Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast 1: Jocko & Echo (Discipline, Ownership)

Episode Date: December 22, 2015

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The pomegranate, what is it, pomegranate chai? White tea. Yep. That's what it is. And you're deep. So action. Action. All right.

This right here is the first jaco podcast. Here we go. I guess to start off, how did we end up here? How did this happen? I guess I have to thank Tim Ferriss for initially having me on to his podcast. And that was via a couple people that helped me out get on there, Kirk Pazley, Peter Atia. And they made some introductions and introduced me to Tim Ferriss.

Tim had me on. Got a lot of good feedback on that show. And that led to me going on to Joe Rogan. So thanks to Joe Rogan for having me on as well. and once those two things happened and I actually got online and started getting communicating with other human beings online and they were asking you know you should you should do a podcast because it was interesting and both Joe and Tim told me to have a podcast because it was interesting so as I I got all that feedback, which was awesome.

I kind of realized I should do a podcast. So I'm sitting here. My name is Jocko, Jocko Willink. I was, if you don't know anything about me, I served 20 years in the military. Retired in 2010, myself, and one of my buddies, guy by the name of Laif Babin, we started a company where we,

do leadership and management consulting for businesses doing all that work eventually got us to a situation where we had some knowledge and kind of aggregated some knowledge and so we put that into a book the book came out and been doing pretty well it's called extreme ownership so that's who I am now I kind of sometimes find it a little strange just to be talking and so as we decided to put this podcast together. At one point I had done some follow-up videos for Tim Ferriss, for him to put online, and I did those with a buddy of mine who's sitting here with me now, a guy by the name of Echo Charles, who is a longtime jiu-jitsu training partner of mine, and he does video production.

He's got a company called FlixPoint TV, and whenever I got to do something. and video related. He's my go-to guy. And so when this came, this opportunity came about, when we were filming the videos for Tim Ferriss, we had questions from the internet, and we were sitting there

and he's filming, and we were basically doing a podcast because we were talking and we were having conversations about leadership and about jujitsu and about problems and about everything. And that kind of rolled into when we started talking about doing a podcast, and I said, hey, do you have

audio equipment? do you have a recorder? Do you have time to sit down and hang out with me and do this? I do. He said I do. I do have all that stuff. And here we are. So then what we did was we took a bunch of questions that I got from online.

People hit me with all kinds of different questions, which is awesome. Thanks to everybody. for giving me that feedback and listening and talking and communicating with me, that's awesome. It's kind of weird because I've never been like the most social person in the world. And not that I feel like lonely, because I never do.

I don't care if I'm alone or not. Social, you mean like online social? Definitely not online social. I mean, I had zero online presence prior to, you know, being on the Tim Ferriss podcast. and um but but even socially i mean i don't like hang around with people you know that i mean i told you that like the last time i was over here i said hey yeah i just don't do that a lot so it's it's kind of interesting to me being online and communicating with really thousands of people yeah and

they all and it's cool because i'm not used to having people that are kind of interested in the same thing i'm interested in you know the jihitsu the working out the want to do better they want to get better to want to learn more. That's what I want to do. And it's cool to be able to communicate with a bunch of people that want to do the same thing. And, you know, I think that's with this podcast,

which I know is going to evolve into all kinds of different things. But I think the underlying theme will be lessons learned. You know, lessons learned. I want to learn from people. I want people to pass on what I've learned. I don't want people to make the same.

same mistakes I made. I want to learn other mistakes that people have made so I don't make them. And I think that's kind of kind of be the underlying theme here with this. Yeah. What about you? I mean, is there anything in your background that you would consider to be important for people to know? Above and beyond what you just said, no.

those are the relevant points for sure that's that's as we talked about doing this that's one of the things that struck me as you're a director you know for your business you're you're a film director and you don't get in front of the camera that's not your thing right and so that's why I think this interaction is good because you're you draw things out of people that's what a director does yeah

and I believe that's what you're going to be doing here. Yeah. Yeah, especially when I did a lot of the Metamor's stuff. That was essentially my, that was like maybe a third of the whole job, is to get stuff out of. So the jiu-jitsu players out there, if you followed Metamoros at all, the videos, the, what do they call, lead-up videos. Yeah, like promo.

The promo videos. For the matches, yeah. Those were countdowns, if you will. That's right. Those were Echo Charles material right there. Yeah. So you'd occasionally hear his voice in the background with a question. Yeah.

So speaking to questions. Yeah. We got some questions from the interwebs. Yeah. What do we got for the first one here? We got. First question is, why do you wake up early in the morning? Actually, this is, I kind of have the same question for you because I wake up late.

Oh, I was in the nightclub industry for a long time, so my schedule is just shit. shifted. I still, you know, work out and work hard for the most part during the day, but my schedule is just shifted. But I think a lot of times I'm viewed as like, oh, this is like late riser, like early risers just to begin with kind of seem like these disciplined, you know, but if you just shift the schedule a little bit forward, you know, you're up for, let's say you get eight hours sleep. I know you get less than eight hours sleep, but let's say a typical person eight hours sleep. If you get eight hours of sleep, but you wake up at 4.30 versus you get the same eight hours of sleep, same waking, you know, hour or same hours awake and doing work and working justice

but you wake up at, in my case, noon sometimes or whatever. What's the difference, really? Well, there, technically there is no difference. And actually I've talked to people that they're on the night shift. Right. You know, so they get home at four. o'clock in the morning. But I think we both know. I think we both know what the difference is. And I truly think, you know, that waking up early. Now, if that early means noon,

because you worked until 7 o'clock in the morning or 8 o'clock in the morning, and it takes discipline to get out of bed, then I believe that there's, then that's fine. but if you wake up whenever you want and you slept for 10 hours and you're lazy getting out of bed, I think that affects your whole life in a negative way. I really do. I think it's not good.

And again, I know that some people are on those schedules. And I know that some people need more sleep. That's, I understand that. There's some genetics involved. I have one of my daughters genetically, I will go to bed at, 11 o'clock at night, she's still awake. I wake up at 4 in the morning, she's awake. So there's some genetic weirdness going on there.

Yeah. What, as far as getting up early, let's say, how you said, okay, it takes discipline to get out of bed. Wouldn't that kind of indicate that maybe you need some more sleep? Because let's think of like what they call the natural sleep cycle, right? you go to sleep, you sleep your hour of seven, I think I deal seven and a half or something like this, and you naturally wake up, you got your rest. But if you got to drag yourself out of bed, doesn't that kind of indicate you need more rest? Possibly. You could be right. But you know how you always say like, what do you say, psychological victory? Psychological victory. Right. So

isn't that kind of, it's a mental exercise, right? Yes. So you're, if that's part of your routine to fight adversity, you end up getting better at fighting adversity, whether it's that tiredness you feel or actual physical pain or, you know. And also, you sleep, like, if you decide to sleep more, it's because it feels good, right? So then it's good for you. But what if you want more candy?

You know, if you want more candy because it tastes good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good. In fact, it's not good. But I do think that there's times that I do definitely need more sleep, but I don't. And I also know that there's a fine line. I know when I get overtrained.

