This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average Host. This is the James altucher show.
Today on the James altucher show. Have you ever wondered how to make your life better? Have you ever wondered how to have more discipline and you ever wondered what in your life needs Improvement? Have you ever complained, have you ever made excuses?
Have you ever
procrastinated to the answer to that last one, I'll give a Jocko will link style response, which is don't procrastinate. That's it. Don't
Get to mired in to the details. Don't do it. Don't
have excuses.
Do something to make yourself better. Today, Jocko willing was a Navy SEAL for many years. He has such an impressive guy. He's got, he's got a great podcast, he's been on this podcast a bunch of times before. I really loved all his books extreme ownership, which is part of my own personal Mantra, which is to take extreme ownership. And part of that is because of my conversations with Jocko is another book that dichotomy of
Leadership but today we talk about the expanded book, discipline equals Freedom Expanded Edition by Jocko willing. I love this book. I have it right next to me because I read from it very often and jacko's just such an impressive guy to talk to, and to know and to meet, if you've already met him through my podcast, he has more to say, we have more stories to talk about. If you haven't yet, this is gonna be a treat for you. Here we go.
Jogo, first off, I love the book. Let me read the title out discipline equals, freedom field manual. I don't know what mk12 mod 1 means, but you could tell me and this is the field manual. Super enjoyed it and, you know, it was odd when I was reading it. Literally, I had just been told something disappointing to me. Someone had said something, you know, and this happens to everybody at every stage of life, but someone had said something about me which potentially cost me an
Me. And it was also a non truth. I'll put it that way and then picking up your book like a second later. And there were so many things. It was as if you were, like, writing a letter directly to me about, you know, no excuses, you know, you know, get into Destroyer mode, you know, move forward, no matter what, take the next step and it's, and it's interesting. It feels like the Viewpoint is, is not that there is an enemy on the other side, but you have to prepare
Pair in your life as if there is someone pursuing the same goals as you in conflict with you and you have to make sure you prepare always in every aspect of your life. A little bit better than that invisible opponent. And I feel like opponents the wrong word, but that's how I felt reading the book.
Yeah, I think that's a very good way to read it and and like you said, look, you might not have a an actual enemy human being out there. But think about life, life is filled with all kinds of resistance and Insurgency that's fighting against you and if you don't impose your will on it, your life will go in the wrong direction. There's no doubt about it. So, I think that is an attitude that I have, and I think that's a, probably, a pretty perceptive, take away from the book from from you,
you know, it's interesting.
Because I always feel like the way even though our backgrounds are completely different. And I always addressed this, I apologize about that. But I feel like a lot of the ideas overlap and interact in the sense that
You know, let's say I'm in a business and it's not going so well or let's say, you know, I Stumble in some way financially which is happen to me many times. You know, the discipline I've learned through that over the past 20 years that this has been happening to me is to is to always this day. Like let's say I have a problem this day. Let's say I have some asset that I can sell or some Financial investment doesn't go well or I'm disappointed in some respect. I always
Always have to make sure I make one move or one switch in my thinking that moves me forward. And if I do that everyday, it compounds and adds and that's the sense I get from your book and that and that works, it's always being proactive, rather than falling back on an excuse, or falling back on a regret or falling back on like well, that opportunity is gone now, it's all over for me. Like those thoughts have to always go away.
I don't think it's that strange that people.
People from different, backgrounds can come to very similar conclusions. You know, I was, I joined the Navy out of high school, I ended up going to college much later because the Navy sent me to college, but, you know, even when I started talking, when I, when I got out of the Navy and I started talking about sort of my operating system, which is what that book is really a lot of people said, hey, you know, have you been, do you follow the stoic leaders and, you know, this is very similar to
It's a Buddha and just the whole nine yards, all these ancient philosophies and the fact of the matter is, I didn't really read any of that stuff growing up. I was a kid that got out of high school did did crappy in high school. Join the Navy because that's what I always wanted to do. And then I ended up being in tough situations over and over again and ended up in a leadership position and had to figure out how to make things work. So that's what you had to do. You know, you are doing what you doing, you made some mistakes, I made some mistakes we but we
Figure out how to move forward. And I think you can look at any anyone and if they if they address the problems in life that come your way, you're going to figure out that these similar things work. You know. There's not too many people that are that are contacting me saying, hey, I'd really like to talk to you. My philosophy is when something bad is happening run away, or hey, I'd really like to talk to, you know, I've got a great book that's out. It's called, it's called avoid taking responsibility for things like that. Just doesn't happen. So, I don't think
It's a big surprise that, you know, someone like yourself that's been through some trials and tribulations in your life has come to similar conclusions that I've come to. And I don't think that is very strange at all. I think it's actually, I think it actually speaks to the nature of some foundational truths in the way the world operates and I think that's pretty good evidence for
it. Yeah, I agree. Like sometimes. Maybe the mental model underneath a recommended set of actions might be a little different. Like like and I do like the mint.
Model of thinking like, you know, you talk about, for instance, when you talk about waking up and the importance of sleep, which is a small section of the book. But but an important one in my view and you say, look, if you go to sleep at 10 and wake up at five, that's great. But if you go to sleep at 9:55 and wake up at 4:55, that's even better. Because you're waking up five minutes earlier than the guy who's training who you're potentially training against meaning for you. You're going potentially to war. And so there's someone out there doing the equivalent.
Island training on the other side who might you might have to face in a life-or-death situation. So you do need that 5 minutes difference makes a difference and it's important. That's the importance of being proactive and aggressive every day,
you know think about it in the business world as well. I mean, I work with my consulting company, we work with all kinds of businesses, every kind of business you can imagine and if you think it doesn't pay off to be competitive in business, and your competitor is going to open their store at
Clock in the morning and you're going to open it but 5:30 you don't think that's an advantage. That's an advantage all day long. So it applies to everything, I don't care if you own a pizza restaurant or you're in the financial industry or you're in a construction industry, no matter what industry you're in, when you go hard and you get there early, that's that, that works. And by the way, sunsoo in The Art of War wrote about this 2,500 years ago, he was the way he put it was he who gets to the battlefield first, has the
The big advantage and should win. And that's the same thing. If I show up to work earlier than you, I'm going to win.
It's really true. I remember, and I hope you don't mind. Just me swapping stories here because there's so many aspects of the book I want to talk about. But it just reminds me things. Like, when I had my very first job outside of school, it was at HBO in the 90s and I remember even being feeling, sorry for my boss. So I was in my 20s, he was
His 40s and he had kids and he had a commute to work and I can get there at 5:00 in the morning, 6:00 in the morning, he my boss and his entire generation who were working at HBO. They couldn't really get there before 9:00. They had their family responsibilities or their excuses. I don't even know why but that's when they would arrive and I knew just by getting there earlier than everyone else. I was always the only one on the floor. When I got there, there was it was you, it's this feeling of being unbeatable at
That moment no matter how many disappointments you have like this appointments could not phase me then.
Yeah. And it's really hard. I mean if you get up to work at five o'clock the morning they're shown up at 9:00 that's not even really competition. I mean you're just destroying them and and I think I found this you may not have found this but for me you know I wasn't the strongest guy, wasn't the smartest guy, wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed and I kind of realized if I was going to be, if I was going to do a good job,
Then I needed to do. I need to work harder than everybody else, and that means show up a little bit earlier than everybody else. Get that, get that Head Start, and it definitely pays off.
Yeah, and by the way, I'm pretty sure you are the smartest tool in the shed. Because in order, you also have to know that once you're there, you have to know what to do. Like in order to learn something, you kind of correct, correct me if I'm wrong because this is the way I view learning. And I feel your book not only is about discipline and how to get that discipline, and what things to be disciplined about. But it's also a
Learning, you know making a choice and you say this at any stage in your life you say it's never too late to make the choice to be successful. But then you have to figure out in whatever your domain is. What are the elements of success that you're going to start improving that? You're going to avoid making excuses about that? You're going to start compounding, you know, proactive behaviors in. Like, how do you, how do you right now? For instance, learn something new. And how did you learn something new? You know, back then it's probably similar
So, there's a couple things that you talked about
that, that I that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
So how do I figure out what I'm going to do is one of them because I've got, you know, I've got a bunch of different businesses going on, I've got little projects happening, I know you do too. I track what you're doing. And and by the way,
I just bought your Jocko drink on Amazon.
