Jocko Podcast - 66: Gen. HR McMaster's Tactical/Strategic Lessons Learned from his War Fighting Experience. Liars, Defending Bad Leaders, Jiu Jitsu Strength, & Dealing w/ The Grind

Episode Date: March 15, 2017

0:00:00 - Opening/Gen. HR McMaster's account in the First Gulf War.  The Battle of 73 Easting.  Tactical & Strategic lessons learned. 0:57:23 - The 4 Fallacies of Warfare. 1:24:50 - QUESTIONS and ANSWERS from the interwebs. 1:24:56 - Should you defend bad leaders to your men? 1:40:05 - How to avoid taking things too personally. 1:51:51 - Using too much strength in Jiu Jitsu.  Training for better technique. 2:01:54 - What to do when someone lies, betrays trust, or "destroys" you. 2:15:12 - Direct Attack and Indirect Attack strategies. 2:17:21 - Dealing with the Daily Grind Struggle. 2:27:49 - Suggestions on how to actually employ Extreme Ownership and Discipline. 2:30:42 - Support, Cool Onnit, Amazon, JockoStore stuff, with Jocko White Tea and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid, and The Muster002  2:58:04 - Closing Gratitude   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 66 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. At 325, the troop once again received orders to attack. I gave an order full of enthusiasm. I told the troop, we attack in five minutes to the 70 Easting. This is the movement we have all awaited. Although we knew the general locations of large enemy units,

we had not received detailed intelligence about the enemy we were to encounter. I had a feeling, however, that this time we would meet the enemy. Lieutenant Gautier, known for his deadpan sense of humor, asked on the radio, what kind of contact can we expect? I replied, enemy contact. He said, Roger, that's the best kind. And the troop rolled forward through the blowing sand. And that's a little excerpt from a personal account from a guy by the name of HR McMaster.

You may have heard about recently coming into a higher profile job in the current administration. But he's a very interesting guy. And I wanted to talk a little bit about his experience and some of the things that he said about, It's the way he sees things and so he was in this big battle in the first Gulf War as a captain so you know in charge of a group of 140 guys and he fought in this battle called the Battle of 73 Easting and I'm going to a little excerpt from Wikipedia that sort of gives you the

broad idea of what was going on the Battle of 73 Easting refers narrowly to the violent armored combat action that took place in the final hours of 2nd ACR's covering force operation in the zone of 2nd Squadron and in the northern 3rd of the 3rd squadron zone. In the battle, 4 of 2nd ACR's armored cavalry cavalry troops, troops E, G, and I, with Troop K, contributing to I troops fight, totaling about 36 M1A1 tanks, defeated two enemy brigades, the 18th Brigade and later in the day the ninth armored brigade so it's interesting you have a legitimate tank battle right like a World War II style tank battle that took place in the first

Gulf War and that's what this is talking about and McMaster at the time McMaster's was in charge of Eagle Troop so they got some good details in here and again this is very simple one of the best clearest descriptions of what happened it was actually on Wikipedia so I just pulled some of that so here we go a little bit of what Eagle Troop did at 4.10 p.m. Eagle Troop received fire from an Iraqi infantry position in a cluster of buildings Eagle Troop Abrams and Bradley's returned fire silenced the Iraqi guns took prisoners and continued east with the two tank platoons leading the nine M1 a1 tanks of Eagle Troop destroyed 28 Iraqi tanks 16 personnel carriers and 30 trucks in 23 minutes with no American losses

So you got nine tanks against 28 tanks and 16 personnel carriers and 30 trucks and the nine tanks win That's that's this domination battlefield domination and there's a bunch of technical reasons as well as leadership reasons that we're gonna get into to next at about 420 eagle crested a low rise and surprised an iraqi tank company set up in a reverse slope defense on the 70 easting captain macmaster leading the attack immediately engaged that position destroying the first of the eight enemy tanks to his front his two tank platoons finished the rest so they're just they're just hammering hammering these iraqi tanks Three kilometers to the east McMaster could see T-72s.

Those are the tanks that the Iraqis are using in prepared positions. Continuing his attack past the limit, the 70 limit of advance. So the way maps are set up, there's coordinates on them, and each one of the coordinates has, each one of the lines that runs north-south has a label to it, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73. So he had been told not to go past the 70-Easting. That's what they're saying. That was his limit of advance these are all really common military terms. They say hey, you're not allowed to go past this road or this this coordinate on a map and they just call that a limit of advance So he was supposed to stop at 70. He asked to get after it a little bit harder

Continuing his attack past the 70 limit of advanced he fought his way through an infantry defensive position and on the high ground along the 74 Easting And this is going now that I mixed this in here with the Wikipedia which was a very simple explanation of what happened now going into a personal account that McMaster wrote himself when he was a young captain so here we go from Captain McMaster's account lieutenant Gifford called me from the command post to remind me that the 70 Easting was the limit of advance we were already beyond it I told him I can't stop we're still in contact tell them I'm sorry Gifford explained the situation to the squadron headquarters on the radio major McGregor was forward with our tanks and fully understood the situation if we had stopped we would have forfeited the shock effect we

had inflected on the enemy had we halted we would have given the enemy further to the east an opportunity to organize an effort against us while we presented them with stationary targets we had the advantage and had to finish the battle rapidly we would press the attack until all of the enemy were destroyed or until they surrendered so that's a pretty bold move to just push and it's out Also a risky move and I'll say the biggest risk of it is having a blue-on-blue situation unfold I think it makes a lot easier the fact that this was daytime and That that just makes it everything so much more clear in the daytime

But you could obviously make some mistakes if you're if you're pushing you that limit advances there for a reason and you it might have some other group that's controlling that sector You also might have air power that the air power might be told hey if you see any vehicles moving past 70 Easting you can start dropping bombs So you do have to be very cautious when you make an aggressive move like this and I bet McMaster himself would go back and say you know what I should have done is I should have given him a heads up hey I'm pushing past 70 Easting Please you know let everybody know So now this is going back to the to the wiki account here There he encountered and destroyed another tank unit of 18 T-72s in that action the Iraqis stood their ground and attempted to maneuver against the troop This was the first determined defense the regiment had encountered in its three days of operations

Still, the Iraqi troop had been surprised because of the inclement weather and were quickly destroyed by the better trained and better equipped American troops. After defeating that force, McMaster sent a scout platoon of two Bradley's north to regain contact with Troop G. In doing that, the scalp platoon encountered another Iraqi tank position of 13 T-72s, which they destroyed with tow missiles. So as these guys are just everywhere they they find these these Iraqi tanks they're just crushing them And this is going back to McMaster's account again I jumped on top of my tank to give the crew room to cross load ammunition while I monitored the radio I surveyed the fires which the which surrounded the troop it seemed as if the action had only lasted seconds I felt no significant emotion during the battle I think I had simply been to

too busy I realized that I had not eaten all day I tore into an MRI package and devoured a dinner of cold potatoes and ham I gulped down some water and the quick infusion seemed to slow the flow of adrenaline so I thought that was interesting he was just doing his job you know he wasn't getting emotional and just getting it done and then the ceasefire comes the next day and that's it the war's over Like, I mean, the war was 72 hours and the war's over. And so he kind of talks about what he was thinking here once they hear the ceasefire. Back to McMaster's account. Eagle troop had taken no casualties.

I and other soldiers offered prayers of thanks to God. We did not gloat over our victory. We had simply done our part in liberating Kuwait from the treachery and inhumanity of Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard henchmen. We surprised the enemy on the 26th of February. That surprise and the bold action and teamwork of the troop soldiers contributed to the route that is now known as the Battle of 73 Easting. In general, the Iraqis were unprepared for the United States Army. Americans are better trained and equipped. The true decisive factor, however, was the American soldier.

He is the best at what he does and absolutely dedicated. to serving his country our soldiers were aggressive in battle yet demonstrated great discipline and compassion for their enemy I am grateful that I had the opportunity to serve with them in this action captain H.R McMaster E-trop 2-2 ACR so in and I didn't go into it too much of I didn't go into it at all but they took a lot of prisoners as well they weren't just killing everyone there was a lot of people that were surrendering a lot of Iraqi soldiers that were surrendering and they were doing their best to take care of those guys. And there were also some that pretended to surrender and then attacked.

So they had a little bit of both. And they, as McMaster said, they showed great discipline and compassion for the enemy. Now, I didn't, you can go online and you can read the full account of what this whole battle felt like. But he recently wrote, so now he's a lieutenant. He was a captain at the time, an 03, and now he's a lieutenant. Lieutenant General a three star and there's a website called the strategy bridge dot org and there's an article there which is written by McMaster and he goes through the lessons that he learned in that battle and the the the article is called

something along the lines of hey guidance for small unit leaders so I thought there was some some good solid lessons learned that he brought back so I'm gonna go go through him number one lead from the front leaders must be forward to gain a clear picture and make decisions as sergeant Harris engaged with 25 millimeter lieutenant Gautier moved forward to assess and further develop the situation so so to explain that you've got a sergeant that's like engaging the enemy and then the lieutenant he doesn't just sit there he goes forward to find out what's going on and assess what's happening So as a leader when your troops are getting busy doing the work What can you do don't get this don't get target fixated on your own guys in the work that they're doing

Look around go forward move to a different position where you can see more Back to the book goatee fired a tow missile into the center of the enemy position in the village to orient our tanks After our gunner staff sergeant Craig Koch fired a subsequent tank round to mark center all nine tanks fired high explosive rounds into the village simultaneously to suppress the enemy position despite the secondary explosions in the village to itself first platoon maintained its primary observation to the east so he's basically mark in the position lieutenant goate basically marks the position so not only did he move

and observe what was happening then he's directing everyone else once once he does that so it's a really simple You hear it all the time lead from the front now can you get too far forward? Yes, you absolutely can If you're if you're the guy that's actually engaging the enemy and you're having to you know either with your weapon in a tank or your weapon your personal weapon on your your your rifle and you're the leader and you're actually shooting bad guys well then you you got some issues because You need to be looking around you need to be seen what the next move is going to be so lead from the front but always the dichotomy is there don't go so far forward that you lose the ability to look around and observe what what's happening number two shoot first if you know where friendly forces are and there is not a danger of civilian casualties do not hesitate to shoot or conduct reconnaissance by fire the side that shoots first has a tremendous advantage

staff sergeant David Lawrence was the commander of first platoon's northernmost Bradley when his gunner sergeant Bradley feltman said hey I've got a hot spot out there I'm not sure what it is Lawrence responded put a toe in it see what it is a toe is a tow missile Lawrence identified the hot spot as a T-72 as the turret was ripped from its hull in the ensuing explosion our troops experience was consistent with Irwin Rommel's observation in his World War I book infantry attacks and this is Rommel talking I have found again and again in encounter actions in encounter

actions the day goes to the side that is first to pletka its opponents with fire shoot first and how do I translate that real simple be aggressive now he points out very clearly here you know where there's where you know where friendly forces are right you know where friendly forces are because obviously that can go sideways and by the way when he pushed past his limit of advance now also no one knew where he was so he need to be careful in that situation but That aggressive, being aggressive with fire is something you have to do. And you can see, like they saw a hotspot out there on their thermal.

I don't know what this is. Yeah, put a toe in it. We know it's not good guys, okay, blast it. We had, I'd been in Baghdad on my first deployment for like a couple days. And we went out on an operation. And anyways, when we were coming back, we got ambushed. And it wasn't a big deal. But like we received fire and so we returned fire and and basically we returned fire heavily and and

We were getting after it This is when we didn't have any Armour on our Humvees they were just they were just open they didn't have doors so we didn't have armored Humvees Not many people didn't in Iraq at that time in 2003 So what we had done is we had taken the doors completely off and then we'd taken our seats and turned them so they faced out So we and we we we'd have our feet like hanging out of the Humvee or maybe sitting on these these big rails that we built along the side And so we'd be facing out it was you were in a position you were basically in a position to shoot at all times and because the way a Humvee is set up with doors on either side and then people in the back

You had 360 degrees of of visibility and of fields of fire coming out of every Humvee and so when we got we were driving we were on the we just done a little operation we were coming back and as we were coming back we started taking fire and so we just returned fired it was a massive return of fire like I think the enemy was pretty overwhelmed with it and we got back and everyone was kind of like well we kind of we kind of laid it down yeah we went through a lot of rounds in a very short period of time and the reason I'm saying this story is because that was my platoon and so we get back and we're kind of debriefing and then the next day we're going out another operation. And I don't know if this story's going to make any sense, but the next day we're going out another operation and one of my bros, who was my senior enlisted advisor at the time, but he wasn't on that mission that we just did.

And he goes, listen, if you guys take contact, you need to shoot back. You can't be afraid to fire it. And I made some combat, like, don't worry, we'll be good to go. No, no one here is afraid to shoot. And then everyone laughed because they knew that we put down a lot of lead

If you want to trade bullets with us. We'll play that game. We don't mind trading some bullets. So the same thing, though. If you start feeling like you're going to get contacted, and that's another thing that you should teach us. You know, when you're in a firefight, where do you think the enemy might be?

And we heard this a lot. The Korean Marines, the U.S. Marines that were in Korea, we're talking about that, hey, we're going to put fire down where we think the enemy might be. Because that's where, you know, you're looking at an area and there's a good covered position. there's a bad guy's probably gonna be there put fire on him yeah shoot first lesson number two from general McMaster all right number three fight through the fog of battle be prepared for

confusion and concurrent activity as we suppressed enemy positions in the village while Lawrence was launching a missile the troop received permission to advance to the 70 easting I instructed first platoon to resume to resume movement to the East lieutenant pest check did not respond immediately because Lawrence was reporting on the platoon radio net contact contact east tank simple orders and complete reports are essential to maintaining common understanding in battle so there's another example of got to keep things simple and he's specifically talking about how you communicate with other people on the radio That's what he's talking about.

You have to communicate simply and clearly in order for people to understand what's happening. That can mean if you give, a lot of times you see this, people try and give too much detail. Right? Listen to this. Contact. Contact. Contact. East.

Tank. That's it. Where's the contact? It's to the east. What is it? It's a tank. That's it. That's what we need to know.

Now, everybody knows what's going on. If you said, hey, I've got a contact. He's about 480 meters. It is a T-72 tank. It's moving in an east. We don't care about any of that right now We don't care about any of that just tell us what is happening and that's one of the things that can help you Fight through the fog of battle now

That contact call is actually a standard operating procedure I'm assuming which is because we would do this in the seal teams you'd give what type of contact it is what direction Or sorry what bearing and what distance so you'd say machine gun fire 150 meters 4 o'clock and now everybody gets a very quick read of what's happening because you can't not everyone's going to see where the firing came from so even having a standard operating procedure to keep your your verbiage limited is important there's calls the whole everything we do in the seal teams basically has a very simple call that you can make and and it's broken down into like three words contact front online you know that's it

everyone knows what to do every seal you tell them contact front online they know what to do number four follow your instincts and intuition as sergeant feltman launched the tow missile I decided to go to a tank's lead formation and instructed green and white the tank platoons to follow my move first platoon pulled in behind as the tank wedge moved forward and covered the tank's rear third platoon retained responsibility for flank security got to maintain that flank security as we begin moving forward first platoon responding to the contact report on their platoon radio net began firing 25 millimeter high explosive munitions across the

front it was a little unnerving for the tanks as we moved forwards I gave first platoon a ceasefire order red one this is black six cease fire the two tank platoons were slightly delayed as our tank came over the crest of the imperceptible rise north of the village sergeant Craig Koch the gunner deported tanks direct front I counted eight T-72s in in prepared positions they were at close range and visible to the naked eye so he's talking about trusting your instincts and trusting your intuition and my and that's what he's doing here he's seeing things happening he's seeing things unfold he says hey

go go into this formation boom everyone goes in this formation he's acting off of instinct but what's important here is where do your instinct and where is your intuition come from it comes from training and experience that's where it comes from. Now, it could be hard to get combat experience. We hadn't had a tank battle in, well, since World War II. There's been no major tank battles. And here these guys are, no, none of these people ever been in a tank battle before.

And now they're in a tank battle. So how do you do that? You've got to do realistic simulated training. That's what you have to do. And you have to make this realistic. It's got to be surprising. It's all the things I talk about all the time. It's got to be surprising.

