160. Literacy and Strength | Jocko Willink

[0] Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1] I'm Michaela.

[2] This is episode 12, season four.

[3] This episode was recorded on March 12th and is with the one, the only, Jocko Willink.

[4] Dad has been on Jocko's podcast several times in the past, but now had the opportunity to reverse the interviewing role to learn more about Jocko's life and endeavors.

[5] They discussed Jocko's experience in the military and war exploring time in the Navy Seals, Afghanistan and Iraq, and much more.

[6] Jocko Willink is an American bestselling author, podcaster, and retired naval officer who served in the Navy Seals.

[7] Jocko also has one of the most successful podcasts out there, the Jocko podcast.

[8] Please remember to rate and subscribe if you enjoy this content.

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[20] Enjoy this episode.

[21] Hi, everybody.

[22] I'm pleased today to be talking with Jaka Willink, who I've talked with on his podcast on three separate occasions.

[23] I don't think I've had Jocca Willink.

[24] I don't think I've had Jocko on mine.

[25] And my memory isn't what it should be.

[26] But I'm quite sure that we've, so far, when we've talked, it's been on your podcast.

[27] So I thought I'd take the time today to get to know you in some more detail.

[28] Jocko is an American author, podcaster, and retired naval officer who served in the Navy SEALs.

[29] He co -authored the book's extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership with fellow retired seal, Leif Beben.

[30] Did I pronounce that right?

[31] It's actually Leif Babin.

[32] Oh, so I didn't pronounce it right at all.

[33] Leif Babin.

[34] He hosts a weekly podcast with Brazilian jihitsu practitioner Echo Charles called the Jocco podcast.

[35] He has a million subscribers on YouTube and his podcast attracts many more listeners.

[36] He co -founded the management consulting firm Eschelon Front LLC and has extended his business development on a number of additional fronts.

[37] His military service included combat actions in the war in Iraq.

[38] where he eventually commanded the sealed team's three task unit bruiser that fought in the battle against the Iraqi insurgents in Ramadi and was honored with the silver star and bronze star for his service he achieved the rank of lieutenant commander good to see you again jaco it's good to be here i'm yeah i feel the same way that it's good to be here um i'm really looking forward to our conversation So I'm glad that you were able to gut through that ridiculously long bio.

[39] And I felt that as you got to the end of it, you were breaking free of the chains of that reading.

[40] So I'm glad it's over with.

[41] Yeah.

[42] Well, it's so much better just to talk than to read in this sort of format.

[43] But at least everybody who doesn't know already has some sense of who you are, some minimal sense of who you are.

[44] So tell me what's been happening online with you over the last couple of years, because we haven't spoken.

[45] I would say it's got to be two years, I think, something like that.

[46] And so I've cast an eye on what's been happening with you on YouTube and some of my staff have filled me in.

[47] But I'm really curious, tell me about what's happening with your YouTube channel and your online activities, your podcast and all of that.

[48] Yeah, a few years ago, I started a podcast.

[49] That was actually quite a few years ago.

[50] Now, it was in 2015.

[51] It might have been kind of as the, as the explosion of, prior to the explosion of podcasts.

[52] In fact, I think I read something that said at that time, it was like 17 % of Americans were listening to podcasts.

[53] And that number's much, much higher now.

[54] And I kind of got lucky because at the time, Tim Ferriss had one of the most popular, still very popular, but at the time, just because the numbers of podcasts that existed, his podcast was even more popular.

[55] And I went on his podcast.

[56] And when we got done recording and he pressed stop on the record button, he looked to me and said, you should have your own podcast.

[57] And I kind of took that, you know, and noted it.

[58] and then a little while later I was on Joe Rogan's podcast and he had, you know, obviously another one of the most popular podcasts in the world.

[59] And he told me in the middle of that podcast that I should have my own podcast.

[60] And so when guys like Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan are telling you to have your own podcast, you have your own podcast.

[61] Now, I came to realize later that Joe Rogan actually would tell everybody to have a podcast.

[62] So maybe, you know, he would tell everyone, oh, you should start a podcast.

[63] Well, I actually listened to him.

[64] And so I started that podcast, and I would say I probably if somebody would have asked, you know, what should a person do to make a good podcast or maybe not a good podcast, but a popular podcast.

[65] Somebody would probably say, make it probably half an hour to an hour, bring a bunch of different guests on so that you can hear a bunch of different people talking and, you know, talk about positive things in the world.

[66] And so instead of doing any of that, what I did was I have a podcast that's between two and five hours long.

[67] Oftentimes it's just me talking, reading from a book and reviewing a book.

[68] And usually the books are about war or suffering or some kind of human atrocity.

[69] And so that's what my podcast is.

[70] And really what it boils down to is it's learning about human nature.

[71] And for me, human nature is best revealed or most clearly revealed.

[72] in times of suffering and one of the, I guess, a pretty good monopoly on the market for suffering is war and right in there as well as, you know, human atrocities.

[73] So I started that podcast and like I said, when I started it, there weren't that many, there weren't as many as podcasts as it are now.

[74] So it got some traction out of the gate and it kind of just stayed there.

[75] So I was very lucky in that respect, and I've been doing it ever since.

[76] I've put out one podcast a week for five years.

[77] I've only missed one week in there, and that was when my best friend was killed in a parachute accident, and so I didn't put out a podcast that week.

[78] But other than that, I've been very consistent.

[79] And then the YouTube channel is, well, it's kind of the podcast, and then we do some excerpts there and little clips and stuff like that.

[80] And Echo Charles, I forget what you called him in the bio, a Brazilian jihitsu practitioner.

[81] He's also a video guy.

[82] And so he makes his little clips and puts special effects in them and stuff because he's creative and bored, which means...

[83] It's a great combination for someone that you're working with.

[84] It is indeed.

[85] So I think that's what's been happening online for me and for the past few years.

[86] Who, who do you, who's your audience, do you think?

[87] Or do you know?

[88] Yeah, I know actually quite well that my, my demographic is people.

[89] It's people.

[90] It's human beings.

[91] Really, it's, it's all over the place.

[92] And when I go and do live events, I'll have just the entire spectrum of humans there.

[93] Hey, look, is there a, is there a, you know, kind of a typical.

[94] typical person.

[95] Yeah, there's a typical person, but we get everybody on the spectrum from the grandma to the little kids.

[96] You know, I've written a bunch of kids' books, and the little kids show up as well.

[97] Right.

[98] Pretty, pretty broad.

[99] Kids books.

[100] Yeah, pretty broad demographic.

[101] That's, I meet all kinds of people.

[102] Everybody from a, I'll meet a firefighter and then a hedge fund guy, and then a stay -at -home mom, and then a retired Marine.

[103] It just meet everybody.

[104] It's, and that's the audience.

[105] Do you have any sense of what it is that's attracting people to your podcast?

[106] I mean, you sort of approached that tongue and cheek in some sense for a dark topic.

[107] You know, you concentrate on things that are pretty negative or they're pretty dark.

[108] And so, as you said, that might fly in the face of any advice you'd get about what to talk about.

[109] But obviously, I mean, one of the things I've encountered is that there's a very, there's a vast hunger for serious dialogue.

[110] And I mean, one of the things that struck me always about your podcast was you often read something that's very, very emotionally demanding, stark, harsh, rough.

[111] And, well, and it's interesting to think about why people might be attracted to that.

[112] What's your sense?

[113] And also, why are you doing it?

[114] I think that it's emotional.

[115] I think that these are emotional topics.

[116] I think these are things that people can be a little bit afraid of and a little bit nervous about and being able to brush up against them a little bit, gives them a little bit more familiarity with them.

[117] And therefore, when you see, when you come close to things that are that stark and dark and horrible, it also makes you look up around at the present situation that you're in and maybe it doesn't look as awful.

[118] Yeah.

[119] So there you touched on two things about knowing.

[120] something about history that might be really useful or about human affairs, right?

[121] One is that, I mean, it's a tenant of clinical psychotherapy that a voluntary approach to what's frightening, threatening, even disgusting is curative.

[122] It has to be voluntary.

[123] And it can't be too intense, right?

[124] Because if it gets too intense, it can actually hurt you.

[125] But if it's voluntary and measured, that actually seems to strengthen people.

[126] It develops resilience.

[127] And I would say, say that's one thing that virtually all well -trained clinicians agree on, is that that kind of exposure, whether it's discussing old, difficult experiences in an autobiographical manner, or whether it's actually going out into the world and facing things that you're afraid of.

[128] If you're an elevator phobic, for example, you might be faced with confronted with the necessity of at least looking at an elevator, which is something you might avoid if you're phobic.

[129] And then, so that's the first thing.

[130] So there is some pronounced human tendency to be attracted to what's dark because that is a pathway to mental and physical resilience.

[131] And then the second thing is, which I also think is extremely important, is it's useful to cultivate gratitude in my estimation.

[132] And one of the ways that you can do that, because you take a lot of what's good in your life for granted.

[133] it gets invisible, especially if it's predictable.

[134] It gets invisible, and that's unfortunate because it's still rare and precious.

[135] And if you know how terrible things can be, have been, or could become, then that can alert you to how fortunate you are when all hell isn't breaking loose right now everywhere in your life.

[136] So, you know, and you can also sort of learn some skill sets of how to handle these tough situations when you get in them.

[137] And if you can see that someone went through something that's much worse and what did they do to deal with it, how did they get through it?

[138] What did they think about?

[139] What did they do?

[140] You can say, okay, well, I've seen that before.

[141] And the situation I'm in isn't quite as bad, but I know that that person took action.

[142] I know that that person stood up and made a move and made things happen and tried to move forward.

[143] And maybe that's what I should do too.

[144] So you can you can definitely garner some skills from the past.

[145] Right.

[146] So that's a third element is that it can expand your notion of human competence.

[147] And that's, I think that's partly, that's one of the reasons that people love watching high -end sports performances, you know, because you think, well, look, there's that's what a human being is capable of isn't that so remarkable and i am one of those and so that's a limit case but there's obviously obviously room for me to develop and that's that's something that's very hopeful and so if you are in dire straits and you've seen that other people can get through that you think well maybe maybe i could get through that if i could just learn how to do it so i i had a guy on my podcast who had written a book.

[148] His name was William Reeder.

[149] And he had, he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

[150] And he was shot down, well, he shot down two times.

[151] The first time he was shot down, he was able to make it back to friendly lines.

[152] The second time he was shot down, he was captured.

[153] And he was captured in South Vietnam, which is actually worse.

[154] You didn't want to get captured in South Vietnam because then they had to get you to North Vietnam to the prison.

[155] And getting to North Vietnam while you're patrolling through the jungle for months on end is not a good thing.

[156] And at one point, he's in a two -foot -tall bamboo cage in the jungle, and his legs are shackled, and it's nighttime, and he's trying to sleep, but he's having trouble sleeping because the rats are gnawing at the wounds on his legs.

[157] And so knowing that someone could suffer through that and survive and get through and make it out the other side and then carry on with a completely productive life tells me that we are pretty resilient as a species if we can dig deep and find that resiliency.

[158] yes well that's exactly the kind of story that also makes you much appreciative of the fact that you have a bed in an air -conditioned room that in a house in a town that's not burning to the ground with rioters and you have that every night and so you take it for granted but but it's still worth noting that it's a kind of miracle compared to all the alternatives that might manifest themselves.

[159] Yeah, I think people appreciate that.

[160] I think people, you know, look, how many movies have been made about war?

[161] Countless movies have been made about war.

[162] Countless books have been written about war.

[163] So human beings are definitely have some sort of, I don't know if it's a fascination or at least an appreciation for the sacrifice and the effort that goes into fighting a war.

[164] and and I will tell you and I I can't speak for everybody but certainly me and the kids I many of the kids I grew up with and then many of the people that I served with that's what we wanted to do we had some kind I had some kind of an instinct that's such a great thing for you to be able to say you know because there's there I remember watching this kid once I saw him in Montreal and he was standing.

[165] He's a big kid about six, five, I would think.

[166] And he was wearing these punk boots that were like military knockoffs essentially.

[167] And he was standing there.

[168] He's about 17 or 18.

[169] And he's standing there on the corner of this outdoor shopping mall carrying these two pink shopping bags and looking completely out of place.

[170] And I thought, you know, if you went there and offered that kid a chance to go off and have an adventure, you know, to have a battle, he dropped those shopping bags and be gone in two seconds because he wants something more than to be he's not built for that it was so incongruous you know he wasn't built for that and William james the american philosopher said that we needed a moral equivalent to war because war calls people to extremes right to to to to the extremes in their life and there's something about that that was obviously compelling as you as you say it's uncomfortable as well to state that blatantly because obviously peace is a desirable condition.

[171] But the question is then, well, how do you put sufficient adventure into the peace?

[172] And that's a very, very, that's a very complicated problem.

[173] Yeah, you know, it's very true in the fact that in war I was lucky enough to go and I was lucky enough to serve in in combat and to be in a position of leadership in combat and in those situations I was able to witness with my own eyes on the one hand the most heinous and despicable acts that human beings can partaken and I was also able to witness with my own two eyes these soldiers and Marines, the guys that were in my task unit, making the most incredible sacrifices for their friends.

[174] So yes, there is an extreme to war.

[175] And like you said, it's not something you wish on anybody.

[176] And I had this conversation with Sam Harris a while ago because he called me out and said, you know, you're talking about how hard war is and it's terrible.

[177] But at the same time, you say it's the best thing that you have been through.

[178] And I asked him if you'd ever known anyone that had cancer and survived it.

[179] And oftentimes those people will say, it's the best thing that happened to me. I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but I'm glad it happened to me. And that's kind of how I feel about war, too.

[180] I wouldn't wish war on anybody, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

[181] So when you look, when you look back on your involvement in the war, in Iraq and your country's involvement, what do you make sense out of it morally?

[182] I mean, we're in that domain right now.

[183] You know, you tell me already that you're pulled between these extreme views.

[184] You don't wish war on anyone.

[185] I mean, if you have, do you have a son?

[186] Yes.

[187] How old is he?

[188] 18.

[189] Well, so then you think, I presume, but I, or perhaps I wouldn't, I wouldn't deign to presume, if you could have what you wanted for him, would that be peace?

[190] Of course.

[191] Okay, okay, well, that, right, why, okay, so let's talk to do that a little bit.

[192] Of course, of course, but.

[193] well right right exactly well the other thing the other thing that you do as far as please correct me if i get any of this wrong but i mean part of what you're also offering to people is the is the call of a kind of radical discipline right now you post on instagram you're the times you wake up in the morning correct yes 430 something like that and pretty regular and I guess you do that to show people that you can get the hell out of bed at 4 .30 and get your day going.

[194] And yeah, maybe not.

[195] I would love to tell you that I was that had that much forethought into when I started doing that.

[196] But I was on Tim Ferriss's podcast and he told me I should join Twitter.

[197] And I kind of said, what's that?

[198] And he showed it to me a little bit.

[199] And he said, you really should join this.

[200] It's a way you can communicate with people.

[201] And I said, okay, fair enough.

[202] So I signed up for Twitter and then whatever.

[203] The next day I woke up in the morning and didn't know what to write or what to do.

[204] So I just took a picture of my watch and, you know, here I go.

[205] And other people kind of noticed that.

[206] And so that's kind of how that whole thing started.

[207] But yeah, well, it's not, it's not always the case that when you do something new and creative, you know why you do it.

[208] I mean, sometimes you have, and even if you think you know why you do it, you might find out five years later that there were 10 other reasons that you did it that you weren't aware of at the time.

[209] Like, we live beyond ourselves all the time.

[210] That's especially true if you're entrepreneurial and creative, because you're changing who you are all the time.

[211] And there's no reason to assume that your understanding of yourself would keep up with the changes.

[212] So my take on my take on the interest.

[213] Instagram posts was, well, what I just mentioned, it's like, well, you know, yeah, you can sleep until 10 o 'clock in the morning if you want, but you can also get a jump on the day.

[214] And I think part of what makes your, I think part of what makes what you're doing attractive is that there's so little emphasis in our popular culture, especially with regards to the so -called mainstream media on discipline and responsibility, that there's a tremendous hunger for anything that pertains to that.

[215] And you have a right to be discussing that, I would say, because of your background, which, if nothing else, required a tremendous amount of discipline.

[216] Yeah, and I ended up writing a book called Discipline equals Freedom.

[217] And I'm lucky that I wrote it when I did, because if I would have written it two years later, everyone would have said, oh, everyone's talking about discipline now.

[218] So, yeah, discipline, absolutely.

[219] discipline does bring you freedom in life, and that's something that I kind of figured out over time.

[220] So what do you mean by that?

[221] Like how did you figure that out?

[222] And what do you mean by that?

[223] Because they're often, and, you know, the classic sort of, what would you call it, romantic rebel is someone who has, is free from excessive order, let's say.

[224] They don't see, they see freedom and discipline as antithetical rather than seeing one.

[225] as a precondition for the other.

[226] And so, so how did you learn that discipline was a precondition for freedom if I've, if I've got the equation?

[227] How did that manifest itself in your own life?

[228] So we'll start off by saying this.

[229] And look, I was a young kid.

[230] I joined the Navy to go in the SEAL teams.

[231] I went through SEAL training.

[232] I showed up at a SEAL team.

[233] Seal Team one.

[234] And when I got there and as I look back, this is a very powerful thing.

[235] even though it's very simple when I was so I'm 19 years old when I show up at seal team one I'm done with the basic seal training and I have a goal in my head which is that which is this I want to be a good seal that that's what I want to do that's like I don't know about anything else I this is what I want to do that I want to be a good seal that's what I want I want to be a good seal that's what I want to be a good seal.

[236] And so as a 19 year old with all kinds of energy, and we haven't talked about my childhood yet, but I was kind of like a very rebellious kid.

[237] When you talked about seeing a kid that looked like you could have handed him a club or a battle axe and he would have probably been feeling a little bit better, I was like that.

[238] I was constantly looking around for a club or a battle axe because that's what I felt like I needed to do.

[239] And it was beautiful because I was running around the woods as a young kid playing Army.

[240] And I just went and actually played Army.

[241] You know, that's what I ended up doing.

[242] So I never really had to do, do, you know, force myself into some mold that I didn't want to be into.

[243] So I got to SEAL Team One.

[244] And now I, I just want to be a good seal.

[245] That's what I want.

[246] And so now that starts steering some of my decisions.

[247] And, and for the most part, it steered my decisions in a in a decent direction now there were sometimes where as I look back now what I thought was a good seal was a little bit off but luckily it wasn't 180 degrees off it might be off 30 degrees or 40 degrees right right right and as I got older and more mature and I figured out more about what that ideal should look like to me and I could keep chasing that ideal that was good but even to be even to be a 19 year old kid with a with a 70 or 80 degree corridor to move forward in is not a bad thing.

[248] No, it's a gift.

[249] It's a gift.

[250] Exactly.

[251] So then I'm looking around at other seals that were older than me and more senior to me and trying to figure out which one of those guys is a good seal.

[252] Yeah.

[253] And what I realized was that the guys that were working harder for the most part were good seals.

[254] Now, look, there's just some people that are just way talented.

[255] Right.

[256] And it would show up, you know, three minutes before a run or three minutes before we do a shooting competition and they could just walk through it, no problem.

[257] Right.

[258] And that's great for them.

[259] It wasn't me. I wasn't, I'm not that great at anything.

[260] But I saw other guys that might not be a grade at anything either, but they worked hard.

[261] They showed up to work early.

[262] They did the drills that they were supposed to do.

[263] They had discipline.

[264] And when you have - Has amalgamated statistics and I hope I get this right, but it's approximately correct.

[265] If you work 10 % longer hours, you make 40 % more money.

[266] Right.

[267] And I think your comments about talent are also dead on.

[268] It's like in any field of enterprise, there are people who are phenomenally gifted.

[269] And then if they work really hard, they're even more phenomenally gifted, right?

[270] Those are the people who break records.

[271] but that talent apart hard work actually works and with virtually everything it might not make you the best at whatever it is you're pursuing but it will certainly make you better than you are and then I have in this I have this new book I hope you got a copy because we did you get a copy okay so I'm bringing it up for a particular reason I have a chapter in this book called well there's two that are relevant imagine who you could be and then aim single -mindedly at that.

[272] That's one.

[273] And then the course, or what would you call it?

[274] A complementary chapter is work as hard as you possibly can on one thing and see what happens.

[275] And that's also predicated on this idea that discipline is a precondition to freedom.

[276] So you were fortunate.

[277] Like you had this goal, right?

[278] So that meant you had a goal, which is a really big deal, because you could learn about goals.

[279] you had a sense of what a higher mode of moral being that I would rather be a good seal than the person I am now.

[280] Well, it's a code of behavior and a way of perceiving.

[281] So there's an ethic in that.

[282] And then you said as well, you know, your conception of what good seal meant changed as you matured.

[283] But that's also fine.

[284] It wouldn't have changed unless you would have pursued that initial only partially accurate goal.

[285] And so that's also a really good thing for people to understand.

[286] is like, if you don't know what you're doing, aim at something.

[287] Is it the right thing?

[288] No, but it's better than just shooting randomly.

[289] So you aim at something.

[290] And then as you aim and you move towards it, you're going to find out why you're wrong.

[291] And then you might recalibrate your aim.

[292] And that's going to happen over and over, because as you move towards a goal, it recedes, or it broadens, or it recedes and broadens.

[293] And otherwise, you'd run out of things to do.

[294] So, but anyways, back to the story.

[295] you have this this identity and you said it was it was there in you all right from the beginning because you would play army in in the by yourself even in the in the in the forest by your house I presume and how old were you do you think when how long back can you remember having that as a fascination I do not remember wanting to do anything else so would you say what is as early is that as early as four, three, five, preschool, something like that?

[296] Can you remember playing when you were that young?

[297] I can't remember, you know, a specific age.

[298] But if I think back to, hey, that looks like what I want to do.

[299] I remember I want to be a soldier.

[300] And do you, okay, you remember when you were a kid.

[301] I mean, I'm fascinated by this because, well, one of the things I really noted when I had kids was how much their personality was there right from the beginning.

[302] Like, my children are quite different.

[303] They have their similarities, but they're quite different from one another.

[304] And those differences were there right from the beginning, and they've maintained themselves throughout their lives.

[305] And so it's fascinating to see that that destiny in some sense is built right into the person to begin with.

[306] And so, well, this was built into you by all appearances.

[307] And so it manifested it in itself in what attracted you, even in play as a child.

[308] And that's the beginning of identity formulation, that play.

[309] And so what was it about being a soldier that you think attracted you when you were a kid?

[310] Like what was it that was so compelling?

[311] Because being a soldier is a multi -dimensional identity.

[312] There's the physical combat element of it.

[313] There's the strategic element of it.

[314] There's the discipline, the camaraderie.

[315] What were you playing, do you think?

[316] I got to ask this.

[317] I was talking to some folks at the Special Operations Command the other day, and they set me up with this kind of beautiful possibility or opportunity for me to give some kind of an incredibly beautiful answer to this very question, you know, and there was something along the lines of, you know, at what point did the opportunity to serve and sacrifice for your country reveal itself to you or something along that, those lines?

[318] And all I'm thinking about is when I'm eight years old, 12 years old, 15 years old, I want a machine gun and I want to go fight a war.

[319] That's what I want to do.

[320] I would love to tell you.

[321] I would love to tell you that I, you know, read some heroic book.

[322] I read The Odyssey and realized that I don't need to read any of that stuff.

[323] Well, that wouldn't be wrong with it to be or eight anyways, right?

[324] I mean, that's why I'm curious about what it was so early, you know.

[325] And so, okay, so for you, it had something to do with weaponry, apparently.

[326] I got to tell you a story about my father, okay?

[327] And tell me if this, like, produces any echoes.

[328] Before you go.

[329] Yep.

[330] weaponry was like for sure that's fine but it could be a club it wasn't it wasn't I wasn't a kid that was obsessed with guns okay it was and and maybe it was just we're going to get out and and run around with sticks and try and hit each other or get into rock fights mm -hmm you ever have rock fights when well we we had ice fights because it was northern alberta but also dirt lump fights and now and then those would have rocks and I can remember it was usually the Protestant kids against the Catholic kids.

[331] I mean, there wasn't that much of a division between those two in our town, but the Catholic kids had their junior high and high school, and we had ours.

[332] And so our gangs were separate.

[333] And so we would have dirt lump fights in the vacant lots where buildings were being constructed, and those were extremely exciting.

[334] You know, now and then you'd take a dirt lump rock in the mouth, and that was a little bit on the painful side.

[335] and but but but there's no doubt that it was extremely exciting and so and i cut you off about your dad and the gun oh well my dad told me something and then this might be more relevant to to guns but my dad collects single shot rifles and he has a lot of them like hundreds of them and he's a gunsmith and and makes stocks and hand carves them and anyways he's he's an artisan in that regard and it's really it's a it's a real focal of saying He was a great shot.

[336] He shot at the provincial level, which would be the state level in the U .S., but it was single shots.

[337] And he hunted.

[338] And so we grew up on moose meat and elk meat.

[339] And he brought elk into northern Alberta as part of a repopulation attempt.

[340] Anyways, I could never understand his fascination with guns, because it was really a deep fascination.

[341] So it was something that elicited my curiosity.

[342] And at one point, I realized that, he only hunted with single shots.

[343] So he had one shot at whatever he was hunting.

[344] So it had to be a good shot.

[345] And so he was pushing himself.

[346] And then I realized, well, he was really obsessed with hitting the target, taking aim and hitting the target.

[347] And it was about that time I learned that the Greek word for sin, Hamartia, meant to miss the target.

[348] So there's this tight alignment between taking careful aim at the center of something precisely and then break.

[349] yourself into alignment so that you would hit that target.

[350] There's a deep morality in that.

[351] It's a morality of hunting.

[352] It might be a morality of combat.

[353] And it's really deeply embedded inside of people.

[354] And that was what had my father in its grip.

[355] And so I was wondering if the, if you're, if you're, the automatic interest that even the club elicited in you had something.

[356] to do with that, that seeking, that hunting, that target seeking, or if, you know, perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree.

[357] I would say, no, but when you, when you were talking about getting hit in the head with a dirt clump and whether you get hit or not, when you get done with that situation, you are in an elevated state of mind because that was dangerous and it was a very high level competition because even when you're throwing a baseball or, you know, kicking a soccer ball around, there's no real danger in that situation.

[358] But when someone's hucking dirt clumps at your head, you get a legitimate rush from that.

[359] And it feels good.

[360] And it feels it's exhilarating.

[361] One of the most fun, yes, there's no doubt that it's exhilarating.

[362] One of the most fun days I ever had as a child, this was less dangerous.

[363] I lived next door to a policeman, an RCMP officer, and we went out one day.

[364] I was probably about eight into my neighbor's backyard, and she had green tomatoes everywhere, far more than she was ever going to eat.

[365] And we had a green tomato war for like an hour and a half.

[366] And he was moving them at a pretty good velocity.

[367] So if they caught you, especially in the head, you know, you kind of remembered it.

[368] But it was exhilarating.

[369] And it was really fun to engage in that with him.

[370] And I really do remember that.

[371] And I do remember those, I hadn't until today, but I do remember those dirt lump wars.

[372] And there is an exhilaration in pushing yourself like that.

[373] And I also don't, I don't want to give the impression that I was, you know, running around with camouflage paint going to high school or I was, you know, I was doing a bunch of other stuff too.

[374] I played soccer.

[375] I played basketball.

[376] We had, you know, a bunch of different bands.

[377] We played music.

[378] I played bass in a band.

[379] I sang in a band.

[380] I played guitar.

[381] We did all kinds of other stuff.

[382] But I was always kind of just in the back of my mind sort of wanted to do that job.

[383] All right.

[384] So you went to the seals and tell us about that a bit it was awesome you're you're uh you're making more money than you could ever figure out to do with you know i'm 19 years old and i am the richest person that's ever existed in my mind because i'm making whatever it is however many thousand every two weeks and you know my expenses were nothing and so you're just totally stoked you're getting you got a great job you're working out you're shooting machine guns you're blowing things up you're hanging out with a bunch of bunch of other guys that like to blow things up and you you can fight each other at the drop of a hat and then you get done with a fight and you shake hands and then and then you go eat a steak and so you're just in this environment and it's perfect it's it's freaking awesome so what was it like it was awesome that's what it was like it's funny you read accounts of the navy seals and i've never read it as enthusiastic an account as that account right there and so then how long after you what happened after you were done your naval seal training what direction did your military career take yeah so i got done with seal training I went to SEAL Team 1.

[385] It was 1991.

[386] I just missed the first Gulf War.

[387] I was all brokenhearted about that because this war had happened and I didn't know when another one was going to happen.

[388] And so what do you do is you train and we trained a bunch.

[389] I did a bunch of SEAL platoons, which is you form up with a group of guys, you do a training cycle together as a platoon and then you go on deployment overseas.

