Jocko Podcast 66 w/ Echo Charles – HR McMaster, Liars, Defending Bad Leaders, Dealing w/ The Grind

This is Joo podcast number 66 with Echo Charles and me Joo Willink Good evening Ekko Good evening At 3:25 the troop once again received orders to attack I gave an order full of enthusiasm I told the troop we attack in 5 minutes to the 70 easting This is the movement we have all awaited Although we knew the general locations of large enemy units we had not received detailed intelligence about the enemy we were to encounter I had a feeling however that this time we would meet the enemy Lieutenant Goautier known for his dead pan sense of humor asked on the radio “What kind of contact can we expect?” I replied “Enemy contact ” He said “Roger that’s the best kind ” and the troop rolled forward through the blowing sand And that’s a that’s a little excerpt from a personal account from a guy by the name of HR McMaster who you may have heard about recently coming into a higher profile job in the current administration But he’s a very interesting guy and I wanted to talk a little bit about his experience and some of the things that he said about just the way he sees things And so he was in this big battle in the first Gulf War as a captain So you know in charge of a a group of 140 guys and he fought in this battle called the Battle of 73 Easting And I’m going to go to a little excerpt from Wikipedia that sort of gives you the the broad idea of what was going on The Battle of 73 Easting refers narrowly to the violent armored combat action that took place in the final hours of second ACR’s covering force operation in the zone of second squadron and in the northern third of the third squadron zone In the battle four of second ACR’s armored cavalry cavalry troops troops E G and I with with troop K contributing to I troops fight totaling about 36 M1 A1 tanks defeated two enemy brigades the 18th Brigade and later in the day the 9inth Armored Brigade So it’s interesting You have a legitimate tank battle right? like a World War II style tank battle that took place in the first Gulf War And that’s what this is talking about And McMaster at the time McMasters was in charge of Eagle Troop So they got some good details in here And again this is very simple one of the best clearest descriptions of what happened It was actually on Wikipedia So I just pulled some of that So here we go A little bit of what Eagle Troop did At 4:10 p m Eagle Troop received fire from an Iraqi infantry position in a cluster of buildings Eagle Troop Abrams and Bradley’s returned fire silenced the Iraqi guns took prisoners and continued east with the two tank platoon leading The nine M1 A1 tanks of Eagle Troop destroyed 28 Iraqi tanks 16 personnel carriers and 30 trucks in 23 minutes with no American losses So you got nine tanks against 28 tanks and 16 personnel carriers and 30 trucks and the nine tanks win That’s that’s just domination battlefield domination And there’s a bunch of technical reasons as well as leadership reasons that we’re going to get into next At about 420 Eagle crested a low rise and surprised an Iraqi tank company set up in a reverse slope defense on the 70 Easting Captain McMaster leading the attack immediately engaged that position destroying the first of the eight enemy tanks to his front His two tank platoon finished the rest So they’re just they’re just hammering hammering these Iraqi tanks 3 kilometers to the east McMaster could see T72s Those are the tanks that the Iraqis are using in prepared positions continuing his attack past the limit the 70 limit of advance So the way maps are set up there’s there’s coordinates on them and each one of the coordinates has each one of the the lines that runs north south has a has a label to it 69 70 71 72 73 So he had been told not to go past the 70 easting That’s what they’re saying That was his limit of advance These are all really common military terms They say “Hey you’re not allowed to go past this road or this this coordinate on a map ” And they just call that a limit of advance So he was supposed to stop at 70 He has to get after it a little bit harder Mhm Continuing his attack past the 70 limit of advanced he fought his way through an infantry defensive position and onto high ground along the 74 easting And this is going now that I mixed this in here with the Wikipedia which was a very simple explanation of what happened Now going into a personal account that McMaster wrote himself when he was a young captain So here we go from Captain McMaster’s account Lieutenant Gford called me from the command post to remind me that the 70 Easting was the limit of advance We were already beyond it I told him “I can’t stop We’re still in contact Tell them I’m sorry ” Gford explained the situation to the squadron headquarters on the radio Major McGregor was forward with our tanks and fully understood the situation If we had stopped we would have forfeited the shock effect we had inflicted on the enemy Had we halted we would have given the enemy f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far f far further to the east an opportunity to organize an effort against us while we presented them with stationary targets We had the advantage and had to finish the battle rapidly We would press the attack until all of the enemy were destroyed or until they surrendered So that’s a pretty bold move to just push and it’s also a risky move and I’ll tell you the biggest risk of it is having a blue-on-blue situation unfold I think it makes a lot easier the fact that this was daytime and that that just makes it everything so much more clear in the daytime but you could obviously make some mistakes if you’re if you’re pushing that limited advance is there for a reason and you might have some other group that’s controlling that sector You also might have air power that the air power might be told hey if you see any vehicles moving past 70 easting you can start dropping bombs So you do have to be very cautious when you make an aggressive move like this And I bet McMaster himself would go back and say “You know what I should have done is I should have given him a heads up hand pushing past 70 Easting Please you know let everybody know ” So now this is going back to the to the wiki account here There he encountered and destroyed another tank unit of 18 T72s In that action the Iraqis stood their ground and attempted to maneuver against the troop This was the first determined defense the regiment had encountered in its three days of operations Still the Iraqi troop had been surprised because of the inclement weather and were quickly destroyed by the better trained and better equipped American troops After defeating that force McMaster sent a scout platoon of two Bradley’s north to regain contact with Troop G In doing that the scout platoon encountered another Iraqi tank position of 13 T72s which they destroyed with tow missiles So as these guys are just everywhere they they find these these these Iraqi tanks they’re just crushing them And this is going back to McMaster’s account again I jumped on top of my tank to give the crew room to crossload ammunition while I monitored the radio I surveyed the fires which the which surrounded the troop It seemed as if the action had only lasted seconds I felt no significant emotion during the battle I think I had simply been too busy I realized that I had not eaten all day I tore into an ME packaged and devoured a dinner of cold potatoes and ham I gulped down some water and the quick infusion seemed to slow the flow of adrenaline So I thought that was interesting He He was just doing his job you know he wasn’t getting emotional and just getting it done And then the ceasefire comes the next day And that’s it The war is over Like I mean this the the war was 72 hours and the war is over And so he kind of talks about what he was thinking here once they hear the ceasefire Back to McMaster’s account Eagle troop had taken no casualties I and other soldiers offered prayers of thanks to God We did not gloat over our victory We had simply done our part in liberating Kuwait from the treachery and inhumity of Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard henchmen We surprised the enemy on the 26th of February That surprise and the bold action and teamwork of the troop soldiers contributed to the route that is now known as the Battle of 73 Easting In general the Iraqis were unprepared for the United States Army Americans are better trained and equipped The true decisive factor however was the American soldier He is the best at what he does and absolutely dedicated to serving his country Our soldiers were aggressive in battle yet demonstrated great discipline and compassion for their enemy I am grateful that I had the opportunity to serve with them in this action Captain HR McMaster E Troop 22 ACR So and and I didn’t go into it too much of I didn’t go into it at all but they took a lot of prisoners as well They weren’t just killing everyone There was a lot of people that were surrendering a lot of Iraqi soldiers that were surrendering and they were doing their best to take care of those guys And there were also some that pretended to surrender and then attacked So they had a little bit of both And they they as as McMaster said they showed great discipline and compassion for the enemy Now I didn’t you can you can go online and you can read the full account of what this whole battle felt like but he he recently wrote so now he’s a lieutenant He was a captain at the time an 03 and now he’s a lieutenant general a three star And there’s a a website called the strategybridge org or and there’s an article there which is written by McMaster and he goes through the lessons that he learned in that battle and the the the article is called something along the lines of hey guidance for small unit leaders So I thought there were some some good solid lessons learned that he brought back So I’m going to go go through them Number one lead from the front Leaders must be forward to gain a clear picture and make decisions As Sergeant Harris engaged with 25 mm Lieutenant Gotautier moved forward to assess and further develop the situation So so to explain that you’ve got a sergeant that’s like engaging the enemy and then the lieutenant he doesn’t just sit there He goes forward to find out what’s going on and assess what’s happening So as a leader when your troops are getting busy doing the work what can you do? Don’t get don’t get target fixated on your own guys and the work that they’re doing Look around Go forward Move to a different position where you can see more Back to the book Goier fired a tow missile into the center of the enemy position in the village to orient our tanks After our gunner Staff Sergeant Craig Cotch fired a subsequent tank round to Mark Center all nine tanks fired high explosive rounds into the village simultaneously to suppress the enemy position Despite the secondary explosions in the village to its south First Platoon maintained its primary observation to the east So he’s basically marking their position Lieutenant Goautier basically marks the position So not only did he move and observe what was happening then he’s directing everyone else once once he does that So it’s a really simple combat You hear it all the time Lead from the front Now can you get too far forward? Yes you absolutely can If you’re if you’re the guy that’s actually engaging the enemy and you’re having to you know either with your weapon in a tank or your weapon your personal weapon on your your your rifle and you’re the leader and you’re actually shooting bad guys well then you you got some issues because you need to be looking around You need to be seeing what the next move is going to be So lead from the front but always the dichotomy is there Don’t go so far forward that you lose the ability to look around and observe what’s what’s happening M number two shoot first If you know where friendly forces are and there is not a danger of civilian casualties do not hesitate to shoot or conduct reconnaissance by fire The side that shoots first has a tremendous advantage Staff Sergeant David Lawrence was the commander of First Platoon’s northernmost Bradley When his gunner Sergeant Bradley Feltman said “Hey I’ve got a hot spot out there I’m not sure what it is Lawrence responded “Put a toe in it See what it is ” A toe is a tow missile Lawrence identified the hot spot as a T72 as the turret was ripped from its hole in the ensuing explosion Our troops experience was consistent with Irwin Raml’s observation in his World War I book Infantry Attacks And this is Raml talking I have found again and again in encounter actions in encounter actions the day goes to the side that is first to plaster its opponents with fire shoot first and how do I translate that real simple be aggressive now he points out very clearly here you know where there’s where you know where friendly forces are right you know where friendly forces are because obviously that can go sideways and by the way when he pushed past his limit of advance now also no one knew where he was So he needed to be careful in that situation But that that aggressive being aggressive with fire is something you have to do And and you can see like they saw a hot spot out there on their thermal I don’t know what this is Yeah Put a toe in it It’s we we know it’s not good guys Okay Blast it Yeah we had uh I’d been in Baghdad on my first deployment for like a couple days and we went out on a on an operation and anyways when we were coming back we got ambushed and it wasn’t a big deal but like you know we received fire and so we returned fire and and basically we returned fire heavily and and we were getting after it This is when we didn’t have any armor on our Humvees They were just they were just open They didn’t have doors So we didn’t have armored Humvees Not many people did in Iraq at that time in 2003 So what we had done is we had taken the doors completely off and then we’d taken our seats and turned them so they faced outwards So we and we we’d have our feet like hanging out of the Humvey or maybe sitting on these these big rails that we’ built along the side And so we’d be facing out It was you were in a pos you were basically in a position to shoot at all times And because the way a Humve is set up with doors on either side and then people in the back you had 360 degrees of of visibility and of fields of fire coming out of every Humvey And so when we got we were driving we were on the we had just done a little operation We were coming back and as we were coming back we started taking fire and so we just returned fire and it was a massive return of fire like I think the enemy was pretty overwhelmed with it and we got back and everyone was kind of like well we kind of we kind of laid it down you know we went through a lot of rounds in a very short period of time and the reason I’m saying this story is because that was my platoon and so we get back and and we’re kind of debriefing and then the next day we’re going out another operation and I don’t know if this story is going to make any sense but the next day we’re going out on another operation and one of my bros who wasn’t who is my senior enlisted adviser at the time but he wasn’t on that mission that we just did and he’s he goes “Listen if you guys take contact you need to shoot back You can’t be afraid to fire ” And I made some combat like “Don’t worry we’ll be good to go No one here is afraid to shoot ” And then everyone laughed because they knew that we put down a lot of lead If you want if you want to trade bullets with us we we’ll play that game We don’t mind trading some bullets So the same thing though if you start feeling like you’re going to get contacted and that’s another thing they used to teach us you know when you’re in a firefight where do you think the enemy might be? And we heard this a lot The the Korean Marines were talk the the Marines US Marines that were in Korea were talking about that hey we’re going to put fire down where we think the enemy might be cuz that’s where you know you’re looking at a an area and there’s a a good covered position There’s a bad guy’s probably going to be there Put fire on them Yeah Shoot first Lesson number two from General McMaster All right Number three Fight through the fog of battle Be prepared for confusion and concurrent activity As we suppressed enemy positions in the village while Lawrence was launching a missile the troop received permission to advance to the 70 easting I instructed first platoon to resume to resume movement to the east Lieutenant Peschek did not respond immediately because Lawrence was reporting on the platoon radio net Contact contact east tank Simple orders and complete reports are essential to maintaining common understanding in battle So there’s another example of got to keep things simple And he’s specifically talking about how you communicate with other people on the radio That’s what he’s talking about You have to communicate simply and clearly in order for people to understand what’s happening That can mean if you give try a lot of times you see this people try and give too much detail Mhm Right Listen to this contact Contact east tank That’s it Where’s the contact? It’s to the east What is it? It’s a tank That’s it That’s what we need to know Now everybody knows what’s going on If you said “Hey I’ve got a contact He’s about 480 m It is a T72 tank It’s moving in an eastward No we don’t care about any of that right now We don’t care about any of that Just tell us what is happening And that’s one of the things that can help you fight through the fog of battle Now that contact is actually a standard operating procedure I’m assuming which is because we would do this in the SEAL teams You’d give what type of contact it is what direction or sorry what bearing and what distance So you’d say machine gun fire 150 m 4:00 And now everybody gets a very quick read of what’s happening because you can’t not everyone’s going to see where the firing came from So even having a standard operating procedure to keep your your verbiage limited is important There’s calls the whole the all everything we do in the SEAL teams basically has a very simple call that you can make and and it’s broken down into like three words Contact front online You know that’s it Everyone knows what to do Every seal you tell them contact front online they know what to do Number four follow your instincts and intuition As Sergeant Feltman launched the tow missile I decided to go to a tank’s lead formation and instructed green and white the tank platoon to follow my move First platoon pulled in behind as the tank wedge moved forward and covered the tank’s rear Third platoon retained responsibility for flank security Got to maintain that flank security As we began moving forward first platoon responding to the contact report on their platoon radio net began firing 25mm high explosive munitions across the front It was a little unnerving for the tanks As we moved forwards I gave first platoon a ceasefire order Red one this is black six Cease fire The two tank platoon were slightly delayed As our tank came over the crest of the imperceptible rise north of the village Sergeant Craig Cotch the gunner reported tanks direct front I counted eight T72s in prep in in prepared positions They were at close range and visible to the naked eye So he’s talking about trusting your instincts and trusting your intuition And my and that’s what he’s doing here He’s seeing things happening He’s seeing things unfold He’s like he says “Hey go go go into this formation ” Boom Everyone goes in this formation He’s acting off of instinct But what’s important here is where do your instinct and where does your intuition come from? It comes from training and experience That’s where it comes from Now it’s could be hard to get combat experience We hadn’t had a tank battle in well since World War II There’s been no major tank battles And here these guys are no none of these people have ever been in a tank battle before And now they’re in a tank battle So how do you do that? You got to do realistic simulated training That’s what you have to do And you have to make this the realistic It’s got to be surprising It’s all the things I talk about all the time It’s got to be surprising It’s got to be unknowns You got to do things that people aren’t expecting That’s what you have to do so that they can develop their instincts so they can develop their intuition Because if you’re inexperienced and you don’t know what you’re doing and you just decide you’re going to follow your instinct your instinct can be wrong Oh yeah it can be wrong And the le it’s it’s like jiu-jitsu right? Mhm You take a new person in jiu-jitsu their instincts are going to be wrong Period End of story Right I mean the classic is if someone is mounted on you then they and you Yeah You either do one of two things You try and push them off of you you’re getting arm locked or you turn around you turn over and they’re