547. The Movie Hollywood Didn’t See Coming... | Jocko Willink
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This is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Watch Parenting, available exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. We're dealing with misbehaviors with our son. Our 13-year-old throws tantrums. Our son turned to some substance abuse. Go to dailywireplus.com today. One time my daughter came home saying that she was stupid. And I said, well, why do you think you're stupid? She says, I don't know my times tables.

bad father. I hadn't taught her how to study. She literally was thinking that she was stupid. Single points of inadequacy do not indicate general incompetence. You're not born knowing your time stables and you're not born knowing chemistry and you're not born knowing European history. You have to read about it and you have to study it. You want to take that self-criticism and narrow it to the point where it turns into a strategy for progress. Okay, so you wrote this book, The Way of the Warrior Kid. So there's a guy, he has kids,

And one day he walked into his kids' rooms and his kids were doing push-ups. And he said, what are you doing? So they showed him this book that they read called Way of the Warrior Kid. He picks up the book and says, I got to make this into a movie. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't know how much you care about Hollywood behind-the-scenes stuff. Well, let's hear the story. ♪♪

Hello everybody. I had the privilege of sitting down today with someone who's really become a friend, Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL, a serial entrepreneur. And we had a chance to dive into the practices of his successful and adventurous life. And we talked about two broad categories of

topic, both of which are a great practical utility. One of them was an analysis of where you find ideas and opportunities. How do you determine where

where to look for what might change your life. How do you pursue your interests? How do you pay attention to what bothers you? How do you turn the problems that bother you into opportunities? How do you pursue the things that compel you so that they are the gift that keeps giving? How do you generate a life of abundance around you conceptually and practically? And Jocko has done that in a multitude of ways. We used...

his latest foray into a new entrepreneurial domain as a case study, so to speak. He's got a new movie coming out, The Way of the Warrior Kid, and we discussed why he wrote that book, what problem he thought he was solving, how that morphed into a sequence of publishing opportunities, how that then transformed into the opportunity to make a movie, how he made that work properly.

We also talked about leadership a lot and what leadership is and how it is that you configure yourself and the way that you interact with the world so that you can become an effective leader, so that you can invite people to share their excitement of your vision, how you can develop an exciting vision, how you can strategize with people so that they come aboard, so that the things that you decide to do together are overwhelmingly more likely to be productive and worthwhile.

So why is it useful to talk to Jocko, and why would it be useful to watch this podcast? Because he knows how to conduct himself effectively in the world in a multitude of different manners, physical, psychological, philosophical, practical. And we discussed all the things that he knows, many of the things that he knows, in a way that makes his wisdom accessible to people who are trying to straighten their lives out and to aim upward. Way we go.

We meet again. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Great, eh? Yeah. Define great. It seems like the things in my life are moving forward in a positive direction. So, it seems pretty great. And it's been like that for quite a while, eh? Yeah, I'd say it's been like that for quite a while, yeah. What are you doing right?

I guess I'm just trying to work hard and keep moving forward myself. I think that accumulates over time, I would say. Yeah, right, right. Are you still getting up at 4:30 in the morning? I am indeed. You know, that's completely insane. Yeah, a little bit insane. So how do you structure your day?

Wake up early in the morning, work out. How long do you work out? It depends. Today I worked out for about probably 15 minutes because I had to get on a flight to come out here. So I just woke up, I got on the rower and I did a little bit of barbell exercise and then was done. 15 minutes. Do you do that as soon as you wake up before you eat? Is that the first thing you do is work out? Yes. I usually don't eat until like 10, 10.30, something like that.

i know i don't really like breakfast uh-huh and i don't really feel like eating when i get done working out right so i just let it ride for a while right so first thing get up shower or do you just go right to the work right to the workout right to the workout right do you think about it or just go do it i don't think about it i just go execute it yeah and so what's the typical workout length it depends how much time i have you know if it's a if it's a sunday

and I get up and I don't have anything else in the rest of the day that's pressing, I'll work out for a few hours. You know, just very relaxing. Relax. Yeah. Have a good time. Yeah. And do you do that every day? I do. I do. I always find that...

Look, I understand rest days, but life gives me rest days, right? You know, whether it's a super early flight or a broken water heater or, you know, things come up in the world. And so you get forced to take rest days. So unless I don't have to schedule the day, I don't have to just come along. They come. You get injured. You know, you get some kind of an injury. It's like, OK, it looks like I'm going to take a rest day today or you get sick or just whatever the case may be. Right. OK, so you work out. Then what?

typically? It depends on what's happening. But, you know, I have a few different businesses. So we all attend to the businesses, you know, have meetings and discussions and then have clients. So I have a consulting business. So I have clients to talk to. And then just the various businesses require

they require a little bit of time and a little bit of care. So tell me, list out your businesses, if you would. And so let's go through that a little bit, and then we can talk about where you're pursuing all of those. Yeah, so I would say the big three, I'll call them, the big three for me anyways, is I have a leadership consulting company called Echelon Front, and we work with scores of companies around the country and around the world, and we train them and help them with their leadership. Yep. And then I have a...

a food supplement company called Jocko Fuel. And we make clean supplements for people, whether they need protein or whether they need energy or hydration, we got you covered. And so that, again, we're growing very rapidly and we've been growing very rapidly for many years now. And then the final one is a clothing and apparel company called Origin USA, which...

made basically everything that I'm wearing right now from my boots to my jeans, my t-shirt. The shirt is made by another company called Hooli, which is another friend of mine, Asil, who makes golf shirts. I'm not a golfer, but he makes golf shirts. And Origin, at Origin USA, we make everything 100% in America with American-made materials. So the cotton on these jeans, the zippers, the threads, the boots, the leather, everything that I'm wearing from Origin USA is from Origin.

that are made here, grown here. And then we actually have factories in Maine and factories in North Carolina where we cut and sew. Yeah, I think the last time we talked, you told me about reestablishing some of these factories and reopening them. Yes. So it'll be fun to cover that. So those are the big three. What else?

Because that's not enough, you know. Yeah, yeah. The other kind of big project that took a lot of time over the past few months was making a movie. So I've written a bunch of kids' books, and one part of those kids' books, or one series of kids' books, is called Way of the Warrior Kid. Yep. And the Way of the Warrior Kid has now been, is being turned into a movie. And so we filmed for...

two and a half months in September, October, or late August, then September and October. So three months, August to October last year. Yeah. Okay, let's walk through that. Tell me about the books first. I know about the books, but everybody watching and listening should know. And so, and I want to know how that got turned into a movie, because that's not easy by any stretch of the imagination. No, it's not. So tell the whole story. Start with the book. All right.

All right, so years ago, I got four kids myself. And years ago, I was wanting to buy some books to read to my kids. And going to the bookstore-

the books were just not good. And there was, actually, I remember there was a book that was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was a pirate book. And I picked up this pirate book and I started looking through it. Hoping for a pirate book. Yeah, hoping for a pirate book, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this was by no means a pirate. These were the weakest, wimpiest pirates I'd ever read about in my life. And I went home and didn't buy the book. I went home and I said, all right. Those are the pirates that used to be known as dead. Yeah, yeah.

