Jocko Willink: "Become A Dangerous Man Others Respect" - Master Power, Influence & Discipline

If I want to gain the ability to influence you, well then what I have to do is give you the ability to influence me. And when I say, "Hey, here's what we're trying to make happen. Here's what I want to do." And you say, "Well, I think we should do it like this." You know what I should say? Okay, well, let's take a look at that. The more I allow you to influence me, the more open your mind gets for me to influence you. So, that's that's that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to allow you to influence me, and the more I allow that to happen, the more influence I'm going to have. Respect, same thing. If I treat you like you're a pleb, like you don't matter, you're not going to respect me at all. But, if I treat you with respect, when you try and talk to me and I I listen and I respect what you're saying and I try and understand it fully, then your respect for me is going to go up as well. So, when you want to earn respect, give respect. When you want to earn influence, give influence. When you want to earn trust, give trust. All those three are related. Hey everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. Today's guest is a retired US Navy SEAL officer and New York Times best-selling author. He's also the host of the top-rated Jocko podcast and the co-founder of Echelon Front and partner in Origin Maine. During his time in Iraq, he was awarded the Bronze and Silver Stars for his actions in battle, and under his leadership, Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly decorated special operations unit in the war. So, please help me in welcoming the author of Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy of Leadership, and most recently, Leadership, Strategy, and Tactics, the decorated combat veteran and children's author, Jocko Willink. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Mr. Willink, dude. Doing good. So, your thoughts on leadership have been really impactful for me. I have a list cuz people would ask me all the time what books I read cuz in no uncertain terms my success is in direct correlation to the number of books that I've read. And so, people started asking me like, "What have you read? How did you change your trajectory in life?" And so, I made sort of my ultimate playlist of books and Extreme Ownership, I think, comes in number two behind the only book that I think is maybe more foundational, which is Mindset by Carol Dweck. But when I read your book, man, I was like, "Fuck." The notion of just own it. Like, take it in, own it, own the solution as well as the problem was really transformative for me and has played out wonderfully in terms of my business relationships. So, seeing you continue to go deeper on themes of leadership and now making a field manual has been really exciting for me. What are some of the rules of leadership that you wanted to get across in the new field manual? So, what happens is with Extreme Ownership, with the Dichotomy of Leadership, we get these principles across people. And we did it in the the most simple, straightforward possible way that we could, which is we tell a war story, we tell what the principle is, and then we show an example from the business world. And I'm saying we cuz I wrote these books with a buddy of mine, Leif Babin, that I was in the SEAL Teams with. And so, that's what we did and it's pretty straightforward, but you know, we have a consulting company, too. So, as we go around and talk to people, we start hearing questions. And then I have a podcast and people send me questions all the time. And these questions are really about how do I take these principles? Cuz they get the principles. They they can explain the principle. They can quote you the principle. But then they get faced with a problem and they don't understand how to actually apply the principle. So, on my podcast I was answering these questions all the time of hey, what do I do when what do I do when my boss wants all the credit? What do I do? And and and what do I do when I've got a young individual that has a lot of potential but they're not really taking advantage of it. They're not motivated to make things happen. What do I do that? And and question after question after question after question. And I realized okay, I need to actually put these principles in a field manual that people can pragmatically take the lessons, take the principles and apply them to what's happening in the world. And that's what I try to do in the in the new field manual. So, I'm writing a book now that's sort of conceptually about building yourself. How you use beliefs, values, your sense of identity, all that stuff to change the direction of your life by changing the way that you think. One of the things I'm finding most difficult in putting the book together is like the order. So, what do you need to understand first? What do you need to do first? When you were putting this together, you have like 80 some chapters. How did you decide the order? Like what is leadership building block number one? Well, actually what I did was I started off with what I considered leadership building blocks one, two, and three from my life, from the SEAL Teams. When I got to the SEAL Teams. My first three SEAL platoons, this is the 1990s, there's no war going on and I looked at these situations and said okay, these are things that I took from these specific events or these specific scenarios and I applied those for the rest of my career and for the rest of my life and I apply them today. And so, what I did was I started off by telling these three stories about my first platoon, my second platoon, my third platoon. My first platoon to summarize the story, we were doing a training operation, we get into this tactical situation, everyone in my platoon is focused on one area. Everyone's looking down their weapons waiting for a threat to expose itself, which means you got 16 guys looking down their weapons and I'm waiting for someone to make a call. I was a new guy. I'm waiting for someone above me in the chain of command to say, "Hey, move here." Or "Hey, move forward." Or make some kind of a decision. And as I'm waiting, no one's doing it. So I So I'm a new guy. I'm scared to say anything and I know I shouldn't say anything, so I'm just waiting. And no one's giving an order. No one's giving any direction. So I wait longer. And this goes on for probably 30 seconds or a minute, which is a really long time when you're trying to take down a target. And finally I said to myself, "All right, I'm going to see what's going on." So I