I know when I get not enough sleep, and I feel it, and my workout starts going backward, and my jihitsu starts going backwards, and my life starts going a little bit backwards. And then I know, okay, you know, you need to take a day, you need to relax, sleep more. Maybe wake up at like five. Yeah, sleep until like 5.30.

And you could always tell that when we were training fighters for the UFC. You could tell when they reached their limit, when they were over training, it was so obvious. They would just fall apart on the mat, just completely fall apart. And, you know, the other thing is I'm like making a big deal out of waking up early. There's millions of people in the world that's what their job is. they're a single mom and they got to work two jobs and they're getting up earlier than I am and they're going to bed later than I am

because they're supporting their family. So I'm not sitting here saying this is the be all end all, but I will say that it definitely it definitely has an impact and it definitely affects the other things in your life if you have that discipline early in the morning it will help you across the board. Yeah.

And I always read this stuff about creative people and this is a complete generalization, but they say that creative people tend to stay up later, and usually when you stay up later, you wake up later or whatever. If you're mentally weak, yeah. So couldn't it be kind of seen,

couldn't it be seen like when... My early waking is a total lack of creativity? No, it seems like you're, you're driven to get things done, you know, get the job done, get it done well, no excuses. Right. And at the same time, develop your physical, mental toughness and, you know, improve yourself in these ways that it's essentially like, I don't want to say the chores in life, but it's like you want to get up and maximize the day and get the most work done possible, right?

So if you, let's say, okay, a typical day, let's say I wake up at 8 a.m. I do my work. I get home at 5 and I, you know, I kind of goof off, watch some TV and maybe, I don't know, maybe even go out to a bar or something like that. Where all the work is done. There's no work to be done really, as far as just kind of in a general way of saying it, there's no work to be done at the bar. There's no work to be done watching, you know, TV or whatever. a person that lacks discipline, they're going to, it's pleasurable. The bar is pleasurable, you know, for, you know, generally speaking, TV's pleasurable. So they're going to be all focused on that. Like, oh, I don't want to go to bed and face the workday the next day. I don't want to charge the work day. I want to immerse myself in the fun part of it, in the candy part of it. Then they wind up going to bed late. And then they wind up having to drag themselves out of bed, maybe sleep in a little bit more. So wouldn't kind of that discipline that you talk about, that

applies to the whole day, not just waking up early, right? So it's like a whole system. So a lot of people when like you that I've noticed, you focus really hard on getting stuff done. And if you maximize the time you have to get it done when you wake up early, then you can do that more effectively. And at the same time, I don't want to give the impression that I'm living this like task driven life where I have every minute of the day scheduled because because then that does inhibit your ability to do other things. It inhibits your creativity, obviously. But, you know, I'll train Jiu-Jitsu, and I'm going to go there for, maybe I'll just go there

for 45 minutes and get some rounds in. Maybe I'll be there for three hours. And I don't necessarily know that when I show up, because I have some flexibility in what I'm going to do in the day. The waves are good, and maybe I'll go surfing, you know. But you're right that. you have to be disciplined. Getting out of bed is like the foundation of the discipline.

And I think it carries over everything else because we get out of bed early. And then you work out. When you get done working out, me personally, I don't want to eat junk when I get done working out. I'm like, oh, you know, I did a good workout. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling healthy. Instead of eating a bowl of lucky charms, I'm going to eat, you know, some eggs and bacon and something good. So I agree with you on that.

Um, yeah. So fear is kind of a little side note to, to that question. Well, to me, one of the things, when people ask me, like, what drives you, which is kind of a weird question, because it's a big question. Right. I guess that's not a weird question. It's a big question. Right. What drives you?

Yeah. Yeah. Answers on that one. But one of the things that I definitely think of. as a driver of me is is fear. And it's, you know, fear of failure, fear of being overtaken. Yes. Yes.

What drives me. Right. And this comes from, I remember being in the SEAL teams. I was, when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, I was very afraid of making mistakes and looking stupid or doing dumb things and getting a bad reputation. And that fear got me to work early and got me to inspect my gear three more times. and got me to ask my buddy to inspect my gear to make sure we were good to go.

So I think that's what the fear is. And then there's also the fear of what the enemy's doing and how hard are they training? And are you training harder than them? And now that I'm in the civilian world, I'm thinking, okay, what is some other company doing better than we're doing? And how can we overtake them?

You know? And that's some weird fear and competitiveness that everybody has, some people more than others. You got to balance it for sure, but it's definitely one of those things. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes that can get in the way, especially when you mentioned, like, what is that other company doing? So I knew this guy that my brother worked with, that he would be one of those guys

where he'd be really concerned on what's the competition doing. So he'd be developing this aspect of his company, and it's like right in the middle development and but he'd be paying to tell you know one air would be on the you know what's going on with this other company and they do some new thing or going some new direction that really yields a lot of success for and oh we got to do that we got to meanwhile these other ideas that are solid viable ideas are left half developed or the resources are kind of allocated to do this new thing and not so much the old stuff and you know what I actually got asked us at working with a company the other day

and they said you know how much should we be focused because I said something along these lines they said well how much should we be focused on what the enemy, on what the competitors are doing. And should we be afraid of them? And I said, actually, fear is the wrong word. You shouldn't be afraid of the enemy, but you have to respect them.

And I think that's the thing that gets me out of bed early in the morning, is that I respect the enemy. I'm not afraid of them, but I respect them, and I'm going to be ready to do battle with them when the time comes. You know, there's kind of a side note,

but isn't, Don't you kind of think too sometimes where it's you're almost like reflecting yourself when you say you're you're you respect and you for lack of better term fear the enemy and what they're doing to prepare? Because you know what you're doing to prepare and it's pretty hard. So you kind of almost in the back of your mind is thinking they're probably doing all this too, you know? So it's like the more you do, the more you kind of in a weird subconscious way might think. They're doing? They're doing the same thing. You know?

So it's like boom, boom, boom. It's never ending like. It's an arms race. Yeah. It's an arms race. somewhat. Yeah. And if you get caught up in it to a point, like the example you just gave you, I can

drive you crazy and it'll drive you to failure. You have to be able to stand on your own and say, okay, we're going to maneuver regardless of what the enemy is doing. We're going to make our moves. Yeah. Next. What do we got next? Next question.

Oh, well, actually, there's life, you know, and other people sing. Yeah, I kind of went through that. Yeah, this applies to everyone these underlying concepts. Okay, well then, you kind of talked about this before, mental toughness. How do you, and this is another one that applies to me where certain, and you'll see it even in high level, certain people, it's almost like they've navigated their way through life and to, too, into success, not really needing that much mental toughness because maybe they had some special. attribute that allowed them to be successful early on and kept them success. You know, like these athletes, for example, gifted. Yeah.

And, you know, and you kind of notice it when things get rough for them, that's when they break or whatever. And so, I mean, I'm not saying I'm like a superior athlete or nothing like that, but it just so happens in a lot of ways, some ways, whatever. I managed to avoid developing mental toughness up until a lot of. about maybe two years ago. Maybe. But, and I, of course, I know how mine came about.