choking you But each one of your instincts is wrong Your instinct needs to be elbow escape or you know uh oompa escape Got to be one of those two things But those instincts only come from training It’s the same thing with these combat scenarios how you have you can’t just tr don’t just trust your instinct as a matter of fact Yeah Make sure you’ve trained yourself Make sure you’ve prepared yourself and then make sure that you detach cuz that’s another thing that can screw up your instincts is your instincts You’re feeling pain You know I was rolling with Andy yesterday He will put like pain on me He’ll he’ll put his elbow in my ear or or something And all he’s trying to do is get me to to make the instinctual move Yeah of I’m going to reach up and pull his hand away If I do that I’m getting arm locked right? You can’t do that Have to just accept the pain Y just just deal with it Go grind harder Andy Bring it Yeah Here your instinct if you start taking fire from a certain position that could your instinct could be oh we’re going to get down and move over here You got to remember you got to detach enough that you say oh I need to check my flank I need to see what else is going on here I need to assess these other situations that might be unfolding Yeah that’s the and that’s where that kind of exper well and training come in and a lot of it can be things that aren’t really conscious too and it comes with like let’s say you know in a relationship situation Let’s say I know I’m sitting over here trying to talk about war and fighting and you want to go straight to relationships this early in the show I’m not even necessarily saying you know romantic or boyfriend girlfriend any kind of relation If you know the person really well you can tell when something’s off just a little bit and be like “Hey is something bothering you?” The guy be like “Oh no no all good “ And they can you know they can re be real convincing with “Yeah yeah no I’m all good ” But you you know your instinct because you have so much experience with them you know? Yes you’re right And you’re right in the fact that you know when I talk about deescalation right if you come in and you say “Hey Joo this is crap with the way we’re doing this ” If my instinct is like “No it’s not crap “ That’s my instinctive response Like no screw you I’m right You’re wrong But what I really need to do is say “Hold on a second Detach Let’s assess what Ekko’s saying ” Ekko normally doesn’t do this right Why is he doing this? Something is going on Don’t I’m not going to trust my instinct right now Luckily like you said through training through knowledge right in the situation I know that you don’t act that way So yes follow your instincts follow your intuition but make sure that you’ve trained to develop them And also I like to question them When I feel something I just don’t go with it immediately I’m I want to go with it and I most likely will go with it but there’s also a possibility I say well not a possibility but when I say “Hey we need to move here ” I go “Okay what could be happening? Is this a position that the enemy might be in? Is this a a move that could be getting set up on me?” No I think I’m pretty solid Or at least as I move there I’m going to be aware of it I’m trusting my instinct but I’m being cautious Yeah Yeah It’s crazy how like you hear that talking police you know like cops have like good in instinct because of like the repetitious patterns of bad guys Yeah for sure I was going to say something else too Oh there’s plenty of times where if you don’t trust your instinct you will get crushed right? I mean you think about in a jiu-jitsu perspective but when you get good you’re not thinking about anything You you have to just use your instinct You’re you’re training your muscle memory is what’s working And the same thing with police you know they get to a point you get into a situation if they’re not going off their instinct they’re going to get they’re going to get burned Yeah Cuz they learned Yeah Yeah And that’s the trained instinct How you were saying like that’s the train as opposed to the untrained instinct can kind of get day one being a being a police officer out on the beat They’re not going to have they’re not going to have a fraction of what you deal with that cop 10 years later and and that cop’s like “Hey listen I see your hand I see you got some blood on your knuckles I know what happened here Tell me what’s going on “ You know what I mean? Whereas a young guy might be getting in your face about something Yeah Where a guy’s like being uh too nice You know how like the cop can tell like “Oh this guy’s being too nice ” You know what I mean? And there’s like a mediocre level of niceness that’s like “Okay that seems like like he’s mellow ” But if a guy’s being like too aggressive or too defensive or too nice they can tell you know there’s something up suspicious You know maybe a new guy might not be able to tell that You know what I mean? Yeah No absolutely All right next one Number five Use standard unit fire and battle drills Aim to overwhelm the enemy upon contact and retain the initiative through speed of action As Sergeant Cotch fired the main gun and destroyed the first tank I sent a contact report to the troop This is black six contact east Eight armored vehicles green and white you with me? Sergeant Cotch destroyed two more tanks as our tank platoon accelerated movement All nine tanks began engaging together as we advanced In approximately one minute everything in the range of our guns was in flames Fire distribution and control allowed us to destroy a much larger enemy force in a very short period of time So how do they do that? Good solid disciplined standard operating procedures And you I’m telling you think about how simple this is He he says this is black six contact east eight armored vehicles green and white Are you with me? That’s the whole that’s the whole detailed plan Mhm Hey there’s bad guys over there We’re moving east Let’s go And everybody says “All right we’ve done this thousands of times We’ve drilled it We rehearsed it What What do we do right now?” And they probably had little standard operating procedures Hey guys on the you know on the left flank are going to start flying at the left vehicles guys on the right flank And they had all these procedures work out so that in less than a minute victory Less than a minute So develop those good standard operating procedures disciplined procedures And when I talk about freedom on the battlefield this is exactly what I’m talking about Discipline equals freedom on the battlefield Because when you have those disciplined procedures he doesn’t even have to He has the freedom to maneuver He has the freedom just to say “Hey guys there’s the enemy Let’s take care of them ” Boom It’s done Yeah Next one Number six Foster initiative Every trooper understood how our platoon and the troop conducted fire and maneuver Our tank driver Special Specialist Christopher Hedonog knew that he had to steer a path that permitted both tank platoon to get their guns into the fight He turned 45° to the right and kept our frontal armor towards the first enemy tanks we engaged He drove through a minefield avoided the anti-tank mines reporting on the intercom Sir I need you to know we just went through a minefield He knew that it would be dangerous to stop right in the middle of the enemy kill zone Heeden Scog saw that our tank platoon had a window of opportunity to shock the enemy and take advantage of the first blows that Sergeant Cotch delivered So clearly this is decentralized command right? And you just think about this first Every trooper understood how our platoon and the troop conducted fire maneuver Everybody knows what to do Everybody And here’s this kid He’s probably 18 years old What is he? A specialist? Yeah specialist He’s probably 19 years old And he’s got he’s leading right? The the commander’s in charge but there’s a guy that’s driving that’s picking the course where they’re going to go And again think about this The captain he’s not saying like “Hey six degrees to the left six degrees to the right get 40 ” No he’s not giving any of those orders And if you think about it could he have been able to do that? He’s dealing with all this other stuff He’s dealing with fire control He’s dealing with uh the position He’s reporting back up the ch He’s got all this other stuff going on He doesn’t have time to tell this guy where to go but it’s decentralized command That specialist that is leading the tanks from an actual driving perspective He knows what to do He knows the procedures And so he’s able just to do it He even knows he knows it so well that when he sees that we’re in a minefield he he assesses the threat Okay we’re in a minefield But I see three mines I’m going to steer around them the best I can but if we stop we’re going to be we’re going to be open to getting attacked by the enemy So you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to keep moving And he made that decision on his own The right decision He made that decision on his own because he understood the overall objective and the procedures that they would follow and what was most important So that’s a great example of decentralized command Number seven use tanks to take the brunt of the battle Tanks drove around the anti-tank mines and Bradley’s and other vehicles followed in their tracks Our squadron’s S3 tank commanded by Major Douglas McCarth McGregor hit an anti-tank mine but the blast damaged the tank only slightly It continued the attack and made a repair When we halted we ran over anti-personnel mines but they sounded like microwave popcorn popping and had no effect on armored vehicles The rate of our fire of our tanks allowed enemy tanks to fire only two errant main gun rounds at the outset of the battle and two later as the troop assaulted Enemy machine gun fire had no effect on the troops advance The psychological shock of our tanks advancing undaunted toward their defensive positions paralyzed and panicked the enemy So if you don’t know anything about what I’m talking about I apologize but tanks are massive A1 Abrams tanks are massive and they have extremely heavy armor They’re 68 tons And as he’s saying here these even the anti-tank mines aren’t aren’t aren’t stopping the tanks And the the anti-personnel just is nothing But Bradleys are smaller not as biggie and not as big and not as heavily armored So the the tanks are laying down you know driving and then the Bradleys are just falling in their tracks in case they hit any mines They’re the they would hit the Abrams tank But my what so what I take about so how can we apply this to you know everyday life how can we apply this to business you know they’re saying technically specifically use tanks to take the brunt of the battle right this this is the way I look at this from a business perspective and from a life perspective play to your strengths right what is the strongest thing they’ve got are these tanks and it’s the same thing that we run into in business and it’s the same thing you run to in life and jiu-jitsu everywhere What are you what are you strong at? What are your strong areas? That’s what you focus on That’s what you use to lead your your advance Now do we train for our weaknesses? Absolutely You know we do that all the time Do we do we when we have a weakness in a business we don’t go hey let’s just cover this up No we we focus on it so that we can prove it But if we’re going to go to market with something let’s go to market with something that we’re good at right? If we’re going to uh if we’re going to try and set up some expansion into a new area let’s set up an expansion into a new area that we’re familiar with that we’re good at that we’re strong in Let’s not say “Hey you know what? We’ve been making we’ve been making cars for the last 50 years Let’s go over here and make computers ” No we’re going to make cars Okay let’s make trucks too We know how to build vehicles That’s what I’m saying And and you see this all the time with jiu-jitsu What do jiu-jitsu guys do? What they should do which is try and try and play to your strengths right? Yeah In competition In competition Right Of course when we’re when we’re training we pray to our weaknesses right? We want to Oh I’m I’m I don’t like people being across side Cool Let them get across side Yeah I don’t like being on the bottom Cool I’m going to be on the bottom But in competition what are you good at? How do you get the person to play your game? Yep That’s the question Yeah And that’s everything too right? Like even at work you’re gonna train the new guys but you’re not going to send the new guy you know to make contact with the you know potential client or something the big client Yeah Don’t send the new guy Send the strongest Send the tank Send the M1 Abrams to meet the new client that’s got big potential So play to your strengths Use tanks to take the brunt of the battle Next be prepared for misfires and degraded operations Lieutenant Jeff Danto’s tank crew came around the village destroyed an enemy tank and acquired a second tank at very close range that was traversing on them A round got stuck in the breach of the cannon meaning this this cannon’s not going to shoot anymore The loader grabbed hold of the loader’s hatch kicked the round in the brereech came up and the gunner Sergeant Matthew Clark destroyed the T72 In another example Staff Sergeant Diggby ordered Private First Class Charles Bertubin to reload tow missiles Bertubin could not get the cargo hatch open However when the lightweight wrestler guy’s a wrestler good for him kicked the hatch release he sheared it off Rather than tell Bradley his Bradley commander that he could not get the toes reloaded he jumped out of the back door while the vehicle was under small arms and machine gun fire He climbed onto the back of the Bradley loaded both missiles then tapped the his Bradley commander on the shoulder while yelling “Toes are up “ Staff Sergeant Digby nearly jumped out of his skin because he thought in Iraq he’d climbed onto the Bradley So here’s these little malfunctions going on with your weapons And what do you do? You deal with it And I think I said this on the last podcast with Leif We have a little saying nothing works everything sucks Right? And that’s what you got to prepare for You count If you rely 100% on those radios those radios aren’t going to work If you rely 100% on your weapon okay how you better learn those drills You better learn how to how to fix and adjust your weapon very quickly Go to your secondary whatever the case may be You got to drill those things You got to be ready for problems You got to be ready for Murphy’s law to kick in H next number nine Coordinate between platoon and ensure mutual support The burning tanks and personnel carriers of the enemy’s first defensive line formed a curtain of smoke that concealed enemy further to the east As our tanks assaulted through the smoke we saw other enemy armored vehicles and large numbers of infantry running to get back to subsequent trench lines and positions We destroyed the enemy armored vehicles quickly and shot the infantry with machine guns as we closed the distance with them Pockets of enemy soldiers threw up their arms Our soldiers were disciplined Turrets turned away from any enemy soldier with his hands raised Tank platoon leaders asked the scout platoon to pick up observation of the enemy infantry as their Bradleys came through the smoke The scouts saw that the enemy had used a false surrender to gain a better position Enemy soldiers were reshouldering their rifles and rocket propelled grenades Our Bradley surprised the enemy and killed them before they could engage our tanks effectively Cover and move Cover and move Real simple That’s what that one is Mutually supporting That means we’re helping each other out That’s what cover and move is Next number 10 Take risk to win Because Eagle Troop pressed the assault the enemy could not respond effectively Right? That’s that you’re going to find that in any case you want to get the person on their heels You want to get your opponent on their heels As we cleared the westernmost defensive positions our executive officer Lieutenant John Gford broke in on the radio I know you don’t want to know this right now but you are at the limit of advance You are at the 70 easting I responded Tell them we can’t stop Tell them we’re in a contact and we have to continue this attack Tell them I’m sorry We That’s a part I already covered We had surprised and shocked the enemy stopping would have allowed them to recover As Irwin Raml observed in infantry attacks the man who lies low and awaits developments usually comes off second best It is fundamentally wrong to halt or to wait for more forces to come up and take part in the action Eagle troop continued to attack toward another very subtle ridgeel line on the enemy position on which the enemy positioned his reserve a coil of 18 T72 tanks Major Muhammad later told one of our troopers this is the enemy commander of this unit Major Muhammad later told one of our troopers that he had not known he was under attack until a soldier ran into his elaborate command bunker yelling “Tanks! Tanks!” By the time he got to his observation post all the vehicles in defensive positions to the west were in flames He ordered the reserve behind him to establish a second defensive line It was too late The Eagle troops tank crested the rise and entered their assembly area The tanks were starting to move out when we destroyed them at close range So it’s not only take risk it’s be aggressive That’s got to be your default mode Default mode is aggressive Press that attack And it it’s interesting when I mean clearly it happens in combat You start getting the upper hand Keep going Keep going And it happens in jiu-jitsu as well You know if you can get that person on the run you’re attacking them with two three four different things at the same time That’s when they’re done And that’s a bad feeling when you’re when that’s happening to you Oh yeah You’re falling behind in the oodloop and they’re just getting getting all inside your oo loop You’re defending something You feel the other thing happening Yeah Not good But that’s uh again take risk but yes be aggressive Now those were the lessons from this this one battle you know this one battle at 73 Easting And now obviously McMaster stayed in the army He went up through the chain of command and and now we’re going to go to 2005 2006 the battle of Talifar in Iraq which this this battle was led by who is now a colonel McMaster He was a captain at the time of this 73 easting battle Now he’s a commander He’s commanding the third ACR the third armored cavalry regiment And this is very similar to the battle of Ramani what happened in Talifar And the reason one of the reasons why it’s so similar is that Colonel McFarland who was the commander of the 11 AD that led the fight in Rammani that I was there to support the first thing he did when he went back to Iraq when when McFarland went back to Iraq for that deployment in 2006 he took over for Mc McMaster and McMaster was in Talifar So McFarland shows up in Talifar and says “Hey this is what I did I did a little something called seize clear hold and build This is the strategy we do We pushed into these enemy controlled territories ” And and then it had become so pacified in Talifar that they were able to take most of the 11 AD and send them down to Rammani And when they got down to Romani McFarland who is a brilliant guy had listened to everything McMaster said looked at how he did it and then applied the same strategy in Rammani Now he had to make adjustments to it for sure because it wasn’t exactly the same But luckily he was a smart creative guy that said “Oh we got to make these adjustments ” But he did it But the the overall concept came from what McMa from what McMaster did up in Talifar And so there was an article in the New Yorker written by a guy named George Packer and the article is called the lesson of Talifar Is it too late for the administration to correct its course in Iraq? And this this article came out April 10th 2006 probably three or four days before I arrived in Rammani in 2006 So that’s when this article came out And you can see he’s saying “Hey look is it too late to correct the course?” Well actually um a lot of people in 2006 weren’t even admitting that we were on the wrong course you know cuz what we were doing at that time and I’ve talked about this a bunch what America had been doing at that time is is going out grabbing bad guys one at a time two at a time and bringing them back to base and putting them arresting them capture kill missions And what what’s interesting is that’s that’s that’s an attrition That’s a war of attrition right? You have certain number of bad guys We’re going to go catch them all And it really wasn’t working It really wasn’t working That’s why in 2005 2006 enemy attacks were up 300% And you know 2005 2006 our whole country