actually point my weapon at the ceiling and I take a step back and I just look around. And And I see that every single person in my platoon including my platoon commander, including the assistant platoon commander, including the platoon leading petty officer, everyone is just focused on their weapons and no one's making a decision. And I can see this. And because I'm looking around and I'm detached from the scenario just by just by 8 inches I stepped back. Stepped back and looked around. I can see what decision needs to be made. And so I I summoned up as much courage as I could as a new guy because new guys don't make decisions and I said "Hold left, clear right." Which is a basic command that we had rehearsed and we would practice. And I expected someone to say, you know, "Shut up. Shut up, Jocko." But instead they repeated the command. They all said "Hold left, clear right." Which means we were going to execute it. And sure enough, the guys on the left held and the guys on the right cleared. And we we got done and instead of someone saying, "Hey, you need to keep your mouth shut." Like one of the more senior guys said, "Hey, good job up there. Way to make a call." So I looked at it and I said, "Wait a second. How could I have As a new guy have made a decision in that situation that was better than what the more senior, more experienced guys were making?" And I realized it was because I took a step back and detached from it. So, at that moment I said to myself, "Okay, from now on, when I get into these tactical scenarios, I'm going to take a step back and I'm going to try and look around, and I'm going to try and detach myself from the chaos and the mayhem." And I started doing it all the time. In every tactical situation, in the land warfare, in the mountains, in the urban environments, I was doing it all the time. And I was able to like see what was happening. It was like a superpower to be able to see what was happening and make decisions. And so, then I actually started doing it when I was having conversations. And if you and I were in disagreement, and you started getting emotional, instead of me getting emotional back at you, I would just take a step back and be like, "Oh, okay. He's really He's really concerned about this. Why is he so concerned? What does he see that I don't see?" And I started actually just detaching all of the time, and that became a very powerful tool in leadership that I used to this day. My second platoon, we have a great platoon chief, we have a great platoon LPO, we have a great assistant platoon commander, but our platoon commander, the guy actually in charge of the whole platoon, he's not very experienced. He had come from a different job in the Navy, so he didn't have a lot of experience. And which is fine. Like, it's okay to be inexperienced as a leader. You can get through that as long as you're humble and you listen and you take advice from other people, you're going to you should be able to do fine. No one expects you to know everything as a leader. But he didn't do that. He didn't listen. He didn't take advice. He didn't take guidance. Everything was like his way or the highway. And eventually, we in the platoon got kind of fed up with it, and we had a mutiny inside of our platoon. We went to our commanding officer and said, "Hey, sir, we don't want to work for our platoon commander. He He doesn't listen. He's arrogant." And eventually what ended up happening was this guy got fired as our platoon commander. And that left an impact on me because as I'm watching this going, I'm thinking to myself, why don't we like this guy? Why doesn't anyone want to listen to this guy? Why don't we want to follow this guy? And the reason cuz he was arrogant and he didn't listen and he didn't give us any ownership of everything. Everything was about him. And that would that would have made an impression on me. That that would have left a mark, but the mark got left even more clearly because when that guy got fired, the guy that came in and took over for him was was like I hate to use the word legendary, but he was a pretty legendary SEAL, had a ton of experience, he'd come up through the ranks and he'd been stationed at every different kind of SEAL team. And he took over as our platoon commander. And I kind of thought to myself, well, he's going to take over cuz we're a bunch of mutineers and they need to put someone really strong that's going to like whip us back into shape. So, I was anticipating that we were going to have this super hardcore guy. And and this guy shows up and he's got a nice smile on his face and he's super humble. And I remember the one of the first things he said to us was like, I look forward to working with you guys. And I was it that word right there. I'm going to work with you guys. Not not I'm in charge, I'm glad I'm taking over, I'm glad to be your commander. It was nothing like that. He said, hey, I'm looking forward to working with you guys. So, all of a sudden it was totally different and he started putting us in charge of things. Instead of him coming up with a plan, he would say, hey, you guys come up with a plan and let me know how you want to do it. And all of a sudden we had all this ownership and that made me reflect on the way the first guy had acted compared to the way this guy had acted. And I realized how important it was to be a humble leader and to listen to other people and to give ownership to other people. So, that was the second platoon. And then in the third platoon the story that I tell is we were it was a good solid platoon and we had a good platoon commander and we were out in the desert doing some training, and uh some targets popped up. It's just fake. It's just It's not war. But, we start engaging the targets like we're supposed to, and everyone gets in the prone position and is returning fire. And I did what I had been doing this whole time, which was detach. I kind of took a step back, took shot a couple rounds, then kind of pulled back and looked to see what was going on. And I saw the call that needed to be made. And I gave the platoon commander a couple seconds to make a call, and he didn't make it. So, you know, I call I made the call. "Peel left." And everyone said, "Okay, peel left." And we peeled left, and we left the scenario, and we got our distance, and then we stopped the training exercise. And we did a little debrief. And during the debrief, the platoon commander, you know, he said to me, "Well, why did you make that call?" And I said, "Well, I could see what we needed to do, you know, and you hadn't made a call, so I I you know, I I made the call." And he goes, "Well, I