Navy SEAL Jocko Willink Swears Success is at the Intersection of these TWO things

Jocko Willink’s story reads like an adventure novel that takes us from the serene landscapes of a small New England town into Navy SEAL training, the Iraq War battlegrounds, and a multifaceted civilian life of entrepreneurship and leadership consulting. “I always wanted to be a commando of some kind as soon as I realized that you could actually get paid to carry a machine gun,” he says.

Joining the Navy out of high school and going through the notoriously demanding BUD/S training, Jocko spent most of the next two decades on active duty as a SEAL, platoon commander, and then a task unit commander in his final deployment. Jocko took on the role of the officer in charge of all of the advanced training for the West Coast SEAL teams. His discipline and extreme personal ownership defined him not just as a soldier but as a leader among leaders. 

Things are about to get real as I’m hunkered down in a small, dark bunker-style room blacked out with soundproofed walls. There’s a spotlight overhead, like a scene from a movie when someone is being interrogated. I’m sitting at a table filled with an assortment of large machetes and hunting knives. 

This is Jocko’s San Diego podcast studio nestled in Victory MMA and Fitness. We talked in depth about his origin story and keen ability to spot, start, and invest in great business opportunities.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The most common piece of advice that I give I is to start small and grow. Pay attention to the demand signal. Don't think that your idea uh is perfect. It's not gonna be perfect. You're gonna have to open your mind, you're gonna have to accept feedback, you're gonna have to uh realize that the the perfect vision that you have in your head isn't necessarily going to be the person perfect vision that everyone else sees. So you have to open your mind and be accept that feedback that you're gonna get in order to grow, and then like I said, iterative decision making. Make take small steps, make small decisions, and then pay attention to the feedback as you grow.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Alright, here we go.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Cheers. Cheers. Hi, I'm Jocko Willink, and you are on Behind the Brand with Brian Elliott.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the show. Jocko. Thank you for having us to this uh secret bunker in this undisclosed location, somewhere in the uh inner part of San Diego. Roger that. Thanks for coming by. Appreciate it. This is a pretty impressive place, amazing. I mean, I can't really believe that I'm here. It's uh it's like a dream. I've been watching and listening to the podcast and a big fan from a long time, and so this particular recording studio is legendary.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Yeah, we only started using this particular spot probably about two years into the podcast. Uh before that, we recorded it in Echo's living room in my garage. We eventually moved into uh this room was about half the size. It was the maintenance closet here at Victory MMA and Fitness. We moved into it, and then eventually we doubled it in size and made it a little a little bit soundproof. So that's how we ended up here.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah. I usually ask my guests, how did you get this job? How'd I get this job? Which job? Well, let's take it back in the chronology. Let's go back to uh the you know your origin story.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah, I grew grew up in New England, small New England town, wanted to be a commando of some kind my whole life. As soon as I realized that you could actually get paid to carry a machine gun and run around with that machine gun, then that's what I did. I joined the joined the Navy out of high school, went in the SEAL teams, spent my adult life in the SEAL teams, moved up through the ranks in the SEAL teams, eventually became an officer in the SEAL teams, did a bunch of deployments overseas, retired after I spent the last three years. I was teaching teaching leadership and tactics to the SEAL platoons that were getting ready to deploy overseas, and then retired. And when I retired, I started teaching leadership to companies and corporations and teams in the civilian sector. From there, I wrote a book and started a podcast and ended up with a few different companies and all that stuff. So that's kind of how I ended up here.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

I want to unpack a lot of that. Uh I want to go let's go back in the chronology to young Jocko. Um so where did that desire to carry a machine gun around and you know defend this country and all the things that maybe were part of your motivation? Where did that come from? Were your parents in the military? Like were you dreaming uh I I think a lot of in the context of that question is I think a lot about nature versus nurture. Um but yeah, help me understand that.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

What did you want to do when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

I wanted to be a professional baseball player.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Okay. I wanted to be a professional machine gun carrier. That's what I wanted to do. So I think everyone has their probably some job that they look at and they think that seems like it would be a good job. And that's the way I looked at being in the military and being in special operations. So that's what I wanted to do. And I really don't remember wanting to do any other kind of job. I don't remember a phase of wanting to be a firefighter or a policeman or a veterinarian or anything else, really. I just remember wanting to wear camouflage uniforms and be outside fighting the enemy. What did your parents do? My both my parents were school teachers. My mom was an English teacher, my dad was a history teacher.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

And w were they exceptionally gifted in the DNA department like you seem to be?

SPEAKER_02 4:40

I think, well, I'm not gifted in the DNA department, and I would say we're pretty normal stock of human.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yeah. Yeah. I I again I'm uh I'm super curious about nature and nurture for lots of dis different reasons. You talk about leadership, you talk about discipline. Um and you seem to have refined your process. But uh I'm also curious, uh have you ever taken an IQ test? You seem like a very high intelligence guy. And I'm just wondering, I mean, you come from teachers, that's sort of like the nature part of it, the stock uh that may have been passed down. Do you ever take an IQ test?

SPEAKER_02 5:18

I guess the closest thing I've taken to an IQ test would be the military entry exam that you take called the ASVAB. And yeah, on that I got the best score that you can get. And what is that? It's a 99. So you're in the 99th percentile. Aaron Ross Powell And how do they judge you on that? What are some what's some of the criteria? Aaron Ross Powell It's a test. It's a it's a it's just a written test with math problems and spatial problems and vocabulary questions. So it's sort of just a standardized test. They want to figure out what cognitive capacity you have to do the various jobs that exist inside the military.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Trevor Burrus What kind of person do you think is successful in the military? My uh my wife's brother, her twin actually, uh, enlisted at the latest age that you can enlist. I don't know what that is, maybe 39? Aaron Ross Powell Probably something like that. He he has I think he is an IQ of 160-something, so you know, pretty intelligent guy, um, but had trouble with I guess being disciplined. Uh he needed structure. He sort of floated from job to job before the military. And so when he joined, it was it clicked for him. It's like exactly what he needed, and now he's like thriving. I in fact, we don't even know exactly what he does because he can't tell us. So we think it's like maybe intelligence-related or you know, he's doing something cool. Um what kind of traits and qualities do you think make people successful in the military? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