There you go. So people will wonder, you know, how do you figure out what's going to work? What's not going to work?
How do you figure out where to invest your your resources and your time and your money? How do you do that? And and the way I look at it is so when you're in combat, when you're going into battle, the the principle is you look at the enemy defenses and you want to figure out where their weak points are obviously right? You don't want to attack their strong point. You want to attack the weak points. So what you do is you go out and you do reconnaissance missions. You probe
good to push against their defenses and see if you can locate any weaknesses and if you do then you apply some of your resources to those weak areas and actually the term that used in the military's, you exploit those weaknesses and that sounds really bad in the business world to say, hey once I find an opportunity I'm going to exploit that opportunity but what you want to do is take advantage of that opportunity. There's also times where you push out and you try and do a reconnaissance and you figure out that whatever that thing that you tried really, isn't that good? So you don't put any more resources there.
So that's kind of what I do the supplement line that I've got a few years ago, I started making one thing. It was it was T, it was bags of tea which no one would expect me to make and they sold like crazy and it was great and then I made cans of tea and it sold like crazy. It was great. And then I started making supplements. I started making supplements that I actually use people bought them like crazy and just continue down the path. Now there was there's plenty of things that I've tried along the way that I've had to back away.
Away from all that, that's not really that popular. Or I didn't really get a lot of good feedback or, or hey, the cost to produce. This thing was absolutely crazy and I made enough for me, but I can't really afford to make enough for everybody. So I think having the mindset of being number one, willing, to take some risks to try and do some things. But equally important is being humble enough to say, you know what, that wasn't a good idea. And I need to back away from that, and I know there's some sunk cost to what I tried to do. But that's
Okay, no factor, and I'll keep moving forward,
right? So how do you decide when to stop something? Even if it's something you enjoy and it's or something you really wanted to succeed.
If I really want something to succeed or something, if it's not, well, let me rephrase that. If something I really enjoy, I'll do it. I mean, if something that I just enjoy doing, I'll just do it. I mean I have a podcast, I really enjoy doing my podcast even if no one listen to my podcast, I would still do my podcast because I get to read great books, interview, great people. I
Earned more than anyone from my own podcast. I learned more than anybody because I have to do all the back and research. Even if no one listened to it, I would still do it. So if I really enjoy something, then I will absolutely just continue to do it. But if I'm doing something that maybe isn't that great and it's not getting great feedback and and I realized hey this isn't that I'm investing a bunch of time and effort. I'm not getting a good return on investment from it. It's really easy for me to say, oh yeah, I've invested this much time. I've got this much return.
That doesn't make much sense, I'd rather be doing something else. It's pretty easy for me to figure that out.
You know, I like the section about questions, particularly you see in an election year. And obviously this has been a very strange year for a lot of reasons. But the idea of questioning everything is so much more important than answers and so you see on Twitter all day long, people have all the answers. Suddenly all of my Facebook friends were expert epidemiologists. And then somehow my
My gym teacher from fourth grade was like, a super Economist talking about the lockdowns, and now he's an expert on the Supreme Court. If all you have is questions, it's great. Because, like, you say in the book, what am I going to do to improve myself today, to get better faster stronger? And then I even tell my kids at the end of the day to look back and say, what did I do to improve myself because then that primes them. So that they know at the end of the next day, I'm going to ask the same question so they, it's like they have to prepare
So I do think this questions aspect is very important like question everything like what what sort of things do you question on a daily
basis? I think what's interesting about this is a again I was really lucky. I I guess I'm kind of a weird person or strange person. You think when I was a kid, I was a super rebellious kid, you know? I was I was crazy kid, I liked hardcore music and heavy metal and I didn't like Authority and I didn't like anyone telling me what to do and I I just
Everything that anybody told me I thought, you know well how do you know that? And I did I questioned everything and that rebellious streak that I have that, I still have to this day, it's a very important thing to have. And and what makes it most important and kind of what you're alluding to is, when you turn those questions towards yourself, you know, and you start asking yourself well, what did what what have I done? What can I do? Better, did I really do something productive today? You know, I've
I was talking about my kids recently about the difference between consumption and production and it's really easy in this world right now to just consume information, right? Whether it's Instagram or Tick-Tock or SnapChat like you can just go on there and consume but you're not producing anything. You're not making anything, you're not creating anything, you shouldn't be in a deficit. You should be hating if you end up at the end of the day that you've consumed more.
Information than you've actually produced or you've consumed more creativity than you've produced. So, that kind of thing is the kind of thing. I question myself, what did I do today? What did I produce today? What did, I've created a versus sitting around and watching a movie listening to someone else's podcast watching an Instagram video, watching a YouTube like all those things are consuming and look you can learn a lot from that you can learn a lot from YouTube. You can learn a lot from podcast. That's good.
But you have to make sure it's not a deficit we're all you're doing is consuming and you're not producing anything. But so the kind of things I question, you know, I as I say in the book, I mean I question everything, I question everything and I think one of your points and one of the reasons that 2020s been so crazy, is everybody does think they know everything and everybody thinks that they and you know what they think, they know everything and then they can support it with alleged facts from the internet and they Google some statistics are they
Show that, whatever country that did that certain thing. And and, and so not only do they think, they know then they reinforce and then people pile all on and it just it just becomes completely crazy when the fact of the matter is. And I often say that, you know, how often James, I have to admit that I'm wrong. Do you know how often I have to admit that? I'm
wrong. Well, if it's anywhere close to mind, it's all day long.
See, it's not with me. I almost never have to admit that, I'm wrong. And the reason that I almost
Never have to admit that I'm wrong is because I Almost Never Say, Hey, I know this fact or that fact, 100%, I never tell anyone know the disease is going to do this or this person is going to get elected or this purse. I never say that kind of thing because I don't know, I don't know and
there's also an aspect of there's a benefit to not caring and I don't mean that in a way where you don't care, what the policies of the country are you don't care what's happening in your community but
But there's only so many things you can control or so many things. You can have an impact on, and it's almost using up the fuel and you were, you have a, you know, a section called fuel. It's almost using up your fuel to expend energy on things. You have no control over like for instance in opinion making its way into the world via Twitter.
Yeah now it's very interesting times I think a lot of it has to do with the ego to you know we get wrapped up in wanting to be right again.
When else we want to be correct. And we can go to war over some fact that we barely even have a grasp on. And yet we want to argue with James, that I'm right. You're wrong. And like you said, what am I actually doing to benefit the World? By having this argument on a Twitter thread, with a someone, I've never met am ever going to see them. It's it's just it's sad. I think that that's look, I'm not going to say that these type of
The things are fads like the hula hoop but I think at some point people look around, a lot of people look around and go. Yeah. You know, probably four hours a day on social media is a little bit much. I'm spending six hours a day, looking at people looking at threads on Twitter that's probably not a great way for me to spend my life. I think we'll get there
eventually. I think so too. I think there's got to be but that on the one hand there's kind of this addictive dopamine thing. That happens when you reload
Twitter and there's and there's more engagement or you reload, Facebook, and there's more engagement but at the same time it's very easy to see at the end of the day like oh, I don't feel good right now. And it's almost like, you know, you refer to an example of like eating Donuts feels good but but later, it feels bad, it's the same thing with like social media, like feels good to get that one last like you're wrong because of this thing. I just read three seconds ago on Wikipedia. But now next
Perdon. And at the end of the day, it just doesn't feel
good. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely some short-term gratification versus long term gratification that we definitely as human beings tend to gravitate towards short-term gratification, for sure and short-term gratification is not long-term success and it's not long-term happiness and and you are wrote about that in the book. People say do do what makes you
happy and and I get
it if you're doing things.
