The Mello Millionaire with Tommy Mello - Navy SEAL Jocko Willink Reveals Battlefield-Tested Secrets to Success

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer, leadership consultant, and bestselling author. During his 20-year military career, he led Task Unit Bruiser — the most decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. There, he learned that strong leadership means taking responsibility, staying humble, and keeping the mission clear. After the military, he cofounded Echelon Front — a consulting agency that teaches leadership principles to civilians, businesses, and teams. Jocko is also widely known for his bestselling books “Extreme Ownership,” “The Dichotomy of Leadership” and his hit podcast “The Jocko Podcast.”Time Stamps:00:00 Discipline and Motivation02:58 Leadership Lessons from the Battlefield05:56 Ownership and Accountability08:57 Overcoming Insecurity11:53 Environment & Personal Growth15:09 Strategies for Young Men17:52 Balancing Life: Work, Family, and Health20:51 The Secrets to Healthy Relationships24:11 The Driving Force Behind SuccessMeet me at Home Service Freedom 2025 ⟶ ⁠https://homeservicefreedom.com/⁠Check Out My Social Media:Tiktok  ⟶⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello⁠Instagram ⟶⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/⁠Facebook ⟶⁠https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/⁠My other podcast:The Home Service Expert ⟶ ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/4WHQ3ldGThHsP1cfzNF33G⁠Live Q&A submission form:⁠https://homeserviceexpert.com/questions⁠Learn more about Jocko: Website ⟶ ⁠https://jocko.com/⁠Echelon front ⟶ ⁠https://echelonfront.com/⁠Victory MMA ⟶ ⁠https://victorygyms.com/TMM Director / Series Creator - Elaina SlaytonExecutive Producer - Jim Leslie Producer - Bianca Zhou Editor - Paul McAleavey Camera - Cullen Fleming

If you were raised without discipline, how do you flex that muscle? That alarm goes off at 4.30? Do I feel like getting out of bed? No. Do I get out of bed? Yes. What's the motivating force in life that drives you? That I think about all the time is the guys that I lost in combat. They sacrifice their lives and I'm not going to let those guys down. Wow. Discipline, leadership, relentless drive. Our guest today doesn't just preach these values, he lives them. As a Navy SEAL commander, he led Task Unit.

bruiser. Get ready to move. The most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq war. Jocko was a leader that you never wanted to let down. He took those battlefield lessons and built echelon front. Leading in combat is like leading in any other situation in life. Coaching top leaders in business in life. Joining us is Jock willing? He is a best-selling author. How does this translate into corporate America? A Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. Who here likes to train Jiu-Jitsu? A successful entrepreneur. Oh shit, Chaco! And the host of the Jocko podcast, inspiring millions to embrace the warrior mindset.

And yes, he really does wake up at 4.30 a.m. every single day. You've changed my life, man. Huge fucking fans. To get ready. This conversation is going to be intense. Today, I'm joined by Jock Willing. We usually started out asking a bunch of questions, but I think most people know who you are. What was the greatest thing about being a Navy SEAL? Just working with awesome guys and having a really cool

mission every day. You know? Like, when I was a young kid, I didn't want to be inside. I wanted to be outside. I wanted to be shooting a machine gun if possible. And it's pretty cool. And I figured out that you could actually get a job shooting a machine gun. I was like, sign me up. And when did you retire?

I retired in 2010. 2010. Yeah. Well, let's just start out by, you'll just tell us a little bit about all the stuff you're into right now. You've got your supplements. You've got your speaking. You've got your kind of best practices, coaching. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I got a leadership consulting company called Echlon Front, and we've got a bunch of instructors and, you know, the principles that we learned on the battlefield about leadership. We documented those and ended up teaching them in the SEAL teams. And then once I retired from the SEAL teams, started teaching them in the civilian sector, and that's just grown a ton because those principles are very effective for leading in any environment and any endeavor. So as that grew, also, you know, I started a podcast. wrote a bunch of books.

Yeah, I have a supplement company called Jocko Fuel. And then I have a clothing company called Origin USA and we make 100% American-made clothing. And we make jeans, boots, t-shirts, hoodies, hunt gear, workout gear, and jiu-tzee. That's awesome. So when I was in the military, I actually started Victory MMA.

So one of my buddies was a master chief in the SEAL teams and we were both training in Jiu-Jitsu all the time. And we had kind of, been inside of other either boxing academies or regular gyms. And so eventually we got kicked out of a bunch of different places for training people in MMA and jiu-jitsu. And so we decided we would start our own.