[390] And when there's no war going on, you go to other countries and you work with foreign nationals and you train them on the skill sets that we have and learn some stuff from them.

[391] And then you come back and you do it again.

[392] And then eventually from there, I went into where I became a trainer at SEAL Team 1 and taught the tactics to the SEAL platoons that were now training to go on deployment.

[393] And I did that for a couple years.

[394] And then I got picked up for a commissioning program and became an officer in the SEAL teams, which moved me up into a leadership position.

[395] And then I did a couple deployments as a young SEAL leader.

[396] Then I had to go to college.

[397] The Navy sent me to college because in order to be an officer in the Navy, you have to go to go to college.

[398] And I hadn't been to college.

[399] Where did you go?

[400] I went to the University of San Diego.

[401] You went to the University of San Diego.

[402] What did you take there?

[403] I was an English major.

[404] All right.

[405] So you finished college and then what happened?

[406] You're not going to ask me why I was an English major?

[407] Why were you an English major?

[408] I thought when he hears English major, he's going to say, wait a second, here you are, this guy talking about machine guns and blowing things up.

[409] What in God's name are you going to go study English for?

[410] I have to say that that thought did pass through my mind.

[411] Okay.

[412] Why was I an English major?

[413] I was an English major because, believe it or not, when you're in the SEAL teams, and especially when you're in the officer position, you have to write and read all the time.

[414] So when one of your troops does, something and they deserve some kind of recognition for that, you have to write them an award.

[415] And if the award is written well, there's a much better chance that it'll actually be given to the person that you're writing it for.

[416] You have to write evaluations for your troops.

[417] And the evaluations that you write is how your troops are judged so that they can be promoted.

[418] On top of that, if you want to go do a mission, you have to write a concept of operations, which is a document, which is five, six, seven, eight pages long that you send up the chain of command, that then they scour through and see if they're going to prove your mission or not.

[419] You know, that's so insanely important, you know, I mean, one of the things, I did a talk at Harvard four years ago, and I pointed out two things to the students in the audience.

[420] one was that a tremendous amount of civilization and effort had gone into producing the institution that they were now part of, and that everyone who was part of that institution was hoping that they would come there and learn everything they possibly could that was relevant and important and that they would be the best possible people they could be, and they would go out in the world and do as much good as they possibly could.

[421] That was the essential mission of the enterprise.

[422] And that was really the case.

[423] And also that learning to write in particular was going to make them more powerful than they could imagine.

[424] And a number of students came up to me afterwards and said, I really wish someone would have said that to us when we first came here.

[425] And it's the writing part of that.

[426] I kind of got obsessed with that when I was working as a professor.

[427] And I'm working on a piece of software right now to help, which will launch soon, to help people write.

[428] Because what I observed in my own career, and it's so interesting, the parallelism is so interesting, but not surprising, is that nothing can stop you if you can write.

[429] And it's for the reasons you just laid out.

[430] It's like, when you write, you make a case for something, whatever it happens to be.

[431] And if you make the best case, well, then you win.

[432] And you get whatever it is that you, you're aiming at.

[433] And so, you know, you said, maybe that's why I didn't ask you why you went into English, I guess.

[434] That might have been the reason is that the utility of learning to write is so self -evident to me that it could pass by without question.

[435] But it's also interesting to think about how it fits into this broader, well, let's say, at least partially military slash strategic way of looking at things.

[436] You know, you describe the intense relationship between marshalling your arguments properly, getting everything in order on the page, and making strategic progress truly in the military sense that those things are tied together very, very precisely.

[437] And it's obviously your ability to communicate as well.

[438] That's, well, look what it's done.

[439] You have your podcast.

[440] You have your YouTube channel.

[441] You have your books, many of which you self -published.

[442] So that ability to communicate is, it's, I just can't understand why it's not presented, especially, not entirely, but especially to adventurous, well, let's say young men.

[443] We could say young people.

[444] You're adventurous.

[445] You want to make a mark is you bloody well better learn how to write.

[446] Because if you learn how to write, well, then you can think and you can communicate your thoughts.

[447] So not only are you deadly strategically, you become extremely convincing.

[448] And then you can go and do anything you want, and no one will stop you.

[449] And that's never told to people.

[450] And I don't really understand why.

[451] You know, you hear the pen is mightier than the sword, which is just a cliche unless it's fleshed out.

[452] But the reason, you laid out the reasons perfectly.

[453] Yeah.

[454] You have to communicate what happened as well as having it had it happen.

[455] Right.

[456] So you already connected the dots, but obviously not only am I having to write and present my argument, I'm also having orders being issued to me, which are.

[457] are written.

[458] I'm sure you've heard the term rules of engagement.

[459] Well, Rules of Engagement is a 12 -page document that is in a bunch of legalese.

[460] And I've got to translate that document to my troops, some of whom, you know, barely graduated high school.

[461] And so I've got to be able to do that.

[462] So I've got to be able to read and then write and be able to then communicate and talk to the team and brief them in a manner that they can actually understand what it is I'm talking about and what it is our mission is and why we're doing this mission.

[463] So that was why I decided to study English when I went to college and believe.

[464] So that was a conscious decision.

[465] Absolutely.

[466] And with that end in mind that it was.

[467] So tell me exactly what the decision was with regards to studying English.

[468] What did you know that?

[469] Because it's not, as you pointed out, it's not self -evidently the most practical of pursuits and not necessarily what you'd expect someone with a military orientation to pursue.

[470] Right.

[471] Here's the thought process.

[472] I want to be a good seal.

[473] The good seals that I see can communicate, they can write, and they can read.

[474] That's what I need to learn how to do.

[475] I need to learn how to do that better so that I can persuade my chain of command that we need to do this mission or we need this piece of gear or this guy over here needs to get an award or he needs to get promoted.

[476] All those things are done by being able to write and communicate properly.

[477] Okay.

[478] So let's say you take the example of a seal who's got it all, but this literacy.

[479] Okay.

[480] So what happens to him compared to someone who has all those skills?

[481] well if he can't if he can't write well and he's in charge of six guys and one of those guys works hard or does something that deserves to be recognized this is the responsibility of that leader to write that person an award okay so he can't reward his he can't reward his good workers his good soldiers he can give him a pat on the back but a pat on the back isn't going to get him promoted an award is actually worth some points towards your promotion And the people that are on that board that are giving that reward, they're never going to meet that leader.

[482] And they're definitely not going to meet that guy.

[483] There's no bias.

[484] It's based on this piece of paper that you hand in.

[485] You hand in this piece of paper.

[486] They read the piece of paper and they say, award approved or award not approved.

[487] Or you want to do a mission and you send that up the chain of command.

[488] And it's the same thing.

[489] It gets to a certain point where they're just looking at it and reading and trying to decipher this pile of junk that you put together.

[490] And by the way, I'm in charge and Jordan sends me a concept of operations that doesn't make any sense, why would I possibly let you go out and execute an operation that I can't even understand what it is you're trying to do?

[491] So it has a huge impact.

[492] It has a huge impact.

[493] Okay, well, I'm dwelling on this because it's upsetting to me. I would say that young people in particular aren't stringently instructed that the ability to that literacy makes them powerful in every way they can possibly imagine except the absolutely immediate and so it's just sad to me that it's not sold in that manner you want to be weak stay illiterate you want to be strong it's like put yourself together physically fair enough man get brave and street smart but then you could add some literacy to that and you're an unstoppable machine so i concur 100 % and you know you said being literate makes you powerful and throughout recent history if we're trying to oppress someone what we don't want them to be able to do is read or write or articulate themselves right well we haven't even talked about reading you know we just talked about writing and fair enough.

[494] But obviously you studied English, so you also read.

[495] And so what's the advantage to that, as far as you're concerned, practically speaking?

[496] Well, obviously there are so many lessons that you can pull out of books.

[497] And you can get to a point where nothing really surprises you because you've at least seen some indication of what can unfold through reading.

[498] so again for me it's very much focused on combat and war but there's there's lessons that you learn and you say oh i i've seen that before there's a book it's a book called about face which i think the last time you and i talked you were i think you were writing the forward for for the gulag and i was about to write the forward to i don't know if that's your favorite book, but I was lucky enough to be able to write the forward for my favorite book, which was re -released because I was talking about it all the time.

[499] And the book is called about, the book is called About Face.

[500] And it's about a guy that was in the Korean War and then he was in the Vietnam War and his name is Colonel David Hackworth.

[501] But I would read that book.

[502] When I was on deployment, I would read, open up that book anywhere and I would read two pages or three pages before I'd go to bed if I was in my bed that night.

[503] And there was so much many lessons that correlated to what I was actually going through in a real obvious example was when he was in Vietnam, he's working with the South Vietnamese soldiers and therefore by proxy the South Vietnamese government.

[504] And guess what?

[505] They're all corrupt and they're not motivated and they don't have the right gear.

[506] And here we are in Iraq and we're working with Iraqi soldiers and therefore by proxy, we're working with the Iraqi government.

[507] Guess what?

[508] They're all corrupted.

[509] They're not well equipped.

[510] And how do you, how did he deal with it?

[511] How do we deal with it?

[512] So there's an example of when you read, you can learn and you don't have to go through the school of hard knocks.

[513] You don't have to get punched in the face repeatedly with things that turn out to be situations that other people have absolutely gone through.

[514] And the amount of, the amount of the level of capability increases so much by seeing something one single time.

[515] If I see something one time, I'm infinitely better than if I'd never seen it before.

[516] So if it's like those little puzzles, they give you a little puzzle, some kind of a mind bender, right?

[517] The mindbenders only work on you one time.

[518] The riddle only works on you one time.

[519] Then you go, I know, I know the answer to that.

[520] That's the answer.

[521] You never get fooled by that again.

[522] So just knowing, just seeing it one time, you're infinitely better.

[523] So when you read enough, you're capturing all these lessons.

[524] and you know what?

[525] I got to say this.

[526] It's not just reading.

[527] It's not just reading.

[528] And I learned this because as I started doing my podcast, and many of my podcasts are just me reading books.

[529] I realized how to read more intently, even more intently than I did when I was going to college and I was going to be, you know, writing a paper about a book.

[530] And so I'd read it in a certain way.

[531] but even that reading was a little bit detached, a little bit detached because you're looking for a theme or you're looking for character development or what have you.

[532] But when you read to learn about human nature and life, you detach less and you kind of put yourself in there and you experience it a little bit closer.

[533] And then when you take a step back, you go, oh yeah, I know what he was thinking right there because I was right there with him.

[534] And so there's a certain attitude.

[535] You kind of have to put yourself into the work and really read it with that kind of intensity, for lack of a better word.

[536] Is it possible for human being to read intensely?

[537] Absolutely.

[538] Because that's what I try and do.

[539] I get there.

[540] That's no different than acting intensely or playing intensely.

[541] Of course, you want to put the book on.

[542] You want to become that person.

[543] rattle you up, man, especially if the person is thinking all sorts of things that you've never thought.

[544] I mean, I love reading for that reason.

[545] I could pick my peers, too, which I really loved.

[546] It's like, well, you know, I have these people around me, but then there's these people who've lived before me and in different places, and I can set them up on my shelf.

[547] I can enter into their world, and I can benefit from everything they've thought and saturate myself with that person.

[548] And it's very disruptive, especially if the person that you're reading has a mind that's more powerful and more well developed than your own.

[549] I mean, Friedrich Nietzsche spun me around for about three years.

[550] And I was reading Young at the same time intensely.

[551] And the same thing, you know, it was very disruptive, but unbelievably useful, unbelievably useful to try on other people like that.

[552] And you get the benefit of their entire life distilled into their book.

[553] You know, it's 30 years of work.

[554] I read this one book called the Neuropsychology of Anxiety, which is a great scientific work.

[555] I think it's the greatest neuropsychological work of the last 50 years.

[556] It's a very hard book.

[557] I think it has 1 ,800 references, something like that.

[558] And this guy, Jeffrey Gray, he actually read all those references and he understood them.

[559] And so it took me six months to read the book.

[560] but I got an entire education out of it.

[561] I got to experience in six months what it took him 30 years to learn.

[562] Like, what a gift that is.

[563] It's unbelievable.

[564] I was listening to an interview with Gary Kasparov, I think you said, Russian.

[565] He was a chess world champion for 20 years, something like this.

[566] And he, they asked him, and the interviewer didn't ask him directly if he could beat this young, young guy named Magnus Carlson, who's the current kind of prodigy of chess.

[567] He's just phenomenal and the highest chest rating ever, et cetera, et cetera.

[568] And he didn't get asked directly if he could beat him, but it was definitely implied, if I remember the interview correctly.

[569] And it was very interesting to me, Gary Kasparov, there was two things that would have found interesting.

[570] Number one was he said, he's younger than me. And he didn't mean that and like that was an advantage for for Gary he meant it he's younger than me so he has an advantage because he's younger and I kind of thought to myself well that's kind of weird because this isn't a physical this isn't a wrestling match this isn't a jujitsu match why would that help and then sure enough you learn a little bit about cognitive decline and Gary Kasparov is 57 years old when he did this interview and guess what you start well depending on who you are, but you start to see cognitive decline around that time.

[571] Hell, it kicks in at 25.

[572] Well, there you go.

[573] There's, you can, IQ is pretty unitary, but you can fracture it into crystallized and fluid.

[574] And fluid IQ is what enables you to learn.

[575] And it declines from 25 onward.

[576] Crystallized intelligence continues to grow, roughly speaking, because it's partly dependent on such things as vocabulary, which you can learn.

[577] which accumulate.

[578] But interestingly enough, you know, you were talking about physically, the best way to stave off cognitive decline is not cognitive activity.

[579] It's exercise.

[580] Weightlifting and cardiovascular exercise can, it's by far the most potent means of staving off cognitive decline.

[581] Yeah.

[582] So Casparov would have the advantage in terms of experience, but the younger guy would have the edge on sheer raw brain power.

[583] That's what I thought to.

[584] That's what I thought.

[585] too, but guess what?

[586] It's wrong.

[587] And it's wrong for the exact reason that you just said.

[588] So Magnus Carlson, when he's 11 years old, he gets to open up a book and see every single match and move that Gary Kasparov ever made.

[589] Because that's what they do.

[590] They document that stuff.

[591] Of course.

[592] And so what he got to do was what you got to do, you got to learn a person's 30 years experience in six months.

[593] Well, this young kid, Matt, so this, so this, where it might have taken Gary Kasparov, you know, eight years or four years to figure out how to get out of some particular quandary on the chessboard.

[594] Well, Magnus just opened to a page in a book and said, oh, if I ever get into that quandary, I'm there.

