Jocko Podcast - 35: Maneuver Warfare, Being a Rebel, Disarming w/ Words, Sliding into Old Habits

Episode Date: August 10, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 1:13:23 - Cool Interwebs Stuff and Onnit Stuff 1:15:19 - Random Working out talk 1:26:05 - Thoughts on UFC McGreggor VS Diaz and Jiu Jitsu 1:33:40 - Jocko being a Rebel VS Rule-followers 1:43:40 - Dealing with a Leader who Preaches, but does not Practice ownership. 1:47:24 - The Art of Disarming People with Words. 1:53:48 - People who Lead from an emotional/unbalanced place.  How to improve. 2:01:10 - "You get more bees with honey." 2:05:23 - Sliding into old bad habits.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 35 with Echo Charles and me, Jocker Willink. Good evening, Eko. Good evening. Weeper was ahead when he and Bourne reached the gap in the wire. Star Shell after Star Shell was going up now, and the whole line had woken up. Machine guns were talking, but there was one that would not talk. The rattle of musketry continued. But the mist was kindly to them.

It had thickened again. As they got beyond the tramling, clutching wire, Bourne saw a weeper a couple of paces ahead of him, and what he thought was the last of their party disappearing into the mist about 20 yards away. He was glad to be clear of the wire. Another star-shell went up, and they both froze in stillness under its glare.

Then they moved again, hurrying for all they were worth. Bourne felt a sense of triumph and escape thrill in him. Anyway, Lahun couldn't see him now. Something kicked him in the upper part of the chest, rending its way through him, and his agonized cry was scarcely audible in the rush of blood from his mouth as he collapsed and fell. Weeper turned his head over his shoulder, listened, stopped, and went back.

He found Bourne trying to lift himself. and Bourne spoke, gasping, suffocating, Go on, I'm scuppered. I'll not leave thee, said Whipper, said Weeper. He stood and lifted the other in his huge, ungangly arms, carrying him as tenderly as though he were a child. Bourne struggled wearily to speak, and the blood, filling his mouth, prevented him.

sometimes his head fell on Weeper's shoulder. At last, barely articulate, a few words came. I'm finished. Leave me in peace for God's sake. You can't. I'll not leave thee, said Weeper in infuriate rage. He felt born stretch himself in a convulsive shudder and relax, becoming suddenly heavier in his.

arms. He struggled on, stumbling over the shell-plowed ground through that fantastic mist, which moved like an army of wraiths hurrying away from him. Then he stopped, and taking the body by the waist with his left arm, flung it over his shoulder, steadying it with his right. He could see their wire now, and presently he was challenged and replied. He found the way through the wire. and staggered into the trench with his burden. Then he turned down the short stretch to Monk Trunch, trench, and came on the rest of the party outside A Company's dugout. Iva brought him back, he cried desperately, and collapsed with the body on the duckboards.

And that is from a book called The Middle Parts of Fortune. which is written by a guy named Frederick Manning, who served with the King's Shropshire Light Infantry in World War I. He served with the 7th Battalion at the Battle of the Soam. And after the war, he became a writer. And the book, which is actually a novel, but based on his experiences, was published as being written by Private...

1902. That's how it got originally published. And then after his death, he finally received credit for writing it. And it's a very powerful book. And I wanted to start with that excerpt from World War I because it is the most shining in my mind and most horrific example of attrition warfare.

Almost 20 million killed. Usually over a few hundred yards of trench. And I can't stand that. Attrition warfare is a strategy in which one side tries to grind down and wear down the other side. And they break when they no longer have the men, the soldiers, the people, the humans, or the supplies to keep it going. and it's brutal and it also gives no real advantage

to intellect and to thought and to tactical prowess on the battlefield and I don't like it now the opposite of attrition warfare is maneuver warfare

and that's what we're going to dive into tonight the book is the maneuver warfare handbook But as we talk about it, think about it not just being about war and about combat, but about how attrition warfare and maneuver warfare can be easily seen in the way that we lead. And also in the way we interact with other people, with other humans, which is what leading is. And so here we go.

Into this book right here. maneuver warfare handbook. It's written by William S. Lind. And we'll get into him in a minute. Here we go with the book. I served over 31 years, active duty with the Marine Corps, saw combat in both Korea and Vietnam, and attended service schools from the basic school to the National War College.

Yet only toward the end of my military career did I realize how little I really understood the art of war. Even as a PFC in Korea, after being medevacked along with most of my platoon after a fruitless frontal assault against superior North Korean forces, it seemed to me there had to be a better way to wage war. 17 years later, commanding a battalion at Kaysan, I was resolved that none of my Marines would die for lack of superior combat power. But we were still relying on the concentration of superior firepower to win.

essentially still practicing grants attrition warfare and we were still doing frontal assaults that opening right there is Colonel John C. Stutt Marine Corps obviously and he just kind of explained his his career path serving in both Korea and Vietnam

and he goes on the author of this book so he's doing the forward to this book maneuver warfare the author of this book has never served a day of active military duty. And he has never been shot at, although there are no doubt some senior officers would like to remedy that latter deficiency.

So he's a little bit unpopular, the guy that wrote this book with some people. Yet he demonstrates an amazing understanding of the art of war as have only a small handful of military thinkers I have come across in my career. So he's talking about this guy William S. Lynde.

And here he goes into some details on William S. Lynde and how he came into contact with him. Back to the book. When I first heard Bill Lynn speak, I must confess, I resented a mere civilian expressing criticism of the way our beloved core did things. After all, he was not one of us. He had not shed blood with us in battle.

He was not a brother. and I had strong suspicions that he would have difficulty passing the PFT, meaning the physical test. So this guy, Lind, not exactly a high-level athlete. But what he said made sense. For the first time, I was personally hearing someone advocate an approach to war that was based on intellectual innovation rather than sheer material superiority. mission type orders, surfaces and gaps, Schwerpunct, instead of the rigid formulas and checklist that we normally associate with our training and doctrine.

It was a stimulating experience. Through Lynn's articulation, years of my own reading of military history began to make a lot more sense. But why all this from a civilian instead of a professional soldier? In fact, the entire movement for military reform is driven largely by civilian intellectuals, not military officers. One notable exception being retired Air Force Colonel John Boyd. When you think about it, this is not surprising.

We have never institutionalized a system that encourages innovative ideas or criticism from subordinates. So there you go. It's the military. What do you say to your superior officer? I don't think that's a good plan. No, what they're told to do is support the plan. proposing significant change is frequently viewed as criticism of superiors since they are responsible for the way things are and borders on disloyalty if not insubordination so it is not surprising that the movement for reform comes from outside the military establishment and he goes on to say b.H. Liddell Hart which B.H. Liddell Hart was a guy that fought in World War I a Brit that fought in World War I

battle the psalm he got hit three times eventually was gassed set out of the line and almost his entire battalion was wiped out and this guy eventually wrote a book called strategy an indirect approach and interesting i pulled up one quote from him um often the longest way around is the shortest way there. This is the indirect approach. So anyways, back to the book here on what B. H. L. H. L. H. H. H. H. H.R. once remarked that the only thing harder

than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out. In 1925, when he was expounding such haterical theories as the indirect approach, the American General Service school's review of current

military literature dismissed one Liddell Hart's major works as negative value to the instructors at these schools. I expect Marine Corps schools to receive this publication with similar enthusiasm, but I cannot believe a professional military officer would not benefit by reading it. So that's, if you, to catch the setup of this book, he's saying, look, this is different than what we've been taught. This is different, and by the way, this book, I'm checking the dates right now. this came out in 1985.

So there has been progress in this direction since then, but at the time that this came out, it was just, it was viewed as almost insubordination to think this way. So let's jump into it right here with the theory of maneuver warfare. So now we're getting to lend himself writing.

Maneuver warfare is not new. It probably dates, from the first time a caveman surprised an enemy from behind instead of meeting him club to club. Sometimes the word maneuver is used as a synonym for movement such as in references

to fire and maneuver in small unit tactics. So that's, you know, we have in the book Extreme Ownership cover and move and that's what we're talking about. We're talking about move. He's saying fire and maneuver is the same use of the word maneuver to mean move.

maneuver is organized movement of troops during combat operations to a new access and region for the purpose of taking in an advantageous position relative to the enemy in order to deliver a decisive strike. So that's sort of the classical definition. But when used in the phrase maneuver warfare, maneuver means much more. Only recently has someone suggested a convincing answer of what maneuver means. that man is a retired Air Force colonel and fighter pilot named John Boyd. Colonel Boyd's development of the theory of maneuver warfare began not with ground battles,

but with a study of some mock air-to-air combat exercises conducted at Nellas Air Force Base in 1974 that led him back to the study of air-to-air combat during the Korean War. American aviators were very successful in that conflict. They achieved a 10-1 kill ratio over their North-Earths. Korean and Chinese opponents. Colonel Boyd began his study with the question, how and why did we do so well? He noted in several traditional measures of aircraft performance,

the principal communist fighter, the Meg 15, was superior to the American F-86. So you might think, oh, Americans always have the best technology. Not true. And Boyd will end up doing Boyd. We're going to hear quite a bit about him right now, but this guy was sort of a strategic genius in the Air Force, and a bunch of people on Twitter hit me, and social media have always been saying,

you've got to do Boyd, you've got to do Boyd, and I know I've got to do Boyd at some point. And this is sort of a good introduction to Boyd. So here's the difference between the Meg 15 and the American F-86. The Meg 15, it could climb and accelerate faster, and it had better sustained turn rate. But in two less obvious measurements, measures of aircraft performance, the F-886 was much superior to the MiG.

First, the pilot could see out much better. The F-86's bubble canopy gave its pilot very good outward vision. While the MIGs fared canopy made it difficult to see out. Second, the F-86 had high-powered and highly effective hydraulic controls, and the mig did not. This meant that while the mig could do many individual actions, including turn, climb, and accelerate better than the F-86, the F-86 could transition from one action to another much more quickly than the mig. It was better in the transition. So for all you jiu-jitsu players, you start that scramble, you start that scramble, the F-86 is a better scrambler.

using these two superiority the American pilots developed a tactical approach that forced the mig into a series of actions each time the action changed the F-86 gained time advantage because the F-86 pilot could see more quickly how the situation had changed and he could also make his aircraft shift more quickly

to a new action so he can see what's happening faster then once he sees it which he saw faster now he can make his adjustment faster. With each change, the MIG's actions became more inappropriate, until they were so inappropriate that the MIG gave the F-86 a good firing opportunity. Often it appeared the MIG pilot realized what was happening to him and panicked, which made the American pilot's job all the easier.

Later, Colonel Boyd began studying ground combat to see if there were any situations similar to that he had found in the era war over Korea. He found that in battles, campaigns, and wars like Vicksburg and France, a similar thing seemed to have happened. One side had presented the other with a sudden, unexpected change or a series of such changes to which it could not adjust in a timely manner. As a result, it was defeated, and it was generally defeated at small costs to the victor. Often, the losing side had been physically stronger than the winner, just like the MiG-15 was, was physically faster, it didn't matter. And, often, the same sort of panic and paralysis

the North Korean and Chinese pilots had shown seemed to occur. Colonel Boyd asked himself, what did all these cases have in common? His answer was what is now called the Boyd theory, which is the theory of maneuver warfare. The briefing Colonel Boyd gives to explain his theory, patterns of conflict takes over five hours. So Colonel Boyd does give this brief, and it takes over five hours, or he did when he was alive.

But at the cost of missing some of the subtleties and supporting historical evidence in the briefing, it can be summarized as follows. So here's a kind of a synopsis of the Boyd theory that Linda is going to put together for us right now. Back to the book. Conflict can be seen as time competitive observation, orientation, decision, action cycles. Each party to a conflict begins by observing. He observes himself, his physical surroundings, and his enemy. On the basis of his observation, he orientes, that is to say, he makes a mental image or snapshot of his situation.

On the basis of this orientation, he makes a decision. He puts the decision into effect, i.e. he acts. Then, because he assumes his action has changed the situation, he observes again and starts the process anew. His actions follow a cycle, sometimes called the Boyd cycle, or Uda loop, and Uda's OODA, and that's Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. If one side in a conflict can consistently go through the Boyd cycle faster than the other, it gains a tremendous advantage. By the time the slower side acts, the faster side is doing something different from what he observed, and his action is inappropriate. With each cycle, the slower party's action is inappropriate by a larger time margin.

