Y Combinator Startup Podcast - #86 - Jocko Willink and Mike Sarraille

Episode Date: July 20, 2018

Jocko Willink and Mike Sarraille served together as Navy SEALs and now work together at Echelon Front, a company Jocko cofounded.We met up to talk about a new initiative they’ve set up called Overwatch. Overwatch is a talent acquisition firm that matches employers with veterans from special operations forces and combat aviation. You can learn more about Overwatch at EFOverwatch.com.They’re also hosting an event called the Muster in San Francisco on October 17th and 18th. You can sign up at ExtremeOwnership.com.If you’d like to hear more from Mike and Jocko, check out Jocko Podcast Episode 134.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.We're accepting applications from startups for the Winter 2019 funding cycle. Apply here.***Topics01:04 - Intros5:07 - Mike and Jocko on how they transitioned out9:37 - How the military prepares people for the private sector13:47 - What is Overwatch?23:32 - Preconceptions about veterans28:24 - Advice for companies looking to hire veterans31:03 - Jocko's next book, The Dichotomy of Leadership33:58 - Mike and Jocko's working relationship45:20 - How to set up your team so everyone can contribute55:02 - What Mike and Jocko are trying to improve about themselves58:45 - Alex Badalyan asks - What are some military tactics startups could adopt to increase team effectiveness and throughput?1:00:47 - Allen asks - From your experience as a SEAL and in the business world, do two or more co-founders/leaders have a higher success rate? What are your thoughts on a solo leader/founder with a strong team and culture?1:06:56 - Armando Neves asks - I liked Jocko's episode on strategy and the way of the Samurai (The Book of Five Rings), how much of the warrior mindset is he implementing on a day to day basis?1:11:17 - Ryan Carl Mercer asks - Favorite MRE and thank you for your service sir.1:14:59 - Spencer Clark asks - Is culture more decided by micro or macro policies & interactions?

Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinators podcast. Applications for the winner 2019 YC batch are now open. You can learn more at Ycombinator.com slash apply. Today's episode is with Jocko Willink and Mike Sarelli. Jocko and Mike served together as Navy Seals and now work together at Echelon Front, a company Jocko co-founded. We met up to talk about a new initiative they've set up called Overwatch. Overwatch is a talent acquisition firm that matches employers with veterans from special operations forces and combat aviation. You can learn more about Overwatch at EFoverwatch.com. They're also hosting an event in San Francisco called the muster on October 17th and 18th.

You can sign up at extreme ownership.com. All right, here we go. All right, guys. Well, thanks for hosting me. I'm excited to a podcast at the Jocko Podcast Studio. For those of our listeners that don't know about you guys, I think we should start with some quick intros and then start talking about the new program you're working on. So, Jocko, why don't you start off?

Cool. I was in the military for 20 years, and then I retired. And when I retired, I started working with civilians primarily and teaching them about leadership that I had learned while I was in the military. And that culminated in a book. And then another. That ended up kind of morphing into a book called Extreme Ownership. and that book came out and that book's done pretty well and that kind of morphed into a podcast. So I have a podcast called Jocko podcast where I talk about, really talk about human nature through the lens of leadership and war and general atrocities and struggle than human beings go through.

So it's a little bit of a rough podcast to listen to from time to time, but there's a lot of lessons in it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it really contrasts from the average podcast in the sense that it's sort of like you reading a book every single week or every other week and just going through, giving notes, giving notes based on your experience. Yeah, and it's interesting too because I get most of the books that I try and use are first person accounts of these situations. So whether it's war, whether it's some kind of atrocity. It's a first person account. It's someone that was actually there. It's not an interpretation. It's not what someone else thought that person thought.

It's what that person thought. So I think that has the ability to take you into the minds of and see some of that stuff through a better perspective. And the more different perspectives you can get other than your own, the better you're going to understand things. Yeah. Yeah, I've been blown away by like, I mean, the legs the podcast has. When you started off, I was like, I don't know if he's going to be able to find 50 books. And now. Well, I thought that too.

Because when I started, there was a few books, you know, about Face by Hackworth. There was three or four books that I knew I could cover that really had a big impact on me. And then I reached a little bit. And I said, well, you know I can do this one too. And when I started reading with the thought that what can I learn from this, not just what do I understand about it, but what can I actually learn from this? Then I started pulling out all these old books that I'd read with the old breed, just books that are incredible books. And as I pulled those out, and now I realize the actual problem isn't that there aren't enough. books. The actual problem is that there's no possible way I can cover all the books that exist

that we can learn from and that I can learn from. So the problem ended up not being the problem I thought it initially was. There's a lot of incredible books out there. Yeah. Well, you're doing a great job. Mike, what's your story? Hey, much along the same lines. First off, thanks for having me on Y Combinators dear to my heart because I was born and raised in Silicon Valley. Much like Jaco, I did something uncharacteristic to a kid coming out of Atherton, California. I enlisted the Marine Corps and then eventually became a seal and finished up and retired after 20 years. I was one of Jocco's guys in the book, Extreme Ownership. It's all about the Battle of Ramadi.

I was one of those guys that worked for Jocko, and hence how we've known each other for so long. You know, I did not write a book because I believe in an extreme ownership. We can't replicate what is already working. But really, you know, I finished my first. my MBA at the University of Texas right before I retired, and I just got into facilitating successful veteran transitions. And when I say successful, a lot of the time, that is not setting the expectation on the corporate side. That is actually setting the expectations on the veteran side and getting their heads right. It's not an easy thing to hear after 20 years in the

military that you are a new guy again, but you are. You may have some great leadership tenants and foundational aspects of leadership. But when you step into a different industry, you step into a different industry and it takes time. You've got to roll your sleeves up. You've got to get to work and you've got to prove your worth. And so sometimes that's a lot tougher for veterans than the general public may know. And I mean, that's really at the core of what we were going to talk about today.

And so how did that process go for both of you? I mean, Mike, you got vetted going while you were still active, right? I did. I still don't know if that was the right decision. You know, when you're not coming from a totally stable financial position, you're still active duty starting a company, even though it was a, even though it was a social venture, the timing might not have been right. But in retrospect, it is a organization that's going to do a lot of good for veterans. And so, you know, I focused my MBA. And let me say this. When I stepped into the MBA program, I thought I was going to do investment banking. and I realized really quickly that that did not play to my strengths

and that I like to create things in front of me and I like to see the value proposition as I stand it up. And quickly transitioned to focusing because there was a lot of teammates calling me that were like Mike did, we know you have connections in Silicon Valley, can you help me get a job? And I'm like, dude, what is going on here?

I'm like, these are, and Jock knows a lot of these guys are like amazing, amazing leaders. So what is the major disconnect? And that's, you know, when I got Admiral McCraven involved. And we discussed the systemic challenges facing veterans and really started the foundation of what vetted came from, which was a research project into those challenges facing veterans. And then the so what, how do we solve it? And that's when we got Wharton, U.T. McCombs and Texas A&M.

His Business School involved. And hence we created what Huffman Post is called the most comprehensive veteran transition program in the, the nation. And now you guys are starting it here to some extent. So yes, we basically, we did the social side and Jocko and Laf have been involved in vetted. And now it's all those lessons learned from standing that up and we're capitalizing it. And, you know, we live in a capitalistic society. We can do a lot more good on the for-profit side than we can on the nonprofit side.

Right. And we didn't want to let those valuable lessons from standing this thing up, just go to waste when we knew we could actually shake a more cages and rattle things loose in the for-profit room. Because your story, Jocko, when you transitioned out, is that when echelon front began? Or did you think about finding a job somewhere? No. So about six months before I retired, and my last job in the Navy was running the training for the West Coast SEAL teams.