well I shouldn’t say our whole country but many people in our country including a lot of major politicians were saying it was unwinable and you know we we just need to get out It was a quagmire and all that stuff So that’s because we were not on the right strategy And actually if you take this and you apply it back to Hackworth when he basically said during the end of the Vietnam War and he said “Look we’re not going to win ” He wasn’t talking about we couldn’t win He was saying we’re we’re fighting the wrong kind of tactics We’re doing the wrong thing here You keep saying “Hey what’s our body count? What’s our body count? What’s our body count?” That’s a war of attrition Hey we lost this many guys You lost that many That’s an attrition warfare It’s World War I I mean I always use World War I as the classic attrition warfare Hey we’re going to go over the trench We’re going to kill as many of you as you can and hopefully it’s less than us We’re going to see who can last longer That’s a punchy That’s That’s Hey Echo We’re just going to stand here You punch me I’ll punch you You punch me and whoever goes down you know loses Well guess what? What do we look like at the end of that? We’re all beat up right? Both of us Doesn’t matter Doesn’t matter how good we are So these guys were thinking maybe instead of doing punches to the face we should do a little jiu-jitsu a little something a little bit more more tactically sound And it wasn’t just go out and grab bad guys just go out and try and kill bad guys because we learned 2003 2004 2005 that’s three years of doing those type of operations and real progress wasn’t being made It certainly wasn’t made in in Rammani at this point Again there was guys that were doing incredible work and you do have to go out and and attack the bad guys and go after those critical nodes for sure but we were focused so much on that that we were ignoring a lot of what was happening with the populace and and politically other other areas that needed to be addressed So this article came out and again it’s from the New Yorker written by George Packer Came out April 10th 2006 And here’s we’re going to this article Back to the article The lesson that McMaster and his soldiers applied in Talifar were learned during the first two years of an increasingly unpopular war When we came to Iraq we didn’t understand the complexity What it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions He said in his horse energetic voice “When we first got here we made a lot of mistakes We were like a blind man trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things Later he said you got to come in with your ears open You can’t come in and start talking You really have to listen to people I mean okay that is just this whole thing is just a a great summary of a humble man right? He’s saying look when we came here we didn’t understand the complexity That’s humility He says “We didn’t understand what it was like to live under a brutal dictatorship ” That’s humble He says “When we first got here we made a lot of mistakes “ He’s not saying “Oh we did everything right ” No we made a lot of mistakes We were like a blind man trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things So they’re trying He admits that we’re trying but we’re breaking a lot of stuff Later he said “Listen listen You got to come in with your ears open You can’t come in and start talking Okay leaders around the world pay attention to that right there You don’t need to come in and start talking Come in with your ears open and listen And he says you really have to listen to people Very clear very great leadership guidance right there Back to the article They didn’t even want to say the i word One officer told me it was the spectre of Vietnam They did not want to say the insurgency word because the next word you say is quagmire The next thing you say is the only war America has lost Vietnam And the next thing you conclude is that certain people’s vision of war is wrong So uh we had a hard time again just as America admitting hey this isn’t just a bunch of thugs running around There’s an organized insurgency here We need to fight it like an insurgency We had a hard time making that mental transition as a nation And I’ll tell you when I I’ve told this story before When I got to Romani and I looked at what’s going on I literally read the counterinsurgency manual that was written by basically by General Petraeus who’s a brilliant guy and these guys McMaster I think McFarland they all helped him write that article or write that book So this was a totally different attitude And you know you hear it here that people people back in DC they didn’t even want to use the word insurgency They didn’t want to use that word cuz it it makes everyone think of NAM and we lost right? So the article um going going a little bit deeper on that Back to the article the Pentagon strategy in 2003 and 2004 was to capture was to combat the insurgency simply by eliminating insurgents an approach called kill capture KV Sep a retired special forces officer who now teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California said of the method “It’s all about hunting people I think it comes directly from the Secretary of Defense I want heads on a plate ” So he’s talking about Rumsfeld right there You’ll get some people that way but the failure of that approach is evident They get Hussein They get his sons They continue to work every week to kill more capture more They’ve got facilities full of thousands of detainees Yet there’s more insurgents than there were when we started In dereliction of duty McMaster wrote that a strategy of attrition was in essence the absence of a strategy What a great line that is Right And so so McMaster wrote a very harsh critique of the Vietnam War and the way it was run Again not not a critique of the boots on the ground and the troops that fought but a critique of those back in DC that were running it And you know this is just this is just an incredible statement that a war of attrition is in essence the absence of strategy This is like okay what do you do want to do? Just going to we’ll go kill as many of us as we can Mhm Okay That’s if if that’s your strategy not a strategy It’s like when you get into an MMA fight what’s your strategy? The guy goes I’m going to punch him in the face until I win Right? That’s not a strategy Put my head down and start That’s not a good strategy Don’t don’t do that Mhm You need to have a little bit more strategy than that Yeah Um back to the article If we’re not stupid and we don’t quit we can win this thing And again what’s important this is 2006 This this major Mccclofflin Mccclofflin he’s another person that’s interviewed in this article He’s talking about like we could lose this thing right? So if we’re not stupid and we don’t quit we can win this thing Major Major Mclofflin said “History teaches you that war at its heart is a human endeavor And if you ignore the human side yours the enemies and the civilians you set yourself up for failure It’s not about weapons It’s about people “ That’s very It’s very true And I’ll tell you where it’s true It’s true in war clearly And it’s true in business too And you get people that don’t understand the human side of business They don’t understand that they’re dealing with human beings and they treat people like numbers they’re not going to be successful Now you also get people that go so far in in the other direction that all they care about is their people And guess what? Now they’re making bad business decisions and they’re hiring more people and they’re keeping them They’re not letting anyone go and they’re running themselves in the ground cuz their overhead’s too much and they cause destruction But on the other side you’ve got someone that’s a n bean counter right? Nope You you let that person go No severance or whatever limit You do that methodology you’re going to end up with no business either because the people because they’re people If you treat them like robots you’re they’re not going to work for you They’re going to they’re going to rebel against you the robot will do what the robot is told but people aren’t robots So you got to remember that human side and and obviously in war and that’s that’s one of the reasons that we’re able if we’re able to talk about this stuff to businesses we’re able to talk about combat leadership to businesses The first often times the first thing that the business that’s bringing us on has to get a grip on is the fact that we were in charge of people not Terminator robots Right? We Leif and I use that term all the time that people think “Oh you’re in the military Oh you’re running Navy Seals They do whatever you No No Not true They’re people And guess what? The enemy are people They have thoughts They have passions They have desires And guess what? The civilian populace that you’re working amongst Those are human beings too And they’re not just going to listen to what you say And you can’t just for instance can’t just throw money at them right? You can’t just throw money at them They don’t care about that money You you know it’s really interesting I I talked about this this news story I saw on Vice News of a guy going into he he was a and I don’t remember the reporter’s name but he’s a young reporter spoke Arabic and he goes into Rammani while it was surrounded by ISIS and ISIS was getting ready to take over and he’s saying hey he’s talking to just normal people and he’s talking to this one guy and he says you know the guy’s saying look we really need help we hope America comes back and the reporter says well why don’t you just leave you Why don’t you get out of here? And the guy says I live here right? I live here I’m not going anywhere That’s a human right? That’s a human That’s a sentimental value It’s like my house that I live in You’re not going to take my house from me Yeah Like if you if people came to try and take my house away from me there would be a fight Yeah And and it wouldn’t end well for anybody No That’s sentimental right? So you have to remember that these human beings are human beings and that’s the one of the key things that that McMaster really McMasters really understood really understood this fact and and you know I’m giving a lot of credit to McMaster but there’s a lot of I mean there’s way more guys that I’m talking about than I don’t have them not going through their names but there’s a lot of guys that contributed to this idea and did an outstanding job Um you know he’s getting the credit because he’s the guy in charge right? I’m giving him some credit because he’s the guy in charge But I guarantee if you asked him he’d say “Well no I had this captain that did this and I had this major that did that and he had all these people ” But he’s the guy just like if something’s gone wrong he’d be responsible Well some stuff went right So you get the credit there General Now he wrote these these four fallacies of warfare which I find very very interesting And so we learned kind of the tactical side of what he learned from his battle at the 73 Eastings Easting you know he had 10 lessons learned pretty tactical stuff right now we’re getting into a little bit more strategic level we’re talking about war as a broad in a broad sense And so here’s what he says about these four fallacies of war warfare There are four fallacies about future war that are preventing us from learning from our most recent experiences McMaster said “These fallacies are portrayed in such a way that they reduce risk to United States interest when in fact they exacerbate risk because they over rely on capabilities and they purposely ignore continuities in the nature of war “ Okay? So he’s saying “Look the the way they portray these things is it makes everything good for America but they actually make things worse for America because they ignore things in war that are always the same This is war we’re talking about The nature of war does not change Okay His first fallacy the vampire fallacy It’s a vampire fallacy It’s a vampire because you can’t kill it and it comes back every 10 years This is the belief that a narrow range of technological capabilities will deliver fast cheap and efficient victory in future war The latest manifestation is the belief in a new range of technological capabilities Everything from big data analytics to artificial intelligence to drones and robotics and so forth So so what does that mean? We have an idea that we can as a as a nation just we were so so technologically advanced that nothing can stand up to us and we can just use these precision weapons to take out enemy targets and then it’s over It’s a fallacy It’s a vampire It’s going to come back You can’t just kill it It’s going to come back And you know obviously we’ve seen we saw that in Iraq We had all kinds of technological advances over the enemy But they continued to come back And when we walked away they came back strong They were called ISIS Now I think that’s pretty self-evident what that means Now what does this mean in business and and in life? Well to me what this means is there’s no easy solution There’s no easy solution to things right? We look at something we go “Oh we can just do this We can just use some certain new technology or we can just use some app right? Oh if I get an app to track my diet then I’ll be good to go No Got to stop putting the sugar in your mouth to be good to go People want the shortcut They want to they they think that there’s an easy way to get things done and there’s not You have to do the work There’s a vampire out there What you got to do is you got to grab that vampire You got to cut its head off You got to soak it in holy water And then you got to dry its bones out in the sun That’s what kills a vampire All right? That’s the attitude you have to take You can’t just think there’s going to be a shortcut We’ll be able to we’ll be through with this vampire you know tomorrow because I have a a a cool gun I’m gonna shoot him No bullets don’t kill him Got to go harder Yeah I think the correct way to kill a vampire isn’t to cut his head off It’s the It’s the wooden steak into a heart That’s I think you might be thinking of Medusa or something Okay just kind of FYI the holy water part was correct though Yeah just just so FYI I don’t I don’t mean to call you out here I actually googled how to kill a vampire No that’s wrong though Mythology says otherwise You stick a wooden steak in his heart Crucifix will get him if you have faith Sunlight will kill him So that was correct Holy water Holy water will get him for sure Yeah And um yeah stay dry And the Yeah I don’t know what what website said cut his head off Uh oh Don’t trust Google Lesson learned See you know what I did right there? Took a shortcut Oh yeah I took I I thought it was a vampire Just Google it real quick We’re good to go You know what you did? This is what this is my what I think you did I think you Googled it which is fine But here’s the thing about googling something Googling is not the answer It’s what you find from Google And if you just go for the first one or the the one that looks like most You see the iron the irony here is that I tried to take a shortcut and I’m wrong And that’s the same that’s the vampire fallacy in its own right Exactly Yeah I prove the point All right Next The zero dark 30 fallacy And that’s the name of a movie about the the killing of Bin Laden This is the idea the zero dark 30 fallacy This is the idea that all you have to gain to do to gain a victory in war is to gain visibility of an enemy’s network structure and then conduct raids against that network either with special operations forces or nodes So the problem with both these fallacies of course they represent important capabilities you need to have but these are capabilities that masquerade as strategies and simple solutions to the complex problem of war neglecting war’s political nature neglecting war’s human nature neglecting war’s inherent uncertainty based on the interactive nature and finally neglecting that it is ultimately a contest of wills So the idea that you can again it’s attrition warfare And I I I’ll be honest with you I never really looked at this as attrition warfare until I was reading researching for this podcast I never I always said hey you know it’s a raid mentality Hey we can just capture all the bad guys But to say yes that’s attrition warfare that’s exactly what it is And especially for me because I I look at World War I as so awful and it’s an example of attrition warfare and that’s what makes it so bad This is attrition warfare 2 Hey we’re just going to capture or kill all the bad guys How do you do that? What we’re forgetting is what about this line? When you do that when you just say “Hey look all we need to do is is capture kill the bad guys ” This is what you do You masquerade this that capability to be able to do that which is an awesome capability awesome capability but that mass that capability masquerades as a strategy And what you listen to the things that you forget about This list is classic the complex problem of war You neglect war’s political nature human nature inherent uncertainty interactive nature and you neglect that it’s a contest of wills So that’s and there’s some great YouTube videos where McMaster is talking about that big lesson learning that this raid mentality was it’s part it’s it’s part of the way you defeat an insurgency Part of the way you defeat an insurgency is capture killing the bad guys It’s awesome But there’s so much more you have to address That’s like saying “Hey the way you win in a jiu-jitsu is to arm lock the person ” You could even say as broad as the way you win in jiu-jitsu is to submit somebody right? So if I taught you every submission I knew but I didn’t teach you how to transition didn’t teach you how many positions you would there’s no way you could win It’s the same thing Is submission important? Yes That’s what a raid is A raid is the submission It’s one piece of it It’s not the whole game though It’s not the whole game And I think that’s what he’s making very clear here through that zero dark 30 fallacy Next one is the wild kingdom fallacy Back when America was wholesome there was no reality TV no Kardashians or anything So on Sunday nights American families would watch this wildlife show called Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom And that show what happened on that show is the host Marlon Perkins would send his assistant Jim to conduct exotic and occasionally dangerous field work This is the belief that we could be like Marlin and just get Jim or other militaries to do our fighting for us And this is a way in the minds of some people to reduce risk But it actually increases risks because you are relying on other people whose interests are often times incr in congruent with your own interests and not only don’t have the capability to fight and do what you need to do but often times don’t have the will to do it So he’s saying this idea that we can just hey we’ll just have the Iraqis do it Mhm Sounds like a good idea right? Because I don’t want my guys to get hurt or killed there’s a problem with that The problem is they can’t do what we do They can’t do it as well as we do it And they probably don’t have the will to do it Now credit to the Iraqis right now They’re moving through Missoul They’re getting after it They’re they’re heavily backed by American forces but they’re they’re taking the lead for sure M So but when we were in Rammani those guys didn’t have the will that we had They didn’t didn’t mean as much to them If you can believe that I know it sounds crazy We had a battalion of Iraqi soldiers Talking about this with Leif We had a battalion of Iraqi soldiers So 500 Iraqi soldiers that had come to Rammani as to to help out in the fight They left They abandoned They quit a battalion of Iraqi soldiers And here’s the weird thing The reason they brought this battalion in one we needed more manpower Number two they were Sunni So Rammani was a Sunni city and bulk of the army at the time was Shia So the Shia coming in and fighting in Rammani Sometimes the Sunnis would say “Hey what? Hey wait a second Why are these Shia in here?” So the idea was to bring the Sunnis in to help And the Sunnis got scared This the Sunni battalion got scared and left And one of the reasons they said “Well it’s in a Sunni city “ And I just said “Wait wait a second That’s the whole point These are your people These are other Sunnis that are getting murdered by insurgents ” So it was just it was a tough situation And my point in saying that and there’s a whole there’s a whole another discussion we could have on that but the point is that in order to win that fight we had to be on the ground The Iraqis were not going to do it by themselves They were not going to And that’s what this fallacy is Hey that if we just direct other people to do it then we’ll be good to go and we don’t have to take any risk Now again how does that translate to what we do? You know business