actually didn't want to peel left. I wanted to assault the target." And and and right there in that split second, I kind of thought to myself, like part of my ego flared up, and I was kind of thinking I I could have said something along the lines of, "Well, you need to make a call faster. If you're not going to step up and lead, then I'm going to do it." Like I could have said that. But, I realized at that moment in time, wait a second. I didn't need to make a call. The problem could have developed more. But, for some reason, I thought that I needed to be the guy. And I said, "No, you know what? You don't need to be the guy. You're leader. You need to support your leader. And it's not about you." And so, that right there also changed my attitude because then from then on in my career and in my life, I realized, "Hey, I don't always need to be the center of attention," which is what our ego wants us to do. Our ego always wants it to be about us. And it's not about us. It's not about us at all. In fact, in a situation like that, where the platoon commander wants to do something, maybe he sees something that I don't see, maybe he's got a different strategic objective that he wants to accomplish, and I'm undermining that. And what does that do to our platoon? Hey, it makes me feel great cuz I think oh yeah, I might not be the guy in charge but I'm out here making the calls. That's your ego. And what you have to do is subordinate your ego and be supportive of the person that's in charge and you move forward together as a team cuz that's what it's about. It's not about me, it's about the team. And so when you ask me how do I start off the book and how did I figure out what order to go in? That's what I started with. These three kind of foundational things and you know, I built on those things and obviously the book Extreme Ownership which you mentioned, that became kind of the core tenant of the way I think. But those seeds were planted in those earlier platoons. And so although I built upon those things, it was those three fundamental lessons that I started with and so that's what I started the book with. Mhm. No, and it you get that sense and the way that you structured things, they do build on each other and it's you know, building a mindset and having the principles to act through is I think really effective and if I you call it out as being a field manual and I think it feels like that. Like even if that had not been on the cover, you you start to get the sense of okay, wait, one thing is going to stack to the next is going to stack to the next. And also there there are sort of larger movements in the book. One of them you touched on a little bit here, I'd like to go deeper on is the notion of relationships and you talk about how important relationships are and how especially in the military in such high pressure situations, how do you build those relationships so that they're really meaningful? So that in the dichotomy of leadership you talk a lot about you can be too friendly but you can also be too distant. So in a field manual sense, how do I like and I ask myself this as the CEO, right? There are days that I want to come and and play with my teammates, right? Like I care about them and and I want them to know that like I really do care like as a human being. And so you want to sort of be in it some days and play and and just be, you know, one of the the guys, as it were. Um but I do worry about going too far and then you don't have the distance to get the things done that need to be done. So how do you build those kind of lasting and useful relationships? Yeah, this is when when I say that relationships are the most important thing in getting things done, when I look back at my career in the Navy and the SEAL Teams, just about every single thing that I ever did was through relationships. So the amount of times that I looked at one of my subordinates and said, "No, you will do what I'm saying because I'm in charge." I don't think I actually honestly ever said that one single time. I think it was always, "Hey, this is what we got to get done. How do you think we should do it? Do you think this is smart?" And it was all based on relationships and up the chain of command, too. There was never a time that one of my bosses said, "Hey, Jocko, shut up and you do what I told you to do." There was never a time that one of my bosses said that to me. There was You know, if I had a question, if I pushed back, they gave me legitimate answers. If they didn't have good answers, then they would modulate or change what it is that they were telling me to do. So this idea of having relationships up and down the chain of command. And and there's a word that people bring up a lot and I think they're pretty interchangeable and it's relationships and trust, right? It's relate Trust is built on relationships, relationships are built on trust. If you don't trust me, we don't really have a relationship. The more deeply you trust me, the better relationship we have. So how do I build trust with you? So if you're above me in the chain of command, well, this is and this is one of those uh answers that's so obvious, it's it's crazy, but people actually failed to do this, which is if if you ask me to do something as my boss, I do it. And I do it well, and I do it consistently. And I go above and beyond what you ask. And if you want me to deliver this project by this date, I deliver it earlier and I deliver it to the best of my ability above and beyond what you expected. And you say, "Oh, wow. When I ask Jocko to do something, he actually does it." And that's where it starts. It starts with that right there. With me performing, me offering advice, me me taking what you asked me to do and doing it. That that's the number one thing. If we flip those roles, and now I'm in charge of you, how do I build trust with you? Well, what I do is I give you a project. And instead of me giving you a project and then saying, "Hey, here's how I want you to do this and here's how I want you to do the next part." Instead I say, "Hey, here's a project. Let me know how you want to do it." And then you go figure out how you want to get done. And I don't micromanage you and I don't ask you a million questions about and and and tell you, "No, don't do it like that. Do it like this." I let you do it. And what does that tell you? That tells you that I trust you. I trust you. And when I trust you, you start to trust me. And by the way, if something goes wrong, instead of me jumping down your throat and hanging you out to dry and making you an example in front of everyone, I say, "Hey, let's figure out