The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 38 | Jocko Willink | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: May 25, 2019

Glenn talks with Jocko Willink who is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, author of the book "Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win", and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he is a leadership instructor, speaker, and executive coach. Jocko spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams, starting as an enlisted SEAL and rising through the ranks to become a SEAL officer. As commander of SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser during the battle of Ramadi, he orchestrated SEAL operations that helped the “Ready First” Brigade of the US Army’s First Armored Division bring stability to the violent, war-torn city. During his career, Jocko was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and numerous other personal and unit awards. In 2010, Jocko retired from the Navy and launched Echelon Front with Leif Babin where he teaches the leadership principles he learned on the battlefield to help others lead and win. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast could go one of two ways. I just met him before I came into the studio, and I only said one thing, do you have a sense of humor? Why? So it could get dicey. Could get dicey. I'm not sure we've never met.

I am a huge fan of his work. He is very good at what he does. He's a certified badass. He is a real-life Rambo. And he wakes up every day, very different than I do. He sets his alarm for 4.4.30 so he can, quote, get a jump on the enemy. He does at seven days a week. He served eight years as a Navy SEAL on SEAL Team 1, Seal Team 2. He has completed multiple deployments throughout the world, and in 2006 he deployed to Ramadi. He's the guy that turned that around. He was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He commanded the SEAL Team, Seal Team 3. And his role in combat earned him a silver star, a bronze star, And the right side of his uniform is a patchwork of various other awards, commendations, badges, and patches. Since leaving the Navy, he has enjoyed a career as a motivational speaker.

And an avid Brazilian judicits, I can't even say it. He's an expert in that. He's got a black belt. He likes, I think, getting hit in the face. He's an M.MA fighter. He got his black belt from Dean Lister. He owns an MMA-based gym where he trains and spars with professional MMA fighters. He is a New York Times bestselling author.

He has developed a philosophy of extreme ownership and the idea that leaders must own everything in their world. This guy makes me feel like I'm wearing a skirt. I hope he has a sense of humor. This is a podcast you don't want to miss. Did you see Mission Impossible Fallout? No. I don't see a lot of movies. Are you one of those guys that goes to movies and you're like, that wouldn't happen?

That's part of it. And I also go to movies and fall out. asleep. Really? It's like the place where there's no one's allowed to bother me, so I just sleep. Okay, so there's a scene where Tom Cruise goes in, and they're just beating a snod out of each other, and one of them takes, like, you know, the sink out of the bathroom and throws it at the other, and they just keep going and going and going.

You ever been in a fight like that? Like, just like, I mean, like, for real, like a, not like a, not like an MMA where you're stopping. I mean, a real, like, they just went on and on and on, and you're like, this guy. just won't stop. Yeah, most real fights don't actually last that long. Really? Yeah, I mean, particularly because someone else is going to jump in.

So a one-on-one fight is very rare, and I've never had a one-on-one fight that lasted more than, you know, a minute. So you're better than Tom Cruise, because he had two guys. I'm not sure how good Tom Cruise is. Okay. MMA, tell me about, first of all, your Brazilian jiu-jitsu? What's the difference? What does that mean? Okay, so Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a martial art that it's very similar to wrestling.

So it's grappling-based. You don't punch each other in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. You grapple. But the big difference between Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and wrestling is that in wrestling, which is a great sport, and my kids are hardcore wrestlers, but in wrestling, you're not allowed to do little things like choke your opponent or get their arm in such a position where you, you could break their arm.

Oh, okay. And that's where the expression tap out comes from. And it's a phrase that's used all the time for kind of everything. Now, oh, I had too much. I tapped out. But that comes from this idea in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. If I get your arm in such a position that I can break it and you know I could break it, instead of allowing me to break it, you can just tap out and I let you go.

So, and then we can train again. And that's what makes Brazilian jih jih Tzu very effective is you can train 100% all the time without hurting each other. Whereas boxing or moitai or the striking martial arts, if you're really going hard, you can't do that every day. You can't get punched in the face every single day. With MMA, I watch it and I'm fascinated by it. But in no time in my life have ever gotten up and thought, you know, I'd really like to just be just kicked in the face today.

Where is the entertainment? Where is the, where is the, what gets you up in the morning on a day of a fight? And you're like, today's the day I get to get kicked in the face. There's very few people, even MMA fighters that don't mind getting kicked or punched in the face. It's not a good feeling. And the few that do

enjoy that, that like that thrill, I mean, they usually do pretty well. But most I would imagine, but most people, almost a little like a psycho. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Yeah. But generally, your goal is to not get punched in the face. And if you get punched in the face too much, you're going to lose

the fight. So, and one of the, that's one of the problems with MMA with boxing with Muay as you're taking that traumatic head injury over and over and over again. So you're seeing it with the NFL right now with football, which a lot of that is stemming from the fact from the vets coming back from overseas, having been

blown up a bunch of times, that minor concussion over and over again causes long-term damage. So that's one of the reasons I think Brazilian jiu-jitsu and wrestling and the grappling martial arts are going to become even more popular because you can put your 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-old kid into Brazilian

jih Tiu-a or wrestling, and they're not to get brain damage. Whereas boxing, moitai, there's no doubt there's a risk for that. You know, it's the same thing with football. There's definitely a movement a little bit away from football right now in, in America, because people are seeing the brain damage that you get. So you need to be careful. I should say that's bunk. Not with, not with traumatic brain injury for, you know, people who have been in war, but for football, they say that's, there's, the statistics don't bear that out. Yeah, it's interesting. I think it affects different people differently.

And I think you can see that very obviously with boxing, right? You see some old boxers, they're fine. They're perfectly fine. And some old boxers, they have pugilistic disease. I forget the actual name of it. But it's the way I just tell you. I can't see getting hit in the head over and over and over again and have it not affect you. I cannot see that either. You get punched in the head a bunch of times.

