Jocko Podcast - 38: BOOTS. How to Effectively Navigate Life, Land, & the Battlefield. Infantry Columns, On Patrol, The Beloved Captain, Jocko Academy for Young Troopers, The Warpath.

Episode Date: August 31, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:20 - Jocko takes his kids on PATROL / Land Navigation. 0:54:00 - The Beloved Captain 1:23:56 - Dope Internet and Onnit Stuff 1:28:56 - Leader has High Standards, but no Respect from the team. 1:39:18 - Denying your boss's hand shake with tact when you have no respect for him. 1:48:36 - Jocko's Academy for Youth? 1:59:20 - Hesitations on a new High Position.  Questioning if you're good enough for it. 2:06:44 - Taking ownership of "mixed messages" to your group from other leaders. 2:12:19 - What is "The Path"?  And where it leads.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 38 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. We're foot, slog, slog, slog, slogging over Africa. Foot, foot, foot, foot, slogging over Africa. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. There's no discharge in the war. 6, 7, 11, 5, 9 and 20 mile today. 4, 11, 17, 32 the day before. Boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again.

There's no discharge in the war. Don't, don't, don't, don't look at what's in front of you. Boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. Men, men, men, men, men, men, men. will go mad with watching them and there's no discharge in the war. Try, try, try, try to think of something different. Oh my God, keep me from going lunatic. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again.

There's no discharge in the war. Count, count, count, count, count the bullets in the bandoliers. If your eyes drop, they will get on top of you. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. There's no discharge in the war. We can stick out hunger, thirst, and weariness,

but not, not, not, not the chronic side of them. Boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again, and there's no discharge in the war. Taint so bad by day because. a company but night brings long strings of 40,000 million boots boots boots boots boots moving up and down again there's no discharge in the war I have marched six weeks in hell and certify it's not fire devils duck or anything but boots boots boots

Boots moving up and down again and there's no discharge in the war Good evening echo good evening That's a poem that's a poem called infantry columns By Kipling Richard Kipling who we've actually read before on the podcast He was a British correspondent. He was an author. He was a poet he was a patriot, a British patriot. And he was actually also critical of war. And paraphrased from a book by a guy named David Gilmore,

the long recessional, the imperial life of Richard Kipling. Kipling was deeply critical of how the war was fought. And by the way, he's talking about World War I, of how the war was fought by the British Army as opposed to the war itself, which is kind of like Hackworth. Hackworth was more opposed to the way we were fighting in Vietnam than he was opposed to the actual war itself. And he complained as early, this is Kipling, complained as early as October of 1914

that Germany should have been defeated by now. And something must be wrong with the British Army. Kipling was shocked by the heavy losses. that the British expeditionary force had taken by the autumn of 1914 and blamed the entire pre-war generation of British politicians who he had argued failed to learn the lessons of the Boer War and as a result thousands and thousands of British soldiers were paying with their lives

for failures in the fields and so there's some definite complexities to Kipling and it actually goes a little bit further and deeper with these complexities and there's a reason I started off with that poem and That poem it is Pretty much attributed that the the idea of that poem which is obviously about marching long distances and it's attributed to A series of forced marches that were led by in the Boer War Which were led by field marches Marshal Lord Frederick Roberts, who led 60,000 men on forced marches during the second

Boer War in South Africa. He led these forced marches that were almost 1,000 miles, 950 miles from Cape Down to Transvaal. And so that's kind of where this poem comes from about how maddening it is to march and how hard it is. But the interesting, the other interesting piece of this is that Lord Robert, Lord Roberts, who led this march, was actually personal friends with Kipling. They were close friends. And Lord Roberts was commander-in-chief of the army during World War I.

And at Kipling's request, at Rutyard Kipling's request, Lord Roberts allowed Kipling's son to be administered. to join the Irish Guard. He had some kind of a health problem. And so Kipling, Rudyard Kipling called him up and said, hey, my son's got a little health issue, but he needs to get in the game. And Lord Roberts worked it out, you know, commander and chief of the army. And God him admitted to the Irish cars.

It was actually his eyesight. He had poor eyesight. And so the horrible piece, I guess, of that is that, as I mentioned, The first time we read a Kipling poem on here is that Redyard Kipling's son, John Kipling, was killed. In September of 1915, the Battle of Luz, where the British suffered 60,000 casualties in three weeks of fighting. 60,000 casualties.

His body was never identified. and he is one of the 20,000 British dead that are current commemorated by the Luz Memorial. And while his body was never found, there were accounts that he was last seen slogging through the mud blindly after a violent shell explosion had ripped off his face. and there's further connections and one of the lines in the poem is that there's no discharge in the war

and this is actually from the Bible Ecclesiastes 88 says there is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit neither hath he power in the day of death and there is no discharge in that war

so what he's saying there is no man have powers to power over the spirit to retain the spirit, meaning you can't keep your soul. When it's time for your soul to go, you can't keep it. And then neither have the power over the day of death. Obviously, you have no power to overcome death. And there is no discharge in that war. And that is that this ultimate struggle between life and death, that war that we fight for life itself, there's no escape.

You can't get out of it. There is no discharge from that war. And a little heavy way to start the podcast. But that poem also has a special meaning to a certain group of people in the Navy. And those of you that know what I'm talking about there, you know what I'm talking about there. and it's a poem that I thought of often in my career especially when I strapped on my gear

and heaved on an overloaded rucksack for a long patrol or march and when you do that any soldier military man will tell you this that when you do that that is one of the most demanding parts of the job the ruck march the long patrol the hump

a little walk the forced road march and even though you're with a group of people when you do that when you're marching you're very much alone you're alone with your thoughts

and there's things that you got to think about you got to think about your field of fire you got to think about your navigation you've got to think about rally points you got to think about head counts you got to think about terrain feature you got to think about the enemy and booby traps and IEDs and all that stuff But even with that, there's still a lot of empty space to fill up inside your head.

And I recently took my kids out on patrol. And I guess to be grammatically correct, it was a hike in the civilian world. But in my mind, it was a patrol. It felt like a patrol. and you know, it's the same thing. I mean,

essentially you're moving from point A to point B. You set security when you get there, you set your layup point, which civilians call like a campsite, then you sleep, and then you wake up,

and then you do it again. And as I did that patrol, and since it had been a while since I had done a patrol, and because I was also watching my kids on their first patrol, I got to kind of revisit my little relationship that I have with patrolling over the years. And also as I saw them suffer and learn through their first,

I got to think into everything that I'd learned over the years from patrolling. And in doing that, I realized how much patrolling has. had taught me. So I'm there. I'm walking and I'm thinking about all these things that I learned. Because again, when you're patrolling, you've got time. Even if you're thinking about navigation, you're thinking about all these things. It doesn't matter. Even every piece of the job that you're focused on, it doesn't matter. There's still space to fill. And that's what happened. You know, your mind starts to think about all these things. And it dawned on me how much patrolling and marching

had taught me and how it's really a fundamental component in everything that I did in the SEAL teams and in the military and like leadership there's some fundamental principles that apply universally to so many things in life and also

just like leadership there's a certain aspect of patrolling and navigation that is as much art as it is science and the science, of course, is relatively easy to teach, but the art, as always, the art is hard to teach. And finally, with this idea of navigation of moving from point A to point B, which includes plotting a course and picking waypoints along the way

and identifying it and avoiding obstacles en route and how to overcome the unexpected obstacles and how and when and where to rest and everything else that navigation and patrolling includes and all those things are things that you face as you navigate life and as you set goals as you establish where you're going. So I wanted to take a closer look at land navigation

and how it relates to leadership. and life and in digging in I looked at I looked at some of the information out there some of the some of the field manuals and it's it's I learned from people right and I didn't learn from a book and as I went to the books I was hoping that I could find what I had learned from people but but I didn't really find it I found pieces of it glimpses of it but nothing like what I was taught by the guys that raised me in the SEAL teams. And, you know, I looked up the Army FM 3-TAC-25.26 map reading and land navigation. And it's a thorough document.

And it's very heavy on the scientific side, the actual technical skill of it, like how to set declination and encompass and how to orient the map and with the contour line. All the basic tools are in there. And there's some good quotes. One of the quotes it said Today the complexities of tactical operations and deployment of troops are such that it is essential for all soldiers to be able to read and interpret their maps in order to move quickly and effectively on the battlefield. Okay, I can't argue with that. You got to know where you are.

And if you ever heard me say this, I always used to ask the young seal officers, what's the most important piece of information you need on the battlefield? And they would say, where the bad guys are. or how many guys you have or how many enemy there are or anything like that. They'd have a bunch of different ideas. And I would say, no, no, no, no, no. The most important piece of information you can have on the battlefield is where you are. You got to know where you are. Otherwise, nothing else matters.

And then I looked at a book called The Last Hundred Yards, which we actually covered on this podcast, podcast number three. And it goes through a section which is describing, it's talking about GPSes and how now we've got GPSes and the GPSes can be unreliable and you can't count on them and all this stuff and that's kind of true it was even more true when that book came out which is in 1995 and there was less satellites in the sky and the GPS receivers weren't as good and the encryption methodology wasn't so dialed in yet so the GPSes were less accurate back then and they were also still pretty big there were these big contraptions and and

And even in 1993, 1994, the GPSes that I carried were big, heavy things. Basically, you had to assign a person to carry them. And now, of course, they're tiny. You know, everybody's got, you know, a GPS on your iPhone or whatever smartphone you're using that are a thousand times better than the one I used to carry on my back. And they're also very accurate and reliable now. and the military's come to rely heavily on them, perhaps, perhaps a little too much. And I'm not going to be a guy that's like a stick in the mud that says, hey, don't evolve,

don't learn anything because technology is awesome and you have to take advantage of it. But I also do think there's a need to remember the old ways. And I remember when GPS first came out and I was coming into the SEAL team, had this thing. And I remember this, this officer's particular said to me, you know, hey,

all I need to do is, all we need to do is carry this thing. And, and, you know, we'll know exactly where we are at all times. And he hands me this,

you know, 20 pound brick, big box thing. And I kind of said, hey, man, all I need to do is carry this map and compass and I'll know exactly

where I am at all times. It's called land navigation. I want to learn it. But, Nowadays, the GPSes are awesome, and we definitely rely heavily on them. But it is a piece of the last 100 yards that definitely emphasizes that you have to know how to land nav, which is good. But like I said, when I looked through these books, none of them gave me the same clear level of instruction that I learned about land navigation and patrolling when I first got into the teams. back in the day.

And again, these instructions and this methodology and some of these basic principles of patrolling in land nav, they stuck with me and are really fundamental building blocks

of how I ended up doing everything that I do. And they're really the basis of the attitude that I had that was very beneficial in leading me to having success in other areas, which was awesome.

And so, again, here I am, and taking my kids on their first patrol, it made me realize this so clearly. And as I was thinking about, I was like, you know, I'm going to talk about this on the podcast. Because these are lessons that I learned that I actually forgot that I learned. You know what I mean? These are lessons that are so embedded that I forgot that I thought about them. But I think about them all the time.

And then when I'm seeing my kids do this, I'm thinking, oh, yeah, there they are. They're learning this right now for the first time. And so to go through some of those things, some of those principles, the first one is planning. And, you know, this gets, of course, everyone knows you've got to come up with a plan. But doing a detailed map study and identifying the obstacles that you're going to have to get around. And there's a couple different methods that you can use for land navigation. One of them is called dead reckoning. And dead reckoning means you get a compass bearing.

From point A to point B is you know you're going to be traveling on 270 degrees. So you put your compass on 270 degrees and you march. You go a straight line. Don't let anything take you off that line. Head down and go. And that's called dead reckoning. And that's obviously can be very problematic because if in between you and where you're going is a giant mountain or a, you know, a bunch of rivers or whatever,

you're going to have to go through all those things and you're going to get, you're going to get worn out, you're going to get tired. It might be not tactically advisable to go through those areas. And so the better form is called terrain nav or terrain association. And when you're doing that, you actually look at the map and you study what the ground is going to do. And so if there's a big mountain, you can skirt around the bottom of the mountain. And then you get to the other side of the mountain and there's a ravine that's you can follow that ravine around until you get to a certain point on the ravine where it, cuts far to the north and you can you can head in the other direction to you towards your tar so it's this

it's a method of really knowing the terrain that you're going to be on and it's infinitely more effective than dead reckoning so if you think about this from a perspective of you have a mission that you're trying to get done well how are you going to get there you know how are you going to get this mission done are you going to just put your head down and absorb any impact that you take and and apply more pressure, or are you going to be smart, or are you going to study the terrain and take a look

and figure out the best way around those obstacles? Those dead reckoning and terrain association, the terrain association, you don't like, let's say, go around the mountain and then try to get back on the dead reckoning course. You're just using the terrain. You're going to use the terrain the whole way.