what went wrong. Did I not support you well enough? Did I not give you what you needed?" And so you realize, "Oh, he's not going to hang me out to dry. He's going to give me the support. He's going to try and teach me if something goes wrong instead of trying to drop the hammer on me." And in order to do this properly, of course, let's say you just started working for me. The first thing I would hand you wouldn't be a massively strategic important project and say, "Hey, here's the here's you know, here's a multi-million dollar project. You take it and run with it. I'll be over here. I trust you. You you make it happen." Cuz I don't know you. How can I trust you if I don't know you? So I'm going to give you a smaller project. I'm going to give you something little to start on. And then you do that, you do that well, boom. Now, I'm going to give you something bigger and we continue to go in that direction until pretty much we get to a point where all I really have to tell you is, "Hey, this is the vision. This is what we're trying to make happen. Run with it. If you go If you If you need to pass this barrier of whatever kind, let me know so I can let everyone else know. But, it's on you. Run with it." Um one thing that I think I've struggled with as a leader is I My success is all predicated on being the unreasonable man, and I don't know if you've ever heard that quote. Um Bertrand Russell, I think he said, "All progress depends or the The reasonable man conforms to the world. The unreasonable man insists that the world conform to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." And I have literally proven that in my life. Like, everything has been an echo of everyone saying something couldn't be done and then me going in It's a game I play called no [ __ ] what would it take? And then you figure out what it would take to do the thing that everybody else just writes off cuz they say it's impossible. Going in and doing it. So, then as things settle and now it's not just me sort of having to be this chaotic madman to get everything done, you've got a team, the temptation is when you assign something to somebody and they tell you that that's impossible, the reaction is to basically give them all the parameters of the job and say, "No, it is possible. Go, go, go." Um and I think that ends up robbing agency from people cuz I have to like be so aggressive just to convince them that it is possible. And so, where I would love to hear your thoughts is how much of the parameters of the project do you give someone? Like, if you say, "I know this can be done in a week. I know it can be done on this budget." And you say that, "Hey, get this done." And they're like, "It can't be done." Then, of course, to convince them what I do is I give them the path. And I say, "Well, if you did this, it would work. Do we agree?" And then when they agree, they can go do it, but by then I've now taken all of that ownership away from them and they're just executing on exactly my plan. And so I know I'm not getting what you're talking about. So it's like, [ __ ] do I really just back off and go I know it's not impossible, but it's impossible if I don't want to ruin this relationship. How do you handle situations like that? I ask questions. Now, when I ask questions, this is a this is a tool, but it's also legitimate questions. So, when I say, "Hey Tom, here's the project I want you to get done. Can you take a look at it and tell me how you want to get it done?" And you come back to me, you know, 3 days later and you say, "Hey boss, I was looking at this thing and it's just not possible." And I don't say, "Well, actually it is possible cuz I've already thought it through. Here's how Here's how you need to do it." Instead I go, "Well, what's what What do you think our our real challenges are?" And then you say, "Well, you know, we can't get the supplies in time." And then you say, "Well, and also we don't have enough manpower." And I say, "Okay, well, how what's taking the supplies so long to get here?" And you say, "Well, you know, they're coming across the country on a truck." And so it's going to take, you know, a week and a half for them to get here. And we don't have enough people cuz it's going to take 190 man hours in this amount of time. And and I only have three guys. So, it's impossible." And I go, "Is there any way other way to ship stuff across the country?" And you say, "Well, I mean, I guess we could we could fly, but it's going to be more expensive." "Oh, okay. Well, how much more expensive?" You see what I'm saying? And so eventually eventually you're going to come to the solution. You're going to come to the solution. And and I'm going to be happy that you come to the solution or there's a chance that you actually say, "Hey Jocko, it's it's not possible and here's why." And you tell me something that I didn't I didn't foresee cuz I'm at a higher level, I'm elevated, I'm working on I'm overseeing 14 different projects, you just got one. When you dig in and you pull the thread, you realize it can't be done. I go, "Oh, uh okay. Well, I I that makes sense. Okay." Yeah, I I love that. And you have two elements that I'll say maybe are a dichotomy, but I'll be interested to hear what you think, which is your your you always soft-shoe it a little bit to talk about it is kind of manipulation uh and then truth. And you have chapters on both in the book. Where do you come down on how just sort of transparent you are versus knowing I have an outcome that I need to get to. I'm realistic about human psychology. If I just come in and [ __ ] give you the answer, it doesn't work. You feel robbed of your agency and your ownership. And so I have to get you there slowly, but I'm also trying not to make it obvious that I'm leading you there. I'm legitimately asking these questions. I'm not I'm not doing this, "Okay, well, we're going to get you there and that's what's going to happen. I already know the outcome." No, I I think I know the outcome, but I'm not sure of it. You know how many times I'm sure of what the outcome's going to be? Not very often. So, that the the truth is I I am I'm being totally transparent. I'm asking legitimate questions. I think I know the answers. I think they're going to lead to the right place. And so, it's okay to let that run its course. Now, you talked about manipulation. Manipulation obviously has a bad connotation. Leadership has a good connotation. What's the difference between the two? Because guess what? If I'm manipulating you, I'm trying to get you to do something. If I'm leading you, I'm trying to get you to do something. And many of the tools