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This is what I learned from 20 years of being in the Navy Seals. Discipline, drive, how to make decisions under
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pressure, leadership, strategy, and tactics that you can apply to business and you can apply to your life as well. So, let's go.
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Jaco Willink is a former Navy Seals officer who uses his decades of military
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training to help people become masters of discipline and master their lives. Your excuses will destroy you. Your
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default mode should be to take ownership because if these problems are because of me, then I'm capable of fixing these
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problems. So, what's step one? First of all, small steps can be painful. Even something as simple as going to the gym. If you're completely
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out of shape, sometimes that can be enough to make you say, "I'm not doing it anymore." You need to envision a path of where this can lead you to. Number
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two, most human instinct is to hesitate. But you see that problem over there, you got to go solve that problem. It's not going to go away. So, if you're in the
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woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. And worst case scenario, you figure out that you walked the wrong direction. Okay, now you can go walk in
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the other direction. But standing there not doing anything is just waiting to starve to death. And the next challenge,
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detach from your emotions. Good leaders have control of our emotions. If I have to yell at you to get my point across,
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I've made like 47 other mistakes. My goal is I don't have to say a word and you already know what to do. Is there anything else that you'd add to
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that list? Absolutely. In fact, people don't really talk about this and this could apply to just about anything. So if you're the
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type of person that doesn't, you're going to struggle. Jocker, was there a hardest day while
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you were in the Navy Seals? Yeah,
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that was the lowest point of my life.
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Congratulations, Dario gang. We've made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe,
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which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So, if you've ever
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liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than
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you know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode.
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[Music] Joo, surprisingly, I couldn't find an awful lot in your
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childhood that would indicate to me how you became the man that you are today. And I say that because there's a bit of
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a stereotype that someone like you who becomes a Navy Seal must have some kind of traumatic early event that shaped
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them to become some ultra resilient human being. When you look back on your childhood,
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what are the sort of dominoes that fell in that early chapter of your life that made you the man you are today? I wish I
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could positively identify the thing, the moment. The closest I've come is that I
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a little kid. I was a little kid. I wanted to be some kind of soldier. I wanted to be some kind of commando. And
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that's I so I collected little little soldiers, little plastic soldiers. And one of the I had different military
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units like historical military units from around the world. And one of the historical military units that I had was
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the British commandos. And so I had these tiny figurines and they had
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machine guns and they had kayaks and they had uh little boats, little
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inflatable boats. And I thought to myself, that's what I want to do. I I
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want to do that. I I wish I could do that. And then when I was probably around
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12 or 13, I realized you actually could do that. You could actually get the job of being a commando. And then it was
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just a matter of figuring out which one of the American branches had the closest
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thing to what I thought was a British commando. And the closest thing that I found was being in the being in the Navy
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and being in the SEAL teams. And at 19 years old, you applied to be a
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Navy Seal. Mhm. Okay. So, I have to ask a very dumb question here, which is what is a Navy
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Seal? So there's special operations which I guess
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you know from England this is the the the SAS and the SBS. So those are the
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two sort of units that we get compared to the most. And uh so a Navy Seal is a
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part of the Navy but you're the special operations component of the Navy. And the the term SEAL is actually an acronym
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which stands for sea, air, and land. Because even though we're in the Navy, we are trained to operate in the sea. In
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the air, so in the sea meaning we dive, in the air meaning we parachute and repel, and then on the land meaning we
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conduct land warfare operations. And you take all those things, combine them together, and that's what our job
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consists of. I was under the assumption that to become a Navy Seal or to be in the SAS, you had to have 10 20 years in
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of military service. You had to have like an established military service and then you get some like pop up on your computer and it says like come to this
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this building over here. And so to hear that you applied at 19 years old, I was like, "Oh, I didn't know teenagers could apply." Yeah. No, I I was 18 years old
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when I joined the Navy and I joined on a contract that got me sent to SEAL training and it took a year to get
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through. So I was 19 when I finished that up. There is there's always debates about
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well don't you want someone that's more experienced and I actually loved the
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fact that I was basically raised in the SEAL teams. It it was just awesome. It was an awesome way to grow up. It was an
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awesome way to spend those those years of your life learning the trade that you wanted to learn. And so I thought it was
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awesome and I think it worked out pretty well. There is a usually the the the percentage of people
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that make it through SEAL training is about 20%. People that are under the age of 20, it goes down to about 5%. So
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yeah, I was one of those like small percentage of people that are very young but still make it through.
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And what is the characteristics that they're ultimately testing with the design of that training? What are they testing for?
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Will you keep going in the face of
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whatever? Well, they they call the uh one of the weeks hell week, don't they?
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Mhm. So, they try and simulate hell by the sounds of it. Yeah. They try and simulate hell. It's
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it's they actually were trying to simulate combat initially when they created that
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week. They wanted to take as much combat simulation from World War II at the time
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and put it into a very compressed schedule so they could create these frog men to go overseas and conduct
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operations cuz World War II was going on. And so they needed to compress the training cycle. So they compressed a
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bunch of that combat simulation into it's about 5 and a half days, no sleep,
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lots of physical activity, lots of stress, lots of pain, and lots of people quit.
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How many people quit in that particular week? Mo I would say most of the people that quit
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probably of of it's probably 80% of the quitters quit
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in that week. It's been long discussed. I think there's a book um called Grit
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where they discuss what it takes in terms of character traits to get through
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these kinds of endurance tasks. And people often think it's those that have the biggest muscles or that do the most,
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I don't know, cardiovascular exercise. But from what you've observed, and this is maybe a broader point about adversity
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in life, is there any similarities in the people that are able to get themselves through adversity? It it's
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there's there's some internal drive that you either have or you don't
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have. And if you have it, you won't quit. And if you don't have it, you're going to quit. And it breaks people. The
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other thing is you might be an exceptional swimmer and you might be exceptional upper body
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strength but you're not that fast of a runner. They're going to find that out. Or you might be a fast runner but a bad swimmer. They're going to find out what
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your weaknesses. You might not like the cold. They're going to see it. You might not like the boat on your head. They're
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going to see it. They might see that you have a bad temper. are going to find that and they're going to pick at that thing to
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either make you come out the other side or make you quit. It's a pretty It's a
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pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty It's a pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty profound thing to look at from the outside and
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and and see it cuz when I was going through it, it was just sort of I was young. I didn't care. I was going to do
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it. There was nothing that they were going to tell me that was going to make me quit. I never thought about quitting. If they told me to get back in the water
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again, let's go. They told me to put that log on on my shoulder, let's go. Put the boat on my head, let's go. I I I
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didn't care. Can you teach that? That let's go. Let's We're going to jump back in the water. Let's go.
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I think that I think that's one of the few things that you learn in basic SEAL
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training is to shrug your shoulders and go forward.
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Like, one of the things they do is they'll they'll line you up on the ocean. And this is in California. And
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sometimes people think that California is nice warm water, but it's not. It's 55 degrees. And I don't know what that
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translates to in centiggrade, but it's cold. And one of the things they do is they'll they'll line you up and they say
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interlock arms and you get arm- arm with the guy next to you and they say forward march. And you march in the water and they say take seats and you sit down and
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they leave you in there and it's called surf torture. And you just sit there and they'll after a while they'll pull you
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up out of the water. They'll line you up and the doctor will come down and see if anyone has hypothermia. And if no one
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has hypothermia or signs of hypothermia yet, get back in the water. And then they just keep doing that. And so, yeah,
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it's uh what you learn to do is okay, I'm going to go forward. There's no I
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can't get out of this. I'm going to go forward. I'm not going to quit. So, I'm going to go forward. Bring it on. And I think if there's anything that you
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learn, it's to to keep pushing
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through things that suck. And I would love to say like, oh, so keep pushing through adversity, but this isn't
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adversity. This is just things that suck. It's one level below adversity.
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Adversity is when you're having a challenge. This is just something that's going to suck, and you're going to have to push through it. cuz I'm asking
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myself if this is something I could teach, you know, or I could be taught because I I look at someone like you
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who's, you know, done all the things that you've done through your life and I go, did did you have some kind of innate
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advantage or can we all become Joo? If I had to guess,
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I would say no. I I would say you can't teach it. I would say that you can grow
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it. If you've got the seed of some sort of fire,
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you could probably grow and you can get better at it. But
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it's same thing. You go back to like prison. If you've ever met anyone that was a prisoner of war
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or people that went through like the Baton Death March, there's some people
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that had a will that they were not going to die.
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They I'm not going to die. I'm going to keep going. And and the people that died, they they did not have the will to
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live. And think about how bad things have to be before you say, you know what, I'm just going to lay here and die.
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That and that can get to that point. I had a guy on my podcast that was he was
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shot down in Vietnam and he was shot down in South Vietnam, captured and so
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he had to do a seven-month trek through the jungle with his captors and at one
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point he's in a two-ft tall bamboo cage in the jungle and he's trying to fall
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asleep but he can't sleep because the rats are gnawing at the wounds on his
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legs and and he shackled. And he was with guys
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that did not have the the intrinsic will to
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carry on. And if you didn't have that will to carry on, you die.
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You talked about the role that having a why plays and I was thinking about, you know, if I just if I just lost my
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girlfriend or someone I'd gone through some severe rejection or someone in my life had died and their part my parting
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promise to them was I was going to do this. The role that having some kind of reason to carry on plays in how we
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handle adversity or things that suck. Did you see have you seen any patterns in that? Is it important? cuz there's
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books behind me that literally say start with your why and those kinds of things. Yeah. And you know that's a
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anything from oh my girlfriend dumped me and I'm going to prove her wrong to something that much more significant
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which is my girlfriend died and I told her I was going to do this. I'm going to do it for her. Both those things
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depending on the human being can be a strong enough I a strong enough why to get through. And I've I've I have
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friends that were I have one friend that was into Vietnam. He was in Vietnam and when he showed up
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SEAL training, he didn't know what it was. He thought he was volunteering to be like a diver, a a diver that would do
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construction under under boats. He thought that that that what it was. And so he showed up and they're like, "This
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is SEAL training. He's what's a seal?" And they kind of explained it to him and then he went and made it through all
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that torture, all that mayhem. And why? cuz that was what they were telling him to do. And he was, "Okay, that's what
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we're doing. Let's go." So, again, I would love to be able to, you know, give
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you this profound anchor that people need to have, but it's like, "Oh, do do
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you want to do this or not?" Which is what I think a lot of it boils down to. Do you actually want to do this or not?
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Do you actually want to do this or not? Because if you actually want to do it, what's going to stop you? Nothing. And
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if you don't really want to do it, what's going to stop you? Just about anything that comes up, just about any
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obstacle that gets in your way becomes an excuse. It becomes a reason. It comes a rationale for not proceeding down that
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path. And and and this is interesting, too. You when you talk to people that went to SEAL training that didn't make
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it, most of the time it's some reason. There's a medical reason.