And really what I was doing was simulating combat and then putting leaders through leadership training. That's what it was. And so about six months prior to retiring, a guy that I knew asked me to come and to his executive team about combat leadership and I thought you know okay cool I'll go do do that and he said I'll give you some money and I said well that makes it even a little bit cooler so I went up and I talked and I don't know what he expected me to talk about but whatever I you know I I basically gave the same brief that I would give

the young junior officers when they were entering the seal teams when they had graduated the the basic seal training I would give him a brief and I basically gave that same leadership brief to to these executives and when I got to done, the CEO came up to me and said, hey, I want you to do this for every division of my company. And I said, well, you know, I'm retiring in six months and I'm not really looking to do anything like that. And he says, I'll give you money. And I said, well, okay, let's talk about that then. And so then he ended up paying me and at one of those divisional meetings, the CEO of the parent company was there. And when I got done, the CEO of the parent company came up to me and he

said, hey, I want you to do this for all my CEOs. I want you come talk to all my CEOs. And they owned 45 or 50 companies at the time. So I did an event with 45 or 50 CEOs and got done with that. And a bunch of those CEOs came up and said to me, hey, can you come and talk to my company? And that was where it started. It didn't take very long for me to be stocked up with work. And at the same time, Laif, who wrote the book with me and who was also in Ramadi and, you know, my dear friend and brother, he had, he was still in the Navy and he had met with a company

that had come to do like a tour of the SEAL team. And they, they kind of were interested as well. And he kind of talked about leadership with them. And as soon as he was getting ready to get out, he got out of 13 years, I think. I said, hey, man, I need some fire support over here. And so that's, that's where it started. And then like you said, you know, as we would go out and work with these companies, they'd say, hey, do you have these, do you guys have this stuff written down anywhere? Do you have a document you can give us or a manual you can give us?

And eventually we wrote that stuff down more specifically. And that's what turned into the book. Okay. So I think we should explain, like, basically how the transition process works from, I mean, the SEALs or the Navy or more broadly, because I didn't fully understand the amount of training or the lack of amount of training that you got. So I think most of our listeners don't know either. So could you walk through what you, so, you know, you announce you're retiring. What happens? I don't think I'm really a great example. I think Mike would be better because I told my chain of command that I was retired. And I had great relationships up my chain of command and it was a very hard decision to make But I told him I was retiring and then I finished out my my work and then I went in the civilian sector I I didn't even go to the there's a class called tap Transit I didn't even go to that I went to zero so I got I didn't do anything and I wouldn't recommend that

There's a lot of good good information by the time I was retiring I well I was pretty much just good to go and on another path and down this road and didn't need to do anything else. I need to do, what I need to do is go forward and continue to work with civilian leaders and expand working with more companies. So that's what I did. I'm not a great example of how to set yourself up for retirement or how the Navy transitions you for retirement.

I could actually provide some context for that. So, you know, for your average, by what I mean average, it's not average in talent, just your general soldier airman, sailor. Marine when you make the decision to get out, the military starts you on a process. Unfortunately, you're pretty much focused on your work almost up to the day you get out. That's just how the military is raised. And because you want to do such a good job and you want to pass off a good product to whoever's coming behind you to ensure their success, that's what vets do.

And so you focus very little on your actual transition and then all of a sudden you get an exiting document from the military. and you're like, what do I do now? So the military does a really good job of training people on the front end. I mean, for the SEAL community, we'll use that as an example. I mean, you go through basically two years of training before you even show up to a SEAL team. You know very specifically how to do your job. You know the science of it.

And, of course, over the course of your SEAL career, you hone the art. The military doesn't do a great job of transitioning people out and preparing them for success. What they did was outsource the process. to the Department of Labor, hence this transition assistance program called TAPS. It's a one-week course. And even though TAPs are run by awesome, awesome Americans, this is the way I put it. We have people in the Department of Labor running those programs that have very little private sector time themselves. They're federal government employees.

So federal government employees should not be preparing veterans for jobs in the private sector. and that's why we stood up vetted. And TAPS is a basically cursory program that covers all your VA benefits. Here are some sources for how to do your resume. This is how you should interview, but it's very quick. And the Department of Labor does very well with the problems that they were handed. It just as a whole, we're underserving our veterans and preparing them for successful transitions. And that's why we need to rely more on the private sector to get.

involved and actually solve it for the government. At the end of the day, the military needs to focus on what's important. That is winning wars. If we want the military to get good at transitioning veterans out, that draws resources from elsewhere, which means we're sending less prepared soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors overseas to face the threats that they have to face. So again, if people think, well, the military should do a better job of this, it's not all on the military.

Yeah, no. The military has their job, their real job, which is to defend this country and to, you know, take folks away from that, just it's not the right thing to do. Right. So you're stepping in and trying to like solve this mismatch of education, right, between the private market and the military. And so what, what does the current program look like for you guys?

So we, you know, the name of the company that we unveiled on July 4th is echelon front Overwatch. We call it Overwatch for, for short, is, again, it's very niche. It's a white glove premium service. We focus specifically on the special operations forces. That is your green berets, your Navy SEALs, your Marsock Raiders, Air Force PJs, Paralyst, and then Combat Aviators.

So we had to start with a small group, nail that market, and then maybe we can expand down the road to all veterans, because we're not saying that soft and combat aviators are the only ones that are going to be successful in the private sector, and there's a lot of cases that actually defy that. So we focus on those groups. We do a lot of preparation on the front side, preparing our candidates.

It's one, the vetting process. Jocko and I are going to tell you, like our industry in the military is much like any industry. You have high performers, those middle or road performers and in the substandard performers. Echelon Front Overwatch will not place anyone that is substandard in any company because we at the end of day are concerned about our credibility in the private sector. So we put a lot of diligence into preparing and vetting the candidates that we present to our clients. Now, we are industry agnostic. It could be investment banking. It could be tech. It could be healthcare. Ultimately, vets know or think they know what they want to do when they get out. So that's why we'll place in any industry. But we do have a thorough process to vet them and prepare them. And we do put a lot of the work on veterans. Our golden rule on the website is no one will own your transition for you. Not even us. We shouldn't. You have to own this. We are not going to completely do your resume for you. We'll revise it. But you'll revise it. If you're not willing to roll your sleeves up, and especially here's the key, not willing to be humble and not willing to work hard, then this is not for you.

And so every candidate we produce is going to be one established leader in the military is humble, is ready to work. They're ready to listen to somebody in that industry and learn the tools of the trade and then apply to leadership. They learn the military to succeed. And are you applying any particular educational regimen for them? We are. So, you know, actually, I'm pretty proud of the, uh, the career resources page on the echelon front overwatch. If you go to, uh, EFoverwatch.com, uh, under the career resources, uh, tab, we've laid out a six

step, uh, process. Yeah. Uh, for veterans to follow. And it starts with know thyself, a lot of personal assessments, you know, uh, you know, we, we always talk about echelon front brutal self assessments to know your strengths, know your weaknesses, specifically to play to your strengths and know how to augment. your weaknesses. And then it goes from there of re-educating yourself. One, doing a lot of career in industry research to identify if a certain industry or company is a right fit. That's on them.

And then education and retraining. There's a lot of great programs out there vetted. The veteran accelerated management program. Stanford Ignite right in your backyard, Dartmouth Next Step. Bethany Coates with Breakline. I mean, there's a lot of great programs. Don't go through one of them. go through as many as you can. And the one thing, you know, about vets is, you know, we do lack a business acumen. We come from a different industry where we have a completely set of tools. And for, you know, if I took a CEO from a tech company in Silicon Valley, they would be blown away watching us go through the military decision-making process and how diligent it is. So for vets, they have to learn the hard skills in the new industry they're stepping into.

And that's one of the things when working with clients and we place a candidate into the action. company is we lay out all the steps they need to sort of retrain themselves to learn those tools. So if they're stepping into digital marketing, we're going to lay out a number of digital marketing courses that they can take when they step into the job so it's on the job training. And again, that overwatch phase of maintaining contact with the candidate and client, the one thing, simply learn in your backyard, in August, we are unveiling the corporate skills apprenticeship program for veterans. It's simply learn and Eschlon Front Overwatch are spearheading this.

It'll include digital marketing, digital selling, PMP, Lean 6 Sigma, so process improvement, agile, and then also business analyst certifications. It is tough. It is long. But we got a great discount for veterans. And if someone goes through the other program, there is no doubt that they're, you know, starting salary with all those certifications will go up. It's just, hey, here's the thing. You have to be willing to sit down and do the work and get through that corporate skills apprenticeship program. But it's worthwhile.

And so we're happy about that. Yeah. I mean, I can imagine it's tough. Guys are coming out at what? 40. When did you guys get out? Yeah, I was 38. 38.

38. Yeah. No kidding. I was, uh, well, I enlisted it when I was 18 years old. Yeah. I was, I was 19 when I enlisted I got out at, uh. Actually, no. I was 39.

I just turned 39 because I did a little bit over 20 years. Okay. Got it. Yeah, I do. So I got out at 40 enlisted when I was 19. But I mean, we have veterans getting out at all stages. Guys in their young 20s that just do, you know, four to six years. And then guys that do more than us getting out in their 50s.