how does that translate to business? How does that translate to life? For me it’s real simple The important things that you got to do you got to do the the hard things that you got to do You got to do you know Okay Tim Ferrris can we outsource some stuff? Yes we can Don’t worry Tim We’ll outsource some stuff But the important stuff you have to do you got to do it You got to do it yourself If it really means something you have to do it You have to have the will and you have to make it happen Because if I outsource something to somebody if I say “Hey I really don’t feel like reading this book You know I really don’t feel like reading this book for the podcast Can you read this for me?” Well yeah Somebody’s going to read it but they’re not going to have my perspective on it and they’re just going to give me some notes and I’m going to sit here and read them Yeah we’re not going to get the product that we need because that’s important I have to do the work myself No one can I can’t outsource that piece Can’t do it There’s actually been people that said like “Hey I can read the books for you and give you notes ” I’m like “Hey I appreciate the offer ” No Yeah I got to read it I got to do the hard part Yep Yeah Now you say trying to outsource that stuff Echo Charles No No No No Keep it in house For sure the the congruency of of interests you know that’s a big one because you can even think that the person has the same interest and really you both can think that but just maybe in a different way especially when you’re thinking creatively like how you present this and what parts you think are important are going to be slightly different Even if the person has the same interest as you it’s going to be different So then at the end of the day when you expect a certain result it’s going to be different Yeah Let yourself down Yeah You know I just somebody just wrote cuz we’re doing Mousashi It’s a giant book and someone was highlighting Masashi the other day and kind of took a picture of it and he said you know I wonder how close Jaco’s highlights are going to be to my highlights And you know what? They’re going to be close They might even be right on maybe but they might not be Yeah And I’m can’t say “Hey bro send me your book and your notes and then we’ll do the podcast and I’m just going to cheat ” Can’t do that Just like you can’t say “Hey you know what? Iraqi forces that aren’t ready that don’t have the same Here’s the big problem with the Iraqi forces at the time The Iraqi forces at the time didn’t have a vision of what their country could be like So so think about that We Americans we had we had inherently being from America we have a vision of what freedom is like We we know what that is Iraqi soldiers didn’t know what that is They they thought man they lived under under Saddam for their whole lives I mean all the soldiers that we worked with lived under Saddam their whole lives That’s all they knew So for them we say “No you’re going to have freedom ” They’re like “Yeah I don’t know what does that even mean What does that mean? I don’t know what that means ” We’re we’re thinking “Hey don’t worry These guys will fight They’re going to fight for their freedom They’re going to fight for their Sunni brothers They’re going to fight for their Iraq ” They’re kind of like “We don’t even know ” They didn’t even really have a good vision of what Iraq is Iraq is a country that we used to be underneath Saddam and now it’s not And we don’t know what that means We don’t know what that looks like We Americans had a vision of what that looked like They didn’t have it So how are they going to fight for it? Yeah To your point they don’t see what we see They had a different opinion So who’s got to go on there and and have and who’s going to have the will to fight? The answer is us in that particular case And it’s the same thing right now like even in Missoul even in the last time when Rammani was taken back by by the Iraqi forces Good Good on them Props to the Iraqi forces right now They’re backed up by Americans Americans are are saying “Hey look this is the vision This is what you’re going to do This is how we’re going to take this part of it ” And that is the big difference of why they didn’t have the will They didn’t understand what they were fighting for And you take anybody and put them in that situation You don’t even look at Vietnam War right? You look at the Vietnam War our our American soldiers some of them you can go watch interviews you know they were saying “I don’t know what I’m fighting for ” Yeah Hey they they were actually questioning I don’t even know what America’s like anymore right? It was really reading reading this book by Jim Thompson you know longest held P ever And when he got back he was kind of when he got back to America you know he was gone from 1964 until 1973 When he got back when he left America was fairly conservative and and patriotic when he gets back people are burning flags people are protesting He he was taken aback by it And so so if you took somebody that left for Vietnam in 1970 and America’s in turmoil and all that it’s hard to have the same vision that they had had in 1964 which is like “Hey America we’re going to go stop the Communists Communists are bad Communists are bad ” But then you start having the American Socialist Party that’s telling you that Communists are good and all of a sudden kids over there going “Hey look I don’t even know what’s going on but I’m not sure I want to die here in this jungle ” Yeah And that’s problematic And it’s the same thing with with the Iraqi soldiers They just didn’t know what they were fighting for If you asked them what they were fighting for they might say a paycheck Very few of them would say “I’m fighting for a free and stable Iraq ” Yeah They very few of them Now some of them fought against truly heartfelt fought against the insurgents They didn’t like the insurgents The insurgents were murdering people and raping women and torturing people They didn’t like that and they’d fight hard against them but that wasn’t not everyone experienced that right? Not everyone saw that Yeah So and I’m sure they’re kind of like you can tell them what you’re fighting for you know and and they can answer you You don’t feel it’s like uh you know like your dad tells you when you’re young your dad tells you “Hey clean your room I want this room and span ” And you’re like you don’t get it Yeah all I’m going to take this whole mess I’m just going to put it in the closet just so he’ll st leave me alone kind of thing you know And then meanwhile the dad your dad has this vision is like like what’s up with you? Why didn’t you clean your room? Don’t you understand? Kind of thing Yep Like Yeah No you don’t You don’t understand that your dad’s trying to teach you that discipline equals freedom My kids were running late this morning going to school Why are they running late? Cuz their rooms are messy Well you’re running late Everything’s stressful now when we’re heading to school Why is that? Well because your your room is messy Lack of discipline Lack of discipline causes mental stress Mental stress is not freedom Yeah But to your point even trying to explain to the Iraqi soldiers why they’re doing what they’re doing Mhm on a really big level like that is difficult Is difficult Now occasionally you get a good leader There was some there was some good leaders There was one of the generals that the Delta platoon commander worked with He was a good dude He was a good leader And and the Delta platoon commander actually had some really good Iraqi scouts as well that really believed in what they were doing And I know that be the reason I differentiate a little bit The Delta platoon commander worked very consistently with the same guys a bunch as as Leif was working with multiple different groups So the Delta platoon commander had some more tight relationships with some of those guys Leaf did too But anyways some of those guys understood what they were fighting for Mhm But it’s hard to just like you said explain what freedom is Yeah And the other piece of it is in that in those situations explaining what freedom is is still no guarantee at all right that freedom is coming your way These guys have been through so much turmoil that country’s been through so much turmoil They’re like “Hey you know what? We don’t even know You can promise us that but doesn’t seem like we’re doing too well How do we know you’re going to win? How do we know we’re going to win? We don’t know that So you know what I’m going to do? Lay low See where this thing falls ” And then I’ll then I’ll step up once I know who’s going to win Tough Next The RSVP fallacy Thank you for the kind invitation to the war but the United States regrets it is unable to attend This is the belief that you can just opt out of war It’s a narcissistic approach to war which we define only war in relation to us and what we’d like to do So this idea that you can just be opt out doesn’t work The the the bottom line there is that you got to get in the game The game’s going to take place The game’s going to happen and you’re going to be affected by it That’s the key point It’s not a game that takes place on a field It’s a game that takes place on a field and expands out into the crowd into the stands and into the town and starts stuff starts getting burned Yeah And riots take place So you have to get in the game That was the That was the fourth fallacy of war Now I I think that all those really show not just how smart McMaster is but also how open-minded he is which is a very important quality I also think he’s a realist He’s a realist and looks at things in a very real way you know this is the what’s happening and this is what we need to do to deal with it And also what’s great about McMaster is that he he’s not afraid to speak his mind and he’s got kind of got in trouble for that along the way So I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how McMaster handles all the challenges that are ahead of him right now not only in DC but in the world So it’s going to be interesting and we wish him or I certainly wish him the best of luck in that pursuit So leading off with Little McMaster and um thinking about going to a little Q&A at this time Sure It’s been a little while since we did Q&A here Yeah I’ve been doing Facebook live Hell yeah And when I’ve been doing Facebook Live I’ve not I I’m purposely not preparing at all That’s my goal My goal is to not prepare at all because and and the second or the yeah was the second one that I did I started looking at the questions ahead of time and I was saying okay well maybe I’ll just take a couple notes here maybe and all of a sudden I started preparing for Facebook live and then I realized if I’m going to prepare I’ll make it the podcast so no don’t prepare Facebook live ask me your question and I’ll answer it there on the spot it’s fun it’s different right it’s easier Mhm I can’t do two podcasts a week because don’t have time to prepare for them But can do Facebook live You can slide that thing in And doesn’t preparing for a live thing with the dynamics of Facebook live Doesn’t that defeat the live kind of purpose in a way? It does But we could do this podcast on Facebook Live So we could prepare it and we could put it on Facebook Live We could do that But then it would be a rehash of what we’re doing And the other piece of it is is I think the Facebook live is a way of people seeing a little bit more of me as a normal human being right? And not me as a guy with all the answers on stuff like “No you asked me a question I don’t really know ” You know what I mean? Yeah And and also you know obviously on this podcast is is usually pretty serious And so I’m not like that all the time So maybe they could see Well I I I have a serious side no doubt Sure But I’m not like that all the time Yeah So I think Facebook Live is a good way to say and plus I don’t want to answer some questions here be for a couple reasons Number one man when somebody listens to the podcast I want to make sure they’re getting something right of qu high quality right? Not not just some fluff right? We’re not doing fluff here If we need to do fluff on the podcast we just won’t do the podcast because I don’t I don’t want to somebody to press play and waste time Oh yeah You know what I mean? Yeah I don’t mind fluffing around and talking smack on Facebook Live because it’s that’s what it is It’s an open forum We’re gonna have some fun We’re gonna get after it a little bit but it’s not going to be super heavy because if you want that come here Get your podcast on Yep Yeah It’s kind of more lightened up a little bit Yeah It’s not like that’s it And it’s not like I said “Okay hm let’s see I need to show them my light side ” No but if you talk to me live right? Right It’s like when Jody came on Jody came on like after we were hanging out for for like an hour He’s like “Yeah man When I was coming down I just thought you were going to be like full on psycho the whole time And I was like “Yeah I’m not full on cycle the whole time ” You know if we’re eating a burger we’re good I’m not going to be sitting there while I’m eating a burger saying “Let me tell you what “ No I don’t want to do that when I’m eating a burger I want to enjoy that burger Yeah makes sense But yeah if it’s a live Q&A you know how like at like the muster or you know when you guys okay we’re going to do some Q&A That’s a example of like a live Q&A you don’t prepare for those questions you know So and and and also what’s interesting about those questions is those I’ve given some I mean if you think about any of the podcasts that I’ve gone on Tim Ferris Joe Rogan Sam Harris th those those guys asked me some heavy questions right? Those guys weren’t just asking weren’t just BSing right during those So there’s no guarantee that I’m not going to get get a little bit serious on Facebook Live or whatever I’m going to do I’m going to do what people ask me right? Yeah But yeah during the muster we do a lot of Q&A during the muster We get all kinds of questions There’s some really funny questions that require funny responses There’s also some some real serious ones that require very serious answers And what’s interesting this happens on Twitter too Somebody asked me some dead serious question like a very serious you know something that’s emotional to me like about losing guys or or something like that Guys killed in combat and I’ll I’ll respond to it and then two tweets later someone says you know I’m going to have some mint chocolate chip ice cream tonight You know what I mean? And so you go through these if someone’s reading they must think I’m schizophrenic because I’m answering real serious then it’s real light and then it just kind of weird Yeah Yeah the roller coaster man Yeah it’s an emotional roller coaster on the Twitter Oh lord All right it’s all Q&A Okay Echo Charles back in the game Back in the game All right so yeah first question Jo and Echo should you defend bad leaders aka your superiors to your men? Think about that question This is a good it’s a good question and we haven’t done Q&A in a while and that’s why I want to start off think about that Should you defend bad leaders that are people that are in charge of you? Should you defend them to your men? Now this is really a perfect example of the dichotomy of leadership And this is one of those situations that makes leadership very very hard because it requires a nuanced balance to handle this correctly So on the one hand if we if we say our boss is a bad leader and doesn’t know what he’s doing So like oh the boss hey echo our boss doesn’t know what he’s doing He’s an idiot We undermine his authority for sure and we undermine the authority of the whole chain of command So should you call out when someone sucks? You say “Oh that guy sucks He’s terrible “ Should you do that to your leader? The answer is no You can’t do that You can’t do that because you’re undermining everything So you got a horrible leader You can’t just sit there to your boys and say “Hey this guy’s an idiot ” Can’t do that However if you give full support to this horrible boss then your troops who know a good leader from a bad leader they know what’s stupid and what isn’t They know this They know this And if you are sitting there backing them 100% then they’re going to know that you either actually agree with the bad leader which is bad or that you’re too weak to stand up and say “Hey boss what we’re doing is wrong ” So you can’t go to one extreme the boss is an idiot You can’t go to the other extreme the boss is awesome Think about how hard that is Think about what I’m saying This is very very challenging So what can you do? Well okay First of all as a subordinate leader it is your duty to push back right? To to say “Hey boss I think we’re doing the wrong thing here ” And then this is why we spend a lot of time trying to build relationships with our bosses so that we can have candid conversations with them right? Sometimes it’s hard to do that It is I understand But when you have built the relationship then you can go to your boss and say “Hey look this isn’t this isn’t good ” Now once you’ve done that then you can go to your go to your your troops and you say “Hey look I went to the boss This is what I told him You know I told him that hey doing this method isn’t going to work well He explained to me why we’re doing it This is what he said So this is why we’re using this method And I know it’s not popular with you guys but it’s it’s here’s the reason why we’re doing it So So you made progress right? You guys are saying “Okay well he at least stood up to the man ” Mhm And now he gave us an answer He told us why we’re doing what we’re doing So that’s good too But the other thing is one of the easiest way to do this is to provide an honest opinion Truth Truth is going to be your friend here Truth is going to be your friend Now I should I should put a caveat around that because the truth might be you think your boss is a complete idiot and everything he’s saying is stupid Okay so I I take it back Don’t use full-on truth And this is so this is so interesting too because clearly truthfulness is a huge you know it’s a value that I hold very dear right? And you got to be truthful and all that I’m telling you right now do not be truth If you think your boss is an idiot and you think the method that he’s picking or the plan he’s got is stupid don’t be truthful with your guys and go down there and say boss is an idiot It’s not going to help your team right? We have to be smart about what we’re doing But when you when you do that what you need to do is keep it somewhere in the middle Okay? So when you say something negative don’t get all crazy with the negative Don’t get all nuts with the negative What you want to do is say so you say something like “Hey look I’m I’m sure there’s some better ways of doing this but this is the decision that was made and we need to make it work ” Right? So I’m not saying it’s horrible I’m saying “Look hey guys I’m sure there’s some better ways but guess what? This is what we are being told to do right now and we’re going to do the best we can ” Mhm Notice that I’m putting it from like them to the we I’m making I’m taking ownership of it This is now ours to execute Yeah So you want to do that or and and I also want to focus more on as much as I can I want to focus on not the personality of the boss but I want to focus on like the what we’re being told type thing or what the mission is because I don’t want to bring I want to keep the personality of the boss at bay Sometimes you get a boss that has such a raging personality that you have to say something like you just you have to explain and that’s when even then you want to ratchet it down a little bit You don’t say “Hey the boss is an asshole ” Yeah The boss is an idiot No you don’t say that You know you say “Hey look guys I know the boss is is not exactly perfect but I think he means well with what he’s trying to do ” And that way we need to focus for that reason we need to focus on executing because it’s not going to help us to sit here and complain about the boss He might not have the greatest personality but you know what? His intention is good so let’s support him You know what I mean? Something like that where you’re not you’re not giving him full support but you’re not completely throwing him under the bus Again this is so hard to do because let’s face it the boys the troops they know what’s up They know when that boss is an idiot They know when he’s unprofessional They know when he treats you like They know that stuff And so if you bow down if you break and you give that to them yes you’re right the boss is a jerk Yes you’re right The boss treats people like Yeah If you give them that you’re you’re hurting the situation And that’s why also when you’re in a leadership position your job oftentimes is to buffer between the jerk boss and the boys You don’t the boys should never know that the the kind of stupid harassment that you