Ep 38 | Jocko Willink | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Today's podcast could go one of two ways.

I just met him before I came into the studio and I only said one thing.

Do you have a sense of humor?

Why?

So it could get dicey.

Could get dicey.

I'm not sure we've never met.

I am a huge fan of his work.

He is very good at what he does.

He's a certified badass.

He is a real life Rambo.

And he wakes up every day very different than I do.

He sets his alarm for 4 or 4.30 so he can quote get a jump on the enemy.

He does that seven days a week.

He served eight years as a Navy SEAL on SEAL Team 1, SEAL Team 2.

He has completed multiple deployments throughout the world and in 2006 he deployed to Ramadi.

He's the guy that turned that around.

He was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He commanded the SEAL team, SEAL Team 3.

And his role in combat earned him a Silver Star, a bronze star.

And the right side of his uniform is a patchwork of various other awards, commendations, badges, and patches.

Since leaving the Navy, he has enjoyed a career as a motivational speaker and an avid Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

I can't even say it.

He's an expert in that.

He's got a black belt.

He likes, I think, getting hit in the face.

He's an MMA fighter.

He got his black belt from Dean Lister.

He owns an MMA-based gym where he trains and spars with professional MMA fighters.

He is a New York Times best-selling author.

He has developed a philosophy of extreme ownership and the idea that leaders must own everything in their world.

This guy makes me feel like I'm wearing a skirt.

I hope he has a sense of humor.

This is a podcast you don't want to miss.

Did you see Mission Impossible Fallout?

No.

What?

I don't see a lot of movies.

Are you one of those guys that goes to movies and you're like, that wouldn't happen?

That's part of it.

And I also go to movies and fall asleep.

Really?

It's like the place where there's no one allowed to bother me.

So I just sleep.

Okay, so there's a scene where Tom Cruise goes in and they're just beating a snot out of each other.

And one of them takes like, you know, the sink out of the bathroom and throws it at the other.

And they just keep going and going and going.

You ever been in in a fight like that like just like i mean like for real like not like a not like an mma where you're stopping i mean a real

like that just went on and on and on and you're like this guy just won't stop yeah most real fights don't actually last that long really yeah i mean particularly because you someone else is going to jump in so a one-on-one fight is very rare and and i've never had a one-on-one fight that lasted more than you know a minute so you're better than tom cruise because he had two guys I'm not sure how good Tom Cruise is.

Okay.

MMA, tell me about, first of all, your Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu, yeah.

What's the difference?

What does that mean?

Okay, so Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a martial art that

it's very similar to wrestling.

So it's grappling-based.

You don't punch each other in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

You grapple.

But the big difference between Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and wrestling is that in wrestling, which is a great sport, and my kids are hardcore wrestlers, but in wrestling, you're not allowed to do little things like choke your opponent or get their arm in such a position where you could break their arm.

And that's where the expression tap out comes from.

And it's pretty, it's a phrase that's used all the time for kind of everything now.

Oh, I had too much, I tapped out.

But that comes from this idea in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

If I get your arm in such a position that I can break it and you know I could break it, instead of allowing me to break it, you can just tap out and I let you go.

So, and then we can train again.

And that's what makes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu very effective is you can train 100%

all the time without hurting each other.

Whereas boxing or Muay Thai or the striking martial arts, if you're really going hard, you can't do that every day.

You can't get punched in the face every single day.

With MMA, I watch it and I'm fascinated by it.

But at no time in my life have I ever gotten up and thought, you know, I'd really like to just be just kicked in the face today.

Where is the entertainment?

Where is the, where is the, what gets you up in the morning on a day of a fight and you're like, today's the day I get to get kicked in the face?

There's very few people, even, even MMA fighters, that don't mind getting kicked or punched in the face.

It's not a good feeling.

And the few that are, are, that, that do enjoy that, that like that thrill, I mean, they usually do pretty well.

But most

people feel like a psycho.

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

Yeah.

But, you know, generally, your goal is to not get punched in the face.

And if you get punched in the face too much, you're going to lose the fight.

So, and that's one of the problems with MMA, with boxing with Muay Thai, is you're taking that traumatic head injury over and over and over again.

So, you know, you're seeing it with the NFL right now with football, which a lot of that is stemming from the fact from the vets coming back from overseas, having been blown up a bunch of times.

That minor concussion over and over again causes long-term damage.

So that's one of the reasons I think Brazilian jiu-jitsu and wrestling and the grappling martial arts are going to become even more popular because you can put your five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old kid into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or wrestling, and they're not going to get brain damage.

Whereas boxing, Muay Thai, there's no doubt there's a risk for that.

You know, it's the same thing with football.

There's definitely a movement a little bit away from football right now in America because people are seeing the brain damage that you get.

So you need to be careful.

I'm not going to say that's bunk.

Not with traumatic brain injury for

people who have been in war, but for football.

They say that's the

statistics don't bear that out.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I think it affects different people differently.

And I think you can see that very obviously with boxing, right?

You see some old boxers, they're fine.

They're perfectly fine.

And some old boxers, they have

pugilistic disease.

I forget the actual name of it.

I can't see getting hit in the head over and over and over again and have it not affect you.

I cannot see that either.

You get punched in the head a bunch of times.

It's not going to be good for you.

You head-to-head with Chuck Norris, who wins?

Chuck Norris?

Well, I mean, it's Chuck Norris.

I mean, he'd probably sneak up and kill me from behind, right?

I was just with him.

It was a stayed at his ranch, and he's 79 years old.

79?

Yeah, 79, I think.

And he walks away, and there's like five of us.

And he walks away, and I look at the five guys, and I said, you realize that guy could take all of us at 79.

He's just a machine.

And interestingly, he was an early adopter of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

And so even though he was a striker, you know, that was how he was raised and that's kind of how he got famous.

But as soon as he kind of recognized the power of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, he started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and he eventually got his black belt.