And we went and made this gym here, which is called Victory MMA. Love it. Well, let's talk a little bit about that. Extreme ownership, discipline. Obviously, you learn a lot of the Navy about leadership. A good leader has nothing to prove but everything to prove.

What does that mean? exactly has nothing to prove but everything to prove yeah so that's something that I actually used to tell these these young junior officers so you get these young guys they're going in the seal teams but they're officers so they've been to college they get commissioned as an officer so now they're supposed to be in charge allegedly but you know you've seen the movies you've seen the old vietnam movies where the young officer comes in and he's trying to tell the old gunnery sergeant what to do what they do is they start bossing people around trying to make decisions that they don't really know anything about and they end up looking stupid so

what I used to tell them was you don't have anything to prove. You don't need to prove to your, to the seal platoon that you're in charge of them. You are in charge of them. What you're trying to prove to them is you're going to make good decisions. You're going to take care of them. You're going to, you're going to be tactically squared away. You're going to listen. You're going to be humble because that's what a good leader does.

Can you explain how the laws of combat apply to leadership and business? Yeah. So again, being in the. being in the SEAL teams for 20 years and learned a bunch of lessons over the years. And eventually, I was in a position where I was teaching leadership to the young SEALs. And when I started doing that, I realized that I needed to kind of take all the lessons I'd learned through my career. And I needed to formulate them in a way that these young SEAL leaders could just, all right, here's what you need to do. So cover move is a machine gun fighting tactic.

You ever seen a movie where someone goes, cover me? Yeah. Well, what that means is when you say cover me, if I say, cover me Tommy you're going to start laying down fire while you're shooting at the bad guys and it's a real thing It's not just in Hollywood. Yeah, so you need to do that and if you don't do that if I don't say cover me and you don't start shooting at the bad guys and I get up and start running I'm gonna get shot So that applies obviously on the battlefield, but it applies in the business world as well Prioritize and execute we're gonna have a lot of things going on on the battlefield You'd have terrible situations happening and usually it all be happened at the same time so you've got to

to be paying attention to which one of those problems is the biggest problem and focus on that biggest problem. Then you can move on to the next one and so on down the line. Well, it's the same thing in business. If you try and do 49 different things at the same time, you're not going to achieve them. You've got to figure out, all right, this is the one that's going to give me the most return on investment. I'm going to focus on this one. Now listen, it doesn't mean, and you know, you know this very well, it doesn't mean you can only do one thing at one time. But, you know, I'll assign someone or delegate someone to take care of something that I can't commit all my resources to so that we can do a couple things at the same time.

And so we got to prioritize next to you, figure out what the biggest problem is, what the biggest return on investment focus on that and then going down the line. And then decentralized command, this is, you know, in combat. I can't tell everybody in a 20-man platoon what they need to be doing during combat. I can't be saying, hey, you with the machine gun. Move a little further to that corner and hold security down that road. And hey, you, with the grenade launcher, why don't you step back over here and start lobbing some grenades at the enemy? And hey, you with the radio, why don't you start calling and see if we can't get some?

I can't tell every single person what to do. They need to know what to do. They need to understand what the mission is, then go execute it. It's the same thing with you. And I've heard you talk about this before. You know, when you started your business, of course you feel like, hey, you want to go out and do every install yourself. Yeah. So if you want to grow your business, you've got to get some people that are going to go and take that action without you having to do it.

You know, a lot of people don't get this concept. And it's basically what you're talking about is advanced delegation. And people always see, I always, a lot of these guys I see on TikTok and Instagram, they talk about how they could outwork everybody. I'm like, why would you want to outwork anybody? Why not just out delegate them? Maybe if you're just a psycho, you can outwork two lazy people. Yeah. But if you're not going to outwork 10 people.

No. It doesn't matter who you are. Just like you can't out fight 10 people. You're not going to outwork 10 people. And so who's going to win? Somebody that's got 10 people that understand the mission that are out there executing the task or one person that's working really, really, really hard. And by force ranking, that's what that's what we call it in the military is force ranking. So you say, listen, I've got 10 guys.

This is my number one guy. Yeah. Maybe you can have two number one, you know, two number one guys or two top guys. and then you got your next four or five guys, then you got your next four or five guys, then you got your bottom two. And eventually you've got to look at those bottom two and say, are they contributing to the mission?

And if they're still contributing the mission, okay, cool. Like, you know, sometimes I get asked about, you know, I got a guy that works for me. He shows up on time, but as soon as four o'clock rolls around, he's out of there. I'm like, okay. So is he reliable?

Yes. Does he do his job? Yes. I'm not really mad at that person. I recognize that they might not be a go-getter. Right. But, you know, I might give him six months. Might give him a year.