are very similar. So, what's the difference between me leading you and me manipulating you? It's very easy for me to answer that question. If I'm manipulating you, I'm trying to get you to do something that's going to benefit me. If I'm leading, I'm trying to get you to do something that's going to benefit you, that's going to benefit the team, and it's going to benefit the mission. So, for me, those are those are too easy. Those are too easy. It's It's real obvious. And And by the way, if I'm a manipulator, I can get away with that for a little while, but eventually you're going to look at me for what I am. You're going to see that the maneuvers I'm making, the tools I'm using, I'm utilizing those tools for my own benefit. And as soon as you see that, you you won't fully support me. You You won't. The same goes for when I'm trying to make you do something good for yourself and for the team. You're going to see that, too. And you're going to say, "He's He actually cares about me. That's what he's doing this for." And when you know I care about you, you'll do anything for me. I mean, that's what it boils down to. If my team and I I I mentioned that in the book, it's like Oh, I want to give you hard criticism. How do I give you hard criticism? The first thing I have to do is make sure that you understand I care about you. Which is not Which is not easy to do. And it's not always obvious. But if you know that more than anything else what I want is for you to be successful, when I say, "Hey Hey, Tom, I'm looking at the outcome of the last project, and you were like 3 weeks past the time. I think there's some things that we could do to kind of make you a little bit more efficient in leading these things." If you know that my number one thing is that I care about you, you're going to be all ears. To an extent. Because guess what percentage of the world is truly open for criticism? What's the number? Oh, it's tiny. So, there's so few people that are truly open to criticism. I I I always use this example, like if if I went and talked to your company and got done and was like, you know, "Hey, Tom, you know, it's it's great talking to your company. You got any feedback for me?" And you said, "Well, yeah, you know, I I think you could have spent a little more time talking about extreme ownership. It would have been a little bit uh better for my crew. And in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Oh, really? Oh, you think? No, that's what we Even though I Even though I actually asked for feedback, I'm getting getting mad. My ego's perking up. So, most of the time people don't want to get that direct feedback. And And in fact, in so sometimes when I hear people say, "You know, I'm just going to get direct with this person. You know, I'm just going to I'm just going to let them know exactly what they're screwing up." Almost always that's a bad idea. Now, and there's some people that sit there and they say, "Well, that's weak." Or whatever. But, it's not. Because I'm going to get the message to you. I'm just going to deliver it in a way that you accept it more. That that your mind is open to it. That That's what I'm trying to do as a leader, as a friend, as someone that cares about you. Hey, look. I need to get this information to you. Now, this will escalate over time. And if I've tried, you know, if I said, "Hey, hey Tom, I think we could do this better." And you still fail. And I say, "Hey Tom, maybe you should try this." And you still fail. And And then I say, "Hey Tom, I think this is the way you should go." And you still fail. And then I you know, I'm going to get to a point where I'm saying, "Listen, Tom, this isn't working. The way you are doing this is not working. And I told you this and I told you that and I told you the other thing. And what I'm trying to say is that you need to change this part of your game. It is hurting you." So, sometimes it gets there where I've I've totally exhausted every conversation that I can think of. You know how often I escalated to that point in my career, my life? Like, almost never. Almost never do you get someone that is so thick-headed that they're not going to listen to you. And when they are, it's because they have a giant ego. It's because they their ego they can't see the fact that "Oh, I'm making some real bad mistakes." And by the way, when you've delivered them that final message of like, "Hey, here's exactly what you're screwing up." What they say is, you know, "No, you just don't know what it's like in my shoes." And that's when you know you can't help them. What is it you've you've said that your entire podcast is about human nature? Why is that so important to spend that kind of time on? What is it you see that you want to communicate? Well, if you want to be a good leader, you have to understand human nature. And the places where human nature reveals itself most clearly are times of extreme sorrow, pain, suffering, and inhumanity. So, if you want to see what happens to human beings, how they behave, see what they do in a concentration camp. If you want to understand humans better, understand what they do in the genocide in Rwanda. When 800,000 people were killed in 100 days, mostly with machetes. There's something going on there that we need to understand. If you want to understand leadership, you want to understand human nature, you need to look at the My Lai Massacre, which happened in Vietnam, which was perpetrated by American soldiers, normal American soldiers. Normal American soldiers, you know, you're you know, you see the typical war movie, they got the typical Americans, you know, they got the kid from the city, they got the kid from the country, they got the jock, they got the rock they they that's what they and that's what this was. That's what that company of soldiers was. And they went in there and committed a heinous atrocities. And if we don't recognize what causes that, where that comes from, and that it's actually possible, then it's bound to happen again. You've talked in your podcast very eloquently about emotional control. You've talked sort of fun and tongue-in-cheek about stuffing your emotions down. Um how the [ __ ] do you do that when the person you're standing next to who you love and care about just got shot? Like how do you not Hulk out and just [ __ ] shoot indiscriminately? That's one of the things you have to watch out for. That's why you have to understand human nature, right? Because you have to understand and and believe me, like my deployments to Iraq, I was 30-plus years old. My last deployment to Iraq, I think I was 34, 35 years old. But that's me. I'm a 35-year-old