Jocko Podcast - 419: Training, Discipline, and The Battlefield of Life. With Leif Babin.

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

How you help people and yourself is to train. Disciplined training will prepare you for almost everything. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 419 with Kerry Helton and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Kerry. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is Laif Babi. Good evening, Leif. Good to be here right on. Trade At. Lieutenant Commander J.B.

is taking command of Trade At from me today, 30 September 2010. I would like to thank everyone at Trade At for working so hard to make NSWG1 Trade At deliver the best training in the world. This training has kept many seals alive. This training has also directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Muge fighters. Muge fighters that are eager to see our women covered in burqas, our children enslaved, our comrades beheaded, and our way of life destroyed. You now carry the fire. Keep the training hard. Stay focused on our purpose to close.

with and destroy the enemy. This is our core. This is our religion. Somewhere our enemy is on his knees in a cave in the mountains cold and hungry, rocking back and forth with an AK-47

in one hand and a tattered copy of the Quran in the other. He is mumbling a prayer to a God he is twisted into darkness. His AK-47 is clean. He is ready. We are also ready.

Our weapons are clean. Our tactics solid. We also pray. We pray for toil and chaos and gunfire and violence and blood. We pray for war. Our ritual is preparation. Our ritual is training. solemn focused hard we train with intensity and test ourselves mentally and

physically we leave no stone unturned we tear ourselves apart so we can rebuild ourselves stronger smarter tougher this is our duty for our nation and for the teams hold the torch high and let it burn bright Let it burn the wretched dying souls of our enemies Thanks again for your sacrifice and dedication to the teams and our country Cover and move simple prioritize and execute decentralized command No fucking slack jocco And that right there is a note that I wrote to trade at

When I was getting ready to retire and I didn't have a copy of it but I I I said send it to Leif, and he had a digital copy. I guess I must have sent it from my work email, which you don't have access to once you retire, and you just send it to me the other day. And, you know, TradeEd is the group that conducts the advanced tactical leadership training for the SEAL teams. There's one group on the West Coast, that's group one,

and one group on the East Coast. That's group two. And I know that that note might seem heavy-handed to some of you out there. Some of you understand where it's coming from. Some of you might not. But you got to remember, that was written when we were in the midst of a war. Maybe you could say two wars in two countries.

We were fighting a brutal enemy, a savage enemy that tortured, murdered, and raped as part of their standard protocol. That's what they did. And we saw that. And additionally, in the SEAL teams, and in the military at large, we had lost a lot of friends to this enemy. And while the message might be hard, I just wanted to make sure I conveyed at the time

the importance of training to everyone at trade at so that they would understand the importance of their jobs and they would take it as seriously as they possibly could. And definitely I heard many times. When guys would come back from deployment, they were so thankful for the training that we put them through. And there's no doubt that they would keep their guys alive. It would prevent blue-on-blues. It would get guys ready for medical situations.

Like the training was awesome. And training saves lives. That's what it does. And the importance of training, I actually learned, or I should say I reinforced the importance of training was reinforced to me. me from a guy by the name of private first class, PFC, Willie Lump, remember old Willie Lumplump? Going to have to take it to the book, gentlemen. Going a little about face here. The fact is a soldier's response must be automatic and based in a philosophy about killing

that simply cannot be taught in a classroom. Kill or be killed. Hands-on training in the control of seasoned, hard-assed NCO can often mean the difference between life and death for a boy on the battlefield. Take the case of Willie Lump Lump, whose tragic story, well-known among my men, went something like this. After World War II, a boy named Willie Lump Lump, enlisted in the army. He went to Fort Benning to take his infantry training, 16 weeks of sweat and tears and lots of punishment to turn him into a hard number. soldier. Along about the seventh week of training, a sergeant stood up in front of his class and said, gentlemen, I'm Sergeant Slasher. And today I'm going to introduce you to the bayonet,

on guard. With that, the sergeant went into the correct stance for holding the bayonet. On the battlefield, he continued, you will meet the enemy, and there will be times when you will need this bayonet to defeat the enemy, to kill the enemy. Over the next weeks, you'll be receiving a 24-hour block of instruction on the bayonet, and I will be your principal instructor. Willie Lumplump went back to the barracks, deeply upset. Man, that was so brutal out there today, he thought. The war is over.

We're living in peace and tranquility, and still the army is teaching us how to use these horrible weapons. Dear mom, he wrote home, today the sergeant told me he's going to teach me how to use the bayonet to kill enemy soldiers on the battlefield. Willie's mother was shocked. She got right on the phone. Hello, Congressman Do Good? This is Mrs. Lump-lump, and I want to tell you what's happening down at Fort Benning, Georgia. Here it is, 1949, and they're teaching my baby to kill with a bayonet. It's uncivilized.

It's barbaric. The congressman immediately got on the horn. Hello. General Playwright? General Play It Right at the Pentagon? This is Congressman Do Good. I understand the Army is still giving it. the Army is still giving bayonet training?

Yes, we are. Do you think it's a good idea? I don't think it's a very good thing at all. It's even somewhat uncivilized. I mean, really, how many times does a soldier need his bayonet? Not very often, sir, it's true. Actually, I was just reviewing the Army training program myself, and I was thinking that the bayonet is a pretty obsolete weapon.

I agree with you. I'll put out instructions that it's going to stop. The next day, 700 miles away, gentlemen i am sergeant slasher this is your second class on bayonet trit the sergeant was interrupted by a lieutenant walking purposely toward him across the training field stand easy man it's out the lieutenant whispered what it's out the lieutenant whispered again the sergeant nodded his mouth wide open and disbelief he turned to his class gentlemen we have to break here it looks as if bayonet training has been discontinued in the army.

A year later, PFC Lump-Lump, the model soldier, deployed to Korea with the 1st Battalion 15th Regiment 3rd Infantry Division. He was standing on a frozen hill and the Chinese were coming at him, wave after wave after wave. Willie stood like a rock. Resolutely, he shot the enemy down. Suddenly he realized he was out of ammunition. He looked at his belt, not around left. He saw a Chinaman rushing toward him. him. He remembered the first class on bayonet training. He reached down and pulled his bayonet out of his

scabbard. Shaking and fumbling, he tried to fit it on the end of his weapon. But by that time, the Chinese soldier was standing over him with a bayonet of his own. The secretary of the army signed his thousandth leather for the day. Dear Mrs. Lump-lump, it is with deep regret. I must inform you that your son, PFC Willie Lumplump Lump was killed in action 27 November 1950. Heartbroken, Mrs. Lump Blump wrote to some friends of young Willys in the company. How? Why? Willie wasn't trained, they wrote back. He didn't know how to use his bayonet.

Now Mrs. Lump Blump was not only heartbroken, but outraged. She didn't even bother to call Congressman Do Good. She barged right into his office. Why? she screamed. Why wasn't my son trained for war? The mythical Willie Lumplumplump was my training aide. I used him in every unit I commanded to explain two things to the troops. First, that the training they were about to receive was in their best interests.

And second, that the civilian population didn't know didly squat about the realities of war. Because as much as any other factor, civilian interference was what was leading the post-Korea army training down the tubes. A few months before my trooper fell out on the beach, there'd been an incident at Paris Island Marine Corps Training Center. A drill sergeant named McKeon had gotten his 74-man platoon of recruits out of bed for a night march in order, he said, to teach them discipline. The end result was six dead boots, swept down a fast-running creek on the island. McKeon was court-martialed and the entire military training system. went on trial by the press heads rolled on Paris Island as bleeding heart civilians got on their soapboxes and called for an end essentially to any training that

carried with it even the slightest risk of danger the military overreacted when Paris Islands commanding general was transferred out of his command a chill went down the spine of all new style self-serving commanders I'd met in and since my second tour in Korea who put their careers above the mission and their men but for the grace of God they thought and gratefully accepted the new training safety regulations sent down from the top it was a long long way down from Blue Devil Day in Gorgia Italy then one day each month when all units in the 88th Blue Devil Division were put through the paces at one of these

I'd be going through bayonet training drill and managed to vertical butt stroke my squad leader who is dancing in front of me daring me to get him right in the chops with my M1 rifle, my regimental commander, Colonel Ball, who'd strolled by just as the sergeant fell to the ground in a shower of blood and teeth, hadn't even flinched. Good work, soldier, he'd said, speaking from experience of three years of the toughest of combat of World War II in Africa, Sicily, and Italy, good training. The only way to prepare men for combat is to train them in conditions as close to the real thing as possible. A commanding officer has to be prepared to take his lumps in training. Soldiers cannot be trained in a classroom, then be thrown onto a battlefield and expected to cope. In fighter company, I'd taken my share of wounded in our company in the attack demonstrations.

Guys hit by shrapnel from a shell landing too close in. But I'd been willing to take that risk because I wanted those people to know what it was like to have a mortar round slam down in front of them and hear machine gun slugs snap over their heads. The average 2% training casualties we had, to my mind, were a small premium for an insurance policy that could cover a whole unit when the real shooting started. The McKeon case was a terrible tragedy. The sergeant was charged with six counts of involuntary manslaughter, oppression of recruits, and drinking on duty. With the help of powerful testimony from the greatest Marine of the Mall, Lieutenant General Louis B. Chesty Puller, McKeon was eventually acquitted of the manslaughter and oppression of recruits charges,

but the verdict did not calm the fluttering hearts of Colonel Thiessen and his ilk, and peacetime army training continued downhill spiral, the horrible consequences of which would not be seen for another decade. And, of course, that was seen in Vietnam. That's what he's talking about a decade later, when soldiers and officers weren't trained. not properly trained and it costs dearly so training that's what we're uh that's that's how we help people that's how we make people ready to do their job that's how we prepare them for

critical situations and I think a lot of times what when people think of training a mistake that we make is we think of formal training we think of training we think of training where okay we're going to take the next two weeks or two days or two months and we're going to go through a formal process and we're not going to do any work because we're going to be training and and a lot of times that's what people think of when they think of training and obviously I went through a lot of that type of training layf you went through a lot of that type of training because you got a lot of that type of training shoved down your throat at the naval academy definitely and there's definitely there's benefits for you get a you get you kind of get I would

say a foundation from that type of formal training. But to me, the most important type of training that happens is informal training. Training that happens while you're doing your job. I guess the common term would be OJT, right, on the job training. And actually, in the SEAL teams, on the job training was the way everything was trained. When I came in, look, for the leadership, there was no leadership. The course that you ran, the junior officer training course, didn't exist. So the officers would just show up to the SEAL team.

All they'd done has been through buds like all the other guys. They had, and whatever college they went to. But from what I can assess, there's not a whole lot of leadership that actually gets absorbed in college. I mean, I've never had an officer say to me, oh, I went to this great class. And I think I'm going to do good on this assault because I took this leadership theory. class as how much how much leadership did you get the academy we we took mandatory uh you know you go over to luce hall and take mandatory uh leadership uh training classes every semester um i uh i didn't i mean i i think what i learned a lot from my time of the naval academy was um there was a lot of examples

of what not to do you know there was a lot of uh an officer or a senior you know midshipman who kind of to lord it over me or whatever. And I send an example like, you know what? I want to make sure when I'm a leader that I'm never going to emulate that. There was obviously some great people at the academy and I learned for some great folks. We had and there's an orchestrated effort to teach to teach that. I remember General Kruak coming in as the common out of the Marine Corps and talking about his experience in Vietnam. I mean, there's a number of leaders like that that would come in to talk about their experiences. And I think the difference though between when I was going through the academy, I graduated,

I went there 94, I graduated 98, was that there just wasn't a real war going on. And there was a real lack of, I think, actual combat experience. And so I think people trained the best they could and tried to set people up for success. But I think the difference in what your letter is talking about, you know, there, and the reason that that was so powerful with me

and everybody that read that, which is why I printed it out and kept it. And the picture of that I sent to you, That was a hard copy that I printed out the moment that I got that distributed to me when you sent it my way. And is that you understand the realities of war and how hard that actually is, which is exactly what the hack we're talking about. I think it's super easy for people to lose that concept of they're thinking, oh, I'm prepared, oh, I'm ready to go. Oh, I've got this figured out until you get thrown into a situation that's overwhelming and totally chaotic. and you have no idea what's going on

and what the enemy's doing. And I think that's what I love about when you were running training attachment is it was to test people and put them in the worst case scenario that we could think about so that we could survive that. And it's, you know,

as you instilled in me and everybody that you worked with, that's the duty of a leader is to make sure that your people are prepared to be able to go out into a realistic scenario that they might encounter and be successful. And of course, on the battlefield, that's, you know, that's, that's going out and trying to accomplish your mission and bring all your guys home alive, which is, which can be an extremely

difficult thing, obviously. So I think it's a good reminder to everybody. And I think that's, you know, going through my time in the academy and my time of the surface fleet, excuse me, before I joined the SEAL teams, I think that's the, that's, there are a lot of great people that mentored me and passed on some, some great lesson learned. But I think really when we started working together, and that was my first encounter of it.

You had just come back from a whole bunch of combat experience as a platoon commander. And you're talking about lessons that you learned and mistakes that were made and really analyzing that in great detail and applying that. And of course, that's exactly what we did when we came back from Ramadi

to take over different, you took over training to attach, but I took over the junior officer training course to teach the next generation, of SEAL officers going through our training pipeline and to try to set them up for success and prepare them for these incredibly tough challenges they would come up against on the battlefield. Yeah, and actually I've I've gone and talked at the Naval Academy. I've gone and talked at West Point. I've talked to the Air Force Academy. I've I've been to all them. Is there? Am I missing one? I guess the Coast Guard Academy. I haven't been there. Merchant Marine Academy. I haven't been there. And I was just out at the Army Navy football game and it will clearly I mean, those, you know, you go meet all those midshipmen and cadets. They're fired up, man.