You know, maybe he's a young single guy. You know, he's making enough money to pay the rent and pay his car payment and he's having a good time on the weekends. He's kind of set right now. Fast forward a year. All of a sudden, he's getting married. Yeah. And, you know, now he's got a kid.

He's going to start looking around going, wait, how can I make more money? How can I do better? What can I make happen here? And so I'm going to take that person. I'm going to move them into the higher part of the bell curve where, you're going to he's a higher performer. But you do have to check your people. You have to make sure.

And then you have to give them good feedback. Some of my leadership team always tells me, well, not everybody could be a tent. Yep. And I'm like, well, I only want tens. I'm like, it's all the leadership and it's hard to get all tens. I look at it like I might, I'm not going to get all tens. Like, you know, even the Chicago Bulls, look, Michael Jordan's a 10. But what's Scotty Pippen, a 9.8?

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Let's go right on down the line. Eventually you got people that are not Michael Jordans. Right. So, but can they feel that role in that team? And here's the important part that I think you're aiming towards, which is does the person want to be a tent?

Do they want to be a 10? The only thing you could delegate out of fitness, finance, faith, and family is finance. You can't delegate church and like praying. You can't delegate time with family. You can't delegate working out. Yeah. There's only one person that's going to be able to do those things. You're the only person that can do those.

things yep and by the way even finance well I mean you still have to someone else can handle the finances but you got to go out there to make that money you do you know what I mean like no I don't know about you but no one was depositing money in my bank account like when I started I had to be everything I started at the bottom I had to do every job but once you become once you've done it a couple times now you hire the top down because now you got money it's easy when you've got money to make more money it's hard when you don't have anything and that's what I came from zero I don't know you were raised in the East coast, right?

Yep, yep. Did you guys come from humble beginnings, or was it like mid? Yeah, my parents were school teachers, you know? Okay. So we, my parents were school teachers and we had a, uh, a Chevy scooter. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like a, it was a, it was a vehicle. I just always remember this Chevy scooter because it barely fit, you know, I had two sisters and it barely fit us in the backseat, no air conditioning, AM radio.

It was just like, it sucked. Okay. Okay. So you become a role model for a lot of young men. I think it's your message resonates, this idea of discipline. What are some game-changing advice for young men in their 20s that you wish you knew? The one that no one wants to hear is wake up early. If you're not getting, I think you should get up in the morning to do some kind of exercise. Right.

So if you've got to be at work at whatever, seven o'clock in the morning and you've got a half an hour to get to work, whatever, roll that time back. so you can get up and do some physical activity in the morning, and that's just going to make your whole life better. I think that is a good way to start the day. It sets everything else in motion. And then, you know, another thing, you know, you and I were talking about before we hit record is, like, these things don't happen overnight.

You're not going to, you don't start a business, and now your business is totally successful, and it's a huge expansion, and you're just living the dream. It doesn't happen like that. The dream takes work. So I would say get up early, work hard. essentially that's what you got to do i i talk a lot in my book my original book the home service

millionaire about delayed gratification about living below your means about stacking the chips and compound interest yeah when it's working for you or against you oh yeah um if i was talking to someone young right now and say listen don't worry about the watch in the car and i live with my parents as long as they let me even if i got to pay them a little bit of rent like stack of the cash yeah you know no doubt dude i worked double shifts i washed dishes i i i bus tables whatever i get my hands on to make a buck i just did it and i worked as much as freaking possible and i you know it's it's things have changed a little bit but i still work a lot but i don't work a little bit smarter i don't have to do the physical labor yeah i mean there's no i still see the

american work ethic yep very very strong but i would say what you have to be careful of is as a young guy working right now you can make you can make good money and that's where you're going to do what you said you got to be smart with that money. I drove a 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan for 13 years with a window that was taped shut when I was in the Navy. And the reason I did that was because I was house poor. Like I was buying houses as a young guy on Navy pay, which is not easy to do, which meant I didn't have money for the brand new car for myself, the brand new car for my wife, the fancy, like fancy watches. That's something that's never even crossed my mind. So yeah, Stay humble, live within your means, and in the long run, that delayed gratification, you're going to be in a much better situation.

How do you destroy insecurity? Well, it depends what you're insecure about, but I think if you're insecure about something, what you have to do is you have to look at that thing and you have to go toward it. So when you're insecure about something, go and admit it, face it, and then start to take ownership of it and you'll become more comfortable with it, no matter what that thing is. the worst thing you can do if you're insecure about something is hide from it. What do you think of three common lies that hold people back? I can give you one of them or I can give you 1,000 of them, which is it's my boss's fault. It's my parents' fault. It's my spouse's fault.