It's got to be unknowns. You've got to do things that people aren't expecting. That's what you have to do so that they can develop. their instincts so they can develop their intuition because if you're inexperienced and you don't know what you're doing and you just decide you're gonna follow your instinct your instinct can be wrong It can be wrong and the let it's it's like jiu jitsu right you take a new person in jiu jitsu Their instincts are gonna be wrong period end of story right I mean the classic is someone is mounted on you Then they and you try you either do one or two things you try and push them off of you you're getting arm locked or you turn around You turn over and they're choking you

But each one of your instincts is wrong. Your instinct needs to be elbow escape or, you know, ump escape. It's got to be one of those two things. But those instincts only come from training. It's the same thing with these combat scenarios. How you have, you can't just trust. Don't just trust your instinct as a matter of fact. Yeah.

Make sure you've trained yourself. Make sure you've prepared yourself. And then make sure that you detach. Okay. That's another thing that can screw up your instincts is your instincts. You're feeling pain You know I was rolling with Andy yesterday

He will put like pain on me He'll put his elbow in my ear or something And all he's trying to do is get me to make the instinctual move Of I'm gonna reach up and pull his hand away If I do that I'm getting arm locked Right? No can't do that Have to just accept the pain Just just deal with it

Go grind harder Andy Bring it Here your instinct if you start taking fire From a certain position That could your instinct could be Oh, we're gonna get down and move over here. You got to remember, you got to detach enough that you say, oh, I need to check my flank. I need to see what else is going on here.

I need to assess these other situations that might be unfolding. Yeah, and that's where that kind of experience, well, I'm training. Come in and a lot of it can be things that aren't really conscious to. And it comes with like, let's say, you know, in a relationship situation. Let's say I know you sitting over here trying to talk about war and fighting. And you want to go straight to relationships This early in the show? All right, do it.

I'm not even necessarily saying, you know, romantic or boyfriend or from any kind of relationship. If you know the person really well, you can tell when something's off just a little bit. Be like, hey, something by the other guy, be like, oh, no, no, all good. And they can, you know, they can be real convincing with, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm all good.

But you know, you're instinct because you have so much experience with them, you know. Yes, you're right. And you're right in the fact that, you know, when I talk about de-escalation, right? If you come in and you say, Hey Chaco this is crap with the way we're doing this if my instinct is like no it's not crap That's my instinctive response like no screw you I'm right you're wrong

But what I really need to do is say hold on a second detach let's assess what echo's saying echo normally doesn't do this right? Why is he doing this? Something is going on don't I'm not gonna trust my instinct right now luckily like you said through training through knowledge right in the situation I know that you don't act that way so yes follow your instincts follow your intuition But make sure that you've trained to develop them and also I like to question them when I feel something I just don't go with it immediately I'm I want to go with it and I most likely will go with it But there's also a possibility I say well not a possibility but what I say hey we need to move here I go okay. What could be happening? Is this a position that the enemy might be in? Is this a move that could be getting set up on me? No, I think I'm pretty solid or at least as I move there

I'm gonna be aware of it I'm trusting my instinct but I'm being cautious Yeah, you hear that talking police, you know, like cops have like good in in Oh for sure for sure because of like the repetitious patterns for sure of bad guys. Yeah, for sure. I was gonna say something else too Oh, there's plenty of times where if you don't trust your instinct you will get crushed, right? I mean you think about in a jiu jitza perspective But when you get good you're not thinking about anything you you have to just use your instinct your your your training Your muscle memory is what's working and the same thing with police. You know they get to a point you get into a situation if they're not going off their instinct They're gonna get they're gonna get burned yeah, because they learned you know yeah, and that's the trained instinct how you were saying like that thing right trained as opposed to the untrained instinct Yeah, they can kind of get a being a being a police officer out on the beat

Yeah, they're not gonna have they're not gonna have any a fraction of what you deal with that cop 10 years later and you and that cops like hey listen I see your hand I see you got some blood on your knuckles I know what happened Here tell me what's going on You know what I mean Yeah Whereas a young guy might be

Yeah Yeah Yeah or guys like being Too nice You know how like The cop can tell Like oh this guy's being too nice Yeah

You know I mean And there's like a mediocre level Of niceness That's like okay That seems like Like he's mellow But if a guy's being like Too aggressive

Or too defensive Or too nice They can tell You know There's something I'm suspicious You know Maybe a new guy Might not be able to tell that

I mean yeah no absolutely all right next one number five use standard unit fire and battle drills Aim to overwhelm the enemy upon contact and retain the initiative through speed of action as Sergeant Koch fired the main gum and destroyed the first tank I sent a contact report to the troop This is black six contact east eight armored vehicles green and white You with me? Sergeant Koch destroyed two more tanks as our tank platoon's accelerated movement. All nine tanks began engaging together as we advanced. In approximately one minute, everything in the range of our guns was in flames.

Fire distribution and control allowed us to destroy a much larger enemy force in a very short period of time. So how do they do that? Good, solid, disciplined, standard operating procedures. procedures and you I'm telling you you think about how simple this is he says this is black sex contact east eight armored vehicles green and white are you with me that's the whole that's the whole detailed plan hey there's bad guys over there we're moving east let's go and everybody says all right we've done this thousands of times we've drilled it we rehearsed it what what do we do right now and they probably

had little standard operating procedures hey guys on the you know on the left are gonna start flying at the left vehicles of guys on the right flank and they had all these procedures work out so that in less than a minute Victory less than a minute So develop those good standard operating procedures Disciplined procedures and when I talk about freedom on the battlefield this is exactly what I'm talking about Discipline equals freedom on the battlefield because when you have those discipline procedures He doesn't even have to see he has the freedom to maneuver he has the freedom just to say hey guys there's the enemy. Let's take care of them boom. It's done Yeah.

Next one. Number six. Foster initiative. Every trooper understood how our platoons and the troop conducted fire and maneuver. Our tank driver, specialist Christopher Heidensog, knew that he had to steer a path that permitted both tank platoons to get their guns into the fight. He turned 45 degrees to the right and kept our frontal armor towards the first enemy tanks we engaged.

He drove through a minefield Avoided the anti-tank mines reporting on the intercom Sir, I need you to know we just went through a minefield He knew that it would be dangerous to stop right in the middle of the enemy kill zone Heed and Skog saw that our tank platoons had a window of opportunity to shock the enemy and take advantage of the first blows that Sergeant Koch delivered So clearly this is decentralized command right and you just think about this first Every trooper understood how our platoons and the troops conducted fire maneuver everybody knows what to do everybody and here's this kid he's

probably 18 years old what is he a specialist yeah specialist he's probably 19 years old and he's got he's leading right the the commander's in charge but there's a guy that's driving that's picking the course where they're gonna go and again think about this the captain he's not saying like eight six degrees left six degrees to right get 40 no he's not giving any of those orders and if you think about it Could he have been able to do that he's dealing with all this other stuff he's dealing with fire control He's dealing with the position he's reporting back up the cheese got all this other stuff going on he doesn't have time to tell this guy Where to go but it's decentralized command that specialist that

Is leading the tanks from an actual driving perspective He knows what to do he knows the procedures and so he's able just to do it he even knows He knows he knows it so well that when he sees that we're in a minefield he He assesses the threat. Okay, we're in a minefield. I see three minds. I'm going to steer around them the best I can. But if we stop, we're going to be open to getting attacked by the enemy. So you know what we're going to do. We're going to keep moving. And he made that decision on his own. The right decision. He made that decision on his own because he understood the overall objective and the procedures that they would follow and what was most important. So that's a great example of decentralized command. Number seven. Use tanks to take the brunt of the battle. Tanks drove around the anti-tank mines and Bradley's and other vehicles followed in their tracks. Our squadron's S3 tank, commanded by Major Douglas MacArthur, hit an anti-tank mine, but the blast damaged the tank only slightly. It continued the attack and made a repair when we halted.

We ran over anti-personnel mines, but they sounded like microwave. Popcorn popping and had no effect on armored vehicles the rate of our fire of our tanks allowed enemy tanks to Fire only two errant main gun rounds at the outset of the battle and two later as the troop assaulted Enemy machine gun fire had no effect on the troops advance the psychological shock of our tanks advancing undaunted toward their defensive positions Paralyzed and panicked the enemy me so if you don't know anything about what I'm talking about I apologize but tanks are massive A1 Abrams tanks are massive and they have extremely heavy armor they're 68 tons and as he's saying here these even the anti-tank mines aren't aren't aren't stopping the tanks and the

anti-personnel just is nothing but Bradley's are smaller not as big you not as big and not as heavily armored so the the tanks are laying down you know driving and then the Bradley's are just falling in their tracks in case they hit any mines they're the they would hit the Abrams tank but what I take about so how can we apply this to you know everyday life how can we apply this to business you know they're saying technically specifically use tanks to take the brunt of the battle right this is the way I look at this from a business perspective from a life perspective play to your strengths right what is the strongest thing

they've got are these tanks and it's the same thing that we run into in business and it's the same thing you run into in life and jiu jitsu everywhere what are you what are you strong at what are your strong areas and that's what you focus on that's what you use to lead your your advance now do we train for our weaknesses absolutely you know we do that all the time do we do we when we have a weakness in a We don't go hey let's just cover this up. No, we we focus on it so that we can prove it But if we're gonna go to market with something let's go to market with something that we're good at Right if we're gonna if we're gonna try and set up some expansion into a new area

Let's set up the expansion into a near area area that we're familiar with that we're good at that we're strong in Let's not say hey, you know what we've been making we've been making cars for the last 50 years let's go over here and make computers no we're gonna make cars okay let's make trucks to we know how to build vehicles that's what I'm saying and you see this all the time with jih Tjitsu what do jiu jit to guys do what they should do which is try and try and play to your strengths right in it in competition competition yeah right of course when we're when we're training we pray to our weaknesses yeah right we want to oh I'm I'm I don't like people being across side cool let him get across side yeah I

I don't like being on the bottom. Cool. I'm going to be on the bottom. But in competition, what are you good at? How do you get the person to play your game? That's the question. Yeah, and that's everything too, right? Like even at work, you're going to train the new guys,

but you're not going to send the new guy, you know, to make contact with the, you know, potential client or something. The big client. Yeah, yeah. Don't send the new guy. Send the strongest. Send the tank. Send the M1 Abrams to meet the new client.

That's got big potential. So play to your strengths. use tanks to take the brunt of the battle. Next, be prepared for misfires and degraded operations. Lieutenant Jeff DeSifantos tank crew came around the village, destroyed an enemy tank, and acquired a second tank at very close range that was traversing on them. A round got stuck in the breach of the cannon, meaning this cannon's not going to shoot anymore. The loader grabbed hold of the loader's hatch, kicked the round in, the breach came up,

and the gunner, Sergeant Matthew Clark, destroyed the T-72. In another example, Staff Sergeant Digby ordered private first class Charles Bertubin to reload tow missiles. Bertubin could not get the cargo hatch open, however. When the lightweight wrestler, guys are a wrestler, good for him, kicked the hatch release, he sheared it off. Rather than tell Bradley, his Bradley commander that he could not get the toes reloaded, he jumped out of the back door while the vehicle is under small arms and machine gun fire. He climbed onto the back of the Bradley, loaded both missiles, then tapped his Bradley commander on the shoulder while yelling, toes are up.

Staff Sergeant Digby nearly jumped out of his skin because he thought an Iraqi had climbed onto the Bradley. So here's these little malfunctions going on with your weapons, and what do you do? You deal with it and I think I said this on the last podcast with Laif we have a little saying Nothing works everything sucks right and that's what you got to prepare for you count if you rely a hundred percent on those radios Those radios aren't gonna work if you rely a hundred percent on your weapon okay You better learn those drills you better learn how to how to fix and adjust your weapon very quickly go to your secondary whatever the case may be you got to drill those things got to be ready for problems You got to be ready for Murphy's Law to kick in.

Next, number nine. Coordinate between platoons and ensure mutual support. The burning tanks and personnel carriers of the enemy's first defensive line formed a curtain of smoke that concealed enemy further to the east. As our tanks assaulted through the smoke, we saw other enemy armored vehicles and large numbers of infantry running to get back to subsequent trench lines and positions. We destroyed the enemy armored vehicles. and shot the infantry with machine guns as we closed the distance with them. Pockets of enemy soldiers threw up their arms. Our soldiers were disciplined.

Turrets turned away from any enemy soldier with his hands raised. Tank platoon leaders asked the scout platoons to pick up observation of the enemy infantry as their bradleys came through the smoke. The scouts saw that the enemy had used a false surrender to gain a better position. Enemy soldiers were reshouldering their rifles and rocket propelled grenades. Our Bradley surprised the enemy and killed them before they can engage our tanks effectively. Covered move. Covered move. Real simple.

That's what that one is. Mutually supporting. That means we're helping each other out. That's what cover and move is. Next. Number 10. Take risk to win. because Eagle Troop pressed the assault the enemy could not respond effectively

right that's that you're gonna find that in any case you want to get the person on their heels you want to get your opponent on their heels as we cleared the western most defensive positions our executive officer lieutenant John Gifford broke in on the radio I know you don't want to know this right now but you are at the limit of advance you are at the 70 Easting I responded Tell them we can't stop. Tell them we're in a contact and we have to continue this attack. Tell them I'm sorry.

That's the part I already covered. We had surprised and shocked the enemy. Stopping would have allowed them to recover. As Erwin Rommel observed in infantry attacks, the man who lies low and awaits developments usually comes off second best. It is fundamentally wrong to halt or to wait for me. more forces to come up and take part in the action. Eagle Troop continued to attack toward another very subtle ridge line on the enemy position, on which the enemy positioned his reserve a coil of

18 T-72 tanks. Major Muhammad later told one of our troopers, this is the enemy commander of this unit, Major Muhammad later told one of our troopers that he had not known he was under attack until a soldier ran into his elaborate command bunker yelling, tanks, tanks. By the time he got to his observation post, all the vehicles in defensive positions to the west were in flames. He ordered the reserve behind him to establish a second defensive line. It was too late.

The Eagle Troops tank crested the rise and entered their assembly area. The tanks were starting to move out when we destroyed them at close range. So it's not only take risk, aggressive that's got to be your default mode default mode is aggressive press that attack it it's interesting when I mean clearly it happens in combat you start getting the upper hand keep going keep going and it happens in jit-to as well you know if you can get that person on the run you're attacking them with two three four different things at the same time that's when they're done and that's a bad feeling when you're when that's happening to you yeah you fall behind

in the oot-loop They're just getting getting all inside your loop. You're defending something, and you feel the other thing happening. Yeah. Not good. But, again, take risk, but yes, be aggressive. Now, those were the lessons from this one battle. You know, this one battle at 73 Easting.

And now, obviously, McMaster stayed in the Army. He went up through the chain of command. And now we're going to go to 2005, 2006, the Battle of Talafar in Iraq, which this battle was led by who is now a colonel, McMaster. He was a captain at the time of this 73 Easting battle. Now he's a commander. He was commanding the third ACR, the third armored cavalry regiment. And this is very similar to the Battle of Vermont. what happened in Talafar and the reason one of the reasons why it's so similar is that

Colonel McFarlane who was the commander of the one one AD that led the fight in Ramadi that I was there to support the first thing he did when he went back to Iraq when when McFarland went back to Iraq for that deployment in 2006 he took over for McMaster and McMaster was in Talifar so McFarland shows up in Talafar and and says, hey, this is what I did. I did a little something called C's Clear, Hold, and Build. This is the strategy. We pushed into these enemy-controlled territories.