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There's a family problem. There's very few people that look at you and say, "Oh, I quit cuz it sucked." Which is
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what, by the way, which is what happens to the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people that don't make it through SEAL training, and by this I
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mean 80 90% of the people that don't make it through SEAL training, they didn't make it through because they
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quit. Then there's a small percentage that had a medical problem. And then there's a small percentage that got performance dropped, meaning they
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couldn't perform the runs, the swims, the the the technical aspects of the
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job, and they failed. and they get dropped. But the vast majority of people, they quit. But they don't
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usually say that. And even in their mind, they probably don't believe it. They probably believe, well, you know,
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it was my leg and once my leg was hurting, I knew I was going to have a hard time on the runs. And since I wasn't going to be able to make the
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runs, I just that's why I quit. But it wasn't really quitting. It was cuz my leg. So, it's it's it's like I said, it's a
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very it's a very strange and and and and really kind of a a mystical thing.
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Excuses. You're talking there about people making excuses. Yeah. What have you come to learn about the nature of excuses and if they are our
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friends, our enemies, if they're ever useful, your excuses will destroy you and take
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everything that you ever wanted from you if you let them. Doesn't sound like a friend.
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No, it's definitely not a friend. It's definitely not a friend. It It can seem like a friend just like your friend that
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uh keeps feeding you drinks at the bar can seem like a friend, but are they really helping you in any way, shape, or form? No, they're not. They're not. So,
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when you when your excuses make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you didn't execute on what you needed to
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execute on, then they can make you feel better, but they're not helping you. They're not
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helping you at all. Is that what you when you think about extreme ownership, which is the title of um this book here
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in front of me, is are excuses the opposite? Excuses and blame, is that the opposite of extreme ownership? That is
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the opposite of extreme ownership. Extreme extreme ownership is this went
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wrong. This failed, didn't accomplish this, and it's not the fault of my boss.
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It's not the fault of my girlfriend. It's not the fault of my parents. It's not the fault of the weather. It's my
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fault, and I'm going to take ownership of it, and I'm going to fix it. That's what extreme ownership is. And this is a
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very difficult thing to do because it hurts. Because when you look around at
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your life and you look around at your job and your financial situation and
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your relationship and your physical health and when you look at all those things and all the problems that you may
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have with those things and you say, "The reason I have all those problems
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is because of me." That can hurt. That can sting.
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And a lot of times our ego rejects that and makes excuses and lies and then we
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don't have to change anything and then nothing changes if someone was on the extreme end of
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that disease of excuse and blame and all of those things. Is there anything that
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you could do or you would advise them to do to kind of walk back from there to get over the other side? Because I think
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we can all think of people in our lives and maybe even ourselves at times who have gotten into a chronic pattern of
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using excuses and blame as a form of self-defense because we don't want to turn that mirror back at us and have to
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confront reality. Like I think sometimes if I think about my some of my closest friends, those that have the lowest
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self-esteem will use excuses and blame the most because it's,
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you know, personal responsibility might not in the short term at least do
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anything for my already low self-esteem. So I'm going to blame the world as self-defense. What's step one to get out
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of that? Well, unfortunately, what happens a lot, and you you may or may
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not have seen this, but I I would assume you've seen this at some point in your life, people, and this is a term. There's a
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term it's rock bottom, right? This is a term that we hear for someone that's addicted, someone that's an alcoholic,
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someone that's physically let themselves go, someone that's put themselves into a
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situation with their finances or their work or whatever, where they reach rock bottom. But when it when it when the
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excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me and this is it hurts
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but is also unbelievably empowering because if these problems are because of
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me then I'm capable of fixing these problems. So
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even though extreme ownership hurts and is painful, it's also liberating because
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now you have control over your fate and over your destiny and that is a glorious
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thing. Is that to you how you start to build confidence? Confidence seems to be this really elusive thing. Confidence
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ultimately is a belief you have and these beliefs are like instruction manuals for our life. You must have seen
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in your you know in your all your years some people really build their confidence and I guess you've seen other
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people destroy their confidence. So what is the nature of how we build our own confidence?
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Yep. You're right. I have seen it and I've had to do it to people. I had to
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take people and build their confidence. And so how do you do that? You know, if you're a young officer in the SEAL teams
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and you you feel like maybe you kind of got here, you got lucky, you barely made it through training and all of a sudden I'm saying, "Hey, you're in charge of
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this squad right here." And you don't feel like you have the confidence to do it. And so it comes time to make a
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decision and you're sort of looking around and the guys are looking at you like, "Hey, you going to make a call or what?" And finally someone just steps on you and says, "Hey, I got it. Hey,
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everyone move over to this building." And now your confidence goes down even lower, which is a problem. So how am I going to build your confidence? Well,
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what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you I'm going to put you into a situation that I know you can handle. I'm going to
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put I'm going to give you a task that I know you can do. It's look, it's not
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going to be a total softball. It's not going to be a joke of a task, but I'm going to give you something that I know you can handle. And I'm going to let you
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do that. And I might let you do that two, three, four, five times. I might say, "Hey, on this next operation, Stephen, I want you to uh you're going
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to you're going to you're going to hold the left flank with your with your squad. The whole everyone else is
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assaulting buildings. They're setting up external SC. You're just Hey, just you just hold this. You just set your team
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up on this burm over here and and watch to the north. And look,
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this is a pretty easy job. All right. And so you go out there, you take your team, you get on the burm, you look to the north, you do a good job.
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confidence goes up a little bit. Now, look, there was no pressure. You didn't have to make any decisions, but you did what you were supposed to do. And I
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might have you do that two or three times. And then the next time I say, "Hey, you know what? Hey, good job out there. I'm going to build up your confidence a little bit." And then I'm
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going to say, "Hey, I need you to handle security to the north
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and to the west." All right? So, you're going to have two squads now. So, I'm just going to give you small tasks that
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I know you can handle to build up your confidence and over time you will become more and more confident and you're going
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to hit some challenges and you'll overcome those challenges and if you do great your confidence grow if you fail
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in a challenge I might have to reset you a little bit but this this sounds like a big long process but it's actually
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usually not that long it's actually people kind of nod their head oh yeah I can do this contrarily sometimes I get a
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a guy who's overconfident and you know I got Stephen walking here like uh you're darn right I should be in
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charge and what do I do with you because now you got an ego you're not listening to people now I'm like hey Stephen you
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know since you're doing so awesome why don't you run this whole assault team tonight and you go yeah no problem and
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then you get out there and you're not ready to lead a whole assault team you're not ready for that chaos and that
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confusion and that mayhem and so about halfway through the assault when there's you've completely lost control. I might
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walk in and say, "Hey, Stephen, I'm sending Chief down there to straighten you out." And you go, "Roger, thank you." And you get humbled.
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So, if someone's trying to build confidence from a work perspective, we do the same thing. Whether it's a a
00:22:59
business, a company, give that person a task, a project that they can handle and help them build their confidence. Now,
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as far as you as an individual human being, it's a very similar process.
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Train, study, work, practice.
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Train, study, work, practice. Train, study, work, practice. And eventually
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you will increase your confidence. So I in your book you were talking about
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the fact that you didn't like speaking. You didn't like public speaking. So what did you do? Did you sign up to go talk
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in front of a thousand people, you know, tomorrow afternoon? No, you started small and you built a little bit of
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confidence and then you win a little bit bigger of an audience and the confidence grows a little bit more. Little bit bigger audience, the confidence grows
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and you get to a point where there's no audience that's going to stumble you in any way. So that's the same process.
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It's it's basically exposure therapy, right? It's it's basically exposure therapy where you expose yourself to a
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little bit and this is you know you're talking about Jordan Peterson exposure therapy. I give you a little bit. I
00:24:08
don't overwhelm you with it because if I overwhelm you with it, you're going to be scared of it. I mean, if you lack confidence and I put you in charge of
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something that you can't handle, your confidence is going to go back even further. So, I need to give you enough
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exposure that you do well, increase your confidence, and you're going to do fine.
00:24:26
Whenever we're swimming, I don't know, a couple of centimeters just outside of our depth in any regard, we have that
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thing that some people have dubbed imposter syndrome where we start, the story we tell ourselves about this depth
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is that we're a fraud. We shouldn't be out this far. Um, we're going to get
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found out. And that can sometimes I think if we tell ourselves that story about whatever, you know, depth we're swimming at, that lowers our
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performance. Sometimes it can make us our confidence decrease. What is your take on this term imposter syndrome? Do you think it's a real thing?
00:24:58
Yeah, I think it's a real thing and I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's bad because if once again, if you're
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coming to work for me and you're like, I'm glad you hired me. I'm ready to take over this department. Look out.
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I'd be a little bit questioning the fact that you're so overconfident
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that you're going to go in and do things that you might not really understand. Now, if you had a little imposter
00:25:22
syndrome and you said, "Hey, Jo, I really appreciate you hiring me. Um, you know, I haven't really done this type of
00:25:28
work before. Can I ask you a couple questions?" I'd be thinking to myself, "Okay, he's humble.
00:25:34
He's wanting to do a good job. He doesn't think he knows everything." I'd feel more comfortable with someone like
00:25:41
that. So, I don't think imposttor syndrome is a bad thing. I think if you
00:25:46
feel it, it's actually a good indication that you're humble and you have an open mind and you're going to listen to what people have to say. So that's number
00:25:52
one. And number two, if you feel like you have imposttor syndrome, if you going to
00:25:59
a meeting and you're going to get assigned a project or you're going to be discussing a project that you're really, wait, should I even be here? Should I be
00:26:06
put in charge of this project? What you do is you go into the meeting and you say, hey everyone, I really appreciate
00:26:11
everyone coming to the kickoff of this meeting. Hey, just so everyone knows, this is my first time running a project like this. I'm definitely going to have
00:26:17
some questions for some of you that done this before. So, if you see me going off track on something and you see a mistake
00:26:22
that I'm making, please let me know because what I want is for the team to win.
00:26:27
Okay, there it is. It's on the table. I don't know everything. I'm not that
00:26:32
experienced in this particular thing, but I'm humble and willing to listen, and I want the team to do well. No more
00:26:38
imposter syndrome. Is that the same in the Navy Seals? cuz one would assume that you, you know, as a leader, you've got to tell people what
00:26:44
to do. That is wrong. In the Navy Seals, and that is
00:26:50
not a good assumption. In the SEAL teams, you the good leaders in the SEAL teams absolutely have an open mind, want
00:26:58
to hear other people's opinions on how to execute an operation, want to hear what shortfalls there are when a plan is
00:27:05
presented that, hey, what about this and what about that? And a good leader is not going to impose plan as in fact my
00:27:13
standard operating procedure was to have my subordinate leadership come up with
00:27:18
plans instead of me trying to come up with the plans. In fact, that's the best way to operate.
00:27:23
That means you ask them for the plan 100%. Why?
00:27:28
There's a multitude of reasons. Number one, I want you to have ownership of the
00:27:34
plan, right? So, if I'm imposing a plan on you, then that's not really your
00:27:39
plan. I want you to I want you to come up with a plan and I want you to go to your team and I want you to collectively come up with a plan that you all embrace
00:27:46
and understand and buy into. So, it's going to be a better plan from your
00:27:52
perspective if you come up with it. Also, if I come up with a plan, I'm in the plan. So, when I'm in the plan, I
00:27:58
can't see the plan as well. I want to be outside the plan looking at it from the
00:28:04
outside from a different perspective where then I can see the holes in the plan and I can ask you some questions about the plan that you came up with.