They want to, they want to learn. They're open books. I mean, the amount of them that talk about the podcast, so they're all listening to the podcast. But there is a disconnect, and I know that there's leadership classes. And, you know, and I know the people that run those leadership classes at both those places, or at least I know some of them. And, like, they care deeply about training those guys up, which is awesome. And it's appreciated.

And they're getting, like I said, they're getting that foundation. But then you've got to at some point connect the thread between what you learned in the class and what's happening when freaking mayhem breaks out. And it takes some time to get to make that connection. And that was cool about like when I was running trade at, they, it wasn't, look, it was hard as hell. But you could, and you saw this. when you went out there with me, especially when you were at Team One in a leadership position,

you could watch the leaders get better. It wasn't like we were just kicking the shit out of them and like, oh, you just suck. No, it was, you could watch them, learn the techniques, learn the principles, and start to be able to actually lead no matter what we did to them. And another interesting, from their viewpoint a lot of times,

it would seem like sometimes that they weren't, they might think that we were just, kicking the shit out of them every time. But what they didn't realize until we tell them is like, no, the first operation that you went on, we didn't even do anything. There was no opposing force. All you had to do is go out there, and it seemed so crazy. And then the next one, we had one shooter that caused all this chaos and mayhem.

The next one, we had two shooters. The next one, we had five. By the last iteration, we had seven or eight guys out there, and you guys completely dominated, and there was nothing we could do. There's nothing that the bad guys could do to beat you. To them a lot of times it just felt like they were just barely you know they're just barely keeping their head above water But then you'd throw them back into an occasion we do this you know if there was a if there was a If there was a platoon or a task unit or troop that was sort of

Starting to maybe get their confidence shook to a point where it's gonna be a problem We would back off a little bit and let them go out there and and and really knock one out of the park and be like oh yeah, I got this and then they'd go oh They'd realize that we hadn't done as much to them and they realized that they were getting better and So it's not that when you're in a leadership position, your goal is not to just kick the shit out of people and make them fall apart. That's not the goal. In fact, the goal is to do is to make them like uncomfortable and maybe barely, maybe they just don't get there. You know, for example, if it's a runtime, right, you want them to just barely pass the run. And actually sometimes you want them to just barely fail the run.

You want them, if they got to run it in 32 minutes, you want them to get a 3203. So they know like, okay, I got to run as fast as I can. Next time you want them to get a 28, whatever, a 31, 52. And then what do you do? You tighten the parameters. That's what happened in seal training. First phase, you got to do it in 32 minutes. The four-mile-time run.

Second phase, you got to do it in 30 minutes. Third phase, you got to do it in 28 minutes. So that's what we would do. We would continually ramp up the pressure. And actually the way I explained it to the trade at guys. And to the troops, too. I'd say we are going to compress the space time continuum. Because if you're a platoon commander and I give you one problem now and then 45 minutes later,

I give you another problem in a different location on the battlefield. And then 45 minutes after that, I'd give you one more problem. So you had three problems. And you would address those problems in Solomon. It probably wouldn't be that hard for you. You know, you're a new platoon commander. Then the next night, I would compress the time. and compress the space.

So maybe you'd get one, and then as that one's getting wrapped up, I'd give you another one. And then as that one's getting wrapped up, I'd give you another one. And so now you can start to feel it. You could see it so clear. We'd compress that time, space, continuum.

And then guess what? By day five, day six of field training exercises, it's seven problems, and they're all happening at the same time in the same space. And so what people need to learn how to do is they need to learn to parse those problems out, this is called prioritizing execute by the way, they need to figure out how to figure out what those problems are, pull them apart and then address them separately, and then they'll be able to accomplish that. And the strange thing is, that's a skill. And it's a skill that you can learn. And once you learn that skill, you can get really proficient at it. And then seven problems all at the same time, what it feels like, it feels like seven problems, you separate them in your mind in time and space, and you're okay. And that's And that's what our goal was.

So we got to see this. And the thing about the informal training, so when you and I went through training together, our workup, the amount of instruction that you got from the cadre was probably very small. Now look, did they give you tactical instruction about, hey, Leif, you know, put your site picture over here, or, hey, you might want to put this gear over here. Or, hey, when you enter the room, think about this. Like, definitely. And that's what the conjury was doing.

But the vast majority of the training was informal training from me, from Tony, from guys that were like, hey, we've been doing this for a long time. Like I had a very lucky situation where I've been doing this for 15 years. And you'd been doing it for two. So for me to say, hey, what were you thinking about in that scenario? And you're like, I was thinking about kicking their ass. I'm like, Leif, I love the fact that you want to kick their ass. But you got 16 guys in the platoon. all 16 of them, if all 16 of them are thinking about kicking their ass and no one's thinking

about where you're going to go when you get done kicking their ass, you'd be like, got it. And it's so obvious. And all you had to do is just take a step back and next thing you know you're moving forward. So that informal training is what people can do all the time. And it doesn't matter what your business is. If you're a police officer, if you're a firefighter, if you're a salesperson, if you're a construction business. If you're a manufacturing business, it doesn't matter. There is what you can do is you can utilize what's happening in your business, what's happening in your world to actually train people.

And if you do this, it takes a little bit of investment. It's a little bit of investment. So if, if you're a project manager on this construction site and you're just showing up here, sure, I can say, okay, Leif, here's the timeline that we're going to do. Here's the timeline we're going to follow and you go okay thanks boss and you just start following the timeline what did you learn from that you didn't learn anything but if I say hey life here's the project come up with a timeline and now you actually have to think and look what are you how good are you gonna do you just got out of college or whatever you've never done it before you're not going to do great maybe you get if it was a graded test you probably get a 50 or 40 because you know you saw some of it in in school and

you did that one internship so you get maybe get a 50% maybe you get a 60 but you but now you do it and And now I see you down like, hey, concrete you can't do, you can't double it up like this. And by the way, if you order your wood here, you're not going to have it here in time. Lumber's got to get. And you go, okay, cool, got it. And you're taking notes. We do another project next time. You do the same thing again.

Now you get an 85%. And so in a couple projects, instead of you just maintaining the level of a get knocking a 40, getting that 40, you go 70, 90. And next thing you know, you're doing it. And very shortly, you'll be doing it better than I can because you're there on the job and I'm now, you know, managing and doing emails instead of doing timelines. So doing those kind of things and as a leader in an organization, taking the opportunity to say, hey, go ahead and figure out how you want to, what's the sales pitch you're going to use? What are you going to do? Here, pitch me. Well, a little seven-minute roleplay if we're in the sales industry.

So doing that and letting that happen and making those investments. is that is how you build a team. That's how you do it. If you don't do it, you're going to end up stuck in your position, wherever it is. I think the biggest resistance to that, too, is that people think they're good to go.

They totally think they're good to go. Just like if you'd ask me as young Lieutenant Leifab and Charlie Lieutenant Commandor and Tassaneda Bruiser before we deployed Dremonti, if, you know, was I ready for some tough urban combat?

And I'd be like, totally good to go. You know, are you going to get in a frontly fire situation? Never happen to us. That happens to losers don't know how to plan and execute missions. So I think people think they're good to go. And oftentimes, and we see that where someone, whether it's in the construction world or companies we're working with, that, you know, you got these young people coming here and they think they know everything. But one thing you did a good job of was just, you just, you let us brush up against the guardrails of failure. And it opened our minds. And, you know, particularly what stands out to me is I remember when we were doing our immediate action drills

when tasking a bruiser when me and Seth Stone, the Delta Bouticamah were going out into the desert and we're running with our platoons doing our immediate action drills, which is like a playbook for like a play you'd run in football, you know, or basketball when you get shot at it's a react to contact drill and you said, how are you guys doing with your iats, immediate action drills? How do you guys feel about it? How do you feel about your iats? And we're like, we're good to go. And you didn't be like, you knuckleheads don't you, you think you get all figured out. You'll have one platoon under your belt. You're not as good as you think.

You didn't say any of that. You just said, okay. And so we went out and we ran some immediate action drills. And we were not exactly good to go. And we got our butts handed to us and we're like, man, this is, we don't know as much as we think we do. I think we came. We both were kind of like talking about it on the way back from the, you know, out of the training range. And so we come back.

I remember going up to you and be like, hey, Jocko, let's talk to those immediate action drills. And so now our minds are open. Now we stood around the whiteboard. We're talking about, okay, if you can attack from this direction, now what do you do? We start just making those calls, role play in the scenarios. And that's that informal training you're talking about. But it's so hard to do that because it's real easy. It would have been super easy for you.

You had a ton of experience. You've been in the teams for a long time, it's enlisted seal, and you just come back from a significant combat appointment. you had a bunch of experience, and you could have easily said, like, you guys don't know what you're talking about, you know, a couple new guys, one platoon wonders, and our minds would have been closed,

would have been defensive, but wouldn't have been open to that. So that was always a powerful thing and that indirect approach that you always took with us. The other thing that stands out to me, too, is, you know, oftentimes the training standards going through training, our seal instructor cadre that put us through training,

we were going through our workup cycle and tasking a bruiser was outstanding, and they pushed us hard, and they certainly taught us a lot and put us in some challenging training scenarios. But I remember several times, whether we're out in the desert going through our land warfare block

or going through our close quarters combat block in urban combat training scenario and them saying, hey, you guys are good to go. You're good to go. And I remember you pulling me and Seth aside and saying, hey, what do you guys think? Do you think we're ready for the worst case scenario? And I mean, look, we're tired.

guys want to break you know we've been training hard it's it's i don't know anybody that did that was like oh yeah no we're going to do it again training detachment instructors just said we're good to go we can take it back to the camp and and and when you asked me that question i mean we kind of looked at each other we're like i don't think so i think we need to let's do a couple more runs and that that was always like let's do it let's do one more run let's do two more runs and we would we would do extra training just based on the scenario and i think you you kept us focused on just like that letter which is thinking about that strategic, what is your enemy doing right now?

What is the worst case scenario that you're going to be up against? Who's that hardcore fighter that's training and preparing for you right now? And so I think when we thought about that, it's really easy to lose sight of that. You know, whether you're a police officer and thinking, you know,

well, what's the worst case scenario? Hey, I haven't encountered the worst case scenario yet. So, or whether you're, you know, on a construction site, I haven't encountered that worst case scenario. so maybe it won't happen and that complacency starts to creep in. So I think that kept us focus on, hey, are we ready for that? And I think when you're a leader and you're thinking about what is that worst case scenario,

are we actually prepared for that? If you can't answer that question, the affirmative, then you're failing your team. You're failing as a leader. And I think that is really the solemn duty of leaders, right, is to train and prepare people for that worst case scenario so they can go out and be successful. And I think those questions to us, you asked them. I mean, there's, I couldn't be like, yeah, we're good to go. I'm like, man, because what, what's the, the, what's the harm in training too hard?

Well, you know, and I know you got pushback sometimes when you were running training attachment. Well, this training, we're training for this crazy scenario all the time. And I remember those discussions, you're like, look, if, if it's not that hard and you don't lose a bunch of guys on target, cool, it's super easy. Like, wow, training was way harder than actual combat operations. But if, it's, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, you're, you're, It's the reverse of that situation is horrible, right? We were not prepared and you know what? We got a bunch of guys killed and we weren't able to accomplish our mission

because we didn't train hard enough. We didn't hold the standard high enough. Yeah. The going a little bit, rewind a little bit, talking about this idea. So we're doing these immediate action drills and we have our whole task unit. So there's 35, 40 guys in the task unit. And we're going to go out and we're going to get into a contact.

So an enemy engagement, which these targets pop up. And then we start to shoot at these targets. And then we as leaders have to maneuver these troops around the battlefield to either break contact and get away from these enemy targets or we can assault those enemy targets and take them out and so it's at nighttime you have 40 people with in bunch of different locations they've got machine guns they've got grenades they've got rocket launchers there's a lot of things going on there's a lot of chaos going on and it can be really hard to manage and really hard to control and really hard in some cases to even understand what's happening so you guys were doing it in your platoons so before everyone does it together the your platoon is doing it and then

Seth's platoon who's doing it so now you only got whatever 16 guys it's a little bit easier to control because there's only 16 guys but same thing live fire start going night time people have grenades you got a clear back blast for rockets there's a lot of things that are going on and you guys you know I'd ask you prior to going out like how are you guys with I ads and you guys both were like we're kind of good to go you know hell yeah Right and then you went out and you know I was I was now watching your platoons do it and I could see that You know I could see like oh these guys are gonna need some help And actually when you talked about me being just coming back from a platoon commander tour and

Done a bunch of real-world missions that's not where I learned how to do that shit I well thank God was as Hill team won I was an enlisted guy I did three platoons I did all those workups but then I went to training department I went to the training department I went to the training So I went out and watched people do IADs and I went out and really learned What worked and what didn't work and what it looked like from a detached position So now when you guys come back and you're like hey, you know what? Let's go through this stuff Let's let's let's go through this and so what we did was and I like what you know those movies where the person's like We could use this and they presented immediately so you're you're you guys guys like I think we need some help oh I happen to have magnets for the magnet board

with like the different you know squad one squad two squad three squad four I happen to have these let's just break these out and we start to so we just draw some basic terrain up on the on the white board and take these magnets set them up in patrol order and it's like all right we get contacted from the front and we had the the fire team leaders in there as well all right what's the call boom and I probably made the call you know strong right or whatever the call was where do you go where do you go and people start moving their magnets on the board. Now what's amazing about this. What's amazing about this is probably for the first time in your life, you saw an immediate action drill from a detached perspective and saw what it looked like

from the equivalent of 5,000 feet and saw it like a chessboard. I mean, what does a chessboard look like if you're on the chessboard? You might not even be able to see where the queen is and where the rook is. If you're a pawn that's behind the night, you can't even see it. Well, when you're out in the desert and your mind is I'm behind this berm and I'm there's I can't see because the the flash of the M60 that's going off right next to me or there's a flare in the sky that just went out now I lost my night there's all this stuff is happening and when you're in it you can't it's very difficult to see it so once you see it once you're thinking about it from altitude and you're like oh oh when I'm moving my fire team over here I need to make sure

I make enough dead space so that these other guys can shoot and you're looking at at it from a elevated position and now you're detached and what it does is it it now takes that classroom of hey this is an I ad and this is what you're supposed to do to when you're in the field and you're like wait a second this didn't look like what it what it was in the classroom but now you're thinking through it kind of connects that line between what was going on in the classroom and what's going to go on in the field and now when you go out you understand it's so much more clear and I got this from there was was an Australian SAS guy that was at SEAL Team One when I was there.