get from your boss The boys should never know that They should think hey Jo says this guy’s good to go We’re good to go They should never think that this guy’s an idiot M So again in both cases it’s like you can’t go hardcore You can’t go hardcore against either the plan or the person But you also at the same time you need to give a little bit of a pressure release Just a little bit of a pressure release You know you got to give them just enough that they go you know what you want them to think? You want them to think hey Joo gets it He knows He’s not admitting it to us And good on him He’s He’s keeping it professional They know they they know that John They know I don’t love the boss but they know I’m keeping it professional So therefore they they accept what I’m saying and they stay part of the team Yeah It kind of feels like I’m kind of imagining myself as one of the boys right? I you’re my boss and we don’t really like your boss But I feel like sure if I was made to feel better in whatever way just a little bit better that pressure release how you say just a little bit better about the the mission Okay And I trust you because of how you always handle things or whatever You know what? All right It’s not the best funnest whatever It’s not my first choice but at least we’re doing it together You know I trust you and all right let’s do this kind of thing And and one of the key things you just said is trust So if you trust me and the boss is saying to do something completely ridiculous and I come down and say “Eko guess what we’re going to do? We’re going to we’re going to dig this hole and then we’re going to fill it back in and we’re going to do it six times today Let’s get to work ” And you know it’s stupid And I come down and try and sell that to you Yeah Without any explanation with that voice Yeah With that voice I’m going to lose trust you’re you’re not going to trust me as much Now if I come down and say “Hey hey boys Hey bring it in This is what’s going on ” Yeah See I’m going back to a normal voice here Going back to the leadership voice If I say “Hey guys here’s what’s going on I know this is going to come across as a strange task We’re going to get it done We got to dig these holes and we’re going to fill them back in We’re actually going to do this six times today Again I know it’s a not exactly what we were planning to do today but look let’s get after it Let’s get it done And let’s prove to everybody that we can make this happen faster than them ” and all of a sudden we’re we’re going to get after it You know what I mean? It’s no factor Whereas again if I go into like a dorky nerd voice and try and say we are going to do this because it’s the best plan ever You I’m losing trust with you I’m actually hurting my trust So this is a really really nuanced thing And my best advice here is to try and keep it in the middle right? Try and keep it and and I’ll tell you probably lean a little bit lean towards being professional lean towards supporting the chain of command cuz because the guys are going to know when you give them that little little pressure relief when you say “Hey I know this is this is a little bit of a strange plan ” As soon as I say that everyone’s like “Okay he understands We’re good And we’ll do whatever he says Hey Jo Okay Jo we get it You got to you got to have us do this Cool Let’s do it ” Yeah It’s when I come down and say and again you’ll realize that this is this is the opposite I say all the time you know if you come down and say the boss’s plan we got to do this I always throw that as like the worst possible leadership is hey we got to do this because we were told to do it That’s the worst possible leadership Not saying to do that What I’m saying is a little pressure relief Just a little pressure relief of hey look I threw up a different plan I thought my plan was a little bit better Boss came up with this this idea We’re going to go for it It’s close enough Just something like that Just like hey I know I know I dig it Yeah That’s it little little just give him a little a little nugget Yeah I feel like I would feel if you were to be like “This is such a dumb plan and I don’t know why we got to do it or whatever ” I’d be like “Wait wait then why are we doing it then?” You know you’re you’re my b like why are we doing it then? You know and I wouldn’t want to do that No So yeah it’s like right in the middle there It’s leaning towards being professional It’s leaning towards supporting the chain of command with just enough of a pressure relief to to to have them say “I’ll tell you a story ” This is real real quick This was in Dude take your time I want you to tell me the longest story We’re going back to 9th grade Bring it through And this is kind of high school It’s weird that I even thought of this So we you know how like in in class right? This uh early high school freshman you know in class they’re like “Hey get into groups We’re going to do this thing ” And um so we got into these groups and and we did some project little thing during class We’re done Halfway through class we’re done and we’re about to present The teacher looks at it and is like “Oh you guys got to do it again ” But the teacher doesn’t tell everyone She tells just this one girl Mara is her name Mara Yeah So Mara comes back from talking to the teacher and she’s like she was kind of the leader No one des but she at that point she was kind of the little leader the liaison between the group and the teacher So she comes back she’s like she’s like we got to do it again And we’re and everyone’s like what? She goes we got to do it again Like you could tell she had accepted it but just her being like sighing kind of demonstrated that hey she feels the pain too I dig it but hey guys you know we’re not going to complain or anything It was just that little subtle thing But that’s exactly what it did It kind of it basically accepted the order that none of us really wanted to hear but at the same time she demonstrated that hey she feels it too you know and let’s do and we did again of course and whatever I don’t even know what grade we had Got an A+ I’m sure Mara working her leadership skills on the Yeah there it was weird that I mean I don’t know necessarily that she intended to do that but that was the exact effect and you can thinking back I can see the the elements you know the little pressure release was her not saying don’t talk to me like that she said we got to do it again you know she didn’t like oppose anybody her just her little mannerisms you know what she didn’t do she didn’t jump completely on board with the teacher and be like we got to do this again it sucked no she was like hey look we got we’re going to have do this again You know what I mean? Just the tone She made it enough And I’ll tell you this this question I’m surprised it took so long to get this question cuz this is a really really good question And it also is a incredibly important skill to be able to walk this line And it’s tricky to do And it’s a very it’s it’s sort of this might be one of the this is like the type of thing that helped me a lot in when I was in the teams was just being able to do this enough cuz you get told to do some dumb in the teams man And you know what it’s like okay being able to translate a stupid something stupid and give enough pressure relief to to make guys not just go Jacqu’s just you know company guy Yeah Right He’s a company guy He just oh he doesn’t stand up for us No actually I do But this is you know like Leif telling that story about doing paperwork I’m like no we’re going to do all the paperwork I I I went I held the company line but like in such a dynamic or such an overboard way that guys are like okay yeah we’re gonna win you know this is a competition Yeah So that’s good times Yeah It’s like a me it cuz it seems like okay all that paperwork it’s it’s almost like the paperwork was like an affront It was like hey what it’s us against them kind of thing Whoever told us to do the paperwork and you were like yeah it’s us against them and let’s do this thing Yeah Exactly You know so it’s like you take it to them That’s something I’ve done I’ve actually done that a fair amount I talked about the story before but like an at officer candidate school every little stupid rule that they threw at us I did it to the nth degree and had everyone in my class do it the nth degree where they were just going ballistic Yeah Yeah Going ballistic So a story like that where we’re just go we’re going to take what they’re take the order and carry it out to the extreme and take pride in doing that That was another little tactic that got used by me along the way Yeah Yeah We’re going to do that We didn’t do it so hard You’re not even going to know what your name was That’s another tactic you can take for sure They want us to polish these boots They want us to They want us to clean this thing We’ll do it Watch this All right Next question Next question Jo has there been a situation in which you took something too personally? How do you avoid taking things personally? So the initial reaction is like “No man I don’t take things too personally ” you know I keep but the actual fact is yeah I take I take everything personally right like I mean I if I do something bad I am very personally I don’t like it at all if I do something poorly I don’t like it at all I take it very personally if somebody gives me feedback I I take it personally this is like it’s an ego thing it’s a pure ego thing right and I I just had to say this at a group I was talking to just because I say ego is bad all the time ego is good too Ego is what drives you Ego is what makes you want to be number one Ego is what is brings you pride in your work It makes you work harder to give deliver good product and and be a good leader and a good employee and a good person Right? That’s ego The problem comes when ego or taking things personally actually prevents you from listening to the critiques that you’re being told That’s that’s the problem So for instance we’ll take this little podcast right here that’s got some critique on it the other day Yeah Yeah I got somebody somebody sent me a little critique and they said that I didn’t explain because we had Andy Stump on here and Andy was kind of rattling off that his his career in the teams And as he was rattling off the career in the teams he lost some people Not a bunch because it wasn’t that complicated but he lost some people And and for instance he used an an acronym um or an acronym LPL which stands for leading petty officer which is the which is the second senior enlisted person in a SEAL platoon And I didn’t explain that when he said it So there’s an example So when I heard this my first reaction is like oh you don’t know what LPO is? Cool Go Google it Go Google it Why are you asking me? Your brain stop talking And then that was pretty much you know my my ego was saying “Hey I can’t believe this person doesn’tare How dare you?” And then I as I thought about I was like “Well you know I need to I need to make sure in the future that I’m more that I’m more aware of what guys are talking especially when I’m sitting here talking to another SEAL who we have a common language and we are talking about things in a very conversational mode So we’re not caring about anybody else ” And that’s sort of what the podcast is often is like we’re not we’re not talking to everyone that’s listening at this moment We’re just kind of talking to ourselves or amongst ourselves And so when he throws out this words I need to be more aware of them So if I took it personally I might not listen If I actually listen I can do a better job So that’s that’s kind of it And basically that’s the same with anybody when anybody receives any criticism of any kind they get they take it personally And I think the thing is two things Number one get over it so you can listen to what the criticism is And and also remember this This is kind of weird I I think maybe I’m wrong What do you think? The more angry and the more personally you take some criticism the truer it actually is Is that possible? When something really bothers you it’s probably something that really bothers you cuz you know it’s true Like when somebody says something that just doesn’t matter to me I it’s you know I don’t take it personally Oh yeah they just think that Don’t worry about it I’m not worried about it But when somebody says something that I know is true and they’re pinging me on it that’s means I get even more take it more personally and get more angry about it And and then that should be an indicator hey this is something you actually need to fix Yeah It actually has to do with insecurity more than anything So it can be it can be super true or it can be kind of true or you can just be questioning it whether or not it’s true If you’re insecure about it that’s when it’s going to affect cuz you can be like there can be okay you know let’s say guys have a receding hairline and they’re like “Oh I don’t I don’t care about that at all It’s totally true ” You know and or let’s say I do care about it I don’t like it but I I I’ve known it for the last I don’t know 20 years whatever And someone’s like “Hey you know your hairline’s receding “ still care about that I don’t I don’t think they do No I don’t know of any But I’m just saying you know certain things that um and if you know about it or you know and you know it’s true and see you won’t necessarily be bothered by it But if you get someone who’s like it’s starting to recede or it’s early on or it’s like dang and they won’t necessarily be this is just an example hypothetical but they won’t necessarily be concerned about the actual hairline receding They’re more concerned about oh do do I look old or am I unattractive now or am I losing it now? Or something like that that’s what they’re insecure about So when someone points out some symptom of that insecurity that’s when they’re like “Well you don’t got to say that ” Or you know they get all “Oh man ” That goes for kind of anything So maybe I don’t know maybe someone’s saying “Hey you didn’t explain this enough “ Maybe you’re like “Wait what are you saying? Was that a junk episode kind of thing?” Or or something like “Did I not um you know how you you’re good at explaining stuff and simplifying them?” Whatever Maybe it was like a an attack on that or something Maybe it’s a personal point of pride Yeah Yeah You know exactly I don’t know Yeah But maybe But that’s typically what people get mad about It’s not necessarily if they know it’s true or not It’s if they’re insecure about it right? Well you wouldn’t be insecure about something that wasn’t true No but here’s the thing But sometimes you do cuz you know and you sometimes it’s like a weird like mental uh like problem but you know girls for example I’m not saying all girls but let’s I’m going to totally generalize right now but you know the girls like hey do I look fat in this the girl’s like in awesome shape or whatever and you’re like they always think they’re fat that it’s not true that’s not the right response by the way that little wishy-washy thing that’s not that’s a perfect example though you know what I mean so it’s like that kind of stuff you know people are just insecure about stuff sometimes Oh and even though the girl’s in really good shape you know that’s horrible Yeah Or even guys when especially like if they’re into like their physique or something like that where I don’t know they’re at a party or I’ve heard guys like they go to parties and they’ll do like dips or push-ups before they walk in because like so they’re like more pumped I I swear And is that why you were doing some push-ups before? You know what I mean? So like you were just a little insecure about what I just said No I didn’t Anyway you know they’ll get that kind where they’ll be like “Oh I’m” They’ll think that “Oh I’m not looking very cut up ” Or something like that you know like that kind of stuff When it’s not true Yeah Yeah No I think I think that’s a a good point And I think the bottom line is when we take things personally I I I think it’s actually not a negative thing because it means that you’re there’s probably something that you need to work on But I think what we need to watch out for is taking it personally and therefore being mad and either being mad at the person that told you which the person probably could be out of line you know saying some stuff that’s offensive but even if someone offends you okay well let’s fix it So you don’t have that that that weakness or that insecurity anymore And so just know what your red flags are Know when you’re taking something Everybody takes stuff personally Yeah I’m like Mr Detachment and I take stuff personally all the time when somebody says something to me I’m like “Oh okay Dang what did I what I need to do better?” Yeah You do a good job of seeing the the big picture though you know like but because a lot of times you know when I don’t know I always think back to you know the the relation like “Okay let’s say let’s say I’m at home I’m mowing the lawn I I you know did all this these great housework chores whatever you know dad comes home mom comes home and they’re like hey I thought I told you to take out the trash meanwhile everything else is and span so I’m like I’m mad you know how dare you say that to me when I did this me my thing my thing but at the same time they’re right you know so you do a good job of like you’d be able to kind of recognize that even though you’d probably feel those same feelings you won’t your default isn’t what about this and fight back and and make the problem bigger It’s kind of like you’ll feel it on the inside and recognize the red flags of what’s happening and go “Oh yeah cool I got to remember to take out the trash cuz the truth is that’s correct ” You do It doesn’t matter if you did the lawn or not the trash was a thing you know So yeah Yeah you do a good job of of recognizing that part I think a lot of times in our case we don’t do such a good job You know I’m going to throw this out there This is a little off subject but it just made me think of it I was talking to Dave at at the gym yesterday and he was listening to the podcast and and he he lost his he lost his dad Yeah And like 6 months ago and he was listening to a clip from the podcast of me basically saying “Hey ” cuz someone asked what good comes from when someone dies And he he said “Look you covered a lot of stuff and it was super powerful and and was was very helpful ” And he said “But there’s a one more thing ” He said “There’s one more thing that has come from my dad’s death that is good “ And I said “What?” And he said it was like a slap in the face of go out and and get after it you know and I kind of left that out And I’ve I’ve talked to other people and clearly you know when you lose someone that’s close to you See the reason I guess the reason that I didn’t think of this is because in the teams you kind of like you guys get killed you know and we all kind of already live with the feeling of hey man I mean I say it all the time I’m going to live the best life I can but for someone in the civilian sector and they haven’t had any any they haven’t lost anyone They haven’t had anyone died close to them They get the feeling that many of us many people walk through the through the world with of I’m gonna live forever You know I’m not gonna die and I got all the time in the world I need I got time And so he made this great point He said you know for me when my dad died he’s you know he’s in his mid20s and he’s been kind of you know I don’t want to say the word relaxing but he’s been you know fairly cru he’s been cruising kind of and he’s he realized he can’t he can’t do that you know he needs to he needs to get after it So cool story cool feedback I thought I should uh let everybody know that’s another good thing when if you lose someone and you you’re not accustomed to that and you don’t see how precious life is because a lot of times it’s pretty easy to forget It’s pretty easy to forget how precious it is when when it’s right there when it’s given to you You know it’s just like food It’s pretty pretty easy to forget I mean how precious was the was the crappy loaf of French bread with sticks and bugs in it that Colonel Reer got when he got to the prison camp in Hanoi? That was precious And you know what? Even Colonel Reer 3 weeks later he was like “Oh this that bread ” Even he’s here he’s laughing He’s like “That bread sucked ” I was like “Sir here you said it was like the best thing you’ve ever had ” He goes “Well it was at first ” So we all get we all get this attitude that you know hey this is always going to be here Well it’s not always going to be here So don’t don’t treat it like it is taking that for granted Yep Next question Hi Jaco I’m being told in jiu-jitsu that I’m using too much strength to execute techniques and dominating roles I get after it in the gym and try to be stronger and fitter already limit my strength against same weight training partners and definitely don’t pull don’t bull rush or overpower lighter partners I want to improve my jiu-jitsu knowledge and understand the intent of reducing my strength and uh reducing my strength to learn the skill But where where is the balance? I feel like I feel like I’m doing uh being penalized for working hard and being strong and there has to be an element of strength uh to technique right? Now that I’m trying to do zero strength working weak positions and they still go 100% on me I’m not learning anything right? That’s what he’s asking What is my what is my 25% stronger than my training partners? 