Even though he desperately strives to do something that will work, each action is less useful than its predecessor. He falls further and further behind. Ultimately, he ceases to be effective. And we clearly, I mean, this is obvious in combat. It's also obvious in jiu-jitsu. I mean, very clear when you're training, when you're rolling with somebody, if they're not making adjustments fast enough, you just, it's two or three, two or three transitions,

and you got them. You're on their back. The Boyd theory defines what is meant by the word maneuver in the term maneuver warfare. Maneuver means Boyd-cycling. Boyd-cycling the enemy, being consistently faster through however many, utaloups it takes until the enemy loses its cohesion until he can no longer fight in his

effective organized force sometimes a boyed-cycled enemy panics or becomes passive this is an ideal outcome for the victor because a panicked passive enemy can be annihilated or captured at the lowest cost in friendly casualties at other times the outmaneuvered enemy may continue to fight as individuals or small units but because he can no longer act effectively as a force, he is comparatively easy to destroy. So, continuing on, if the object in maneuveral warfare is to move through the udaloups faster than the enemy, what do you need to do? How can you be consistently faster?

Much of the rest of this book is an effort to address that question. But in terms of general theory, the following points are worth thinking about. One, only a decentralized military can have a fast OODA loop. If the observations must be passed up the chain of command, the orientation made and the decision taken at a high level and the command for action then transmitted back down the chain, the Oudoloup is going to be slow. As the Israeli military historian Martin Van Krebel has observed,

from Plato to NATO, the history of command and war, consists of an endless quest for certainty. Certainty concerning the state and intention of the enemy's forces. Certainty concerning the manifold factors which together constitute the environment from the weather and the terrain to the radioactivity and presence of chemical warfare agents. And last but definitely not least, certainty concerning the state and activities of one's own forces. Historical commanders have always faced the choice between two basic,

ways of coping with uncertainty. One was to construct an army of automaton's, following the orders of a single man, allowed to do only that which could be controlled. That's centralized command. The other, to design organizations and operations in such a way as to enable the former to carry out the latter without the need for continuous control.

The second of these methods has, that's decentralized command. The second of these methods has, by and large, proved more successful than the first. And the ongoing revolution in the technology of command notwithstanding, this is likely to remain so in the future. And indeed, so long as war itself exists. Very obvious stuff. And again, in our book, Extreme Ownership, that's one of the principles of combat, decentralized command. And this is what it is.

If you don't have decentralized command, that you have to report up the chain of command. That takes time by the time it gets back down. What the decision, the decision gets made at the higher level, then they pass it back down to you. By the time it gets to you, it's already changed.

And that's in a jiu-jitsu, in a jiu-jitsu comparison, if you have to think about your moves, so you have instinctive moves, muscle memory. When somebody starts to pass your guard, you get the underhook. If you have to think about getting the underhook

and you have to command your body to get the underhook, they already got the underhook on you. So it's the same thing here. That's decentralized command. Back to the book. Number two, maneuver warfare means you will not only accept confusion and disorder and operate successfully within it, through decentralization,

you will also generate confusion and disorder. I love that. That's just awesome, right? It's not just saying, hey, look, things are getting confusing. But I'm actually going to create the confusion. I'm going to make it happen. That's something, when you see the really good judicious, I mean, Glover does that. Glover creates confusion.

He creates mayhem. He creates chaos in the match. He wants to scramble to happen. He wants to go as long as possible. The reconnaissance pull tactics of the German Blitzkrieg were inherently disorderly. Now, this is something that's very contrary to what people think of the German military and even the German culture. German culture is very orderly. and here we say the Blitzkrague was inherently disorderly.

Back to the book, Higher headquarters could neither direct nor predict the exact path of the advance, but the multitude of German reconnaissance thrusts generated massive confusion among the French in 1940. Each was reported as a new attack. The Germans seemed to be everywhere, and the French, whose system demanded certainty

before making any decisions, were paralyzed. It's very interesting to think about that idea of We all want to have certainty and what's going to happen and how in in In battle and in life if you wait until you're 100% certain you're probably going to be too late Speaking of certainty three all patterns recipes and formulas are to be avoided The enemy must not be able to predict your actions. If your tactics follow predictable patterns, the enemy can easily cut inside your udaloupe. If he can predict what you will do, he will be waiting for you. This is why it's

so hard to tell someone how to do maneuver warfare. There is no formula you can learn. When someone says, cut all the bull about theory, just tell me what to do, you can't. You can talk about how to think and about some useful techniques, but you can't give new formulas to replace the ones currently taught. Instead of a checklist or a cookbook, maneuver warfare requires commanders who can sense more than they can see, who understand the opponent's strengths and weaknesses and their own, and who can find the enemy's critical weaknesses in a specific situation. They must be able to create multiple threats and keep the enemy uncertain as to which one

is real. They must be able to see their options in the situation before them, constantly create new options, and shift rapidly among options as the situation develops. General Herman Bulk, one of the most successful practitioners of maneuver warfare, said, I'm against the school approach that says, in accordance with the ideas of the general staff, in this situation, you must do thus and such. On the contrary, you must proceed as dictated by the personalities involved

and the particulars of the situation. So he got a German, successful German general, and he's actually saying you react based, not just on the situation on the ground, but on the personalities involved. Leadership

is an art, my friend. Therefore, one of the first principles has to be, there can be no fixed schemes. Every scheme, every pattern is wrong. No two situations are identical. That is why the study of military

history can be extremely dangerous. Another principle that follows from this is never do the same thing twice. Even if something works well for you once by the second time the enemy will have adapted. So you have to think up something new.

No one thinks of becoming a great painter simply by imitating Michelangelo. Similarly, you can't become a great military leader just by imitating someone. It has to come from within. In the last analysis, military command is an art. One man can do it, and most will never learn.

A little bit of maneuver warfare. And so at the way the book is broken up, this book is called maneuver warfare handbook, it's it goes into uh it breaks into another section which we're going to get to in a minute but he kind of goes into a little bit lind now goes into a little bit talking about education and training back to the book it is my great and this is a quote is my great and constant hope that the marine corps will produce some outstanding man for this country such men are somewhere and they may as well be in our classes as anywhere else.

I do not want such a person to be hammered down by narrowness and dogmas, to have his mind cramped by compulsory details. It is my constant ambition to see the Marine officers filled with ambition, initiative, and originality. And they can get these attributes only by liberality of thought, broad thought. thought that differs, thought that differs from precedent and the compulsory imprint of others. And that is a long paragraph that says, free your mind. Free your mind.

And I love pointing us out because this is the Marine Corps. That's that, that quote is from the Commandant of Marine Corps Schools Brigadier General J.C. Breckenridge, written in 1934. In 1934, he was saying people, Marine Corps officers, don't go by the book, don't obey what other people said. He wants them filled with ambition. That's pretty normal. But initiative and originality, he's telling in order to be a good leader,

you've got to free your mind. Now, like I said, the book makes a transition from being the, from being the introduction by William Lind about maneuver warfare and then it slides into another section which is just about as big and this part is called fundamentals of tactics and this section is written by

Colonel Michael D. Wiley United States Marine Corps and he ran a course fundamentals of tactics course and this is sort of of the, this is the notes from the course when he would teach this course, the fundamentals of tactics. And Colonel Wiley, kind of interesting, he went to the, went to the, he was an enlisted Marine, then he went to the Naval Academy, and he was Jim Webb's company commander in Vietnam,

and Jim Webb is a fairly famous guy. He was a Navy Cross winner. He's a, now a, he was a senator from Virginia. he wrote a book called Fields of Fire and then there's another great book called the Nightingale song which is it follows a couple five or so yeah I think it's it's a Webb

McCain Oliver North McFarlane I think and John Pointextra anyways very prominent graduates from the Naval Academy that all kind of stood out and were connected throughout the book. So this guy, so Jim Webb is this kind of famous guy, and this guy that wrote this was Jim Webb's company commander in Vietnam. So that's kind of, it's a small world and things tie together.

So now we get into these lectures that he wrote, and I don't mean to lecture anybody, but they're called lectures in this book. I would just call them free-fro information we're going to learn from. The first section is called surfaces and gaps. The concept of surfaces and gaps is one of several concepts that bear on tactics. It is unimportant whether you refer to this concept as surfaces and gaps or soft spot tactics or simply the idea of pitting your strength against the enemy's weaknesses. That is what it is all about. Strength against weakness.

Call it what you will. The term surfaces and gaps is derived from a German term, flaken and lukentactic, which means simply the tactics of surfaces and gaps. The surfaces being the enemy's strong points, which we avoid, the gaps being the weak points that we want to go through. Now, Liddell Hart, who we talked about already today,

called it the expanding torrent system tactic. He drew an analogy between an attacking army and a torrent of water. If we watch a torrent bearing down on each successive bank of earth and dam in its path, we see that it first beats against the obstacle feeling and testing it on all points. Eventually, it finds a small crack. Through this crack, pour the first driplets of water and rush straight on. The pent-up water on each side is drawn towards the breach. It swirls through around the flanks of the breach wearing away the earth on each side and so widening the gap.

Simultaneously, the water behind pours straight through that breach between the side eddies which are wearing away the flanks. Directly it has passed through. It expands to widen once more the on-reach of the torrent. Thus, as the water pours through it in and an ever-increasing volume, the on-reach of the torrent swells to its original proportion. leaving in turn each crumbling obstacle behind it. Long paragraph. But that's how water gets through things. Finds the weak point and piles on.

The idea of putting surfaces and gaps tactics into practice was first implemented by the German army in World War I. This is stuff that everybody should know, especially military people. In 1918, as they prepared for Ludendorf Spring Offensive, the German army changed its offensive tactics. The Germans had found that they were being overpowered by the material available to the British and the French. The Americans were coming, and it was clear that Germany was going to lose if she did not do something differently.

Because they did not have the option of matching the Allies' strength and material, the Germans decided that they would have to outthink them. That is, they would have to have better tactics. Germany did not succeed in winning the war. It was too late by this time. they were surrounded. The women and children were starving at home. It was simply too late for them to win.

Yet, they made some tactical progress there at last, at last, in the spring of 1918. They inflicted terrible defeats on their enemies to the point that the Allied armies were seriously considering the prospect of giving up. At the tactical level, the Germans put their strength against weakness. They sought the gaps. Small assault groups called Sturmgruppen sought gaps in the enemy lines and attacked through them, assaulting with light machine guns, rifles, grenades, and flamethrowers,

while heavy machine guns, direct and indirect weapons, including trench mortars, were used to suppress enemy strong points. But on a strategic level, the spring of 1918 offensive failed. Why? Because Ludendorf, on that level, put strength against strength he was seek though he was seeking gaps he was seeking gaps

at the enemy's strong points that's a very that's a great great information to have so yeah the guys on the ground were attacking the weak points but the strategic picture they were still attacking a strong area so you might have found a little weakness

in a wall a little weakness in the wire a little weakness in the trench but they were attacking a let's say a 20 mile trench that was overall was a strong area whereas they should have looked for where the flanks are 100 miles away. Back to the book, the idea of putting strength against weakness was, of course, born way before 1918. Klaus Fitz writes about it in Chapter 9 and 10 of Book 7.

In Chapter 9, regarding defensive positions, he states, the attack cannot prevail against them. It has no means at its disposal to counteract their advantage. In practice, not all defensive positions are. like this. If the attacker sees that he can get away without assaulting them, it would be stupid of him not to attempt it. It would be

stupid of him to attempt it. It is a risky business to attack an able opponent in a good position. Same thing we heard from Sunsu. You don't attack the heavily defended positions. Back to the book. Employment of this concept of

surfaces and gaps then gives us many advantages over what could be called slower moving forms of combat where strength is thrown against strength. Attacking through gaps, avoiding surfaces, gives us an advantage of economy of force. If we are pitted strength against strength, assaulting enemy strong points,

we are consuming our manpower as well as ammunition and supplies as we go along. If we go through the gaps, we are practicing economy of force. We are reaching our objective without using up our men. We are leaving the enemy behind. Because we are moving faster,

we have the advantage of rapid exploitation. So when you attack, obviously, you attack weaknesses. You lose less men. Now this is important. The concept of surfaces and gaps demands leadership from the front as opposed to leadership from the rear. The commander must be where he can make swift decisions. He must be where the situation is developing.

Obviously, leadership from the front had become a scarcity in World War I. JFC Fuller in his book Generalship wrote In the World War Nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men Starting with a battalion commander

And ending with the army commander Sitting in telephone boxes Improvised or actual Talking talking talking Talking In place of leading Leading leading The result was

Unresponsive leadership And slow reactions We actually talked about this on the last podcast when Laif was talking about being in an assault force and being in the assault train, which is 20 guys, 15 or 20 guys, and he was standing always at the end of the train because that's where he was told he was supposed to be. And he didn't know what's going on the front so he couldn't help. He couldn't make any decisions. If someone was going to, if he needed to make a decision, well, he couldn't even make a decision because he didn't know what's going on up

there. But if someone said, hey, we need a decision from the boss, they had to pass that word all the way back. Not good. So you've got to lead from the front with decentralized command and be far enough. I don't want to make it sound that simple. It's the same thing we talked about. You've got to be far enough forward that you can understand what's happening up there. And obviously, but you don't want to be the guy that's doing the shooting because then you've gone too far forward to actually be detached and make decisions. Certainly, combat is not going to be that simple.