And he put me through one workup and then we had another Australian guy and they had these little, um, they would make these kits, these little kits with a, and I remember it was in a secret box. You know what a secret is? Negative. It's like a breath, like a sore throat thing. A little tin box like, uh, alttoids. Yeah. You know the altruits thing, right? So these guys would have in their altoid secrette box back in the day. But this guy broke it out. Now this is when I was a new I broke it out and inside that thing he had like a couple pieces of ribbon. He had these little pieces of wood. One of them was a square.

One of them was a circle. One of it was a triangle. And then there was a bunch of little ones that were almost like a direction, like an arrow. And so what he could do is right there. Oh, we got a brief admission. Oh, pull out the secret box. Here's a road.

That's a piece of ribbon. Here's a square. That's a target. Here's these little arrows. These are our guys. And all of a sudden, you could give your squad or your platoon a visual at altitude of what this is going to look like. And it was, it was for me the first time I saw that, it made such good connections for me.

And maybe that's that whole thing of, you know, there's auditory learners, visual learners. Well, I think most people are some kind of combination of the three. What's the other one? Auditory. Tactile. Tactile. So tactile might not come into play too much here. But listening and seeing, those definitely come in to play.

And if you can give someone both those things, all of a sudden, you're covering a lot of ground in the brain housing group. So we have a much better understanding of what's happening. So I saw that. And then when I was in training cell as an E5 mafia member, I was in there. I was like, oh, I can watch someone. Hey, wait, hold on. Let me, let me show you what this supposed to look like from an elevated position.

Instead of being like, dude, you moved to the wrong spot. Okay. Well, they, I told them. they moved to the wrong spot, but it's so out of context when you're on the ground. You don't see the big picture. But when someone says, hey, here's a piece of ribbon. This is the road that you were supposed to be crossing. Here's where the enemy was and they see it.

Here's where you were and they see it. Here's where the other guy was and they said because they didn't know where that other guy was. They didn't know. It didn't make sense to them. So when you can do that, when you can bridge the gap between what's real and what's classroom, there's like usually in most cases there's some kind of intermediate step that you can show someone that, will help them to understand what's happening.

So when I think back to, and actually Seth, when we got done with that, he's like, I never knew what was happening. He'd already done a whole platoon. And he goes, I never understood what was happening during I ads. He literally said that. And he's humble to a fault, but he's also,

he was just like, I never understood what was happening during I ad. And now I get it. It was that much of a game changer for Seth to see that on a whiteboard, think through, it move his piece other guy move his piece you move your piece Seth goes okay everyone's moved it's my turn to move here's what yep that's what you should do he looked at me and said

I've never understood an I had before you know what I was just I was just kind of breaking this down in my mind about why that was helpful because there's no question you're 100% right it from altitude you can see it but we actually had a playbook you know we had a whole playbook of of these like I think they were in PowerPoint and so it's like and so a couple I think there's two things that I think in my mind. One is it was daunting because there's there is a playbook of like a hundred different things and so it's oh I got to memorize all this stuff. And so you kind of broke it down of like look you're either going to assault or you're going to break contact. You know, you're either retreating if hey, we encountered, you know, we only

have 30 of us and there's 200 enemy fighters. We're going to break contact. We're probably going to pull back calling an airstrike or hey, we think we can win this this fight. We're going to assault forward. So then and that that broke it down and made it simplified. it so we can better understand it. We're either we're going to move right or left. We're going to use cover and move. There's going to be a base that's laying down fire while another units can maneuver either forward or back.

And I think just breaking, just simplifying it all down. So it wasn't this like, oh, if this happens, I have to do this. And it's overwhelming to try to memorize all these different plays. And then secondly, even though that's an overhead view, when you're looking at it on like a PowerPoint presentation, it's not dynamic. Yeah, you don't have to think about what's happening. And so that's what I think opened my mind too is we're looking at these magnets

magnets because now instead of just, oh, okay, strong right means these guys are going to go to the right. But we're doing it with, now you're drawing up terrain. You're talking about like, okay, if there's a train feature between us, do I want to go all the way over there where I can't see these guys and they can't see me? You know, I need to make some adjustments. So you realize that there's flexibility in this as well instead of just this, oh, no, I know I have to go to the right.

I'm going to maneuver whatever distance, you know, is specified in the, in the, in the, in the PowerPoint presentation. So those two things, I think, one, the simplification of it. So it's not just memorize all these things. It's actually fairly a simple concept. You're going forward. You're going back. You're going right. You're going left. It's all cover move. That's the only tactic as you, as you broke down, you know, for us. And then, and then that it's dynamic and how, how you can take this play and make, you know, adjustments for the terrain make adjustments for the enemy being in two different locations and and and that just opened up the our minds I think like okay now I

can apply this in the real world yeah yeah the the fact that you have to use your brain because you're right there was like there was existing powerpoints I don't even know if we made our own we probably did I was probably the type of do those like yeah we're gonna make all these things but there's it so you look through the powerpoints but it's like when you when you when you memorize a phone number. If you look at the phone number and you just type it in over and over and over again and you just look at it every single time, you won't memorize it If you don't look at it and you try and remember that's how you memorize things, right?

So when you're looking at the play and you're like okay if this happens I go there and there's 90 of them You're not gonna be able to remember any of them and and so that's huge and yeah the simplification of listen Here's the thing if you're moving someone's got to cover you if you do that we're gonna be okay like that's It's it. If someone is putting down cover fire, the other people can move. If no one's putting down cover fire, you can't move. And that means someone's got to get a position where they can put down cover fire. And that's another thing I talk about was like, Seth, he thought that, you know, in the

pictures, it looks like it's 10 yards back and he'd be like 10 yards back because that's the standard operating procedure. And I'd be like, bro, can you see anything right now? He's like, well, no, there's a berm there. And I'm like, okay, we'll move up the berm so you can see what's going on. And telling him, you can go where, you can actually go, look. Can you go ahead of the firing line? No, you can't.

Can you go into pre-designated dead space where you might get shot by your own guys? No, you can't. But you know the parameters that you're allowed to maneuver within. Then you should maneuver there. And that's good. So like you pointed out, the flexibility. And I think you guys both probably had a pretty rigid mindset, not recognizing how much flexibility, especially as a person in a leadership position.

Because look, the 60 gunner, you kind of need to know what he's going to be. And he's got tighter parameter. the guys that are set in the doors or set in the dead space, they got to have a tighter parameter. But as a leader, man, you can go wherever you got to go to make things happen. And I think that was very liberating for both you guys. And also the attitude of, you know, a lot of times like, hey, shut up and you're not, shut up and do what you're told to do.

That doesn't help. That's the opposite of training your leaders. And, you know, we had that one event that we were at where I was like, you guys had been trained not to lead. And I kind of felt bad saying it and you got up here like, no, 100%. When you were in your first platoon, you got trained not to lead. Hey, stay over there. You'll be told what to do.

You take the, the huts report. You stand by to, it was like a lot of don't lead. And what's crazy about this is, you know, I had like offline conversations with like a platoon chief. And they'd be like, well, you know, you're sitting here telling the officers to lead. And I'm like, hey, listen to what I'm saying. I'm not just telling the officers to lead. I'm telling the machine gunners to lead. I'm telling the point, man, I want everybody to lead.

That's what they should be doing. Everybody should be doing this. And so don't get into a hissy fit because it's like, oh, well, shouldn't the platoon chief have the tactical safe? What's happening? 100%. Yeah, that's what I'm relying on. That's what I want. I want my platoon chief to handle what's happening.

That's what I'm saying. He's the tactical expert. He's making things happen. Of course. Why are you telling the officer to lead? Well, what do you want the officer to do? Don't you want the officer to figure out where you're going next? Don't you want them to figure out where fires should come in from?

Don't you want them to figure out where Kazavak should land? Or are you going to do all these things yourself? Because you can't. And we all know you can't. It doesn't matter how good you are. You need help. We need help. So I had a lot of those conversations.

And then this is the other thing. And this is true with all these opportunities that you have in whatever business you're in. It's an opportunity to train a team to work together. and solve problems and and that's what you know I was talking to some a unit the other night and we were talking about training and I said when you when you're doing these big training exercises look are they going to be are they going to match the scenario that you're going into and the answer is they might when when I had Bobby Holland on we did we did I forget what the exact numbers, but we did over a hundred urban, sniper, over-watch operations in the Battle of

Ramadi. And I was like, Bobby, do you remember how many we did in Workup? And he's like, he kind of got the puzzle look on his face. Like it's a trick question. It is a trick question. The answer is zero. We did zero urban Overwatch training missions in our workup. But what did we do?

Luckily, we are seals. So our careers and our training is meant. to train you to look at a problem, apply the principles that we have, and solve the problem. So we hadn't done urban sniper, kind of offensive sniper overwatches where the intent was to kill bad guys. But what had we done? Well, we'd done for rural hide sites to set up and observe targets. Okay, well, that, okay, well, how do you do that? Well, you got to set security.

You got to find a good position where you have a good line of sight. You've got to have a defensible position. So we took all those things and just applied them to an urban environment where we're going to set ourselves up not to watch what's happening, but to engage enemy. And so we make these slight adjustments to it. And now all of a sudden we're doing an operation that we really hadn't done in training, but we got it done. And we did a lot of them. Same thing when you guys did the PSD mission. Did you guys get any pre-deployment PSD?

You guys might have gotten some because it was already a running mission. Yeah, the previous, we did in just a couple weeks of it right before we left. And just based on some feedback, and we were kind of scrambling to make that happen. Yeah. But the guys that took over the mission had nothing. They just jumped right into it. Yeah. So here they get hit with this no-fail mission guarding the, what, seven, top seven.

Five. Top five government officials in Iraq that are most likely the biggest targets in the world. Like two of them have been assassinated. Over the previous weeks so there you go these guys had targets on their on their fronts their backs their sides their heads and everywhere else and Seals get tasked with you need to prevent them from dying you to protect them Seals hadn't done that mission look did it like I did when I was at team two we did like a little A little training in it you know we had some guy we work with the secret service they gave us you know so guys had some idea

But essentially as a big unit doing that kind of mission sustained Seal hadn't done that before I hadn't trained for it but we're seals we take we look at the mission we say okay these are the principles that we have we apply our principles to the mission with an open mind and we figure out how to solve it so that's what we learn how to do and that's what our training is and even going back to to buds and I I'm guilty of always saying like oh you don't learn anything in buds you you know it's just a suck fest and you just learn how to not quit but what you do learn is like mayhem and how do you get through mayhem how do you control your emotions

how do you look at these problems because like it's an unsolvable problem right when you when you're you know this better than me because I was a freaking E3 in buds and I had no responsibilities you were a class leader in buds but when you have you know nine boat crews of seven guys each and there's freaking artillery simulators going off, machine guns, it's dark out, and there's total mayhem going on, and they're literally getting told to go in a bunch of different directions, and then they come to you and they're like, Lieutenant Babin, what's the head count? Like, that's a big problem, and you've got to figure it out, and you will learn to adapt, and you'll learn how to be like, okay, I've lost control, what I need to do to get back.

So our whole existence, and again, you know, you want to tie this back to the Navy, Just to the Navy. Let's go full Ben Milligan at this point and go roots of the Navy. Well, when you're on a ship in Whatever 1873 and you're out patrolling somewhere and all of a sudden your mast breaks What do you do? There's no help. There's no radio. You can't call anybody. What do you do? You figure shit out and and and so we become very self-sufficient. We also become it's in our it's in our blood and it's in our hair to look at a problem and figure out how to solve it and that is an important part of training that when you're raising people up you want to not just spoon feed them going back to the timeline the worst thing to do is hey layf here's the project here's the timeline I want you to follow I've given you nothing I've helped you zero in your life but to say hey lay if here's the project

come up with a timeline and we do that in a bunch of little different spaces over time and eventually you're better than I am, and now I can go up to the next level and start doing the next job. So in order to do that, you really have to, in your organization, make training a part of the culture, the culture of the organization.

That's what you have to. Training and creating leaders has to be inherent in your culture. And cultures, culture is a huge culture is really the essence of an organization right if you don't have if you don't have a good culture you're not going to have a good organization it's funny when you were telling my daughter this morning we were kind of talking about this beforehand and and you were telling her about you're like yeah when your dad changed our name because we were

talking we're sitting around talking about culture and leadership with my daughter and what happens and Laif's like you know when your dad said hey we're not not tasking to Bravo anymore. We're tasking a bruiser. He, in Leif's like, you know what? First we were kind of like, what is this all about? And he's like, 24 hours later, we're like, we're a bruiser. It was, it was immediate.