Right. And guess what? They want to get after it in the private sector. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. I mean, they have a whole life ahead of them. Yeah. And the thing is, as Mike was talking about, like, sure, there's skills that you have to learn

for these specific industries. And quite honestly, that's the easy part. Like, if you blow it off, it'll, it'll crush you. But if you are attentive to it, you address it, you'll get those skills. But the hard part that people need and what makes this program great is that you've got people that have experience in leadership and experience leading other human beings to accomplish very challenging missions over short periods of time and over long periods of time. and that is what is challenging and it's much harder to train someone to be a leader than it is to train someone about some technical aspect of a job or even the background of a job it's it takes much more time it takes years it takes dozens of years and that's what we've got in this situation we've got people that have not only learned those leadership skills and they've applied those leadership skills over and over again in high stress environments there's no better way we could prepare people for leadership skills for leadership skills

in the civilian sector, then have them serve in the military and being leadership positions. And then you take them out, you polish them up with the industry knowledge, which again, hey, I'm not taking anything away from the industry knowledge. It's important and it's hard to learn. But the level that a leader needs to learn, it isn't the same level that the ground troop needs to know it. So they acquire the skill set and then they apply what they've got from the military and what they've got from their leadership experience.

And you've got a winner right there. Yeah. Well, it's as Mike said before. You know, it's this practiced experience as compared to an MBA, which is two years. I mean, like, two months into your MBA, you're looking for your internship, which hopefully is your next job. Yeah, I agree with you guys. The thing about leadership and, you know, the executive development industry is the year-over-year growth is amazing because companies realize they have to train their internal talent. They have to build talent from within.

Is that, you know, at the end of the day, the U.S. military, and we talked about this before, is the pre-end, eminent leadership training platform in the world because we have the resources and the time to do it. I mean, if you step into the military, whether you enlist or you're an officer, you're going through an initial three-month, 24-7 restructuring program and training program to get you ready for the rigors of the military and one to lead. And, you know, officer candidate school and boot camps. I mean, there's a methodology to the design. And we talked about this yesterday. You know, the Marine Corps is probably the best at putting people through Marine boot camp in turning young girls and boys into men and women.

And it's amazing. That process has just not been replicated by anyone. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the whole thing with leadership is that it takes time. It takes time to develop those skills. And the other thing is it's, it's hard. It's hard to do.

And you've got all these crazy people that, that work. for you. Regardless of what situation you're in you know, that's one thing, one of the myths about the military's oh everyone in the military is just they're like robots and they'll just listen to what everyone says. Well, the fact the matter is that's not true and even inside the SEAL teams everyone thinks, oh these guys are just so motivated and they'll do whatever you say. That's completely untrue. The guys in the seal teams, you've got all kinds of, just like any other group of people, you got egos, you got personalities, you got different motivations that are driving people,

You've got people that get wrapped around their own plan that they come up with and they don't want to listen to anyone else. You have to work through all those problems. So people that have experience doing that over time, you can't buy that experience. You can't go to school for that experience. And even the fact that the military takes people and puts you through leadership training, that right there alone isn't enough. What really makes the people in the military become good leaders is that they lead. They lead. And they succeed sometimes and they fail sometimes.

And if they go through their career, they learn from those failures and they become better and they don't make those mistakes again. And by the time they're getting ready to move on, they know what they're doing. So I think many people actually given the success of your podcast think that when someone comes out of the sales are like, oh, it's a jaco or it's a mic. Like, oh, we just get one of those guys. But that's not an always case. And I think because so as a percentage of the population, so few people know any of these elite members of the service, there are these preconceptions that people get in their head. And I think now's a good time to just like dispel those.

And honestly, like, explain what people are expecting. So when you guys are talking to an employer, what are you coaching them with? How are you instructing them to like, this is what's reality and this is what you may think? What comes up? Well, you got individuals, first of all. And just like, just like any group of people, it's a bell curve, right? And just like Mike just talked about, you got people at the high end of the bell curve. You got people at the low end of the bell curve, and you got a bunch of people in the middle of the bell curve.

And our job, before we place someone, is to make sure that they're at the high end of the bell curve. Because you're 100% right. And we'll talk about seals, for example. As far as someone that's in civilian sector, a seal is a seal, is a seal, is a seal. If you were in the seal teams, you're good to go. You're just a perfect leader and you're a great, you've got a great way to deal with stress and you can overcome all these problems. That's actually not true. There's a lot of great guys in the SEAL teams, and there's some spectacular individuals in the SEAL teams.

And there's also guys, there's a bunch of people in the middle that do their job and they do a great job. And then there's people on the low end of the spectrum that they don't do a good job. And they manage to stay in. And this is true with the Marine Corps. It's true with the Army. It's true with Special Force. True with everyone. Every group has their bottom feeders in there.

And so what we do is make sure that none of those bottom feeders get placed by us. because it's very hard for a civilian to tell the difference between, you know, I always ask, I always ask employers this, have you ever interviewed somebody and you thought I am about to hire the biggest stud who's going to crush this and I'm set for life because I got this guy coming on my team or this girl coming on my team? And then how often does that person turn out to be horrible? You know, okay, let's say you're pretty good. Even if you're pretty good at judging those situations, you're still probably only batting like 70 or 80% at best. 20% of time, you're hiring someone that is a disaster. People learn to interview well. Some people can interview very well.

Some people are great workers, but they interview horribly. And you can't tell from looking at the resume when you sit and talk to me. I don't see this guy. This guy or girl working out. So it's the same thing with the SEAL teams. It's the same thing with any group, any group. It's not just the SEAL teams, any group. And so what we're doing is taking a look at these people.

We're vetting them. We're making sure that we're screening them properly. and know and understand their reputation through our connections, and then train them and test them and make sure that they are on board and think the way we think and are going to be a good fit for where we're placing them. I think Jocko pretty much summarized that pretty well. We do get a lot of preconceived notions.

Naturally, people's perceptions in the military come out of the books in the movies, primarily the movies. And so, you know, a lot of people think we just run around the bases, singing cadences 24-7. Is Terry logs all day? It's not the, yeah, not the case. And these guys are personally authentic. They're usually of high emotional intelligence. They're highly capable.

They have the character, the aptitude. And if they don't, even within our respective communities, again, we're using the seal community. We tend to minimize those bottom feeders, as Jacker referred to them. if they are bipolar and just have low emotional intelligence, we're like, okay, yes, we're going to shift you over to this job here because, you know, you can do this job well and it's not on the front line and it won't have any major consequences. I mean, that happens within our community as well. But we know, and here's the great thing about the special operations community and the

combat aviators is we can reach back to our respective colleagues that are still in community and say, hey, John Doe, thumbs up, thumbs down. oh yeah, absolutely thumbs up. Or, hey, your thumbs down, here's why. And we can validate and, you know, that would pretty, pretty quickly. So at the end of the day, you know, I tell a lot of employers like, hey, we don't even charge a retainer like a lot of recruiting firms. We just want promised interviews. So if a company comes to us, we're not going to charge you for a retainer fee.

Just give us three promised interviews and we want the dates and times. And we'll put our candidates in front of you. And then they impress them. Like, oh, wow, totally demystified what I thought about veterans. Yeah, we know. We know. And that changes a lot of perceptions. You just got to talk to them and you recognize, hey, these are people too.

So for those who aren't fortunate enough to work with you guys, do you have some advice for companies interviewing veterans or looking to interview veterans? This is the question that's comes up all the time. It comes up from every company I work with and it came up in the SEAL teams and you've probably heard me talk about this. It's like, guess what? It's really hard to judge people. It's really hard to judge people. It's really hard to judge a book by the cover. And we, you know, I was in, you watch people going to the basic seal training course.

And you look at a group of 10 people and you're not going to know who's going to make it through and who's not going to make it through. That's the way it is. The only way to figure out who's going to make it through is to put them through it. Yeah. That's the only way. Now, so what I recommend to companies all the time is when you, you know, Yes, you want to do a thorough interview. Yes, you want to give them scenarios.

Yes, you want to put some pressure on them and figure out where they're coming from. But what you really want to do is say, look, we're going to bring you on as a contractor for 90 days and see what you're like. See what you're like and see if you can really do what it is you say you can do and see if you're going to lose your temper and see if you're going to get crazy on some minute thing that doesn't really matter and see if you're going to work hard. All those things are things that you need to explore when you're dealing with a hiring situation. Yeah. So like standard best practices. Yeah. Treat them like anyone else. Standard best practices.