I think, I mean, the main reason was just through maturity and seeing it around me. But let's say I didn't, I wasn't surrounded by people who are mentally tough, and I didn't see the value firsthand. How do you just develop mental toughness? Again, this is one of those things that people ask, and this was a, a, Big question from online, you know, tons and tons of people asked, how do you develop mental toughness? How do you become more mentally tough? And, you know, you and I did that video on it where it's like, if you want to be more mentally tough, then be tougher. You know? And you get these people that are out there that sell courses on developing mental toughness and, you know, they're either going to bring you into a room. and get you into some spiritual state and say,

okay, listen, you've got to visualize the mind of the wolf. And you are going to see through the eyes of the wolf. What does a wolf do? The wolf does not back down. He leads the pack. And like all this stuff, right? Okay, I'm not, I don't know. No, not my gig right there.

Because the cool thing about mental toughness is, is it's just a simple choice that you have to make. make. Are you going to go through this thing that's hard, this thing that's tough, this thing that sucks? Are you going to suffer through it or are you going to quit? It's really easy. You just go, okay, I'm going to suffer through it. I'm going to deal with it. Then you're mentally tough. Done. Next question. Let's move on to something more important. You know what I mean? That's not easy. Doesn't that, and maybe I'm wrong here, but that sounds like the answer coming from someone who has, doesn't sound crazy, but has the luxury of being mentally tough. So like when you're, do you ever remember a time that you were not meant that? you were straight up mentally weak. Do you ever remember any time? No. 1996, I was, no, I'm just kidding.

You know, like, I'll tell you, people talk about in seal training. They say, oh, everybody, everybody wants to quit at some point during seal training. And I literally, not at all, never for one second. I think, oh, I'm going to quit. I don't want to do this anymore. Not even a chance. That's ridiculous. Who says that?

Seals say it. Like others say it? Yeah, absolutely. You know, everyone thinks about quitting sometimes. No, and I got plenty of bros in the SEAL teams that never thought about quitting. Me too. Yeah, I told my best friend. Yeah.

They said, no, you don't even think about quitting. No, we didn't even think about quitting. Yeah. And so those guys are mentally tough. And, okay, so if you're not mentally tough, if you view yourself as mentally weak, then you've got to do things, I guess, push yourself to that threshold. And how do you push yourself to that threshold? You do mentally challenging things. You do physically challenging things, and you push through them.

Yeah. And then that might develop your mental toughness more. Right. Yeah, you'd think that like any exercise, getting the reps, you need to get those reps of hard stuff mentally. Like that seminar analogy you just made, that's not. That doesn't seem like that would ever work. No matter if you're visualizing yourself as a wolf or whatever,

you're not even getting the reps. That's like saying, oh, I've never played basketball ever. I've never been held a basketball, but guess what? we're going to prepare you to be good at basketball, close your eyes, visualize play basketball. And that's your reps. So it probably won't work.

So back to the fear thing. We're going to get hammered because all these people can be like, no, if you visualize, you get better. That's true. They do all kinds of experience. But mental toughness, you're right. You might be right. That's more of a motions thing, I think,

when you visualize, you know, winning and reacting. Mental toughness, maybe, but it won't substitute reps. Like if you're scared of something, for example, that should be like a flag. or an indicator that, okay, I got to, let's get some reps right here. I'm scared of this. You're right. And that being said, like you're talking about your SEAL buddies that never were going to quit, right?

And I was definitely never going to quit. Well, I didn't have any reps going into that of, you know, mentally challenging things or whatever. I mean, why. You did, though. In life. In life. And this is why I say that. I'm not, obviously, wasn't in SEAL teams at all.

we might find that hard to believe no these guys both played football D-1 school they both one of them's father was a Navy SEAL and just growing up a certain way with a certain

like environment does make you tell like let's say your father just not letting you quit like you play even Pop Warner football and your dad's like no you you can't quit like oh I want to quit this is lame, I'm not good, or I'm just so tired, I'm hurt or whatever. And your dad saying, no, you don't quit.

And it just is in your mind. And this is the crazy thing about the SEAL teams is there's kids that grew up in, you know, some rich town with very wealthy parents and went to an Ivy League school and they're tough. And there's kids that grew up with no dad and, you know, a single mom and they're tough as hell. So that theory is almost debunked because where does that mental toughness come from? I think it comes from a bunch of different places. It just is interpreted and kind of internalized in the same way. And I'll tell you where I think it comes from.

I think it comes from when a human being decides that they're going to achieve their goals and they're going to go through whatever obstacles, then that's where mental toughness comes from. It is a decision that human beings make to make it happen. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that when... You know what you're doing right now? You're a shirking responsibility for mental toughness.

That's what you're doing. I'm trying to narrow it down. You're basically saying right now, like, you didn't, you weren't developed in a way that raised mental toughness and it's everyone else's fault. It's your fault. You're not tough. I'm taking me the exact opposite of extreme ownership of my lack of mental toughness or former I'm working on.

No, but I think it is a lot of environmental factors. Like, you become tough because of certain environments for sure. Yeah. I guess, I guess we would need to. to see what happens with the people that aren't mentally tough. Because where do they end up? They end up in the gutter. They end up dead. They end up in jail.

They end up in bad places because they weren't mentally tough. They didn't figure it out. They didn't drive through it. And so we don't even know who those people are. What happened to them? They failed. They didn't make that decision. They didn't decide that they were going to get out of that bad situation.

They were going to push through that scenario. The guys that you played football with, they drove through that. that those bad situations and got there. You know, that's how they did it. They decided to do it. Yeah. Yeah, making that decision, I guess it's, they would have to sort of access a place in

their mind where that decision is final. Because a lot of times people say, yeah, I'm going to do this. And that's my dream. And, you know, I'm going to be an architect. And then when they go to college, when the beginner class is three hours a day for five days, they're, oh, well, you know, I don't know. That's one thing that the seal training does very well is gets rid of those people. Because everyone that shows up there thinks they want to be a seal.

Right. Until, you know, two weeks into it. And then you've got half the guys and then you end up with 20% of the guys. And everyone has that dream when they show up there. Yeah. But that dream gets crushed. So as a try to imagine yourself, you're probably not going to be able to do this, but imagine yourself mentally not tough.

Okay. I don't even want to say weak. Just an average person, you know, when, you know, know when you get you're doing some push-ups, you hit about, you know, 15, you're like, oh, you hit 20. You're like, okay, I can't do anymore. So you stop doing the push-ups.

Not the guy who's going to get those five extra. You're not that guy. Is there an exercise or an approach to just be on the path to at least increase my mental, your mental toughness? Like what, like what? Keep going. Yeah, but I can't keep going.

Yes, you can. I mean, I can, yeah. Yes, yes, you can. That's the difference. You can't. You just got to sit. Okay. I remember I read the small little book.