You'll know when you do your map study, you'll know that you're going to go, skirt around this mountain, you're going to go down a ravine, then you're going to cut over by this open field, you're going to hold along the wood lines. When you get to the end of the wood line, there's going to be a fence. You're going to step over that fence. Once you get to the fence, you're going to follow the fence for, you know, until you hit another big terrain feature like another hill. And then you're going to follow the base of that hill until you get to a stream. So you're going to know exactly where you're going the whole time. Right.

And you can imagine how much more effective this is. I mean, you don't have to look at your compass. You are taking advantage. You're going to patrol in areas where you have a tactical advantage, too. So it's just a much, much better way to do things. So a lot of times I think people, you know, they hear the big Navy seal. Like, oh, we're just going to get it done. Yeah, stay on the course.

Right? Well, staying on the course means I'm going to reach my objective. It doesn't mean I'm going to pound my head into the wall with, thinking. Right, right. So that's what terrain features do for you. And there's also some terrain features that are interesting. You can use reference points that keep you from going too far.

So you can know, hey, if we hit this main highway, we went too far. We know we missed our target. We missed our turn. If we hit this river, we know we went too far. If we hit this ridge line, we know we went too far. So you're going to set those up for you. And they're going to confirm where you. where you are.

And also you're going to use those as reference points. So you're going to tell your whole team. So your whole team is going to know, hey, we made it this far. Oh, there's the big river that we're turning left at. Okay, we turned left. That's awesome. Next thing we're going to hit is a wood line. Oh, here's the wood line.

So everybody knows. And so imagine if you're, again, think about this outside the parameters of land navigation and patrolling. Think of it in a regular business or any situation where you're trying to get a team to do something. If you lay out the course for them and you plot out what the obstacles are and you explain to people where they're going to be and how important it is that they need to get there and what we need to be looking out for, imagine how the team feels. The team knows where they are. They understand where they are. When you're doing dead reckoning, the guys in the back, they have no idea where they are. I've been that guy.

I've been that guy in the back of a patrol and you just have no idea where you are. You have no idea how much further to go. You just got your head down. You're slugging along with your weight, and it's a nightmare. Whereas I've been on good patrols where I'm in the back, but we got a really good brief. And I'm like, oh, there's that mountain. Oh, there's that ravine.

Okay, we should be coming to that stream soon. Oh, yes, we're at the stream. So you know where you are. And when you provide your team with that kind of clarity on the course that you're planning to take, it's going to make them so much more aware of what's happening. And the more aware they are of what's happening, the better performance you're going to get from them. Yeah.

The other thing is, as you're doing this, you do something called a pace count, which is your, as you walk, you know how many paces it takes you to get 100 yards. And there's some Kentucky windages there as well because we're going uphill or downhill. You can work out these different, which you can get pretty accurate. So you can know that, hey, when I take left, when my left foot hits the ground, on average, when I'm wearing 100 pounds, it's 86 paces for me and I just went 100 yards. So you'll know that. And so then what you're doing is you're constantly checking. It gives you another reference point. Because if we're supposed to hit a stream in 300 yards,

and I know we've marched 600 yards, something happened. Time for me to stop. In fact, at 400 yards, I'm probably going to stop and say, okay, let's do a quick map study. So you want to double check these things. And in a business world, this could be some kind of a timeline that you've set up. So you're like, hey, at, you know, 42 days, we should be here on this project. Oh, we're not there yet?

Okay, what's the problem? What did we miss? Why aren't we getting it done? So that gives you two sort of methodologies to confirm where you are so you can triangulate your position, which is smart. What do you call it Kentucky what? Kentucky Windage. What does it mean? It's like, give or take.

It's, you know, it's just, it comes from shooting. Oh, got you. And you would normally dial in your site to get you specifically, let's say, you think 600 meters. Right. But then there's a strong wind blowing. So maybe you're going to hold off to the left a little bit. Because it's windy in Kentucky or something. I think it's just shooting.

Maybe the shooters in Kentucky had a, they were real accurate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pull in a little Kentucky windage. Got accommodate for that. Yeah. Gotcha. Chicago windage. No.

No. Well, because it's kind of windy, you know, so. Yeah. I see where you're coming from, but no. It's Kentucky Windage. It's my brogino. Pretty dope. So, like I said, in life, plan, study the route that you're going to go.

Think about the obstacles. How are you going to avoid them? What do your goals look like? What do your smaller goals look like along the way? The little reference points. So you got somebody who signed something to the big project? Okay, what are the little things? Or you got something in your life that you're trying to accomplish?

What are the little goals you've got to set for yourself? So you get to keep a reference. reference point along the way and what's the timeline you're going to meet those on. That's how you stay on track. And, you know, what we actually did, we did something called pace notes. And what pace notes were. And I learned it for foot patrols. And we ended up using it even more when it came to vehicle patrols.

And I realized that, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago or something, we started sending guys to rally driving school. So I could learn how to drive rally racing cars. and that's been the way they always done paste notes in rally racing so you so what's cool about it is when you do paste notes you're writing down specifically this is the terrain feature this is what I'm to see and this is how far away it is this is the next terrain feature this is what I'm going to see and this is how far away it is so you can actually track that now we got so detailed with that on on vehicle mounted patrols we would actually just take the map and blow the map up so we'd see exactly what it looked like at that intersection or at that intersection or at

at that juncture or at that city block so we could see what the buildings look like so we'd be looking for. So that's pace notes and it, and it, it's almost like a rehearsal, you know, it's almost like a rehearsal because you can, you can walk the whole team through and they can get a visualization of what they're going to see and how it's going to look. And the other, the other piece is that I said is you've got to share that plan and explain it to everybody, so everybody's on the same sheet. And I did this, well, I explained it to my kids. you know, and I said, okay, here's what we're going to see.

We're at this area here. We're going to go across some flat ground. We're going to start hitting some little terrain features here. It's going to go up and down and up and down. That's going to tell us that we're here. And not only does it help them know what's going on, but now I'm talking through it. And that helps me because it helps to teach things because when you teach something, you become more proficient at it.

That's one of the good things about teaching anything. You know, you want to get better at something? Teach people how to do it. It makes you better. You want to teach that arm lock or you want to get better at the arm lock? You'll notice all kinds of little details. else about it. Right.

It's so hard to teach. Like, if you're not used to teaching, Trey jump in there and teach, because you're just used to doing it. And a lot of that stuff you just do without thinking about, okay, what exactly am I doing in this detail? You just do it.

Oh, yeah, you know, muscle memory. And there's all these little factors that facilitate you doing something that you don't even think about. And then Trey teach it, you're like, oh,

you kind of do this. Wait, wait, whoa, you know, you don't even know what you're saying. You know, Greg Train always throws out little details. And I go, oh, that's a good little detail. Right. And he has something that I do, but once he points it out or teaches it,

and he'll be teaching something basic that I know and I'm good at. Yeah, yeah. And he'll say, oh, yeah, and then I put my foot on the hip here to stabilize this. And I go, I go, I do that. But when you start thinking about it and you focus on it, it makes you that much better at it. And that's the same thing that's going to happen here.

When you actually brief your team and tell them exactly what to expect, now again, this doesn't mean that you're going to say, hey, this is exactly how it's going to go, because you've got to give the caveat that, hey, this is our plan, and we might have to deviate from this plan. and that's okay. We're ready to do that.

We're adaptive. Yeah. But when you talk through it, it helps you and it helps them. Yeah. That's funny. Greg Train is the reason I ran into it. He was like he's teaching or whatever.

And then he just all of a sudden bust out, hey, Echle, teach him that move that you do. Now it was pretty good at that move. I started teaching. What move does it? It's like,

it's a guard past that I do sometimes. And, bro, I'm teaching it. I don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm like doing it all good, but everyone's like, oh, all right. You know, I'm like,

I am a pool. I am a poor teacher. Well, that's something you can work on, I guess, starting now. Take over the podcast. I'm more comfortable avoiding it. Awesome. Now the next piece that I was thinking about on patrolling and that I saw my kids go through

and that I went through as a young seal is you start questioning or you start going through this process of what do I need to bring with me? What do I actually need to bring with me? Now, when you don't have to carry it, or when you don't know what it means to carry it, carry it. When I say carry it, I mean, put it on your back

and bear the weight of that item. When you don't have to do that, you want to carry everything. I'll just carry everything, the warm, sleeping bag, and the whisper light stove, and the extra food and the comfort gear, and all this stuff. That's what you do when you don't have to carry it,

or when you don't think about carrying it, or you don't know what it feels like. to carry it. But when you have to carry it, you get down to what you need real quick, to what you actually need real quick. Totally limited on the food. You're not going to, I never, I never heated a meal in the field unless it was like snow on the ground, a winter warfare scenario. I never heated a meal on the ground. If it was never, never heated a meal. Because that means you had to bring a fugel and a whisper light and all this stuff. And I never, I was a radioman.

So I had to already carry a radio. Yeah, yeah. And then I got used to that. So by the time I was an officer and I wasn't carrying a radio anymore, I just said, oh, I'm just going to be lighter than everybody else. If I can. Um, comfort gear. No. No.

We won't take that. And you need to, you need to get it, you need to bring enough comfort gear that you can actually sleep and survive. I mean, you need to bring a ground pad or whatever. but you know we used to say a little saying was travel light freeze at night that was my saying for sure travel light freeze at night and I'll tell you I got my indoctrination to freezing at night

and traveling light when I first checked into the team I went to a comm school communication school a seal communication school so you're going to learn how to be a radio man in the seal teams and I had this this old chief that was running the

running the training. And I was a fired up new guy. I didn't even have my trident. So I was just a brand new guy. Didn't even have my trident. I was at the team. And they sent me to this school. And so this chief,

and I actually went with another new guy, who's a great guy. And we went out there, total new guys. Neither one of us had our trite. So we had graduated from Buds a couple months ago. Or from airborne school, whatever.

So we showed up. It's winter time. And we show up. And the end of this school, you go through a field training exercise. and it's, I want to say it's five days in the field. It's like Monday through Friday in the field or something along those lines. And you are basically doing a reconnaissance mission,

and they give you really good targets to look at, and you're going to report back with all this information, and then you're going to move. They're going to move you every couple hours. They give you directions to a new point to move to. So we're getting ready for this FTCS, and I'd never spent much time in the field, and the guy that's running the course,

you know, he's having fun with the new guy, and he's like, hey, Willink. And I said, yes, Chief. And he goes, you know what? You think you're hardcore? And I go, I'm trying to be hardcore. And he says, if you're really hardcore, you don't need a poncho.

You don't need a sleeping bag or a ground pad. You just go out there with a poncho and a poncho liner. And I was like, okay, no problem. So sure enough, I go in the field with a poncho and a poncho liner. and actually it was a bivisack which is a Gortex

It's like a Gortex sleeping bag Just a thin Gortex shell And a poncho liner Which is something that's been around forever And it's just a very thin Thin Thin Basically blanket

No it's not even a tent It's like a blanket It's like a blanket That's what it is Oh the liner It's a very thin It's a very thin liner It's what is the poncho liner

And so I had those are the two things I had with me and and my buddy took the same so we were like oh oh that you need to be like that to be hardcore cool I'm hardcore how cold was it like so we are going into the field we're inserting in the field

and the sun is going like we inserted right at dusk as we're inserting in the field it's raining right as we get on the ground it turns to sleet and then two hours into the night it turns into snow So we freeze. I mean, we freeze. We're just, we can't sleep. And the funny thing was,

was that we couldn't sleep. We literally couldn't sleep. It was too cold for us to sleep. And the guy had set it up, so you had to make a communications window. You had to make communications. It was about every three or four hours. And so,

and if you missed a communications window, if you missed it, that was, you know, your grade went down or whatever, you got points subtracted. So all the other guys who were experienced seals that knew how to live out in the field better than we did, they all were super comfortable. They all went out there and had sleeping bags and ground pads and all that, and they slept through their calm windows.

At least some of them, they didn't sleep through all of them, obviously, but occasionally they'd sleep through one after four days, three days, whatever. And so we were the only pair that made all of our calm windows because we couldn't sleep. Right. I remember, you know, yeah, we'd just be standing up, just standing up, standing by, tree doing burpees out just trying to try to survive yeah yeah so that was um that was one of the lessons on on on learning how to travel light freeze at night now that was a little too much i i should i the thing i needed was a ground pad you need a ground pad when you go in the field so

travel light freeze at night is kind of like a warning or is that like no it's the deal that's what you do oh dang it was my methodology and it's it's a methodology of a portion of guys in the military that are that are on the would rather be on the hard side right so I'm gonna also I'll freeze at night so I can travel light travel light freeze at night because you're gonna be more effective when you're when you're lighter yeah except that night I mean of course if you're exhausted that's why that's where there's got to be a balance there we should have brought ground pads on that

operation to that and that training operation for sure yeah because we're and and like we got trench foot legit and the guy that was with me had legit trench fort when he got out like what is that like Frost bike, no, it's when your feet, because part of this training operation took place in, in like a swamp. Oh, dang. So it's freezing in the swamp, and he got legit World War I style trench foot. I had it, too, my not as bad as him.