And then it becomes so pacified in Talafar that they were able to take most of the 11-A-D and send them down to Ramadi. And when they got down to Ramadi, McFarland, who was a brilliant guy, had listened to everything McMaster said, looked at how he did it, and then applied the same strategy

in Ramadi now he had to make adjustments to it for sure because it wasn't exactly the same But luckily he was a smart creative guy that said oh we got to make these adjustments But he did it but the the overall concept came from what McMaster from what McMaster did up in Talafar and so There was an article In the New Yorker written by a guy named George Packer and the article is called the lesson of talafar Is it too late for the administration? to correct its course in Iraq and this this article came out April 10th 2006 probably three or four days before I arrived in Ramadi in 2006 so that's when

this article came out and you can see he's saying hey look is it too late to correct the course well actually a lot of people in 2006 weren't even admitting that we were on the wrong course you know because what we were doing at that time and I've talked about this a bunch what America had been doing at that time is is going out grabbing bad guys one at a time two at a time and bringing them back to base and you putting them arresting them capture kill missions and what what's interesting is that's that's that's an attrition that's a war of attrition right you have certain number of bad guys we're gonna go catch them all and it really wasn't working it really wasn't working that's why in 2004

2006 enemy attacks were up 300% and you know 2005 2006 our whole country well I shouldn't say our whole country but many people in our country including a lot of major politicians were saying it was unwinnable and you know we we just need to get out it was a quagmire and all that stuff so that's because we were not on the right strategy and actually if you take this and you apply it back to Hackworth when he basically said during the end of the Vietnam War, and he said, look, we're not going to win. He wasn't talking about we couldn't win. He was saying we're fighting the wrong kind of tactics. We're doing the wrong thing here.

You keep saying, hey, what's our body count? What's our body count? What's our body count? That's a war of attrition. Hey, we lost this many guys. You lost that many. That's an attrition warfare. It's World War I mean, I always use World War I as the classic attrition warfare.

Hey, we're going to go over the trench. We're going to kill as many of you as you can. And hopefully it's less than us. We're going to see you can last longer. That's a punch. Hey, Echo, we're just going to stand here. You punch me. I'll punch you.

You punch me and whoever goes down, you know, loses. Well, guess what do we look like at the end of that? We're all beat up right both of us doesn't matter doesn't matter how good we are So these guys were thinking maybe instead of doing punches to the face we should do little jiu jitsu a little Something a little bit more more tactically sound and it wasn't Just go out grab bad guys just go out and try and kill bad guys because We learned 2003 2004 2005 that's three years of doing those type of operations and real progress wasn't being made it Certainly wasn't made in in Ramadi at this

point again there was guys that were doing incredible work and you do have to go out and and attack the bad guys and go after those critical notes for sure but we were focused so much on that that we were ignoring a lot of what was happening with the populace and and politically other other areas that needed to be addressed so this article came out and again it's from the New Yorker written by George Packer came out April 10th 2006 and here We're going to this article back to the article the lesson that McMaster and his soldiers applied in Talafar were learned during the first two years of an increasingly unpopular war When we came to Iraq we didn't understand the complexity what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions

He said in his course energetic voice when we first got here we made a lot of mistakes We were like a blind man trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things Later he said you got to come in with your ears open You can't come in and start talking you really have to listen to people I mean okay that is just This whole thing is just a a great summary of a humble man, right? He's saying look when we came here. We didn't understand the complexity That's humility. He says we didn't understand what it was like to live under a brutal dictatorship. That's humble. He says when we first got here we made a lot of mistakes

He's not saying all we did everything right now. We made a lot of mistakes We were like a blind man trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things so they're trying He admits that we're trying but we're breaking a lot of stuff later he said Listen this you got to come in with your ears open. You can't come in and start talking Okay leaders around the world pay attention to that right there. You don't need to come in and start talking Come in with your ears open and listen and he says you really have to listen to people very clear very great leadership guidance right there Back to the article They didn't even want to say the I word one officer told me it was the specter of Vietnam

They did not want to say the insurgency word because the next word you say is quagmire the next thing you say is the only war America has lost Vietnam and the next thing you conclude is that certain people's vision of war is wrong so we had a hard time again just as America admitting hey this isn't just a bunch of thugs running around there's an organized insurgency here we need to fight it like an insurgency we had a hard time making that mental transition as a nation and I'll tell you when I I've told the story before when I got to Ramadi and I looked at what's going on I literally read the counterinsurgency manual that was written by basically by General

Petraeus who's a brilliant guy and these guys McMaster I think McFarlane they all helped him write that article or write that book so this was a totally different attitude and you know you hear it here that people people back in DC they didn't even want to use the word insurgency they want to use that word because it it makes everyone think of nom and we lost right so the article going going a little bit deeper on that back to the article the Pentagon strategy in 2003 and 2004 was to capture was to combat the insurgency simply by eliminating insurgents an approach called kill capture Kalev SEP, a retired Special Forces officer who now teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California said of the method, it's all about hunting people.

I think it comes directly from the Secretary of Defense. I want heads on a plate. So he's talking about Rumsfeld right there. You'll get some people that way. But the failure of that approach is evident. They get Hussein. They get his sons. They continue to work every week to kill more. Capture more they've got facilities full of thousands of detainees yet there's more insurgents than there were when we started In dereliction of duty McMaster wrote that a strategy of attrition was In essence the absence of a strategy What a great line that is right and so so McMaster wrote a very harsh critique of the Vietnam War and the way it was run again not Not a critique of the boots on the ground and the troops that fought, but a critique of those back in DC that were running it And you know, this is just this is just an incredible statement that a war of attrition is in essence the absence of strategy This is like okay, what do you do we're do? I'm just gonna go kill as many of us we can

Okay, that's if that's your strategy not a strategy It's like when you get into an MMA fight what's your strategy the guy goes I'm gonna Punch him in the face until I win. Yeah. That's not a strategy. Put my head down and start swinging. Yeah, that's not a good strategy. Don't do that.

You need to have a little bit more strategy than that. Yeah. Back to the article. If we're not stupid and we don't quit, we can win this thing. And again, what's important? This is 2006. This major McLaughlin, McLaughlin, he's another person that's interviewed in this article. He's talking about like we could lose this thing, right?

So if we're not stupid and we don't quit, we can when this thing, Major McLaughlin said, history teaches you that war at its heart is a human endeavor. And if you ignore the human side, yours, the enemies, and the civilians, you set yourself up for failure. It's not about weapons. It's about, it's very true. And I'll tell you where it's true. It's true in war, clearly. And it's true in business too.

And you get people that don't understand the human side of business. They don't understand that they're dealing with human beings and they treat people like numbers. They're not going to be successful. Now, you also get people that go so far in the other direction that all they care about is their people. And guess what? Now they're making bad business decisions and they're hiring more people and they're keeping them. They're not letting anyone go and they're running themselves in the ground because they're overheads too much and they cause destruction. But on the other side, you've got someone that's like, oh, now, bean counter, right?

Nope. You let that person go, no severance or whatever, limit it. You do that methodology, you're going to end up with no business either. Because they're people, because they're people. If you treat them like robots, they're not going to work for you. They're going to rebel against you. The robot will do what the robot is told, but people aren't robots. So you've got to remember that human side.

And obviously in war, and that's, that's, that's, that's, One of the reasons that we're able if we're able to talk about this stuff to businesses We're able to talk about combat leadership to businesses the first oftentimes the first thing that the business that's bringing us on has to Get a grip on is the fact that We were in charge of people not Terminator robots right? We we we we life and I use that term all the time The people think oh you're in the military. Oh, you're running Navy SEALs. Oh, they do whatever you know no no not true They're people. And guess what?

The enemy are people. They have thoughts. They have passions. They have desires. And guess what? The civilian populace that you're working amongst, those are human beings too. And they're not just going to listen to what you say. And you can't just, for instance, can't just throw money out of them.

Right? You can't just throw money at them. They don't care about that money. You know, it was really interesting. I talked about this. This news story I saw on Vice News of a guy going into He was a and I don't remember the reporter's name, but he's a young reporter spoke Arabic and he goes into Ramadi while it was surrounded by ISIS And ISIS was getting ready to take over and

He's saying hey, he's talking to just normal people and he's talking this one guy and he says you know The guy saying look we really need help. We hope America comes back And the reporter says well why don't you just leave? You know why don't you get out of here? I don't you get out of here And the guy says I live here Right? I live here. I'm not going anywhere Yeah, that's a human right? That's a human. That's a sentimental value It's like my house that I live in. You're not gonna take my house from me Like if you if people came to try and take my house away from me

There'd be a fight. Yeah, and and it wouldn't end well for anybody That's sentimental right. So you have to remember that these human beings are human beings And that's one of the key things that that McMaster really McMaster really understood Really understood this fact and and you know I'm giving a lot of credit to McMaster But there's a lot of I mean there's way more guys that I'm talking about that I don't have them not going through their names But there's a lot of guys that contributed to this idea and did an outstanding job You know he's getting the credit because he's the guy in charge right I'm giving him some credit because he's the guy in charge but I guarantee if you asked him he'd say

well no I had this captain that this and I had this major that did that and he had all these people but he's the guy just like if something's gone wrong he'd be responsible well some stuff went right so you get the credit there general now he wrote these these four fallacies of warfare which I find very very interesting and so we learned kind of the tactical side of what he learned from his battle to 73 Eastings Easting you know he had 10 lessons learned pretty tactical stuff right now we're getting into a little bit more strategic level we're talking about war as a broad in a broad sense and so here's what he says about these four fallacies of war warfare there are four fallacies about future war that are preventing us from

learning from our most recent experiences McMaster said these fallacies are portrayed in such a way that they reduce risk to United States interest when in fact they exacerbate risk because they over-rely on capabilities and they purposely ignore continuities in the nature of war okay so he's saying look the the way they portray these things is it makes everything good for America but they actually make things worse for America because they ignore things in war that are always the same this is war we're talking about the nature of war does not change okay his first fallacy the vampire fallacy it's a vampire fallacy it's a vampire because you can't kill it and it comes

back every 10 years this is the belief that a narrow range of technological capabilities will deliver fast cheap and efficient victory in future war The latest manifestation is the belief in a new range of technological capabilities, everything from big data analytics to artificial intelligence to drones and robotics and so forth. So what does that mean? We have an idea that we can, as a nation, just we were so technologically advanced that nothing can stand up to us. And we can just use these precision weapons to take out enemy targets.

And then it's over. It's a fallacy. It's a vampire. It's going to come back. You can't just kill it. It's going to come back. And, you know, obviously we've seen, we saw that in Iraq. We had all kinds of technological advances over the enemy. But they continued to come back. And when we walked away, they came back strong. They were called ISIS. Now, I think that's pretty self-evident what that means. Now, what does this mean in business and in life? Well, to me, what this means is there's no easy solution. There's no easy solution to things, right? We look at something, we go, oh, we can just do this.

We can just use some certain new technology or we can just use some app, right? Oh, if I get an app to track my diet, then I'll be good to go. No. Got to stop putting the sugar in your mouth. to be good to go. People want the shortcut. They want to, they think that there's an easy way

to get things done and there's not, you have to do the work. There's a vampire out there. What you got to do is you got to grab that vampire. You've got to cut its head off. You've got to soak it in holy water and then you've got to dry its bones out in the sun.

That's what kills a vampire. All right? That's the attitude. You can't just think there's gonna be a shortcut We'll be able to be through with this vampire You know tomorrow because I have a cool gun. I'm gonna shoot him no bullets don't kill him Got to go harder. Yeah, I think the Correct way to kill a vampire isn't to cut his head off it's the it's the wooden stake into the heart

That's I think you might be thinking of Medusa or something. Okay, just kind of FYI the holy water part was correct though. Yeah, just just so FYI I don't I don't mean to call you out here I actually googled how to kill a vampire No, that's wrong though mythology is says otherwise he's you stick a wooden stake in his heart Crucifix will get him if you have faith Sunlight will kill him so that was correct holy water Holy water will get them for sure yeah and um yeah staying dry in the yeah I don't know what what website said cut his head off Oh, don't trust Google. Lesson learned. See, you know what I did right there?

Took a shortcut. Oh, yeah. I thought it was a vampire. Just Google it real quick. We're good to go. You know what you did? This is what I think you did. I think you Googled it, which is fine, but here's the thing about Googling something.

Googling is not the answer. It's what you find from Google. And if you just go for the first one or the one that looks like the most simple. But do you see the irony here? Is that I tried to take a shortcut and I'm wrong. And that's the same. That's the vampire fallacy. In it's right yeah

It proves the point all right next The zero dark 30 fallacy And that's the name of a movie about the Killing of bin Laden This is the idea the zero dark 30 fallacy This is the idea that all you have to Gain to do to gain a victory in war is to gain visibility of an enemy's network structure and then conduct raids and against that network either with special operations forces or nodes so the problem

with both these fallacies of course they represent important capabilities you need to have but these are capabilities that masquerade as strategies and simple solutions to the complex problem of war neglecting wars political nature neglecting wars human nature neglecting wars inherent uncertainty based on the interactive nature and finally neglecting that it is ultimately a contest of wills. So the idea that you can again it's attrition warfare and I'll be honest with I never really looked at this as attrition warfare until I was reading researching for this podcast I never I always said hey you know it's a raid mentality hey we can

just capture all the bad guys but to say yes that's attrition warfare that's exactly what it is and especially for me because I look at World War I as so awful and it's an example of attrition warfare and that's what makes it so bad this is attrition warfare too hey we're just gonna capture kill all the bad guys how do you do that what we're forgetting is what about this line when you do that when you just say how look all we need to do is is capture kill the bad guys this is what you do you masquerade this that capability to be able to do that which is an awesome capability awesome

But that mass that capability masquerades as a strategy and what you listen to the things that you forget about this list is classic The complex problem for you neglect wars political nature Human nature inherent uncertainty Interactive nature and you neglect that it's a contest of wills So that's and there's some great YouTube videos where McMaster's talking about that that's big lesson learning that this raid mentality was it's part of it's part of the way you defeat an insurgency part of the way you defeat an insurgency is Captcha killing the bad guys it's awesome But there's so much more you have to address that's like saying hey the way you win a jiu jitzu is to arm lock the person

You can even say as broad as the way you win in jiu jitzu is to submit somebody Right so if I taught you every submission I knew But I didn't teach you How to transition didn't you cheat on any positions you would do there's no way you could win It's the same thing is submission important. Yes, that's what a rate is a rate is the submission It's one piece of it. It's not the whole game though It's not the whole game and I think that's what he's making very clear here through that zero dark 30 fallacy Next one is the wild kingdom fallacy back when America was wholesome there was no

reality TV no Kardashians or anything so on Sunday nights American families would watch this wildlife show called Mutual of Omaha's wild kingdom and that show what happened on that show is the host marlin Perkins would send his assistant Jim to conduct exotic and occasionally dangerous field work this is the belief that we could be like Marlin and just get Jim or other military to do our fighting for us. And this is a way in the minds of some people to reduce risk, but it actually increases risks because you are relying on other people whose interests are oftentimes incongruent with your own interests and not only don't have the capability to fight and do what you need to do,

but oftentimes don't have the will to do it. So he's saying this idea that we can just, hey, we'll just have the Iraqis do it. Sounds like a good idea, right? Because I don't want my guys to get hurt or killed. There's a problem with that. The problem is they can't do what we do. They can't do it as well as we do it. And they probably don't have the will to do it.

Now, credit to the Iraqis right now, they're moving through Missouille. They're getting after it. They're heavily backed by American forces. But they're taking the lead for sure. So, but when we were in Remarckisks, Those guys didn't have the will that we had. They didn't mean as much to them if you can believe that. I know it sounds crazy We had a battalion of Iraqi soldiers talking about this with life. We had a battalion of Iraqi soldiers so 500 Iraqi soldiers that had come to Ramadi as to to help out in the fight they left

They abandoned they quit a battalion of Iraqi soldiers and here's the weird thing the reason they brought this battalion in one we needed more manpower number two They were Sunni so Ramadi was a Sunni city and bulk of the army at the time was Shia So the Shias coming in and fighting in Ramadi sometimes the Sunnis would say hey what wait a second Why these Shias in here so the idea was to bring the Sunnis in to help and the Sunnis got scared this the Sunnis the Sunnis the Sunnis the Sunnis the Sunnis the Sunnis the Sunnis the Sunni's the Sunni's the Sunni's the The Sunni battalion got scared and left and one of the reasons they said well it's in a Sunni city I just said wait wait a second well that's the whole point these are your people these are other Sunnis that are getting murdered by insurgents So it was just it was a tough situation and my point in saying that and there's a whole

There's a whole another discussion we could have on that But the point is that in order to win that fight we had to be on the ground the Iraqis were not gonna do it by themselves they were not going to and that's what this fallacy is hey that if we just direct other people to do it then we'll be good to go and we don't have to take any risk now again how does that translate to what we do you know business how does that translate to business how does that translate to life for me it's real simple the important things that you got to do you got to do the the hard things that

that you got to do you got to do you know it okay Tim Ferriss can we outsource some stuff yes we can don't worry Tim we'll outsource some stuff but the important stuff you have to do you got to do it got to do it yourself if it really means something you have to do it you have to have the will and you have to make it happen because if I outsource something to somebody if I say hey I really don't feel like reading this book You know, I don't feel like reading this book for the podcast. Can you read this for me?