Cool. Standard best practices. I mean, you could, the only thing I'd say is when you do have a veteran and or you're looking to hire a veteran, again, going back to the technical skills that they may or may not have, that's okay. Take a look at their technical skills and say, you know what? Are they in the ballpark? And can we give them a little bit of leniency?

Because we know that they've got some experience and some leadership skills that we're can bring the table. And they've got some discipline. And they've got some people. skills that they can bring to the table. So all those are all those are good things. So one of the services, it's worth mentioning that, you know, basically this test drive before you make a final offer, we actually will work with companies to set up a veteran fellowship for recently separated veterans. So they get this great veteran for anywhere from six months or 12 years at a industry

standard salary as a fellowship working in there. And then they get to make that final determination at the end of the six months or 12 months of, yes, this is a good candidate for this company. We want to make a final offer. And then what it allows veterans to do as well, sort of, you know, the altruism of the side of the company is you're giving them great industry experience where they can come back to us and we can find another company that is a right culture fit. So it really benefits both parties.

Great. Let's go a little bit broader. So, Jocko, you've been on a warpath writing in the past couple of years. Check. I'm curious about the next book. So dichotomy of leadership. Diacotomy and leadership. This is another one I'm writing with,

we actually wrote it. It's with Laif once again. And the title is dichotomy leadership. And so as, which is actually chapter 12 in extreme ownership is called the dichotomy leadership. And the reason for that is, the reason that we ended up writing a whole book about it now is as we work

with companies over the past years and, we'd look and see what problems were they having. Where were the issues that they were having? And it was always trying to find this balance in the various dichotomies of leadership, of which there is, I think, an infinite number. Number. So, for instance, as a leader, if you go too far in one direction, you become a micromanager. And now your people lose any initiative and they stop taking charge of things and they stop,

they stop moving forward without your permission. So you're micromanaging them too much. And that's bad. You go too far in the other direction where now they don't, they don't even know what your strategy is. You don't communicate with them enough. They don't know which direction they're supposed to be heading. And they're all kind of wandering around. That's bad.

So what you have to do is you have to balance those two. Is it possible for a leader to be too close to your people where all of a sudden you develop these close relationships where they stop listening to you because now you become more of a friend than a leader? Or is it possible? So that's bad. Or you go too far in the other. direction where you don't know who anyone is and you don't know what they're what's going on with

their family life and you can't relate to them at all well then that's bad as well so there's all these dichotomies that you as a leader have to balance and it's it's the hardest thing to do as a leader because you but because the reason is because both answers are right both it like is it right to be close to your people yeah absolutely so you should be close to them but is it right to like have enough distance that they still yes that's right too so that it and Every direction is the right answer, but what you have to do is balance them. And so that's why we wrote this entire book about all, well, many of these dichotomies that exist. And then once you recognize that there are dichotomies, then you can start seeing them in everything.

You know, there's ones that we didn't write in the book that, you know, we still, we mentioned in the book. We didn't write whole chapters about them. But, you know, is it possible to be too direct in communicating with someone? Well, yes, it is because you can be offensive to them. Is it possible to not be direct enough? Yes, it is because now they don't really understand what it is you want. Yeah. So these dichotomies exist everywhere as a leader.

And that's why we ended up and as we dealt with companies and we saw where the friction points were, it was always because they were getting off. They were losing the balance in various categories of leadership. And that's why we wrote the whole book about it. What are the dichotomies you guys deal with in managing each other and working together? In all of us working together? You too. Well, I would say that the biggest thing for me is, you know, I'm pretty hands off. you know and I I give intent on how things are supposed to go and Mike is so so I lean towards being a little bit too hands off Mike leans towards being a little bit too aggressive and so it's it's it's fine but occasionally I look up and I see where Mike is and I'm like hey Mike come back brother come back and that's the way it is but you know I mean we've been working together for a long time and known each other for a long time and and that's the way

You know, the whole, our whole company of Eschalon Front, it's all, you know, it's all, that's the, that's the way we operate. We know each other very well. It makes it, makes it, makes it a lot easier that we don't have to build relationships. The relationships are already there. We already know, we already know each other's strengths and weaknesses. And whether it's strengths and weaknesses or just like, I know Mike's going to be aggressive. I know if I, if I put Mike in a room with, you know, like a shovel and a match, I'm going to come back two weeks later and he's going to have like, dug to the you know through the ground and built a fire and we're creating some

business around whatever right that's what's gonna happen and that that's that's fine so I just need to be aware of that and and then he knows me like he knows me all that I'll be like yeah go get some you know go and then occasionally he goes oh you know what I should probably tell jocco that I'm about to make this major move right now yeah and so and it's the same thing you know throughout all the whole crew so Mike I'm curious about your answer but I have another question for you because this is how it works with most startups. So, all right, you and life start Eschelon Front, right? And then you hire like one buddy and then you hire two buddies. And before you know it, like you're at 10 and you've maybe run out of buddies you want to hire. What happens if Eschalon Front goes to 100 people? Or will you cap it before that happens? No, we won't cap it. We'll hire the right people. That's what we'll do. We'll hire the right people. And most important, well, there's a bunch of things that are equally important. Number one, we'll hire the right number. Hire the right people number two when people come on board

Before they come on board we'll make sure that they understand where we're coming from once they're on board We'll make it really really clear how we roll right? Okay, how we roll how do they say that in the business world They say our culture right they say this is our culture like that's how you would say it I'd say like this is how we roll this is who we are yeah this is what we do and When people get on board and they recognize that this is like This is not a game this is actually what we do and this is actually what we do and this is is how we roll, then people will either get on board with the program or they won't. People that don't get on board with the program, that's okay. I don't dislike people that don't get

on board with the program, but I'm not going to work with them. I'm not going to work with them. There's plenty of people out there that want to work hard and want to get after it. There's plenty of people out there. There's also plenty of people that don't. And that's okay. We'll bring people on board that want to get after it. Right. Well, there's also different styles of getting after it. Okay, explain those to me. Well, I mean, okay. So I often break it down into personality types, right? So I'm generally, uh, maybe skewing towards Mike's direction, um, in terms of like really getting into something and then putting my head down and just doing it solo. Um, and I generally don't require input from other people once I know. It's like, all right, this is

what's happening. I'm doing it. Uh, I prefer. to work alone on this project and I can get the shit done. Check. Yeah, you're right. Other people need to be affirmed the whole way. And those styles don't necessarily align perfectly if you build that whole team. Yeah, you're going to end up with different types of people on every team just like I said earlier.

So, and you are right. I didn't really understand what you were saying. But yeah, there's people that move forward in different ways. And there's some people that. And that's one thing. Like, for instance, with span of control, right? Like, you know, there's a number for span of control in combat. It's four or five people.

In the business world, it's seven or eight people. Generally, those are the numbers that get thrown around. However, if you're in control or if you're running a team and everyone on the team is a players, guess what? You can control more of them because you don't have to give them as much direction. If you have a bunch of substandard players on your team and guess what, they're going to need more direction. Guess what? In your average team, some of them are. It's a bell curve.

And so there's some people that you don't have to give much attention to. You're a guy that puts, Craig, get this project down. You're going to get this project down. You put your head down. You're going to get after it. And I know it's taken care of. Bill over here. Oh, Bill, can you get this project done?

Well, yeah. Okay. And I know that Bill's going to need a little follow-up. Nothing major, but I'm going to have to give him a little pat on the back, a little nudge to make sure he's getting his job done. Yeah, absolutely. You have to modulate your leadership depending on the people you're dealing with. Now, this doesn't mean that you change your personality. This doesn't mean you're a different human being.

It doesn't mean you're two-faced in any sense, but you have to modulate your interaction with different people depending on the type of person that you're dealing with. I think that's, in my experience, that's been one of the hardest leadership problems. Like, not problems, but challenges. Like, just getting used to dealing with different types of people and recognizing that, like, I'm in a heads-down mode right now,

but Jocko needs a lot of help right now. And unfortunately, I have to give them time. And again, that's one of the best things about what we're doing now is bringing people that have dealt with all these situations, Right. And dealt with all these different types of people. And they have learned to recognize these things. And so now we give them some technical skills.

We get them out in the field and they crush it. Man, I'm going to have to compete with these guys. All right. Mike, what are the dichotomies that you think you deal with with Jocko? I want to go back to it. You know, this is easy. And Jock alluded to it. We've built trust and credibility in Jocko's eyes since 2006.

