This is Joo podcast number five with Echo Charles and me Joo Willink Good evening Echo Charles Good evening Welcome to podcast number five Here we are Here we are number five Thank you everyone for joining us So tonight I got asked on Twitter it hey could you talk about coaching some people and that kind of prompted me to think about something that I have pulled out in the past when I’m teaching some leadership classes And what this is is two counseling notes that I wrote for sessions when I was trying to help a couple of SEAL leaders improve themselves and get better And the first one was for a SEAL that was a buddy of mine and who was a little bit junior to me just a little bit junior than me in rank but you know because I was a prior enlisted SEAL I had actually been in the SEAL teams for a much longer time And this guy was a real great great leader great guy and very passionate about doing a a solid job and very passionate about the SEAL teams which is an awesome thing to see And with that passion and I’ve said this before sometimes your strength can be your weakness and sometimes he would get a little bit too passionate about stuff and a little bit emotional and be be a little bit easy to read And so I was in a meeting with him and I kind of saw how he was acting and I saw how other people were reacting to him And so when I saw that I kind of sat down and just put some words on paper to let him know that he had a little area of improvement And what’s good about this is you know I was the detached person So I was able to sit outside the situation and just watch and see oh that’s that he’s not coming across the way he thinks he’s coming across And so I’m going to start off with that one This is pretty positive Echo question When you when you say put words on paper is that like an official thing? You know like when you get written up at work or something it’s like here’s your official warning right? This one was not This was just a bro saying “Hey man here’s some here’s some tips ” Almost like a DL note almost Yeah A DL note Yeah This is a DL note So what’s interesting is there’s there’s in the SEAL teams there’s not a lot of writing up in this in this capacity So if somebody has a safety violation where they do something unsafe that gets written up immediately but this type of thing is a little bit you know cuz normally you’re just trying to bring someone along and help them out and improve their leadership You know it’s just mentoring So a lot of times that you don’t need to document when you’re trying to help out your buddies the the reason that’s why I’m kind of lucky here I forget what it was but I you know I went to a meeting he was in it and I kind of forget the situation but for whatever reason I wrote this down and I think I sent it to him and said “Hey let’s talk about this later ” But just just wanted to give you this stuff you know now And so I’m kind of lucky that I wrote it down It was kind of like in the spirit of organization you know Yeah And just I think it was more of just I couldn’t talk to him immediately for whatever reason And so I just sent him an email and said “Hey bro just just or I like left it on his desk I forget if it was digital It’s probably email ” But so here we go And there’s there’s some interesting comments in here and that’s why I think I saved it and that’s why I think it’s it’s good conversation So here we go Here’s my note to a SEAL leader that is a buddy trying to trying to move along his leadership paradigm And here we go One leadership is getting people to do things This is a form of manipulation So right there I use this word that everybody hates manipulation And people often replace that word with influence And I do it too you know say “Oh you want to use your influence but what you’re really saying is you want to manipulate people but it’s very negative ” And the way I break that down the way I separate that from something negative and something positive is if I’m trying to manipulate you in a negative way that means I want you to do something that’s going to benefit me and it’s going to hurt you To me that’s manipulation and that’s negative But if you’re trying to influence someone you’re trying to lead them You’re still manipulating them but you’re trying to get something that’s going to be positive for them and positive for the team M So as far as I’m concerned when you’re influencing someone you’re really manipulating for a positive outcome So but that being said I think people need to recognize that and that’s why I use that word because everyone knows what manipulation is You’re trying to get someone to do something right? And that’s what leadership is if you think about it You’re trying to get someone to do something But I use that word so it’s very clear what you’re trying to do right? Leadership is nothing more than getting people to do what you want both up and down the chain of command So not just the people below you you want the people above you to to do what you want them to do More importantly getting them to to want to do what you want them to do is the best form of leadership and the highest form of manipulation So this is a situation where you don’t even want you you want the person just to want to do what you’re getting them to do Right? So now I go on every time we open our mouths to speak to another person our goal is to get them to do what we want them to do Otherwise why the hell are we talking? So everything you say the tone of your voice the the words you choose the inflection on those words and body language and facial expression are all tools to be used to make progress in getting your way or tools that you misuse and isolate yourself and move away from your goals So again I wanted to make sure that this guy knew that every little facial expression everything that he said and how he said it all those things have an impact because people forget that You don’t realize how important your words are and how important your facial expressions are and how important your tone is and how that impacts people You are always in negotiation Everything you say and do and the manner in which you say and do it has an impact on future outcomes Pretty simple Now this is when I say this to people they go oo So here it is The best way to win is when the other person doesn’t know you won and if possible might not even know there was a fight If your ego requires the constant food of victory you can never win in this manner So just to restate that the best way to win in a in a competition of getting some getting something to happen or getting some someone to do something the best way to win is when they don’t even know that you won And even better than that is that they don’t even know that there was a game They don’t even know that they’re doing this for a reason other than by their own free will That’s what they think That’s what you want them to think And again this is manipulation And I’m sorry about that The thing is is that you’re manipulating for positive outcomes You’re not manipulating for your own benefit You’re not manipulating for to to make bad something bad happen to that person You’re influencing them so that they do a better job So that the team does better So that the mission gets accomplished Mhm Now I go on Creating adversarial or antagonistic relationships never helps you reach end goals This is slightly related to the old keep your friends close and enemies closer People that outright oppose me will never help me and will usually maneuver to hurt my cause This is never good At least a neutral relationship seldom results in someone actively sabotaging my efforts So it’s really easy to get an adversarial relationships And that wasn’t one of my little go-to words that I used to use when talking to my subordinate leadership What adversary? Adversarial relationships You know I’d say “Hey you’re starting to get into an adversarial relationship with this person And then where is that going to go?” And I would say “It’s never going to be good They’re never going to they’re never going to go out of their way to help you In fact when you’re an adversary of somebody they go out of their way to sabotage you and hurt you And that’s that’s just never going to be helpful So then I go on to say “Your history reveals that you are good at getting into adversarial situations You should work to control that impulse It will never help you attain your goals “ And that’s you know you’re laughing because that’s a very blunt statement right? That’s a very blunt statement Your history reveals that you are good at getting into adversarial situations You’re good at it though Like that’s a skill almost Yeah Yeah You’re real good at it Um and you can see this is this is a pretty blunt uh pretty blunt writing here And the reason is because I had a relationship with this guy You know he was open to hear what I had to say And so it wasn’t like I was just being a jerk and I was going to put him on the defensive and he knew that and he knew that I was always you know looking out for his best interest and I knew he would look out for mine as well So we had a very good relationship going on Don’t burn bridges Period Nothing is ever gained by this The future is never known and I always do what I can to keep lines of communication open bridges intact and reinforced if possible So why burn bridges? So seldom in life should you burn a bridge? And a lot of times people think because I’m a SEAL and I’m aggressive that I’ I’m like this kind of burn bridges type of person right? And it’s it’s just not true because it’s not an effective way to go through life Now I go on to make a note about that I don’t like to say never but when dealing with human relationships which are inherently complex and unpredictable I believe that you should never follow courses of action that cannot be undone reversed or manipulated in the future Of course now I’m talking about you know people on the same team I’m not talking about you know going to war and there you obviously do things in war that are completely unreversible because you’re destroying and killing people and they’re never coming back So this is different This is this is in a team situation where you’re trying to work together and you’re you’re in a leadership role Mhm Going on believe in what you’re saying but accept that you might be wrong I believe in what I’m saying and if I don’t believe it I study and question it until it makes sense or I change what I am saying until I do believe it That’s a little hard to understand that last piece So so what I’m saying is you got to believe in what you’re saying You have to believe in what you’re saying And if you don’t believe it then you’ve got to either question whatever it is that you’re being told to believe or that you should believe or that you’re supposed to believe you got to question that until you understand it And then once you understand it then you have belief in it And you know I’m I’m not going to go into crazy detail on that because in in our book the that Leif and I wrote you know there’s a chapter and it’s called believe and it explains exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to making sure that you believe in what you’re saying But I think the point that I was focused on here was more that sometimes you’re wrong and you have to be able to admit when you’re wrong And I I go on to kind of go into some detail here If I’m wrong I look forward to admitting it because it gives the opportunity to advertise being humble and open-minded That’s interesting And people miss that opportunity all the time