That strategically over the long term will make you happy, like, getting a job that you enjoy, or living a place that you like, or hanging around with people that that are that you find enjoyable. And those are long-term things that will make you happy. But as you said, eating a donut right now sitting on social media playing, another video game, whatever. The thing is that you thinks gonna make you happy right now and it's a short-term gratification, the long term. It's not going to help you out.
I love this section in the book and it's pretty early on in the book called Mind.
Roll. I love that because there's almost this science fiction aspect and you refer to that in the first set and it's not about controlling other people's minds about controlling yours but it's a very Jocko written section, like, you know, you right. People ask me how do I get tougher? And, and you just write, be tougher. How can I wake up early in the morning? Wake up early, you know, how can I stop eating sugar? Stop eating sugar. And your point is, is that you can control these emotions. But I even remember
Stuff you would write years ago where it had the same kind of style like people to ask you these questions and you would just remove the question part and and there's already the answer and that, that's a, that's like a very Jocko way to do things, but I'm curious some people, they ask you, how can I stop eating sugar, because they're really addicted? Like, it's really hard for them to say, no. But you're saying, you only think it's hard for you, you have control over what's on your mind and so I'm just trying to understand it. Is there a nuance
There
I've got two examples here that I think are very interesting and the reason they're very interesting is because there they were very hard for me to relate to but around that I got one was a one was an email that I got from a guy and the other one was a guy that I actually met. So the guy that sent me an e-mail and both these guys kind of preface preface their communication with me with I'm really embarrassed to tell you this and it's not going to seem like a big deal.
But I want to tell you this and I want to say thank you because this had a huge impact on my life. The first one. And again this is it is what it is. This guy will had bit his nails, his whole life and you know, he was a grown man. He was a professional and he had raw fingers and he would be in a meeting and he would bite his nails and there would be blood on his hands and he said it was just absolutely horrible and he's been doing it for
38 years or what? However old he was he'd been doing this whole life and he was like in mid 30s to 40 years old. So we this was a habit. He had had his whole life gnawing at his nails. He said he and and and it's so strange, right? Because he thought it was disgusting, he knew it, made him look gross, he knew it. People paid attention to it. He knew people watched him and he couldn't stop.
Any heard me on the podcast saying like those lines right there. Hey, you don't want to eat sugar anymore. Stop eating sugar. And he said, I heard you say that and he said I'm going to stop biting my nails. And then, you know, he tells me the story holds up his hand and he's got his, he shows me, his fingernails and her, fingernails were all normal. And actually there was a little bit of damage to him like permanent damage there was a little bit of funkiness to him, but
he was like, thank you. What I needed to do was just stop. The other guy, I told that story on the podcast and then months later, I met a guy who he prefaced the conversation, the same way he goes. You know, Jocko, I'm embarrassed to tell you this and it may not make any sense to you, and you may never understand what this is.
And
I he said it just it doesn't fit anything with what you do and who you are. He said, I was absolutely addicted to video games. He said, I would play video games for 18 hours a day, 20 hours a day, 15 hours, a day, every single day. And he worked in the, he worked in the computer industry. So he was staring at a screen all day at work, and you would put he would play video games all night long. He would have had his diet was horrible.
His sleep was horrible and he could not stop. And he said, he heard me talking about that story and he said, you know what I'm done and he took all of his video games, he sold his video game console and all these video games and he actually used that money to come to the event where I met him. That's great. He says, you know, I haven't played it. I haven't played a video game and whatever it was for months, so,
You know, it's one of those strange things. You know I think of people
Sometimes, you know, I've said before, you get what you want, if you really want to get control over that, man, you get control over it and hey, look are there things that are out of your control? Absolutely. And I've had those questions that, you know, some of the most horrible questions I've had him in since I've been out talking to people is
You know, when I talk about taking ownership of things, right and someone will stand up at one of my events and say, hey Jocko I you know, my nine-year-old. Daughter has leukemia
How do I take ownership of that? How am I supposed to take ownership of the fact? Everything's my fault. Well, how is this my fault that my daughter who's nine years old? Has leukemia and, you know, there is an answer to that and and I've answered that type of question many times and the way that you take ownership over things that you have no control over as you take ownership of how you respond and that's what you do. So these kind of situations are so
You always have to remember an I always think about the fact that what people face in their life is their life and you know, this is one of the reason why I started writing those kids books, I was in the SEAL Teams and you know, there's a war going on. I came home from work, one day, my oldest daughter was talking about something and she was sad about something. Somebody had said something to her. And in my mind I was thinking, you know, part of my mind was thinking, this is such a joke.
Give you words, somebody called you a name who cares? You need to toughen up and then at the same time as looking at my daughter and I thought to myself, oh yeah, this is her whole world. And so that's the way it is for everyone, you know. And look, you might be addicted to heroin, or you might have some horrible disease, or you might bite your nails and whatever situation you're in. That's what you're in. And people have to face those challenges that they come across in their life. And, and to your point earlier,
I think that's what like this book. I think that's what, that's why it's so Universal because it doesn't matter what the challenge is that you're facing, it made from the outside, it may appear small, but inside, that's a huge problem. And from the outside it may appear gargantuan, but when you're in it, you don't have a choice, you have a choice, but to face the problems. And so I think that's why the book has done so well. And and this, this new edition coming out is because regardless of
People are in their life. They find it. They understand it and they can utilize it to help as you said earlier, move
forward. Yeah. Like like, I love this concept. You have the chapters called good and so someone comes to you with a problem and you reply good. They come to with another problem. You reply good, you know. So you're and you say what things are going. Bad, you know, don't get bummed, don't get startled essentially, you know, say good move on. Figure out how to be proactive, but
But sometimes, like what do you say to the guy with the daughter who has leukemia? You can't just say, well, say good because it makes you appreciate life. More makes you appreciate the time with your daughter more and so on, you know, there's a little Nuance there but
How do you convert the word? Good to action?
I mean, even to the question that you just asked, because I've had that question many times of what what is, you know? My, my friend died, my, you know, whatever person you lose somebody. What? What, God's name is good about that and and you just answered it, right? You just answered it. Listen, if you look, I've lost way too many friends and it's horrible.
All every single time but I can either focus on on that horribleness and dwell in the darkness or I can say hey at least I got to know them. At least I got to spend time with them. At least I have these memories. Good. I can I can tell their story. That's what, what is your alternative when You Face something? That's that truly dark. What's your alternative? It's either. Hey, embrace it. Good? And and and look at what you've got. That is positive, that's going to come from it. The alternative is
Embrace the negative embrace the darkness and going to a place where there's no escape from. So even in those really hard situations,
You have to get mine control, you have to get control over your mind. And and you know when it comes to loss,
You have to remember but you can't dwell and, and look, it's absolutely. It's a, I actually have gone through this lost thing enough times. Now that when I finally put pen to paper on it and explain what it's like when you lose somebody, the amount of feedback that I've gotten is has been really phenomenal because I've mapped it out a little bit and and you know what happens is when you lose somebody
When
someone dies that you care about, you get, you get hit with this tidal wave of emotion and sadness and it's so big and it's like the ocean and it consumes you and what's really scary about it is that you can't control because we're used to being in some kind of control and all of a sudden, you're in a situation where you're not in control anymore and it feels horrible. But here's the reality is, the reality is you will start to those waves will start to fit, they will start to get a little bit weaker and you'll start to get
Get a little bit more control and then they'll get a little bit more space between them. And and look, there's times where, even to this day, I'll be thinking about one of my friends and, and losing one of my friends, and I'll get very emotional. Even that could happen that could happen, you know, today,
But those times will become less and less frequent and those emotions will become less strong. And what's horrible about that is you think to yourself? Well, does that mean I didn't really care about my friend? Did that mean I'm a cold person or that? I'm an unemotional person, or I'm forgetting about them and it doesn't mean any of those things. It just means that you are adapting and you're learning how to understand that loss. And as you learn to understand it, you deal with it and you
You move on. So all these things are really really hard and you know I I say that combat is like life but Amplified and intensified and so you know when you when you go to combat you're going to see things that normally take lifetimes to see or a lifetime to see, and you're going to see them in a very condensed form and that's why you get a kid. That's 23, years old, who has a thousand-yard stare and you wonder why? Well, it's because you're supposed to live to 90 before you watch your friends die and it's not not supposed to happen when you're when you're
21 or 22. And so you see that stair, that kid has been through a whole lifetime of suffering, in before he can drink a beer legally. So you learn about it and you learn about it a little bit through a firehose. And I was lucky too because I didn't go to war. I mean, not my, I was in the when I first got in the military was the 90s, there's no war going on. My job was just kind of a cool job to be honest with you, we got to shoot guns and blow things up and jump out of airplanes. Like it was all
fun and it wasn't until the war started and then you realize, oh well, I was
You know, 30, whatever years old. And when September 11th happened, I was a more. I was an older more mature person. And I had seen, I had seen some been around loss before and so I had a little bit of understanding of how to deal with it. But for a kid that just rolls into the military at 18 years old, he's going to see he's going to get a life time experience in a very short period of time. And here's the thing, there are ways to deal with it. There are there are people that have
Down the path before they're people that can explain things to you. And again, that's why like, writing this book was one of the reasons behind writing this book Because as I talk to people on my podcast and I say, oh you're going through this do this. They say thank you. Thank you for telling me that and I only need to hear that so many times before. I said, I better write this stuff down and get it out to people.