So that's the, I have a lot of respect for a guy like that that trains one way for a long time and then has the humility to look at a totally different martial art and say, you know what?

That seems pretty effective.

I'm going to try it.

And he tried it and he realized it is very effective because that's the one thing with grappling.

If you're trying to punch me and you're a great puncher and you're a great kicker and you're a great striker,

if I can get close enough to you to take you down to the ground, your strikes don't work anymore.

Can women do that?

Are women strong enough to do that to a man?

Yeah, there's women that are very good at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

I actually have one female Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt at my gym in San Diego, and she puts guys to sleep for sure.

Now,

I put people to sleep too, just in a different way.

My daughter had

kind of a scary incident,

and she had been against guns.

My daughter was against guns for a while.

She was just like, she wasn't against them.

She's just like, they're not for me.

I don't want to do it.

That all changed one night.

And now she's a really good shot.

But we were talking about all my kids,

martial arts, being able to protect protect themselves.

And, you know, I don't know anything, I don't know anything about any of it, but

Krav Maga,

I'm told that at one point, that was, you know, the United States stopped training people.

And I don't even know if this is true because it was so dangerous, blah, blah, blah.

It's not true.

It's not true.

Okay.

All right.

I've seen a documentary on it that said, oh, it's so dangerous.

I thought, that's what we should be training people for.

But what I like about that, and maybe this is true, is

I want to be trained.

If I'm going to train my daughter, if I'm going to send my kids to train,

I want them to be able to kill you.

Mine's not to,

I'm not going to put you to sleep.

If you're trying to kill me, it'd be nice if I could put you to sleep, but I'm going to kill you if I have to.

So, what is the, what's the one thing if you could have kids, daughters, sons learn to be able to protect themselves?

What would you go?

Where are we going?

So

you really, what you need to do is if you really, from a young age, is you should start training in martial arts.

I definitely think that your foundation should be Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

There's no doubt in my mind about that.

Now,

the thing is, if you're going to punch me and I don't want to fight you, or you're going to kick me and I don't want to fight you, you know what I can do?

I can run away from you.

I can run away.

I can just get away from you.

If you're standing there ready to punch me, I can run away from you.

So that's fine.

That's my first method of self-defense is to be able to run away.

The problem is, what if you grab me?

If you grab me, well, now I can't run away anymore.

And now what I have to do is I have to fight.

And so

you're forced to fight in a grappling situation.

In a stand-up situation where you're pushing me or

you're setting up to punch me, I can just run away from you.

I can get away from you.

But once you grab a hold of me and you, let's say you take me down to the ground, if I don't know how to handle myself on the ground, I'm going to have a real problem.

So kids should train in boxing.

They should train in Muay Thai.

They should train in wrestling.

They should train in jiu-jitsu.

And you know, you asked me specifically about females.

Well, in many cases, even a very, even a decent level Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner that's a 110-pound female comes up against a guy that's 260 pounds, 230 pounds, a man, that's an athletic man or even just a big, strong man.

That's going to be a real problem.

And ultimately, in many cases, all the jiu-jitsu in the world is not going to help that 110-pound girl.

So two things.

What you said about firearms is 100% correct.

I mean, that is the ultimate equalizer.

And that is, if you truly need to protect yourself, that is the ultimate way.

And so what I tell females now, when they say, well, why should I even train?

Why should I even train?

If it's not, if I can't defeat a 230-pound man, why should I even train?

Well, the answer to that is very simple.

You might not be able to defeat that man, but if you're in a situation where someone's trying to grab you, someone's trying to control you, you might be able to delay that control for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute.

And that might be the difference between someone seeing you, someone being able to help you, you being able to cry out for help, police being able to come on the scenes or whatever the case may be.

So you should do everything you can.

And I'll tell you, you go against a girl that's been trained in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, it is not easy.

It's not easy.

It's going to be very,

they're going to be a difficult fight.

Not even for you.

Even for anyone.

I mean, they're going to be able to do things that you don't expect them to do.

So it's important to train regardless of the

if you pick a style, I would say pick your base style to be Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

And then you get into things like Krav Maga, which they start talking about weapons and things like that.

And they start talking about some immediate drills to do in certain situations.

And that's that's fine.

You should drill those things.

I have a very open mind.

I think people should train all kinds of martial arts and

be prepared to the best of their ability throughout their life.

And that's another thing.

You're not going to learn a magic move.

That's one of the things that can be

a little bit deceiving about some martial arts is, well, if I touch you here or I hit you here, that's going to incapacitate you.

It's just, those things really don't happen.

You know, there's no magic place for me to touch you and you just fall down.

Now, if I get a perfect punch and I hit you in a knockout spot, sure, I could knock you out.

But even you watch a boxing match.

How often does someone actually get knocked out?

They get punched in the head 150 times.

They don't get knocked out.

That happens all the time.

So we can't count on those knockout punches.

We can't count on one technique that's going to save your life.

What you should do is train to be ready and train to be prepared for all of life in a multitude of different arenas.

I want to talk to you a little bit.

You wrote an article about toxic masculinity, which I thought was fantastic.

But can I ask the cameraman, can you pull back on him?

Because

from the front shot, please pull back so you can get the full view of what I'm seeing.

This camera, please, behind me.

There, there.

Look at the arms.

Okay.

Sorry, I'm just having.

I just want to.

Barbie dolls do not look like people.

I feel like I'm sitting across from G.I.

Joe.

You just look exactly like G.I.

Joe in real life.

Has anybody ever told you that?

I have heard things along those lines before that I

write out a central casting for the military dude.

No, I mean, but it's almost like they made the little plastic man after you.

I want to talk to you

about toxic masculinity because I think your point of view is

really good and it's nuanced, but nobody would give you the benefit of the doubt of the nuance.

Am I right?

Sure.

Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah.

So talk to me about toxic masculinity.

I think they take certain aspects that are considered to be masculine aspects, and if you take those aspects to the extreme, well, they're going to be bad.

And that's...

That's true.

