251: Set The Standard. Set The Example. How to LEAD. "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander" (Gen. Bruce Clarke), with Leif Babin.
Jocko Podcast- 1,788 views
- 14 Oct 2020
0:00:00 - Opening 0:12:18 - "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander", General Bruce Clarke 2:15:49 - Get a routine. How to stay on THE PATH. 2:58:55 - Closing Gratitude.
This is JoCo podcast number two fifty one with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening. Good evening.
And also joining us tonight is my brother Leif Babin from podcast 11, first guest ever on the podcast. Thirty four sixty five, one fourteen and one thirty eight. And obviously Leif was in Task Unit Bruiser as the Charlie platoon commander in the battle Ramadi. We wrote extreme ownership, we wrote the dichotomy of leadership together and we have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front.
And I at one point in my life gave him the book that I've been reviewing for the last couple of episodes that I wrote.
The new Forward to the book is called About Face, and we're going to talk a little bit about that, but then we're going somewhere else.
Thanks for coming back. Oh, man, thanks for having me on.
Was twenty eighteen, fourteen, August twenty eighteen.
The world has changed drastically since then and that's, that's, that's kind of crazy.
It's crazy that as much as I see we just didn't coordinate for another podcast in over two years.
That's apparently would you say everything you had to say on the first five, apparently so that's just the way it is.
You were telling me about an about face in the battle of Ramadi, me kind of saying, hey, check this out, check out this check out this section.
What were you thinking? I'm reading you about like the South Vietnamese army and how corrupt they were. What, like all these different examples?
Yeah. I mean, just I thought it was so awesome that this new you know, this new book with the new Ford written by you, you know, for about Face the new the new version of it that's out with the new Ford. And I remember distinctly coming back from operations in Ramadi multiple times, probably at least four or five different times.
I could remember where I, like, walk into your office and attack operations center of the Camp Margalla, and you'd say, hey, listen to this. And I was like, OK, and you bust out the book, you'd open it up to like a highlighted section, read the section. And it was mind blowing because it was just like it was written about the operation that I was just on like an hour ago. And instead it was written 40 years before about Vietnam.
And it was it was pretty, pretty eerie.
And that was it had I never realized all the influences until later when you gave me a copy of the book, which is the one thing that you gave to me and you gave your Seth Doane, the platoon commander, when we when we finished, we came home. I still have that book. It's dated January twenty seven. We just been home for two months at that point. But now going through that book, I realized like where you got, you know, renaming, tasking to Bruiser, you know, all those things, like there's so many things that came from that.
So it's it had so much influence on you and through you, on me and everybody in to ask you to ruža and then every generation afterward.
That's crazy now. In that book in the book about face, there's two quotes that always bothered me. Here's the first one, men in battle, men while doing battle, what they have been in the habit of doing in training, General Bruce Clark, one of the U.S. Army's greatest training generals, had written in his then recently published guidelines for the leader and commander. So that's the first quote that bothered me. The second quote that bothered me was this, quote, The troops responded well to hard hands on repetitive but still interesting work.
They may not have wanted to go to Vietnam, but they sure as hell didn't want to die there. So they even flocked to off duty classes like Ricardo.
Meanwhile, I established the requirement that all officers and NCO in the battalion read and carry on their person, General Bruce Clark's guidelines for the leader and commander. As far as I was concerned, the finest little handbook on leadership and training ever written and adopt as their own philosophy. The one that I learned from a five by seven card, which I still had issued to me in Clark's seventh army in Germany, which stated An organization does well only those things.
The boss checks and quote.
So why did those two quotes bothered me? They didn't bother me because I didn't agree with them. Obviously, they bothered me because I could never find this specific book called Guidelines for the Leader and Commander.
And I always searched for it. I would look for you these days. You can pretty much find anything online, especially like a lot of the old manuals that I read old army manuals on. You know, they've been out of print for a long time and you can go find a PDF. Somebody uploaded it. This thing has been nowhere for ever. And here I was learning from this book that Colonel Hackworth wrote, but I could never find the book that Hackworth learned from and that did not make me happy.
So. So who was this guy? General Bruce Clark. Bruce Clark. He was a World War One, World War Two, Korea. He enlisted in nineteen seventeen. Ended up going to West Point. Hope don't hold that against him. Life.
Good to go. I turned down my appointment to West Point, but it's a it's a great place.
He got into the Army school. Look at you overachiever.
I had to go had to go to see the seal out that years ago. You. That's a rough gamble, right.
It was a rough gamble and it paid it was very poor gamble. When I graduated and I didn't get selected for the school program, I could tell you I was like, I should have gone to West Point. I'd be in the army, you know, I'd have all those opportunities in front of me.
But that is the that is the that is the worst luck that it happens that the SEAL teams is in the Navy.
And if you don't if you want to be a SEAL and you don't make it into the SEAL teams, you're in the Navy because you probably don't want to have the type of job that a regular Navy dude has. If you want to be in the SEAL teams, would you concur?
Definitely. I mean, if you if you want to be in the SEAL teams, that means you want to be shooting a machine gun and run around in the streets or the jungle or whatever. You don't want to be on a ship, you know, working in an engine room or or driving a ship in Cambridge Bridge Watch or whatever. And those are cool jobs to different people, like different jobs. But those are two almost totally different types of jobs.
Whereas if you tried for Special Forces and you didn't make it, you'd still be an infantry guy. And that's still the similar thing. But you just roll the dice big time.
I did, but it it worked out then, you know, you got to trust. In fact, had I got selected for the SEAL program right out of the academy in 1998 when I graduated, I'd never been to ask you to Bruiser. I would not been trying to be commander. I would have done my OIC probably at least a year or two or three prior to that, as a lot of the guys who were my my same year group.
So, you know, that's the good Lord has a plan and you got to just trust in that plan. And it had I actually not had I got selected from Marine Corps, I obviously never had a chance to be in the SEAL teams either. So.
But West Point's an awesome school, Matt. It was a really, really agonizing decision for me because I got I got picked up for West Point in in like it was like probably January, February of my senior year. And I found out I got I got an appointment, so I accepted it. And then I didn't find out until, like, April that I got into the Navy.
So it was you know, it was it was a it was a big gamble for sure.
But hey, man, it's a it's an awesome merker. Obviously, there's a great rivalry between West Point and, you know, Army, Navy. Everybody knows the football games. And but I am one of the things we're most proud of. Obviously, in Tasket, Ruža was being the. A one one Addy's Army SEALs, as they call this, and so good on General Clark. One thing that that I just want to say when you read that quote, I'm fascinated, you know, to to to listen this as well, because I have used that quote, an organization does well, only those things.
The boss jacks a probably a thousand times since teaching the junior officer training course up through what we do now with Echelon fraud. And I did not realize it came out of this book.
I say, don't you usually attribute it to attributed to. Yeah, I think I just misremembered that he he obviously was giving credit to General Clark and I clearly did not remember that and have not done that.
Right.
Yeah. So he went to West Point or enlisted World War One. Went to West Point World War Two, commanded the 4th Armored Division in patent's Patton's Third Army.
Battle of air, a court battle, the Bulge Distinguished Service Cross and three Silver Stars, also in Korea ended up with forty five or so years of service, not only leading troops, but also he oversaw a bunch of training schools and training commandos died in nineteen eighty eight at age 86.
And I wanted this book. I searched through this book for years. I wrote an email to the publisher. This publisher still exists. I'm going to call them out right now because I'm sure someone will reach out to him. I think it's Stackpole books. They still exist and we've covered other books of theirs on this podcast because they print a lot of military type books. I think the clay pigeons, the Saint Lo, we covered that on this podcast and a few others that are in the queue.
I reached out to him, send an email. Hey, I'm looking for this book. I see that you used to publish it. Nothing, never heard nothing back. And then, you know, like you said, the Lord works in mysterious ways. The about face, the new the new version comes out and I search on on Amazon once a month. I'll search and see because they would have this book that have it listed in there. That's how I knew the publisher was.
But they would have it in there. Not available. Not available. Not available for years. It's been not available. It popped up. It says available. One copy.
Three hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars. This is and I'm only holding a photocopy right now. It was three hundred dollars. This thing is one hundred and seventeen pages. It's like I don't know six by a it's small. It's this little book. It showed up in a little tiny envelope. I was super stoked.
And as you might imagine, like you said, it's filled with lessons filled with the obvious roots of hackwork, theories around training and leadership, which I stole, as you already rightfully accused me, of stealing many things from Hackworth, as I fully admit all the time that I stole, I used passed on to everyone. I could still try and pass on, still try and pass on an about face, still trying to pass and what we do in Echelon front try and pass on these lessons.
So you know what?
I don't think you can actually use the word steal because they're freely given the same way that like what people like, hey, do you mind if we, like, talk about extreme ownership with our team? Like, no, I actually don't mind. In fact, that's what we wrote the book for. That's why I'm sure that's why I wrote the About Face. And I'm sure obviously that's why General Clark wrote what he wrote. So it's not stealing.
It's freely given. And I think the as we all have often said that we didn't learn anything new. We just we just maybe package it a little bit differently. And I use a different term than maybe others use. It's always good when it's pretty common for, you know, me to do an initial client call with the company and they'll be, you know, give me a brief on their company.
And like our company values are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, extreme ownership. And they're like, hey, we hope you don't mind. We're like the exact same thing.
I say you can't deal with free. So and I try and give Hackworth credit. Yeah, but I guess you're right. Can't steal what's free. But what we can do is we can take it and we can try and pass it on. So without further ado, I present to you at long last guidelines for the leader and commander.
There's I'll have to show it to you later.
There's a little there's a little signature. I don't have it in the photocopy. There's it's there's a little you know, somebody gave it to someone. Someone gave it to, like the command sergeant major or something like that. All right.
So here we go. Dedicated to the ground combat soldier.
The paramount concern of the army is the ground combat soldier. He is the focal point of all our efforts, organizing, equipping, training, sustaining and supporting him so that he can perform his indispensable role in combat is the army role.
The role is equally significant in any kind of war, hot or cold.
It is just as important in general war as it is in limited war. For our nation to entertain any notion to the contrary would be dangerous.
The danger could be social as well as military, more than any other category of personnel in the armed forces, the ground combat soldier comes from the general populace. He is the private citizen under arms, the clenched fist of his people.
I think I've just roll with that from now on. That is the greatest description of combat. Yes. Of a combat soldier I've ever heard in my life, clenched fist of the people. Why? Why is this the first time I'm hearing this as the one thing I'm I'm just Remez about? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Me too.
We could have we could have put that up as like a poster of retasking a bruiser.
You know, I think I think I used and you may have heard me use this. In fact, I know you did the sword of destruction.
I use that to describe sort of what our methodology was, especially in cleaning out insurgents and how, hey, everyone wants to be everyone wants to make friends and and win the hearts and minds. And that's all definitely important. But that really comes. And this is this is when I use this line that would come after the sword of destruction has been wielded on the insurgents or the bad guys. I think the fist of the people is better. We're going with a fist, the clenched fist of the people back to the book.
It is by no idle chance in the history of mankind that the course of democracy parallels the importance accorded to the ground combat soldier in the military forces of nations. It is no exaggeration to say that the basic freedoms we now enjoy are closely related to his ascending importance on the battlefields since the battle of cracy.
Nor is it an exaggeration, in my opinion, to say that the preservation of those freedoms will continue to be oriented by his place in the sun. Only when men from all of the people are willing and ready to fight and die for freedom, does freedom have meaning for them? Only then does democracy thrive.
That is the inexorable lesson of history, these are important things to be reading right around this time in the world, because what percentage of of the populace actually is in the military? One percent. So there's not a lot of people that seem to step up and be ready and willing. And what does that mean? That means they don't understand what the prices understand, what the cost is.
And what he's saying here is freedom is only safe for there's people that are willing when there's all people he's saying all people, by the way, all people have to be ready and willing.
Tevye, well, you also have to think about his perspective, though, right? I mean, I think in America today, obviously, we've been at war for a long time since 9/11. And but there really there isn't an existential threat in the way that he was living with World War One. You've got this expanding empire now, World War two. You've got you've got the Japanese, Germans. I mean, there's the world was truly at stake and and it was everybody all hands on deck, even those that couldn't serve, who are medically qualified or whatever, like they're they're you know, they're doing everything from blood drives to, you know, collecting tyres.
All that kind of stuff is going on back here. Bond drives, you know, Liberty Gardens. Yeah. And, you know, the Rosie the Riveter. I mean, ladies out there turning wrenches and building planes and tanks and all that stuff. So I think that was I mean, our country has an experience that probably since World War Two. But I think living to that probably gave him unique perspective. This also ties in continuing on beguiled by the mechanical marvels of an age, it is easy for people to forget the true character of the ground combat soldiers in war.
When free men have been so beguiled in the past, they have slipped back into slavery. For the ability of the ground combat soldier to play his part in the social scheme of things depends upon the part he is given in the military scheme of things.
Again, we we can very easily think about the fact that, you know, this war is a technical thing and you don't have to you have to put boots on the ground.
And that whole idea that technology can eliminate war. And you and I were talking the other day that there's there's some people that, hey, God bless them, they have a positive attitude that we as a species can evolve to a point where, you know, we don't have any more.
And that's a very positive thought. I think we would all agree that that would be a great thing. It's probably highly unrealistic because there's always going to be somebody, no matter how nice you are, there's always going to be somebody that's going to try and. Take a couple extra dollars from Echo, Charles. You'd have to defend yourself. I understand, even if you're super nice.
Yes, you might have to fight. I understand. I don't think you can't study history and believe that we're on some greater trajectory and mankind is above war or conflict are evil or darkness. And the thing I love most about this podcast is reminding people of the darkness. You can't appreciate the light if you don't know the darkness. And and I think that's that's the most powerful thing. And I think only if you experience what General Clark has experienced, do you do you fully get yet understand that?
I answer your question on the podcast. A long time ago, a guy said, you know, you keep talking about training jujitsu, but I don't even like to fight. Why should I train jujitsu? And I said, if you don't like to fight, you are actually the premiere person that needs to train jujitsu.
And if you don't like war and you don't want to go to war. Then you should train and prepare and be ready to go to war, and then hopefully you won't have to, and if you do, it will be swift.
The other thing that that quote reminds me of is that we get asked, how often do we get asked about, you know, talk about some training or bud story, you know, from the SEAL Basic Training Program.
And we don't even talk about that stuff because I think people I mean, I'm trying to explain to people that the the physical nature of combat operations is so much more difficult than anything in training.
And then then the emotional you know, I was going to say to that as a physical. Yes, but the mental and emotional isn't even comparable thing. Right.
Like, it's not a comparable thing to say, well, you know, I was really wet and cold during seal training compared to I was waiting to suck, start an IED 17 nights in a row.
You know, like that's definitely more mental stress than, hey, you're going to have to go hit the surf again. Who cares?
No question about that. But what I'm talking about the physical nature of it. So we're talking about the ground combat, OK, here. And this is you know, I'm thinking about, you know, one of our seals. I mean, you certainly know him well, was one of my most awesome guys in charge of doing just a physical, you know, stud awesome dude who's like going down with heat exhaustion and like, can't can't continue forward.
And I'm like, give me your machine gun. Take my, you know, my rifle, my M4. We got to move, man. We can't stay here. We're going to get we're going to get hammered. And we knew we were going to get we're going to get ambushed at any second. So it was just the physical nature of that. Like, I can't physically continue because I'm carrying, you know, 80 pounds of gear on this patrol and it's one hundred and seventeen degrees right now.
And I got a little behind the hydration curve because we've been out here for 48 hours doing this kind of stuff. And I'm going down with heat exhaustion, you know?
So I think that's something that people when you talk about technology and are riding in vehicles or flying an aircraft or shooting missiles, and there's there's just no getting around the guys carrying a rucksack, you know, a heavy rucksack would gear and going on foot. And Ramadi was unique like that for us, because if you drove into those areas, you were going to get blowed up. And it was it was a good reminder of the physical nature of of war.
And I think, you know, what he's talking about with the ground combat soldier is exactly right.
It's just it's just savage.
Like it's just, you know, when you whenever you put on, you know, like at the beginning of land warfare training and you haven't put on a rucksack and whatever, two months because you were coming back from deployment and then you go on leave and whatever, and you get out to the desert warfare training facility and you put your gear on for the first time and you're like, yeah, the first. It's one of those things where the first like 20 minutes, you're just thinking this completely sucks.
And then it just sucks so bad that the suck kind of comes out. But it's just savage.
It's just it just it's just a constant level of pain.