[595] And so what Magnus got to do is he got to start from here.

[596] Right.

[597] And build.

[598] And so I make this point from a leadership perspective, we can do the same things as leaders.

[599] We don't have to figure all this stuff out.

[600] We can jump up to Gary Kasparov's level or at least get a baseline of what he knew and win because we learned.

[601] It's very interesting to me. Well, you think, and again, with regards to selling this sort of thing, you know, I'm stunned that it's possible to make history boring, for example.

[602] People should be so enthralled with history that they can't get enough of it.

[603] But with reading, you imagine you have this opportunity to learn whatever you want from the greatest people, who ever lived along that dimension and and well it's stunning to me that that is a hard sell it's mysterious that that it's that it isn't something that everyone is just clamoring for i mean that to me that points to a devastating failure inadequacy of the education system a mysterious inadequacy yeah there's uh i think maybe the transaction isn't always clear for people.

[604] I always talk about, well, if you're going to sell somebody, if you're going to sell somebody a book, you know, if I'm going to sell you a book, Jordan, you've got to give me $20 and eight hours of your time, right?

[605] That's what you know you're going to give me. You're going to give me $20 and you're going to give me eight hours of time, which you would probably, you know, have other things that you might need to do.

[606] And the transaction is not always clear of what you're going to get out of that, especially when, look, you can spend a lot of time reading books and not get as much as you might want.

[607] You might not get your $20 worth out of a book.

[608] So you have to be somewhat selective.

[609] Now, luckily, it's not even that hard to figure out which books to read because there's so many reviews and history about where these books came from and the productivity that they resulted in.

[610] But I think it's hard sometimes for, look, I can only speak for myself.

[611] When I was younger, it was really hard for me to figure out that transaction.

[612] Yeah, fair enough.

[613] Like I had a librarian when I was 13, who told me what to read, which is what a teacher should do, right?

[614] There's nothing a teacher can do for you that's better than say, well, here's 10 books that will change you completely, and who actually knows that to be the case?

[615] And one of the things I'd really like to do, I've toyed with, well, with the whole concept of online education, one thing I'd really like to do is to divide up the variety of domains of learning.

[616] and identify the top 10 books in each domain.

[617] So to ask an expert, it's like, well, you're a historian, you're a great historian.

[618] What 10 books are crucial?

[619] And I have a list on my website, a list of recommended books.

[620] There's about 100 of them that have been instrumental for me. And lots of people have used that list to purchase books.

[621] So that's been really good.

[622] But I'd really like to extend and expand it.

[623] Yeah, I have the same thing on my website, the books from the podcast.

[624] and same thing, all kinds of those books get sold.

[625] And it's beautiful to see.

[626] But the people that are checking the website or listening to the podcast, they know that those books have been through a filter.

[627] They're there for a reason.

[628] They're there because they're going to be worth that transaction.

[629] And I think that's a tough sell for a lot of people.

[630] They can't figure out, maybe they've invested in books before and they didn't quite get the return on an investment that they wanted and buy two or three books and $50 or $60 and 20 or 30 hours.

[631] Yeah, that's a great observation, I think, because one of the advantages to coming from a literate background is that you do, in fact, reduce the transaction costs.

[632] Because there's an infinite number of books.

[633] Well, no, there isn't.

[634] But as far as we're concerned, there might as well be.

[635] And so the question of what to read really is daunting if you don't know anyone who reads.

[636] Where do I start?

[637] And how can I not be a fool in doing this?

[638] so well okay back to english so what what were you reading when you were in university was it was it fiction novels was it nonfiction what what were you what were you focusing on it was like your basic english literature that's what i studied and so i read everything i read everything you know from each one of the little periods and it took the various classes and and really as trite as this may sound, it was actually the most impact was from Shakespeare.

[639] It was the most impact on on multiple levels.

[640] And I'll tell you the primary level.

[641] And when I've covered Shakespeare on my podcast, I explain this to people.

[642] People think, well, you know, I didn't really understand.

[643] I read it and I understand it.

[644] And I, so I start off when I talk about Shakespeare on my podcast, I start off by saying, listen, if you think you're going to just pick up Shakespeare, open it up and read it and understand it, you're not going to because it's barely written in English.

[645] It's barely written in English.

[646] It's almost another language.

[647] And so you're not going to be able to just pick it up and read through it.

[648] It's written in almost other language.

[649] So what you have to do is you have to start to interpret it.

[650] And so what I realized with Shakespeare is number one, the weight of the words, that these words were so pregnant with meaning that you had to pull those words and parse those words and pull those words apart to see all the depth that each individual word had and then the way that they're put together.

[651] And what was great about this was by the time I was back, because then I went right back into the SEAL teams and somebody would hand me a Rules of Engagement document and that was written by some lawyer in Washington, D .C. And I'd pull it out and say, wait a second, this word, I don't know what this word means.

[652] Let's pull this word out.

[653] Let's see what this, the actual definition of this particular word is and how that changes my viewpoint of these rules of engagement and how can I translate that for my troops so that they actually know what to do.

[654] So that part for me was from a reading perspective, starting to read Shakespeare and saying, oh, okay, you're not going to understand this.

[655] And if you don't understand something, that's okay.

[656] You pull out the Oxford English dictionary and you look it up.

[657] And then you not just find out what the meaning of the word is, but what's the root word and where does it come from and what kind of depth and what kind of...

[658] Yeah, and that's really, that's unbelievably useful to discover the connotation of words.

[659] And the Oxford English Dictionary is particularly good for that, because you discover things that you never guess by looking at how the word developed.

[660] I mentioned the word Hamartia.

[661] Like the fact that the word for sin was derived from an archery concept was revelatory to me. It's like, that's so cool.

[662] It ties this moral concept, abstract philosophy, back down to something.

[663] as primordial as weaponry and hunting.

[664] And just the fact that that's the metaphor is absolutely fascinating.

[665] And then there's the overlap in meaning that I already referred to.

[666] And virtually every word is like that, because word is an ancient artifact.

[667] It's like an animal in some sense.

[668] It has an evolutionary history, and it transforms across time.

[669] And each word kind of, it carries the echoes of its past with it, too, because each word attracts other words in a particular unique way.

[670] So it kind of lives in a word ecosystem as well.

[671] And the ecosystem contain information about the history of that word.

[672] And you think, well, why is that important?

[673] It's like, well, hey, guess what?

[674] You think in words.

[675] You talk in words.

[676] You have all these archaic entities, these words, these living entities that you use.

[677] It's like the more you know about them, the more you know about you.

[678] The more you know about other people, and the better you are at formulating and communicating your ideas, there's nothing lost in that kind of investigation.

[679] There's nothing but gain there.

[680] Yeah, and that's, that was, so that was the, that was the English road for me. And it was good thing I asked you that question, eh?

[681] Yeah, it was really, really insightful for you to come up with that.

[682] Thank you.

[683] Thank you.

[684] All right.

[685] So, so, and you, did you, did you enjoy university?

[686] Did you find a community there?

[687] No. So when I was going to university, I was married.

[688] I had two kids when I got to university.

[689] I had three kids when I left.

[690] I was not a university student.

[691] I was in fact, in fact, I would sit in the front row during my classes.

[692] I would have three pencils and three pens lined up and staged on my desk.

[693] I would be ready to take notes.

[694] If the teacher said something I didn't understand, I'd be sitting in the front row, raise my hand.

[695] I don't understand what you just said.

[696] Can you explain that?

[697] And meanwhile, you know, I'm 28 years old and there's a bunch of 18 years olds in there and they just want to, you know, go out and hang out with their friends.

[698] And I'm there, I'm in there to, I'd love to really come off sounding good and tell you that I was there to learn.

[699] But I was there to get A's, which meant I did have to learn.

[700] So I went at it as a competition.

[701] And I was competing, not with the other students.

[702] I was competing with the teachers because I'm a little bit crazy sometimes.

[703] I would want to make sure that they couldn't ask me a question on their test that I didn't know the answer to.

[704] So that's what I did.

[705] And so did I have fun?

[706] Maybe not.

[707] And one thing, when I got back to the SEAL teams, what I told the guys, I'd say, you know what I learned in college?

[708] And they'd say what?

[709] And I said, I learned never, ever, ever, ever get out of the teams, ever.

[710] Never get out of, sorry, get out of.

[711] Never get out of the teams, the SEAL teams.

[712] Never get out of the street.

[713] Okay, okay.

[714] Well, you know, I taught older students in Boston and undergraduates.

[715] And the undergraduates, especially in Boston, but also at the University of Toronto, were very, very bright and generally very hardworking.

[716] The older students were generally not as highly selected, but man, they were committed.

[717] And most of them had had jobs that they weren't thrilled with, let's say.

[718] and had a hunger for what education could bring them that the younger people lacked.

[719] And so it does seem to me often, and maybe this is just because I'm getting older, that after high school, it might be good for people who want to pursue university to go do something that they're qualified for, which isn't much at that point, for a year or two, so that when they do go to college or university, they understand just exactly what they're being offered.

[720] Yeah, but I couldn't agree more.

[721] working in the regular world will definitely make you appreciate the opportunities that you may have if you go and learn more in the world.

[722] All right.

[723] So you came out of university.

[724] You had three kids.

[725] You were married.

[726] What happens next?

[727] Go back to the SEAL teams and go through the rest of my career.

[728] I showed up at a SEAL team.

[729] September 11th had happened.

[730] So I show up at a seal team.

[731] I become a platoon commander at a seal team and then go on deployment.

[732] I get done with that deployment.

[733] That deployment was primarily to Baghdad, although we worked kind of all over Iraq, got done with that deployment.

[734] I went and became the aide de camp for the admiral that was in charge of all the seals at that point in time.

[735] And so that was sort of, well, not even sort of.

[736] It was a very administrative job.

[737] But it was also a huge opportunity for me to get to see the seal community in the most broad way that I could.

[738] So I got to learn a lot there and then I went back to a seal team and was now what's called a task unit commander, which is two seal platoons combined together.

[739] And I was in charge of two seal platoons combined together, which is called the task unit.

[740] My task unit was called task unit summer of 2006, very tough fighting, a very tough battle, and came home from that deployment.

[741] Hey, so could I, let me, let me ask you there.

[742] So can you tell me, can you describe a typical day or a typical week?

[743] What was it like to be there?

[744] I like all the details.

[745] Tell me what happens when you get up in the morning.

[746] What did your day look like?

[747] So we're there, we showed up there, and as soon as we got there.

[748] And we knew going into it in 2005, 2006.

[749] If you can remember watching the news in 2005, 2006, just about every day you would see in the news that there was three soldiers killed in Al -Lambar province or five Marines killed in Al -Lambar province or three Marines wounded in Al -Lambar province.

[750] And the capital of Al -Lambar province is the city of Ramadi, and the vast majority of those casualties were happening inside the city of Ramadi.

[751] And we knew that going there.

[752] And when you say we, you say we were deployed there.

[753] Who are you, you're obviously referring to the country, to your country.

[754] But what does we mean when you make, when you say that?

[755] But when I say we in this particular case, I'm talking about my seal task unit.

[756] So I had.

[757] And that's how many, how many people?

[758] Yeah.

[759] So I had about 35 to 40 seals most of the time.

[760] And then another 60, around 60 support personnel.

[761] and these people are armorers that, you know, can fix our weapons and mechanics that can fix our Humvees and intelligence people that gather information for us and radio operators that can receive our radio calls.

[762] So there's a big support network that goes with the SEAL task unit as we deployed.

[763] And why was it a SEAL enterprise?

[764] What was specific about this deployment that required the whatever it is that the seals bring?

[765] And what is it exactly, that the seals bring that's specific?

[766] So on this particular deployment, at this point in time, seals were deploying to Iraq all the time.

[767] There was always seals in Iraq.

[768] My first deployment was in 2003, 2004, and we were, in the beginning of that deployment, we were the only sealed platoon there.

[769] And then by this time, there would be many more seals.

[770] I forget what the number is.

[771] So we were in Iraq, and we were conducting special operations missions.

[772] And in particular, in Ramadi, when we got there, so a standard seal operation on my first deployment was gather intelligence from various sources.

[773] So through various sources, we would gather intelligence about the location of a bad guy.

[774] Okay.

[775] So you had a variety of people who were targets identified and they were leaders of of what marked them out as bad?

[776] What were their characteristics?

[777] These are people, well, we want to talk about their psychological characteristics.

[778] No, no, no, I mean technically.

[779] You might not be able to do a better job than that.

[780] I can tell you what they were doing for a living was trying to kill Americans, trying to kill coalition forces, trying to kill other Iraqis, trying to create chaos and mayhem for the interim government in Iraq.

[781] These are...

[782] And were they generally leaders of a group that you would target?

[783] or are these people who were involved in the army on the other side?

[784] Or like, put them in context.

[785] Yeah, so there's no, there's no, I mean, the Iraqi army is actually on our side.

[786] Right.

[787] So these, the Iraqi army is our friends.

[788] And that's who we're working alongside.

[789] And now early in the war, not so much because the, the coalition forces made a decision to disband the entire Iraqi military.

[790] Right, right.

[791] It was.

[792] Oh, this is why I wondered if there were people with, on the military, to what degree there were people with military chaining that were facing you.

[793] Yes.

[794] So since that happened a lot.

[795] And as a matter of fact, in the city of Ramadi, there used to be a massive military, Iraqi military base there.

[796] And so a bunch of former Iraqi military lived there.

[797] There was a whole area that was called the, it was an area called the officer housing.

[798] There was an area in Ramadi that was called the officer housing where Iraqi officers used to live.

[799] And I'm not nailing that name.

[800] something like that.

[801] Um, so yes, there was, there was former Iraqi regime army people that were out there fighting.

[802] There was also foreign fighters.

[803] And so would they have their own little groups?

[804] They're bands of people that were fighting with them.

[805] You were targeting leaders.

[806] I'm just wondering how people were selected.

[807] So the seals were after specific individuals, generally speaking.

[808] Yes.

[809] And here's what we figured out.

[810] If you only target the leaders, Well, it's going to be a lot harder to catch them because they're laying low and they're moving around and they try and give misinformation about where they are and whatnot.

[811] So what we'd go and go out and grab, you know, one of their lieutenants, grab one of their soldiers and find out where the lieutenant is, grab the lieutenant and find out where the leader is.

[812] So there would be these cell networks, these little networks and maybe they're a mortar cell and they're dropping mortars or they're a roadside bomb cell.

[813] And that's what they're doing.

[814] And so we would figure out who these bad guys were.

[815] And then through these various intelligence sources, we would find out a location.

[816] Maybe it was a mid -level guy.