when they’re wrong they either put their foot down and deny it or they don’t take advantage of the fact that they go that that when they’re wrong they say “Oh you know what Ekko? Ah man I I’m definitely wrong here I think you had a much better idea Let’s I’m stepping back You run with it “ That’s a great sign It makes people respect you and go “Yeah that’s cool This guy This guy’s humble enough to admit when he’s wrong ” They like that So that’s actually a form of manipulation in its own right because I want you to think that I’m humble and I am humble but I want to make sure that you see that right I go on to tell this individual you are not good at being wrong or taking criticism this is a weakness of yours so recognize fool and again you can see here that’s where the kind of the relationship that I had with him comes out oh right you really put that yeah yeah no that’s real that’s real And this is written I would say maybe eight years ago something like that So it’s pretty old Thank god for computers because we have you know uh records of things right? Right You saved it right? Control S Yeah for sure Now I go on Think strategic You will win and lose daily battles all the time If you flaunt your victories which you do they hurt you strategically If you sulk in your defeats which you also do it hurts you strategically This is wrong Winning in daily battles gives you the opportunity to deflect credit show your humbleness and victory and show your ability to lead which all help you in the long-term fight to achieve your goals Losing a battle gives you the opportunity to generous generously seed your position to admit you’re wrong which both display humbleness and display your ability to follow So people in every business in every job in in life in your house you win and lose little battles all the time and deciding which ones are worth fighting for number one And then when you do win them how do you act? And then when you lose them how do you act? And all of these the winning and the losing is not as important as how you act upon winning or losing And how you you continue to influence the situation Even though you might have lost you do it in such a way that you show humility and you open up You show your open mind and it makes the person you build your relationship with them Mhm So winning or losing is not important What’s important is how you react to winning and losing Yeah Like when you um like when you say you’re sorry right? You know like if two people are in a relationship or even friends and get into a argument fight whatever about whatever And uh and one person they don’t want to say they’re sorry you know because it’ll show that I was wrong or it’ll show that I lost the argument or show that my points were invalid or whatever they think But when you say sorry and for real say sorry Don’t be like “Well I’m sorry if you were offended ” Don’t say that kind of stuff Don’t be like “Okay I’m sorry “ Don’t say like that like really mean it And when you can do that consistently it’ll b any future argument it’ll start to break down that barrier of of of defense you know? So they the person the people both of them won’t go into it thinking okay I got to I got to mount this defense against this person now it can be a little bit more of a fair problem-solving situation more so than this argument me against you cuz they trust they’re not going to you know get attacked if if they show weakness or whatever if they’re like oh you know what I know I I I made a mistake they get they you demonstrate by saying sorry you demonstrated that you’re not going to go and turn up the heat when they start showing that weakness It’s like okay you can you can solve problems a lot more easy That’s that’s thinking strategic Right Right Speaking to people going on here Speaking to people Oh wait Going back I say you have a bad tendency to get caught up in tactical battles You expend effort and ammunition receive wounds and tear yourself up when you should be thinking strategically And that kind of goes to what you were just saying where people will get all angry and they’ll hurt the relationship Why? because they want to win this meaningless battle right? Meaningless battle So detach yourself When you start feeling that anger that aggression that frustration detach yourself and ask yourself what am I really arguing about? What is happening right here? Why am I getting worked up? You probably shouldn’t be Now I go on to speaking to people Well literally speaking to people treat everyone with respect from E1 to0 E E1 in the military is the lowest ranking person O10 an officer 10 is the highest That would be an admiral or a general The E1 is the is the seaman recruit or the lowest ranking person So I’m saying treat everyone with respect Mhm Speak with humility This disarms people and is one of the best forms of manipulation And again if everyone is is put off by that term manipulation which I know it is a very derogatory term and but you have to get over that because you have to understand what I’m trying to say I’m trying to make sure that people understand that when you’re in a leadership position there’s nicer ways of saying it but what you’re trying to do is get people to do what you want them to do That’s what leadership is And that’s also what manipulation is Disarmed people are open to suggestion Overconfidence and condescending tone which is common for you causes defenses to go up and people to get defensive So the minute you come in and you start being overconfident or talking to people in a condescending manner they get defensive and all of a sudden they’re not really listening That being said subtle confidence and believing in what you are saying as noted above allow people to also believe in what you are saying and that they trust in your judgment and leadership However do not speak as if you know things your opponent does not That offends everyone especially SEALs So you never never like talk to people as if you know something that they don’t you know because it offends people It offends me It offends everybody It’s impossible not to be offended by that It makes you feel stupid You get defensive So you’ve got to say things in a manner that you don’t sound like I know it and you don’t Right? Your rank means nothing in an argument Pulling rank in any way is defeat So the minute I have to say echo I outrank you therefore I’m right means I it means I couldn’t It means my argument didn’t make sense it should be able to stand on its own two feet right? And similar to that and this is something we we saw a lot in the SEAL teams and you see it a lot in the business world as well It’s similar to rank It’s the experience It’s pulling the experience card Pulling the experience card is weak arguments should be able to stand on their own without needing to be backed up by the way we did it in Baghdad the way we did it in Rammani the way we did it in Afghanistan or whatever the case may be You shouldn’t need to say that Now you can cite an example but that shouldn’t be the basis of your argument And we see that in the business world where someone will say well we’ve been through this before right? And well why did you go through it before? Then why are we going through it again? If you went through it before maybe you did something wrong But that’s a tendency that people have and in the business world you end up with people that have been in a specific industry for 20 30 40 years And so it’s very easy for them just to fall back on the well this is the way we’ve done it before I’ve seen this a million times I’ve always done it I’ve done this before I’ve been through this before You’ve heard all these examples It’s what people do Also like if people they’re in some kind of debate or argument about I don’t know whatever solar system they’ll be like oh I have a college degree almost like my argument is better than yours regardless of what it is because I have that college degree Yeah I have an example of that where a young seal was feeling as if he was being disrespected about what that he didn’t know very much He’s a pretty new seal and he fell back on the argument of exactly what you just said which was like you know I have an I have a degree in problem solving or something along the I’ve been to classes on problem solving That was his reason why people should listen to him right? Which is not a good card to pull out No in any situation and definitely not in the SE teams Hey I’ve been a I’ve been to a class on problem solving You you need to listen to me Wait a second Why don’t you just present your solution right? and then let it stand on its own two feet because if you’re so good at problem solving then we surely you must have a wonderful solution Yeah you took that class for sure man Uh but yes it’s the same thing So to close this thing out I said anyway those are some thoughts I thought about this today after we had that conversation I left thinking about my principles of management leadership off the battlefield in administrative situations These are the same principles I used in combat building relationships and leading And I also use them in administrative leadership situations And as you know I’ve been successful in that environment as well You are a great leader Just make some adjustments to your game and you’ll be even better And that’s it That’s how I closed it out to this guy who was you know got this note from me and hit me back and said “Hey man Thanks That’s good stuff And and I’ll take action and definitely improved his game with it Now that’s a pretty nice counseling session or nice attempt to help somebody Now this next example that I’m going to go through is somebody that was on his last legs He was in a leadership position and he was having some significant problems Now he was an inexperienced guy and for some unknown reason he was cocky He was arrogant He was failing as a leader and he’d been through multiple verbal counselings like I talked about and you asked me do we write people up? I mean the the SEAL teams for for writing somebody up for a leadership problem They’ve been counseledled numerous times verbally because you don’t expect I mean it’s not that hard you know it’s not that hard to say hey make this adjustment The guy goes oh yeah okay I didn’t see that I was doing that The only time you end up with someone that you have to actually write it down is when someone get starts getting to a point where you say okay this person’s job is now in jeopardy Mhm And this is uh again thanks to technology I I saved this Thanks to technology Y So here we go Seldom do I have to do this Most guys listen and adjust and get better and move on My cadre meaning the the training crew that I had my cadre and your leadership asked that I talk to you And it is my job and my duty and my responsibility to try and make squared away tactical SEAL leaders Know this I have personally worked with and seen all kinds of platoon commanders with all kinds of personalities If you count my previous experience in platoon and training cell and as an enlisted man the number is pretty big I’ve done seven deployments serving in every spot from the youngest E3 new guy to the oldest and the task unit commander That being said I’m not that good at anything but I am a hard worker I don’t like to waste my time with people that don’t appear to have the desire to be better seals and you don’t appear to have a desire to improve yourself despite your history which includes the following Getting bad fit reps So fit reps is short for fitness reports and that’s basically an evaluation And this