So what I view Echelon Front as is, basically task unit bruiser from the Battle of Ramadi rebranded. So when you just talked about who we are and how we roll, when Jocko and Lave came to me and they're like, come on board. It's like, okay, I already know who we are and how we roll. And, I mean, they threw me into the mix pretty quick. I did one event with Jocko, one event with Lave, and they're like, go forth now and perform.

And with Jocko and, you know, Jock was, again, the task unit commander to us all. a manner to us all. It's easy. And, you know, with Jocko, it's one thing. Perform. Do your job and do it well. I know you have the capability to do it and utilize the principles of extreme ownership and the laws of combat.

And you will succeed. It doesn't mean we will not. I mean, we will fail here and there. But the great thing about, like, Jocko and Taskina Bruiser is there was no zero defect mentality, as I like to call it. We are not perfect. We are flawed like every other human. We will fail. and then we will sit down and we'll learn from it

so that we never make that mistake again. And one of the best, the best military unit I ever worked for, bar none was TASCying and Bruiser. And I never saw a level of humility within the military like Tasking and Bruiser ever again. And that was early in my military career.

I was eight years into the military at that point. Yeah. And that's one thing I did want to bring up a little bit was when we were talking earlier about screening people, right? And basically, I was saying, like, hey, we're going to screen people and make sure that they're on board. And it makes me sound like I'm sitting here saying, we're the judge of everyone that's in the military. That's absolutely not true. And there's so many people in the military that are far superior in every skill set that I have ever had, even at my absolute prime.

We there's there's there's thousands and thousands and thousands of people that are far superior to me in every way and I'm stoked that I will have the opportunity to give those people out to companies where they will go and crush it because believe me on the same in the civilian sector I meet leaders all the all the time in the civilian sector that are unbelievably awesome leaders and guess what they want they want more good people they want more good people so for me to have this opportunity really not as a judge and I apologize for coming off like hey I'm judging or we're judging or we're screening and like no actually we're looking for people that are better than us and I know them I know them I know people that are better than all of us and those are the people we're going to bring in and turn them loose with these companies again with with companies in the civilian sector that are incredible incredible companies with incredible leadership that want more good people And you know what?

There's companies in the civilian sector that maybe they have some leadership issues. And this is something that I saw a lot when I was running training. You have a seal platoon or you have a seal task unit. When I first started running the training, I wanted the platoon commander and the platoon chief to be the leaders. I was like, these guys. And if they weren't the leaders, I thought it was wrong. And it didn't take me long to be, it didn't take me long to get to a point where, it's hard to find good leaders.

To have two good leaders in a CO platoon and to have them actually be the platoon commander and the platoon chief was actually ended up being very, very rare. And I realized that it didn't matter that much. It was optimal. But what I really wanted was a couple really solid leaders in the team. I didn't care where they were in the team. They could be the lowest ranking guy. They could be in the middle somewhere.

They needed to be good solid leadership. And if you had one or two, if you had two really, you need two good leaders. If you had two good leaders in a seal platoon, the seal platoon was going to do awesome. And it didn't matter where they were. If they happened to be the platoon commander, great. If it happened to be the platoon chief grade, if it happened to be the leading penny officer, great. That was super. If it happened to be an E5 that had done two deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq and had a lot of experience and had stepped up and got after it and was a good leader, he would make things happen.

And he would do it in such way where he wasn't stepping on people's toes, but he would still get the respect to the boys. It was awesome to see. And so when we go to companies now, like people always say, well, the CEO is messed up or or my leader's messed up. It's like, that's okay. You are going to work for people that aren't necessarily the best leaders in the world. That's fine. People ask me, what do you do when you have a weak leader?

I'm like, I'm happy. If my leader's weak, I'm stoked. I'm going, hey, boss, you know, I got this. Hey, thanks for your support. We're going to keep over. We're going to be over here doing what we do. I'll let you know if we need anything. We really appreciate it.

Here's the credit on the last things we did here. You take it. Go make yourself look great. That's what I'm here for. And you build that relationship. and you go get the mission done. Yeah. That's what you do.

So again, I just want to make sure that we're not sounding like, hey, we're the supreme judges of the world because we're absolutely not. We do happen to be lucky enough to have contacts in the military community and now contacts in the civilian community. And we just want to help those two great groups of people get together and kick ass. Man, I think it's so great. How do you recommend that companies set up their structure, such that, you know, the intern that just started, if they have a great idea, let's ship it. It's happening.

Do you have advice on that? Yeah, it's called decentralized command. It's called humility, right? So decentralized command, extreme ownership, this is the fundamental concept of, hey, we're going to listen up and down the chain of command. We're going to let our frontline people, who knows better? If Mike's in the field with his platoon and I'm back in the forward operating base somewhere and he needs to make a decision, who knows to make a better?

decision is it me or is it him it's it's him 99.9% of the time there's that small percentage of the time where I happen to know because I'm in a I'm I'm in a further away position that there's enemy moving in or that there's a support element coming to him and I can say Mike don't go west hold what you got there's a support element coming to your direction right now and he goes okay thank you and and so but most of the time he's in the field and he says hey this is what I see this is what I'm going to do and I say awesome do it let me know how we can support you or here's some elements I'm going to move to support you so that's decentralized command the the biggest hindrance to decentralized command is ego

is me going you shut up Mike and do what I tell you to do you don't know what you're doing you're junior to me you haven't been as long as me you haven't been as long as me you need to listen to me yeah no actually I'm stoked when one of my subordinate leaders comes up with a great plan that that makes me that makes me that makes me eminently happy because now I can say, oh, Mike, that's a great plan. You know what? I couldn't come up with that plan. You run and execute it.

Now who has ownership of that plan? It's all Mike. And he's going to run with that plan and he's going to make it work. He's going to overcome any obstacles. That's what's going to happen. Why? Because he created the plan. It's his plan.

As opposed to me dictating a plan to him and saying, this is the way you will do it and you won't deviate from what I've told you to do. Well, then what's he going to do when he gets out in the field and hits an obstacle? He's going to go, oh, you know what, Jack was plan? sucked and we're not going to go that way. You know, you set up a culture like that where even a new guy. Yeah. Where his or her opinion matters,

then you set up a culture for success. And I'll tell you why. And I'm going to refer back to the Task Unit Bruiser. They set up front that, hey, even if you're a new guy, you lead. And if everyone's leading, we win. And then you fast forward through the one year of training that we had leading up to the Battle of Ramadi.

The new guys on their first deployment within Tasking and Brewers, were some of the high-performing individuals within that task unit. I mean, the, the, the accolades that came out of it, you know, unfortunately, we lost some new guys. Michael Monsor, who made the most selfless sacrifice by jumping on a grenade to save three other seals. Brand new guy. Ryan Job, laying down cover fire for his team to move, brand new guy. Mark Lee, you know, killed during a firefight, again, covering his brothers.

And then, you know, I can say Johnny Kim because he's, you know, in the public now, but Johnny Kim, now a NASA astronaut was a brand new guy who was awarded the Silver Star during that deployment. Why? Because they set the culture up front that lead. Speak up and lead. We're listening. No doubt about it. If you think that me, okay, because I was in charge of task in your prison, if you think that I can see. sit there in any combat situation and control like a puppet master, the elements that are out on the battlefield, it's literally impossible to. I don't care who you are. I don't care how good you are. You don't have the cognitive capacity to do that. And it happens in businesses. And again, we see this all the time in businesses as the businesses grow. You talked about going from 10 people to 100 people. Well, if you've got a CEO that's a good, solid leader and he likes to control

things with 10 people he can pull it off for sure with 10 people he can pull it off he's a workaholic he's working 22 hours a day 20 hours a day 18 hours a day he's on he's in every meeting he can he can pull that off when he gets to 100 people you can't pull that off anymore there's it's it's physically humanly cognitively impossible to do that so if he hasn't or she hasn't set up the culture strong enough that people understand how they're supposed to operate, then they're not going to operate properly. So, you know, that's, that's real commander's intent. And it is.

It's culture. Commander's intent is, or a culture is almost like a broad commander's intent that overlays the entire, the entire group of individuals that you work with. Everybody knows, everybody knows, this is what we're, this is what we're moving towards. Right. So with this new book, are you referencing stories from, Ashland Front because I've kind of been wondering if the podcast is now going to create a feedback loop. So you're maybe not this book, but maybe the next book is actually not even your stories,

but it's stories from Vietnam, World War II stuff. So I, the next book, Dicotomy of Leadership is still stories from our military career, from our combat experiences and from the training that we went through. And it also does still include stories from Eschalonfront from all the companies that we've worked with. Um, down the line, yeah, there will be other books that address other things learned that I've learned from the podcast. Yeah. So I've, I've got that book probably coming out about a year after this one. So I've already done that deal. Yeah. Dude. Yeah. How many hours a day do you write? I write, I write an hour a day when, when it's on. So I write about a thousand words an hour. And I sit down and write for an hour and I got a thousand words. And I write for an hour and I got a thousand. So, you know, for for the kids book, they're about 25 or 30,000 words. So that's that's 30 days, 25 or 30 days worth of writing. A thousand words that you keep every day?