00:28:11
And finally, if I'm coming up with a plan, if I'm staring down at the map coming up with a plan, well, who's
00:28:16
looking up and out? Who's looking at the followon operations? Who's looking at where our our other units are out in the
00:28:24
battlefield? Who's checking on the intelligence that we're gathering about the enemy? If I'm looking down and in,
00:28:29
I'm not looking up and out. If I'm coming up with a plan myself, I'm looking down and in. If I'm letting you
00:28:35
come up with a plan, I can look up and out. You can look down and in. And we can have a lot more awareness of the
00:28:41
battlefield. Often leaders and managers, we get, I
00:28:46
think, caught up in in the proverbial trenches. We get a little bit too close to the painting, so
00:28:52
we can't see the picture. How important do you think it is to be the leader that's able to take a step
00:28:58
back? That is the job of a leader. That is the
00:29:05
job of a leader to take a step back, detach from the situation and
00:29:11
see the entire picture of what is unfolding or what is being planned or what is happening.
00:29:18
If you are in the problem, you won't see the solution to the problem. it it you we will very rarely. So you
00:29:26
have to be able to detach. And that's one of the the main things that I tried to teach young leaders when I was in the SEAL teams. It's the same thing that I
00:29:32
try and teach leaders now is to take a step back, detach from the chaos, detach
00:29:38
from the mayhem, detach from your emotions, detach from your ego, and be able to assess the best way to execute
00:29:45
and give, you know, the book, the book is called Extreme Ownership that you referenced. That doesn't mean that I do
00:29:52
everything myself. In fact, what I want to do is I want you to take ownership. And how do I get you
00:29:57
to take ownership? I give it to you. Hey, Stephen, how do you want to run this project?
00:30:03
And and listen, what if you come up with a terrible plan? Oh, no. No. Let's say let's say
00:30:09
you come up with a let's say I come up with like I in my mind I've got something that's going to be a 95%
00:30:15
solution. And I say, well, you know, I'm going to delegate. So, Stephen, how do you want to do this? And you come up
00:30:21
with like an 80% solution. Now, what should I do?
00:30:26
I'll tell you. I'll still let I'll still run with your plan. I'll be like, "Okay, Stephen, sounds good." If you come to me
00:30:33
with a 70% plan, I might say, "Hey, Stephen, what about this?" And you go, "Yeah, I'm going to make adjustment
00:30:39
there." And all of a sudden, we got it to a 78% plan and we're still good. If you come to me with a 20% plan now, I
00:30:46
can ask you three or four questions before you say, "Hey, Jo, let me I'll be back in a couple hours. I'm gonna go reformulate this thing." And by the way,
00:30:51
all that's training you, right? All those questions are training you. You coming up with a plan is training for you. Because if if I'm got people that
00:30:59
work for me and they can't come up with a plan by themselves, I'm complete failure as a leader. So, I'm going to
00:31:04
train you so that you can come up with plans and I can look up and out.
00:31:11
takes a lot of patience, doesn't it? Because you know, you know, in those many of those situations that you're not
00:31:17
going to get from A to B as fast as you possibly could have. It's a investment in a long-term
00:31:23
efficiency because even though I might have to invest a little bit more time right now and I spent 10 minutes
00:31:29
explaining to you why this tactic would be better than that tactic, even though it's going to cost me 10 minutes right
00:31:34
now or maybe a half an hour, we look up in 6 months and you're actually coming up with better plans than me.
00:31:41
You know, I read throughout your books you went from being that young teenager who passed training to really like
00:31:47
leading the Navy Seals in many respects. Well, leading an element of SEALs. Yeah,
00:31:54
that's um when you look back on that accomplishment,
00:32:00
have you figured out what it is about you in particular that allowed you enabled you to do that?
00:32:07
Is that something? Is that Is there a muscle you grew?
00:32:14
I was I'm a hard worker. I, you know, I I was never great at
00:32:22
anything like as a kid. I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the strongest. I
00:32:27
wasn't the smartest. But I did I did know that I could work
00:32:35
hard. I had to work hard and I listened to people. I didn't think I knew everything. I I even sometimes I'll joke
00:32:42
about, yeah, you know, when you're young and arrogant, even when I was young and arrogant, like we all are when we're 23
00:32:49
years old or 22 years old and you're young, you think you know everything. Even then, I always had that little like
00:32:54
you don't know everything. And I think that humility paid a played a big role
00:33:00
in me being able to be successful because I was never afraid to say, "Hey,
00:33:06
I'm not 100% sure what to do right now. What do you guys think?" Or, "Hey, I feel like I've reached the limitations
00:33:12
of my thought process. I need some help." And so, I think that's one of the
00:33:19
main reasons that I was able to to to do a good job to do to do a good job. When
00:33:25
I meet someone like you, I I wonder I go, "This guy must have seen so many things. So many things that the average
00:33:31
human being will absolutely never see, you know, and I cuz you were you were sent all around the world on some
00:33:38
absolutely incredible unimaginable missions for for 20 20 years for for the
00:33:46
average person who has no idea what your eyes have seen.
00:33:52
Can you paint me a picture of some of those extremes?
00:33:58
Well, it's war. So, it's it's war.
00:34:06
It's people being wounded, people being killed in Iraq with the insurgents that
00:34:13
we were fighting. It's them torturing people, mutilating their
00:34:19
bodies, raping beheading people
00:34:28
horror.
00:34:36
But you know, it's interesting when when I talk to other people, when I meet
00:34:42
people, I always think to myself, what you're saying that you think when
00:34:49
you see me, I always think that when I see other people because
00:34:56
other people, we don't know what they've been through. You don't know what kind of childhood they've had. You don't know
00:35:02
what kind of horrors they've seen. You don't know what kind of abuse they've suffered. you don't want to kind of you
00:35:07
don't know what kind of trials and tribulations other people have faced. So I I don't I I look at everyone and and
00:35:15
and also the trials and tribulation that someone face someone faces
00:35:22
that that's profoundly difficult for them regardless of what it was
00:35:27
regardless of if they were a a person that you know got injured really bad.
00:35:32
they're when they were in high school, they're 15 years old and they broke their leg and they they they couldn't
00:35:38
play their sport anymore and now they're 17, but that was a traumatic thing for them.
00:35:45
And yeah, so when I when I look at other people, when I talk to other people, I always think everyone everyone every
00:35:51
human faces challenges and you don't know what they've been through and they they might have been through things that
00:35:57
are worse than what I've been through. And I usually my assumption is people
00:36:03
have been through a lot of challenges and they they persevered through it and here
00:36:10
they are. So I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
00:36:17
But humans aren't supposed to be exposed to those kinds of images. And I think if
00:36:23
you spoke to, I know a trauma psychologist, they would they would class a lot of those things that you've seen as what they call like tort
00:36:28
traumas, like really really traumatic events. How how does someone like you go about processing those things to ensure
00:36:35
that that trauma doesn't show up in later life? You know, we talk about soldiers coming back from war suffering
00:36:40
with PTSD and things like that. What have you done to sort of insulate yourself or at least help you understand
00:36:47
some of some of the things you saw? There's evil in the world. when there's evil people in the world
00:36:54
and evil people are going to do heinous and atrocious things
00:37:01
and that's a reality and that's always been the reality
00:37:08
and the best thing that I can do is well when I was in the military do my best to
00:37:13
to stop that kind of atrocious behavior and
00:37:20
when and I'm out of the military. Try not to try and
00:37:26
help people move away from those thoughts. I mean, when you're talking
00:37:32
about like your my my family like my family didn't
00:37:38
they my wife wasn't tracking what was going on when I was overseas. She didn't
00:37:44
know what was happening most of the time. you know, when my guys
00:37:49
got wounded or my guys got killed, she knew. She went to their she went to the hospital to visit them. She went to
00:37:56
their funerals, but I wasn't dragging her down
00:38:02
the the to the depths of human nature.
00:38:07
I took that and same with my kids. I didn't share with them that these things
00:38:14
happen. So, and and that's so so I think from my perspective,
00:38:20
you know, it's like the reality of the world is yeah, there's evil people in the world. I accept that reality. I understand that
00:38:27
reality. There's also good people in the world and there's people that do amazing
00:38:34
things. There's people that sacrifice their lives for their friends
00:38:40
and that's part of humanity. So I like to focus on that part of
00:38:47
humanity rather than the dark side of humanity. But if you
00:38:53
really want to appreciate the the light and the good, then you have to
00:38:59
recognize that there's darkness and there's evil. Was there a hardest day while you were
00:39:04
in the Navy Seals? Is there a day you look back on and say that was the the most sort of emotionally testing day?
00:39:12
Yeah. Losing guys in combat
00:39:20
and that stays with you? Oh yeah. Always.
00:39:29
I just can't imagine, you know, I just can't I've never lost a
00:39:35
friend. I've got two older brothers. I've never lost my brothers. I just
00:39:41
can't imagine. I can't imagine how difficult it is to like go forward when
00:39:47
you've lost, you know, you refer to these people as your brothers
00:39:57
and I'm not unique.
00:40:02
And the guys we were over in the Battle of Amati when we were over there, the
00:40:08
the Army and the Marine Corps, they were losing guys every day. This is not unique. I'm not unique. There's guys
00:40:15
that were in charge of units that lost 10, 12, 15 guys.
00:40:21
And it's not unique for human beings either
00:40:26
because even though you haven't lost any friends, you haven't lost any of your brothers,
00:40:32
you will. This is part of life.
00:40:38
And so this is part of life.
00:40:44
people have, you know, everyone's died and in combat people have died and
00:40:51
people carried on and I know that my friends that died,
00:40:57
they would not want me to sit around and mourn and and and break down and drink and and and pop
00:41:06
pills. They wouldn't want me to do that at all. They'd want me to live. That's what they would want. They would want me
00:41:12
to live. They want me to go out and make things happen and and drive on and enjoy and surf and
00:41:18
play guitar and do jiu-jitsu. That's what they'd want me to do. 100%. 100%.
00:41:24
In fact, they would be disgusted
00:41:29
if what I did with the gift that they gave me was piss it away. They'd be
00:41:35
disgusted. And I won't do that. Not Not a chance.
00:41:41
I'm going to live like they would want me to.
00:41:48
In those moments, that's certainly what logic tells you.
00:41:53
But those moments, it's hard to be logical in those moments, right?
00:41:59
Yeah. I
00:42:05
ended up with some pattern recognition on this whole scenario.
00:42:11
Unfortunately, because when you lose friends over and over and over again,
00:42:17
you start to see what happens from an emotional perspective, from a spiritual
00:42:24
perspective, from a physical perspective. And what I what I
00:42:31
began to recognize as a pattern is and the way that I explain this to people
00:42:37
that go through loss like this is you're going to have you're not going to be in
00:42:44
control of your emotions sometimes. So, and since you're 31 years old, you've
00:42:51
had control pretty good control over your emotions since you were 7 years old or 8 years old. Occasionally you'd break
00:42:58
down. Occasionally you'd lose your temper. But you've gotten more and more in control the older you've got gotten.