But, and then she was like, she goes, oh, you did that? And I was like, yeah, I did that. They don't know what the hell's going on. They're like, oh, you were in the Navy? I was like, yeah, I was in the Navy. So whenever I think about culture, and this is one of the topics that you were, you were talking about that you mentioned, you thought it would be good to cover because we we always get asked about culture few components that I think

about when I think a culture in order to build a good culture we talk about them a lot of Deschal upfront but setting a good example making sure that you explain the history and you propagate the story of the organization you have material items like you know this is patches and and that type of thing. Rewarding good behavior. And I don't like to use this word because it's extreme, like penalize bad behavior.

That doesn't, but so I usually say mitigate bad, bad behavior. And then the last one, which I added, I was thinking about this yesterday. Language. Language becomes culture. So I wanna go through a couple of these things. The one I wanna start with is, from about face I just want to read this little chunk from about face if you guys don't mind it's a good book from what I from what I can tell if trust troops were proud and they were and if trust troops were disciplined and they most certainly were then I and our trust troops were the proudest of the proud the most disciplined of the disciplined our platoon sergeant Steve Prezanka was the ultimate taskmaster he quickly became my mentor and my hero the one I will

wanted to be like when I grew up and had a whole bunch of stripes of my own guided by his firm hand the iron art platoon was an outstanding unit without a doubt the best in the regiment if you learn it right you'll do it right for the rest of your life presenka would growl as the endless repetition of one thing or another began to take its toll on his charges if you learn it wrong you'll do it wrong and you'll spend the rest of your life trying to learn how to do it right thanks to him we learned it right first time around we learned about weapons our enemies how to disassemble ours and our enemies how to disassemble assemble and fire them we spent days training in the woods learning about camouflage woodcraft creeping scouting and observing we became experts in what presenka called snooping and pooping

all under his watchful eye we had an hours close order drill every day using the drills of the 30s and if presenka didn't like the way we did them he turned back to the old field manual which he Red, close order drill is the foundation of all discipline and throw another hours worth on top of us. Holding a 9.5 pound M1 rifle at right shoulder arms isn't exactly a breeze at any time. And often by the time Sergeant got through to us, our right hands would be locked stiff in the M1 grip position for hours, somehow not getting the word that the weapon wasn't there anymore. The importance of close order drill could not be overestimated. The discipline instilled was that which would maintain.

order in a chaotic battlefield. You're in a life or death situation out there, Prezanka would say. When you hear an order, you don't respond in 10 seconds or 10 minutes. You respond now. Unless you want to get yourself or your buddy blown in half. And I don't want any of this Simon says shit either. When I move, move, move. When I say stop, stop.

When I say knock out that machine gun, you knock out that machine gun. I don't want you to think about it. Just do it. Prazenka made the made out the training schedule we marched to the tune he played and loved him for it He commanded our respect effortlessly it seemed He was 22 years old and he'd been through it all dude. That's so crazy right he'd been through it all An I and R man from basic training onward he'd been with the 28th bloody bucket division IonR in World War II and was captured after a painful cat and mouse game with the Nazis deep behind shattered US lines during the battle the bulge he was just a total pro the finest

fairest platoon sergeant who ever came down the track who knew as much about soldiering as an Alabama Bible bashing preacher knows about the good book he could double time 10 miles first thing in the morning regardless of what he drunk the night before sometimes he'd come roaring into our barracks at 0500 still loaded to the eyeballs from a wild night partying shouting out of those sacks boys let go your cocks and grab your socks it's time to go for a run and off we'd go so you know he starts that off by saying he became my mentor and hero the one I wanted to be when I grew up so that's what we have when I talk about setting an example when you

have people when you want to create a culture inside your organization you do it by setting the example and if you're not setting the example you're well Let me rephrase that. Whatever example you set, that is going to influence the culture. That's gonna become the culture. We got. Yeah, I was just thinking about,

you asked what I learned at the Naval Academy and earlier, and I learned a lot from a lot of great, wonderful people. And they taught me how to take care of my people. And they taught me about what my role as an officer was. And we learned a lot about administrative duties and how to navigate ships and, uh,

set up, set up stakes, you know, in foxholes at Quantico to mark your, you know, firing positions. But I think the, what's interesting about this, you know, I think that is pushing the standard high from someone who was at the Battle of the Bulge, you know, who is, who experienced the worst possible combat scenario you could be a part of. And I think realizing that, man, I'm not taking care of my people if I don't get them ready for that. And I think that was the thing, you know, just coming up in the peacetime Naval Academy and the fleet beyond that. And then as I went through training, I don't think a single of my buds instructors

had any kind of combat experience when I was going through. I mean, I got picked up for September 2001, and then I went through training in 2002. And there were great people. And they taught me and pushed me. But I think that level of recognition of this is hard. And if you're not ready for this worst case scenario, like you're gonna get killed, you're gonna get captured, all these horrible things are gonna happen,

like what the stakes are, why the standards should be pushed that hard. And I think that's, I can only imagine that, kind of like you asking us the question of like, are we ready for that worst case scenario? I'm sure that someone like Steve Brzeke was asking those questions regularly to young Hackworth, and his peers, just to push that of the culture of like,

this is what we got to be ready for. We have to be ready for the worst case scenario. And I think if you don't, if you haven't experienced it, then you think you're good to go. You know, it's like the person that doesn't train Jiu-Jitsu and thinks, hey, they're an athlete, you know, maybe they're a vet. They can take care of themselves. You know, they're five and O in the streets.

or the bar fights they've been in their life. And then they walk. Five and O against my little brother. They walk in on the Jitsu mats and you realize like, oh, I'm not near as good as I thought I was. That guy who's half my size just choked me out in about 30 seconds. So I think any time that that's what training should be is, you know, is setting people up for, as you said, pushing them.

And it's not an immediate thing that, but certainly iterative steps like that. But I think for the folks that know better, like, Steve Bresenka, I mean, that is your job as a leader. And obviously he did that in a tremendous way that had a lifelong impact on Hackworth, and I'm sure so many others. And there have been many people like that throughout my career, certainly, you know, that took the time to train and mentor me and pass on lessons learned. And I think that's, you know, as I took over, as we came back from Ramadi,

was just being humbled every day on just, you know, with some really difficult urban combat situations and something that was only a tiny fraction of what I can only imagine of someone like, you know, Przanka saw at the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, every time I read about history and I think I've experienced something in combat, you're like, man, I haven't done anything,

I haven't seen anything. You read about what others have been through and what they've done. And I just, I think taking over the junior officer training course, I always was just trying to think, what do I wish someone had taught me before I was in those positions. And trying to pass those lessons on.

I know that's exactly what you did at trying to attachment. And not just to the officers, but to the chiefs and to the squad leaders and the fire team leaders and the individual shooters that are stepping up. And I think, yeah, I mean, that's the duty. That's the duty of every leader, I think, is just, and when you say that, you know, building into the culture,

that's got to be the culture of the team. And so it becomes not just leader, is holding their people accountable, but other people on the team that realize what the standards are and why we got to be better. We got to set the standard. We got to push hard. When everybody on the team understands why, then you've got this peer pressure that says, hey, man, your gear's not squared away. What's up with that? You know, that's not what we do here.

You better get your stuff ready to go. And I think that becomes just powerful at every level of an organization when that's the culture of the team. Yeah, and it's important to remember that just like Hackworth was watching Prezenka and emulating him, that's what's happening to you when you're in a leadership position. The team is watching you. They're judging you. And if their judgment is positive, they're going to emulate you. And if their judgment is negative, well, they're not going to do anything that you want them to do. And so that's why that's why your example is a leader.

And by the way, that means your middle manager. means you're front line not in charge of anyone you people still I can tell you so many times where I was like like when I was in trade at and I'm out there and I see some freaking new guy and he's just getting after it like I'm getting inspired by a guy that's just holding the corner with his with his mark 48 just laying it down and just like trying to give direction you're like dude this is freaking awesome so it doesn't matter if you're a front line guy doesn't matter You are still impacting the culture of the organization and if you think about that That you know that's that's that's that's one of those things that if you think about the impact that you're having to your organization

By the way this includes your family by the way this includes your friends You know that friend that's like stepping up and is and is doing something and you're like man I got to do this too now like that's what it is that's you're you're you have culture amongst your friends and when that culture is like let's get better let's do better Let's hold this high standard. That is how we develop cultures in our families, with our friends, and in our organizations. I was going to say that, you know, obviously when I was teaching that course, we had four weeks of classroom, a week-long field training exercise. And I tried to cram as much of that stuff as I could. Obviously, you were the, you know, the first first person coming to talk to those, the Jock brief.

But I think one of the things I was most proud of is, you know, I think for a lot of guys like me that came out of the Naval Academy or RTCC, or OCS that weren't a Mustang officer, somebody who was commissioned prior enlisted, I didn't really have that visibility. You know, you don't understand. It's harder to realize that you got those eyes on you, you know, from the folks on your team that are looking at you and that you have to live

and set that standard. And Bobby Homm was one of the guys I brought in every time to come in and talk to the class, along with a couple other awesome seal enlisted leaders. and I just got to, they got to sit in there and hear, okay, what did you respect in the officers that you admire and you're like working for? What did you not respect? You know, what did you, what are some things that people did that, that lost respect, you know,

and that, or that you had disdain for, and so they got to see that perspective. And I think it's hard to see that. It's hard to detach and see how the world views you. Some people do that better than others. It's certainly not an eight, I think, in most of us. And I think that was something that you certainly instilled in me. And I try to instill in others as well when they can see that perspective of, hey, let me tell you what I saw in some people that I had no respect for, we'd never want to work for again.

One of the biggest shortfalls that you can have as a human being and as a leader is not understanding that other people can see what's happening. Like when you think that you're pulling the wool over somebody's eyes, you, you look so dumb. And it's just terrible. It's a lack of self-awareness. And there's actually that, uh, when we had Jimmy May on, he was talking about going through buds and they were doing all these psychological surveys. And one of the things they found was if, if the way a guy viewed himself matched the way he was viewed by his team, he had a better chance of making it through.

Even if he viewed himself as like, hey, I'm not sure I belong here, but I'm going to give it my best shot. And the team thought, well, I don't know if he should really be here. He seems like he's working hard though. That guy has a better chance of making it

than someone that has an attitude of like, I definitely deserve to be here, and I'm going to make it. And the team thinks, oh, he's probably not going to make it. Of course, there's anomalies and it's not 100%. But what that tells us, me is you know when you think of yourself a certain way and other people see you in a

really different way that's gonna be a problem and when I'd run in when we'd have officers that were having issues it was always that right it was always the officer that thought that no one saw him you know skip out of the weapons cleaning like he thinks oh they think I just have to go work on a brief they know that he didn't go work on a brief they know that he just didn't want to get his freaking hands dirty or when it's time to pick up brass and it's like, well, you know, gents, I've got to head back for a meeting. They know that you can get out of that meeting.

They know that 100%. And you think that they don't. And it's just absolutely terrible. So you should, in your mind, kind of like when I talk about leadership capital, like you should walk around like your bank account's almost empty, you should act as if the intent of what you're doing is printed on your forehead.

Right? That's how you should act. You should act like if I'm gonna skip picking up the brass because I don't it's gonna be hot out there I should act as if I have I'm skipping this because I don't want to be hot and freaking walking around the desert for the next day and a half Because when I go into regardless of what I tell Laif hey Laif I gotta go back and we've got a meeting I've got a meeting with a skipper So you guys go ahead and clean a brass if I say that I do I promise you what Laif is reading is the card on my forehead that says I'm Don't want to work I don't want to get my hands

dirty. So just think about that. You should always think that your intent is printed on your forehead because it might as well be. It just might as well be. And this is how we're setting the example. So if you think you're setting a good example, but you're really skirting around and you're doing things, nefarious things or you're cutting corners, you're being lazy, I promise you. They see it. And here's the thing. Here's a key point. If you're listening this right now and you think that, well, Jock was wrong about this, you're the person I'm talking to. I'm literally talking to you right now. If you're the person that's like, well, I'm really good at like kind of, I can act out, I can act pretty well. The team doesn't know that I just don't, that I'm leaving early. The

team doesn't know that I'm skipping this. The team doesn't know that I'm nervous about. All that stuff that you think they don't know. I promise you, I promise you, they know. And that's why it's good to have Bobby, when you're teasing the JLs, have Bobby Holland come in there and be like, Oh yeah, I had this officer that I work for and when it's time to clean what clean weapons. He would never be there. He always said he had to go do the the AAR like oh oh really. Okay. We got it. You don't have to do that AAR. You don't have to you can do it later. It's not do there's no due data on it. You don't want to do this extra work and by the way. Oh, it's extra work. Yeah, you're the officer in charge. You have extra work. You're making more money. You're responsible for all this shit. So for you to do some extra work? Yeah.

And I'll tell you what, there's sometimes where the boys will be like, hey, sir, I know you got to do this. They'll kick you out of that shit. That happens. Great. If that happens, you can resist and then they'll be like, dude, no, give me that.

I had that happen many times in my career. Hey, we got this. Get out of here. You did that to me a thousand times. Hey, Jock, go. Get out of here. We got this. That happens to me today at Eschlam Front.