The gap then might be any undefended point or any weakly defended point. It may be any enemy vulnerability. It might be the enemy's flanks. The term flank itself needs some elaboration. Think of it as a relative thing. John Boyd defines a flank as that aspect toward which a force is not devoting its primary attention. In other words, in fluid warfare, what is one moment the enemy's flank is, might the next moment be the enemy's front.

It depends on how he is directing his attention. A gap for the infantry could be an enemy missile site manned by troops who are not combat oriented. The missile site might be a surface if you are flying on an airplane, but a gap if you are a light infantryman who has gotten inside enemy lines. So, does that make sense to you? So if you've got a surface-to-air missile launcher, and it has a radar on it, and it can track aircraft coming in,

and if you're a fighter aircraft, you don't want to stay away from that thing, because it'll get you locked on radar, and it's going to fire a heat-seeking missile at you and kill you. So for them, it's a surface. It's a strong point. For an aircraft, it's a strong point. But for a ground troop,

they don't put, you know, the highest-level troops guarding these things because they're in the rear a little bit. They put, like, kind of, you know, some, what they call them here, They're manned by troops who are not combat oriented. So that means it's a softer target. Back to the book. Let us say we are unsuccessful in finding any gaps.

We may have to create gaps, and there are ways of doing this. So then they talk about the ways you can do it. You can do it through firepower, but dropping bombs, by suppression, by assault, all those different ways to create gaps with, you know, using direct fire to soften up targets. And then I like these tactics a little bit better. Another way of creating gaps is through supporting attacks. By attacking one point along the line, we may divert the enemy from another point,

and by drawing them off, create a gap. Again, this is in linear terms for instructional purposes, for simplicity. But do not get a linear mindset. Sometimes a less costly way of creating a gap is through deception. By causing the enemy to think that we will attack at one point, thereby enticing him to draw his forces off from another point. And when we attack that point where he has weakened himself. But what do we do about surfaces?

That is strong points. Sometimes they are best bypassed. Once the enemy has been bypassed, his strong point may be cut off from its support. And in that way, his strong point eventually withers away and becomes a weak point, which we can attack later. you know, we talk a lot in here about not attacking people's defensible positions, and this is just classic, another way of saying that.

You know, we talk about people with got the ego, the big ego, and how you don't want to confront that ego. Well, if you can bypass the ego, eventually the ego doesn't become a factor anymore. And that's the same thing when you're doing ground combat. Back to the book, there are certain problems presented

by the concept of surfaces and gaps, especially to commanders who are used to slow-moving forms of combat. one is that the commander will not always know where all his people are in the Marine Corps we've become used to being accountable at all times for knowing exactly where every man is in this faster moving form of combat to do so would be impossible your subordinates are finding the gaps and exploiting them so you've got if you're a control freak you're not going to be able to pull this off

because I'm saying well echo where are you echo where are you echo where are you No, echo's out there. He's working. He's finding some gaps to get through. Not know exactly where he is. Another problem is that artillery and air might not be, may not be controlled as closely as is possible in slower moving forms of combat. So you start to deal with the problems of air support.

And artillery is a little trickier to use because you have people moving around the battlefield and you're not sure where everyone is. And that makes it very difficult because you obviously don't want to drop bombs on your own people. Another problem associated with the concept of surfaces and gaps is that as we penetrate deeply, often on narrow fronts, our flanks become exposed. There are, however, compensating factors again related to speed. We are moving quickly. The enemy is always off balance. Remember the old adage, there is security in speed.

So, in other words, as you penetrate into a zone, you're going to be exposed a little bit, but if you're moving fast, you can deal. with that exposure. Critics of these faster moving forms of combat characterized by initiative at the low level fear that they will lead groups to groups of men moving willy-nilly about the battlefield and that commanders will lose control. So people say, oh, you know, if I give so much, so much initiative at the low level, I'm going to lose control of it. And people are going to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. This need not be so. If the concept of surfaces and gaps is employed properly, it will not be so. That is why we have control measures.

The boundary, the limit of advance, the phase line can still be used. It must be remembered that these control measures should serve their function but not be rigid lines that cannot be changed or ignored when the situation changes. They should be kept to a minimum and must always be flexible. The tactics must never follow the control measures. On the contrary, the control measures must follow. the tactics and the tactics must always be based on the enemy other concepts that will be discussed in the chapters ahead as especially that of the main effort gives

us meaning gives us means of keeping control over our troops and preventing a situation where they can be said to be moving willy-nilly about the battlefield so decentralized command it it is challenging and if you don't do it right you will have chaos. So now we get into the next section. And it does say lecture again, but again, I'm not here to lecture anybody.

I don't think I can pull that off. The concept, this section is called mission tactics. The concept of mission tactics, like surfaces and gaps, must always be at work in battle. The name is derived from the German

Alftrags tactic, which means literally mission tactics. It is no accident that the name includes the word tactics. Assigning a mission and depending on subordinates to carry it out constitutes the tactic. To allow the subordinate to decide on his own initiative what to do is the means of getting the most appropriate decisions made on the spot and acted on more rapidly than the enemy can respond to your actions. got to get your subordinate leadership to lead.

You want them to lead. This is the account of Prince Frederick Charles, who is giving a ton lashing to one of his majors for committing a tactical blunder. In defense of his action, the major explained that he was only following orders. In the Prussian army, the major reminded the prince, an order from a senior officer was tantamount

to an order from the king. The prince was unimpressed. His reply to the major was, the king made you a major because he thought you were smart enough to know when not to obey orders. And that is the essence of mission tactics. The subordinate decides what to do even if it means that the order issued by his senior now should be changed or adjusted. The mission assigned is sacred. The mission is the output that the commander wants.

That does not change. But how that output is to be achieved, may change and is up to the intelligent subordinate to decide whether or not it has. Total freedom for the subordinate leadership to figure out how they want to make this happen. They know what they need to get done, but they have the freedom to figure out how they're going to make it happen. Back to the book, there is a classic example used time and time again and introducing the student to mission tactics. It is simple and of value, so it will be used again here. The subordinate is giving the mission of getting his unit across the river. Getting his unit across the river is the output

the senior desires. The route that he has been given crosses the nearest bridge. The junior commander arrives at the site to find that the bridge has been destroyed. He does not stop. He does not wait for new orders. He does not request permission to change his route. He goes to the nearest forward several kilometers distance and he crosses there. He informs the same. He informs the senior, of course, as soon as he can, but he does not wait. Remember, mission orders are necessary to give the tempo of operations the rapidity that it must have if we are to keep the enemy off balance. So that's a very simple example.

I tell Echo, hey, I need your troops across that river. Go across that bridge. You get there. The bridge is out. You're like, no, I'm still going to get across the river. Here's, let's find a plightment of a place we can go across or let's make it happen. And you're going to make it happen. not going to bother me.

You're not going to call me back. Hey, the bridge is out. What do you want me to do? Now, something that this is a little bit, this is a little bit simplified, because the reality is, if you were going to start moving kilometers away from where I anticipated you being,

you need to tell me that you're moving. You need to tell me because I might have other friendly units in the area that might don't expect you. I might have big dropping bombs in that area. So this is actually leaving out some critical coordination that does have to happen, but the initiative to make it happen should happen.

Yeah, it seems like you, like in the process of that decentralized command, the person carrying out the order is it's kind of to his discretion how much he's going to deviate when something changes. Like he can't, he's, of course he's going to deviate he's going to make those adjustments, but

you don't want to deviate too much. Right. And honestly, if I was to give you to directions, hey Echo, I need you going across, I need you across the river. I would literally give you some parameters to work with I'd say don't go further south than this area than this road and don't go further north than this. You can do whatever you want inside of here. So now you can do whatever you want inside that box.

Yeah, and how you always talk about you'll say like why you're going across the river as well. And speaking of why, here's another example of mission orders. This is an actual example. Seas control of Route 6 west of the muddy river in order to destroy enemy forces attempting to assist. from company Bravo's zone of action. So it's telling you the why. That's what the in order to is. Notice in the mission order, the phrase in order to.

That is a very important phrase and usually ought to go in the mission order. There's no rule that every mission order contain the phrase in order to. If you were told attack the enemy company that you see in front of you, it would probably be highly superfluous to tell you why. They are there. They are a threat. Why waste the breath? But usually your mission order will have the ability to endure time better if you explain this

ordinate why he is carrying the mission out. So you called this echo. He turned into a little tactical genius over there, aren't you? In order to, this gives the order, the quality that Eric von Manstein called long term. It can endure the test of time. Your commander can lose communication with you, yet you can still carry out his intent because you know what he wanted and you can continue to act within his intent

for a long time without checking back. Understanding the why, as briefed by Lieutenant Colonel Echo Charles. Fixed rules are not appropriate in instructing how to assign missions. Too often students reject good ideas about tactics because they cannot get their thoughts to fit the format of the operation order that is being demanded. The important thing is that the mission be clear. Compared to clarity, format is of little or no consequence.

And this is, we talk about it into extreme ownership, these massive PowerPoint briefs that, I mean, hundreds, literally, you know, 100 to 150 slides to try and make the, to try and brief a mission. When, and the leaders would waste so much time trying to put these briefs together. and they wouldn't do the planning that they're supposed to be doing. They wouldn't be thinking. They'd be building PowerPoint slides. And I just had to get these guys to think.

And stop working on the PowerPoint. Stop trying to match your font. Try trying to equalize the hues on each slide to make it look pretty. No, don't care. What I want you to do is think, and I want clarity of mission is the most important thing. As a matter of fact, I had one guy who was running training, and a guy says to me, it's one of the task unit, commanders and he says hey you know what is it what is it that you're looking for in the brief and he's you know trying to figure out how many slides do I want to see and what format do I want to see and I said

what I want for the brief is that your men understand the operation boom back to the book the subordinate receiving that order must be more talented amateur troops awkward clumsy untrained troops cannot be expected to carry out mission orders why because as a result of their lack of experience, they must be told what to do. Only the professional experience leader can know what to do without being told what to do. Because we in the

Marine Corps set our standards high, we expect that our subordinates will train until they can perform under mission orders. So, I don't know if I made this clear, or if I breezed over this part. Mission orders is exactly what we're talking about when it comes to, hey, just tell the person, this is what I need

done. And this is why I want it done. You figured out. opposed to telling them exactly what you want them to do. Commander's intent. Yes, indeed, Commander's intent. Burdens of responsibility increase on both sides. On the part of the senior commander, so when you're doing mission orders, the burden of responsibility increases on the part of the senior commander and on the part of the subordinate.

Look first at the senior commander. Operating with mission orders, his orders must be perfectly clear. the onus is on the senior to define to the junior what must be accomplished without telling him how to do it. The onus is not on the junior to ferret out what his commander wants. The senior must state what he wants. Otherwise, he should not expect to get it. Now, I actually, when I teach people this, I tell them that the onus is on the junior. And if I tell you to do something and you don't understand why you're doing it and you don't understand what my intent is,

and you still go in the field and try and do it, I blame you. I mean, it's my fault, too, but we're both taking ownership. I might even say we're taking extreme ownership of the situation. But really, if your boss isn't telling you why they're telling you to do something, you just raise your hand and ask,

hey boss, what's your objective here, what's your overall intent, what's the commander's intent? Because I want to make sure if I lose communications with you, I can continue to execute towards your desired end state. That's what we're looking for. an additional burden of responsibility on the senior is that he must train his subordinates and his unit to operate as a team

they are not going to be able to perform mission orders without training another new burden of responsibility is that he must expect his subordinates to make mistakes he may not expect zero defects wars are won by people not machines people make mistakes if people are more afraid of making mistakes

than they are of exercising initiative now and then they will not take risks and they will not exercise initiative. Furthermore, they will not win in war. Perhaps the most important new responsibility that is placed on the commander who gives mission orders is that he must trust his subordinates. If trust breaks down, the whole system breaks down. So people ask me about trust from time to time,

and it's absolutely, and I talk about relationships, The R word. And that's what that's what it is. And Leif and I talked about the other day on the podcast is that just building trust, how one of the best ways to build trust is I give it. I give it. And so that's what goes back and forth.

And in the military, you do that when you're in the training environment. When there's no risk or very, very tiny risk of life and limb, there's no strategic lift. You're not, you're not going to lose the war. So I'm going to let you run with stuff. I want you to learn. I want you to take risk.

And if you fail, if you screw something up, I don't try and fire you. We try and learn from it. And that encourages you to take initiative and keep getting after it. Now we're moving to the next section, which is called the main effort. The commander in making his plan must determine what and where his main effort is in every operation, whether it be offensive, defensive, or withdrawal.

This main effort should be specified in the operation order. It should always be clearly stated in paragraph 3A, the concept of operation. There can only be one main effort. When you start giving two or three or a three-part main effort, you'd better look back at it because the chances are you have not made up your mind what you are trying to do. So if you're trying to plan a mission, you're telling people there's three main things we're trying to get done?

