Jocko Willink: Leadership and Discipline

Retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink Shares Intel On Discipline, Leadership & Winning In Life

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Before I was a business owner I had little interest in self-help books. It wasn’t until business hit me in a place that hurt the most—my pocketbook—that I found use for reading. Funny how that works. Maybe if I had read Jocko Willink’s book with Leif Babin Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win beforehand it would have saved me a hundred grand… 

The book spoke of taking full responsibility for every aspect of a business, that the speed of the leader is the speed of the game, and gut-checked my ego in the most uncomfortable ways, forcing me to look at myself in the mirror for the chaos that was Hook & Barrel in its earliest days. 

The book was highlighted, underlined, dog-eared, and stickied to the point it is almost unreadable today. It sat with me in treestands, flew with me on countless flights, and has as many coffee stains as I have scars. Jocko became my drill instructor and whipped me into business shape. Jocko’s future books also became staples in my library: Leadership, Strategy and Tactics, Discipline Equals Freedom, and The Dichotomy of Leadership all still rotate through my never-ending learning. 

So, who is Jocko? He is a patriot, Navy SEAL, entrepreneur, business coach, jiu-jitsu enthusiast, podcaster, and general badass. Need a baseline point of reference? Simply, search “Jocko Good” online and you will quickly see why so many Americans and people worldwide respect the hell out of him. 

The following is based on my interview with the man who changed my trajectory in business (though he will graciously point out it wasn’t him, but rather me taking action). Regardless of who did what, it was my honor to have an hour or so of his highly valuable time to bring to you, the reader, some insight that might inspire you to take control of your destiny as well. Enjoy!

The Early Days

Jocko describes himself as a “fairly average” kid during his younger years. Somewhat rebellious, he liked hardcore music and frequently found himself getting into fights.

At the time, most observers probably wouldn’t have tabbed him to be a future Navy SEAL. But life has a way of surprising those who don’t see what’s inside a person.

“It’s the only thing I actually remember wanting to do,” he says. “Not so much specifically being in the SEAL Teams, but wanting to be some kind of a soldier, some kind of a commando. I don’t know where it comes from. I always assume that there’s a certain group of people that just want to do it. Just like I meet people who say their whole life they wanted to be a banker…they wanted to be a salesperson…they wanted to swing a hammer on a construction site. They liked machinery so they wanted to be a diesel mechanic.”

Jocko’s desire to carry a machine gun and “get after it” led him to learning more about the various aspects of the military. The knowledge gained helped him narrow down his options for moving forward.

“It was just a matter of time before I figured out what the SEAL Teams were,” he says. “I grew up in the water. So having an opportunity to be in the maritime component of special operations, it seemed like the SEAL Teams was a pretty obvious choice for me.”

That choice turned out to be a good one for Jocko. And upon joining, he soon found himself growing up in many different ways.

“What was nice about it is when you join the military, there’s a very clear path on what you need to do to be successful, to be good,” he says. “And as soon as I saw that path, I said, ‘OK, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna work hard.’ And starting in boot camp they want you to fold your clothes a certain way. OK, I got it. They want you to make your bed a certain way. OK, I got it. They want you to floss your teeth every night. So, I flossed my teeth every night, and I floss my teeth every night to this day. So, I just kind of got on board with the program.” 

Toughening Up

Jocko says that when you are in the SEAL Teams you’re surrounded by people who advise you and slap you upside the head when you do something stupid and encourage you when you’re doing something right.

“So, I had a ton of mentors, but I never used that term or thought about that term. And no one ever used that term to me,” he says. “Being in the SEAL Teams is on-the-job training. You’re going to get taught the skill and the trade by the guys who are senior to you. There are some tactical manuals, but there are no real manuals. You’re going to learn how to clear a room from the guys that came before you. You’re going to learn how to do an immediate action drill from the guys that came before you. You’re going to learn how to shoot your weapon from the guys that came before you. So, the entire career of a SEAL is learning from the people that came before you.”

During Jocko’s 20 years on the Teams, he also learned a lot about discipline and motivation. And those lessons are ones he still regularly uses in his everyday life.

“Motivation is just an emotion, it’s a feeling. Hey, I’m really excited to do this today. Hey, I’m really fired up,” he says. “But you can’t count on that. Just like any other emotion. It’s fleeting. It may be there. It may not be there. 

“But discipline: When the alarm clock goes off, you get out of bed. You go do what you’re supposed to do. You can absolutely rely on discipline. So, I think discipline is the way to go and is the only thing that you can rely on because you control it.”

Following a combat tour to Iraq, Jocko came home and spearheaded the development of leadership training and personally instructed and mentored the next generation of SEAL leaders who have continued to perform with great success on the battlefield. When he chose to retire from the Navy in 2010, it wasn’t an easy choice. And it also wasn’t an easy transition to civilian life. 