Yeah. I, I do pretty decent out of the gate. Nice. I do pretty decent out of the gate. As a matter of fact, the second Warrior Kid book, I write when I was about to finish it, I probably had another 5,000 words to finish. And it was just through the first draft. and I had some stuff go on where I just had to finish it and I submitted it.

And it was almost, it was almost good to go as with very few edits on the first, literally the first. Like normally I would have edited it, edited it three or four times. I did not edit it. I edited it once it got back. You know, they gave it back to me. But yeah, so I write, I write harder. Yeah. Do I throw stuff out sometimes?

Absolutely. Yeah. But even if you write a thousand words, when you throw out 400. guess what you got 600 words yeah yeah you're cooking and in two or three months you got 50 or 60 thousand words and you're done so it's it's a it's a good little system the other thing about it for anyone that's interested in writing you probably you aren't but if you write every day you don't have to go back and read which you wrote the previous day because you still remember it for me if I take two days so if I write today and then I don't write tomorrow and

then I go to write again I got to go back and read that one day is enough for me to forget really where I was at. Whereas if I write today, I write tomorrow, I can pick, I can literally just start typing again because I know where I was at. So if you're going to do it, that's the disciplined manner to make it happen. Yeah. I mean, that's all like maintaining some kind of flow state has always been a challenge for creative projects.

I mean, like I've, I've so impressed with you guys, the writing, the podcast, like constantly doing these muster events. Like, you just got to stay on it. You got to keep the beat going because it's so easy to let it slip. And you're like, what was that event in New York like? How did that go? You know? Yeah.

And I think the other thing is you have to force if you don't put, if you don't, if you don't, if you don't force it out of yourself, it's not going to happen. If you don't force it out of yourself, it's not going to happen. The book or the project or the thing that you want to do, the podcast that you're going to do, if you don't, if you don't put discipline around it, it's not going to happen. I mean, I've been putting out the podcast for 133 weeks. and I've missed one. And, you know, it's like, that's, that's putting, there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of pressure when you're reading a book and I like a book and going back. There's a lot to do.

It's, it's no joke. And, but if I didn't have the timeline, then guess what? It's real easy to say, you know what? They don't really need one. I don't really, I can, I can push this off. Yeah. It's really easy to do that. Yeah.

It's really easy to do that with everything in life, whether it's a workout, whether it's writing, whether it's a project you're supposed to be doing, whether it's sitting down at a computer screen to do and learn some some technical skills that you know is going to make you a better, a better candidate for jobs. All those little things. It's discipline equals freedom. That's what it is. Yeah.

101. Yeah. Discipline equals freedom 101. Are you guys working on something right now? Like, how are you improving yourself? I'm so curious. I did like, I read discipline equals freedom on the flight over here. It was like, oh, man, this is awesome.

Like, I'd read the book. I listened to the podcast. So like, I think I get this, but book is great. But it's this framework for life, right? So whatever it might be, you just apply it. Are there specific things? Because I think I'm, I'm curious about you guys just as men, like things that you are personally working on right now.

Whether, yeah. I'll absolutely take the first. I'm working to becoming a better father, quite frankly. And people might think that sounds weird. Well, why aren't you like trying to push your business forward? Oh, no, no. That is a requirement. we're working 90 hour to 100 hour weeks writing learning more about talent acquisition

how to solve the systemic challenges that that is that is going to happen that's a requirement but it's how do I balance my time really well to give you know my kids more my time because and Jacco and I have talked about this a lot is when you're in the military your family comes second and that might sound harsh but when you have 40 seals under your command that are your responsibility to bring home. You know, they usually come first. And I think the families understand that. It's just some of the unsung heroes in the military are absolutely the wives and the children.

And so now that I'm out, I'm trying to, you know, achieve that dichotomy within my life to be a better father. Do you have one? Do I have one? No. I've got an infinite list of things that I'm trying to get better at all the time. I'm not getting an infinite list of things I'm trying to get better at all the time. And that's just the way it is. I hate sucking at stuff.

And I suck at all kinds of stuff. I'm trying to get better. Dude, that's the podcast. I keep meeting me people who are just like the top 1% in their field, science, business, whatever it is. And you're saying, all right? That's a whole lifetime spent learning physics. And, yeah, just to do the interview, it takes a couple days to prep.

You know, it's a good thing. For guys like Jocko and I, and for, Anyone in any industry that wants to be the best, it's more about the process. It's not the end state. Like, I find, and I'm sure you'll agree, I find very little solace in achieving anything. It's like, okay, I achieved it. Yeah. Immediately like, no celebrating, like what's next.

I just don't find any gratification. But, you know, if I look back at the process, I'm like, okay, that was pretty badass. That was good. Let's move on to the next thing. And I find that amongst high performers, high achievers, is that they're just never satisfied with the end state. It's all about the process. Yeah, what's next?

Dude, it's so important to get good at something too. Because that, tying on to that, like, before I had gotten really, really good at something, I didn't fully understand that process and what it feels like. And then you just apply it to something else. What do you really, really good at? I have a cycling world record. Some pretty good at riding bikes. Oh, dang.

Yeah, yeah. It was two days straight climbing up and down a hill, so it's most elevation in two days. so yeah but once you but it was the same thing man like it wrapped up and like all right dude is it amazing it's so cool like you're in the Guinness Book World Records that's awesome

what can I do in three days exactly exactly and like you know there's someone chomping at your heels so yeah that's awesome yeah I've got to say this is why you would love the guys we place in your company it's like

the one thing about the teams that I loved is it was the competition made the world go around and like if Jocko like you know could shoot a target 10 times within 10 seconds it was like I would be there all day until I could get nine seconds and then you'd hear that I got nine seconds and it creates this culture of you know everyone gets along they realize the competition makes everyone better that was the great thing about the seal teams everything is a competition yeah yeah well it's cool

you're surrounded by him still uh guys we got a bunch of questions for you from the internet shall we all right um so first question Alex Badalian asks, what are some military tactics startups could adopt to increase effectiveness and throughput? Yeah.

We covered it according. Yeah, I mean, but right there, it's a cover and move is the first thing that I think about because if we're not supporting each other, then we're not going to be able to get things done that we need to get done.

So work, cover and move means teamwork, work together as a team. And I actually just had this with this discussion with a group, a company, they had they had reordered and put simple as the first law of combat and I kind of joked around it was it was the the president that had done this and I joked around with them and I said hey there he said we know I did it because it looked good on this graphic and I go it's cool I get it that it looks good in the graphic but the reality is they are in an order of of cover move is number one and the reason cover move is number one is because that's teamwork and if we're not working together there's there's we're not moving forward we're not going to be effective we're not going to be effective we're not going to be effective. vision so when you look at what your mission is and you look at your submission

that's nested inside the greater mission don't just focus on that make sure you look as a company like how are we gonna help the other elements that are inside of our team how we can help them move forward don't just worry about yourself worry about everyone that's covered move I would go one further take the laws of combat covered move simple prioritize and execute decentralized command and actually push up on your wall. Basically, why I love startups is it's the fire team. You have limited

resources. You have a small team. Everyone has multiple tasks to do. And you have a burn rate that you have to manage. And to increase the throughput and drive revenue as quickly as possible. I mean, the laws of combat. If you reinforce this within your company, it will work. If you truly

understand what they mean as a small team, you implement them. You will succeed. Right on. Next question. All right. Alan asks, hey, Jaco, from your experience in seal and as a seal, in the business world, do two or more co-founders leaders have a higher success rate? What are your thoughts on a solo founder with a strong team or rather a solo founder creating their own strong team? I think it's a little strange to think about someone doing something solo and achieving anything really incredible. You're going to need a team. You're going to need people. And the more you trust your team and the better relationship you have with your team, then the better you're going to do. So I think if you're a good, I think the critical thing here is you have to, you have to think about what you're going to do.