No, wrong. There should be one. Yep. Yeah, in message conveyance. Actually, I think it's in newspaper writing. They call it burying the lead. Like your main story has to, you know, you can't have three main stories in one article.

Got it. Because, and, you know, one story is going to have cool details. Right, right. But you start spending a, bunch of time on these cool details. They call that burying the lead. It's a bad deal. So don't do that in the newspaper business?

And don't do that on the battlefield. Every unit commander down to the company commander will always assign a main effort and sometimes even a platoon commander should. The entire command must be aware of what and where the main effort is. The commander can change the main effort at any time. This is what gives the operation its fluidity. And this is one of the pretty common issues that we run it, ran into it when I was running training, run into it now in the business world where you work with a company and they're not,

they're not assigning a main effort. They're concentrating on 14 different things at the same time. They don't prioritize and execute because this is another form of prioritize and execute. And that's a problem because if you're trying to do 14 things at once, you're going to not accomplish any of them. The German word for main effort is Schwerpunct. Any time in your readings, when you see that, and often you will see it written in italics,

the German word schvertpunct, take note because it is one of the most important underlying concepts in everything the Germans do. Make the main effort where the enemy least expects you. Make the main effort where the enemy is. is weak. Be prepared to be surprised. So let's go. I got to stop right there. It's interesting, you know, when you see the big, fortified area of the enemy, you say, okay,

we're going to, we better, we better attack that hard. No, wrong answer. That's a surface. We're looking for gaps. So don't make the main effort, the strong point, make it the weak point. Back to the book. Be prepared to be surprised. Be leery of the council. Do not ever be surprised. In war, you will be surprised. The task is to learn to deal with surprise. If what you thought would be an enemy weakness

becomes the enemy strength, you should not be disrupted. If your tactics are fluid, you can deal with surprise. You will shift your main effort to enemy weakness and go on through. That is how the main effort works in the offense. Fluidity. Remember we've been hearing a lot about in the Vietnam The Viet Cong were too rigid. They would just try their plan.

Didn't have the fluidity. The main effort should be directed against enemy weakness, not enemy strength. Here you see the interconnection between the concepts, the connection between the concept of the main effort and the concept of surfaces and gaps. All the concepts work together at the same time. The main effort cannot be understood in isolation from surfaces and gaps because it is directed against enemy weakness. and another one of the four laws of combat that we talk about in the book, Extreme Ownership,

is simplicity. Simple. Back to the book. Even the principle of simplicity can be recognized in the concept of the main effort. Instead of trying to do ten different things we are focusing on one. There will be many other efforts going on at the same time, but all in some way directed at making the main effort succeed. So what do you gain from this main effort?

effort. You gain direction. You gain fluidity. You gain speed. And you prevent dissipating your efforts all over the battlefield. The way the Poles did when the Germans invaded Poland, they tried to defend their entire 800-mile front. There was no main effort, and by trying to be strong everywhere, they were in fact strong nowhere. This trying to cover all the bases is a common error in the amateur commander's plan. It is a symptom of avoidance of decision making. Avoidance of decision making. So if you're not saying, hey, here's what we're going to focus on.

You're just, well, I'm going to wait. I don't want to decide yet. Oh, I'm not ready to commit. By establishing a main effort, you make a clear decision. You obviate the necessity for junior officers to keep asking for guidance. If they know their commander's main effort, they can come. continue to operate even though communications may be cut and they can continue

to operate at a high tempo because they need not keep checking back for new orders and here we get to another something you might recognize from our book extreme ownership when the commander has made this decision he has

done something very necessary he has done something very ethical he is assumed and taken responsibility for what will happen if the battle goes awry. He cannot blame his subordinates. He can only blame himself.

It was he who decided what was to be done and designated a main effort in order to do it. Therefore, it takes courage and moral character to select a main effort. That is why the weak commander and the amateur so often fail to do this. In fact, the weak commander will actively avoid, choosing a main effort.

It is very convenient for the commander weak in character to avoid selecting the main effort because if the battle goes unfavorably, he can blame someone else for the mistake. The commander who has taken the stand and selected his own main effort cannot

do this. Therefore, in a sense, the main effort is a moral commitment. Taking some ownership by selecting the main effort. And you've got to dig that.

The next concept, and again, you know, I'm cruising through this book, like I always do, only reading, I don't know, probably a very small percentage of it, 15%. And there's a ton in here. And it actually has some very cool, like exercises, where it gives you a scenario that's happening and you go through and you figure out what you. would do and it gives you a good solution. So it's got it's got it's it's a great book to look at. The next lecture is called the concept of the objective. According to the chairman, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff publication number one,

Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, the objective is the physical object of the action taken, a definite tactical feature, seizure and or holding of which is essential to the commander's plan. That definition is clear enough. Basil Liddell Hart would have disagreed with the JCS definition. At one point in his writings, Liddell Hart stated, the only real objective is the enemy. Lidell Hart's statement is also quite clear and understandable,

especially when we realize that whether we are attacking or defending, the problem is always the enemy. Once the enemy is taking out of the action, defending and attacking are not. longer necessary. Now, the, the, I guess the controversy here, if we could call it that, is the objective not being a specific piece of terrain. It's the, the objective is the enemy. But that being said, the terrain, of course, is extremely important. We must use it to gain advantage. But the object of the attack is the enemy. The objective must be to take the enemy

out of action to destroy him to disarm him. We cannot do that simply by seizing a piece of terrain and holding it. We must be prepared to move continually, wherever necessary, to confuse and disrupt him through a combination of fire and movement. When the term objective appears, it means an aiming point, that towards which we direct our efforts in order to best use the terrain to accomplish our final goal, the destruction of the enemy. The ability to wisely select an objective is the mark of a good commitment.

The inability is the mark of an amateur, and history is replete with examples of poorly selected objectives. There were hills fought for bravely by Marines in Vietnam after they ceased being of any tactical value. Lives were thrown away from meaningless terrain, terrain that did not meet either of the two main criteria for selecting an objective. The two main criteria are one that it be useful to use. you or two dear to your enemy. If it is neither one of these, it is probably not worth the life of a single Marine. Any good commander will, therefore, select terrain that is useful to him.

The great commander will have the ability to select terrain that is dear to the enemy. And the final concept is the concept of the reserve. General JFC Fuller of the British Army, the original author of the nine principles of war that the U.S. Army was to adopt in the 1920s, once stated that of all the principles he developed the most important was economy of force. He reasoned that whichever side still had forces left after the other sides had been committed was bound to win. Napoleon seems to have had similar thoughts when he observed that whoever still had his reserve remaining after his enemy had committed his reserve would win the battle. And here's another quote in here from Napoleon that I think when they're talking about

committing and it talks about your mindset on the battlefield from Napoleon. If I appear to be always ready to reply to everything, it is because before undertaking anything, I have meditated for a long time. I have foreseen what might happen. it is not a spirit which suddenly reveals to me what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by others it is a reflection

a meditation so Napoleon he was good to have these quick reactions and everyone says wow he must have just had this incredible you know he's calling a spirit that just comes to him and says hey move these guys over here hey assault that flank no he already thought through this thing for hours and he said oh if they do this I'm gonna do that

if they come over here, I'm going to be ready over here. Preparation. What Napoleon was saying was that thorough thought in advance prepared him to make split-second decisions when the situation suddenly changed. Preparation is key. Now, that wraps up the book, and I hope that it provides some reminders and some insight to people, not only to the warfighters out on the battlefield, but as I said in the beginning,

I hope it provides some details into dealing with humans, with people, and problems. In the business world, in leadership positions, on that jiu-jitsu mat, in life. Whatever you're doing or whatever you're trying to get done, think of how you can use maneuver warfare to make it happen. And I guess we can go over to some questions from the interwebs. And I guess before we go to the interwebs,

maybe you could tell us about the interwebs and what we can do to support. Support by being on the interwebs. If you're on the interwebs and you're in the mood to support this podcast and or yourself with supplementation, go to onit.com slash jaco. get on it supplements are the best ones i like that idea yeah krill oil it's a good idea cruel oil for sure for your joints and alpha brain some of that alpha brainy yeah some shroom tech sport mode yeah shroom tech sport if you're into performance

physical activity performance if you feel you need a little turbo boost yeah yeah it was funny remember um tim kennedy put it in like real real good terms in my opinion when he was like, oh, yeah, when I took the shroom tech, it's kind of like, because, okay, so you don't want to get confused and be like, hey, I'm going to take the shroom tech and it's like a caffeine boost or something. You know, you don't, because it's not that. It's not. So it's, and he put in these terms where he's like, you know, you go a few rounds, you go five, six, seven, you know, however many rounds and everyone's like real poop. But then you're kind of like, I can go a few more rounds. And really, that is exactly how it is. Or when you're hitting towards the end of the round or whatever, it's like, you, you, you, you're kind of.

feel solid, you know, it just, I guess apparently what it does is it helps you utilize your oxygen consumption. And you'll feel it on a workout. I mean, obviously you're talking about Jiu-Jitsu, which for those people that don't train Jiu-Jitsu, which you should. But if you don't, well, you should. But you're also going to keep working out and you have the, you know, you, sort of a metabolic conditioning type, type of workout situation going on.

Remember how I was telling you I did my metabolic conditioning after I did, like, normal lifting? I've actually been doing the reverse of that lately. Really? I don't know. I would advise you. Because I'm super warmed up. I'm dripping with sweat. Yeah.

And I just, and I feel really good. And then I figure maybe the opposite will happen. Because we both know if you go with your strength movements first, you take a little bit off your metcon strength, right? Yeah. If you do, and so that way when you do the Metcon fresh, you feel like Superman, right?

Because you've been blasted your muscles out. So I've been doing the reverse, though. what I'm doing the MacCon type first, and then I just breathe it out, and then I get into the heavy stuff. Yeah, and I dig it. The only reason I say I dig it because you're savage like that, but consider, because those are two, well, it depends on what kind of lifting you're doing. So let's say if, no, well, if you're lifting like for strength or, you know, muscle growth or whatever, you should do that first. because the results you seek are in line with you having full energy. You're lifting.

I agree with you. I actually think you're correct. And the METCON isn't. The result of the METCON is for you to recover from conditioning. See, it's muscular conditioning. So if you're tired going in, that's more conditioning you have to recover from. Better exercise. So it essentially, but hey, if you want to reverse it, give your body some stuff to, yeah, some stuff to do with it.

It's funny because I completely agree with you. And I've only been doing this for a couple months. And I, you know what it was? You know what it was? One day I was, I was, I was, I was like a MEC-com. It was pretty strong. You're just feeling good. Sure.

And then I got done. I said, I need a little bit more. So I was like, I'm just going to move some, you know, do something heavy. Get my lift on. And when I, when I went heavy, I was like, man, that feels good. Right. You know, I'm all loose. I'm all warm.

And so now I've just kind of started doing it a little bit. Yeah. And if you get used to that, then it'll start to be more and more benefit. I used to, I used to run on the train. I used to do like three and a half miles, sometimes four miles, and then lift, just because I didn't have time. And every time I lift, I would never feel like running the, you know, the mile afterwards. I'd do it on a treadmill. So I'd be like, you know what?

I'm going to get the running out of the way that I'm going to lift. And then I was like, dang, lifting is kind of harder, but I'd way rather endure this discomfort when I'm lifting than when I'm running on the treadmill. But I did that for months and months and months. And then one day I didn't run. I was like, it was weird. I was like stiff. Yeah. So you kind of get used to it.

But either way. I mean, my original point is, I do the Metcon after I live. Doing the Metcon after you live. That has been my standard for so long. Right, but you know how you're saying, do the Metcon before you lift,

or you're just doing the Metcon that day. It's easier. Yeah. Because you're not a start from lifting. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, my original point was the Shroom Tech.

So if you're doing that kind of thing, after you lift, when you're going into the Metcon, you're going to feel way better. You want to hear something cool. So a lot of times people ask me, what is your workout? Right? They want to know reps, sets, weights.

Yeah, yeah. And that's cool, of course. And I haven't put it out there for, well, I'm, I got a book. I'm putting together a book. Like a new book kind of thing? Actually, it's not going to be any book. It's going to be a real book. Hardcover.

Yeah, like a real legit book. Right on. Which means it's going to take a little more time. but I'd rather do it and do it right. But what's interesting is this is what's so cool. So people that listen to the podcast and ask it and have been applying the basic principles, because I have never put, I haven't put out, I don't think I've put out a single workout. Also, people say, what do you actually eat?

Right? They want to know what I had for breakfast, lunch, dinner, what I had for snacks, whatever. All I say is like, oh, you know, I mostly, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, low, very low carbs. I eat a lot of meat. I eat a lot of protein. I eat a lot of fat. Okay?