That happened to you and me at Eselam Front a year ago, whatever. We were trying to help freaking prep for whatever. And Jamie's like, We were stuffing bags for the council. Jamie's like, you guys could get out of here. Yeah, because we were more because we were just messing things up. But you set the example, though, Jocko, and that's what you're talking, right?

As a leader, you got to set the example for the culture. And whether it was going out and pick up brass, I'd never seen anyone do that before. There wasn't even an expectation that you'd be there to help pick up brass. But you're there just picking a brass. They're like, oh, dang, Chaco's here picking up brass. And then what also was crazy is the dives. You might think this is weird, but in the SEAL teams, seals absolutely hate diving and getting in the water for whatever reason.

Many SEALs. Some SEALs, yes, many SEALs. And they would try to do everything they can't avoid it to be in wet, you know, cold water. And we used to joke with Chris Kyle about that. He'd be like, no, we have some sniper training set up. And then the sniper training fell off. It's like, hey, Chris, you're going to join us for the dive? He's like, no, no, I've got an eardrum issue.

I was like, when did you have this eardrum? It's the first I'm hearing about it. It's like when I was in SQT, which is like five years ago. Five years before that, yeah. So I was like, you sure you have an ear drum issue? Like, dude, get your stuff ready. We're diving. But you just showed up to the dives.

And you weren't even, you weren't leading the dives. And if you're on a combat dive, particularly if you're doing like a pole dive or everyone's just hanging on to like this painter pole underwater, all you're, all you're literally, you're in the dark. It's nighttime. You can't see anything. You're literally holding onto a pole and just kicking for, two hours or three hours or whatever and and that's all like jocco would just show up and do it like and uh i'd

never even seen that before people and it was something that just it definitely built in the culture of the team like hey man we're all in this thing together like we're we're we're gonna train together we're gonna push the standards together and uh i'm here and i'm gonna be a part of this thing and i think it's we we started kicking you out we realized like hey man you know we know you got stuff to do and we got this. I never thought, I never thought for a millisecond not doing evolutions.

Like that was not a thing to me. I didn't understand. When you told, I don't know when you first told me, like, we were kind of like fired up that you were doing the dives. You probably told me that like three years ago

and I was like, really? Like, what would the task unit commander do? Sit around? You know? Like, that just doesn't make sense to me.

And again, that's because I had guys like Delta Charlie that, first guy to step up and be like oh we got something shitty to do I'm going first let's go cool so setting the example is how you start to spread culture that's kind of number one um the big piece about making sure that people understand the history and there was I'm not going to read from about face on this um but one of my favorite examples of that the Marine Corps does this all the time the Marine Corps when you go and read their doctrinal material about operations about

squad leaders about leadership they just put in their historical things that Marines have done that are awesome and that's what you get you get this is though it's not doesn't say this is how a Marine supposed to be that's the underlying mission message of everything that the Marine Corps produces is this is the way a Marine should be and actually what's interesting I just remember this in the squad leader makes a difference which is a book that kind of just shows how what they want is decentralized command what they want as leaders to lead what they want as subordinate leaders to step up and lead so they made a thing called the squad leader makes a difference and it's just all these stories

about squad leaders but there's there's a couple stories in there that are bad and the squad leader doesn't step up and the squad leader doesn't and everything falls apart and people die and so they're showing you historically what you're supposed to be like in Ramadi amazing to go into those army battalions marine corps battalion headquarters and they brought their historical documentation with they bought their battle streamers with them like how awesome is that with the 137 you walk in there they got articles hanging up from world war two how does not an impact you're an 18 year old soldier or you're a 35 year old seal like me and you're like in there like hell yeah this is this is awesome so i remember as we were briefing uh for before uh cop falcon and launching on that uh that that that

i remember colonel to desko standing up and saying this is the most historic thing that that the 137 band it's a bit a part of since the since the ardennes forest and you know it just i think living that history and making sure that everybody's aware of that stuff it was i was all fired up to you Like, let's do this. Yeah. This is awesome. And look, you don't have to be a military organization to do this. You have a company.

You have a team. You have a sports team. You're a high school sports team. That's why they hang up those banners, right? That's why they hang up the banners in the wrestling room of who won state. Who won masters. Who won C? That's why they do that.

They're trying to create that culture inside the organization. That's why they do it in the NBA. They look up at the rafters. That's literally a thing, right? Hang. Oh, they're going to hang your number from the rafters. I mean, come on. Why are they doing that?

The culture, like the Celtics, bro. I mean, you know, the Boston Garden Park in the day, right? That place was like it was, it was culture. It was the culture that propelled and made the Celtics, the Celtics. So, and you can do that, whatever organization you're with. And we see that now. You know, you go into a good company that cares about its culture, and they're going to have the article up on the wall.

that they opened a new building or they built this finish this project or they whatever they're gonna they're gonna talk about their history and what they've done and that becomes part of the culture and it drives the culture and it gives people something to be proud of so that's another huge thing that you can do to develop culture inside your organization rewarding good behavior that sports the culture and mitigating behavior that does not support the culture What does that mean? Well, in the military, we have an award system.

And believe us, it is far from perfect. But it does reward people for doing the right things. And you only get, if you look at the definition of the awards, they are 100% aligned with the culture of the organization. That's what they are. Even the administrative awards. They're aligned with the, with the culture of the organization.

That's what they're there for, is to grab this culture and move people in the right direction. And then when people do things that are outside the culture, you got to give them a little bit of a beat down. I mean, whether that's holding, you ever been to one of those public captainsmasters masks? You ever been to one of those? Oh, yeah.

Laif, did you ever go to a public captain's mask where somebody screwed up on the ship and they're like, all hands? I don't know if I went to an all hands one. I certainly was in some captain's mass. Dude. I, those all hands captain's mass when someone really screws up and they're like, yeah,

fan tail or what it was, the air deck. What the hell? Why can I think? What's the name on an LCD? What's the name of the, where the Hilo land? Flight deck.

Flight deck. Yeah, flight deck, all hands. Freaking 16 Hyundai. Boom. The punishment gets meted out right there. What is that? What are we trying to do?

We're trying to make the guy, look bad, we're trying to make him feel bad? No, we're trying to mitigate the impact of negative behavior for our culture of our organization. Now look, do I recommend freaking all hands, you know, dropping the hammer? In some cases, in some cases, yeah, it is, if you've got someone that's done something that we can't have inside of our culture, man, you got to, you got to kind of make an example out of them. That's the word, right? And a lot of times, that has a negative connotation. Oh, they're trying to make an example.

Actually, I am trying to make an example out of you. I don't want anyone else to do this dumb shit that you just did. So everyone's going to sit here and watch this captain's mask go down and they're going to see the punishment that I give you. And I want everyone to understand how jacked up this is. So there's a reason for that. That's, to me, is that's the kind of a great example of trying to mitigate bad behavior for the culture.

And guess what else they do? And this, this I know we've all seen. Where do you get your awards? Do you get your bronze star with a V? Do you get that in the mail? You shouldn't because that doesn't help our culture. You should get it in front of the command. Everyone should be there.

They should all be seeing. Oh, this guy did what seals are supposed to do. He's being recognized and rewarded for it. That's what it is. And it should mean something. So those are some things that you can do as a leader. Reward when people. That's why they have, you know,

It's literally why they have employee of the month at Chick-fil-A, right? It's like, hey, this person did what they're supposed to do. They set a great example. We're going to award them in front of everybody, and everyone's going to clap, especially at Chick-fil-A. They're like, oh, we did it. Right? They're fired up.

Hey, we got a 16-year-old kid that's treating people with respect showing up on time. Like, they're knocking it out of the park. Good job. Employee of the month. That's what we're doing. They get a freaking sticker or a tag, right? That's what's happening. When I was at OCS, if you were on your name tag, you had like whatever you were the top in was, you could be military, academic and physical.

If you were in the top of those, so if you were like had the high academic score, you get, it says, you know, academics. If you were a high military, you get military. Or what is it, military professionals? No, it was like military bearing? or something like that. And then physical. And then if you got them all, you had a white name tag.

They called it the snowflake. And when you're wrapping that snowflake, you're like, yo, you know what I'm saying? Look, I was in the freaking seal teams. I'd been in the seal teams for eight years. And I showed up at OCS and got that snowflake, bro. That's kind of fired up.

Jocko was a snowflake holder? I got it fired up for that snowflake, boys. Yeah. Hell yeah. So those are some things you can think about. Now, I was going to say that Napoleon's quote about it. There you go. It's incredible what a man will do and risk his life for a worthless piece of ribbon. And I think just that public recognition of effort is awesome.

Anytime that you can do that to show people what the standard looks like. And I just want to say, too, when you're talking about mitigating, you know, underperformance, I mean, we wrote in extreme ownership, it's not what you preach, what you tolerate. You have to hold the standard high. You have to push the standard high for all the reasons we just talked about to prepare people and make sure that they're ready to go take on the real world challenges that they're up against so they can be successful in what they're trying to do in business and life anywhere. But it doesn't have to be drop the hammer on people.

And I think that's oftentimes. I mean, I think about how you typically did that in tasking a bruiser. And oftentimes it was just kind of asking some questions about like, hey, do you think that helps? us out, you know, like, is that, do you think this improves our chances of getting a chance, you know, going to Iraq? And so I think there's, we're all trying to, you know, at that time, we're trying to battle the, what task is going to get chosen to be able to get sent to fight the war and other people are going to go to the Pacific theater and train and not, you know, be able to participate in combat operations. So you just related that back to like, okay,

here's the standard. And if you don't meet that standard, that's going to affect what, you know, our employment overseas and how we're actually going to be utilized and that affects everybody, not just you, but every single person on the team. And so I think it's just whether you're asking some earnest questions and letting them come to that example or just saying like, hey, we need to let's redo that. We're going to redo something that needs to be redone until we get to the quality that we need to or we have the standard that's actually achieved. And I think just making sure that you're holding the line on that. And it doesn't have to be like, you're used. screwed up I'm dropping the hammer can simply just be hey do you think that helps us and and

oftentimes quite a few things that I got myself involved who we're not helping us get where we wanted to go you know what's interesting now I I wanted to address this when we started this thing off but I forgot about it and I didn't have a note because you're talking about you're throwing it out there like well we could have either gone to a place where there's no war going on or we can go to Iraq where there's a war going on. We all wanted to go to Iraq. That was like the biggest threat I could give the hardest question I could ask you is like Leif, do you think that's going to help us get to Iraq? And you'd be like no, I'll never do it again. Like we and in that opening thing that I wrote we pray for war and look I understand that people are not going to that's not

going to make sense to people. I get it. I get it. But even if that doesn't make sense to you, let me tell you something. Just right now, if that doesn't make sense to you that we have Men praying for war right now if that doesn't make sense to you and you think it's awful Just do me a favor and just close your eyes for a second to say thank you To say thank you to say thank you that those people exist because they do and they are ready to fight They're ready to sacrifice they're ready to die for this country and yeah do they go a little bit hard in the paint might they even go a little bit overboard and pray for war yep, but let me tell you I think I'm thankful that they're there because they're the ones that who's going to step up if they're not who is what

kind of what kind of who's going to step up that's right there aren't people that are going to step up so that's who's going to war so be thankful for those warriors that are out there holding the line um next thing material items and i i still haven't that that's not the best name for for these material items i haven't thought of a better name for it because it includes all kinds of stuff that's the best I've come up with is like you know patches obviously that's a big subject and tea bruiser I'm glad that you've come you've fully come around to the idea that patches are important patches um uh t-shirts the old jaco from uh 2006 might have disagreed but that statement yeah and we'll get into that in a second um let me let me read something real quick from about

face when I arrived at Fort Campbell in January 1965 the cluster of World War two barracks shroud in a cloud of coal smoke didn't it all resemble my mental image of the home of the 101st Airborne Division the Army's premier fighting force but I didn't have a lot of time to think about the 101st was definitely the big leagues to make your mark in such a unit a second lieutenant had to hit the ground running and those of us from the class of 64 did just that we worked hard and we played hard and we were damn proud to be members of the best team in the US Army that screaming eagle patch meant a hell of a lot.

And that's John D. Howard, platoon leader, 101st Airborne Division, Republic of Vietnam, 1965 and 1966. There you go. That patch, what does it mean?

You know? And if we were to, just when I said out, we'll get into that, look, to me, well, and I think to you too,

our patches were totally out of control. And we were so far, we were so far leaning, And SEALs are so far leaning into being unprofessional, and not on professional. They're so leaning into looking non-military, I had to kind of take more extreme measures to bring us back so we look like people that may at least had a chance of being in the military. Because it's funny, you know, we'll talk about how like, yeah, Taskin a Bruser, they were,

you know, all the same uniforms. But compared to the rest of the military, like not even close, you know. Everyone has different boots on. I mean, there's just a bunch of different things going on. But yes, I was not as open-minded as I am now about the patches, about the stickers. But you know, Hackworth ended up giving out patches in a couple times in his career. That was a big deal to him. And, you know, they have the little, what's on the hardcore ricondo shirts that we have,

that little arrowhead. That's what he gave patches and sewed him on. He had Tiger Force when he was in Vietnam before, gave him like, what was it? black berets with some red insignia on it. And he talks about it. He let them wear tiger stripe uniforms. Why? He talks about that made them feel good, feel special.