100% I’ve trained no ghee for four years but ghee only for 12 months Don’t judge a white belt warrior Okay So you know I don’t think anyone is saying use zero strength right? And just be a I used to have a uh kids in the kids class that would just like flop around like use No they’d be like noodles you know especially when you’re a partner right? And I say “Hey don’t be that ” So no one’s telling you to use zero strength That’s not the that’s not the the goal here You just want to use less strength And I’m the same way man I work out so I can be strong Yeah And when we’re rolling if I have to use strength I’m going to use it You bench pressed me off off you the other day from across side All technique Yeah Can you all technique? You even claimed it at the time You were like “That’s all weightlifted ” So So that’s good right? And and you you used it cuz you had to use it You were going to get punished and you’re like “Oh no I’m not going to I’m not going to have Jaco across the side this early in the roll ” So boom got bench pressed People were watching too by the way Yeah Yeah So so yeah we we want to be strong for sure but I’ll tell you this is the this is the key thing When I’m going to train with someone I’m going to use just enough skill and strength to stay slightly ahead of them Just enough I’m not trying to crush them If someone’s and and I’ll tell you if someone’s way lighter than me then but they have kind of equivalent skill then I’m going to try and limit my strength as much as I can That’s what’s jiu-jitsu versus jiu-jitsu for sure But I I’m definitely going to use my strength if needed for really for a couple reasons The first reason is because of ego Sure Right I don’t want to tab I don’t want to get caught in a bad position I don’t like that Yeah You know if you c if you train like when we’re done training there I’m definitely using strength because I’m dripping with sweat right? I mean I’m using physical attributes but that’s not the only reason The other reason that you have to use your strength sometimes is you don’t want to give people the false sense of security that hey that worked right even even your good training partner it’s like you don’t want to say oh the guy gets a position so you just tap right cuz in a competition or in the street the person’s not just going to tap they need to do it right so that’s it I guess the bottom the bottom line is that my guess is is this dude is probably using too much strength He’s probably one of those guys that’s naturally really strong and he works out and he’s thinking I’ve been training no ghee for four years So now when I put this ghee on man I’m angry about it because I’m falling behind a little bit So I’m going to use some strength Yeah I would say man just try try and relax and just one of my favorite pieces of advice to give relax harder Yeah Just relax Try and flow when you roll a little bit and it it definitely will make you it’ll make you better in the end The more you relax the the the more the better you’ll get in the end Yeah And certain I found that like certain guys that’s just their just their method really strong Yeah And that’s how they roll and they’re just aggressive physically That’s how and I found that they can a lot of times they can get more technical you know but really that’s kind of their their strengths in a way and that’s it’s just their way of rolling And some guys are the opposite But now that you mentioned it and some people that are like that they have like an on andoff switch They’re either all on or they’re just super docile Yeah It’s almost like you got to find that middle ground if you can If you can but people are different Like let’s say um like remember Franklin he’s real easy Okay consider him where he’s going to be real technical and flexible and flowy and stuff and that’s his jiu-jitsu You can he can I need to be more strong and rigid and aggressive He can train that but his default is that flowy flexible way And and guys who are like this I think that’s going to be kind of their default They can train kind of deviate a little bit and get it more for sure but that’s kind of just their that’s that’s the vehicle they have you know and it’s it’s almost like a genetic thing It’s not genetic I know that but it’s it’s kind of it’s almost like the foundation of their Franklin was a trip to roll with because he was so flexible but not just in a normal way You know what was flexible in his his spine was flexible like when you’d put your weight on him and he would just like like jellyfish It was awesome Yeah it was like an octopus That’s exactly what was like I wish he kept training man He was so good I saw him pretty not too long ago Yeah he trained it like occasionally Yeah he Yeah he was getting good for a while Yeah really good Still good though Still good Um but yeah it’s kind of there’s it’s more of a mental thing like if you mentally there’s drills like you can do Remember um Jerry Lowden was his name He jammed up his knees But we used to do this thing He’s like “Hey let’s just flow “ Right And you know how people say “Let’s just flow ” So then they’re trying to kill you But yeah he wouldn’t though He would be like his flow would be like a fast pace and you could even try to hold him down and and he’d just be like flowing flowing flowing He would get you in a good position then he’d get right out of it into another you know like he was really good at flowing to the point where bro you get kind of tired because you’re moving so much It’s not full speed flow It’s almost full speed though So I remember doing that a lot with him and it really translated when I would roll it would be like I felt like that difference in technique Yeah No that’s really good I I do I always do a warm-up round with Andy like that We just go position position We’re going but we’re going like you know we’re just go We’re flowing Yeah that sounds I don’t like that word Yeah but that’s what it is I mean that’s what it is Don’t ever do that with Dean Okay No I’m serious Don’t ever you know don’t ever say listen to him say like “Hey let’s just get warmed up “ Because he’s not going to do that He’s going to flow until he’s in a good position He’s going to smash you So don’t do it You have to just go harder Side note Yeah Okay Good Yeah Yeah Andy’s real good at that point that that stuff too Yeah But that’s a good way though like if you That’s a good way That’s a good way if you can That’s a good I see what you’re saying That’s a good way to learn to relax more Yes Yeah Yes Yeah When that becomes more common because let’s face it I mean if you’re strong and you’re going into roles and people if to the point where people are saying “Hey you’re you’re using too much strength ” Yeah If you’re hearing that from if you’re getting like getting after if you’re hearing that from multiple people there’s an issue man that’s that my point is even though you’re saying saying hey some people are just that way don’t accept that like who the guy that asked this question don’t accept Ekko’s thing of saying some people are just that way because that means you’re just going to keep doing it and you won’t get better cuz you will the more you relax the better you get for sure and of course I don’t mean it like that so just that yeah I know I know you don’t but I’m saying like don’t get that misconception that that’s what Ekko is trying to say Hey you’re just that way Go with it No don’t go with it Listen to what Ekko is saying when he’s saying “Hey find somebody to flow roll with and just let it flow ” Yeah It’s going to be pretty rare you find a person whose kind of default method is this And then by the way I just realized I don’t say flow roll cuz I was thinking about what I say to Andy or we don’t say it anymore We just do it But I used to be “Hey let’s get a warm-up round ” So I call it a warm-up Let’s go with that Okay Flow roll Yeah But sometimes not sometimes just like a technique sharpener kind of thing Okay I guess we have Nonetheless let’s say he does do let’s say he does do some flow rolling some drills and gets better at it I would I would guess that there is going to be a significant remainder of his game that’s going to be this aggressive game Oh for sure I think that’s No they do aggressive for sure Holmes is aggressive on the mat for sure Another little mindset that might help is think less competitively because you know how like a lot of people when they and really it’s true though this here’s the thing this this element needs to be there where when it’s time to to spar it should be competitive otherwise it’s like what are we doing you know I want if I want you to be competitive because I want an accurate look of what it’s like to roll with Jaco or a guy like Joo big strong good at jiu-jitsu whatever if you’re just flow rolling with me in non-competitively every single time I’m not getting the work that I need Really? I’m not That’s what I was talking about earlier too is that’s why you got to go hard Yeah you got to use strength Yeah So it should be competitive but if some if people are complaining you’re going too hard you’re going straight up like every row is 80C on the line life or death you know kind of more in that direction The moon giles Yeah Yeah So if you think maybe less of that Yeah and understand that this is this is training If you want to get less using strength and stuff you got to kind of train that stuff I like it ultimately Next question Next question Joo I need some advice if you’ve got time We got time What’s a good course of action when someone lies betrays trust or just plain destroys you? Move on Straight up Straight up Move on Forget them They are lying and they are untrustworthy So move on Now sometimes this can be hard especially if they’ve somehow tied themselves into your life Especially like for instance you get the kids involved in a divorce scenario You you can’t move on But you have to mentally move on You have to emotionally detach from that human And that’s hard to do because obviously they were someone that you trusted And the reason I know that you trusted them is because they got to a point where they were able to betray your trust and destroy you So they they it’s hard But the fact that they trust that you trusted them the fact that you had that relationship that’s even more reason to walk away It’s even more reason to move on You got to see them for what they are And this is an important piece right here This is an important piece This is something I learned as a young lad out there in the world That person is not who you thought they were right? They are not who you thought they were The idea that this person was a trustworthy faithful companion is not true It is not true That person does not exist They didn’t exist and they don’t exist It was in your head It was in your head that this person was trustworthy and you they were everything you wanted them to be and they were a faithful commandant That is a lie They are not that person They have proved it They have proved it by their actions So move on And at the risk of sounding callous get over it Get over it Do not dwell do not dwell on do not dwell on on on what it was and don’t dwell on what it could have been You hear when guys go through bad breakups You know it’s I just I thought we were going to It’s like no don’t dwell on that Deal with what it is right now what that person is Deal with reality Accept reality and be be thankful for reality Be thankful that you were able to learn before you invested more more into this person Be be thankful that you found out when you did that this person was a liar that this person was unfaithful was untrustworthy Be be thankful that you know it and you know it now instead of later And you know what else is going to make it a lot easier to get over these situations is recognize that there’s plenty of people out there in the world that are trustworthy and that are faithful good people There’s they’re out there Go find one of them But don’t think that that person that you had was the only one in the world They’re not And you know what? If that sometimes sometimes people have a hard time making that trust because they’re so caught up and they they they don’t want to meet someone else right away That’s fine Start with yourself right? Rely on yourself Trust yourself cuz we when when someone breaks our trust we we we question ourselves too Yes Like we think our my judgment’s bad I’m not a good judge of human character cuz I totally put my faith in this person and look what they did to me So now we don’t trust her So you got to build that trust up You got to build that trust up back again with yourself How do you do that? Read write learn work out be alone It’s okay to be alone Some people get freaked out when they’re alone It’s okay to be alone It’s okay It’s okay to be alone There’s no big deal Enjoy it do something productive and build that trust up in yourself You know look back at the situation learn from it We do that It’s an post-operational debrief Oh you’ve put too much trust in somebody Cool They broke your heart All right roger that Let’s see what were the steps What should I have recognized? How many times did I say “Well you know they didn’t call me but it’s probably just cuz their phone was out of battery ” No once your phone runs out of battery once okay you don’t let it happen again right? So you start seeing those red flags see the mistakes that you made and then look for them next time around because you deal with people all the time that they they made mistakes the first run they go back and they make the same mistakes the second run they go back and they make the same mistakes the third run That’s when you got to start blaming yourself Yeah On your situation That’s why That’s why I said you got to like build a relationship with yourself You got to learn yourself You got to trust You got to learn to trust yourself So spend some time doing that And then when you go back and you start dealing with people because that’s what that’s what you got to watch out for is that you become a hardened criminal and you don’t trust anybody Like you were talking about cops You know sometimes cops have a hard time because they’re dealing with scumbags all day long And it builds up this this mistrust of other people So you don’t want to have that happen You want to be suspicious of people but you want to be able to build trust once they’ve proven themselves So take those small steps and start to build up over time Don’t just jump in and give someone 100% trust out of the gate You don’t know them You don’t know them You know back in the day back in the day when old hardcore bands used to have this t-shirt that just said “Trust no one ” I was like “Yeah that’s legit right? You don’t don’t go out of the gate with the big trust on somebody with important stuff Don’t do it But the good news is like I said there’s plenty of people out there that are good people that you are give you that you can give all your trust to Just take it slow brother Yeah And it’s so crazy how you just explain that so simple And it makes total sense when you’re in the situation though the emotions you know like you can’t just detach and be like “What are the red flags?” No you’re too busy missing the person or whatever You’re a disaster So and I get But even throwing things looking at pictures that’s the worst Yeah Don’t look at pictures You have to get out the picture and stare I’ve seen guys do that I’m like “Bro just give me that Let me throw this away for you It’s not going to help that person ” That was always to me was was explaining like “Listen cuz guys what she was No no she wasn’t That is a lie That person that you’ve put put together in your head that you’ve assembled in your mind that person doesn’t exist They don’t exist The the person that you dealt with was a liar Yeah Was unfaithful was a cheater That’s the person The person wasn’t this person that you’re putting forth in your mind That person doesn’t exist So stop But but you don’t understand the good times Yeah I know I know Here’s what it is It’s a trick Here’s the trick Okay So uh if okay that person’s a liar that person’s a cheater And what I kind of said there was like you don’t understand the good time That’s a real part of it That’s really it’s like sure they did this Sure she um uh flats my tires when she gets mad Sure all that but the good times we have are so good So it’s it’s it’s proof that it is it’s not about the person It’s not about the person that you can see all the red flags and how they mistreat you from time to time or they beat It’s about yourself and how you’re sad now because of all these reasons but the trick comes with what one of the tricks comes with um same thing I said about drinking where it’s your brain cuz it’s like chemicals when you bond with someone in a certain in certain ways and it’s different from you know it varies from person to person but it’s like I think it’s like oxytocin or I don’t know something where it’s it’s it go I don’t want to go into it but you feel this bond with this specific person that’s why you have these feelings even though this girl like lies to you see her lying text messages on your phone right now You’re looking at meanwhile you still still miss them It’s a trick because it’s saying like that your emotional like well-being is attached to this person kind of thing right? And all the other stuff you just kind of ignore So just like um how I was saying with drinking right? Why no consciously like I’m going to be hung over tomorrow? I won’t get anything done All this stuff like why do I want to drink so bad right now? You know kind of thing Um and it’s the same thing The chemicals in your brain are telling you like this girl is essential for you you know for your well-being She’s not Yeah Oh that’s the logic though That’s the It’s a trick Don’t listen to the Don’t listen to your brain Listen to me She’s not essential That’s why you move on bro I’m telling you But that’s the logic Those chemicals are blocking I have seen so many situations where guys are just and and what’s horrible is I’m sitting here saying this It’s you could be smacking someone in the face telling them move on move on And they’re not going to listen That’s a lot So you got to make that decision Yeah That’s that’s that’s it’s hard And guys ruin their lives I mean girls do too Girls and guys they ruin their lives you know with over somebody that is completely abusive whether mentally or physically that just completely abusive and they’ll ruin their lives for this person that per and see in my mind I think it’s because they build a person they build a person on the framework of reality they build a fantasy and they’re in love with that fantasy and they want to keep it going right it’s a fantasy so stop and they and they ignore like all the quote unquote red flags and they remember the good times even if it’s like like 10 minutes a week they remember those good times they ignore the the the the red flags for because of that that you know that trick that chemical trick in their brain and so it reinforces that thing that they built you know that fantasy that they built it’s like it’s true it’s this big the reality is this big and look the fantasy and they just attach to it you ever see like a friend or whatever cuz I’m assuming you’re you’ve never been in this situation like you ever had a a friend where they’re really into it they’re almost ruining their life they’re in bad shape or whatever and then whether it be all of a sudden or years later whatever they’re thinking back and they’re like “What was I thinking?” Because the chemical trick so to speak wears off and then they can see all that logic that you’re talking about You’re like “Oh my gosh man “ It’s it’s almost like it’s almost like you feel like you were a different person when you recover from just the fact that you can’t talk any sense into people when they’re in that situation It’s a trick You got to try and Yeah it’s hard It’s hard But I think knowing that that’s it it’s a chemical in your brain that is tricking you And it goes for a lot of stuff donuts like all this It’s tricking you If you know like hey and you say “Hey I’m not going to be tricked I feel it I feel this I feel the sadness I feel missing this person ” But it’s a trick you know? Yeah that helps It totally helps I like it So move on man I know it’s hard Trust us Speaking of moving on next question Unless we want