You have to think about what you're going to do and how you're going to get it done. If you think you can accomplish things by yourself, you're probably a little bit mistaken. You might even be a lot mistaken. If you think you know everything better than everyone else and that's why you should control everything, it's probably going to end up problematic. To have somebody that's a good sounding board is important. Now, the other thing I would say about this is it's also important to find people and work with people that complement who you are, that complement your strengths and your weaknesses. If you're a person that has great ideas but is bad at execution, you need to find a partner. that's really good at execution.

If you go out and find a partner that also has incredible ideas and you two put this company together and it's filled with a bunch of ideas, guess what? No one's going to execute those ideas. You're not going to go anywhere. If you're a person that can execute well, but maybe you don't have some of those creative thought processes, you find someone that's got good creative thought process. So you want to partner with people absolutely and you want to partner with people that making you better.

in court of that and before that is kind of like seeing the world as it is. That's a problem I see with a lot of solo founders. They're just like, I got this figured out. And then they're a little bit delusional. We see that in the military all the time. We call it emotional attachment.

So, you know, I would sit and jocco would pass, hey, we need to execute this mission, go ahead and plan it. And I'd plan it for three days. And during that process, because I think I'm coming up with this great plan that's going to wow him. and then I present it.

And I've been one inch from viewing the plan for the last three days. And then he comes in from a six-foot view. He's like, oh, good plan, but you need to switch this, this, and this. And like, this will go wrong if you do it that way. And then you know what I do? I lash out. And I'm like, yeah, I usually wait for him to leave and that, that mother, you know, but he's right.

And so the worst thing you can do is become so emotionally attached to your product that you stop listening to who? Your customers. Because in the military, we say the enemy has a vote in all plans. So does your customer. And so the second, you've got everything figured out and you stop listening to your customer, you need to step back, detach emotionally. Yep. And reassess.

Yep. Do you guys do that by journaling, just by it through experience? Yeah, I can tell you. So people ask me about detachment a lot because I talk about detachment a lot. Because detachment is, it's definitely one of the key technical. skills to have as a leader and as a human being, by the way. And so there's all kinds of things. And I actually wrote about it in the kids book quite a bit. I wrote about how you emotionally detach because the kid loses his temper and gets in trouble. And guess what? You've got to learn to detach. Well, guess human beings do that. Adults do that all the time. So this idea of detaching is something that you absolutely have to focus on. How do you do it? Well, you have to learn to recognize when you are getting emotional.

Because normally it's to detach from the chaotic situation. So there's a, there's a, if you're on a construction site and something's going wrong and you step back so that you can fix it. Or you're in a manufacturing plant and something's going wrong and you step back so you can fix it. You're stepping away from it physically. That's, that's good. There's also situations where you need to step away emotionally. And that's a little bit harder. And, you know, the examples that I talk about, me, first of all, if you start getting like this, well, that's you need to put yourself in check.

You're obviously getting emotional. You also, if you're getting ready to send an email and you're typing really hard on that, that's probably not a good email to send. You should wait 24 hours before you send that email up the chain of command. And then there's this part, and this is probably, this is the one that is most valuable. When you're looking at a situation and you're feeling the anger, the frustration, things aren't going the way they're supposed to. to go much of the time you need to step back and you need to look at yourself and figure out why you are getting emotional and most of the time I would venture to guess the reason that you're getting emotional the reason that you're getting mad is because of your own ego

someone has done something that's offended your ego someone has come up with a plan that's better than yours someone has come up with an idea that's better than yours someone has has dared to confront something that you've said when you should not be questioned and those ego flare-ups cause all kinds of emotions and so if you don't learn to detach from those

and do real assessments and figure out logically not emotionally what the problem is then you will have some significant issues so learn to detach yeah I mean oftentimes the people that yeah when I was growing up the people that bugged me the most had a quality that I didn't have or wanted to have more of.

And then you're just like, oh, that guy is more articulate or he's stronger or whatever it is. And that was it to a T. Welcome to my life, Craig. All right, next question. Let's see. Armando Nevis asked to Jocko. I liked your episode strategy and the way of the samurai. I think that was Tim Ferriss, right?

So I did one with Tim Ferriss that was based on the novel. Musashi, which is an incredible, incredible novel. I mean, it's a historical fiction based on the life of the great Japanese swordsman Musashi. And then Musashi is the guy that wrote the Book of Five Rings. And I covered the Book of Five Rings first before I did Musashi, just so people would have that background on it before we got into it. But Book of Five Rings is pretty famous.

I think that was episode 80. then the one with Tim was episode 100. Cool. And that one is, I think that's one of the few that's over four hours long because when I got done, I was joking with Tim Ferriss. I was like, well, there's the, you know, he's got the four hour work week and the four hour chef. And I was like, well, there's the four hour podcast.

Totally. And we did it right after he had gotten out of some really psychotic fasting and oath of of silence deal. So he had been in silence for, I want to say like 10 or 15 days, some long period of time. And it was awesome. It was awesome to cover that. So that's the Musashi. Okay.

Great. And then his question is how much does the daily warrior mindset, how much do you implement on a day-to-day basis? I was thinking earlier when Mike was talking about the TAP program that gets you out of the military. And I was thinking to myself, so you take a guy like myself that's been indoctrinated and then lived and breathed and eaten and slept nothing but military for 20 years. And then you go, okay, look, we're going to send you this program for a week and that'll get you ready. You know, it's kind of laughable, right? It's a little bit laughable at least. It's going to take some more transition.

So for me to think that for me to think that I think about the warrior mindset, I don't. It's just part, it's just my day. It's just the what I'm saying. I don't even know other ways to think. I don't actively engage because what's that the statement about the fish in the water, right? Oh, the David Foster Wallace talk? The David Foster Wallace. This is water.

This is water. That's like me. I don't even know that I'm in this. I'm just swimming in it. And that's just how. As Echo Charles says, that's just how, you know, that's just the way it is. So I don't actively think about it. But all I've been doing my whole adult life is this.

Right. That's all I read about. That's all I write about. That's all I do. Are you equally maniacal? I think so. You talk about the perception of that. It is strange.

it's they're almost as like a negative connotation on like being in the military these days. There is still, you know, it was it was alive in the Vietnam War, you know, like the military is evil. The military is awesome. Like, it is the foundation of our lives. Like, hey, you know, I was a troublesome kid in Atherton what they did. Like my father saw it firsthand. He had, you know, bad experiences during Vietnam with the Army and absolutely loves the military. We love the military.

You know, war is a tragic thing. but it also serves some great purposes. And we reference and we make every analogy, a military analogy, because we saw the good. And actually, you know what? The one outcome from Echelon Front and Echelon Front Overwatch is I hope more kids sign up in the military. I honestly do.

It is a great platform to take a young boy or a young girl and turn them into a outstanding leader. but I am maniacal about my service and the service of our brothers and sisters, man. It was awesome. And there's just so much good they can do outside the military after they're done, whether it's six years, 20 years, or 35 years.

Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right. All right, we got a couple more just real quick. Cool. All right. So, Ryan Carl Mercer asks, hey, Leif isn't here, but I think this is relevant for all you guess.

What's your favorite MRE? None. I'll put it you this way. MREs are designed to meet your caloric intake in very austere environments. If I had my way, would I take a prime rib? Yeah. Bone in. Prime rib.

Out to the field, cook it and eat it. Yes, I would. But, you know, Ryan, you don't see me coming home to my fiancé, Jordan, saying, hey, why don't we cook up some of those MREs? that does not happen they are awful but they are a good tool when you're in an austere environment

yeah when you get hungry enough they're a beautiful thing they're unbelievably delicious when you're in a you haven't eaten for a while and there's people that get really good at they basically can cook with them they basically

not cook like they can chef what is that called they can create they can create these will mixures that make things even better. Like they doctor them up a little bit? Yeah, they they mix them together in a certain way and they put the certain spices with this or whatever. And so there's people

that get good at that. I was never one of those people. When I was a young enlisted, I was a radio man, so I always carried a lot of weight and I didn't have room to carry much food. And so the only thing I would carry from MREs was the main meal which is one pouch, like all the other stuff I didn't bring because it was just too much stuff. And so

I just carried the main meal. And as Mike said, in a normal day-to-day life, I would not like one. My first deployment to Iraq, we ate way too many MREs, and I hated them. We only ate them for about a month, and then we started getting some good, better food. And so that month, I really didn't like them after that time period. But if you're really hungry, man, they're a beautiful thing. Yeah.

And to make a second bike reference, there's a saying from bike touring, that's hunger is the best seasoning. whatever. Yeah, no, that's great. I always talk about, you know, water. Yeah. Like, if you've never, if you've ever been thirsty before, then you remember how amazing water is. Water is beautiful.