“The most prominent thing in my life was being in the SEAL Teams and being a frogman,” he says. “ But, you know, I also retired 13 or 14 years ago. So, I’m not holding on to that. I had to move on. So that’s what I did when I retired from the Navy and from the SEAL Teams, I looked for the next mission. 

“And it was a rough day leaving, cleaning out my locker for the last time, and turning in my badge so I couldn’t get into the command anymore. It’s just the way it goes, though. You got to move on. And that’s what I did.”

Jocko On Leadership

While in service, Jocko earned a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and numerous other personal and unit awards. Along with those honors, the leadership skills Jocko attained as a Navy SEAL continue to serve him well today. As he puts it, in the SEAL Teams, “you’re in a leadership position even when you’re not in charge of anyone else.”

“It would be impossible for me to think of the time when I felt I was leading for the first time because it’s what you’re doing when you’re in the Teams,” he says. “Even in my first platoon, I was the primary radioman. So right out of the gate I was putting together the communications plans for our training operations and briefing the senior leadership on what the communications plans were. 

“So, what you’re doing out of the gate is you’re building relationships and you’re working with other people. And ultimately, that’s what leadership is. It doesn’t matter where you are in the chain of command, whether you’re the most junior guy. You still are leading because you’ve got to get people going in the right direction.”

After retirement, Jocko’s leadership abilities began landing him invitations from large company owners to speak to their leadership teams. He soon found himself speaking to everyone from junior managers to company CEOs about how to become a better leader.

“I actually started getting a pretty high demand signal,” he says. “So, I reached out to my brother Leif Babin, who I had served with in the SEAL Teams, and I said, ‘Hey man, I need some support over here. Can you help me out?’ He said sure, and we started traveling around the country working with a bunch of different companies.”

Unexpectedly to Jocko, he soon had people asking whether he had any notes he could share with them. And many wanted to know if he had all the information he was presenting written down somewhere.

“We just looked at each other,” he says. “There was a pretty strong demand signal for a written version of what we were talking about, so we put together the fundamental principles of combat leadership. And when we did that, it got into the hands of a literary agent, who said, ‘Hey, this is a book.’ We put a little more time and effort into it, and that ended up being the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win.”

In the book, Jocko talks about one of the aspects of leadership he believes to be the most important—the dichotomy of leadership. In a nutshell, he addresses the critical balance of how a leader can be a micromanager, go too far, and be too controlling, or, at the other extreme, can go too far in the other direction, be too laissez-faire, and too hands-off.

“It’s difficult to maintain balance,” Jocko says. “So, for me, I’m always off balance and always trying to course correct to make sure that I’m in that middle zone where I’m not going too extreme in one direction or the other. 

“In leadership, I have a tendency to be very hands-off and very laissez-faire. So, I have to make sure that I’m leaning in and staying connected with the team and what’s happening. And I can still go too far in that direction.”

Jocko The Businessman

Of course, anyone who knows anything about Jocko is aware that there’s much more to his business career than making an occasional leadership presentation and writing a book. He’s involved in a number of different business ventures—all of them very successful.

Echelon Front, his leadership consulting business, features decorated, combat-proven veterans, athletes, men and women in business with experience in building, training, and leading high-performance winning teams. With its company motto, “No matter the problem, leadership is the solution,” Echelon Front’s mission is to help other businesses build their own high-performance teams.

Jocko also runs his own small publishing company, although he has also written books for bigger publishers. His popular Way Of The Warrior Kid book series is currently being made into a movie, and he has his own podcast—The Jocko Podcast—where he and various guests discuss all aspects of leadership and discipline. He’s a prominent figure in the sport of jiu-jitsu, still trains regularly, and has his own training center, Victory MMA and Fitness in San Diego. 

He even has his own brand of nutritional supplements—Jocko Fuel—which he’s grown into a very successful business. His line of products includes everything from protein powder to energy drinks.

His latest venture, becoming part owner of the clothing company Origin, came more as a surprise than something he had sought out. Such things just seem to happen to savvy businessmen and leaders who keep an eye out for opportunities.

“I was doing my podcast, which had become pretty popular, and I was encouraging people to do jiu-jitsu on a regular basis,” he says. “People started asking me what kind of jiu-jitsu gi to get. There was a company that I had heard of and that I had followed called Origin, and they were up in Maine. This guy, Pete, was making jiu-jitsu gis in America, and no one else was doing that. So, I would tell people to buy Origin.”

Jocko reached out to the company via a plea during a Facebook Live post, asking that if any viewers knew Pete to please let him know Jocko wanted to talk to him. A woman viewing managed to connect him with Pete Roberts, Origin’s owner.

“We talked for four hours on a Skype call,” Jocko says. “When we got done, my wife said it sounded like I was talking to myself because we were so aligned on what our vision was. At that time, I think he had eight employees. 

“I think when we shook hands and partnered up, we were making 100 to 150 pieces a week. Right now, we make probably close to 20,000 pieces a week and have more than 400 employees. The company’s grown a lot, but that’s where it started from. The genesis was me trying to support an American-made company.”