And no matter how good of shape you thought you were, I mean, that guy was just talking about was in awesome shape. He was a great, you know, physical specimen, like awesome dude train hard all the time. One of the best deals I know. I mean, it happened to me. I remember Johnny King was born into position. Johnny Carson was like and here's our corpsman. He was like, Hey, Leif, you doing OK?
I'm like, I don't know, man. You know, I was, like, super pale. And he could see that I was and I just I was dehydrated and were already smoke. You been up for twenty four hours, so he like gave me an IV and, you know, to just help me, help me recuperate and we were in good shape. I mean we train hard, we are already acclimatized. It's just it was, it was hard, it was physically difficult.
All those emotional things are absolutely the case. But it was a it was physically hard and probably the best day Burke talks about this year because ultimate good deal.
Dave Burke running with a pallet of water between where you were back at Phalcon. We were in a cyber overwatch position like three hundred yards down the street carrying on on an Israeli stretcher with, like pallets of water and Emrys, which probably, you know, probably weigh like two hundred pounds and running as fast as we could with that in all our combat gear for 300 yards.
Dave, Dave Berg was just he was like, hey, let's go. And we're just running. And it was it was awesome. I did a delivery run to you guys down there. You did. You brought some water to this. We were just we are just baking on the rooftop.
Nothing. Yeah. Like even just that. Even just sitting there baking on a rooftop for three days, just just getting dehydrated as everything sucks as to quote Tony, everything sucks.
Everything was all right back to the book. It will be a sorry day for all mankind in this supersonic nuclear age of ours. Should the ground combat soldier ever be deprived of his rightful place in the hearts and minds and military forces of his people? In our efforts to avert this danger, a one army attitude must pervade all ranks. The ground combat soldier is not a guardsman, nor regular, nor reservist, nor a selectees. He is simply the American fighting man on the one army team.
I appeal to every member of the team, civilian and military, to give his cause the enthusiastic support merited by its vital importance to our country. Bruce C. Clark, General, the US Army.
There's the intro. We're already off to a good start.
I'm the next copy that's out for 300 bucks a lot and I got to figure out what to do.
I'm sure Stackpool will will reach out, but if they don't, I'm just going to publish.
This thing was just coming in with the PDF publisher's forward.
These guidelines were written by a leader and commander out of the wealth of experience gained by him in leading and commanding troops from a squad to an Army group. These guidelines were prepared for the benefit of the of other leaders and commanders in the US Army in order that they, in turn may make use of his counsel and experience. So as you said, he wrote this for us. General Bruce S. Clark has probably had more command duty at more command levels than any other officer in the US Army.
Living or dead.
He served more than 40 years in all grades from private to four star general, known as the most effective trainer of modern times in the US Army, as well as an outstanding combat commander. General Clark here specifies the methods he has used with outstanding success in management training, in soldier management and in leadership and generalship. What do you think?
Not exactly a lightweight, not exactly a lightweight.
And there's a picture in here, says The Ground Combat Soldier, the focal point of all our efforts.
You don't call God loves you because as you're as you're saying that, you know, I'm thinking about my experience in Ramadi and, you know, our combat experience, three deployments to Iraq is just absolutely nothing compared to what someone who fought in World War One, World War Two and Korea.
I mean, it's just it just I'm so humble when I read about people's experiences and realize, oh, I if I think I thought I thought I saw some combat. And that was significant for the Iraq war is like, man, it's absolutely nothing.
All the even the physical hardships I'm describing just pale in comparison, you know, to to battles and just what General Clark experience.
And so many have experience throughout the ages.
We often joke about the fact that just what we experienced compared to what these guys went through when we had Dean Ladd on the podcast who got gutshot rolling in to Tarawa five hundred yards from the beach, there's no possible way he should survive that.
And by the way, what was really crazy is that was like he did it after he got done with that.
He had already done the one of the other islands he goes into targets got shot, two of them Marines, disobey all orders and actually grab him and bring him back to a boat. He gets somehow miraculously saved. He goes back to Hawaii and then six months later, he's back on another island campaign. It's like, oh, you got got shot, but you survive school. You're in you're in the game. Yeah. America, what? All right, chapter one, part one is leadership and command, chapter one, command responsibilities introduction.
When an individual assumes command of a unit, large or small, he steps into one of the most interesting and the most challenging assignments a member of the armed forces can have. Here is a job into which a man can sink his teeth.
Here is a job where initiative, originality, hard work, fidelity and human understanding can pay off in the richest dividends.
This chapter includes many matters that are connected with the ability of the commander to train his unit. So it's interesting what extreme ownership we close out by saying this is the most challenging endeavor a human can, leadership is the most challenging endeavor, a human faces and therefore the most rewarding. I swear we didn't steal that from him, even though he just said the exact same thing, even though he wrote a lot earlier than us.
You know what? You know what it is, though? As when we talk, we talk with leaders all the time and they say, hey, we're already doing all these things you're talking about.
And and what the reason for that is because there's what works and what doesn't work. So no matter what you call it, you know, we gave a little framework around ownership laws of combat. But if you if you're in a leadership position, you're going to you're going to figure out what actually works. And that makes me think about this. You talk about psychology a lot and not not in like psychological terms and, you know, like clinical terms, but in like try to get people to do what you need them to do to accomplish the mission with.
And that's exactly human nature.
It took me I don't know how many podcasts must have been around. I don't know. But at some point I said, yeah, this is a podcast about human nature, really. That's what it's about, about human nature and where human nature is most revealed is in war or in atrocities or human suffering or human struggle. That's when that's when human nature is revealed. And, you know.
We had this conversation, and I don't know when, but I remember telling you and Stoner and being like, hey, look, when we go on deployment, people are going to go crazy. And look, I didn't mean, hey, these people are going to. But we know when you talk about senior leaders or, you know, people are going to start feeling pressure and people do crazy thing. And I saw that from my first deployment to Iraq.
I was thinking, wait a second, this is just like people are going crazy.
So that's something that happens. It's just human nature is revealed.
And if you're if you're let's say you're nervous about things, let's say you're nervous type person. You're you're you're you're a scared of something.
What what's that going to do in combat? It's just going to get worse.
Let's say you're worried about things. What's going to happen in combat.
You're going to be even more worried. Let's say you have a tendency to focus on things that don't really matter. You're going to do that even more in combat. It's like everything. You're just your human nature gets exposed. To quote you, its combat is life amplified and intensified, true, and I think that's that's true. That's true. And it's like that friend that that tells you, like, they go crazy when they drink and you're like, no, you're actually just when you drink, you actually are crazy and you're able to keep it contained until you put the alcohol in.
You know, you actually are crazy and it just comes out. Yes, very similar.
Here we go back to the book.
So you want a command? How often have we heard an officer say, I do anything to get a command? Have you ever wondered if you really meant it? Have you ever wondered if you really would make a good commander? We have often heard the expression a good commander is born, not made. This is interesting. So he's saying, hey, we often hear a good commander is born, not made. You know how nowadays they say, you know, actually anyone can be a leader.
I shouldn't say in such a sarcastic voice, people say, look, anyone can be a leader, you can learn what I talk about. Leadership, strategy and tactics is it's both like you're going to get some natural qualities for sure. Some other things are going to have to work in. So he says, we often heard the expression a good commander is born, not made. And he says this is not entirely true.
By exercising certain principles, the vast majority of officers can become good commanders. There you go. He agrees with me.
Let us see if considering the following 20 questions will provide us with some guidelines.
If the answers to these questions are yes, the potential commander statement is sincere and he should fight to get it and should be given a command, he will never have an assignment that will give him greater satisfaction or one that will enable him to contribute more to the army and to our country. So here's the 20 questions.
Is the officer seeking command duty, willing to devote all hours of day and night, seven days a week to his command?
Is his wife willing to take an active role in helping to make a happy Army community in their unit area, is his family willing to be secondary, if necessary, to the company, battalion group, Regimental Combat Command, Brigade or division?
I'm so glad you wrote that, because I still have people that will call me out because I'll say, hey, when I was in the teams, the teams came first. The teams were more important than my family and I'm sorry, but you have to take care of your guys. You have to. You mean when you would say things like, I'm going to go home and see this woman and these kids that live at my house? Yes.
Just for the record, Djogo was Jagoda loving husband and an awesome dad.
But we knew that was a joke. It's pretty funny. Is he willing to learn, teach stress and live with the fundamentals necessary to make his unit good and believe his great talents for bigger things are not to be wasted? Does he like to be with young people? Can he live with their energy points of view and problems they create?
Is he willing to take the hard knocks that come from carrying the responsibilities for the failures of his subordinates? Do we get to pass these things on Echo Charles? I don't think so. No, we don't. Sounds a little like a.
It certainly does. Can he juggle at the same time all the balls of training, maintenance, test, administration inspections, property, communications, message supplies, athletics, marksmanship, discipline and public relations without dropping any of them as an excuse?
Is he able to do many things concurrently rather than being a consecutive do or can he manage a complex job? Can he receive and carry out orders, can he follow orders as well as give them so number eight there? Is he able to do many things concurrently rather than being a consecutive door opposite of prioritize and execute? It's like I'm going to I need to be able to do multiple things at once. Here's what's interesting.
I highlighted that and I was thinking about it. As I read through the rest of the book.
He starts to go into a a delineation and a bifurcation between between the title, the book leader and commander. And what he starts talking about is when you're a leader, squad leader, platoon leader at company, it changes to commander.
And now what you have to do is realize that you've got to you've got to be able to task people to do things right. You've got to be able to delegate.
And so as a as a leader, to prioritize and actually as a commander, yes, you're going to prioritize and execute, but you're going to prioritize, delegate and then have other people doing multiple things at the same time. I mean, when we were going on operation, for example, did we say, OK, right now we're only going to set security, we're not going to do sensitive site exploitation. We're not going to do a search right now.
We're only going to start recruiting. No, we set security. Then we start interrogating prisoners. We start searching, we start organizing. There's multiple things that you're doing at the same time.
So that's different than, hey, we've got we've got we're getting attacked with multiple problems right now. We need to focus on the biggest problem. And it also starts to lean into talking about delegation and how and, you know, I've always said even when I explained prioritize and execute, I say these words once you've got that problem, that first problem solved or you've got it going in the right direction, then you can move on to the next problem.
So if I look, if we're getting a contact from the south and I go, let's take a platoon, go, go, start knocking those guys out, I don't even worry about you anymore. I'm good. Like, I might check in with you five minutes later to make sure you're good. But meanwhile, what am I doing? I'm saying if I don't continue the assault on this building. Right, it's not like I'm saying everyone everyone on online know if you can handle it, you handle it another way.
I used to explain this is let's say you're building a building and you've got to get one of the rooms electrical done because they're going to put drywall in that room today.
And you've got 10 electricians on site and the room is small. Does that mean you take all ten of your electricians and you pack them into that room and put them all to work? No, because there you don't need that many. You need four guys in there. That's the fastest, most efficient. You can get it done. So you take those four guys, you put them in that room, you take the other six guys and they can start doing something else.
You don't just say that's the number one priority. Everyone just sit in there and do nothing for guys do it and everyone's watching them. No, you you handle the problem. You get it moving in the right direction. Then you move on to the next guy. Then you can take the remaining resources and apply them to the next thing. That makes me think about target fixation, which is what we talk about with with, with and execute is it's really easy.
Like this is the priority. Get so focused on that. But I mean, the example you just gave, like leave, take your platoon and take the hit that target the S and then s you continue the assault like you wouldn't even say s continue this because he's going to he's going to do it. And you talk about how your greatest goal is to go out on operations and not say anything that I used to think that like that was like I wanted to be the leader, like the John Wayne Sands of Iwo Jima with my helmet on sideways and my gun and high board is my finger is point, you know, like the plastic army man with the finger pointing.
It is the leader of this is he's got it high part of this guy and I so many times Ramadi in the middle of a big gunfight where like, I'm not saying anything at all. My my team's doing what they need to do. The fire team leaders are running the guys. The squad is run their guys, the leading petty officers doing his thing, the chiefs doing his thing. I can think two steps ahead. So, I mean, that's you have to be able to do that.
That's decentralized command. And when you get a team that's running that, then you can you can handle 12 or 15 drops the same time because each of the teams is doing their thing.
I was talking to a client today and he was talking to me about how he sometimes has meetings.
He'll have eight blocked meetings a day or ten. That he has to go to and he gets Dionysiac. I know I got this meeting, this meeting, and I had him pull up his calendar and he's talking me through it. Each one of these meetings.
And I said, what's wrong with you?
Like, what is wrong with you? That every like each one of your teams needs to talk to you every single day? That's crazy. To me, that's crazy. To me. That's not decentralized command. That is centralized command. So you aren't giving the people the right direction. They're not hearing what you're saying. They don't have the guidelines. You haven't given them the trust.
You've been an easy. But there's there's a bunch of reasons why it could be happening, but it shouldn't be happening. You shouldn't have to attend those meetings all day long, every day, because that's not decentralized command. It's not efficient. What happens if you aren't in those meetings? Well, the guys won't know what to do. OK, well, there's your problem. Give them the guidance and let them run.
And if you're down in the weeds trying to solve those problems, which is what you're doing in the meetings, then you can't. Who's actually taking a step back? I mean, that's when you wrote in that the decentralized command chapter and extreme ownership that we have been a horrible blue on blue situation that happened. If you were down in the weeds trying to tell, you know, stoner Cestoni how to run his platoon, you know, that's just the way it is.
So I think that's your job as the leader should be to take a step back and think strategically. The next step, the next step after that. And you can't if you're down in the weeds, make it beginning to. And but you can also see where people need help. And you could step in temporarily when you take a step back and you've got teams actually handling those problems, which you did all the time as a golf course commander when he like come over, you walk in the house after we call Target Security Walk and that's what's going on.
Check in with me. I'll give you a quick update on what's going on. You kind of then you'd move to get to where you were needed, you know, where people might need more resources or. Hey, we need to guys outside, you know, can we can you guys spare fireteam or hey, we need more guys in the house. Let's bring a fire team in or whatever maybe. Yep. Yep. Got to do that.
Continuing down this list, can you receive and carry out orders?
Can he follow orders as well as give them. Hmmm, can he stand tough competition from like units and still retain a spirit of cooperation and teamwork with them enemies outside the wire?
Is he physically and emotionally fit to carry the load? That's what you and I just talked about.
I talked about the mental side. You talked about the physical side.
They're both freakin grueling. Does he have the courage to make and stand by tough decisions? Are he and his family willing to live in a goldfish bowl where their actions are closely observed by both subordinate and superior? Is he still enthusiastic and cheerful when confronted with seemingly impossible task to perform with inadequate means? Is he willing to leave a warm office to check and supervise training, maintenance and many other activities of his unit? Is he willing to take responsibility himself and correct the situation rather than blame it on the staff of a higher headquarters or on a subordinate when things go wrong in his unit?
Man, we owe this guy some money.
That's pretty phenomenal. You know what is so humbling to hear that, too?
And it also doesn't he's capturing the burden of leadership so well, you know, by obviously someone who's been and lived it, you know, in a multitude of levels. And I think so often we talk to like front line troopers or front line leaders or like if I was in the senior ranks, but everything would be great. And they don't fully understand the burden of leadership. And that's that's a tough thing. Not not everybody can do that. And there are a lot of people that don't want that.
And I think once they get there, they realize, like, maybe that ever.
Next, is he willing to do the best with what he has, even though what he has seems inadequate, is he confident he can produce a superior unit with the usual run of manpower?
Can he inspire personnel to produce outstanding accomplishments, is he willing to take a chance on being relieved for attaining only mediocre results? Does he really want command rather than just to get command on his record and I just realized he's got like a lot of these 20 questions. There's like three or four questions in each one. He snuck some in on us. But what a what a great what a great outline. Just to just to check yourself. And see where you're at.
See how in the game you are next. What does the soldier expect from his commander? Having dealt with the prerequisites of command, so that's what we just did, I offer these thoughts on what soldiers look for in their commanders, regardless of branch of service, honest, just and fair treatment.
Men admire a strict officer if he is also just an officer who tries to be a good fellow, loses his grip early, an officer cannot be expected to know everything. He cannot bluff his men and retain their respect.
When he does not know he should say so and then find and announce the answer like we're. I'm laughing as reading this. You're laughing as I'm reading. This is like straight out of leadership strategy and tactics. Just it's crazy to sit here and read this. You ask that question all the time, like, who's got it all figured out? Who has all the answers? Nobody. So why would you even try to pretend like you do people you know?