guy had really bad evaluations just like general evaluation not like fitness stuff Well it’s fitness Fitness is like one block but there’ll be a block on leadership There’ll be a block on tactical knowledge There’ll be So there’s all these blocks and his and he had bad fitness reports bad evaluations getting sent to his staff billet as a junior officer So they took him and instead of making him in a putting him in a seal platoon they had him in some administrative job which is a big signal Sometimes they’ll do that in between tours or after you do an assistant platoon commander tour They’ll give you a tour like that to expand your knowledge but he just got put straight into that So that wasn’t good and finally having a horrible reputation in the teams which this individual certainly did have Now I go on and say “I didn’t take this into account when looking at you as a SEAL officer and as a man I don’t care what people say I judge people on what I see with my own eyes ” At first I thought you were just another alpha male seal that rubs people the wrong way No big deal There are plenty of seals like that I usually like them Most of my true friends fall into that category And that was one of the things about this guy You know he was like a big guy and he was pretty aggressive And I thought to myself just what I said I thought okay you know what? Maybe he’s rubbing the people the wrong way and and people are a little intimidated by that As time passed I began to see something different This is what I see You are insecure about something I don’t know what but it forces you to act arrogant and come across as selfish Your performance as a tactical leader varies between below average and average with some visible spikes of increased potential You are almost incapable of communicating with other people respectfully So those top three right there for whatever reason and and I never figured out what made this individual so insecure I don’t know if he I I have no idea I don’t know what happened to him but it’s okay We have insecurities We get intimidated We feel like we have to overprove ourselves It’s okay These things happen You just make adjustments That’s all you got to do You got to make some adjustments You got to realize that you’re not communicating with people respectfully And when somebody tells you that you’re not you got to question what do I sound like? Maybe you pull out of of a recorder and listen to yourself Mhm You have some good ideas You have some good ideas from time to time but you act as if you know everything all the time Your ability to elevate your presence to that of a respected leader of men on the battlefield and in garrison is almost non-existent And I don’t know if at this time I was really using the term like detach that much but that’s what I was trying to get get across to him is that he wasn’t able to elevate his presence He wasn’t able to come across like a leader He was right there in mentally with the rest of the platoon Mhm Going on You cannot mask your emotions and you don’t understand the ramifications of that shortfall So these are the little things the little eye roll the heavy sigh Yeah Yeah The crossed arms I mean just all these little things that it was like it was like an open book When you’d see this guy you knew exactly what he was thinking And he had no idea that it was so obvious to everybody else myself all the rest of my instructor staff his leadership everyone was thinking the same thing And in his mind he he was good to go He was you know he was a stonefaced poker player Yeah And it kind of gets worse when you can’t mask your emotions but your emotions are reflective of your insecurity which you mentioned is one of the first things So it it’s like this double whammy It’s one thing if you can’t mask your emotions but you’re pretty humble in in general and you’re a nice guy or whatever you’re a go with kind of guy Yeah And and the the emotions that you’re not masking or something positive right? At least some positive or or a lot of positive maybe some negative but hey look no one’s perfect kind of thing But yeah if it’s just like insecurity oozing out of Yeah And and the insecurity was really the what oozed out of him was I know everything You don’t know Look Joo I know you’ve been in the teams for 18 years and you’ve done multiple deployments overseas and even though I have done zero deployments overseas I know more than you Dang Yeah Uh here we go on And and so now I start trying to make sure I cover all the bases with this guy Sure You do not have the understanding of human nature team building leadership influence manipulation compromise and the broad concepts of tactical operation operational and strategic leadership and management Perhaps you don’t have the intellect to understand these things because if you did why are we sitting here right now talking about this? And by the way the reason this is written down I wrote it down and then brought him into my office put it in front of him and then read it to him because I wanted to be crystal clear And so that’s why this is written in that perspective that I’m saying why are we sitting here talking about it right now? Why am I not thinking this might not be the most polished guy in the world but he’s a good guy and he’ll get things done? because you you end up with plenty of SEALs that are just they’re just not that polished or they’re a little rough around the edges or they can’t brief well or whatever I mean it’s cool There’s there’s all kinds of different guys in the SEAL teams and you just got to take what you get and you you strengthen your weaknesses a little bit But this guy was just not getting there For some reason you believe that you are a victim that people don’t like you or have it out for you And this was so weird This guy had this attitude that everyone wanted to fire him that everyone was against him and he was this he was in this you know struggle on his own against the world and it was just completely not true especially in the beginning I mean obviously it escalated to that but that he brought it upon himself but but honestly that’s something I kind of I kind of pride myself in in as a leader in taking a a blank slate when I meet somebody and saying okay cool you know hey look this guy has a bad reputation whatever I’m going to see what I can do with him I want to make him better I kind of take pride in that and and want to make people better and so for him to think that I was out to get him or this training cadger was out to get him Was just not true Just completely not true Uh this is not true But it isolates you hurts your ability to interact with people and keeps you in a paranoid guarded and confrontational state It’s it’s rough rough Next you don’t understand the broad skills required to be a good SEAL leader such as tact team building communications and trust building So it’s interesting None of this is about fire and maneuver None of this is about taking down a building None of this is about you know h how to how to plan and execute an assault Mhm None of this is about that because that stuff is relatively easy to do And what we would 99 9% of the time when we fire a leader had nothing to do with their tactical prowess It had to do with them as a leader Now them as a leader affect would affect the tactical outcome of operations for sure but that wouldn’t be the the key component of their failings The the key component of their failings would be their arrogance Going on you do not understand the burden of command You do not understand the influence you have on your men This is a big one This is one of those ones that I I find this with CEOs I find this with mid-level managers I find this with everyone where they don’t understand their influence on their people They understand when they say something off the cuff that everybody listens and they think they mean it and it has real impact on people They don’t understand when they show up late Now being late is okay When they go home early going home early is okay Those are the little things examples of little things that people don’t understand the influence that they have on their troops going on You do not understand the gift you have been honored with to lead men in combat against our nation’s sworn enemies My concern is how you will act overseas when lives are at stake I cannot allow you to go forward with these shortfalls And that is something that in the SEAL teams so in the SEAL teams people think well if someone’s no good you just fire them and that’s it And it’s actually not true You know you have to have good reason and document what issues they’re having And the other thing is that that’s really harsh about firing someone in the SEAL teams is when you fire someone in the SEAL teams you’re ruining their life It’s their dream to be a SEAL Now they’re not going to be a SEAL anymore Their paycheck their retirement I mean they’ve got plans They they’re counting on this So when you fire someone in the SEAL teams it it can be devastating career blow and it can really ruin someone’s life Now there are times where we go hey you know what? This guy’s going to be okay We need to push him back a little while We need to recycle him He’ll be able to come back and he’ll get better and he just needs to learn more That happens as well But in this type of situation this guy was already with a bad reputation This was going to be if he got fired from this job this was going to be a death sentence for his career So when you fire someone from the SEAL teams they’re not out of the military They’re or it depends on the situation Depends on Yeah Sometimes they they’ll get a lot of times the officers will be removed from the military The enlisted guys might go to the regular Navy which is which is a harsh punishment for a guy that’s been in the SEAL teams that you in the SEAL teams you have quite a bit of freedom You get more money You doing some job that you really like and then all of a sudden you’re not doing a job that you really like And that can be a severe form of punishment as well Is it is it like going to the minors from the major league to play baseball? It’s just it’s just a totally different job It’s like going from baseball to something completely different I mean it’s going from baseball to doing accounting you know or from baseball to going to construction you know cuz the regular Navy has regular jobs that are like that There’s accounting jobs there’s building jobs there’s you know techni technical jobs So it’s like going from a job that’s like a sport which is the SEAL teams going into a job that’s more of a job but it’s not like a dishonorable discharge situation No not unless the uh guys And you know it’s interesting I I remember I was on a I was on a ship one time and the waves were big and it was cold and we were launching off this ship in the middle of the night and there was this regular Navy guy a first class bosen’s mate which means you know he ran the the deck operations of the ships and putting boats in the water and and it was all stormy and dark and we’re on these little boats out in the middle of the ocean we’re about to go launch and uh the guy says to me “Man I would never want your job ” And that’s you know that’s what he was thinking And I look back at him and I said “Well that’s good cuz I would never want yours either cuz I would never want to be you know stuck on a ship and doing that kind of work But it’s we both had jobs that we liked you know and everyone’s got jobs they like But so when a person’s in the SEAL teams though and they’re getting put to