Since then, the company has expanded greatly, also making and selling jeans, boots, hats, belts, wallets and even top-quality hunting gear.

“As I started getting into hunting and started seeing what was being made, well, none of it was being made in America,” Jocko says. “So, if you wanted to buy hunting gear, you were going to buy hunting gear that was made in China, which is an adversary of our country. And when you buy something that’s made in China, you are actually helping our adversary, someone that potentially we could end up in war with.

“To me, there’s no more patriotic people in America than hunters. So, the fact that hunters didn’t have the option to buy something that was made in America, it definitely did not sit well with me. We started the hunt line, and it is growing. We’re getting better and better at it.”

Family & Parenting

Despite how busy all of those business ventures keep him, Jocko is at heart a family man. He’s been married to his wife Helen since 1997, and together they have three daughters and a son.

“She obviously did a lot of combat deployments at home when I was overseas, and she was a saint and a trooper then,” he says of Helen. “She handled everything on the home front from broken water heaters to getting the kids to maintain grades, to getting the kids to every wrestling practice, jiu-jitsu practice, surf team, dance recital, gymnastics event. We had very good, clearly delineated roles and responsibilities. And that’s how we operated and that’s how we still operate.

“Obviously we work together on a ton of things with the family. But she handles a whole section of our lives, and I handle a whole other section of our lives. So. I think just having that good communication and being in the roles that fit you well has worked really well for us.”

Through his family life, Jocko has learned many lessons on raising kids in our current age. And he has realized it’s a lot different than handling a SEAL Team. 

“You want to remember that your kids are going to be who they are, not who you want them to be,” Jocko says. “You can give them great advice and you certainly can steer them some. But if you’re tyrannical with your kids, they will rebel against you just like your employees will if you’re a tyrannical leader.

“I was very cautious about talking about my kids when they were younger. I would say, ‘Hey, the jury’s still out.’ We don’t know how they’re going to turn out. But now my kids are all older. They’re in their 20s, and they’re all squared away. And I made some mistakes along the way. One of them was that I pushed them too hard to do jiu-jitsu. You want jiu-jitsu to be fun, as fun as possible. When you force things down people’s throats they reject it.”

Pressed about his favorite family moment, Jocko grasped for an answer. Like any good dad, he didn’t want to choose a memory with one child over a different memory with another.

“We have four great kids,” he finally says. “I quietly nod my head when everyone in my family is all heading to jiu-jitsu to train together. Every so often, because the kids are older now, we have a good family jiu-jitsu day and we all will train together at the gym. And then we do some kind of sauna/ice bath/pool scenario after that. And it’s pretty fun. So, I enjoy that a lot.”

Bowhunting With Jocko

Jocko took up hunting later in life, actually only about three years ago. It was a chance meeting with professional archer and bowhunter John Dudley that ignited the spark.

“John Dudley saw me on the Joe Rogan podcast and thought that I would really enjoy hunting,” Jocko says. “I ran into John randomly in a New Jersey airport and he said, ‘Hey, my name is John Dudley. I’m friends with Rogan, and I think you’d really like bowhunting and archery. And I’d like to get in touch with you about it.’

“I’m the most spoiled person of all time when it comes to archery. John Dudley built me a bow and flew to San Diego and taught me how to shoot. So that’s how it got started. And yes, I recognize and am very appreciative of the fact that I’m the most spoiled human being when it comes to hunting.”

Never one to shy from a challenge, Jocko’s very first hunt was an archery hunt for elk. As most H&B readers know, a mountain spot-and-stalk bowhunt for elk isn’t for the faint of heart and is not typically a newbie hunt.

“It was awesome,” Jocko says. “I got a great bull, and it was a very enlightening experience. And what I liked about it is you pick up a lot of skills in the military that might not translate that well to the civilian world. For instance, walking quietly through the woods, using cover and concealment to approach a target, understanding land navigation, understanding how to put your gear on, staying calm in chaotic situations, and getting control of your breath while you’re letting an arrow go. 

“There are a bunch of things from the military that translate into hunting. I think that’s one of the reasons why it appeals so much to veterans and people who are in the military. You now get to utilize the skills that you worked on and focused on for so long for a skill or for a situation that you would no longer be able to use these skills for.”

In the end, the joy of hunting to Jocko is getting outdoors, utilizing hard-earned skills to stalk quarry, and letting the chips fall where they may when it comes to success. Every hunt, as he points out, doesn’t have a dead animal at the end of the trail.

“But you’re going to go outside, you’re going to pursue a worthy opponent in elk hunting,” he says. “You know, those things are incredible animals. They’re brutally tough. They run up mountains. It’s shocking what they can do. A mountain that would take us an hour to get up to the top of, they’ll run up that thing in a couple of minutes. It’s crazy how suited they are for their environment. And you’re at a huge disadvantage out there trying to hunt them.

“And the reward is, if you get one, that’s great. If not, you learned. And that’s the way life is as well.” 

Check out the full video interview below: