Jocko Podcast - 365: Build A Palace, Or Struggle to Build a Lean-To. Leadership Lessons From Omar Bradley.

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

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This is Jocko podcast number 365 with Echo Charles and me. Jocker willing. Good evening. Echo. Good evening. Also joining us tonight, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening.

All of you here this evening are leaders. I am pleased to meet you. What you do may well dignify the past. Explain today and secure for all of us tomorrow. Excerp from a speech that was given. And was captured and transcript from General of the Army, by the way, General of the Army, Omar Bradley, who Dave and I, well, I mean, the Bradley fighting vehicle. We are very fond of the Bradley fighting vehicle.

So Omar Bradley, we're going to dig in this document, but a little bit about him. born in a little farming town in Clark, Missouri, February 12th, 1893. Wicked poor, parents, very poor, but he got into West Point, went into West Point, graduated in 1915, number 44 out of 164. There's only 164 people going to go into West Point in a class, you know, now it's like, but I I think it's about a thousand of class now. So he graduated with that class of 1915, which by the way, this is interesting. This class, the Eisenhower was in that class,

but 56 people in that class became generals. One class of 164 people became generals. So they call that class, the class that the stars fell on. World War I, he was an infantry regiment, but he never left America, so didn't do anything. So that's rough. That's that's hard happen to some guys in the teams they missed Vietnam and they were in the teams and there's nothing going on and then they got out of the teams September 11th happens It's like a a bad deal a bad deal so he's in world world war one happens he just never leaves America in between the wars

He's going to you know various assignments spends a bunch of time as a student or a teacher at military school schools makes Brigadier General in 1941. 1942 to 1943 commands the 82nd and 28th Infantry divisions. March 1943, he is requested by Eisenhower to go to North Africa. And this is when he becomes the deputy commander under Patton, which gets represented in the movie Patent. Two Corps. After that, he's selected as the Army Group commander for D-Day. for Operation Overlord D-Day and in D-Day he's on the ground leading the fights through the hedgerows of Normandy

and then after the Battle of St. Lowe August 1st he takes command of the 12th Army group end of the war he's now a full general and by the way check this out full general he's in charge of overall in charge of 43 divisions 1.3 million men I think that's the largest army that has ever been a assembled in America. 1945 comes back after the war. He becomes the administrator for the Bureau of Veteran Affairs. Gets on with that job. 1948,

back to the Army. 1949. First chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So that's kind of a landmark role. First chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 1950, of course, Korea War starts in June. In September, he gets promoted to General of the Army, five star.

He's the fifth five-star general and the last five-star general that we've had in America. Army grows from 1950 to 1952. The whole army grows from 1.4 million troops to 3.5 million troops. Didn't really have a great relationship with MacArthur. And I should say MacArthur didn't have a great relationship with him. Kind of convinces Truman to get rid of to fire General MacArthur. And I tried to figure out exactly what this meant. I read several different sources about this.

So he stopped active service in 1953, but he stayed on active duty. I guess it's because you're a five-star general. You're like permanent. Like you're not going anywhere. So he's still active duty, even though he's not maybe in the exact position, but he's still on active duty. And then he just like chairs a bunch of, you know, chairs the commission. on veterans pensions, a member of the president's intelligence

advisory board. He's chairman of the board of Belova Watch. How do you say Belova watch company? Belova? Belova. Is that how you say it? I've heard Bolivow, but the bullet. Okay.

I don't know how to say it. American company. Did you know that? No. I always thought it was a foreign company. No, it was American company. Not made in American anymore, unfortunately.

Wrote a book called Soldier's Story, which I'm sure we'll cover on here at some point. He was a consultant. in the movie Patton for the movie Patton because of course Patton had died in what 1947 it was even quicker it's like 45 it was like right after the war like the war was just barely over so Patton wasn't alive and and so he's a consultant on the movie Patton and of course in the movie it shows them as kind of like friends you know close friends little different personalities but in reality they didn't get along

apparently very well he died April 8th 1981 so that means he was on active duty from August 1st 1911 when he went to the when he went to West Point until April 8th 1981 he was on active duty for 69 years eight months and seven days obviously a ton of experience and like I said I'm sure at some point we'll cover that whole book on the podcast but I was reading this transcript the other day because he had visited the Carlisle Barracks, which is where the Army War College is, and he had stopped by to talk to some students about leadership. And he had some great insights there that I thought it would be worth sitting down and covering.

So let's get into it. Omar Bradley, five-star general, stopping by to talk to your class about leadership. What do you got? So he starts off, like I said, I use it already. All of you here this evening are leaders. I'm pleased to meet you. What you do may well dignify the past Explain today and secure for all of us tomorrow. So that's how he that's how he kind of kicks this thing off Then he says perhaps I can touch upon a few factors that will underscore the value of good leadership Leadership is intangible no weapon no impersonal piece of machinery ever designed can take its place

Now he didn't have AI yet right Yeah, no, no, he did not. He did not have AI. No. AI is getting close, man. Have you seen the chat GBT? You know what I'm talking about? No.

What is that? It's like this AI that's writing things for people. Oh yeah. Did you see the AI art? Yep. AI art. It's like a trend now everyone's like doing their thing. But doesn't AI kind of defeat the whole purpose of art though?

Yeah, kind of. And the other thing that I've noticed about AI art, people that have posted AI art of themselves is it's basically the most completely like fantasized vision of yourself that you could ever have. Like, hey, it's, it's me, Jocko, except for I, you know, just like a 270 pound shredded six foot five dude with like, that's pretty much what it is. Yes, sir. Yeah, that's probably written into the AI. Like they probably like plump your lips or something like that.

Oh, to get you to get you to like the picture and post it. Spread it. got it from spread it that's how it uh what do you call when the AI takes over it's like info that's how it like disseminates right that's how it like freaking propagates itself yeah so he's saying there's no machine that can take its place but I'll tell you what you can definitely make some incredible calculations using artificial intelligence I think you're always going to have a little sanity check on things but according to Omar Bradley in 1971 which is when he

made the speech, they're never going to be able to replace leadership. He goes on to say, this is the age of the computer. He wasn't kidding. And if you know how to program the machine, you can get quick and accurate answers. But how can you include leadership and morale, which is affected by leadership into your programming? You actually can do some of that, right? Some of it. Yeah.

You have to be able to, right? Yeah, fully. Let us never forget the great importance of this element, leadership. and while we use computers for certain answers, let us not try to fight a whole war or even a single battle without giving proper consideration to the element of leadership. I'm going to concur with that. Another element to be considered is the man to be led

and with whose morale we are concerned. I am constantly reminded of this point by a cartoon which hangs over my desk at home which depicts an infantryman with his rifle, across his knees as he sits behind a parapet. Above him is the list of the newest weapons science has devised, and the soldier behind the parapet is saying, but still they haven't found the substitute for me.

Now I'm going to tell you, they're getting closer. I mean, Dave Burke, you're all but replaced. You've been beating the aviation AI drum for a while. This is not like a new thing. You've been thinking about. We've been talked about this. We have. And I am of, I still think of the minority mindset that we're one airplane away from no longer having man fighters.

Wait, who thinks that we're, do people think we're more than that? Yes, I think so. Oh, really? I think, I don't have any data to back this up other than just conversations. I think most people in aviation think we have more manned fighters to build. I think we have one more. I think it's not, it would not surprise me if we built one more. One more past the F-35?

Yes. One more. You think they're going to need another manned aircraft past the F-35? No, I don't. Oh, you don't. I do not. I'm telling you, I would not be surprised if the next one that they're designing now is the last man-fighter. Okay.

It would not surprise me at all. I think a lot of people would say, no way. The other interesting thing is there's a dynamic where there's no reason to even have a big aircraft like that, right? I mean, you could just make smaller, multiple smaller aircraft. Yeah. There's a whole lot of things happening right now. Like I forgot with the terms, but basically they're even looking at F-35. Certainly the next iteration of fighters is, oh, I think they call it like the swarm,

which is all these, you know, smaller drones or, you know, remote pilots that this lead pilot, you know, and an actual aircraft might have a bunch of control over, but the swarm is all these unmanned aviation, you know, centric vehicles working with that person. The progress that they made with drones in like a few years was insane. We had one, we had these drones in Task Unit Bruiser. I think they were called Ravens. And they were sort of like a big model airplane, you know, little radio controlled airplane. And like single prop and you had to throw them into the air.

And then you had to be a legit pilot to be able to fly them. And you'd be flying them around in circles around the target. And the pilots all sucked. So they're like crashing them. It was one of Laf's AOI. No, one of Laif's AOCs, no, one of Laif's AOCs, he begged me. We had something. He goes, hey, can I use our UAV for this?

Can I launch the UAV? And I was like, all right. So we were on NAB Coronado, I think. And he throws this thing to launch it. And it, no kidding, goes like 80 yards and plows into a building just head on. Right. It just totally blew it. And then the second time he's using it, we're out at our urban training, and he, like, launched it.

And again, imagine a little tiny model airplane. It's got a crappy camera. Like, this is before, you know, this is like worse than a Blackberry camera in 2005, right? This is just junk. It's not like now where you and, like, we're all sitting at this table. We all have, like, how many megapixels are on our iPhone? I don't know. Did BlackBerry have a camera?

Yeah, it did. Yeah. Because I have like a folder that says Blackberry pictures. So yeah, it exists, bro. And they are low quality. So anyways, you got this knucklehead. You got this crappy camera. You got this knucklehead seal.

Like that's like no pilot by any stretch. He probably went to a three week school or something. And he's flying around to Target. And the camera's not like we take for granted now that you can just lock a camera in position. It's got a little geostabilizer and all that stuff. This didn't have any of that. It's like, it's just absolutely awful.

It was literally worthless. So he's, he's telling me like, you know, hey boss, I got this thing. I woke up. We'll get the UAV.

We'll get a look at the target. All right, bro. So he launches it. You can't see anything. We're waiting to launch. I go, hey, man, just bring it back here. We got to go.