It was called Mind Games. And there was this one short chapter on anger, anger issues, like if you have anger issues, right? And I never had anger issues or nothing like that. But like anyone else was young, I was like, I don't know, 23, 24. You know, I get mad and think I'm better than certain rules. And when I get called out on the rules, I'd pitch it, like, you know, have an attitude or whatever, right? So I read this little chapter and it said anger issues along with other things comes from a low self-esteem because you're real sensitive and you react in this aggressive way or whatever. But the word low self-esteem was like a trigger for me.

So having a low self-esteem for whatever reason, that was like an embarrassing thing. So that could be a little trigger. So you could find little triggers in, let's say, you know, you're doing push-ups and you don't want to do five more. the fact that you don't want to do the five more, that should be embarrassing to you. Yes. You know, like if you kind of tell yourself that, that'll help you make that decision where I'm not going to embarrass myself right now. You know, so that fear of embarrassment can get you into the mode to want to exercise more

mental toughness, you know, and that trigger. And at the end of the day, when you feel that weakness, it's a choice to make to overcome it. It's not that big of a deal. You just suck it up and do it. Let's go to the next question. Yeah. What are some key

mental and physical steps or patterns to stay on game? Yes, this is one of those questions that we got a very simple. A bunch of very similar questions to this. What are the five key? And people always want to put numbers on things, especially these days, I think people's attention span.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, people want to see a list of, okay, if I do this. Yeah. And I guess, you know, it sells, right? What are the five? In fact, they've done a bunch of articles about Laif and I, and they throw like a number on them, the 12 things, the three things. Because people want to believe that there's a finite number of steps to take.

And also, as far as an article for consumption, it makes you feel mentally comfortable to know that, okay, it's not this open. I don't know how much I'm going to read. I know I'm going to read the 12, you know, and that's what I'm going to eat. You know, this is going to go back to what we've already been talking about. You know, for me, waking up early, working out every day, taking ownership of what you're doing and responsibility of things that are in your life, making sure that you, periodically throughout the day, throughout the hour, maybe not throughout the minute,

but that you detach yourself from the situation that you're in. You detach yourself from it and you look at yourself and you assess. And I think that has a huge impact. And I, you know, I talk about that a lot, that detachment, that it is something that I learned in the SEAL teams. And I learned it when bad things were happening. And if you get sucked into those bad things and you're in them mentally, emotionally, And physically, you can't assess well because you're in the problem.

It's like when you're watching a horror movie and, and, you know, they're like voluntarily, oh, there's a noise down in the basement. Let's go see what it is. Everyone that's watching the movie that's detached from the situation is screaming at the screen. No, don't do it. The people that are there are saying, yes, let's go check it out. Because they're emotionally and physically and mentally in the situation. So having the ability to detach from the present from being inside your own head.

Being able to detach from that is hugely important because it allows you to do a real assessment of yourself. And then finally, staying humble. You can't ever think that you've got everything figured out. You've got to constantly be saying, you know, what can I do better? What can I fix? What am I screwing up? and people are going to give you advice and you got to take it and listen to it

and see if it's good or not maybe put it to the test but I think those things waking up early working out taking ownership of stuff being able to detach and assess and staying humble those are those are kind of my mainstays

if I had to call them out on the list of five things that make you better yeah the ownership that I don't I mean, they're all pretty, you know, these are all challenges for sure. These aren't just easy things to do. But the ownership, I think that's a big key.

Like, for example, in your book, what it talks about, the whole theme of the book, Extreme Ownership, where any situation when something goes wrong, when it doesn't go perfectly or you want it to go better, it's so easy, super easy, especially if you're emotionally charged or whatever. It's so easy to be like, well, that guy didn't do his job or whatever. And a lot of the cases, it's true. That guy didn't do his job. A lot of guys he says it's true.

And then when you do that, you don't even think about or you don't honestly tell yourself or think about what you did or what you didn't do, you know, or what you did wrong, you know, to make that, you know, what role you played. And that's why that detachment is critical. Because if you don't detach, it's very easy to be in your own head and say, well, Echo screwed up his part and that's why we failed the mission. It's because Echo didn't do his job. and now, but as soon as I hear myself saying that, when I'm saying it, it's okay. When it's coming out of my mouth, it's okay. If I see myself saying it, then I know that I've gone the wrong way.

I know that I've made a mistake. Yeah. And what's interesting is when you, when you, and it's something you can do like right now. You don't have to get trained in it. You can start practicing taking ownership of everything you possibly can't, literally right now. and what I found and really like about it is that it works not just like with business it works with everything relationships with your wife or girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever all that it works amazing in all those situations so it applies it's really kind of like a staple for for life you know

like a way to conduct yourself just in life yeah and that is that is why that is why that became the title of the book because that is the underlying characteristic that helps people in their life. And I mean, that means as a leader, of course, obviously, in a pressure situation, obviously, in a business, obviously, but you're right. And it takes transitions across the board to life and it makes you successful across the board when you take ownership of everything, no doubt about it. So at age 44, you get out of bed, bust your ass, like the next mission is around the corner. What drives you?

Actually, you kind of talked about that, kind of that fear of the enemy's preparation. Yeah. But what do you, you know? You know, this is one of those things that when people start talking about a war, and what war does to people and you know nowadays we're hearing and we see more and we know more about what war does to people's minds and obviously it is it can have some some extremely negative impacts on people and there's a lot of veterans right now that are that are suffering that are having a hard time.

And I think for me, when I think about what drives me, it's an extremely powerful force that's driving me today. And that is that I served with guys that sacrificed their lives. so that we could be here, so that I could be here, so that we could have freedom, so that I could have, never mind freedom, so that I could be here alive. And when you think about that, when you think about this gift, this gift that you've been given,

to come back to America and be free and have a life and have liberty and be free, and be free for the pursuit of happiness. You think about that gift. It's the most beautiful thing anyone could ever give you. It's been given to you. It's been given to me. And I will not squander that gift.

And I will make every day count as I remember those guys that gave that gift to me. Yeah. Funny how like, you know how you, kind of get a glimpse of certain people's life and how they how they behave and how they act what their routine and schedule is and when you like keep just hearing that

and you've said that before and you've even kind of said that to me before and it kind of reminds you how much reminds me how much I'm not doing you know and you know how if you get free money it almost means less

than if you earn it, you know. So I think a lot of times when you don't do a lot or, you know, maybe, you know, you haven't served or something like that, it's almost like free money. And you've been exposed to earning that money in the real sense. Yeah. So that's, boom, that's constantly just in your nature now. And then, you know, other people, they do have to be reminded, you know. And I think it's a powerful reminder.