But what is that? It's just your feet get numb and rotting and jacked up. Yeah, good times. So, again, how do we apply this to life? And I think if you look at what you want versus what you actually need, and imagine if you had to carry everything that you owned. Now, of course, that's not possible. But I think this is this whole, like, minimalist attitude that's kind of getting popular right now.

It's getting popular in the civilian world right now, but in the military, we've always valued that. And that's one of the cool things about going away on deployment. For me, I always love this feeling. When you went away on deployment, you could only take, we as Seals took a lot of gear with us, but there's a limit. You took, you know, five or six kit bags, you know, five or six big duffel bags, basically filled with gear. And that's it. That's it.

That's all your gear. That's all the gear you have. And so honestly, to me, that always felt good. That is what I got. This is everything I have. And, you know, as a young seal, that was basically you could fit all your gear in those six bags. And then everything you owned in the civilian world, you could fit in two more bags. And we live that, like, I live like that with my buddies back in the day.

We live like that for a long time. Oh, we can go on deployment tomorrow. We can just put all of our stuff at home in a kit bag. We can loan our stuff up and we can be ready to go. Yeah. Kind of like we're the military guys are kind of like the OG minimalists. Yeah, yeah. Back in the day.

It's good, man. I've got to teach Sarah this stuff. Yeah, well, people start to hold on to stuff. Especially the part where if, or when you carry it, you realize how much stuff, you know, that part were you talking about? Once you know the weight of your own stuff, you think twice before. Yeah, we got to do some. In a civilian world, you start thinking about the cost of that gear. And what does that mean over time and how much of usage are you getting out of it?

Now, the thing that I hang on to, there's a couple things that I'm a little bit of a horder on. One of them is T-shirts. Yeah, I'm not mad at that. Now, now some people might be thinking, hey, Jocko, you. You wear the same freaking t-shirt every single day, which is true. Yeah. But I have, you know, old t-shirts that are just, I just, I just, because I wear my t-shirts a lot when I wear them. It's hard for me to part with them.

Brad, better that than shoot. You like the, I have, I have a ton of old jiu-jitsu t-shirts. Yeah, yeah. When I used to go to schools, I used to travel, I used to go, yeah, and they'd give me a t-shirt. Oh, yeah. And I have all these old-school T-shirts of schools that don't even exist, or schools that got really big or whatever. or just competitions that I did, you know, and you got those old school t-shirts.

And I'm not, I don't wear them anymore, but I have a hard time throwing them out. I was thinking, you know what I could do is inventory them, take pictures of them, and put them on the interwebs and then throw them away.

What to me? Oh, like a, like an archive. Yeah, yeah. Because there's some, it triggers memories that are. Yeah, yeah, it's like memorabilia. Yeah, like baseball cards.

Because you like to, it triggers the memory of those times, of that event or whatever. Otherwise, you're not thinking about it. And there's a, problem with that. I'll tell you, I realize this from my experience growing up, you know, I grew up in New England and I don't go home, didn't go home at all. They hardly ever go back to the town where I grew up. And the people that I know that are still there, they remember all

this stuff from when we were kids. They remember this event and that. Remember when this happened? And I honestly don't remember. I just don't remember it. And I think the reason is because I went away from there and I never went back and so I have nothing triggering those memories. I don't see the school yard where the fight happened. I don't see the, I don't see the road where the car flipped. I don't see that stuff. And so I don't remember it like they do. They're there all time. Oh yeah, I remember when little Johnny, you know, it's like, no, I actually don't remember that. So with some of this memorabilia, as you called it, if every time I look at it, I go, oh, yeah, that was a cool tournament, or that was cool training with those guys or whatever.

So I have a bunch of jih T-shirts that I have an hard time getting a part. That's how. Yeah. I was taking them to the gym and framing them and hanging them up. Jokers T-Kish. No, not Chagu's T-Share. But their old school T-shirts, they'd be cool to have those old t-shirts. And if you got my T-shirts, Dean T-shirts, and put them up in there, that'd be sick.

Yeah. Or even the poster. Remember Best of the West? Remember that tournament? Yeah. That was a good one. It's just gone. So that's it.

You go through this checklist, back to the subject here. You go through this checklist of what you actually need. And again, when you're in a business, you've got to look at what do you need to complete this operation? What do you just want? Because it'd be nice to have. And separate those things. Separate those things.

You can actually put them in those categories. You know, need, want, nice to have, right? And then you go through, okay, let's concentrate on what we need first. and then we can see if there's anything that we want and then by the way if there's a nice to have we can throw in there, okay, fine. But to go in there and just buy everything on that list or command everything on that list

because you think you're going to need it, no, wrong answer, wrong move. Yeah, and a lot of times people, and of course I'm not talking about, well, maybe it applies, or it does apply to business, but just in life, what you need and what you want,

you know, a lot of times what you want doesn't even facilitate what you need. You know how like you'd be like, oh, hey, I don't need faster internet, but I kind of want it. But the faster internet is going to facilitate my work. Well, let's say you do. You know, you need the internet.

At least that's something. Sometimes people will get stuff that they want that's just straight up no function. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Not in my family. I know, man. I don't like things without function.

I don't like them. Don't like them. Okay. So again, back to this, once you've decided on what you're going to bring or what you're going to need, then it's time to start the operation. It's time to start this movement. And even from the start, you've got to check, confirm where you are, make sure you know, then you get started. And I had this first reminder when I did this little patrol with my kids because I just said,

oh, we're good to go. It's a little trail. Start walking. We started walking. I didn't keep a pace count. That's ridiculous. That's embarrassing to admit. Didn't keep a pace count.

And it wasn't really paying attention. We were just kind of talking and having, yeah, we're just talking and moving and kind of getting used to it all. And hey, how's your backpack feel and all that stuff? And all of a sudden, I go, wait a second. Where are we? Where are we right now? Because I had told them that, hey, we're going to be looking for this trail that goes up.

And we talked through it and we pulled out the map and we started doing a little study. And my son was like immediately with, oh, we went too far. We missed it. I know it. It's back there. and my daughter wouldn't commit either way. And I said, okay, let's do an assessment. And so we assessed and realized that we actually hadn't gone quite far enough.

So we went a little bit further. But my point is that you've got to check yourself. You've got to check yourself and check your team consistently. Not constantly, right? That's micromanagement, but consistently. And you also have to watch out for target fixation, which is trying to go. go too fast. Like, oh, you're just trying to get to that to the end point without going by your little way points along the way. That is a way to get yourself lost because you're driving and

you're not looking for your reference points and you'll lose the bubble. So you've got to detach a little bit and stand back and pay attention and not be all crazy about that. You know, for, you know, every 500 meters, maybe every, you do a quick check, every thousand meters, you're going to do a little bit of more accurate study and that's going to keep you in line. And if you are out of line, you're only going to be a little bit off track. You're not going to be 12 days of work or two hours of walking off track. Yeah, it makes perfect sense too, especially by all these reference points. The target fixation, you're just, you got one reference point and it's probably not even that accurate because really just by the nature of the whole deal, the map, the one reference point

that you do have is the furthest thing away, literally. So you only have that one or effort. If you have all these other reference points, you get off track one step, two steps, three steps. You still got like a bunch of reference points. All right, let's backtrack all these reference points. They're good to support you. That's how you do it.

And that's, again, that's when you're planning something with a team and a business. You've got to have some reference points along the way to help you get towards your goal. Yeah. Because your goal is far off in the distance. Yeah. So you've got to plan about how you're going to get. there.

If you have a, if you edit video or use Photoshop, it has, when I first started, it has this history little box. So every move you make it records it. Oh, that's pretty cool. Delete, delete. And then you have control, which is save, but that's something else. But, yeah, each one. So you can literally go, oh, wait, it's a reference point with every single move.

That's awesome. So you can go up, oh, let me go all the way back, you know, 25 moves to when I erase this little thing, poop, and let me start from there. Can you bring one thing back that's far up the chart? Yeah. Here's the only thing, but it's like a little, like a fork kind of, like. Let's say you go back in time, essentially. You go back like five moves, and then you make a different move.

That one discourse, yeah, is gone. That's why in time travel. Yep, exactly right. Time travel. All right, so when you get out on patrol now, discipline is paramount. Sure. For instance, you got to stay hydrated. You got to keep track of your gear.

You got to keep track of your pace count. You don't let your gear get out. You don't take out your gear like, oh, stop for seconds. I'm just going to pull everything out of my rucksack and lay it all over the place. No, you got to keep it tight. You don't rush over obstacles. So, for instance, oh, you know, there's a little log, and I got to, there's a log going across this trail. And I got to step over the log.

Well, I step up on top of it. And then I'm just going to jump off because it's a little easier. No, you don't just jump off because that's how you sprain your ankle. That's how you blow out a knee, which is, you know what? You're playing a basketball game or you're on the jih Tzu mat and you twist your ankle? Cool. Walk to the side, put some ice on it. You're, you know, 10 kilometers out in the middle of nowhere and one of your kids sprains an ankle, you're in trouble.

You're in trouble. And if you're out on patrol in a military situation, And you get somebody that gets a sprained ankle, you're in even more significant trouble. So you've got to have the discipline to slow down, slow is smooth, smooth as fast, watch your footing, watch for danger, watch your field of fire, pay attention to the first person that's in front of you and the person that's behind you. And that's how you're doing your communication. So you've got to keep your communication up the whole time. So again, you can go right to any business, any project that anyone's working on.

It's all the same thing. You've got to be disciplined. You've got to keep track of things. You've got to keep your communication going between your team members by passing whatever signals you've got to pass. When you get to a layup point, when you're going to actually stop and basically camp out, I hate saying that. Because in the SEAL teams, it's derogatory to say, oh, this looks like a campsite. Yeah, yeah. So you never want to have anybody say that.

So I wouldn't let my, when I went on patrol with my kids, I was like, no, we're not camping. We're doing layup point. But so you guys are camping out. No, or not. So when you get to a layup point where you're going to stop, you don't just flop down and turn into a pile of crap. And this is true, again, with a business situation, you reach one goal, you don't just like flop down and say,

ah, we did it, high five office party. No. You can order a pizza maybe, but you're not ordering booze. You know what I'm saying? You still got stuff to do. So you don't camp out. You have to remain tackle. You have to remain disciplined.

You have to quietly assume your security position. You've got to then be quiet and make sure you are as alone as you think you are. Then you've got to pick out some landmarks. Once you get to your little layup point, you got to make that your home. You know, you got to look for some landmarks or somewhere where you know where you are. And then you confirm your position, you know, you take a triangulation with your compass. maybe even break out your GPS, get a little double confirmation. And then once you've got everything set, then you can take a little breather.

But what you don't do is get to the finish line and just flop down and, oh, we made it. You never want to do that. And the other piece, this is something I thought about a lot while I was on this patrol with my two kids. I went with two out of the four kids. When we kind of have a standard in most militaries do this, when you're doing a patrol, you're going to move for 50 minutes and you're going to walk for 50 minutes and you're going to rest for 10 then you walk for 50 and rest for 10

walk for 50 and that's kind of the standard and I can tell you that if you aren't careful it can be hard to start up again and you get tired legs and you get sore shoulders and you get hunger and you get thirsty and it's easy to let 10 minutes

turn into 15 minutes and turn into 20 minutes and turn into a half an hour that can happen very, very easily. And this is the thing you got to remember. While you are resting, you are getting no closer to your target. There is no progress that is being made.

And by the way, the only person that is going to move you toward that target is you. You're the only person that's going to move you towards that target. you're not going to get carried. The target's not going to move to you. You are the only person that's going to move to the target. And if you don't move, you'll never get there. And the faster you get there, the better off you're going to be.

Now, again, this doesn't mean that you're simply grinding yourself and your team into the dirt. There are rest periods involved there. You have 10 minutes of rest. You have 50 minutes of work. So I'm not talking about smashing your team. But you absolutely do have to drive your team. because there will be no progress in the comfort zone. There will not.

Inside the comfort zone, there's no progress happening. There's nothing happening. And when you're patrolling with a rucksack on, it is not comfortable. It's not comfortable. It's not easy. And that is one of the things. That's why this discipline of keeping moving and continuing to push the pace is so powerful. and that's the same thing with any goal obviously the correlation here is that any goal that you're going

for you have to keep moving toward it you have to stay on the path do you have to rest yes but you have to go you have to go down that path and that is another one of these principles and all these principles they really apply to everything that I did in my SEAL career, regardless of what I was doing. The same things. Planning well, setting goals, knowing what they look like, staying disciplined on everything, on every type of mission, on every task, every job. That is what I always did.