Dead pirates, exactly. Not the kind of pirates that would survive for very long. These were weak pirates. Right, right. And so I decided I'm just going to write my own books for my kids. And I ended up writing the first book in the series, which is called Way of the Warrior Kid. And it's a combination of my kids, of some of the troubles that they had, which are troubles that all kids had.

and have growing up. And I kind of modified them a little bit for the books. But, you know, for one thing, one time my daughter came home, my oldest daughter came home, who's a incredibly smart young lady. But when she was in whatever grade it was, she came home saying that she was stupid. And I said, well, why do you think you're stupid? And she says, I don't know my times tables. And I said, well, how much have you studied your times tables? And she said,

What do you mean? And she, bad father, I hadn't taught her how to study. She thought she should just know her times tables. Right. And so we sat down. Come out of the womb with timetables intact, if you're smart. Exactly. So she literally was thinking that she was stupid. And so we sat down, we made flashcards, and in whatever it was, a half an hour, she knew her times tables. So, you know, that's also an interesting conceptual error for kids and for adults for that matter is that

single points of inadequacy do not indicate general incompetence, right? And while it's really hard, it's really easy to fall that way to take a single example. And well, that's the mountain out of the molehill problem, but that's a classic cognitive error. It's like minimize your self-criticism to the, what would you say? You want to make your self-criticism as small as possible in a manner that would in fact rectify this specific problem, right? I'm not stupid.

I don't know my timetables. Well, that's still too big a problem. I don't know how to go about approaching a new skill. That's still probably too big a problem. I haven't

figured out how to set out a schedule that would allow me to incrementally master this thing, right? That's a lot easier on your self-esteem than I'm stupid. Yeah. Right. It's something that you can pragmatically fix. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, that's what you want to do, right? You want to take that self-criticism and narrow it to the point where it turns into a strategy for progress. That's kind of the essence of behavioral therapy, right? Is to take a

well, a vaguely defined and emotionally troublesome foggy problem to clarify it until you can advance. And more than that,

to clarify to the point and to develop a strategy to the point where not only you could advance but you're highly likely to to make it that small right so did she master her times tables she mastered her times tables and she you know she kind of mastered everything from there on out from an intellectual level and went to a great college and all that stuff right and did that get her going in that direction that

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think she recognized that, oh, you're not born knowing your times tables and you're not born knowing chemistry and you're not born knowing European history. You have to read about it and you have to study it. And that that's something you can do and that that's under your control. Yes, yes. Right. Well, that's a very important thing for fathers to teach their children. That's for sure. Which I clearly had not done.

I clearly had not said, I wasn't engaged enough to know, oh, you gotta learn your timetables, here's what you gotta do. It took her coming to me with that complaint about her genetics, that she was stupid, which I said,

Actually, you're not. Okay, so you wrote this book, The Way of the Warrior Kid. How many books are in that series now? There are five books in that series. Five books. Now, if I remember correctly, did you publish those yourself? Did you set up a company for that? Or was that picked up by someone? There was another book that is called Mikey and the Dragons. Right, right. Which I think is one of your favorite children's books of all time, if I remember correctly. But Mikey and the Dragons, that's the one where...

I wanted to have it published before Christmas one year. Yes. And the publishing company said that that's not feasible, completely unfeasible to be able to do that. And I said, are you sure? And they said, yep, it's just, there's no world where this thing can be published. And I said, oh, well, watch this. And so that one, I published myself. But, and thankfully, then I published a couple more of the Warrior Kid series online.

on my own publishing company. But thankfully, you know, I maintained a good relationship with that publishing company and they've now taken the books back. And so now we're publishing all the books under that same publishing company. And so why did you decide to switch from your own publishing house to this company? What was the advantage in that? Well, there's one huge advantage and that is with the movie coming out,

this is going to be a there's going to be a lot of books to be printed and stored and the whole nine yards and at a certain point you know they're a business i'm i have a business mind at least yeah i try to yeah and at a certain marketing platform at a certain point you say okay

you know, what does it cost me to publish these books myself? Well, there's a lot of costs. You've got, there's the storage, the printing, the whole nine yards, the mailing, the ordering. There's a whole bunch that goes with it. Yeah, you need to have a business to do that. And there's the brainpower engagement that it takes to do that. So that's all happening. Meanwhile, they have all the necessary infrastructure. Right. And they were a good partner. You know, I

Maybe was a little bit too aggressive when I went and published my own book, you know, but... Were you? Okay, maybe not. Well, you make a point. Yeah. Right, you make a point. And you also indicated very clearly that you had your own marketing power, which is a major issue. Like, hopefully what a publisher could offer you is the opportunity to take on all that infrastructure responsibility, but also to market. But if you have your own marketing power,

clout. We should talk a little bit about marketing too, because people, just for clarification, you tell me what you think about this too. One of the things that was most difficult for me to learn as a business person, let's say, I generated a bunch of tests 30 years ago to help companies hire better employees. They were very good tests, but

I really had very little luck selling them, partly because it turned out that most companies didn't want to hire better employees. And so, which was quite a shock to me, but, and people might not believe that, but it depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to middle managers in a large company,

What they're really interested in is not ever taking a risk on anything whatsoever. They're not particularly interested in making the company grow either, even because there's some risk in that and they won't get any credit for it. Plus there's some expense. And if they were entrepreneurially minded, they would be running their own companies. And so mostly what they do is attenuate risk. And then most companies are set up so that they don't really incentivize their people to take entrepreneurial risks. And so anyways, we didn't sell anything.

much of that at all. I eventually worked with one company where it was a real success. But what I did learn was that

The product is about 15% of the problem and the communication is the other 85% or 90% or 95% even, you know, which is why you get, what's your typical royalties on a book? Maybe somewhere between 5% and 12%. Seems kind of ridiculous, right? Because you wrote the book. It's like, yeah, but you didn't market the book.

So no one's going to buy it unless they know about it. You don't have any marketing infrastructure and that means you can't communicate with people. And it doesn't matter how good the product is if no one knows what it is. And it's really hard to get people to pay attention and even harder to get them to buy something. So there's 90% of the problem right there. And then there's all the distribution. So the publishing people, were they able to also help you market or did you do most of that?

Well, as you know, the marketing that you can do, the marketing that I can do is the bulk of the marketing. And so, you know, that was one of the reasons why when I did leave them, you know, when I did talk about to them,

You know, they offer, well, they could pay you in advance, right? Yes. Well, I didn't need an advance. Right. They could pay to have the books printed. Yeah. Well, I could pay to have the books printed. Yeah. They could get you distribution. Mm-hmm. Well, I was selling 85% of my books on Amazon. Yeah, right. And so that... Yeah. And the final one is marketing. So those are the things that a publishing company brings to the table. Yeah.