And the only thing that hurts worse than lack of water is lack of air. And lack of air doesn't last very long, but that feeling is the worst, followed by water. and I've never gone hungry more than four or five days. So I'm pretty lucky in that regard. But reading about some of the people that suffer without food for extended periods of time, talking to some of the guys that were in the Hanoi Hilton, living on a ball of rice one in the morning, one in the afternoon for six years, you know, and losing 100 pounds per person.

It's just unbelievable. and it's also unbelievable how those guys in that austere situation would would sit there and talk about food for hours and hours and hours. You know, Captain Charlie Plum was on the podcast and just to hear him talk about, you could still see a little light in his eyes when you talk about good food. And same with Bill Reeder who was in a horrible situation as well and ended up in the Royal Hilton. But to see those guys, you know, you go talk to those guys. you really get to appreciate the incredible blessings that we have and how freaking easy our life is. Yeah. And you realize how much you can suffer through.

Indeed. All right. Next question. Spencer Clark asks, is culture more decided by micro or macro policies and interactions? I don't think that's a question that I don't think it's one or the other. I think if you're behaving on a macro level one way and then in the micro level, you're not reflecting that, that's not going to wash out correctly.

And the opposite is true. So you have to, you have to husband both of those macro and micro cultures equally, and they're both equally important. If you're a guy that treats everyone at a macro level one way and then on the front lines, you treat them a different way, guess what? Guess what your culture is? It's actually, it's actually even worse. It'd be better just to have a hard attitude that everyone is. that everyone just knew where you came from, but to be two-faced is actually worse.

So you got to treat them equally. Everything matters. If you're in a leadership position, everyone's watching you. Every little statement that you make, you know, you walk down and you look at someone's plan or you come down and you look at a new task that's come down and you go, oh, this is this is a bunch of crap. Guess what everyone now thinks they 100% think it's a bunch of crap. If you come down and say, hey, look, this is going to be challenging. I think we can knock this out of the park.

And then people go, oh, yeah, we're going to knock this out of the park. So the way you act on a macro level, the way you act on a micro level as a leader is going to create the culture that you're going to live with. Mike approved. All right, let's wrap up. I want to hear about the muster in San Francisco. We have a lot of Bay Area listeners. You guys are doing another event. What's the deal?

Yeah, so we started doing the musters a few years ago. And basically what happened was we as are, as demand increased for echelon front services, the price point went up. and it continued to go up through the years until it got to a point where people that were in small to mid-sized businesses really couldn't afford to bring us in because it just cost too much money and we couldn't afford to do it because we had too much stuff on our plate and to satisfy so there was a lot of demands for hey can you just do you know how can we get you how can we do this how can we make this work and so what we ended up doing kind of I wouldn't say as a whim but We definitely made an aggressive decision. I think it was in July when it was, okay, you know what? Let's have an event that people can come to. And we'll do it in San Diego. And that's what we did.

We called it the muster. It was a two-day, it's a two-day leadership event. We did. And, you know, I said, Leif, I said, and Jamie Cochran, who's our ops director, who's an incredible asset and incredible person. But she was, she had done some event management before. and it was, hey, I don't know. And it was definitely concern.

And I said, you know what? Let's go for it. Let's go for it. Here's a worst case scenario. Worst case scenario, 33 people show up. We lose some money. We make a great event for them. We learn from it.

And maybe we adjust it and we can get better in the future. But worst case scenario, we lose a little bit of money, no factor. And we'll move forward. So we said, okay, we'll go for it. We booked a place and we put it out there. We sold it out. And so we had the first monster was 350 people in San Diego. And then from there, we went to New York.

We went to Austin. We came back to San Diego. We went to Washington, D.C. We sold out every event. And they're awesome. They're intense leadership, pragmatic leadership information on how to become a better leader. We're doing this one October 17th and 18th in San Francisco, California. And obviously, we got clients up there that.

it makes it easy for them it also is makes it easy for people that might not be able to afford the echelon front full package services which the primary the primary line of operation for echelon front is we do we do long long range leadership alignment programs with companies so we go in for three months six months a year in some cases and we get entire leadership teams aligned and working together well and overcoming their problems and their issues, which, by the way, every single problem that companies face, every single problem that companies face is a leadership problem. And if you can come up with an example, if someone wants to text me or hit me up on Twitter with an example that's not a leadership problem.

Like, oh, we have a problem on our manufacturing line. Guess what? The leader is not set up that manufacturing line correctly. Guess what? We're not going to meet our numbers. What? There's a leader that isn't driving his team in the correct manner. We aren't hiring the right people. Well, guess what? We aren't leading correctly to get the right people in the door. So every problem that a company has is a leadership problem. And that's a hard statement

for people to stomach because what that means when you're in a leadership position is, wait, Jockel's saying this is my fault. And I am saying it's your fault. But the good thing is it also puts it in your hands to control it puts it in your hands to change and lead correctly from the top from the middle from the front and make things happen and that's when you that you know that's the title book extreme ownership when you recognize that hey when you stop saying hey you know what it's the market and it's these other people it's the competitors did this and we didn't expect that the minute you stop blaming everyone else and everything else and you say okay this is mine I'm going to fix it here we go the moment that you say that is the moment you start to win

Greg, I got to tell you, so my first muster was in May in D.C. And so I have no experience with events like this, you know, with Jocko. I got to see how this sort of rolls out. And at the conclusion of it, you know, I came home and, you know, went to my fiance and I'm like, dude, these guys are changing lives. And just like, you would see the eyes open during the two days. And actually, funny enough, I live in Austin. saw a guy that worked out in my gym and owns a supplement company in Austin.

I'm like, hey, you're from Austin. We started talking and I'm like, well, dude, have a great time in the muster. And lo and behold, I run into him at the gym probably like four weeks after the DC muster. And he's like, dude, that has changed our entire management philosophy and now we're in the process

of filtering it down all the way to the frontline troughs. But he's like, we've rethought how we lead. And so how is that relevant to Silicon Valley? dude, I couldn't think of a better program for a startup team to attend, and you will see the eyes open. And they'll be like, okay, we're doing some things well. We're doing some things really well. But we're doing a lot of things the wrong way. And, you know, you talked about this earlier question from Alex.

You know, it will increase your effectiveness. It will increase your thorough. So, yeah, I'm telling you. I'm a believer. 100%. Wow. Is it weird? having all these fan boys now?

You know, I don't think I really have, like, fan boys or whatever. I think what's cool about, even, you know, even going to the muster, like, we are there. Yeah. And, and, and you know, you hear me talk about the muster. There's no backstage. There's no green room. We're out there. We literally sit with the audience and talk with the audience the whole entire time.

And so it turns into it. So it's not really an audience. It's just a big group. And do we present? We absolutely present. Do we get feedback? Yes. Do we do Q&A?

So I don't really think I'm, I don't really think that we have fanboys. I think we have people that that are on the same train with us and we're all going in the same direction. And is it cool to be with a group of people that want to go and get after it? Yeah, you know what? It's awesome. It's awesome. I'm stoked that this whole thing has turned out this way. And it's awesome to meet people all over the world.

I mean, people come from all over the world to come to the muster. And it's awesome to meet people from foreign countries, from America, from every corner of this country that are in the game. They want to crush it. And they show up and they teach us and we teach them and we all move forward together. It's awesome. Where can they find out more? The muster is extreme ownership.com. That's where you register.

There's only one more we're doing this year. And yeah, that's it. Extremeownership.com. echelon front is echelonfront.com. Jocko podcast is joccopodcast.com. That's it. That's it. Mike, you on Twitter?

I'm on Twitter. At M.J. Sorelli. Reach out. Right on. Love the conversations that go on the Twitter, especially this guy in Mark and Driesen, right there from your hood. Man, I love the,

the Jaco picture with the hair that I saw floating around. Like, oh, yeah, yeah. That was awesome. Yeah, that's from the, that's from the 90s. Yeah. 90s. Okay. Long hair.

That was the cool seal back then. That was when I was younger and thought, hey, man, this is going to be, this is, this is how I should be. That's a look. Yeah. Dumb. What can I say? Yeah, it wasn't that bad. All right.

Thanks, guys. Thank you so much. Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it, Craig. Thanks, man. All right. Thanks for listening. So, as always, you can find the transcript and the video at blog.

Dot Ycombinator.com. And if you have a second, it would be awesome to give us a rating and review wherever you find your podcast. See you next time. Thank you.