And then we get that question. Our leaders like, well, they lose respect for me. You know, if I if I act like I've got to pretend like I know it.
All right. Know everyone knows you don't know it all. So so they they know you don't know. And if you're pretending they're losing respect for you, if you can actually admit you don't know and take ownership then of a mistake or whatever it happened that obviously they suspect is going up.
Also, another tricky situation that that this offers some insight into and it's not it doesn't offer a definite answer, but I've seen leaders backed into a corner where, you know, life screw something up and whatever the mitigating circumstances were, you know, I say, you know what, though?
I'm going to punish him, you know, lay left and finish the project on time. I'm writing him up. I told I was going to write him up. I'm gonna write him up and let you know. You come to me and say, hey, boss, I get it's my fault. Here's some mistakes that I made going up. Doesn't matter. Right? You up. And I feel like I'm going to lose respect of people if I don't like, drop the hammer on you.
And the fact of the matter is. You don't if you're if you're a reasonable human being and you understand, you listen to the mitigating circumstance of a situation and say, you know what, I really hope that this doesn't happen again.
There's no possible way. If this happens again, I'm going to let you off the hook. But you came to me with a plan on how you're going to fix these things. Don't ever allowed to happen again. Your respect for me doesn't go down. People don't think, oh, is weak. They think we ought to boss. It's going to take care of our people. Now, look, if you have somebody that's just out, you know, does something totally off the wall, of course, punishment must be dealt out, but it's not weak to be reasonable.
I guess that sums it up.
Speaking of punishment, a commander should administer punishment in an impersonal way and to a degree that fits the circumstances and the offense. When a man pays his debt, the commander should forget the incident. Got to keep that thing in mind, though, like you might have a repeat offender. Yeah, I get it. I get you, General Clark, but not one, you know.
You know what I think what he's saying there, what I interpret that as is, is what you talk about in the first chapter of extreme ownership of this horrible blue on blue situation. That was tragic. That was terrible. And the, you know, our commanding officers coming in to find out what happened. And we think, OK, they're going to fire someone for this. And there's a lot at stake. And then you talk about by taking ownership, by implementing a plan to make sure that never happen again, the boss actually his trust increased in you rather than decrease.
So, I mean, I think when people take ownership and they implement a solution to make sure you see, hey, they're fixing that problem, you are gaining trust that even if something bad happens. So it's not that you're it's not that you're forgetting about it, but you're certainly like you're not holding it against. Yeah. And I think that's the key thing, isn't it's not the literal term.
Forget, but, you know, I'm not going to look at you and go, well, you know, I don't know the last time you could quite do what I did. You do know it's OK. You you made your mistake. We figured out what the punishment is going to be. You did your time for your crime. We're going to move on and I'm not going to hold it over your head.
That being said, you know, I'm paying attention.
Make sure you're not a repeat offender. Courage. Every man experiences fear in a crisis. The commander cannot show it. He must fortify himself by learning to control his emotions. This is crazy. To read consideration, do them. So this is again, this is all onto the topic. What does the soldier expect from his commander consideration? Do them as mature. Professional soldiers, regardless of age or grade soldiers, should be treated as mature individuals. They are men engaged in an honorable profession and deserve to be treated as such.
Military courtesy start between officers, observation of these courtesies between seniors and subordinates is not belittling to either their evidences of the alertness, pride and good manners of your men, the commanders rank should be used to serve his subordinates. It is not a reward and is not a license to exercise idiosyncracies rank as one object to enable the officer to fulfill his responsibilities, subordinates expect the commander to play his part according to his position. They do not begrudge him his rank.
If he uses them, if he uses it in the interest of his subordinates and superiors. So if you're using your rank in the interest of your troops, we're good. You're using it for yourself. We got an issue, we got a problem, you know that part about the professional, these are professionals. Treat them like professionals.
It reminds me of our experience in Ramadi, working alongside U.S. soldiers, Marines, and someone you always said about, like, these guys are true professionals there. They are awesome professional warriors that we were privileged and honored to work alongside. And it was interesting how there are some special operators that did not treat them that way because they felt like, oh, they were special. And they went through some, you know, specialized training and they were part of a specialized unit and they had better gear or whatever and and how like they created all this bad blood just by not treating people professionally.
And it was you know, I just remember, you know, meet some of these young Marines and soldiers when we first arrived there.
And they just you know, they were looking at us like, oh, man, the SEALs are here. And they look at our short barrelled little rifles and our cool gear. And we had better night vision, all the stuff, the stuff in them. I'm looking back at these these young privates thinking, man, these guys have fired more rounds of their weapons and all of us put together and the entire task unit are ever going to fire in our entire careers in the SEAL teams.
I mean, that's how much combat they were seeing. And it was just what an honor and privilege to be with. I mean, they were they were absolute professionals and that served as well by treating them accordingly.
Yeah, it's like one of those little golden rules.
Why is this so hard? Treat people with respect. Treat people with respect. That's it. Treat people with respect.
Personal interest taken in them as individuals, again, what does a soldier expect from his commander, personal interest taken in them as individuals, a good officer will know the names, background and individual characteristics of his men. He must have a genuine personal interest in them or they will not have it in him. Each individual has problems.
There is no easy way of getting a grip on men than by helping them solve their personal problems that give them great concern. And officer should not, however, be too familiar with his men. Good soldiers do not expect it and usually resent it. It is not necessary to call soldiers by their first names, even if the officer sleeps in the same foxhole with them. Close, but not too close, as we like to say, the dichotomy of leadership.
Yeah, you know, the expression, and I, I, I didn't ever hear anyone say this, and I started saying it a little while ago, I don't know, maybe I maybe it's not going I don't know.
I'm not trying to take credit for something.
But, you know, you know, the term that we'd say in the teams, which was take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you, which is means, hey, when you get done with the dive, you take your dive rig and you do the proper maintenance on it. When you get down to the parachute jump, you take your parachute, you do proper maintenance on it. When you get done with a firefight or an operation, you take your weapon and you do the proper maintenance or you take care of your gear and your gear will be there to take care of you.
Same thing with people. You take care of your people and your people will take care of you.
That's true, as you're saying that I'm talking about some of those text messages that that you've sent Echo Charles. Yes, those things are going to become public.
I think you might tell a different story in a little way.
But why is it so hard for people to respect people? Just no respect whatsoever.
If my text messages to echo Charles, they do have a high level of disrespect. And this also brings to the fact that I believe I believe I'm not a hundred percent sure. I believe that I have a certain guard passing technique that is called the disrespect, literally, that I actually named because of you, because I would use this guard pass.
And it's so disrespectful that you would you would feel disrespected. Did you think of that?
No, you did. I mean, I remember very vividly expand.
I like this, you know, after. It's very disrespectful. That's it. Yeah. I think that's a good question. You know, is it that hard to to be respectful?
And apparently it is.
So, yeah, there's a fine line between justice and disrespect and maybe maybe a little more of a gray area gets blurry sometimes.
Find some good screen shots and and let's post some some JoCo Echo texts. Hmm. I think that'll be fun.
OK, back to the book. There is nothing wrong today with the following instructions written by Baron von Steuben at Valley Forge and published in the Continent, published by the Continental Congress. Instructions for the Captain.
A captain cannot be too careful of the company. A captain cannot be too careful of the company the state has committed to his charge, he must pay the greatest attention to the health of his men, their discipline, arms, accouterments, ammunition, clothes and necessaries.
His first object. Should be to gain the love of his men by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity, inquiring into their complaints and when well-founded, seeing them redressed. He should know every man of his company by name and character. He should often visit those who are sick, speak tenderly to them, see that the public provision, weather of medicine or diet is duly administered and procure them. Besides such comforts and conveniences as are in his power, the attachment that arises from this kind of attention to the sick and wounded is almost inconceivable.
It will, moreover, by the means of preserving the lives of many valuable men. So there you go. What a what a what a incredible thing to be able to read instructions for a captain, for a captain from Valley Forge.
That's powerful, man. It's humbling as well to I think about all of my shortcomings and how much I could have used that guidance directly, you know, prior to being charitable platoon commander or, you know, even not like just reviewing that and thinking about it.
And it captures, I think, like I said, the burden of leadership in a massive way and all that's required of you, which is a lot everything 100 percent all the time.
And if you take care of your men, your men are going to take care of you, and if you have this if you have this inconceivable attachment, what that does is. Is preserve's lives, so when you are a tight unit, you know, I've often said that, you know, the thing that makes a SEAL platoon strong is just the bonds that you have.
Like, that's the that's the difference. That's what that's what's going to that's going to make the difference in any military, you know, not just the seal. I mean, I can talk about SEAL because I've been in them.
But any military unit, what is it that makes a really strong unit? It's how tight they are and what makes people tight. You take care of them.
It. It goes on instructions for the lieutenant he should endeavor to gain the love of his men by his attention to everything which may contribute to their health and health and convenience. He should often visit them at different hours, inspect their manner of living, see that their provisions are good and well cooked. And as far as possible, obliged them to take their meals at regulated hours. He should pay attention to their complaints and when well-founded, endeavor to get them redressed, but discourage them from complaining on every frivolous occasion.
So for the captain and for the lieutenant, what are you trying to do? You're trying to build relationships with your team. You're trying to take care of your people. And by the way, those are the instructions, not one, that's it. Next guy, I was just going to say, I think that's that's the most profound thing to me.
You know, you'd think if Hackworth is saying everyone, every officer should be required to read this, you would think it's going to be talking about tactics. You would have to set up your base of fire and your assault elements or you know, how to how to position your troops. And it's not that at all. It's it's all about building relationships with your team. You know, what's required of you to actually be a leader. It's how you know, how you manage and lead.
And that's that's pretty phenomenal.
And you said that all the time, something that we talk about often, which is the hardest parts of of combat leadership, is always the human aspect, not the not the tactics.
That's the easy part. Yeah, that that's you know, when I wrote the foreword for About Face.
You know, and he turned you know, he turned against he said, hey, we can't win this war if we keep fighting like this.
And and, you know, they asked him they asked Howard Tucker in that interview, that famous interview, you know, he gets asked, could you could you could you become are you too emotional about the war in Vietnam?
And Hackworth says one couldn't have spent the number of years I spent in Vietnam without becoming emotionally involved. One couldn't see the number of young studs die or terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved.
I have just seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful, great young men in this country, I have seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the nation being split asunder and almost being being split apart and almost being split asunder because of this war. And I'm wondering to what end it will lead to, end quote. You know, like that's a guy that loved his troops. I can only imagine that burden, you know, with fifty eight thousand dead in the Vietnam War, 58000 U.S. troops killed, and because even a tiny fraction of that number, you know, that we've experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq coming back from Iraq when we came back from Ramadi, I think one of the hardest things for me, just after having lost Mark Ryan, was blind.
Mikey, you know, we lost my EDELL platoon and a good friend of mine who's hopefully going to be on this podcast with you sometime, Elliott, who was severely wounded, and he was in Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio, which is the primary burn care facility for all of all of the U.S. military. And so I went and spent a bunch of time with him there. And from December four, you know, really through much of like twenty seven back there regularly and trying to trying to, you know, just help him support him and his family wherever we could and.
Just witnessing the those burn victims in there, you know, when IEDs that were causing, you know, the enemy's most valuable weapon and you're walking into those ICU rooms and you're seeing young soldiers and Marines with no lips, no no noses, no ears, just face, you know, faces burned off. It was one of the most horrific things I've I've ever had to experience. And when I would hear people on the news talking about the war and pontificating about the blood and treasure that we'd spent and they had no inkling of of just how deep and personal that was, you know.
And again, that's just a fraction in the Iraq war of what Hackworth experienced in Vietnam. I can only imagine, you know, for him and for every other Vietnam veteran out there what that was like. But there's there's no way to not make that personal. Yeah, and you can see the route of that. Because, you know, it's the same route, like you said earlier, these things that you uncover over time, you know, if you take care, if you if you love your troops, that's going to be that's that's what it's about.
And Hackworth knew that. You know that. I know that General Clark knew that. That's the way it is. Goes on here, loyalty, loyalty to superiors and subordinates is a basic requirement.
Criticism of a commander's superiors in front of subordinates lays him open to the same treatment, he should stand up for his men as he expects them to stand up for him.
You can you can you can almost see Hackworth life unfold, right, like you can see that that statement in everything that he did and officer's presence, when the conditions are unpleasant and when the going is tough, sharing the situation of the men means a great deal to them.
Pick up the brass. The commander should act as a buffer between superiors and subordinates.
He should protect his men from harassment that comes from above but still get the job done.
Yeah, I know.
Sometimes I would pull back the curtain for a few minutes and, like, show you what was happening above me in the chain of command on all different fronts.
And look, everyone up above me in the chain of command doing their job.
But it's it's it's pressure and it's it's kind of maddening. And and sometimes I would be asking you for something and you'd get pissed off about it. You know, what the hell you need this for. And I'd say, come here for a minute. Let me let you take a look behind this curtain for 15 seconds. You look back there, see that sausage get made and say, OK, I'm good, I'll get you what you eat. I'm out.
Thank you. That you did.
You guys did a great job of screening us from that. And but I think that was very valuable for me because it gave me a new perspective, you know, like, oh, they're asking us for this. You know, I'm getting mad about it.
And then I realized how much you're actually screening out, you know, of that harassment, like, hey, I'm keeping these guys off your back so that you guys can go do what you need to do next, that there needs be anticipated and met.
A good soldier has needs both spiritual and physical, and the commander should do everything possible to anticipate and meet those needs. At the same time, he should provide all the comforts and privileges practicable. This is not meant to imply that he should coddle his men or treat them as babies, like how beautiful is this dichotomy?
Just when you think, oh, maybe he's a little off track here, maybe I'm a little bit no, this does not mean to imply that he should coddle his men or treat them like babies, such things as a hot meal when it is not expected.
Unit parties, liberal pass privileges and good recreational facilities are more more to the point. Next thing that the soldier expects from his commander to be kept informed and told the reason why the commander should keep his men informed at all time, tell them the reasons behind decisions affecting them.
Many jobs seem purposeless unless the facts behind them are known.
He should continually take action to offset rumors and speculation by giving his men all the information he can. Yeah, we owe this guy money.
We owe this guy money.
You know what, though? You're probably. I mean, obviously, there's a direct influence through David Hackworth, you know, an about face from General Clark. I think you could go back to the Greek hoplites or the, you know, the Roman legions and probably find some centurion who's writing the same stuff. I mean, they're learning the same stuff. It's some some different aspect of different terminology, a little bit different, you know, a vastly different era, millennia apart.
But it's it's human nature, as we just said, hasn't changed.
And and I bet there would be something very similar. And just to make sure everyone realizes we're not just talking about war, we are talking about leadership. We're talking about leadership and business. You need to tell your people what's going on and they need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. I'm talking about your family. They need to understand what's going on and they need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Any any situation where you're interacting with other human beings, these rules apply and they apply to the point.
Why do we know that they work? Because they've been tested. We tested them. But these guys testimony, even crazier conditions, harder conditions, three freakin wars.
And that's that's when the most common things were getting in front these days is questions about managing the family schedule and how do I work from home, you know, with so many people still working from home, you know, it's those are those are like a good bulk of the questions are about that and it directly applicable.
Well, the other thing that's been interesting is when covid hit, you know, most of the companies that we work with are good companies that want to be awesome. We do get some companies that that come to us sometimes against their will, brought to us by the board or whatever. We are going to fix them, help fix them. Most of the companies we work with are good companies that want to do better when covid hit.
So these companies aren't companies that are struggling. These are companies that just want to do better. And so they would implement the the principles that we talk about implement, cover, move, implement simple prioritize next year, decentralized command default, aggressive extreme ownership. So they implement these things. And yes, they're absolutely start doing better. And we watch them and we get feedback from them and their profits go and they become more efficient and more effective and they start taking market share everything that goes awesome and it's cool and everyone goes, hey, yeah, that's great.
And we're super excited about when covid hit and all of a sudden there was companies that were in dire situations and were able to utilize the principles to survive.
Yes. But also start to actually go on the attack and thrive.
That was pretty epic because it basically was like, have you ever did you ever pull a reserve parachute?
Never. Yeah, I only did it one time. And all the other times I'd be like, yeah, cool. I'm glad I got to reserve all the time that I pulled aside. This thing's freakin awesome, bro. Thank you for backing this correctly. Case of beer to the rigor, you know, because because normally it's just like. Yeah, yeah. It's work, you know, it's on there, it's all good. And that's kind of what companies do.
OK, we're doing really good. Profits are up, all these, all these positive things.