Hypothetically. Hypothetically is the marketing piece. And so when I didn't need it in advance, didn't need money to print the books, didn't really need the distribution, and I don't really need them to market it, what did they bring to the table? Well, the last thing that they...

that they help with is headache removal. Yeah, right. So it's just headache removal. And, you know, now they know that they're not going to get, you know, 90% of the profits from it because that, I would just say, well, that doesn't work. So we sit down, you have a negotiation, you figure out a deal that makes sense for everybody, and that's exactly what we did. Yeah, yeah. Well, and the moral of this story in part, and for everyone who's watching and listening and who have some business ambitions, let's say, is...

Don't underestimate the utility of a communications network, right? There's nothing that you can build that's more valuable than that. And then once you have a communications network, you can pretty much, you can develop products indefinitely because now you can communicate with people. And that's partly why you have three businesses, right? Three plus more because you can communicate. Okay, so you wrote five books for kids and...

Did they sell well? And they obviously sold well enough so that you move towards a movie deal. So tell me about that because you need a screenwriter and you need a whole crew. And is this a Hollywood enterprise? Who are you partnering with? Or can you talk about that yet? Yeah. So we partnered with a company called Apple and a company called Skydance. So Apple's

is obviously apple and guidance oh oh really oh okay yeah you have major players involved in this they're the they're the biggest players in the sky dance that was um top gun maverick and yeah yeah yeah yeah oh that's great yeah they were great and did they approach you so here's

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I don't know how much you care about Hollywood behind the scenes stuff. Well, let's hear the story. So there's a guy named Ben Everard who he has kids. And one day he walked into his kids' rooms and his kids were doing pushups. Oh, yeah. And he said...

what are you doing? And they're doing pushups and they showed him this book that they read called Wave the Warrior Kid. He picks up the book and says, well, I got to make this into a movie. He reads it in a night, goes, this is incredible. He actually tracks me down, friend of a friend of a friend. And he comes to my gym in San Diego. You know, we set up a meeting. He comes down to my gym in San Diego. And I had had some offers for, to option the book into a movie. And they were all kind of,

They didn't seem very serious about it. They didn't seem to really get it. Well, Ben came down and he clearly understood. He had kids that had been impacted by the book and he understood and saw the vision for it. And he had, he made some really big movies. He made a movie called Yes Day, which was one of the biggest movies on Netflix in 2020 or 2021. And so he's coming off kind of a really good reputation and,

And he came down and said, look, I see this. I see the vision. Let me make this into a movie. And I said, great. So we partnered. The next thing you need to do is you need to have a screenplay. And he said, next thing we need is we need a screenplay. And I said, cool, I'll write the screenplay. I'm a writer. And he said,

you don't write screenplays. And I said, yeah, but I'm a writer. Come on, I've written New York Times bestselling books and whatever the case may be. And he said, look, it's just different. And thankfully, I was humble enough to say, okay, you know what? This is a medium I'm not familiar with. What convinced you of that? I think just recognizing that there's things that you don't know what you don't know. And I'm looking at something that I haven't done before

And even in talking to him, I could see that there's things that I wasn't thinking of that a movie writer would think of. I just... I could see the way he was talking to me that there was things that I just didn't quite understand yet. Yeah, it's a tricky issue, eh? Because...

likely you could learn. But the question is, how long would that take? How much failure would be involved? What would be the opportunity cost? Right. And then there's the issue of pride that you also already brought up. You know, you learn after a while that a new endeavor has all sorts of pitfalls you couldn't possibly imagine. Right. And those are the things you have to learn the hard way. Right. So even though it'd be fun to learn to write a screenplay, obviously. Yeah. And so I have since learned and

written one, which is another, a whole nother story. Oh yeah. So we, we end up, we, we get pitched, a couple people pitch us on writing the screenplay and we finally land on a guy named Will Staples who, whose dad was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. When I heard that, I was like, all right, this, this must be my guy. And this was right before the Hollywood writer's strike. Again, there's all this Hollywood stuff going on. There's a Hollywood writer's strike. So

We hire him to write the screenplay. And the screenplays cost a lot of money. And so Ben said, okay, I want to put together a group of investors to pay for the screenplay. How much is a screenplay these days that's high quality? It depends, but let's say $250,000 or so. Yeah, okay, that's about what I would expect. Maybe $300,000, maybe $150,000, but in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars. Right. And he says, I want to put together these investors. And I said, well, what if I just buy it?

What if I just pay for it? And he said, well, I mean, you can. And what I didn't realize at the time was that

The vast majority of screenplays that get written never get turned into a movie. Right, right. And I mean, it is probably less than 1%. Right. Probably a lot less than 1%. Yeah, basically none of them get turned into movies. And then of the movies that are launched, basically none of them are successful. Yes. Right. So yeah, you're playing a high-risk, high-return game. But I didn't know that. Yeah. So I'm thinking, okay, well, I'll just...

pay for the screenplay and then I'll get to basically sell it to the production. I'm going to make even more money. Right. So that's a weird presumption too, isn't it? Because one of the advantages, I presume, correct me if I'm wrong, one of the advantages of having additional investors is that you validate the utility of the project. It doesn't look like a

vanity project then right away and other people are on board. And so that means as you move forward, there's more people testifying to the validity of the project, right? There's lots of reasons to have partners. Yes. Lots. And I didn't think of any of those. Right. I just thought, oh, this is, you know, obviously this is going to get made into a movie. Obviously it's going to be a great screenplay. And obviously this is going to get bought by a huge studio. Obviously that's going to happen, right? Yeah, right. And so, you know, I wrote the check and I own the screenplay, which...

Again, very lucky. I didn't realize at the time, but that is a huge amount of leverage, right? Because now you own all this intellectual property. It's yours. Yeah. So did that turn out to be a good decision? It was an amazing decision. Yeah, well, that's the thing, too, because you're in a different position, perhaps, than most people because you have that built-in marketing clout. Yeah. Right? So that makes a huge... Hypothetically, that makes a huge difference. Okay, so...

Did you evaluate the screenplay and could you? So, well, the screenplay...

you know, luckily this guy, Will, this is a machine. He sat down, I think he put pen and paper. And of course he's got the IP, he's using ideas from the books. Yeah. And so it's not like he's creating something from scratch, but he did a phenomenal job. And, you know, we're all going back and forth on the thing and revising it and don't like this, add that, take this away. So he was, everyone was very collaborative. He was very open-minded and it was great. And so-

When we finally got like the screenplay done, I could tell from my, you know, amateur perspective, this is good. This is really good. It was very powerful. What did you like about it?

It has everything in it. So it's funny. It's sad. It's exciting. It's just a very emotional screenplay. It's a very emotional movie. Did he do a good job of capturing the essence of your books? 100%. What's the essence of those books, do you think? The essence of those books is, as a human being,

you start off in life and you're not gonna be strong, you're not gonna be smart, you're not gonna be powerful, and it's very easy to let that become your life. And yet, if you learn discipline and you work hard and you train hard and you study hard, you can become a good, strong, smart human being. - Right. - And that's the message.

It lands on you. So to give more consideration to, especially when you're young, to who you could be rather than who you are, and certainly not to despair at who you are. Well, all heroes start out lowly in the story of Moses, so that's a great adventure story. Moses is literally endangered by the Pharaoh, who's put out the word to kill all the firstborns. The same thing happens in the case of Christ.

And so then he's launched on a river and has to be rescued, and he's the son of slaves. And then in the gospel story, you have exactly the same motif. Christ is born in the most no-account town in some backwater of the Roman Empire, and

his parents, who are also under the thumb of a tyrant at that time, end up giving birth with the animals, right? So it's very low beginning. And part of the reason for that is, well, that's life. You start completely helpless. And you start with, in some ways, you start at great risk and with everything against you. And so then the question is, well, what the hell do you do about that? And certainly,

In the story of Abraham, for example, so he's the father of nations, let's say, Abraham. He listens to the beckoning call of adventure and goes out and voluntarily confronts the difficulties of his life and makes the sacrifices along the way. And he's promised an eternal future of infinite abundance in consequence, right? There's the idea being that if you

form a, if you forge an alliance with a spirit that calls you to develop, to push yourself beyond your limits, if you occupy that space, then God will be with you, so to speak, and

No one can stand in front of you, and you'll be successful, and so will your descendants, and your reputation will grow, and abundance will come to everyone. Right? So that's a good deal. And I think that is marked by that impetus that children have to, well, like the kids you were talking about who were doing push-ups. Right? That impetus to develop is deeply rooted inside of

people. And it's definitely what you want to encourage as a father. So you've written these books. And so tell me about the public reception and what people have told you about the kids' books. What do people say in terms of the impact on their kids? That story that I told you of kids doing push-ups when dad walks, that's one story of thousands of stories that I've received. Letters I receive, notes that I receive of kids that did their first pull-up.

Kids that got an A in their math test. Kids that memorized the Gettysburg Address. You know, kids that started training jujitsu. That have been encouraged and inspired. Exactly. And you think the movie will pull that off. Oh, I know the movie's going to pull that off. Yeah. Where is it in its production sequence? It is in the...

editing right now. But I mean, it's close. Animated? No, it's live action. It's a live action film. I see. I see. And can you share the names of the actors and...

Yeah, I mean, there's a kid named Jude who plays the kid in the movie, Jude Hill, who is a great actor and just did a phenomenal job. How old are the kids in the movie? So in the movie, in the book, the kid is in fifth grade. Oh, yeah. In the movie. So 11, basically. In the movie, he's in eighth grade. So he's a little bit older, and there's a couple reasons why we did that. Oh, yeah. But, and then the...

The hero of the story is the kid, but the mentor in the story is his uncle, Uncle Jake. And Uncle Jake is a SEAL and...

He comes and stays with the kid for the summer. And over the summer, he helps him transform from being a wimpy kid to being a warrior. Oh, yeah. That's fun. That's fun. That's like a Karate Kid motif, essentially. Yes. Yes. There hasn't been a movie like that for a while that really hit. There hasn't been one like that in a long time. So in the movie, Way of the Warrior Kid, Uncle Jake is played by a guy named Chris Pratt, who's a huge actor and a phenomenal human.

So he's, and he does an incredible job playing Uncle Jake in the movie. Yeah, yeah. So how involved were you in the movie-making process? Thankfully, I was very involved. The director is a guy named McG, and McG is just an incredibly talented,

listener, humble. And, you know, he's made some huge movies in his time. I think he started his career in the movie world making Charlie's Angels, which was a smash success. And that's kind of where he started. He had done music videos prior to that, but that's where he started his movie career. And so he's done a bunch of incredible stuff in Hollywood, but he was...

So you've got quite a lineup, really. You've got great, great allies, Apple and Skydance. That's like... Sundance? Skydance. Skydance. Skydance. And a great director, good actors, and solid screenplay.

And, well, that should be well-timed in the market, too, because, well, you know, there's an appetite for that sort of movie. And I was... So I was on set just about every single day. We filmed for, like I said, I think it was almost two and a half months or something like that. And McG, the director, I mean, he was just so open-minded. And you said he listened. Oh, he listened. Yeah, yeah. So dive into that a little bit, because you made a point of that. So, interestingly, on...

On a Hollywood set, as you're filming, especially now with digital, you can watch the replays and they have something called video village, which is a bunch of video monitors that are showing real time what all the different cameras are seeing. And so generally speaking, the director will be watching on his monitor all the different camera angles and seeing it real time and then making adjustments. And so for basically the entire filming,

Mick G sat in his chair in Video Village and was watching, and I stood over his left shoulder the entire time. Oh, yeah. I tapped him on the shoulder. Hey, I like that. Hey, that didn't look good. Hey, and he just was so open-minded, and he just, he really wanted, you know, he really related to the movie as well. You know, he grew up, you know,

kind of a wimpy kid himself in the beginning and he developed and he grew. And so he really understood it as well and it meant a lot to him and he really wanted to do it justice. And so it was really interesting to see that. What did you do right that enabled you to collaborate together that way? Because creative collaborations are, well, they're great when they work and they can work very well, but

People have to, well, that's what I'm curious about your opinion, what you had to do to, well, you can imagine you're encroaching on his territory. That's one way of thinking about it, right? And so you have to conduct yourself in a manner that doesn't produce pointless primate dominance competition, right? And you want to be collaborating toward an end. How did you conduct yourself so that that

possibility maximized. Presumed you listened as well. - 100%. I mean, I would ask him questions and he would say to me, "Well, here's why this will look this way." Or, "Here's why, I don't know." And sometimes he'd say, "Oh, no, I'm not sure about that." And sometimes he'd go, "That's a good point. That makes a lot of sense." - So you were asking, yeah, so that's an interesting point as well. Like something to know tactically for everybody who's watching and listening is that if you want to offer your opinion,

so to speak, it's generally much more sophisticated to do that with a question. Accusation is the worst question, right? Suggestion is the next worst. Question is the best suggestion.

And then you leave it open. It's like, well, what do you think? But it has to be honest. What do you think about doing it this way? And that can't be manipulative. It has to be, you have an idea. Could it happen like this? But if you're working with someone who knows something, you actually want to know what they think of that idea. And that's the... When I talk about this with leaders, for instance...

and I talk about asking questions, I literally say you have to ask earnest questions. Yeah. It has to be an earnest questions. I can't, I can't, you know, ask you a leading questions. Right. Don't you think it would look better? Or do you think it might be better if we do it like this? Yeah. When I already think I know the answer. Yes, exactly. I have to truly be curious and ask you the earnest questions. Hey,

do you think it would look better from this angle over here? Or do you think that this is the best angle? So that's an attitude that's characterized by the opposite of pride. That's the humility that opens doors. So one of the things I figured out this year, because I was thinking about what I was doing on stage when I was lecturing and trying to determine explicitly why it was working, and I stumbled across something that in retrospect was pretty obvious, but...

I pose myself a central question before I go on stage, right? And it has to be an actual question. I actually have to not know the answer or not enough, and I have to want to know the answer, because otherwise the whole thing is a lie, right? But then I also understood, I can't believe it took me this long to figure this out, that the root word of question is quest.