It depends on the job that they're going into. Yeah. And it depends on the situation that the military unit happens to be in at any given time. So if you are in a peacetime military scenario and you're in what's called garrison in the military, which is which means you're, you know, on the parade field, in barracks, you're doing inspections, you're following orders, you're following the plan of the day, all those things, if you're sort of a conscientious person, maybe a little bit authoritarian, you'll do well in those situations. But in combat situations, what you need is someone that is more creative, more open-minded, and they'll do better in those situations. And in fact, sometimes the people that do well in combat do not do well in the peacetime, and sometimes people that do well in peacetime don't do well in combat. And what you hope to have is someone that is has uh an ability to kind of bounce back between the back and forth between the two. They understand that hey, there's rules that have to be followed, and there's games that have to be played, but then there's environments where you cannot follow the rules and you need to think from a different perspective in order to win.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

I've heard that um that saying, I don't know where it came from, but it's like, you know, uh I think Mike Tyson gets credited with it a lot. Like everyone's got a plan until you get punched in the in the face. Uh is it that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_02 8:26

It is that sort of thing. Once you once the bullets start flying around, the plan that you came up with is gonna have to be adjusted in some way. You the no one can perfectly predict what the enemy is gonna do, what the weather's gonna be like, what the terrain actually looks like, what your own troops are gonna do. There's so many variables that you have to have an open mind in order to thrive in those combat environments.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

When you enlist enlisted, uh put a timestamp on that, but what year was it? 1990. Okay, so this is like Gulf War timing.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Yeah, but I missed the Gulf War. I missed the Gulf War. So by the time I was in basic SEAL training when the Gulf War was going on, and I missed it. So I showed up at SEAL Team One and missed the big war. How do you feel about that? At the time I was heartbroken. Yeah. Big war happened. I mean, the ground war part only lasted three days, so it's not like I had that much of an opportunity to get in there. But going into the war, I remember specifically watching CNN when CNN was the only news that was running 24 hours a day on cable, and they were expecting 40,000 casualties, U.S. casualties in the first 48 hours. It was I was thinking that I was definitely gonna see a lot of combat. And then it was over so quickly. So that was that.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

I don't know how I don't know much about military structure. So SEAL team, like how long has the SEAL teams been around? Because you said SEAL team one. Is it like chronological? So it's like they created one and then they created another? They created one and two first.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

SEAL team one is in San Diego in Coronado, and then SEAL team two was in Virginia Beach. They had an East Coast and a West Coast team, created them in 1962. They were formed out of some older what what we consider now frogmen. So in World War II in Korea, in World War II specifically, they created frogmen to go and clear obstacles on the beaches before they did amphibious landings. So these guys were very capable in the water. They worked, they went in the water and then up onto the beach and maybe into the hinterland a little bit to clear obstacles and do reconnaissance, and that's what they did in World War II and Korea. And then Kennedy, President Kennedy, was very open-minded when it came to guerrilla warfare and unconventional warfare. And so he created he created the SEAL teams in 1962.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Oh, I had no idea. So you you're telling me like before we stormed Normandy, frogmen were there clearing the path.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Yes. And they took 50% casualties at at Normandy.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Wow. Massive. How many frogmen, uh about how many frogmen were there at Normandy? A couple hundred. Wow. Yeah. I mean, d to me, just historically, that seems like the most intense sort of like where the Germans were hunkered down and that was like America took a lot of casualties. I mean, I've only seen it in like war movies and but like, yeah, I mean, you think about that, a couple hundred guys going in before everyone else. That must have just been Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yeah. I don't know the exact numbers, but it's more like a hundred. I've because and I'm just envisioning in my mind at the UDT SEAL Museum, they have a a a plaque up with all the guys that were wounded, and I'm trying to remember what that how many people were on that plaque, but it's it seems like the guys that were wounded or killed was like between probably fifty and a hundred, and then there's fifty percent casualties, so yeah, probably a couple hundred people.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yeah. Still pretty amazing statistics. So when you think about it, like how intense or how dug in the Germans were at that time. It's like only fifty percent almost kind of feel like reacting that way. It's like I'm surprised they didn't all get wiped out. I mean, they you're basically sitting ducks, yeah. Floating ducks. I mean, it's intense. Wow. So that's a high skill level. That's that's like some that's some serious stuff.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

I I would say the skill level is medium and the bravery level is off the scale.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah. I mean you have to go in thinking, well, this is probably my last day. Oh, yeah.

unknown 12:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Incredible. Um so you join in 1990. Uh you have a pretty clear trajectory on like I are you just like on this path uh and you're you know rising through the ranks. I I've heard you tell the story, I think I heard you tell it just the other day on a pod somewhere where it's like you were giving someone advice and they felt like oh, I know what it was. Uh someone that you knew, or a friend of yours, was uh getting a divorce and they felt like you know their life was sort of circling the toilet. He's he was saying, like, after all this, I'm gonna sell my business and I'm gonna end up having to work at Home Depot. And you're like, okay. Depends on how you look at that. Um I'd love that advice. Uh talk about perspective. Talk about tell that story a little bit and talk about perspective.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Well, that particular story was a guy that I know I'd uh interacted with him a bunch of times, and he had a big family. And the I I would see him once a year, basically. And each time I'd see him, he'd kind of give me an update on what he was doing, and he was doing he was farming and he was working very hard, and he had his family, had multiple kids, like four or five, maybe even six kids, a bunch of kids. And each year he'd kind of give me an update. And then one year, surprisingly, he gives me the update that he's getting divorced and it's just going downhill, and he is losing money on the business, and he's telling me he's gonna have to go work at Home Depot. And basically, I told him that that's a huge opportunity. And if I was him, they would put me to work in Home Depot. They'd put me in whatever aisle I was gonna be assigned to, and I would make that the most squared away aisle in that Home Depot, and eventually they'd say, Hey, can you run these other two aisles as well? And though I would square those away and I'd make them shine, and they'd be clean and squared away, and then they'd say, Can you just run all the aisles? And I'd end up running that store and I'd take over Home Depot. That was that was what I said to him. Obviously having fun with it, but just letting him know step up, work hard, do what you're supposed to do, be an asset, and things will improve for you. They will. And I work with companies all over the country. And if you're a hard worker and you bring value, you will do well. And and you've got to keep your ego in check as well. If you can do those things, you're gonna you're gonna advance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