What do you do for workouts? I get up early in the morning. I hit it hard. You know, am I doing squats? I'm doing pull-ups. I'm doing basic stuff, right? I've put those basic principles out there. Well, there's people, troopers,

that have been applying these basic principles. And they're making incredible progress in their lives. They're getting stronger. They're getting leaner. They're getting in better shape. So it's actually proven Because I remember you and I talked about this a long time ago I said listen

It's more about the commander's intent Right? The working out is about the commander's intent It's not about I'm going to tell you how many reps and sets to do I'm going to tell you what you want to make happen Right I'm going to tell you where you want to be at the end of this workout Right Physically and mentally

And people have been taking that And I mean all kinds of people hey i've lost 28 pounds i've lost 42 pounds just from applying the basic principles that i and and so those will be consolidated in the book so that people can follow them and there'll be some other good stuff in the book to basic philosophy of joccal philosophy yeah yeah that is

well that was kind of a tangent on on it wasn't it well i and rightly so i think rightly so i think so it's consistent right which which actually kind of brings me to my point the consistency is probably the most overlooked that even though people know yeah you got to be consistent we got to but that's kind of everything because everything else is variable like you can there's a billion different workouts by consistency do you mean doing the same thing or you just mean doing it every day getting in there and doing it yeah absolutely not skipping days weeks you know getting off the horse you know that kind of stuff there's a million different workouts you can do That will give you results.

And there's a million different results that you can kind of strive for and get them. Because it's just so many. Same thing with diet. Like you can, you know, people have their rigid diet philosophy. But the fact is that many different diets work. I mean, there's some basic principles. You don't eat a bunch of sugar. You don't need a bunch of fast food.

You know the obvious things to avoid. And you can get results with many kinds of diets. And I would go one step further what you're talking about. consistency in order to have consistency that requires the discipline it does require the discipline so that's the key factor yep that is the key factor

and when people apply the discipline to their lives boom right now everything becomes consistent and that's everything so the books can come and the books can talk about that there you go boom how else how else can we support the podcast if you before you do your

Amazon shopping um go to jackel podcast or one of the websites jocco store.com, click on the Amazon link and do your shopping. You can support passively. And you can install that little tool or you can just make it your fit. I put it in my, what's that called up at the top there? The bookmarks.

Yeah. So when I click on Amazon, it's already the jocco. Yeah, exactly. That's what I, yeah. We go crazy with Amazon. Amazon's awesome. Dang, yeah, so awesome. And don't call it a little tool.

It's not a little tool. Oh, that's right. It's the trooper tool. It's a big deal. It's pretty little. Technically, it's really. Anyway, the trooper tool that Brady made. Little tool, by the way, again.

Yeah, little small tool, simple. You go and you can go on the websites and get it. It's called the Jock Podcast Trooper Tool Chrome Extension. All it does, it makes it easy to support podcasts when you do your Amazon shopping, so you don't have to remember that. And, you know, basically, you click on it. Do you want this tool? Click.

Yes. Boom. It's on your little browser. there, it automatically directs you to our affiliate link, which you can support that way. And it's kind of cool little icon. If you care, if you, yeah, when you do it, this little icon there, it makes it official. But you can hide the icon if you don't want it and just hide it. If you don't.

And I understand it. If you don't, yeah, it's Jacko's face. But anyway, yeah, the trooper tool, that's a good one. That's a good, easy way because remembering to go to the website and click through before you do, you know how like you're, you know, you're going in there. Because you want that thing now. Yeah, you know, you're just like Amazon or, you know. I want this thing. I want that duct tape now.

Yep, nope. Same day, yeah. Yeah, that's true. So anyway, now you got the trooper tool. Boom, easy, easy. Also, obviously, by subscribing to the podcast, if you haven't already, that one's a good way to support. Yeah, absolutely. And the Jocco store.

That's a good one. I think, if you like shirts, let's say discipline equals free. Well, most people do have to wear. shirts. Right. Some juncture during the day. Sure. You can't get into the restaurant without a tissue.

Uncleai, you can. Sometimes. Except in Hawaii. But yeah, there's some shirts on there. If you like them, get a shirt. That's a good way to support. We're a bumper sticker. Elections coming out.

Jocko 2016. Yeah. I saw a car with Jocko 2016 on it. Did you know the person? Was it in San Diego? Yeah, Chris Martin. But still, it's cool to see. You know, when you pull up, you're like,

yeah, oh, that's Chris Martin's car. Anyway, it looked cool. He has a nice car too, by the way. So it looked extra cool. You know, it was like extra official. Yeah. We got some real supporter out there. Yeah, yeah.

That's what it felt like. Also, subscribe to the YouTube channel. And you posted your first. Yeah, absolutely. I'm starting to put it. It's a deleted scene. Oh, yeah.

Sorry, sorry. Sorry. There's a difference. Man, keep me in time on those. Deleted scene, if you want to hear Echo Charles talking about alien abduction. My kids' book. The only podcast there are about alien abductors.

There's a lot of podcasts about it. Is that a subcategory? Because now we're going to fit in that subcategory. Leadership, war, darkness, alien abduction. Maybe that's why it's an outtake. That was more like an example underlying kind of thing. It's more about my children's book idea. Okay.

We're good. We're good. Anyway, those are the ways. Yep. On dot com slash jaco, that's a good. good one, like I said for the supplements. 10% off. I forgot to mention that if you don't know. 10% off the supplements.

Yeah. Good. I guess with that, let's get down to the questions from the troopers on the interwebs. Getting a lot of questions lately. I like it. I like it too. First question. Jocko.

If you were coaching McGregor, for those who don't know, that's Connor McGregor, U.S.C. fighter. What would you focus on to try and make up the jujitsu disparity. All defense? Interesting.

And if you don't know what's going on, Connor McGregor is fighting Nate Diaz again. 202 UFC. So a lot of times I don't like to talk about this kind of thing because it's by the time this comes out it'll be, by the time you're listening to this

might be over. Don't care anymore. But there is a a principle here, a concept behind this that does make sense to try and discuss so people can learn and improve and something for me to think about my game. So you got this guy who's a really good striker, going against a guy who's a pretty good striker himself. Very good. Yeah, very good.

And that's one of the things that this is the question, the way it sets it up, as if jiu-jitsu is the only thing that Nate Diaz is better at. That might not necessarily be the truth. And in fact, in their first fight, it was the striking of Nate Diaz that forced Connor McGregor to shoot a sloppy take down, take it to the ground. And once you got on the ground, the jiu-jitsu from Nate Diaz was just way too much for McGregor. So this question, it's almost a little bit off because the question shouldn't be that there's just a jiu-jitsu disparity. the question should be you know what is

how would you make up for the fighting disparity or maybe not even that it's how would you go against what would you tell Connor what would you work on yeah what's the strategy so let's just look at as an overall strategic question you've got a guy that's pretty that's what what is he good at that's the question

what is he good at one of the strengths of Connor McGregor he's fast he's strong but strong might not even come to play because our Diaz walking around at 200 pounds right now They're fighting at 170. So he's going to cut a lot of weight. He's going to be big and strong.

He's going to be in better shape for this fight. Connor is pretty good with some unorthodox stuff. His striking is fast and fairly dynamic. So those are the things that he has going for him. What does Nate Diaz have going for him? His jiu-jitsu is really good. Really good. I understand.

Jiu-Jitsu's sick. His striking is, especially his boxing. He's not a big. kicker. So if I was if I was McGregor here's what I'd be doing I mean what I'd be working my wrestling we'd be working my underhooks of course and in getting control and getting back to my feet when I get taken down immediately getting back to my feet. The way I would fight if I was Connor McGregor is I would back off with the hard punches I would throw a lot of really fast light punches and I'd move around

round a lot and just try and touch and go. That's what I do if I was Connor McGregor. I would possibly start in the middle of the second round, maybe into the third round, five-round fight, I might start throwing some leg kicks. He doesn't, Nate sometimes doesn't even check leg kicks, so maybe you can start putting a hurting on him if you throw enough of those. But in jujitsu-wise, I would teach him to disengage. disengage because you don't want to go you don't want to get in the Oudaloupe with the he

McGregor does not want to get in an Oudaloup situation with D.S. Because he can't keep up with him. He'll be changing. He'll be going to the next thing, going to the next thing, going to the next thing, going to the next thing, going to the next thing, and Connemarger always get caught behind

and he won't be able to do it. So I teach him to get, now one thing that does make Jiu-Jitsu a little bit harder. If you and I are doing Jiu-Jitza, and your goal you're not sure you you actually disengage for me and you're just like your whole goal if we were on the mat shook hands slap bump and we're going to roll and all you did try to do is stay away from me it would be a really hard round for me it would be harder than if you attacked me yeah it's harder than if you attacked me right and when I did take you down all you did was try

and get back up you didn't try and close a guard you didn't try and attack me with any submissions you just tried to get back up and get away from me that is a much harder round for me than if you actually come at me with your full board Jiu Jitsu. Right. Because then it's Jiu-Git-Su, and I have an advantage. Yep. But if it's Jiu-Jitsu of mine versus run away from you, now I got to run after you.

Now it's a more fair fight. So that's what McGregor needs to do. He needs to use his speed and his, yeah, use his speed. And I think that's his biggest advantage. The other thing that I, The other thing that I find about the Diaz brothers, that I wish that I could, I wish they,

I wish they would not train so much triathlon and train more explosiveness. I wish he was a little bit stronger, both Nate and Nick. I mean, those guys are awesome, and they're great fighters, but they really train. Hey, they do literally do triathlons.

And so you're not getting explosive muscles. Now it shows that they have great cardio, but I'd rather just say they were a little bit more explosive. That's my personal. opinion. Yeah, I dig it. I have no advice. I think Nate Diaz is so well-rounded

in this, as far as this matchup goes. I don't know. Like, just like that first fight. Yeah, the first fight, though, you watch the first round. It's not a pushover. No, no, no. It's going to be a tough fight, man. Yeah, that's in the end.

That's not what I'm saying at all I'm saying. Just making sure. You know, you know how like, you know, you attack the weaker points, right? Like, let's say I'm a way better striker than one guy, and his jiu-jitsu is way better than mine. I can stay on my... You know, it's obvious that's where I'm an attack, but in this case, it's not like that. It's not like that. So, yeah, I don't know, man.

The tough one. It's a tough fight for Connor. It's a tough fight for Nate, too. I mean, there were some... Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't... Even though the ending of the fight was very lopsided, the first round, it was a little closer. And I think Connor thought he had magic.

Yeah. He even said in the post-fight press conference, he said, you know, he was the bigger man. Right. And I hit him with everything I got. Most of those would stop a smaller man. They didn't stop him. And I think that's got to be hard. Yeah.

I think that got to him psychologically. So if he's prepared for that psychologically this time, maybe he'll be able to stick with a game plan and not shoot on him, which was ridiculous. Yeah. And even the shoot, it wasn't just like, hey, I'm going to decide to shoot. shoot, it was kind of like a, you know, a ditch, a ditch effort. Yeah, kind of rocked too. And now you shoot, you're rocked and you have to contend with Nate Diaz Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah.

So it's like, it's not just, I got to contend with Nate Jiu-Jitsu, which is bad enough, by the way. Yeah. But you're rocked and it was like a desperation thing. Then you got to deal with it. Then you get that. So it seemed like, oh, it was so quick, but it was like, it was just a bunch of compounding factors and culminated in that, the joke. Didn't work out. Looking forward to watching that.

Yeah. All right. Next question. Joko. Like you, many. leaders began as rebels. Jocco's a rebel. I'll tell you about his band one day. How did you learn to see the game? Oh, when I was a kid? Yeah, man. That Elgin told you about? Yeah, man. And that you told me about too. How did you learn to see the game and are rule followers at a disadvantage?

Okay, so yeah, I was a rebellious youth. And, you know, when I got it, in the SEAL teams, I was kind of a rebel, a rebel as well. And as a matter of fact, if you think about it from a certain perspective, being in special operations, especially when I came in, being in special operations is almost a form of rebellion in its own right. Because you're saying, look, the regular stuff, I want to do the regular stuff. Right, right. I'm going to do the other stuff. So that was my attitude.

You know, I thought, oh, regular Navy, nah, I'm doing this. You know, so that was my rebellion. And like I've explained before, joining the military, I grew up in New England, not a lot of, not a huge military proponent up there. And so it was almost a rebellious thing. As a matter of fact, it was a rebellious thing for me to join the military in the first place. So these are the kind of things that were rebellious. And yes, we were, we were, my buddies and me were rebel youth with some rebellious rock and roll bands back of the day. So when I got to the SEAL teams, we actually were, I kind of maintained that, you know, like we're going to be hardcore, we're going to be, maybe the word isn't rebel, but we were, we were like outsiders, you know, we were like going hard.