He brings it back and just tries to land and it crashes right over our Humvees square into a tree, bro. Just totally destroyed. So they've made massive progress. I think, I don't I mean I think your your crew is definitely out of a job in next fighter for sure

Who's thinking you still need to be in there? I think a lot of people What is it what if you were to argue their side? What would you say? I think the argument of their side is like All the nuance that goes in with real-time decision-making and the flexibility that goes along with that requires a human being to understand sort of the nature of the the three-dimensional unpredictability in the fog of wars you need a human being and to be able to make decisions as opposed to a computer. I'm not an expert on AI, but it is startling. And it's not just what it can do.

I think your point is a more important point is how steep that curve is. And if you think about, like, if you think about 30 years and how much happens in 30 years, that's why I'm looking at it like, all right, we're going to start designing this thing now. Like, we'll buy it and we'll build it and like we'll fly it. And then like 30 or 40 years from now, we're going to do it again. And I'm like, 40 years. years from now, like, if I think about how old I'm going to be and how much is going to happen in that 40 years or 30, 40 years, I think it's really hard to not at least envision.

It's going to be dramatic how much different the world is and just the concept of even what AI means. It's not like it's going through something where it can like cook food for you or draw a piece of art. It's like doing level, eye level thing that is well beyond anything you can comprehend and just visualizing. It'd be like saying to the right brother. So like, hey, you just flew an airplane, that's amazing.

In 40 years, we're going to walk on the moon. They're like, that doesn't compute. They can't make the connection of like 40 years later, it'll be like the 50s, and we're going to start putting people in outer space. So I think if you think about that, like what's going to happen in 30 or 40 years, I think that curve is so freaking steep

that it's hard not to visualize. It's going to be something way beyond what we can imagine. And the idea of, like, me, Dave Burke, you needing me to do that is, it's a little arrogant, I guess, basically think of it like hey man you know I I love to consider myself a smart guy but give the computers 35 years from now I think I think a lot is going to change there's a lot of things changing right now yeah there's a lot of things changing right now the um you know the battlefield in

the Ukraine right now the tanks are getting taken out at like a couple miles away with no you know by a ground by a by a man-packed munition that's a game changer like all of a sudden in one short period of time, tanks are a little bit obsolete if you look at it from that perspective. So things are changing. All right, back to leadership here. Of course, with this particular group of service personnel, I am considering leadership as it applies to a military unit. However, having been associated with industry for some time now, I find it difficult to completely separate the principles of military and industrial leadership. They have much in common. So he agrees with us. Leadership is leadership. In selecting a company,

in which to invest our savings we often give primary consideration to the company with good leadership in a similar manner a military unit is often judged by its leadership good leadership is essential to organized action where any group is involved the one who commands be he a military officer or captain of industry must project power and energizing power which coordinates coordinates and marshals the best efforts of his followers by supplying that certain something for which they look to him be it guidance support encouragement example or even new ideas and imagination so i mean this is um this is what why leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield right but it's so it's so interesting that this guy he's talking about these these like this guy that spent his whole life in leadership can't really put his finger on what he's talking about you know what i mean He's like, could be guidance, could be support, could be encouragement, could be example, could be new ideas.

That's a wide range of stuff. The test of a leader lies in the reaction and response of his followers. Now, that's a good statement. If your people aren't doing what you need him to do, you're doing something wrong. He should not have to impose authority. Bossiness in itself never made a leader. So there you go. which is also again for those of people that are up there with a stereotype of the military leader here's this guy saying you shouldn't have to impose your authority and you know what we were at gettysburg and i started talking about authority and like authority what the things people call on for authority rank time in experience knowledge technical knowledge like all those things people can call on that and use it as authority

Like I've been doing this hey I've been podcasting for three years man you don't know what you're talking like that kind of thing That's just a that's just an argument of authority So it goes beyond just rank Continue on he must make his influence felt by example and the instilling of confidence in his followers the greatness of a leader is measured by the achievements of the lead This is the ultimate test of his effectiveness Check I'm on board of that Yeah and and listen And I'll make this comment now, so I don't have to come back to it.

Like that comments, I would say a timeless comment. Your achievement as a leader is based on what your people accomplish. If you listen to what I said five minutes ago and you're like, oh, I'm just going to outsource my leadership to a computer down the road. That's not a good plan. The attributes, the behaviors of good leadership, regards of what computers might be able to do in the future, the most important thing you could ever possibly do is make you and the people around you better leaders. So don't get all wrapped up on this. AI is going to solve your problems.

I don't know when it will, if it ever will, but between now and then, learning how to be a good leader is a really good use of your time. Well, that's the most important thing. Nothing that you can do as an individual human can ever compete with what you can do with a team. That's it.

Yeah. Too frequently, we use the words leader and commander synonymously. We should not forget that there are far more staff officer assignments than there are command billets. And a good staff officer can and should display the same leadership as a commander. While it takes a good staff officer to initiate an effective plan, it requires a leader to ensure that the plan is properly executed. That is why you

and I have been taught that the work of collecting information, studying it, drawing a plan, making a decision is 10% of the job and seeing that the plan, seeing the plan through is the other 90%. A well-trained officer is one who could serve effectively either as a staff. officer or as a commander you know this is the the conversation that you and I have we've had it at the muster a few times because when and I wrote about it in extreme ownership with Seth Stone and writing on his writing on his Humvee window relax here's what you do when you start getting shot at bro one relax to look around three make a call and then you and I had a conversation about it

and you were lining it up with the Oudaloup and the last thing in the Oudaloup is act. After you decide, you act. And they didn't quite line up because I didn't say execute or act when I put that thing on Seth Stone's board on his window. And the reason I didn't have to say that is because his platoon was like ready

to do whatever the hell he said to do, right? They weren't having a problem with execution. He was just having a problem with decide. You were only solving the part that he wasn't doing so you didn't need to add a component that was already happening with that guy. Yeah. And that's what this is.

Getting people to actually do things, that's what he's saying is 90% of the job. Sitting there and coming up with a plan is okay. I mean, there's some small challenges to come up with a plan, but not really. I mean, if you have time to plan, then you have time to assess different angles and look at things and come up and try different

little courses of actions and run through some war games, some possibilities. And then you've got a plan. You're good. But getting people to actually, execute that thing that's what's a challenge that's where things fall apart by the way that's where dreams die I'm gonna tell you that right now dreams die in execution

they don't the dream comes out man the dream flourishes in someone's mind right people go people live out the entire fantasy they've the entire dream people live out like echo comes out up with an idea for a movie right sure He lives out the whole fantasy, the Oscar awards, like the whole thing, the limos, like the red carpet. He's got that whole thing. But guess what he fails on? Execution.

Like it's like, oh, but now I gotta work. Like now I gotta take and I gotta do this thing. So dreams die in that space between decide and act, that's where dreams die. Between idea and execution, that's where dreams die. And that's why a leader's job is to make that execution happen and here's the thing this is another thing so Cestan we got interviewed about the battle of Ramadi and and Seth told the interviewer that I had to like beat I had to

beat my head against the wall for every operation that we were able to do which was an exaggeration but the fact that matter is and I would tell that story to the young officers like if you think you're going to do a mission without like making that mission happen you're not going to be able to you're it's almost it's very rare that you're going to be able to that an operation you come up with a plan and like okay I set it in motion and now it's just going to happen no you have to like fight every step of the way and that's the way it is in business that's the way it is in life yeah I I'm picturing trying to convince other people that that you need to be on board with when you've come up with a plan knowing that

they're going to have to be on board with that plan and when when he says you're going to beat your head against the wall I think like you said your point is just the amount of sheer work that it takes. You don't just like, hey, you guys. And they're like, cool. And it just happens. It's all the other people and all the things they have to do and where leadership comes in on that just to convince people, and I hate to say it, there are times that are people out there that just want to say no. They just want to say no to your plan. Oh, yeah. And you, especially if there's rank involved, you can't just tell those people what to. You can't lead your way around those things. And there's so much harder than sometimes people give credit for. And how often I'll

see people run into a barrier and then stop and give up then. And so I literally wrote down dreams die and execution. I mean, it's kind of funny when you say it. But that's the hardest part. Not the, I could sit at my desk and I would do this all the time in Ramadi. I had these ideas. Like, hey, we're going to do this. We're going to go here.

We're going to make all these things happen. And then reality is in there. And the hardest part about that is the people you have to get on board to making this stuff happen. Not your people going ready to go execute, but all the things that get in the way to the point where you can go. Excuse that plan. Yeah, you ever heard the term idea guy and I he's that you guy you know which is a bummer It's it's what and this is this is a huge dichotomy is that

For me like okay let's say I'm write a book let's him write way of the warrior kid The idea is the is by far the hardest part of that it is so hard to come up with an idea like that's a viable and good It well I can't actually even say it's hard work it's almost like a it's almost like life it's almost like life like you can't you can't create life like hey a scientist knows the various ingredients that are in a cell but they can't make they can't mix them together make it come to life right as tenacious d said you can't manufacture inspirato so so it's it's this dichotomy because the hardest thing you could do like write a hit song right oh my gosh like everybody knows what

chords it is like there's four chords five chords that you're gonna be using whatever and yet Jack White is writing hit song after hit song after hits on coming out he's he's bringing them out of thin air right and yet someone else is spending their entire life trying and they can't make it happen so it's weird that you can have because I kind of wrote down a note I was like ideas have no value because ideas by themselves have no value they have no value and you have a riff in your head or you got an idea for some new component or whatever. If it's just an idea, man, it has no value. And that's proven out in the fact that if you go and find investors for your idea, they're going to buy your idea for pennies on the dollar. You're going to own like a little

tiny piece of it if you're lucky. Now, if you are able to hang on to the idea and you're able to execute, you could end up being, you know, Peter Thiel or Elon Musk that came up with the idea of PayPal and held on to it for long enough that, okay, here we go. So have you got to think it's like it's like a it's a war man it's a war the whole thing from the idea that you come up with that's great to the execution. And by the way, if you're an idea guy and you're stubborn, don't be. I'm going to give you some advice. Don't be stubborn. Find somebody that's an execution guy and be like, hey, dude, I got a really good idea.