That's been my experience too. Well, what do you do? Uh how do you view competition? So I and I'm just curious, like in the context of if we can toggle between your military career, uh, Alexa, something I it's a space I know almost nothing about the culture, like, is there competition there? Is there someone else trying to work their ass off to get the promotion over you? Or is it very much symbiotic, team, you know, team-based uh you know, because out in the business world, if you're working hard and you outshine uh someone else we had on this podcast, Robert Green, who wrote that book, 48 Laws of Power. Robert's the man. One of the lessons in the 48 Laws is never outshine the master. So sometimes if you're the junior guy and you're working your ass off and you make your boss look bad because you're working harder than he is or she is, it can be a problem. Uh how does that factor in the Yeah, that would be good advice.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

And if you work your ass off, you actually your goal should be to make your boss look good. And now your boss looks good, and he's happy, you're happy, he's gonna get promoted, and you're probably gonna backfill his space and he's gonna drag you along. And what's most important about that is you're doing a good job and accomplishing the mission. So is there competition inside the military? Yes, there is. Can people undermine each other and do things to make try and make you look bad? Yep, they can. In my opinion, and in my experience, if you're doing the right things for the right reasons, you're gonna win in the end. So if you and I are up for a job and you do something to try and make me look bad and you actually get the job, great. That'll happen one time, maybe two times, because you're a self-serving person. The your troops will know that, your subordinates will see it, your peers will see it, and eventually your boss will see it, and you will not progress beyond that one job that you just got. So I always just try and do the right things for the right reasons, and if you're doing that, you'll win in the end. So, even with the boss example, if the reason I'm trying to shine is so I can make myself seen above my boss, that's not doing the right things for the right reasons. I should be doing that so that we accomplish the mission. And the boss is the guy in charge, so he's gonna get the credit, and I'm okay with that. So, yeah, if you're doing the right things for the right reasons, you'll win in the end. You might take some tactical short-term losses. You might have someone that gets an award that you think you deserve, or might get an evaluation that you think you should have gotten. That's okay. Just say, Roger, that keep working hard, eventually it'll come back.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

You really seem to have your ego in check. Has it always been that way?

SPEAKER_02 17:38

I mean, no, because you're 21 years old, and when you're 21 years old, 22 years old, 23 years old, 25 years old, your your ego is always going to be kind of trying to rear its ugly head. But at the same time, I did learn pretty early that how much trouble it can get you into and how much trouble it can get me into. Also, I wasn't the strongest guy, I wasn't the fastest guy, I I I wasn't the best shot. So you're constantly in the SEAL teams, you're constantly humbled by the incredible guys that you're working around. So yeah, I think I think humility is something that grows more as you experience life more. And then of course, combat is the ultimate in humility because there's going to be things that happen that you are not going to be able to control and they're going to beat you.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah, it's an equalizer. How do you teach self-awareness? Self-awareness seems to be one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Um how do how do you learn self-awareness?

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Yeah, it it is absolutely one of the greatest gifts. Um, we I in the terminology that I use in my books, I call it detachment. So being able to take a step back, being able to detach from your emotions, detach from your ego, detach from the chaos and mayhem that's going on in front of you. I say detachment is a superpower. If you have the ability to do that, it's a superpower. So how do you do it? This is one of the one of the things that's very challenging. Number one, you've got to understand what your own red flags are, call them red flags, meaning signs that your ego is starting to shine or start starting to come forward, signs that you're starting to get emotional. You need to be aware of those things. So whether it's someone that when they start to talk like this, they oh, I'm getting frustrated. They start to clench their fists, they start to get hyper-focused on something that's right in front of them. Those are, to me, red flags that you as a human being need to become aware of to say, oh, there's a red flag. It's time for me to detach. So that's part number one is recognizing that you are not detached, that you're getting emotional, that your ego's getting away. Once you have that, I kind of have a protocol that I teach people that is sort of a crutch at first. And if you use it, eventually you won't need to do the physical actions. So the physical actions are take a step back. Literally take a step back. So if you and I are having a conversation and I start to feel my emotions accelerate, then I will literally take a half a step back or a step back. That's number one. Then I'm gonna take a breath. And and the reason that I figured out to take a step back was being in training scenarios, high-pressure training scenarios, where you've got a platoon of SEALs all on a skirmish line, all looking downrange, scanning for targets. And I was in a situation where no one was making a decision. And so I took a step back and looked around, and all of a sudden I could see everything. And once I could see everything, I was the one that ended up making a decision, even though I was one of the junior, the junior guy. So taking a step back is number one. Number two, take a breath. And again, the reason that I figured this out was because in the military, when you talk on the radio, you do not want to sound panicked. You want to sound calm. Yeah, for obvious reasons. Yeah. For for two obvious reasons. Number one obvious reason is that you want to make sure that you are conveying a calm, cool, collected manner. You don't want your panic to spread to other people. And number two, the guys will make fun of you when you get back to camp if you sounded like you were panicking on the radio. So when I would take a step back, and then I had to make a decision, I had to get on the radio before I would get on the radio. I take a breath. So you take a step back, you breathe. Then look around. Take a look around. Take your focus off of the thing that's right in front of you, the thing that's causing your emotions to get elevated. Take a step back, take a breath, and then look around. As you broaden your horizon, this is a natural cognitive. Thing that sends you into a less heightened state. So if you do those things, you are going to be on your way to detaching, to becoming self-aware of the situation that you're in, being able to see a bigger picture, and then be able to make better decisions.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah, I love that advice. And I think I'm remembering the end of that story too about the friend at Home Depot. I think you said you got to take a walk. And I love the metaphor and literal nature of that advice about, you know, um changing your perspective and taking a breath. Because when you move, I mean, like if you're stuck, and I think you explained it as like, you know, hey, you know you're in the forest, but you can't see a thing. You don't know where the road is or where food is or shelter. If you just stay there looking around and being confused, you're literally and figuratively getting nowhere. So you have to actually move your bones to change your perspective, to get your bearings. And so that's really great advice if you feel stuck, right? And the other part about uh taking a breath also seems to be if I'm gonna extract a lesson, is I think um, we have biases, right, as humans. And we we're probably right now seeing life through our personal distortions. 100%, right? And so if we take a breath, you know, change our perspective, step back, step forward, whatever, and then we take that breath, we I think can more accurately convey what we see as the truth and can better communicate that to the other side, right? Versus if we're in a panic or if we're, you know, have anxiety, or if we're worried, or we're fearful, you know, uh all the simple things of just, you know, just relax and take a beat, you know, is very helpful sometimes. It's simple but profound advice.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Yeah. And the perspective piece, so there's a a couple things that tie in there. In the military, there's a saying that the first report is always wrong. So the report, the first report you get from the field is always wrong. And there's a number of reasons for that. Number one, the person that's giving you the report is emotional. But more important, the report that you're getting is only one person's perspective. It's just what they see, and they only see one side of things. So you want to see multiple different angles and multiple different perspectives. That's why when we look at a target, we don't just look at the target from one direction. We try and see that target from every possible angle that we can. So we have a better perspective, so we better understand what the threats are. So, yes, taking a breath, taking a step back, looking around, seeing other perspectives. And the way you do that from a leadership perspective is you go and talk to people that are in various positions around the issue. So if we have a manufacturing line and we've got a something's wrong with the manufacturing line, we want to talk to the people that are literally working on the manufacturing line. We want to talk to the guy that's in charge of that shift, we want to talk to the person that engineered that manufacturing line, you want to talk to as many people as you can so you understand the broadest perspective of the whole problem. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