You take any characteristic of a human being and you take it to an extreme, and it's probably going to be bad.

Even ones that seem good.

Well, for instance, confidence, right?

You should be confident.

Would you want your children to be confident?

Of course, you would want your children to be confident.

Not overconfident.

What if they become overconfident?

Well, then they're arrogant and they're egotistical and they're going to have a downfall because of that overconfidence.

You want your kids to be articulate and able to speak well?

Well, what happens if they end up speaking all the time and they cut people off and they don't let anyone else get a word in edgewise?

That's a problem.

We don't want that.

You go to the other end of the spectrum where they're too shy and

they won't say anything at all.

Well, that's not good either.

So where do you want to be?

You want to be balanced somewhere in the middle.

Do you want to be competitive?

There's sort of a traditional masculine trait.

Now, if you ever met

my daughters, I have three daughters and one son.

My daughter, my oldest daughter, is a psychotic competitive, right?

So it's a bit of a...

I find that very difficult to believe.

Yeah, it's considered to be a masculine trait.

And do you want your kids to be competitive?

Of course you want your kids to be competitive.

Do you want your kids to be so competitive that they cheat?

Do you want them to be so competitive that they lie?

Do you want them to be so competitive that they step on the backs of other people to rise up above them?

Of course you don't want your kid to be that competitive.

Or so competitive that they can't handle failure.

Or so competitive.

All these are the traits taken to the extreme.

Now the other end of the spectrum is, well, I don't care if I win or lose.

I don't care if I get beat.

Do you want your kid to be like that?

No.

Where do you want your kid to be?

You want your kid to be balanced.

And so the idea of toxic masculinity i think is just taking some what are considered to be traditional masculine traits taking them out to an extreme and you'd say okay yeah they're bad so what's what's a man what is a man what should a man be

i look at what a man should be is someone that does what they're supposed to do

That's more of a human.

Sure.

Isn't that?

I mean, that's what we're all supposed to do that.

We're all supposed to do that.

Yeah, and I mean, I don't know.

Here's how I really differentiate.

So

I had a really good friend, John Huntsman Sr.

He was an old Navy man from World War II.

He was just great, and he was a real gentleman.

And we were walking one night.

We were in

Wyoming or Idaho.

And we're just walking, I'm walking him home, and

he looks up at the sky, and he was a navigator.

And he said,

You read the stars?

And I said,

No.

And he said,

Every man should know how to read the stars.

And

then he went into a little bit, and it was more philosophical in a way.

What should, what makes a man?

What should a man, as a dad of a boy, what should I be teaching my son what a man is?

This is a list of things that goes on and on.

And what I did

is I wrote a book about it.

I wrote a book because I had a son.

And as I went out to try and find books for my son to read, have you ever tried to find books for

it's horrible.

Yeah.

And I could not find any books that...

You'll find all kinds of women hero.

Right.

I couldn't find any books where, oh, okay,

this is the values I want to pass on to my son.

And so I wrote a a book called Way of the Warrior Kid.

And what the book is about is about a young kid.

He's 10 years old.

He can't do any pull-ups.

So he's getting made fun of in school.

He doesn't know his times tables.

Even though the other kids know their times tables, he doesn't know his times tables yet.

He doesn't know how to swim.

And he's getting picked on by the school bully.

And so

he's all sad last day of school.

They actually are doing a competition to see how who can do the most pull-ups.

He can't do any.

He's getting laughed at he the the the class field trip is at a lake he can't swim

he's getting picked on like i said by the school bully kenny williamson by the way you got to watch out for him so he goes home he's all sad he's crying and when he gets home he remembers that his uncle is coming to stay with him for the summer and his uncle was in the seal teams and so his uncle shows up and they're actually staying in the young kid mark's bedroom And his uncle says, hey, you know, what do you want to do tomorrow?

You want to go play some basketball?

You want to go for a swim?

It's going to be hot out.

And the kid, Mark, kind of says, Well, I'm not really good at basketball and I don't know how to swim.

And he breaks down and he starts crying and explains to his uncle all the problems that he has.

And his uncle says,

These aren't problems.

These are things that you can fix.

And

he trains him over the summer, teaches him how to swim, teaches him how to study, teaches him how to eat right, teaches him how to work out, teaches him hard work, discipline.

He teaches him those things and he overcomes these challenges.

So I put these things that I think are important for a young man to be able to do into these books.

And now I've written three of them about

these

important

values for a young man to have.

How important is hard work for kids?

Hard work is one of the most important things, and hard work to me ties into discipline.

And, you know, I had written a book called Discipline Equals Freedom, Field Manual, and that was sort of aimed at adults.

In fact, it was aimed at adults.

But the same messages that are in that book are passed on to kids in these other books, these Way the Warrior Kid books.

I I have a ranch and we spend our summers at the ranch and that's putting up fences and

digging holes and chasing down problems.

And when I bought it at first, I was living in New York City, which is a whole different world.

Just as hard, but in a completely different way.

And I remember the first summer I went out to the ranch, my head hurt from living in New York because you're constantly thinking, you're constantly being pushed mentally, but your body, at least for me, not at all.

Not at all.

There is something

different about hard physical work that

we have lost.

You know, we might work hard still, but that physical labor at the end of the day is different, don't you think?

I think that you have to exercise your body, whether that's work or whether that's working out.

There's no doubt in my mind.

There's no doubt in my mind that when you do physical things, you feel better.

And

this is another thing I wrote about.

Like, this actually happens.

There's physiological things that take place when you work out that make you feel better.

So you're 100% right.

You're 100% right.

And you're backed up by science.

If you work out, you do hard labor, you're going to feel better.

No doubt about it.

That's why you should make that part of your day.

Even if you have a job where you don't do anything physical, physical, you need to get up early and do something physical so you get that part of your

soul taken care of.

When I don't do anything physical, I feel horrible.

Yeah.

Give me two or three days of that and I'm not a happy person.

You get up at four o'clock in the morning every day?