And the group of guys I was with, when the guys I went through SEAL training with, it went to SEAL Team 1 with me back in the day, you know, we were getting after it. We were pushing hard. We were, you know, being hardcore. And I actually got told to stand down a few times for doing stuff that was a little bit too hardcore. And as a matter of fact, so you get these evaluations in the Navy. When I first got in the Navy, they had this old evaluation system where you had 15 things you were getting evaluated on. And everybody, it had been in inflation. So the highest grade you could get is a 4.0.

So if there was inflation of the grades at the time. And so everyone just put 4.0 for everything. Pretty much. And I actually, I have this. I actually saved this evaluation of me, but I got a 3.8, 3.8 in team building. And the guy that gave it to me said, you know, you're just too hard on people that are unsat.

which I actually, he was one of the guys that I was like, you know, hard on. Yeah, I was hard on him a couple times. So, and unsat, I used to use that word all the time. Yeah, sat or unsat. And Jeremy does be uses that. Yeah. So that was sort of, you know, we were rebelling by being super hardcore, I guess you could say.

But then, even though I was rebellious, and again, that's a strong word. I don't know if that's the word we were to it's I don't know if that's the perfect word but I did I love the seal teams right so in in working for some of the great guys that I work for I realize that if you want to impact the teams which I want to do because I did love teams then you got to try and get to some kind of leadership position you know these guys that I respected that I work for so wait that guy controls this platoon I want to do that he's helping us he's making this good so kind of like that old quote that that the best form of revenge is success.

It's almost like the best form of rebellion is success. And so that's what I kind of went for to a situation. I was trying for a situation where I could move forward and kind of bring this, hey, I got this now. This is my platoon, you know? So I guess that was a little bit of a, it's a little bit simplified. But, you know, I don't want, again, I don't want to make it sound like I was some kind of crazy rebel

in the SEAL teams. I wasn't. I was into the SEAL teams. I was into doing the right thing. And I wanted to do my best in the SEAL team. So I guess that's not really being rebellious at all. But I did still have some of that rebel mindset. And one of the things I think is beneficial about having a rebel mindset is you question things.

Right, right. You question things. You're not allowed to, I was never afraid to say no or I don't agree with that. I was never afraid to be contrarian or something. I was never afraid to hold the line and take criticism. So that goes even if you're in a group of rebels and you go against them, who's the rebel now? Well, you are. So when guys were going down a certain path, I'd be okay holding the line against them because I was okay with being an outsider.

I guess that's the word I've been looking for, like an outsider. Someone that's not quite just following and doing what everyone else is doing. I've always been okay with being an outsider. So maybe it's not necessarily a rebel. But being an outsider and like, okay, those guys are doing it that way? No, I don't agree with that. And I'm okay being over here by myself, marching to my own drum, for lack of a better word.

But it's kind of like only if you need to be kind of thing, right? What do you mean? Like if everyone's doing the right thing, you're going to go with that and you're going to go hard the way you do. But yeah, you're not just like this follow. fall in line in you know and I never I would say that's something and so if we categorize that as being rebellious then yes I kind of I would more categorize it with being comfortable with being an outsider yeah comfortable with my own decision making process so and not always I mean

there's times where I did things that other way you know I was younger you're not that's another thing when um you know you hear me talk I'm 44 years old Right. I spent my whole adult life in the SEAL teams. I didn't show up in the SEAL teams with like this incredible leadership capability and ready to write a book. No, man, I learned this stuff. I'm still learning. I'm still learning this stuff.

I picked stuff off a long way. So I don't want people to ever think that, you know, I was a superstar. I wasn't. You know, I'm still not. I'm just, I have an open mind. But now I can look back. Yeah, yeah. And I was lucky enough to have some great jobs and some great experiences that opened a lot of, it showed me.

I learned a lot. I had an open mind and the world taught me a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah. But it wasn't just like, hey, I was showed up there. But I would say this, the people that are out there that are leaders, keep the rebel alive. Keep them alive. Keep them under control.

Yeah. And maybe you don't let the rebel talk to other people, right? Maybe, and I've had SEAL buddies that do this where they're rebellious. They're as outsider or whatever the word we're using as I am, but they just can't keep it inside. So they're verbalizing it. And what are they doing? They're making, they're antagonizing people. They're doing that.

I never did that because I'm playing the game. I'm going to win the long-term strategic goal. So don't let the rebel be the one that represents you and talks and opens your mouth. But let him whisper in your ear and listen to it. Yeah, I talked to him. I talk to my wife a lot about the difference. There's the difference between what you think or what you feel or whatever and how you behave. So like you can, like if you, I don't know, you get cut off in traffic or something.

No one's going to be mad at you. if you're like mad at that or if that irritates you or whatever. But if you start flipping the guy off or violating traffic laws to go chase him or do, you know, start behaving because he cut you, behaving in a certain way, then that's wrong. So there's a difference. You can feel like all kinds of stuff. But once you start misbehaving, that's when the violations come up. That's basically what you're saying.

Like don't let him. Control your drive. Yeah. Your behavior. Mind control. I think we've talked about that on here before, a little bit of mind control. Body control, too. Yeah, just being a rebel, typically that's like, hey, all these rules that everyone's following,

I rebel against those rules. But here's the thing, some of those rules are good rules. Exactly. So you can't just be a rebel to be a rebel. So not a blanket statement. I'm a rebel. And that's why I was kind of pulling back on that word. Yeah.

Because it makes me sound like I was big rebel. I was not. I loved being the teams. Right. So why would I rebel against it? Yeah. The people I rebelled against were the guys that were not good seals. We rebelled against them.

Like I told you, we had a mutiny. That was a rebellion. That was a straight rebellion. Yeah. Had a real legit mutiny. Yeah. And went against our commanding, our platoon commander. Mm-hmm.

And said, hey, to this commanding officer said, no, we don't want this guy anymore. That's a rebel. Yeah, we rebelled. But then again, everyone in my platoon was with me. So we all rebelled. So then was I a rebel? I don't know. Yeah.

And does that make you a rebel just because you rebelled that one time? you know yeah i think we're getting too much semantics aren't i don't they semantics kind of part of let's not go there all right next question next question jaco how do you deal with a leader who preaches ownership but does not practice ownership oh dread the leader who preaches ownership but does not practice ownership you know what i do in those situations i take ownership myself sell and I work for all kinds of bosses that didn't want to take ownership and you know what I did take ownership I took ownership do you work for a boss that doesn't want to lead you know what I did

lead if for in my mind if a boss doesn't step up or doesn't take ownership they're not a problem they're an opportunity they're an opportunity it's an opportunity for me to step with if you're If you're my leader and you're not giving me instruction, you're not stepping up and leaning, guess what? I'm going to run with it. I'm going to run. I'm going to take control. I'm going to take command.

I'm going to make things happen. And you're either going to, you're either going to see what I'm doing and say, wow, he's taking ownership. I need to step up. Or if he doesn't have any potential at all, then maybe he looks at it and says, you know what?

Maybe I'm not fit for this. or maybe they don't realize it's happening, you'll end up taking their job from them. Because other people will eventually realize. Now, the thing that you have to be careful of is if you say, oh, he's not leading, I'm going to lead. Then you let your ego start saying, I'm going to lead. And then you flunked it,

and now you might make your boss think that you're gunning for their job. And then we can have some issues. Because now we might shut you down. You know, there's all kinds of things, negative things that can happen there. So when you take ownership, you've got to make sure you're putting your ego in check and make sure that you're taking ownership, but you're still giving them the credit. That's the hardest thing to do, but it works. I'm telling you, I promise you that works.

If you take ownership, but then you'd give them the credit, like, hey, sir, you know, I just want to go through this thing right here. Here's what I did yesterday based on, you know, the guidance that you gave us. The guy didn't give you any guidance, but you just make it up. Just make it up. You know, here we go. And you just do your best to make him look good. eventually you're going to win. So if you got someone that's not leading,

that's not stepping up, that's not taking ownership, just do it yourself. Do it in a tactful manner. Do it in a non-ego flare-up manner. But do it. Make it happen. Get after it.

Yeah, if you keep that goal, you know how like when you're on a team, right, you have some objectives. It's probably just a handful of them, typically, if not just one. Close with and destroy the enemy. Yep. Yeah, make the same.

whatever the goal is if you keep the goal in mind then as long as you like really keep it in mind you can avoid all the because if you're like okay i'm gonna step up just like are you saying i'm gonna step up in lead and then if your goal shifts from the the main goal that you guys all have to now my new goal is to be the leader that's my goal to be the leader then up comes the ego because the being the leader that's what you're focused on i'm the leader you're the follower kind of thing keep the goal in mind you're going to do basically with your ownership you're going to do your part and then some if someone's not doing you know certain things or whatever you're going to take the lead you're going to do your job in it to achieve the goal therefore pulling

everybody ahead so just keep that keep that goal in mind there yes indeed do it for the goal not for yourself yeah good jocco something i would be very interested in listening to you discuss is the art of disarming people with words. Yeah, and good question. How do we disarm people? And good thing tonight, we talked about maneuver warfare, because we already know that we're not going to attack the strong point. We're going to look for the gaps.

We're going to look for the weaknesses. We're going to look for the openings. So what does that mean? That means if we're dealing with someone that has a big ego, we're going to sidestep that we might even throw some compliments out there I might be saying echo you're so good at they doing this right here I could use some help doing that now we're getting around his ego now we can start getting into his head if the person's over aggressive maybe you just have to be a little bit more accepting of them maybe if they're nervous you've got to just reassure them they're hostile

just be open-minded to what they're saying so there's a lot of ways that disarm and like some tactical things that you could literally like it says disarmes Disarmed people with words. So what are words that disarmed people? I'll give you a couple. That's a good idea. Oh, okay. Or, yeah, that actually makes good.

That's good sense right there. That makes sense, right? Disarmed. Or, oh, yeah, I like that. Disarmed, right? All three of those little easy phrase, that's a good idea. That makes sense. You know, I like that.

Those are all things that are going to disarm somebody a little bit. And once you disarm them, they're going to, They're going to open up. They're going to open up a little bit. So, so like, once you, once you get them disarmed by just opening your mind, giving them a little compliment, tell them that you like where they're coming from, and then you start to probe and trying to figure out what's going on. And instead of being direct, right, we want to use the indirect method here.

So, you know, ask questions. Say, hey, echo, could you explain to me? what the what we're trying to get done here that's a lot different than what are you trying to do here that's an attack almost what the hell were you thinking what the hell were you thinking hey could you explain to me this

because I'm not sure I understood it I didn't really see everything here or hey I'm having trouble understanding this can you can you help me because I'm not sure I don't think I get this so now when I say that to you you in order to explain something you have to actually open up you have to say okay I'll find I'll tell you Well, as soon as you say that, now you're opened up, right?

Now you're open up. And when you open yourself up, when you open yourself up verbally with an idea to explain an idea, then you open yourself up mentally too because now we're having a discussion. And that's what I'm trying to make happen. So it's pretty easy. I shouldn't say it's pretty easy. If you think about it and you just think about those simple phrases that you can use to disarm people of, hey, it's a good idea.

I like where you're coming from. oh yeah, that actually, that makes good sense. That is the way you disarm somebody. Very simple. Yeah, and there's little things you can do even outside, actually outside, straight up, outside of any specific, like, scenario where, you know how some people are just more approachable than other people, and then some people just aren't.

So what you can do, and what I've noticed, is people that don't talk, negatively about people and don't come in just talking negative in general. Like I knew a guy, no, I still know him, but I don't seem any more hardly, but every time he'd come in, the first thing out of his mouth was something like,

I don't know, traffic was bad. It was something bad. You know, he was just complaining about life and it was just a matter of what particular thing he chose to complain about, but it was always a complaint, everything. And another thing he would do is, let's say someone would say something,

oh, hey, did you see this or that or whatever? This was real cool. he'd be like yeah but and then say something bad and kind of dump on it you know yeah that's true but you know that kind of stuff so don't do that so that seems kind of easy but you'd be surprised where don't be super negative is your statement don't be don't be a negative person in general so right off the bat you'll be kind of one of those guys that's more approachable but here's here's one that's harder I mean it's simple but it's it's kind of harder to do because I think it comes kind of natural simple not easy is don't talk bad about people and when people are talking bad about people like to you or around you or whatever don't like jump in and kind of accommodate them and i'm not saying reject them or even talk bad about them talking bad about people i don't don't do that just don't be one of those people yeah it's the here's the thing it's i'm going above and beyond saying don't be you know certain people that's all they do is gossip about people of course that's a no-brainer i'm saying never do it try to never do it at any cost never do it if you can because basically you're trying to establish a rep of being this positive approachable person that's what you're trying to do so even though people don't take specific mental notes like oh you're talking bad about this person you always talk bad about people they you feel you feel it so you ever you ever been around somebody who tells tells you

tells you secrets every time they see you like hey i'm not supposed to tell you this but this and you're like dang this guy's telling me all you know all this cool secrets i like being around him and that's typically why people tell them. And I'm never going to tell them any secrets. That's exactly right. So, you know, this guy's talking about about people or this guy's being negative or whatever. When it comes to you, why would I want to trust in this guy or talk to this guy about this, especially if we're going to do something together, you know?