If you had to choose one, uh creativity or discipline, which one would you choose? I mean, both equally or you know, in their separate ways, valuable, invaluable, probably. But if you had to just choose one, the ability to be creative, and I'm not just talking about being an artist, I'm talking about creative thinking, getting yourself out of problems or solving problems or discipline, which path would you go down?

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Th those things alone are worthless. Explain. If you can be you can be very, very creative, but if you don't have the discipline to put those ideas into some sort of function, then you uh haven't accomplished anything and nothing will happen. And if you're highly disciplined, but you don't can't think of any solutions or any ideas or create anything, then you're once again not moving. So those things by themselves are worthless, both of them.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Can you give us some examples from your life or what you've seen out there in the field? For you know, both, you know, the advantages of of creativity and discipline used together? Because I think I haven't heard from many people of you, you know, sort of using that cocktail, that recipe of creativity and discipline. I I don't hear it many other places. I hear people talk about self-awareness, I hear people talk about stoicism, you know, which is kind of what we just glazed over, this ability to sort of detach and like think of things in a different perspective. You know, that's that's 2,000-year-old philosophy, too, right? That's that's not necessarily new. But I haven't heard a lot of people talk about creativity and discipline the way you do.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

You can have all the ideas in the world. If you don't have the discipline to write, to sit down and put those ideas on the page, you don't have any books, doesn't matter. If you're a musician and you have a bunch of riffs in your head, but you don't have the discipline to practice so that you can get good enough to play those riffs, and then the discipline to organize those riffs into songs, and then the discipline to train some other people to give you backing musician uh music, and then the discipline to get in and practice as a cohesive unit until that song comes to fruition, that song is nothing. It doesn't even exist. So to me, that it's very obvious that if you're a a person that is going to create things, you have to have the discipline to follow up, or you have to organize a team that has people on the team that are creative, that can come up with good ideas, and then people on the team that are disciplined and execute them. And I see that all the time inside of businesses and organizations. You have people on the team that are highly creative, and you have people on the team that can execute. And there's going to be some natural tension between those two, and a good leader is going to kind of orchestrate the way those two things come together to actually get product.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Yeah, I'm just sitting here looking at you, kind of trying to see in the Jocko brain. And uh my interpretation as I listen to you and what, you know, watch you, it's like you've refined this process to such an art form, to such a I mean, uh you seem to have this ability to just cut through all the clutter, to cut through all the nonsense, and just get right down to the essence of the issue. Uh I think that's maybe something you might take for granted because uh I see how quickly and easily you do it, but I would also assume that that's, you know, from maybe 1990 until today, that's just been something that you has just been part of your life that you've worked on. You talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 28:53

Well, I definitely don't take it for granted because when I was running that advanced SEAL training, I would have young leaders that could not do this when I started working with them. And then over time they get to a point where they can. So it is something that you can learn. It's the really it's the art of simplification. It is looking at a complex problem and saying, here's how we can solve this problem. This is what we need to do. The steps for that, you know, what are you gonna do? The first thing I need to do is look at the end state. What is it we're trying to accomplish? That's that's people don't even some people don't even ever think about that thing. They don't, they they have a book that they want to write. They don't even think, okay, there's an end state that I want to get to. It is this book. Here is the main premise of the book that I want to convey to people. Yeah, what's the point? What is the point? That's it. What am I going to do? What why am I doing this? And then what are the minimum steps required to make that happen? Whatever that thing is. So this is something that, yes, I have been doing. And it started in a very, a very brute form, which is looking at operations to conduct. We are going to conduct an operation. Okay, what is it that what is the end state we're trying to achieve? And then what are the minimum steps? Do we need to get there? Every other step that I take, that I take voluntarily, there's risk behind it. I don't want to do anything voluntarily. I want to do what I have to do. And if there's something that I'm doing that I don't have to do, I really need to have a good reason for it. And if I can get rid of it, I'll get rid of it. So that's what you what you're identifying is that ability to look at a complex problem, see all this all this gibberish. And really, when you first look at a target package or you first have an idea, it's just gibberish in your head. And you've got to take that, you've got to analyze it, you've got to distill it down into the end state that you're looking for, and then what are the minimum steps required to get there? Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