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There's so much overlap between some of the things you say and I say them in different ways often, but the most dangerous thing for me has been looking back at times when I've gone from great success to going dead broke and dwelling on the regret that results. And I wish at that time and I'm talking like 20 years ago, I wish I had had a mentor. I wish I had somebody who could have told me
This is what you do and it might be just as simple as just improve yourself today. Just just get better today just view this as a learning experience. Today, we'll deal with tomorrow tomorrow. It's either that I had nobody to talk to or I didn't have the humility to talk to anyone. I had shame around my loss and and so maybe maybe this idea of responding good that's a muscle that that you've developed and perhaps you've had mentors or an instinct for that but I feel like it's
It's hard sometimes to do that. Like, it's so easy and seductive to dwell on a bad thing that happened and to fall into the excuse and the regret, you know, how do you develop the muscle? And I have my own thoughts on this, but obviously, you're really good at it,
you know, I think James the, I've been very, very lucky in my life and one of the ways in a million different ways. I've been very lucky in my life and one of the ways that I think, I've been very lucky in my life is,
I had a very nice gentle slope of bad things happening to me and and so I think as bad things would happen, you know, if a little bad things happen. If a little bad thing happens and you go, oh yeah, whatever good will overcome that. It does build you a little muscle and let you see. All I can let this thing, whatever I am trying to think of some just dumb things that I did, you know, I just did dumb things, you might get in trouble.
I'm John, I'm trying to think of something right now. Oh, you okay, here's one, like, going through basic Seal training. I failed this thing called pool competency where they put you in the pool and they you got scuba gear on and they basically just completely drown you and it's not literally drown you. But they they rip the regulator out of your mouth and they tie it NOS. They rip your mask off, they bang you into the bottom of the pool, they rip your all your scuba gear off. You've got to, and then you've got to stay completely.
Action, you've got to reassemble the gear, you got to get everything working. Again you got to get the regulator back in your mouth, you got to do a check and then they just do it again and they do it for half an hour. And the first time that I did it, I failed and
it's really horrifying because when you want to be in the SEAL Teams,
there's no freaking guarantee at all that you're going to make it. It's it's hanging over your head the whole time and when you don't make it into the SEAL Teams, if that's what you want to do.
It's like there's no other options. I mean it's a it was such a fear and and quite frankly in recent years, there's been there with some guy that that killed himself that he actually quit SEAL training and then
You know, he was out of the training, rented a hotel room in San Diego and, and jumped off the building and killed himself. And I could, I wasn't surprised at all when I heard that because you get some kid that's been wanting to do that their whole life, it's their life. It's a dream. It's their goal. They've told everyone I'm going to be a Navy SEAL, I'm going to be a Navy SEAL, I'm going to be a Navy SEAL and then they get there and they actually quit, which should also show you something about what the training does to people psychologically. It's very difficult.
Well, for me, I failed this Evolution this, this pool competency, and even, then I remember thinking, like, I'm going to crush this thing next time. And I, actually, instead of being scared of it, I went in because we had I failed on a Friday and then you have the weekend to remediate. And then on Monday, you take it again and over the weekend. A couple of other guys that failed. We went into this. It's called a dip tank.
It's basically just like a metal box filled with water and we went in there. We just beat each other to death with these with our scuba Rigs and we just did it over and over again and we made them. We made what our little training over the weekend harder than what they did to us. On Monday. I rolled in on a Monday. There was no way they were going to stop me. So like a little thing like that I got hit with some adversity but I look, I'm not saying it's big adversity at all. That's what I'm saying. What I'm saying is it wasn't what I'm saying? Is it wasn't, you know?
My dad died when I was 10 years old. It wasn't this thing that came out of nowhere. Where is unexpected? I had a very nice gradual escalation of problems in my life, and so that, by the time, I was older and I was going to war and I was going to have real real problems, then I was a little bit. I was a little bit more prepared for it and even, you know, I had a friend of mine that got murdered when I was in the SEAL Teams is really, it was a great friend of mine, an incredible person, incredible.
Human being hung out with him, all the time. He was a kind of a heroic guy. He was the he was the quarterback of the football team at the Naval Academy. This guy named Alton Lee Grizzard and he ended up getting murdered by some girl's boyfriend Etc. Murder double murder suicide. And you know, it was really hard for me was really, really hard for me and but I was young and I wasn't
In a position of leadership and I kind of had to overcome it and then that's that's kind of the first initial time that I felt those waves of emotion and not being able to be in control. So that by the time I was older and I was started losing friends from War. I was at least a little bit more prepared for it. So I think I've been very lucky that I've had a slow escalation of problems in my life and
As I dealt with the small problems. As you said, back to your question, I think, as I dealt with small problems, I built some sort of muscle memory on how to overcome them. And therefore, what I hope is that telling people, hey, this is what you could look just like you, no one ever told me. Hey, this is what you got to do in this situation. No, one ever really told me that it was me. Just figuring it out and just like you had to have some point figure out. Okay, well I can sit here and be depressed because I blew freaking
Thousands of dollars. And I could be set for life. And now I'm actually screwed and you can sit there and dwell on that and figure out what, how you're going to finish the job of screwing yourself at some point. You said, okay, well, I did it once I could do it again, right? And I think that those are slow learns if you have to learn them the hard way. And and I think my goal like with a book like this and I think, you know, listen to what you put on your blog and what you write about, what you talked about, you're doing the same thing.
Hey, you don't have to learn the hard way. Here's some shortcuts that you can
take its true. Like what happens is and I'm showing the same thing happen to you. Is suddenly, you have this mindset that when something bad happens, you are able to say good, you, you know, implicitly that there's this problem is, is wrapping around some solution, some some new opportunity. So as soon as something bad happens, now it's much easier for me to slip.
To a mindset where, oh, this really is a good thing that happened because now I know that there's an opportunity here as soon as something bad happens, like I feel happy about it and that was a mindset. I didn't have necessarily 20 years ago, although, I wish I had, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. I'm sure. But like, what would you have done if, you know way back in the day you did fail to get into the seals
I have no idea, you know, I would like to tell you that when I think I would do is I would go to the regular Navy Fleet for a while and reapply to try and go back again which is that does happen. There's there's guys that quit or don't make it through the first time that come back and they end up in the SEAL Teams. They end up being awesome guys. So I think that's what I probably would have done. Yeah. Or try
and so in right now so many people
Are going through issues like this. Because, you know, you figure during this economic lockdown, 55 million people at some point or other filed for unemployment insurance, which is so one out of three American workers. So their whole lives were uprooted, their whole lives were changed their fears about whether they could support their families and their children were even themselves. All that came into question and so a lot of people are dealing with this at all ages. And you mentioned at any age, you you have the opportunity to get
Get started. But there's all this mythology around. Well, you know, you're 50 years old. You're 40 years old, you're 45 years old. You can't just get started on something new. You got to pay your dues. There's you got to put in 10,000 hours. You gotta go to school or whatever and people are like, I'm 50 years old. I can't not gonna spend 10,000 hours learning this. Like what do you do when you need to learn something new and and succeed at it not just
Like a hobby like oh, I'm going to go to the golf course and take some lessons, but you need to recreate yourself and your certain age. Well how do you look at it? How do you attack it? How do you
learn?