I didn't take it easy. Did I rest? Sure, of course. I rested. But did I cut corners? Did I take the easy way? Did I slack off? No.

No. I did not. I held the line. Now, from a leadership perspective, all this talk of marching and patrolling made me think of a short story called the beloved captain, which I was recently introduced to by the wife of one of the finest leaders I've ever worked for, a guy named. General Sean McFarland who was the colonel at the time who was commanding the 1-1 AD the First Armored Division otherwise known as the ready first during the Battle of Ramadi. And I recently saw General McFarlane's wife at a memorial event that we did for the 10-year anniversary of Mark Lee's death.

and she told me about this story. Again, it's called a beloved captain, and it lays out some fundamental leadership principles. And when the general's wife told me that he kind of referred to this story himself for guidance, I figured maybe it would be the kind of guidance we could all use. And the story is written by a guy named Donald. Hanky who served with the British Army in World War I, a volunteer who enlisted at age 29. Despite having served as an officer when he was younger, he enlisted to go fight.

And he eventually regained his commission. And in both as a enlisted guy and as an officer, he fought on the front lines. and he wrote this story which is called, as I said, the beloved captain. He came in the early days when we were still at recruit drills under hot September sun.

Tall, erect, smiling. So we first saw him, and so he remained to the end. At the start, he knew as little of soldiering as we did. He used to watch us being drilled, by the sergeant, but his manner of watching was peculiarly his own. He never looked bored.

He was learning just as much as we were. In fact, more. He was learning his job, and from the first he saw that his job was more than to give us the correct orders. His job was to lead us. So he watched and noted many things and never found the time hang on heavy, heavy, on his hands. He watched our evolutions so as to learn the correct orders. He watched for the right manner of command, the manner which secured the most prompt response

to an order. And he watched every one of us for our individual characteristics. We were his men. Already, he took an almost paternal interest in us. He noted the men who tried hard, but were naturally slow and awkward. He distinguished them from those who were inattentive and bored. He marked down the keen and most efficient among us. Most of all he studied those who were subject to moods,

who were sulky one day and willing the next. These were the ones who were to turn the scale. If he could get these on his side, the battle would be won. So here's this leader. Very important for him to learn about his men and know his men and study his men. we have heard this before. Back to the book. For the first few days, he just watched.

Then he started work. He picked out some of the most awkward ones, and accompanied by a corporal, marched them away by themselves. Ingenuously, he explained that he did not know much himself yet, but he thought that they might get on better if they drilled by themselves a bit, and that if he helped them,

and they helped him, they would soon learn. So there's some serious humility going on there. He's like, hey, I don't know that much. You guys don't know that much. Let's help each other. Let's build a little team here. His confidence was infectious. He looked at them and they looked at him

and the men pulled themselves together and determined to do their best. So he formed relationships here. Their best surprised themselves. His patience was inexhaustible. His simplicity could not fail to be understood. He's keeping them simple, so simple that they could not fail to be understood. His keenness and optimism carried all with them. Very soon the awkward squad found themselves

awkward no longer. And soon after that, they ceased to be a squad and went back to the platoon. Then he started to drill the platoon with a sergeant standing by to point out his mistakes. Of course, he made mistakes. And when that happened, he never minded admitting it. some extreme ownership going on, he would explain what mistakes he had made and try again. The result was that we began to take almost as much interest and pride in his progress as he did in ours. We were his men and he was our leader. We felt that he was a credit to us and we resolved to be a credit to him. There was a bond of mutual confidence and affection between us,

which grew stronger and stronger as the months passed. He had a smile for almost everyone, but we thought he had a different smile for us. We looked for it, and were never disappointed. On parade, as long as we were trying, his smile encouraged us. Off parade, if we passed him and saluted, his eyes looked straight into our own, and his smile greeted us. It was a wonderful thing, that smile of his.

it was something worth living for when worth working for. It bucked one up when one was bored or tired. It seemed to make one look at things from a different point of view, a finer point of view, his point of view. There was nothing

feeble or weak about it. It was not monotonous like the smile of sunny Jim. It meant something. It meant that we were his men and that he was proud of us and sure that we were going to do jolly well better than any of the other platoons. And it made us determine that we would.

When we failed him, when he was disappointed in us, he did not smile. He did not rage or curse. He just looked disappointed. And that made us feel far more savage with ourselves than any amount of swearing would have done. it's a point we've talked about on here many times that guy that's yelling and screaming not getting respect that has a lot to do also

actually probably everything to do also with remember who we were talking about use the carrot not the stick you know the reward so that's basically I mean on top of the bond or it could be kind of the same thing where when they look for that approval which we all do with our friends especially

they're not looking to avoid him getting mad they're looking to make them happy because of that, you know, how that feels or how good that is. So he doesn't have to get mad. He just has to basically go to zero. He doesn't have to go negative 10 on him. He goes to zero or one. They're like, dang.

I'm going to get back to that 10. Yeah. And it's such great language. He just looked disappointed and that made us feel far more savage with ourselves than any amount of swearing would have done. Yep. And I had a boss like that one time. our whole goal in life was just to

just to make him look good and have him say give us a smile and do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were all fired up. Yeah. Back to the book. He made us feel that we were not playing the game with him. This is if they messed up.

He made us feel that we were not playing the game by him. It was not what he said. He was never very good at talking. It was just how he looked. and his look of displeasure and disappointment was a thing that we would do anything to avoid. The fact was that he had won his way into our affections. We loved him, and there isn't anything stronger than love when all said and done. He was humble too, if that is the right word, and I think it is.

No trouble of ours was too small for him to attend to. when we started root marches for instance and our feet were blistered and sore as they often were at first you would have thought that they were his own feet from the trouble he took of course after the march there was always an inspection of feet that is routine but with him it was no mere routine he came into our rooms and if anyone had a sore fit foot, he would kneel down on the floor and look at it as carefully as if he had been a doctor. Then he would prescribe and the remedies were ready at hand being borne by the sergeant. If a blister had to be lanced, he would very likely lance it himself then and there so as to make sure that it was done with a clean needle and that no dirt was allowed to get in.

There was no affocation about this, no striving after effect. It was simply that he felt. felt that our feet were pretty important and that he knew that we were pretty careless. So he thought it best at the start to see to the matter himself. Nevertheless, there was in our eyes something almost religious about this care for our feet. It seemed to have a touch of the Christ about it. And we loved and honored him the more, literally getting down on his hands and knees and caring for the feet of his men. and you know you can imagine the leaders that would that would see this as being beneath them

and maybe even thinking in some way that this would make them look bad right but you can see obviously he's comparing him to Jesus so I think it was a I think it had a good effect on the men we knew that we should lose him for one thing we knew that he would be promoted It was our great hope that someday he would command the company. Also, we knew that he would be killed. He was so amazingly unselfconscious. For that reason, we knew that he would be absolutely fearless. He would be so keen on the job and hand and so anxious for his men

that he would forget about his own danger. So it proved. He was a captain when we went out to the front. Whenever there was a tiresome job to be done, he was there in charge. If ever there were a moment of danger, he was on the spot. If there were any particular part of the line where the shells were falling faster or the bombs dropping more thickly than in other parts, he was in it. It was not that he was conceded and imagined himself indispensable.

It was just that he was so keenly. that the men should do their best and act worthly of the regiment. He knew that fellows hated turning out at night for fatigue when they were in a rest camp. He knew how tiresome the long march there and back and digging in the dark for an unknown purpose were. He knew that the fellows would be inclined to grouse and shirk, so he thought that it was up to him to go and show them that he thought it was a job worth doing. And the fact that he was there put a new thing. complexion on the matter altogether.

No one would shirk if he was there. No one would grumble so much either. What was good enough for him was good enough for us. So you gotta get out there. And I've told stories about picking up brass and taking the bad watches, all those things. And this is a exact commentary about that. Just because you're in a leadership position doesn't mean you don't get to do the hard stuff or you don't have to do the hard stuff.

It actually means you do the hard stuff. I was talking to Jade a few days ago. And, you know, he's the boss of his company and stuff. And man, pretty much every word that's coming from that is like, man, it's reminding me of this where, like, there's certain people in a group that can do that, that can go and, like, you know, they'll wash your shoes and you don't automatically have that respect. In some cases, you'll have less respect.

if like shirt like they're kissing your butt and they don't have anything to look up to you know or you know these these kind of guys or whatever um but the point is as the leader or the boss or the dad or whatever like everyone in the group is is watching people are watching so if you're like you can be like hey you can make 10 20 50 great moves and then but let's say you just kind of come in late every day or something like that or like you're anticipating or something. Yeah, they're watching. So they're like, okay, I see that. And they're not being critical necessarily. They're just watching. Or are they? I'm sure. I mean, it can go conscious or even subconscious.

Yeah, they could be getting critical. But, man, they're watching. So when you're like, if they see you slack off, they're like, it's okay to slack off. Yeah, all right. Okay, that's what we're doing. You're leading. If you're from a leadership position, you're slacking. Your followers are going to slack.

There's no doubt about it. Let there be no doubt. Yeah. you lose your temper or even even if like you think no one's paying attention you like you know your kid is cruising with you or whatever you're on the phone with i don't know the cable guy and you know how they schedule that you know between these two and you're mad or whatever i'll be there between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. or 9 a.m. the next or something and you lose your temper on the cable guy

brother he's watching you're like oh okay that's kind of what how it is like that's how we do it kind of thing you know happy for watching so yeah this guy where he's doing the hard stuff You know, the top level stuff. Bottom light, he's doing it all. People are watching it and they see it. So they're like, man, that's the way to roll. I mean, literally something that they didn't think, digging in and moving at night and digging in, you know,

for an unknown purpose, he knew that they weren't fired up. As soon as he showed up and started doing it, they all realized, okay, if it's good enough for him. Yep, that's how we're rolling. It's good enough for us. And they're back to the book. What was good enough for him was good enough for us. if it were not too much trouble for him to turn out,

it was not too much trouble for us. He knew, too, how trying the nerves, how trying to the nerves it is to sit in a trench and be shelled. He knew what a temptation there is to move a bit farther down the trench and herd together in a bunch at what seems the safest end. He knew, too, the folly of doing it, and that it was not the thing to do. not done in the best regiments.

So he went along to see that it did not happen, to see that the men stuck to their posts and conquered their nerves. And as soon as we saw him, we forgot our own anxiety. It was, move a bit further down, sir, we are all right here. But don't you go exposing yourself? We didn't matter. We knew it then. We were just rank and file bound to take risks.

The company would get along all right without us, but the captain, how was the company to get on without him? To see him was to catch his point of view, to forget our personal anxieties and think only of the company and the regiment and honor. That's an interesting concept, is that this leader's presence actually opened his trooper's minds to what he saw. That's awesome. There was not one of us, but would gladly have died for him.

We longed for the chance to show him that. We weren't heroes. We never dreamed about getting the Victoria Cross. But to save the captain, we would have earned it ten times over. And never have cared a button whether we got it or not. We never got the chance. Worse luck. It was all the other way.

We were holding some trenches Which were about as unhealthy as trenches could be The boches Which is a slang term for the Germans The boches were only a few yards away And were well supplied with trench mortars We hadn't got any at the time Bombs and air torpedoes were dropping round us all day

Of course the captain was there It seemed as if he could not keep away A torpedo a torpedo fell into the trench and buried some of our trap chaps the fellows next to them ran to dig them out of course he was the first one then came another torpedo in the same place that was the end but he lives somehow he lives and we who knew him do not forget we feel his eyes on us we still work for that wonderful smile of his there are not many of the old lot left now but I think those who went west have seen him when they got to the other side I think they were

met someone said well done good and faithful servant and as they knelt before that gracious pierced figure I reckon they saw nearby the captain's smile Anyway, in that faith, let me die if death should come my way. And so, I think, shall I die content? Die he did. Donald Henke, who wrote that story was badly wounded in the Battle of Epris on July 30th, 1915, and after recovering from those wounds, he went back to the front. including action at the Battle of Soam,

and later preparing to go over the top at 1.30 in the afternoon on October 12th, 1916. Lieutenant Hanky was reported to have told his men, if wounded Blighty, if killed, resurrection. And Blighty was a term that basically meant million-dollar wound, which we've talked about before on this podcast. The million dollar wound is, hey, you get shot, it gets you off the front,

but it doesn't kill you and it doesn't maim you for life. It's a million dollar wound, and the Brits called that a blighty. And so at 1.30 in the afternoon in October 12th, as his guys are getting ready to go over the top, he tells his men, if wounded, blighty, if killed, resurrection. So you boys have nothing to fear.

shortly thereafter he was killed he is said to have been buried near the spot where he fell although the grave was never found we do have his words so let us heed

those words as we try to lead others as well as he did as well as we can as well as the beloved captain with that And some time since we've done some questions for the internet, so we can move to those questions. Sounds good.