It's not going to be good for you. You head to head with Chuck Norris who wins? Chuck Norris. Well, I mean, it's Chuck Norris. I mean, he'd probably sneak up and kill me from behind, right? Right. I was just with him. It was a state at his ranch.

And he's 79 years old. 79, yeah, 79, I think. And he walks away, and there's like five of us. And he walks away. And I look at the five guys. And I said, you realize that guy could take all of us at 79. Yeah. He's just a machine.

And interestingly, he was an early adopter of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And so even though he was a striker, you know, that was how he was raised. and that's kind of how he got famous. But as soon as he kind of recognized the power of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, he started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and he eventually got his black belt. So I have a lot of respect for a guy like that that trains one way for a long time and then has the humility

to look at a totally different martial art and say, you know what? That seems pretty effective. I'm going to try it. And he tried it, and you realized it is very effective. Because that's the one thing with grappling, if you're trying to punch me and you're a great puncher and you're a great kicker, if I can get close enough to you to take you down to the ground,

your strikes don't work anymore. Can women do that or women strong enough to do that to a man? Yeah, there's women that are very good at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I have, I actually have one female Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt at my gym in San Diego, and she puts guys to sleep for sure. Now, I put people to sleep, too, just in a different way. My daughter had kind of a scary incident. And she had been against guns.

My daughter was against guns for a while. She was just like, if she wasn't against them, she's just like, they're not for me, I don't want to do it. That all changed one night. And now she's a really good shot. But we were talking about all my kids, martial arts, being able to protect themselves. And, you know, I don't know anything. I don't know anything about any of it, but Krav Maga, I'm told that at one point that was, you know,

the United States stopped training people in. I don't even know if this is true because it was so dangerous, blah, blah, blah. It's not true. It's not true. Okay, all right. I've seen a documentary on it that said, oh, it's so dangerous. I thought, that's what we should be trading people for. But what I like about that, and maybe this, no, this is true is,

I want to be trained. If I'm going to train my daughter, if I'm going to send my kids to train, I want them to be able to kill you. Mine's not to, I'm not going to put you to sleep. If you're trying to kill me, it'd be nice if I could put you to sleep, but I'm going to kill you if I have to.

So what's the one thing if you could have kids, daughters, sons, learn to be able to protect themselves? What would you go? Where we go? So you really, what you need to do is if you really, from a young age, is you should start training in martial arts. I definitely think that your foundation should be Brazilian jiu-jitsu. There's no doubt in my mind about that.

Now, what the thing is, if you're going to punch me and I don't want to fight you, or you're going to kick me and I don't want to fight you, you know what I can do? I can run away from you. Yeah. I can run away. I can just get away from you. If you're standing there ready to punch me, I can run away from you. So that's fine.

That's my first method of self-defense is to be able to run away. The problem is, what if you grab me? If you grab me, well, now I can't run away anymore. And now what I have to do is I have to fight. And so you're forced to fight in a grappling situation. In a stand-up situation where you're pushing me or you're setting up to punch me, I can just run away from you. I can get away from you. But once you grab a hold of me and you, let's say you take me down to the ground, if I don't know how to handle myself on the ground, I'm going to have a real problem.

So kids should train in boxing. They should train in Muay Thai. They should train in wrestling. They should train in jiu-jitsu. And, you know, you asked me specifically about females. Well, in many cases, even a very, even a decent level Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner that's a 110-pound female comes up against a guy that's 200 and, 60 pounds, 230 pounds, a man that's an athletic man or even just a big strong man. That's going to be a real problem. And ultimately, in many cases, all the jiu-jitsu in the world is not going to help that

110-pound girl. So two things. What you said about firearms is 100% correct. I mean, that is the ultimate equalizer. And that is, if you truly need to protect yourself, that is the ultimate way. And so what I tell females now when they say, well, why should I even train? Why should I even train? If I can't defeat a 230-pound man, why should I even train? Well, the answer to that is very simple. You might not be able to defeat that man, but if you're in a situation where someone's trying to grab you, someone's trying to control you, you might be able to delay that control for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute.

And that might be the difference between someone seeing you, someone being able to help you, you being able to cry out for help, police being able to come on the scenes, or whatever the case may be. So you should do everything you can. And I'll tell you, you go against a girl that's been trained in Brazilian jiu jit-to, it is not easy. It's not easy. It's going to be very, they're going to, they're going to be a difficult fight. Not even for you. Even for anyone. I mean, they're going to be able to do things that you don't expect them to do. So it's important to train regardless of the, if you pick a style, I would say pick your base style to be Brazilian jih Tzu. And then you get, you get into things like Krav Maga, which they start talking about

weapons and things like that. And they start talking about some immediate drills to do in certain situations. And that's fine. You should drill those things. I have a very open mind. I think people should train all kinds of martial arts and be prepared to the best of their ability throughout their life. And that's another thing. You're not going to learn how to you're not going to learn a magic move. That's one of the things that can be a little bit deceiving about some martial arts is, well, if I touch you here or I hit you here, that's going to incapacitate you. It's, it's, those things really don't happen. There's no magic place for me to touch you and you just fall down.

Now, if I get a perfect punch and I hit you in a knockout spot, sure, I could knock you out. But even you watch a boxing match, how often does someone actually get knocked out? They get punched in the head 150 times they don't get knocked out. That happens all the time. So we can't count on those knockout punches. We can't count on one technique that's going to save your life. What you should do is train to be ready and trained to be prepared for all of life in a multitude of different arenas.

I want to talk to you a little bit. You wrote an article about toxic masculinity, which I thought was fantastic. But can I ask the cameraman, can you pull back on him from the front shot, please pull back so you can get the full view of what I'm seeing. This camera, please.