I do.

Every day.

Yeah, actually 4:30, but yeah.

Every day.

Yeah.

No sleeping in.

No.

Anybody in your life say, shut up.

I'm sleeping in.

I'm real quiet.

My wife does not get up when I get up, and I'm very good and stealthy about getting up and getting out of bed.

I'm stealthy.

I'm stealthy.

You are stealthy.

Because I don't want to wake her up.

She has a different sleep pattern than me.

I was just with Tony Robbins, and

he's

quite ill.

He has mercury poisoning, and he's been quite ill for quite some time.

And

I watched him in his day, and he's amazing.

He's all wired up, so they can monitor absolutely everything about him.

And he's burning 12,000 calories a day when he's working.

And

you'd never know he was sick.

Never know he'd sick.

You see

him maybe after or right before, and you can tell that something's not quite right.

And he gets up every morning, and he jumps into a pool of, I think, 55 or 60 degree water every day.

And he said, I don't do it because I like it.

I do it because I'm telling my body I'm in charge of you.

And he said to me at one point,

he said,

I'm Tony Robbins.

I built Tony Robbins.

This is the machine that carries Tony Robbins around and it works for me.

And

I remember

almost every day

since then, I get up every morning and I say,

this works for me.

There is a difference.

Just that mindset totally changes you.

Is that part of the thing of getting up at four o'clock in the morning of I'm in charge?

Or have you always been?

one of those people at four o'clock i've not always been like that but i will say this from from From my perspective, when people ask me all the time, I lack discipline.

How can I get discipline in my life?

And no one wants to hear this answer.

No one wants to hear it.

Just do it.

One of the first steps you can take to impose discipline in your life is to wake up early in the morning.

Because let's face it, when the alarm goes off,

you've got your head on that soft pillow.

It's all nice and cozy and warm in there.

You do not feel like getting up.

And so you.

He doesn't even have a snooze alarm.

He doesn't ever hit the snooze alarm.

Yep, you do.

And you should not.

You should not.

That snooze alarm is.

That's insane.

I call that snooze alarm the dream killer.

Like when you, when you, when you press that snooze button, you're killing your dreams.

What?

So don't, don't touch the snooze button.

Now, where I get that.

Now, some would say that might be a little extreme.

No, where people get worried and people freak out

is

sleep is healthy.

Sleep is good for you.

I know that.

I get it.

And people say, you're telling people not to sleep.

No, I'm not telling people not to sleep.

You do six hours every night.

10 o'clock.

Yeah, I usually go to bed around 10.30, 11, and I wake up at 4.30.

So I get five and a half to six hours almost every night, you know?

And sometimes I tell people,

I think sleeping is good.

I do it almost every single day.

But people will freak out and say, you're telling people to be unhealthy.

I'm not saying that at all.

I'm not, you know, if you need, different people are, they have different genetic needs for sleep.

I'm one of those people that doesn't need much.

Of my four kids, my oldest daughter needs even less sleep than I do.

My middle daughter sleeps more like my wife.

My son's somewhere in the middle, which, by the way, that means my middle daughter, she gets out of bed when you get her out of bed in the morning.

She likes to sleep.

So I'm not telling people, hey, don't sleep, but I am saying put yourself on a schedule.

And you know, you ask why I don't sleep in.

If you sleep in, if I sleep in on a Saturday until six o'clock,

that night, I'm going to have more energy.

And instead of going to bed at 10, 30, or 11, I'm going to stay up until midnight because I got a little bit of extra sleep.

Well, now that next day, I'm going to sleep in a a little bit more.

And all of a sudden, Sunday, I'm sleeping in until 7 o'clock.

Now, Sunday night, I can't go to bed until 1 o'clock in the morning.

And you see where I'm going with this.

I go into Monday with a lack of sleep because I couldn't fall asleep.

So I just, the most important thing is set a good wake-up time that works for you, where you get enough sleep, and then wake up that time every day if you can.

For a while, for about 10 years, my body only needed about three hours of sleep.

There was nothing better.

There was nothing better.

Sleep is the biggest waste of time ever.

You know, it's not something you go to the doctor for, you know, afterwards, you know, because it did some damage to my body.

And afterwards, people are like, you didn't check that on?

I'm like, why?

If you don't have to sleep, it's the greatest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it is, there's no one working.

Nope.

There's no one to bother you.

It's completely, you are just able to focus.

Yeah.

It's, it's great to get up early.

And, you know, I always like to throw this caveat in there as well.

I don't, I get up early and it's a luxury for me.

You know, there's plenty of single moms out there that are getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning so they can do their first shift at a diner, followed by going from there to a daycare center where they're working, followed by some other job that they're doing late at night.

Like that's that's so there's plenty of people.

I'm not bragging, I sleep less.

I'm like, no, there's plenty of people that are working harder than me and getting after it more than I am.

And respect to them.

And I hope they can drive on with that until they can get to a point where they can get more sleep.

Ken, because you're really, you're, I mean, you're a phenomenal leader, you know, with the SEAL teams, but you are now an inspirational speaker.

You've written books on leadership.

Can everyone be a leader?

Yes.

With one exception.

So, with one exception, and first I'll say, can everyone be a leader?

Yes.

Everyone has certain innate capabilities, right?

And some of them may be stronger than others.

And some capabilities that you have tend to make you a better leader.

And there's a bunch of them, right?

So,

you know, some people are naturally articulate, right?

There's some people that can, there's some people that have a natural level of confidence.

Those are really good things to have if you're a leader.

Some people can look at complex problems and they can kind of simplify those complex problems.

And those are very good skills for a leader to have to be articulate, to be confident, to be able to simplify things.

Those are great skills for a leader to have.

And different people have different levels of those skills.

So I'm sure you've known people in your life that weren't very articulate.

They, okay, so they didn't really get that skill.

Or some people that lack confidence.

And they can be super smart.

They can even be articulate, but they lack confidence.