a job it’s normally a job that they don’t really like ” Mhm Uh and what my point in all that is that it is difficult to ruin someone’s career and it is a heavy burden when you have to do this to somebody That being said you’re going to send these people especially a person in a leadership position they’re going to be overseas and responsible for people’s lives You have got to do the right thing Yeah And I say that to business leaders now You know you’ve got to do everything you can to mentor someone And that’s that’s that’s actually how I know you’ve done everything you can to mentor and get someone along because when you fire them you shouldn’t feel guilty about it And when when a leader says “Oh really? I feel bad about firing this person ” Okay then that means you haven’t done everything you can to mentor them M cuz if you have and they still fail then then they’re incapable of doing the job and and they need to go find a different job or they need to get put in a different position That’s just the facts But if you’ve done everything you can and they can’t do it then yeah they need to move on But when you go “Oh I I feel bad about getting rid of this person ” It’s cuz you it’s cuz you haven’t had this conversation that I’m having with this guy right here the laying it out and saying “Here’s what you’re doing wrong Here’s how you need to fix it This is what the expectations are And if you don’t meet them you’re not going to be here You need to clearly understand that Yeah It really puts it into perspective right on that on that last item there One when you said “My concern is how you would act overseas when lives are at stake ” Like that really puts it into perspective at I mean really looking at it in a light-hearted kind of way You can kind of compare this to let’s say you know when you’re in kindergarten you get a report card or whatever and then at the end if you’re a kid like this guy you get a little note at the end says does all it says does not play well with others and you’re like all right you know it doesn’t he’s whatever this especially when this is the adult version of that but times it by like 10 and it sums it up right here with that last one like when lives are at stake and that’s exactly what was going on So here I tried to give this guy corrective measures is what I called it Corrective measures Number one be humble And we get asked all the time what’s the most important characteristic of a leader? And Leif and I will say all the time humility And I if you’re not humble then how can you look at yourself and say I need to do stuff better? How can you look at your team and say “We need to get better ” How can you look at your enemy and say “I better respect them “ Mhm If you don’t have that humility you’re going to fail there So my first corrective action to this guy be humble Number two truly and deeply accept the fact that you have some serious personality defects that you need to immediately put in check and over the long term completely fix So I was very concerned that this guy was going to sit there and nod his head Mhm Yep Okay Yep Sorry But not truly and deeply accept the fact that he had these issues because there’s a big difference between nodding your head and saying “I got you sir Okay sir Yep Yes sir Uhuh Uh-huh I’m gonna I’m going to do better ” There’s a big difference between that and going home looking in the mirror and saying “I’ve got some serious problems that I need to fix ” Going on understand that the criticism you are hearing from me is not mine alone but also my staffs and your leaderships as well I’ve also heard this from other people outside your command Your reputation is horrible Again I I wanted to make sure that he didn’t think this was just Joo being hostile I wanted him to realize that it was my entire staff and his leadership that was being hostile Going on corrective measure embrace and contemplate the solemn responsibility of being a SEAL officer about to lead men into battle and possibly to their deaths Embrace the burden of command This is one that for me was very disturbing to see because I had led men into battle and I had had my guys get killed So to have him with this attitude where I could see that didn’t occur in his brain He didn’t understand that these guys that he’s supposed to be in charge of he’s going to be asking them to do things that can get them killed And I don’t think he understood that the burden of command That’s the burden of command That’s that heavy responsibility And yes in combat it means guys getting wounded or getting killed and that is a heavy burden But I will tell you in the business world when you’ve got people’s jobs at stake when you’ve got the profitability or the survival of a company at stake and dozens or hundreds or thousands of people may or may not have a job if you don’t do your job correctly as a leader that is a heavy burden as well going on Be the best at everything you do In doing that one put everyone else before yourself Push away compliments Shift them to your peers and your men Accept responsibility of failure and shortfalls only For in them is the improvement and growth So this is actually a conversation we had on one of our earlier podcasts Any compliments success you shift that to your peers and your men You accept the responsibility for the failures and the shortfalls And again if you don’t accept the responsibility for those failures and shortfalls how are they ever going to get fixed? The answer is they’re not I’m never going to change everything anything if it’s all Ekko’s fault I did everything right It’s all Echo’s fault Yeah Truly listen and try to understand what people tell you by first understanding that your personal compass is wrong Truly and completely wrong For what is right and wrong for what a good seal and a bad one is for what makes an exceptional leader and a horrible one You must correct this compass so that it may guide you in the right direction And my point with this was that I think in his mind his vision of what a quote unquote good seal was I think he thought he was being it Mhm And I had to explain to him that he was wrong He did not understand what a good seal was He did not understand what an exceptional leader was He just did not understand it You must correct this compass so that it may guide you in the right direction The final corrective measure lose your ego This guy despite having a treacherous record and a horrible reputation despite that for some unknown reason that I cannot fathom he had a big ego He thought he was a great seal He thought because he was a big dude and could shoot well he he was a talented athlete as well but he thought that that made him a good seal and it didn’t It just gave him a big ego So now I tell them these are tall tasks but you control them all And that’s true If you look at every one of those things be humble Yes he controls that Accept the fact that he’s needs some serious work Yes he controls that Understand that the criticism is coming from a bunch of people not just me Yes that’s under his control Embrace and contemplate the solemn responsibility of being a SEAL officer about to lead men into battle and possibly to their deaths Yes he controls that ability Be the best at everything you do Yes that’s under his control So all these things lose your ego These are all things that he had control over We need good aggressive leaders in the SEAL teams We don’t need the person that I outlined above And the reason I pointed that out is because I think in this guy’s mind he was an aggressive guy and he was a good leader in his mind But I wanted him to know that yes we do need aggressive leaders in the SEAL team but we don’t need this guy We don’t need the guy that I’m just talking about It’s in your hands Good luck Then I asked him “Do you have any questions or comments for me?” Which he did not I asked him “Are you sure?” He was sure I asked him if he understood and he nodded his head And again the reason I’m reading these because these are my actual notes And then I said “Do you believe I am right or do you just think I don’t or do you think I just don’t get it and that you actually know what’s up?” And he of course said “No I understand ” A and even as he was saying those words I was not convinced And this gentleman did not make it in his leadership role and he ended up getting fired When he said he that he understands was it like was he all salty like “Yeah I understand man “ No I mean he was he was not dis not he was not openly disrespectful and maybe somewhere in his brain he was trying to understand and trying to listen and trying to believe but it it it wasn’t there Mhm So in going through this and I think one of the reasons why I wanted to do this on the podcast was a lot of times leadership is about awareness And I use this example all the time In the movie Terminator it says you know in the year 2016 the machines became aware And I used to get to see that with SE leaders like they they become aware of being in a leadership position And so that’s that’s one form of awareness And I think a lot of times you don’t recognize if you’re not aware of something you can’t recognize what the problem is Mhm And so going through this all these issues that this guy had I people that are listening to this podcast you don’t have all these issues It’s impossible You wouldn’t even like to listen to this podcast because this is a podcast where we’re all kind of sitting here picking ourselves apart and seeing what we could do better and trying to learn and and people with with this type of attitude that this guy had they they don’t even enjoy this Mhm Because they think they know everything You’re not even talking to them I’m not evenbody else But everybody myself included I still go through this and I go I’m doing that a little bit right there I’m falling into that trap I’m getting a little bit arrogant on this thing I’m doing this wrong I’m not I’m not I’m letting my emotions out too much And again I’m not telling people to be robots But you can’t be an emotional disaster or emotional show for your people So show that awareness and thinking about it And the other thing this is the other reason why I wanted to use this particular note is because I think it’s as direct of a note I I could write someone Maybe I could do it better now I don’t know But at the time to go face to face with someone and and kind of call them out this is about as stern as I could do it And this is the standard that we need to hold ourselves to That sternness that what am I doing wrong? And how do I be honest with myself and be my own worst critic? Which is a big cliche but yeah be your own worst critic Look at yourself And you can’t be your own worst critic if you don’t detach from the situation If you’re inside your own head you can’t even critique yourself So you got to get out of that brain And that’s going to be a common theme for not just for this show not just for this podcast but forever because it’s one of those things that’s really helped me and I think has helped the people that I’ve worked with when they’ve when they overcome that So there’s some counseling for everybody myself included So now we uh we’re getting to the internet questions So again if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re wondering where these questions come from they come from a couple different places on the internet Facebook I actually get most of them from Twitter Um you if you want to see what’s happening on Twitter with me it’s Joo Willilink If you want to see what’s happening on Twitter with Echko it’s echo