Do you want to help me execute this thing? And there's all kinds of different people out there. and some people are idea people and some people are execution people and you've got to work with these other people to get things to move. Very few people are going to come up with an idea execute the idea properly

with the right logistics to make this thing work. That's why you build a team. So I was a radio man in the day. I was back in the day. So I was a radio man. Which man I was always out in the field and I had a little flashlight with me, right? I had a little red lens flashlight

and I would tape it up so it'd be really, really dim because a little bit of light goes a long way and you just need to look at your radio in the dark and you gotta turn on your little flashlight. But you have a batteries and they wear out and, you know, it gets left. There's all kinds of problems and it's big. And I remember one day I was in a helicopter.

And I'm looking at the pilot and the pilot's reading his map and he's got a lip light. You know what this is day? I'm sure you do. Yeah. Right. It's like, so where their headset, you know, where their radio comes out,

there was a little, how did you turn it on? I think like either like your tongue or something, like whatever the magnet electro or I'm drawn a blind, but like your contact with it illuminated the light. And what it was. If you bite down under or to close your electronics or something. But all it was was an LED, a little dim LED light that you could see.

And it's like LED like every light in my house right now is an LED light. But I, but I didn't think, oh, I should make a flashlight's little tiny, tiny flashlights like that. Because you wouldn't have looked at, remember when you were kidding, you had some kind of a toy that was lit up with an LED light?

It was like any random toy. They had little LED lights. Those are bright enough to be a flashlight. And I was a radio man, and I didn't put two and two together. And by the time when Iraq, the Iraq war started, someone else came out with little LED flashlights,

and now that's all anybody to use this, period. So there's a classic example. I didn't, that idea is worth probably hundreds of, hundreds of millions probably worth billions of dollars now of LED flashlights it was right in front of me as dancing around I didn't see it so that that idea would have had unlimited value to me if I could have executed but I couldn't I didn't know it I just didn't know it so though that's why the idea has limitless value but at the

same time if you don't execute some no value at all that's kind of the same as Bluetooth remember because when Bluetooth came out right it was like just the earpiece. It's like that's Bluetooth. Now like everything is Bluetooth. There's like no wire. There's no wire anymore. Necessary. And Bluetooth owns like Bluetooth. They own that stuff. So they're getting paid.

Imagine getting paid on every set of head of Bluetooth headphones now and every Bluetooth speaker and Bluetooth. Yeah. So there's a there's a good one. A little technology activity. All right. Going back to the book here. I can recall a former vice president of one of the companies with which I'm associated. He would formulate some

plans but never followed up to see it his plans got expected results I knew he had served in World War II so out of curiosity I looked into the nature of the service and found that his entire period of service was a staff officer he had never had the advantage of a command job so his training was incomplete maybe if he'd remained in the service longer we could have deployed developed his leadership qualities as well and this man would still be with the company the dude got fired so there you go. He couldn't execute, good at coming up with plans, just couldn't get him executed.

You may have heard the story about General Pershing World War I. While inspecting a certain area, he found a project that was not going too well, even though the second lieutenant in charge seemed to have a pretty good plan. General Pershing asked the lieutenant how much pay he received and when the lieutenant replied $141.67 per month, sir. General Persing said, just remember that you get paid $1.67 for making your plan and issuing the order and $140 for seeing that gets. carried out I think I heard that story about Patton too I guess maybe Patton heard it from

purging I am not sure that I would go to that extreme certainly in these days problems are complex and good staff work plays a large part in resolving them I have known commanders who were not too smart but they were very knowledgeable about personnel and new enough to select the very best for their staffs remember a good leader is one who causes or inspires others staff or subordinate commanders to do the job isn't that interesting word, causes or inspires. Like, it's just happening.

Furthermore, no leader knows it all, although you sometimes may find one who seems to think he does, and that's coming from, that's from the document. Even he had to deal with people that thought they knew everything. A leader should encourage the members of his staff to speak up if they think the commander is wrong. He should give, he should invite constructive criticism. It is a grave error for the leader to surround himself with a yes staff. Oh.

See, he developed this idea and I executed in the book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Don't be, you know, no, no yes, man, right? He's knowing this. General George C. Marshall was an excellent exponent of the principle of having subordinates speak up. When he first became chief of staff of the army, the secretariat of that office consisted of three officers who presented orally,

to General Marshall, the staff papers or studies coming from the divisions of the general staff. I was a member of the Secretariat. We presented in abbreviated form the contents of the staff studies, citing the highlights of the problem involved, various possible courses of action considered, and the action recommended. At the end of his first week as chief of staff, Marshall called us into his office and opened the discussion by saying, I am disappointed in all of you. when we inquired if we might ask why he said you haven't disagreed with a single thing i have done all week we told them it so happened that we were in full agreement with every paper that had been

presented that we knew what he wanted and that we would add our comments to anything that we considered should be questioned the very next day we presented a paper as written and then expressed some thoughts which in our opinion made the recommended action question question Questionable general Marshall said now that is what I want unless I hear all the arguments against an action I am not sure whether I am right or not I was at FTX with a shalom front and I said something along the lines of and I actually wrote it down But it's something along the lines of if you don't get any pushback It's a warning And that's his leader and it could be a warning for a bunch of different it's a symptom for a bunch of different

problems. Like the primary one, hey, maybe everyone's scared of to tell you what they actually think of your stupid plan. Maybe you're hoarding information so they can't even assess whether a plan is accurate or not. Maybe you've got them trained to a point where all they want to do is agree with you. If you train your leaders, like you can do such a exquisite job training your leaders that you've replicated yourself. And you don't want to replicate. yourself. You want to have people that have different perspectives. That's the goal. Yeah, I wrote down, you're going kind of going through that list of all the potential reasons why I know there's more, but I wrote down, we all see it the same way. And how easy is to fall in the chat for like,

that's a good thing. That's not a good thing. I don't want people. And the whole point of the risk behind that is, is we can have a great relationship. You see the way I operate. We get aligned. We get fundamentally observing the world the same way. And that seems like such a good thing. But it's not. I actually want you to see it from a perspective that I don't see him. Like, hey, dude, you don't see what I'm seeing over here. So when we talk about being aligned, we want alignment on what our outcomes want to be and what the objective is. But I don't want everybody seeing the problem the same way that I see the problem.

And, you know, checking out what we want our outcomes to be. I've worked with clients before where I'm like, well, why do you want? want to do that. I remember I was working with a client that was like, we want to grow by X percentage. I was like, well, why do you want to do that? Yeah. What's the reason? Well, because we want to grow.

Okay. So what is it going to take to grow? And you start, like, why do you want to do that? Some businesses, they get into a good spot. And look, we are program now in the business world, right? Program to, hey, growth. Growth is success. And there's a lot of reality to that.

There's a lot of reality to growth its success depending on the type of business but like you you get a small family business And well They got you know husband and wife they got a good business going and they have a kid And they want to grow the business well You know what does that kid want to do? Does that kid want to take over the family business is do they want to keep this business at a sustainable rate where they can kind of continue on with their business and don't have to look you're getting oh you go to uh you go to Florida every every winter for three weeks when you're if you grow your business all of a sudden

that Florida trip three weeks you can't do that anymore so you listen what are you trying to do so even like where's our outcome you need to even question that and this is a great example you know we've gone through in the well with Vietnam with Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, to what end? And I know Jamie just did on the woman's assemble. She talked about to what end, which is a book by Ward Justin. And she took what I had talked about at the council. At the council, I kind of opened up talking about to what end. And this is what Ward Just was asking about the Vietnam War. Here we are. We're spending billions of dollars. We're losing American lives.

We're killing a bunch of Vietnamese people To what end? What are we trying to do here? And if you have that attitude in every decision that you make, You know, when Echo wakes up in the morning, goes down, you know, to the donut shop and orders the donut, like to what end are you doing this? If you ask yourself that honestly, to what end? Well, I know it's going to taste good. Okay, but like where are you going to be? in a few years. Well, you know what? Actually, I'm doing this right now.

I get it. I'm just going to have this donut, but I'm going to do a hard workout later and I'm not going to eat anything else sweet for the next couple days. So, okay, so you have a plan. But where people lose it is when they're not actually thinking about where they're trying to go.

That's a problem. So ask yourself that question. To what end? And if your boss is telling you to do something or your boss has come up with a plan or you're presenting a plan to your boss and your boss doesn't agree with you, you might not be aligned on where you're trying to go.

Well, wait a second. Are we trying to grow the business? Okay, well, what part of the business are we trying to grow? There's all kinds of questions to be asked here. So pay attention to those things. If you happen to be a detail, if you happen to be detailed to a staff, try to be a good staff officer

and if possible avoid being a yes man. I would suggest to all commanders that they inform the members of their staffs that anyone who does not disagree once in a while with what is about to be done is is of limited value and perhaps should be shifted to some other place where he might occasionally have an idea so you got someone that never disagrees with you get rid of them they're not helping you of course I am thinking about the decision-making process after decision is made everyone must be behind it 100% I thought the British were admirable in this

respect during World War II no matter how much discussion there had been on a subject As soon as a decision was made, you never heard any doubts expressed. You had to believe that everyone involved in making the decision had never entertained any ideas except those expressed in the decision. We could talk for a long, long, long time about this. And the reason we could talk for a long, long time about this is because there's an element that comes into play when Dave and I are and Echo are discussing how we're going to execute something.

And that's that thing that comes into play is Dave's ego. Echo's ego and my ego. And once those things are in play, all of a sudden, it's very difficult for us to walk out of the room feeling like I support Dave's plan 100%. It's very, very difficult because damn, I'm just a little bit more

tactically savvy than Dave is. And he's imposing this plan on me and he's not listening to what I'm saying and I'm going to be pissed. And by the way, I'm pissed. Echo's even more pissed because his plan was even more disparate than mine was from Dave's plans and his ego is even bigger. So now we now he's totally against what we're doing, but you've barked the order so we're going to go do it. We're going to do it pissed and we're not going to be successful.