It's my teammates' fault. It's my teacher's fault. It's my co-worker's fault. It's the client's fault. It's everybody else's fault. Yeah. So we blame a bunch of other people for things that are going wrong. in our life and to me that's the biggest lie the moments that you look around at your world

and you say to yourself the reason my finances are bad the reason my business is bad the reason my relationship is bad the reason my health is bad the reason these bad things are happening to me is because of me yeah that's the moment that you can actually get control and make things happen look i've never been in a 12-step process but i don't know people that have had that have what's the first thing they start out with admitting they oh yeah it's admitting You got to admit that you've got a problem. And so I think a lot of people, they don't ever do that. They blame everybody else with themselves.

And there's never any accountability there. The one thing I was thinking about this podcast is you talk a lot about discipline and intrinsic discipline, meaning no one's telling you. But if you were raised without discipline at all, how do you flex that muscle? So I think like any other habit and muscle, it is something that you have to impose and you have to work on. No one, just about no one, wakes up every single day at 4.30 in the morning goes, oh, great, my alarm's going off. Great, super. I don't want to lay in bed one minute longer. There's not too many people that wake up, like feeling like that every day, myself included.

It's like, oh, I went to bed late, whatever, had to work late, had that emergency call. couldn't sleep well whatever the case may be and I went to bed at 11 o'clock 1130 that alarm goes off at 430 do I feel like getting out of bed no do I get out of bed yes forcing yourself to do things that you don't want to do that's what discipline is so you have to force yourself to do things that you don't want to do and if you do that over time that becomes something that we call discipline if you don't do things, if you only do things that you want to do, i.e. stay in bed, i.e. eat the donuts. I.e. lay on the couch. I.e. not make the phone call that you're supposed to make. If you don't do those things, that's called a lack of discipline. And where you end up is in a terrible place where you have no control over your life.

So discipline is a habit. It's a skill. It's a muscle that you need to train and you need to work on and you need to keep in shape. Look, there's two types of people that go into the military. Those that were bred to be in the military their whole lives, they couldn't wait. And then the other ones is like, dude, you're getting in a lot of trouble. Like, you need some motivation. How good is the military to kind of build that muscle? It does a good job. It does a good job.

But, I mean, we know that there are veterans out there that are completely out of shape, that are addicted to alcohol, addicted to drugs, aren't holding their job. Like there's, the military can show you the path, but the military doesn't keep you on the path. Yeah. One of the things, people always ask me that, like, how did you start from nothing and get to this level of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars? And my answer is, I change circles pretty quickly. I get to the top of this mountain. Look over there's a bigger mountain.

Go down to the base camp. Talk to a few people. Have you been at the top of this mountain? They're able to get me there way quicker. But what do you think about this idea of, you got to get around the right people? Like if you want to be a great dad Don't hang out with guys that go to the strip club all the time And don't alcoholics

If you want to become a great leader She's probably hang out with great leaders That proven that they've been able to lead people There's always going to be tradeoffs There's always going to be sacrifices And you're either going to sacrifice Sometimes in your business You're going to sacrifice sometimes with your family

Sacrifice sometimes with your health Sacrifice sometimes with really anything And the thing you got to be careful of, and you know, you were talking about this earlier, if you start sacrificing with your health, that's the one thing that will undermine everything. Yep.

The question I get asked all the time, you know, work-life balance. The answer is you have to balance. And you have to explain to your family, hey, I got this project going on right now. I'm trying to acquire this business or I'm building this business, and I'm not going to be around much right now.

Other than that, here's what I'm building. Here's why I'm doing it. So you got, and then sometimes you got to tell your work, Hey, listen, I've been gone for a month and a half. My daughter has a wrestling tournament, and it's going to give me an all-day tournament on Saturday. Do not call me. I'm going to cut and wait with her on Friday.

I'm spending all day with her on Saturday. Don't call me. If something goes wrong, talk to Fred. He'll handle it. So you've got to figure out when you're gone too far in one direction and the other direction, and you've got to maintain that balance. It's, I always say I'm off balance on purpose.

and their seasons of life. I see a lot of people, they always say, how do you make the time? And I go, there's 168 hours in a week. If you sleep for 50, you work for 50, you work out for 10, you still got 58 hours left. You could go on a date with your wife every single night. You could read a book, you watch your favorite show

and still have 40 hours left over. So I don't know how people could use that as an excuse. I just don't have the time. What do you think about that? Got to make time. I always say make time. Make time for what's important. And if you don't, if you don't make time and if you don't pay attention to where your time's going,

if you don't do like a time audit, that's what I, when people tell me like, well, I don't have time for that. What do you spend your time doing? Do you even know. Yeah. Do a time audit. Figure out what you're doing with your time. And eventually you figured out that you're spending two and a half hours a day looking at your, looking at the phone that's in your pocket. Yeah.