Well, yeah, somebody's going to read it, but they're not going to have my perspective on it. And they're just going to give me some notes, and I'm going to sit here and read them. We're not going to get the product that we need because that's important. I have to do the work myself. No one can, I can't outsource that piece. Can't do it.

There's actually been people that said, like, hey, I can read the books for you and give you notes. I'm like, hey, I appreciate the offer. No. I got to read it. I got to do the hard part. Yeah. You say it.

Try to outsource that stuff, Echo Charles. No, no, no, not keep it in-house for sure. The congruency of interest, you know, that's a big one. Because you can even think that the person has the same interest. And really, you both can think that, but just maybe in a different way, especially when you're thinking creatively. Like how you present this and what parts you think are important are going to be slightly different, even if the person is the same interest, it's going to be different.

So then at the end of the day, when you expect a certain result, it's going to be different yeah let yourself down yeah you know I just somebody just wrote because we're doing Musashi which a giant book and someone was highlight masashi the other day and kind of took a picture of it and he said you know I wonder how close jaco's highlights are going to be to my highlights and you know what they're going to be close they might even be right on maybe but they might not be yeah and I can't say hey bro send me your book and your notes and then we'll do the podcast and I'm just going to cheat can't do that just like you can't say hey you know what Iraqi forces that aren't ready that don't have the same here's the big problem with the Iraqi forces at the time the Iraqi forces at the time

Didn't have a vision of what their country could be like So think about that we Americans we had we had inherently being from America we have a vision of what freedom is like We we know what that is Iraqi soldiers didn't know what that is They thought man they lived under under Saddam for their whole lives I mean, I mean, I I mean, all the soldiers that we worked with lived under Saddam their whole lives. That's all they knew. So for them, we say, no, you're going to have freedom. They're like, oh, yeah, I don't know what that means.

What does that mean? What does that mean? I don't know what that means. We're thinking, hey, don't worry, these guys will fight. They're going to fight for their freedom. They're going to fight for their Sunni brothers. They're going to fight for their Iraq. They're kind of like, we don't even know. They didn't even really have a good vision of what Iraq is.

Iraq is a country that we used to be underneath Saddam. And now it's not. And we don't know what that means. We don't know what that looks like. We Americans had a vision of what that looked like. They didn't have it. So how are they gonna fight for it? To your point, they don't see what we see. They had a different opinion. So who's got to go on there and and who's gonna have the will to fight? The answer is us in that particular case.

And it's the same thing right now like even in Missoual, even in the last time when Ramadi was taken back by the Iraqi forces good on them props to the Iraqi forces right now. They're backed up by Americans Americans are saying hey look this is the vision this is what you're going to do this is how we're going to take this part of it and that is the big difference of why they didn't have the will they didn't understand what they were fighting for and you take anybody and put them in that situation you don't even look at Vietnam War right you look at the Vietnam War are our American soldiers some of them you can go watch interviews you know they were saying I don't know what I'm fighting for

yeah hey they were actually questioning I don't know we know we know America's like anymore right was really reading reading this book by Jim Thompson you know longest held POW ever and when he got back he was kind of when he got back to America you know he was gone from 1964 until 19703 when he got back when he left America was fairly conservative in in patriotic when he gets back people are burning flags people are protesting he was taken a back by it and so so if you took somebody that left for Vietnam in 1970 and America's in turmoil and all that it's hard to have the same vision that they had had in

1964 which is like hey America we're gonna go stop the communists communists are bad Communists are bad but then you start having the American Socialist Party that telling you that communists are good and all of a sudden kids over there going hey look I don't even know what's going on but I'm not sure I want to die here in this jungle yeah and that's problem And it's the same thing with with the Iraqi soldiers. They just didn't know what they were fighting for if you asked them what they were fighting for They might say a paycheck Very few of them would say I'm fighting for a free and stable Iraq

Yeah, very few of them now some of them fought against truly Heartfelt fought against the insurgents. They didn't like the insurgents right insurgents were Murdering people and raping women and torturing people. They didn't like that and they'd fight hard against them, but that That wasn't not everyone experienced that right not everyone saw that Yeah, so and I'm sure they're kind of like you can tell them what you're fighting for you know and And they can answer you yeah, but you don't feel it's like you know like your dad tells you when you're young Your dad tells you hey clean your room. I want this room spick and span Yeah, you don't get it. Yeah, I'm gonna take this whole mess. I'm just gonna put it in the closet just so he'll leave me alone kind of thing, you know

And then meanwhile the dad your dad has his vision is like like what's up with you why didn't you clean your room don't you understand kind of thing yeah no you don't you don't understand that your dad's trying to teach you that discipline equals freedom my kids were running late this morning going to school why are they running late because their rooms are messy well you're running late everything's stressful now when we're heading to school why is that well because your your room is messy lack of discipline lack of discipline causes mental stress Stress mental stress is not freedom yeah but to your point even trying to explain to the Iraqi soldiers why they're doing what they're doing

On a really big level like that is difficult It's difficult now occasionally you get a good leader there were some good there was some good leaders there was one of the generals That the Delta platoon commander worked with he was a good dude he was a good leader and and the Delta platoon commander actually had some really good I Iraqi scouts as well that really believed in what they were doing and know that be the reason I differentiate a little bit the Delta platoon commander worked very consistently with the same guys a bunch as as Leif was working with multiple different groups so the Delta platoon commander had some more tight relationships with some of those guys Leif did too but anyways some of those guys understood what they were fighting for

but it's hard to just like you said explain what freedom is yeah and the other piece of it is in the in those situations Explaining what freedom is is still no guarantee at all right that freedom is coming your way These guys have been through so much turmoil that country's been through so much turmoil They're like hey, you know what we don't even know you can promise us that But doesn't seem like we're doing too well how do we know you're gonna win how do we know we're gonna win We don't know that so you know what I'm gonna do lay low see where this thing falls And then I'll then I'll step up once I know who's gonna win

Tough next The RSVP fallacy. Thank you for the kind invitation to the war, but the United States regrets it as unable to attend. This is the belief that you can just opt out of war. It's a narcissistic approach to war, which we define only war in relation to us and what we'd like to do. So this idea that you can just be opt out doesn't work. the bottom line there is that you got to get in the game the game's going to take place the game's going to happen and you're going to be affected by it that's the key point it's not a game that

takes place on a field it's a game that takes place on a field and expands out into the crowd into the stands and into the town and stuff starts getting burned yeah and riots take place so you have to get in the game that was the that was the fourth fallacy of war. Now, I think that all those really show not just how smart McMaster is, but also how open-minded he is, which is a very important quality. I also think he's a realist. He's a realist and looks at things in a very real way. You know, this is what's happening and this is what we need to do to deal with it. And also what's great about McMaster is that he's not afraid to speak his mind and he's got kind of got in trouble for that along the way so

I'm definitely Looking forward to seeing how McMaster handles All the challenges that are ahead of him right now not only in DC, but in the world so it's gonna be interesting and we wish him or I certainly wish him the best of luck in that pursuit so leading off

a little McMaster and um think about going to a little Q&A at this time sure it's been a little while since we did Q&A here yeah I've been doing Facebook live

and when I've been doing Facebook live I've not I'm purposely not preparing at all that's my goal my goal is to not prepare at all because and in the second or the yeah it was the second one that I did I started looking at the

questions ahead of time and I was saying okay well maybe I'll just take a couple notes here and all of a sudden I started preparing for Facebook Live and then I realized if I'm going to prepare I'll make it the podcast so no don't prepare Facebook Live ask me your question and I'll answer it there on the spot it's fun it's different right it's easier I can't do it two podcasts a week because don't have time to prepare for them but can you Facebook live you can slide that thing in it doesn't preparing for a live thing with the dynamics of Facebook live doesn't that defeat the live kind of purpose in a way it does but we could do this podcast on Facebook live so we could prepare it and we could put

it on Facebook live we could do that but then it would be a rehash of what we're doing and the other piece of it is is I think the Facebook live is a way of people seeing a little bit more of me as a normal human being right and not me as a guy with all the answers on stuff like no you asked me a question I don't really know you know what I mean yeah and and also you know obviously on this podcast is is usually pretty serious and so I'm not like that all the time. So maybe they could see. Well, I have a serious side, no doubt.

Sure. But I'm not like that all the time. Yeah. So I think Facebook Live is a good way to say. And plus, I don't want to answer some questions here for a couple reasons. Number one, man, when somebody listens to the podcast, I want to make sure they're getting something of high quality, right? Not just some fluff, right? Yeah.

We're not doing fluff here if we need to do fluff on the podcast we just won't do the podcast Because I don't I don't want to somebody to press play and waste time Oh yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah I don't mind fluffing around and talking smack on Facebook Live because it's that's what it is It's an open forum. We're gonna have some fun we're gonna get after it a little bit But it's not gonna be super heavy because if you want that come here get your podcast on you know Yes, kind of more lightened up a little bit. Yeah, it's not like that's it is not like I said okay Hmm let's see I need to show them my light side no, but if you talk to me live right, right

It's like when Jody came on Jody came on like after we were hanging out for for like an hour He's like yeah man Ross coming down. I just thought you're gonna be like full on cycle the whole time And I was like yeah, I'm not full on cycle the whole time Yeah, you know if we're eating a burger We're good I'm not gonna be sitting there while I'm eating a burglom Say let me tell you what no I don't want to do that when I'm eating a burger when I enjoy that burger Yeah makes sense but yeah if it's a live Q and a you know how like that like the muster or you know when you guys okay we're gonna do some Q and a That's the example of like a live Q&A. You don't prepare for those questions. No, you know? And and and also what's interesting about those questions is those I've given some I mean if you think about any of the podcast that I've gone on

Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, those guys asked me some heavy questions, right? Those guys weren't just asking me, we weren't just BSing, right, during those.

So there's no guarantee that I'm not going to get a little bit serious on Facebook Live or whatever. I'm going to do what people ask me. Right. Yeah. But yeah, during the muster,

we do a lot of Q&A during the muster, we get all kinds of questions. There's some really funny questions that require funny responses. There's also some real serious ones that require very serious answers. And what's interesting, if this happens on Twitter, too,

somebody asked me some dead serious question, like a very serious, you know, something that's emotional to me, like about losing guys, or something like that, guys killed in combat, and I'll respond to it.

And then two tweets later, someone says, you know, I'm going to have some mint, chocolate chip ice, You know what I mean? And so you go through these if someone's read they must think I'm schizophrenic because I'm answering real serious then it's real light and then it's kind of weird Yeah, yeah, the roller coaster man. Yeah, it's an emotional roller coaster on the Twitter Oh Lord. All right. So Q&A. Okay, okay, echo Charles back in the game back in the game All right, so yeah first question Jocko and echo should you defend bad

leaders, aka your superiors, to your men. Think about that question. This is a good, it's a good question. And we haven't done Q&A in a while, and that's why I wanna start off. Think about that. Should you defend bad leaders, that are people that are in charge you,

should you defend them to your men? Now, this is really a perfect example of the dichotomy of leadership. And this is one of those situations. that makes leadership very, very hard because it requires a nuanced balance to handle this correctly. So, on the one hand,

if we say our boss is a bad leader and doesn't know what he's doing, don't forget all the boss, hey, echo, our boss does know what he's doing, he's an idiot, we undermine his authority for sure. And we undermine the authority of the whole chain of command. So should you call out when someone sucks? You say, oh, that guy sucks.

He's terrible. Should you do that to your leader? The answer is no. You can't do that because you're undermining everything. So you got a horrible leader? You can't just sit there to your boys and say, hey, this guy's an idiot. Can't do that. However, if you give full support,

to this horrible boss, then your troops, who know a good leader from a bad leader? They know what's stupid and what isn't. They know this. They know this. And if you are sitting there backing them 100%, then they're going to know that you either actually agree with the bad leader,

which is bad, or that you're too weak to stand up and say, hey, boss, what we're doing is wrong. So you can't go to one extreme the boss is an idiot you can't go to the other extreme the boss is awesome think about how hard that is Think about what I'm saying this is a very very challenging so What can you do? Well, okay first of all as a subordinate leader it is your duty to push back right to say hey boss I think we're doing the wrong thing here and this is why we spend a lot of time trying to build relationships with our bosses so that we can have candid conversations with them right? Sometimes it's hard to do that. It is I understand

But when you have built a relationship Then you can go to your boss and say hey look this isn't this isn't good now once you've done that Then you can go to your go to your your your troops and you say hey look I went to the boss is what I told them You know I told him that hey doing this method isn't gonna work well. He explained to me while we're doing it this is a What he said. So this is why we're using this method. I know it's not popular with you guys, but it's it's here's the reason why we're doing it. So you made progress right your guys are saying okay. Well, he at least stood up to the man and now he gave us an answer. He told us why we're doing what we're doing so that's good too But the other thing is one of the easiest way to do this is to provide an honest opinion truth Truth is going to be your friend here truth is going to be your friend now I should I should put a caveat around that

because the truth might be you think your boss is a complete idiot and everything you say and is stupid. Okay. So I take it back. Don't use full on truth. And this is so, this is so interesting too because clearly truthfulness is a huge, you know, it's a value that I hold very dear, right? And you got to be truthful and all that.

I'm telling you right now, do not be true. If you think your boss is an idiot and you think the method that he's, or the planet he's got is stupid don't be truthful with your guys and go down there and say Boston idiot is not gonna help your team right we have to be smart about what we're doing but when you when you do that what you need to do is to keep it somewhere in the middle okay so when you say something negative don't get all crazy with the negative don't get all nuts with the negative what you want to do is say so you say something like hey look I'm sure there's some better ways of doing this but this is the

decision that was made and we need to make it work right so I'm not saying it's horrible I'm saying look hey guys I'm sure there's some better ways but guess what this is what we are being told to do right now and we're gonna do the best we can notice that I'm putting it from like them to the we making I'm taking ownership of it this is now ours to execute so you want to do that and and I also want to focus more on as much as I can I I want to focus on not the personality of the boss, but I want to focus on like the what we're being told type thing

or what the mission is. Because I don't want to bring, I want to keep the personality of the boss at bay. Sometimes you get a boss that has such a raging asshole personality that you have to say something. Like you just, you have to explain. And that's when even then you wanna ratchet it down a little bit. You don't say, hey, the boss is an asshole.

Yeah. The boss is an idiot. No, you don't say that. You know you say, hey, look guys, I know the boss is not exactly, perfect, but I think he means well with what he's trying to do, and that way we need to focus, for that reason, we need to focus on executing. Because it's not going to help us to sit here and complain about the boss.

He might not have the greatest personality, but you know what? His intention is good. So let's support him. You know what I mean? Something like that where you're not giving him full support, but you're not completely throwing him under the bus. Again, this is so hard to do because, let's face it, the boss. Boys, the troops, they know what's up. They know when that boss is an idiot. They know when he's

unprofessional. They know when he treats you like shit. They know that stuff. And so if you bow down, if you break and you give that to him, yes, you're right. The boss is a jerk. Yes, you're right. The boss treats people like shit. Yeah, if you give them that, you're hurting the situation. And that's why also when you're in a leadership position, your job oftentimes is to buffer between the jerk boss and the boys. The boys should never know that the kind of stupid harassment that you get from your boss.

The boys should never know that. They should think, hey, Jocco says this guy's good to go, we're good to go. They should never think that this guy's an idiot. So, again, in both cases, it's like, you can't go hardcore. You can't go hardcore. against either the plan or the person but you also at the same time you need to give a

little bit of a pressure release just a little bit of a pressure release you know gotta give them just enough that they go you know what you want them to think you want them to think hey jaco gets it he knows he's not admitting it to us and good on him he's he's keeping it professional they know I they know that John they they know I don't love the boss but they They know I'm keeping it professional. So, therefore, they accept what I'm saying, and they stay part of the team.