I think that when you say, hey, I'm going to learn something new. When you're older, as far as I'm concerned, an older person has a massive advantage in in taking what you already know and learning something you all you have to do is apply what, you know to this new thing and you can pick it up quicker than a younger person. Might be able to. I'm trying to think of things that I've, I mean, I started doing a podcast.
Asteroid that was five years ago but I didn't.
Gosh, it's been five years already. I feels like
yesterday. Yeah it started doing a podcast like five years ago. I didn't have any experience. I've never people ask me, who did you go to some sort of public speaking course or school? And I never went any kind of public speaking course or school, but I've been speaking in front of people for a long time because I was in the military, you stand up and you brief people. I don't think I'm answering your question very well.
No, no, but but it's interesting.
Resting because I never thought of it, I mean, I have thought about this concept of can I borrow things I've learned from other domains and bring it into this domain. But what you're saying is even a little broader, which I haven't really thought of which is just that the general experience of having, you know, the more the greater intuition you have when you're older as opposed to when you're 20 or the greater just database of experience. You can draw from. I think that is powerful.
I can't believe I didn't think of this. So I actually did.
Start doing something totally new, which is
archery, you can take sure.
Yes, shooting a bow and
arrow. I went to an archery thing about a year ago. It's so much fun. Yeah.
So I've never shot a bow and arrow before, and all of a sudden I started shooting bow and arrow. And what did I do? Like I said, I took what, I already know I applied it, which is good, which reminded me what you said. I practiced which reminded me of what you said. But the most important thing is something that you said earlier
Which is the most important thing you have to do, when you want to learn something new, which is be humble, you know, I didn't walk into the archery store and say, Hey, listen. I'm here to start archery, but don't worry about a thing cause I was in the SEAL Teams for 20 years and I know how to kill stuff. No, I went in there and said, hey, I've never done this before. I'm here to learn and I tried to wipe my brain clean of any preconceived notions about how to do this. So, you know, they say that a lot.
Times when when people are being taught how to shoot like weapons, females can learn quicker than males, if they've never saw before. So, if you take a 30 year old man and a 30 year old woman, and you that have never shot a gun before, there's a really good chance that the female will be a better shot at least initially. Then the male will. Why? Because the female has no preconceived notions about how to shoot and they have no ego about this. You tell them what to do and they're going to do it.
It now, you take a guy that's watched Dirty Harry a bunch and he thinks that he's, you know, some kind of a gunfighter even though he's never shot a wet before and he's got these little preconceived notions in his head. It's way harder to teach that individual than it is to teach someone that just has an open mind and is willing to learn. So even though you and I are both talking about this idea that you can take what, you know and you can use those parts of that domain and apply them somewhere else at the same time. If you try and do that too much or
Try and force things that don't really fit. It is going to cause more problems so you have to figure out. Okay, it's a dichotomy which I know you love that word and I know you love the title of my book that kind of leadership I do. Now I
apologize for the 80th time. I apologize about criticizing it for years ago.
It's, it's a dichotomy because you want to take what, you know, you want to apply the the knowledge that you have from your experience. But at the same time you want to just open your mind and be totally humble and willing to learn
Learn. So I think that the way that you learn new things, the other interesting thing, and this is another thing, I work, my consulting company, I work with different businesses, all the time and I work with whatever, I'll go work with with an oil company or gas oil company. Then I'll go work with a financial company that I'm working with a construction company. Then I'm working with a manufacturer of all these different companies. And every single time I have to learn at least a little bit about their particular business, but I don't walk into
Say well let me tell you how you're going to solve the problem on your manufacturing line with this. No actually what I say is okay. I don't really know a lot about manufacturing. What I do know about is about leadership. So let's see how those two things interact, but I'm not arrogant and walk in there and I think that I understand they're what they're doing at the ground level. I don't, but I do understand the next level up, which is how they're leading through those things. And I don't pretend that I know about what their Frontline troops are doing.
But I do know about how those Frontline troops are being led. So I don't confuse my humility about what's happening on the front lines with the confidence that I have that. I understand what's happening from a leadership
perspective. You know, I guess that leads into authenticity because I think when you're, let's say when you're younger, you don't necessarily know who you are. And I don't mean that in a cliche way. You don't quite yet, know what your values are. You don't quite yet? Know how you survive difficult situations. You do.
Get know how to deal with people who have preconceived notions of you and how to interact with them and how to deal with that. But over time you build an intuition of how to deal with these things. And so you can bring authenticity to a new activity like, okay, here are the things. I know I'm pretty good at here are the things I believe in that I can apply to this, you know, for instance, I believe in these things about leadership which implies asking questions being humble and these
Terry has knowing that I have some expertise in these areas, which is why I was called in, you know, there's a saying in comedy, you have to find what your unique voices or else you're just copying other comedians or who have come through in the past, you have to be who you are authentically. And there there was some quote you have to ask yourself who are you? Why are you and why now? And I think that helps with learning to it helps set the base with Where You Are.
And then asking who are you? And why are you helps, you figure out, what are the fastest ways, or what are the ways to weave? There's no shortcuts as you point out in chapter one in this book but that you figure out how to weave through the obstacles along the way to by knowing who you are.
Yeah and also I would say that this is interesting knowing who you are means you have to be aware of what you know, and what you don't know, which goes back to what I was saying. If I don't, if I'm not aware.
Of my strengths and weaknesses. If I'm not aware of the fact that I don't know anything about your manufacturing line and I go in there and act like I do if I'm not aware if not self-aware no one's going to listen look when I go down and try and tell you how to work your manufacturing line when I don't know how to do it. How are you then when you see right through me and then, how am I going to tell you about leadership? When I didn't even couldn't even put this together over here? So it's again, as you said its authenticity and if I try and fake one thing, it's
Gonna ruin everything else.
Yeah, I remember there was one point and it's like 19 years ago, I there was one point where I was running with another guy of venture capital firm, so we're always looking at new companies to invest in and I was whatever. I was 30, and my partner was in his 40s and he had been a banker. And we, he'd always start off these meetings, he would say to the other company pretend like, I'm a five-year-old and you need to
Explain your company to me and they would start explaining it and he's like, no, no, nope, I'm a five-year-old. I don't understand. And then he would start asking like and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, man, he's asking the stupidest questions in the world. This is really embarrassing. I didn't know what the company did either. But he's, you know, I learned a lot from just watching him be stupid or at least acts do because he wasn't a stupid person. And and meanwhile, I would make all the worst investments in the world because I wasn't
Behaving like a five-year-old. So that was a big learning experience. For me is making sure I always keep that childlike attitude which unfortunately only realize when you're not a child, how important that was. Yeah,
that's that's that's a great case for being humble, right? Because the humble guy goes in there and says, hey look, I don't know anything about this business to explain this, to me. Like, I'm a five-year-old, cuz I'm not that smart either. And I just want to really understand that compared to, hey, I don't want to show these people that I'm not that smart, and I don't really understand their business.
Just going to sit here. Not asking me questions. I'll make a decision based on kind of what I can suss out from what they say, which who's going to make a better decision than the person that actually digs in and understands, or the person. You're, I used to where I went to college when I was like 28 years old because I've been in the Navy and the Navy sent me to college, but I had no shame. I would sit in the front of the room, if the teacher got to something and said something, I understand, I'd be just just raise my hand and say, I don't understand that, can you please explain that again? And no one else.
These classes would ever ask that question. No one else would ever say. Hey, I don't understand what you're doing right now and sure enough. I would have the highest grades in the class because I was the one that was humble enough to go. I do not understand this game. We explain it to me.