There's some people,

being able to simplify is a good skill to have, but usually people remember, instead of people that were able to simplify things well, A lot of times instead people remember individuals that really make things complicated.

Have you ever worked with somebody that takes just something and just makes them complicated?

You're like, shut up.

Can we just do it?

Yes, yes.

So those are different skill levels that a human being will have.

And you got born with what you got born with.

And maybe it got nurtured a little bit along the way.

It improved a little bit.

And so you can take those skills.

And if you're not very articulate, you can read and you can speak and you can write and you can become more articulate.

If you're not very confident, as you get experience and as you go through things in life, your confidence can increase.

And as you continue as a leader to look at complex problems, you can get better at solving those problems and simplifying them so there's ways to improve your leadership capability and and that's what I do for a living is work with companies and work with leaders to improve their leadership capability and that can happen pretty much across the board now the reason there's a caveat to that is one of the most important characteristics for a leader to have is humility because if you lack humility Well, you don't think you need to be any more articulate because, you know, you're already good enough.

And you don't need team members.

You don't even need anyone to give you any input because you already know everything.

So the person that lacks humility is not going to become any better of a leader.

You said this in your

toxic

masculinity article too about

if it's good for a man to be able to control his emotions, but if you're emotionless, nobody wants to follow somebody who doesn't feel.

Yeah, 100% true.

That's a great example.

So

the classic masculine trait is to have control of your emotions.

Does that make you a good leader?

Yes.

You don't want a leader that flies off the handle.

You don't want a leader that loses their temper.

You don't want a leader that gets completely distraught and falls apart if something bad happens.

No, that's a bad leader.

That being said, you don't want a leader that is completely void of emotions.

And if you're completely void of emotions, you won't connect with your team as a leader.

You won't connect with them as a person.

And if you don't connect with your team as a person, there's no bond.

There's no bond.

There's no team.

There's no team.

There's failure.

It's interesting because George Washington was a, he's one of my favorite leaders.

And

he was an unbelievably complex man with all kinds of emotions going on.

But the only time I ever saw weakness in him was after he lost New York and he was standing across the river and he's looking at Manhattan and he it's written that he wept

and the people around him all of a sudden flipped and they were like, this guy, we are doomed with this guy.

And yet he was able to turn that around

and then get everybody in the boat to go back up and take.

I've often, people don't understand the leadership that that took.

To get them back into the boat to take on the Hessians, that would be like me saying to my fat friends, hey, let's go take on SEAL Team 6.

We wouldn't do it.

We'd all be dead.

That's,

he had something

that,

and what is that?

That X factor where a real leader, they say this about Steve Jobs, could look you in the eye and you'd be like, I'm not doing that.

I'm not doing it.

No matter what he says, I'm not doing it.

And before you know it, you're walking out of the office going, damn right, we're going to do it.

What is that?

Well, it's an important point when you make of that about George Washington.

That really

leaving New York at that time was an escape,

was a retreat, but it was a great tactical move and a lucky one because the fog rolled in and it was a lucky one.

But if he would have stayed there, they would have really suffered some significant,

it would have been a massive defeat.

It probably

could have been over.

So now if you think about it from you're a trooper, you're a trooper and you're looking at this guy.

If this guy walks out of there after this and he has no emotions,

And he says, don't worry about it, gents.

You just got defeated.

You know, you just had to run away.

And this guy is acting like it didn't happen.

Now, weeping and crying, that might be a little bit much.

Right.

It might be a little bit much.

In fact, it probably was.

But at the same time, if you showed no emotions, it's not enough.

But there is something about, I mean, and I don't know how much of this is legend.

I happen to believe the stories because they're so universal.

But there is something about him,

you know, riding a big white horse towards the front, almost in a brave heart sort of fashion, going, come on, let's go.

That

the troops that followed him after horse after horse after horse was shot out from underneath him.

And he walks off the battlefield every time that it gave them this

invincibility almost, or this conviction that, no, no, no, we're moving forward.

There's a force here.

Well, when a human being looks at another human being that is willing to sacrifice,

and in that case, willing to sacrifice everything, that is,

when we see that as people, when you see someone that's willing to sacrifice, and I was lucky enough to work with guys and see guys

sacrifice their lives for the cause, the cause of freedom, for the cause of trying to help, you know, I was in Iraq, trying to help these Iraqi people escape from this

evil, evil insurgency.

And evil isn't even a strong enough word.

This sadistic, evil, subhuman insurgency that was raping, torturing, murdering, skinning people alive.

That's what this city of Ramadi was under.

And I don't think I've heard the skinning people.

Oh,

oh, yes, skinning people alive,

beheading the head of the family.

So, oh, the insurgents think that this family or this father had been working with coalition or helping coalition forces.

Cool.

What we're going to do is we're going to go in that night.

We're going to murder the whole family.

We're going to put their heads out in front of the house so everyone knows what's going to happen to you.

And, but all that being said, this is not our country, right?

But there was Americans that were willing to sacrifice their lives to try and help these people move towards freedom and move away from that oppression.

So when you see that, and you know, my task unit in the Battle of Amadi, we would go to memorial services of the Army soldiers, of the Marines that were killed in action.

And

when you see that level of sacrifice

and you see someone willing to make that sacrifice, it absolutely reassures you that you're on the right path and you're doing the right thing.

You worked with Chris Kyle,

who was a remarkable remarkable man.

Indeed.

I was so humbled by him.

It's one of the biggest regrets of my life.

I'm not good around people like you

because

you do things that I just don't, I just, I mean, I'm afraid to find out.

I always see myself as,

in a worst way, in the worst way.

my worst nightmare is that scene in Saving Private Ryan.

You don't watch movies, did you watch movies?

No, that's a movie you have to watch.

Okay, so remember the guy on the stairs who was practically wetting his pants and he just couldn't do it.

He froze?

That's my worst nightmare of me, that I would get into that situation and I would let my team down because I would just be paralyzed.

Because I can't imagine what war is like.