After hearing a story like that, it's always tough for me to remember that when you hear a one story like that, you've got to remember that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of stories like that. war and of leadership and of sacrifice. If we don't do our damnedest to learn from those lessons and apply them, I question whether we even deserve to have this life. Yeah, about this story, beloved captain.

Yes. Like, that's such a clear demonstration on how to be, where these guys would follow this guy basically into fire. They could probably watch and watch them, into a pit of fire and they'd all follow. They did. Yeah. Think about it.

They did. That's what World War I was. Yeah. Stand up. Go follow me. We're going to die. Let's do this. Yeah.

So if this guy's mere presence can make these other guys follow him like that in these type of situations, like if more people would be like this guy, you know. In normal life, I mean, it'd be a breeze to have people, you know, listen. to you and you guys get some stuff done. And how much of the stuff that the beloved captain does is counterintuitive

of what people think of a military guy. I mean, almost everything in there. He's admitting his mistakes. He's figuring out who's awkward and admitting to them that he's kind of messed up too. He's getting down on his knees and basically

being almost submissive to his men in order to make sure that they're healthy. He's taking all the hard jobs. He's smiling and developing these strong relationships with his men. Like every one of those things is almost counter to what people think a big, tough military leader is. The drill sergeant. The drill sergeant leader. Like, no.

And so I see people in the civilian sector that end up in the same way. They think that that's how you lead because they've seen it in a movie. And that is not that that that hyper aggressive mentality is is ineffective with human beings. And actually, there's a question here, so we'll probably talk about that some more. But that's why I always make it perfectly clear that. I'm all about being aggressive. I'm all about being aggressive, but being aggressive towards your mission, not towards people. I mean, unless the person warrants aggressiveness, which does happen from time to time.

That's called a fist fight. You know that part you noted where his mere presence kind of, not imposed, but impacts. Impacts. Their perspective where it's like, it's basically him walking in to whatever the situation and them just kind of automatically, hey, what's he seeing? Right. You know, they're so just kind of into. Hey, let me, let me move this weapon because it's in a bad spot. Let me, let me pick up this stuff up over here.

Yeah. That is completely right. Completely right. I was on a ship one time. and I thought I was about the commanding officer on a ship there's something called the one MC which is basically a loudspeaker

that goes throughout every portion of the ship everyone can hear it and this commanding officer gets on the one MC and he's going to make a speech right because that's what commanding officers do sometimes and he says I thought he was going to make the most epic speech because he said not the most epic

but I thought he was going to say something pretty powerful sure he says um he says hey when you see a piece of trash on the ship and when I see a piece of trash, I thought he was going to say, when I see a piece of trash, man, I go and pick it up. And instead he said something along the lines of when I see a piece of trash,

I'm frustrated that nobody picked it up. And think about the impact of those two statements. If he said what I thought he was going to say, which is, hey, when I see a piece of trash on the floor, I go over and I pick it up and put it away. or throw it away and then I make sure there's no other trash near it because I want this ship to shine. That's one thing. He said, hey, when I see a piece of trash on the ship, I get so frustrated that you aren't cleaning it up.

And I was so let down that that ship that commanding officer said that of that ship. But to your point, it's like the reason I thought of that is because you can see when, even when I've been in, you know, the commander of a unit of some kind. and I would see when I walk in unexpected, there's like a change, you know? And it's not always, you know, sometimes I've seen it where guys, the commander walks in, and it's people are doing that because of fear. Right. Right. Yeah, that's not different.

That's not what we're looking for. Yeah, yeah. You want to say, oh, the boss is here. I don't want him to see that this is going on. I don't know. This is, we shouldn't be doing that. We should. And that's, you're right.

That is a real powerful, real powerful thought that he puts in here about how will, When the boss comes around, when the commander comes around, and it actually provides the troopers the ability to see what he's seeing and how powerful that is. Well, one time, Jade, I forget what he had to do this thing where it's like, it was like a tense thing. And he was just telling, he's talking to Sarah about it. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to leave, like, right after that

because I don't want to have to face like some awkwardness or something like that. And then when Sarah left, I was like, hey, I'm going to tell Jocco that you're going to do that. And he was like, all like, he knew I was joking, but he was like, you know, kind of like, what would you think about that? You're not even in swath, by the way, obviously, but it's kind of like that thing, you know, like, hey, what would, like, you ever watch, remember Commando? Yeah, it's not. Yeah, go ahead. There's this part, right, where the story behind Commando is one of his guys that he trained and stuff, went rogue, went bad, came back, and they thought he was dead. He comes back and he helps, you know, then, you know.

Great, great story. Yeah, it's dope. Anyway, so this bad guy now, you could tell he still has all this admiration for, his name is John Matrix. For Arnold? Yeah, for Arnold. Yeah, for Arnold. Okay. Because he's like, he's walking around the compound that he's kind of like, you know, and all these guys are like talking tough and stuff.

So he goes to the other boss that he's now working with. He's all, it's funny to hear your men talk tough. It makes me laugh. If Matrix is here, he'd laugh too. You know, kind of like he's, it's almost like him and Matrix are on the same team still. You know, he knows how he would see that, you know. It's kind of that same thing. Presence.

Awesome. So, wrapping that rough transition. People want to support the podcast. How they're going to do it? Echo Charles. Well, one way. The way I like. to recommend one of the many is by supporting yourself at the same time on it supplements

and wear your bars on it dot com slash jocco get 10% off before this podcast i'll make it short before this podcast when i get um uh shroom tech i didn't get 10% off now you can get 10% off Or if you shop at Amazon, click through our websites. This is another way you can support the podcast. Click through our website's Amazon link. Our websites. That's joccopodcast.com and jocco store.com. There's a little thing you can click on.

Yep. Yep. And you can support that way. Does it cost you anything? No, it does not. It barely costs you time, barely. Really the thing is remembering to go there. Yeah.

So that's kind of the thing. A good solution to that. Yes, which we do have now. A little Trooper Tool. Trooper Tool is what it's called. It's this cool little thing. And it's on the website as well. It says, Trooper Tool Chrome extension.

Boom. Click on it. It puts a little icon on the top of your browser, and it automatically affiliates your Amazon experience with us. That's perfect. Passively. No, passively as opposed to actively. No, no, no.

It's aggressive. Yes. But it's not passive. Yeah. All right. Passive means you didn't do anything. We have troopers out there that are aggressively shopping on Amazon to support the podcast, and I dig that. Yep.

I read that sometimes, my friends on Twitter, they'll send me like a screenshot, boom, of their trooper tool or their little purchase. Like, hey, I bought this stuff tape. Here's my thing. And it's a screenshot. Nope. Yeah, it really makes me feel empowered, and I'm not joking. Well, it does help the podcast. Yeah, fully.

I appreciate it. Fully. Subscribe to the podcast, of course, iTunes, and then on YouTube as well. I'm slowly putting more videos. I'll put a few and keep putting more. So you're not just stuck watching the podcast, which is cool, too, by the way. If you're into watching it and listening, it. Sometimes, like, people will put it.

on their screen as they work out, you know, so they can kind of watch, listen, work out, watch, listen, you know. It's a good little, little formula. Anyway, yeah, YouTube, it's a good one as well. And, of course, the Jocco store. If you like, you know, shirts and whatnot, coffee mugs, stickers, they're pretty cool. I've got some great feedback. One announcement, we have women's stuff coming out in about, what, a week or two. So, yeah.

To all the female troopers Who have been Pressuring Strongly recommending, we'll say Consistently, strongly recommending. Yeah, they're good ones. I chose three colors. You're going to have to wait and see

Which ones they are. And when they do come out, give me more feedback. I want to narrow it down to the stuff that we all want. So yeah, go ahead and do that. Jocco store.com. There's some cool stuff.

If you like it, boom. Get one or two or however, many and that supports as well and plus that means i don't have to buy my wife anything yeah i'll just give yeah i'll send one home with you podcast t-shirts that's actually one of the good reasons i like managing this stuff i don't have to not that i really butt shirts that much anyway but i have a bunch of shirts now plus maybe my daughters too yeah perfect yeah so we're good you know good to go everybody's good to go are they regular are they the same design or is it something new uh it's there Yeah, they're more or less the same,

but they're basically the women's version of what we got. I started with a discipline equals freedom. I might just do one for women, because let's face it, like we all get after it in pretty much the same way, except for every once in a while, women get after it in a different way. Every once in a while.

So it might be worth it to give them something different, something special. Just my opinion. Awesome. All right, there you go. That's always this. Support. Support that podcast,

yeah, boy. And with that, question number one, I am a Marine Corps vet. Only four years, and I recently hired another Marine. He had a great reputation and a lot of experience as NCO leader,

Gunny Sergeant. But he's not doing well in our company. He only seems to lead through fear slash authority. It isn't working. He has high standards, which I like, but he's not gaining the respect of his team or the rest of the company.

What's going on? And how can I fix it? This is kind of a classic case. And unfortunately, it's an unfortunate case too. And what we have here is an example of a guy that's probably pretty charismatic. He's probably pretty aggressive. He's probably pretty loud. He's probably pretty authoritative.

He's probably pretty smart. He's probably physically impressive. In other words, he's probably got a lot of. of natural good leadership traits and I surmise in a situation like this that this is a type of person that took the basics of what the military taught him and utilized it to lead and so what he did was he used imposed discipline that's what got used on him and that's what he used so it's the things that we just talked about it's intimidation it's the whole thing with maneuver warfare versus attrition warfare that the military still teaches,

unfortunately, that the job of leaders is to obey orders and ensure orders are obeyed. Okay, that's what the military, unfortunately, in some cases, teaches. And you can go through your career and that's what you can kind of learn, or you can have some good leadership inside the military that teaches you the better way, the way to actually lead. And so, but if you're, if you're raised that the way that your job as a leader is to obey orders and ensure that orders are obeyed, if that's your job, how do you do that? Will you do it through blunt force trauma?

That's how you do it. And as I've said before, that does work for a time period. It does get the job done. It's micromanagement. And fortunately, our understanding. Unfortunately, in the military, you've got people that rapidly cycle through leadership positions. And so it's not like you are permanently in charge of the same group of people. So you can kind of get away with it because you do a workup and it's a workup is stressful.

And then you go on deployment. The deployment's only six months long. And by the time you're done, everybody hates you. But it's okay. You're moving on to your next job. And so that's how people survive. And what really hurts about this is because they survive. that leadership position, it actually reinforces that type of leadership behavior, which is not good.

But what they do is, if, let's say you do, it's just an American kind of mindset of, hey, if some is good, more is better. And so they take this attitude and they become more, more aggressive. They impose more discipline. They raise the standards to a ridiculous level where it's no longer, you. even sensible where things just become stupid. Like we used to say, so I don't know why they called us, but in the military they called a push-up position, the front-leaning rest.

Sure. Front-leaning rest. I don't know why. And then they also use the term forward-leaning, meaning, hey, we want to be ahead, we want to be ready, we want to be prepared. And I used to say, let's not be so far forward-leaning

that we're in the leaning rest. Meaning that we're leaning so far forward that we're wasting our energy and getting tired. and so at a certain point it can become stupid an example of this would be like uniform inspections like okay you gotta have a square

to a uniform you know you gotta be able to break out uniform look sharp well if you do that every day you're wasting time because it's not the most important thing it does have a level of importance

somewhere on the hierarchy of important things not real high but there's some people if you're a strict military disciplinarian you might think I need to have a uniform

inspection every single day because my guys are going to look the best. And so you've got a bunch of guys that not only are they wasting time prepping their uniform and paying for the uniform to get dry cleaned and they're actually using their uniform so much, their dress uniform so much that they're providing wear and tear on it. And so it's just stupid. It doesn't make any sense. So that's what they do.

These leaders that have been raised like that, they start to do it even more and it just defeats its own purpose and most important. is that these leaders start to stifle free thought from their subordinates. And eventually, and this is even more critical, eventually they begin to stifle free thought from their own brain. And that's likely what happened in a situation like this. And, you know, you got a guy that, again, was raised in this attitude, and he took that attitude, and he amplified that attitude, and that is how he... was successful and he amplified it even more.