[817] Maybe it was a high -level guy.

[818] Maybe it was a low -level guy.

[819] And then once we know their location, we're going to get them.

[820] What were the typical motivations of the people that you were pursuing?

[821] What were they fighting for?

[822] So there's a variety of motivation.

[823] Some of the, you know, if you're a frontline, guess what?

[824] If you're a 15 -year -old kid with no money, guess what's a good motivator, money.

[825] And you, and these, the insurgents, the insurgents say, hey, we'll give you a hundred bucks to go launch an RPG at the American base.

[826] So that's their motivation.

[827] End of story.

[828] The higher you get up the chain of command, the more you're going to start leaning towards legitimate jihadists that now there's jihadists throughout the chain of command don't get me wrong and and i mean hardcore jihadists and and i remember the first time i i was in my first deployment the first time i saw a legit hardcore jihadist you can tell that these this guy hated us and it was very clear from the look on his face when we captured him it was completely.

[829] He was filled with seething hatred.

[830] So there's jihadist throughout the chain of command.

[831] And that guy was like a middle.

[832] So the jihadist motivation was, well, by definition, in some sense, a religious motivation.

[833] But your experience of it was that it was primarily a visceral hate.

[834] And hatred for what do you think?

[835] I mean, obviously you're an occupying force, let's say.

[836] And America is seen at least among the jihadists of that time as as a truly satanic force, I suppose.

[837] I mean, what's motivating?

[838] What was your experience of what was motivating the hatred?

[839] Yeah, it's everything you just said.

[840] But, I mean, you can trace it all the way back to the Israeli -Palestinian conflict.

[841] I mean, you can, they're going to draw and see, view the West as evil, as the great Satan.

[842] And so that's what.

[843] What did you think at that point about the morality of?

[844] the endeavor.

[845] I mean, because this is why I'm curious.

[846] Like, and please do correct me. I'm sure I'm wrong about many of the things that I think, but it seems to me that the clearer your moral sense when you're engaged in a battle, the more likely you are all things considered to win, because you're not, part of you isn't going to be fighting against you, right?

[847] And I mean, in any enterprises like that, if I find that if I'm involved in a project, and I have reservations, then the part of me that has reservations, 20 % of me, pushes against the other 80%, and then I'm only 60 % as effective as I might be.

[848] And so whenever I engage in an enterprise, I try to walk through it ethically and see, well, am I actually committed to this?

[849] What qualms do I have?

[850] What doubts do I have?

[851] What resistances do I have?

[852] Because that's going to make me weak.

[853] And so when you go into battle, I presume it's the same thing that you have to believe, I know they say that soldiers also fight very hard for the guy who's in the foxhole next to them.

[854] So there's that brotherhood camaraderie.

[855] But you go there as a representative of your country as well, your nation.

[856] And there has to be that ethical dimension to it.

[857] And so how did you guys deal with that?

[858] looking at what we're doing.

[859] And what's really interesting is even though when you stare at it from a strategic perspective, when you say, oh, as a Western power, as this country, we're going in here and we could argue all day long about whether that's a right call or a wrong call, whether that's morally correct or whether it's an immoral move, we could have arguments about that all day.

[860] Yes, well, they've been going on for 3 ,000 years in the Middle East, right?

[861] Right.

[862] Endless arguments about what's right.

[863] And here's what, here's what one of the nice benefits of being on the ground is you get to see what's happening, what's actually happening.

[864] So what you see in Iraq when you're actually on the ground is, for instance, in Ramadi, what you see and what we saw is, the Iraqi populace who are a bunch of normal people that want to carry out their lives and raise their kids and run whatever business they're going to run, that's what they want to do.

[865] They want to, they want, they actually want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is what they want.

[866] That's a normal Iraqi family.

[867] When we would, when we would go to an Iraqi family's house, that's pretty much what you're dealing with.

[868] And amongst those normal people that just want to live their lives in peace, there are insurgents.

[869] And the insurgents want power.

[870] They want control.

[871] And they are willing to do anything to get it.

[872] And so when you see fathers beheaded and their heads left in the yard of a family because he had, you know, had relate, he was, he was working with a shake that had said things against Al -Qaeda.

[873] And now this guy is beheaded.

[874] There was a guy that was skinned alive.

[875] There was torture.

[876] There was rape.

[877] So when you are on the ground and you see this stuff happening, and you see the local populace clapping and cheering when you kill insurgents, your strategic vision isn't quite in focus as much as what you're seeing right in front of you with your own two eyes.

[878] And so therefore, the 20 % of you that might be arguing whether this is right or wrong, when you see families slaughtered, you very quickly tell that 20 % of your brain that you don't you need to look at what's happening right here this is this this is this is this is immoral and we need to do what we can to help these people and do you did you feel then and and then again now i mean it's a quagmire it's an ethical quagmire the middle east and so it seems in some sense that no matter what you do there it's wrong and and i'm not trying to convince you of that.

[879] Believe me, I'm really curious about this.

[880] You felt when you were there that you were on the side that was doing the right things.

[881] Do you, um, and now when you look back, I mean, I don't know what to make of what, what happened with the U .S. in the Middle East over the last 15 years.

[882] I'm just as happy and perhaps you are as well.

[883] There's less engagement in foreign wars now than there was 10 years ago in the U .S. right?

[884] That seems to have receded to some degree.

[885] And that perhaps that's a good thing.

[886] What do you think about America's involvement in Iraq?

[887] What conclusions have you come to?

[888] So you talked about this argument that you're going to have in your own head.

[889] Well, you are also going to have that argument on a national level, right?

[890] You're going to have a national level argument of whether this is the right thing or the wrong thing to do.

[891] So my scale, my measure of this is if you are going to go to war, if you are going to go to war, you have to make sure before you go that you have the proper will.

[892] the proper will.

[893] And there's two types of will that you need to have if you're going to go to war.

[894] The first type of will that you need to have if you're going to go to war is you have to have the will to kill.

[895] You have to have the will to kill.

[896] And guess what?

[897] I am sorry to inform everybody.

[898] it is not just the will to kill the enemy.

[899] Because when you go to war, war is an imperfect, is an imperfect endeavor.

[900] And no matter how hard you try to just kill the enemy, you will kill civilians, you will kill women, you will kill children.

[901] That is what is going to happen.

[902] That is what is going to happen if you go to war.

[903] so you have to make sure you have the will to do that that sometimes you're going to drop a bomb and it's going to land and it's going to kill women and children that's what's going to happen and anybody that thinks anything different is naive and ignorant we seem to let our politicians often convince us that that's possible but it's not so you have to have the will to kill and then on top of that, obviously, you have to have the will to die.

[904] You have to know and understand that if you embark in a war, your sons and daughters are going to be killed.

[905] That is what is going to happen.

[906] And anybody that says it's not going to happen is naive and ignorant.

[907] Now, I think before we go to war, oftentimes we rationalize that we can mitigate the risk of killing.

[908] We can mitigate the risk of dying.

[909] And for some reason, we think we can mitigate those risks down to zero, which is impossible.

[910] So if you have the will, if you look at a situation and say, we need to do something here, For moral reasons, for national security reasons, we need to take action.

[911] Okay, so let me ask you a question there, if you don't mind.

[912] You know, whenever I have had to take difficult action in the past, so to take a risk, my justification for that, so what allowed me to organize my will, let's say, was a belief that inaction was a worse crime.

[913] So I'm trying to think through what it takes to conjure up the will that you just described, morally speaking.

[914] And it's very difficult to talk about the morality of war, but it's absolutely necessary, clearly.

[915] Do you believe that in the situation in Iraq?

[916] Do you think that the argument was laid forth?

[917] It's such a, it's, it's, it's, so, there was a. terrible attack on New York, 9 -11.

[918] And the response was focused on Iraq.

[919] That's correct so far.

[920] Yes.

[921] Focused on Afghanistan immediately and very much thereafter focused on Iraq.

[922] Yes.

[923] All right.

[924] It was never obvious to me why the focus shifted to Iraq.

[925] Do you have any sense of why that was?

[926] I know that there was a lot of thought at the highest levels of the American government prior to 9 -11 about Iraq.

[927] And so there was a plan that was already, in some sense, in place for Iraq.

[928] But it isn't obvious to me why attention was shifted towards Iraq in the aftermath, apart from the fact that that plan already existed.

[929] I think the shift came from, and I'm trying to think of some kind of a metaphor here, but you know you've got you've got some rats in you know in the garage and the rats have nod through some of the wiring and so you go and you you know you try and kill the rats in the garage and you realize you know what this isn't the only place that these rats seem could could be there could also be some rats over here in the basement and we have wires over there too go handle that situation as well.

[930] You said that you were overwhelmed by the reality of the situation on the ground.

[931] My first deployment to Iraq, we worked with, we just worked with seals.

[932] Basically, all the operations we did was just with seals.

[933] When we went back to Iraq in Ramadi, we were ordered to work with Iraqi soldiers.

[934] Now, the Iraqi soldiers were poorly trained.

[935] They were poorly equipped.

[936] They had low motivation.

[937] Some of them were not very trustworthy.

[938] And we were going out into the worst battlefield on planet Earth at the time.

[939] And it was pretty hard to make sense of that order, right?

[940] Mm -hmm.

[941] But when I thought through the order, you know, why is, why is my senior leadership ordering me to do this?

[942] Well, the answer is quite clear after I thought about it a little bit.

[943] Hey, the reason that we have to do this is because we need to work with the Iraqi soldiers so that the Iraqi soldiers become proficient enough that they can handle the security in their own country.

[944] Of course, yes.

[945] Okay.

[946] So my senior leadership isn't telling me to do something because they want me to die or want my troops to get wounded and killed.

[947] They're telling me to do something because it's a strategic move where in hopefully two or three years, the Iraqi military will be at a level where they can handle security in their own country.

[948] Okay, got it.

[949] Okay, that's part one.

[950] Well, when we got ordered to work with Iraqi soldiers, it wasn't just, it wasn't just my seal tasking.

[951] It was everyone.

[952] All coalition forces, all American Army and Marine Corps was getting told you'll work with Iraqi forces.

[953] And everyone kind of had that nervous feeling, right?

[954] Hold on a second.

[955] You want me to have this person that has a rusty AK -47 and a pair of sandals?

[956] You want that person to support me out on the battlefield?

[957] That doesn't make any sense.

[958] And so what the American forces did was when they were ordered to take Iraqi soldiers with them on an operation and they would go out with a platoon of 40 Americans and they would take two Iraqis with them.

[959] Because they were told to take Iraqis, plural.

[960] So that means two, that's what we're going to do.

[961] And they'd leave them in the Hun v and they'd go conduct their operations.

[962] Well, senior leadership got wind of this.

[963] And this obviously is not in the spirit of what we were being told to do.

[964] you're not going to get a nation's army trained up by taking two soldiers out so the next thing the leadership said was okay here's the new order for every one american that you bring out you have to have seven Iraqi soldiers with you so yeah that's different so they imposed a ratio on us now Ramadi at this time was a complete war zone other parts of Iraq were actually somewhat pacified.

[965] And in many of those pacified areas, that order actually made sense.

[966] The Iraqis in some area, the Iraqi soldiers in some areas were actually capable of conducting decent operations with very little American oversight.

[967] And the level of violence in those areas wasn't that bad.

[968] So it was okay.

[969] Well, in Ramadi, it didn't make any sense whatsoever.

[970] So I'm being ordered to take one seal for every seven Iraqi soldiers.

[971] Well, first of all, because of the fighting was so bad in Ramadi, many of the Iraqi units only had 10 or 15 or 20 people in their platoon.

[972] So if I was going to send out seals, I would only be able to send out two seals with 15 Iraqi soldiers.

[973] So now which two seals am I going to send?

[974] Am I going to send the medic?

[975] Well, I want to send a medic for sure, but guess what?

[976] I also need to send a machine gunner in case we get into a firefight.

[977] What about the radio man that actually calls for help?

[978] What about the point, man, that actually knows where we're going?

[979] What about the leader who's going to make decisions out there?

[980] What about the explosive ordinance disposal guy that can dismantle bombs from going off?

[981] So who am I supposed to leave behind?

[982] It doesn't make any sense.

[983] The danger to the troops is so much higher in that situation.

[984] So what did I do?

[985] Did I say, hey, that's what I'm being ordered to do?

[986] No, I took all this into consideration, and I, you'll appreciate this.

[987] I wrote a point paper up my chain of command, explain the situation of what was happening, explain the number of casualties, explain the level of violence, explain the size of the Iraqi elements that we were working with, and said, can I please get a waiver for this and allow me to take however many seals I've deemed necessary to take to be safe?

[988] And my chain of command read it and said, yeah, sure, Jocko, do whatever you want to do.

[989] Thank you.

[990] so that's okay so what you what you're telling me is that you take what you're told to do and you take what you know to be the case on the ground and you try to do you try to take both of them into account as much as possible well you're also shunting information back up the hierarchy hopefully to modify their decisions the decisions they're making that aren't in accordance with the reality on the ground right right so you do i mean you do your best under the circumstance but that that makes that that seems to be that seems to be a good answer but but it escalates obviously it can escalate higher than that right it can the decisions the orders that we're being given can escalate to a point where maybe this entire thing that we're doing i think is wrong right right okay so now we get into a situation where and the reason that i i have to explain all these other of things is because it happens very rarely.

[991] It happens very rarely that, you know, someone in the military is looking at a decision that's being made on a big scale and says, I think this is totally and completely wrong.

[992] Now, I will tell you, and I wrote about this in my last leadership book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, if you're being told to do something that you believe is completely wrong, well, I would love to tell you that that's a black and white decision, but guess what?

[993] It's not.

[994] Even that's not a black and white decision.

[995] because Jordan, if you order me to go and assault a machine gun nest that's on a hill with my squad, and I know that this is a machine gun nest in a bunkered position in an elevated position with interlocking fields of fire.

[996] And if we go up that hill, we're all going to die.

[997] And I look at you and say, hey, hey boss, I don't think that's a good call.

[998] They're elevated.

[999] They're bunkered.

[1000] They're interlocking.

[1001] This doesn't make any sense.

[1002] And you go, no, Jocko, shut up and do it.

[1003] And I said, no, I'm telling you, Jordan, this isn't a good idea.

[1004] And you say, no, shut up and do it.

[1005] Now, here's my decision point.

[1006] If I say, you know what, I will not do it.

[1007] I will not do it.

[1008] You know what you do?

[1009] You go, cool, Jocko, you're fired, and you get your yes man come over, and your yes man comes and you say, go assault that machine gun nest, and he takes the squad up and he gets everybody killed.