Because every day. and I would say every minute of every day I'm thinking about those guys and that definitely pushes me and I don't want to let those guys down so in regards to the military

you know officers entering spec ops or other elite scenarios what advice would you have for them you know this is again this is one of those questions that's come up and I get this a lot because a lot of people that listen to Joe Rogan a lot of people that listen to Tim Ferriss they're younger folks and they they might be stepping in a leadership position for the first time

and so we definitely got a lot of a lot of questions from military guys that are getting promoted they're going to be promoted into leadership positions and we get a lot of younger people that are stepping into the business world and they're stepping into leaders roles for the first time in those situations. And I think that, um, and I would tell both the special operations folks and the folks in the business world, the same thing because as, if anyone's listened to me at all or heard anything that I say or read the book,

the leadership principles do not change regardless of this in business or in battle. The leadership principles stay the same. And so if you're new and you're up and coming, what do you do? How do you step up into that role? Number one, be humble. I know it's a theme. I sound like a broken record, but you, everybody knows, everybody's seen that cocky guy that walks in and thinks they're going to run everything. And you just instantly disrespect that person.

So how do you overcome that? You come in and you be humble. You respect people. You know, you respect people, regardless of what rank you are, regardless of whether you're making a ton more money than someone else. It doesn't matter. You treat everybody with respect. You treat them with respect and they're going to respect you. You listen to them.

It means so much when one of your people comes and talks to you and you sit down and say, okay, let me take some notes on what you're saying. That means so much to them. And sometimes people forget that. You know, they forget what it means to look up and see the boss man and they might blow a guy off or, you know, hey, I don't have time for you right now. You've got to listen to people. because what you're trying to do in a leadership position, and this is a word that I've only recently become comfortable saying, the word is relationships.

You are truly, that's what business is, that's what life is, that's what business is, that's what combat is. That's how you lead people in combat in business. you have relationships with them. Leif and I talk about this all the time. You know, sure, I can give you an order if you're below me in rank, and you might do it some of the time,

but you're not going to, the people that really follow you that you have a relationship with you, those guys will do anything for you. The guys that I worked with, the guys that worked for me were my subordinates, they'd do anything for me. And you know what? I would do anything for them.

I would do anything for those guys. The guys that were in my task unit, These guys were awesome. They were awesome guys. And I would do anything for those guys. I would give them anything, anything. And they would do the same for me. Why?

Because we had relationship. That was what we had. It wasn't because I would order them to do something that doesn't work. So you've got to build those relationships. And how do you build relationships? How do you build relationships then? You build relationships by doing those things, by respecting people, by being humble, by listening. by telling them the truth.

By having integrity and telling people the truth. You can't lie to people. And I mean, lie is a strong word because, you know, I don't think people are generally lying to each on a regular basis, but people use half-truths and they, you know, they shadow things and you can't do that. And people see right through it. And even if they don't know what the truth is,

they know they're not getting the truth. Right. So, you know, I was always with my guys, okay, here's what's going on. Here's the problem. Here's what we screwed up. Here's what we need to do better. Here's the pressure I'm under from higher headquarters. Here's why I'm under this pressure.

I'm not sugar-coating it. I'm not trying to set something up to be different than what the reality is. If I'm getting told to do something that I don't believe in, okay? Now, this is a tough one. If I'm getting told to do something, I don't believe in. I'm not going to go tell my guys, hey, I don't believe in this and we're going to do it anyways. No, no, no, no. If I don't believe in it, I got to figure out why we're doing it.

And I'm going to say, okay, boss, I do not understand why we're doing this. I don't see how this is going to help us win the battle. So you need to explain this to me. So I can explain it to my guys because I'm not going to go lie to them. I'm also not going to go down there and say, hey, we're doing this anyways. Or I'm not going to send people to do things that I don't believe in. We're all trying to win the war. My boss is trying to win the war

I'm trying to win the war My guys are trying to win the war So my boss isn't going to tell me Do something that doesn't make sense And isn't logical to win the war So I should believe in it And if I don't then I should question him And those are those are the things

That allow you to build relationships And the topic of the night again Ownership You know if you take ownership When there's problems and you get them solved And then when things do go right You pass that Pass the reward

and the credit onto your boys, then you, that also helps you build those relationships. So that's what I would tell a new leader in the business world, work hard, you know, I should have said that one's like number one. Work hard. Work hard, yeah.

Dang, that's another thing, that whole answer with it. What you just said applies to, is another thing that applies to everything. Yep. You say as a leader, you know, in a, you know, with the chain of command and, you know, all your guys that works with your kids, your friends, or just even in general, like, you know, at the gym, if you're, I used to work with this guy.

And, man, he was the nicest guy. He was the nicest guy. He'd always have compliments. But, you know, the kind of compliments that are kind of too good. Like, man, I don't know. Let's say I'm wearing a new shirt. And, man, that shirt is fucking awesome. And then.

I've never been told about one time of my life. You're going to have to come up with a different compliment. But he would do that kind of, he would say, you know, give you compliments. Right. But just overdo it a little bit too much, just a little bit, just to step outside of the realm of it being believable. Yep. So that kind of work, he'd like, man, that's awesome. And then he'd walk away or whatever, this is a nightclub.

And he'd come back and be like, man, that is an awesome shirt. You know, it's hard to believe, given what I know about this person, that you're that into my shirt. Right. Maybe he's just into you. See, and that would be a thing if there was other indicators, right? So it's a whole persona. So it takes that, it takes you being consistent and all these things that you're saying are honest and consistent about it. So the point of your story is that you didn't build a relationship with a guy because you didn't trust him.

Yes, exactly right. So you know when you're saying, tell the truth, you know, if it's bad, you've got to tell the truth. You're not going to. Literally, it's almost like he would. only want to tell you good news. So it could be like he could, it's almost like you had this feeling like even if he hated my shirt or thought it looked whack or something like that. He would, he would still, oh, that's a, that's a cool shirt.

And you know, this is important. This brings me to another point. And that is balance. And I talk about balance all the time because all these things have to be balanced. And when you're talking about truth right now, you have to be tactful, you know, being, being truthful and being honest does not give you permission to be a jerk. It doesn't do that.

And so there's a difference between, you know, oh, I don't like an echo shirt. So I'm going to say, dude, that's an ugly shirt, right? And just like in when you're working with, you know, subordinates and they screw something up, you know, you're in it, you know, that was a horrible job. You let me down. No, no, okay.

Hey, well, first of all, you want to take ownership of it. I obviously didn't give you good enough guidance. But the point that I'm trying to make is, being honest with people. There's people that are blunt, honest leaders, and everyone hates them because they're so blunt, they don't have any tact. They don't maneuver.

They don't use jujitsu. They don't think and they don't assess the whole situation. And they think that if I tell Echo, you know, if I want Echo to use Method A and Echo's used to using Method B, Echo might have a personality that if I go up and say, hey, use Method A now. I'm being blunt, I'm being frank.

what does Echo say to that? Echo's like, dude, I've been doing this a lot longer than you. I'm not going to do method A. I'm sticking with my method. That's real. I need to get, you know, so you've got to, you've got to influence people. You've got to be a chess player, not a checkers player.

And so don't confuse being honest with being blunt and untactful and a jerk. You have to do jujitsu. And for anyone that's listening that doesn't do jujitsu, Jiu-jitsu is a very nuanced game where you're constantly trying to set things up and shape the situation. It's not like boxing.

In boxing, I'm trying to punch you, you're trying to punch me. In Jiu-Jitsu, you're trying to maneuver on the other person. You're trying to get better positions on them. You're trying to flank them and come in from a different direction that they didn't expect. That's what the art of leadership is.