Yeah, it kind of feels like I'm kind of imagining myself as one of the boys. You're my boss, and we don't really like your boss. Right. I feel like, sure, if I was made to feel better in whatever way, just a little bit better, that pressure, really. So you said, just a little bit better about the mission, okay? and I trust you because of how you always handle things or whatever.

You know what? All right. It's not the best, funnest, whatever. It's not my first choice. But at least we're doing it together. You know,

I trust you and all right, let's do this kind of thing. And one of the key things you just said is trust. So if you trust me and the boss is saying to do something completely ridiculous, and I come down and say, Echo, guess what we're going to do? We're going to dig this hole and then we're going to fill it back in.

I want to do it six times today. Let's get to work and you know it's stupid and I come down and try and sell that to you Yeah without any explanation with that voice. Yeah with that voice I'm gonna lose trust you're gonna you're not gonna trust me as much now if I come down and say hey Hey boys hey bringing in this is what's going on. Yeah see I'm going back to a number voice here Going back to the leadership voice. Yeah, I say hey guys here's what's going on. I know this is gonna come across as a strange task We're gonna get it done we got to dig these holes and we're gonna fill them back in or we're actually gonna do this this six times today again I know it's not exactly what we were planning to do

today but look let's get after it let's get it done and let's prove to everybody that we can make this happen faster them and all of a sudden we're we're gonna get after you know what I mean it's no factor whereas again if I go into like a dorky nerd voice and try and say we are going to do this because it's the best plan ever yeah you I'm losing trust with you yeah I'm actually hurting my trust trust so this is a really really nuanced thing and my best advice here is to try and keep it in the middle, right? Try and keep it.

And I'll tell you, probably lean a little bit, lean towards being professional, lean towards supporting the chain of command because the guys are going to know when you give them that little pressure relief, when you say, hey, I know this is a little bit of a strange plan. As soon as I say that, everyone's like,

okay, he understands, we're good. And we'll do whatever he says. Hey, Jocko, okay, Jocko, we get it. You got to have us do this. Cool, let's do it. Yeah. It's when I come down and say, hmm, and again, you'll realize that this is, this is the opposite. I say all the time, you know, if you come down and say, the boss's plan, we got to do this. I always throw that as like the worst possible leadership is, hey, we got to do this because we were told to do it.

That's the worst possible leadership. It's not saying to do that. What I'm saying is a little pressure relief, just a little pressure relief of, hey, look, I threw up a different plan. I thought my plan was a little bit better. Boss came up with this this idea we're gonna go for it it's close enough just something like that Just like I know I know I dig it yeah that's it little little skim a little a little nugget Yeah I feel like I would feel if you were to be like this such a dumb plan and I don't know why we got to do it or whatever I'd be like wait wait then why are we doing it? You know you're you're my boss like why are we doing it then you know and

I wouldn't want to do that no So yeah it's like right in the middle there it's leaning towards being professional it's leaning towards supporting the chain of command with just enough of a pressure relief to to have them say I'll tell you a story so this is real real quick this is in do take your time I want you to tell me the longest story we're going back to ninth grade and this is and this is kind of it's weird that I even thought of this so we we you know how like in class right this early high school freshman you know in class they're like hey get into groups we're going to do this thing and so we got into these groups and we did some project

little thing during class. We're done. Halfway through class, we're done, and we're about to present. The teacher looks at it and is like, oh, you guys got to do it again. But the teacher doesn't tell everyone. She tells just this one girl, Marla, is her name.

Marla. Yeah. So Marla comes back from talking to a teacher, and she's like, she was kind of the leader. No one does it, but at that point, she was kind of the little leader, the liaison between the group and the teacher. So she comes back.

She's like, we've got to do it again. And everyone was like, what? She goes, we got to do it again. Like, you could tell she had accepted it, but just her being like sighing kind of demonstrated that, hey, she feels the pain too. I dig it, but hey, guys, you know, we're not going to complain right.

It was just that little subtle thing, but that's exactly what it did. It kind of, it basically accepted the order that none of us really wanted to hear. But at the same time, she demonstrated that, hey, she feels it too, you know? And let's do it. We did again, of course, and whatever.

I don't even know what grade we had. Got an A plus. I'm sure Marla working her leadership skills on the team. Yeah, it was weird that I mean, I don't know necessarily that she intended to do that, but that was the exact effect. And you can, thinking back, I can see the elements, you know, the little pressure release was her not saying, don't talk to me like that. She said we got to do it. You know, she didn't like oppose anybody. Her, just her little mannerisms. You know what she didn't do? She didn't jump completely on board with the teacher. Yeah. And be like, we got to do this again. It sucked. No, she was like, hey, look. We got we're gonna have to do this again. Yeah, you know what I mean? She just the tone was perfect. She hated enough. And I'll say it, this question, I'm surprised it took so long to get this question

because this is a really, really good question. And it also is a incredibly important skill to be able to walk this line. And it's tricky to do. And it's a very, it's sort of, this might be one of the, this is like the type of thing that helped me a lot in when I was in the, teams was just being able to do this enough because you get to do some dumb shit in the teams man and you know what it's like okay being able to translate a stupid something stupid and give enough pressure relief to to make guys not just go jocco was just you know company guy yeah right

company guy you just lives oh he doesn't stand up for us no actually I do but this is you know like lay's telling that story about doing paperwork right I'm like no we're going to do all the paperwork I went I held the company line but like in such a dynamic or such an overboard way that guys were like okay yeah we're gonna win yeah this is a competition yeah so that's good times yeah it's like a meet it because it seems like okay all that paperwork it's it's almost like the paperwork was like in a front it's like hey what it's us against them kind of thing whoever told us to do the paperwork and you were like yeah it's up against them and we're going to win this thing yeah exactly you know so it's like you take it to the yeah That's something I've done I've actually done that a fair amount I talked about the story before

But like an officer candidate school every little stupid rule that they threw at us I did it to the end degree and had everyone yeah Yeah yeah yeah Goin ballistic yeah going ballistic so a story like that where we're just go we're gonna take with their take the order And carry it out to the extreme and take pride in doing that That was another little tactic that got used by me along the way Yeah, yeah we're gonna do that we didn't do it so hard you're not even know what your name was That's another tactic pick you can take for sure they want us to polish these boots they want us to they

want us to they want us to clean this thing we'll do it watch this all right next question jaco has there been a situation in which you took something to personally how do you avoid taking things personally so the initial reaction is like no man I don't take things too personally you know what keep but the actual fact is yeah I take I take everything personally right like I mean I if I do something bad I am very personally I don't like it at all if I do something poorly I don't like it at all I take it very personally if somebody gives me feedback I take it personally this is like it's an ego thing It's a pure ego thing right and I just had to say this at a group I was talking to just because I say ego is bad all the time

Ego is good too Ego is what drives you ego is what makes you want to be number one Ego is what is brings you pride in your work it makes you work harder to give deliver good product and and be a good leader and a good employee and a good person right that's ego the problem comes when ego or taking things personally actually prevents you from listening to the critiques that you're being told that's that's the problem so for instance we'll take this little podcast right here I's got some critique on it the other day yeah I got somebody somebody sent me a little critique

and they said that I didn't explain because we had Andy Stump on here and Andy was kind of rattling off that is his career in the teams and as he was rattling off the career in the teams He lost some people not a bunch because it wasn't that complicated, but he lost some people and And for instance he used an an acronym Or an acronym LPO which stands for leading petty officer which is the which is the second senior enlisted person in a seal platoon and I didn't explain that when he said it so there's an example so when I heard this my first reaction is like oh you don't know what LPO is cool go Google it go Google it why you

asking me oh brace stop talk and then that was pretty much you know my my ego was saying hey I can't believe this person does yeah how dare you how dare you and then as I thought about I was like well you know I need to I need to make sure in the future that I'm more that I'm more aware of what guys are talking especially when I'm sitting here talking to it another seal Who we have a common language and We are talking about things in very conversational mode so we're not caring about anybody else and that's sort of What the podcast is often is like we're not we're not talking to everyone that's listening at this moment

We're just kind of talking to ourselves or amongst ourselves and so when he throws out this words I need to be more aware of them so if I took it personally I might not listen if I actually Listen I can do a better job So that's that's kind of it you and basically that's the same with anybody when anybody receives any criticism of any kind they get they take it personally and I think the thing is two things number one get over it so you can listen to what the criticism is and and also remember this this is kind of weird I think maybe I'm

wrong what do you think the more angry and the more personally you take some criticism, the truer it actually is. Is that possible? When something really bothers you, it's probably something that really bothers you because you know it's true. Like when somebody says something that just doesn't matter to me, it's, you know, I don't take it personally.

Oh yeah, they just think that, don't worry about it. I'm not worried about it. But when somebody says something that I know is true and they're pinging me on it, that means I get even more, take it more, and get more angry about it and and then that should be an indicator. Hey, this is something you actually need to fix. Yeah, it actually has to do with insecurity more than anything.

So it can be, it can be super true or it can be kind of true or you can just be questioning it whether or not it's true. If you're insecure about it, that's when it's going to, because you can be like, there can be, okay, you know, let's say guys have a receding hairling and they're like, oh, I don't, I don't care about that at all. It's totally true, you know, and or let's say I do care about it. I don't like it, but I've known it for the last. I don't know, 20 years, whatever.

And someone's like, hey, you know, your hairline's receding. Do people still care about that? I don't. I don't think they do anymore. I don't know of any, but I'm just saying, you know, certain things that's, and if you know about it or, you know, and you know it's true, you won't necessarily be bothered by it. But if you get someone who's like, it's starting to recede or it's early on or it's like, dang, and they won't necessarily be, this is just an example hypothetical, but they won't

necessarily be concerned about the actual hairline receding. They're more concerned about, oh, do I look older? Am I unattractive now? Or am I losing it now? Or something like that? That's what they're insecure about. So when someone points out some symptom of that insecurity, that's when they're like, well, you don't go to say that. Or, you know, they get on, oh, man, that goes for kind of anything. So maybe, I don't know, maybe someone's saying, hey, you didn't explain this enough. Maybe you're like, wait, what are you saying? Was that a junk episode kind of thing? Or something like, did I not? You know how you you're good at explaining stuff and simplify them or whatever maybe it was like an attack on that or something

Maybe it's a personal point of pride yeah, yeah, you know exactly I don't know yeah, but maybe but that's typically what people get mad about it's not necessarily if they know it's true or not it's if they're insecure about it right well you wouldn't be insecure about something that wasn't true No, but here's the thing but sometimes you do because you know and you sometimes it's like a weird like mental like problem but you know girls for example I'm not saying all girls but I'm not saying all girls but I'm not to totally generalize right now. But you know, the girl's like, hey, do I look fat in this? The girl's like an awesome shape or whatever. And you're like, uh, they always think they're fat. It's not true.

That's not the right response, by the way. That little wishy washing thing. That's not a good response. That's a perfect example, though. You know what I mean? So it's like that kind of stuff. You know, people are just insecure about stuff sometimes. Oh, and even though the girls in really good shape.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's horrible. Or even guys when, especially like if they're into like, their physique or something like that were I don't know

they're at a party or so I've heard guys like they go to parties and they'll do like dips or push-ups before they walk in because like so they're like more pumped I swear and is that why you were doing some push-ups you know what I mean so like you were just a little insecure about what I just said anyway

you know they'll get that kind where they'll be like oh I'm they'll think that oh I'm not looking very cut up or something like You know like that can stuff when it's not true. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think I think that's a good point and I think the bottom line is When we take things personally I I think it's actually not a negative thing because it means that you're there's probably something that you need to work on But I think what we need to watch out for is taking it personally and therefore being mad And either be mad at the person that told you which the person probably could be out of line you know saying some

stuff that's offensive. But even if someone offends you, okay, well, let's fix it. So you don't have that, that, that weakness or that insecurity anymore. And so just know what your red flags are, know when you're taking something. Everybody takes stuff personally.

I'm like, Mr. Detachment. And I take stuff personally all the time when somebody says something to me. I'm like, oh, okay. Dang, what I do to do better. Yeah, you do a good job of seeing the big picture, though. You know, like, because a lot times, you know, when, I don't know, I always think back to, you know,

the relationship like okay let's say let's say I'm at home I'm mowing the lawn I you know did all this these great housework chores whatever right you know dad comes home mom comes home and they're like hey I thought I told you to take out the trash meanwhile everything else is spick and span so I'm like I'm mad you know how dare you say that to me when I did this me me my thing my thing but at the same time they're right you know so you do a good job of like you'd be able to kind of recognize that. Even though you'd probably feel those same feelings, you won't, your default isn't,

what about this? And fight back and make the problem bigger. It's kind of like, you'll feel it on the inside. And recognize the red flags of what's happening. And you go, oh, yeah, cool, I have a handle of that. I got to remember to take out the trash because the truth is, that's correct.

That is correct. You do. It doesn't matter if you did the lawn or not. The trash was a thing, you know? So, yeah. Yeah, you do a good job of recognizing that part. I think a lot of times in our case, we don't do such a good job.

You know, I'm gonna throw this out there. This is a little off subject, but it just made me think of it. I was talking to Dave at the gym yesterday, and he was listening to the podcast, and he lost his dad, and like six months ago. And he was listening to a clip from the podcast of me basically saying, hey,

because someone asked what good comes from, someone dies and he he said look you cover a lot of stuff and it was super powerful and was was very helpful and he said but there's a one more thing he said there's a one more thing that has come from my dad's death that it's good and I said what and he said it was like a slap in the face of go out and and get after it you know and I kind of left that out and I've I've talked to other people and clearly you know when you lose someone that's close to you see the reason I guess the reason that I didn't think of this is because in the teams you kind of like you guys get killed you know and we all kind of already live with the feeling of hey man I mean I say it all the time I'm gonna live the

best life I can but for someone in the civilian sector and they haven't had any any they haven't lost anyone They haven't had anyone died close to them. They get the feeling that many of us, many people walk through the world with of, I'm gonna live forever. You know, I'm not gonna die. And I got all the time in the world that need. I got time.

And so he made this great point. He said, you know, for me, when my dad died, he's, you know, he's in his mid-20s. And he's been kind of, you know, I don't wanna say the word relaxing, but he's been, you know, fairly, he's been cruising, kind of. And he realized he can't.

He can't do that. No, he needs to get after it. So, cool, cool story, cool feedback. I thought I should let everybody know that's another good thing. If you lose someone and you, you're not accustomed to that and you don't see how precious life is because a lot of times it's pretty easy to forget, it's pretty easy to forget how precious it is when it's right there, when it's given to you. You know, it's just like food.

It's pretty, pretty easy to forget. I mean, how precious was the, was the crappy loaf of French bread with sticks and bugs in it that Colonel Reeder got when you got to the prison camp in Hanoi? That was precious. And you know what? Even Colonel Reader, three weeks later, he was like, oh, this bread, even he's here, he's laughing. He's like, that bread sucked. I was like, sir, here you said it was like the best thing you've ever had. He goes, well, it wasn't first. So we all get, we all get this attitude that, you know, hey, this is always going to be here. Well, it's not always going to be here. So don't, don't treat it like it is. Taking that for granted. Yep. Next question. Hi, Jocko. I'm being told in Jiu-Jitsu that I'm using too much strength

to execute techniques and dominating roles. I get after it in the gym and try to be stronger and fitter. I already limit my strength against same-weight training partners and definitely don't pull, don't bull rush

or overpower lighter partners. I want to improve my Jiu-Jitsu knowledge and understand them intent of reducing my strength and uh reducing my strength to learn the skill but where where is the balance i feel like i feel like i feel like i'm doing uh being penalized for working hard and being strong and there has to be an element of strength uh to technique right now that i'm trying to do zero strength working weak positions and they still go 100% on me i'm not learning anything right what he's asking what is what is my what is my 20s?