So you're kind of coming at it from the other perspective, not how would you disarm someone. You're just coming at it from how do you be a person that doesn't even need to be disarmed. Yeah, like just, yeah, exactly. So you're, so at the start point. Oh, no, no, you're actually right. So you're saying if I know you as a guy that doesn't talk bad and doesn't tell secrets and doesn't, but then I'm going to automatically be a little bit disarm. You're going to start off a little bit of disarm.

Exactly. So you've developed a relationship with the person. Yeah. With everyone, really. Make that your goal. Make that your goal. Yeah. Good.

Check. Jocco. Have you worked with anyone who led from an emotional or unbalanced place, but learned to detach and what helped them. Well, when I was putting these questions together, obviously here's one where you also have

to use a little disarmed movement to get someone that's getting emotional about something. You've got to get them to calm down. So you don't reciprocate the emotion. Don't coach people when they're angry or emotional. That's not the time to say, hey, you know what you need to do right now is

you need to calm down. No, that doesn't work out. You know, that doesn't work. Actually, Leif was telling that story on the last podcast where he was losing his temper about something. And I just stood there and said, kind of smiled and said, I didn't reciprocate the anger. I said, hey, take it easy. You know, don't worry about it. Let's just think about it. Can you make this happen?

And he's like, yeah, I can, of course. I actually, I had one of my senior enlisted advisors, actually my first deployment to Iraq. And he and I were old school team one guys. And one of my favorite guys in the world, actually. But he would sometimes get a little bit emotional, a little bit, a little bit. And he had this tactic that I picked up from him, that I understood the way he addressed conflict was, and I broke it down for him eventually was simplify, amplification. and repeat. That's what he would do. And it actually worked. It worked a lot

of time on most people. And so like, for instance, if I said, hey, I'm going to need you. I want to take a couple more guys on this operation. And if he didn't think I needed more guys for an operation, he'd say, well, why don't you just take everyone in the compound? I'll tell you what. Just take every person on

the roster. That'll give you enough people then. We'll take everyone. I'll start rounding everyone up. Right now. We'll take every single person that we have out there, and I'll even grab some army guys on the web. That was his way. And I'd be like, no, man, no. But what I wouldn't do is I wouldn't get defensive. I wouldn't get fired up. And I would say, hey, no, I'm not saying I need everybody. I'm just saying I want to take a three more guys. There's some spaces in the vehicles. It'll

give us a little more ability to contain the target. And we'd look at the, I'd say, look, take a look at the map. And so then he, he, and in this guy's case, he actually wasn't like too emotional. He was just super passionate. And when I actually, broke down the simplify, amplify and intensify. Oh, no, it was simplify, amplify, and repeat.

That's what you do. Simplify, amplify, and repeat. And then whenever we would start getting a discussion and he would start doing it, we would start laughing because he realized that that's exactly what he was doing. So the simplify, amplify, repeat, that's what the name you put on his little thing.

That was his methodology. Yeah, yeah. If you said, like I said, if I said, hey, I need a couple more guys. He would say, well, we'll just take everyone. Then if that's what you need, you need every single client. He would simplify what you said. He would amplify it and make it more extreme, and he would just repeat it over and over again.

And most people that he did it to, they would feel stupid because of what he did to him. You know, he'd say, well, no, I don't need it. I'm not, they would just feel stupid. And he'd say, so just, that's ridiculous. And he'd win. But we would laugh about it. But like I said, he wasn't. actually too emotional

um he was just fired up about stuff which is a positive thing but someone that is actually too emotional so like I said you gotta stay calm you don't

don't coach people when they're angry you set a good example and then when people calm down later you talk to them about like hey man that wasn't cool and you gotta you gotta spin it right

because you're trying to get you're trying to get you're trying to You don't want to like literally coach? Because if I say echo, I need to coach you on something. You're defensive and all that. But if I say, hey, man, I rely on you because of your expertise. And I think you're the only guy in the platoon that can actually make this happen. So if you're losing your temper, man, that doesn't, all of a sudden I can't count on you.

And I need you. Because you don't make good. I mean, none of us make good decisions if we're all bent out of shape on something. so I got it please can you just can you help me by just hey man if you start

if you start getting angry about something just realize it's going to affect your decision making and we can't have that man we need to come we need to make the good decisions people are counting on us and that's

handling someone that gets emotional about stuff yeah that's what some simplify repeat one right girl simplify amplify and repeat I'm not going to say all girls do this

but some wives might be like you say some wives with the last name Charles you know it ultimately I think if you know if you're in a good relation

you don't really take it that seriously but but yeah you say like I don't know you know hey you were you said something mean to me or whatever and they'll be little bit why do you marry me then why don't you just do you know they take it to the to that next level

simplify amplify and repeat yeah or or watch out for that one or hey go to this one time long time when we first got to she's uh she said she wanted me to get orange juice I went to the store I wanted me to get orange juice for whatever reason

I forgot the orange juice I didn't choose not to get the orange juice I forgot just forgot you know you come home forget the orange juice she said something along the lines of does anything I say

have any importance to you at all that's what that is right and I'm afraid yeah and all she needs to do is say it more than once and you got to repeat as well yeah yeah

so I mean I guess to answer that question no yeah most things are pretty important i mean maybe not the orange juice at that moment you know i forgot um another tactic like when you talk to people like to calm them down or whatever like let's say something they lose their temper all the time or something like that and you have to address like them losing their temper be like hey you know how you use the word passionate passionate is basically like an excuse word for someone being like you know what people like i'm just passionate i'm passionate it's a euphemism it can be it can be a euphemism well here's a thing

being passionate and being emotional are two different things because you can be passionate about something and not lose your temper and not being in one they're two different things so people be like they'll put that on and so it sounds kind of acceptable simply not true but so if you but you can use that to your advantage you can be like hey I know you're passionate I dig it man it's one of the things I like about you and another thing that I like about you is that you're also a thinker that's why boom then you say what to do check out let's go with the The ninja mind there is, that's what I like about you. Or what I like about you is this.

And then they kind of take on that role. Yeah, for sure. You're disarming them. Yeah. Yeah. You get more bees with honey. I always actually heard you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but it's the same idea.

It's something I agree with. I mean, obviously, this comes down to the R-word relationships. And always what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to build the relationships. So I'm going to put out the honey. You know, I'm going to put out the honey. The carrot is preferable to the stick. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Which is another way of saying that.

The reward, the good stuff. the so so yeah totally that that absolutely works better um now you can give people too much honey and now they get type 2 diabetes they get lazy they get out of shape and they don't work anymore right so you can't you got to that's that's the that's the dichotomy that you need to balance as a leader not being too hard but not being too soft not being too aggressive but being aggressive enough, that's the dichotomy. But the bottom line is you need to treat people well. That's what you need to do.

You need to not spoil them, but give them respect and build the relationships. And if you make that your goal, when I work with all these different companies, you know, I'm always saying, listen, make your goal with this person that you're having a problem with, make your goal to build a relationship. Make that your goal. When they say something negative, say something positive. When they want to blame something on you, say, yeah, you're right. It's my fault. Build a relationship with the person that's going to strengthen the team. It's going to be a thousand times infinitely better than having an antagonistic relationship with somebody.

So. And also, you know, when you're leading with vinegar, when you're leading with fear, and you're leading, you're beating people with a stick, that does not work out good in the long run. Do you have to have consequences sometimes? Yeah. But the team that is following somebody because they want to do their best for that leader

is going to beat the team that is doing things only because they're scared of the leader. Right. Yeah. If they're trying to avoid the stick, that's going to be where they operate in. They're going to operate enough to avoid the stick. Exactly.

Because really that's the goal to avoid the stick. There's no honey. They're not going to go above and beyond. Yeah, I think he said something very wise in office space. What is he saying? He said he was in his little review. He got hypnotized. Did you watch office space?

I've watched it a million times. So he gets hypnotized, all right? So now he tells the truth or he doesn't care, you know, about things. So he's like, he's real open and honest. He goes into his little review, which is supposed to be this kind of tense thing. And they say, like, what's up? You know, they ask him some stuff. And he's like, it's a problem of motivation.

Like, you know, we're not. If I get, you know, all this, so he's explaining it to it, and then he's like, okay, if I'm, if I'm scared of, you know, whatever, this punishment from my boss or whatever, no, I'm just going to work hard enough not to get fired. But that's true, though. That's absolutely true. So, yeah, like these kids who only get scolded, you know, they don't get, like, compassion and compliment and support, you know, they only get scolded. A lot of times, I mean, there's a lot more to it, but a lot of times they're just going to do the minimum. And clearly, to not get scolded. Too far in the other direction.

where all you get is spoiled. You're too far in the other. And the dangerous part about going too far in the other direction, how you put it, is you don't prepare them. Like, they wind up when they're on their own. Like, they're not prepared for, like, the tough parts. Yeah, and there's a lot of good parts in life, man. But those tough parts, they're there too.

So if you're not prepared for them, you're going to get jacked. For lack of a better term. I think that's the correct term, actually. All right, last question. Jocko. Great topic for me would be staying committed to life change. I start strong and fade fast into old habits. Please help.

I'm going to have to bring in a little Shakespeare on this one. Shakespeare. Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion. all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream and that's brutus from julius caesar and brutus in the play is plotting to kill caesar someone he was loyal to in shakespeare the master of understanding human nature he captures what that feels like. And here's what these lines mean between the acting of a dreadful thing.

So that's the moment. That moment when you're waiting to do something that you don't want to do. And the first motion, so that's when you actually start doing that thing that you don't want to do. All the interim. Now this is all that time,

all that time in that moment. While you are waiting to take action is like a phantasma or a hideous dream. So that moment, moment when you're waiting to do something, it's like an apparition. A hideous dream, a nightmare. And so the battle, the struggle, it takes place in that moment. It's not knowing what to do. That's not the battle. It's not actually doing it.

That's not the battle. It's the moment in between. It's the hesitation. Hesitation is the enemy. And in war, understanding where the enemy is allows you to defeat him. And this is where the enemy of action, the enemy of commitment, the enemy of change. That's where the enemy lies. It lies in the waiting.

And all you have to do to win is overcome that moment, the waiting, the hesitation. All you have to do is go. Move. Take action. Get out of bed. Get your feet on the ground. Step into the gym. Put down the donut and pick up the kettlebell.

Hesitate. Do not wait. Go forward. Go to war. and win single and i think that's all i've got for tonight thanks to everybody out there for listening and for all the awesome continued support we're getting from everybody if you want to keep supporting echo how they do that well primarily i would say support yourself with supplementation because really that's really

what it's about. Not necessarily the supplementation, but supporting yourself as well. It's kind of like when you, when you fly in the airplane, you know, you got to put the mask over yourself first before you. You help your infant. Yeah, yeah. Because if you're not dope, like he, anyway, you know what I mean. So anyway, if you need supplements, go to onet.com slash jaco, get 10% off on it supplements. What does that mean? That's the best supplements. I like it. And you got 10% off. I could explain why they're so good, but you can go on the website, read it. Just trust me. It's only supplements I take in you too, right?

Yes, indeed. Or you take something else. Flintstone vitamin. Or you can support by clicking through, before you do your Amazon shopping, click through the website. Or just get the trooper tool. I think that would be a lot easier. So you go on the website, get the trooper tool. It's called Jocko Podcast, Trooper Tool, Chrome extension.

Click on it. Boom. Confirm. Boom, it's on there. Anytime you shop at Amazon, you support passively this podcast. and you're kind of official. That's dope. I don't like the word passive,

even though I know it's the correct term. Because when you are shop, that's a really good, easy way to support the podcast. Yeah, so I don't agree with you on the passive. Yeah, I know. I like passive. They're actively shopping, actively get in after it, passively supporting.

I dig it. They actively went to the website. They actively installed the tool. or they click through, they're taking action and they're making things happen. Yep. And it's efficient too. I'm giving them credit.

Beneficial. Anyway, nonetheless, that's a way and that's a good way. Subscribe on iTunes, of course, if you haven't already. Write a review. Yeah. To write a review.

Somebody wrote an awesome review the other day. That's appreciated because then we know what we're doing here. We're getting feedback. I'm reading the reviews. Yeah. And it's cool. That goes reading the reviews.

subscribe to YouTube we're gonna be more a little bit more active on the YouTube so it won't be just the video version I'm gonna get active I'm gonna do it why don't you get a lot more active I'm gonna do it actually I'm doing it I'm active I'm more active

that's good as of right now so that's a good subscribe to YouTube now how about this subscribe to YouTube if I'm putting out dumb stuff if I'm mucking it up like right now it's just you know the video version of the podcast

which is cool if you like podcast why not like the video version if you even like videos I'm gonna add some stuff in there some whatever some out takes deleted scenes other stuff little mashups or whatever if they're lame just unsubscribe

you're confident that they will not be right I'm confident yeah but that's just my opinion and I actually thought the first one was it was pretty darned yeah yeah but you know what's funny about Those things.