Behind me, there, there. Look at the arms, okay? Sorry, I'm just heavy. Barbie dolls do not look like people. I feel like I'm sitting across from G.I. Joe. You just look exactly like G.I. Joe in real life. Has anybody ever told you that? I have heard things along those lines before that I'm right out of central casting for, you know,

the military dude. No, I mean, but it's almost like they made the little plastic man after you. I want to talk to you about toxic masculinity because I think your point of, view is really good and it's nuanced, but nobody would give you the benefit of the doubt of the nuance. Am I right? Sure. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So talk to me about toxic masculinity. I think they take certain aspects that are considered to be masculine aspects. And if you take those aspects to the extreme, well, they're going to be bad. And that's true. You take any, you take any characteristic of a human being and you take it to an extreme, and it's probably going to be bad.

Even ones that seem good. Well, for instance, confidence, right? You should be confident. Would you want your children to be confident? Of course, you would want your children to be confident. Not overconfident. What if they become overconfident? Well, then they're arrogant and they're egotistical,

and they're going to have a downfall because of that overconfidence. You want your kids to be articulate and able to speak well. Well, what happens if they end up speaking all the time and they cut people off and they don't let anyone else get a word in edgewise, that's a problem. We don't want that. You go to the other end of the spectrum where they're too shy and they won't say anything at all. Well, that's not good either. So where do you want to be?

You want to be balanced somewhere in the middle. Do you want to be competitive? There's sort of a traditional masculine trait. Now, if you ever met my daughters, I have three daughters and one son, my daughter, my oldest daughter is a psychotic competitive, right? So it's a, but it's a thing. I find that very difficult to believe. Yeah, it's considered to be a masculine trait. And do you want your kids to be competitive?

Of course you want your kids to be competitive. Do you want your kids to be so competitive that they cheat? Do you want them to be so competitive that they lie? Do you want them to be so competitive that they step on the backs of other people to rise up above them? Of course you don't want your kid to be that competitive. Or so competitive that they can't handle failure. Or so competitive? All these are the trait taken to the extreme.

Now the other end of the spectrum is, well, I don't care if I win or lose, I don't care if I get beat. Do you want your kid to be like that? No. Where do you want your kid to be? You want your kid to be balanced. And so the idea of toxic masculinity, I think, is just taking some what are considered to be traditional masculine traits, taking them out to an extreme. And you'd say, okay, yeah, they're bad. So what's a man?

What is a man? What should a man be? I look at what a man should be is someone that does what they're supposed to do. That's more of a human. Sure. Isn't that? I mean, that's what we're all supposed to do that. We're all supposed to do that.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how I really differentiate. So I have a, I had a really good friend, John Huntsman Sr. He was an old Navy man from World War II. He was just great. And he was a real gentleman. And we were walking one night. We were in Wyoming or Idaho.

and we're just walking him, walking him home, and he looks up with this guy, and he was a navigator, and he said, you read the stars? And I said, no. And he said, every man should know how to read the stars. And then he went into a little bit, and it was more philosophical in a way. What should, what makes a man?

What should a man as a dad of a boy? What should I be teaching my son what a man is? This is a list of things that goes on and on. And what I did is I wrote a book about it. I wrote a book because I had a son. And as I went out to try and find books for my son to read, have you ever tried to find books for? Well, that's awful.

It's horrible. Yeah. And I could not find any books that. No. You find all kinds of women hero. Right. I couldn't find any books where, oh, okay, this is the values I want to pass on to my son. And so I wrote a book called Way of the Warrior Kid. And what the book is about is about a young kid. He's 10 years old. He can't do any pull-ups. So he's getting made fun of in school. He doesn't know his times tables. Even though the other kids know their times tables, he doesn't know his times tables yet. He doesn't know how to swim. And he's getting picked on by the school bully. And so. So he's all sad. Last day of school, they actually are doing a competition to see who can do the most pull-ups.

He can't do any. He's getting laughed at. The class field trip is at a lake. He can't swim. He's getting picked on, like I said, by the school bully, Kenny Williamson, by the way. Got to watch out for him. So he goes home. He's all sad.

He's crying. And when he gets home, he remembers that his uncle is coming to stay with him for the summer. And his uncle was in the SEAL teams. And so his uncle shows up and they're actually staying in the young. kid Mark's bedroom and his uncle says hey you know what do you want to do tomorrow you want to you want to go play some basketball you want to go for a swim it's going to be hot out and and and the kid Mark kind of says well I'm not really good at basketball and I don't know how to swim and he breaks down and he starts crying and explains to his uncle all the problems that he has and his

uncle says these aren't problems these are things that you can fix and he trains him over the summer teaches him how to swim teaches him how to study teaches him how to eat right teaches him how to work out, teaches him hard work, discipline. He teaches him those things, and he overcomes these challenges. So I put these things that I think are important for a young man to be able to do into these books. And now I've written three of them about these important values for a young man to have. How important is hard work for kids? Hard work is one of the most important things.

And hard work to me ties into discipline. And, you know, I had written a book called Discipline equals Freedom, field manual, and that was sort of aimed at adults. In fact, it was aimed at adults. But the same messages that are in that book are passed on to kids in these other books, these way the warrior kid books. I have a ranch, and we spend our summers at the ranch, and that's putting up fences and, you know, digging holes and chasing down problems. and when I bought it at first I was living in New York City, which is a whole different world. Just as hard, but in a completely different way.