But all of a sudden when they're faced with real hardships and challenges, they're like, what should we do here? Prioritize next year? Oh yeah, OK.
Or die. Or they no longer exist. Exactly.
Hey, you know, we've got this going. We got all these people working at home. What should we do? This is decentralized command. Yeah, we've been doing that. Well, yeah. Now you need to do it harder. You need to make sure everyone understands what the mission is, what the goal is, what the end state is. You need to communicate with them. They need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Can you make that happen?
Yes, we can. OK, execute.
You know, that makes me think there was a there was an educated phone line a few weeks ago as they were about to go back to school, you know, in her in her state or her her district. She was an educator. She was talking about how crazy it was and how much uncertainty it was.
And and you said we didn't learn this stuff in a Boy Scout troop.
You know how this we learn this on the battlefield. It was crazy. It was chaotic. There was a lot at stake. There was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen. What you need to do is prioritize and execute. That's where this came from. And I think I know it's getting crazy in that sixth grade classroom.
And I'm telling you, this is going to work. And it did.
And she came back and gave us a great sitrep about how it was she was implementing that and moving forward and doing great logit.
Next thing that the soldier requires is a well thought out program of training, work and recreation. The commander should keep a balance between training and recreation. Too much of either becomes a drag on the men. Logical progression of training helps the helps keep the men from becoming confused. Yeah, this is exactly what we wrote about dichotomy. Leadership train hard but train smart. You can smoke people, you can crush them to the point where they're not getting any benefit anymore.
Next, demands commensurate with capabilities neither too great nor too small a commander should not overload his men with unnecessary work.
On the other hand, letting men become bored because they are not working off is just as bad. Neither men as individuals nor unit should be expected to accomplish an impossible task.
What is that? What are you saying? You've got to balance that dichotomy.
It sounds like General Clark had the same experience with his soldiers that we always said like a bored team, guys like the most dangerous thing in the universe because they're going to figure something out to go cause trouble or because create mayhem.
Because rock fights. That was when I was a young team guy, if there was if we weren't being told to do something like sitting around waiting for something, there was a rock fight happening. You know, sometimes it hits you in the leg with a rock from 20 yards and it's a rock fight or or actually actually wasn't rock fights.
There was a couple those. But most you're not talking about like tossing a pebble. You're talking about like, you know what it was? It wasn't rock fights. That's when I was a kid. When I was a kid, there was rock fights.
And I don't know what you're even thinking when you're having rock fights.
But we had we had begun wars. Yeah. We had begun wars. You shoot your buddy in the leg with you. We had to be on wars if you got shot, right, rider? Because if you got shot, you had to take off one layer of clothing, by the way, zero.
April were like it was just the dumbest thing. What's that? I got hit in the face when I came home one time, my eyes swollen. So shut it. My dad was like, Son, what happened to you? I got hit with a spear. We were having spear wars, sharpened sticks, throwing them to each other to hit me. I'm going to miss it, miss my eye by like three millimeters. My dad was like, you're an idiot.
Don't ever do that again.
Anyway, rock fights.
Oh, yeah. Not rock fights, chucking rocks at objects. It'd be like, hey, who can hit that? So I guess it's similar to the pebble, but it'd be like, hey, who can hit that lamp over there, you know, that street light or something. We'll start saying they're how rocks at it.
Speaking of team thousand rock fights to my my first deployment for we worked together and testing the Bruiser in two thousand four. After your first of all of Iraq, one of our super solid team guys, you know, in an hour platoon was throwing rocks through the window of and got in all kinds of trouble because he damage this smash and shattered a window of this like former Saddam Palace.
And they literally like like pulled an award for him. I made it crazy. This this palace had a JDAM drop to the middle of it.
It was completely like for some reason they got all upset that he, like, shattered the windows down. A giant bomb dropped from the sky. It's a GPS guided bomb.
Got something. Ammunition, joint direct attack munition, I believe. I don't know. I don't know. We'll go there. Will have a good day when you need a good deal. If you know what, there weren't too many times to ask you to bruiser where we had board team guys because you always had us busy doing stuff.
But the one time that we did let it go, the Andrew Paul got volunteered to demonstrate the new tasers that we got. I remember that. And Chris Kyle tasered him and everyone sat around filming it and laughing.
Andrew said that was the worst experience, like the cool thing.
There was a safety officer there that someone someone made like we put out the jujitsu mats because this was remember where the digits are in the morning in the high bay there. And I forget, you know, I heard someone came like, hey, JoCo there about the case and you fall out up doing work.
I'm like, all right, I better go. Do you like your earmuffs? Did you go check it out? I don't know. I don't even remember. It might have been one of those things where I was like, all right, let the boys do what the boys are going to do. Maybe I just saw the video.
Yeah, I think you saw that.
I saw the video, but I saw that there was a mat. They took our green. They were actually my mats. They took them, put them down underneath. So he fell face down on the freaking mat, thankfully. Yeah, that board guy's bad. Didn't he say he was going to fight through it?
I think he did not fight through it and he tells a tough, tough dude, but that Taser took him down.
All right. Back to the book guidelines. Two orders. Give orders. This is ridiculous. Give orders in a manner which indicates you expect compliance, do not issue orders you cannot enforce, give clear, complete correct orders and follow them. The reason I said this ridiculous is because it's just crazy that what the actual verbiage that we use when we brief is you give simple, clear, concise guidance.
And here they're saying clear, complete, correct.
Only by long and careful training can the commander in chief perfection in giving orders, ambiguity, vagueness and incompleteness of orders are to blame for the for most disobedience and failure to comply.
Which is when I say, if your team isn't doing what you what you want them to do, the very first person you should check is yourself.
And here it is. And yet that's so hard for any of us to do, right? You get frustrated with the person for not doing what you wanted to do, and instead of actually looking at yourself and saying, hey, OK, obviously I wasn't clear I could have done a better job.
The words of an order indicate what is to be done. The manner in which it delivers generates the spirit in which it will be carried out.
Oral orders should be repeated back.
Failure to do so will most assuredly result in a grave misunderstanding. Only by long and careful training can men learn to receive, obey and pass on orders to others.
Lack of orders does not relieve a commander from acting.
You must strive to to maintain a complete picture of the situation so you can take suitable action in the absence of orders.
It is a wise officer who refrains from criticism until he can make logical, constructive suggestions, an officer should be as good as his word. He should not make promises he cannot keep or make decisions he cannot support. Just perfect guidance on how you how you tell people what it is you want them to how you give orders. The combat commander positive leadership battle appears to add peculiar problems to command, but when further analyze, the problems are merely magnifications of those present in training.
The great difference between combat and training is the presence of danger and confusion in combat. These two obstacles can be overcome only by positive leadership and by developing a positive and automatic reaction in the individual soldier.
That's cool, it's cool that it says this like we absolutely added confusion, massive amounts of confusion into our training to simulate the we couldn't you know, you can't shoot people obviously during training.
You can't add that element of danger, but you certainly can add some freaking confusion to the term.
I think I was used with chaos and mayhem in a lecture like Activate Chaos and Mayhem in your trade. Instructors were awesome in doing that. They were very awesome at doing that.
These positive traits of the commander and of the soldier are acquired during training, training and training in wartime before combat, training, during battle and by mental factors not easily described a desire to overcome the enemy, devotion to country and to organization and personal devotion to the commander. When a disciplined unit is spurred by the mental drives mentioned, it fights not only well, but brilliantly.
Those are some. Awesome things to strive for the with the the willingness to overcome the enemy, devotion to country and organization and personal devotion to the commander. Battle is fought for real money and for keeps, battles are won by teamwork, not by individuals acting alone.
The only teamwork that can stand up under the confusion and constant danger, feeling of fear and physical exhaustion is the battle of instinctive teamwork. Success in combat is due largely to endurance on the battlefield. The day after day strain of living in the dirt, of going without sleep and food, of the constant threat of death will cause men calls the man who is physically or mentally weak to quit. Fatigue makes cowards. Men in good physical condition are the last to tire.
I would I would definitely agree with that for sure. You know what, though, man?
I was just thinking about that, going through the strain and stress of like I think I just think about the support of the team. You were talking about the bonds between teams and relationships and.
Just that that attitude, you know, you talk about the respect of the commander and, you know, obviously, you know, we always no one ever wanted to let you down to you, Bruiser, clearly. But I think understanding the mission and just like looking at another guy, you could be under fire in a crazy situation.
And, you know, I look at like Tony Tony Blair, I look back at you or, you know, even that situation I said earlier where Dave Berg and a couple other of our guys ran down to grab the pallets of water, like interact with you or when you came down, you know, for a delivery, you know, to resupply us.
You know, you're just showing up for just a few minutes, checking us out, see how things are going like. And I think just the look and in your eye, like, hey, cool, how are things going down here?
It's no matter what the physical strain is on you, you know what you're going through a mental strain. It's I think that support of your teammates around you and like the attitude, particularly the kind of attitude of humor and I think the midst of some really dire situations, I think was always super helpful for us.
Yeah. If that the attitude that people have and I would love to tell you its leaders, but as you know full well, it's not just leaders. It can be anyone in the platoon, anyone on a team, anyone in the organization.
When things are going bad and someone says, dude, we got this, you know, or whatever, someone instead of saying, oh, you know, hey, we got to roll out again, you got to be kidding me.
Someone goes, good, let's bring it, you know, like that little thing, the best empowerment.
There it is. And the best example I can think of is we wrote about in the planning chapter of of extreme ownership, which you, me and everyone else is jacked up about to launch in that hostage rescue operation.
And I mean, you're sitting in there and and butters our, you know, intelligence and comes rolling and goes, they got it buried in the yard and Boker machine gun positions, the house. And you just looked at me and with this big smile on your face, like, I guess you guys are going to get something. And I was like, I guess I mean, that's and that attitude, instead of being like, you know, if you looked at me like, oh, no.
Yeah. Do you do you think you maybe we shouldn't go on this, you know, it was like now you just start you were like smiling and laughing about it. Not look, obviously we'd planned and contingencies in place that we weren't being callous about it, but it was that attitude was contagious for everybody.
You know, our Markley rolling out on the as the lead turret gunner like Mark, if you are lucky tonight, everybody's a winner, you know, so pay attention to that because it's really easy.
It's really easy. It's really easy to let that bad attitude come out and you just stifle that thing, you just need to stifle it. And anybody that wants to talk to me about being transparent and showing your feelings, I'll say no, no, actually, just be quiet. Just shut up. And what you need to do is you go, oh, this is going to suck. And I'll look at life and say this. You guys are going to get some.
Watch this. Let's go. Let's go. Bring it.
The importance of endurance on the battlefield is underlined by Grant's philosophy, the idea that in every battle there may come a moment when each side is fought out and ready to quit and the belief that in such a moment, victory will go to the side, which is able to make one final effort. In the heat of a firefight, the poor commander will not be able to lead men into danger to make them attack or keep order. When he and his men are under hostile artillery fire, he won't be able to execute his plans.
Instead, his men will forget teamwork and follow their own plans in fighting for survival. Therefore, he must take every opportunity to make your men confident in your ability to command and of the skill and toughness of your unit. Unit morale, the prospect of entering battle puts every soldier under severe nervous strain, dangers, real and imaginary, are thick around them. The commander can overcome much of this strain and strengthen the mental endurance of his men by teaching them in advance.
What to expect an event foreseen and prepared for will have little harmful effect.
You were talking about Grant's philosophy there and I was thinking about Chamberlain, that at Gettysburg we were just at Gettysburg for EAF battlefield.
And I mean, they you know, he and the 20th man charged fixed bayonets and charge down the hill in the round top. That was the absolute last ditch effort.
They didn't have any ammo. I mean, it was it was it was it was, you know. Mm. Close to to losing that battle. And that would have changed the entire tide of the battle, you know, if we're on top of it. And so I think that's such a phenomenal example of to me that's that default aggressive mindset of like, hey, OK, we're going to be default aggressive to to continue this and that one last push is going to change the entire outcome.
There's a famous boxing match with Muhammad Ali. And I want to say. I want to say.
I can't remember which match it was, but it is a brutal boxing match and at one point both fight Muhammad Ali's all beat up and whoever he was for, I forget it was it was an incredible fight.
But he gets back to his corner and he's telling his corner, caught him off.
He's done. Cut my gloves off. I'm done. And basically his corners, like you got, you know, you got to keep going. And they look over and the other guy didn't answer the bell.
So, like, that's that's where it's at.
Like, if you you can give up right there, that's something to think about, you know, like can you just go a little bit more, can you just go a little bit more.
Back to the book in combat, you really see the critical importance of high morale and esprit de corps morale must be high enough to stand the shock and boredom of combat. You know, actually, before I continue here, I want to say this, that thing about giving people a heads up about what they're going to face like that, you know, you're going to like if you have had fighters where they got their first big, although they're on the big stage, maybe they're in the UFC for the first time or whatever, they get nervous and they don't know what that is.
No one ever told them, hey, man, you're going to feel you know, you're going to feel sick. You're going to feel butterflies. Tito Ortiz, Dean used to corner Tito a lot and Tito and they just they just had a show about Tito versus Chuck. And one of the scenes you can see it's Tito. He's right about to walk out and he's throwing up, just viciously throwing up. And I remember Dean telling me Tito would get so nervous before fights that he would just start throwing up, but he understood what it was.
Now, imagine you you just going in your first fight and all of a sudden you start you want to throw up and someone just be like, hey, just go ahead, throw up to get it out, you know, just get it out of your system. It's the same thing in combat. You've got to say, hey, listen, you're nervous. It's OK if you're jittery, if you're if you feel sick, if you whatever, it's OK.
That's just your body. Focusing its energy towards where it needs to be focused is perfectly fine. But if you don't know that it can be a problem, back to the book.
So morale must be high enough to stand the shock and the boredom of combat. Every man must be strong, must strongly believe that what he is doing is right. He must have supreme confidence that he can deal with any situation that he is a better fighter than the enemy. Esprit de corps is unit morale. Every man must feel that his unit is a superb fighting unit and that he, like the rest, will sacrifice even life itself for the unit.
The spirit is often the difference between mediocre and superior armies. It was strong in the Roman legions and the French troops under Napoleon recognized, though, that the commander must inspire beyond a group, a spree only deep personal conviction springing from the identification with the cause will drive a man forward when his unit is destroyed or scattered.
Personal example, the commander should be a model soldier.
He must master the technique of war as it fits his assignment. He must improve and expand his technical knowledge. The commander must strive to make it possible for every soldier to say truthfully, the old man knows the old man always knows the right thing to do.
In addition, he must exhibit daily a fine example of stamina and courage besides his own example, the higher commander is also represented by his staff officers. They, too, must reflect the superior qualities of their commander, above all.
Set the proper example. Leading by example, there you go, the model soldier soldiers morale. Show me a unit that is well-run, properly trained and ready for combat, and I'll show you a unit with high morale. No commander will readily admit that his unit's morale is anything other than excellent leadership, strategy and tactics.
People always ask you how to improve, do hard things. You can't improve morale, do hard things. As we compare units, however, it is often obvious that morale in some units is more excellent than in others. What is morale are manual on leadership defines morale is the mental and emotional state of the individual.
Although it is a complex and intangible quality, the manifestations of its absence in a unit can be detected readily in the form of poor appearance of the individuals, of the individuals and unit area, poor discipline and a low state of training.
That's something that I mean, obviously, Hackworth immediately applied that, you know, to the the hard from the hard luck to the hardcore for Italian. And I was thinking about that with Toscana Bruiser's, something that we talk about often, which is, you know, the initially we were working harder than everybody.
You know, people we're working harder than we are preparing for scenarios that we've the guys that have been to Iraq previously that and won't we trained for this crazy multi casualty scenario, you know, that we we didn't experience it like that on the on the battlefield or when these doctors say, hey, you guys are good to go, and we say, you know what, we need to do a few more runs. And there was grumbling around that.
People were people were saying, hey, we're working harder than, you know, we're coming in early, we're staying late. We're not taking the night off and going out drinking beers in town. We're actually planning and training and and preparing, you know, and it's interesting to think about how those complaints just faded away as our performance increased. And I mean, that was morale.
That's that's morale increasing to say we're tasking a bruiser. Hey, why are we working harder than, you know, these other tasking? Because we're tasking a bruiser.
That's why. Because we strive to be better than everybody and that's what we're going to do.
And that's I mean, that's that's a that's awesome.
One on one more stuff I stole from Haak, Hackworth, one on one.