And that what I was doing on stage, because I lecture without notes, and I'm trying to investigate this question, was taking notes.

the listeners on an adventure. And the adventure was, the treasure at the end of the adventure was the resolution of that question, or at least it's maybe it's clarification or further movement towards answering it at minimum, right? And you want a landing too where the, where an answer emerges as a consequence of the dialogue. But it's definitely a quest

And that means that if you're collaborating with someone and you ask them honest questions, which you can do if you continually consult your ignorance, right, then you're inviting them on an adventurous collaboration. And that is immediately playful rather than tyrannical. Yeah. I really like the idea of consulting my ignorance. Yeah. I definitely like it. Well, it's inexhaustible. What am I missing here? Yeah. What am I not doing? And, you know, this is something that...

When people come to me and, you know, whether it's a family member or someone I work with, and they don't agree with something I say, my thought isn't, what don't they understand? My thought is, what don't I understand? Yeah, right. What did I not clarify? Right, well, you also don't know when someone objects. First of all, you don't know if they understood what you said. You also don't know if you said it that clearly. And so definitely in a situation like that,

your best initial foray is questions. And then it's always possible this is a useful thing to know too. I think this is part of the reason why you're supposed to love your enemies. Part of the reason is it'd be better if they were your allies. And so maybe you could figure out how to make that happen and that would be better for everyone. But part of it also is they might be bringing you some information, right? And even if they're dead set against you,

for arbitrary reasons, it's possible that in their objections they'll shed light on something that you could have done more effectively. And if you can really listen to them, they might tell you that and that would be a good deal. So, okay, so you used a question approach, right? And you said it had to be earnest. How did you figure out that it had to be earnest?

I think just from my time in the military and interacting with leaders up, down, and across the chain of command and recognizing, what would you say? Accusations are the worst form of question. The worst way to kick things off. You're doing this. It's like, wait a sec, wait a sec. Are you doing this? That's better. That's easier. Same information conveyed, a little bit less necessary.

much less likely to put the person on the defensive. Yeah. All you have to do is, you know, when you're a young 20-year-old SEAL, all you have to do is instigate the ego of one senior commander at one time. That didn't seem to work real well. No, no, no. No, especially the first time they meet you. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really bad idea. And then soon you figure out that it's not just the senior commanders, it's

the junior commanders, and then you realize it's your peers. And the most important... And you even. The most important eureka moment is when you realize that it's the same with your subordinates. That your subordinate doesn't want to get told what to do. They want to get asked their opinion, and they want to... And you have to listen to it earnestly and say, yeah, maybe that does make more sense. Yeah. They want to get invited along on an adventure. Exactly. Yeah, that's the best thing to set up if you can manage that. Yes. And you can...

If the people that you're dealing with are dealing in good faith, you can manage that. But if the people that you're dealing with are not dealing in good faith, that's still often the best approach. I mean, you have to figure out if you can rely on them, if that's a partnership that can even work. That's why you shouldn't really sell either. Because really what you're doing is you're offering people an opportunity that's a partnership. And if they're not interested, you don't want them as a customer. Right.

because they're not going to be satisfied anyways and the last thing you need is a dissatisfied customer and you can think oh they gave me money it's like yeah once and so that's not that helpful and who knows how much trouble they're going to cause if they're disgruntled plenty right so don't push look but don't push yeah i was listening to something you were doing the other day and you were just talking about the

as a leader, an invitation as opposed to an order. And I think you use something even more extreme than an order, you know, mandates, you know, these types of things. Exactly. Use of fear and compulsion. That's all sign of bad policy. Fear, compulsion, mandates, orders, all of that. And it's much better to, it's much more effective to...

to proffer an invitation. And that could be a rough invitation. That's going to happen in the military, for sure. It's not like the stakes aren't high, but...

But it still is, you know, and this is one of the obstacles I had to overcome when we started doing leadership consulting with civilian companies because people have the stereotypical view that in the military you barter someone and then people are just, they're going to obey. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, no. No, well, you can see that there are, and maybe this is a boot camp issue, and there's a boot camp,

issue with every disciplinary structure. There might be a window of disciplinary necessity where the person involved has to subordinate themselves

to somewhat arbitrary demands. That would be the case when they don't know what the hell they're doing and they really need to listen. But the goal would be to build them as rapidly as possible into people who would engage in collaborative problem solving. And certainly in the military, the more that capacity is distributed down the ranks, the more effective the military is going to be because that means that competent people can make local decisions in the environment as it changes without

relying on or defaulting to a slow-moving chain of command that has shaky allegiance to begin with. This is called decentralized command. And you just explained it perfectly. It's exactly what you want. What you want in your business, too. You want to hire super competent people and you want to offer them a deal that they're thrilled about so they're maximally motivated. This is something capitalists do a very bad job of communicating to young people. It's like,

I'm the boss. That's the stereotypical view of a evil capitalist. And I tell my minions what to do and they do it or else. It's like no one will work for you productively under those circumstances. Not in the least. It has to be a deal. And how much can you grow? Are you really going to be able to make every decision? Okay, you can do that when you've got this little tiny company. But the minute you grow, there's going to be decisions getting made that are, if you know about them...

It's shocking. Yeah, right. Well, that means the tyrant is his own obstacle to his growth.

Because a good manager makes himself irrelevant as rapidly as possible. And then he's free to go do something else. That's the payoff. Why would I give up that control? It's like, you want control? Really? You want control, do you? Or do you want... How about distributed competence as an alternative to control? That's a good deal. And it also means you have to be very...

selective in your choice of employees and partners and in the manner in which you structure your deals. And you don't want to get one up on one of your partners. That's a very foolish attitude because, well, they won't partner with you again. And they're certainly not going to give their best once they figured out that they've been had. And you can pat yourself on the back for being smarter than them, but you're not likely. They just trusted you and you weren't trustworthy. And now they've discovered it.

Okay, so this movie now, so you're working collaboratively with the director. So that must have been fun. You must have learned a lot from doing that. Learned a ton. Yeah, I bet. I bet. And so it's in the editing phase. And do you have anything to do with the editing? Because that's also unbelievably, you man, skilled editor, that's a valuable person. That's another thing for all you people who are out there watching, listening, you young people. If you can learn to edit, cut, cut, cut.

from podcasts and put them on your podcast channel and see if you can learn how to pick the minute, two minutes, three minutes where something is, like a whole story is told in a compelling way. See if you can learn to do that because if you can learn to do that and you can do that with 100 clips

and they have some virality about them, even on a relatively small scale, the probability that you're going to be able to find a job is very, very high because good editors are ridiculously hard to find because you have to have that eye for quality and that eye for micro narrative. And you just have an unlimited opportunity to do that on YouTube because you can take all the content there and...

reshape it. And so, and that's, so did, were you involved in the editing? Are you involved in the editing? And when you say involved, I mean, obviously I'm not a technical person doing any, but I'm watching the iterations of the edits happen and giving my feedback. And, and I'll tell you what is incredible. You know, the first cut,

the very next cut is exponentially better than the first cut. And so then that just happens over and over. So we've iterated probably, I don't know how many times right now, 20 iterations down. Well, that's crucial too. That's a crucial thing for people to understand is that

You want a bad, expansive first draft. So you have way more material than you need and then you cut and you cut. And you're not throwing away, you're conserving the best. And so you do that when you're writing too. Assume if you're going to write something, you have to write four times more than you're going to keep. And then why? Well, how about so you can keep the best 25%? That's a good deal.