You put that thing on. You were talking about the other day, K dog. You put on that deaf core shirt. You see that X flag and you're like, hey, look, I got to kind of represent. Can you wear a deaf core shirt with an X flag and be in a Dunkin' Donuts? You shouldn't be. It's a violation. Anybody in the game is going to kind of probably have a chance.

with you but they're not in there so you can kind of get away with it right they're not in Dunkin Donuts but you know but you know Yeah you'll police yourself you'd have been proud of K dog when we when he was out for our marketing and media team The death core symbol going up with the whiteboard stayed there the whole time Represent it's a thing though right it's a thing when you wear it you elevate and look there is There is something it for us that And we kind of come accustomed to it and maybe free it, but like the trident, like your, your trident when you get your trident and when you wear your trident and when you put your trident on. That's that you should you should wear that trident and you should be thinking about the price that has been paid for that for that thing to shine the way it does. and when you think about that, man, like you are going to look squared away.

If you put on that, if you put that triton on your uniform and you think about the price that's been paid to make that thing shine the way it does, you're going to polish your boots. You're going to polish your shoes. You're going to freaking make sure your shit is squared away. That's the way I feel, you know, and I know that's the way it's supposed to feel. And that's what he's talking about here with 101st Airborne. You put on that patch, you know, that means something. I'm giving you a hard time about it, obviously, because you forbid patches.

But obviously, there is plenty of good reason for that. And even I can see that. But what was cool about it is, I mean, the reason you didn't drop the hammer on us, which we wrote about the Academy Leadership, is because I think you recognize why we had those patches made. And that was something that just gave us an identity that people wore with pride. and and that's that's I can't I can't help but imagine that played certainly a significant role in that decision yeah and I mean the fact of the matter is since I

told you couldn't wear patches everyone freaking spray painted a damn 18 inch Punisher skull on their freaking body armor so it was like went from this little subdued thing to like hey we're here Punisher skulls are in the house let's go so yeah Did you really follow the intent that you followed the letter of the law, but not the intent? I remember, dude, we had some kind of a senior officer came to visit. And we had Punisher Skulls on all of the 50 cow like. Yeah. Yeah. I, I kanked that one.

Yeah, you, you're like, no, we have to pay it over that. It was good. It was on all the vehicles too, on all the sides of vehicles. Yeah. You overruled. I had to kank that one because, and the reason I thought was like, didn't make sense for a lot of reasons. but you know like having these clearly identifiable marks to the world seemed like it maybe wasn't the best idea so we we straighten that out it looked cool for a couple

days though it did look pretty cool for a couple days we did we definitely complied it made sense to be you talked to me that like yeah okay that makes sense we'll get rid of it so obviously there's a balance to any of this stuff yeah but there is something you know about about naming you know what and when you you you had General Mukiam on, he was talking about how a hackworth, he used words to motivate. And I think, you know, whether it's changing the name from Tasking of Brover to Tasking a Bruiser, you know, or the hard luck battalion to the hardcore recondos, there's something powerful in that. And then when you're talking about patches, when you're talking about, you

know, gear, the Def Corps, you know, symbol, like there is, you realize you're representing for that. You can see that. Kerry's like, I'm representing for DefCore. This is, what we got to think about. And that is a high standard that we all have to work to achieve, the highest possible standard all the time. And I think the more that you do that, I think, as a leader, it just builds that into the culture of the team where people take real pride in that. And it's a pretty special thing. I think when you can look around and look at other folks and they don't have that patch, you're someone with that patch. And that's, you know, even, I know, Stoner and his guys

when they they were given that you know that spade spade patch by the first of 506 task force Red Curry he you know one of first airborne guys and and uh they certainly wore that with tremendous pride

yeah yeah and just FYI does this mean if you're in a leadership position you can make some patch and start giving it to people and it's going to have meaning nope it has to have some inherent value and that that inherent value has to be is that it has to be earned in some way so it's like you know getting a black belt

jiu jitsu if you can go down to a store and buy a black belt then what does it mean but when you get a black belt in jiu jitsu you you earned it when so so you can't just make things up and just start throwing them around you people got to earn it otherwise it has no meaning so think about that as well um the other thing and this is the one that i just i said i was kind of just added this in my in my thoughts around culture and developing culture is the language that you use and I mean I started throwing down some of these languages that I've used over the years or that I've heard over the years but you know you just mentioned hardcore recondo no fucking slack I started this thing off with like that was 2010 I wrote that email like no fucking slack's

been a part of my gig for a whole long ass time and I'm freaking Land Warfare guys gave me that shotgun. It says no fucking slack on it. But there you go. That's that language. And even Hackworth talks about it in the book, he's like, I, the guys, I knew they would think it was cheesy at first, but I knew over time it would start to sink in. And you're like, oh, okay.

So, you know, in Tasking a Bruiser, just BTF and think about, you know, what does that do to your culture? How does that change the culture of the organization of the team when you have something that everybody knows what it means and it and it means something that's going to help the team btf big tough frog man can you say btf and be like well i'm not sure if if i want to do this hard work nope doesn't work doesn't work doesn't work just btf so there's that i was in a platoon where we said right and tight it was a team too everything's right and tight like hey we need to be right and tight we were all we just said we went crazy with this term but guess what it did all of a sudden

there was a there was an underlying driving force that everyone wanted to be right and tight which is and the platoon is right and tight that's the way it was um even just the language that you're using that aren't necessarily like a slogan or a mantra of any kind but just the language that you use and you know, check, no factor. Like, no factor is not really a big slogan, but how does that change the organization? How many times has someone at Eschelon front, there's been some situation going on

and someone's like, no factor? Like, we got this. That's very common. So how does that change someone's attitude and how does that change, if it changed one's person's attitude? And all of a sudden, that organization is all thinking the same way,

which is, oh, we've got a problem, no factor. That is a part of the culture. My first platoon, always go out. Always go out. And look, this wasn't necessarily the most positive thing because what they meant was go out like go out partying. I always tried to bend it to be like always go out on the op.

There was no ops going on. So I was just full of shit. But the attitude of like always go out, it affected me. I'd be like, hey, always go out. That's what we're doing. Okay, cool. It took me a long time to realize that I didn't have to always go out when it came to party in the town. I remember I came to that conclusion living over, you know, here in San Diego back in the dam.

I'm like, you know what, it's Friday night? I actually don't have to go out to me. It's not a bandit. I'm not going to do that. Dude, I remember when we started working together in Taskin a Bruiser and one of my good buddies from Steel Team 5. I'd just, I'd been at Steel Team 5, so I'd spent two years there, you know, my first combat department to Iraq and, done their workup. And then I shifted over to Steel Team 3. And I remember him saying he was, you know, he knew, he knew Seth Stone as well. So we're all hanging out together. And he came out

and met me, you and Seth out when we were in Tasking, Bruiser. And he was like, all you guys sound the same. All you guys sound the same. And that's what he was talking about. We were saying no factor. We were saying get after it. We were saying standby to get some. We were saying like We were all using the same language that everybody used in Tasking and a Bruiser. And it was, he was making the comment that, and really, I think what it was is recognition of the influence that you had on me and on Seth Stone that he knew well, you know, both of us well. And but everyone is talking like that.

And everyone has this kind of same attitude. And I think that just, that's a powerful culture when everyone's thinking the same way. We know what we're going to do. And we can make decisions about what we need. to do. Oh, there's a challenge. There's an obstacle that comes up. Cool. No factor. We're going to figure out a way to figure out a way to get this problem solved so we can accomplish our mission. Oh, it's really hard. Cool. We're going to be T.F. We're going to BTF. Oh, this is a really dangerous operation. We're taking some risk here. Cool. We're going to BTF. No one can go into

that area. No, no U.S. force have been in there. Are you sure you want to go there? We're going to BTF. We're going to BTF in. Big mix it up. B. out and go get some big chow go go criteria you know everyone else had no go criteria like if this happens it's a no go if this happens it we had go go because we're going that's a good attitude to have even you take you know in the marine corps close with and destroy the enemy you hear that and that's the language that we're using and believe me i've adopted that language as you could hear in that opening thing like that's a powerful thing oh what's our purpose in life Close with and destroy the enemy.

Okay. That's what we're thinking about. So, yeah, language that you use is going to impact the culture. And what's interesting, when you look at different groups of people, start paying attention to the language that they're using. And it's going to indicate to you what their culture is like. So those are some things that I think really have a big impact on culture. Setting the example, knowing the history and propagating the history.

rewards and mitigation for proper and improper behavior that's supporting the the culture of the organization material items the patches the t-shirts the banners all those things those those are absolutely a a part of the culture you know what's funny is even uh one of our mutual friends johnny he's always like he talks about the fact that he could see us and we didn't have helmet covers on, right? So the Army, even our guys with ACUs, we didn't have helmet covers. So an Army guy would have full ACUs and an Army ACU helmet cover. Our guys had full, or some of our guys had full ACUs, no helmet cover.

And wherever he'd see it, he'd be like, oh, yeah, you go tell it was you guys, freaking no, no helmet coverage out there and just getting all fired up. And again, it's like those little things, they start to develop a life of their own. So good for culture. Let me say one more thing about setting the example. And that is, you know, we were talking about this and you said you weren't even thinking about it. You know, when you came out to do, go do a dive or pick up brass. But I think for leaders out there, when there's something hard that's going on, when there's something difficult, when people are having to stay late or work on the weekends, that is an opportunity.

That's a softball that's getting pitched at you for you to just crack out of the park. when you show up, even though people know you don't have to, you show up, you're there with your team, you're setting the example. That is such a great way to build that culture by setting an example and build leadership capital with your team. Don't miss an opportunity like that. When there's something hard going on, sure, it's easy to stay in your bed or not come in early or stay late or miss watching your kids soccer game on the weekend or whatever it may be. But if your people or they're working, there's something hard going on, go get in there, go set the example.

It's such an awesome opportunity to be a part of the team and create that culture. And there's other people going to do that too. They're going to emulate that behavior if you do it as well. I'm not down about it. The kind of the last thing I was thinking about,

you'd sent to me sort of some topics, and I think this is one of the ones that just ties in across the board, ties into training, ties into culture. and this is taking care of your people. And, you know, I know you already mentioned that you learned at the Naval Academy, take care of your people, take care your people, take care your people. I learned in Navy boot camp, take care of your people, take care of your people, take care of your people.

This is a mantra that gets beat into us and it can go a little off the rails from time to time. What do I mean by that? What sometimes you just decide not to take care of your people? No, it's just that sometimes, sometimes. People think taking care of your people is giving them whatever they want and Not pushing them to help them get better so you look at a great way to think about it was just think of a kid a little kid Take care of your kid what does that mean? They want cotton candy give them cotton candy They want ice cream give them ice cream they want to sit around and play video games let them sit around and play video games

We all know that's not going to help them Same thing with your if you're in the military. Oh take care of your people. Let me them go home early you know let them skip work don't check their equipment like do the let them get out of shape let them skip PT you're taking care of them oh yeah I'm taking care of my people no you're not taking care of your people you're you're going to get them to a point where they're not capable and in fact you're doing worse than that you're setting them up to get killed in combat that's what you're doing business same thing I'm taking care of my people and to cut them loose early I'm not going to check their goals on a weekly basis or a daily basis or whatever,

monthly basis to make sure that they're moving in the right direction. So taking care of your people doesn't mean coddling them. It doesn't mean babying them. It means discipline. That's what it means. It means discipline. And it means not imposing discipline on them, but what we want to do is we want to do is we want to create a culture of discipline inside the organization so the discipline doesn't come

from outside it comes from inside the person inside the team that's where we want it to come from and can you go too far with that yes you absolutely can 100% um we want to drive you know just having uh danica patrick on you talk about driving right what are you doing you're driving you're driving that thing as fast as you can what happens if you go too fast you crash but if you don't don't push it hard enough, you don't win. So this is what we have to do as leaders. We got to find that balance. Do we want to push that thing hard enough that we're going to win?

But we don't want to blow out the engine. We don't want to hit the wall. And that can happen. That happens. That happens actually too often in military cases where you've got the tyrannical leader and they're going to impose that discipline. They're going to burn everyone out. It's terrible.

This reminds me of, so it's actually taking care of your people. And it reminds me of a conversation I was having with JP to know where he was talking about how. you always told the guys the truth. And that's one of those things that, again, on the surface can look like, well, if you're always telling them the truth, you know, can't that be harmful in some scenarios? And what JP said was that there was a situation with your higher up and you and the team.

And the higher up was basically telling you, hey, this is a no-go. And you took the truth back to the team. And what I was thinking he was about to say is, Jocko came back and said, the boss is bad, so we can't do this, and that's what it's going to be. And the truth you told the team was the actual truth, which was, hey, guys, I've done a bad job at building a relationship with my boss. And because of that, we're in a situation now where we're going to have to do this thing, do it to the best of our abilities, and deliver to this boss so I have a better relationship so that we can keep moving and win. And that was the actual truth of that whole situation, right? So it's not just taking care of your people.