When you put ego into this equation, this is what causes this problem. Yeah, and that ego that ego when it comes out will reveal itself when I now have to do your plan and it doesn't quite go the way you were thinking and I kind of know that that's going to to happen that my ego is almost going to be happy to see that failure. I'm going to take some and I might be keeping my ego mostly into control, but there's a little part of me if I don't really have that thing in check, a little part of me that's wants this little hiccup, this little error, this little failure, this little setback, I almost want it to happen. And when I get to the point of how I'm actually supposed to work through that and solve that problem and my ego is really barking at, hey, you knew this was coming. You knew Taco's plan was stupid. You knew

this is going to happen. It's almost like I want that failure to occur so I can see the ego. I told you, man, as opposed to solving that, which I probably can, but how powerful the ego is. And I think you've said it like, I'd rather be right than win. Oh, yeah. There's been countless people. And, and, you know, a good, the ultimate example of that is there's people that would rather die themselves and get their men killed. then subordinate their ego to someone else or admit that they were wrong about something. Like that, and then there's examples throughout history,

disgusting examples like that. Now, here's a, I'm going to give everyone just a beautiful, beautiful piece of advice right now. And you know I don't say this very often. This is a beautiful piece of advice for everyone. Here's my default mode when I walk into the planning room

with Dave and Echo. My default mode is going with Dave's plan or I'm going with Echo's plan my default mode is to support someone else's plan That's my default mode my default mode is not to impose my plan on everybody else never and by the way It doesn't matter if I'm the boss walking in to talk to you guys or if I'm the subordinate walking in to talk It doesn't matter my default mode is I'm gonna go with someone else's plan I'm gonna go with what you recommend The only and look if you come up with the most wazoo plan ever created BTF Tony BTF Tony, who I love, who's freaking tactical, he's as tactically sound as any human has ever been.

And like he came up with a plan. In Ramadi, he's like, I want to take the freaking, like, he wanted to, it was something that was like legitimately insane. He wanted to take the little side, like a little side by side with him, just by himself and do like a patrol out into some random part of Ramadi and set up in a building or something because he thought he could get a, away with it just going by himself. I was like Tony bro you can't do that dude you can't just go by yourself and you know what hey there's actually a 90% chance that it would have worked

it's also 10% chance we never saw Tony again which I wasn't really put the risk out right so Tony I'm sorry but like unless someone just comes up but other than that one time Tony and I in the time that we work together we were never in disagreement about a plan more than that. than like 0.01%. Huh. You know like, oh, hit it from here, yeah, sounds good. And you know what? Basically, eventually, as I worked with Laif and Seth,

it all became that. Now, what I had to be careful of is what you already gave warning of. Like I didn't want to say like, oh, Laif came up with a plan. That's great. I don't question. I would always pull myself back far enough to go, okay, just make sure Leif,

look at Stoner's plan, oh, just make sure, yep. Hey, is there anything I can, can I poke any holes in this? I hate saying devil's advocate, but you have to be a little bit of a devil's advocate to make sure that you're trying to poke holes in plans to see if there's any holes in there because you don't want to miss anything. And the only way to be able to do that is if you're detached, obviously. But default, subordinate your ego and let's go with Dave's plan.

Sounds good, man. And that's how you roll. That's how you solve that problem. And by the way, the only part of you that really thinks your plan is better is just your ego. Because here's what you're planning. What you're planning is something that you can't know. You're planning something that's going to happen in the future, something that's going to happen on enemy territory or against a competitor or in a market you don't understand. That's what you're doing.

So when you come up with a plan, it's about something that you can't guarantee anyways. So why would you commit or over commit to it? Doesn't make any sense. So be careful of that. I don't want to over-emphasize leadership of senior officers. My interest extends to leaders of all ranks. I would caution you to always remember that an essential qualification of a good leader is the ability to recognize, select, and train junior leaders.

I would like to quote from a book entitled Born at Revely and written by Colonel Red Reader. I have this book in the queue, by the way. Colonel Reeder was on a trip for General Marshall and one of his assignments was to inquire into his junior leadership This is an account of his conversation with Colonel Bryant Moore on Guadal canal Colonel Moore I said tell me something about leadership I had hit a sensitive spot he forged ahead leadership The greatest problem here is the leaders and you have to find some way to weed out the weak ones It's tough to do this when you're in combat the platoon leaders who cannot come

command who cannot foresee things and who cannot act on spur of the moment in an emergency are a distinct detriment that's what's so interesting this had a bunch of conversations with my last client about um the psychology of military incompetence and the authoritarian mindset and how people do well that do well in garrison don't do well in combat and that's what he's talking about people who can't foresee things people who cannot act on the spur of the moment in an emergency he goes on to say here It's hot here as you can see men struggle they get heat exhaustion they come out vomiting and throwing away equipment The leaders must be leaders and they must be alert to establish straggler lines and stop this thing The men have been taught to take salt tablets but the leaders don't see to this the result heat exhaustion

The good leaders seem to get killed The poor leaders get the men killed. The big problem is leadership and getting the shoulder straps on the right people. 60 millimeter Japanese mortars shells fell about 30 yards away and attacked a number of coconut trees. I lost interest in taking dictation and the colonel stopped talking. When the salvo was over and things were quiet again, Bryant Moore said, where was I? You saw that patrol. I tell you this. Not one man in 50 can lead a patrol in this jungle.

If you can find one who the good patrol, if you can find out who the good patrol leaders are before you hit a combat zone, you have found something. I have had to get rid of about 25 officers because they just weren't leaders. I had to make the battalion commander weed out poor junior leaders. This process is continuous. Our junior leaders are finding out that they must know more about their men. The good leaders know their men. The um it's weird that he would wrap up that section with good leaders know their men after talking about all these other things good leaders know their men He goes on now this is getting out of the quote from that book

I'm raised that or born at revelry says what are the distinguishing characteristics of a leader There are many essential characteristics that he must possess but I will mention a few that come to mind as perhaps most important First he must know his job without necessarily being a specialist in every phase of it. A few years ago, it was suggested that all engineering subjects be eliminated from required studies at West Point. I objected. For example, bridge building is a specialty for engineers. Yet, I think every senior officer should have some idea of what is involved. When we reached the Rhine in World War II, it was not necessary that I know how to build a bridge, but it was very helpful that I knew what was involved so that I could see that the bridge engineers

received proper support in tonnage allowed and the idea of the time involved specialties dominate almost every problem faced today by the military leader or the business manager the this individual must get deeply enough into his problem that he can understand it and intelligently manage it without going so far as to become a specialist himself in every phase of the problem you don't have to be a tank expert in order to effectively use a tank of your command Yeah. This makes me think of the basic school for the Marine Corps, is that philosophy is, I don't care what your job's going to be, you're going to have some exposure to everything else. You're not going to be an expert in any of it, but it sure does help a lot if I'm going to work with you and you're an engineer and have some framework for what you're doing. So I know what the challenges are. So I know how to help you or support you or make sure you're at least getting what you need. And the idea of not being a specialist, but knowing what all your specialists are dealing with. I mean, that served me well. And I think, The very start for that for me was the Marine Corps, the basic school.

Yeah, they get that baseline set for everybody. Everything. And look, when you're at a business or you go into a business or you take over a business or you move into a new department, you don't have to become an expert, but to sit down and walk around, walk the floor, go and do that thing. You know, go get on the manufacturing line and do the various parts of the job so that you, look, you're going to be terrible at it. You've never done it before.

But go do it. Yeah. And it's crazy how easy that is and how much, and I'm not exaggerating, like in one day, in one day, how much you can learn from just spending one day out there. You do not need, nor do they expect you to be an expert on any of this stuff. And not just the mileage you get by just building the relationship, but the amount of time that it takes to get exposure worth they're doing is actually really small.

You don't need that much time to get out there on the line and go, oh, hey, let me try that. Hey, can I see that? Hey, how does this work? And just in a few hours, what you can learn, especially when you're starting at zero. If you're starting at zero, you're going to learn infinitely more in just a little bit of time.

So if you see this, some giant daunting task, it's really not. It's not nearly as hard. And I remember this, learning about how inside of a squash and all the different things worked. You spend an hour or two with somebody and just sit with them and have them show you their job

and then you do their job for a little bit in a couple hours what you can learn from that. Yeah. And compared to the people that didn't do that. You're a freaking expert. Totally. So, all right, here's one to, here's one to remember. Thomas J. Watson of IBM once said that genius in an executive is the ability to deal successfully with matters he does not understand.

So good. And my note when I read that is the genius. what will make this person be able to successfully deal with matters that they don't understand is having the humility to admit that they don't understand and saying, all right, let's get this figured out because I don't know what to do right now. This leads to another principle of leadership, which I have often found neglected, both in military and in business. While you need not be a specialist in all phases of your job, you should have a proportion

degree of interest in every aspect of it. And those concerned your subordinates should be aware of your interest. That's what you just talked about, Dave. You must get around and show interest in what your subordinates are doing, even if you don't know much about the technique of their work. And when you are making these visits, try to pass out praise when due as well as corrections or criticism. There you go. That's what you just talked about.

Go light on the criticism part. You don't even know what the hell you're doing. Totally. Let me show you how to work that thing there, son. No, don't do that. We tend to speak up only when things go wrong. This is such a well-recognized fact that a complaint department is an essential part of many business firms. To my knowledge, no comparable faculty exists anywhere to expedite the handling of praise for a job well done.

It's a good point. We all get enough criticism and we learn to take it even. Winston Churchill, despite his matchless accomplishment, found occasion to say, I have benefited enormously from criticism, and at no point did I suffer from any perceptible lack thereof. So he's always getting criticized, even Churchill. But let us remember that praise also has a role to play. Napoleon was probably the finest exponent of this principle of recognition through his

use of a quarter inch of ribbon to improve the morale and get results since. The quote from Napoleon, where he said, you can basically get someone to do anything by giving a little ribbon. And he's right. Both mental and physical energy are essential to successful leadership. How many good leaders have you known who were lazy or weak

or who couldn't stand the strain? Sherman was a good example of a leader without standing mental and physical energy. I cite him with some trepidation because some of you may be from Georgia. However, during the advance from Chattanooga, Chattanooga, To Atlanta, he often went for days with only two or three hours of sleep per night and was constantly in the saddle,

reconning, and often knew the dispositions and terrain so well that he could maneuver the enemy out of position without a serious fight and with minimum losses. Conversely, a sick commander is of limited value. It is not fair to the troops under him to have a leader who's not functioning 100%. I had to relieve several senior commanders during World War II because of illness. It is often pointed out that Napoleon didn't lose a major battle until Waterloo, where he was a sick man. So, lazy, weak. That's a problem. A leader should possess human understanding and consideration for others.