And I remember the first summer I went out to the ranch, my head hurt from living in New York because you're constantly thinking, you're constantly being pushed mentally. But your body, at least for me, not at all, not at all. there is something different about hard physical work that that we have lost you know we might work hard still but that physical labor at the end of the day is different don't you think I think that you have to exercise your body whether that's work or whether that's working out

there's no doubt in my mind there's no doubt in my mind that when you do physical things you feel better. And this is another thing I wrote about. Like this actually happens. There's, there's physiological things that take place when you work out that make you feel better. So, you're 100% right. You're 100% right. And you're backed up by science. If you work out, you do hard labor, you're going to feel better. No doubt about it. That's why you should make that part of your day. Even if you have a job where you don't do anything physical, you need to get up early and do something physical. So you get that part of your soul taken care of. When I don't do anything physical, I feel horrible.

Yeah, give me two or three days of that, and I'm not a happy person. You get up at 4 o'clock in the morning every day? I do. Every day. Yeah, actually 430, but yeah. Every day. Yeah. No sleeping in.

No. Anybody in your life say, shut up. I'm sleeping in. I'm real quiet. My wife does not get up when I get up, and I'm very good and stealthy about getting up and getting out of Stealthy. I meant you are stealthy. Because I don't want to wake her up.

She has a different sleep pattern than me. I was just with Tony Robbins, and he's quite ill. He has mercury poisoning, and he's been quite ill for quite some time. And I watched him in his day, and he's amazing. He's all wired up so they can monitor absolutely everything about him. And he's burning 12,000 calories. a day when he's working. And you'd never know he was sick. Never know he'd sick. You see him maybe after or right before and you can tell that something's not quite right. And he gets up

every morning and he jumps into a pool of, I think, 55 or 60 degree water every day. And he said, I don't do it because I like it. I do it because I'm telling my body. I'm in charge of you. And he said to me at one point, he said, I'm Tony Robbins. I built Tony Robbins. This is the machine that carries Tony Robbins around

and it works for me. And I remember, almost every day since then. I get up every morning and I say, this works for me there is a difference just that mindset totally changes you

is that part of the thing of getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning of I'm in charge or have you always been one of those people at 4 o'clock I've not always been like that but I will say this from from my perspective when people ask me all the time I lack discipline how can I get discipline in my life

and no one wants to hear this answer no one wants to hear it just do it the one of the first steps you can take to impose discipline in your life is to wake up early in the morning. Because let's face it, when the alarm goes off, you've got your head on that soft pillow. It's all nice and cozy and warm in there. You do not feel like getting up. And so you have to. He doesn't even have a snooze alarm.

He doesn't ever hit the snooze alarm. Yep. And you should not. You should not. That snooze alarm is. That's insane. I call that snooze alarm the dream killer. Like when you press that snooze button, you're killing your dreams.

So don't touch the snooze button. Now where I get, Now someone say that might be a little extreme. No, where people get worried and people freak out is sleep is healthy, sleep is good for you. I know that I get it. And people say, you're telling people not to sleep. No, I'm not telling people not to sleep.

You do six hours every night. 10 o'clock. Yeah, I usually go to around 10, 30, 11, and I wake up at 4.30. So I get five and a half to six hours almost every night, you know. And sometimes I tell people, I think sleeping is good. I do it almost every single day. But people will freak out and say you're telling people to be unhealthy.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm not, you know, if you need different people have different genetic needs for sleep. I'm one of those people that doesn't need much. Of my four kids, my oldest daughter needs even less sleep than I do. My middle daughter sleeps more like my wife. My son's somewhere in the middle, which, by the way, that means my middle daughter. She gets out of bed when you get her out of bed in the morning. She likes to sleep.

So I'm not telling people, hey, don't sleep. But I am saying, put yourself on a schedule. And you know, you ask why I don't sleep in. If you sleep in, if I sleep in on a Saturday until 6 o'clock. Ooh. That night, I'm going to have more energy. And instead of going to bed at 10, 30, or 11, I'm going to stay up until midnight because I got a little bit of extra sleep. Well, now that next day, I'm going to sleep in a little bit more.

Now, all of a sudden, Sunday, I'm sleeping until 7 o'clock. Now, Sunday night, I can't go to bed until 1 o'clock in the morning. And you see where I'm going with this. I go into Monday with a lack of sleep because I couldn't fall asleep. So I just, the most important thing is set a good wake up time that works for you where you get enough sleep and then wake up that time every day if you can. For a while, for about 10 years, my body only needed about three hours of sleep. There was nothing better. There's nothing better.

Sleep is the biggest waste of time ever. You know, it's not something you go to the doctor for, you know, afterwards, you know, because it did some damage to my body. And afterwards, people were like, you didn't check that on. I'm like, why? If you don't have to sleep, it's the greatest. Yeah, yeah. Because it is, there's no one working. No.

There's no one to bother you. It's completely, you're just able to focus. Yeah, it's great to get up early. And, you know, I always like to throw this caveat in there as well. I don't, I get up early and it's a luxury for me. You know, there's plenty of single moms out there that are getting up at three o'clock in the morning so they can do their first shift at a diner followed by going from there to a daycare center where they're working, followed by some other job that they're doing late at night.

Like that's, that's, so there's plenty of people. I'm not bragging. I sleep less. Like, no, there's plenty of people that are working harder than me and getting after it more than I am and respect to them. And I hope they can drive on with that until they can get to a point where they can get more sleep. Can, because you really, you're, I mean, you're a phenomenal leader, you know, with the SEAL teams, but you are now an inspirational speaker.

You've written books on leadership. is can everyone be a leader? Yes. With one exception. So with one exception. And first I'll say, can everyone be a leader? Yes.