And so, and editing, you develop an eye for editing, that's really that ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. It's crucially important. And I also think if you develop that in any domain, video editing, for example, that generalizes. It's one of those few complex cognitive skills that actually seems to generalize. You know, because I found that once I had learned to edit writing,

editing video was very, very similar, very similar process. I remember in the Navy, you have to write evaluations for your guys. And I think the number at the time was you had 17 lines to write. Right.

And you had to give them as much credit as you possibly could in order to get them promoted. And so it was like the, the number of letters in a word sometimes like, is it worth those extra characters for this particular adjective? Does, is it going to, and, and,

It was kind of fun for me to do that. Right. That's a good disciplinary training. And I think when you're editing properly, we tried to teach people that in this essay app that I developed with my son. It's like, well, how do you edit? Well, here's one way to make your writing 50% better.

immediately take your first draft and cut it by 25 just shorten the sentences keep the content shorten the sentences can you get the same place more efficiently that's a great thing to learn and then well every word is that the right word and length is a consideration and poetic flow and you want to you want to edit at the word level and at the phrase level and the sentence level and

how the sentences are sequenced in the paragraph and how the paragraphs are sequenced together and whether the whole thing has an impact. You want to be thinking about that all at once. That's very careful attention to detail. If you pay attention at all those levels, you'll write something stellar. That's a great thing to learn. That essay app, it helps a lot with that because it walks people through that process and teaches them how to do that.

Okay, so what's the future of the movie? Like, it's not released. When is it going to be released? I'm not sure when it's going to be released yet. Theatrically? I don't know. So Apple owns it. Oh, yes. And it depends on what Apple wants to do with it. So, you know, Skydance made it. Apple owns it. And so, yeah. And just like any other...

product release, you know, they have to time it with their other products that they have coming out. And, you know, do they have a family movie or, you know, at that time and which one, which one's ready. So I'm not sure when it's going to come out, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. And I think the world is going to be happier place and a better place when it comes out. Yeah. Well, that's fun. So that's, that's a cool thing. So now, you know, one of the things, there's another kind of moral that we could derive from the story that you just told too, is

which is crucially important because people are often confused about where they might find inspiration or get ideas. Writers are often asked that, "Where do you get your ideas?" And they usually can't answer. We're building a module for Essay that helps people figure out what to write about because I think I've cracked it. And so the cracking is something like this, is that

There are things that call out for your attention that are like invitations in the world. Those are things you're spontaneously interested in, eh? But then there are things that bother you, and that's the activation of your conscience. And one of those is really the voice of positive emotion, things that invite you forward, and the other is the voice of negative emotion. Here's a problem, a pitfall, an obstacle, a way of deviating off the path,

a place where things have gone wrong. Now, what happened to you when you said this,

straightforwardly is you had a problem which was well what am I going to get my kids to read and your experience was you went to the library the bookstore and you couldn't find anything now you could imagine someone brooding about that you know the culture's gone to hell it's like how the hell can we have nothing but like wimpy pirate novels and it's just another indication that we're going to perdition in a handbag and and you know and to get resentful and bitter about that but your your

perspective was that absence is a opportunity. And so this is a good thing for people to know. If something bothers you, there's a billion things that could bother you, and not everything does. And so then you might ask, well, why does that thing bother you when some other thing that's equally bad doesn't? And as far as I can tell, the answer to that is because if it bothers you, that's your problem. And you might think, I don't want to have a problem. It's like,

That's because you don't know that problems and opportunities are the same thing. So if a problem's crying out for you, to you, then it could well be that your proper destiny is to address that problem, in which case it's an immense opportunity. And you saw that, exactly that. Oh, look, there's an absence in the marketplace. Well, that's a good discovery, an absence in the marketplace, especially if you're right about

And so that's what you did. And then you've managed, you got a movie out of it. So that's a pretty good deal. And that's independent of whether, of its eventual success as a movie, because even if it lands at any of the levels of success it could land at,

You got to make a movie. And so that's pretty good. And God only knows what you learn doing that. So there's no loss in that, right? There's just gain. There was an interesting thing that I realized during this whole thing. And it is related to what you just said. So for many years, I have told people that if you have an idea and you don't execute on it, your idea doesn't mean anything. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It doesn't really matter. Yeah.

And what I realized in making this movie is that I was actually wrong. Okay. Because if an idea, it's worthless if you don't execute it on it. I get that. But the actual idea that if you have an idea, if you have an idea and it's good. Yeah. Yeah.

You can't even put a price tag on that thing. And that's why when you look at Hollywood, Hollywood makes a bunch of, what are they called? Like reruns of the same movies, right? There's a reason for that. They have all this money to throw at ideas and they just go, well, you know what? Make the superhero movie again, make the space movie. And they just make the same movies often over and over again.

And I realized that these, you know, if you have a really good idea, you have to execute on it. You have to do something with it. Because if you don't, it's like a mortal sin not to execute on a good idea. Well, it's a revelation, a good idea. It's a gift. It's grace. Where does it come from? That's why I was kind of very curious when you said that. That's exactly right. I know the answer to that. I look at it like...

they know what molecules are in an amoeba. We know what chemicals, but we can't make an amoeba. We can't make something alive.

And just like in a movie or a book or a song, they know, you go to Nashville, they know what notes make a hit song, but they can't just produce a hit song. They can put all the chemicals in there, but they can't bring it to life. And so there is, just like there's something special about life, there's a spark that we don't understand. We can't fabricate it. We cannot fabricate that spark in life. And we can't,

as far as i can tell we can't fabricate that spark of an idea okay so so there's a bunch of things that that come off that so one of the things i realized so i've done a lot of lecturing again this year i don't know how many different cities we went to

60 or 70, you know, over the last eight months, maybe more than that, a lot. And I've, you know, I have a chance to develop my ideas every night. One of the things I came to understand more clearly was, this is a very cool thing, it's relevant to what you just said, is that the spirit of your aim, you could say, answers your prayers or informs your thoughts. And it has to be that way, because thought is a navigation tool, right? You set an aim,

And then your perceptions line up so you can see your way forward, but your thoughts and your emotions also aid that because otherwise... because you want to get there, let's say. And then the methods by which you might advance come to mind because you've set your aim. Okay, so we can take this apart in this idea that came to you. It's like you wanted to serve your children.