I just can't imagine it.

And I don't think it feels like it does in a movie theater.

I could be wrong.

And I stood next to Chris for about five minutes.

And I so wanted to say hello to him.

And I felt

silly that I didn't, you know, that I just, I was paralyzed.

I just was like,

who am I to even say hello to him?

And I really regret that.

But as you look at people like you, any, really any of these guys that are coming coming home,

you're I don't think people understand, and maybe it's just me, I don't think people understand that when you're there,

you're fighting for something bigger, unless you're a psycho.

You're doing something that you believe is really important, it is life and death all the time, or at least in the active times, and then you come home and this must seem

like a play

that this is

little kid second grade time we're arguing about statues and we're arguing about stupid stuff that makes no sense

how do you go from

that

doing

something noble

and being a part of something important to coming here and being surrounded by people who are like, I am just so offended by the words that you're using right now.

This is toxic and

I'm triggered.

Well,

war

will put things in perspective for you.

It has to.

And that's why I think a lot of

I get asked about war.

And one of the things that I've said many times about war is that I think war makes you better, right?

Of course, is it awful and horrible?

Yes, absolutely.

But it will make you a better person.

And I had a conversation with a guy who said,

he was interviewing me and he said, you know, I hear you say that a war is awful and horrible and all these things.

And then I've also heard you say that

it's the highlight of your life.

The best times of your life were in war, which is absolutely true.

It has to be.

And

it has to be, could we spend a second on that?

I think it would have to be because you are the most alive at that point, right?

There is no other thing that will make you as completely crystal, crystalline focused on anything other than war.

There's bad guys that you are trying to kill and they are trying to kill you.

You can't get any more focused than that right there.

When I had this conversation,

and I've also said, you know, that the best times of my life, hands down, the best time of my life up to this point

was being the task unit commander in the battle of Ramadi, without question.

The worst times of my life also were

being the task unit commander in the battle of Ramadi.

By the way,

thank you.

It was an honor.

It was an honor to serve.

The thing that I came away with and where I ended up in this conversation with this interview that I was

doing was I asked him, I said, have you ever known anyone that's had cancer

and bad cancer and they survived it?

And of course he said yes.

And I said, what do those people say about cancer?

Oftentimes they say,

I'm glad I had it.

It taught me.

I wouldn't go through it again and I wouldn't wish it on people.

I wouldn't go through it again.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but I'm glad I went through it.

And that's the same with war.

Why is that?

Because it puts things in perspective.

It makes you realize that there's little things, little petty things in the world that do not matter.

And war,

there's nothing

better

than

the sunrise.

in a free country or walking down the street walking your daughter to school.

It doesn't get any better to that than that.

And when you've been to war and you see the sacrifices that were made, and you see how so much of the rest of the world lives, they don't have that opportunity to be able to walk down the street with your little girl and take her to school.

It puts things in such stark perspective.

You realize

how lucky we are to be here, how lucky we are to be in this country.

And you also realize that it is a sin.

It is a sin to squander these opportunities that we have.

I think history is going to study this time period like we are going to be under the microscope as much i think as our founding era was if we survive this period of time uh we will be known as the greatest generation maybe perhaps of all time because no

no country has come back from where we are right now in in a million different ways but i believe we can do it But if we fail at this point, we are going to be, we're going to be looked at as we were insane.

We were insane you wait they had what

what was just over the horizon and they did what with it

well i think it would follow like a

a a spoiled child who inherits you know a hundred million dollars from their from their father or their mother and what do they do with it well they end up getting addicted to drugs and being losers and spending all the money and they end up in the gutter.

Or you see young Hollywood child stars.

What happens to them?

Often, they get all that freedom.

They get all that liberty.

They get all that money.

They can do whatever they want.

And what do they do with it?

They end up in the gutter.

And yeah, could that happen to our country?

Absolutely.

It's usually the third generation of wealth.

First one makes it.

The second one

kind of lives off it.

And the third loses everything.

Yeah.

We're three generations really away from World War II,

where

my grandfather was World War II, Eric, Great Depression, worked hard, man.

They saved every scrap.

My grandmother would not throw away a piece of fabric that was this big.

She had a place for it, you know.

My mother was kind of like that.

We saved all the wrapping paper every Christmas.

Now, yeah.

Yeah.

Too much freedom.

And I know that's, that's, that's the, so I wrote a book called Discipline Equals.

Too much freedom without any price.

Well, it's discipline.

So I wrote the book discipline equals freedom.

And I wrote that for a personal level, right?

Hey, if you're an individual, if you're an individual and all you do is whatever you want to do, where are you going to end up?

You're going to end up in the gutter.

You have to have discipline in your life.

And if you don't understand that.

And if you have discipline, you'll end up with more freedom.

If you just have freedom, you'll end up in the gutter.

You'll end up being a slave.

You'll end up being a slave to your addictions.

You'll end up being a slave to whatever

your remish.

If you have discipline in your life, you will end up with freedom.

You'll end up with financial freedom.

You'll end up with more free time.

You'll end up with the things that you want in the world.

And the same thing can be said on a national level.

If you take a country and you just give them so much freedom and they don't exercise discipline,

then

it can go really badly.

Roam.

How's this going to go for us?

I think we'll be all right.

I think we'll be all right.

I think that the will and the spirit of the American people,

once awoken,

will overcome all.

I come from an alcoholic family.

My bottom was just kind of losing everything.

My mother's bottom was suicide.

I think alcoholics, recovering alcoholics, are the secret to us in recovery as a country.

If we just admit that there's a problem, just start there, admit that there's a problem

and surrender and then just do all the things to put it all back right.

We could save our country.

I just keep wondering, what is our bottom?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And that's what I was about to say is, you know, we're fighting these wars and we've got,

you know, kids over in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, and

they're in war.

And they've never known an America without war.

Yep.

Yep.

And meanwhile, back here,

there's no effect whatsoever on the American populace.

There's no rationing.