00:43:04
So you're not used to not being in control of your emotion. We as adults
00:43:10
are not used to losing control of our emotions. So what's going to happen? You
00:43:15
lose one of your friends. You lose one of your family members. You're going to get hit with a wave waves of emotion that you can't control.
00:43:22
And this sometimes causes people to to
00:43:28
really overreact and think that they're in this terrible place cuz they think, "Oh my gosh, I've
00:43:34
been able to control my emotions for the last 30 years and now I'm losing now I'm I'm I can't control my emotions. There's
00:43:39
something wrong with me." Is what they think. And this is what I learned is that those
00:43:46
waves of emotion, they're gonna they're gonna roll back
00:43:52
and you're gonna you're going to get control again. You're going to take a breath and then you're going to get hit
00:43:59
with another storm, but it's going to go away. And you're going to get hit with another storm, but it's not going to be
00:44:05
as strong. And then it's going to go away. And you're going to get hit with another storm, but it's going to be a longer
00:44:11
period of time. and it's not going to be as strong.
00:44:16
And what this is is this is your this is you processing what happened.
00:44:23
And eventually you do get you regain control of your emotions. And there's still going to be times there's still
00:44:29
going to be times where you're going to be 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the road, you're going to hit with a wave of
00:44:34
emotion and you're going to be caught off guard. It's going to catch you. I had a guy on
00:44:41
my podcast that was in World War II, Korea, and
00:44:48
Vietnam. And so we were we we talked about World
00:44:54
War II where he was, you know, a young private soldier. And then he was a little bit more senior when he was in Korea. And then in Vietnam, he was a
00:45:01
battalion commander. So he's in charge of 700 guys.
00:45:06
and we we were talking and I I I said
00:45:12
something along the lines of I I asked him something about his the casualties that he took in his battalion. And so
00:45:18
now this is you know he was in Vietnam in I don't know 1967 or 1968 so it's
00:45:23
been 60 years and I asked him about casualties that he took and he got choked up.
00:45:32
Got choked up. lost control of his emotions for a for a second. And when I
00:45:37
saw that, I felt so relieved.
00:45:42
I felt so relieved because I thought, "Oh, it's always going to be like this." And that's okay. It's okay. It's okay.
00:45:51
It's normal. Lost your friends, lost your brothers. Is it Is it Is it wrong that you get
00:46:00
choked up when you talk about There's nothing wrong with that. Here's a guy that lost his lost lost some of his men
00:46:06
60 years ago and he's getting choked up right now. Why? Cuz he loved him.
00:46:11
Cuz he he wishes he could have brought him through that conflict and he didn't and he feels it and he lived a normal
00:46:18
life. Retired from the army, got follow on jobs and had another career.
00:46:25
But he lost his friends, his brothers, his men, and that hurts. And it's not
00:46:32
going to go away. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong
00:46:38
with me. Do I get choked up sometimes? Sure. Yeah.
00:46:43
Yeah. I lost some of my best friends.
00:46:48
Does that hurt? Yep. Do I wallow in that? No.
00:46:54
Do I dwell in those emotions? Nope. I don't. And they wouldn't want me to. and
00:47:00
they'd be disappointed if I did.
00:47:06
I think it's really important because as men we we don't we get conflicting messages about emotion and how to
00:47:13
express it and what that looks like and if there's weakness to certain emotions or if you know but the it's the
00:47:21
psychology seems to be pretty clear that the suppression of these emotions, the trying to hide them, the total
00:47:26
compartmentalizing of them doesn't actually make them goes go away. They just appear somewhere else in a bottle or in some kind of recreational drug or
00:47:33
somewhere else. So, and nor does suppressing them isn't going to help.
00:47:39
And nor is letting them run your life. So, because you're sad now you're going to
00:47:45
make a bunch of bad decisions cuz you're sad. No. No. It doesn't doesn't work like that. Doesn't work like that. You're sad. Okay.
00:47:53
You get emotional sometimes. Okay. Got it. Now, get control of your emotions
00:47:58
and carry on with your life. And sometimes you're going to get hit with those waves, and that's okay. I I think
00:48:04
that's a big misconception and sort of relates to what you're saying.
00:48:10
Oh, I'm I'm having an emotional moment right now. There's something wrong with me. No, there's nothing wrong with you.
00:48:16
There's nothing wrong with you. The other extreme is, oh, I'm letting my emotions run my life and I'm making a
00:48:22
bunch of bad decisions and my excuse is, well, you know, I lost some friends or I had this traumatic experience happen to
00:48:28
me. That's why I'm doing that's just an excuse and it's a very easy excuse. And
00:48:34
in society, the last thing I want to say to you is, well, you can't act like
00:48:39
that. Oh, you lost one of your friends. Hey, that doesn't mean you can make excuse. You can't use that excuse. No, I
00:48:44
I go, "Hey, man. Uh, okay." It's what I say, right? I'm a polite person. I'm
00:48:51
empathetic person. You're sad. You're making bad decisions. You're saying it's cuz you lost your friend or you went
00:48:57
through this traumatic thing. And I go, "Okay, I how can I help?" Instead of saying,
00:49:03
"Hey, man. Yeah, guess what? It's time to carry on."
00:49:09
Don't Don't dwell on the I I I've told a thousand veterans this. Remember, don't
00:49:14
dwell. Remember, remember your friends. Don't dwell in the past, though.
00:49:20
Remember, don't dwell. That's what we have to do. And the emotions. Yes.
00:49:28
Embrace those emotions, but don't let those emotions embrace you.
00:49:33
Don't let those emotions run your life. There is there is a cuz people say, "Oh,
00:49:39
uh, suppressing your emotions is bad." Okay, so I'm just going to let all these emotions out and they're going to run my
00:49:45
life now. No, no, no. At a certain point, you say, "Okay, my emotions are
00:49:50
now leading me down the wrong path. I'm in control.
00:49:56
I'm not going to allow my emotions to make my decisions." They're in the calculus. I'm not saying take your
00:50:02
emotions out of the calculus, but they have to be one component of your calculus, not the whole equation. The
00:50:09
equation has to include emotions. Yes. Logic, yes. Future, yes. Goals, yes.
00:50:18
Family, yes. Work, yes. Finances, yes. All those things have to be in the calculus. Emotions has to be a part of
00:50:25
the that calculus. You can't pull them out of there or they'll bite you. But you can't make them the overwhelming
00:50:32
denominator of everything that you do or it's going to be problematic.
00:50:37
I heard you tell a story which I thought was really inspiring. Actually, I was just listening to it before you came about a friend of yours who was going
00:50:42
through hardship in their life and you your advice for them was to start walking.
00:50:48
Yeah. Yeah. It was a guy who was Yeah. going
00:50:54
through hardship with his job, with his marriage, and the marriage was coming to
00:51:00
an end. The job was not was going to come to an end as well. And he's out
00:51:05
there and doesn't know what to do. And the analogy that I set up for him is
00:51:12
if I'm in the woods, which is where you are right now, you're in the woods and you don't know where to go cuz the
00:51:18
wife's not there anymore. The job's not there anymore. You don't know where to go right now. So if you're in the woods
00:51:24
and you don't know where to go, start walking. You got to start walking because the
00:51:30
perspective is not going to change. You have to start moving forward. You have to t start start taking steps in order
00:51:36
to improve your vision, improve your perspective, change your perspective, make some kind of progress. And worst
00:51:42
case scenario, you figure out that you walked the wrong direction. Okay, now you can go walk in the other direction.
00:51:48
And that's that's going to be fine. But standing there lost and not doing anything is just waiting to die, waiting
00:51:54
to starve to death. Don't let that happen.
00:52:01
It's overthinking. It's that anxiety. It's that ruminating that I think I've I mean I've done it multiple times in my
00:52:07
life when the solution is I can't get to certainty on the problem. So I I try and
00:52:13
think my way out of the problem which only seems to cause more harm than good.
00:52:18
Yeah. There's definitely a level of risk conditioning that you get inside
00:52:25
the military because there's you're not you're just not going to be certain about anything. And you have to be able
00:52:31
to say, "Yep, I'm going to make this decision right now and here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make the smallest decision possible. Going to
00:52:37
take the smallest step possible, but I'm going to take a step because I'm never
00:52:43
going to know everything. And if I take the time to try and know everything, everything will have changed by the time
00:52:48
I know it. So, I'm going to absolutely take that step and take that action.
00:52:53
I mean, that's a metaphor for life as well, cuz there's a lot of people trying to get to 100% certainty whether to leave the job or the marriage or the
00:52:59
start the business and they're struggling maybe at 60 70 maybe 80 90% certainty. But for some reason, we seem
00:53:06
to need, you know, certainty. That's why I use the what I what I call the iterative decision-m process. I'm
00:53:12
only to take small steps. So, am I trying to leave my I don't like my
00:53:18
job. I'm miserable there. Okay. Does that mean I walk in tomorrow morning and say, "Hey, boss, I hate it here. I quit." No, it doesn't mean that. It
00:53:24
means I say, "Okay, I'm going to start putting my resume together. I'm going to start checking out
00:53:30
LinkedIn. I'm going to start seeing what qualifications I might need that could
00:53:36
improve my ability to get a new job. Once I've done that, I'm going to start
00:53:41
sending out my resume. I'm going to start building some relationships with some people. And now I look up and I get
00:53:48
another job offer. So, I didn't make a crazy short-termed emotional decision. I
00:53:56
made a slow, progressive, iterative decision-making process that led me from
00:54:02
a situation that I didn't like to an opportunity that seems more promising. And this could apply to just about
00:54:08
anything. I see this a lot in businesses. I see that the the real cost in business. I spent about 10 years working in
00:54:14
marketing. So I was my job was to work with the CMO and the CEO helping them to try and make certain marketing
00:54:20
decisions. You know that invest in this platform, do this thing, whatever. And I came to learn over time that the biggest
00:54:27
cost wasn't making a bad decision. It was the time you waste the nine months
00:54:32
waiting for Joanna to get back from annual leave so we can have a meeting with Dave and procurement to get the invoice signed off versus the CEOs that
00:54:40
I worked with that said, "Let's do it now." When the decision was quite clearly
00:54:45
low cost, relatively low cost or reversible. Mhm. It was always speed that seemed to to
00:54:50
pretty much speed that seemed to win out because most decisions are either reversible or actually more
00:54:56
inconsequential than you think. Very few decisions are final. Very few decisions
00:55:01
are final. Even something like buying a house. Should I buy this house? Oh my gosh, it seems if you buy a house and
00:55:09
you decide it wasn't the house that you wanted, you sell the house. It's like now look, could you get caught
00:55:15
in a bad market and could Yeah, that can absolutely happen. So, you need to be smart about your decisions that you make. But most things are not as final
00:55:24
as they seem. Most things you're going to be able to and will you look you paid the realer so you lost 3% there. You
00:55:30
paid the other realer, you lost 3%. You had to pay the mortgage fees. So you're going to lose some money, but it's not
00:55:35
like you buy a million- dollar house and then you decide you don't like it. You don't lose a million dollars. You lose
00:55:40
80 grand or whatever, you know, and it's okay. Two years, three years, you get it back. What? So people think of decisions
00:55:47
as being permanent. Yeah. If you're if you're in marketing and you approach me and you say, "Hey, listen, CEO, there's
00:55:54
a new marketing opportunity that we'd like to get you into." And I go, "How much did it cost?"