Okay? You wanted to serve them in a manner that was better than what was being served to them. You wanted to serve them in a manner that would help them develop in this adventurous way. So that was your goal, your aim, when you went to the library. And then what happened was there was a mismatch between what you discovered and your aim, and so now that constitutes a problem. But it also constitutes an opportunity, right?

because now you see that there's a... If your aim was correct and there's a void, well, then that's a moral problem even. Okay, so now, if it's a moral problem because your aim was right and...

that the mechanisms for that aim to be manifested aren't available, well then that's a genuine gap and it needs to be addressed. And if you figure that out, it's your moral responsibility to do something about it. But it's also your great opportunity. Okay, so there's that. So that's what you're serving. If your aim is correct and true,

and you have a revelation in relationship to that aim, and you don't act on it, you've thrown away the pathway to that aim, and you've betrayed it. That's not a good idea. But even more concretely, one of the things my wife has really learned to do in the last two years, she started to write and she started to speak publicly because she introduces me and talks for about 10 minutes. And she's learned during our discussions

our private discussions, let's say, if an idea emerges, she writes it down right away. No matter what we're doing, right? The idea comes, you write that thing down because it's a gift and God only knows what it's worth. You know, you could have a good idea now and then. It might be a good idea that changes your whole life. And you could have that idea and be casual enough to forget it. And that was that. And then you'd wonder why you never got anywhere. It's like, well, you had a gift and you didn't. And then there's another issue too is,

The things that meet with reward grow. That's a neurological truth. That's how large language models are trained. They're trained with reinforcement. The closer they get to the target, the more weight is put on that response. So it's literally reward that trains large language models to match the target. Well, if you have a bit of a creative spark and you're being...

And ideas are being revealed to you in concordance with your aim. And then you don't act on those. You punish them. You punish the source of the ideas. Just like demoralizing a kid. Like if a kid comes to you with ideas, and every time they come, you say, oh, that's stupid, or what the hell do you know? Or you say, I'm going to do something about that, and then you don't. That kid will stop coming to you with ideas. And people do that to themselves all the time. All the time. And so you even have an obligation to your...

You can watch this, you know. This is what I've been trying to teach people too, is if you want to improve your life, it's like, well, set that as a name. I'd like things to be better.

and then ask, what could I actually do that would move me somewhat in that direction? You'll get an answer. That's a good way to pray. That's a good way to pray. And I've experienced two things here. These are like the opposite ends of the spectrum. And this is, I think, a very positive thing for people to hear. If I was a young person, I would really like to hear this. So there are going to be times like you're talking about with your wife where all of a sudden from nowhere—

Or from somewhere, but somewhere that we don't know and understand. All of a sudden, there's an idea there. The source of all revelation. It shows up. Yeah. It shows up. I've had that happen to me where it's like, boom. I wrote a book called Mikey and the Dragons. That came just boom. I just instantly had this idea. Boom. I wrote the book. Yeah. And I remember when I was an English major in college and some of the old poets were

They would claim that, you know, they just wrote this first, you know, the first draft that was in. It was one draft, one shot. And there was sort of rumors about these that that's not really happened. They found their notes. They'd written a bunch of drafts. But sometimes it's true. Sometimes you will get that inspiration. It'll come and boom, you're done. Yeah. Yeah.

So you can sit around and wait for that. I don't recommend waiting for that though. It may or may not come. We can't control that. The other side of the spectrum, which I've also had this happen to me, and my silly term that I came up with for it is squeezing your brain. You have to like squeeze your brain and squeeze something out of it. And what I like is this idea, just to come full circle a little bit here, I had this thing where I wanted to...

have lessons for my kids that they could read in a book. And so I have that. There's my aim, what you would call an aim. Well, I didn't immediately say, oh, okay, what I can have as a kid that's going through kind of kid problems and his uncle who's a Navy SEAL can come and stay with him for the summer and he can teach him. I didn't have that. And I definitely didn't have the nuances of like, oh, he can get bullied by this kid. That fills in. Right. But I squeezed on my brain and thought, what would be a good... And then all of a sudden, boom, you just start...

you find your path and the story will come or the idea will come. Well, that's part of that discipline striving. Like I learned when I first started writing, I forced myself to sit and write every day. And some days...

I was highly productive and other days I wasn't so productive, but every day if I sat long enough, I was a little bit productive. And then I got better at being productive and much better at not delaying sitting down. That took a long time, really years to really get disciplined. I'm still learning that discipline. How long do you write for at a time?

I max out about three hours. I find that if I write more than three hours continually, I get exhausted. So three hours is about right. And I've learned tricks like at the end of the writing session, write down what you're thinking so you can use that the next day and do it every day and so on. And I've got to the point now where I can write a newspaper article, a good newspaper article, pretty much in one draft. But that's taken forever.

35 years of writing to manage that. But I learned early that if I sat long enough, I would write something that would be valuable, right? And some days it took like 45 minutes to get warmed up so that, you know, everything I wrote was just

painful to produce and not a very high quality. But if you persist, the thing that persistence, that's the other thing that's kind of interesting neurologically. You know, I already said, if you punish the source within you that gives rise to ideas, it will stop producing ideas. So that's a bad idea. But it's also the case that you want to make being creative the victor over all the competing ideas

pulls and temptations, and partly what you're doing when you're disciplining yourself is that. It's like, no, I'm going to sit here, regardless of all the other things I could be doing, all the other things I could be thinking, until that part of me that's able to create wins that internal battle and prevails, and then it gets stronger and stronger over time. And it is, that's building character. That's exactly what that is. Let's segue back

Oh, I want to ask you one more question. Why did you move to adolescence instead of people who are in grade five? And then I want to segue to your leadership consulting and talk about exactly what you're doing there. So for the movie, the reason we made the kid a little bit older, well, one thing is there's a...

There's a girl in the book that befriends, and we wanted to elevate that a little bit, make it a little bit more of a romance. Right, right. And a romance is good in eighth grade, ninth grade, but it's not really the fourth grade, fifth grade type thing. Yeah, right. And just some of the things, some of the conversations that are taking place are a little bit elevated. And then just from interacting with kids, kids will buy into things

that are older than them but they won't buy into things that are younger right of course so a a 10 year old kid goes oh cool it's a story about a 14 year old they or a 13 year old they they will do that sure but a 14 year old doesn't go oh i want to hear about a 10 year old it just doesn't work the other way so we wanted to attract more people and open their minds to especially a 13 year old kid yeah you take a 13 year old kid to a movie about a fifth grader

They don't really like that as much. But they'll go see their peer. So that was another reason in my mind. Well, in adolescence too, like there's a lot of coming of age movies and they're also generally attractive to adults more so than a kid's movie. Now and then you get a kid's movie that works like Stand By Me worked. But those kids were also on the cusp of adolescence. I think adults are interested in adolescence because that's this time of radical personality reshaping and the construction of destiny. And so people...

whether they're happy about the way their life's turned out or not, they're interested in looking back to think, what if? You know, so... Okay, so that's very interesting, and we'll keep an eye on that. And that's... Tell me the name of the movie again. Tell everybody the name of the movie again. The movie is called The Way of the Warrior Kid. Yeah, okay. And it's the same title as the books. Same title as the books. Yeah, okay. And so let's talk about your leadership consulting. So, you know, I...

worked with executive MBA programs, and I was very interested in the psychology of leadership, but as a psychological field, leadership is a mess. Partly because it's very ill-defined. Like, what's a leader, exactly? It's a more intractable question. Not as intractable as what is a woman, as it turns out, but... So, let's start with that. Like, when you're... when you're consulting on the leadership front,

What is it that you think that you're training? And how did you come to the realization that that was what constituted leadership? So let's, I'd like to know how you define leadership even, and then how you facilitate its development. Yeah. So I actually kicked off with a group the other day and I said, you know, let's define leadership. And, you know, we got a couple- There's a question right away. There you go. And then I said, hey, I got it for you. Getting people to do stuff.