They're still driving around in a

you don't even know it's still going on.

And so

as long as that's happening, as long as American day-to-day life isn't really impacted, guess what?

We're kind of going with the flow.

Hey, you know, it's all good.

When something impacts us in a way where everyday American life is truly impacted, that's when I think the American, the true American spirit will be awoken and we'll get back together

and we'll say, oh, there's something much worse out there that we need to fight against.

Can I ask a question I've been really wrestling with?

I'm a big tech guy.

And

in particular, AI.

AI is wonderful.

It's making our life wonderful.

I don't like the idea of

artificial general intelligence.

I don't like the idea if we get to that point of turning over the keys to artificial intelligence to kill people.

I like having a drone where we're not putting people in harm's way, but a human has to push the final button.

However, with that being said,

war without human cost

on the side of the might and the fighting

also scares me because it becomes a video game and there is no cost to it.

There is no

war made you a better man.

If it's a video game and I'm just controlling it from someplace else, what does that do to the soul?

You could say the same thing about hunting for food, right?

There was a time

where you had to hunt for it you couldn't just you couldn't just click a button on your phone and have it show up at your house which is what's happening right now that's happening right now yeah you press a button and that food yeah that's more

that's more my style than yours right right right but it's the same thing right i mean you're gonna you're gonna lose some level of

of humanity, right?

Some level of understanding of humanity if it's machine versus machine.

Now, believe me, I'm all pro-machine.

We want to have robot wars and settle it that way.

Let's do it all day long.

Actually, and when you take it to the next step, it's not actually going to be, in my opinion, robots versus robots.

It's just going to be cyber.

It's going to be cyber war.

I wish Trump would have created

the cyber service instead of space because I think that's more important.

Big time.

And now there's obviously there's...

big cyber warfare groups inside of our current military branches, but let's just create a branch because that's where the next battlefield's going to be.

In fact, that's where the next battlefield is right now.

So, will we lose some level of it?

Yeah, sure.

Is that bad?

Probably in some way, but there's also some benefits to it.

There's no glory.

There's no glory in war.

Or at least I should say there's very limited glory in war.

There is very limited glory in war.

There is something that does hit you when you are lucky enough to be a part of it that does make you better

the Nazis

or

the ISIS mentality?

Which was more

evil?

I mean, I was looking at the two of them.

Are they the same, cut from exactly the same cloth?

They're both the same as far as I'm concerned.

In terms of level of being evil, they're the same.

And, you know,

the Japanese Imperial Army, same right there.

Rape a Nanking, let's have a look at that.

You know,

ISIS

systematically raping 10-year-old girls and boys.

Yeah,

let's just put them all in the same bucket as far as I'm concerned.

Wipe the earth of them all.

Americans are, Americans have their problems.

They're just the same.

Americans, we do have problems.

We've made mistakes.

We've done things that are horrible and awful.

Absolutely.

I've covered a lot of that on my podcast.

I covered the Milai Masker on my podcast.

And even my dad, who is a very pro-American conservative guy, when he listened to my podcast on the Meli Massacre, he said, I didn't, and my dad, by the way, is a history teacher his whole life and the smartest guy I've ever known.

And he said, you know, when I, I always thought that the Mili Massacre was kind of like a liberal media spin to make us look bad.

And I said, no, dad, it wasn't.

It was bad.

It was bad leadership.

And it was human beings being led in the wrong direction because human beings can be led big time and they have it's a little frightening how how that line is

it's it's more than a little frightening it's horribly frightening yeah that particular

as i did that podcast i was as i was going through it i was thinking to myself what's the what's the what's the lesson from this what is the lesson from this these these this company of u.s army soldiers who by the way were the most this the cross-section of America, normal guys, they go in, they rape, torture, murder, mutilate about 500 Vietnamese old men, women, and children.

The lesson from it was as all this was happening, as these guys just went in the darkest, most horrible direction, There was a helicopter pilot, which I'm sure you've heard, a helicopter pilot, saw what was happening.

He intervened to save some of the Vietnamese villagers.

He flew back to base.

He told the commander what was going on.

He said, look, these guys are murdering people.

The commander got on the radio, called the company in the field, and said, stop killing people.

And they stopped immediately.

They stopped immediately.

All it took was one leader to step up and say, stop what you're doing.

What you're doing is wrong.

And everyone stopped.

That is the power of leadership.

And by the way, what got them into that mess in the first place was a bad leader leading them in the wrong direction.

So when bad things are happening, what you need is leadership.

And when leadership steps up to move people in the right direction, human beings want to do the right thing.

But it's very easy to get drawn into that dark place.

So yes, has America done horrible things?

Absolutely.

Did we do things that we,

it would be great if we could undo them?

Absolutely.

In every war, yes, it happens.

But to say that America is evil or say that, you know, we don't look back at those things and admit that they're wrong and how do we correct them and how do we make sure that they never happen again

you know the the problem is is that i think your father is very um

is very average american we

have split american history into two pieces we it's either all bad

or it's all flags and apple pie it's not it's winston churchill it's both he was a monster in india and he was great in europe it's both it's which way are we headed?

I tried to get people to...

The Medal of Honor

is so

tainted.

And there's no reason why we should not pull these medals back at this point because of Wounded Knee.

Every single soldier in wounded knee at Wounded Knee

got

a Congressional Medal of honor that was more medals awarded there than any battle of world war ii that's what popped out in the history book to me i looked at that and i went something

is really wrong there or

something

superhuman happened it was wrong and i just am so offended because i believe in the honor of the people who are receiving that medal.

And many of them turned it down.

They got rid of it at the end they knew this was wrong

well

the medal at that time was i i believe at that time it was actually the only medal for valor there was i i'm pretty sure and

that that at that time that was the only so so now you've got a wide array of medals for valor you've got the commendation medal with a V for valor.

You've got an achievement medal with V for valor.

You've got the bronze star with a V for valor.

You've got the the Silver Star.