Everyone has certain innate capabilities, right? And some of them may be stronger than others. And some capabilities that you have tend to make you a better leader. And there's a bunch of them, right? So, you know, some people are national. Articulate there's some people that can there's some people that have a natural level of confidence those are really good things to have if you're a leader some people can look at complex problems and they can kind of simplify those complex problems and those are very good skills for a leader to have to be Articulate to be confident to be able to simplify things those are great skills for a leader to have and different people have different levels of those skills

So I'm sure you've known people in your life that weren't very articulate they okay so they didn't really get that skill or some people that lack confidence and and they can be super smart they can even be articulate but they lack confidence they there's some people have you it's being able to simplify is a is a good skill to have but usually people remember instead of people that were able to simplify things well a lot of times instead people remember individuals that really make things complicated you ever work with someone that takes just a oh yeah yeah oh my gosh something it just makes them complicated so you're like shut up can we just do it yes yes so those are different skill levels that a human being will have. And you got born with what you got born with.

And maybe it got nurtured a little bit along the way. It improved a little bit. And so you can take those skills. And if you're not very articulate, you can read and you can speak and you can write and you can become more articulate. If you're not very confident as you get experience and as you go through things in life, your confidence can increase. And as you continue as a leader to look at complex problems, you can get better at solving those problems and simplifying them. So there's ways to improve your leadership capability and that's what I do for a living is work with companies and work with leaders to

improve their leadership capability and that can happen pretty much across the board. Now, the reason there's a caveat to that is one of the most important characteristics for a leader to have is humility because if you lack humility, well, you don't think you need to be any more articulate because, you know, you're already good enough

and you don't need team members. You don't even need anyone to give you any input because you already know everything. So the person that lacks humility is not going to become any better of a leader. You said this in your toxic humanity, toxic masculinity article, too, about if it's good for a man to be able to control his emotions. But if you're emotionless, nobody wants to follow somebody who doesn't feel.

100% true. That's a great example. So the classic, the classic masculine trait is to have control of your emotions. Does that make you a good leader? Yes. You don't want a leader that flies off the handle. You don't want a leader that loses their temper. You don't want a leader that gets completely distraught and falls apart if something bad happens.

No, that's a bad leader. That being said, you don't want a leader that is completely void of emotions. And if you're completely void of emotions, you won't connect with your team as a leader. You won't connect with them as a person. And if you don't connect with your team as a person, there's no bond. There's no bond. There's no team. There's no team.

There's failure. It's interesting because George Washington was a, he's one of my favorite leaders. he was an unbelievably complex man with all kinds of emotions going on. But the only time I ever saw weakness in him was after he lost New York and he was standing across river and he's looking at Manhattan. And it's written that he he wept. And the people around him all of a sudden flipped. And they were like, this guy, we are doomed with this guy.

and yet he was able to turn that around and then get everybody in the boat to go back up and take, I've often, people don't understand the leadership that that took to get them back into the boat, take on the Hessians, that would be like me saying to my fat friends,

hey, let's go take on SEAL Team 6. We wouldn't do it. We'd all be dead. That's, he had something that, and what is that, that X factor, where a real leader, they say this about Steve Jobs, could look you in the eye and you'd be like, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it. No matter what he says, I'm not doing it. And before you know, you're walking out of the office going, damn right, we're going to do it. What is that? Well, it's an important point when you make of

that about George Washington. And that really leaving New York at that time was an escape, was a, was a retreat, but it was a great tactical move. And a lucky. one because the fog rolled in and it was a lucky one but if he would have stayed there they would have really suffered some significant it would have been it would have been massive defeat it probably could have been over it could have been over so now if you think about it from you're a trooper you're a trooper and you're looking at this guy if this guy walks out of there after this and he has no emotions and he says don't worry about it gents you just you just got defeated you know you just had to run away right and this guy is acting like a

didn't happen. Now, weeping and crying, that might be a little bit much. Right. Might be a little bit much. In fact, it probably was. But at the same time, if you showed no emotions, it's not enough. But there is something about, I mean, and I don't know how much of this is legend. I happen to believe the stories because they're so universal. Um, but there is something about him white, you know, riding a big white horse towards the front, almost in a braveheart sort of fashion going, And come on, let's go. That the troops that followed him after horse, after horse, after horse was shot out from underneath him, and he walks off the battlefield every time that it gave them this invincibility almost or this conviction that, no, no, no, we're moving forward.

There's a force here. Well, when a human being looks at another human being that is willing to sacrifice. and in that case willing to sacrifice everything that is when we see that as people when you see someone that's willing to sacrifice and and I was lucky enough to work with guys and see guys sacrifice their lives for the cause the cause of freedom for the cause of trying to help you know I was in in Iraq trying to help these Iraqi people escape from this evil evil insurgency and and evil isn't even a strong enough word this sadistic evil subhuman insurgency that was raping torturing murdering skinning people alive that's that's what the city

of romadi was under and i don't think i've heard the skinning people alive oh yes skinning people alive beheading, beheading the head of the family. So, oh, the insurgents think that this family or this father had been working with coalition or helping coalition forces, cool, what we're going to do is we're going to that night, we're going to murder the whole family. We're going to put their heads out in front of the, in front of the house. So everyone knows what's going to happen to you. And but all that being said, this is, this is not our country, right? But there was Americans that were willing to sacrifice their lives to try and help. these people move towards freedom and move away from that oppression. So when you see that and,

you know, my task unit in the Battle of Hamadi, we would go to memorial services of the army soldiers, of the Marines that were killed in action. And when you see that level of sacrifice and you see someone willing to make that sacrifice, it absolutely reassures you that you're on the right path and you're doing the right thing. You worked with Chris Kyle. Indeed. Who was a remarkable man. Indeed.