Several adjuncts to morale chart, three good management, we all like to be in a unit where things run smoothly, where things are planned, where men do not have to hurry up and wait adequate information. Men like to be kept informed ahead of time of things that affect them or are apt to affect them. It is far better for the commander to keep his men informed than have the men seek to get such information from rumors. High state of training.
If a unit is not well trained, its men know it. This fact shakes their confidence, especially if they anticipate the possibility of using that training in the critical situation. Chances for advancement progress is morale raising to all men, knowing that advancement is possible and that excellent performance and preparation lead to promotion helps morale, good physical and mental condition, good physical condition goes hand in hand with good mental condition. These two elements are basic to achieving good morale.
Good administration men like to know that they're paying accounts and individual records are correct, confidence and equipment are the best equipment of best equipped army in the world. Confidence in commanders, men expect their commanders to know their jobs, to share the hardships with them and to take a personal interest in their problems. You will not know whether a particular officer or soldier has a problem.
Until someone has heard his case, a willing ear will gain much confidence. Comfortable quarters.
I'm paraphrasing some of these mess, good food, mail service, medical attention, post exchange facilities, leaves and passes, religious services and character guidance.
It is especially important that a army be made up of mostly young soldiers, be provided with facilities for religious services in accordance with their preferences. A program of character guidance will help to continue in the service the wholesome influence of home and community life. Awards and letters of commendation. Standards soldiers like to be in a sharp unit, they appreciate achievement of high standards and discipline, dress, housekeeping, police, maintenance, training and athletics. The lift and morale that comes from impressive and well executed military ceremonies is an important factor.
That kind of reminds me, like groupies, you know, at the team and everyone, like, hates groupies or Guillermo's or got group groupies and then you get together and you do some awesome work, workout together. And after you're like, that's awesome.
That was great. You know, we just got some little help from external sources that it was. We'll move on to this in a second.
But just got a little some little help from external sources that it was Ali Frazier when that fight happened, when that fight I was talking about earlier happened and it was Frazier, his Fraziers corner was basically saying, you're done.
And Ali was over telling his corner, caught him off, I'm done. And Fraziers Corner said, you can't. You're done. And that was it. Ali Ali's corner. No, you can't call out. You're fighting again. You're fighting more. And he decided to stick. You know, that was it you want for an ex. He he held on for an extra three seconds. And got the victory after a 15 round war or a 14 round war going into the 15th round, but I like that.
Like I know look, I know I'm not the most talented and gifted person in any way, shape or form, but I know that I, I if someone's if I'm having a hard time, I know someone else is, too. And I know that I will answer the bell and I know that's going to that's going to be a problem. That's going to be a problem for somebody.
You know, that's I think for a lot of us, it's kind of human nature to focus on yourself, you know, and think, oh, if you're having a struggle and it's you know, it's something you talk about, whether it's, you know, disrupting this freedom, waking up, you know, the alarm early in the morning and how it's like you're a human being. It's hard for you. It's hard for anyone to do that. But it's we kind of like to think, oh, it's harder for me.
And without recognition of, like, man, this is it's hard for everybody. And if I can push a little bit harder, it's going to give me the advantage. I figured that out in hell week for me. I wasn't the fastest runner. I wasn't a fast swimmer. But like by like day two of hell week, everyone is crushed. I was like, dude, I'm good to go. Like I all of a sudden I can I can hang with guys that were way faster runners than me.
You know, they were hurt more and and it's like even the score. So I think that's that gives you a pretty huge advantage if he can keep trying to. Yeah. The tough times.
Yeah. That with that the normal face philosophy for sure.
So much like I obviously thing about like a jujitsu situation or whatever, where you're competing against someone directly, where if they're gassing or whatever they're they're in a state of extreme adversity will say and they interpret because just like how you saying you're like, hey, we're so focused on ourself, I'm focused on how tired I am. I don't know how tired this guy is. All I have really is, is external, what he's doing or looking like. But if the other guy's just like cruising in his face like he's really comfortable, you're like, man, I can't compete with this at all.
So now you want to give up even more.
You can never like the joke about normal face is no joke, man. It really isn't. It really, truly isn't. And you talk about you talk about, you know, like how many times have you seen me? Like we're doing jujitsu or even not you trained with me, but me trained with anybody, me trained with Dean Lisk, you know, training with somebody that's better than me, that's giving me a run. Have you ever seen, like, a look on my face of just, like, despair?
No, so and so and so.
And I told this story probably more than once before already on here. But there is a time where you were rolling with Dean.
And, you know, with all due respect, you use kicking your ass pretty bad, too.
And I was like, dang jakovčić and you guys were going hard. That's the thing. And that's the part that really, like, stuck with me. I'm like, man, I'm seeing right now, like hard green.
I scrambled and scrambling and you scrambling any scrambling and then you kind of it. But you guys weren't even doing that. I was like, man, and you're getting your ass kicked. So I'm like Choco's in a world of hurt right now. Then he had you in Mount Double Snowing.
And I'm like, I would be I was feeling literally, like physically claustrophobic because of how tired I was, like empathetically getting from watching you guys and like, how your arms were, whatever. I was like, man, I don't know how he can even take that or whatever. And then you ended up sort of getting out on the ground ended and I was looking at your face and you're just like kind of like that's what you do every day kind of thing.
I was like, I don't know.
That's what I knew is like, OK, this is a little bit different than the normal person.
You know, you do that even when probably the lowest point that I've seen you when Seth Stone and I came to visit you in the hospital after your next surgery and we went and bought you a big, like Denny's burger, you know, like double cheeseburger, like, we're going to go let's go see JoCo. You just had a surgery and we roll up there and you were just in and you were like normal. I knew you were hurt bad because you didn't like like just set it down over there, but you were still like normal face.
And I don't know what you look like before we walked in there, but you definitely turned on normal face. Yeah. When you know and I knew you had to be in massive pain, you just coming out of next surgery. You know, I had all these nerve issues and they had you on a bunch of drugs yourself, but you even still the normal face. Well, it's freaking surgery because of Dean Lister. That's ridiculous. But it's a real thing.
And also, I mean, look, if you've come to me with many times with all kinds of, you know, bad bad news, you know, whether it's just, hey, you know, whether even it's just some stupid like I'm thinking of some dumb stuff, like you lost some gear, right?
Some let's say some critical gear, which you did or your platoon did, which means you did like it.
Like, you know, you come to me and you go, hey, hey, boss, we lost this. That the other thing. And I go, OK, well, looks like when I filled out paperwork, right. Like it's a real thing. And if I can't control my emotions because you lost a piece of gear, your platoon lost piece of gear, like, well, how am I going to react to. By the way, when you're saying I lost a piece of gear like we're talking about, like I'm coming and telling you a loss of fifteen thousand dollar pair of like PVS 15 like night vision, which can be used by the enemy.
Yeah. Which is a big deal.
Or we lost a kick 13, which is, you know, cryptologic device that, you know, that we use for radios.
It's a cryptozoological device that when you lose means the entire country of America has to update their cryptologic O'Groats, which is a giant deal.
And so for JoCo to just give you the normal face on that, it's actually the worst. It's like your dad telling you he's he's he's not angry. He's just disappointed. I mean, it's actually the worse, because if you were like, dude, are you kidding me?
You know, like, I would look at it, it would be desirable, which I was like, Roger and just looks back at you like, you know, we're getting angry.
Doesn't it give you like maybe it's on the other side of, like, your brain or something, but doesn't it give you, like, a big sense of comfort, like, OK, at least this is manageable. Like it's a big deal, but at least it's manageable because like, if you're already kind of freaking out for whatever reason and you bring it to him, who's like part of the reason you're kind of apprehensive about the whole thing, to say the least, and he doesn't freak out.
So it's like it feels like in your mind, you're like, OK, maybe this this whole chaotic situation that just emerged is kind of manageable, more.
Well, I mean, look, to me, there's there's there's definitely like it's more difficult to handle.
A boss is like doesn't freak out about it. Right. We're like because you don't want to let the boss down, you won't let that boss. And you're like, hey, man is like Roger, you know. And it's a it's it's it's harder.
It's more. But I guess to your point, it's you're going to I'm going to actually fix that problem. I want to make sure it doesn't happen again. Whether if you do if you flipped out about it and, you know, yelled and screamed at me, then that's my punishment. Whereas the punishment for me is knowing like, it's constructive because I know, like, I got to get this because we can't let this happen again. This is a massive issue.
Hey, OK, I know we get to send out a message and tell the entire US military and Department of Defense send out a jackass message. Yeah. So you know what? I'm going to start writing the message right now. Let me do it.
It's you know, that's that's that's probably not the best example I could have picked, because as I'm thinking about it, what you're saying is accurate. Like, it's it's more tormenting for me just to be like, all right, cool. Roger, you know, as opposed to being like, I can't believe you did that because now you can be like you are such a jerk. And it's almost like, you know, we can have a little spat as opposed to me just late, just.
Saddling you with unbearable guilt for letting me down. But look, the reality is it's gets the problem fixed. It gets the problem fixed.
I mean, it's not unbearable guilt. It's like, OK, we can't let that happen again. This is a huge deal. And we've got to get we got to we got to I'm going to make sure this doesn't happen again, which is going to be better for me. Got to be better for you. Going to be better for our team. Got to be better for everybody rather than like, oh OK. I got yelled at, you know, and and that's the end of it, you know.
Yeah. And even like when they flip out on you or something, you're like, yeah, it messed up, but like he didn't have to flip out on me like that, you know.
So it kind of like justifies but it kind of gives you it gives you a cause right and left and just lost his mind with me on that. You don't mean you go back to the platoon, you go do Jocke, which totally freak out. He's freaking out about this. That guy turns a mountain in a molehill every time, right. All of a sudden it's me against you. And then it turns into me against your platoon.
So it's just all bad.
One thing I will say about normal face, and I could say this because anybody that knows me knows that I'm probably the worst one of the worst normal faced guy ever like it is a real struggle for me to, like, maintain normal face.
It's funny because I.
I mean you. Yes. It is not a strength of yours, but you are better now because bad back in the day, it was just like I would be look at you going, oh, this is my face. Getting is turning red.
Just clenching your teeth. I'd be like, oh Jack, let's get split up. This ought to be good. I'd be thinking like, please, please don't say anything until the boss leaves or whatever. I'll handle it.
Dude, you don't have to say anything. And yeah, that would be good. But what I was going to say is this is a great example of this when it goes freedom. Right. And your kids, I mean, I've known them since they all are super little and watched them growing up. And you have helped them train them in that like like help. You're practicing that. And it's something that you got to practice, something you have to you can get better with reps, even if you're not naturally good at it.
Like me, you can definitely get better with reps. And so I've improved. I got a long way to go still, but I think you've got to be thinking about it all the time. And that's you know, we've talked about on the podcast years ago when I was here, like, you're the chaos at home. I got young kids at home. That's a great example to, like, accept that as like, OK, I'm not going to spin up.
This is a good chance to practice normal face right now. When I'm upset, I'm frustrated. We're not getting out the door for the road trip or whatever it is that we all get. I get spun up about all the time.
And it's a if you accept that is like a training opportunity, then when you actually need to use normal face, you will actually be much better at doing it.
Right. You mentioned like training in the kids and stuff.
The whole reason it's called normal face is because it's an actual game that this guy plays, played whatever with the kids with it.
It's like, what is the wrapping paper? The rest of the cardboard left over from the wrapping paper, the tube.
I've witnessed the he you that look, I did it to one.
We had a guy that showed up in Ramadi, a new guy who's a great dude, but he showed up and he's a happy guy and he had a and he would smile all the time.
Right. We're talking Private Pyle, you know.
And so I'd look at him go, hey, you can't be walking around, like, smiling like that. You're a freakin team guy. You need to represent where we are to ask you to bruiser, not task unit freakin smileys. So I played normal face with that guy. You know, I'm talking about OK. Yeah. And it was so funny because, I mean, I was laughing so hard because he could not even come close to not smiling.
And the more I did it and the harder I hit him, the harder I was laughing. He was laughing. It was pretty funny.
One one normal face game I'm thinking about was was your oldest daughter when she was probably probably seven maybe.
And we were at your house and on the pull up bar in the garage. Do you remember that now. And you're like, get up there. She'll probably pullups. You can do that. She gets up, she crankshafts bullwhips like awesome. And then, you know, maybe she wasn't even seven because she was way off the ground, you know, you, like, lifted her up there to get there on the whole side, bulbar freakin. So she's like four feet off the ground.
And and you were like and you're like, I will not catch you. And she's hanging on the bar like I will not catch. She's like, daddy, like I mean, while you're at your hands are like right there. Yeah. But she gets them. And I was just like and you know what she actually was like. You could see initially she was like God.
And then, then she was like, she just went like normal face and then she dropped off. You got her.
It was like, yeah, well you also have to train your kids to deal with just unknown terror.
Folley Breaking Broken Bones. Sorry, kids. I know that's the way she turned out, all right. Great.
She's outstanding. Yeah, I you know, it's a learning process. You know, you learn you learn about, you know, you learn about controlling your emotions, life. I've learned a lot about parenting.
So I feel like with the kids practicing or taking opportunities to practice normal face, one hundred percent of the time is a good method.
It's a good method and it is a great thing. Like no joke. It is a great thing for a leader to be able to control your emotions because your emotions. We already talked about this. If I'm panicking, if reports to me some news and I panic, he's going to panic. Everybody panic. It's going to be mayhem if he sees me go. All right. All right. Got it. You know, it's like, OK, you know, I've had, like, at the muster, you know, the Masters, there's there's timeline's and there's you got to be at a certain place at a certain time, you know.
And I've had Jamie come up to me, you know, the so we don't have any of that stuff yet.
It's like, OK, and you can see that she's kind of panicked about it.
You know, we don't have the labels for the whatever to pass out stuff like, OK, we'll pass them out tomorrow.
And she's like, OK, you know, just like it's all good. But that that's an awesome thing then. And that's powerful. I mean, you and I were just talking about this today, right. With some some excellent rosoff. And in our strategic growth and things that I was really spitting up about and really stressing on, you're like it's not that big of a deal, you know, and that is that's something that is that perspective. You know what?
Someone's emerged when someone is immersed in the details of things and they're like, it's the weight bearing down on them or like, man, this is going to happen. It's real easy to get stressed out about that. So it's a powerful thing. Yeah. That also, you know, falls into some implied intent. Right. Of me and leaving you with the impression that something needs to be perfect because. Well, you know me like I like things to be squared away.
And then all of a sudden you've got something that's not squared away and you start trying to fix this problem. And it's you're investing more than it's worth into the problem. And it's because I am giving you the wrong implied intent that, hey, you know what? If it's that much investment, I don't want you to make that much investment of time into something that's really not going to have a massive impact strategically.
So, like, I got to do a better job of going, oh, you know, let me know if something's a struggle. Where have I done this before?
Like, hey, if it's going to cost, this would be really cool to have. It'd be really cool if we executed this.
But if we can't, don't worry about it, you know, don't invest more than X amount of hours.
Hey, go look at it for two hours. If we can't do it, we know we won't do it. No factor. It'd be cool if we can. But let's not let's not lose sleep over it.
Whereas, you know, it's like once again, going back to Gettysburg. What I need to remember is if. If General Lee tell Stonewall Jackson to do something, he's going to freak and do it and he doesn't care what price he has to pay to accomplish that mission. Well, if I if I mentioned to you, like, hey, this would be cool to have and you're like, cool. And now now all of a sudden you're paid the ultimate price to make something happen.
And you look up, you know, three weeks later and you've spent money and time and it's like, you know, like I got it done or or maybe we can't execute what your vision was. It's like, OK, don't worry about it.
But that's not a good normal face, you know, it's a little bit too much. So, yeah, it happens.
The final thing I'll say about normal faces, I love that my kids now have been influenced. I'll be like we call it JoCo normal face.
So when you when you say, you know, we pretty much brand everything as JoCo around here. So we're good when I say execute JoCo normal face and they're like smiling probational like boom, it's on you. It's awesome. I my one year old, not so much yet, but my four year old. Six year old they get. So that's legit. That's legit. All right.
Back to the book chart number for evidence. So we were on this old thing talking about morale and this is evidence of morale and discussing the subject of morale with visitors. I often ask and am asked, what do you look for in a unit or in order to gauge the morale? Since morale is influenced by so many factors, there are naturally many indications of the state of morale.
The things I know quickly and sizing up a unit include going through some of these saluting dress, Good Housekeeping, pride. Prior to going to that one little bit, are the men eager to show their accomplishments, do they point to their unit's history with pride? Do they have something good to sell and try and sell it? Participating in charities athletic program in support of teams, an athletic program enthusiastically supported, is always a favorable indication of morale, church attendance, soldiers deposits and other savings.