You've had a great deal of success. Uh is it easier to start something now, today, because you've had you've had all this perspective, you have this experience of, you know, failing, learning from the mistakes, and then you know, moving forward. Or do you think it was easier back, you know, when you're first getting started? And I'm asking this because I know a lot of people who watch and listen to this series, they're entrepreneurs. You know, they're wanting to start their own thing. And so, you know, timing's everything, right? Like some people will say, oh, you know, it's the recession or it's the pandemic. There's some sort of excuse or barrier, right? So like how do you view uh timing of things? Is it is it easier now, or was it easier back then because you had less of a distance to fall and fail back then when you had you know nothing, versus today when you've you know you're building this empire?

SPEAKER_02 31:45

It's the same because they're all one step at a time. That's I wrote about this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, I call it the iterative decision-making process. I am not going to, if I have an idea that I want to make something, I want to start making a product, do I go and build a factory to make that product and invest a huge amount of capital and take loans out and find investors? No, I don't do any of that. I actually might make that product in my in my shop at my house and make three of them for $17 investment and four hours of time. That's my investment. It's a little tiny step. Then, oh, I show my friends, they go, Oh my, I want one too. Well, now maybe I put a little production together and I say, okay, I'm gonna make all these pieces at the same time. I'm gonna make 20 of these things. I'm gonna spend six hours doing it because I've kind of cleaned up my process and boom, now what now what's the demand signal? Oh, everyone loves them. Or maybe, oh, and if everyone loves them, great. Now maybe I'm gonna start to look if I can find someone to help me manufacture them. I'm gonna keep taking one small step at a time. I also might make those first three and I show them to my friends and they say this is dumb. And I say, Oh, I don't say the market's wrong. I don't say they don't get it. I don't say that it's the timing. I say my idea is not good. Yeah, these are data points. These are my idea is not good, and I'm gonna move on to something else. So I'm constantly doing reconnaissance and checking to see what the feedback is. Where people make mistakes in business is they don't listen to the feedback. They don't listen to the feedback that they get. Whether it's feedback from the market, whether it's feedback from the friends, whether it's free feedback from that industry, they don't listen to it. And they think, well, I see the vision and no one else can see it. Now listen, if that's true, if you have a vision that you think other people just don't understand, well, then what you need to focus on is on the education of them. And you don't want to overinvest in the product, you need to invest in the education first and and move in that direction. And then you need to test the education. And if people say, Oh, now that I see your vision as well, oh yeah, I agree with you. But if you educate people and they say, Okay, yeah, but it's still not worth it, you need to pay attention to that. So being open-minded and make sure that you pay attention to feedback is is incredibly important in anything that you do.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Uh has there been a time where you ignored the feedback and you pushed through anyway? And then what was the result of that?

SPEAKER_02 34:18

I no, I pay attention to the feedback. I pay attention to the feedback. There's been you know, even with I guess the first gyms, uh so so I own a gym right now, Victory MMA and Fitness. The first gyms that we did, we did them small. We did them small. Why? Because we didn't know if we could fill them or not. We didn't know if people would want to come. So you you gotta that's what I always recommend people do. You start small and you pay attention to the feedback. So that's what I've always done. Now listen, as I've as I have more resources, I can put some more resources up initially, but the process is still the same. I'm still gonna pay attention to the feedback. And if the feedback is telling me, Jocko, your idea is dumb, I'm not gonna pursue that idea anymore.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

This series is called Behind the Brand. We talk a lot about brands and branding. Uh I want to ask what the Jocko brand is. Uh, but before we go there, uh, how do you look at brand? Like what how do you define what a brand is? Have you thought about this?

SPEAKER_02 35:22

Not really. And sometimes when people start to ask me about brand and branding, I feel a little bit, I feel unqualified to answer because I didn't scratch my head, get out a piece of paper, and start coming up with ideas for a brand. I didn't do that, and I still don't do that. I am a person, not a brand. And so this is who I am. I've tried to make sure that what I put into the world is reflects who I am, and I try not to put things out into the world that don't reflect who I am. But I the the who I am, which is if you are gonna call it a brand, is not something that I created for the purpose of putting out there. It's just who I ended up being, and then I try and put things out in the world that reflect who I am as a as a human. So I I'm I'm a human being and not a brand.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah. I I love that answer. Uh we had Seth Godin on here, and Seth is like one of the uh godfathers of brand marketing, and he said the same thing to me as Brian, I'm not a brand, I'm a human. But I push back a little bit on that. Um yes, you are human, but you're also a brand, or you could be seen as a brand. And I think you know, people who are thinking about this idea, I actually think your advice is excellent. Because what you're saying is just you should walk the talk. So like your values, the things you're, you know, whatever you put out there in the world, however people experience you when they come up and shake your hand, meet you, grapple with you, you know, in the octagon out there, whatever, like that should be aligned with the products that you make or the books that you write. Like, you know, uh a brand is really a shorthand for what you stand for. If people, you know, the example that Seth gave me is he said, close your eyes and you know, imagine if Nike built a hotel, what would that look like? What would that smell like? What kind of facilities and you know, amenities would it have? Can you imagine what that is? And if the answer is yes, then Nike probably has a brand, right? If Hyatt made a pair of shoes, now try and imagine what the Hyatt sneaker looks like. It's more difficult to do, right? And that's because Hyatt has a brand, but it's it's not as distinctive as Nike is, right? Their brand is maybe to appeal to the masses, it's to be available on every street corner when you need it. It's about price. And it's, you know, when you go and you Google it, you know, they're among one of the lowest. You know, so their brand is about ubiquity or or access wherever you are in the world uh versus exclusivity or being special. And so I think a brand is a shorthand for what you stand for. Uh and it should also be distinct or distinctive. Um and I think the Jocko brand, in my experience or my opinion, is distinctive. And the other thing is um, you know, are will are people willing to stand in line for it? Are they are they willing to pay us uh a little premium for a brand? You know, if you have a generic, you know, all of us are probably about the generic brand of something, and you know, we're not willing to pay more for it. That's why we want to buy the generic. We want the the cheapest version, or we want to, you know, we don't care who makes it. Um but when you put your name on it, like jockofuel, we have a certain expectation, you know, of the person who made it and what it stands for. There's and the interesting thing is that the brand kind of lives in the hearts, minds, you know, and maybe stomach of the people who experience your brand, right? So it's like you create this thing called Jocko Fuel, and then now I'm consuming it, and I form an opinion, and now I have an opinion about the Jocko brand, right? And now you don't have much control. It's like now I have the control, like what I think. And I think, oh, it tastes pretty good. And then I look at the ingredients, oh, you know, increased focus, balanced energy, supports memory. Oh, there's like no sugar. Oh, this is not a Red Bull. This is actually pretty healthy, right? And then I start forming opinions. Um So I think brand is actually something that merits thinking a lot about. I mean, you sort of articulated it in a very non-scientific way, but it's actually spot on. Like you you're just being authentic.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Yeah, I hadn't thought of the idea of Nike hotel, but yes, I think pretty much anyone that knows me could make my hotel for me. And it would be pretty I bet most people would get it pretty close.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