And he ends up, now he breaks out of the Marine Corps. Well, now it's not just a six-month deployment. You've got to lead people for years and years and years and you've got to go from different various projects and all these personalities and it's a more sensitive environment because it's in the civilian sector and lives aren't necessarily at stake. And so what do you need to do? What you need him to see? So now I'm talking to the leader that asked this question.

what can you do to help? Well, what you need that former Marine gunnery sergeant to do, what you need him to see is that the next level of leadership, the next progression along the spectrum of leadership, is not more of all that. It's actually less. It's not more imposed discipline on your troops. It's actually less.

the troops having free thought and self-discipline, and it is not you leading more. It is actually you leading less. It is not you taking more ownership. It is you taking less ownership and your troops taking more ownership. It is him giving guidance, giving commanders intent, and then stepping back. It is him not being the focus. Because a lot of times when you're in a leadership position, that can be an ego feeder. And all of a sudden, you want to be the center of attention. You want to be in the spotlight. But you don't want to be that. You want to be less of that. And I'm telling you, so that's what you got to do. You've got to open his eyes to what the next level of leadership looks like. He's never had that open for him.

and I'm going to tell you right now it's going to be hard to get him there because there's a good chance that he's a hard person to coach because he's been successful with the techniques that he learned and he has experience and he's and that that experience has strengthened his resolve and his belief in his leadership technique it's it's it's a tough situation so you're likely going to have to take an indirect approach and so for instance here's a good one. Hey, I was wondering, you know, who's going to take your place when it's, you know, when it's time for promotion, who you're grooming to fill your shoes? Because guess what? He's not grooming anybody. Or you ask him how much time he's spending, looking up and out at what's going on, strategic, as opposed to down and in at his own little element.

And the other thing that you could do is assign him some higher level project that actually pull him out of the micromanagement weeds. And maybe even put him on projects with people that don't micromanage. And good leaders that lead in a good way, put him on some kind of project with them so he can see what that looks like. And obviously, these are just some suggestions of approaches

because you're probably going to have to, you'll have to adapt those. and figure out exactly how to walk him through to the end state, which the end state, the commander's intent from me is you want to teach him what the next level,

the next advancement of leadership skill for him is, and it's something that's the opposite of what he learned. So good challenge. Yeah. Yeah, that leading from authority thing, and fear and authority. It's almost like it's so black and white

where when someone does that, it's so clear. It's very clear and it's very addictive for the person because there's immediate gratification. I told you to do it. And so they do it and then, okay, see, it worked. Yeah. It kind of takes less work too a lot of the time. It totally takes less work.

You don't have to invest in relationships. You don't have to invest in indirect approaches on things. Of course it takes less work. It's real simple. You can kind of give in to your temper sometimes too. Yeah, oh yeah, your temper's a little bit of a tool with that kind of. The problem is, over time, that type of leadership doesn't work. You want to be the beloved captain who never lost his temper, who never yelled at his men,

and yet who would follow him into the fires of hell. Yep. Next question. If you had a leader at work who you did not respect and know is ineffective, and you've communicated that to him yet when they see you, they try to shake your hand. How would you react? And how would you deny their hand shake offering?

Appreciate the feedback, sir. So, okay, this is just off the mark, right? I mean, I hope people realize that this is, no, it's okay. I mean, I understand the reason I put this in there just because this is what we talked about earlier where you think, man, I'm holding the line. and I'm holding the line and this is my expectations of a leader and you don't fit it

so I'm gonna, number one, I'm gonna tell you. Number two, if you try and shake my hand, you're not getting. Right, right. So that's what we call an adversarial relationship and is not what we want. How, let me ask you this, how is this going to help your cause

to have an adversary relationship with your boss? How does it help your cause? Is he going to listen to you more or less? Is he going to support you more or less? Will he give you what you want more or less? Which one? You won't shake his hand? And you think he's going to support you in any way?

No. And furthermore, is he, if you have an adversary relationship with your boss, is he more likely to promote you into a position where you can have more control over decisions for the team and for your own future? What do you think the answer to that is?

Negative. All those answers are obvious. this whole concept is wrong. Our job is to build a relationship with our boss. And honestly, with everyone else for that matter. That's what we're trying to do. Straight up disrespecting the boss or, again, anyone is not going to help our cause. It's going to hurt it.

Now, this doesn't mean that we're kissing ass. this doesn't mean that we're folding. It doesn't mean that we're weak. This is the challenge for me to convince people that want to be strong leaders that this doesn't mean that you are weak. It actually takes more strength to control your emotions. It takes more strength to remain professional. It takes more strength to focus on the long-term win and not the short-term frustration.

it takes more strength to keep your ego in check. And I would say that this whole question is an indicator to me. I might need to check my own ego. Okay? Am I critical of my boss? Am I critical of my boss because I'm a little bit jealous? Is that possible? Am I critical of my boss because I think I do?

deserve the job more than they do? Do I think that my boss got lucky or he's a brown noser or he's favored some way? That's why he got it and I'm going to be bitter about it. And therefore I'm not going to respect him. All those right there, ego talking, right? Full on ego talking. So you got to put the ego in check. You've got to support the boss and you've got to support the team.

And that's the best way to support the boss and support the team. And the obvious caveat to this is, if the boss is doing something that's illegal or immoral or unethical, then fine. Yeah, of course, absolutely. You can call him out. You can deny his handshake. You can report him up the chain of command or to the authorities because if you're part of what he's doing and you know it, then you're complicit in the activities. So you're at risk anyways. And it's the right thing to do.

So obviously in those cases, yeah, you can hold your ground. But barring those extreme circumstances, what you want to do with your boss is build the relationship. And again, it's not just your boss. It's your peers. It's your chain of command up and down. You want to build those relationships instead of breaking him. Yeah. Yeah, it seems it's a little fun, not funny.

It's interesting how when you lay it out. And I'm sure a lot of maybe even when he's listening to this. just hearing this question out loud, it seems obvious, you know. But really you're trying to think about yourself in this situation. Yeah. Where, yeah, you don't like this guy and maybe he said some stuff to offend you even, and you don't respect them, obviously. So, yeah, like, you don't want to shake this guy's hand.

Like, how you feel is a lot of times what dictates your behavior, you know, towards people and just otherwise. So when you're in the situation, it's kind of like, it's so hard to be like, yeah, I don't. don't respect his whole methods. I don't like any of this stuff. He's going to come shake my hand. It's so hard to be like, sure, and do what you're talking about.

It can be. Put your ego in check. Put your emotions in check. Yeah, yeah. Put your attitude in check and just go, hey boss, how's it going today? Yep. Everything's going good here. Yeah.

So I appreciate the support you've been giving us. There's one decision you made I was kind of wondering about. I'd love to pick your brain on at some point. Oh, really? Whereas if I just go, I don't want to shake your hand. I hate you. I basically disrespect you and I hate you. And what you do,

the decision you made over here was wrong. Is he going to listen to me? There's no chance. There's no chance. You're going to lose the argument. Yeah. Me? When I go in there and I say,

hey, boss, how's it going? Yes. Yeah, no problem. Hey, I have one thing I wanted to pick your brain about this decision you made over here. Is he going to listen to me? Got a better chance. Still might say no, but guess what? I'm fighting a long war.

I'm going to outlast him. I'm going to outwork him. I'm going to out maneuver him. My boss is going to do what I want him to do. I know. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to keep that in mind, man. Yes.

When you're in it, when you're in it, when you lose that little battle, because really that's what it is, when you're shaking your hand, and you're like, in your head, you're like, I hate you. I don't want to shake your hand. Freaking, get your hand out of my face. Your whole existence of your hand in front of my face is an insult. That's what you're thinking. So if you shake it, you lost that battle.

And that's bad right there. For you. It feels bad. It's very, very immature. Yeah. It just feels right at the time. Yeah. If you let your emotions get all crazy.

If you're not being strategic, that's everything. If you're not thinking about winning. Yeah. And by no means, if you're not playing the game correctly. I know, but the point is,

when you say it out loud, it's like, oh my gosh, it's so clear. You know what? You know what? You just indicated to me something very obvious

is that over time, you know how over time you get to, okay, you go for a hard workout and you get to, you look forward to the feeling, afterwards that yeah I did this hard workout there's endorphins or whatever I'm gonna tell you at some point I developed some sort of attitude where when I

do when I control myself and I make a good strategic move it feels just as good yeah it feels way better than the short term oh man I really told him no no wrong answer you lost you won the battle lost the war idiot that's what I feel like if I make that mistake right that's absolutely correct you only you've you conditioned yourself to the whole process you know because you probably went through it a few times, tasted the fruits, you know, of winning the law. So it's just with experience, exactly right, exactly right. So, and there's ways you can kind of do that to yourself.

Like, I do, if, like, even if you haven't, like, ultimately when you boil kind of your whole way of thinking down, when you do have an ego that you think is like a functional ego, but use that ego to win the long war. So, like, kind of like what I did with getting mad, it's like, no one can't, like, my, like, no one's going to tell me I have low self-esteem. Because really, you know, angry issues is usually because of low self-esteem. So in this case, you could be like, hey, if you ever facilitate that adversarial relationship where you don't shake his hand, or you're like, you want to, as he said, you've communicated that to him. You have a leader that you don't respect and you know is ineffective, and you told them.

Okay, so keep that. When you say stuff like that, consider that as like your weakness. Like, just tell yourself that. For sure. Say that's your weakness for you. forgetting the long war and for and for showing your cards that much showing your card yes yeah just it's this little internal thing you tell yourself and then just like how you're saying where you feel dumb and if you if your ego can't handle that can't handle all that then i'll

go back to my point that i said this doesn't mean you're weak right it means that you are winning yeah but flip it around as far as what you tell yourself like you you know it feels weak to lose a small battle i understand but flip it around and say hey what i'm saying is no if you win it at the expenses along that means you're weak say that to yourself yes it'll get easier you know you're right if you lose the long-term battle you're even more weak yes that's the big weakness big weakness next question for the podcast what would a jaco school for boys and girls eight to 16 years old this should be interesting what would that look like schedule subjects physical education?

So, first of all, I would love to do this. And seriously, one day, I may do this. Lord of the Fly. Yes. I actually really do relate to kids for some reason, and I think a school, I think

I could develop a school that would be awesome and outstanding and would produce really stable, strong, mentally capable children for the world. So, and so I was so happy when I saw this question. And I've actually looked, and I've actually, I've actually pondered the ideas of, you know,

buying a piece of property, you know, what it would cost, maybe getting some investors together that we're going to build a school. I mean, I've literally, I've actually looked for property, which is something I do all the time, but I've looked for property and said, okay, this would probably work. So, like, like, almost like an extension school, like in a little, Oh no, like an academy, like a school that you go to. Right. And you, and what we could probably do is do like a, instead of a, hey, you're going to go here from sixth grade to graduation, you go for like one year.

You go one year here. You go back to your regular school. After you've been in the school for a year, you're going to go back to your regular school. You're going to totally dominate. You're going to be number one. You're going to learn so much more. It's just going to be awesome. So we wouldn't need to bring these young, these children into the school for the entire time.

Because, you know, you could go back out to the regular world and overlay what you learned at the academy. And you would just dominate. And so, yeah, maybe I'll end up doing that someday. And the schedule, I mean, I didn't spend that much time on it. Yes, you did it. It doesn't really even take that much time to figure out. Because you know what we're doing. We're waking up very early in the morning.

We're doing a hardcore PT. Some kind of sports, a variety of sports. Guess what? We're playing every sport. You know, baseball, basketball, swimming, football, soccer, wrestling, judo, boxing. We're going to do a little bit of everything. That's going to happen really early on the morning. I mean, obviously, we're getting up at 4.30.

We are up before the sun gets up. I mean, that's the way it is. And then we get the knowledge. so we go into the classrooms the classrooms I would get instructors that were full on engaged in what they're doing

just in the game that love their subject and that can relate it to the world and most important because I think this is what's lacking sometime most important through all the different knowledge courses or all the basic knowledge

there would be a common thread that connects them all together because that's what I think people are missing that a lot. I think we miss that that underlying theme through our educational system

but I think when you connect everything they're more powerful. Like when you connect math to science to history to English to foreign language and you connect those to art and music and you connect there's some because there are all those things if you look at history all those things are connected. They're all connected.

They're all connected, but we don't make the connections. And when you don't connect things, they're weaker. So I would force, or I wouldn't have to force it. You don't have to force it. I would, I would foster that thread through everything so that everything made sense in a big picture. And that way when you get granular, you're tying it into this overlying theme of civilization and the movement of the way things go through civilization.

Now I'll tell you another piece of this. You would learn vocational skills at my school. 100%. You would learn carpentry. You would learn how to do electrical wiring. You would learn plumbing. You would learn automotive and motor repair. You would learn all those things.

And guess what? Are you going to take those courses? Like I said, this school would probably only be a year long. That's fine. Because guess what? You know how long it takes to learn basic carpentry? Not real long. Are you going to be a skilled carpenter?

No, but I'm not looking to build skilled carpenters. Are you going to be ready to rewire a giant building, a commercial building? No, but could you rewire a house? Likely, it doesn't take that much time to learn that. You won't be skilled at it, but you will have the knowledge. Same thing with plumbing. Like I said, the automotive. So you would learn those vocational skills.

because we have people in America right now that don't know any of that stuff. And that's jacked up. Yeah. Even like when I was young, my dad used to make us change our own oil. You know, you can go anywhere. It takes a second, whatever, 50 minutes. But he's like, no, you change your own oil. You got to know what to do with the oil.