man with a wife and kids. I have guys in my platoons that are 20 years old, 21 years old, 22 years old. I need to pay attention to them because they're going to have less insight into the world. And so it's going to be challenging. So what we That's what we do. That's what leaders are there for. So we as leaders, we have to constantly look at that and say, "Okay, I've got that going on. And I and and I need to control it. So when people start getting emotional, when when guys get killed, how do I get control over that? Yeah, I absolutely have to control my own emotions because it's your guys. And believe me, when you lose one of your guys, you want to kill everyone. Everyone. And you know you can't. And you know you shouldn't. So you have to detach from your emotions. You have to get control of them and you have to make sure that you lead your your men in the right direction so they don't do something that is not the right thing to do. I imagine Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a really [ __ ] extraordinary way of practicing that where and look, man, don't get me wrong. I am in no way, shape, or form experienced in BJJ, but um I know enough about it sort of from the outside to say sometimes the right answer when it seems like you should be fighting and kicking as hard as you can, it's actually to relax. And so having to be somewhat counterintuitive has that helped you? Like I'm always trying to find the thing for the guy that isn't good at this yet. Like what can he do to practice? Cuz you don't want to send him to Afghanistan right now and say, "Hey, go out in the battlefield and figure this out." So what can he do or she do to practice learning to get better control of their emotions? Well, it's interesting that you asked me that question. That might one of my answers for people when they say, "Hey, how can I get better at detaching control my emotions emotions?" I tell them to start training jujitsu. Because you're going to get tapped out in jujitsu. Your ego is going to get smacked around so hard, you're going to lose your mind. And what you in the the the more the matter you get, the more aggressive you are, the more you're going to get beat down. And the worse it's going to be. So you have to learn to control your emotions. No doubt about it. And then what you have to do is you have to start practicing it all the time. You have to start paying attention to the to the the red flags that go up when I start raising my voice at you. I go, "Oh, that's that's your emotion. Get mad." And and for me, like the minute I feel some sort of anger, some sort of jealousy, some sort of frustration, Mhm. most of the time I go, "Oh, you're getting mad. That's your ego." That's your that's you're getting emotional about this. Take a step back and listen to what the other person is saying. Take a step back and try and see it from their perspective. Take a step back and try and understand what they're trying to say. Because sometimes, you know, if you're not a if you're not a very articulate person, you're just making me mad. Mhm. It's only cuz I don't understand what you're trying to say. Take a step back. Let's talk through it. So, pay attention to, you know, I always talk about when you're sending an email to someone and you're typing like this, don't don't send that email. That's not a good email to send. That's an emotional email. Wait. Write it out, fine, and then save it and read it later and you'll realize, oh yeah, I was really mad about something or I was really frustrated. So, how do you do it? You practice it. You pay attention to your emotions and you get control over them. Have kids. If you have kids, you'll have to learn to get control of your emotions. How do you gain influence and respect? Like, what's that process? Very similar to when we talked about trust and building trust and giving trust. If I want to gain the ability to influence you, well, then what I have to do is give you the ability to influence me. And when I say, "Hey, here's what we're trying to make happen. Here's what I want to do." And you say, "Well, I think we should do it like this." You know what I should say? Okay, well, let's take a look at that. The more I allow you to influence me, the more open your mind gets for me to influence you. So, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to allow you to influence me and the more I allow that to happen, the more influence I'm going to have. Respect, same thing. If I treat you like you're a pleb, like you don't matter, you're not going to respect me at all. But, if I treat you with respect and respect you when you try and talk to me and I I listen and I respect what you're saying and I try and understand it fully, then your respect for me is going to go up as well. So, when you want to when you want to earn respect, give respect. When you want to earn influence, give influence. When you want to earn trust, give trust. All those three are related. No, that makes a lot of sense. And speaking of making sense, your children's books are rad. Rad. And this is one of those things where uh for better or worse, the lesson I had to learn was to toughen up. So, by nature, I am conciliatory. I am fearful. And that was not getting me anywhere in life. And so, I had to find the gym. I had to put myself in situations where I was forced to stand my ground against people that were very intimidating. And it was like coming up in business for me was literally a It was It was a brutal environment. And it was perfect. It was exactly what I needed. And like that's becoming, I don't know, passé for people. And it seems sort of Middle Ages now to to have to sort of scrap and fight your way up. But there is something in that process of of getting tougher that gives you your own agency. Like I feel like I control my own life now in a way that I did not before I learned how to And look, when I say learned how to fight, I'm talking intellectually. But having to stand up for myself, having to always be in deeply uncomfortable positions, um and then also physically getting tougher through just adding strength to my body. Um What made you want to write children's books? And what are some of the core principles you hope kids take away from that? Well, I decided to write kids books because I have four kids. And if you go out into the market these days and look for a book for kids that actually espouses the values that will make them lead a good life, there aren't very many. So, instead of complaining about it, I said, "Okay, well, I'll write some books." And the first book that I wrote was The Way of the Warrior Kid, which is about a little