I was so humbled by him. I had, it's one of the biggest regrets of my life. I'm not good around people like you because you do things that I just don't, I mean, I'm afraid to find out. if I always see myself as and in a worst way in a worst way if I my my worst nightmare is that scene in saving private Ryan you don't watch movies did you watch no that's that's a movie you have to watch okay so remember the guy on the stairs who was practically wetting his pants and he just couldn't do anything he froze that's my worst nightmare of me that I would get into that situation and I would let my team down because I would just be paralyzed because it's I can't imagine what war is like I just I just can't imagine it, and I don't think it feels like it does in a movie theater. I could be wrong. And I stood next to Chris for about five minutes, and I so wanted to say hello to him, and I felt silly that I didn't, you know, that I just, I was paralyzed.

I just was like, who might even say hello to him? And I really regret that. But as you look at people like you, really any of these guys that are coming home, you're, I don't think people understand it. Maybe it's just me. I don't think people understand that when you're there, you're fighting for something bigger, unless you're a psycho. You're doing something that you believe is really important. it is life and death all the time, or at least in the active times, and then you come home and this must seem like a play.

That this is little kid second grade time. We're arguing about statues and we're arguing about stupid stuff that makes no sense. How do you go from that doing something noble and being a part of something important to coming here and being surrounded by people who are like, I am just so offended by the words that you're using right now. This is toxic and I'm triggered. Well, war will put things in perspective for you. and that's why I think a lot of I get asked about war and one of the things that I've said many times about war is that

I think war makes you better right of course is it awful and horrible yes absolutely but it will make you a better person and I had a conversation with a guy who said he was interviewing me and he said you know I hear you say that war is awful and horrible and all these these things. And then I've also heard you say that it's the it's the highlight of your life. The best times of your life were in war, which is absolutely true. It has to be. And it has to be could we just spend a second on that? I think it would have to be because you are the most alive at that point, right? There is no other thing that will make you as completely crystal crystalline focused on anything other than war.

There's bad guys that you are trying to kill and they are trying to kill you. You can't get any more focused than that right there. When I had this conversation, and I've also said, you know, that the best times of my life, hands down, the best time of my life up to this point, was being the task unit commander in the battle remoddy without question. the worst times of my life also were being the task unit commander in the battle remoddy by the way thank you it was an honor it was an honor to serve the the thing that i came away with and where i ended up in this conversation with this interview that i was doing was i asked him i said

have you ever known anyone that's had cancer and bad cancer and they survived it And of course he said yes. And I said, what do those people say about cancer? Oftentimes, they say, I'm glad I had it. I'm, it taught me. I wouldn't go through it again and I wouldn't wish it on people. I wouldn't go through it again. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But I'm glad I went through it. And that's the same with war. Why is that? Because it puts things in perspective. It makes you realize that there's little things, little petty things in the world that do not matter. And war, there's nothing better than the sunrise in a free country. Or walking down the street, walking your daughter to school.

It doesn't get any better to that than that. And when you've been to war and you see the sacrifices that were made and you see how so much of the rest of the world lives, they don't have that opportunity to be able to walk down the street with your little girl and take her to school. it puts things in such stark perspective. You realize how lucky we are to be here, how lucky we are to be in this country. And you also realize that it is a sin. It is a sin to squander these opportunities that we have.

I think history is going to study this time period. Like we are going to be under the microscope. as much, I think, as our founding era was. If we survive this period of time, we will be known as the greatest generation, maybe perhaps of all time, because no country has come back from where we are right now in a million different ways.

But I believe we can do it. But if we fail at this point, we are going to be, we're going to be looked at as we were insane. We were insane. Wait, they had what? What was just over the horizon? And they did what with it?

Well, I think it would follow like a spoiled child who inherits, you know, $100 million from their father or their mother. And what do they do with it? Well, they end up getting addicted to drugs and being losers. and spending all the money and they end up in the gutter. Or you see young Hollywood child stars.

What happens to them often? They get all that freedom. They get all that liberty. They get all that money. They can do whatever they want. And what do they do with it? They end up in the gutter. And yeah, could that happen to our country?

Absolutely. It's usually the third generation of wealth. First one makes it. The second one kind of lives off. And the third loses everything. Yeah. We're three generations really away from World War II, where my grandfather was World War II Eric,

Great Depression, worked hard, man. They saved every scrap. My grandmother would not throw away a piece of fabric that was this big. She had a place for it, you know? My mother was kind of like that. We saved all the wrapping paper every Christmas. Now?

Yeah. Too much freedom. And I know that's that's the, so I wrote a book called Discipline equals freedom. Too much freedom without any price. Well, it's discipline. So I wrote the book, Discipline equals freedom. And I wrote that for a personal level, right? Hey, if you're an individual, if you're an individual and all you do is whatever you want to do, where are you going to end up? You're going to end up in the gutter. You have to have discipline in your life. And if if you don't understand that. And if you have discipline, you'll end up with more freedom. If you just, if you just have freedom, you'll end up in the gutter, you'll end up being a slave. You'll end up being a slave to your addictions. You'll end up being a slave to whatever. Your choices, your ramifications.

If you have discipline in your life, you will end up with freedom. You'll end up with financial freedom. You'll end up with more free time. You'll end up with the things that you want in the world. And the same thing can be said on a national level. You know, if you take a country and you just give them so much freedom and they don't exercise discipline, then it can go really badly. Rome. How is this going to go for us? I think we'll be all right. I think we'll be all right.

I think that the will and the spirit of the American people, once awoken, will overcome all. I come from an alcoholic family. My bottom was just kind of losing everything. My mother's bottom was suicide. I think alcoholics, recovering alcoholics, are the secret to us in recovery as a country. If we just admit that there's a problem, just start there, admit that there's a problem,

and surrender, and then just do all the things, to put it all back right, we could save our country. I just keep wondering, what is our bottom? Yeah, that's a great question, and that's what I was about to say is, you know, we're fighting these wars, and we've got, you know, kids over in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and Syria, and they're in war. And they've never known in America without war.