It's a big inside joke. Like for somebody, that's for, like, no one is that doesn't, if someone stumbles across that video and watches it, it will mean nothing to it. Yeah, they'll get way less of it for sure. Anybody that is in the game with us, they know what's funny. Yeah. They call those Easter, like there's little Easter eggs in there. Like, you know, the Trooper Tool video?

Yeah. There's little Easter eggs in there. You know, if you play back and pay attention or whatever. I like that. Just like the shirts. And everybody caught the shirt. details yeah everybody sharp man everybody saw that on your amazon page that you displayed you had the duct tape actually if you look close to it's like well yeah this this stuff

there's these streaks and everything you don't want to give them away that's part of the fun part of the fun nonetheless yeah sure you too you can support that way and of course if you like the shirts get a shirt we got a kind of a new one that the the trooper one it's just it's just the basic Brandon jaco podcast if you're on YouTube right now I'm wearing one right now yeah you know Debbie's one of the one of the troopers

she took a picture of the day like wow amazing background mountains snow cap mountains trees trooper trooper t-shirt outstanding that was good yeah well they are

I did make it a point to get the good ones they're not like you know you know the process of by good creating quality. Quality, yeah. I didn't just be like, hey, give me the cheapest possible one, the ballpark giveaway.

I didn't do that. I was like, you know, I went through some lengths. So they're good. Wearable. Quality. My goal is to be like, if you put it on,

you'd be like, regardless of what's on it, this is my favorite shirt to wear. That's the goal. And so the design is just a bonus. I like to think so, yeah. I think that's good.

bonus. Yeah. But yeah, get a shirt, jocco store.com. Get a sticker to if you want. There's a few options there and a coffee mug. And may or may not have some jaco white tea.

Maybe. We have a little something coming out. Working with a company. A lot of people would talk to me about the beverage that I drink. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I drink some alpha brain. But my most common beverage is the power of tea. Yep.

And that, and you can find that out on Tim Ferriss, right? Yeah, that was the first, people went crazy. Yeah, because he was asking, hey, what is that? What is that? What is it? And he drank it. And he kind of seemed like a thing. And when he drank it, he got all fired up. Listen to the Tim Ferriss podcast.

He's like, oh, well, this is like an adrenaline fuel. There's caffeine in that one? Yeah, there's a small amount of caffeine. Well, I shouldn't say small. Usually white tea is about a third of a cup of coffee. So it's pretty mild on the caffeine. It's like a microdose of caffeine. There's some antioxidants in there.

And it tastes good. And so, anyways, I got approached about, hey, we are, we are fans of the Jocko podcast, and guess what we make tea. Boom. We want to make your tea. So I went through some iterations trying to find it and tune it. Yeah. The little mixture. Yeah.

And now we got a little something. Jocco white tea. That's going to be good. Yeah. So we'll put it on the Jocco store, some kind of connection. to get it. I don't know when that'll be out. It'll be out sometimes soon.

Yeah. And you put the thing on there where people can have, get emails from us. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The mailing list, right? Yeah.

To put simple, it's a mailing list. It's more for like insiders. You care about like, I don't know, insider stuff. So I don't, you know how like there's a lot of mailing list or whatever you can get on and they'll like send you email,

I make it a point not to send you stuff that's like not relevant because you sometimes no I've signed up for that before yeah no don't fill people's email box with stuff that is stuff yeah it's like it's like hey here's my email violate my trust no man no I'll send you me yeah when I when if there's something important yeah and not the kind like hey one out of all these people one of these people might be interested in this let me send it to everybody's Not that kind. No. If I think everyone would be interested, I could be wrong, but if I think that, genuinely, then I'll send you something.

And furthermore, if there is a pandemic, epic, a disaster situation, I will be sending forth instructions for all troopers to congregate and dominate. That's what we're going to do in the event of the zombie apocalypse. See? That alone right there is the reason. And at some point, see now, at some point, I may send out, like, a longer thing. Like, for instance, upcoming, we got the muster. Right. That Leif and I are doing here in San Diego, got to get out some details on that so people know when it's going down, all that stuff.

I'm going to send that out to it there so that people know what's happening and they get connected. So that's an example. Yeah. Am I going to email it 47 times? No. Yeah. Hey, reminder, but I know if you're enlisted on the, on the mail, then you're interested in what we're saying. Yeah.

So I think that's what we're putting it out there. Yeah. We're not going to violate that. Here's my email. Violate my trust. Yeah. What the hell? You know how they'll, because they'll send you stuff, bro.

Every like three days. Oh, yeah. If you let them. Sometimes there's multiple times a day. Oh. Who does that? Why would you, why is that considered to be good marketing? I don't know.

Is that considered? to be good marketing. Somebody must be telling people to do that. I don't know. You know what? That's what I don't want to do is market things. Yeah. See,

and that's the thing. If anybody out there thinks I'm marketing things, stop me. Do it. Well, I did learn recently. There's a difference between advertising and marketing. So marketing is everything. Like if even you wearing that shirt, that's technically marketing. Advertising.

Okay. On the other hand. All right, busted. I don't want to get into a big thing here. I was talking to my... Well, I guess then we market and we advertise for... No, we mark it. We don't advertise.

We don't? No. Okay. What about when I say... What about when you say, hey, on it has good stuff? And I say, yeah, get the curle oil. That's on it advertising, technically. Okay.

We're in the advertising. Well, what I don't want to do is beat people down with, you know, buy this, buy that. I don't want to do that. Yeah. On it is actually supporting the podcast, and I support on it. That's Joe Rogan's company, and Joe Rogan's a great guy who helped us out. By the way, we're sitting here because of Joe Rogan.

FYI. All right. The other way, I also, you got the, you can buy a little book called Extreme Ownership. Written by myself and my brother Laif Babin, who was on the last podcast, Podcast 34. He was also on Podcast 11. and we wrote a book it's about leadership it's about war it's about business

it's about life and it's available in hardcovering digital audio format both Laif and I we read the sections that we wrote so that's cool and you know what's cool

is get it for yourself which is cool it'll help you but then help your team grab them a copy and you're helping us you know a little bit yeah it's for support goes thing good about that book

I said this before but it's worth saying again is that you know how like some books is like okay I'm going to you know improve in whatever I'm going to read this book it's going to help me in this way or that way or whatever but this is like the kind of stuff where you can literally turn on that like right when you read a certain sentence and it's giving you whatever you know whatever this advice is whichever one it is but extreme ownership will say you can turn it on right then and there like right then in there you can walk away and you have to read the whole book technically

and it'll you'll already be changed that's awesome you just got to do it I'm saying like not all books are like that. It's like, oh, yeah, it's this gradual process. That is awesome. But anyway, that's a big takeaway I got from it. Now, as always, if you want to let us know what's going on in your world, you want to continue this little talk that we're having amongst us, we're all up in the web.

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocco Willink. Now, one of the things that I've made a note here to talk about, little bit got a got to got a come clean here got to address something went on a little trip into the bush was out of contact before I left on the trip I I didn't stop but I could no longer keep up could no longer keep up with responding there's a time there up until a week ago maybe maybe a week and a half ago I committed and responded to every single person that hit me on Twitter.

A hundred percent. And I kept trying to maintain. And I told everyone I'm going to maintain. And I maintained for a long time. For what? Six months, seven months, something like that. But I cannot maintain anymore. I cannot respond to every single person.

And especially coming back from being in the field for, you know, know, seven days where I didn't have it or have it very sparingly. I'm getting thousands of tweets a day, which is awesome. And you know what? I do read them all. I absolutely read them all. But to respond to every single one of them, I don't have time. Starting about a week and a half ago, I just said, no, I can't do this.

Because first of all, we went to the whole thing of like, oh, we're going to go two times a week for the podcast, or one time, two times a month for the podcast, maybe one every two weeks. most people didn't like that I didn't like that I want to come in here and get it on so but well and I used to be able to respond to the Twitter in like 45 minutes a day which I can find that time I'll make that time then it was an hour

then it was an hour in 10 minutes and all of a sudden it became two hours a day and then if think about this if I missed a day for whatever reason or missed a day and a half five hours finally one Sunday I sat down

and I did Twitter for a stupid amount of time, you know, six something hours. And Twitter's a great method of communication, but I got to be more selective and disciplined about my time management. I don't want to carry this on even further, but the reason I'm kind of like kind of laughing is that, because you're kind of new to social media. Yeah.

So kind of. But it's funny because like you're, this is going to sound strange but you're that like nice of a person that you're like telling everyone like we know we know you can't respond to everybody but you're like really bothered by you're like guy I can't I'm not rude I'm not being rude that's what's funny I feel bad that's what's funny because from your perspective it's like it's like someone's talking to you for real and you're just like basically putting your finger up saying I don't you know I don't have time for you you know but we are kind of we are kind of a we are kind of a

group, a team. Right. Of which, which I'm sort of like the guy that facilitates the communication between us from almost a leadership position. And so for now,

people, and you know what was funny? Because one of the troopers, guy named Brandon, who's been in the game since day one. I forget how he found, I think he listened

to Tim Ferriss Park. And he immediately, like, followed me on Twitter. And we were going back and forth on a bunch of stuff. And finally, we were emailing about some stuff.

We were emailing about, uh, he was he was trying to get time x to sponsor the podcast or me or something because time x is selling watches factually factually

a lot of people have bought timex iron man watches from your thing just from from wanting to get in the game you know like oh yeah that's cool man let's do it you know and so a lot of people have factually bought those watches and so brandon trooper was like hey you know what i'm going to

contact these guys. So we went back on a bunch of emails. I have pictures of me with this watch on, with this Timex watch at UCMA Twitter feed. Not the exact same watch, but the same model watch, the same model. And I have, I think, five of them right now. And actually, some troopers sent me other, older, because you can't buy them anymore. So I have enough of these watches to last me for the rest of my life. of these, you know, I think it's about five or six.

And I've actually done surgery on these watches over the years. Like fixed them? Yeah, like one would break a certain part, so I'd take another one apart and I'd put the insides. You know, so one day, I was reading an email from Brandon because we emailed back and forth on this a couple times. And then the other day he emailed me just said, hey, just so you know, I haven't given up.

I'm still on Timex, and I sent him an email. And I was reading it on the way here to record. And I was looking. through the email when I parked I saw his phone number at the bottom and I just hit you know it's an iPhone I hit it I hit the thing and it called and

I said and he's like hey this is Brandon and I said hey what's up man it's Jocko he's like really yeah man what's going on I just wanted to touch base and he's and so I said so we started talking and this was right as the social media I was reaching the kind of the end of the line of social media

and as I'm sort of thinking about how I'm going to manage and how I'm going to like if I could tell people like listen I'm sorry I just can't physically can't do it and one of the things he says to me while we're talking he goes you know what's so awesome is that you respond to everybody and I was like no so I stuck with it I said okay you know what I'm behind I'm going to sit down and I think that's when I did like a Sunday where I just sat there like an idiot you know but it just boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom Yeah. And the thing is, too, is a lot of people are telling me good stuff.

And I'm like, want to say, hey, man, thanks. That's a good point. Oh, that's a good book. I'm going to check that out. So when he told me that, I said, okay, I'm going to hold the line. I'm going to hold the line. And then I realize if I'm going to hold the line on that, I'm going to let go of more important things. One of them being the podcast.

Yeah. One of them being the podcast and not putting forth quality podcast, which to me is the most important thing that I'm doing right now is getting the podcast quality. From a podcast perspective, right? Sure. So yeah, there's my social media adventures. I know, yeah, but it's funny to think of it from your perspective because I would argue, I would guess that from everyone else's perspective, it's like, yeah, no kidding. Yeah, yeah, you're freaking, but no man, good on you, really.

Yeah, I think that's cool. Well, I apologize everybody, but, and I'm telling you, I'm still like reading them, but it's, I can't respond. everything. Got you're the man. But what I'm going to try and do is since I don't have to be sweating the more responses if I tweet

I'm going to try and like to be a little bit more active as things happen cool things happen, whatever. Yeah. We'll see how that works out. All right. To close it out, thanks always.

And once again, to the uniform folks out there, the firefighters, police and law enforcement and, of course, military members, Thanks to you all for holding the line. And to the other troopers that are out there that are listening, who have opened your ears and opened your mind. You.

You who are looking at yourself every day like we do. Thinking, how can I be better? Thanks for doing that. thanks for making that daily self-assessment thanks for moving forward without hesitation and most important thanks for getting after it so until next time this is echo and jocco