to talk about this some more No I think we need to move on Okay Exactly Right Let’s move on In what circumstances do you recommend direct attack? I will Hold on Oh we’re not moving on You’re stuck on it No but what’s horrible is man people kill themselves Yeah In these situations over a lie Yeah That’s That’s to me that’s the trick But it’s a lie and and guys or girls get so distraught over this fantasy that doesn’t exist And what’s really jacked up is if they could just move on they’d find a reality that was actually congruent with what their desires are It’s out there Yeah You see people all over the world They’re they’re they’re in relationships having fun from every level right? there’s someone out there But you you get caught up in this mental trap and and obsessing over a fantasy It’s a fantasy Don’t don’t don’t obsess over the fantasy man There’s you can you can get over it And there’s plenty of other human beings out there that are awesome So go find one of them And in the meantime hang out with your badass self right? Become a better person Man working out is a big one For sure That’s a That’s 100% Just get get in the gym and get after it Jiu-jitsu solves everything Yes Lifting solves everything All right Okay So what circumstances do you recommend direct attack in combination with indirect if any or do you have any examples? Yeah So we talk about flanking all the time I always recommend a combined attack Right If you only attack the flank well then the enem is going to adjust and they’re going to put all the defenses there Now it’s not a flank anymore Now it’s the front becomes the Yeah So so you need to feain attack or at least you need to attack with some minor level of force directly so that the enemy has to defend what you’re doing And I mean clearly when when we’re examples are pretty easy to come up with We’re when we’re doing raids like assaults on buildings you’re going to attack that building from multiple directions at a minimum At least you’re going to set distractions on some of the other directions And the same thing we were setting up overwatches Yeah We’re going to have a lot of times we’d have a main overwatch and we’d have a little another little flanker overwatch So when you come to get us you’re going to pay And like a classic L-shaped assault There’s a reason it’s called an L-shaped It’s shaped like an L You have a you have a a fire a base position that’s going to put down fire on the target And then you have maneuver element that’s going to come in from the flank But even with that you you you have to do a base element and a maneuver element There’s a reason because you’re gonna the base is gonna put down fire and then the maneuver is going to maneuver it So yes those are those are clearly some of them It’s the same thing Yes it’s the same thing in the business environment right? In the business environment if you’re going to maneuver into a new market you don’t just walk away from your other market right? You don’t if you’re going to develop a new product you don’t throw away your old product No you keep that’s your base You keep that going and then you flank Mhm So it makes sense there Um Yeah So absolutely when you when you’re going to attack attack from both directions I in fact I do that most of the time So next question This actually isn’t really a question It’s more of a comment Yeah I kind of turned it into a question I guess Yeah Yeah you responded to the comment Very polite Sure Anyway comment goes “Just want to say a quick thanks I struggle with the daily grind Trading days for dollars but you helped me make it happen “ Yeah And my comment was like “Okay well thank you I guess because I hope at the same time that you’re grinding that you’re trading that you’re I hope that you’re not trading days for dollars long term because long term that’s a losing proposition right? If you’re grinding and it’s not doing something you want to do if it’s a grind that you can’t embrace then you got to find a way out of that right? You got to find You can’t trade You don’t want to trade days for dollars because dollars don’t mean anything Days is all you got So you got to find a way out Now this does not mean you need to be rash about it This doesn’t mean tomorrow you walk in I’m not doing this job anymore I’m out and now you’re broke No Don’t be rash and don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater But do come up with a long-term plan about what you want to do how you want to do it where you want to do it And this might take one year or 2 years or 5 years It might take 5 years to get to where you want to be That’s okay That’s fine It’s it’s actually kind of cool when you’re grinding right now because you know there’s something that you’re working towards in the long run That’s actually awesome Mhm So but but you got to have an exit strategy You got to have an exit strategy You got to plan and figure out how much money it’s going to take and what are you going to do? You’re going to work two jobs I’m going to save all my money right now I’m going to invest here Going to pay off my mortgage Whatever it is you’re going to do so that you can get yourself in a position where you actually enjoy doing what you’re doing That’s what you want And the one other cool thing about this like like I say man it’s cool to grind man That’s what we’re here to do You’re here doing stuff right? If you’re not doing anything well then what are you doing? You’re not doing anything So the the other thing that’s cool though about grinding and working is is that when you get that freedom right that you worked hard for it’s going to be so much more worth it the discipline that you put into place to get to that freedom that you want it makes that freedom so much more worth it So I appreciate it I’m glad you’re grinding I’m glad you’re grinding hard but don’t just make that trade It’s not a square trade days for dollars It’s not a square trade Get it back under your control And we’ve had I’ve actually had some really cool feedback on the podcast of people that have hit me up and said “Hey I you told me to plan an exit strategy “ I wish I could find this The guy said “You told me to plan an exit strategy “ He’s like “That was whatever 9 months ago I saved my money I just did this Now I’m in another business I’m kicking ass Thank you ” Right So it can be done It’s one of the things about cool about being a human being You got free will You can make stuff happen Yeah So go make it happen No man And that’s there’s a a lot of tricks there too where you know that we talk about the dis hyperbolic discounting when you when you basically go for the short-term payoff beyond uh inex in at the expense of the long-term payoff So let’s say you have an exit strategy four or five years It helps actually this is like for real help night and day where if you look at that end exit strategy as like a you know a goal or whatever and the time in between now and then is preparation time that’s all that is like prep So a lot of times like I remember when when I was working at the nightclub that was that was a full-on like nightclub cool job All short-term payoff stuff living kind of daytoday week to week I get my paycheck I go hang out go work paycheck hang out So it’s all just short-term payoffs right? So I was in there for like years How many years? Seven Dang So wait no six So I was the end of like almost seven So yeah nightclub So I remember thinking when I was like over it already um I remember thinking dang I I feel like I waste a lot of years I think back now I didn’t cuz I learned a lot of like psychological stuff but um I remembered like reflecting and being like man I spent yeah I went to college all this stuff really slacked through college I spent it the same way just like okay I’ll take this class cuz I may or may not pass it whatever I just want to play football and be cool whatever and I reflect and I think dang I spent my life preparing for nothing really consciously I mean passively I did because I liked certain creative things and and that you know materialized Yes for sure But actively like consciously I was never you know certain people that are like I want to be an architecture and that’s it and I’m doing it And I know a lot of times if there’s family history and certain things it’s like they know you know and they wind up doing it a lot of time Mhm But I reflected and thought man I’m here I spent my life up to this point preparing for nothing in life I know about working out That’s it So a lot of times when you’re m you find yourself in a grind that without like a an exit strategy or something like that it a lot of times that will be the case like I’ve spent my life kind of preparing for nothing really but that’s the good thing how you’re saying it can take a year it can take two years 5 years whatever start preparing for that five years and at the end when the five years comes you are prepared straight up if you spend one year doing something focused like hey I got to get even something like I’m going to play the piano I don’t know anything bowing arrow I don’t know You spend one year focused on it At the end of the year you’re going to be pretty prepared Yeah Compared to the average person So you spend like two years 5 years preparing whatever that exit strategy is And you’re for real prepared Spend look at that time as this is preparation time Yeah And it’s if only somebody comes up to you you’ve been working at the nightclub for a year and says “Hey Ekko what are you going to do with your life?” And you’re like well it wouldn’t you would immediately say well well let me phrase that another way Echo are you planning to uh you know be a nightclub bouncer for the next 25 years? Your answer would clearly be no Okay so what are you getting ready for? Yeah Cuz a lot of times this person is aware that they’re in a grind A lot of times people don’t even realize that what they’re doing that they’re they’re they’re marking time is what we call it in the military You’re marching but you’re not going anywhere You’re literally your feet are going up and down You’re spinning your wheels So think about that’s a great point that you just made is what what were you preparing for? If you would have been learning to play the piano boom you could be in the game right now Right now Yeah But so that’s an important thing especially when you start talking to people that are younger you know when they’re 15 16 17 years old cuz they’re marking time you know they’re having fun Yeah But it’s cool to have fun Let’s make sure we’re making some progress and building some capacity to have a better future all the time What can you do to build capacity for your future? Hey you know you heard Andy Stump and I talk about this and we we didn’t even re recognize that there’s anything else you could do besides be in the teams Like that’s it That’s it And that’s kind of that’s kind of good because when you’re in the teams you don’t want to be thinking about anything else And luckily the teams does give you preparation for other things in life because you’re in leadership position you’re going up you’re learning skills you’re learning whether you’re learning parachuting and you’re learning stuff and guys get out of the teams all the time They become cops they become firemen they all kinds of good jobs But if you’re not in a job like that you’re in a job like being a nightclub bouncer Hey it’s a fun job right? It’s cool You’re having a good time but let’s make sure we have an exit strategy on that one right? Yeah And it doesn’t even necessarily mean like if I wanted to be ultimately and I’m just saying being conscious of it where if I wanted to be a nightclub owner or something perfect I’ll stay right in there And but here’s the thing The difference is I’m not I wasn’t consciously spending that time preparing for anything I was going for tomorrow I was going for you know this weekend That that’s all I was going for And a lot of times I mean in the nightclub it was because it was like a a very recognizable payoff you know because it’s fun and there’s this party going on but even in these grinds like um let’s say I was working for a moving company one time It was the same thing I was looking for the weekend It sucked but I was still like the work part sucked but I was looking forward to getting off work Okay The relief So it’s it’s the same dynamic just kind of negative you know? It’s like negative versus the positive is the relief kind of thing Oh that one the moving company made you want to it forced your hand to want to go do something else like a different lifestyle Whereas the nightclub is sort of you can get you can get distracted and into that where you’re like hey this is just going to be cool right Yeah So it’s that that carrot and the stick you know you know So the nightclub was I was just eating that carrot that was running in front of my face every day or every week or whatever The the moving company was like I’m just trying to run away from the stick that’s hitting me every day kind of thing So I guess it just depends on how much you hate sticks and like carrots It’s just so good And like you said we don’t listen to our parents or we don’t listen to our people around us We don’t listen to We just don’t do it It becomes noise That’s why even you saying “What do you What do you want to do with your future bro?” I’ve heard that since literally since I could understand English What are you going to do with your What are you doing to prepare for your future? What are you going to do? Do you see yourself doing this for Oh yeah No I don’t know Leave me alone It’s just It’s a meme already You know you hear it all the time So it doesn’t mean anything That’s why a lot of times it takes like someone to either rephrase it or straight up like show it to you somehow you know where it hits you Or like Dave was talking his his he was cruising and his dad died and he got shown real quick like hey what am I doing? So good stuff to think about Yeah I mean personally I just got tired of him man So yeah Well I’m glad you did Next question I think we got time for one more question Yeah Jaco I’ve read your book Extreme Ownership My son and I listen to your podcast on the way home from hockey practice and while I can see your message I can’t bring myself to employ it which I would like to do so very badly Any suggestions? Well everybody wants to employ extreme ownership and discipline so very badly but everybody also wants it to be easy right? They want some some secret power that just makes it happen and and they think that I hold the the magic key that’s going to make discipline the easiest thing in the world Well I can tell you that taking ownership of your life it isn’t easy And living the life of discipline isn’t easy In fact it’s hard That’s why it works And so if you want to employ discipline there’s only one way to do it You employ discipline Stop looking around for suggestions on how to employ discipline Because I’ll tell you that listening to this podcast is not going to give you discipline Reading the book is not going to give you discipline You have to impose discipline on yourself you And you do that with steps that you execute Small steps Get up early Work out hard Attack your daily tasks Crush your job Don’t waste time on on on meaningless activities That’s how you employ discipline You get aggressive in making things happen Be the discipline That’s it That’s it It’s that simple And I’ll say it again If you want to live a disciplined life that’s what you have to do You have to be the discipline And I think that’s all I’ve got for tonight So Echo yes I know you’ve been kind of stepping up the discipline and ownership Sure Why don’t you take some ownership right now of telling people how they can support this podcast if they want to? I I will Before supporting this podcast I think we all should support ourselves in this way Similar to like on the airplane like I said before you know the airplane oxygen mask you got to put on yourself before you can help the infant Not that not that this podcast is an infant or nothing Oh maybe it is one year Whatever Anyway you know what I mean So if you’re I’ve been into working out more more consistently which is ain’t a lot cuz I was you know I’m no stranger to the workouts Um I’ve been supplementing my workouts with supplements as you know Um krill oil just got some more Boom You know when you get new krill oil like I get it now before I run out you know? I mean it seems obvious like oh stock Yeah You’re you’re an adult now and you’re prepared I like it Yes Exactly Which is new for me I mean the buzz is still going I’m out of krill oil I’ll order some now It’ll be in in a week Yeah I know Yeah No no no That’s not going on anymore Which is another demonstration of discipline Really? I like it We count that Yeah It’s kind It counts So the daily discipline in all things including ordering krill oil before you’re out That’s a good point It’s true I like what you’ve done there When it comes in I’m not even out on my old but when it comes in it feels good Oh the krill oil’s in It feels good to be prepared Yeah So yeah you feel prepared You are prepared Yeah you are You feel it cuz you are straight up Anyway krill oil if you don’t know what’s krill omega-3s is it? Yeah Anyway it’s real good for your joints And really that’s the I mean omega-3 is good Cool But the question is if you don’t know it’s kind of like what does that do for me? You know well how is that going to look? How’s the omega-3s going to benefit me in in the krill oil situation it’s your joints especially if you do a lot of pressing exercises and jiu-jitsu Actually I shouldn’t say especially I’m just saying including but not limited to hard pressing and jiu-jitsu exercises like what you’ve done there I’m telling you man It’s the truth Um anyway Yeah So get on that krill oil if you have joint a joint situation Really? Yeah Or if you don’t or if you don’t preventative Yeah Yeah I need to do more pre preventative stuff in my life Yeah It’s funny I’ll take them like I’ll pour them out you know and they look like jelly beans Yeah I I didn’t realize they look like jelly My daughter she’s four She’s like “Oh jelly beans ” But she smell them No she don’t bite them She you know you smell them Yeah They smell like krill oil Hey I was on deployment So they make disgusting jelly beans Have you ever seen those before? They they make jelly beans that taste like puke That taste like what? Like on purpose? Yeah It’s like a joke So I was on deployment in Iraq and somebody sent me a a care package a care package right? They care They were being funny They sent me some of them bad tasting jelly beans I didn’t look at the label I just opened them up because I hadn’t had any candy in a while I wanted some candy Yeah man Boom Took a mouthful Just puke in there Dang It is disgusting Yeah So the crow oil jelly beans more or less the same thing Don’t bite them and eat them Except Yeah The packaging is different So they don’t you know where can you get those things anyways? If you’re interested in these krill oil tablets is what they are Now krill oil little tablets Yeah you eat them and chew them if you want Swallow them I recommend cuz they they smell and taste like krill oil anyway But they’re good for your joints Yeah On it Okay So the really all the supplements you’re going to want to take is from Onit So go to onit com/joo if you want the 10% off But like I said back to the support part where okay so you know how like when you work out and then you ever work on you’re like “Hey my knees or my elbow or something is bothering you ” It’s like your whole body is working fine You can bench a bunch you can squat a bunch but it’s like your elbow it’s like you know you’re you’re only as strong as your weakest link Mhm elbows knees that’s your weak link right there That’s what the krill oil does That’s what it alleviates You know that’s important is what I’m saying Yeah I agree with you Here’s the thing I didn’t really understand that But bro I’ve I’ve done it where I’ve taken like ibuprofen to like okay it’s cuz it’s just pain you know? It’s not like I’m going to pull like if it’s your muscle or something like a strain muscle not an injury Yeah It’s like a pain but it’ll inhibit cuz you have a little What made you decide to start taking oil? Um I mean I know I take it I was like “Yeah you should try it ” Or did I say that or did you just start trying it on your own? It was you but I I heard about it You know my wife my father-in-law would always grill oil is better than fish oil I was like “Cool I don’t even take fish oil ” So it didn’t really mean much to me I lift I’m I I’m looking for gains bro I’m not here Yeah bro Leave me alone with the girl But yeah that was it and you mentioned it and um you know I you’re not hobbling around in pain or nothing So I say “Hey if Joo doesn’t it let me go try ” And yeah and I got it from a guy that was like a powerlifter really strong and he was you know 56 years old when I met him He was in