Charles And if you want to see what’s happening on there and also if you want to submit questions then for me Twitter’s the place to do it because I can jump on there you That means you have to be disciplined and keep your questions short And I just drag those questions out of there and and put them into the well of questions And with that and some of them I answer you know right there on the spot and some of them I go oo that that’s a good topic So with that in mind and and I’ll tell you this is still from the well of questions where most of these I don’t have the name of the person because I’m still on the well of questions of the first time I asked and I got hundreds of questions So I’m still going through those And here we go What drove you to become an English major in college? This is something I surprisingly get asked a lot And I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising because if you don’t know my story with college I was actually already in the SEAL teams I had spent 10 years in the SEAL teams When I finally got sent to college I had to get a college degree in order to continue my career as a SEAL officer And when I went to college it was not even a question that I was going to be an English major So why is that? Well luckily I had spent enough time in the SEAL teams to realize that the most important skill from an officer perspective that could differentiate and make you do a better job of something you can I mean we talk about leadership all the time and and the different points and humility and discipline all those things that make you a good leader that’s great but those aren’t things that you learn in college So which skill could I learn in college that will actually make me do a better job as a SEAL leader? And I knew before I even showed up there exactly what that was going to be And that was English Why? Well English to me was the study of the English language The English language is the methodology that we American humans use to communicate with each other And as a leader it is critical that you have a good control and a good grip on this medium that you’re going to use to communicate what your vision is what your ideas are what your strategies are what the orders are You have to be able to do that in clear and concise language And I knew that English would provide me with that You also have to be able to understand what you are being told to do or what the orders are or what the mission is or things like rules of engagement So rules of engagement is a legal document written by lawyers and you have to read it and understand it And I found that this was very very useful This was probably and again looking back cuz you know what I guess I could have gotten a degree in history and I could have really drilled down on the military and that would have been helpful as well but the practical application of English in that job was very important and I will tell you that in anyone that’s going to end up in a leadership position the command of the English language is a very important thing and when I started to get into Shakespeare And Shakespeare I know there’s at least half the audience just went oh god what is he talking about Shakespeare the thing about Shakespeare is and this is what I had to learn in college when when you first see Shakespeare you think oh I don’t understand this you this is a bunch of gobbledygook this doesn’t sound like English I don’t understand it you’re not supposed to understand it and people don’t pick up a Shakespeare play and just understand it you have to study what the words mean The guy made up words He just made them up So how could you know what it means? You’re lying if you say you know what it means He made it up He used archaic words that or words back then that weren’t archaic but they’re archaic now and people do not use them anymore So how could you know what they mean? You don’t You have to look them up and figure out what they mean And that was very good for me to take a bunch of Shakespeare and have to look at these look at this writing and figure out what it all means because I realized that when 3 years later or four years later when I got a rules of engagement that was written by a lawyer and there was words in there I didn’t understand I didn’t just go “Oh god I don’t understand this ” and throw it away No I said “Okay there’s a word I don’t understand I just need to look it up figure out what it means make sense of it ” And that’s what that’s what studying Shakespeare specifically did for me And you know at some point we’re going to get into some Shakespeare right here And there’s some very very powerful things that Shakespeare wrote which are unmatched in language in my opinion So that’s down the road probably not too far But that is why I studied English in college How do you deal with delayed onset muscle soreness or stiffness from weight training and how does it affect your jiu-jitsu? Uh the jiu-jitsu questions Awesome So obviously I work out I work out pretty much every day I I work out That means I lift weights I do calisthenics I do sprints I do some kind of physical conditioning every single day And that means that yes I am always at least somewhat sore and tired when I show up to train the jiu-jitsu which I usually do in the evenings So for me jiu-jitsu always makes me feel better it you know you’re you’re basically getting a very gnarly full body massage when you train jiu-jitsu You’re getting a very aggressive and involuntary full body massage and you’re getting stretched in different directions So whenever you know if I did some exercise that made me sore if I did deadlifts and I’m feeling sore tight in my back and I go do jiu-jitsu by the time it’s done I don’t feel that soreness anymore So just like a massage or a stretch I think it it um loosens you up and and it’s pretty normal for me I also like to train sore and tired because it just makes training a little bit harder and makes you more ready And all that being said when I do heavy squats or high repetition squats or any squats where I kind of push the envelope yeah my legs are really sore and it sucks to get on the mat and I do it anyways And and also training while your muscles are sore when you’re tired it helps your technique right? So you’re not I mean especially as a bigger guy Yeah you know having strength and weight at the same time is an advantage can be used as a weapon but can get in the way of your technique It can get in the way of technique and it can get in the way of your progression Progression Yes for sure Um you might be speaking from a standpoint of someone who’s in good condition by the way cuz I would say that for most people I would argue for most people it’s not a full body massage It doesn’t loosen you up It makes you more sore Yes And you know what? That’s a good point And the beyond the fact this is you actually are right on more points than you know because beyond the fact that yes I am in fairly good condition because I do work out every day Also jiu-jitsu for me because I am experienced is generally not a 100% physical war like you have when you’re not quite as experienced right? And if you watch you know when I’m rolling with guys all my training partners they’re all good guys too So we’re we’re training for you know an hour and we can do it It’s not because we’re in that much better condition It’s just that we’re that that much more relaxed and we’re relying more on technique So so that’s a good point and I could see where in the early days Now that being said I trained this way the whole time that I’ve trained So I even when I was a spaz crazy you know white belt warrior I still worked out every day And when I was a blue belt training super hard I still worked out every day So you’re I was going down the path that you were right but now I’m going to reig on that and say that you’re wrong and you just need to work out get on the mat loosen it up and keep training Well yeah I think in the grand scheme of things you’d be more loose Yeah But we’re talking about delayed onset muscle soreness I think I think I would argue that most people after training jiu-jitsu unless it is like just a light like roll but if you’re you know if you’re doing just I don’t know your normal jiu-jitsu guy let’s say he does four rounds six minutes one minute in between Mhm He’s going to get more delayed onset muscle soreness the next day from the jiu-jitsu I don’t think so I I I think so I I I don’t think so This is a issue that will not be solved on the Jaco podcast I would say try it Try it That’s what I’m saying I think so Cuz I’ve been trying it for years and years So we’re going to go ahead That’s another thing is every time you show up to do jiu-jitsu it’s not a competition day you know and and not that you don’t have roles and good roles and you go hard but there is a difference between like oh I’m going to let this guy pass my guard or I’m going to I’m going to hang on with every little piece of my and what is this look you’re giving me right now? I I agree with you but it still doesn’t change my argument that even if you’re rolling that way Yeah I I think that you have to roll pretty light to not get any delayed onset muscle Okay here’s one more story And this is where this is where you might be right This is a funny story So like I just talked about when I went to college So when I went to college at the University of San Diego it was I was still in the military but I was my job was to go to college which meant that for somebody that was used to working 18 hours a day as a SEAL all of a sudden I didn’t have 18 hours a day to work So I trained a lot And one of the things I noticed one day for whatever reason I had I think I had one of my kids was born and I had final exams or just some some perfect storm of events and I missed and I didn’t train jiu-jitsu for three days And on the fourth day I got up out of bed and I felt all like young and I wasn’t sore I just I I was dang I feel great what is this? And what it was was that I hadn’t trained And at that time at that time we this is when Dean Listister and I were training like mad men And he was constantly competing I was competing and and he was and we would train for two to four hours a day of just psycho rolling And but again even when we were doing psycho rolling like that it wasn’t competition day And but we but it definitely made me sore Yeah And so you you do get some soreness You’re you’re correct You’re correct I think I’m just used to being in a continued state of soreness Yeah that’s what it is So when you’re like “Oh yeah I didn’t roll for 3 days on that four you know that that fourth day you woke up and you’re like “Dang I feel young What is this?” That’s called rest You rested and you recovered And it happens I mean I travel now and there’ll be days obviously days when I don’t get to train but um Okay So this question is um it I don’t know if it’s an addition to the other question but it’s phrased like this Also I’d like to hear more about more about your writing process Tough times what worked well creative breakthroughs etc I don’t think these were related I think this is just pulled out So Oh right Right Okay Creative [Music] breakthroughs Yeah So first of all if to to go specifically on how I wrote this book and you could probably apply this to any kind of task that you’re looking at doing but the first thing we did and Leif and I wrote this book together the first thing we did was we outlined the book and what the chapters were about and what the stories inside the chapters So we both knew what the chapter was and then we