You've got the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, and then you've got the Medal of Honor.

So at that time,

these guys fought.

They wanted to recognize their bravery in that situation.

And they gave them all the same medal.

It's, yeah, it's so

revoke it.

Yeah, that might be a good call.

The Medal of Honor should be, you know, it is.

What it is.

It is what it is.

It should be honorable.

Yeah.

Should be honorable.

I mean,

one of my guys, Michael Monsoor,

you know,

that's what the Medal of Honor is to me.

You know, he jumped on a grenade to save three of our other teammates.

And

that's the Medal of Honor as far as I'm concerned.

So you were in SEAL team 1, 2, and 3.

You weren't good enough to get to 6?

One.

I was at SEAL Team 1, SEAL Team 2, SEAL Team 7, and SEAL Team 3.

Why not 6, Dev Group?

I mean,

I just.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

Everybody seems to think that SEAL Team 6 is like, that's like,

that's the thing.

But the SEAL teams are broken up by region, and they're also by,

I don't want to say skill, but what they're good at.

They're not all the same, right?

For a while, when I first came in, they were not.

They had different regions.

We were assigned geographically, so different SEAL teams were assigned to different parts of the world.

And then as

later on, around 2000s, they started to change it where every SEAL team was pretty much the same.

And

we would deploy to the same places.

And so there's

that, that's the way it is now.

And then what you're talking about, developmental group, they are guys that get selected from the SEAL teams and go through more training and have an incredible amount of assets and they're incredibly skilled guys.

Which is the SEAL team?

Is there a SEAL team?

And don't tell me if you have to kill me afterwards.

Don't we have a SEAL SEAL team that

is operational here to make sure they're constantly testing our infrastructure?

They're testing our

see if

they can get into our financial services.

If they can hack in, they know others can, so

they make sure that

they expose any flaws in our services.

Is that true?

Okay.

All right.

What you're probably referring to is there's a book called Rogue Warrior, which was written by a guy named Dick Marcinko, and he had an element that was called Red Cell.

And it's in the book, that's why I'm talking about this.

He had an element called Red Cell, which would go out and test the security of

bases, you know, around the world that in America, you know, military bases.

Also, became kind of a thing.

it's a normal thing now.

People use that term.

So to think that America wouldn't red-sell our security right now all the time,

of course, we're going to.

How concerned are you on things like EMP?

I think it's a concern that you have to be at least somewhat concerned.

There's

a book written in the 1960s by Carol Quigley, and he said,

all the

safeguards that we've built for mutually assured destruction,

it's all going to be great, unless there's an unflagged cave-dwelling society that doesn't care about all of the systems.

And that seemed crazy in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s until today.

That kind of seems like, you know, when it comes to throwing rocks at each other, they're probably better at throwing rocks than we are.

They can survive

in conditions that most Americans.

I don't know.

You've been to Montana?

You've been to Wyoming?

You've been to Maine.

You've been to Minnesota.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, California, people think California is like paywatch, but yeah, you're in Texas.

I mean, I'm not too concerned about our

someone trying to take over our country.

That's actually, yeah, come on down to Texas.

Come on.

Yeah.

You know, there was never, I've heard this, I don't know, you might know.

There was never any plan from the former Soviet Union to invade America through Texas.

No, that would be a bad call.

Yeah, it could be a bad call because everybody had guns and everybody would defend it.

Yeah.

And you know, it's the same thing.

I mean, you look at every state, you know, California.

Of course, everyone thinks of California.

What do you think of?

You think of Bay Watch and you think of Silicon Valley?

What is California?

California is farms.

It's massive farms.

It's hardworking Americans that

are

freedom-loving people in California.

They don't, they don't, they might not be the majority, they might not live in those cities, and they might not get the vote out there, but that's that's what it is.

And the whole country's got people like that.

You know, the I grew up in New England, New England has

incredibly hard-working patriots up there.

If we got invaded,

yeah, try that up in Maine.

Did you grow up in New England?

Yeah, I did.

I did.

You do not seem like a New Englander.

What do I seem like?

I mean, don't go all hostile on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know.

New England,

I lived in New England.

I only lived in Connecticut, so it might be different.

But New England, they're standoffish.

Yeah.

Well, you got the Puritan.

Yeah.

You got the Puritan culture that's still there.

And I didn't really realize that until later on in life.

But yeah, for sure, the hardworking Puritan culture is there.

And I think that's where you get the hardworking new you know I got a I got a company in Maine.

We have a factory up in Maine.

We're bringing back manufacturing to Maine.

And we're building, we're making clothes and apparel and we're starting to make shoes, but we're doing all this stuff in Maine.

It's so easy to hire people up there right now because all the factories went overseas.

We're bringing it back.

But these people, they're incredible craftsmen.

Yeah, yeah.

And they know how to work.

They work hard.

And so that's part of the New England culture.

And again, that culture is not just in New England.

You go anywhere in America.

There's people that know how to work.

We know how to work in America.

And back to your earlier point, we know how to defend ourselves as well.

So it doesn't matter where you land here, it's not going to be fun.

Yeah, I don't think people underestimate Americans.

Now, I wouldn't have made it past the Missouri River.

I would have been like, nah,

I'm okay.

We're the people that cross the mountains.

And when you've, if you've, I mean, if you've ever flown over the mountains, but if you've ever driven through the mountains and you think you get to a peak and you're like, oh, good God, look at how many peaks there are.

You would get up to that first peak and you'd be like, are you kidding me?

And you didn't know if you went down and then you were trapped and you had to go all the way back up and go a different direction.

That seems insane to me.

But that's, we're still not too far away from that kind of mentality.

No, that's, it's incredible.

The, the attitude of the American working people is,

that's why we're here.

Look at this place we're sitting at, right?

American hands built this stuff and will continue to build.

And at some point, if someone tries to take it away from us, it'd be a real problem.

I'm glad people like you live.

I am so glad.

I'm so glad.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Just a reminder.

I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.