great shape And I said “What do you do?” He said “Grill ” Yeah I told um that’s not the only thing He also works out hard and all that stuff but it’s a good thing to know about That’s really That was kind my point really You know like my you know you can be strong but when you got your elbow jacked up from being strong really Yeah You know you got to patch that little thing naturally like cuz it’s not like you’re putting cortis cortisone shots or or in my case ibuprofen just to mask the pain so you can get gains It’s different It’s like a whole thing I was telling um Taylor I was talking with him We rolled for a little bit Did we? No we didn’t roll We were just talking and uh I told him how old I was and he was like “What?” You know it’s the krill oil man Notice I didn’t mention how old I am Yeah Nonetheless uh if you like krill actually there’s some good Oh you know the per Okay so there’s this total strength and performance too Um I was I was looking at that because it’s real interesting like stuff in the clinical studies It’s over time So it is considered a pre-workout So typically when people when you should take it consistently consistently Yeah Your gains it’s like a cumulative effect You know what I mean? Just like crow oil though Really like cuz here’s why I got tricked I didn’t get tricked but here’s why I misunderstood is usually a pre-workout has like caffeine and stimulants in it you know And sure it’ll have like other stuff allegedly I don’t know But usually you take a pre-workout so you get fired up physiologically to go lift get a big pump get all this you know this performance stuff or whatever from the caffeine and all that Total strength and performance doesn’t have caffeine No it doesn’t Yeah So it’s a different it’s a whole different kind of system that’s giving you you know the benefits It feels good though Yeah That and but Shroom Tech too same thing where you can take it that day and you’ll feel it that day cuz it you know helps you oxygen Like I said I double I double dip on those I get all of it man All up on it and down four Actually my trip to South Africa I didn’t have either Oh dang Yeah Going um what do you call it? When you don’t take the supplements going slick I guess Yeah We had some good roles down there too Yeah I was I was thinking to myself like the guys that were down there Chef and Richie they’re like “Hey you know tomorrow night because I went and rolled the first night at at their fight fit and the the first night you know we trained a little bit you know but we were hanging out and then they said “Hey when you come back tomorrow we’re just going to do like 10 rounds 10 five minute rounds ” I was like “Okay cool ” And then I got the home the next morning or the next afternoon we were heading over there said “Yeah I I wouldn’t mind having a little bit of shroom tech right now but I didn’t have any Had to go slick “ Yeah Good times Hey man You know and hey going slick that’s cool but you don’t have to Yeah No you know I mean we didn’t want to I wanted to have a little of that shroom tech with it Yes Yes Some of us we don’t want that beef you know So we’re going to take the shroom tech We’re going to take the the c to me again back not to go too deep on the crow oil but that one I think is like an essential That’s like an everyday thing you know? Yeah Like people they’ll drink coffee every single day You know what I mean? And cool I say cool drink coffee but it should be like that because the krill is way more beneficial than the coffee I think coffee is more like it’s like a immediate thing Anyway anyway you like this stuffs um these cool supplements good supplements the best supplements Everyone knows this already Go to on com/joo for 10% off Also a good way to support the podcast is the Amazon clickth through All all that is is before you do your Amazon shopping click through the website I got a banner little Amazon shopping banner Got the com got the co uk one and I want to say the Germany one too Over there on the side of the website uh jockodcast com and also up top on the on the navigation menu is what to find is what you’re saying easier than it was before For sure Well that’s good And then on the store I think it’s like in the support tab Anyway before you do your Amazon shopping click on that first then do your shopping regardless of what you’re buying I always make the sodium in the water reference cuz really that’s what it is really That’s the best reference I mean the best analogy you know Okay It is bro Okay Okay I said okay dude Yeah But the way the tone was like whatever But here’s the thing That’s a big deal small piece of sodium drop it in water see what happens Just see what happens Actually don’t do that Look at look up a video See what happens That’s what’s good And that’s what you are really You do the small I think the biggest thing is people don’t People think it’s not a big deal That’s the thing They think it’s just a little piece of sodium Tell that to the sodium Yeah When he hits water So anyway yeah you go and you do small action Takes two sec Literally two seconds Boom Click And big reaction Good support good reinforcements What if you you kind of needed some reinforcements and it took just one click of a thing and it brought just a full-on reinforcement into your situation? That’s good right? Small action big reaction Sounds good to me Anyway that’s what the Amazon clickthrough does And that’s how you do it Go to jockpodcast com click on the Amazon battery before you do the shopping Boom Instant support Um and you can subscribe to the podcast on whatever iTunes provider platform you use iTunes Stitcher Google Play and others Um yeah subscribe if you haven’t haven’t already Leave a review if you’re in the mood If you were moved by Joo’s words or Echo’s words or Echo’s words leave a review you know see what up Um also subscribe subscribe to our YouTube channel We have a YouTube channel I know a lot of people already know that And a lot of people have YouTube channels Yeah How do you distinguish which one’s good and which one’s not good? Right Well here’s the good thing about subscribing to YouTube channels is you just click subscribe and if I guess it you know it shows the new videos in your feed You can elect to have a notification or not It’s good to have the notification and it doesn’t annoy you cuz for something to annoy you it would have to happen a lot but since you don’t make a lot of videos that’s the thing actually depends on what you mean by a lot So at least two a week will be uploaded Oh one will be the podcast one will be something else I think that is a that you just threw down the gauntlet Now everyone’s going to track your I know do it Hey if Ekko doesn’t put up at least two videos a week from here on out we can attack him on the interwebs Verbally please Yeah man No Hey uh I’m accountable you know Okay Well yeah you just made yourself accountable so that’s good There it is But yeah subscribe A little bit of that extreme Anyway good thing about subscribing to YouTube you can just unsubscribe like anything else It’s not like these you know these marketers who email you stuff It’s like “Hey unsubscribe to dude I bought one can of chicken with from you four years ago and you’re still emailing me Your chicken wasn’t that good Stop Why do I have the option to unsubscribe to your email list when I didn’t even subscribe to it? Get away from this ” Yeah So it’s not like that kind where you click unsubscribe and then they email you again By the way this is just to confirm We’re sorry to see you go Why this? Why? And then you got to fill out It’s not like that And in six and and you’re you will stop receiving email in six to eight weeks Yeah Or some something Yeah It’s not like that Unsubscribe Done Problem solved And then you resubscribe you It’s totally up to you Empower yourself on the subscribing situation That’s YouTube Um so yeah some videos on there will um we’ll try to keep you somewhat occupied on there It’s good Anyway and also Joo has a store It’s called Joostore Joostore com If you wear shirts and you want to represent that way I think we’re going to put some new shirts on there some new stuff You know what I did? What we did really is you know people listen to you Joo I listen to you But the good thing about you is actually actually one of the one of the reasons I listen to you is because you listen to me and you listen to others You know we listen to others So people be like “Hey XYZ make that into a shirt ” or you know hey you said that make that into a shirt or they’ll just come up with their own thing You know prioritize X I don’t know whatever Make it a shirt So during that listening I kind of we kind of just took it to heart in a real general way And there’s some new stuff I like that Yeah it’s good It’s good options Yeah but you can’t we can’t make every shirt that everything No And I because you just don’t that wouldn’t be practical No it wouldn’t be And some I mean I got to be honest Plus I say I say some cool stuff I also say some dumb stuff Somebody might pick some dumb stuff Yeah Or you know something that maybe wouldn’t translate onto a shirt that someone would actually wear other than maybe a handful of people Then we’ll just say some shirt ideas make more sense than others We’ll just say that But nonetheless uh we are listening and this is going to be a result of it with some you know maybe some new stuff Uh there’s also some patches cool patches the Velcro ones and whatnot Um hoodies rash guards performance I think we’re going to do another rash guard design as well Not going to get rid of the old one The old ones and the the current one is that one’s dope too Nonetheless just more options you know guys want to get after it and have different looks Maybe even have two in rotation that look different Boom So yeah we do that Anyway all these things you can look at them if you like what you see one two three things whatever However many things get it Support that way Good way to support Such a good way Yeah Um Yeah And and you’re representing so it’s kind of like it’s it’s like an official way to kind of just jump in the game you know? You know what I mean? I do know what you mean I saw remember um I don’t know if Yeah you met him right? Yeah Yeah Sam he came into the gym the shave head Yeah Sam So he was just sitting there in the down in the lounge downstairs I’m I’m going to get something to my car real quick I see I see the shirt Of course I’m going to say something but before I say anything I’m thinking in my mind look at this guy representing hard And the thing is I don’t know him you know? You know it’s a guy I haven’t met or whatever And you get that feeling like that guy’s representing And that’s the feeling you get really you know when you see somebody in the wild with it Well actually speaking of that I got a little story to tell Somebody hit me up and they said “Hey I was out in the wild saw someone with a with a Jo podcast t-shirt on Walked over to him threw the bonafites on him Bonafet bonafites is like you ever seen like a spy movie where I come up and I say “It is cold and dark in the winter ” And the person responds “In March it will be warmer ” And now we know we’re good to go So what was the bonafes? This dude walked up to the other dude with a trooper t-shirt on and he said “Good evening Echo ” And boom they knew what was up Y So I think that’s become the official bonafites of Jono podcast If you if you see someone in the wild and you you know it might be a situation where you can’t just get crazy Nope You just got to walk up and say good evening echo and then they’ll then you can do your burpees Exactly And that feel that feeling is real though That feeling that I had when when you see it’s like oh yeah you kind of know you know Anyway it’s cool that way little added layer if you will Anyway also Psychological Warfare If you don’t know what Psychological Warfare this is what it is It’s an album with tracks And this is they’re not music tracks They’re not Jaco’s hardcore band tracks Bronson’s children’s tracks It’s not that What it is is little they’re not even excerpts because they’re just loan tracks for specific things And those things are if you’re feeling weakness at any point while you’re trying to consistently get after it wake up early or work out or stick to your mental QRF quick reaction force Yeah Got some weakness hitting you Cool Here we go Boom Call the QRF Here they are I kind of look at it as like a spot Yeah You know like when And for those of those people that don’t lift a spot is when someone helps you lift whatever weight you’re trying to lift And and not to split hairs but really it’s not necessarily there to help you It’s I mean ultimately it help make sure you don’t go down Yes Exactly So if you’re slipping if you want to really get after if I’m going to work up every single day no days off one year Big big tall order right there Just like if I’m I’m going to bench this 10 000 lbs Whatever I’m going to make two videos a week I’m going to bench more than I’ve benched before but I’m going to go for I’m go for my one rep max It makes sense to have a spot You might get that one max and not need the spot but it’s there If you fail like if it’s like too much or it feels like too much or that guy’s there to just nudge you as much as you need That’s really how this is just how I look at it Accurate Yeah Potentially right? Yeah Accurate So basically what it is is you put the track on like “Oh shoot I’m about to skip this workout I’m about to make this workout day a rest day ” No you’re not Yeah You don’t want to do that No you can rest tomorrow Today you work rest on the day that you have scheduled for rest for real in your thing Don’t just impromptu make it a rest day cuz you feel like it’s not how it works If you need a little spot in doing that you listen to a track called workout get what is it? What workout? I don’t know One of the workout spots cuz there’s there’s a couple for workout There’s one for waking up There’s three for waking up Yeah See and there’s one for kind of sticking to the diet plan you know like there’s that kind of stuff And um yeah you put it on and there’s one for getting for forcing yourself through creative blocks Yeah Right Which kind of sounds like impossible but let me tell you it’s possible I would say I will say that this will get you through it 100% of the time Like I I’m trying to imagine the feeling that you would that would result in your heart if you listen to this and you still skip the workout bro Um yeah it’s hard to fathom the feeling you would have Anyway it’s very helpful and um a real good spot you know and it’s Jaco talking to you so he’s like kind of there with you you know the guy you want there That’s my opinion Anyway it’s called Psychological Warfare It’s on iTunes So if you just do a search psychological warfare Jaco willing get that You can support that way But this is one where this is real good support for yourself Make it your ringtone The the wake up call Clear it with your wife first You could have some problems Spouses do not like Yeah that’s a good one And it happened happens to be number one still on iTunes That’s awesome Yep Since day one by the way Yes That’s Thank you for the support on that one Um all right While you’re on Amazon real quick this is a couple things I I have to cover Um I legally have to do this Jo White T we’re we’re Looks like we’re going to have to go put a warning on it because there’s a little situation going on Got a a trooper hit me up on Twitter and this is what he said Warning I started drinking Jaco tea and the wife became pregnant Should be on the label So he was also wondering if the child would arrive as a brown belt in jiu-jitsu Now to be honest with you we should have tested this further Mhm You know we should have tested this further We didn’t And we aren’t 100% sure if babies produced under the influence of Jaco White tea will be a brown belt They will be a purple belt minimum but they might not be a brown belt But fertility yep it’s confirmed Prenatal jiu-jitsu skills confirmed And confirmed to a level of about 147% So order the tea make it drink it It tastes so good Tastes like victory So you can get that You can you can also pre-order Way of the Warrior Kid book Now Uncle Jake is trying to explain to Mark what a warrior is So he gives him a notebook that has various warrior codes in it He’s got the Ranger Creed He’s got the Seal Code He’s got the Marine Corps core values He’s got the the seven virtues of Bushidto It’s the samurai code He’s got the code of chivalry for knights He’s got the Viking laws So he’s got all these like warrior codes in there so that young Mark knows what is up And we should all we can all kind of need to know what is up with some of them The Vikings You don’t you might not think you might think yourself a Viking laws What you know what can a Viking teach me? Why would I need to know Viking laws? How could I possibly get anything? So you get way the warrior kid You order it You go you start going through the Viking laws Let me tell you what they say Viking laws Be brave and aggressive Be direct Grab all opportunities Use varying methods of attack Be versatile and agile Attack one target at a time Don’t plan everything in detail Use top quality weapons Be prepared Keep weapons in good condition Keep in shape Find good battle comrades Agree on important points Choose one chief Be a good merchant Find out what the market needs Do not promise what you can’t keep Do not demand overpayment Arrange things so that you can return Keep the camp in good order Keep things tidy and organized Arranged enjoyable activities that strengthen the group Make sure everybody does useful work Consult all members of the group for advice Hey this Viking laws are 1 200 years old Is there anything you might be able to get out of that? Yes absolutely We could all take something away from that So bunch of warrior codes in there And by the way Mark he ends up writing his own warrior kid code Mhm Yeah Yeah The kind of kid code that I wish I would have lived by You know what I’m saying? Yes It’s going to help some people out Also just released We got the discipline equals freedom field manual coming This is what you were asking for a book It pretty much represents what we talk about this on on this podcast Thoughts and action The thoughts are aligned with what you hear on this podcast The actions are more detailed than what I say on the podcast more granular more specific workouts of food intake martial arts So discipline equals field discipline equals freedom field manual You can get some of that You can also pick up a couple copies of Extreme Ownership of course Lessons of combat leadership that we talk about on this podcast by the way from Henry V to HR McMaster spans a pretty good time And those lessons of combat leadership translate to business and life And they’re laid out in extreme ownership very simply and very clearly So what you do is you order one for you and then you order one for everyone in your chain of command up and down Get some muster May 4th and 5th New York City Marriott Marquee Register now Book your hotel Book your travel Come and get it You know it’s morning PT That’s what we start with full days of leadership training leadership discussion Q&A a lot of Q&A Also just hanging out We we’re going to we’re going to be sitting there with you eating lunch eating breakfast whatever Leaf’s going to be there JP is going to be there Dave Burke who’s coming on the podcast is also going to be there A bunch of you all are going to be there That’s one of the best things about is meeting everybody And of course Ekko is going to be there We knew that cruising He’s going to be cruising big time So come on to that We’re in the game in that and we’re going to be in the game with you getting stuff solved And while you’re waiting for that if you want to get in the game with us now you can find us on the interwebs find us on Twitter Instagram and be on that Facebooky we’re there too Echo is ate echo Charles and I am at Joo Willilink and thanks for listening to this podcast Thanks for supporting the podcast We appreciate it We’re glad we have you out there in the game with us And to the military personnel that are out in the field right now in harm’s way protecting freedom around the world Thank you to the police and law enforcement that are out on the streets right now protecting us from criminals Thank you And of course to the firefighters EMTs and other first responders that are waiting right now for us to call when an emergency takes place Thank you and everyone else that is out there doing your best Builders and biologists farmers and framers scientists and sales reps engineers and educators leaders and frontline sled dogs Thanks all of you for taking ownership of your life for being the discipline and for getting out there into the world with a clenched jaw and a furled brow and getting after it And so until next time this is Echo and Joo out