Yep, yep. And meanwhile, back here, there's, there's, there's. no effect whatsoever on the American populace. There's no rationing. There's no, they're still, they're still driving around in a, you don't even know it's still going on. And so, so as long as that's happening, as long as American day-to-day life isn't really impacted, guess what? We're kind of going with the flow. Hey, what, you know, it's all good. When something impacts us in a way where everyday American life is truly impacted, that's when I think the American, the true American spirit will be awoken and we'll get back together.

And we'll say, oh, there's something much worse out there that we need to fight against. Can I ask a question I've been really wrestling with on, I'm a big tech guy. And in particular, excuse me, in particular AI. AI is wonderful. It's making our life wonderful. I don't like the idea of AGI artificial general intelligence. I don't like the idea if we get to that point of turning over the keys to artificial intelligence to kill people. I like having a drone where we're not putting people in harm's way, but a human has to push the final button.

However, with that being said, war without human cost on the side of the might, and the fighting also scares me because it becomes a video game and there is no cost to it. There is no war made you a better man. If it's a video game and I'm just controlling it from someplace else, what does that do to the soul? You could say the same thing about hunting for food, right? There was a time where you had to hunt for it. You couldn't just click a button on your phone and have it show up at your house, which is what's happening right now. That's happening right now.

You press a button and that food is going to show up. That's more my style than yours. Right, right, right. But it's the same thing, right? I mean, you're going to lose some level of humanity, right? Some level of understanding of humanity if it's machine versus machine. Now, believe me, I'm all pro-machine. We want to have robot wars and settle it that way?

Let's do it all day long. Actually, and when you take it to the next step, it's not actually going to be, in my opinion, robots versus robots. It's just going to be cyber. It's going to be cyber war. I wish we, I wish Trump would have created the cyber service instead of space because I think that's more important. Big time. And now there's, obviously, there's big cyber warfare groups inside of our current military branches.

But let's just create a branch because that's where the next battlefield's going to be. In fact, that's where the next battlefield is right now. So will we lose some level of it? Yeah, sure. Is that bad? Probably in some way. But there's also some benefits to it. There's no glory.

There's no glory in war. Or at least I should say there's very limited glory in war. There is very limited glory in war. There is something that does hit you when you are lucky enough to be a part of it. That does make you better. The Nazis or the ISIS mentality, which was more evil. I mean, I'm looking at the two of them.

Are they the same cut from exactly the same cloth? They're both the same as far as I'm concerned. In terms of level of being evil, they're the same. And, you know, the Japanese Imperial Army, same right there. Rape a Nan King. Let's have a look at that. You know, ISIS systematically raping 10-year-old girls. and boys, yeah, let's just put them all in the same bucket as far as I'm concerned and wipe the

earth of them all. Americans are, Americans have their problems. They're just the same. Americans, we do have problems. We've made mistakes. You know, we've done things that are horrible and awful. Absolutely. You know, I've covered a lot of that on my podcast.

I covered, I covered the Mila Mastker on my podcast. And even my dad, who is a very pro-American, conservative guy, when he listens. to my podcast on the Milai Masker, he said, I didn't, and my dad, by the way, as a history teacher's whole life and the smartest guy I've ever known. And he said, you know, when I, I always thought that the Mili Masker was kind of like a liberal media spin to make us look bad. And I said, no, dad, it wasn't. It was bad. It was bad leadership. And it was human beings being led in the wrong direction because human beings can be led. Big time.

And they had a little frightening how how that line is. It's more than a little frightening. It's horribly frightening. Yeah. That particular, as I did that podcast, I was as I was going through it, I was thinking myself, what's the, what's the lesson from this? What is the lesson from this? These, these company of U.S. Army soldiers who, by the way, were the most, the cross-section

of America, normal guys. They go in, they rape, torture. murder, mutilate, about 500 Vietnamese, old men, women, and children. The lesson from it was as all this was happening, as these guys just went in the darkest, most horrible direction, there was a helicopter pilot, which I'm sure you've heard, helicopter pilot saw what was happening. He intervened to save some of the Vietnamese villagers. He flew back to base.

He told the commander what was going on. He said, look, these guys are murdering people. The commander got on the radio called the company in the field and said, stop killing people. And they stopped immediately. They stopped immediately. All it took was one leader to step up and say, stop what you're doing, what you're doing is wrong. And everyone stopped. That is the power of leadership.

And by the way, what got them into that mess in the first place was a bad leader leading them in the wrong direction. So when bad things are happening, what you need is leadership. and when leadership steps up to move people in the right direction, human beings want to do the right thing. But it's very easy to get drawn into that dark place. So yes, has America done horrible things? Absolutely. Did we do things that we should, we,

it would be great if we could undo them? Absolutely. In every war, yes, it happens. But to say that America's evil or say that, you know, we don't look back at those things and admit that they're wrong and how do we correct them and how do we make sure that they never happen again? You know, the problem is that I think your father is very, is very average American.

We have split American history into two pieces. It's either all bad or it's all flags and apple pie. It's not. It's Winston Churchill. It's both. He was a monster in India and he was great in Europe. It's both. It's which way are we having?

I tried to get people to, the Medal of Honor is so tainted, and there's no reason why we should not pull these medals back at this point because of Wounded Knee. Every single soldier at Wounded Knee got a Congressional Medal of Honor. That was more medals awarded there than any. battle of World War II. That's what popped out in the history book to me. I looked at that and I went, something is really wrong there. Or something superhuman happened.

It was wrong. And I just am so offended because I believe in the honor of the people who are receiving that medal. And many of them turned it down. They got rid of it at the end. They knew this was wrong. Well, the medal at that time was, I believe at that time, it was actually the only metal for valor there was. I'm pretty sure that at that time, that was the only, so now you've got a wide array of medals for valor.