said uh and and if you haven’t read the book I wrote half the chapters and he wrote half the chapters So we didn’t we didn’t write it together and try and mindmeld the whole thing Now the intro we wrote together and the outro or whatever it’s called we wrote together and that was cool You know we just edited it cuz it was both of us talking but we didn’t have to try and mindmeld or or come to agreement on the rest of it We just wrote separate chapters And so what I did was once we once we knew what the chapters were once we knew what they were going to be about then I wrote a thousand words a day no matter what That was my I was very busy at the time I was doing some big contracts I was super busy and I knew that I had to do it in chunks And I also know that my attention span is I can force it but it’s not fun So a 000 words took me about an hour like 50 minutes to an hour So every day no matter what I sat down and I I ended up writing about 60 000 words So it took me no I think it was 55 000 words Took me 55 days 55 days straight and my draft was done And that’s that’s there’s a couple good advantages to it Number one when you write every day if you write if you skip two days and then you go back guess what? You’ve got to go back and reread what you wrote because you don’t remember it Right Right Whereas if you just go back into it I could just pick up where I left off Boom I could start writing again An hour later I’m done Don’t have to waste any time Have to go back and reread I know what my train of thought was That’s the important thing So so that was important And sometimes I didn’t feel like writing of course but I just wrote anyways And sometimes it would come out not that great but it doesn’t matter You got a thousand words that you can hone and you can adjust and you can turn it into something good And and also it just takes away every excuse is gone There’s no excuse There’s zero excuse There’s only you do what you’re supposed to do That’s the only thing Not I’m don’t know what to think I I’m I’m I lost my train of thought I have writer’s block or whatever I’m too tired No it’s like one answer for all these problems and that is right So you got writer’s block Good Right You got I’m too tired I had a long day Good Right Oh I’m stuck and I don’t know where to take this story Good Right That’s the only It’s just one answer solved every problems And that’s kind of the same thing with with everything you know with going to the gym You know what? I’m tired Good Go work out I’m sore Good Go work out I’m super busy right now Good Go work out And you could do this You could apply this to any sort of you know with training jiu-jitsu I don’t know if I’m I’m I’m not feeling like my aame tonight Good Go train when you’re weak Right Good Go train when you’re mentally not not there because it doesn’t matter What is it? Is it the World Championships today? And even if it is the World Championships you got to go fight anyways because it’s the World Championships So get on the mat and train Yeah And you could you could look at these when you say that that applies to everything like you don’t feel like it or whatever a lot of times create like creative block and I’m just realizing right when you said that is the this is the first time I’m kind of understanding this and realizing that okay when you have a creative block that’s almost like in my experience it’s a good reason to not do creative stuff cuz I can’t cuz creativity comes from a real like you have to feel it you have to want to do it it’s like a creative thing right insp manufacture insp to quote Tenacious D Okay Yeah Yeah You can’t you know manufacture whatever Um so you know it’s different than going to the gym So are you saying though if you get creative block and for those of you that don’t know Ekko does he writes and produces and films and directs videos of all kinds? So you’re saying when you can’t think of what to write you just stop Yes We have a quitter in our midst You know in a way what I’m saying but what I’m saying is and that that’s okay I mean we all have different techniques My my technique is not better than your technique Your technique may work sometimes It may work 100% for you I’m talking about my technique and my technique was like okay I’ve got writer’s block I don’t know where to go with this I’m going to write anyways Right And what you’re saying is when that happens to you you say you know what I’m just going to walk away from it right now and come back to it later And that’s okay I say until right now though I just realized it when you said okay if you don’t feel like writing or good do it anyway because I guess I never really thought past that when you say yeah you’ll just have more stuff to hone into okay if if later on when you do hit inspiration which now you have more material to draw inspiration from it’s going to come clear like okay that thing that I wrote or you know put in when I wasn’t inspired okay that’s got to go but you can learn so much from what you put down there Why doesn’t that work? Or dang that was pretty good when I was feeling bored or when I was feeling whatever That’s pretty good I’m going to use that You know so you’re going to you’re going to get way more results potentially than you would if you simply don’t do anything and what if it the inspiration doesn’t come back which it doesn’t a lot of the time then it’s too late So yeah um good lesson learned right there Thanks That is a good one So next question from Jennifer from Jennifer This one I got author that has a name Nice Jennifer U Jennifer says “I’m really struggling with focus lately I’d love for you to cover it on the podcast “ Focus Cover that This is Do we get asked this a lot about focus? I don’t know if we’ve gotten asked specifically Yeah specifically about focus But this is one of those things and this is this is I I’m starting to realize a underlying theme with a lot of with a lot of what people are asking me and that is I think people have a vision or a thought that I’m I’ve got some answer that is like oh you lack focus follow steps one two and three and I’ve talked about this with leader ship and that I’ve got some easy button solution for these situations Mhm And this got me thinking about my kids and one of my daughters who when she was I don’t know what how old you are when you’re supposed to learn the times tables but she was that age and she got really disappointed because she didn’t know our times tables and she actually you’re young when I again I don’t I forget the grade but it’s you know it’s like maybe second grade second third grade yeah second third grade so she’s supposed to know times tables She doesn’t know him and she starts getting this this negative attitude of I I’m stupid You know I’m dumb Other kids know them I don’t know them And I just said “Oh well have you studied them?” And she hadn’t She hadn’t studied them She’d sat in class when they would go over them and she’d picked up 50 or 60 or maybe even 70% of them but you know there’s some hard ones in there right? 12* 12 12* 12 is a tough one You know there’s some tricky ones in there that she didn’t know And so I said “Oh well you need to study them and then you’ll know them ” So you know we made the flash cards and she studied them and all of a sudden she knew them and then she realized that you have to practice these things and you have to put effort into them It’s the same thing with sports You know you’ll get the kid that says “I’m not any good at baseball ” Well you don’t spend any time practicing it right? And so it’s the same thing with focus You it takes effort You just don’t I don’t wake up in the morning flip a switch and then become focused When I was writing when I was just talking about writing this this book that we wrote I didn’t go “Okay flip the switch for focus I’m going to do a thousand words right now ” No no I had I sit down and go “Okay listen idiot This is your job You need to do it Get it done ” Mhm You know another another funny story is in the SEAL teams we have these helmets or we we had them We’ve modified them since but we had these helmets and underneath the helmets you would wear this this headset that your radio headphones would go into So when you’re in the steel teams you’re out on the battlefield you got to talk to different people and you’ve got to have a radio and you’ve got nice almost I guess it would be to describe it it’s like a Bose noiseancelling headset for all practical purposes but it’s durable and you wear that underneath your helmet and if you’re in a leadership position sometimes you have one group of people talking into one ear and the other one might be the air frequency So you can hear the aircraft talking You got all this stuff going on inside your head and that’s tricky and kind of a pain But what was really painful was the way they made these headsets they didn’t fit right So they were very painful and they they actually squeezed your head So when you put your you put your headset on and then you put your helmet on over it and it actually squeezed your head and it was very very uncomfortable to give you a headache It was just it just wasn’t fun at all It sucked So we were out on this training mission and this is when I was a task unit commander and it was a long one It was you know 14 hours We were out there on this target and we were securing it and we were holding it and we were searching it doing all this stuff It took a long time And about eight hours into it one of the junior officers came up to me and he says “Have you kept your helmet on this whole time?” And I said “Yes ” And he said “Doesn’t it hurt a lot?” And I said “Yes ” And that was it You know there was just pain to be experienced And I just sucked it up and eventually we figured out how to how to cure it But the point is is that does it take some pain to focus? Yeah Yes It is not easy There’s it takes will and it takes mental effort to make it happen You know and it’s there we get into kind of the things I think I talked about this last week but you know shut off the music set a goal for what you’re trying to get done and then put a time limit on it You know that I used to race myself when I was writing those words You know I’d race and see how fast I could get them done and then go And that’s that’s that that’s your focus Your focus is something that you control and you can make happen So get focused and practice focusing Practice focusing Yeah Cuz you kind of at first glance or the first thought isn’t that you practice focusing you you focus on practicing or you focus on writing or you focus on you know and if you can’t focus like dang that sucks But if you practice focusing then you can focus on your writing and you can focus and also everybody knows that the deadlines make you more focused when something’s due I mean so put a deadline on yourself and make it real somehow right? Like kind of like if someone texts you say “Hey I’ll be over in 10 minutes You can clean your house pretty quick in that 10 minutes “ You know what I mean? But give yourself three hours to clean It’s going to take three hours It’ll probably take three hours Leif and I say when when people would to plan for an operation how long does it take to plan for an operation? We always say a half an hour longer than you have That’s how long it takes So just get on it start planning it and and go forward Uh so diet what do you eat? And any thoughts on using superfood amaranth to increase fuel nutrition? Amaran Do you know what amaranth is? No I didn’t know what it was either I didn’t look it up looked it up