Anyone could go through a list of, hey, here's what you guys screwed up on the mission. One, two, three, four, five. Fix it. That guy's not going to be respect as a leader. Even though he's truthful and honest and blunt, it's not going to get him where he needs to be. There's a whole other game to play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's dealing with egos and it's dealing with personalities.

That's really what it boils down to. Everyone has different personalities and learning how to be a craftsman that knows what tools to use with what different types of wood. That's what being a leader is. Yeah. If leadership was do these next seven things and you'll be a great leader, I wouldn't have a book and I wouldn't have a business because everyone would be a great leader. There is an art to it. It is a very difficult thing to do. It's simple.

There's simple steps. You know, be honest. You show integrity, take ownership. There's those simple steps. But at the same time, they're incredibly nuanced. and that's what makes it challenging. And that's what makes it so rewarding as well. That is absolutely what makes it so rewarding.

People who don't take accountability. Don't take accountability. Blaming everyone else. How do you deal with people like that? And I mean personally, how do you deal with them? Because I guess, or would it be the same way as you would professionally? Yeah, personally, professionally, it's all the same. These are questions that we get asked.

on a regular basis, and we definitely got a lot of them online, is these, how do you deal with people that don't take accountability? How do you deal with leadership that doesn't get the message that you are communicating, right? So just so we can both understand very out of the gate here, both those questions, what do both those questions do? What this question? Both these two questions. They have something in common.

How do you deal with people, people that don't take accountability, and people that don't get them, message that you're communicating. You're not taking accountability. You're blaming these other people. You're blaming them for not taking accountability and you're blaming them for not understanding your message. Right. Whose fault is that? Your own. If you take an extreme ownership, that's your fault. 100% of the time. So if I'm a leader and my people aren't taking responsibility for their actions, that's not their fault. It's my fault. I have not shown them how to lead properly. I haven't shown them how to take accountability. And how do you do that? Hey, you know, if Echo does something wrong, I don't

go echo you screwed this up i say echo this went wrong it's my fault that i didn't explain it to you well enough i'm not going to talk to you baby but like hey you know what do we do wrong how do we not how do we how do we how do we make this happen you know you got to take ownership of it and that's what does that make echo do that makes echo say oh you know what you know what i mean so both those questions how do i how do i solve those problems i i take ownership of them that's number one Number two, what do I do? Because to take ownership of them isn't quite enough here. We need to be smarter than that.

Again, we need to play chess. So what I always try and do from a leadership perspective is I always try and understand the perspective that other people have. This kind of goes to detachment. I got to detach from my own head and I got to see it from their perspective. So I can understand what does it look like from Echo's viewpoint? What does it look like from my most junior guy that's not doing what I want him to do? Why isn't he doing it?

What is he singing from his perspective? Okay, my boss doesn't understand what I'm trying to communicate to him. Guess what? What is his perspective? How do I detach from my own head, see what his perspective is? Because once I see his perspective, I can adjust it. So it's very important to try and understand other people's perspectives. And it's usually not that hard.

people are often pretty easy to read and as soon as you leave your own head and get into theirs you'll see how you can change the scenario and make them understand it better so those are two big pieces

yeah that's another one that applies to everything and how you were saying these are simple steps but simple but not easy yeah

Yeah. Mancy, get out of your own head and, you know, it's hard. It definitely is challenging. Especially in these pressure situations work. Pressure situations where emotions are involved and you start getting fired up. People are yelling or there's, you know, capital at risk or jobs at risk or lives at risk. It's definitely hard to do that. And guess what?

Those situations where it's hardest to do are the most critical times where you need to step back. calm down step outside your own head don't see the emotions let your ego go understand other people's perspectives that's when you need to do it the most yeah oddly enough so what would you say is your most difficult day in the military or can you even single one out and how did it affect you or shape you or or you know push you forward you know you know The time I was in the SEAL teams for 20 years, and it was awesome. It was, I can't even call it a job because it was so fun and surrounded by great guys. And even overseas in Iraq, I was having an absolute fantastic time the whole time.

Obviously, those were the best days of my life being a combat leader in a combat situation. that's what I wanted to do my whole life. And when I was there, I knew that. And those were the best days of my life. And encompassed inside those great days are obviously the worst days of my life. And no doubt the worst days of my lives were the days when my guys got killed. And Mark Lee, first seal killed in Iraq. Mikey Monsor, second seal killed in Iraq,

who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade to save three of our other teammates. And Ryan Job, who was severely wounded, blinded in both eyes after he was shot in the face, who made it home, and eventually, after his 20-second surgery to repair the damage that would have done to his head and face, he died as well.

And the day that was the absolute worst was when I came home from deployment. And I didn't have those guys with me. I was coming home to my family, to my kids, to my wife, and they weren't. And how it affected me as far as my military career goes, I truly understood what was at stake in combat. And when I took over training out on the West Coast, I was obsessed with making the training as realistic as possible and getting the guys that were going overseas to Iraq and Afghanistan,

and getting them as prepared as they could humanly possibly ever be to be in these worst case scenarios. And I remember, you know, I remember we'd set up these scenarios that were very, very difficult. I mean, unbelievably difficult. Like you were going to have massive challenges. And I remember I'd see a guy, like, for instance, in an urban environment and training,

I'd see a guy standing in the middle of street You know like Which you would not want to do if you were in Ramadi in 2006 And I'd see and I would I would get this feeling I'd like sick to my stomach feeling Because like in the back of my mind I'm waiting for rounds to start hitting the ground And kill this guy or wound him

And I would you know get fired up And you know explain to him Listen you cannot you got to move from cover to cover Don't be standing out here in the middle of street Why is there's no cover fire going on you know and that's how it affected me as far as my military career and how it affected me in my life you know I've already told you how it affected me those are those guys um I'm trying to honor them by by living the best life I can and taking advantage of the freedom that they bless me with so I'm gonna go to

the uh another question from online here how'd you come to know the darkness And how does it motivate you dealing with it and using the light to win? Is this a Star Wars question? Kind of. On Tim Ferriss podcast, you were talking about the darkness and the light. No, no doubt about it. It's definitely something that I, something that I, it's definitely something that I think about, you know. And I, the world is, is an evil place.

and there's a lot of evil in the world. There's pain, there's suffering, there's disease, there's evil, there's war. I mean, there's bad things in the world. And sometimes people ignore those things. And we talked about this with Joe Rogan quite a bit. You know, we can live in a bubble here in America where there almost is no pain and there almost is no suffering and there almost is no violence and there almost is no evil. And for some reason, I've always stepped outside that bubble and looked and seen what the rest of the world is like. And so I think that's a counter to what a lot of people believe the world is like.