[1010] So I surrendered my influence when I drew that line in the sand and said no. And you doomed other people to death.

[1011] And I doomed other people to death.

[1012] Now, my boss orders me, you order me, and I say, okay, boss, got it.

[1013] You definitely want me to do this.

[1014] There's no way out.

[1015] Yes, you definitely got to do it.

[1016] Okay.

[1017] All right, guys, here's what's happening.

[1018] We're going to start, we're going to get into a cover position.

[1019] We're going to start maneuvering towards this thing.

[1020] We're going to see what kind of fire we receive.

[1021] If we start receiving overwhelming fire, I'm going to lock some of you guys in that position, and I'm going to send another squad over to the flank.

[1022] and we're going to take out this machine gun nest from another angle or I'm going to hunker down in that position and we're going to call for air support.

[1023] So you're decomposing.

[1024] You're actually decomposing the process then into micro elements and then testing the micro elements.

[1025] Then you can report back with that information.

[1026] Yes.

[1027] Right, right.

[1028] Very smart.

[1029] Very smart.

[1030] We have to be very careful.

[1031] So when you talk about, oh, I don't think we should go into Iraq.

[1032] I don't think we should go, okay, so what am I going to do?

[1033] Hey, I don't think we should go.

[1034] Now, are there times where that might be the right decision?

[1035] There are sometimes like that where maybe I think that me as a senior leader standing up and saying no to my boss is going to make, you know, Jordan suddenly looks to me and goes, wait a second, Jocco has always been a good guy.

[1036] And now we're sitting here telling me no, he's really serious about it.

[1037] Maybe I, maybe I'm not seeing something.

[1038] Maybe I can get you to rethink your position.

[1039] That's a risky move though.

[1040] It's always a risky move to kind of draw line the sand or kind of an ultimatum because you use up your capital you burn your leadership capital it's even worse than that you just completely surrender your leadership guy you don't even use it you you you obliterate it it's gone you have no more influence you're done so we have to think very long and hard about those things and so when it if if i was i was never put in a position like where i didn't where where i thought that what we were doing as a country was wrong i'll tell you Actually, probably the closest I've come to that was, I think it was 1993.

[1041] The massacre was unfolding in Rwanda.

[1042] There was the, the, the, uh, the, uh, Hutus were killing the Tutsis by the hundreds of thousands.

[1043] And I was on a Navy ship, um, off the coast of, off the coast of Africa on standby to go into Rwanda as this slaughter.

[1044] took place.

[1045] And we didn't do anything.

[1046] We didn't do anything.

[1047] So that's the cost of not going to war there.

[1048] It's the cost of not going to war.

[1049] And there's a very, you know, it's a very interesting, I'm sure you've heard of the massacre that took, took place in Mila in Vietnam.

[1050] And one of the most interesting things in that reprehensible scenario is, What stopped it?

[1051] What's, so this is this, this, this, this, this horror's unfolding.

[1052] There's, there's murder, mutilation, rape, just going berserk.

[1053] A company of American soldiers is murdering, raping, mutilating bodies, just absolutely heinous, absolutely reprehensible.

[1054] And while this is happening, a helicopter pilot comes in and sees what's going.

[1055] on.

[1056] And these guys have lost their mind, really.

[1057] The guys on the ground have lost their mind.

[1058] The helicopter pilot flies back to base.

[1059] He walks into the tactile operation center and says, hey, they are killing civilians out there.

[1060] The commanding officer gets on the phone and says, hey, stop killing people.

[1061] And they stopped immediately.

[1062] They stopped immediately.

[1063] That's what tells you how important leadership is.

[1064] Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.

[1065] And if you have a leader that's going to let things start to go in this direction, all it takes is one person to step up and say, hey, everyone, stop what you're doing.

[1066] This is wrong.

[1067] So you get a situation like Rwanda, we didn't really do anything.

[1068] We didn't do anything.

[1069] And what would it have taken if we rolled in there and said, hey, no more.

[1070] Stop.

[1071] Do they look around with their machetes covered in blood and wake up of their neighbors and say, wait, wait a second, yep, okay, we're going to stop.

[1072] So I'm not saying these are easy predicaments, but certainly, you know, the idea of are there situations where it's better to do something than nothing?

[1073] I'll tell you what, rolling into Baghdad and going into Saddam Hussein's torture chambers, which we did.

[1074] And you see the, the, the, the hook, there was hooks, like hooks hanging from ceilings.

[1075] and drainage where blood would drain in these torture chambers.

[1076] You see that a couple times and you think I'm okay with us being in here and getting rid of this guy.

[1077] I'm going to switch topics.

[1078] I want to talk to you about your books.

[1079] And I'd like to know, look, you said right at the beginning of this interview that you wanted to be the best Navy SEAL, good Navy SEAL.

[1080] That's what you said.

[1081] You didn't say the best.

[1082] You wanted to be a good Navy SEAL.

[1083] The best was aiming a little bit too high.

[1084] Yeah, I know.

[1085] That's why I wanted to get the words right.

[1086] What are you doing now?

[1087] I mean, I presume that your life is still being lived in an expansion of that, the pursuit of that initial ideal.

[1088] You've transformed multiple times.

[1089] You're a civilian.

[1090] You're a communicator, a mass communicator in a variety of different, in a variety of different ways.

[1091] I think you mentioned, we were talking offline a little bit, for example, that you have a clothing line.

[1092] And I'm going to ask you about that because that's a curious thing to me. And that is, I'm definitely curious about that.

[1093] But like, what's your mission?

[1094] And is that the right question?

[1095] Is that an appropriate question?

[1096] So there's a, there's a quality, let's call it.

[1097] So as I went through that, as I created in my mind that ideal of of what a good seal is what is a good seal and and i'm sure you could i could say okay what do you think jordan oh he's probably strong and he's probably fast and he's probably smart and he's probably tactically sound and he can probably shoot a weapon straight and all those things absolutely all those things are there and as you would kind of burn away the the or if you were to set up a hierarchy of importance of what makes a good seal yeah You might think that some people would think, oh, well, it's probably being the best shot or it's probably being the strongest or it's probably being really good in the water.

[1098] All those things, all those skills that you think it might be.

[1099] And you could talk to different seals and they would all kind of, you know, some guy would say it's running.

[1100] Some guy would say it's strong.

[1101] Some guy would say it's a best shot.

[1102] Whatever.

[1103] Best tactician.

[1104] But if you offered them one thing, 99 .9 % of seals would agree.

[1105] on what makes you a good seal.

[1106] And that is, you look out for your teammates.

[1107] You put your team above yourself.

[1108] Yeah, so that's a real inversion of the things that you just described, because all of those things are dimensions along which you could be excellent in a manner that distinguishes you from the group and elevates you above them.

[1109] But you derive from that acclaim that that should all be subordinate to a reciprocity, and any seal that's a good seal would tell you that that would be at the top of the hierarchy you can be the best shot you can be the best shot you can be the best diver you can be the strongest you can be the fastest you can be the best tactician if you don't take care of your teammates none of that none of those other things matter you you're not even wanted in the seal teams that's that's that's what it is so well do you think that that that seems to me me to be true for functional organizations in general is that, and certainly the people I've seen, this is part of the reason why casual critiques of hierarchies annoy me so much, because the people I've seen who are radically successful don't get there from power.

[1110] They get there from mobility, but also reciprocity.

[1111] And yeah, 100 % right.

[1112] So when you say to take care, look out for and to take care of.

[1113] I think you said to look out for.

[1114] What flesh that out?

[1115] What does that mean in the situations that you've been in?

[1116] And how did that guide your behavior?

[1117] It's a, it's a, it's a literal, constant daily, hourly by the minute attitude, which is, hey, my, my buddy needs me to move over there and cover for that area.

[1118] That's what I'm going to do.

[1119] My buddy needs to me to bring him some more ammunition.

[1120] My buddy needs to me to bring him some more ammunition.

[1121] to help him clean this weapon my buddy needs to carry the boat i need to pick up the boat because we're moving across the beach all these things so what are you doing you're you're looking so what like you said moment to moment so what are you doing you looking for ways to be useful constantly how can i support my teammates what can i give to them how can i make them how can i make their situation better right now and and that that guy that has that attitude has going to have it great reputation in the C. Yeah, well, then you can think too.

[1122] Of course, then the fact that you're outstanding on any number of dimensions, let's say that becomes an asset of the team rather than something that's a competitive liability.

[1123] Because like if you're going to be looking out for me, and I really believe that, the fact that you're stronger and smarter than me is actually really good.

[1124] Because now I've got someone who's stronger than me and smarter than me who's looking out for me. And so whatever competitive jealousy there might have been there could be easily subsumed under appreciation for those positive attributes.

[1125] Yes, and we are going to work together because guess what?

[1126] You might be the strongest, but I'm a little bit faster than you.

[1127] Right, right, right.

[1128] And you might be a good shot, but I'm better in the water than you are.

[1129] And we're going to be in the water and shooting.

[1130] So we're each going to have a chance to be number one.

[1131] Yes.

[1132] So the reason I went to that.

[1133] How long did it take you to figure that out?

[1134] You said something interesting about assembling the image of an ideal seal in your imagination.

[1135] And so was that something that, were you consciously aware of doing that while you were doing that?

[1136] Or did you see that you were doing that in retrospect?

[1137] Unconscious and saw that I did it in retrospect.

[1138] And the support your teammate is something that you hear immediately.

[1139] And if you listen to it, you can't miss it.

[1140] Now, guys, miss it.

[1141] guys definitely miss it but if your eyes are open and your ears are open you can't miss it it's day one seal basic indoctrination you take care of your swim buddy they literally say that day one they'll say take care of your swim buddy and what does that mean in the in the swim buddy context what what what does that translate to practically that means before jordan gets inspected by the instructor i take a look at jordan's gear and make sure it's all squared away and say you're good to go, as opposed to seeing that your life jacket's got a twisted strap and just sitting there looking straight ahead.

[1142] No, I want to make sure you're okay.

[1143] That's actually, before I check myself, I'm checking you.

[1144] Before I check myself, I'm checking you.

[1145] I'm making sure that you're good to go.

[1146] This is partly why these claims, the broad claims that are being made in the social world at large now about hierarchical power being the fundamental attribute of society is so disturbing to me because this is not true.

[1147] It's literally not true.

[1148] Only when a hierarchy becomes radically dysfunctional does individual power come to dominate.

[1149] The rest of the time, it's something like what you're saying.

[1150] And that's true.

[1151] Capitalism has a bad rap, let's say, morally, because of its selfishness.

[1152] But the functional organizations that I've seen, that are business organizations, if the people in there aren't motivated by the ethos that you're describing, no one bloody well wants to work with them.

[1153] No one wants to buy their material.

[1154] No one wants to partner with them across time.

[1155] They don't even want to go golfing with them.

[1156] So it's just not, it's so not true.

[1157] It's completely not true.

[1158] And that's, I mean, that's the essence of the books that I've written about leadership is that story over and over again.

[1159] I had a, I had a seal platoon commander that operated via power, his authority and his power.

[1160] That's how he operated.

[1161] We did what he told us because he told us to do it because he was the highest ranking guy and you better be quiet and listen to me and it's going to be my plan and you all better just shut up and get on board with it.

[1162] And we had a, we had a mutiny.

[1163] We had a mutiny in that seal platoon where we went to his boss and said, we're not working with this guy.

[1164] And he actually ended up getting fired.

[1165] So everything you just said...

[1166] Well, that's exactly right.

[1167] Look, there's no stable organization.

[1168] No organization can run stably across time if it's predicate of operation is raw power.

[1169] And the reason for that at some point is that the people who are being tyrannized are going to band together and say, no, we're not going to do this.

[1170] We're going to take you out.

[1171] And so if you don't want to be taken out, you can't exercise tyrannical power.

[1172] It's the intrinsic weakness of tyranny.

[1173] And to confuse functional and competent organizations with tyranny is also to make a mockery of the fact that this cooperative ethos is actually the dominating principle if the organization is functioning properly.

[1174] Yeah.

[1175] And as I pointed out, I actually lived through that.

[1176] And I lived through the other end of the spectrum, too.

[1177] When that platoon commander got fired, the platoon commander that took his place was very humble, listened, had an open mind, gave us ownership, told us to come up with a plan.

[1178] And we love that guy.

[1179] And that's the guy that I try to emulate to this day.

[1180] And we would have followed that guy anywhere.

[1181] And it's precisely.

[1182] Right.

[1183] And so that's not power.

[1184] It's not power.

[1185] It's precisely because he didn't use his tyrannical power to drive us to do what he wanted us to do.

[1186] Look, whenever I've been in a situation and wanted to get the best out of the people that are working under me or with me, for that matter, I seed as much responsibility and authority to them as possible, partly because one of my predicates of operation is that if I'm going to engage in an enterprise, with you and I have to tell you what to do and or if I told you what to do, you would do a better job.

[1187] I should find a different person.

[1188] All that is is indication that I chose the wrong person.

[1189] If you're the right person, I'm going to grant you as much autonomy as possible, partly because then you get to have your own domain, partly then because you're self -sufficient, partly because you do better, but even more so because then you're fully committed to the task.

[1190] And I don't believe that anybody occupies a position of leadership for long who doesn't know those things.

[1191] And they're certainly not effective if they don't know them.

[1192] No, they're not.

[1193] And I talk to leaders all day, every day in every possible industry that you can think of.

[1194] And it's one of the things that I end up saying a lot to leaders is, you know, if you're working for me, Jordan, and you come to me with a plan of how you want to execute a project or an operation or a task.

[1195] My goal, my goal is that we're going to use your idea.

[1196] That's my goal.

[1197] My goal is that whatever you present to me, if it's, if it's going to get the job done, we're good, we're going with it.

[1198] You know, then at least the person can learn from what they're doing and be better the next time.

[1199] Right.

[1200] If it's minimally viable, why not let them run it?

[1201] Sometimes it's an emergency and you can't do that.

[1202] Yeah, yeah.

[1203] And by the way, if there's urgency and I can't do that, okay by this time you and I have built an up enough trust that you know that if I say hey we need to go over there right now you go yep got it right so so we do get into situations like that happens right and that's that's something you don't want to do too often because just as we discussed earlier you burn up your leadership credibility by doing that so you can use power if you're a leader but judiciously and seldom and you need a good rationale and people have to trust you and so that's the other issue is that we could we could think about the preconditions for trust because if the organization isn't running on trust then everybody's at each other's throat constantly and all there is is backbiting and confusion and so to trust means i i have to i have to i have to what would i say i have to have faith in your motives and i have to see that you're doing your best to align your motives with mind.