kid who can't do any pull-ups, so he gets made fun of. Doesn't know his times tables, so he gets made fun of. Doesn't know how to swim, so he gets made fun of and gets picked on by the school bully. So, his life is miserable. Last day of school, kind of everything comes to a head. He's crying behind the library. On his way home, he remembers that his Uncle Jake is coming to stay with him for the summer. And so, Uncle Jake was in the SEAL Teams. So, his Uncle Jake is actually staying in his bedroom with him. So, they you know, Uncle Jake shows up and says, "Hey, you know, what do you want to do tomorrow? You don't have to go to school. You want to go for a swim? You want to go play basketball? What do you want to do?" And the young kid named Mark says, "Well, you know, I don't know how to swim. And I'm not good at sports. And I can't do anything. And I'm getting picked on." And he breaks down. And his Uncle Jake says, "Well, okay, let's look at these problems. All these different problems that you have, we can solve these problems. But, you have to be committed. You have to be able to willing to put in the work." And so, over the course of the summer, he teaches him how to study, teaches him to eat right, teaches him how to work out, teaches him how to swim, and teaches him jujitsu, so he knows how to fight. And it's obviously it's a transformational for the kid. He ends up writing his own warrior kid code about being a warrior. And that's what the story is. I I was telling you earlier I I get little handwritten notes from kids all over the world that say, you know, "Dear Mr. Jocko or Dear Uncle Jake, I'm 6 years old. I just did my first pull-up and I know my times tables up to five. Thank you, Melvin." And those are the most rewarding things that that I get are those things. But, there was a really interesting I got I got a letter and I know you get all kinds of stuff from people that say, "Hey, thank you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for showing me the path." Whatever. And I get a lot of those and I never read them on my podcast. I always read them, but I never I never read them. But, I got one this let this letter from this guy and it was it was a great letter and he says, you know, "I'm 37 years old. I was out of shape. I was overweight. I was eating horribly. I wasn't advancing in my job. Wasn't happy. Wasn't getting along with my wife." And he goes, "Then I read your book." He goes, "And I started with I started waking up a little bit earlier. I started just doing a little bit of work out. I stopped the drinking beer on the road. I did this. I did that." And he said, you know, "It's been whatever it was. It's been 8 months. I've lost 22 lb. I got a promotion. My wife and I are happy. And I just wanted to say thank you for writing that book." And by the way, the book was Way of the Warrior Kid. And so that that's what I it took me by surprise, you know, because I've written the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, which is really focused on this kind of stuff for adults. And he read that kids' book and it's it made it had a big impact. So, then people say all the time, "Hey, you you flanked us because you wrote this book. You said it's for kids, but every one of those moms and dads that read those books go, 'Oh, this is what it is.'" So, that's how I ended up writing all these kids' books, just seeing how seeing the struggles that my kids went through growing up. And this is the other thing that made me do it was when you're when you're an adult, right, and your kid has some problem, you're kind of like, "Whatever." You know, it's you know, you're running a business or like I was in the military and you know, my problems are these big giant problems of of we're at war with other countries, right? There's guys being killed. That's a problem. And you know, I look at my daughter and say, you you know, "Oh, she doesn't know her times tables." Who cares, right? And what I realized is when you're a kid, that's the whole world, right? The whole world is you're you feel stupid because you didn't know your times tables yet. And that's the real story. That story in the way of the Warrior Kid was my oldest daughter who's very smart young girl. Well, she's she's old now and goes to one of the best country colleges in the world. So, she's not dumb. But, she came home from school one day and said, "I'm dumb." And I kind of said, "What are you talking about?" She said, "I'm stupid." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "All the kids know their times tables and I don't know them." And I I said, "Well, how much have you studied them?" And she said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, you need to study them. You need to learn them." And so, I sat her down, we made flash cards, and she studied them, and in an hour she knew all of her all of her times tables. Of course, this is my fault. Bad dad, I didn't teach her how to study, but you know, in her mind she thought she was stupid. But, I you know, I said, "You're not born knowing the times tables. You need to study them." So, if I can make that mistake as a dad that cares about his kids, how many other parents are making that mistake? How many other kids go through life and they go, "Oh, I'm stupid." Or, "Oh, I I'm not strong." "I can't do any pull-ups. I'm not strong." Actually, have you ever done pull-ups before? No. Oh, guess what? In order to get strong, you got to do pull-ups. And I talk about this in the book. Sure, are there some kids that are going to be able to do pull-ups out of the gate? Sure. Are there kids some kids that can learn their times tables really quickly? Sure. You're not going to You're not going to be great at everything, but you can get better as long as you have the discipline, put your mind to it, and are willing to work hard. So, there's the kids books. Dude, they're so good. I remember as a kid in uh middle school and we had to do pull-ups and because my last name starts with the B, I was one of the first people to try. So, it was like my friend Lauren Aarons jumps up, he just hangs. Like, am I really supposed to be able to do it? And he lets go, I jump up, and I go to pull myself, and I'm like, "Oh, this actually isn't possible. Like, there is no way to pull yourself up like this." And I'm like, "Why are they having us do this?" I I couldn't understand. And then we get to Christian Russell and he bangs out 22. And I was like, "What?" Like that was so startling to me that somebody who had never done a pull-up before in his life could do 22. And I was like, "Yeah, we are not all born equal. Some people have some