A man who saves his money each month is banking on his future. And as well, it is usually a well-adjusted and confident soldier.
When there are many such soldiers in a unit, there is a depth of stability in the organization. But commanders should not attempt to coerce the men to participate in this program, you know, just for for for all leaders, really. This is probably one of the things when I look back at my military career that I did a pretty horrible job of, and that was that. I never said, all right, guys, here's what you should do with your money.
Here's some here's some moves to make. You know, here's some things that you should do here, some things that you shouldn't do.
So just if you're a leader, especially if you're a military leader, look, when you're a when you're in a lot of kids that join the military, myself included, hey, when I got to the teams and I was an E for in the teams, I was the richest person in the world.
And, you know, I got that paycheck every two weeks and I was ready to rock and roll, making it real.
It was great.
And, you know, I really wish somebody along the way would have said, hey, man, that's cool. You know, you're going to make whatever five thousand dollars this month.
You know what? I know you like to get after it and go have a good time. And you should and you should do that with four thousand dollars, not with four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine dollars. So if you're in a position where you can help people plan their economic future, please do that. You know what?
It's funny that you're actually saying that because you have of all the people I worked with in 13 years in the Navy, like you're the only one that did that.
And maybe not only like a unlike a you didn't like have a presentation to the entire task unit.
You know, maybe you could done something. We should have, but you had a lot of direct interaction with a whole lot of people and helped direct them. And, you know, our our influence are encourage you to do something. You know, I go in the right.
Yeah. I think to your point, I think guys that were close to me, I would be like, hey, bro, what you need to do is this. And so that's cool. But, you know, I should have been doing it for everybody and I didn't. And the reason is I didn't really care about that stuff. Honestly, I didn't really think about it. I didn't really think about that. I just thought about, hey, we just want to be good frogmen and a good task unit, a good platoon, you know, like that's it.
That's what we're here for. So I should have been think a little bit deeper about that. But if you're in that position, do it.
Enlistment and reenlistment records a wall when such offenses are reasonably easy to commit and the number of offenses is low, it is indicative of high morale.
Sighs A sick call Court-Martial rates incidents and accidents. Complaints about the inspector general. This is another classic thing, right?
So complaints to the inspector general. Sorry, this is complaints to the inspector general. Later in the book, he talks about how you should be open and ready to being inspected if you everyone hates inspections and doesn't want the commander to come down and he says you should be waiting for that. And it's very similar to our attitude in Ramadi, which which I absolutely stole from the XO of the first of the five or six or sorry. Yeah, the XO, the first the ops officer from the first the five or six who as soon as we got there, there's an investigation happening.
And he and I was like, how what you get investigated for it. He goes, oh this, that and the other thing and or this thing. And I said, Oh, is that how is that going to work out? He goes, I love it. When we get inspected, he goes, I want them to come and inspect and see what we're doing and see what it's like down here and see what it's like to live down here and let them understand what's going on in the front lines.
And I, I absolutely adopted that policy.
And what's cool is what he says in this book is, you know, you why are you afraid of being inspected? You shouldn't have nothing to hide. So if you're if you're afraid of being inspected, that's a problem. And let's fix the things so that you can be. Open to being inspected, you know, we talked about that and extreme ownership, right, leading up the chain of command and how we invited our commander to come down and see what we're doing and invite our operations officer and their staff to be there.
But that's it's the complete opposite, though, of what everybody else. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Everybody else's mindset was like, get the boss man away. We don't want him around here. We want to be able to. And what they wanted to be able to get away with was like really minuscule stuff like uniforms around the camp, like attendance at meetings, little things that don't really matter.
And yet what we gain by having them come out and visit us was a deep understanding of our mission, how we were mitigating risk, what resources we needed.
I mean, it's it's it's a no brainer.
And yet nobody does that because they don't want the the scrutiny of the big boss man, the wrong attitude, next action, outside influence on morale, the factors and indications of morale covered so far, concerned things generally within the control of the commander. But there are influences on the morale of the soldiers, especially those on duty in a far off land, which stem from the attitudes of officials, the press, radio commentators and public at home.
The soldiers should feel that he is needed and that his sacrifices are the of immediate and long range benefit to his country, his home, his family and himself. He should feel that his unit is in is as important to him as his family, that he is just as important to the unit.
He will feel that importance as long as the people at home feel that he is sensitive to public opinion at home and because of good radio, newspaper and mail facilities, isn't constantly aware of attitudes at the home toward the importance of his job.
That's an interesting perspective compared to totally all.
You know, if we were reading newspapers and watching TV, you know, the particular in 2006, the Iraq war, it was just constant negative coverage. Quagmire, we can't win. You know, this is terrible. We just have to tune that stuff out. Yeah. And it's it's even more pronounced now with social media. Do we have social media? Was there social media for us? And in Ramadi, it was like MySpace.
And actually, I do remember Mark leaves always come back and get on Facebook. So it exists. Yeah, Facebook existed, but it was not I think like MySpace was still like the dominant three thousand six echo.
Where were we at? Social media was two thousand six is correct. Yes, just kicking. It was like tween MySpace and MySpace.
It was like a music, something you could put music so on. So MySpace was legit social media back then.
Yes. And before that. And before that. Yeah. 2007, 2006. What year what year did Facebook come to prominence.
Oh I don't know the exact year but that's when you know, when it was, it was rolling it was for sure. But MySpace was still going on as well.
But there was a lot less people on all these things, you know what I mean? Now. Now it's the now it has replaced free iPhone.
So you couldn't access it with your phone. You don't access it through the you know, your your computer.
Yeah. That was like barely like right.
When pictures to the Internet started going, like not all phones had cameras.
So bottom line, we got to pay attention to the influence on morale from outside our organization. Pay attention to it.
This next section is called Junior Officers Conferences.
And and it says there are always many newly commissioned officers, fine officers in the Army. They have come from many sources. Some of these young officers have demonstrated outstanding ability in combat. Others have not had this experience. Few of them have had the time or opportunity to become fully indoctrinated with the duties and responsibilities required of an officer. The standards and responsibilities of an officer are, in many respects more exacting and more difficult to discharge in peacetime than in combat.
Consequently, officers conferences should be conducted for all junior officers to review the duties and responsibilities. So what I what am I saying?
What he's saying is that, look, you should meet with your your subordinate leadership and educate them and teach them.
And I often ask this question to clients. I say, has anyone here had a person that invested in them personally and, you know, most of the time. Especially when I'm talking to leaders, most of the time people will raise their hand and say, you know, oh yeah, you know, I've had I had this person that took me under their wing or and then I say, well, how does that how did that make you feel?
And obviously, everyone says, oh, yeah, that makes you feel great, makes you feel like you can do well. And it's a person that's encouraging you. And then I say, how many people are you doing that for right now? And like, there's less hands. Right. And so we take this investment of the people that raised you like the people that raised me in the teams. Right. What if I take that investment? I just hold on to it.
Don't give it to anybody else. That's horrible.
And it's not continuing to grow the capabilities of the community. There's there's there's something deeper there that when he said roles and responsibilities, are you reviewing roles and responsibilities with them? And I think that's something that, you know, the JOCO brief that you would give in like the junior officer training course, when I was running training for two years, I ran training for all school officers or graduating from our our basic training pipeline.
And you came in would you have you come in to give the Jakiel brief? And it was the same thing that you briefed to the task units and platoons going through the work up. And I think one of the most important parts of that was the roles and responsibilities.
So it's great to mentor.
I mean, you're right, people don't invest in or people agree with 100 percent. But I think a lot of people don't know how to mentor people. And what he's saying there, I think, which is if you've got to make their roles and responsibilities clear and you broke down, I mean, it was it was it was shooter. You know, your job is to make things happen. You know, get down all the grass that you have.
You have it listed out all the way. Fire team leader, you know, take your four guys, lead your fire team, support your squad. You have the squad leader. Then you had the platoon commanders, you had the assault chief. You had the, you know, assault force commander, the ground force commander, et cetera. And that was a really powerful document. So much so that I've had several several very successful seals, including good friends of yours, who have reached out to me and said, hey, can we get a copy of that?
Yeah, because it really, without breaking that down, enables you to execute with confidence. If you know what your roles, responsibilities are, then you can actually step up and execute with confidence. And I think that's a a really people don't define that.
But you do find in a way it was easy to understand and enable people to execute. And I think that's a great that's a key thing to to mentor people on.
One of the key parts of that, when I would get done talking about what the roles and responsibilities of everyone was, I would say, OK, now that you know your roles and responsibility, you also have to understand the person below you in the person above you of the chain of command. You have to understand what their roles and responsibilities are. And if you have to, you have to either ascend or descend into the situation where you can solve a problem and do their job as soon as you get a problem solved.
You can't get stuck there. You have to elevate yourself up to the next position. The last thing that I would start saying to guys once they were done with Josee, now I'm talking to platoons is I would say listen, and I would usually say this just to like the headset.
I would say, listen, here's the roles and responsibilities.
I don't actually care who does these things, but you better figure it out because sometimes you might have a platoon chief that hadn't been in the teams for a few years and he had some platoon commander that had just gotten back off deployment. Or you'd have whatever the case may be, maybe the LPO just got done. Teaching assault's out at, at, trade at and now he's in the platoon or just got back from land warfare. So he's going to really know how to do that job.
So I'd say, listen, it doesn't really matter which one you have now. I'll tell you basically, and this is what I always say, basically enlisted guys, you're the tactical experts. You handle the problem that you got at hand, officers.
You need to figure out what the next move is going to be. And that was the general thing. But then I'd say, listen, if this officer, like, doesn't have any experience whatsoever and maybe the LPO is kind of badass and the chief is I'd say, listen, listen, officer, you need to look to your chief and he needs to elevate a little bit and figure out what's going to do next.
So and that's the reason that happened, was because as I put more and more platoons through training, I saw that some platoons, they just didn't they they had a mismatch. They had some prior enlisted officer that was freaking just a bad ass, knew everything, or they had a chief that was been out of the loop for a while.
And so OK. But like I said, so eventually I would say, listen, I don't really care how you guys break these up, but you have to know who's responsible for what.
And one man cannot do all these jobs. It's not possible for one man to do all these jobs.
I seen some bad ass seals with tons of experience come through here and they might be able to pull it off or on OP or two ops and then something's going to happen. And all of a sudden it's going to be overwhelmed and other people have to be able to back him up, not to mention if someone is doing all these jobs, I'm going to kill them and you better figure it out.
I remember that.
Don't get stuck there and yell, still get stuck there.
It's like, OK, so the reason I wanted to cover this section is because it says this. So we're talking about these junior officer conferences. These conferences should be conducted by commanders themselves in on an informal basis, lieutenants and separate companies and detachments may be invited to join groups from units commanded by a field grade officer. Group should not be too large.
Preaching should be avoided. I read this whole section just so I could say that preaching should be avoided. These conferences can well can well be the means of improving the unit team under the coaching of its captain, the unit commander. These conferences may consist of one hour meetings. He goes he goes into some detail about how to do it. But the fact that he's saying, look, you're not bringing people in there to preach on how to do things, you're bringing their educate to have discussions.
And he's got the whole topic of discussions here. Military courtesies, personal standards, military discipline, promotions, unit history, esprit de corps accomplishments, missions, troop information, morale, self education of our officers, professional publications, responsibility for he's got everything security classification, use and misuse of military vehicles. So basically it's like tell the guys what's going on. That's what he's saying.
You have to tell people what's going on.
And then he's got this commander's checklist for success in this. We've been already been going for a while, so this will probably be the last thing we cover. Every commander at every echelon should maintain a continuing checklist to be left for or given to his successor to command, this checklist should contain items of value that will assist the new commander in becoming familiar with his command more rapidly than if he had had to uncover the same items over a period of time.
Such items must consist of one significant strengths and weaknesses of key officers non-commissioned officers in the command boom.
Isn't it weird that we might be in charge of people and know that we would have to turn this over and not keep track of like who's what strength and weaknesses?
Our next important policy matters announced by senior commanders and not contained in S.O.P or directives. So you're tracking this stuff.
A good turnover's is such an important thing to to do. And what I think is important about a turnover. It's great to have it to turn over to the next unit.
But what it does is it forces you to actually think through how you are operating. And when you force yourself to think through how you're operating, you define it, you refine it, you codify it, and now it becomes stronger.
Just like when you just like when you write down these principles, just like when you formulate a standard operating procedure and you just like when you teach a jujitsu move or you write out how you do, any time that you study what you're doing, you will get better at it.
And that's what this commander's checklist for successors. I said success is for success for someone is going to take your place that you know, what part of that do I think is.
Yeah, that's self analysis you're talking about is like, hey, what did we screw up? What do we learn from it? I remember giving a turnover one time on a follow on deployment. And when the new unit came in, the new CEO to take taken over for four US and one of the one of the senior leaders was like, you disagree, turn over. You know, you guys were given here. Really, this is one of the best tours I've seen.
I'm like, why? Like, why did you say that? I kind of caught me off guard. I was like, why didn't he say that? He's like, because you're telling us all the stuff that you screwed up.
And it was it's it's really, you know, when you have a unit turning over things like people coming in, like get these idiots out of here, we're going to take take over, even though we've been there for six months learning. And I was like, man, how are you going to learn from us to continue the mission to be more effective if we don't tell you what we screwed up? But clearly, he wasn't used to that and most people weren't doing that.
And I think that thinking deeply about it and if you care about the mission that you want, you want the people to be successful. I mean, we try to set up the next SEAL team for sure. You know, Steve Ward, his guys there.
Yeah. Speaking to Steve Ward. He can be on the podcast sometime real soon, names and personalities of individuals outside the command with whom it is necessary to associate new business areas of training weaknesses within the command. So reporting the weaknesses like you just talked about, disciplinary matters, security matters, critical equipment shortages. So that's that's that section. And here's the last thing. We'll cover vigilance. And by the way, where we are on page 13 right now, so, yeah, we are on page 13 of this book, there's one hundred and seventeen pages, one page 13, a unit operational readiness status status must be ready for immediate employment at all times.
Regardless of how well a unit has been trained, the commander cannot allow it to become lax and let down its guard. World War Two and the Korean conflict were started by surprise attacks on Sunday mornings. These surprises remind us that we must be ready for anything seven days a week, twenty four hours a day, we cannot relax our vigilance. In any way that would contribute to disaster. So there you go, like I said, that is the first 13 pages, I'm only I'm only two thirds of the way through my second just gets our house number just going up.
Look up. I'll get to the rest of this. I'm sure I'll cover this thing.
But it's just incredible to see how these principles remain the same over time, and it's so intriguing to uncover the roots of Hackworth, an about face and there by the roots of me and a view and of extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership and leadership, strategy and tactics. There's a thread you can trace through all these books.
You've got to know your roots and the better, the better, you understand? Yes, history, but the better you understand the origin of ideas and principles than the better you understand those ideas and principles themselves.
And the better leader and person you will become. Crazy. What do you think? I think that's outstanding.
I think that's incredibly eye opening and it's because I've read about face in detail and, you know, I was flipping through my copy this week as I was kind of organizing stuff in my home office and looking at just the, you know, the A tab that underlying pages in the I actually had to I put packing tape along the binder because it's been so just it's been so from overuse.
It's just been torn up and I had to reinforce it.
It's awesome to to understand where Colonel Hackworth got some of these ideas.
And and look, I'm sure you know, I'm sure also, you know, that these were learned from from mentors, you know, and from generations as well.
But incredible stuff.
Definitely making us better. Mr. Echo. Charles. Yes. Speaking of getting better.
Mm hmm. You have any maybe, I don't know, suggestions on how we can get you now that you mention it? Actually, I think that's interesting.
Your that book that you finally located, it was like a little treasure hunt, you know, the kind guys who like to look for treasure that might not even exist. You know, that can. Mm hmm.
That those you know, she's like, oh, it doesn't seem saying you only got hints of it through Hackworth.
I have I have access to all kinds of like I pay you these various websites that offer all these ancient PDF. I mean, I got the most did the dumbest subscriptions and I've been scouring these things for years, you know, nothing, nada. And how crazy is it that the month that this version of About Face comes out, I freaking find this thing?
There's one copy of it on Amazon and I have it.
It was meant to be. I have it. It's legit. JoCo got his treasure.
I have the ARCC, which is the advanced reader's copy so that an advanced readers know I don't have it in that book, but an advanced reader's copy.
When a book is going to come out, they release, they'll print like they'll print. How many how many do you think they print in current days?