Men are not robots and should not be treated as though they were machines. So this goes back to the idea of AI. But I think you're I think they're pretty easily gonna be able to put morale and emotion emotional programming into Leadership decision-making. Oh Squints squints over there from echo Charles. Am I wrong? Eventually, yeah, I mean I guess an argument for AI is like you know how AI works it's like it's a constantly learning learning learning learning right from like input input learn learn learn So in the beginning, it'll probably be like freaking, you've watched a demolition man.

Remember that movie? I think, I'm pretty sure I walked out of the movie demolition man. Okay. So, and that makes, did I miss something big? That makes sense. That looks like it was dumb. Look, I'm not going to argue whether or not it was done.

Yeah. Yeah, I walked out of it. It was dumb. So it was dumb seemingly. It was really dumb, right? Seemingly, but. Oh, there's an layer I missed out on just a metaphorical masterpiece that I, that snuck by me?

But I wouldn't say. masterpiece okay but there's a part on their real subtle part subtlety subtlety where Simon Phoenix right he's a bad guy got a cryoprism whatever and he goes to one of these booths there's these booths rolling around like that there's just a booth for like whatever you want kind of a thing it's like an ATM for anything so this booth can give you like it's like the internet is on there and all this stuff but it can give you a mood adjustment mm-hmm so if you You're like, oh, I want an ego boost, right?

And you press the buttons or whatever, and it says, boy, you look great today. Like that kind of stuff. But in real life, that wouldn't really work, right? Because you're programming the machine. I need to ego boost. Oh, you look great today. A machine giving me compliments after I asked it. Like, brother, it doesn't work like that.

But the AI thinks it does. So I'm saying? So if you're trying to program emotional stuff, like morale boosting stuff in an AI at first, it's going to look like that. Yeah, but here's my counter argument. I don't really want to go full like Lex Friedman like discussion on AI because I don't know enough about it But you could probably put a program in there that we would say something like Hey echo Charles I've assessed your appearance and Comparatively to the rest of the population today you are in the top six percent of looking good

Congratulations echo go have a fun day so now all of a sudden it's giving you some data Here's my hypothesis you but I get it And look, that's not a terrible assessment. But I would think, I think anyway. And try search your emotional soul. Not you, Jocco, Dave. Search your emotional, like, party. Where, like, even if it's true,

if it's coming from a machine, who cares? It has to come from an actual person who, quote, unquote, understands me at the very least as a person. See what I'm saying? So, like, an ego boost from a machine, just the mere fact that it's not from an actual person, bro, it's hard. I can't get there, bro.

Have you ever had any kind of like feelings towards an inanimate object? Like a guitar. Like you've had like real expensive computers, right? Yes. Have you ever had a computer that you kind of had like some kind of bond with? No. No. And here, to answer your question, Dave, did you have any kind of bond with your airplane?

Oh, hell. Yeah. Absolutely. As soon as you said that, I'm like, I have feelings for the airplanes that I flew. There you know. I remember looking at them going, damn. And I would be surprised if you didn't look at a heavy machine going to go, I really like the way you look today. Yeah, but the machine isn't the thing that's giving you the compliment.

It's like it'll have to do, I think, you know, I don't know, I could be wrong. I'm not Lex Friedman. You guys know this? It usually has to do a lot with, or probably everything to do with what you specifically did in with this machine that gave you certain personal feelings, like personal unique, very unique in. Like not replicable You got to remember like right now There's chat There's people right now

There's bots on Twitter today Probably less today But there's there's bots and stuff out there That are having conversations with people Then people can't tell Yeah they can tell yes true But once they knew it was a bot If you tell them it's a bot brother

It's gonna change they're not gonna be Oh equally as in lover So the only thing you gotta get over Is like the little hump Of you just tell people Like oh no this thing can actually assess where you're at. And then people go, okay.

This computer's smarter than your wife. So your wife telling you look good is fine, but this thing telling you look good is factual. So there you go. Believe it. Ego up. What did you say? Ego boost.

Ego boost. Yeah. I'm trying to think like, because now that you put it like that, I kind of'm like, yeah, maybe, but like, I still, it's hard. Let me give an example. Let me give an example.

J.P. Dinell. Sure. Hell yeah. He was wearing like a wrist strap that told him if he was tired or not. Yeah. He believed it. Yeah. He took it off.

Yeah. Because he was having bad days. Yeah. Because that thing told him he was tired. He didn't feel tired, but he, that thing said, hey, you're tired. And he was like, oh, damn, I'm tired. Oh, yeah. And so he did that happen a few times.

He said, you know what? This is bullshit. Yeah. But so he believed the machine. It affected his mood because it had. the data. So end of discussion. I think you can just stand down, bro, because I think that he just got proven wrong. So like, if it was like an evaluation, he's got ego down. So if it was like a report card, like a report guard that maybe, because think about it, okay, this team needs a morale boost.

They're losing, right? Or whatever. So what, what would the machine do? Like assess the good things that are happening and report back. Yeah. I imagine. Imagine. Imagine. Imagine at half time, the coach comes in and he's like, hey, I'm checking your whoop straps right now. I'm checking your data. Everyone has more energy than they had at halftime than we did it the last game that we won. You guys have the power to get.

And that was true. Yeah. Yeah. So that machine can you affect your mood is what I'm saying. Yes. Yeah. I guess like hidden information or something that you might be ignoring, like that something like that.

Something like that. I'm saying that a machine can affect someone's mood. Hey, you know when I have a machine to affect my mood? Damn printer doesn't work. Yeah. Right? Printer doesn't work. All of a sudden, I'm like, damn, I'm mad.

I get angry. I think that's a different thing, but. All right. So check this out. What we're saying is men are not robots and should not be treated as if they were. And he says this, I do not by any means. suggest coddling, but men are highly intelligent, complicated beings who respond favorably to human understanding and consideration.

By this means their leader will get maximum effort from each of them. He will also get loyalty. And in this connection, it is well to remember that loyalty goes down as well as up. The sincere leader will go to bat for his subordinates when such action is needed. Take care of your people and your people will take care of you. A good leader must sometimes be stubborn. Here, I am reminded of the West Point cadet prayer. A leader must be able to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.

Armed with courage of his convictions, he must often fight to defend them. Then he has to come to decision after thorough analysis and when he is sure he is right, he must stick to it even to the point of stubbornness. Grant furnishes a good illustration of this trait. He never knew what he was supposed to be licked. A less stubborn man might have lost at Shiloh. Maybe you've heard the story of Grant in the Richmond campaign. When, after being up all night, making his reconnaissance and formulating and issuing orders,

he lay down under a tree and fell asleep. Sometime later, a courier rode up and informed the general that disaster had hit his right flank and that his troops at the end of that line were in full retreat. Retreat general grant sat up shook his head to clear the cobwebs and said it can't be so It went back to sleep and it wasn't so he had confidence in himself and in his subordinate leaders So there you go and we just have you had a chance to listen to the Civil War? No not yet Excursion we're just about the grant's just about to roll in the scene from the east or sorry from the West the Western campaign grants about to roll in there because he's winning so it's going to be it's going to be cool to get into him as a leader he goes on to say

this I do not mean to infer that there is always just one solution to a problem usually there's one best solution but any good plan boldly executed is better than indecision there is usually more than one way to attain results this goes back to what I was saying earlier that's why I'll go with Dave's plan I'll go with that because I don't care I don't care because the time we waste arguing about which way is better is time of indecision And that's what's going to cost us. So Dave, you got a decent plan, a minimally viable plan. Cool.

Go. Execute. Damn. We work together right now, Dave. You are executing things like wildly often. Executing plans, executing missions. And I mean, you usually sometimes give me like an after action report sometimes about how it went and everything. Is there something outstanding that happened?

Outstanding in any direction, maybe something good, maybe something like, oh, this week we could have done this better. Yeah. But I mean, that's how you have to run things. So much easier. Yeah, I'm, I, there's a lot of these comments that he's made, like the course that you're reading, I'm trying to picture hearing this.

And there are times you say something and people are like, oh, he just said, defend your convictions. And it's like a little, if you don't understand the context of that, there's a little bit of risk in there because that can be like, hey, listen, I'm sorry, Jocko, but this is how I want to get this thing done. And I'm going to defend that conviction. And I just can't help but think about, like the example you and I, that you were just talking about you and me and something we have to think about

Ashlawn Front all the time is a lot of times when people hear these military examples, we're talking about the conflict we're having with our enemies. Like he just told that story of like a lesser man when I lost that battle. Hey, listen, when you're fighting like an actual enemy, defend those convictions. But if Jock and I are on the same team and we're actually working together, I am far less inclined. I'm almost not inclined at all to defend my convictions. And of course, I've got to be careful with that too.

You said it well, that's a dichotomy. I don't want to just roll over and say whatever you want. But if I come in with a plan, you come into the plan, I go, oh, Hmm, dude, that's a totally reasonable plan. That plan will probably work. I am not inclined to defend my convictions against you who is my ally, who's my friend, who wants the same, you know, good outcome that I want, which is very different from an actual opponent, an actual enemy. You know, in the military, those are very stark, obvious contrast.

We're fighting against the Nazis. I'm going to defend those convictions to the end. Or like another company that they don't want to coexist with you. want to take all your clients and run you into the ground. So just even being cautious with the idea of defending those convictions, if it's someone on my team and they have an idea, the chances are, especially if it's like most companies, most people aren't dumb. Most people are pretty smart.

They got an idea. They thought about it. If I can find any reason to abandon my position and go with your position, I'm going to do that. Unless once, like you said, once in a blue moon, like, dude, your idea is terrible. And we just kind of talk through it. It's not that big of a deal. I reveal a couple things to move on.

But 99 times out of 100, your ideas and my ideas, they're actually both going to work. And if you got an idea, I am not inclined, to be quite honest, I am not inclined to defend my idea. Not because I want to, I don't want to upset you and you're my boss. It's because I think, dude, that's totally going to work. Let's just go execute on that. And what that actually gives me is what you just described at the end is,

and I want to be careful with this. But I don't spend a lot of time telling you what I plan on doing. Now, listen, we are strategically aligned. We have, we, as a whole company, we meet and we get aligned strategically. And I don't mean to say that people should be out there operating with total autonomy. But in terms of this day, this event, this thing, it's, I don't spend a lot of time walking you through with what my plans are. Because six, seven years into this, we've gotten to a point where Dave can go execute and you're comfortable with that. And my point to that is because I don't spend a lot of time trying to force my way into what I want to do, you've learned like, hey, Dave.