25% stronger than my training partners 100%. I've trained no ghee for four years, but ghee only for 12 months. Don't judge a white belt warrior. Okay, so, you know, I don't think anyone is saying use zero strength. Right. And just be a, I used to have a kids in the kids class that would just like flop around like use no, they'd be like noodles, you know, especially when you're a partner, right? And I say, hey, don't be that. So no one's telling you to use zero strength. That's not the that's not the the goal here. You just want to use less strength and I'm the same way man. I work out so I can be strong

And when we're rolling if I have to use strength. I'm gonna use it you bench pressed me off off you the other day No, all technique. Yeah, yeah, it was you know here You even claimed it at the time You're like that's all weight lifted so so that's good right and and you you used it because you had to use it you were gonna get punished and you're like I don't know I'm not gonna have jocco across the side this early in the role so boom got bench pressed people were watching too much yeah yeah so so yeah we we want to be strong for sure but I'll tell you this is a this is a key thing when I'm gonna train with someone I'm gonna use just enough skill and strength to stay slightly

ahead of them just enough I'm not trying to crush them if someone's and I'll tell you if someone's way lighter than me then but they have kind of of equivalent skill then I'm gonna try and limit my strength as much as I can so it's Jiu-jitsu versus jiu-tizu for sure but I'm definitely gonna use my strength if needed for really for a couple reasons the first reason is because of ego sure right I don't want to tap I want to get caught in a bad position I don't like that you know if you if you train like when we're done training I'm definitely using strength because I'm dripping with sweat right I mean I'm using physical

attributes but It's not the only reason. The other reason that you have to use your strength sometimes is you don't want to give people the false sense of security that, hey, that worked, right? Right. Even your good training partner is like, you don't want to say, oh, the guy gets a position so you just tap. Right. Because he's in a competition or in the street, the person is not just going to tap. They need to do it right.

So that's it. I guess the bottom line is that my guess is this. dude is probably using too much strength he's probably one of those guys that's naturally really strong and he works out and he's thinking I've been training no ghee for four years so now when I put this gie on man I'm angry about it because I'm falling behind a little bit so I'm going to use some strength yeah I would say man just try try and relax and just one of my favorite pieces of advice to give relax hager yeah just relax try and flow when you roll a little bit and it definitely will make you, it'll make you better in the end.

The more you relax, the, the more, the better you'll get in the end. Yeah. And certain, I found that like certain guys, that's just their, just their method, really. They're just strong. Yeah. And that's how they roll. And they're just aggressive physically, that's how. And I found that they can, a lot of times, they can get more technical, you know, but

really, that's kind of their strengths in a way. And that's, it's just their way of rolling. And some guys are the opposite. You know what? Now that you mention it, some people that are like that, they have like an on and off switch. They're either all on or they're just super docile. Yeah, it's almost like... So you gotta find that middle ground if you can.

If you can. But people are different... Like, let's say, like, remember Franklin? Yeah, flexible. Real flexible. Okay, consider him where he's gonna be real technical and flexible and flowy and stuff. And that's his jiu-jitsu. You can, he can, I need to be more strong and rigid and aggressive.

He can train that. But his default is that flowy flexible way and guys who are like this I think That's gonna be kind of their default they can train kind of deviate a little bit and get it more for sure But that's kind of just their that's that's that's the vehicle they have you know and it's it's almost like a genetic thing It's not genetic I know that but it's it's kind of it's almost like the foundation Yeah Franklin was a trip to roll with because He was so flexible but not just in a normal way yeah you know what his flex bone his his spine was yes

like when you put your weight on him and he would just like like jellyfish like an octopus yeah it was like an octopus exactly it was like yeah I wish he kept training man yeah yeah I saw him pretty not too long ago yeah he's trained it like occasionally yeah he yeah he was getting good for a while yeah really still good though still good um but yeah it's kind of there's it's it's more of a mental thing like if you mentally had there's drills like you can do you remember um jerry loudin was his name he jammed up his knees but we used to do this thing he's like hey let's just flow right and you know how people say let's just flow yeah so they're trying to kill you yeah he wouldn't

though he would be like his flow would be like a fast pace and you could even try to hold them down and and he'd just be like flowing flowing flowing he would get you in a good position then he'd get right out of it into another you know like he was really good at flowing to the point where bro you get kind of tired because you're moving so much. It's not full speed flow. It's almost full speed though. So I remember doing that a lot with him and it really translated

when I would roll, it would be like I felt like that difference in technique. Yeah, no, that's really good. I do, I always do a warm up round with Andy like that. We just go position, position but we're going but we're going like you know, we're just going, we're flowing. Yeah, that sounds, I like that word.

Yeah, but that's what it is. I mean, that's what it is. Don't ever do that with Dean. No, I'm serious. Don't ever, you know, don't ever say, listen to him, say like, hey, let's just get warmed up because he's not going to do that. He's going to flow until he's in a good position. He's going to smash you. So don't do it. You have to just go hard.

Yeah. Good. Yeah. And he's real good at that stuff too. Yeah. But that's a good way, though. Like if you, it's a conscious thing. That's a good way.

That's a good. I see what you're saying. That's a good way to learn to relax more. Yes. Yeah. When that becomes more common because let's face it, I mean, if you're strong and you're going into roles and people, if to the point where people are saying, hey, you're using too much strength.

Yeah. If you're hearing that from them. You're getting like getting after. If you're hearing that from multiple people. Yeah. There's an issue, man. Yeah. That's that.

My point is even though you're saying, saying, hey, some people are just that way. Don't accept that. Like, the guy that asked this question, don't accept Echo's thing of saying, Some people just that way because that means you're just going to keep doing it and you won't get better Because he will the more you relax the better you get Yeah, and of course I don't mean it like that yeah I know you don't I know I know you don't but I'm saying like Don't get that misconception that that's what echo's trying to say hey you're just that way go with it no don't go with it Listen to what echo saying when he's saying hey find somebody to flow roll with and just let it flow

Yeah, it's gonna be pretty rare you find a person who's kind of default method is this and then by the way I just realized I don't say flow roll because I was thinking about what I say to Andy or we don't say it anymore we just do it but yeah I usually say hey let's get a warm up round so I call a warm up okay flow roll yeah but sometimes not a warm sometimes just like a technique sharpened or yeah okay this we have nonetheless let's say he does do it say does do some flow rolling it's some drills and gets better at it I would I would guess that there is gonna be a significant remainder of his game that's going to be this aggressive game.

Oh, for sure. Yes. You know, they do think. So it always be right. Yeah. Holmes is aggressive on the mat for sure. Another little mindset that might help is think less competitively.

Because you know how like a lot of people. And really, it's true though. Here's the thing. This element needs to be there where it when it's time to spar, it should be competitive. Otherwise, it's like,

what are we doing? You know, I want it. I want you to be competitive because I want it. accurate look of what it's like to roll with jocco or a guy like jocco big strong good at jiu-jitsu whatever if you're just flow rolling with me and non-competitively every single time i'm not getting the work that i need yeah that's what i was talking about earlier too is that's why you got to go hard yeah you got to use strength yeah so it should be competitive but if some if people are complaining you're going too hard you're going straight up

like every role is a dcc on the line life or death you know kind of more in that direction the moon giles yeah so if you think maybe less of that yeah and understand that this is this is training if you want to get less using strength and so pay you got to kind of train that stuff I like it ultimately next question next question Jocko I need some advice if you've got time we got time what's a good course of action when someone lies betrays trust or just plain destroys you move on straight up move on forget them They are lying and they are untrustworthy.

So move on. Now, sometimes this can be hard, especially if they've somehow tied themselves into your life, especially like, for instance, you get the kids involved in a divorce scenario. You can't move on, but you have to mentally move on. You have to emotionally detach from that human. And that's hard to do Because Obviously they were someone that you trusted And the reason I know that you trusted them is because they got to a point where they were able to

Betray your trust and destroy you So They they It's hard But the fact that they trust that you trusted them the fact that you had that relationship That's even more reason to walk away. It's even more reason to move on you got to see them for what they are and this is an important piece right here this is an important piece is something I learned as a young lad out there

in the world that person is not who you thought they were right they are not who you thought they were the idea that this person was a trustworthy faithful companion is not true it is not true that person does not exist they didn't exist and they don't exist it was in your head it was in your head that this person was trustworthy and you they were everything you wanted them to be and they were faithful commandant that is a lie they are not that person they have proved it they've proved it by their actions So move on and at the risk of sounding callous get over it get over it do not dwell

do not dwell on do not dwell on on what it was and don't dwell on what it could have been you hear when guys go through bad breakups you know it's I just I thought what you were gonna it's like no don't dwell on that deal with what it is right now what that person is deal with reality accept reality and be be thankful for reality be thankful that you were able to learn before you invested more more into this person be be thankful that you found out when you did that this person was a liar that this person was unfaithful is untrustworthy be be thankful that you know it and you know it now instead of later and you know

else is gonna make it a lot easier to get over these situations is recognize that there's plenty of people out there in the world that are trustworthy and there are faithful good people there's they're out there go find one of them but don't think that that person that you had was the only one in the world they're not and you know what if that sometimes sometimes people have a hard time making that trust because they're so caught up and they they don't want to meet someone else right away that's fine start with yourself right rely on yourself trust yourself because we when when someone breaks our trust

we we we question ourselves too yes like we think are my judgment's bad I'm not a good judge of human character because I totally put my faith in this person look what they did to me so now we don't trust her see you got to build that trust up you got to build that trust up back again with yourself how do you do that read write learn Work out. Be alone. It's okay to be alone Some people get freaked out when they're alone. It's okay to be alone. It's okay. It's okay to be alone. There's no big deal Enjoy it. Do something productive and build that trust up in yourself. You know look back at the situation learn from it

We do that's an post-operational debrief. Oh, you've put too much trust in somebody cool. They broke your heart. All right. Roger that. Let's see what were the steps? What should I have recognized? How many times? And sometimes did I say, well, you know, they didn't call me, but it's probably just because their phone was out of battery. No. Once your phone runs out of battery once, okay, you don't let it happen again, right? So you start seeing those red flags, see the mistakes that you made. And then look for them next time around because you deal with people all the time that they made mistakes, the first run. They go back and they make the same mistakes the second run. They go back and make the same mistakes the third run.

That's when you've got to start blaming yourself on your situation. That's why I said you got to like build a relationship with yourself you got to learn yourself You got to trust you got to trust yourself So spend some time doing that and then when you go back and you start dealing with people because that's what that's what you got to watch out for is that you become a hardened criminal You don't trust anybody like you were talking about cops. You know sometimes cops have a hard time because they're dealing with scumbags all day long Right and it builds up this this mistrust of other people. So you don't want to have that happen.

You want to be suspicious of people, but you want to be able to build trust once they prove themselves. So take those small steps and start to build up over time. Don't just jump in and give someone 100% trust out of the gate.

You don't know them. You don't know it. You know? Back in the day, back in the day with old hardcore bands used to have this t-shirt that just said, trust no one. I was like, yeah, that's legit.

Right? You don't don't go out of the gate with the big trust on somebody with important stuff. Yeah. Don't do it. But the good news is, like I said, there's plenty of people out there that are good people that you can give all your trust to. Just take it slow, brother. Yeah.

And it's so crazy how you just explain that so simple. And it makes total sense when you're in the situation, though. Emotions, you know? Like you can't just detach and be like, what are the red flags? No, you're too busy missing the person or whatever. Yeah, you're a disaster. So, and again, tears, crying. Throwing things.

Looking at pictures. That's the worst. Yeah, don't look at pictures. Get out the picture and stare. I've seen guys doing that. I'm like, bro, just give me that. Let me throw this away for you. It's not gonna help that person is.

That was always to me was explaining like, listen. Because guys, what she was, no, no, she wasn't. Yeah. That is a lie. That person that you put together in your head that you've assembled in your mind, that person doesn't exist. They don't exist. The person that you dealt with was a liar.

Was unfaithful. Was a cheater. That's the person. The person wasn't this person that you're putting forth in your mind. That person doesn't exist. So stop. But you don't understand the good times. Yeah, I know.

I know. It's a trick. Here's the trick. Okay. So if, okay, that, personal I or that person a cheater and what I kind of said there was like you don't understand the good time that's a real part of it for that's really it's like sure they did this sure she um uh flats my tires when she gets smashed her all that but the good times we have her so good so it's

it's it's proof that it is it's not about the person it's not about the person that you can see all the red flags and how they mistreat you from time to time or that you beat you it's about yourself and how you're sad now because of all these reasons but the trick comes with what one of the tricks comes with same thing I said about drinking where it's your brain because it's like chemicals when you bond with someone in certain in certain ways and it's different from you know it varies from person to person but it's like I think it's like oxytocin or I don't know something where it's it's it's basically yeah it's so I don't go into but you feel this bond with this specific person that's why you have these feelings even though this girl like lies to you

you see her lying text messages on your phone right now you're looking at you meanwhile you still still miss them it's a trick because it's saying like that your emotional, like, well-being is attached to this person kind of thing, right? And all the other stuff, you just kind of ignore. So just like, I was saying, with drinking, right? Well, I know, consciously, like, I'm going to be hungover tomorrow. I won't get anything done, all this stuff.

But why do I want to drink so bad right now, you know, kind of thing? And it's the same thing. The chemicals in your brain are telling you, like, this girl is essential for you, you know, for your well-being. She's not. Yeah, oh, that's the logic, though. It's a trick. Don't listen to the don't listen to your brain listen to me that's not essential that's what you're

I'm telling it but that's the logic I know those chemicals are blocking I have seen so many situations where guys are just in any in what's horrible is I'm sitting here saying this it's you could be smacking someone in the face telling them move on move on move on and they're not going to listen that's so you got to make that decision yeah that's that's that's that's it's hard and guys ruin their lives I mean girls do too girls and guys They ruin their lives, you know, with over somebody that is completely abusive, whether mentally or physically, just completely abusive and they'll ruin their lives for this person. That person and see, in my mind, I think it's because they build a person. They build a person on the framework of reality.

They build a fantasy. Yeah. And they're in love with that fantasy. Yeah. And they want to keep it going. Right. It's a fantasy. So stop.

And they get away from it. And they ignore like all the quote of the red flag. And they remember the good times, even if it's like 10 minutes a week, they remember those good times. They ignore the red flags because of that, that, you know, that trick, that chemical trick in their brain. And so it reinforces that thing that they built. You know, that fantasy that they built. It's like, it's true. It's this big.

The reality is this big. And look, the fantasy tree. And they just attached to it. Yeah. You ever see a, like, a friend or whatever, because I'm assuming you've never been in this situation? Like you ever had a friend where they're really into it. They're almost ruining their lives. They're in bad shape or whatever.

And then whether it be all of a sudden or years later, whatever, they're thinking back. And they're like, what was I thinking? Because the chemical trick, so to speak, wears off. And then they can see all that logic that you're talking about. You're like, oh, my gosh, man. It's almost like you feel like you were a different person when you recover from that. I mean, just the fact that you can't talk any sense into people when they're not such a way. It's a trick you got to try and yeah it's hard it's hard but I think knowing that that's it's it's a chemical in your brain

That is tricking you and it goes for a lot of stuff Donuts like all this stuff's tricking you if you know like and you say I'm not gonna be tricked I feel it I feel this it I feel the sadness. I feel missing this person, but it's a trick you know yeah That helps it totally helps I like it So move on man I know it's hard Trust us. Speaking of moving on, next question. Unless we want to talk about this some more.

No, I think we need to move on. Okay. Exactly, right? Let's move on. In what circumstances do you recommend direct attack? Hold on. Oh, we're not moving on. You're stuck on it.