I think also low. How much is that? Because at that age and given everything you had been through. By that point, you had a security in who you were and and massive problems you actually could solve and has soft at that point. So, they gave you a security to say, okay,
I could I maybe I'm I don't know anything. Maybe everyone here does, I'm secure in myself. So I'll just ask, I think a lot of the product times. People don't have that security and that's and how would, how would one develop that? Let's say you just got furloughed from your job and the pandemic and now, you want you, you've been in an accountant for 30 years and now you want to be, you know, you know, add a ballet dancer, something you know, how do you
Get over get over. You can't just say to yourself. Well, I've been in Wars, so I could solve this or I could be humble here because I've got this core of myself built, maybe you've been in secure the entire time you were an accountant because you were just doing it to make some money. You weren't doing it out of love, or you'd weren't developing an expertise, you know, I think starting over that which a lot of people are dealing with is, is hard to find that security at that point.
Yeah. And you're right. And here's what
Is the double-edged sword. That really sucks about this situation. Is if you're not confident, then you don't ask questions then you don't understand and then you don't learn and then you don't move forward, right? It's a it's a bad cycle to get into and and you know, it's an interesting comparison to leadership here too, because let's say you are working for me James and we've got to do some kind of project and I'm the boss and if you come to me with a plan,
And you say, hey jock, I think we should do it like this if I'm a confident leader. I say, hey you know what James? I like your plan. Let's go with your plan instead of my plan. And and when I say that, it actually reveals my confidence, my ability to say, you know what, I don't need to be in charge of this James. Why don't you take lead on this. You tell me what you need from me. You take lead. I'll follow if I have the confidence to do that, everyone can see it. Everyone goes. Oh yeah. That guy.
Doesn't care. He's, he's not worried. He doesn't think James is gonna take his position or take his steal, his glory. But if you rolling with a plan and you've got a great plan and I looked your plan and say, no, we're doing it, my way, everybody can see that. I lack confidence, everybody can see it. And it shows through, and then that's going to compound itself. So you have to really put your ego in check the that's the thing, the harder you guard your ego, the the
Obvious. It is that you're that you're insecure, you know, the more you guard your ego, the more evident is that that you're insecure. And that's, that's an unfortunate thing. It's an unfortunate problem,
but I think I wonder if humility is a muscle. Just like so in though, in the latter half of your book, you know, you give exercises for to get into shape. What? Maybe is an exercise for someone who hasn't exercised the humility muscle and a long time? What would be an
Or size or what something you might do to develop that, that, you know, ability that muscle to put away the ego.
Here's what I used to do, I can tell you straight up, I used to take young seals that had a big ego that needed to get humbled, and I would put them in charge of operations training operations, Lop real operations, but training operations, that I knew they couldn't handle.
And then they go out, they try and run this training operation. Everything would be a complete failure and they'd come back and they'd realize. Now he actually I was going to say they come back and realize how much they screwed up but normally since they're not humble you know they come back and do they come back and blame other people? They come because it wasn't my fault. It was this person's fault. The new guys didn't do their job. Okay, cool. I'm going to give you all experienced. Guys. Go and do another training operation and I would remove their excuses until they would finally see. Oh yeah, this is me.
Yes, you need to get humble. You're not as good as you think you are. So doing hard, things will absolutely humble you and I think you gotta, you gotta pay attention, man, to that to that, to that voice in your head and just pay attention what it sounds like. It's so obvious when you see other people doing it, and it's so hard to see when you're doing it yourself. It's just really, really challenging, you know, if you had two people that were working for you and and
They both didn't complete the project on time, and one of them came in to talk to you and it's like, hey, you know, James, this is my fault. I actually I didn't order stuff. I didn't order the materials and time and I didn't track the vendors to make sure that they got their, their parts of the job done. Next time, I'm going to order supplies earlier and I'm going to track those vendors a little bit closer and make sure they're staying on project and you'd go. Okay cool got it. Next person comes in and says well, you know we failed, but it's not my fault. It's because the supplies didn't show up on time in the vendors didn't do their part of the job.
But that's not on me and who it's so obvious, which person you want to give the next project or you want to give the project to the person that takes ownership and actually takes responsibility. And whereas the humility to say, hey, I was in charge and this didn't work. That's my fault, that perfect fix it.
When do you fire the other person? Um,
I mean, it depends on the depends on the scenario, you know, who are they? What value do they have? What situation are they in? How coachable are they the real problem? If you don't person like that, that already has an ego where they're blaming other people.
And they're really hard to, to get them to see the light, right? And that's the only time, the only type of person that you can't turn into a good leader, or you can't improve their leadership capability of someone that's not humble, why? Cuz they don't listen. So, how are they going to get better when they don't listen to anybody? Yeah, the answer is they're not. So if I recognize that someone has no humility and is not going to listen, I'll probably fire them pretty quickly. You know,
it's actually, I'm sure you've had a lot of mentors and I'm sure you've also
Been a mentor to many people, and I find once I recognized and and being a mentor is not like a job description, right? It's just something that happened at a Bob's. You meet somebody, you get along and you find yourself, you know, guiding them along when you can and, you know, hoping for their success and seeing them move up in the world and I've always kept track of both when my mentors and my call.
Mentees, but often the mentors. Eventually hate me, because many mentors don't want their mentees, or they're the people who were there, guiding to pass them in some way in any way. And so I realized early on that the key to being a good Mentor and for and and that means for me to learn as well from the students because that's a critical part of learning is that you have to from the very beginning, you have to assume
Everyone's going to pass you at some point and the people who do and you see them on the route to passing you and whatever domain or feel there is you know those are the ones you keep and those are the ones you encourage and you want them to I always keep the mindset. I want these people to be better than me at whatever. Is there trying to succeed at and I find for me that's a good mental. Check like am I truly feeling this? Otherwise we'll end up being a bad mentor and you know, it's the same thing.
With employees and so
on. I think that's a great attitude to have. We used to always say you want to work yourself out of a job, that means I want everybody that works for me to be able to do my job better than me. That's my goal. And if they do it awesome that means I can either get promoted move up and and move to the next section and learn a new job or they can just take my job and I'll go find something else to do either way. I'm happy about it.
Well, you, you know, one thing that you've learned late in life,
Is you write these great children's books, The Way of the warrior kid? You've been on my pockets for those. I always enjoy reading your children's books. That's something you've started from scratch. You're like this, you know, Navy SEAL been to war. Oh, now, I think I'm going to write books for seven-year-olds, like, what was The Learning Experience there? Did you, did you read a bunch of children's books, or what did you do?
No, I had kids, I have this and I just started the, there's really hard to find books that were that had the message, and the values that I wanted my kids to have. And so I just said, well, I'll just write my own and that's what I did.
And have you gotten feedback for. I mean, I enjoy the books and I think they're they're they're well done in a children's book style like to have you gotten feedback from kids that hey, I've ever read your book. I give you feedback every day. I
mean
The way the warrior kid, Instagram kids post, pictures themselves doing pull-ups and I got an A on the math test. I mean, this is every single day I get handwritten letters from kids all over the world and it's amazing. And and then what's really amazing is the parents write me letters. And probably the I've told the story a couple times, but I had this guy write a letter
and he was, you know, and
I forget the exact facts but you know, he was drinking every night. His diet was bad, he was overweight, he hadn't been
At work. He hated his job, the whole nine yards and he said you know, I read your book and I started stop drinking walls on the road, then I stopped drinking all the time, then I started eating better foods and I started working out in the morning. Then I started paying attention to my job. I got a promotion, he closes out with. Hey, I'm in the best shape of my life. I got two promotions at work and I'm feeling better than I ever had have. And I really appreciate you writing this book and the book was way of the warrior kid and his a whatever a 38 year old guy.