You've got the commendation medal with a V for valor. You've got an achievement medal with V for valor. You've got the Bronze Star with a V for Valor. You've got the Silver Star. You've got the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service. cross and then you've got the Medal of Honor. So at that time, these guys fought, they wanted to recognize

their bravery in that situation and there they gave them all the same metal. It's, yeah, it's so revoke it. That might be a good call. The Medal of Honor should be, you know,

it is what it is. It is what it is. It should be honorable. Yeah. Should be honorable. I mean, one of my guys, Michael Monsor, you know that's that's what the medal of honor is to me you know he he jumped on a grenade to save

three of our other teammates and that's the medal of honor as far as I'm concerned so you were in seal team one two and three you weren't good enough to get to six one I was at seal team one seal team two seal team seven and seal team three why not six deaf group I mean I just I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding Everybody seems to think that seal team six is like, that's the thing. But the seal teams are broken up by region and they're also by, I don't want to say skill, but what they're good at. They're not all the same, right?

For a while, when I first came in, they were not. They had different regions. We were assigned geographically. So different seal teams were assigned to different parts of the world. Right. And then as later on, around 2000s, they started to change it where every SEAL team was pretty much the same. And we would deploy to the same places. And so there's that that's the way it is now.

And then what you're talking about, a developmental group, they are guys that get selected from the SEAL teams and go through more training and have an incredible amount of assets and they're incredibly skilled guys. Which is the seal team? Is there a seal team? And don't tell me if you have to kill me afterwards. Don't we have a seal team that is operational here to make sure they're constantly testing our infrastructure? They're testing our, see if they can get into our financial services. You know, if they can hack in, they know others can. And so they make sure that they expose any flaws in our services.

Is that true? Okay. All right. What you're probably referring to is there's a book called Rogue Warrior, which was written by a guy named Dick Marsenko, and he had an element that was called Red Cell. And it's in the book. That's why I'm talking about this.

He had an element called Red Cell, which would go out and test the security of, of bases, you know, around the world than in America, you know, military bases.

It's a normal thing. It's a normal thing now. People use that term. So to think that America wouldn't red sell our security right now all the time, of course we're, of course we're going to.

How concerned are you on things like EMP? I think, I think it's a concern that you have to be at least somewhat concerned. There's, there's, um, a book written in the 1960s.

by Carol Quigley, and he said, all this, all the, the, the safeguards that we've built for mutually assured destruction, all going to be, it's all going to be great, unless there's an unflagged cave dwelling society that doesn't care about all of the systems. And that seemed crazy in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, until today, that kind of seems like, you know, when it comes to throwing rocks at each other, they're probably better at throwing rocks than we are. They can survive that, you know, in conditions that most Americans, I don't know, you've been to Montana, you've been to Wyoming, you've been to Maine, you've been to Minnesota. Yeah, yeah, okay. All right. I mean, California, people think California is like, pay watch, but yeah, you're in Texas. Yeah. I mean, I'm not too

concerned about our, are someone trying to take over our country. That's actually, yeah, come on down to Texas. Come on. Yeah. You know, there was never, I've heard this. I don't know you might know. There was never any plan from the former Soviet Union to invade America through Texas. No, that'd be a bad call. Yeah, it'd be a bad call because everybody had guns and everybody would defend it. Yeah. And you know, it's the same thing. I mean, you look at every state, you know, California, of course, everyone thinks of California. What do you think of? You think of Baywatch and you think of Silicon Valley. What is California? California is farms. It's massive farms.

It's hardworking Americans that are, that are, they're freedom-loving people in California. They don't, they might not be the majority. They might not live in those cities. And they might not get the vote out there. But that's what it is. And the whole country's got people like that, you know. I grew up in New England. New England has incredibly hardworking patriots up there.

If we got invaded, yeah. Try that up in Maine. Did you grow up in New England? Yeah, I did. I did. You do not seem like a New England. What do I seem like? I mean, don't go a hostile.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. New England, I lived in New England. I only lived in Connecticut, so it might be different. But New England, they're standoffish. Yeah. Well, you got the Puritan. Yeah.

You got the Puritan culture that's still there. And I didn't really realize that until later on. on in life. But yeah, for sure. The hardworking Puritan culture is there. And I think that's where you get the hardworking. You know, I got a, I got a company in Maine. We have a factory up in Maine. We have, we're bringing back manufacturing to Maine. And we're building, we're making clothes and apparel and we're starting to make shoes. But we're doing all the stuff in Maine. It's so easy to hire people up there right now because all the factories went overseas. We're bringing it back. But these people, they're incredible craftsmen. Yeah, yeah. And they're, they're, they're incredible craftsmen. And

they know how to work. They work hard. And so that's part of the New England culture. And again, that culture is not just in New England. You go anywhere in America, there's people that know how to work. We know how to work in America. And back to your earlier point, we know how to defend ourselves as well. So it doesn't matter where you land here.

It's not going to be fun. Yeah, I don't think people underestimate Americans. Now, I wouldn't have made it past the Missouri River. I would have been like, nah, I'm okay. We're the people that cross the mountains. And when you've, I mean, if you've ever flown over the mountains, but if you've ever driven through the mountains and you think you get to a peak and you're like, oh, good God, look at how many peaks there are.

You would get up to that first peak and you'd be like, are you kidding me? And you didn't know if you went down and then you were trapped and you had to go all the way back up and go a different direction. That seems insane to me. But we're still not too far away from that kind of mental. No, it's incredible. The attitude of the American working people is, that's why we're here.

Look at this place we're sitting in, right? These American hands built this stuff and we'll continue to build. And at some point, if someone tries to take it away from us, it'd be a real problem. I'm glad people like you live. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Just a reminder, I'd love you to raise. and subscribe to the podcast and pass us on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.