And before this was invented, if you said I'm uh, you know, I'm Jocko and I'm gonna invent Jocko fuel, uh I would have bet money that it would be healthy. Yeah. That wouldn't be full of sugar, you know, that it would have legit ingredients. I'll bet wherever this is manufactured, you know, it's not like uh sl slave labor or, you know, like it is definitely not. Right? Like all these things that go along with your brand, uh, you know, you don't even think about these things, but it's like what you do and what you say actually does matter because people will form this opinion of it. And if you're not walking the talk and it's not congruent with the with your brand, then you know that's that's when I think things don't work out.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Yeah, so I I think I've just made a connection that I hadn't made before, and and I think it's gonna land pretty well with what you're saying, or it's gonna support what you're saying. So I grew up in the SEAL teams. In the SEAL teams, your reputation is the most important thing, and it follows you from the day you start SEAL training until you retire and after you retire. So you don't want to hurt your reputation ever. You want to uphold your reputation. The reason you want to uphold your reputation is your reputation reflects the reputation of the SEAL teams itself. So you never want to tarnish that. So I think that for me, the reason that I guess you could say that my brand is confined the way it is and represented the way it is, is just I think about it subconsciously from a reputational mindset of oh, I'm gonna have people ingesting things that I made that have my name on them, they're going to be as good as they can possibly be. Oh, I'm gonna have people wearing clothing that they know is from my company, they're gonna have the highest quality, and yes, it's gonna be made here in the United States of America. My consulting company, if you come to one of my events, it will be the best event that you have ever been to. And all those things aren't based on me thinking, hey, I've got to uphold the brand. I don't think of it that way. What I think of is, hey, this is the reputation, this is the reputation of the companies, this is the reputation of my name, therefore, indirectly the reputation of the SEAL teams and the reputations of America. So I I guess that's what I think about. I don't think of it as a brand thing. I think of it as a reputation. And I don't think you would have to stretch very far being a brand focused person to make the connection between me thinking about the reputation and and the way other people might think about a brand.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

I think you're spot on. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and then I think, you know, whether you're a human who has a personal brand, like you do, or you're, you know, a big consumer brand like let's say Patagonia or, you know, one of these big established blue chip brands. And then you have opportunities to do stuff. Like uh I saw this uh what's that company that's having a moment right now? Um they make those big giant cups that all the women love to buy. They're like the the Stanley cups. Are you familiar with Stanley? Negative. Stanley's having a moment. I mean, They're like a hundred-year-old company, but um they've suddenly become extremely popular with um a certain female demographic, right? And they're like this tall. It's for people who drink water all day long. You know, my wife has several of these Stanley Cups, and they're like 50 bucks a piece. But apparently um they keep liquids, particularly water, you know, very cold, very insulative, and then they're like bulletproof. And this woman, I guess, uh, you know, her car was parked somewhere and some sort of natural disaster happened. Her car caught on fire and burned to the ground almost. But the Stanley Cup inside survived and the water was still cold. And uh the CEO found out about this story because she stared, she shared it on social and somehow the got back to the brand Stanley. And the CEO came on and said, This is really unfortunate. It's amazing that your Stanley Cup survived. Uh we want to do something uh that we probably won't do again, but we want to replace your car for you. And uh we're so happy that you love your Stanley so much. We're gonna send you a new Stanley Cup and we're gonna replace. So like they stepped up. Uh that's not what they stand for, but it's like that was a pretty good move, pretty bold move for the brand. And I think that we have opportunities to do that, to represent, you know, like what we what what you know, our reputation, right? We can it can precede us or we can get in front of it.

SPEAKER_02 45:17

For sure. For sure. The the drink that you're drinking right now. So as we formulated that, one of the things that I didn't want to do was add chemical preservatives to it. The only way to make that happen was to pasteurize it like you pasteurize milk, which is through heat. There were no lines that made that canned drinks like this with a pasteurization part to them. And so we worked with a manufacturer and waited an extra almost a year to put this out. Why? Because we held the line. Because we did not want to, you know, I wanted to make something that my kids could drink. And that's and that's what we do with every part of this. And it's the same thing with the clothing that we make at Origin. We well, was this more expensive to do the pasteurization?