He's a flexible guy. He's going to get to the same outcome. His way, Mewa doesn't really matter. And that's cultivated a bunch of trust. So defending your convictions, if you're not careful, can actually make you appear to be stubborn to a fault. And now, Jocko might be like, oh, is Dave going to adjust as he needs to with this client? Or is he going to just dig into his plan? So be careful about defending your convictions as well, depending on the situation, especially what it is that you're trying to accomplish. Yeah, I think what could get confusing for someone is just confusing the words conviction and idea. Yeah. Right. For me to have a conviction that we should take care of our clients, I'm going to defend that conviction. So when Dave rolls up to me and is like, hey, Jocko, I think we can screw this client over and get some more money from them and do less work. And it doesn't really matter about what the outcome is. Yeah. Now we're I'm not going to be like, oh, sounds like a good idea to him. Let's go ahead. Yeah, we have a problem because we're not aligned. Now, but defending ideas,

which is like ideas, like I said earlier, ideas can be pretty much worthless, right? And, and if we are going to assign value to an idea, we're assigning value to my idea and assigning value to your idea. We can't assign a lot of value to either one of those things because neither one of them has any execution behind it yet. So we're just basically assigning value to air. It's like, it's like doge coin, right? We're just kind of assigning or what is it, FTT, which is the FTT is what the FTCT is what the FTX token.

So this is the guy Sam Bakenman Friedman, Sam Bakeman, Sam Bank Friedman, SBF. This guy ripped off billions of dollars from people. And one of the ways that he did was they made their own little cryptocurrency and just assigned value to it said, oh yeah, this, this, this, this. has this value and then they borrowed money against this thing that they made up and everyone said this guy's smart and he's really nice so we're going to give him we're going to let him keep doing it that's what that's what so when we assign if I assign my idea value and I assign your idea value I can't assign it that much value because it's just something that we both made up yeah

so why am I going to over invest in FTT it's worthless it has no value you also can't see the future I can't see what are you arguing what are you fighting me over yeah the the unknown of the outcome. So the convictions, you know, when we're in combat and the conviction of, hey, we need to do, have the high ground morally with the enemy.

Yes. I'll defend that high ground. I'll defend that conviction all day. Now, even the idea of, hey, Dave, we need to get the high ground tactically. I'll defend that really strong,

but you might say, hey, Jock, listen, we got to, AC 130 that's going to be overhead and we don't need the high ground and we could it'd be much smarter to have these troops over here on this piece of terrain which will set up a blocking force from where the enemy is located I'm I can adjust that that's an idea now and look I'm as I'm as about committed to the tactic of taking the high ground as a human could possibly be but I'm not going to dot I'm

not gonna I'm not gonna die on it unless you know Dave's like well high ground doesn't matter whatever and I'm looking at it well what are you gonna do if the enemy gets up there. Yeah. Well, I'm not worried about it. Okay, well, we need to worry about it. So that's a different. So just don't confuse defending your conviction with defending your idea,

defending your plan, defending your thoughts even. I mean, open your mind. That conviction versus ideas is awesome because the conviction we actually have to agree on. We are going to take care of our people. We are going to help these clients be successful. And if you discover that I'm like, actually what I want to do is, I want to lie to make some money. That's the conviction.

And then the idea is it's so much easier to not care so much about the ideas if you know that we're aligned in that conviction. Like, oh, Dave's going to totally different direction. He's going to get to that high ground. It's just his way of doing it. But he actually sees. That client's getting taken care of an impact. And my point to that is we don't talk about the tactical ideas nearly as much as we used to because you're like, oh, yeah, I know where he's going. I know what Dave's doing.

And yeah, we have a pretty good thing going and you don't just cut people loose. But if you can be a line on the convictions, it's so much easier to be flexible with the ideas. Yeah, like worst case scenario, you didn't actually, you, like, as long as you're not going against the convictions that we share, there's actually nothing you can screw up bad enough to, like, have a problem. Right.

You know, there's nothing that we can't clean up on a phone call. We're like, hey, dude, I over-indexed a little bit. We spent a little too much money on this client, and I owe them another two gigs. And by the way, they really want you so you're coming to it. I'm like, all right, cool. You know, Jamie booking me for free gigs across America. Jamie Cochran, thank you.

No, don't call Jamie. She's not doing it anymore. All right. Going back to the book here. Another quality of leadership that comes to mind is self-confidence. You must have confidence in yourself, your unit, and your subordinate commanders, and in your plan. This recalls a couple of incidents.

Just before the invasion of Normandy in 1944, a story went around that some of the units were making the assault. on the beaches that they would suffer 100% casualties that none of them would come back. I found it necessary to visit these units and talk to all ranks. I told them that, of course, we would suffer casualties, but certainly our losses would not be 100%, and that with our air and naval support, we would succeed. After our landing, a correspondent told me that on his way across the channel in one of the leading LSTs, he had noticed a sergeant reading a novel, struck by the seeming lack of concern

by this sergeant he asked aren't you worried how can you be reading at a time like this the staff sergeant replied no I'm not worried general Bradley said everything will go all right so why should I worry yeah confidence right there in the middle right there nice and balanced confidence not overconfident not arrogant but not self-doubting that's for sure I might relate another incident where there's a lack lack of confidence where there was a lack of confidence I had to relieve a senior commander because I learned his men had lost confidence in him this meant of course that we could not expect maximum performance by that division after being relieved the officer came through my came back through my

headquarters and showed me a file of statements given to him by his request I am sure by the burgo master of all the towns his divisions had passed through if he had confidence in himself he would not have felt the need for those letters pretty good one sir you shouldn't fire me look at everyone loves me I've got a bunch of letters to prove it okay after seeing the letters I told the officer that if I had ever had any doubts as to whether to relieve him those doubts were now removed his letters proved beyond question that he had lost confidence in himself so it was no wonder his men had lost confidence in him to a leader must possess imagination whether it be an administrative decision or one made in

combat the possible results of that decision must be plain to the making it what will be the next step and the one after that he only wrote one little two paragraph sentence about imagination wish I had a little bit more next while there are many other qualities which contribute to effective leadership I will mention just one more but it is a very important one character this word has many meanings I'm applying it in the broad sense to character I'm applying it to the broad sense to describe a person who has high ideals who stands by them and who can be trusted absolutely such a person will be respected by all those with whom he is associated and such a person will readily be recognized

by his associates for what he is circumstances mold our character these circumstances affect different people in different ways from exactly the same set of circumstances one man may theoretically build a palace, while another may have difficulty building a lean to. It has been said that a man's character is the reality of himself. I don't think a man's strength of character ever changes. I remember a long time ago when someone told me that a mountain might be reported to have moved. I could believe or disbelieve it as I wished, but if anyone told me that a man had to change his character, I should not believe it. So this is a very this whole thing about character.

First of all, it's a little strange. There's a little contradiction in there that he made, which is circumstances mold our character. So he's saying that your circumstance, that your character does change based on circumstances. Circumstance molds your character. And then he's saying that character's not going to change. It's more likely that a mountain gets moved

than your character changes. So he's got to, a little hypocritical statement here, but I think I understand what he's getting at, right? I mean, I think he's just talking about the fact that your character is molded over time, but once that character is established, it can't be changed. Now, I can tell you this, I've seen people's character changed, right? Usually it takes a pretty significant event to change someone's character. maybe they get fired

Sometimes people get fired And there's no character change whatsoever They're just still pissed at everybody else But someone gets fired Someone gets killed Like something Some very big event Can change someone's character

Also a series of smaller events I mean you look at someone That you know the kid that you went to high school with And then they joined the Marine Corps And you see them seven years later And you're like damn That's a different thing Dude, that's a changing character.

So I think the character can change. In fact, I know it can. Yeah. I'm going through what you're doing, trying to latch on what he's saying and understanding where he's coming from. And I 100% agree with you. Like, I have seen enough things happen in my life

around people that those are character changing events like you've described. I'm just thinking of the other side of it too, trying to contemplate what he's saying is, and we've talked about this, when someone reveals their character to you, believe them. That component of like, hey, if Jocko, if I catch it and go, oh, dang, Jocco's maneuvering for himself or Jocko deep down is actually trying to do this for him,

I have to understand like that's who he is. And there's a balance inside there too, but I'm just, like I said, I'm trying to latch on what he's talking about. And we've talked about this idea of somebody's character. If they reveal something about themselves, you have, you cannot pretend like that's not the case. or just through some conversation, you're going to change that character. So I do believe that, well, I don't believe,

I know that people's character can change. And I don't think there's some age by which it's now immovable. I think the older you get, the harder that is. But don't be naive about someone's character either. Yeah. The tricky thing about that is, you know, many of us, myself included, we're optimist. We're optimistic people.

And so I see Dave, like, shortcut and something. And I was like, he's part of my team like we're on the same team yeah he's not he's not going to do that and you see it again you're like oh you know he probably just doesn't you make a bunch of excuses for somebody and what you're saying is important you need to when you see those things you need to put it in the calculus man put that into the calculus because it's that is a that is what you're dealing with right that is what you're dealing with as a person is what is their character the thing about the other huge takeaway from this

which is extremely important is that you can take two people with different character put them in the exact same circumstances one person's gonna build a palace the other person is gonna have difficulty putting up a lean to and what that means is you as an individual you you need to take ownership of what's happening and make things happen like that's this is this is extreme ownership Right? One person can look at a situation and go, okay, well, hey, there's a bunch of rock here. Well, I guess I'm going to build a palace. Another person looks at it and goes, oh, there's a bunch of rock here.

How am I going to build a lean to? There's no sticks. They can't figure it out. So getting and surrounding yourself and training people, this, I believe, is a trained attribute as well. Look, just like every other attribute, some people have a more positive outlook, right? You got the guy in your company, you got the guy in your platoon that's like, oh, this is never going to work. What is it? I think Leif Babin likes to quote the alien guys, you know, 17 days.