Guy that picked up that book and realized that he needed to fix his life and there's very simple instructions on how to do it inside those books. So, great feedback, it's very humbling, it's awesome to get. And I love, you know, even when I do like Live Events people show up there with their seven-year-old, their eight-year-old, their nine-year-old, even their younger kids that have read another book. I wrote called Mikey and the dragons for little kids and it's just, it's just awesome man. It's it's I'm super stoked on. It's
Cool. What do you think will happen next for you? In the sense that, you know, do you ever feel an addiction to being or need to be relevant? Do you ever get worried? When some things settle down for you? Like, let's say, you decide, okay, the Consulting business, I've done my thing, I've made good money. I'm I'm not as into it anymore. So I'm going to wind this down and do other things. Do you ever get worried that? You won't be as much in the public eye like you know, you've really
Ali, you know, your brand has really, I hate to use that word because I feel brand. Feels like lying to me brand. Feels like the difference between reality and perception, but Jocko willing has been out there now and you're known /. Well-known do you ever get nervous that that will end in that that your relevance will start to subside as you get older?
Now I'm good man, I'm good. My whole life has been way better than I could have hoped for and
Look, I like interacting with people but I'm definitely not addicted to it and it's just cool meeting people that are that have that, you know, that have listened to the podcast, or have read the books. And, and so I I'm I'm good either way, it doesn't nothing. Nothing like that has ever going to bother me. I'll be totally fine.
And yeah, like for instance, in terms of like, let's picture a weird scenario Jocko willing Tulsi gabbard on The Joe Rogan.
Ugh and show like and yeah, I can make, I can connect all the dots and everything, but what was that like
It was super cool. I mean I'm friends with Joe, I had been, I had been communicating with with Tulsi on Twitter, you know, just going back because, you know, she just I forget someone made something and somebody made some kind of Meme. And then, you know, I made some joke about it and then the next thing, you know, we were going back and forth and then someone said, you two should go on Rogan. And then Joe said that I get a group text that I get a group text from Joe. That says, Joe me, are Jocko me toll. See, you guys got it.
Come on the show and you know, when Joe calls you answer and you make it happen. So it was really cool and Tulsi, I still talk to her. She's a very nice person. She's a very authentic person. I really like her a lot. I mean like, it's just, it's just very cool to be able to connect with with her and talk. And you know, we look to, I don't think we see eye to eye on a lot of things. But what's more important is we both will discuss and have an open mind and
And talk to each other with respect. And I think that's maybe a blueprint for the way people could possibly consider treating each other as if they actually want to understand your ideas. I mean if told he has an idea about something that's different than mine, I don't hate her. I actually want to know why she thinks that. And if there's anything that I don't understand about the place that she's coming from, or is there anything that she doesn't understand about the place where I'm coming from? Can we?
We get to know each other a little bit better. And and and, you know, Joe is a guy that is just so genuinely curious about the world and about things. And so I think that's why he's so successful is because he's authentic. And, you know, people ask me who you what's he really like, and he's just, he's like that. He's just a very nice guy that is wants to learn and wants to understand things better and wants to make himself better. And I think it's just
Cool stuff. That's a it's an incredible time to be alive. That's for
sure. Yeah. I feel like with Joe in his podcast he's very good at making it just a calm conversation that happens to be on videotape as opposed to like oh I've gotta interview this guy and there's got to be a moment in the podcast that's gonna go fire or whatever. He's like I find a lot of times in these in my podcast and this is after doing like a thousand of them. A lot of times, I realize in the
Middle. Oh my shoulders are tense and I have to like consciously like relax them. I don't think someone like Joe has to do that. Like I think he's just let's just sit down at my breakfast table in this bunker here and just have a conversation with this cool person and that's what those podcast feel like
you are. Right. And the only thing I'll say
about that is I
think a lot of people underestimate the amount of skill that it takes to do that. Yes. Because a lot of people
Oh, I'll just, I'll be the next Joe Rogan. I'm just going to get people and all this talk to him in a relaxed tone and everything will be cool. And they don't realize that he's, he actually is incredibly smart. He's actually incredibly good at having conversations and carrying conversations and asking questions and making connections. He does all that stuff and, and what's incredible about as it does, it sounds, it sounds like it's just a conversation and it is just a conversation. It's just that it's a conversation that he has this subtle
Influence over and he does just a great job steering those conversations.
Yeah. And and again, like I've been interviewing people since literally 1995 and I still have to remind myself, relax the shoulders, make it a conversation and he does it so naturally and you're right, I think it's an incredibly hard skill that I think that what people don't realize often is that the things that are incredibly difficult to learn when you watch the masters of those things, it looks
Easy. And that is that fools you?
Yeah, there's no doubt that happens with sports all the time. You know, you see somebody doing something in sports and you think how hard they cannot actually be. Yeah, go try it. And you'll see and it's the same thing with
that, for sure. Yeah. Or like, you know, like Jojo is a stand-up comedian for instance, and everyone's like, oh, I'm funny. I'll just go on stage and make a bunch of people, laugh. Okay, just go try. It is not it. Is, it is one of the hardest things in the world. I've ever attempted to do and I
Looking to do quite a few
that you still have the club in New
York. Yeah. So I have I have a club in New York that I co-own but I perform all over the country. I before I right though a week before the lockdowns I was in five different cities in the Netherlands performing and I've learned just like you have learned a lot of different skills in my life. That is the hardest skill I've ever had. To learn is really hard to make a bunch of people viscerally laughs particularly if they're drunk strangers from
Norway or wherever like, it's very difficult and it's also often humiliating and you have to be able to roll with that too. So it's an interesting thing. So you know, I'll just mention it in the book. You have a lot of great exercises on how to get in shape. I remember two or three podcast ago when you were on with, with leaf and we were talking about the dichotomy of leadership and I asked you, I think there was even after the pockets, I asked you what you did to work out, and you were just like, just
Go in my basement and do a couple pull-ups and do some push-ups. And so I started doing that then as opposed to like the whole Jim thing so much better because it's easier to get into the discipline as opposed to like. Oh now I got to get in gym clothes, go to the gym, get a trainer Bob up using is there the right equipment? You know, it all that stuff. So I like also the Simplicity of how you view all these things and I think that's what makes a lot of this advice so accessible
you know to give a little background on this book
When I originally you know I extreme ownership came out. I started my podcast and people were asking me all the time like what are your workouts? What are you doing? What do you eat? What your sleep routine? What? Your morning routine? Kind of just basic operational systems that, I that I lived in and so I said, you know what, and you know how what a what a pain it is to write a book and go through a publisher. So I just said, you know what? I was going to make a little ebook and I'll put some exercise and I'll put some of my thoughts in there.
And I'll just publish an e-book and it'll be easy. I can get it done in two weeks or whatever and so I happen to talk to my publisher, a guy named Mark and and he was asking me know, hey, you got to get your next book, ready said, well, you know, I'm alright. Something I said right now, I'm just gonna release this little ebook and he says, what do you mean ebook? I go, yeah. I'm just gonna write down some of the stuff for my podcast and some of the exercises I do. And he goes, you're going to release an e-book and I said, yeah, you know, I'm just going to put it on myself and he goes, you can't do that. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you your
Your comes best-selling author. You can't publish it freaking ebook right now. And I said, well, listen, I don't want to go through this stringent, you know, publication. I want you to tell me what the cover is going to look like, I don't want you to tell me how many pages it has to be. I said, that's what I was gonna do it. Myself, he goes, no, no he says no, you can't do that. And I said, listen, this book is not going to be a normal book. It's going to look totally different and he goes, he says to me, you can do whatever you want. And I said, really, I can do whatever I want. Okay. So
I started putting this book together and you know by the time I got it Tim it has black Pages. It's shaped weird had this crazy cover on it and it's coming to publication date and he had you know he is he had to convince people like hey this guy's people listen to this podcast like crazy and they seem like they'll get this book. So we're almost a publication date of the book and he says, Isis, if this is this, the most risk you've ever taken on a book, he goes night.
Not even close because there isn't, this is the most risk I've ever taken with anything in my life. He said this book is just totally different. We'd have no idea where it's going to land. We have no idea how well it's going to do. So everyone's kind of nervous about releasing the book because it was so radically different than normal books. And then, the publication date was October 19th. And I had like, whatever nine days of media plan for New York. And I was going to go do all that thing and go on your show, and go on Fox and go on.