[1204] And I have to believe that that's genuine because otherwise the enterprise isn't going to succeed, given all the other things it's going to have to face.

[1205] Yeah.

[1206] It's another, you know, you bring up the term alignment.

[1207] And when I work with companies, sometimes we'll start talking about alignment.

[1208] And quite frankly, in most cases, vast majority of cases, if you and I are at a company, if we go high enough up what I call the ladder of alignment, if we go high enough up that ladder, we'll get to a point where we're going to be aligned because, look, we're trying to take care of our team, we're trying to provide a good service to our clients, and we're trying to be profitable.

[1209] And look, that's what we're trying to do.

[1210] And 99 .9 % of the times, the companies that I work with, I have to talk them through this, but I can say we can get to a point where we are aligned.

[1211] Now what alignment has like a like a like a like a like a cousin or maybe a step cousin called agenda where where you've got your agenda over here and I've got my agenda over here and you're trying to get more funds for your department.

[1212] And I'm trying to get more funds for my department.

[1213] And so we can kind of sometimes it can feel like our agendas, we're not aligned.

[1214] Yeah.

[1215] Now oftentimes I say, look, if Jordan's agenda is to.

[1216] get more funding for his department so he can invest more and make more money for the team, his agenda is aligned.

[1217] And that's great.

[1218] I have no problem with your agenda.

[1219] It's when you know, you're trying to create your own fiefdom because you're going to leave the company and you're going to go do something else.

[1220] And I start to sense that.

[1221] And whenever.

[1222] Yeah, no, that's going on underground and no one's really talking about it.

[1223] Right, right.

[1224] When I get a company where they can't come to a, they can't come to an agreement about something.

[1225] They can, they cannot.

[1226] So we, walk them up the alignment ladder and all of a sudden you realize oh wait a second this person's just trying to make money and this right right really wants to take care of the team now i'll tell you i'll take them further up the alignment ladder and say listen if you really want to make money and you want to take care of the team guess what if you have a good team that you take care of you're going to make more money yeah yeah yeah yeah but you can get aligned unless people are starting to take care of themselves instead of take care of the team which goes back to what we were just talking about Which is also extremely short -sighted in my estimation because for a bunch of reasons, I line some of this out in this new book, I realized a long time ago that there isn't much difference.

[1227] There might be no difference, actually, technically speaking, in taking care of yourself and in taking care of other people.

[1228] And here's the reason.

[1229] So you might say, well, I'm one person and everyone else is a group of people.

[1230] and so there's that competition between me as one person and what this one person wants and the group.

[1231] But that's not true because I'm actually a group.

[1232] And the reason I'm a group is, well, there's me today, but there's me over the next week.

[1233] And there's me over the next month.

[1234] And then there's me over the next year and over the next five years and over the next 10 years.

[1235] And the me that exists right now can't betray the me that's going to exist next week by doing something short -sighted and impulsive.

[1236] that will, you know, produce a burst of impulsive pleasure, but will compromise the future.

[1237] And so if I'm taking myself into account seriously, which I'm an entity that has multiple incarnations, let's say, across very large spans of time, then I immediately have a community that I have to serve.

[1238] I have to serve the 80 -year -old person that I'm going to become.

[1239] And the difference between that and serving 80 -year -old people in the community is negligible.

[1240] it's the same thing so if I'm taking care of someone in a senior's home for example the difference between that and how I'm going to be taken care of when I'm 80 is negligible and so there's no there's there's no way out of the ethical demand of serving the group even if you're even if your selfishness is is of the most enlightened kind well that's one of the most beautiful things about this about this the whole thing conceptually is that if I put the team before myself if I put the mission and the team before myself and by being a good team player I lift up Jordan and I make you look good and I give you the support you need the beautiful thing about this is eventually I am going to win I'm 100 % going to win and people get short -sighted as you're talking about, where I think, you know what, if I can, if I can pull this project away from Jordan, I can raise my head up and get some credit for this.

[1241] The boss is going to look at me and he's probably going to give me a promotion.

[1242] And that might work once.

[1243] That might work once.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] Or twice.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] And then my reputation is, oh, you don't want Jocko on your team because he's the one that's going to be maneuvering around trying to make himself look good instead of trying to accomplish the mission.

[1248] Yeah.

[1249] So ultimately, if you take care of people, if you're a good seal, if you're a good team player, you will win in the end.

[1250] That's what's going to happen.

[1251] Yes, and you'll win, you'll win surrounded by people who are thrilled to death that you won.

[1252] And so, and that's, that's a much better form of winning than to be bitter and alone.

[1253] Yes, because you've snatched something, someone else.

[1254] The fallen.

[1255] Right.

[1256] Right.

[1257] And the fact that it's own, you know, you can only get away with that once or twice is dead relevant because human beings are very sensitive to negative.

[1258] emotion.

[1259] We remember.

[1260] And one of the things we really remember is betrayal.

[1261] And so if you don't play the game straight and you have to play the game over and over with the same people, then you're dead in the water.

[1262] And then you're going to be in your own little hell.

[1263] You're going to think, well, why won't anybody play with me?

[1264] And the answer to that is, well, you don't play fair.

[1265] And people gave you a chance a few times and you demonstrated that and like there's no coming back so yeah and the reason i went off on this tangent because you asked me your mission now what am i doing now you bet you bet and i think that along the way in my career in the in the navy i was so ingrained with the fact of trying to be a good teammate that when I retired, I kept just trying to help people out and say, hey, you know what?

[1266] I can teach you something about leadership.

[1267] Do you want to know something about leadership?

[1268] I can maybe I can help you with this or I can at least talk you through and maybe I can share some stories of what I've learned about human nature and that way you don't have to learn those lessons by beating your head up against the wall.

[1269] And then maybe I can help you out with, hey, putting some stuff together that you can take as supplements and that's going to make you a little bit healthier and stronger.

[1270] And by the way, we're trying to rebuild our community in New England where we came from, where we used to have a bunch of factories making clothes and maybe we could rebuild that and that way everyone could start working.

[1271] So great.

[1272] So there's the clothing question.

[1273] And so tell me, tell me about that.

[1274] Because it's kind of a surprise, right?

[1275] You have a clothing line, I think, well, that's so funny.

[1276] And that Jocko has a clothing line.

[1277] It's so cool that that's the case and not, not expected.

[1278] So I knew there was a backstory there.

[1279] So I don't imagine that it stems from an obsession with fashion.

[1280] You called it, dude.

[1281] Okay, so what happened?

[1282] And why did you get interested in it?

[1283] And what's going on?

[1284] Okay, so I was, you know, I started my podcast and I was interacting with people.

[1285] And I talk about jiu -jitsu a lot, Brazilian jiu -jitsu.

[1286] I'm a very big supporter of people training jiu -jitsu and mixed martial arts in general, but I am absolutely a jiu -jitsu guy.

[1287] So a lot of people started doing jiu -jitsu, and they started training.

[1288] And so they would ask me that the uniform for jiu -jitsu is called a ghee.

[1289] And people would ask me, hey, I'm starting jiu -jitsu, or I started jiu -jitsu, and I need to get a ghee.

[1290] What kind should I get?

[1291] and I knew from having geese over the years that geese were made in China and whatever horrible slave labor scenarios are happening there.

[1292] And I knew that there was also one company up in Maine, and I'm from New England as well, one company up in Maine that was actually making these jiu -jitsu geese in America.

[1293] And I had seen them online and the story was kind of presented online that this guy named Pete, he was a New England kid and saw all the factories get shut down.

[1294] And we all, you know, we all did that.

[1295] We all saw when I was growing up, the factories, there was no one in them.

[1296] Yep.

[1297] And he saw that.

[1298] And he was also a jihitsu guy.

[1299] And so he wanted to make geese, jih Tjitsu geese in America.

[1300] As he started to go down that path, he realized that the material that you would get to sew together a ghee was not.

[1301] produced anywhere in America, so he decided he was going to get a loom to weave this material.

[1302] And he starts asking around and poking around and eventually finds that in a 500 ,000 square foot abandoned factory in Lewiston, Maine, there is one loom that hadn't been shipped overseas.

[1303] And the woman that kind of owned it was planning to one day put that loom in a museum.

[1304] And he said, I'll buy it from you.

[1305] and so he bought this massive loom you know it's as big as a couple beds put together weighs thousands and thousands of pounds and he gets some of his buddies and they go and drag this loom out of this factory and they take it apart what a cool find eh yeah what a remarkable piece of equipment completely remarkable and he finds a guy he finds people that knew about these things find some old timers there was a guy named lenny who since died but he used to work on looms and he hired him and said, why?

[1306] He says, what do you want to do?

[1307] He said, we got to make this thing work.

[1308] So he starts making, he starts weaving this material, gets this thing up and running.

[1309] So one day, and I'm following the story, I've been following that story for three or four years.

[1310] And I'd actually reached out to him and said, hey, man, I know you're up in Maine.

[1311] I'm from up there.

[1312] What do you think, you know, can I get some of your geese?

[1313] I'd like to like to have some of your geese and how much are they or whatever.

[1314] And I wouldn't even hear back from him.

[1315] because he's in Maine.

[1316] These guys, you know, I make fun of him because he's up in Maine.

[1317] He's in Farmington, Maine, population 7 ,000.

[1318] So anyways, one day I'm doing like a live social media interaction with people.

[1319] And someone says, hey, I'm just starting to dojitza, what kind of ghee should I get?

[1320] And I said, I'll tell you what, you should get an origin ghee.

[1321] And by the way, I said, if anybody on here knows this guy named Pete Roberts that runs that company up there, if you could please tell him, I want to talk to him, that'd be really cool.

[1322] So a few days go by and I get like a message that says, hey, I reached out through my business connections and I found this guy, Pete Roberts.

[1323] Here's his number or whatever.

[1324] Here's his email.

[1325] So I say, all right, great.

[1326] So we set up a Skype call.

[1327] This was a few years ago and we meet each other and we talk for four hours.

[1328] And I come walking out of my office and my wife says it sounds like you were talking to yourself in there because we were just, you know, we.

[1329] We were on the same page.

[1330] So I ended up flying up to Maine.

[1331] We had a stake and we had a handshake and we merged and started working together.

[1332] And what was great was he had, he had this great people up there and was building these keys, but he didn't have a platform.

[1333] He's in Farmington, Maine.

[1334] So there's not a bunch of jihitsu studios in Farmington, Maine.

[1335] Well, I had luckily a platform to talk to people.

[1336] Right.

[1337] Well, and no matter how good your product, man. and everyone needs to know this.

[1338] The world will not beat a pathway to your doorway for your damn product.

[1339] You need to pay attention to sales and marketing, and you can't be contemptuous of it.

[1340] It's like, who the hell's going to buy something they don't know about?

[1341] So we shook hands.

[1342] We started working together.

[1343] And once, so then we started making jiu jitigis, and believe it or not, you know, now we had a bunch of people that wanted these jiu jitigis because they're the best in the world.

[1344] They're made in America.

[1345] They're made by Americans.

[1346] with their American cotton and woven on American loom.

[1347] So it's just, it's a beautiful thing.

[1348] It's a beautiful thing.

[1349] And one day I was in the airport and I'm sitting there in the airport as we're selling a bunch of jih Tisukees and I'm looking around and I called up Pete and I said, Hey, Pete.

[1350] I said, how many people do you actually know that do Jiu Jitsu?

[1351] And he said, he's like, I don't know, like maybe 50 or 100.

[1352] And I said, how many people do you?

[1353] you know that wear jeans?

[1354] And he said, everybody.

[1355] And I said, why aren't we making jeans?

[1356] And he said, let me, let me go.

[1357] So the next thing we did was we started making jeans because because the iconic American genes that you wear aren't made in America.

[1358] The iconic American genes that people think represent America, they're not made in America.

[1359] And that's wrong.

[1360] And the other crazy thing about this is So do you make good jeans?

[1361] We make the best jeans in the world.

[1362] Do they have spandex in them?

[1363] They do.

[1364] They do.

[1365] They have a little bit of stretch in them.

[1366] We've got a heavy pair and a lighter pair.

[1367] And yeah, it's great.

[1368] And where can people find these?

[1369] How do they look for them?

[1370] OriginUSA .org.

[1371] If you go to jaco .com, you can find all this stuff.

[1372] And, and, um, so we started making beans.

[1373] Everybody needs good jeans.

[1374] Then we started making boots.

[1375] and we're making everything, we're making, you know, we started making a bunch of supplements and that started from, I drink tea, another shocking thing you might want to know.

[1376] It is shocking.

[1377] I'm married to a Brit and at some point I started drinking tea and so I started making tea and then I started making other supplements and again, it was like make high quality stuff that works and people need it.

[1378] they want it and we're doing that thing of being a teammate of helping people out so that i knew there was a good story in that clothing it's a great story it's a great it is a great story absolutely if you've ever seen a i don't know maybe you could help me with my with my personality what i like about that too i've learned something in the last while like i i noticed very much that people allow a casual and unconscious contempt to stop them from, well, to elevate the status of what they're doing, I would say, but also to allow them the luxury of not having to consider the importance of all the things they're not doing.

[1379] Now, and that stops them from taking opportunities.

[1380] So, you know, well, it's, I was watching this show last night.

[1381] It was the devil wears Pratt and it was about fashion industry, and this girl who starts...

[1382] You instantly thought of me?

[1383] Absolutely.

[1384] I thought, that's right, the Jocco fashion special.

[1385] But this girl, she has contempt for the fashion industry, you know, and that's portrayed as a moral virtue.

[1386] And I wasn't on her side to begin with.

[1387] I thought, no, you know, there's probably something to this.

[1388] And what you should do is shut up and learn about it before you criticize it.

[1389] But it's more comfortable in some sense to have contempt for things.

[1390] You know, and it's so interesting to talk to you about your clothing line, you know, you saw opportunity there in all sorts of ways and it fitted into this context of, let's say, of being a broader service.

[1391] And because you didn't have contempt for it at all at any level for the machinery, for the manufacturing, for the fact of making clothing, for having your name associated with that, for all of that, then it enables you to see an opportunity there and to do something immediately and then to make an enterprise growth.

[1392] and work.

[1393] And so that's another thing, is that that casual contempt for what you can't do, that's a real ethical mistake.

[1394] Yeah, that one will definitely.

[1395] I see among academics, you know, there's always contempt for businessmen and the immorality of the capitalist enterprise.

[1396] And then I see among businessmen, you know, contempt for intellectualism in the ivory tower.