I have no idea how. Well, or a thousand. No, no, no. Advanced reader copies when they call galleys. Oh, I gotcha. I'm sorry. Yeah. I don't think they print like for instance, print for extreme ownership.
I think I got six and you got six like that. And then they printed them to send to whoever. But we're talking about a few dozen.
Yeah, absolutely. Less than fifty. Right. Less than fifty.
So we're at the master and a guy named Tobin came up and he goes, I have something for you. And he gives me like a brown paper bag.
And this is just weird because it's hard to even understand this if you don't understand what an I.R.S. is and understand how rare they are that, you know, look, you get like I love first the dishes, like I love first a dish of about face.
But there's got to be one hundred thousand of those things floating around. Right. You know, you might like the first edition of extreme ownership, you know, we always joke about it, but there's hundreds of thousands of copies of the first edition of extreme ownership.
There's only probably less than 50 acres of extreme ownership.
And same with the rest of all of our books. Well, so I'm at the muster and this guy comes up to me and he goes, Yeah, I wanted to give you something. And I also appreciate it.
People give us a lot of cool stuff all the time, you know, and he hands me this paper bag and I open it up and there's a plastic there's a book in plastic, just a plastic bag. I pull it out and I look at it and it's in a version of about face that I've never seen before. And it's thinner than normal. And I go. What is this, and I pull it out of the plastic and sure enough, it's unedited advanced readers copy of About Face signed by David Hackworth.
This thing is priceless to me. Right?
So he's out there. I actually owe him copies of about face of this new version. But guess what else? I'm sending him on the arses of extreme ownership because they gave us about six each. I have all of mine.
I have mine as well. You want to know why? Why do you have yours? Why did you keep yours?
Uh, I think some of my intended to send to people and they didn't get sent and some of them I just thought they kind of go hang on to you know, I only kept I first of all, I didn't know that it was a big deal.
I didn't know that this is this whole thing. You know, we didn't know what the hell we were doing when it came to writing. So we don't know the hell we were doing. So they send us these things and I'm like, yeah, whatever.
Well, I didn't there like, you could send them to, you know, the influencers that, you know. Yeah, or I might. And so what I'm thinking is there's misspellings in this. There's some things that we edited out. I said, I don't want anyone to see this. And I just put them right in my I put them in, you know, in like a drawer somewhere.
And then, I don't know, a few years later, I started as I actually as we started doing the podcast and I started getting more into getting various books.
And I always like the first a dish thing.
But then I realized at some point that there was something better than the first dish, and that was the reader's ARCC.
I got I got something better than the readers RC and that is the the word document manuscript. Oh yeah. Which we got we've got to edit all the edits, like just the crazy edits that we went through.
Well that was crazy too, because you were you. Yeah. You were in New York when we wrote extreme ownership and we had to edit that thing. And I remember spending four hours on the phone. Going through final edits would be like, all right, page page sixty four. Hey, you said this. What do you think?
And you'd be like, oh yeah, we need you know, we would just sit there and manually go through for hours on the phone these stupid edits, you know?
And what's what's interesting is that we were talking about this the other day. There was one of the last edits that we did.
We kind of got out the freakin the clenched fist of editing and just started cutting stuff.
You know, we started getting rid of stuff that was pretty that was pretty cool.
You know, it'll be interesting to see, you know, I think particularly if you think about decades from now and what that might be like, a friend of mine showed me, you know, obviously that stuff becomes quite valuable to collectors and the people that know, you know, it's meaningful to people that it has to understand the value of what it is and how rare it is.
And a friend of mine had showed me a copy of of it was a biography of Stonewall Jackson.
And it's like he handed it to me. I was old and kind of brittle.
I felt like I was going to fall apart, opened up.
And it says, Gee, Patton day it was it was Peyton's personal copy, totally annotated like a.. Like all the notes in the margins. You know, something that General Patton went through and noted was pretty, pretty awesome. That is awesome.
I have all the books that I've covered in the podcast with all the tabs and notes and read lines and highlights and everything.
And it's freaking cool to sit there and go back because I'll go back and look at a book that I, you know, I had to cover on the podcast. And like, I didn't even come close to getting, like, everything out of this that I need to get out of this, you know, with the old breed, especially the early podcast, where we would not they weren't as long. And now I look at I go, man, go.
We get right back into that thing.
Right back into that thing you did. You did. Speaking of that, you did. Because I knew it as well, which I gave you that copy. You gave me that copy. Yeah.
It's signed by Leif Babin, not by General Patton.
I'm not quite as valuable a copy of war as I knew it.
And it is signed by Leif Babin, and I am damn proud of that. Disappointing.
Yeah. When you posted the copy that I originally gave you of About Face the other day and you know it had my by you because you made me sign it, you were like, hey bro, you need to sign this. And I was kind of like whatever you call it, what do you call it. I was like Bro, you give us my book, you need to sign the book. And I've put a date in it, you know.
Yeah.
I never give presents to anyone and so are gifts of any kind. And I've never given anything to anybody, really. Have I ever given you anything go books. Oh yeah. So yeah, I've given you some books I just gave you. I just gave you about this. Yeah. All right. So anyways but when you ask me as kind of.
I don't come from the background of giving things in in the in the on the scale of gift givers, if you know ten is greatest, one is the least Choco's like point zero to Jamie cover move Cochran cent like my scent, my oldest daughter, flowers for her birthday, whatever, a year ago or something like that from me and my daughter did not even remotely believe it.
For one second she was like Who did you get to send me flowers?
And I was like, Oh Jamie, I can't lie. I can't lie to my daughter. So there you go. Pretty cool.
So I did sign your book and and then we just we just read we reenacted the signing of the book and I put the same thing.
So there you go.
All right, Charles, speaking of getting better. Yes. You said oh. Then you started asking. Of course. Do you have any more questions? No. For the crew here. No, no, no.
That was more of my that was my takeaway. That's how it was regarding this book the whole time. Like, that's your little treasure that you found finally after your journey.
You know, I wonder what's going to happen now, like once this comes out. Is is Stackpole Books going to reissue it or is JoCo Publishing?
Somebody is going to dig their, like, grandfather's copy out and there's going to be nine of them on the Internet. I'll buy them seven hundred fifty bucks.
Yeah, I'll buy them for you.
How much old hardcover copy of about faces like they were on they were on Amazon the other day. You know, you can buy them two hundred bucks to twenty books. I have twenty copies.
All right. There we go.
Yeah. OK, all right. Getting better. Right. We're on the path. OK, we're getting better even if we're good, by the way, like, you know, what do you call. We're maintaining vigilance.
Yes. Big time for sure. But anyway, on the on our road of improvement for improvement is what we're doing. OK, we're working out every day.
All right. Not to put you too much on the on the spot, but you work out every day. I try to.
OK, so that was my answer to which, you know, that's a non answer, by the way, because there's varying levels of try not to say that that's all that matters. Yeah. Listen, the goal is work out every day. Sometimes I achieve that on, you know, on a weekly basis. Cool. I knocked it out other times. You know, life gets in the way.
But every every day, the days that I miss workouts, it's it's deeply regretful. And when you don't do that, it's a problem.
Yeah. And and I actually got to kind of be honest where if that's the goal, like for real goal, you know, to work out every day, that is a good thing as opposed to, you know, like, hey, I'm going to try to work out this week. You know, there's a difference is what I'm saying.
So well, there's a big difference being I'm going to try and work out every day and I'm going to work out every day. Yes, sir. Yeah. And then if you want to talk about just keeping it real. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. And as far as better and worse goes. For sure. For sure.
Anyway, so when we work out every single day is this conversation we're going to have with laughing, is that what's happening? Because that's what I'm feeling. I think it's, I think it's wildly unnecessary to have it with you at this time.
You know, I'd rather go see all your joints will jam you up if you let them.
I'm not going to talk too much about this right now. I don't even we appreciate that. I don't think we should anyway. I don't think we should even think about it that much at all. Joint should be a thing you don't think about.
You seem standpoint. I see where you're going with this and I like it. Yeah.
What should we be thinking about? Gaines obviously. Yes. Yes. So let the joints just be joints is the same anyway.
So the joints are monopolizing your attention. Here's what you do. Boom Jakiel. Feel joint warfare. These are for your joints for sure. Super krill oil for your age. I take off every day for sure.
Every day or you know what? Actually, I had I had an eye surgery recently, so I had to stop taking it for a little bit. And like, I know it it what's crazy about those is when you stop taking them, like, why they stopped you.
Why why did they. They didn't actually tell me to.
But like, I just, you know, I just I just didn't take them for like three or four days, you know, because you were like laid up and whatever. Not really laid up. But just just like I got out off your routine. I was off I on it. Yeah. And and it was it was like I feel it. I definitely feel it.
And and it's it ain't just it it's real.
It really is. Man you feel the joints and I think both both girl and your wife are awesome and it just keeps you kind of boom on the path in that way.
So boom. Yeah. Don't worry about joints anymore.
You don't have to is what I'm saying. Anyway, another thing you don't want to be worrying about is getting sick because that's one of those things is face it, we're not everyday like fighting to boost our immune system or something like this.
Maybe we are. Maybe I know I am not consciously. OK, so when you wake up, going to be rough, oh, yeah, well, yeah, well, you brought it up, brought it up, you brought it up.
So at 4:00 a.m., whenever you wake up, are you like, OK, let me get this immune boosting scenario cracking part of my routine.
It's consciously or unconsciously part of my routine. I have my supplements lined up when I go in to brush my teeth in the morning. Doesn't count. I do what I'm supposed to do totally doesn't count. When I go in to brush my teeth at night, I do what I'm supposed to do. That includes both brushing my teeth, taking my supplementation and flossing, which I never floss until I joined the Navy. They told me to follow I story for us.
Who do you take supplements pre workout. Yes. Yeah, me too. What are you taking?
I take three supercool three Joint Warfare and vitamin D.
Oh, like for the pre workout.
You mean like for the workout. But it's different. Not for the workout. No, but prior to. Yes I do.
Is that what you're asking. Yeah. Like is that when you take them rather than do you take something before the workout for the workout.
I'll slam some discipline go. Yes but I definitely yeah. Usually the now it's good. I just, I just. Yeah I do.
I take it every morning it's part of my routine and then at night and we had this whole I do not want to talk about this right now, but Echo did not have a routine and therefore he would miss me, just like you just said, if you got out of your routine and you miss like that's a real thing, set up a routine, follow it.
Yeah. And that's a very hard sometimes to make sure that terrorists aren't tracking you all.
Good side note. Yeah, good idea. Yeah. And when you fall out of the routine workout or taking the, you know, the supplements supplementation, as we like to say, that can sort of become the routine seem sane or part of it. It is not even thinking about it. All right.
Well, you know, way back to the immune system thing, so technically you're just like, hey, I'm going to go ahead and take this stuff so I don't have to worry about my immune system kind of thing. You're not consciously aware? Look, I'm not splitting hairs here, but it's significant. It's significant, I think. Anyway, immune system like Ultimate Point with that is you don't have to worry about that either. No vitamin D three and Common and Cold War boom, the combo.
Now, you're really not worrying about it anyway.
Also, after you're done not worrying about these things, you don't have to worry about. Now, let's start with the conscious stuff, OK? We got discipline, right? Good. Really good. Helps you think.
I would say think. But here's what I notice about this.
But this one where it's one of those ones where, you know, like when you go somewhere, like you always want to have a little drink going, whether it be water or whatever, I think this is the best thing for that.
I agree. Maybe not before we go to bed or whatever, but. Yeah, that's it.
Yeah. Yeah. I saw you pound that I, I watched you, I just crushed two of these.
Do this is my knew you were notably smarter this entire podcast. I noticed it but are you saying the bar wasn't very high. I got to say I am not a sour apple sour apple guy like I if I was a kid eating jolly ranchers like I would leave the sour apples there. Unlike JP, no sour apple sniper is legit. Yeah, it's it's awesome.
My family actually is all over the map. I mean, don't get me wrong. Dan Savage. Oh, that savage you go to Dan Savage has been my go to for a while, but the sour Apple sniper is is awesome. And I got to give I gotta give JP credit for that's legit. It's awesome. Yeah.
Those are kind of with your family on that one where here's what I found and this might be the case for others. It's the only reason I'm mentioning it. So remember. Yeah, when it first came out, I was like, man, this is the best one. A little bit better than Jacob Palmer. What? Straight up? No. So that's what I had a lot of that.
And you know what's funny is people like say it to me, like you're all in either one or two ways. One is like, you know, I kind of like the sour apples and I like the kind of ashamed to tell me.
And then the other ones, like sour up snipers way better.
Yeah, that's what you get. Yeah. Yeah.
So but I did find out there's like a deeper game within the game. It was, it was probably better leave it at it because it was new straight up because I kept pounding on sweet.
Yeah. And I'll tell you something else just just to, just to people might be thinking about this.
I want to drink this stuff all day long. I want to drink JoCo Palmer. I want to drink it all day long, but it does have caffeine in it. Ninety five milligrams caffeine. So I don't want to drink seven discipline goes. So we are making a decision go type drink that doesn't have any caffeine. But and it's it's going to be a ginger ale flavor. A ginger flavor. And I've already. Proved the taste of it, and it's it's really good and what's cool about it is it's it's on the sweet side.
I have to admit, this sour apple cider kind of started making me like the I started leaning me a little bit more sweetness. So the ginger is it's it's nice.
Sweet. But here's what made me think about it is that night, you know, you get done with your tomahawk steak. Sure.
And you have a little sweet tooth, but you're too full for a Molk because let's face it, we could go just straight to get your dessert on, but you're a little bit full of Tomahawk was bigger than normal, but you want to have a little a little sweetness to crack it open.
There you go. Decaf. Yeah, decaf. So we're working. OK, good.
Well, there it is. There's also disciplined powder. By the way, left, you mentioned pre workout.
That's my go to work out to the discipline powder with water. Most of the time we actually were talking about this like that.
I know that this one is awesome. What flavor do you like. Lemon.
Lime Tang is Lygia because JoCo Parmer powder is freaking logit.
The other day it was super skater and so I made I mean I mix up a pitcher like you do and like they do in the like they do in Texas.
Throw a big glass pitcher. I filled it up with ice, put the Jocko Palmer in there and it was a huge amount and I just drank that thing all day. It was freaking awesome. So get your JoCo Palmer on. Yeah, I agree.
But my recommendation also, you know what's cool about that, I think with the powder is you can you can dilute a little bit, you know, so you can you can you can have the entire I have a problem.
Good. Like many Americans, the problem that many Americans, myself included, have is simply stated more. It's better. So so I like mix these things.
What's these things called these these glass things? You know, we would have been the glass tumbler Tumblr.
So I get these tumblers and, you know, let's face it, you only need two scoops of discipline into one of these top glass.
Well, in your case. But I will no doubt I will no doubt put four scoops in there. More is better and it doesn't need it.
But, you know, you just think to get that extra little later, Lemon, I know it's going to be a good time at the muster when we've got a tumbler up there on the stage mixed up and you get your drinking at the bottom of it, you just get all powder.
Let's get out of the fire this thing up. You're good.
So that's, you know, OK, let's just talk about that for one second, OK? The early masters where we were disorganized on the back end, we we we had a lot of stuff to learn and so we would sleep. Not at all. I remember the New York monster. We slept well one hour, one night if that in the next night we got like an hour and 45 minutes. And everyone says you're cognitive. If you sleep less than five hours, it's like you're drunk.
Have you ever heard that? Yeah.
If you sleep less than five hours, it's like you're drunk. You're a hazard to humanity. Meanwhile, you and I are up on stage for seven straight hours that day answering questions. You know, people are coming at us with all kinds of leadership problems.
And I didn't hear you up there going, I'll tell you what that's like. How do they come up with that? Who's the scientist that says, like, well, you're drunk if you sleep less than you know? And look, I'm not trying to get crazy here. And, you know, for everyone that freaks out about this and just playing with Freedom Field Manual, I explained sleep is necessary.
I get it. It's good for you. It's healthy.
I tell everyone, get as much sleep as you can. I'm totally down for the cause sleep. It's great. But to go and say, hey, if you don't get eight hours, you're a drunk, you're an equivalent of being drunk and on acid. Think about everybody. Then we're launching on drug Phalcon. You know, we're going into south central Ramadi. Neither you or I had slept at all. Yeah, we were up four. We've been up for twenty four hours at that point and we're launching an operation where we're going to be out on the battlefield for 48 hours.
So it's like, what do you do. Like you, you just power through like you.