SPEAKER_01 46:04

It's absolutely more expensive. But it was worth it to you because that's 100%. You stand for. Yes, 100%. How about the protein? I've seen the protein drinks.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

Talk about that too. Same thing. So there's a lot of filler you could put in there. There's also, it's hard to make a protein shake taste good. And so you can you can put sugar in there, which makes it taste good. You can put artificial sweeteners in there, which make it taste good. And I said no to those two things. So we ended up with monk fruit, which is a natural sweetener. We eventually added fermented cane sugar, which is another natural sweetener, and that's what we did. Is it more expensive? Yes. Is it better for you? Yes. So that's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

How involved were you? I mean, it sounds like you were very involved from from the get, but like, were you part of the formulation team? Were you part of the packaging? Like, how much say did you have or want to have in this?

SPEAKER_02 46:52

Oh, I mean, I'm involved in every aspect. So I mean, I mean, obviously, I don't I'm I don't use what's the what's the program? I don't use Adobe Illustrator for the packaging, but I say more black. I say this color. You know, we have experts that that actually run it's the same thing with formulation. You know, I might say, hey, I definitely want to have this ingredient in there, and then they can sort of calculate, yeah, we can here's how we can do it. Here's what would be an efficacious dose, that type of thing. So yes, I'm I'm involved in all of it. Uh, but you know, we have the we've the experts that that make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Yeah. Uh and then how do you make like cosmetic or aesthetic decisions? Is that just gut? Like this is black with orange highlights. I mean, I almost see you in a black t-shirt 90% of the time. You know, is that just your brand? Like you're you're that guy?

SPEAKER_02 47:48

Yeah, I mean, I like the color black. Yeah, me too. Yeah. So we end up with uh some predominantly black packaging. But at the same time, you also once you get into, you know, now that we're a lot bigger, we you have to understand the psychology of the consumer. And you want to make sure that they can eat clearly and easily understand what it is, they can clearly and easily understand what the benefits are, they can clearly understand what differentiates what we make from what other people make. And so you you have to once you start doing that, you've got to you gotta talk to the consumer. Yeah, you've got to get their feedback, you've got to run A B tests, A, B, D, C, E, F, G test to see what stands out to make sure that you are conveying the messages you want to convey. And at the same time, making sure that there's continuity and that you stay close, that you stay on the path of the truth, which is again to me, if I'm making a pink can, that's not really my personality. So we're not making a pink can. So who's it for though? Who's who is the audience? Who do you have in mind? Well, I've made stuff since the beginning for me. The like in the beginning of Jocko Fuel, I actually only made what I wanted and what I needed. The first the first deviation we made from that was vanilla. We made vanilla protein. I don't like I don't voluntarily get vanilla, so I didn't make vanilla. It was most most proteins that would be the second, maybe third flavor that you make. For us, it was pretty far down the line. But yeah, so so I am, you know, the initial audience, but what I do pay attention to is people that are on the same path as me and what their demand signal is. So if there's demand signal for vanilla, we make vanilla because I know that people have different taste buds and people have different needs, but people do want they want things that are efficacious, they want things that they can trust, and that's what we do. So if there's something that maybe is not in something that I would use every day, we st we make it, but we make a version of it that people can trust and is clean and good for them.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

Yeah, break it down a little bit further. Like, because I I again I know a lot of people are thinking about this for their own companies or products or services, it's like, um, how did you how do you know the consumer? Like who else is on your signal? Like what what does that person look like? Uh you know, is it predominantly men? Is it 50-50 men to women? Is it young people, older people, uh people who live, you know. What what what's the uh psychographic?

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Like So for what aspect of my life? So uh and and let me rephrase that. It's not even for what aspect of my life? Here's the deal I go out and I have a podcast, I have a consulting company, I have a supplement food company, I have a clothing company. There what I've been lucky enough to be able to do is I talk to my people all the time. And you know, the podcast is a little bit of a one-way conversation, but I go out all the time. I meet people from the pod that listen to my podcast all the time. And then I go out and do live events, and when I go out and do live events, I meet my people that I have a good relationship with all the time. Who are they? What's the demographic? I'll tell you what the demographic is. They're human beings that want to get better. That's what they are. They're human beings that want to be better. They're are they bankers, investment bankers? Yes. Are they bricklayers? Yes. Are they truck drivers? Truck drivers? Yes. Are they working on a farm? Yes. Are they selling insurance? Yes. Are they housewives? Yes. Are they moms and dads? Yes, yes. Are they college kids? Yes. Are they high school students? Yes. They are human beings that want to get better. That's who I interact with all the time. That's who listens to my podcasts, that's who reads my books, that's who takes my supplements, that's who buys my clothes, that's who hires my consulting company. It's people that want to improve themselves and get better. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

That resonates with me, and maybe that's uh very clear why I listen too, because I want to get better too. Right on. Um, what is a deeply held belief that you had maybe five years ago? Could be about business, could be about you know, life in general, that you no longer believe?

SPEAKER_02 52:22

The the the one that I have to go back to is more than five years ago. When I retired from the military, I did not know. I I was institutionalized, right? In the in the classic sense of the word, meaning I had spent my entire adult life in the institution of the military. That was all I knew and all I understood. And what I thought was that the leadership principles that I had learned in the military only applied to the military. As I started working with, as a matter of fact, the very first civilian company that I worked with, as soon as I got done explaining the principles of combat leadership that I taught in the SEAL teams, I got done explaining them. As soon as they started asking me questions, I realized that everything that I had learned applied 100% to any leadership situation. It was it was so blatantly obvious to me. That was such an incredible moment because I realized that, well, you know, what do you do when you're when you carry a machine gun for your for your adult life? What do you do? What do you do with that skill? There's no there's no direct translation in the civilian sector at all. There's none. Maybe you could say police officer, maybe you could say security, but maybe you could say security contractor. Like, okay, those are some pretty direct ones, but to take the skills, you're gonna be doing basically the same job. As soon as I got asked the very first question, and I knew what the answer was, I said to myself, Oh, everything that I know applies to all leadership situations, we have something here. And so the the awakening moment for me and the recognition was that the military was one thing and the civilian world something else, and that's when I realized, no, that's not true. Leadership is leadership, is leadership, and human beings are human beings.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Yeah, I heard you I've I've heard you talk about this a little bit where you know you can learn stuff from all different sources. You can get it from books, you can get it from experience. Doesn't matter how you get there, you're still both at the top of that mountain. Yeah, no doubt.