advantages." But unfortunately, the message I did not have your book and so I did not think, "Oh, I could get good at this." I just thought I suck at this. And you might not be able to get to 22. And if he worked out, he can get to 72. Right. But you can get to 17. You can get to 20. You can get to one. Which if you can get to one, you can get to three. If you can get to three, you can get to seven. So many kids these days miss out on the fact of the correlation between working and studying and and pushing yourself to the results that you get. That's one complaint that I have about or I shouldn't say complaint, but it's it's what I think hurts kids is they don't connect what they're doing now with the future. I know I didn't. You know, when I was a kid, I was you know, what's the future? It's tomorrow. The future is oh, the weekend. On Friday night, we're going to go to Johnny's house and we're going to play war. That's the future. You don't realize, oh, there's you can actually set yourself up. What you're doing today is connected to the future. Okay, once you make that connection, you say, "Okay, maybe I'll study. Maybe I'll train. Maybe I'll work out harder." You can start doing those things because you can improve and you can have a better life. If you have discipline now, it'll give you freedom in the future. Yeah, for sure. Have you gotten any pushback on the fact that the way he deals with the bullies learning to fight, which I think is genius and the obvious answer, but I wouldn't say it's the common answer. I don't think I've gotten any pushback. I'm sure there's people that hate me or whatever. I'm sure there's people that disagree and think that the method that you should do is is turn the other cheek or or, you know, try and talk your way out of it. The problem is you need to be in a position where you can talk your way out of it. Because if you're around a person that's a bully, they don't understand talking. They don't care what you say to them. They're going to physically bully you. So, if you don't have the physical knowledge, presence, ability to stand up and stop that, then you're going to get abused. You're going to get beat up. That That's Hey, that's the horrible reality. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it is that way. And that as you know in the book, he's actually able to once he has the confidence and the true ability, he stands up to the bully and the bully is is actually a weakling. He's He He doesn't want to fight. But, he'd never been challenged before, which is a very realistic bully. Bully, big kid, no one ever stands up to him cuz they're big. When someone finally says, "Oh, I'll actually fight you if I have to." And the bully says, "Oh, uh you've never been in a fight before. Never Never had anyone stand up to him." And that that makes him That makes him get humbled really quickly. So, and that is what happens. When someone knows When someone knows how to fight, you don't have to fight. And that's, you know, that sounds like one of those like uh whatever spiritual things about, "Hey, the warrior that knows how to fight and does not have to fight." It's like I'm not saying like that. I'm telling you right now, if you know how to fight, you have much rarer chance of going to of getting into a fight. When you're you know, when I was a kid, a younger kid, you know, teenager, I got in a lot of fights. And you could recognize when someone knew how to fight. You You could look at them. And now that I've been training Jiu Jitsu and fought a ton, when I look at someone, you can see like, "Oh, this person knows how to fight." When someone looks at me, they're not thinking, "Hey, I'm going to take advantage of this guy right here." It's not even just like, "Hey, this guy's big." But, they can tell, "Hey, uh you know, I'll I'll I'll I'll fight. I don't really want to cuz I'm busy, but if you want to push me, you know, we're going to have a problem and it's going to get solved my way." So, having that is is important. And I can tell you right now, the amount of fights I've gotten since I before I knew Jiu Jitsu, since after is like it's a it's a it directly correlated to the more you know, the less you fight. Mhm. That is a spectacular place to wrap this particular edition up, man. Where can people find out more about you? I guess I'm on the typical social media platforms. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. I'm I'm at Jocko Willink at Jocko Willink. I have a podcast called Jocko podcast that we talked about that's available wherever you listen to podcasts. I have my company Echelon Front, which is echelonfront.com, and I have my company Origin Maine, which is originmaine.com, where we sell stuff for jiu-jitsu and stuff for life like these jeans. And um and then jockopodcast.com is the podcast website, so. Yeah. Normally I have a pretty good guess how my guest will answer the last question. With you, your life is so varied, I'm actually not sure. What's the impact that you want to have on the world? Just just help people learn the lessons that I've learned so they don't have to learn them for themselves. There's a lot of mistakes that I've made. There's a lot of I've been blessed and lucky, and I explain this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics that I've been very lucky to have been through what I've been through, to been around the people that I've been around, to learn the things that I've been blessed and lucky enough to be able to learn, and I don't want to hoard them. I want to give them away. So, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing and trying to help people as much as I can. It's amazing. Guys, uh you will not be sorry if you dive in and read everything this man has ever written. Even for the adults, I'm going to tell you checking out his kids book is equally powerful. He has several. A coloring book, by the way, is out now, I think, or coming very soon. Um the podcast is surreal. You you owe yourself listening to the podcast and hearing such a fascinating glimpse into the human condition. Uh it is it is really incredible. Somebody who can go from the the beauty of life so quickly to the horror side of life uh and yet wrap it up and make it all make sense is really extraordinary. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Jocko, [ __ ] hell. That was amazing, man. Appreciate it. There's a lot of people in mediocrity who have a nice resume, but they're one-timers, man. They hit They hit a one-time deal. They busted it open, got a lot of money, but they're good. You're mediocre now, man. What are you [ __ ] doing today, tomorrow, the next [ __ ] day?