[1397] And I think it's not doing either of you guys much good, you know, because you both have something to bring to the table in a real sense and some appreciation for what the other one knows that you don't is well worth everyone's attempt.

[1398] And then everybody gets to win too.

[1399] It's like, well, great, man, you've got this business enterprise, more power to you.

[1400] And then you can say, too, well, you know, great, you teach all these people and you have this advanced learning.

[1401] And isn't the world better because we can both bring that to the table?

[1402] No need for that envy, not at all.

[1403] It just contaminates things.

[1404] Yeah, unless you let your ego slide in there and you start to think, well, I've been, I studied so hard and yet I'm only making whatever I'm making as a...

[1405] Yeah, well, that's a huge part.

[1406] Look, it's a huge part of the culture war, I believe, is that there's a tremendous resentment in the university about the fact that high -level intellectual endeavor doesn't attract disproportionate salary when other occupations do.

[1407] but it certainly has no shortage of other rewards.

[1408] You know, absolute job security being one of them and freedom for that matter.

[1409] So anyways.

[1410] Actually, I've been surprised that in all, you know, there's all this talk in America right now about the divisiveness in America.

[1411] Yeah.

[1412] I've been surprised that the, the ego hasn't come up more often because.

[1413] You mean as a topic?

[1414] as a as a as a as a as a causal effect yeah yeah okay sure you know of the fact that well i go to have a conversation with someone and i just think that i'm right i think that my viewpoints are right and your viewpoints are wrong and worse worse not just wrong contemptible that's like the ultimate expression of wrong right they're beneath my consideration right yeah and that's that's not good That's definitely not good.

[1415] How do I listen to anything that you say?

[1416] How do I find any common ground with you if I think that what you think is contemptible?

[1417] And so therefore we can't have a conversation.

[1418] If we don't have a conversation, we can't find any mutual ground.

[1419] And that means we can't find solutions to the problems that we're facing.

[1420] Yes, and it means when push comes to shove, we have to fight.

[1421] Yes, it does.

[1422] I'm here to tell you that's not a good option.

[1423] you know that's a good place to stop fair enough that was great man thank you appreciate it i loved it well thank you appreciate it yeah so it's good to see you it's good to see you too and i'm it's so it's so nice to see that that all of what you're talking about is finding its audience i like the kids books too we never talked about them oh yeah the kids books i i i feel like um there is no more there's no better gratification for me than the handwritten letters the the the emails that i get but mostly the handwritten letters from kids that are six seven eight nine years old just did my first pull up got an a on my math test got oh isn't that cool it's right yes how could you have anything better than that to know that you were part of that so so tell me about that maybe we'll stop with that Tell me about that.

[1424] Like, tell me about the kids' books.

[1425] How many, you've self -published them.

[1426] How many have sold?

[1427] Well, I, so I didn't, I didn't self -publish all of them.

[1428] Okay.

[1429] The first two went through a normal publisher.

[1430] And what happened was, so the first one is called Way the Warrior Kid.

[1431] And, and basically, I have four kids myself, three daughters, one son.

[1432] As I was raising my kids, I couldn't really find books that.

[1433] articulated the values that I might want my children to be reading about.

[1434] And so I wrote my own books.

[1435] So the first one, Way the Warrior Kid, it's a kid, he's bullied.

[1436] He doesn't know his times tables, so he thinks he's stupid.

[1437] He doesn't know how to swim, so he can't do any of the fun stuff that the other kids are doing.

[1438] And he's getting bullied.

[1439] Common things that kids face.

[1440] And he kind of breaks down last day of school, everything kind of hits him at once.

[1441] And he goes home.

[1442] And he remembers that his uncle is coming to stay with him for the summer.

[1443] And his uncle, his uncle was in the SEAL teams.

[1444] And he presents all these problems that he's having to his uncle.

[1445] And his uncle says, listen, we can solve these problems, but you've got to commit.

[1446] It's going to take discipline.

[1447] It's going to take hard work.

[1448] Teaches the kid how to study.

[1449] Teaches the kid how to make flashcards.

[1450] teaches the kid how to eat right.

[1451] teaches the kid how to work out.

[1452] Brings the kid to jiu -jitsu classes.

[1453] So he learns how to defend himself.

[1454] Kid goes back to school and he's in a much better place.

[1455] And so then that series carries on with different types of situations that kids get into.

[1456] And so I wrote the first one, Way the Warrior Kid, the second one, Mark's Mission.

[1457] And then I had written a kid's book, a kid's book called Mikey and the Dragons.

[1458] And I had written it, I finished it in August.

[1459] And I talked to my publisher and I said, hey, you know, I wrote this kid's book.

[1460] I'm sorry, you know, sorry I didn't let you know earlier, but I really want the book to come out for Christmas.

[1461] and my publisher said, yeah, well, you know, that's not really going to happen.

[1462] And I said, yeah, but I really wanted to come out by Christmas.

[1463] And by this time, I think I'd written like three New York Times bestselling books for whatever that's worth.

[1464] So it wasn't like I was, you know, scrapping around trying to throw this together.

[1465] I had a pretty good vision of what to do here.

[1466] And I said, it's worth a lot.

[1467] Yeah, so I said, please can I, you know, get this thing published by Christmas?

[1468] And they said, they said there's no scenario where this book gets published by Christmas.

[1469] And I said, are you sure?

[1470] And they said, watch this.

[1471] And so I started publishing about a week.

[1472] Yep.

[1473] I started my own publishing company.

[1474] We finished the art inside the book.

[1475] And the book came out before Thanksgiving.

[1476] And that was the beginning of Jocko publishing.

[1477] And so, yes, I've published it, and then I just wrote the latest Way of the Warrior Kid book, Way of the Warrior Kid 4, Field Manual.

[1478] And again, the most rewarding thing that happens to me on a daily basis is I get to open up letters from kids that are 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 years old that just, you know, did their first pull up or ran a mile in a certain amount of time.

[1479] So cool, like, it's so cool to see that because, I mean, it's an unbelievably deep insight.

[1480] that makes that satisfying.

[1481] Like, I have the same experience.

[1482] I don't ever see anything as satisfying as getting a message from someone who says, I've followed what you've been talking about, and here's what I've done that's improved my life because of it.

[1483] It's, there's a, you know, when you read online comments, the negative ones are salient, right?

[1484] They've got potency, and people are wired to feel more negative emotion than positive emotion.

[1485] It affects us more, we feel a loss more strongly than we feel an equivalent gain.

[1486] The one exception to that might be those kinds of letters.

[1487] They're so salient, and it's really curious.

[1488] I mean, that must be something like the deep instinct of fatherhood, that pleasure that's intrinsic in watching someone.

[1489] who's younger, younger, generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking, thrive.

[1490] It's so satisfying.

[1491] Yeah, I think that goes back to the concept of being a good teammate.

[1492] Yes, definitely.

[1493] It's the deepest part of it.

[1494] And you're helping someone get on the correct path when they're eight years old.

[1495] And you know, when I, people say all me all the time, the parents write me too.

[1496] The parents say, hey, you know, thank you.

[1497] I got more out of this book than my kids did, right?

[1498] They say that as well.

[1499] The way that these books come together, it's like you're being a good teammate because you're putting someone on the right path at a young age.

[1500] I always, people say, I wish I would have had this book when I was.

[1501] Right, right.

[1502] Well, yes, absolutely.

[1503] Me too.

[1504] That's a father between pages that.

[1505] It is exactly that because the fundamental role of a father, as far as I can tell, is encouragement.

[1506] And I mean that technically is that your job is to instill courage or to encourage courage, I suppose, in your children, to make them resilient in that manner, to make them confident in their ability to face the world, but also able to face the world.

[1507] And that warrior kid book, it's such a different approach to the problem of bullying.

[1508] It reminded me when you were talking about it about The Simpsons.

[1509] Nelson Munst is the bully in The Simpsons.

[1510] And he's quite a complex character, actually.

[1511] And if he bullies you, there's a pretty high probability that the reason he's doing it is because you're doing something stupid and contemptible.

[1512] So he's got this kind of corrective function.

[1513] And he's not a bad kid, even though he's a bully.

[1514] Some of his bully compatriots are bad kids.

[1515] But he's not.

[1516] He's from a family that's not doing well.

[1517] He has his reasons for what he's like.

[1518] But he is kind of a corrective, you know.

[1519] And there's a scene, too, in The Simpsons where one of the teachers said, says to Ralph, poor Ralph, the children are right to laugh at you, Ralph, which is a hilarious line, but also absolutely terrible.

[1520] But, you know, in your warrior kid book, the message there is one way of dealing with your inadequacies is to rid yourself of them.

[1521] And it isn't self -evident that people who point out your inadequacies are your enemy.

[1522] Now, that doesn't mean that bullies can't exploit, and it doesn't mean that bullying isn't reprehensible.

[1523] But by the same token, you know, critics, a critic who points out a weakness has actually offered you a pathway to development, a true pathway to development.

[1524] So, and your, your attitude to the kid was, look, kid, no one's going to laugh at you if you're the best swimmer, or maybe you don't even have to be the best.

[1525] But, but you could swim.

[1526] You could be stronger.

[1527] You know, you could elevate yourself.

[1528] Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's so fun to write these books because, I mean, I got, first of all, I got to experience it.

[1529] And, you know, I always tell people, people say, oh, did you get bullied because I'm, I'm a bigger guy now?

[1530] I was like, oh, when you're 10, you get bullied by 11 -year -olds.

[1531] That's the way, right, exactly.

[1532] There's always going to be somebody that's bigger than you.

[1533] In the second book, the bully is like a psychological bully.

[1534] His name is Nathan James.

[1535] And Nathan, he's not physically threatening you, but he's, he's making, fun of you and he's picking on you and he'll take it to the point where he might you know feels some repercussions but then he'd be quiet and so you know this kid mark says to his uncle hey i'm going to fight this kid i'm going to fight him and the uncle says well okay if it comes to that but before you fight him so that's when you published yourself i presume uh no no no this was this was still um this is book two oh really okay well my mistake i it's surprising well that was a while ago do you think you could get a book like that published now i'm not a hundred percent sure i've got another i've got a i wrote a novel that's coming out which which you probably touch on uh which which went through like multiple screenings to make sure that it wasn't offensive and whatever else uh Nathan james the bully he picks on the kids but he talks and and his uncle you know The kid, Mark says, hey, I want to fight this kid and his uncle says, okay, if it comes to that, but before you fight him, I want you to gather some intel.

[1536] He says, what do you mean, gather some intel?

[1537] I want you to collect some intelligence.

[1538] I want to know why he acts this way.

[1539] And so he watches, Mark watches this kid Nathan James for a couple days and he says, goes back and reports to his uncle.

[1540] This kid, he doesn't eat healthy.

[1541] He eats potato chips, half a bag of potato chips he's dirty he doesn't change his clothes his socks don't match he's got holes in his jeans he's a slob totally lacks discipline i think i should fight him and then he says well why do you think he's like that you need to do further intel and i'm sure you can see where this is going eventually follows him and realize the kid is kind of on his own and the reason he has a bag of potato chips a half a bag of potato chips is because his mom's not home at night and there's no dad to be found and and we don't even know what's going on but he lives in some in some apartment building above a auto repair shop and and maybe his jeans wears the same jeans every day because that's only pair he's got and so instead of fighting this kid maybe you should try and help him and that's where that goes so yeah there's this another novel that I wrote which is coming out in the fall is, it's, it's, it's definitely going to be interesting what the critics say about it.

[1542] I'm looking forward to it.

[1543] I'm looking forward to their, um, their assessment.

[1544] It's about a, it's about a two brothers.

[1545] One brother is kind of a handsome, kind of street smart kid, smart, good looking.

[1546] The other brother is, uh, got some kind of a, unidential.

[1547] identified disorder, mental disorder, mental handicap.

[1548] And basically is an autistic guy.

[1549] And he's obsessed with washing machines.

[1550] And he works at a laundromat.

[1551] And well, the laundromat is eventually going to be up for sale.

[1552] And the brother, the younger brother, who's a little bit more street smart, decides if that happens, my older brother is never going to be happy.

[1553] Again, again, because he's not going to have this laundromat, and he decides he's going to do something to get money to buy that laundry mat.

[1554] And the only way he can figure out to do that is by doing something that's not legal.

[1555] So he goes for it.

[1556] And well, that's the story.

[1557] But.

[1558] And that's coming out when?

[1559] Comes out in the fall.

[1560] It's called Final Spin.

[1561] How long have you been working on that?

[1562] Well, I write about, I probably, I wrote an original.

[1563] draft of it probably 15 years ago and then just kind of set it aside and then this is then I dusted it off because it never left my mind.

[1564] This story never left my mind because ultimately it's about a you know, it's about can you be happy and what kind of sacrifices are you willing to make to be happy and what about people that are stuck in a right?

[1565] You know, when I was growing up, there was all these kids that were smarter than me and funnier than me and better athletes than me and and I would look around and they would get stuck in a rut right right and not really do anything and it would be a little bit sad yes very and you know I was lucky enough like you said I joined the Navy and all of a sudden had a goal and had an aim and wanted to be a good seal and that was enough to kind of put me in the right direction yeah so what what's next what do you where do you want to take this what's your ambition my you're teaching people your communicating with them on a very broad level.

[1566] Where do you see this going if it went where you want it to go?

[1567] The ambition, the goal is to help more people, is to help more people, help more kids, become more confident, help more leaders, do a better job of leading their teams, help people be on a better path in their life, healthier, and doing productive things in the world.

[1568] That's, I think, the best thing I can do right now at this point.

[1569] Well, that just seems like, generally speaking, that just seems like the best.

[1570] I think, well, once, it isn't clear why you would be motivated to do anything else.

[1571] It's like that actually is the best thing.

[1572] You talked about these letters.

[1573] It's like, well, what could you do that would be better than that?

[1574] I mean, if you were as greedy as you could possibly be, you can't get better than that.

[1575] So it's so rewarding.

[1576] Yeah, and again, the biggest reward is when you get a letter from somebody that, decided they weren't going to kill themselves.

[1577] Yeah, yeah, right.

[1578] Because they heard you talking on the podcast or they read the book, Discipline equals freedom.

[1579] And they said, wait a second, I'm trapped.

[1580] Why am I trapped?

[1581] I'm trapped because I'm blaming other people.

[1582] I'm trapped because I'm not sticking to the things that I know I should do.

[1583] Right.

[1584] And they get on the right path and, you know, they always say, you changed my life.

[1585] And I always say, I didn't change your life.

[1586] You did, which is the truth.

[1587] Thanks a lot.

[1588] Thanks for having me, man. good seeing you.

[1589] Good see you too.