It's actually doing what's best for your people, actually taking care of them. Yeah. When the truth doesn't seem like it's going to work right, the answer is not lies. The answer is more truth. That's what it is. And the example I use with that is if my wife, Cooks bad chicken dry chicken which we know she used to do by the way the solution isn't Hey your chicken is dry I don't like it that's the truth right that doesn't seem like it's

gonna help our scenario negative right big age gonna be mad well so what is the truth What's more truth more truth is oh your wife my wife took care of all those kids all day went out and got the groceries done got everything ready put that stuff in the oven when i got home it was ready that's the truth the truth is i'm thankful that she did all that stuff and this thing's not perfect but i'm thankful and the truth is i'm being a jerk by so you know what pass the ketchup we'll make this chicken good right where's that barbecue sauce at the truth is i need some barbecue sauce over here that's the truth the truth isn't it's dry chicken the truth is i need to be a better human being so that's the same thing as that you're talking about with JP the solution isn't hey

guys the boss is bad the solution isn't to lie to them and say well you know guys uh the i don't think we should be doing this anyways and lie to them and that's not that's not the truth either it's more truth the truth is i don't have a good enough relationship with the boss or i didn't see this strategic picture or i wasn't paying attention what was happening with the enemy i made this mistake I put up this op that we want to do it got denied it's not it's not the boss's fault it's my it's my fault that's truth so solution to truth not seeming like it's going to help the situation the solution is more truth that'll get you there and taking care of your people this is this has to be part of your culture but it has to be

understood in the right balance and people in the people in the seal teams have messed that up people all military have messed it up. I've certainly messed up. And I think it's a real trap, I think, for young leaders because they want to be liked. You know, you want to, you think, oh, a good relationship is about if my people like me. And I see this with business leaders that we work with. I want my people to be happy and the happier they are and the more excited they are to come to work,

then, you know, the better job they'll do. And it's a trap that leads you down the road if you let people cut corners. Okay, they show up, they show up late, they go home early. these performance standards start to slip because you don't want to be the person that really, you know, holds the standard high and pushes people hard because that's, you know, it's hard to take constructive criticism. And when you start letting people cut corners, you let things slip, you're, you're actually failing them as a leader. And it's, I think the recognition I had to come to was that taking care of my people meant looking out for their long term good, their overall success,

their ultimate success, not just the immediate, like, sure, would they like to go home? early on you know yeah I can let him go home early but then guess what then we get behind on the project now all of a sudden we're in crunch time so that we you know either we're gonna fail at which is bad for everybody or or we have to come in you know for the last three weeks and work overtime to try to make up for the time in order to get there which is not which is also miserable and terrible for everybody so I think thinking about what the long-term success you know looks like And back to what we're talking about with training.

I mean, just making sure those standards are set high so that people are ready for the worst case scenario they might encounter. Whether it's on the battlefield with an overwhelming number of enemy who are in greater numbers and maybe they're even, they have greater firepower than we do and attack in our position. Are we ready for that scenario? You know, in the business world, is it, are your people ready for,

if you're in the energy or construction space, you know, for a major safety incident? Do they understand why they have to follow those procedures, you know, and are we ready to handle this worst case, prevent that from happening or stop it from being catastrophic if this scenario actually develops? You know, if, you know, if you're really in any business scenario, you're working on a project, you're trying to meet a timeline and stay within budget, just making sure that people understand how that's going to benefit them. You know, how what they do is going to connect to the success, the overall mission, and then back down to them, how it's going to benefit them long term when we succeed. And we do a good job on this project.

And we have a client that's super happy about what we're doing. They're going to tell their friends. We're going to get more contracts. There's more opportunity for pay and promotion and all those things. But that only comes from keeping the standards high, not letting the standards slip. It's so hard for me with my kids, like you just said. I mean, when I, I've got young kids at home. My youngest is four years old.

He's, man, we just came through the Halloween season. He was in there, like, sneaking candy all the time. Like, I, what's in your mouth, son? Look, he's gone in and grabbed some candy out of the, out of the candy, the candy, you know, basket or whatever that we had for Halloween. And just trying to, you know, teach him, look, I know, I know the candy tastes good, but if all you're eating is candy, you're not going to be strong, you know, you're not going to grow the way you need to.

Your body's addicted to sugar. So I've had to talk to him about why protein's important. And he refused to eat his sausage eggs for breakfast. Was that yesterday? I think yesterday morning. And instead snuck out the leftover steak. He's eating the steak. He's like, look at my muscles, dad.

Yeah. Protein. So I, but I think just trying to make sure that like they understand like it's not immediate satisfaction. It's not immediate happen as it's their long term good. And I think one of the biggest examples of that whether you're talking about in the military and these are lessons I tried to pass on

to other leaders or when we're working with law enforcement, you know, our first responders, you know, the idea that like you have a close net unit of people. And when those people if you're creating the impression, like taking care of my people means, I've got their back no matter what. And that's kind of the way we think about it. And when I talk to leaders like, oh yeah, definitely. I got their back no matter what. If you are setting the,

if you are creating the impression with your team that you have their back, no matter what, I'm telling you that you are failing them as a leader because you are setting them up for failure. Because that means you do something bad, you do something illegal, that's immoral, unethical, I'm going to cover it up for you. I got your back. Instead of, hey, man, I'm not going to let you do that because I'm going to look out for you and your best interests. And if you're following everything that you're supposed to be doing, I got your back. Absolutely. But if you stray off the path and you do something that's illegal or immoral, unethical that you know you're not supposed to do, I don't have your back.

And that's, that prevents people from doing that. So I think that's a trap that people fall into as well. I think when you're talking about close-knit units that, you know, I'm going to cover for you no matter what instead of, no, man, I'm not covering for you no matter what. I'm looking after the overall good of the team and the mission and your overall good. And if you're doing some things that you shouldn't be doing and you start to stray off the path, you know, and I'm going to tell you, I'm going to let you know that you shouldn't do that. And I'm going to try to steer you back on the path. And that's what good leadership looks like. It's not just covering for somebody no matter what happens.

And I think those are traps that are easy to fall into, particularly for young leaders that they want their team to like them. And yet what you have to look out for is their long term good. That's really what taking care of your people means is you're setting them up for the long-term success so that they can ultimately be successful in their business and life and everything they're trying to do. Yeah. And I got your back goes in two directions, right? So if I never tell you like, hey, Leif, if you do something that's illegal or moral or unethical and I'm your boss, I'm going to pay for it. Like you're roping me in to get to go down as well. So you're not going to do that to me, are you?

And you, if we have a good relationship, you're like, oh, dude, I didn't realize that. No, I don't want it. So you look out for me. I look out for you. You take care of me. I'm going to take care of you. By taking care of you, what I mean is if you're doing the right thing, I got your back, 100%.

You to take care of me, you're doing the right thing for the right reasons. And if we've got that going on, we're good. And it's 100%. We're covering for each other. When you start doing something that you shouldn't be doing, or that's illegal or moral and ethical, now we have a problem. You're not covering for me. anymore. So this whole thing just fell apart. And that happens and it's terrible. So you're right.

Having that understanding is like here's our standards. This is what we do. This is how we cover for each other. You're going to be in a good place. The other thing about this is the discipline, the hard training, the shared suffering, which results in winning, guess what all those things do? They all build culture. They all strengthen the culture. That's what the military is, right? The military, oh, how come we have a strong bond in our unit? Because we went through hard training together. How can we have an even stronger bond? We did even harder training.

How can we have an even stronger bond? Oh, we went to combat together. How can we have the strongest possible bond? We were in the battle of the bulge together. And we have a reunion. And that's what we do every year for the rest of our lives. So when you do hard things together, that culture solidifies. And that's what the discipline is.

No one brags. Well, I guess very few people brag. that oh yeah oh our boss just cut us loose this weekend and we just got to do whatever we want They might brag a little bit but they won't brag as much as the person that says oh yeah guess what we did We did this badass hard training We still went out but we were we earned it that's a totally different brag and that's a totally different culture So that's what we're looking for Probably pretty good place to wrap we kind of hit the saw you you brought up these subjects to me and I was like

like, oh, these are all freaking solid. So probably a good place to wrap. Let me just say something about that letter, man, because I remember when you sent that email out and when you were leaving the SEAL teams, I remember just thinking, it's a sad day in the Jocco the SEAL teams. But what was awesome about that is that you, I mean, clearly you're instilling the legacy that you left is hard training, is high standards. why that's important, reminding people about what's at stake if they're not doing those things

and who is training art? Your enemies out there, they're thinking about you. They're ready, you know, they're committed, they're willing to die, their weapons are clean. And I just thought that was a powerful note to leave the teams on and to leave your training instructors with. And that was something that got shared widely, you know, throughout the SEAL teams. And it was a sad day, certainly when you were leaving, but the legacy that you left. of so many incredible leaders in the SEAL teams that continue to pass those lessons on and across the military.

And I think that's what's been so powerful about this podcast is taking those lessons from not only our time, but from so many generations of military leaders across different wars and battlefields and experiences and sharing them with so many people so that they can take and learn those lessons and set the standard high

and continue to carry the tools. to carry the torch forward. Yeah, and just FYI, so everybody knows this is what happened to me. The guys that raised me in the teams, they passed on these lessons. I'm just one link in the chain that's strong, and it goes, you know, in the SEAL teams, just about 60 years right now, which isn't that long. But guess where those lessons came from? You know, the Scouts and Raiders, there's a chain.

And, you know, I'm one link in the chain. and that's what makes it strong is that things get passed on and the lessons get taught and why do they get taught? Because the guys care about each other and they want them to be able to go out and execute the mission.

So that's what we're doing. Culture of training, culture of discipline. That's where we're at. Speaking of discipline, we got deaf reset coming up. Def reset. How did your deaf reset go last year?

Late Babin. me about it. It didn't go good for me. I came out of the gate super hot, you know, after, you know, just, I was working out, you know, over the Christmas holidays, but it wasn't like, it wasn't my normal workouts. I wasn't pushing the standard high. Kind of got off the nutrition plan, you know, pretty good. What's a dessert? What's a dessert at Christmas? What's Christmas dessert? There's got to be like a Christmas dessert. Like, you know, Thanksgiving, you're doing pumpkin buy or something like that. What's Christmas? I've never had it, but in the songs, There's something about figgy pudding.

Is that a thing? I don't know what's up with that. I don't know, dude. Dude, it's cookies, pie. Yeah, it's just everything. That's usually not what for me, though, it's just, you know, it's just a, uh, shark cutery stuff or, you know, just, just, I'm usually not, but when did charcutery become a thing?

The sweets, the sweets, it's meat, cheese, you know, stuff like that. You put that in front of me and I will eat myself sick. Do you know when it's a problem became a thing? Well, you got. In America, we called. that a party platter. Okay. And where you got it

some little cheese cubes, you got a little meat selection, got some ham on there. Right. You know, you get that at Vons, right? Yeah.

It's in a plastic thing. You can see through it, see what's in there, see what's happening. Yeah, see what's happening. But then people started using the fancy word. Well,

you want to put it on a like wooden plank and you want to, but yeah, charcutory is a thing. Because I didn't hear the word charcutory until like maybe two years ago. And then my daughters went ham with,

you know, they go. hard in the paint they're setting up taking pictures of and yeah so so so now that now that's a thing at the willing couch yeah oh yeah well like Thanksgiving my friend Sean Robert come over and she brings over I'm not kidding she brought over a maybe eight foot long shirkutery board yeah eight feet chocolate almonds salami little pieces of bread so what is this like why aren't we gonna have dinner in a little bit. Of course, I, you know, like, I'm like you life, like salami cheese.

I'm just hammering that. But then the chocolate covered almonds are right there too. So we're not getting, we're not, you know, just, I'm just hat. And not cruising by those. Yeah. So anyways, we end up with this whole charcutory thing. Then steak comes. And this is the situation you're at. You're in, you're in Halloween or Christmas break. You're not, you're kind of strained off the table. Then when the steak comes, then you freaking hammer the steak down too. So now you're like freaking doubly full. But yeah, that was my situation last year is, you know, just not training for a couple weeks there. You know, on Christmas break, we were traveling, spend some time with family.

And then coming back, death reset, right? Jan 1, I'm coming out of the gate hard. I was training jiu-jitsu every day. I was training CrossFit every day. And I don't think I made it to day five before I was, like, injured myself and was, like, jacked up. And it was, it wasn't good because what that meant was. Because it set me back where I think it was three or four weeks and be not being able to really train hard So don't do that learn that lesson for me

You got to start training it like to start training and preparing now for the deaf reset I've been trying to tell everyone start training now start getting ready for it get all the freaking Cheetos out of your house Get the chocolate chip cookies out of your house get the Shikudery chocolate covered almonds get them out get him out That's what we're doing death reset. We got the the workouts and fitness coming from Jason Kalipa leadership tips from Eschelon Front. Discipline directives coming from me. Jock Fuel going to be there in the house. Going to be.

And we're actually like giving away awards for the culture of proper behavior. So you can win a bunch of stuff from JoccoFuel. You can win attendance at the mustard echelon front. So anyways, that's what we're doing. Things you got to do. It's all just things on the path. Wake up early. Get some exercise in.

Eat clean fuel. Don't eat any trash. Hydrate. That's what we're doing right down what you're supposed to do. So make a task list for yourself, then prioritize and execute that thing. And then do some writing or reading.

And then at the end of the day, do some remembrance. That's what it is. So that's what we're doing. Def Reset. If you want to sign up for it, go to the DeafReset.com. And join the party.

What's awesome about this? Don't do a lathe babin. Don't do a lathe babin and get hurt four days in. What's also about death? reset is you know that there are thousands of other people on that same path, right? That are, that's your accountability buddies out there. You're like, this is not just me. We're all on this path.

We're all doing this stuff together. But it definitely starts now. I think there's, you know, and you got a scalet, too. Look, if you're not training hard, you don't want to start out of the gate super hard like that. But I'm super excited about this year. I think it's been a great program. We've run in the past, but I think we've stepped it up this year with Jock Fuel, Eschlon, Front. I think the workouts from Jason Kalipa, we did a workout.

with him at the origin camp. And he's a phenomenal coach. Just how he breaks things down and creates programs that, you know, are scalable for whether you're just ultra athlete or somebody who's just hasn't been in the gym in a while. I think it's going to be an awesome program. And definitely go check that out. It's going to be good times. And we were talking about this the other day.