00:56:01
And you say, "A million dollars." And I say, "Oh, that's a lot of money. Can is there can I try it for a shorter period
00:56:07
of time?" "Well, yeah, but you won't get as much for your for you won't get as much volume." And I say, "Okay, well,
00:56:13
still I don't want to invest that much cuz I'm not sure about it. Let's test it and see where it goes." and you say, "Okay, we'll try that. Here's 100 grand
00:56:20
and let's see what feedback we get, and if it's good, it's good. If it's not, we go somewhere else." Do you think you're
00:56:26
conditioned in some ways to have this sort of um bias towards taking action? Because if your background in the seals,
00:56:34
there was often some kind of time urgency. There was some factor that's causing you to have to take a decision.
00:56:39
Is that Yeah. In business and life, there's not there's not like we're going to lose this or someone's going to die or
00:56:44
there's going to be an attack. In the business world, the consequences are prolonged and usually not as extreme.
00:56:52
So, you can get away with less action even though eventually it will catch up
00:56:58
with you. And you've got an example of that in your book. And the the father-son deal and one of them takes 9
00:57:03
months to execute and the other one executes immediately. And the one that executes immediately is successful. The
00:57:09
one that doesn't takes nine months to execute fails. So it eventually inaction
00:57:15
will cost you in and you say interestingly that oh in the SEAL teams
00:57:21
you must be conditioned to do this. I had to condition people to take action even in the SEAL teams. Even a young
00:57:27
SEAL leader who you would think would be by nature aggressive and an action
00:57:32
taker. You put them in a pressure situation where there's not a ton of information and they need to make a decision. They don't want to act either.
00:57:39
So, one of the things that I would teach was that their default mode was to be aggressive. Their default mode was to
00:57:45
take action. I would teach that. Same thing we just discussed. I wouldn't say, "Hey, look, that means you have to take
00:57:50
action." But your default setting should be I'm going to do something. Cuz I'd have a young SEAL officer and there'd be some training mission and there'd be a
00:57:57
problem in a building and there'd be a bunch of paintball flying around in there and he wouldn't want to go solve
00:58:03
that problem. he'd back away from that problem and I would have to go like push
00:58:08
him in the back and say, "You see that problem over there? You got to go solve that problem." It's not going to go away. You got to be aggressive. That's
00:58:14
got to be your default mode is to take action and make things happen because most human instinct is to wait. Most
00:58:22
human instinct is to hesitate. Most human instinct is to let things go
00:58:27
longer and stick with the status quo. that seems to be on the on the front the
00:58:35
lowest risk in the situation is to not do anything. It usually appears to be the lowest
00:58:40
risk. But just like the example that you gave in your book, it's it definitely seems lower risk. Oh well, he wants
00:58:47
money, wants investment, new thing and I don't know the lowest risk in that situation is to not do anything. And
00:58:52
that's what many people do whether they're in the SEAL teams or whether they're in business. So to train people
00:58:57
to oh I need to take risk some level of risk take action because in the long run
00:59:04
I say seven out of 10 seven out of 10 times action is better than inaction 70%
00:59:10
of the time action there's definitely times where you got to hesitate there's definitely times where you got to hold back there's definitely and that's the
00:59:16
other book you got there is called the dichotomy of leadership because there's times yes absolutely action
00:59:22
aggression there's also times the other end of the spectrum was like, "Yep, now's not the time to make a move." So,
00:59:29
it's it's definitely a dichotomy, but the
00:59:35
to me 70% of the time, you better take that action. That's got to be your default mode.
00:59:40
I asked you what your your hardest day in um the seals were and you said about losing friends, what was what was your proudest day? Is there a proudest day
00:59:47
where you go, do you know what? I I really showed up in a in a way that I to
00:59:54
a standard that I held myself to. And because I did, we accomplished something great together
01:00:00
against the odds. There's a a multitude of times where I was in Iraq.
01:00:09
I was in a detached moment in time, you know, moving down a street,
01:00:16
sitting in a vehicle, maneuvering, and I was and I was watching my guys.
01:00:24
I could see my guys and I could see what they were doing.
01:00:29
And I could see
01:00:36
one of the most beautiful things in the world, which was guys that were
01:00:41
exceptional at their job, working together as a team, maneuvering,
01:00:47
protecting each other, accomplishing the mission.
01:00:52
And I got to see that many times. And that's always had nothing to do with me.
01:00:58
Had to do with them. Had to do with being able to see. Look, were we perfect? No. But were
01:01:05
there moments when you see an element cover and move for each other
01:01:12
on the battlefield? A simple plan with the right priorities
01:01:19
with decentralized command. Was there times when I got to see all those things?
01:01:25
Yes. And that without a doubt, those were those are the best days.
01:01:31
Says something about, you know, and I think I've kind of seen this throughout your work is you have a real focus on
01:01:36
service, serving others as a path to I guess fulfilling yourself. And we often
01:01:42
think I think many people think in life that the path to self-fulfillment is to serve yourself. But it seems like you've
01:01:48
kind of figured out that the path is by serving others. Yeah, I think that's
01:01:56
there's there's an underlying core component and belief and and innate DNA
01:02:04
in the SEAL teams and that is you take care of your you take care of your friends
01:02:10
and and that's not in fact if you're the type of person
01:02:16
that doesn't take care of your friends, you're not going to be a good seal. you're not going to be a good seal if if
01:02:23
you put yourself before the team. Look, you can be a great shot, you can be
01:02:28
strong, you can be fast, all those things, but no one's going to really want you in a platoon if you put
01:02:34
yourself above them. And people don't really talk about that. No one ever told
01:02:39
me that, but you feel it. And if you're if you're not self-aware,
01:02:47
you could you might slip into where you're looking out for yourself and it's a problem. And this happens in life, too. You know, if you're if you it
01:02:54
happens in business where I see a guy that he's taking care of himself
01:02:59
and and you know, it's a smart guy and he usually thinks he's pretty smart and
01:03:05
usually thinks he's a little bit smarter than everybody else and usually thinks that no one else is going to notice that he's taking care of himself and
01:03:10
everybody sees it. Yeah. And they dig themselves a grave. They they dig themselves to graves and they
01:03:16
I'm not saying they don't get away with it a little bit. Usually they get a couple promotions, you know, they get to a spot, but ultimately people don't want
01:03:23
to work with that person and so they burn their relationships and they don't
01:03:29
do as well as they should. And which is the the kind of nice thing is if you take care of other people,
01:03:36
they'll take care of you. If you screw other over other people, you're you're gonna get screwed over. So, yeah, I
01:03:44
think there's a there's there's definitely that underlying theme in the SEAL teams. I've seen it now in
01:03:50
business. And it is it is it is going to if you if you look out
01:03:57
for yourself all the time, it's going to catch up with you. I think everyone can
01:04:02
relate in this. If anyone's ever worked in a business and they have colleagues, I think everyone will be able to think
01:04:08
about the colleague who is always seeking credit is um is always you know
01:04:15
being selfish in the way that they're showing up and then they can also think about the colleague who's the complete
01:04:20
opposite of that and it's often it's funny it was making me think as you were speaking that leadership is in fact in many respects it's given it's not taken.
01:04:28
I.e. the person that's showing up for other people but also delivering on their own work is often kind of elected
01:04:34
the leader of the group. This is you know we talk a lot in business I think it was Steve Jobs that said the very
01:04:41
very best leaders in my organization were those that were so good at their job and they were never thinking about like being a leader but that's the
01:04:47
reason they ultimately became it. Yeah. Uh when people ask me and I got a I got a book I wrote called leadership
01:04:52
strategy and tactics. It's like how to get promoted. How do you get promoted? Don't worry about getting promoted. to
01:04:57
focus on the team, focus on the mission, focus on doing a good job, focus on supporting your teammates. If you do those things, you're going to get
01:05:03
promoted. And it it takes you'll have this, you know, the dark part of your
01:05:09
personality will say, "Yeah, but they're not going to notice. They need to see me now." And you'll raise your hand and say, "I want credit for that." And the
01:05:15
minute you do that, the minute you raise your hand and say, "Give me credit," your credit goes down. It's an
01:05:21
unfortunate truth. The minute you ask for the accolades, your accolades are
01:05:26
decreased because every you're looking out for yourself and everyone can smell
01:05:31
that and they don't like it. Yeah. You're saying that the miss I'm more important than the mission in some respects.
01:05:37
Terrible. Terrible. Did you have people like that in the in the services when you were you were out
01:05:44
there? People that were clearly selfish in the seals? Absolutely. Y how did you deal with that?
01:05:51
Well, if they were my boss, then I would make them look good,
01:06:00
build a good great relationship with them. If they were my peer, I'd make them look good, build a great relationship with them. If they worked
01:06:06
for me, I'd make them look good, build a great relationship with them.
01:06:12
I think that as you you know some people that have that kind of um
01:06:19
you know they've got some kind of is it a defect? I think it's probably a
01:06:25
little bit of a defect but they they just they just feel like they need that recognition. They feel like they need to
01:06:30
take care of themselves. And again going back to what I was saying earlier, like what do they go
01:06:35
through in their life that makes them think that they got to look out for themselves? And it'd be kind of nice if
01:06:40
I could be a person that they go, "Man, this guy's treating me really good."
01:06:47
And maybe I could help them transform
01:06:53
from someone that doesn't trust that they're going to get the recognition that they need to, hey, there's good people out there and I'd like to be a
01:06:59
part of this team. Were you ever successful in that transformation? I was successful. I was also
01:07:04
unsuccessful. You know, some people are some people they have that defect and it's strong and they're going to look
01:07:10
out for themselves and there's very little you can do about it and you you know, you try try um but it's it's a
01:07:19
very the ego is a very very powerful thing. I mean, you know, the eagle is so powerful that there's countless cases of
01:07:27
military history where a human being got himself and possibly his troops or his
01:07:36
troops killed because of his ego. So, if you can die
01:07:42
because of your ego, you can absolutely make some pretty dramatic mistakes in
01:07:47
the business world because of your ego. And it happens all the time. It happens all the time.
01:07:53
leaving leaving the military. I have this quote where you said, "So, I'd say if there's
01:08:00
anything that I struggle with now, it's just that does anything else matter?"
01:08:06
And the answer is no. The answer is no. Nothing else matters. Nothing else is close. So, I have to deal with that. You
01:08:12
said that on the Tim Ferrris podcast talking about your time um in the services, but also more specifically the
01:08:19
battle of Ramadi. Ramardia. Mhm. um as being the highlight of your life. How does one go through sort of 20
01:08:26
years of highintensity combat and all that adrenaline and all of the you know
01:08:32
gosh it's harder to think of many greater senses of like purpose and fulfillment and mission and then
01:08:41
real life. Yeah.