You know, there's this little process. You can't just be rolling around and change flat tire. Even now, I have AAA. I don't call AAA for a flat tire. Because Sighton hadn't got a flat tire in a long time. I got a flat tire one day. and actually recently I've been getting kind of flat tires nonetheless but I change them every time because when I first got it after not having a flat tire for a while I thought oh man do I even

remember how to do this I of course I did I remember how to do it's not that hard just like I said so there are people who don't know they get a flat tire and they're they're lost they're lost yeah they only they have triple a or whatever sure they get saved but if they can do them themselves you know so at my school you would learn those vocational skills. And then on top of that, you'd learn basic survival skills. Little hunting, little fishing,

little gardening and planting and how to grow things, grow food, and your basics, water, fire, and shelter. You'd learn those. So you'd be able to survive in any environment, any situation. Obviously, with all those survival skills and the vocational skills

and even the classroom knowledge skills there would be a a system of team building where you're going to be doing things together as a team not only for your classes but also cleaning the place working together as a team and that's what they do in military boot camps all you do is clean they turn cleaning into like a team building exercise so we would do that people would be in simple uniforms you know nothing too fancy obviously the night time would be the study of the martial arts and you would learn the basics of jujitsu boxing moitai and wrestling and that's what my school would be like and there'd be some real discipline there and there would be real achievement and i think that

anybody that spent one year in that school right there would have a infinitely greater chance of success and domination in whatever they feel they chose to go into and when they went back to their school to their regular school. You know, it's funny at first thought when I'm kind of picturing this stuff or whatever and I'm sure I'm not the only one listening to this

where you're like, oh shoot, that's a hardcore school you know, they got to be ready to get. But then you think about it. Well, when you think about it, it probably wouldn't be that hardcore. In fact, it'd probably be kind of fun. given your approach to, you know, teaching and leading and stuff like that. Because, man, I remember when I, it was like when I first met you. I met you and you don't remember when I first met you.

But, so I kind of knew you or whatever a little bit. This was back at the boxing club. And you came in the first time I saw your kids, the word, like Thor and I think one of his sisters. I forget. I don't know which one I forget. They were just little kids. And you had brought them or whatever. And they come in the door and they just start running around.

Like, this is a big playground. right psychopaths yeah hitting the bags and doing all this stuff right and then you you had this look on your face kind of like you it's almost like you had control of the situation but you're just going to let them be them kind of thing and i remember just kind of kind of looking at like oh this is interesting i never seen jocco and his kids you know so let me so i was kind of just watching so decentralized command it was real did in a matter speaking yeah so um judicist started kind of going on and i think you're you might even been teaching i don't know you're involved in some way and And they got loud real quick.

And it kind of was like, for lack of the better term, kind of distracting. And you like kind of stop what you're doing. You're like, you can stop that, like real mean. And then I was like, let me see like how they react. You know, I look. And then they stop. They look at you like just for maybe almost two seconds. They look at each other like that.

And they just start laughing and keep going. And then like you kind of started laughing at the same time. I was like, oh, I see. like you're probably strict but it's not that's their kids you know they're doing kids stuff we want they're not breaking nothing yeah so it was like it's almost like they knew and then they knew beyond that you know like they knew what was ultimately up that was interesting well who knows maybe we can put the school together at some point i know there's a lot of people that would love to send their kids to a school like this on every i i would obviously i would send all my kids to school like this

tomorrow if it existed. Yeah. One year of the academy. That's what it's called, the academy. I think it would have to be. Yeah. A big part of it, and I'm sure this would, I'm sure this would be implemented in the whole system is how the teachers and instructors are treated.

For sure. You know, like, because I think that's a lot of the time anyway, like one of the many issues, you know, when issues come up in education. It's like how are the teachers regarded in that situation. Yeah, man. Yeah, good. Sign me up. Okay.

Next question. I'm about to accept a position across the country after changing the IT field I work in. I've just been accepted for my first job. And in this type of position, with the amount of responsibility I'll have, or I'm having some issues and some hesitations on if I'll be good enough. Have you ever been in a position before where you tried to be. bite off more than you can chew professionally. How do you approach it? And is there ever a time where you think it's best to bow out and quit?

And if so, how do you know when that point is? So, actually, most people get hired into leadership positions they haven't been in before. The SEAL teams is all about that. You get promoted. You do that leadership job. And just as you're getting the hang of it, you get promoted again. so there's nothing abnormal about feeling that you aren't quite ready for a leadership position and the reason that some people fail when they get to these positions that they're not ready

for is because they're nervous that they're going to show that and so they try to hide it they're afraid to ask questions they're afraid to say they don't know so they end up looking scared and stupid which equates to looking incompetent. And I mean, even just with the beloved captain, they actually kicked off. There's a reason this guy included those statements in there that he asked questions and asked for guidance

and admitted his mistakes. There's a reason that he was beloved. That is one of the reasons. And so that's what you got to do is. Be okay with it. Don't try and hide it now to bow out and quit. I have not done that But there's no reason to because if I don't know how to do something I have no problem asking for help up and down the chain of command up and down the chain of command Nothing wrong with that and I've said this before that what what you're feeling

Person that asked this question what you're feeling that you weren't good enough and that you don't want to blow it. Those are actually signs of humility. And it's okay. Those are good. I felt those feelings my whole career. And I still feel them now. And when I was in the SEAL teams, I would over prepare for things. And it wasn't because I thought I was going to dominate. It was because I thought I was going to fall short. Even I was telling you, I prepared for the podcast all yesterday. I thought I was good, literally had printed out my notes, woke up this morning. worked out and I was like no I'm not ready I over prepare for this why because in my mind

I'm feeling that I'm gonna blow it yeah and I don't like that bro there's a thing it's like a for real thing it's called imposter syndrome you ever you've you heard that no but it's it's this and I think you know what I think I think everyone has it in it's in whether a teeny tiny bit or or a lot it's where you it's basically you feel this you feel like I'm really like on the inside like I'm really not this good. You can be like champion of the world on the inside. You're like, there's just a matter of time before they find me out. You know, I don't know.

I don't deserve to be here or whatever. I wish more people would have that because there's a lot of people that I know that have been in leadership positions that feel that they have the divine right to be there. A lot of times if they'll have it, they'll behave in that way. Oh, they absolutely do. That's why they fail. That's crazy. So rehash, as always, bottom one. be humble study and learn what you can ask questions and if you don't know something

admit it now I had to make this note and I'm cautious to even say this but I do have to say it asking questions doesn't just mean putting your ignorance on clear display all the time okay when you ask questions make sure you are asking thoughtful, meaningful questions. In fact, if you can find out the answer on your own, do that. If it's something that you can refer back to and you can look up and you can go back and you can check out the org chart, you can see where that department is or you can find out who's running that project without having to ask that question, do that. Because contrary to popular belief, there actually is, in fact, such a thing as a stupid question.

and you can get away with it sometimes so you don't need to be hyper paranoid about it but you also part of leadership is confidence and up and down so you've got to have some confidence and your people have to have some confidence in you

and if you don't know anything and you can't figure it out for you can't figure out some portions of that on your own that's not a good sign because I just expect fact, if you're going to be in charging me, you couldn't look that up. You didn't, you didn't review this before you came in here. I know you don't know my job, but you should at least know what the

requirements of my job are. You should at least know what the outcomes at a strategic level of my job are, right? You see what I'm saying? There's a difference. So you don't have to go in there and be overly humble. You don't have to go in there and be overtly blank, wide open with, what you with what you don't know. Because, again, I was cautious to make this note because this doesn't, I, you should feel comfortable enough saying, hey, I don't know how to do this. Or, hey, can you explain that the way that works to me? Can you explain what this project, you know, what this project entails?

There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you go into a room and you accidentally ask a question of something that everybody legitimately should know, you're going to look. stupid. That's a mistake. That's a mistake. And so don't do that. It's okay. Be humble. Ask questions, but ask thoughtful questions, meaningful questions that you don't know because it's, it would be pretty difficult for you to know the answer. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, it kind of seems obvious when you say it out loud where you're not going to know everything. No. So that makes sense. But, bro, you got to know

something. You got to be there for a reason. You can't be like, hey, I don't know. Nothing. I shouldn't be here. And that's another thing from the beloved captain, where he says for a few days, he didn't do anything. Yeah.

Guess what? If you can observe for a few days, you're probably going to answer a bunch of questions just from observation and taking notes and getting back and maybe conferring with your trusted agent or your senior enlisted guy or your superintendent. You can confer directly with them and keep that build. that relationship while you're garnering information. Yeah. Don't be that guy.

Try not to. Yes, try not to. Jocko, how do I take ownership of mixed messages to the people under me from the other leaders in my group? Pretty straightforward question. I like it. Well, first of all, you have to address this straight up with the other leaders in your group because if you aren't aligned as a leadership team,

this is going to hurt the cause. It is absolutely going to hurt the cause. This is critical, and it's going to be hard. And there are some things in your group that people do not agree on, and that is why they are undermining the messaging or why they're giving out different messaging because they don't agree with it.

They don't have the courage to stand up and say, hey, I don't agree with this right here. So let's do it a different way. Here's my thoughts. They don't have the courage to do that. So what do they do? They just sit back, and then when it comes time to put out,

the word, they put out the mixed messages. And it's a bad situation. And you actually have to lead here. That's what you have to do. And it shouldn't actually be that hard because what you're asking for is something that anybody can tell is important. So, you know, you say to your leadership team,

you go, hey guys, our message to the troops needs to be aligned and right now it isn't. We need to fix that. Is there anyone on your leadership team is going to disagree with that? No, they won't. That's not what they disagree with. They, everybody knows that the leadership team has to have an aligned message. They have to be on the same sheet of music.

And that's what you need to do. And, and again, it's going to be a hard conversation. It's going to bring out, that statement should bring out the conversation of what people don't agree on and why they're sending miss messages. Now, if you cannot get them aligned, it is a serious problem. But if you can't, the best thing you can do is mitigate. Mitigate that to your team by becoming the trusted voice. So with your team, you want to become the trusted voice.

Now, this doesn't mean that you're going to go on and undermine your other leaders. They'd say, oh, Echo came in here. He doesn't know what he's talking about. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm never, almost never talking about undermining another leader or a leadership team. what I'm going to do though is I'm going to translate I'm going to say hey guys our job on this I know Echo said that here's our job here's here's what our focus needs to be here's the way this translates for us so I'm not disparaging you and I'm not even disagreeing with you I'm simply honing the message for my team now you still even when you do that you're mitigating that as much as possible you still have to maintain the critical goal of getting your leadership team aligned.

And one other little tool to help make that happen is to present their words back to them. And you said, you know, I wrote down what you said to the team this morning. And I just wanted to go through that with you and break it down a little bit. And then go through it line by line and have the hard conversations and make the tough decisions. You've got to make the tough decisions. and also give a little. Seed some points, right? Be flexible, but unify.

Unify the message. And there's a worst, not even a worst case scenario, but there are scenarios where Echo and I cannot agree on the message and we got to go up the chain of command. Now, I would never want to do that. I would never, ever want to say to my boss, hey, Echo and I can't agree. You need to make the decision for us.

to me that's a total failure. It's a failure in my leadership that I can't get us on the same sheet of music. So I can't even think of any time that I ever did that went to my boss and said, hey boss, I can't come to a conclusion here with the other task unit commanders or I can't come to a conclusion

with the other platoon commanders or I can't come to conclusion with my squad about how we should do this. I've never done that. So you should be able to, if you're right, you'll win the argument. And if you're wrong, then you change your mind.

So it's not that it's not like this ultimate, not like I'm saying I'm great. I'm just saying if you're right, then you'll win the argument. And if you're wrong, then you'll change your mind. So it's not that hard. So that's what happens,

needs to happen here with the leadership team. We've got to find out who's right. And people that are right need to convince the people that are wrong. Now you need to check your ego, obviously, across the board. Everybody on the team's got to check their ego

because a lot of people will be holding onto their idea because it's their idea and they love their idea because they're egotistical. And that's how I would deal with mixed messages coming down the chain of command. I'm going to go ahead and just say it

that that could have been one of the best lines I've ever heard. If you're right, you'll win the argument. If you're wrong, you'll change your mind. That's a good up. That's a good one. You just make that up? I did just make it up.

Dang. I mean, I guess it's something that I've known, but right yeah that's what makes it so good because you kind of kind of seems like oh yeah

you know right but that's never the case but if you're being on the up and up there it is right there yeah there you go echo likes that one

approved we got time for about one more I don't see why not Jocko you often talk about being on the path what path is that

and where does it lead ah yes well I can tell you what path I'm on and what path I strive to stay on and that is the war path that that's the path I'm on the war path a path of war

because to me war path means moving toward a battle a fight towards war and that is what I am doing and that's what I've always been doing. Whether it was the actual war against our nation's enemies

or the war against my own weaknesses. That is what I am doing, preparing, and sharpening my sword and honing my skills and maintaining the unmitigated daily discipline in all things.