And so for me, that darkness is always present. It's always there. And at the same time, there is light. and there is people that are incredibly generous, that sacrifice greatly, that give everything they have to serve other people. Doctors, you know, nurses, firefighters, there's all these people, teachers. I mean, there's just people that do all they can to help other people and to do good in the world. and so I think that's what I try and balance in my mind and I don't want people to think that I sit around and brood all day about the darkness

you know because I don't you know I mean I love to have a good time and laugh and and you know smile and I want to do that you know but I also in those moments I'm definitely thinking that you know we're lucky to be here Yeah, and doesn't that make, like, you know, I don't know, a day where you're just kind of cruising or whatever and, you know, looking for a laugh or whatever, you know, hang with your friends or whatever? Doesn't, don't those days seem a lot more enjoyable when you do have the darkness in mind, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Where even, I mean, you know, you have kids, so let's, I don't know, your daughter spills some milk and laughs about it.

Right. if you know what the rest of the world is like, that's going to seem almost enjoyable. It's enjoyable. That's funny. That's cute. You can recognize all the great things about that little moment. It's a lot easier to recognize the great things about that little moment.

Exactly. If you understand. If you think that, yeah, the world's all hunky-dory and milk's never supposed to be spilled and, you know, all this stuff and everything's perfect and sweet. And that's kind of your mindset. And, oh, they spill the milk. That's a disruption. and you're like, yeah, that's your daughter.

But yeah, that's my daughter, sure. You know, I see my daughter every single day. You spilled the milk. That's a distraught. You know, so it's kind of that, you know, without hardship, there can be no pleasure kind of contrast. That kind of, it brought out more, huh? No doubt about it.

No doubt about it. Every once in a while you'll hear people go like, man, like, this country's going, like, violence or whatever, you know, like, it's going down the jitter or all this stuff. And you kind of, if you think about it and let's say your normal day, maybe not you, but probably you too, your normal day. If you, let's say you got up, you worked out, you went to the store. Like, let's say, oh, I want to get a pomegranate white tea at 7-Eleven.

And you go and you're standing in line and the guy in front of you gets into a heated argument with a cash guy, the cashier. and it starts swearing at them and saying, oh, you, I don't like these prices, yelling. Just yelling at him. And they're like, he's like, get out of here. And he's like, screw this place, using profanity, gins and cards speeds away, right?

Didn't break any laws. Just that happened right in front of you. We would probably remember that for a while. All it was was a yelling mess. It's all it was no violence, no laws being broken, no physical, anything. Just the argument between two people. disrespect.

Some disrespect. Exactly. You'd remember that. That would be a significant incident in your day. That's how good the world is or your environment. That's how good this country is. Of course, we're talking about a spectrum here. You're on certain areas.

It's going to be a little worse. But keep in mind, like, in our environment I know here in San Diego, that's essentially how it is most of the time. If you see two people almost get in a fight, that's a significant event right there. Yeah. So overall, I would say there's a lot of light around here. There's a lot of light. You know, so I think that if you think about the, and you've been exposed to it, so dang, you can really have an accurate perspective.

The light is very noticeable, you know, if you can constantly have that contrast and know it. there's no doubt about that um when is when do you see ego get in the way like when is it most prevalent do you think it's so prevalent everywhere and this is uh when i saw this question i immediately thought of um this guy whose ego just completely got in the way and he was able to fix it on this particular situation. And it was me. So this is actually a funny story. This guy, so we started working with a company,

and the company had a pretty young CEO, and he was a super smart guy, and he had played football in college, a D1 football player, just a pretty badass guy, super smart, super articulate. And when I met him, I like, there was a little tension between him and me.

There was a little something. There was a little tension. And I'm looking at this guy and I'm like, this guy really thinks he's a badass. And so when we go through a meeting and we go through another meeting and there's just this tension. I'm going, yeah, this guy is definitely, he's got issues. He's got problems. I'm looking at this guy. And I can feel it come from him that he's thinking the same thing.

Are you sharing you The thing of the same thing? I'm positive Is that just you looking at the mirror again? I'm positive if you're thinking the same thing And I'll tell you how How I know that So as I'm sitting there

So we actually did like a whole like two days With this company And then we were coming back And the next time we came back I go I don't know what's going to be like This one of this again with this guy This asshole I come back

And sure enough There it is I see him And he's like Looking at him I'm looking at him at me and there's tension. And all of a sudden,

so I detached from the situation and I looked at myself and I said, Jocko, you're an idiot. Because here I was and what was I thinking? I was jealous of the guy. Or, yeah, intimidated or jealous,

whatever the words, threatened. I was jealous. I think it was jealous because he was a young guy that had been very successful, made a ton of money. Went to a big school. and played ball and all that stuff. And he had done all this stuff. And what was he thinking looking at me?

He was looking at me thinking, oh, this guy, he was a seal, and he was a jujitsu guy, and he's a badass. And both of us were basically envious of the other one in some way. And really what it was, I guess envious is the wrong word. Our egos, both of our egos had impacted. And so as soon as I realized that, I was like, bam, I immediately changed my attitude. And I was like, and the next opportunity I had, you know, during a break or something,

I was like, you know what? After working with you, a couple days, you're awesome. I said, what you've done is badass to be your age and be dominating a company like this and have raised it together and built it. That's awesome and made a ton of money. I love that. And that's just badass, man. I have nothing but respect for you and what you've done.

I actually want to learn from you while I'm here. And immediately it was like a force field came down. And he said to me, you know what? No matter what I've done in my life, it's never going to be what you've done. And after that, we were bros. But I had to recognize the ego in the situation, mine and his. And I just had to disarm it. And then it was all gone.

So it's a story about ego. my big ugly ego and again ego you know ego drives people what makes people want to be successful and it has a lot of positives to it but it can definitely get in the way yeah you recognize that story right

I mean like you realize like how that happens oh yeah off yeah fully especially when you can see man I can't remember the exact words how they I forget even where I saw it but it was you're threatened to Typically, by something along the lines of if someone is, like, capable, or there's these things that people have to be in your eyes that makes them threatening to you. So it kind of put real loosely, when you see someone who is essentially you, you're going to feel threatened.

And it doesn't have to be you like they're the same height as you or the same race as you. And not that. There's some kind of equivalency that intimidates you. Or that intimidates your ego. Yeah. So if you get someone who's, let's say you're kind of built. Like you, for example, if someone's kind of built, boom, that's one thing. If he's around your same age, it kind of depends.

Because it can be, if they're a functioning able adult, put it that way. And it's a guy. Kind of you're built. Boom, boom, boom. Those are all these other things that it's like dogs. And it's so funny to see like it happen, like especially at the gym. When someone, a new guy walks in and he's kind of built, watch everyone's, eyes go

you know like ears pop up yeah it's funny and yeah that goes everywhere business world you know girls have it bad man

in my experience when they see I don't know when they see other girls you know yeah with that

yeah it's funny do you do you want to go do you want to go over these as well you know what I have two questions I

think from myself coming from myself okay but anyway What were you going to say? Proceed with your questions. Okay. So,

conspiracy theories, right? You know how, you know, people, they'll go into certain conspiracy. Chem trials or 9-11 The Inside Job or recently the San Bernardino shootings, like that was, you know, what they're saying, like the government staged it or whatever. Do you ever engage with people about conspiracy theories? I haven't engaged with anyone about conspiracy theories. So do you, when you hear like a new, for example, okay, if you're not really on Facebook, but we'll just say online, you can see people expressing their opinions about the conspiracy theories that they, believe it.