01:08:47
So, number one, as I mentioned earlier, remember but don't dwell. And
01:08:54
have you seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite? No, that's a bummer.
01:08:59
There's a character in the movie Napoleon Dynamite. His name is Uncle Rico. And Uncle Rico played football in
01:09:05
high school. And now Uncle Rico uh lives in a van and sells cooking
01:09:12
wear. So he kind of peaked in high school and he lives in the past. He's
01:09:18
always talking about state championships and if he would have play had that extra point and if coach would have put him in, he's got he's living in the past.
01:09:25
And so while that quote right there,
01:09:31
no doubt that you just read from me is accurate. I mean
01:09:38
there there will not be I don't think anything in my life that will have as
01:09:45
much intensity as much mission focus as much meaning as much
01:09:52
as much opportunity as much loss like that is combat is is like life but
01:09:58
amplified and intensified. So every emotion that you have like you have an emotion when you when you formulate a
01:10:05
new plan and when you sell a business or buy a business you have emotions that's like combat but it's amplified it's
01:10:11
intensified and it's it's a lot more so the that quote that you read is true
01:10:18
nothing will compare to that it won't
01:10:23
but I don't want to be like Uncle Rico living in the past talking about how this is what it used to be like and if
01:10:29
Yeah, there's my big game. I don't want to do that. I want to, as I said earlier, I want to remember, but I don't want to dwell on the past.
01:10:35
Has it ever crossed your mind to go back in any capacity? Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. Every time
01:10:43
like a every time a war breaks out somewhere, you you you want to get your get your knife out, sharpen it up, and
01:10:49
let's rock and roll. Of course, because
01:10:54
Yeah. Well, because of that quote right there. like this is this is it. Like that's that's it. I'm lucky that I got
01:11:01
to do what I got to do, you know? Like that's a blessing. It's a it's the it's
01:11:08
what I wanted to do since I was a little kid. I got to do it. And so if you asked me if I got the chance to do it again,
01:11:14
would I? Yeah, I would 100%. You could though, right? You could go be involved in some capacity in the
01:11:21
Seals. Yeah, there's ways there's things that I could do to, you know, like be a guner again and all that, but there's
01:11:27
also it's also not the same. So, you know, if I cuz I retired from the Navy
01:11:33
and and so I'm not in the military anymore. I still work with the military. I still train the military, but
01:11:44
to go and be a gunslinger again. Um, now you're now you're doing something different. Now you are a mercenary. Now
01:11:50
it's a different situation and the that component that you talked about
01:11:56
of like mission brotherhood is not going to be the same for me and
01:12:02
and quite frankly I think that I part of me
01:12:08
wants to not sour that memory and and all those memories.
01:12:16
I don't want to I don't want to, you know, I don't I don't want to I don't want to sour that memory. I I have
01:12:22
a beautiful beautiful memory and I don't want to tarnish it with me chasing
01:12:30
around the past. You know, when fighters, they retire
01:12:35
from fighting and then they they just they they want to go back, they do it again, and it's
01:12:40
just not the same. Anderson Silva was like that for me. He was Superman and then he went back a couple of times and I didn't want to
01:12:46
watch him get beat up. It was like Yeah. I that's how that's that's a I
01:12:51
feel like that. I feel like that. I don't don't think I could rematch my my Anderson Silva the Spider Championship
01:12:57
run. I don't think I could rematch that. Discipline is freedom. It's the title of
01:13:04
your um your book here. Discipline equals freedom. Now, that seems like
01:13:10
it's untrue because when people think of discipline, they think of rigidity and and taking away their freedom, having to
01:13:17
be disciplined. Why is why does discipline equal freedom?
01:13:25
Because the more discipline you have in your life, the more freedom you will end up with.
01:13:32
So if you lack the discipline to exercise
01:13:39
and eat healthy, you will end up being
01:13:44
a slave to disease. If you lack the discipline to work hard,
01:13:52
save your money, you will end up a slave to finances.
01:13:59
If you lack the discipline to manage your time correctly, you will end up
01:14:05
with no free time. If you have
01:14:10
self-discipline, if you have the discipline to save your money and work hard and invest your money properly, if
01:14:17
you have the discipline to manage your time correctly and not waste
01:14:23
a bunch of time, if you have the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up with freedom.
01:14:30
And it's I know it's a counterintuitive. It's contrarian, but
01:14:36
I've seen this over and over and over again. If you want freedom in your life,
01:14:42
you have to have discipline. There's going to be some kid listening
01:14:48
to this now. I always think about the personas that are listening and they are, you know, eating Doritos off their
01:14:53
belly. Spit them out.
01:14:58
[Laughter] Spit them out. Start now. Because if
01:15:04
you're a kid right now and you're eating Doritos off your belly, I know they taste good and there's some immediate gratification, and I get that. But I'm
01:15:11
going to tell you, it starts right now, throw that bag of Doritos away. Get rid
01:15:17
of it. Go do some push-ups. Go spend $12 at the hardware store and hang up a
01:15:23
pull-up bar in your room and start doing pull-ups. And if you can't do one pull-up, hang on that bar. And you're
01:15:29
going to start to get a little bit stronger. You're going to start to get a little bit healthier. You're going to start to get more focused. You're going
01:15:35
to start to become more resilient. And you're going to start to be able to do a pull-up. And you're going to start to
01:15:41
eat healthy all the time. And you're going to start to understand the world better.
01:15:47
And you're going to start to progress in every aspect of your life.
01:15:54
And you'll see that if you have that kind of discipline right now,
01:16:00
you're going to end up with freedom. And if you don't have that kind of discipline
01:16:06
and you keep eating those Doritos and you don't work hard and you don't
01:16:12
exercise and you don't apply yourself, you're going to end up
01:16:21
you're going to end up shackled. You're going up shackled by a boss that
01:16:27
you don't like doing a job that you don't like to do with
01:16:32
sicknesses and diseases that you don't want. Relying on people that you can't
01:16:38
even count on alone
01:16:44
and you don't have to.
01:16:49
But if you have discipline, if you have discipline, you will attain
01:16:55
freedom.
01:17:01
And it starts with just spitting the Doritos out. Starts with spitting the Doritos out. Yes, indeed.
01:17:08
How do you guys manage your stress? This month is stress awareness month and it's a topic that I'm super passionate about
01:17:14
and we talk about a lot on this podcast. I personally manage my stress by prioritizing my health and wellbeing.
01:17:20
Going to the gym is my number one form of therapy and I couldn't be without those two things. As you guys know,
01:17:26
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01:18:06
know how you get on. One of the things you do, which is I mean you you're super famous for it, is this idea of waking up
01:18:12
early. Now, I'm not someone that wakes up early. I know you no alarm clock and you're usually up by 11:00. I I
01:18:19
Well, I So, no meetings before 11:00. Okay, got it. So, I I stay up quite late. Y
01:18:24
um what's the best case you could give me for changing that? And do I need to change that? Cuz I what
01:18:31
I what I do is, you know, I flew into LA. I'm jetlagged. I'm flying back in a couple of days. I'm going to be jetlagged when I land as well. So, what
01:18:37
I'm trying to do is just protect my sleep at all costs because I've come to learn that it's really the foundation of my performance. So if I if I'm unslept
01:18:44
and I show up at work, the chance that I'm not going to show up correctly in a variety of ways, emotionally,
01:18:50
creatively, whatever, is high. And that for me is the greatest risk.
01:18:56
So I just in the last sort of year or two of my life, I've just said, "Okay, prioritize sleep." Because then
01:19:01
everything else seems to follow. But when I heard that you wake up sometimes at 4:45 or 4:30, like pretty much all
01:19:07
the time, and you I've literally seen you on social media upload your your alarm clock day after day after day, I
01:19:12
go, "Shit, maybe I should rethink." No, I think if you're if you've got a system
01:19:19
that's working well for you and then I wouldn't change anything, right? If you feel like you're performing well, you're
01:19:26
physically healthy, you're getting all the work done that you need to do, you're a naturally more of a a late
01:19:32
night, late morning type person, I'd run with it. It's
01:19:38
if you were telling me, "Yeah, sometimes I get up, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't. I'm not don't work out every day. You know,
01:19:45
sometimes I feel groggy." If you were telling me that kind of thing, I'd say, "Okay, pick a time and start waking up
01:19:50
at that time every day. Doesn't have to be 4:40. It could be 8:00, could be 7:00, doesn't matter. Could be 11:00,
01:19:56
but try and go to bed around the same time and try and wake up around the same time. And that's going to be a great
01:20:02
foundation for everything that you're doing. And I would say when you wake up in the morning, do some kind of exercise
01:20:09
because I think that is very helpful in getting your day started correctly.