We're not even going to make it 17 minutes, man. Like that kind of add that guy. There's one of those guys in every platoon. Totally. Right? They're in every platoon. They're in every company, every team. There's no way we're going to beat the competition with this thing.

Oh, this is never. Like, they're hating life. You know, it's funny. I wrote down, I didn't say it. but the negative people. We have a name for them. It's naysayers, right? There's an actual word for that person.

The English language is so filled with people like that that we have a word for them. It's called a naysayer, right? They exist. They're a type of person. But I think over time, you can train people where they start looking, oh, that's a problem, cool, but I'm not just going to find a solution. I'm going to take advantage of this situation.

We're going to do even more. We're going to do even better. Positive things are going to happen. So take that. into your next scenario, the next circumstances you're put in, and ask yourself, I'm going to build a palace or we're going to build a lean to. Which one am I going to do? I'm going to build a palace or I'm going to struggle to build a lean to. That's the question. All right. Then he goes on to say, all leaders must possess these qualities, which I have been discussing, and the great leaders are those who possess one or more of them to an outstanding degree. Some leaders just, just, miss being great because they are weak in one or more of these areas there is still another ingredient in this formula for a great leader that I have left out and that is luck he must have opportunity then of course when opportunity knocks

he must be able to rise and open the door some may ask why do you talk about the qualities of leadership they maintain that you either have leadership or you don't that leaders are born not made I suppose some are born with a certain amount of leadership. Frequently we see young children inclined to take charge and direct their playmates. The other youngsters follow these directions without protest, but I am convinced nevertheless that leadership can be developed and improved by training. Well, there's no doubt about that. That's again, something else I stole. Like I hadn't read this before I wrote leadership strategy and tactics, but you know, are leaders born or made? The answer? Yes, they are born and they are

made. And he says there's no better way to develop leadership than to give the youngster or other individual a job involving responsibility and let them work it out. Again, this is my favorite leadership strategy and tactics. What's my favorite tool for leadership? Leadership. Put them in charge. Put them in charge.

Put them in charge. That's what you do. Try to avoid telling them how to do it. Boom. Decentralize command. That, for example, is the basis of our whole system of combat orders, which there's a whole, we've talked about this on multiple different podcasts, but, you know, mission type orders, not telling people what to do, just tell them what needs to get done, why it needs to get done,

and let them go figure out. We tell a subordinate unit commander that we want him to do, what we want him to do, and then we leave him to the details. I think this system is largely responsible for the many fine leaders in our services today. We are constantly training and developing younger officers and teaching them how to respect accept responsibility. And this is, I was saying this, I said this at a muster. Like every moment of every day is an opportunity for training your people.

Like anything that you do, if you, it's so awesome. You don't need to go on some big training trip with your team. No, you work in the, you work in a sales group. Cool. You're doing a presentation to some client, potential client, cool. Junior guy, echo. Hey, you're going to present these guys. Hey, you're not, oh, you're not ready to present me.

You're at least going to put together a plan. You're going to brief me. And that way, I can get to know the numbers and then I'll brief it because you're not there yet. We own a construction company. Okay, cool. Echo, you're going to come up with a plan on how we're going to do this concrete pour. You're going to brief me it. I'm going to poke some holes in it, but, you know, that's pretty much what we're going with it.

Look, if it's bad, if it's horrible, if it's going to be a disaster, then we're going to stop. And I'll make the adjustments, but you're going to come up with a plan. And that's what you do. You have the opportunity to train people all day, every day with everything that you do. Your family you got to make dinner you got to go to the grocery store you got to get the yard clean up every single one of those things is an opportunity for you train your team your your your children on how to come up with the plan how to execute a plan how to build teamwork how to do things efficiently like these are all opportunities So everything that you're doing all day long you have the opportunity to train people He goes on to say however don't discount experience someone

may remind you that Napoleon led armies before he was 30 and that Alexander the great died at the age of 33. Napoleon as he grew older, commanded even larger armies. Alexander might have been even greater had he lived longer and had more experience. In this respect, I especially like General Buckner's theory, that judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. And then he goes on to say, I have been asked to speak on leadership in the past I have fairly well covered these same thoughts with other groups somehow however somehow however at the moment these thoughts take on added significance for me you see my first great grandson was born a year ago we call him fat Henry what happens to his life and to the lives

of his contemporaries may well be in your hands thank you is the end of this uh that's the end of this particular speech in it you know I've got a book I've got a manual Department of the Army pamphlet 600 tax 65 that's just got it's got a bunch it's a book of military quotes and there's a bunch in there from O'War bradley the greatest leader in the world could never win a campaign unless he understood the men he had to lead good to know the American soldier is one proud is a proud one and he demands professional competence in his leaders in battle he wants to know that the job is going to be done right with no unnecessary casualties The non-commissioned officer wearing the Chevron is supposed to be the best soldier in the platoon and he's supposed to know how to perform all the duties expected to the American soldier

Period the American American expulsion to be able to teach him how to do his job and he expects even more from his officers Boom fairness diligence sound preparation professional skill and loyalty are the marks of American military leadership there you go Another one in war there is no second prize for runner-up. It's a good one to remember. Another one, leadership in a democratic army means firmness, not harshness, understanding, not weakness. Generosity, not selfishness, pride, not egotism. So he just kind of rolled out some dichotomies for you. He's giving you the balanced one and he's giving you the tendency that most people have.

Military organizations success and success in battle depend upon discipline and a high sense of honor They just roll out these quotes The nation today needs men who think in terms of service to their country and not in terms of their country's debt to them That was in 1948. I think maybe JFK jacked that one a little bit right? Did JFK jack that sounds like a little bit Remember a good leader is one who causes or inspires others staff are subordinate to do the job we already have that one. So there you go.

This guy, definitely some good information, some good things to think about. And, you know, it's leadership. And it's leadership as applied to life. So,

more leadership. More life lessons to be learned. Trying to get better. Yep. Echo Charles, speaking of trying to get better. Yep. What do you got?

Yeah, I didn't really talk much about working out that much. No, no, he did say, he did say physically fit. Oh, yeah, back. Yeah, that one time. He said you got to back it up. He did sort of mean. You can't be weak.

He said weak leaders. Week, yeah. That's a general term, but yeah, I guess. Do some squats, bro. I agree. He didn't say do squats or girls. He didn't say guys or girls do squats. But there's an inferred kind of implied thing that we all kind of heard, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's face it. If you're not doing squats, it doesn't sound like he'd kind of dig you. that much, given the whole nature of the whole deal. I get it. But for those of us who are doing squats, which is pretty much all of us, am I right? We got some supplementation for you, you know, through this path.

A lot of pain in this path. Not pain. Discomfort. Pain, no suffering. Wait, is that pain, no suffering? No suffering. No, no, no. There's pain, but there's no suffering.

Because suffering is like the meaning of pain or like, what the meaning you put on the pain that you get. I think that's like the suffering. Yeah, like doms pain not suffering Tear your bicep pain and suffering Yeah, because you can't do curls for a long time You understand what I'm saying? I guess man I'm not sure 100% I'm tracking you but I don't really want to know

No, no, no this is important because it can actually Help diminish some of your suffering if you understand this Okay, this is what I learned Philosophical echo Charles coming in hot. What do you got? So pain and suffering are two different things. Suffering is just like what you, basically the conclusion you make given the pain that you have. So if it's like, if you think your pain is like bad, it's for the negative, it's destroying

you, it's whatever, then that, that elicits suffering. But if you say, hey, this is part of the process that I need or that I have embraced or whatever, it's still pain, but it's not suffering. See what I'm saying? Yeah, okay. And so you can assign meaning to whatever you want, including pain and you can assign whatever meaning you want to you anything. sort of like building a palace instead of a lean to so I could be feeling pain

and be like this is part of be building the palace or I could be feeling the pain going dude this is horrible I can I'm not gonna be able to sleep here tonight because I got to lean to exactly right all right see so you do understand it's true either way when you do feel this pain eliminate the suffering got some supplementation will help you for real mentally and physically yeah the mulk that's a yeah that's a big one because if you don't get your protein which is hard to do by the way we establish that no long time we It is hard to do just to just eat food and get the amount of protein that we're going to need.

It's true. Yeah. Yeah. But not anymore. Now that we have milk. Yeah. I'm saying? And it tastes good.

The marketing guys are like, well, the thing is with the milk name, we got to explain what it is. Yeah. Mulk. Additional protein in the form of a dessert. That's no problem. Not that hard, dude. No. So there you go.

Yeah. What is Mulk? And we couldn't just call it a protein thing because it tastes too good. Yeah, it doesn't have the, it might have the stigma of like a protein. Yeah. Yeah. If I said, hey, do you want this broccoli? But the broccoli tasted, but the broccoli tasted like really good.

Yeah. Tasted like really good. Like keesh. Would I call it broccoli? No, I'd call it something else. Yeah. If I said, hey, do you want all the goodness of broccoli, but it tastes really delicious? Would I call it broccoli?

I understand what you mean. No. So if I make a thing that's got. protein in it a bunch of really good protein and it's really good for you but it doesn't taste like your typical trash then why would we call a protein we called moke had to have its own word okay so dave burkton let me tell you or let me ask you what you think about this so i drink milk chocolate most of the time see what i'm saying but so sometimes when i make coffee i make a mocha right you put that's a little bit of chocolate milk in the in the coffee okay right that's a mocha or wait or chocolate whatever

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate milk, whatever. What if I put the chocolate, milk in the coffee, that's a molca. So now, and this is my question of Dave Burke, if there was a nut, do you drink coffee right sometimes? No. Oh, bro, this is not even, oh, this question not for you then.

It's for my people then who drink coffee. If there was a milk flavored coffee chocolate called mocha with caffeine, would that be viable? You're going to get a lot of yeses on that Because I'm getting hit up for that. I think so too. Yeah.

Right. Because there's, there's things like that that are out there, but they're not good for you. There's downside. A lot of downside. A lot of sugar, a lot of crap in it. So there's things like that exist, but they're not clean. Right.

That's what I'm saying. So what if this, right here, right, Moch, R-T-D, ready to drink. Chocolate flavored. What if we'd added some coffee flavored or just some coffee in there? in there, see what I'm saying? Yeah, like ice coffee in there. There's demand signal for that 100%. Bro, I think I could get down with that.