SPEAKER_02 54:29

You you come to the if you if you go through the rigors, you will come to a very familiar place, and there will be some other people there. There will be some other, you know, you mentioned Stoicism. I didn't know about Stoicism. I do now. I didn't study Stoicism. I I know it's really obvious that what the Stoics think, I think. You I didn't I would love to tell you that I was this highly educated person that had read the Stoics and recognized that their beliefs were the way to move forward. I didn't know that at all. I didn't know that at all. I lived my life, I went through my experiences, I went through the rigors of my experiences, I recognized the errors that I made, I realized the things that the shortfalls that I had, and I came to very similar conclusions. And that's kind of the way that that's kind of the way the the world works.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

I'm gonna ask you to indulge me on as we sort of wrap things up here. Um I know you've got you got four kids. Yes, I do. I also have four kids. Awesome. My youngest is 15. His name's Parker. And one of my favorite videos of yours is this good video. You know what I'm talking about. Um He's a hard worker. Uh he's also 15. I mean, actually just turned 16. And um maybe if you could uh call him out and talk about the value of doing hard things and sort of unpack that good advice. What what he's he's sixteen now? He just turned sixteen. He's running uh track and field, running his guts out, uh lifting weights, you know, doing all the hard stuff that high schoolers, he's a sophomore.

SPEAKER_02 56:22

So it seems like he's kind of recognized that hard work is going to be beneficial.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

He does recognize it, but sometimes he needs a little pep talk uh when things don't go his way or when things are when things get hard. And maybe I want you to like give him a little advice when you know when he doesn't win the race or uh when uh he's got a pushback.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Yeah. Well that's very that's a very specific thing that you got to there, which is I didn't win. I didn't succeed, I didn't achieve what I wanted to achieve. And yeah, the the the the general philosophy of good is when something goes wrong, when something doesn't play out the way that you wanted it to play out, instead of being miserable, instead of saying woe is me, instead of curling up in a ball on your couch and watching Netflix, instead say good. Oh, I lost the race, good. Now I know an area that I have to improve. Oh, I didn't get the grade I wanted on that test, good. Now I know the areas of weakness that I need to study more on. So that's just that's the the fundamental philosophy. When things go wrong, which they absolutely will. They absolutely will. They when things go wrong, it is an opportunity for you to find a way to improve, to find a way to overcome that obstacle, to find a way to get better. So when things go wrong, say good.

SPEAKER_01 57:49

Aaron Powell What is the value of purposely putting yourself into situations where things are hard? Because as humans, the inclination is to avoid pain, run away from pain. You know, uh I'm looking at all these intense knives on this table and I'm thinking of pain uh or danger. But um I mean that's a natural response. And and that's somewhere in the lizard brain, probably. That's a caveman response, is to to do that. That's that is to be human. But like to override that response and do the thing that is hard is not easy, but it is important. Can you tell us why?

SPEAKER_02 58:29

It's inoculation. It's stress inoculation, it's discomfort inoculation, it's pushing through inoculation. You will get better as a human being if you constantly expose yourself to things that you're that that that stress you, that cause problems. Now, listen, just like weightlifting, if you decide, oh, I'm gonna get better at bench press, so you put 500 pounds on the bar and you haven't bench pressed before, you're gonna blow out your shoulders and you're gonna be injured. So we're not talking about that. But to add a little bit of stress, to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, you will inoculate yourself to mentally and physically to things that are challenging. The more you do that, the tougher you will become. The the more you add that stress over time, the the better you will become. So it's very important to continually find things that take you out of your comfort zone, that are challenging to do, that are gonna make you feel stress, not overwhelming, but they're gonna make you feel some stress. Because here's the thing if in life you got to live in a in a bubble and nothing was ever gonna cause you problems, it'd probably be good for you just to never stress yourself. Life does not offer that. You are gonna experience is experience pain, you're gonna experience loss, you're gonna experience challenges, and if you haven't inoculated yourself to that, you're gonna be overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:00

Yeah, I remember the story you were telling about when you're doing jujitsu, and you weren't good from your back or you know, from from uh the bottom, and so you deliberately put yourself there.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:11

Over and over and over again for like two years. Two years of starting on the bottom every single time until I was inoculated to that, and then it was no factor.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:23

And so should we start focusing on our weaknesses or should is there what's the balance between you know like leaning into your strengths? You know, because there's some clear advantages there, right? Like if if you're already a good striker or something, you know, the the the the answer is do both, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:40

You definitely want to capitalize on the fact that you have some strengths, but you don't want to ignore your weaknesses and have them big gaping holes where you're super vulnerable. So the answer is yes. Should you work on your strengths and weaknesses? The answer is yes. You should work on both.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:55

All right. Final words of advice. Uh let's put it back in the business context. Things that you've learned from building your brand. Uh advice to new founders and entrepreneurs trying to do their thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:10

The most common piece of advice that I give, I kind of already touched on, is to start small and grow. Pay attention to the demand signal. Don't think that your idea is perfect. It's not going to be perfect. You're going to have to open your mind, you're going to have to accept feedback, you're going to have to realize that the perfect vision that you have in your head isn't necessarily going to be the person's perfect vision that everyone else sees. So you have to open your mind and be accept that feedback that you're going to get in order to grow. And then, like I said, iterative decision making. Take small steps, make small decisions, and then pay attention to the feedback as you grow.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

I mean, we were just sitting back, you know, chopping it up, reminiscing about the good old days and all that. You know, tracking my roots, where I came from and where I'm going. But like I say, man.