01:20:16
What are your non-negotiables in your life in terms of habits, routines, disciplines? I wake up early and I work
01:20:23
out every day. That's that's kind of my my that's that's that's those are the
01:20:28
minimum requirements in my life. Train jiu-jitsu. I I don't get to chain
01:20:36
train jiu-jitsu every single day. But if I can train jiu-jitsu, I'm going to train jiu-jitsu. I'm going to work out
01:20:41
every day. If I can surf, I'm going to surf, you know. Um I I obviously have to work
01:20:48
every day. I I work every day doing something, you know. I've got a bunch of different companies. I got to write
01:20:55
books, podcasts. So, I I work every day. Are you ever undisiplined? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
01:21:02
Yeah. Um uh chocolate chip cookies. They're a they're a a discipline
01:21:09
lapse for me. Uh yeah. So, yeah, I'm I'm not a cyborg. When people look at
01:21:16
someone like you that's, you know, done all the things you've done. You've been a a seal and you've you've written all these books and started these companies
01:21:21
and actually the drink I'm drinking now is one of your your products which is the what's that in front of you? The Yeah, it's a it's an energy drink called
01:21:27
Go. Called Go. Um, delicious by the way. Oh, thank you. I think my mouth has been connected to my brain during this interview, so I
01:21:33
think it's working. Um, I understand there's misconceptions that people have of me because they assume it's kind of
01:21:39
like the halo effect. We assume because someone's done something well, they do all things well. Um, but there are so
01:21:45
many things that I think would really liberate people and make them inspired if they could see how deficient I was in
01:21:52
so many things in my life, you know, because they just assume that if you've done one thing, well, you have a good podcast, you have a you must be like,
01:21:58
you know, the perfect picture of what are the big misconceptions generally, moving away from this idea of
01:22:03
imperfection, but just generally about Joo because you've you realize you've become a bit of a character, right? you
01:22:12
know, like Navy Seal that comes with an identity package. Yeah. I think the biggest misconception
01:22:19
I think and it's it's it's not just me, but it's really the military in general is the misconception of this kind of
01:22:25
authoritarian and even authoritarian dictatorship from a leadership
01:22:31
perspective. And even when when we were having this conversation, I said, "I'm going to let I'm going to let my subordinates plan." And you kind of had
01:22:38
a stunned look on your face like, "What are you talking about? Why would you let your subordinates plan? And so there's
01:22:44
an idea and a misconception that the leader is going to stand up and bark
01:22:51
all the orders. So that's one misconception. The another one is I look like a Neanderthal and so people are
01:22:58
think I'm going to scream and yell at everybody. And I I never yell at anybody. You know, I I my business
01:23:04
partner, Leif Babin, who's worked with me, who's in my task unit at at SEAL Team 3 and deployed to Ramati with me
01:23:11
and we now we've written a couple books together. We have a business together
01:23:16
and he was like my direct subordinate in Ramani and dur during a workup and
01:23:23
you know like never yelled at him and he likes to point out that he gave me plenty of reasons to yell at him but
01:23:29
never yelled at him cuz what what good is that? And by the way, if I have to yell at somebody, what does that say? That means if I have to yell at you to
01:23:35
get my point across as a leader, I've made like 47 other mistakes. My goal is I don't even have to say
01:23:42
anything. That's my goal as a leader. My goal is I don't have to say a word and you already know what to do and you make
01:23:47
it happen. And I look at you and give you a thumbs up and say good job. That's my goal. So I think the biggest
01:23:52
misconception is the idea of someone in the military or myself being a
01:24:00
authoritarian leader being very close-minded. Like you know I I got asked a question the other day about you
01:24:07
know if you were if you were if if China attacked Taiwan and you were taking troops in there what would you be
01:24:12
focused on? And I said, I'd be focused on keeping an open mind because if you
01:24:18
have a closed mind about what the mission is, about how it's going to happen, about what your troops are going
01:24:23
to do, about what the enem is going to do, if you have a closed mind about those things,
01:24:28
you're going to get caught off guard. You have to have an open mind. You have to be accepting of the information that
01:24:35
you're receiving. You have to be accepting of the other ideas that other people have. And if you have a closed
01:24:41
mind, you're going to fall apart. kind of counterintuitive in some ways because the reason people often think they've
01:24:46
been made the leader because they have loads of the correct ideas. So I think as as people often climb in life they go
01:24:52
well I've been right so much that they've put me here as CEO so now I need to defend my righteousness at all costs
01:24:59
even when I'm not you know sure cuz that's a weakness. Yeah. And you quoted Steve Jobs earlier
01:25:05
and I I think actually actually it's from your book which was I don't hire
01:25:11
people so I can tell them what to do. I hire good people so they can tell me what to do. So yes uh in your lead in a
01:25:19
leadership position you should be listening more than you should be talking. You were talking a second ago about
01:25:25
shouting and aggression. It made me as you're saying it, I was thinking, you know, there is a stereotype that a man
01:25:32
is aggressive and he shouts and all those things. You know, there's a bit of a stereotype there. I what I was actually thinking is
01:25:39
it's never been so unclear what a man is than it than in 2024 in the context of
01:25:46
how a man's men are show up. Are they meant to be masculine or feminine or somewhere in between or whatever? And
01:25:52
for many men, you are a man's man. you know, when we think of Navy Seals, we go
01:25:58
men. Do you know what I mean? So, I I was wondering because it's it's never been as clear, I think, what a man should be,
01:26:06
you know, when you're raising a kid that's a man or when you're being a man yourself. Um, what do you think a man
01:26:13
should be? And I I want to give a bit more context here. There's a lot of men struggling
01:26:18
right now. There's a lot of men if you know I talk about it a lot that if you look at the stats around suicidality in the UK the
01:26:25
thing that's most likely to kill someone between the age of like 18 and 40 is themselves for a man you know there's a so men are
01:26:31
clearly struggling in some capacity with purpose or or meaning or something. So,
01:26:37
I almost feel like, you know, a lot of these sort of toxic influences of what a man should be have now emerged to offer
01:26:42
answers, but I doubt those toxic influences. And I say there's got to be another role model, another sort of blueprint for what it is to show up as a
01:26:49
man. Well, I was going to give you a real I guess it would have been a real cheap
01:26:54
answer of uh I think it's Marcus Aurelius's stop discussing what it is to be a man and be one. I was going to I
01:27:00
was going to walk out of here with that one and be like, pretty good question avoidance there. Um, which but there's
01:27:06
some merit to that, right? Like and and I was almost thinking like do do we
01:27:11
really not know do we really not know what it is to be a good man? And and I
01:27:17
would go so far as to say to be a good human being, right? Because when a few
01:27:23
years ago there was these there was these discussions going around about toxic masculinity, right? And you take
01:27:30
these traditional masculine traits and people were saying this is toxic masculinity and they're bad and I wrote
01:27:39
a couple articles about it. If you take any trait of a human being
01:27:45
and you take it to an extreme, masculine or feminine or otherwise, you take it to an extreme, it's it's going to be a
01:27:52
problem. It doesn't matter what it is. So, if you take even a really positive trait like
01:27:58
generosity, if you're a a super generous person, that's wonderful. Is it possible
01:28:04
to be too generous? Well, yes, it is. Now, you're getting taken advantage of and now you end up in an abusive
01:28:09
relationship. Like, there's all kinds of problems that can happen. So, when we talk about masculine traits and what's a
01:28:16
man, well, what are some of the traditional masculine traits? Um, to be competitive.
01:28:21
Now, is it bad to be hyper competitive where you
01:28:28
screw people over and you hurt your health because you want to win in this particular category? Is that bad? Yes,
01:28:34
it is. Does that mean we have people that are not competitive at all and they
01:28:39
don't care if they win or lose? No, that's not good either. So, that's that's one trait. What's another good
01:28:45
masc aggression? Aggression is a masculine trait. Is it
01:28:50
good if I'm walking into a restaurant pushing the hostess out of my way? Of
01:28:56
course. That's terrible. That's terrible. Is it good if you and I are working together and I say, "Hey, shut
01:29:02
up and do what I said." Is that good? No, it's not good. So, can you take aggression too far?
01:29:08
Yes, you absolutely can. Can you get to a point where you're not even asserting yourself at all and you're getting W?
01:29:13
Yes, you can. Is that good? No, that's not good either. So, there's a bunch of traits that we
01:29:20
could run through that are considered traditional masculine traits. And if you take any of those traits and you take them to an extreme, they're going to be
01:29:27
bad. Stoicism, right? Being stoic, being unemotional. Is it is it good to have no
01:29:32
emotions whatsoever? No. That's called a sociopath, right? Is that good? No. Is
01:29:38
it good, like I was talking about earlier, to let your emotions run your life and make your decisions based on
01:29:44
your emotions? No. That's not good either. What do we want to be as a as a human, as a man? Want to be balanced.
01:29:50
Want to be a want to be balanced. You don't want to be extreme in any
01:29:56
direction. Even when you asked me like, "Oh, Jo, what are you undisiplined on?" I told you chocolate chip cookies. I
01:30:01
could have also said, "Uh, yeah, sometimes I like to
01:30:06
eat uh mint chocolate chip milkshakes. Sometimes I get lazy to work out. I'm like, you know what? I freaking warmed
01:30:12
up and this sucks and I'm I'm leaving." Uh, sometimes I'm supposed to I was going to write something and now I
01:30:18
didn't write anything. I was supposed to write a thousand words today. I didn't write any. And guess what? I didn't write any tomorrow. I I'm a slacker. So
01:30:24
if I was so disciplined that, you know, my wife was like, "Hey, I'd like to go out for dinner." I was like, "No, I still got to write my thousand words."
01:30:30
Is that good? No, it's not good. So any any characteristic, if we take it to
01:30:36
extreme, it's going to be a problem. And so we as people should be balanced. And
01:30:42
I think what we need to be attuned to is it's it's much easier to be extreme. It's
01:30:50
it's much easier to be extreme. It's it's it's much easier to say, "Oh,
01:30:55
no emotions. Cool." And turn them off. That's easier than or or total emotion
01:31:02
mayhem. That's easier. It's harder to find balance. It's harder to find balance in business. It's harder to find
01:31:08
balance in life. It's hard to find balance. And what we have to do is we have to be attuned to the the feedback
01:31:14
that we're getting. We have to be attuned to the feedback that we're getting. So if we're talking
01:31:20
to our wife and she says you're not going to be home for dinner again tonight for the ninth night in a row
01:31:26
that you're going to stay late at work, okay, you need to be paying attention
01:31:31
enough to say, "Oh yeah, guess what? I'm a little too focused on work right now." And then the other end of that spectrum
01:31:38
is my boss says, "Hey, Jo, wait. You're leaving early again? Well, you know, it's wrestling season. My my daughter's
01:31:43
got a wrestling match, so I'm I'm going to leave." O, okay. I need to be attuned enough to say, "Yeah, if I focus 100% on
01:31:51
my job, I'm going to lose my family. If I focus 100% on my family, I'm going to lose my job." We as humans are supposed
01:31:57
to be balanced. And by the way, there's going to be some things that we don't control. Somebody asked me the other day,
01:32:03
"What did I learn about myself from the highs and lows of my life? The
01:32:12
highest point of my life and the lowest point of my life. What did I learn about myself?"
01:32:18
And I said, I learned that I don't let the highs and the lows affect me too
01:32:23
much because we're going to have wins, we're going to have losses.
01:32:29
We're going to have successes, we're going to have failures, we're going to have good nights, we're going to have
01:32:34
bad nights, we're going to have good relationships, we're going to have bad relationships, we're gonna have good ideas and bad ideas. We're going to make
01:32:40
money, we're going to lose money. All these things are going to happen. And if you oscillate emotionally
01:32:48
up and down drastically, it's going to be problematic. So finding a good, stable, centered way
01:32:57
to be and look at the world and take
01:33:04
everything that you see with a little bit of a grain of salt and don't get
01:33:10
swayed too drastically. in one direction or the other, you're going to be okay.
01:33:18
And if I was to try and sum up some of this idea about being a man or being a
01:33:25
good human, it's like those books. I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership.
01:33:30
That number one, take responsibility for what you're doing. Take take ownership of your world. Take ownership of your life. There's number one. Number two,
01:33:36
the second book, Dichotomy of Leadership. Be balanced. Be balanced.
01:33:43
Don't be extreme. Extreme. Look, do you have to sometimes get out there in the
01:33:48
in the fringes a little bit? Occasionally, you probably had some business situations where you're like,
01:33:53
"All right, I got to let go half of my staff right now. That's an extreme move, but that's how we're going to start." Do you have to do that sometimes? Yes, you
01:33:58
do. But don't let that be where you live. Live in the center. Live in a stable area. And then finally,
01:34:04
discipline equals freedom. Couple of words you use throughout this conversation make me want to add some
01:34:10
things to that list of what it takes to be a maybe not a good man but at least a happy and fulfilled man. One of the
01:34:16
words you used is brotherhood. And I was thinking about all the things you got from your time in the seals and it's
01:34:21
almost a bit of like a microcosm of what I think a lot of men are looking for. You know that sense of purpose that
01:34:27
brotherhood and they find it these days in like video games and stuff right which I video games I've got no, you
01:34:32
know, I cost no judgment on people that play video games. I've played video games my whole life, but there's a it
01:34:37
seems like there's a reason we're getting like increasingly addicted to these video games cuz they're giving us something that we're searching for in
01:34:44
real life and not getting. You use the words brotherhood, purpose. These are things that the SEALs clearly have in
01:34:52
huge huge amounts. Is there anything else that you'd add to that list of what it takes to feel fulfilled? Yeah, jiu-jitsu.