I looked it up I’m no stranger to looking things up No stranger at all It’s some kind of a grain Some kind of a grain So what do I eat? Uh in short I I guess you would classify me as a paleo type person I eat uh steak I eat chicken I eat pork I actually for whatever reason don’t like the taste of fish and seafood that much or eggs which is really unfortunate Really? Yeah I know It’s really bizarre Uh I ate a lot of hamburgers growing up and I kind of didn’t eat a lot of seafood growing up so I just am not a not a big fan So but I eat a lot of steak chicken pork I eat some kind of salad you know just about every day A Caesar I love Caesar salad so I eat a lot of that Uh spinach salad I put a lot of olive oil on it Kind of bathe it This is Peter Aia who’s a really smart doctor and the I guess the president and CEO of something called NUCI which is this nutrition science which is this large the biggest organization to study nutrition and he he gave me a good thought or the way he explained these salads you know he he looked at salads as a vehicle to eat fat by just putting a ton of you know olive oil basically So I I’ve gotten into that lately and just really making these big salads with massive amounts of olive oil so I can get plenty of fat So I’m definitely a a fan of eating as much fat as possible You know if you want to if you want to talk about why I do that if you you know there’s a book called Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Tobs which is a a fantastic book and gives a lot of background on it the I like I said Peter Aia who’s just a brilliant guy who I’ve had a lot of great long conversations with because we’ve done some stuff together and he’s actually the person that introduced me to Tim Ferrris I I mentioned that on the first podcast but it’s funny We’ll go out for dinner and he wants to know about SEAL stuff but I just want about nutrition stuff and his take on nutrition stuff so that we have good conversations and good tradeoffs but he will you know he explains a lot of stuff really well And then and then another good thing there’s on the Tim Ferrris podcast he did an interview with Dom Dagghastino who’s got a really good perspective another another doctor that’s you know a workout guy and and understands nutrition very well So that’s where I have have gotten to in my life and I’ve got a long story you know about nutrition and maybe someday we can go into it It’s just just the discovery and it’s just with everyone else I mean just the fact that I guess 20 something 25 years ago everyone thought well not everyone but most people thought fat was bad and carbs were good That’s not true Actually carbs are bad and fat is good So it’s been a it’s been a re and I was lucky to have been around people that knew that early and and taught the information to me So that’s that’s the in a nutshell And if you want to get with the experts then people like Gary Tobs people like Peter Aia people like Dom Dagghastino they’re the ones that can give you the science behind what I’m talking about or or what I’ve experienced as well Nutrition nutrition is also one of those subjects that you know people vehemently disagree with each other on There there was a while where I was banned by my wife from talking about nutrition with her friends In the early days of me being completely pro- fat and pro protein and really anti-carbohydrates when no one really thought that you know 10 years ago Mh And I would be giving all of her friends a hard time about what they were eating and what they were feeding their kids And uh my wife eventually banned me because I was problematic in that situation I could see that Yeah I mean even just saying you know carbs are bad I mean there’s a lot to that you know but to say carbs are bad that’s a controversial thing to say Exactly Yeah And and that’s another thing and I I I keep saying this but I’m not I’m not here to convince anybody And if you want to tell me that carbs are great good for you You know I hope you enjoy type two diabetes Get after it But but it’s not like carbs G See you see what you’re doing right now? You’re gonna start a little argument right now No I’m not going to Okay But because the bottom line is I I don’t This is stuff that I have figured out I’ve learned from people I’ve used it myself And I know what works for me And And if you don’t want to believe that I’m okay with that I’m not here to save your life I’m not here to change your mind You know and it’s the same thing You know you’ve heard me say this about jiu-jitsu where I used to be really you know no jiu-jitsu is better than this and jiu-jitsu is better than that Now I’m like no actually there’s other and first of all there’s other perspectives But also that are correct and jiu-jitsu and I actually believe that jiu-jitsu I actually believe you be wellrounded and all this other stuff But the bottom line is I’m not a I’m not a here to convert people but somebody asked what I ate and I told them right? And that’s that’s what technically that is 100% true That’s what I did And if you want to argue those points don’t argue with me argue with Peter Aia Argue with Gary Tobes argue with Dom Dagastino because those guys are I mean Peter and Dom are scientists and doctors so they know and they will give you the facts which I could give you but I won’t be deal nearly as convincingly Yeah Yeah Okay Next question A couple of guys I’d like to hear your thoughts on Richard Marinkeno Mareno Marseno and Henry Rollins Mareno and Rollins So let’s start off with Dick Mareno Demo Dick Marsenko who if you don’t know who that is he was a SEAL in Vietnam a SEAL officer in Vietnam He was the founder of SEAL Team Six He created SEAL Team Six He ended up getting in trouble with the Navy and they kind of did a witch hunt on him and he was eventually I don’t actually he did he did a little bit of jail time They found that he had falsified some travel records and maybe some money They found stuff on him but it was kind of trivial stuff that was trumped up Mh Um but and they forced him out of the military and he wrote a book in the 90 in the early 90s because it it showed up in the SEAL teams right around when I got actually through Buds and into the SEAL team So it was sometime around 1990 or 1991 He wrote a book called Rogue Warrior and it did amazingly well sold a lot of copies and it was definitely broke the mold of this idea of the quiet professional which was how I was most certainly raised in the SEAL teams and it’s something that I’ve I’ve obviously contradicted now because wrote a book with Leif have this podcast I’ve been on TV so I’ve I’ve definitely broke the paradigm of the quiet professional M I absolutely try to respect the spirit of the quiet professional and I I’m not you know even if the book that Leif and I wrote isn’t a book about our triumphs and everything we did great It’s a book about what we learned at usually from bad situations and humbling experience That’s what the book is about and it’s an effort to pass on leadership lessons learned that we learned in a humbling way So so there’s that But Richard Mareno from my perspective in the SEAL teams and again this was right when I came in he was kind of the guy that broke this mold And of course there’s been you know dozens and dozens of quote unquote SEAL books now but he wrote the first one Very wellreceived and definitely got some flak from the SEAL community and that is what it is Now now I worked for guys that worked for him that literally were you know they that he was their commanding officer And I remember one of them I said to this one senior guy that was had been ton of experience and I said you know you worked for Marino how was he and he looked at me with no hesitation said best commanding officer I ever had and that’s I heard that everybody I ever asked just about told me that the only people that you’d hear anything different from would be senior senior officers that He was you know he’d be over the top He wasn’t he didn’t quite play the game and but there’s no doubt about it he was a tough guy He was a hardcore guy and the guys that worked for him respected him and liked him The thing that I learned from him was seeing how that transition took place and how he he the thing that got him to where he was to to get that responsibility of creating Seal Team Six which was this elite counterterrorist part of the Navy You know obviously he was trusted and he was liked and he was respected And so I saw that he had gotten himself to that level which is very cool But I also saw and I again this is a topic that comes up a lot Our strengths are often our biggest weaknesses And so this kind of cowboy mentality this aggressive mentality that he had it got him there But once he got there it doesn’t seem like he was able to rein that back in And that is something that I became cognizant of because no doubt when I was a younger guy when I was a young SEAL and then a young SEAL officer I was definitely fairly cowboy-ish And as I moved up the ranks I recognized that I had to mature and I had to grow up and I had to do things differently I couldn’t do the same things I did when I was a young platoon guy as I could I had to tighten it up when I became a young officer and then I became a platoon commander Then I became a task unit commander And I I had to grow up you know for lack of a better word and and looking back I should have grown up even more you know but you don’t see that at the time So that’s something that I learned from Marenko even though I never worked for him and I met him a handful of times you know but never spent any actual time with him But I have also seen this exact same thing with business leaders with CEOs especially with CEOs that come into a company that is not doing well And there’s only one kind of person that can turn that company around Somebody with a dynamic personality someone with a vision someone that’s going to kick down doors somebody that’s going to make things happen And you see those guys go in there and they get that done And they turn those companies around And then the real test comes is can they transition from being that cowboy to being that company person to being that straight shooter straight and narrow that takes the takes the company then from survival to thrive and some of them make it and some of them don’t And I look at Dick Morseno as a cautionary tale to everybody that comes up through the ranks and gets to that point where you’re need to take it to the next level and how you have to change What got you there is not going to be what keeps you there You have to change and you have to adapt and grow And so I think that’s important to recognize And it’s important to constantly be looking around for examples and saying “Okay I see I saw what happened there and try and push yourself forward ” So that’s that’s my I I don’t want to say my opinion because it’s not really my opinion That’s those are my thoughts on demo Dick Marso the Rogue Warrior The other one is Henry Rollins And if you don’t know who Henry Rollins is he was a young kid from the DC area who grew up in the punk rock scene in DC went to a military academy and eventually even though he was kind of just a kid at at some point a band called Black Flag who was a incredible band led by a guitarist named Greg Gin They asked Rollins who was just a fan who had jumped on the stage at some point and sang one of their songs They said “Hey ” they they they had a falling out or I forget what happened with their first uh singer but the first singer wasn’t singing anymore They needed a new singer