I know you could. That sounds like a really cool idea. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. But I do know the team. We are very close. You know what I'll give you for your idea. $1.

Oh, I don't. Yeah, yeah. I don't want me. At best. No, no, no. All good. It's a fantasy. It's a fantasy network worth nothing.

But I do know a group of people who can execute that. Have you ever had somebody present an idea to you? that they made you like sign an NDA and then they present it but then they present the idea and you're like or or this is the most obvious thing that like yes is like why i can't believe you're you're presenting this yeah so i know i know you guys were laughing both of you laughing at me or whatever when i brought this up but all that stuff that i said about the ideas in the you know the cancer pill and all that's from a from a series of real stories that actually happened to me oh yeah yeah yeah and the actual cancer pill thing no no the cancer pill was my rebuttal to like

the person saying how good their idea, how valuable is. It was an NDA day. By the way, not to mention, oh, let's meet up at this coffee shop and like, I want to really present, bro, full on. Oh, yeah. It's so annoying after my brother, he makes apps. So he's like really in that game or whatever. But yeah, when we, when I made websites, probably, you, especially back in what, oh, eight.

Yeah. Probably one in their mom had ideas for a website. Yeah. Brum have a website where it does this and that and this and that. NDA. Sign it because I don't want you to steal my idea. Yep. See what I'm saying?

But this Monka idea is very executable. Yep. No, though, that's probably that's going to happen. I'll say that. I'll say that. So there you go. Djokofuel.com, get mook. Get some discipline go.

Yeah. Energy. You know, that's another thing. Like, it's called an energy drink, but there's no downside. So it's not really in the same category. Actually, they're kind of having a new category of healthy energy drinks based on the drink that We made them like some of the retailers that we work with they're making a new category area. It's like you know oh you can get this junk poison Yeah that'll give you a 30 minute a 38 minute freaking

Methanphetamine it's free rush and then you'll crash and burn and you have type 2 diabetes or you can just take once aisle over and here we are this thing's clean and makes you feel good I wonder if they'd put it one on aisle over though they put it right next to it it's like I mean, I shouldn't say aisle one shelf over. Oh, yeah, like one little section over. Yeah, like makes sense. This one says poison. It's got a skull and crossbones and like a radioactive thing. And then this one says healthy.

It's got like like a strong muscle. Sure. A life force logo or something like that. What's life force logo? I don't know. Oh, okay. Maybe you need to make one. That's the beginning of my idea.

Oh, that's a good idea. Life force. Life force logo. Yeah. Yeah. But it's true though. Yeah, you're over there creating logos on a bunch of ideas too. You're what I'm saying?

I'll get the website soon. That's another part of that process. Oh, I already brought the domain. Dude, you know, me URLs I own. I own URLs, you know, like, you know, lifeforce.com. Yeah. It's like just ran.

I'm probably going to buy that in the next three minutes. Probably somebody already bought it. So the URL domain name is like 1% better than the idea. Maybe 10% because ideas is close to zero. Yeah, well, it's close to zero. But the URL is like literally like, I mean, you can get a URL for $9.99 on go daddy. Is GoDaddy the only one that does that?

No, no, no. Plenty, plenty spots. Domain.com. Go Daddy. Freaking, there's one called domain. Yeah, there's a lot of place. It's called a registrar. Is Go Daddy the big, the big one?

Yeah, it's one of the main ones for sure. That's all my stuff is Go Daddy. Do you ever look at it? Because you got access to my go, do you ever look on there and go like, I wonder what this idiot was thinking here with freaking, WWW. W. Planting Rocks in the World.com.

The thing is that sounds funny to you, but to me, I see all those. I say, okay, I see where he was going. You look at mine. You're going to be like, bro, what the hell is this good thinking? Bray, you haven't lived. Give me your worst domain name that you own. I can't. I don't know it offhand, but a lot of them have expired too.

But, brother, that's back in the day when I used to stay up drinking and stuff and doing like, quote unquote, creative stuff. Just buy URLs for $9.99 or crap. And like I said earlier, you have the whole dream in your head. Oh, yeah. Play out the whole thing. And here's the thing.

It was, it was bad with me for myself. I didn't go to other people saying like, hey, you do the, you know, I decided you do the rest. That was a violation.

You woke up in the morning how to do the walk of shame back to your computer to see what your go daddy bill was. You're right. That's the funny thing. You're 100% right. When you're like, what did I do last night? I'm so dumb.

Like looking at these. Like, what was I thinking? I think. But what made it bad for me is when I drink, I'd be like, wait a second. I could literally pull this off, this little idea that I have. Like, I know how to make websites. I don't want to make video. You go through the line of assets that you bring to the whole project.

And then you do it and you're like, no one's going to do this. You're all but cash and checks. Like, all but checking into the Academy Awards for your movies. It's true. URL. It's true. All right. So there is a URL that has proven.

out to be pretty valuable. It's called joccofuel.com. Boom. Which is one that you know what? I just kind of grabbed. Yeah. Right as the whole idea came to fruition. You want to hear something really,

you might already know this, but Trey, go on GoDaddy or wherever and go look for URLs containing Jocko something, like something real. Like, I don't know, Jock microphones or a Jock bottle or, I don't know, something. You'll find that a lot of them are taken down. Yeah, yeah.

That's those people. Bro. Thank you. To get jaco.com, that was freaking awesome. He totally hooked me up. Great guy. Great guy hooked me up with that. Sold it to me for $1.

Jocko.com. It's legit. So appreciate it. All right. So joccofuel.com, origin, USA.com. Another URL. Had to pay it for that one. Had to pay some real money for that one.

Yeah. For origin, USA.com. That was a bummer. But we got it. And now you can go and get American-made geese, boots, jeans, t-shirts, hoodies,

rash guards. I just got another pair of jeans, by the way. Delta 68. Which ones is you? The middle wash. The middle wash. The middle wash is legit.

That's two pairs for me, by the way. You're in there. All right, origin USA, a bunch of cool stuff. Jocco store.com. Yep, it's true. It's where you can get your apparel. You're going to represent on the path. Discipline equals freedom.

Standard issue. Dave Burke representing the Marine Corps colors. I dig it. Actually, I don't think I've ever revealed that. You just did. What the color schemes are for. But nonetheless, it's true. It's absolutely true.

Dave Burke represent. But yeah, if you want to represent on the past, discipline is free of them. Good. Stand by to get to all this stuff. jocco store. com.

We have the shirt locker on there, too. It's a subscription scenario where you get a new shirt. Cool designs on that one. A lot of people like that one. So check those out. If you like that one, subscribe for that one. It's a good one.

Subscribe to Jocco Underground, too. We have a little extra podcast. We're answering questions. We're doing, we're covering topics that are there that are adjacent to what we talk about on this podcast. They're contemplative. They're contemplative.

They're adjacent. They're very life focused, right? So, follow them the category of how can I be a better human? Yeah. I'd say that's right. And then we answer a bunch of questions from everybody. So jocco underground.com. You know what I found about your topics?

Mm-hmm. Is they, if you can like grasp these topics and keep them in mind and for real, keep them in mind, You will avoid so many of the pitfalls in life. Oh, I'm telling you. And you know what I've noticed about your topics? So here we go. What number? I think we're on the, something like the 65, 65, 70, something like this that we've done.

I think four topics have been yours. Okay. Of the weekly list that you send me of potential topics. Cool. I'm on the grid. I might have one of our topics might be topics that Echo has suggested. Yeah. We could just get a kick out.

We can cover that. we cover Echoes URLs a good idea that would be another good one just go through the list we could cover my dumb URLs too we can just get dumb URLs out here all right that's a good idea actually so uh check that's the jocco wonder ground if you want to subscribe to that we do that other podcast youtube subscribe to that psychological warfare flipside canvas dot com bunch of books you know where to get them you can get them at jocco publishing.com you can go to amazon.com i mean only cry Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay. We reprinted some of those.

Grab, grab that book. It's a fantastic book. Eshalon Front, where we have a leadership consultancy. Dave and I, Echo is not on the leadership consultancy. Yes, I'm from the CMO. Official. Official. But you don't interact with clients.

No, I don't. And you know what? Surprisingly, we haven't had. Have we had a request for Echo to come? There no request. Bro. I know factually that. that I guess you got in this all I found this up this happened one time by the way

probably out of about one million inquiries but whatever so I guess what when you sign up to ask for or to request an instructor yeah and it's like a hierarchy right your first first choice second choice or something like that I guess I was the second choice on one of them yeah did you do it no bro it was no Jamie told me like laughing like that's nice of Jamie I would I would literally bankrupt your whole company with my advice But Dave and I and a bunch of other people, Laif, J.P., Jamie, Jason, Steve, Meg. We got a bunch of people.

Who are going to miss? Corey. Anyways, we have a leadership company, Aiselonfront.com. This is what we do. We teach leadership all the problems that you have inside your organization are leadership problems, and we fix them. If you want to improve yourself on an individual basis, you can go to Extreme Ownership.com where we teach these principles principles of leadership principles of life extreme

ownership dot com and if you want to help service members active retire we want to help gold star families check out mark lee's mom mom and Lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate you want to get involved to go to america's mighty warriors dot org and also check out what mic of think is doing up in up in montana heroes and horses dot org doing stuff for vets and if you want to connect with us dave is that david arberg Echo is at Equitrals. I am at Jockel Willink. We're on the social media things.

Reengaged with Twitter. Twitter's a little wild right now. Some wildness going on. But it's kind of fun. So we're there. We're on the gram. But just watch out for the algorithm on all these things. You got to be careful.

Thanks for listening. And thanks to all of our military personnel out there. Standing and watch around the world. Keeping us safe. Same goes for a police and law enforcement. Firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, Correctional officers border patrol secret service all first responders you all also out there standing the watch here at home Keeping us safe. Thank you

When everyone else out there let's just remember that little piece that Omar Bradley said about About circumstances and character and Circumstances mold our character but different people with different character react differently to different from the exact same circumstances. One man might build a palace while another man's gonna have difficulty building a lean to a palace a palace versus a lean to this is factual This is factual some men women go through life They build a palace and some men and women go through life they build a lean to we've also

seen it we control our own destiny so let's get out there and get after it and until next time this is dave and echo and jaco out