So I'm going to run through a few scenarios and you let me know how you would respond to these. No bullshit. Just we'll dive right in. So you haven't been to the gym in two months. So, hey, if you haven't been to the gym for two months, get a grip on reality and start working out immediately right now. Don't even wait until tomorrow. So you're eating like crap.

Maybe you're just not eating healthy. Let's say I was on a vacation and happened to be in a place where there's just, like, good Italian food. Lots of pasta. American Italian food, which is like fried mozzarella. the whole nine yards. Yep. So I'm like, all right,

what I probably do is do like a 24-hour fast. You're stuck in a job that you hate. I'm going to make sure that my quality of work is outstanding. I'm going to make sure that I'm performing above the standards. And I'm going to start, you know, talking my boss about, hey, you know, I really appreciate being here. Hey, what's the next opportunity that I have? What else can I do here?

What do you think the secret sauce is to a healthy, significant other relationship? I explain relationships of being, based on five components. Trust, listen, respect, influence, and care. So you and me, if you trust me, or if you don't trust me and I don't trust you, do we have a relationship? No.

If you don't listen to me and I don't listen to you, do we have a relationship? No. If you don't treat me with respect and I don't treat you with respect, we have relationship, you got to have those things in place. So if, if you were to start all over again and start a business, what would it be? I'm just curious. Start all over again? Start over.

You're in your early 20s. want to start a business, what would it be? I'd probably be in the same businesses that I'm in right now. Everything you love everything you're doing. And they all kind of, they all support each other, right? But look, I love working out. I love doing jihitsu. I love doing MMA.

I have an MMA gym, right? I love leadership. I love talking about leadership. I love teaching leadership. I have leadership consultancy. Right. I love, in order to do the working out that I talked about, I got to have good fuel. So in order to have good fuel, you got to have supplements, Jocko fuel.

And then finally, I'm a patriotic person. I believe in manufacturing. I believe in the American dream. And I have to wear clothing. Yep. So the companies that I'm in, the businesses that I've made,

that's the ones that I've been in. Yep. What do most businesses that you coach, what's the thing they're lacking? What's the biggest thing that you teach them that makes them grow the fastest? Do you have to understand, you know, leadership is the most important thing in combat.

It's the most important thing on the battle for this. It's the most important thing in life and it's the most important thing in business. So if you you think people think that leadership is something that you're born with and it's not Different people are born with different levels of leadership skill like you're going to have a certain innate ability in parts of leadership some people are just naturally articulate some people are good at simplifying plans Some people are are loud You know believe it or not being loud is a is a leadership skill especially in a combat situation if you can raise your voice and people can hear you,

you're going to be able to give commands and people understand what you're talking about. So there are certain skills that you can be born with. Just like in basketball, you can be born six, nine. You can be born with hands like Michael Jordan. Those are definite advantages. But just because you're six, nine, doesn't mean you're going to be a good basketball player.

Right. You have to learn. You have to practice. And it's the same thing with leadership. So that's the biggest problems that businesses have is they just don't have the leadership. skills and they need to invest in learning the leadership skills. Once you have the leadership skills, now you can start to make things happen and you end up with a decentralized organization

where everyone is out making the mission happen and getting things done and you don't need to micromanage or in some cases need to manage it at all. What's the motivating force in life that drives you? Yeah, the motivating force in life that drives me that I think about all the time is the the guys that I lost in combat. And so I know that they sacrificed their lives and give us the opportunity to be here and give me the opportunity to be here. And I'm not going to let those guys down. Wow.

Appreciate it. Appreciate what you're doing out there. Hey, brother. Thank you very much to letting us be here. Right on, brother. Thanks for coming out. Yeah, this is great. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to this episode.

Like always, we're going to close it out with the Tommy Truth, which is a little slice of wisdom from me to you that can help guide you in whatever you're striving towards right now. Here's my top secrets to unshakable confidence. There's a very fine line between confidence, cockiness, and just overall believe in yourself. Some of the habits and practices of confidence, direct eye contact, looking into blackest part of the pupil. When you talk to somebody, slow down and listen to what they're saying back. Body language, tonality is everything. A lot of people have security problems when they walk in a room because they know they eat like crap. They drinking, they're drinking all the time. They sleep in. If you manage your calendar correctly,

you take care of yourself, you're the best version of yourself. You tend to feel more confident. And that's it, guys. We'll talk to you next week.