And the war path is just that. It's a path. It's a route. It leads somewhere. And so you ask, okay, then, where does it lead? And yes, yes, it can lead to war. In fact, I am waiting. Because the war path is a war against weak.

and so it leads to strength. It's a war against ignorance. And so it leads to knowledge. It's a war against confusion. And so it delivers understanding. And the path, the war path, leads to control and leads to ownership of

your life and that to me is the war path the path of fire and adversity the path of blood and of sweat and of suffering

is the preeminent path of discipline which is why it leads to freedom beyond that the war path it leads and I think that's

all I've got for tonight So thanks to everyone out there For taking the time to listen to this This little podcast we put together And if you like it Then you want to support it How do they do that?

If you're in the mood If you work out I know you heard this before But if you work out and you want supplements That actually work because a supplement industry And you probably know this Bro, they can put whatever they want in it Yeah, there's no regulation

Yeah. You can, I don't know if it was a documentary. It's something like that where a guy just put chalk. That's all it was chalk. And he was like, hey, look, protein powder, sell it. And either he found there was like there was no like regulation saying he couldn't do it technically. Anyway, this is a whole long thing. Nonetheless, if you want for real ones.

That's actually not a bad product idea. We could make protein powder that you can use as chalk on the bar. So you could be chalking up and then eating. Yeah, good, no, not, yeah, I don't know. Maybe we need to get on it to make the protein powder chock-up situation. Yeah, that's a little bit different from what I was kind of saying. But nonetheless, if you go to onet.com slash jocco, you can get 10% off their supplements.

Anyway, my point being with that story is that their supplements are all, like, legit. And you can even read, like, about it, like the quill oil. I said this before. I feel like I said this before. But you can see, like, how they harvest them. They use like eco-friendly boats Like it's like it's basically the ones You want to get

No No It's like the engines are like eco-friendly You know like that kind of stuff Anyway I was watching it You can get addicted on there But yeah all legit Warrior bars

I feel like we haven't really talked about And by the way I got asked by somebody on Twitter the other day What you know hey my joints are hurting What should I take? Take crow oil Yeah that's it man take girl oil Yeah I've been using crow oil for a really long time I'm

44 years old. I'm almost 45 years old actually and my joints are doing solid and knock on wood. You know, I had some joint pain in the past and when I started taking curle oil, I'm talking 10, maybe even longer years ago. I definitely attribute it to helping me and also the glucose of me. Yeah. So. And that's saying a lot because you're big. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're big guy 2.30. And I'm not exactly flexible.

I'm not the most flexible person. And I do like heavy I do heavy duty stuff. I mean I get after it. Not as much as I want to and not as much as I should, but I try. I try to

work out hard. I train jihitsu. I surf. I run. I sprint. I just do all kinds of activities. And before up until several years ago, I was in the military, I was in the SEAL teams,

and I was running around doing all that crap for my whole life. And so, yeah, I would say, order up some Krel oil. Bro, just saying, just doing Jiu-Jitsu alone,

especially as much as you do it. That alone, old, young, whatever, just doing, and you're, like, my joints are fine. If you're in that situation, to buy that alone.

Yeah, and the krill oil, for sure. And also, I believe that working out, period, is very helpful in staying injury-free. Yeah. Because I always work out, and therefore I'm always moving, and therefore my joints aren't getting rusty. Right. You know, but do both.

Right. Do both. Yeah. I mean, you know, I do get injured. You know, I had the finger injury, which is a better, pretty good right now. I had my shoulder got tweaked a little bit. Yeah, but that's not. That's not.

That's like. Yeah. And that's not the kind. Hey, I should have took more acril oil. Yeah. It's not that. It's like, when you wake up or when you, when you're like, hey, I'm going to go out,

you start working out. You're like, oh, dang, I got to warm up some more or some more. And I take, just FYI, I take three of the 500 milligram, one of the capsules in the morning and three at night. So that's like a three thousand a day. Yeah, dang. Well, hey, there you go. Then do that then.

I mean, like I said, you're a big tank that needs more curil oil. Anyway. Yeah, it's good. And from on it, you know you're getting like the good, the good on. Yeah. You know, you're not getting the, it's the clean stuff. Mass, manufactured, you know, the one from the corner store. Yeah, man, it's good.

And you get 10% off. Which is also good. On it slash jocco. And you're supporting this podcast. Oh, it's a win, win, win. Yeah. And speaking of supporting this podcast, Amazon.com click through. It might be the best way.

I don't know if it's the best way. I would say it's another way. It is another way, which is very effective, which has definitely helped support the podcast. Yeah. And it doesn't cost anything. It's real easy to do. You just click.

Yeah, no, yeah, that's good. Yeah, the key thing to that one is remembering it. Remembering to do it. Trooper tool. Yeah, Trooper tool. We got that. So go on the Chrome extension. Trooper tool, Chrome extension.

If you haven't put that on your browser, and you do want to support the podcast through the Amazon situation, put that on there it's easy makes it like super easy efficient aggressive active and efficient yes not passive i like your attitude you know you can support that way and then um obviously the subscribe on itunes and the youtube which i'm putting more videos on there starting to and it's gonna pick up too i got some more content i'm gonna put up for sure and then um the jaco store if you like shirts and whatnot if you like them get one of those.

And we have women's coming out. Is there anything else you have coming out? Yeah. It's a secret. You know, I, yeah. Okay, okay. Well, if you're signed up for the, if you're enlisted in the,

what is it, the insider trooper email, then you can find out what else is out there, what else is coming, what else is on the horizon? Yeah. Because we've had a lot of people ask for this item. What? Give me a hint.

Rash guards. Yeah, if you do Jiu-Jitsu, rash guards are coming out. Some people don't do Jiu-J-J-J-Gs, and they still wear rash guards for, like, working out. Yeah, working out, or diving. Yeah, or surfing. Or surfing. What they're originally for. Yeah, I use a surfing rash-garde a lot of times for J-J-Sah.

You do. But yeah, the rash-gards coming out, and then if you're into the ghee, we have some patches, too. Oh, you got the patches coming out, Chabla. Yeah, yeah, they're good. Cool. Basic, the way we like them. But yeah, anyway, jocco store.com, you can see all the stuff. And, yeah, if you want to be on the insiders list, I don't spam people or send you, like, stuff just for the sake of sending stuff.

I don't do that. In fact, I kind of understand stuff. Yeah, people don't want to be bothered. If you're going to send something, make it be important. Yeah, at least something that I honestly think that you'll be interested in. Yes. Yeah, honestly. I'm going to put some thought into that.

So, yeah, there it is. that's the waste. Now, in the very, very near future, like I'm talking maybe a week. Sure. And it's by early September, 2016, you will be able to order

Jocko White Tea. Mama granite. And you'll be able to order it from Amazon, which is good to go. And I got my first batch in. Matter of fact, I'm drinking a little bit of that stuff right here. Oh, that day.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it definitely puts, you in the zone. Little place I like to call the assault zone gets you there. So look for it. This is, this is, you know,

if you heard that first podcast with Tim Ferriss, and he was like, what is this adrenaline-filled drink? It was white tea. And white tea is not loaded with caffeine. There's other stuff in there. There's magic in there. There's antioxidants in there.

It tastes good. And, uh, anyways, so that's coming. You'd be able to order it. We're kind of wonder. kind of wanted to see if people want jocco white tea i think they do yeah and we will find out shortly i know i do yeah it's that's the interesting thing because you know like just kind of on the surface we're like hey what's jocco into it's not like you know something crazy it's like something

let's face it sounds kind of delicate you know white tea well when you see the can that it comes in it's not delicate it's not delicate it's hard hard it's weird because i was trying to think of where I discovered it and I actually don't know. I actually can't remember how why I drank it for the first time but when I started drinking I was like oh yeah this stuff feels good

especially when you're under stress or there's a lack of sleep or you need to be mentally sharp it's the deal but you can mix white tea with it'll mess up the taste but you mix jocco white tea with alpha brain

I've done it I've done it. I've done it here in the podcast. Yeah, it doesn't mess up the taste. It tastes good. Dang, all right. Well, the white tea is a, it's not like this super harsh taste. It's a, it's a, not mild because you can taste it. You can kind of feel it too. Light.

Yeah. Light but heavy. It's a, I don't even know how to describe it. It's just not a, it's not a heavy taste. Yeah. So you can mix it with a lot of stuff. And you can, like I said, you can be able to get that on. Amazon so you can click through the get on Amazon you can also go ahead and get by the little

book called Extreme Ownership when you're there highly recommend yeah and you can get that anywhere anywhere they sell books you can buy the hardcover you can buy digital audio format which my brother Laif Babin and I actually read you can get it for your people up and down the chain of command your friends family whoever it is that you think needs to get on board with the program get them a copy that's kind of a good initiative for him. And also, October 20th and 21st in San Diego,

we are having the extreme ownership muster. That is also Lafabin and myself. We're going to be getting granular, granular with the combat leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield and how you apply those lessons in your business and in your life.

now that event is going to be extremely interactive we're not going to be hiding behind a curtain we're going to be out front with the troops if you got questions we are going to answer them if you got something you need we're going to talk about it if you got a problem we're going to come up with a solution

I say we because we're going to work together we're going to learn I can't wait to see how much I'm going to learn with the list of people that are coming is awesome every industry could imagine every level of leadership you can imagine it's just it's really going to be fired up and layf and i have been hammered out the schedule and there's so much material and so much good information and so much good content it's going to be awesome and i cannot wait to kick it off is jiu jih Tzu part of the schedule jiu jitsu is not on the schedule but what i'm

going to do is i'm going to basically have a jiu jihitsu situation happening at the gym. So the event is Thursday, Friday. So maybe it's going to be Wednesday night if people come in early. Maybe it's going to be Saturday if people want to stay or Sunday. People want to stay the weekend. Yeah, yeah. Or just have them like where they're like, you know, welcome, come to the gym.

You know, like these are the things from the monster. Or maybe I could just bring some mats to the hotel and do some kind of a, but no, then we got to. The gym is way better because it's like that, it's, you know, one of the best games. You know, people to the gym. Yeah. So, yeah, if you want to get the jihad. Tutsu together. We are going to get the Jimmy and I train Jiu-Tzyito. I'm in San Diego. I'm training.

Yeah. So we'll be in San Diego. We will be training. We might not be able to do it Thursday night because it's a pack schedule. It doesn't end until late at night, but either Wednesday night or probably once the muster's over. Because heading into the muster, I'm going to be like in the game. And actually, I think I'm going to go to, I have an event earlier in the week. So probably going to be the weekend. If you want, if you want to get your jih Tjitia, you want, stay the weekend. Go home Sunday afternoon, get a red eye flight back to the East Coast or whatever, or if you're out here,

just go home Sunday night. And that's kind of just muster, no muster. People come in and they're like, hey, I want to come in the gym. Guys have come. This guy, Max, I just met. Him and his girlfriend, his wife, I forget if they're married or not, but they came in and he was like,

hey, I just came in, whatever. So, yeah, people just come in. Awesome. And they just let them in, too, of course. you know yeah um also you look I know that the muster is expensive and in this situation guess what it costs money to put it on it costs money for the hotel room the event the event room the food the AV equipment the security the logistics all that stuff it costs money and the reason that we're investing in it is because we want it to be the best we want it to be the best event that you have

ever been to. That's what I want. That's all. And, but that does cost money. And so if you can't afford to come out to it, you know what? I apologize. But the podcast is free. The book is 20 bucks.

Get what you can out of that. But if you can afford to come out, come on out. Because you being there is going to make us all better. because every single person that, I get so many responses on Twitter. I get so many stuff, so much stuff through the social media that I'm learning from everyone here. So anybody that can come out and participate and ask that question or give that scenario or give that piece of input is going to make us all better. So come on out and get some.

And as always, if you want to continue this conversation, You know where you can find us all up on the interwebs. Twitter, Instagram, and that Facebook. It's Echo at Echo Charles. And I am at Jocka Willink. And finally, to you, to those of you out there in the battle. are military guys in Iraq and in Syria fighting against a truly evil and abhorrent enemy

stay sharp stay focused and be aggressive it'll keep you alive to the police officers who are suffering through hard times right now verbal and physical attacks I'm going to tell you take the high ground in both those cases. Detach

from that negativity and do your job to the best of your ability. Be smart and stay safe. And of course the firefighters and the emergency medical teams that keep us safe, keep us healthy and come to us in

our time of need. all stay vigilant and train hard. And to the rest of you troopers out there, all over the world, doing what you are doing, make sure you do that thing with every ounce of effort you got. And make sure you stay. Stay on the war path. So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.