No, but what's horrible is, man, people kill themselves in these situations over a lie. Yeah. That's to me, that's the trick. But it's a lie. And guys or girls get so done. girls get so distraught over this fantasy that doesn't exist and what's really jacked up is if they could just move on they'd find a reality that was actually congruent with what their desires are it's out there yeah you can see people all over the world they're they're in relationships

having fun from every level right yeah there's someone out there but you you get caught up in this mental trap and and obsessing over a fantasy it's a fantasy Don't don't don't obsess over the fantasy man There's you can you can get over it and there's plenty of other human beings out there that are awesome So go find one of them and in the meantime hang out with your badass self Right become a better person man working out is a big one for sure for sure That's a that's the hundred percent just get in the gym and get after it Jiu Jitsu solves everything yes lifting solves everything

All right Okay, so what circumstances do you recommend direct attack in combination with indirect if any or do you have any examples? Yeah, so We talk about flanking all the time. I always recommend a combined attack right if you only attack the flank Well, then the enemy's gonna adjust and they're gonna put all the defenses there now it's not a flank anymore now it's the front becomes so so you need to feign attack or at least you need to attack with some minor level of force Directly so that the enemy has to defend what you're doing And I mean clearly when when we were examples are pretty easy to come up with when we're doing raids like assaults on buildings You're gonna attack that building from multiple directions at a minimum at least you're gonna set distractions on some of the other directions And is same thing we were setting up overwatches. Yeah, we're gonna have a lot of times we'd have a main overwatch and we'd have a little little flanker overwatch

So when you come to get us you're gonna pay and like a class classic L-shaped assault. There's a reason it's called an L shape. It's shaped like an L. You have a fire, a base position that's going to put down fire on the target. And then you have a maneuver element that's going to come in from the flank. But even with that, you have to do a base element and a maneuver element. There's a reason.

Because the base is going to put down fire. And then the maneuver is going to maneuver it. So, yes, those are clearly some of us. It's the same thing. Yes, it's the same thing in the business environment, right? In the business environment If you're gonna maneuver into a new market You don't just walk away from your other market, right? You don't if you're gonna develop a new product you don't throw away your old product. No, you keep that your base you keep that going and then you flank So it makes sense there Yeah, so absolutely when you when you're gonna attack attack from

both directions. In fact, I do that most of the time. Next question. This actually isn't really a question. It's more of a comment. Yeah, I kind of turned it into a question, I guess. Yeah, yeah. You responded to the comment. Okay, sure. Anyway, comment goes.

Just want to say a quick thanks. I struggle with the daily grind trading days for dollars, but you help me make it happen. Yeah, and my comment was like, Okay, well, thank you, I guess Because I hope at the same time that you're grinding that You're trading that you're I hope that you're not trading days for dollars long term Because long term that's a losing proposition, right?

If you're grinding and it's not doing something you want to do if it's a grind that you can't embrace Then you got to find a way out of that Right you got to find you can't trade you don't want to trade days for dollars because dollars don't mean anything days all you got So you got to find a way out now this does not mean you need to be rash about it This doesn't mean tomorrow you walk in I'm not doing this job anymore. I'm out and now you're broke no Don't be rash and don't throw the baby out with the bathwater but do come up with a long-term plan about what you want to do how you want to do it where you want to do it where you want to do do it and this might take one year or two years or five years it might take five years to

get to where you want to be that's okay that's fine it's actually kind of cool when you're grinding right now because you know there's something that you're working towards in the long run that's actually awesome so but but you got to have an exit strategy you got to have an exit strategy you got to plan and figure out how much money it's going to take and what are you going to do you're going to work two jobs I'm going to save all my money right now I'm going to invest here you're going to pay off my mortgage whatever is you're going to do so that you can get yourself in a position where you actually enjoy doing what you're doing that's what you want and that one other cool thing about this like I say man it's cool to

grind and that's what we're here to do you're here doing stuff right if you're not doing anything well then what are you doing not doing anything so the other thing that's cool though about grinding and working is is that when you get that freedom right that you work hard for it's gonna be so much more worth it the discipline that you put into place to get to that freedom that you want it makes that freedom so much more worth it so appreciate it I'm glad you're grinding I'm glad you're grinding hard but don't just make that trade it's not a square trade days for dollars not a square trade get it back Under your control and we've had some really cool feedback on the podcast of people that have hit me up and said hey

You told me to plan an exit strategy? I wish I could find this a guy said you told me to plan an exit strategy He's like that was whatever nine months ago. I saved my money. I just did this now I'm in another business. I'm kicking ass Thank you. Right? So it can be done It's one of the things about cool about being a human being You got free will you can make stuff happen So go make it happen No man And that's, there's a lot of tricks there too, where, you know,

we talk about the hyperbolic discounting when you basically go for the short-term payoff at the expense of the long-term payoff. So let's say you have an exit strategy for five years. It helps, actually, this is like for real help, night and day, where if you look at that end exit strategy as like a goal or whatever, and the time in between now and then is preparation time. That's all that is. So a lot of times, like, I remember when I was working at the nightclub.

That was a full-on, like, ooh, nightclub, cool job. All short-term payouts stuff. Living kind of day-to-day, week-to-week, I get my paycheck. I go hang out. Go work, paycheck, hang out. So it's all just short-term payouts, right? So I was in there for, like, years. How many years?

Seven. So wait, wait, no, six. So I was the end of, like, almost seven. Dang. Yeah, nightclub. So I remember thinking when I was like over it already, I remember thinking, dang, I feel like I waste a lot of years. I think back now, I didn't because I learned a lot of, like, psychological stuff. But I remembered, like, reflecting and being like, man, I spent, yeah, I went to college, all this stuff, really slacked through college.

I spent it the same way. Just like, okay, I'll take this class because I may or may not pass it, whatever. I just want to play football and be cool, whatever. And I reflect, and I think, dang, I spent my. life preparing for nothing really consciously I mean passively I did because I liked certain creative things and that you know materialized for sure but actively like consciously I was never you know certain people they're like I want to be an architect for sure and that's it and I'm doing it and I know a lot of times if

there's family history in certain things it's like they know you know and they wind up doing it a lot of time but I reflected and thought man I'm here I spent my life up to this point preparing for nothing in life I know about working out. That's it. So a lot of times when you're making, you find yourself in a grind that without like an exit strategy or something like that, a lot of times that will be the case.

Like I've spent my life kind of preparing for nothing, really. But that's the good thing how you're saying. It can take a year. It can take two years, five years, whatever. Start preparing for that five years. And at the end, when the five years comes, you are prepared. Straight up. If you spend one year doing something, focus, like, hey, I got to get,

even something like, I'm going to plan. the piano I don't know anything bow and arrow I don't know you spend one year focused on it at the end of the year you can be pretty prepared Yeah compared to the average person so you spend like two years five years preparing whatever that exit strategy is and you're for real prepared spend Look at that time as this is preparation time. Yeah and it's If only Somebody Comes up to you you've been working at the nightclub for a year and says hey echo what are you gonna do with you? I your life and you're like it wouldn't you would immediately say well well let me

phrase that another way echoed are you planning to you know be a nightclub bouncer for the next 25 years your answer would clearly be no okay so what are you getting ready for yeah because a lot of times this person is aware that they're in a grind a lot of times people don't even realize that what they're doing that they're there they're marking time is what we call in the military you're You're marching, but you're not going anywhere. Yeah, yeah. Your feet are going up and down.

You're spinning your wheels. So think about it. That's a great point that you just made is what were you preparing for? If you would have been learning to play the piano, boom. You could be in the game right now. Right now, yeah. But so that's an important thing, especially when you start talking to people that are younger, you know, when they're 15, 16, 17 years old. Because they're marking time.

You know, they're having fun. Yeah. But it's cool to have fun. Let's make sure we're making some progress and build. some capacity to have a better future all the time what can you do to build capacity for your future Hey, you know you're Andy Stumpf and I talk about this and we we didn't even Recognize that there's anything else you could do besides being the teams Yeah, that's it that's it's it and that's kind of that's kind of good because when you're in teams you don't want to be thinking about anything else and luckily the teams does give you

Preparation for other things in life because you're in leadership position you're going up you're learning skills you're you're You're learning whether you're learning parachuting and you're learning stuff and guys get out of the teams all the time They become cops. They become firemen's and they all kinds of good jobs But if you're not in a job like that you're in a job like being a nightclub bouncer Hey, it's a fun job, right? It's cool. You're having a good time But let's make sure we have an extra strategy on that one right. Yeah, and it doesn't even necessarily mean like if I wanted to be Ultimately and I'm just saying being conscious of it where if I wanted to be a nightclub owner or or something perfect.

Yeah. I'll stay right in there. And but here's him. The difference is I'm not, I wasn't consciously spending that time preparing for anything. I was going for tomorrow. I was going for, you know, this weekend.

That's all I was going for. And a lot of times, I mean, in the nightclub, it was because it was like a very recognizable payoff, you know, because it's fun and there's this party going on. But even in these grinds,

like let's say I was working for a moving company one time. It was the same thing. I was looking for the weekend. It sucks. But I was like the work part sucked but I was looking forward to getting off work. Okay, the relief is so it's it's the same dynamic just kind of negative. You know it's like negative versus the positive is the relief kind of thing. Well that one the moving company made you want to it. It forced your hand to want to go do something else like a different lifestyle. Whereas the nightclub. You can get you can get distracted and into that way. You're like, hey, this is just going to be cool. Right. Yeah. So it's that that carrot and the stick. You know, you know, so the night club was I was just eating that. carrot that was running in front of my face every day or every week or whatever, the moving company was like, I'm just trying to run away from the stick that's hating me every day kind of thing.

So I guess it just depends on how much you hate sticks and like carrots. It's just so good. And like you said, we don't listen to our parents or we don't listen to our people around us. We don't listen to it. We just don't do it. It becomes noise. That's why even you saying, what do you want to do with your future bro? I've heard that literally since I could understand English.

What are you going to do with your, what are you doing to prepare for your future? What are you going to do? Do you see yourself doing this? Oh, yeah, no. I don't know, leave me alone. It's just, it's a meme already, you know? You hear it all the time, so it doesn't mean anything. That's why a lot of times it takes, like, someone to either rephrase it

or straight up, like, show it to you somehow, you know, where it hits you. Or like Dave was talking, he was cruising, and his dad died. And he got shown real quick, like, hey, what am I doing? So, good stuff to think about. Yeah. I mean, personally, I just got tired of it, man. So. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you did. Next question. I think we got time for one more. Yeah, Jocco, I've read your book, Extreme Ownership. My son and I listen to your podcasts on the way home from hockey practice. And while I can see your message, I can't bring myself to employ it, which I would like to do so very badly. Any suggestions? Well, everybody wants to employ extreme ownership and discipline so very badly.

But everybody also wants it to be. easy right they want some some secret power that just makes it happen and and they think that I hold the the magic key that's gonna make discipline the easiest thing in the world well I can tell you that taking ownership of your life it isn't easy and living the life of discipline the life of discipline isn't easy. In fact, it's hard. That's why it works.

And so if you want to employ discipline, there's only one way to do it. You employ discipline. Stop looking around for suggestions on how to employ discipline. Because I'll tell you that listening to this podcast is not going to give you discipline. Reading the book is not gonna give you discipline. You have to impose discipline on yourself. You, and you do that with steps that you execute.

Small steps, get up early. Work out hard, attack your daily tasks, crush your job. Don't waste time on meaningless activities. It's how you employ discipline. You get aggressive in making things happen. The discipline. That's it. That's it.

It's that simple. And I'll say it again. If you want to live a disciplined life, that's what you have to do. You have to be the discipline. And I think that's all I've got. for tonight. So Echo, yes.

I know you've been kind of stepping up the discipline and ownership. Sure. Why don't you take some ownership right now of telling people how they can support this podcast, if they want to?

I will. Before supporting this podcast, I think we all should support ourselves in this way. Similar to like on the airplane, like I said before, They're playing the oxygen mask. You got to put it on yourself before you can help the infant.

Not that this podcast is an infant or nothing. Well, maybe it is one year or whatever. Anyway, you know what I mean. So if you're, I've been into working out more, more consistently, which is saying a lot because I was, you know, I'm no stranger to the workouts. I've been supplementing my workouts with supplements, as you know. Crill oil just got some more boom you know that when you get new krill oil Like I get it now before I run out you know yeah I mean it seems obvious like oh

Stockbile yeah yeah you're you're an adult now and you're prepared I like it yes exactly which is new for me I mean the buzz is still going I'm out of krill oil I'll order so now it'll be in a week Yeah I know yeah no no that's not going on anymore which is another demonstration of discipline really you know we count that Yeah it's kind it counts the daily discipline In all things, including ordering krill oil before you're out. That's a good point. Yeah, it's true. I like what you've done there.

When it comes in, I'm not even out of my old, but when it comes in, it feels good. Ooh, the krill oil's in. It feels good to be prepared. Yeah. So, yeah, you feel prepared. You are prepared. Yeah, you are. You feel it because you are straight up.

Anyway, krill oil, if you don't know, what's krill, omega-3s, is it? Yeah. Anyway, it's real good for your joints. And really, that's the, I mean, omega-3 is good. Cool, but the question is, if you don't know, it's kind of like, what does that do for me? You know, well, how's that going to look? How's the omega-3 is going to benefit me? And in the krill oil situation, it's your joints, especially if you do a lot of pressing exercises and jujitsu.

Actually, I'm just saying including, but not limited to hard-pressing and jujitsu exercises. Like what you've done there? I'm telling you, man. It's the truth. Anyway, yeah, so get on that krill oil. if you have a joint situation really yeah or if you don't or if you don't preventative yeah yeah I need to do more preventative stuff in my life yeah it's funny I'll take them like I'll pour them out you know and they look like jelly beans yeah I

didn't realize it looked like my daughter she's four she's like oh jelly beans but you smell them no she don't bite them she you know you smell them yeah it's not like krill oil hey I was on the plummet so they make disgusting jelly beans. Have you ever seen those before? They make jelly beans that taste like puke. That tastes like What, like on purpose? Yeah, it's like a joke. So I was on

deployment in Iraq and somebody sent me a care package, a care package, right? They were being funny. They sent me some of them bad tasting jelly beans. I didn't look at the label. I just opened them up because I hadn't had any candy in a while.

I wanted some candy. Boom. Took a mouthful. Just puke all up in there Dang. It's disgusting. Yeah, so the cruel oil jelly beans more or less the same thing Yeah, you don't bite them and eat them except yeah, the packaging is different so they don't you know Where can you get those things anyways? If you're interested in these Crill oil tablets is what they are

I'm not cruel oil little tablets. Yeah, you eat them. Chew them if you want Swallow them, I recommend because they smell and taste like Creel oil Anyway, but they're good for your joints. Yeah, On it, okay, so really all the supplements you're going to want to take is from Onit. So go to Onit.com slash jocko if you want the 10% off. But like I said, back to the support part where, okay, so you know how like when you work out and then you ever work on your like, hey, my knees or my elbow or something is bothering you? Yeah, yeah.

It's like your whole body's working. fine you can bench a bunch you can squat a bunch but it's like your elbow you're only as strong as your weakest link elbows

knees that's your weak link right there that's what the krill oil does that's what it alleviates you know that's important is what I'm saying yeah I agree with you here's the thing I didn't really understand that but bro I've done it where I've taken

like ibuprofen to like okay it's Because it's just pain, you know? It's not like I'm going to pull, like if it's your muscle or something, like a strain muscle. Yeah, it's not an injury. Yeah, it's like pain, but it'll inhibit because you have a little thing. What made you decide to start taking? Girl oil?

I mean, I know I take it. I was like, yeah, you should try it. Or did I say that? Or did you start trying it on your own? It was you. But I heard about it. Yeah. You know, my wife's my father-in-law would all, I was,

like, cool. I don't even take fish oil, so it didn't really mean much to me. I lift. Nothing. I'm looking for gains, bro yeah I'm not here jack and steal yeah but yeah that was it and you mentioned it and um you know like you're not hobbling around in pain or another so i say if jocco doesn't let me go try and yeah and i got it from a guy that was like a power lifter really strong and he was you know

56 years old when i met him he was in great shape and i said what do you do he said yeah i told um that's not the only thing he also works out hard and all that stuff but yeah yeah i told um that's not the only thing he also works out hard and all that stuff but yeah it's a good thing to know about that's really that was my point really you know like my you know you know you can be strong but when you got your elbow jacked up from being strong really yeah yeah you know you you got to patch that little thing naturally like yeah because it's not like you're putting cordis cortisone shots or or in my case ibuprofen just to mask the pain so you can get gains it's different it's like a whole thing i was telling um taylor i was talking with him we rolled for a little

Did we? No, we didn't roll. We were just talking. And I told him how old I was. And he was like, what? You know, it's the krill oil, man. Notice I didn't mention how old I am. Yeah. Nonetheless, if you like krill, actually there's some good stuff.