Trajectory. This is a key word. I need to use it more. I've been using it more. But trajectory. that trajectory is where you're going. And that thing can be pointed up and it can be pointed down. And you can, when you have the right trajectory,

even when you get pushed back a little bit, you hit some turbulence, you're still going up. You're still going in the right direction. When that trajectory is going down, you're doomed. So what I like about this, we're setting the trajectory for the whole year. We're going to make, because look, in 30 days that you're doing this, you're going to have changes in your life.

Like, you're going to have physical and mental changes in your life. your life that's what's going to happen that's what's going to happen and it's going to set that trajectory up where you're going to be able to keep going and the year is going to be just we'll just go ahead and call it epic so that's what we're doing the defreset.com joccofuel.com get some hydrate get some greens get some milk got milk is good it's so good I got to put this out again because I just got to make sure everyone understands what we're talking about here the chocolate mulk powder right now it's it's it's America in America it's cold right now if you Heat up the milk and you add chocolate milk to it you have legitimate 100% hot chocolate

Now Laif knows me I'm a hot chocolate connoisseur This fool's been buying me freaking going to Starbucks and buying freaking hot chocolates for me for 20 years or whatever 18 years Because I don't drink coffee because I don't like it But the hot chocolate you know tastes good now you don't have to have a bunch of sugar loaded Hot chocolate from Starbucks You can get something that's legitimately good for you. Have you ever seen those things when they show much sugars in Starbucks? Oh, it's crazy.

Psycho. They show up by like the cup. Yeah, yeah. Pouring half a cup of sugar right down your gullet. My kids love frozen hot chocolates. We got a local, local coffee shop. Frozen hot chocolates. Summer Moon.

It's a, they basically, it's like a milkshake with a whipped cream on. It's massive sugar. Is it, wait, is it a frozen hot chocolate? So it's a milkshake. Yeah, so it's basically just like a milkshake without coffee. You know, it's that you get in a coffee shop. Oh, like a frappuccino. Yeah, our local coffee shop does it.

It's like a frappuccino with no coffee. Got it. And the kids love them, you know, but massive amount of sugar in it. So the other day, I make them, they're like, we want frozen hot chocolates. So they requested this for breakfast and I made it out of chocolate milk and they loved it. And it was good for them. They got protein. they didn't get a bunch of sugar.

It was awesome. You know who does drink coffee, Leif Bavent? Yes, I do. Have you had the new coffee, milk? Dude, I haven't. Can't wait to try it? I'll go home and get you one. When we go home, I'll grab you one.

It's, yeah. I don't like coffee, as you know, this stuff tastes good. It tastes good. Jock. I was with Jocko the other day. And he, you know, Jocker drinks milk all the time. It's not anything surprising. But I see Jocko take a little hit of this coffee one

and then like proceed to slam the rest of the rest of it. of it, we were on our little road trip. It was, uh, it was pretty hilarious. Jock approved on that coffee. Did you give him, did you give him a hard time about that? Because you know what he used to tell me, right? When I was like, hey, man, I'm gonna grabs a coffee. You want something?

Like, I don't have any weaknesses. Coffee's a weakness. I consider that advice. Yeah, that's it. I don't have any vices, coffee's advice. Well, the new coffee milk negates that. Yeah. 100% good for you.

30 grams of protein, 95 milligrams of caffeine. It's gonna put a hurt on like Starbucks. Oh, dude. Right? Because you, why would you? Why would you do that? Why would you go to Starbucks and because you want a little coffee thing or caffeine thing? Why would you go there and just pour a little bit of caffeine and a bunch of sugar in your system and just ruin your life?

They can't put protein in my coffee. Starbucks can't do that. They don't have protein. Oh, it's just not happening. They can't put 30 grams of protein in my coffee. They literally can't do it. So now that the milk has 30 grams of protein. 30 grams of protein.

And the milk has caffeine in it. Did you know that? The milk, the coffee. Sweet cream coffee milk has caffeine. We debated whether we should put caffeine in or not because we're like, oh, I don't know. And then we just like, hey, if people are drinking coffee, they're going to want that. They're going to want that kick. So, yeah, I'll give you one this afternoon.

I can't wait to check it out. You can tea and eat it for the team here. That's where at joccofuel.com. We're making all kinds of good stuff there. Stuff that's truly good for you. Look, we have to make the world understand. I'm doing a bad job. There's such a thing.

There's one opportunity for you to have an energy drink that's good for you. Go to joccofuel.com and get some go. It's good for you. It's truly good for you. So you can have the benefits of an energy drink without any downside whatsoever. That's it. No downside whatsoever. So check it out.

Before Jocko go, I'd ever really pay attention what was in those energy drinks. No, we pound red bulls or monsters or whatever. And now I look at that stuff, you know, if I'm stopping in a store and they don't, they don't carry, uh, jaco, go and usually I got the stash with me, so I'm good to go. But if you, you pick up and look at what's, what's in this stuff. It's horrible. Yeah, you can't drink them. Yeah, you can't drink them. It's just a nightmare. So joccofuel.com, check it out. Also Wawaa. Also vitamin shop. GnC. Military commissaries, Afeashe, H-Firm, shop right. H-EB down in Texas. They do it right down in Tejas at H-AB, don't they? They represent H-EB.

Freaking legit. And you know why that is? It's because of you that's listening right now that lives in Texas and you know you go to H-E-B. And when you roll in there and you get yourself your Jocko Fuel, man, awesome. We appreciate it. Same thing with Meyer up in the Midwest. Same thing. Harris, Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields.

Small gyms everywhere. That's what we're doing. We're getting into small gyms. You've got a CrossFit gym. You got a Jitsu gym. You got a powerlifting gym. I don't care if you got a global gym. You need to be giving your consumers and your customers and your clients the best possible thing you can

Email jf sales at joccofuel.com so you can sell the goodness to your people. That's what we're doing also origin usa.com You don't have to support communism and slavery You don't have to you can actually support freedom and America and you do that by instead of buying something that was made in a sweatshop by a 13-year-old girl that's there against her will, you don't have to support that. You can get originusa.com. You can support America. You can help rebuild manufacturing in this country.

And what do you need? What do you wear? You wear jeans, we got you covered. T-shirts, we got you covered. Hoodies, we got you covered. Boots, we got you covered. Workout gear? What?

We got you covered. Oh, you need a jiu-gis-gis. Well, those are only made in Pakistan and China. No, actually, they're made right here in the, United States of America by origin USA.com. We got you covered head to toe. So check out origin, USA.com and get freedom to wrap your body.

That's what we're doing. Also, Jocko store. Yeah, I almost covered for Echo. That's your game. That's your game. What do you got, man? So Jocko store, you want to represent on the path? Discipline equals freedom.

You did it again. You're jacking echoes lines, bro. I'm getting there. Okay. I'm getting there. So what I want to do is lay down the foundation here. Let people know jaco store. Jocco store.com is where you can get your discipline equals freedom gear.

Now, what are these things? We called them material items today on the podcast. Yes, we did. These are things. See, you can't think of a better word than material items. It's a hard one. It's a thing. It is.

But it is things that you can wear that you represent on the path. And you're not just representing for the world. You're representing for yourself. When I put that on, when I see that X flag, that discipline equals freedom, it changes the way I act a little. You know, it changes the way I carry myself. You're representing, man, this is the path that we're on. And this is where you can get those items. Jocco store.com.

It's pretty awesome when you're like walking to an airport or you're like a public place. You see like the Def Corps flag. You see the shirt. And, you know, are you on the mats and you see the get after at Rashgard? What's like I'm wrapping on reping the shirt locker here today The shirt locker shirts are awesome because every month a new shirt shows up You just sign up for this and it's it gets shipped to you and you don't know what's gonna be but they're all cool shirts And that's that's like the next level so that then somebody sees that shirt like dude would you get that shirt like oh

You're wearing and this is this is the connection I just made it in my brain You're wearing the path is hard t-shirt and the thing about material items is usually they represent something that's achieved through hard work, right? A patch, a metal, a coin, whatever. The path is hard. That is the thing. When you're rep in DefCore, when you're representing discipline equals freedom, the reason I think I'm connected to it like that is because the path is hard. It's hard to be disciplined, man. It's hard to wake up early and get after it. It's hard to do these things. So when you represent with DefCore, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, You're representing the hard things that we do on the path.

And that makes it mean something. Yeah. K-Dog's in the game. Now, now he'd be getting texts from 4 o'clock in the morning from the old man. We got this. Check. So that's where we're at. jocco store.com.

Hey, you're going to need steak for life, right? You need steak. You want to be strong. You want to take over the world. You want to dominate in your area of operations. You're going to need steak. Primalbeef.com, Colorado, crap. Thecathbeef.com delivered protein justice to your door.

That's what's happening. They're there. I had a we had the other night a very expensive steak from a very nationally known high level restaurant and I'm gonna tell you right now it doesn't it's not the same these this steak that I'm talking about primal beef.com Colorado craft beef.com this is real steak. It's gonna. it's going to bring your taste buds to the next level.

So check those out. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also jocco underground.com. Also YouTube. Subscribe to the YouTube channels. We got we got jaco podcast YouTube. We got Jocco Fuel YouTube. We got Origin USA YouTube.

We got Eshlon Front YouTube. Get in there. See what's happening. Behind the scenes. What's happening? We're putting a bunch of new content up on Exchon Front YouTube now. So excited about that. Yeah.

That's more coming. They were chopping up. some of the debrief podcasts, which is great. It's great because those are the kind of things you can just take, absorb seven minutes, nine minutes, 12 minutes. Oh, I'm in my, you know, doing this part of the workout sitting on the treadmill. Cool. Learn.

Get better. So that's what we're doing there. Psychological warfare, flipside canvas.com. Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. That's what's happening. Books. I read a bunch from About Face today. I've read that book a lot.

Still on my OG copy. But this one doesn't have the forward that I wrote. So I wrote a forward to that book about face by Colonel David Hackworth. Check that out. Then a bunch of other books. You guys know what they are. Leadership strategy and tactics. Final spin.

The code of the evaluations of protocol. Discipline equals freedom field manual. Way the Warrior Kid. One, two, three, four, and five. Letters from Uncle Jake. Mikey and the Dragons. And then, of course, extreme ownership. and the dichotomy of leadership written by myself and my brother,

Leif Babin, keeping it real. I used to say that. That was a thing I used to say on the podcast every time. Bring it back. Yeah, but I just brought it back, bro. What are you talking about? And we also have a leadership consultancy, echelon front.

We solve problems through leadership. It's a leadership consultancy. What does that mean? That means that we work with your company for an extended period of time, to assess the leadership inside your organization, train the leadership inside your organization, and then follow up to make sure that the leadership inside your organization is winning.

We will help you find a way to win. That's what we do. I talked about that earlier today. What we learned how to do is look at problems, apply our principles to the problems, and then win. So we do that through leadership, and we can do that inside your organization, organization if you want to get engaged with us go to echelonfront.com we also

have live events that we do we got the muster we got FtX we got council we got battlefield all can be found at eslamfront.com and listen for you as an individual human being your company may not hire Eshlam Front your team may not hire Eshlam Front but we have online training so extreme ownership.com if you go there we have courses we have live interactive sessions and you can learn the lessons of leadership that you can apply to everything that you do and you might be a front-line person right now I'm not in charge of anybody you are influencing other people you have to lead what about your family you're leading your family what about your friends I talked about this earlier

you're creating a culture with your friends don't you want your friends to be badass how do you do that leadership extreme ownership Check that out. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families gold star families check out Mark Lee's mom Mama Lee's charity organization Giving veterans and their families the attention and the help that they need that isn't covered by the US government by the The VA It's she's helped so many of our friends

She's helped so many people that we don't know, but we know that she know that she's helped so many people that we don't know that she's helped them we've seen with our own eyes people's lives be changed straightened out reorganized and it's just been awesome so if you want to get involved or you want to donate go to america's mighty warriors dot org also don't forget about micah think he's got his team with heroes and horses dot org taking veterans out into the wilderness so that they can get better and jimmy may's Got his organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org. Check that out, helping veterans transition to the civilian sector. If you want to connect with us, we're on the interwebs.

Kerry is at Kerry Helton. No underscore. Just Kerry Helton. He got that straightened out. And Laif is at Laif Babin. No real Lafe Babin anymore. You are the real Laf Babin. Laf Babin.

Just at Laif Babin. We got that squared away. Jack Daniel Hill. JTP. Did he kill up? JTP came through. Jack Daniel got it done. I don't think that's normal that you can pull that off.

No. But it's pretty cool. And I am at Draco-Willing. Just listen, when you get in there, just watch out for the algorithm. Because the algorithm's no joke. We're acting like it's, we're acting like, oh, that wouldn't get me. You know, Leif was talking about worst-case scenarios today. And you don't really know what it's like until you're there.

Well, guess what? That's what you think about the algorithm. You're like, oh, it won't affect me. I'm kind of a badass. It won't get me. I'll go discipline. Next thing you know, Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe.

You swiped away freaking 42 minutes of your life. Don't let it happen. And thanks to all of our servicemen and women who are training right now and preparing right now to fight and conquer the enemies of freedom. We thank you for what you do. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement,

firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers correctional officers at border patrol secret service all first responders thanks to all of you for training and preparing and being ready when we need your help and everyone else out there we got one more bit of guidance from hack he said the that discipline and tactical proficiency on the battlefield were direct results of discipline and combat skills instilled on the parade and training grounds. Discipline is not free. Discipline is not a gene that you have.

Discipline comes from training and you have to make it part of the culture that you're in for you, for your friends, for your family, for your company, for your team. That's what you have to do. and you do that by going out there every day and getting after it and until next time this is laif and kerry and jocco out