I mean, you know, when we, when we got into position and I got security set, like I tried to take her down for an hour, you know, just to try to get a get some shuteye while I could while I was dark before the sun came up, we knew we were going to get it on as we got attacked. But life requires that you're going to have some sleepless nights and you got to be able to get some and and you can get some more.
If you have some little bit of discipline on a little bit of discipline, go. Have we had some discipline go on. The Falcons up would have been that much better. I think Ramadi would have been secured a lot quicker.
I think the drunk reference comparison was like when you're driving.
Yeah, OK, so now they take, oh, the number of accidents that happen from people that are drunk to the number of people that fall asleep at the wheel. OK, ok, got it.
In a way I got it in a way being like overly tired driving could then again I don't know. Could be worse. Everybody's different. Could be worse. Because you you can't control it, you get to a point where you can control it, like being drunk because it's, you know, let's face it, sometimes when people are drunk behind the wheel, they get like more daring and aggressive.
So they'll, you know, it's less that like, oh, they're drunk and they drift.
So you're saying it's their attitude more than their speeding there? Yeah, this. And they sure. A lot of times you can't react as vouchers talking about lack of sleep.
So it's kind of like leaving Niland at it like two o'clock in the morning. You have the Red Bull run up and had we had some Despard go back then, obviously being that much better.
We know Shergar away would have been good to go.
So, hey, you know, again, not to split hairs, but you know, these things sometimes, you know, you add a little nuance, little explanation.
They start to make more sense. This it was what I think is what I want to talk about.
You or your kid, Molk. Molk, what else? Anything else but a bunch of cool stuff. Yeah.
And by the way, you can get an origin main dot com. You can also get them at the vitamin shop.
And yes, you can get them at a little place called Walwa in Florida and the Virginia area.
And by the way, if you're in those areas, go get some. Yeah.
Go into a Walwa. Clean it out. Yeah, it's a different situation, like I mentioned before, is it because look online, even if you've got to go, I mean, Butterman shops not as convenient store ish, like they're not everywhere or whatever, but it's a different situation.
You got to go on there. You got to make it a point to stock up and all this stuff. Right now, you can just grab one on that goes way different.
Here's what here's what the folks at Walwa wondering who wants this stuff? Should they should they put it in every store in America?
That's what they're wondering, where every store that they have, if you want to, you can support the cause.
Just clean them out, let them know we want we want it is in demand.
Is in demand for Sacco's. All right. Oh, yes.
OK, you mentioned arginine dotcom. That's where you get can get JoCo fuel, which is all of this stuff.
Also at Ortman Dotcom is jujitsu stuff, guys, Rakhat, some shirts on there and also, of course, jeans and boots. American made Delta Denim is back in the game.
By the way, if you're waiting on Delta jeans, they're back and we got more denim. So we're good. Very good.
Also, I got my Lincoln boots getting broken in right now and I said logit nice. What you mean Lincoln boots?
That that's that's the one with the toe cap. Oh, that's the model.
Did you did you request the toe cap or did you just get it from Pete. He just sent you what you want. Yeah. You got to watch out dude.
Pete is sneaky. Pete tries to. Tries to impose his will on you, like I was like, no, I don't want to talk up. I don't you know, I was like, I don't know, don't give me the Lincoln, give me the regular ones. And he goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And what shows up at my house, the regular ones and a pair of Lincoln's and I'm like Brown.
He does, he does these little sneaky things and he thinks he's getting one over on you.
That's the thing Pete. We're tracking bro. We are tracking. He likes to do that. I like the toe. That's good. Oh, here's another thing you did to me. I said, hey, bro, I wear white guys.
I wear white guys. So, you know, this was pretty early into the whole thing merger.
And he's like he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. What does he send me? And I said, you know what, in a stretch, maybe a black guy. Why is that, by the way?
Traditions, the tradition.
It's the tradition. The first guy he sends me no shit. It's blue. The only color.
I said, hey, look, don't send me a blue because I wear a white guy. Maybe I get it black. You don't you're not the most popular color. Get Ghias in, like, just origin, which means yes.
In the world. Black.
Yes, black. Which which to me white was the tradition. That's what we do. We keep it tradition. But let's face it.
What's the facts? The facts is everybody wants to be a ninja. That's what it is.
They're a little mix in for me.
I want to be Charles Bronson in the movie The Mechanic. They're they're wearing white guys.
And that's what I always refer back to in my trying to do some of my training partners and instructors. I've I've sent them as a gift. Orjan risky and the we are I think we're six four six four black.
Yeah. The black riff's. Yeah. Did you request white. No, no. I said tell me what you want.
Oh. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Send me a black one. Yeah.
Well that's, that means a lot coming from Todd White. Right, because he's an artist. He understands that color palette.
Yeah. He's down there thinking what will look good.
I got to say though, for the rest, we've got we've also got six out of six the outstanding reviews as well.
The rift is ridiculous.
Yeah. Yeah. It's kind kinda junk, not the guy, but the situation because, you know, a lot of us, we have more than just the one Gaete, you know. So you do the riff. Not all those other guys sort of seem obsolete a little bit. You know, like you don't put that back on the old ones, you know?
Yeah. That's just how it's like a new iPhone. When you get the new iPhone, you're kind of like, well, this is well, it happened with the iPhone.
Not the six, the 11. Oh, no, seriously, the iPhone six, you're like, oh, you know, it's OK. And the battery would run out and the pictures sucked and all the stuff. I was with also Joe Rogan like last year. And we were we were taking pictures of the sunset while we were hunting.
His picture looked freakin. He had an iPhone 11. It looked brilliant, filled with colors.
It looked like a freaking National Geographic picture because we were taking a picture of the sunset so you could see like the mountains. And then there was the horizon. There was a sky, all beautiful colors. My picture just look like black on the bottom and white on top and all that.
I just said I'm an idiot. They call that dynamic range. Yeah.
So what you're saying is you don't realize that you don't realize how good something can be until you actually try something new. And I think ID like to ask you to Bruiser. I was like I thought we were pretty good.
My first ask at it until we were in Roosen, I actually thought that good guys are better and the rift is definitely like that. And it's like, OK, not only that, it's kind of seems kind of a game.
But Pete, I don't think he's sneaky. I think well, he's sneaky, but I think he's like, smart.
He in that way because, look, that's what I was with you was the difference. Big difference. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I agree with is different. So the the the guy. Right. So I wasn't down for the other colleges either. All I had was wait for a reason. Like I'm like you're one of my black belts. One of the people. Yeah.
Yeah it was true. But here's what Pete was thinking is my hypothesis. He was like, look, I get it. They like the white guy. That's the tradition. You can't argue with that.
But they just haven't felt the power, the pleasure of the black guy.
They just if I can get them to somehow feel what I'm feeling about, OK, so he'll give you a frame when you're black. I can't wear this thing and you put it on you like feel like you can be.
I am a ninja after. All right Peter. Successful boom. Did that with the boots.
You Pete gets some level of credit for his sneakiness. But just so you know, Pete, Robert's listening to this. I'm I'm seeing your moves, bro. I'm seeing your moves. You're not getting anything by me. I get it. You know, keep it up, Pete.
You put up this one hundred percent also. What do we have? OK, JoCo has a store. It's called Jackel Store. We got some new stuff on there, by the way. Hoodies are back in. By the way, that was a big I don't look at this for winter time.
Yes, sir. Yes. Snow the last last season, you know, when we got sweatshirts made.
Oh, yeah.
Well, we're trying to tighten things up a little bit. You know what I'm pretty stoked about? The general store is the board shorts.
Yes, sir. Yeah. Those kind of are come in for fall winter, too, which is kind of offbeat.
But hey, man, hey, we're happy. It's a process. Look, look, I've been asking for him for three and a half years, so I'm glad we're rather there.
And we go, yeah, exactly right. Yeah, they're pretty good. They run a little bit loose though. The boards shorts a little bit loose that run.
That's good. That's good for me. Yeah. Yeah.
There you go. Yeah. I don't get to squeeze the tree trunk legs into it. Can't be doing the skinny jeans. Skinny board shorts. Doesn't work. Yeah. That's a little bit of room.
Yeah. And some stuff on there coming up too as well. So if also we have email lists on there, if you want to sign up to get notified notifications for new stuff. But you didn't know the word notification. What just happened.
I was about to say, like if you want a notify, you know how you use the wrong word for the wrong context anywhere else.
What he called dotting my eyes, crossing my teeth, something like it. Unless I'm going to represent while you're on this path, that's where you do it.
Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on your eye, iTunes and wherever you listen to a podcast.
Yeah, this is not the only podcast we have, by the way. We also have JoCo unraveling, which I do with Darrell Cooper.
Marter made fame of Marter made fame.
There you go. Darrell Grounded Podcast's, which is about to get to watch your kid podcast.
We got some a little bit of time. I'm going to squeeze in some grounded some Warrior Kid podcast in the near future. We got a YouTube channel and if you want to subject yourself to videos where Echo Charles has complete creative control to make everything blow up everything, catch on fire, then you can check it out. And the only benefit song is it's a video less than five minutes. There may be cool stuff if it's a long video, that actually would be nice to see some effects and there won't be there.
OK, yes. And you see what life looks like if you're not or if you're intrigued by his Texas Batman persona voice wise.
Got a appropriate way to put it. We got something called psychological warfare. It's an album with tracks that I talk to you about, overcoming your moments of weakness.
You can get that on any MP3 platform out there in the world. Mm hmm. It was the number one selling spoken word album for 11 months on iTunes.
And it makes sense. It makes sense because it's not just artistically good or whatever.
It's effective functionally. How many spoken word albums are there? A ton is the question. Yeah, there's thousands. I will say this.
There's something in the universe where sometimes you know how you're like if you're Bluetooth on your phone, he just randomly sneaks up in your car and like my kind of darkness or lowest moments, like it seems to like sync up and just randomly selected and his Joshua's voice and is usually at max volume. Everything happens at that moment of weakness creeping into you, probably heading to the donut shop.
That thing comes on also flipside canvas. My brother, Dakota Meyer flips on campus dot com, and he's making graphic representations of the path and other basically cool stuff, I know you just got off that stuff coming from Flip.
Which ones? You guys we've got we got good check and we've got this one equals freedom. We get all kinds of we got default aggressive, which is going on. And we've got a bunch of posters as well of the muster and the echelon front and back. And with troopers, you mean you didn't get a poster that had like an outstretched hand on the cliff and another hand going to it and it says underneath teamwork, you know, those fellows just like the frigged?
You mean like the poster poster is a wolf howling and it's leadership on it? Yeah.
Those posters at Flip Side Canvas, we do not sell those posters.
We sell posters that are that can only be described with one word legit so that the posters are legit.
And Dakota and Mandy on the team are awesome, awesome to work with.
We got some books about Face First Edition with the foreword by me, which is just freaking an honor to be able to do.
We got the code, the evaluation, the protocol, leadership strategy and tactics, field manual warrior kit where the warrior can one, two and three, by the way, where the warrior kit for you can preorder it. Right now it's called Wave the Warrior. Do you know what the name of the new way to work it is? You might know, yes. Do you know what it is? I do not. It's called a way of the Warrior Kid for field manual premises.
The last day of school. You know, Mark's been having some hard years, but but now he's kind of getting dialed in. Last day, a school kid comes up to him and says, hey, you know, I've never really talked to you before. And I noticed, you know, you wear that wore your kid. I saw you doing pull ups with your friends and his kids kind of shy. And he says, I really wanted to be a warrior kid like you.
And now it's too late because I'm moving away. And, you know, I just I wish I could have hung out with you. And so Uncle Jake shows up and and Marc tells Uncle Jake about this and says, you know, hey, this I feel really bad. This kid's moving away. He wanted to be a warrior kid. He was too shy to say anything and, you know, wanted me to help him. But I don't know what I could do.
And Uncle Jake says, I know what you can do. Write him a field manual on how to be a warrior kid. So there you go.
And it's the same, let's say, shape and size as the discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. You may notice some similarities when it comes to the layout, just the land of the cover. It's funny.
John Bozak, the artist, the designer, whenever I say like a good idea, he always is, I think you might be onto something there. So I was explaining the cover for your kids and Valerius, I think you might be onto something there.
So, yeah, it's a way to work it for is available miking the Dragons, which has been described as the greatest children's book ever written. That's what I've heard. Sure. I mean, I'm not look, I wrote it.
I don't want to, you know, of line here, but apparently a lot of people think a lot of people think a lot of people think.
And the one of those Freedom Field Manual, oh, by the way, is a new version of that coming out. You know what it's called, Mach one mod one.
You know, that means kind of. Yeah, some cameras are like that. So you want to work through. So this is the first modification to the original Discipline Political Freedom Field Manual.
There's a bunch of new pages in there, wrote about a bunch of new things so you can check that out. And then, of course, there's a little book called Extreme Ownership that I wrote with my brother, Leif Babin and the follow up to that book, which is called The Dichotomy of Leadership, the things that we you heard us talking about today. If you want to see how to take those things and apply them to what you're doing in life, whether it's your business, whether it's you're a first responder, whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, if you're interacting with other human beings, get to the source.
Extreme ownership in the Dichotomy Leadership National Front. What's up with Echelon Front?
We got got a lot going on with National Front, working with leaders all the time, you know, and as we talked about, it's just been phenomenal to watch them, particularly through these tough times of, you know, some some economic turmoil through covid lockdown's and and unrest across riots across America, et cetera, like it's been it's been awesome to see companies take and apply those principles. And so we've got got some great stuff going on for I think particularly for if all mine are we have we have redesigned that thanks to the great Echo Charles, who put some history behind that for our our landing page and design and set up.
And we've streamline the process of logging on that thing. And we've got troopers from I think I'm glad you get the great echo, Charles.
I seem to end up with the average echo. Charles, over here. I think we're happy with that. A good joke. I think we have forty six countries around the world represent.
Right mine. What we're doing is we're look, our goal our mission at Echelon Front is to teach the leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield that we translate into everyday business, everyday life, how to lead, how to lead up and down the chain of command. Doesn't matter if you're it doesn't matter if you're the CEO or a front line person that's not in charge of anyone. When you are interacting with other human beings, you are in a leadership position.
You can you can do things to improve the mission. You can do things that will improve your station in life. Go to F online dot com.
We got courses about this stuff. We do live training all the time. If you want to ask me a question, if you want to ask a question about something he said today, go on their F on line dot com.
For that, we are standing by to help spread the word.
We have the master, the master. There's only one this year due to covid and there is going to be in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th.
I just did a gig and the other five hundred people there, their social distancing happening. So it's going to be something like that.
We'll take precautions. But the Masters on the Masters and we are super excited to meet with troops. It's been such a bummer to have to have canceled two of them. Yeah, but I'm really excited to have this one here in December. Dallas, here's another.
Another bummer is that since we canceled the other two, most people at the other two transferred their tickets to this one, which means it's going to sell out like they always do.
So if you want to come, just try and register early. It's extreme ownership dotcom.
And we also have if overwatch from day one, we've had people asking us, hey, where can we get people that understand these leadership principles? Eventually we started this company f overwatch, go to f overwatched dot com.
We got Micarelli at the helm if you heard him on podcast 240 for him and George Randall, they they geek out about hiring and getting people into companies, taking leaders, military leaders that understand these principles, trained in these principles and then show up at companies and help you lead your company to victory, go to go to f overwatched dot com.
And if you want to help service members, active service members, retired service members, their families, gold star families around the world, then you can check out Mark Lee's mom.
She has a charity organization. Normally, if you want to donate or get involved, then you can go check out America's Mighty Warriors dot org.
And if you're a masochist, if you like pain and you just want more of my discordant declarations or if you want more punishment in the form of EKOS disoriented diatribes or you want to get some more layoffs, prolonged proclamations, then you can find us on the interweb. Raif is on Twitter at Leif Babin. He's on Instagram, which Echo will only refer to as the Gram at Real Life Bhavin, and he's on Facebook at Leif Babin.
And of course, Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at JoCo Willink.
And thanks to General Bruce Clark for your service to our great nation, for your leadership and guidance that continues to have an impact today.
And thanks to all of our servicemen and women who are out there leading and also having an impact in the world by protecting our freedom. And, of course, to police and law enforcement and firefighters. And paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all other first responders, thank you for protecting and keeping us safe here at home and to everyone else out there. Remember these lessons from General Clark?
Remember that the commander must be a model soldier, he must master the technique of war, he must expand and improve his knowledge. He must exhibit daily stamina and courage and above all.
He must set the example. And you set the example every day by going out there and getting after it. And until next time, this is Life and Echo and Jocko.