Oh, you know the part. Okay, so there's this total strength and performance too. I was looking at that because it's real interesting, like, stuff in the clinical studies. It's over time. So it is considered a pre-workout. So typically when people When you get a pre- So I should take it consistently?

Consistently, yeah. Your gains, it's like a cumulative effect. You know what I mean? Just like cruel oil, though, really. Like, because here's why I got tricked. I didn't get tricked,

but here's why I misunderstood is usually a pre-workout has like caffeine and stimulants in it. Yeah, for sure. You know? And sure it'll have like other stuff allegedly, I don't know. But usually you take a pre-workout

so you get fired up physiologically to go lift, Get big pump, get all this, you know, this performance stuff or whatever from the caffeine and all that Total strength and performance doesn't have caffeine. Yeah, so it's a different it's a whole different kind of system that's giving you You know the benefits feels good though. Yeah that and but shroom tech too same thing where you can take it that day and you'll feel it that day Because it you know helps you that's why oxygen like I said I double I double dip on those too get all up in all up on it and down for actually my trip to South Africa. I didn't have either Oh, dang. Yeah.

Yeah. What do you call it? When you don't take the supplement. Going slick, I guess. Yeah, we had some good rolls down there, too. Yeah. I was thinking of myself, like the guys that were down there, Chef and Richie, they're like, hey, you know, tomorrow night,

because I went and rolled the first night at their fight fit. And the first night, you know, we trained a little bit, you know, but we were hanging out. And then they said, hey, when you come back tomorrow, We're just gonna do like 10 rounds 10 five minute rounds. I was like okay cool and then I got the home The next morning or the next afternoon we were heading over there. I said yeah, I wouldn't mind having a little bit of shroom tech right now I didn't have had to go slick yeah good times. Amen you know and hey going slick that's cool but you don't have to yeah no I didn't want to I wanted to have a little bit of that shroom tech with me yes some of us we don't want that beef you know so we're gonna take the stream tech we're gonna take the the crew

To me, again, back not to go too deep on the cruel oil. But that one I think is like an essential. That's like an everyday thing, you know? Like people, they'll drink coffee every single day. Yeah, I don't know what I mean? And I say cool drink coffee, but it should be like that. Because the krill is way more beneficial than the coffee. I think coffee is more like, it's like an immediate thing.

Anyway, you like this stuff these cool supplements, good supplements, the best supplements, everyone knows this. already. Go to onit.com slash jaco for 10% off. Also, a good way to support the podcast. Is the Amazon click through all that is, is before you do your Amazon shopping, click through the website.

I got a banner, a little Amazon shopping banner. Got the dot com, got the dot CO.uk one. And I want to say the Germany one too. Over there on the side of the website, jocco podcast.com. And also up top on the navigation. navigation menu. Easy to find is what you're saying.

Easier than it was before for sure. Well, that's good. And then on the store, I think it's like in the support tab. Anyway, before you do your Amazon shopping, click on that first, then do your shopping. Regardless of what you're buying. I always make the sodium in the water reference, because really that's what it is. Really, that's the best reference. I mean, the best analogy, you know?

Okay. It is, bro. Okay, okay. I said okay. Yeah, but the way, the tone was like, yeah, whatever. But here's the thing. That's a big deal. small piece of sodium

drop it in water see what happens just see what happens actually don't do that look up a video see what happens that's good and that's what you are

really you do the small action I think the biggest thing is people don't people think it's not a big deal that's the thing they think it's just a little piece of sodium

tell that to the sodium yeah when he hits water so yeah you go and you do small action takes literally two seconds boom click and big reaction

good support good reinforcement What if you kind of needed some reinforcements and it took just one click of a thing and it brought just a full on reinforcement into your situation. That's good, right? Yeah. Small action, big reaction. Sounds good to me. Anyway, that's what the Amazon click through does and that's how you do it. Go to jocococopodcast.com. Click on the Amazon battery before you do the shopping. Boom. Instant support. And you can subscribe to the podcast on whatever iTunes provider platform you use. iTunes Stitcher Google Play and others Yeah subscribe

If you haven't Haven't already Leave a review If you're in the mood If you were moved By Jocco's words Or Echo's words

Or Echo's words Leave a review You know See what up Also Subscribe to our YouTube Channel We have a YouTube channel

I know a lot of people already know that and a lot of people have YouTube channels yeah how do you distinguish which ones good which one's not good right well here's a good thing about subscribing to YouTube channels is you just click subscribe and if I I guess it you know it shows the new videos in your feed you can elect to have a notification or not when new videos come up notification and it doesn't annoy you because for something to annoy you it have to happen a lot but since you don't make a lot of videos I do now though that's a thing actually

depends on what you mean by a lot so at least two a week will be uploaded oh one will be the podcast one will be something else okay i think that is a that you just threw down the gauntlet now everyone's going to track standard i know man do it hey if echo doesn't put up at least two videos a week from here on out we can attack him on the interwebs verbally please yeah man no hey uh i'm accountable you know okay well yeah you just made yourself accountable so that's good there it is but yeah subscribe little bit of that extreme ownership on you. Anyway, good thing about subscribing to YouTube.

You can just unsubscribe like anything else. It's not like these, you know, these marketers who email you stuff. Yeah. It's like, hey, unsubscribe to all your email is. Dude, I bought one can of chicken with from you four years ago and you're still emailing me. I didn't even subscribe. Yeah. Stop.

Why do I have the option to unsubscribe to your email list when I didn't even subscribe to it? Get away from this. Yeah. So it's not like that kind where you click. unsubscribe and then they email you again by the way this is just to confirm we're sorry to see you go why this why and then you got to fill out it's not like that and then six and you're you'll stop receiving email in six to eight weeks yeah some something yeah it's not like that unsubscribe done problem solved and then you resubscribe you it's totally up to you empower yourself

on the subscribing situation that's youtube um so yeah some videos on there we'll um we'll try to keep you Occupied on there. It's good. Anyway, and also, Jocko has a store. It's called jaco store. Jocco store.com. If you wear shirts and you want to represent that way, I think we're going to put some new shirts on there, some new stuff. You know what I did? What we did really is, you know, people listen to you, Jocko. I listen to you. But the good thing about you is actually, actually one of the reasons I listen to you is because you listen to me. And you listen to others, you know. Listen to others so people like hey xyz make that into a shirt or you know hey you said this make that into a shirt or they'll just come up with their own thing you know Prioritize X I don't know whatever make it a shirt so during that listening I kind of we kind of just took it to heart in a real general way and there's some new stuff I like that yeah it's good it's good options yeah but you can't we can't make every shirt that everything no and I just don't that wouldn't be No, it wouldn't be and some I mean I got to be honest plus I say I say some cool stuff I also say some dumb stuff exactly might pick some dumb stuff yeah or you know something that

Maybe wouldn't translate onto a shirt that someone would actually wear other than maybe a handful of people Then we'll just say some shirt ideas make more sense than others. We'll just say that But nonetheless we are listening and this is going to be a result of it with some you know maybe some new stuff there's also some patches cool patches the velcro ones and whatnot hoodies rash guards performance i think we're doing another rash guard design as well not going to get rid of the old and the the current one is that one's dope too nonetheless just more options you know guys want to get after it and have different looks maybe even have two in rotation that look different boom so yeah we do that anyway all these things you can look at them if you like what you see one two three

Things, whatever, however many things, get it. Support that way. Good way to support. Such a good way, yeah. Yeah, and you're representing. So it's kind of like, it's like an official way to kind of just jump in the game, you know? You know what I mean? I do.

I know what you mean. I saw, remember, I don't know if, yeah, you met him, right? Yeah, yeah, Sam. He came in the gym and shavehead. Yeah, yeah. So he was just sitting there in the, down in the lounge downstairs. I'm going to get something. to my car real quick.

I see the shirt. Of course, I'm going to say something, but before I say anything, I'm thinking in my mind, look at this guy representing hard. And the thing is, I don't know him, you know? You know, the guy haven't met or whatever,

and you get that feeling like, that guy's representing. And that's the feeling you get, really, you know, when you see somebody in the wild with it. Well, actually, speaking of that, I got a little story

to tell somebody hit me up and they said, hey, I was out in the wild, saw someone with a with a jocco podcast. t-shirt on walked over to him through the bona fides on him what is that bonafides is like you ever seen like a spy movie where I come up and I say it is cold and dark in the winter yeah the person responds in March it will be warmer and now we know we're good to

go so what was the bona fides this dude walked up to the other dude with a trooper t-shirt on and he said good evening echo and boom they knew what was up yeah so I think that's become the official bonafetes of jocko podcast if you if you see someone in the wild and you you know it might be a situation where you can't just get crazy nope you just got to walk up and say good evening echo and then they'll then you can do your burpees yeah exactly and that feeling is real though that feeling that i had when you see it's like oh yeah you kind of know you know anyway it's cool that way a little added layer if you will anyway also psychological warfare if you don't know what psychological warfare this is what it is it's an album with tracks and

this is they're not music tracks they're not jocco's hardcore band tracks bronson's children's tracks it's not that what it is is little they're not even excerpts because they're just lone tracks for specific things and those things are if you're feeling weakness at any point while you're trying to consistently get after it wake up early or workout or or It's a little mental QRF, quick reaction force. Yeah. Got some weakness it in you? Cool.

Here we go. Boom. Call the QRF. Here they are. I kind of look at it as like a spot. Yeah. Like when. For those of those people that don't lift, a spot is when someone helps you.

Yeah. Lift whatever weight you're trying to lift. And not to split hairs, but really it's not necessarily there to help you. It's, I mean, ultimately, a help general. To make sure you don't go down. Yes, exactly. So if you're slipping, if you want to really get after, if I'm going to work up every single day, no days off. One year.

Big, big tall order right there. Just like if I'm, I'm going to bench this 10,000 pounds, whatever. I'm going to make two videos a week. I'm going to bench more than I've benched before, but I'm going to go for my one rep max. It makes sense to have a spot. You might get that one rep max and not need the spot, but it's there. If you fail, like if it's like too much or it feels like too much or that guy's there to just nudge you as much as much as you need. That's really how this is just how I look at it.

No, it's accurate. Yeah, potentially, right? Yeah. So basically what it is, is you put the track on like, oh, shoot, I'm about to skip this workout. I'm about to make this workout day, a rest day. No, you're not. Yeah, you don't want to do that.

No, you can rest tomorrow. Today you work. Rest on the day that you have scheduled for rest, for real in your thing. Don't just impromptu make it a rest day because you feel like it's not how it works. If you need a little spot in doing that, you listen to a track called workout, get it. What is it? What workout?

I don't know. One of the workout spots. Because there's a couple for workout. There's one for waking up. There's three for waking up. Yeah. See? And there's one for kind of sticking to the diet plan.

You know, like there's that kind of stuff. And yeah, you put it on. And there's one for getting, for forcing yourself through creative blocks. Yeah. Right. Which kind of sounds like impossible, but let me tell you. Oh, it's possible. I would say, I will say that this.

This will get you through it 100% of the time. Like, I, I'm trying to imagine the feeling that you would, that would result in your heart if you listen to this and you still skip the workout. Bro. Yeah, it's hard to fathom the feeling you would have. Anyway, it's very helpful and a real good spot, you know. And it's jocco talking easily. Like, kind of there with you, you know? The guy you want there.

That's my opinion. Anyway, it's called psychological warfare. It's on iTunes. And so if you just do a search, psychological warfare, jocco willing. Get that, you can support that way, but this is one where this is real good support for yourself. Make it your ringtone, the wake-up one. The wake-up call. Yeah.

Clear it with your wife first. Yeah. You could have some problems. Spouses do not like. Yeah, but that's a good on. And it happens, happens to be number one still on iTunes. That's awesome. Yeah, since day one, by the way.

Yes, that's, thank you for the support on that one. all right while you're on Amazon real quick this is a couple things I have to cover I'd legally have to do this jaco white tea we're that looks like we're gonna have to go put a warning on it because there's a little situation going on got a a trooper hit me up on Twitter and this is what he said warning I started drinking jaco tea and the wife became pregnant should be on the label so He was also wondering if the child would arrive as a brown belt in Jiu-Jitsu. Now, to be honest with you, we should have tested this further. You know, we should have tested this further.

We didn't. And 100% sure if babies produced under the influence of Jocko White T will be a brown belt. They will be a purple belt, minimum. But they might not be a brown belt. But fertility, yep, it's confirmed. Prenatal jiu-jitsu skills. Confirmed. And confirmed to a level of about 147%.

So order the tea, make it, drink it. It tastes so good. It tastes like victory. So you can get that. You can also pre-order Way of the Warrior Kid book. Now, Uncle Jake is trying to explain to Mark what a warrior is. So he gives him a notebook that has various warrior codes in it. He's got the Ranger Creed.

He's got the seal code. He's got the Marine Corps values. He's got the seven virtues of Bushido. It's the samurai code. He's got the code of chivalry for knights. He's got the Viking laws. So he's got all these warrior codes in there so that young Mark knows what is up. And we should all, we could all kind of.

Need to know what is up with some of them the Vikings you know you might not think you might think yourself about Viking laws what you know what kind of Viking teach me Why would I need to know Viking laws? How could I possibly get anything? So you get way the warrior kid you order it you won't you start going through the Viking laws. Let me tell you what they say Viking laws Be brave and aggressive Be direct grab all opportunities use varying methods of attack be versatile and agile attack one target target? I'm gonna Versatile and agile attack one target at a time don't plan everything in detail Use top quality weapons be prepared keep weapons in good condition keep in shape Find good battle comrades agree on important points

Choose one chief be a good merchant Find out what the market needs do not promise what you can't keep do not demand overpayment arrange things so that you can return keep the camp in good order keep things tidy and organized arranged enjoyable activities that strengthen the group make sure everybody does useful work consult all members of the group for advice Hey, just Viking laws. They're 1,200 years old. Is there anything you might be able to get out of that?

Yes, absolutely. We could all take something away from that. So, a bunch of warrior codes in there. And by the way, Mark, he ends up writing his own warrior kid code. Yeah, yeah. The kind of kid code that I wish I would have lived by. You know what I'm saying? Yes.

It's going to help some people out. Also, just released. We got the discipline equals freedom field manual. coming this is what you were asking for a book it pretty much represents what we talk about this on on this podcast thoughts and action the thoughts are aligned with what you hear on this podcast the actions are more detailed than what I say on the podcast more granular more specific workouts of food intake martial arts so discipline equals field discipline equals freedom field manual you can get some of that

you can also pick up a couple copies of extreme ownership of course lessons of combat leadership that we talk about on this podcast, by the way, from Henry the 5th to H.R. McMaster spans a pretty good time. And those lessons of combat leadership translate to business and life. And they're laid out in extreme ownership, very simply and very clearly. So what you do is you order one for you, and then you order one for everyone in your chain of command up and down, get some. Muster, May 4th. fourth and fifth New York City, Marriott Marquis, register now, book your hotel, book your travel. Come and get it.

You know, it's morning PT. That's what we start with. Full days of leadership training, leadership discussion, Q&A, a lot of Q&A. Also, just hanging out, we're going to be sitting there with you, eating lunch, eating breakfast, whatever. Laf's going to be there. J.P. is going to be there. Dave Burke, who's coming on the podcast, is also going to be.

there a bunch of you all are going to be there that's one of the best things about us meeting everybody then of course echo is going to be there we knew that cruising he's gonna be cruising so come on that we're in the game in that and we're be in the game with you getting stuff solved and while you're waiting for that if you want to get in the game with us now you can find us on the interwebs find us on Twitter Instagram and be on that Facebook We're there too. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink.

And thanks for listening to this podcast. Thanks for supporting the podcast. We appreciate it. We're glad we have you out there in the game with us. And to the military personnel that are out in the field right now, in harm's way, protecting freedom around the world. Thank you to the police and law enforcement that are out on the streets right now protecting us from criminals.

Thank you. And of course to the firefighters, EMTs, and other first responders that are waiting right now for us to call when an emergency takes place. Thank you. and to everyone else that is out there doing your best builders and biologists, farmers and framers, scientists and sales reps, engineers and educators, leaders, and frontline sled dogs. Thanks to all of you for taking ownership of your life.

for being the discipline and for getting out there into the world with a clenched jaw and a furled brow and getting after it so until next time this is echo and jaco out