01:35:00
It's it almost says become a joke amongst me, my friends, people that listen to me
01:35:06
is you got some kind of a problem in the world. You got some kind of problem in your life, go train jiu-jitsu. There's a
01:35:11
reason why I say that. Cuz the things that you just mentioned, discipline. Guess what you need to go train jiu-jitsu when you're tired and you
01:35:17
don't feel like it? Discipline. Guess how you feel when you're done? You feel awesome. You get a bunch of dopamine.
01:35:22
Guess who you're there with? A bunch of dudes that you can relate to. And guess
01:35:28
what you're going to do together? You're going to struggle. You're going to go through some some
01:35:34
hardship together. You're going to sweat. You're going to choke. You're going to get your arm broken. Like these
01:35:40
things are going to happen. Not going to get your arm broken, but you may. But you're going to you're going to be with
01:35:46
a little brotherhood. And by the way, women train jiu-jitsu, too. My daughters
01:35:52
all train jiu-jitsu. It's all good. It's all good. So yeah, jiu-jitsu is one way.
01:35:59
Now look, could you go to the rock climbing gym? Yes, you could. Could you go to the CrossFit gym? Yes, you could. Could you go to the to the Yeah, the
01:36:06
soccer field, football field, whatever. Yeah, you can do that stuff. So yeah, go do that stuff. Go do that stuff. That's
01:36:12
shared suffering together with a group on a regular basis, whether you want to
01:36:17
or not. That's some that's those are all little components of being in the
01:36:23
military or being in the SEAL teams. That's what it is. That's what you're doing.
01:36:29
What does what does a SEAL platoon do? They train to get ready for go to war. How do they do that? They go to the desert. They carry their guns. They run
01:36:36
through little choreographed moves. They get hot. They carry weight. It's suffering. It's just shared suffering
01:36:42
and they're working together and they're learning skills. That's what you're doing in a jiu-jitsu gym. That's what you're doing on the soccer field. So, go
01:36:48
out and do those things with other human beings and it's going to make it's going to make things better for sure. It made
01:36:54
me think of business as well. Business should be that way. If you if
01:36:59
you're in an organization, you're doing the exact same thing, right? We've got a problem. We need to solve it. We've got to allocate
01:37:06
resources. We got to come in late tonight. We got to make this thing happen. We got an emergency. Like, that's what a business is, too. That's
01:37:12
the way it should be. It should be. We're working together to solve problems. And when we're successful, we
01:37:17
get rewarded for that. So, yes, this is called human interaction.
01:37:22
I'm sorry that it looks like war is the best way to do it. It's not. I would
01:37:28
much rather people start a business and create a product and and and create
01:37:34
jobs. I would much rather people do that. And you can find that same kind of camaraderie
01:37:40
in business. In fact, it's interesting. You know, I I have a consulting business and so we work with companies and companies that went through the 2008
01:37:48
economic downfall, those they're so bonded cuz they went through this traumatic experience together. Companies
01:37:55
that that kind of did well out of the gate, they're not people are leaving and people are but companies that went
01:38:01
through some trauma together, they stick together. So yeah, if you frame things
01:38:07
right in your life, if you frame things, if you frame a business challenge as an
01:38:14
opportunity to build a stronger team, if you if you frame a personal challenge
01:38:22
as an opportunity to overcome and improve yourself, these things that seem so horrible are
01:38:30
actually very positive components. of your existence and they're going to make you
01:38:37
better. As you said that, I thought, damn, I should take all of my teams. We should go do like a survival week.
01:38:43
We have uh we we run a program like that at Eson Front where we teach we teach
01:38:50
people like some basic tactics and we have these high-speed laser tag guns and we send them out on missions and there's
01:38:55
explosions and there's gunfire and there's role players that are screaming and yelling and it's it's mayhem. And
01:39:01
those teams that go through that, they bond. They also learn how to make decisions under pressure. They also learn how to detach. They also learn the
01:39:08
fundamental principles of combat leadership that you can apply not just to the battlefield, but you can apply to business and you can apply to your life
01:39:14
as well. So yes, is that helpful? It absolutely is. Struggle sucks.
01:39:22
Depends on how you frame it, right? Depends on how you frame it.
01:39:30
Cuz I'm thinking about you stood at the beach at the, you know, and they say, "Walk out, Jo. Link arms and walk out."
01:39:36
You describe that as sucking. Yep. But what you're also saying is there's
01:39:41
huge value in things that suck. On the the other side of something that sucks is something
01:39:47
worth cherishing. I would say not just huge value, but the
01:39:52
value. It's the value.
01:39:57
You want to know if you're a you were talking about young men that might not have any direction right now. Go do
01:40:03
something that's hard. Go try and accomplish something that's hard. You may win. You may lose. You may
01:40:09
succeed. You may fail. I'll tell you what, you'll be better. If you avoid those things that are hard,
01:40:17
if you don't accept that challenge, if you don't step up and step into that cold water and you sit on your couch and
01:40:24
eat Doritos, I I I can tell you this is not a good
01:40:30
move. This is not a good move. Don't do that. Don't do that. Just get
01:40:36
up, move towards that challenge. Whatever that challenge is, move towards
01:40:41
that challenge and go attack it. And you may be successful and you may
01:40:46
not be successful, but you will be better. And the next challenge you're going to
01:40:52
be more prepared for. And the next challenge after that you're going to be even more prepared for.
01:40:59
And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And then
01:41:06
you're going to win.
01:41:12
And that's life. Life without those challenges.
01:41:20
It's existence. Don't just exist.
01:41:26
Go live. You used the word balance a second ago
01:41:33
and um from reading through your story it appears that when you were in the seals you didn't have a whole lot of
01:41:40
work life balance in whatever way people will define work life balance and talking specifically here about your
01:41:46
relationships your family your wife I'm right in saying that you were out of
01:41:51
balance at through that season of life in terms of you know yes I was out of
01:41:58
balance I was out of balance.
01:42:04
I was out of balance, but
01:42:09
the ship was still moving in the right direction. So, what does that mean? That means that
01:42:15
my wife picked up the slack. That's what she did.
01:42:22
So, I was out of balance. She recognized it. She recognized that I had a job
01:42:30
and that that job was important. She recognized that
01:42:35
I was going to war. I was taking I was taking guys to war
01:42:41
my decisions could mean the lives of these guys, the
01:42:47
deaths of these guys. My wife understood that.
01:42:54
My wife understood that what I needed to focus on at that time was making sure
01:42:59
that my guys and me were prepared for war. That has to be the focus. That has to be
01:43:07
the focus. To not focus on that means I might not be coming home. Means some of those guys
01:43:13
not might not be coming home. She understood that. She knew that.
01:43:19
She stepped up. She I was out of balance. She was in balance. She pulled the
01:43:26
family unit into balance. And And
01:43:32
I was I treated my wife like a princess. My I mean I never I never I mean I gave
01:43:39
my wife everything except for time. I could not always give her the time that
01:43:44
she deserved. She never complained about it one time.
01:43:57
That's legit.
01:44:06
She knew.
01:44:17
She knew that and she understood it. It's a team.
01:44:23
First law of combat leadership is cover and move. We work together as a team.
01:44:29
While I was doing my job, while I was serving the country,
01:44:37
she covered for me where I couldn't deliver on the home
01:44:42
front. With three kids and then four kids, she
01:44:48
covered the finances, the water heater that's broken, the car tire that needs
01:44:54
changing. She did all that stuff. I can see the emotion in your face when
01:44:59
you say that. Where does that come from? Where is that emotion?
01:45:08
That's appreciation.
01:45:15
It's appreciation. It's like I'm gone and she's there. She doesn't
01:45:23
know what's going to happen to me. Doesn't know if I'm coming home. She got three freaking kids running
01:45:29
around. Like, and this is my wife. Guess what? There's hundreds of thousands of
01:45:37
military wives that did the same thing. And spouses as well, cuz there's there's
01:45:42
guys that are married to females that go on deployment as well, that hold the line and and do the job on
01:45:50
the home front. And you know, they they don't they don't
01:45:56
get the appreciation, the outward appreciation, the recognition that the
01:46:01
people that are in the military get, but they deserve it.
01:46:08
Do you think you could ever express the gratitude you have for for her in words?
01:46:14
Do you think do you think it's possible for her to know how much you appreciate her for holding the line and for
01:46:21
covering you? Do I think I could express it
01:46:27
in words? Probably not. Does she know?
01:46:32
Yes, she does. Jocker, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves
01:46:38
a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. Mhm. They leave it in this book.
01:46:43
Question that's been left for you. If you could bring someone back who's no longer with us and have a conversation
01:46:51
with them, who would it be and what would that conversation entail?
01:47:02
Well, I'd bring back Mark Lee, Mikey Monsour,
01:47:09
and Ryan Job.
01:47:16
And I tell him, "Thank you.
01:47:33
Thank you.
01:47:41
What would you be thanking them for?
01:47:47
Everything.
01:47:57
Okay. Thank you. Thank you for I mean the list is quite
01:48:03
ex extensive but thank you for putting your life on the line to make the world a better place. That's um I think a a
01:48:10
level of gratitude and appreciation that we can't really express um in words to people like you that put your lives on
01:48:17
the line and sometimes don't come back from war and put your families through it things that the average person
01:48:22
frankly wouldn't be willing to do um for the sake of an important cause. Thank
01:48:28
you for that. Thank you on behalf of all of the people that will never be able to say it to you. Thank you for what you're doing in this chapter of your life
01:48:34
because you are maybe whether you know it or not, you are saving, improving, and changing lives with everything you
01:48:41
do with your incredible podcast, with all the books you've written. You've written this, you know, you're writing children's books as well now to try and
01:48:48
help shift the mindset of people at the very while they're still seeds and they're formative. And I think that's
01:48:53
also going to change improve lives. and thank you for all the inspiration you've given me over the years because you'll never get to see all of the people who
01:49:00
hear a line that you say, the way that you say it, the stories that you tell.
01:49:06
Um, and for some of those people, it's just the subtle nud nudge that they need to take that first step to spit the
01:49:11
Dorito out and to change their lives. You know, when I when I think about my friendship circle and I told told some
01:49:17
of my friends that I was speaking to you today, those are young men and women that can all pinpoint the moment where
01:49:23
they encountered you and they can pinpoint how it moved their life forward in some way. You'll never meet these
01:49:28
millions and millions of people, but I just want you to know for sure that they're there and they're watching now
01:49:33
and they've been watching and they'll continue to watch. So, Joo, thank you. It's been an honor. It was an honor to
01:49:38
serve and thanks for having me on here. Appreciate it. Heat. Heat.
01:49:45
[Music]