And they're really overt. Let's say, for example, someone expresses their feelings about a certain conspiracy theory to you. On what level do you entertain that? Not very much. Just kind of across the board? Yeah, not very much across the board. I'm not trying to convert people and make people think things. and I'm definitely not going to expend a bunch of energy diving into things that are not worth diving into.

Yeah. You know, with conspiracy theories, you can tie anything to anything if you want to. I mean, any major global occurrence that's happening will be tied into the rest, into some way to craft macaroni and cheese. I mean, there will be a connection to craft macaroni and cheese if you dig deep enough. There'll be an employee, there'll be a purchase, there'll be a plant, there'll be a farm, there'll be a sales, there'll be a stock, there'll be some connection between that and whatever incident that happened on the globe.

And if you want to formulate those and tie those pieces together, you can do it because the world is connected. And when people say, oh, this corporation was involved in some way with this incident in this war taking place, you say, well, yes, you know, there are big giant corporations that have huge interests around the world, and they're going to protect those interests and that's what the world is made of.

So I don't do a lot of debating about conspiracy theories now. There you go. Somebody sent me a link to like a video about 9-11 and I clicked on it and it was something like eight hours long. The video? The video was eight hours long about, you know, And I just thought, well, okay. You know, again, if you want to, you can connect anything to anything if you want to.

That's the way the global world is, the global economies. It's the way things are. Did you watch the whole video? I watched until I saw it said eight hours. I know we got some questions, questions about Blood Meridian. I think that those, that book. which is obviously a very powerful book. It's,

I think we got to save that for the next podcast. I know we got quite a few questions about Chris Kyle. And, you know, people want to know if I knew Chris, if I worked with Chris, and the answer is yes. Chris Kyle was the lead sniper and point man in Charlie Patoon, which was Laif Babins. He was

the officer in charge of that platoon and that was in Task Unit Bruiser, which I was the commander of. So we absolutely knew Chris and worked alongside Chris. Leif was on every mission

for all practical purposes that Chris was on. And you know, Laif and I spoke at Chris's memorial service in Cowboy Stadium. I mean, it's, yes, we

know Chris very well. And at some point, I'll get Lafe on here and we'll talk about Chris some and tell some stories about Chris that would, you know, provide a perspective that may not have been seen in the

portrayals that have been given so far. So I think we need to hold off on that one and maybe just do one more question here. Do you have any friends that aren't military and that are not juditsu or am I mega?

Yes, I do. I do. Mostly musicians. I shouldn't say mostly musicians. Surfers. I got some, I got quite a few friends that surf. I surf in out here in California and I got some friends that play music

and you know, we rock and roll yeah and that's something that I actually forgot I knew you know that you knew that you play guitar yes would you like part of a band or some

some crazy yeah I was I was in bands my whole life when I was growing up and I was a kid yeah it's funny like a lot of successful people or people who are you know they always have all these skills and what's interesting is that like surfing and playing guitar like that's not easy you know it's not I mean I'm not gonna

I'm not gonna talk bad about golf but golf is seems like oh yeah you just go out and you play golf and sure some people they get good and great you know and it is it's fun and stuff but it's not like surfing you know and surfing is fun and man really there's there's a little bit more of a physical challenge yeah it's more of a challenge and a challenge that it shows when you are good at serving or not good at serving. It shows, you know, seemingly. I don't know, I guess that's just my opinion on it. But it's always interesting that, like, to play the guitar, sure.

Yeah. Black Belt and Jiu-Jitsu. What's interesting is, too, is, and these are some other, like I know some guys that are surfers and musicians and artists. And I want to bring some of those guys and talk to them because they have different outlooks on things and how to get good and what kind of discipline. it takes and what drives them i mean you know like you said surfing is challenging surfing is cold it's

wet it's dark it's it's sketchy sometimes and guys that do that their whole life until they're 70 or 80 years old that's pretty awesome yeah um yeah we're on we're at um so so one more okay yeah last question will um the time you wake up in the morning And why do you wake up at that time? And what do you think about? Well, we talked about what time I wake up in the morning. But I think this last question is here, what do you think about before you go to bed at night?

And really, to me, I mean, to kind of close this out as the last question of what do you tell people or what do I think is a helpful kind of lessons learned to close on. And I think one conversation I had with one of my guys who was just a complete, awesome warrior, named JP, JP, how you doing, brother out there? when we were going through training to get ready for Iraq. And when you're going through seal training, you learn,

you learn all this information and they teach you all these things. And you layer them on top of your brain. And there's layers and layers and layers of these tactics and techniques and procedures. And the layers can get so thick that you lose contact with, the ground. And so we were out in training, and I was looking at JP, who is a stud. And it was one of those situations where we're out in the desert, but there's rocks and there's little shrubs and all that.

And he was standing up in the wide open because he was staying in the formation of the patrol, the way that he was taught and the way that he had been indoctrinated is one of those layers as you're here and you stand here. and this is your field of fire and you watch this area. But what he'd forgotten was that you're standing in the middle of an open area. Don't stand there. Move to this little rock and then move to this little shrub and then move to this little. So that way if a bad guy looks, he's not going to see you.

And if he does see you, he starts shooting. You have a place to hide. And I said to him, I said, JP, my brother. And he's like, what's up, sir? I said, hey, man, if you were 10 years old right now and we were out, plain army out here. Would you stand in the middle of this open trench right here? Would you stand here?

And he's like, no. And I said, well, where would you stand? He said, I'd go over there to that rock right there, and I'd get behind that. And I said, so your 10-year-old brain is doing better job moving from cover to cover than your 23-year-old brain. And I said, listen, your instincts,

you know what the right thing is. to do is you know what it is do it and he did and it was amazing and and i think that people you me everyone people listening people that communicate with us you know what the right thing to do is you know what it is you know it's be disciplined you know it's work hard you know it's put your ego in check you know these things you just got to do it he just got to do him. I think we close it out with that. Yeah.

So thanks to everybody for joining. I know we had a bunch of people on Periscope. That was pretty cool to watch. And we'll see how this one goes and we'll do some more in the near future. Yeah, I like the idea that people are really engaged with you online. and they'll ask you questions and you'll essentially

confirm, like check, that's a good question kind of thing. You're engaging. I think that's a good thing because these are real questions. It's not like questions that we just thought up. No, got some great questions. Yeah.

So I would say to, yeah, encourage that, you know, for people if they're wondering about stuff because this is, in my experience, everything that you've even said before this and even just stuff you've said to me personally or whatever. It's all like really useful stuff. And not just in business. It applied the concepts. Applied it. Pretty much everything in life. Functioning in life, if you can function with these

concepts, you're going to do good. It'll be kind of on you if you don't. Not going to take that extreme malicious. Awesome. All right. Thanks everybody for joining. Appreciate it. We'll talk to you next time. Out here.