Then and go in the morning shows and the radio satellite tour and all nine yards and and my best friend died in a parachute accident on September 30th.
and,
In his will, I was like the executor of his estate. I was it said, Jocko, can you take my mind, if I die, can you take my mom to the service? Can you take care of my family? And so all that happened and I, you know, I immediately called up my publisher and canceled, all media and and I went and took care of my brother and his family and the book came out on October 19th. I didn't even did nothing to promote it in any way.
And the book it just took off and it's old grade and it, you know, made the New York Times bestseller listen, I didn't even, you know, didn't even barely know what was happening and it was just all the people that listen to the podcast kind of tracked what was going on. And I had talked about the book on the podcast and people just went and got it and, you know, all the little models that they make at the at the publishing company about how many books are going to sell and how many that we're going to print and all that that just completely
Eat lead. It was it wasn't. It was above any model that they had made that had to print we were behind on printing. They had a print you know hundreds of thousands of copies it other immediately. And then here it is. You know, this is the this is the the Expanded Edition and as you know of an Expanded Edition they released an Expanded Edition because they're you know, it still is just selling like crazy and so it's been, it's been a wild ride and I actually remember I got the book.
And, you know, I had a galley of the book, meaning a pre-printed, you know, not one of the final copies, but just a makeshift copy. And I've got a section in there. It's called death and what you do, when someone dies. And I remember, I was so brokenhearted over losing my friend, that I actually, I actually opened up the book and I had to read my own thoughts about how to get through this and
How to get over this and I think is as that was happening. I realized that regardless of how many people bought this book. I knew that some people that got it, we're going to be able to use it and use it in a positive way, to help them move down the path, and a good
direction. And I think that is the best sign of a good book. Like when you're trying to write a book that not for sales but because this is knowledge, it's not knowledge that you have and want to because your
A great expert, its knowledge that you had needed to learn. And so that's why it's more deeply imprinted in your brain so that you can express it through language and a book which is very difficult to do, you have to have been through something to write something like actions precede, thoughts, proceed being a teacher and so on. And so I wrote a book once called The Power of no not because I'm so great at saying, no, but because I'm horrible at it so I had to learn it. So I'm able to
Express it, if I, like, if you told Brad Pitt, hey, write a book on how to, you know, pick up girls. He'd be the last person I would ask because he just has to say hello to many people and that's it. He could just say hello to me and I'll be whatever and, you know, so I think that's the whole beauty of writing books is that it's not about the things necessarily that you're the king of. It's the things that you had to learn from the bottom up, like, like dealing with
Dealing with loss, you know, learning how to succeed learning how to get over excuses and and procrastination. And, and the things that slow you down and it's how you've learned to have your voice. So, I think marketing is mostly a waste of time. If something's good people are going to share with their friends and that's the most powerful
marketing. Yeah, I think you're right. And that's definitely what happened with this. This was just a word of mouth and now it's, you know, it's it's sold incredibly well and it continues to sell and like I said, the best
Part about that is I know that there's information in that book that will help people regardless of where they are in life. There's no one that's getting through life without struggle, and this book will help people through those
moments. And, and also it mean all your books are great. I always remember the title of, this is your first extreme ownership. It's such an important concept and I love books where the title is the concept. So,
Obviously, I'm glad I read your book. I learned so much from it, but if someone just knows the title, it could change their life. Like just with everything you do, if you find, you're blaming someone take extreme ownership and the situation is going to be better. That's it, is that all you take away from that book. It's great. Although I encourage people to read that book as well, all of your books, but final question, I know you're busy and so I'll ask a very simple question.
What's going to happen in the future?
I don't know,
like this so much. This is the most chaotic gear in recent history. I won't say history because there's been a lot of chaotic years, but people are pretty polarized. People are pretty scared. I've heard people smart people, talk about everything from secession to Fascism to this to that. And yeah, I'm talking politics, but just economics to the lockdowns, have literally taken 82 trillion dollars from the world economy. I mean, things are
Going to be a lot different when, when the dust settles here, curious, you know, just what your thoughts are on that.
I think that human beings like he when you start turning them into pack animals and they get all crazy and start yelling and screaming each other. There's, there's a definitely a possibility that things can go sideways. I've worried about, I worry about like an escalation where, you know, one person gets killed from the left.
and then there's a retaliatory strike against people from the right and then all of a sudden that gets escalated to an even bigger strike to the people on the left and you start, you start basically
an escalation in combat which is, which is a scary thing to think about that being said,
even though you think, oh, there's so many people struggling right now at the same time, people have iPhones. People have food. People have shelter, you know when they when the the the area up in Washington, Seattle was taken over the chop or the Chazz, whichever one you want to call it. And somebody asked me, you know, what do you think's going to happen up there? And I said well eventually people will get tired of it and they'll go home. It wasn't like there was these committed revolutionaries that were up there. Ready to die for the cause
Weren't they were just up there, ready to have some fun cause some Mayhem and and just kind of carry on for a while they weren't ready to die. And and so I don't think we have that level of commitment in on either side, I don't think there's a level of commitment where people are ready to fight to the death and things have been worse. I mean even in the 70s, you know, we were dealing with with real problems. I mean there was police officers being assassinated being murdered, you know, the Black Panthers.
And the and the Black Liberation Army. I mean those they went out and murdered police officers back then, and that was a really insane time but guess what it was. It wasn't people really truly committed. There was some, but it was a very small number and on the end. And that's where I think you end up. I think that most people look around and they say, listen, I get there, some extreme people over there, and some extreme people on the other.
Side. I'm not part of those people. And look, can you get this sort of new phenomenon of kind of mob ruling on on social media? You know, where you can say something on Twitter and all of a sudden, everyone can hate you and cancel you and ban you. Yeah, that can happen. That's maybe a new phenomenon but
Again, it's one thing to say you're canceled on social media. It's another thing for people to actually want to be willing to stand up and fight and really truly commit. So what I'm saying is I think there is commitment in this country, but I think the commitment is to living good lives and I think that a majority of people will always tend towards back. Hey what is going to what is going to make life here better? What can we do? How can we stabilize? I think that's where most people
I think because of social media and because the 24-hour news cycle, all we see is Mayhem. You know, we see Mayhem 24 hours a day and I just think that America is a big ship. It's hard to turn. It might be easy to sit up there and scream and yell but it doesn't really move that vessel. It really doesn't move it off course very much. You can move it a little bit but it's not gonna move a lot. So I certainly hope that I'm right along those lines that we have stability. We have people with that. That
Open up their minds that listen to each other. That, you know, it's like I said with, with Tulsi sitting around with Tulsi and I talked with her, you know, and she'll text me when something's going on in America, some something scary, or something problematic and I'll text her, what do you think of this? And, you know, we can have a totally reasonable conversation and we can find so much common ground and I think at some point soon people will get sick of yelling and screaming. There's some people that won't I get it. There's some people that just want to be agitators. I think people are going to get agitated with the agitators and
Turn them off and stop listening to them and let's find a way to move forward in a productive way. If I can help you, that's awesome. That's my goal. If you can help me. I appreciate it too. That's kind of what we're supposed to do. And I think we're going to get back to that at some point in the future. That's my positive Viewpoint and I hope I'm right.
I hope you're right too. I I do kind of think you're right. So so it's all good so Jocko once again I appreciate I don't even know how many times you've been on the podcast but it's been it's been quite
A bit and always enjoyable, I always learn something and I always feel better afterwards and I'm sure the listeners do as well. I get amazing feedback when you're on discipline equals freedom, field manual, Expanded Edition, it's such a great book. It's like you said, there's all sorts of black pages and it's I've got it, you know, bookmarked in various places and in the formatting so interesting. But it's a great book. I always learn so much again. Just like I learned much from
From your other books, the extreme ownership, which we talked about earlier dichotomy of leadership, which you made fun of me about my original criticism of the title, but I was wrong. You are right. And once, again, thanks so much for coming on the podcast Jocko. I appreciate it. Appreciate
it, man. Always good talking to you. I always learn a lot as well. Thank you, thanks.