They asked Rollins to try out Rollins jumped on the opportunity and took that gig and ended up being the lead singer of the band Black Flag who is a really pivotal band in American rock and roll And I think he took you know Black Flag to a whole new level And I’ve talked about talked about this on Tim Ferrris and I I’ll talk about it again but there was an album called Black Flag My War which is an incredible album And it’s especially an incredible album And if for those of you that listen for those of you youngans out there the records used to come on a piece of vinyl And there was two sides to it And so the this Black Flag album called My War had two sides to it The first side sounded fairly similar to what most of Black Flag sounded like prior to that which is just sort of punk rock fast beat whatever Side two was this slowed down heavy dredging powerful music And the whole side is like that And that that side of that album was on my record player when I was I don’t know 13 or 14 years old for like a year That’s all I listened to And I really related to it because it it just was something that this heavy this introspective this this aggression and anger was something that I when when I heard it for the first time I was like “Oh that’s that’s what I think That’s that’s what my mind is filled with And this was sort of my the next thing that came after Black Sabbath for me because Black Sabbath was the first thing I said “Okay that’s what I that’s heavy and that’s dark and I understand I relate to that The happy music that I was hearing I didn’t understand that I didn’t relate to it That heavy stuff when I heard that this dark stuff I related to it and I understood it and it fueled me And so Rollins Black Flag My War side two definitely had a big impact on me And then from there eventually he was out of Black Flag and he formed his own band and and they made an epic record which is called Lifetime just uh again this this hit me at an age where uh what was I 16 and here comes this album called Lifetime that was very powerful very raw very hard and it just I can’t imagine a better sound coming into my ears when I was 15 or 16 years old than this album Lifetime So myself and my buddies at the time we were listening to Rollins and again this was these were songs about power These were songs about as a matter of fact the cover of the Lifetime album was two hands gripping the earth and it was you know this kind of this message of at least that’s how I interpreted it That’s the thing you got to remember I was a kid and I’m hearing this stuff and I’m overlaying what my thoughts of the world are on top of it It sounded aggressive to me It sounded tough to me And that’s what my mind was like at the time And so I put what I wanted it to I made it what I wanted it to be And to me two hands holding the earth was a powerful symbol of I’m going to I’m going to take over the world I’m going to control the world I’m going to make things happen So we actually when I was a kid we actually followed Rollins around We we would like you know he’d played this was in I want to say this was like 88 or ‘ 89 but myself and my buddies who were we were all into Rollins and we went and I probably saw him play 10 or 15 times on the eastern seabboard maybe it wasn’t 10 maybe maybe it was 10 times and we you know this is back in the day this is this is you know he’s playing in clubs that are the size of your living room you know you’re and we’d help them unload their instruments and we’d help them offload and we’d hang out with them afterwards and it was it was great it Cool And that was my experience and I was definitely I think that had a big impact on me Another thing I got to mention this about life that album Lifetime in between the songs you know if you look at vinyl records and there’s a space in between the songs and there’s you know there’s like a standard I don’t know what you know there’s a standard of 2 millimeters let’s say and when I first got that lifetime record the space in between the songs you could see it was it was tiny and that’s because the the the one song would end and boom the the other song after a moment of silence boom the next song would kick in And that’s what the album was like This intense just driving getting after it So we would go to those shows and we would just go completely nuts in and get our insane mosh pit destruction on So out of that you know spawned this And the other thing was cool is you know Rollins was you know we were not into drinking we were not into drugs and neither was Rollins So he was this kind of and you know we’d see Rollins doing push-ups before the shows and we’d say “Oh yeah This this guy’s like us You know this I relate to this guy cuz I want to be strong and I don’t want to do drugs and I’m staying clean and he’s staying clean ” And so we had this good thing going But again this is my 15-year-old brain right? And uh so what happens? So I took all that to mean that’s the way life is For instance Rollins has a big tattoo on his back that says search and destroy Okay you you I I took that literally you know Okay this I need to search and destroy How do you do that? Okay what is the most hardcore thing? What is the most physical thing? What is how do you get control? How do you do how do you be aggressive in the nth degree? You know how you do it? You be a commando And so so those again those weird twisted interpretations of my mind said to me okay that means you need to be a commando And that’s what I did That’s how I that’s one of the one of the I would say one of those factors that led me onto the path that I’m that I’m here today So went through SEAL training and actually interestingly the first La Palooa tour and we’d have to Google this and see when this was but it was the first La Palooa and Rollins was playing and they played down in somewhere in San Diego La Palooa came and I went and I didn’t want to pay for it for whatever reason So I went backstage and I waited until I saw Rollins And I saw Rollins and I said “Hey Rollins ” And he said “Hey ” And and you can see he kind of recognized me I mean we he he recognized me went over said “Hi ” And I said “Hey can you get me into this show?” And I got a couple buddies with me and he said “It’d be easier to get you into Fort Knox “ It was kind of weird because back in the day we would sit there and hang out with him and help him load his van and get walk right in and it was just really cool to have that much interaction with somebody that you were into I mean you can’t do that normally and all of a sudden there it was Now he’s in Laalooa and even though he’s on tour and he doesn’t know anybody there there’s a guy there me and I can’t get in Mhm So it was you know it was cool Um but it was it was definitely a sign to me that that things were a little different now And he had kind of made it right? I guess he made it now And he ended up having some pretty bigger he had some bigger records that did better than than Lifetime But the way it kind of continues the the way this story continues is that Rollins was a guy when I was a kid that talked about Vietnam vets And if you read any of his you know he used to write books and I’d read his books and he would talk about Vietnam vets and how this guy taught him so much about discipline and and then he talk you know he had this tattoo this search and destroy And in his books or in his shows he would talk about the violence and the fights and all these things and and he even talked about like missions Remain calm prepare to destroy That’s from a song That’s from a Henry Rollins song Remain calm prepare to destroy So he he kind of had this thing that I thought was cool when I was 14 And then I actually went and and I did this stuff you know I actually went and did the stuff that he had talked about and that he spent his career talking about And so all of a sudden this connection this sort of Um yeah this connection that I had with him all of a sudden it kind of faded because I I I looked at it from a different light as it was no longer me looking at someone thinking this guy’s done this cool stuff It was actually starting to look at him thinking he didn’t do this cool stuff And and now I think when I see him now and it’s weird I think he’s about 10 years older than me maybe 12 years older than me So he I can kind of see it’s a little bit of a glimpse into the future you know because you see a guy that’s a certain years older than you and you know what he looked like when he was 25 and you know what he looked like when he was 35 and 45 and now he’s probably 55 and I can see what he looks like and what he did look like So I kind of I I see him now and he seems to be a result of that life that he ended up with which is Hollywood and kind of famous and kind of being in movies and being a rock star And it’s I don’t have the same like I said connection that I that I did But like I said when I was a kid when I was 13 years old when I was 14 years old when I was 15 years old I was I was definitely I I definitely took some things from him and applied them to my life And I’d love I’d love to meet up with him I know he lives up in LA And if at some point Hank if you’re listening let me know Let’s uh let’s link up We’ll talk about the old times But you know I think that might might even be something to close with is when when you’re dealing with people people are not who you want them to be your idols the people that you look up to the people that you think are cool they’re not they’re not that person You kill your idols Now there’s things that we can learn from people but they aren’t going to be what you think they are They aren’t going to be even what they should be Those those people when you take them and you put them on a pedestal they’re not deserving of that pedestal They’re going to be faulted They’re going to be weak They’re going to be egoomaniacal They’re going to be condescending They’re going to be all those negative things Be lazy They’re going to be entitled They’re going to be shortsighted They’re not going to be perfect Far from it And that’s fine That’s okay You learn from their weaknesses and you learn from their strengths of course and you mimic them and you you emulate them But equally as important you learn from their faults and you see what not to do Because the bottom line is you can’t control other people I know we spent time tonight talking about manipulation and influence but the bottom line is you can’t control them You can’t make people be what you want them to be The only person that you can control is you You And that’s what you got to focus on Focus on you Focus on focus Focus on making yourself who you want to be Faster smarter stronger more humble less ego Discipline your body so you can free your mind get up early and go get after it and be that person that you want to be And that’s not easy And not everyone can do it And I’m not here to tell everybody that everybody can do it but it can happen And it does happen through one small decision at a time And every one of those decisions important in building you and that’s all I’ve got for today So to every everyone out there thanks for listening Appreciate it Thanks for subscribing That’s kind of how we know that people are listening Thanks for reviewing When you get the chance let us know what you think and let the world know what you think Spread the word We want to keep doing these podcasts So thanks And most of all to everyone out there thank you for getting after it This is Joo Until next time out
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