Right, right. Yes. That's actually what leads to this. Nice short words. Getting people to do stuff. Yeah. Because that's why we're here. That's why people are wanting to know, like, oh, I need to get people to do stuff. Now, what... That's a behavioral level of analysis. How complex it is to get people to do stuff. And we already talked about one methodology, which is, hey, Jordan, I'm your boss.

Go do this now. Yeah, with an or else lurking behind that, right? And what I always tell people is that works. Yeah.

Short term yes for a minute, you know, I can probably get you know I could if you work for me and I say hey I don't hear from you. Shut up. Go do what I told you to do or you're gonna get fired tonight rap Yeah, you'll go do it. You want that whatever that you want your paycheck for that week's worth of work? But there's no way that you're not looking for another job and there's no way that you're gonna put your best effort in to Execute whatever it is. I told you to go do it's just not gonna happen so

What real leadership is, is like I'm getting you to do stuff because you want to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that alignment of interests. And so that's what it really boils down to. How do you teach that? Well, the thing that's interesting about it is, you know, I had you on my podcast a long time ago. And I had never really understood leadership.

or what a psychologist would do. I didn't understand it. Never been to one, never talked to one. I didn't really understand it. And we were talking about someone that was scared of needles and you walked through the protocol of how to get them to not be afraid of needles. And I said, oh, that's, so he knows how to handle this particular, he knows how to handle these things

psychological problems that people want to overcome. Phobic avoidance. There's a skill that you have that you learned, and it has to do with interacting other people and getting them to move forward in their life. And that's the very interesting thing about leadership is it's the same thing. There are skills in leadership that you can learn. We've already talked about one of them.

at me asking you earnest questions. Earnest questions. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Me being humble. Is humble a skill? It is a skill. Well, it's actually, well, since time immemorial, the core of religious practice is humility. So what does that mean? It means you practice that. So it's a practice. Why? So you get expert at it. Well, why? Because then you're optimally placed to learn, right? If you're noting what you don't know,

And you're viewing every opportunity as an opportunity to inform you rather than an opportunity to control or exert power. You can become an expert at that. Rogan's an expert. You're an expert at that. Your podcast wouldn't work otherwise. Podcasts are... You're not going to be an expert podcaster. Well, there's some manipulative ones, let's say, that capitalize on, you know, trouble muckraking and gotcha questions and that sort of thing. But the honest podcasters...

They're trying to get smarter and they're bringing their audience along for the ride. Yeah, so leadership, so you can imagine that if you're making someone an offer for a partnership, let's say, because that's a form of leadership, the first thing you want to do, I think, and you tell me what you think about this, is like, well, this is what I'm envisioning. This is where I see this going, right?

Does that strike a chord in you? And the answer might be no, and then maybe we could discuss some more because you don't understand exactly. Or it might be, okay, well, then you're not the right player for this game. And you don't want to force that at all because if the person doesn't share your vision, well, you're not in a partnership. So that's just an exploration, right? And then the next thing would be something like, the next question would be,

Is there something that we could do together that would work out better than if we each did it separately? Right? And that's a question too. Like one of the things that popped up, for example, when you were talking about your clothing company, is we're thinking about merchandise for Peterson Academy. And so I thought the first, one of the things that popped into my mind when we were talking was, and I could just ask you this, do you do custom clothing? We can. Okay. Because one of the things we were thinking about for our merch is that it should be

locally sourced, right? And so, especially given the current climb. Especially when you're facing tariffs from overseas. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which is the least of the reasons why you should want to do it in America, but it is, in fact, a reason that is compelling some people to change their vision. We, myself and Pete, who own Origin, we've had that vision for a long time. We've recognized it's not about the tariffs, it's not about the money, it's about rebuilding manufacturing in this country.

And this is something we recognized 10 years ago. So that's part of the quest there too. And the vision, because the vision should be nested inside a broader vision, right? To be really compelling. Yes. I mean, if I would have said to Pete, hey, Pete, you know, I want to make a bunch of money. Yeah, right. Exactly. Profitability is the number one thing on my, and he would say, I mean, we can't partner.

Same vice versa. If his goal would have been to make a bunch of money, no, our goal was to bring manufacturing back to America. Right. Well, then the profit becomes the means to the ends, right? Essentially, because profit has a bad rap because people think about it as exploitation. But what they don't understand is that if your aim is true...

profit is the mechanism by which you accelerate your progress, clearly, because you can't do anything unless you have capital freed up to invest. You can only maintain yourself. There's no progress in a new direction. And so then that puts profit in its proper place. And almost all the people I know that are businessmen who aren't

you know, narcissistic psychopaths, which is most like, and most businessmen aren't because that fails. They're not interested in money for the sake of money. They might use it as a marker of competence and status. And there's something to that. But the ones that are really great, they just think, well, obviously I need to make some money because I can't make this thing grow unless I have money. And then the money,

That's a plus, not a negative. And the prophet motif there is more a testament to

to efficiency and the desire to progress than anything else. Yeah, where you get lost there isn't through the individual business leaders that are, you're right, because they have individual business leader. If they're doing it for profit and that's their main thing and they're burning bridges, eventually they're going to fail. But what happens on the corporate side is all of a sudden it's not an individual and the corporation is truly driving for profit and they're willing to burn bridges. They have the size, they have the capacity. Yeah, that's also why they fail though. Oh.

Eventually, yes. Well, the typical Fortune 500 company lasts 30 years.

Right. So the failure cycle is pretty damn rapid. And it does, I think that is what happens, is there's a vision to begin with, and it's very compelling, and the profit serves the vision, but then it gets institutionalized, and the machine starts to run itself, so to speak. The vision starts to gain the profit, yeah. Yeah, well, that's right, that's right. Come inverted. Well, and that often, I think, also happens when the company has become successful. It's like, okay,

We did it. Now what? Well, hopefully there's a new vision and a new direction, but otherwise the thing is going to keep... It's going to turn into an algorithm, and eventually that won't work. So...

But the way the free market deals with that is then those companies become unsuccessful and they're replaced. So, okay, so you establish an aim and you negotiate to see if that's shared and then you start listening to see if you can build, what, a cooperative strategy. Yeah, and a lot of times this is where people get caught up because as long as we're going to the same place...

You know, we could take your road or my road. Yeah, right. Advantages and disadvantages of both. And by the way, we don't really know what the advantages and disadvantages are because we can't see the future. Yeah, yeah. And so. Right, so you don't want to get too constrained in your insistence. Yeah, I don't want to get too caught up. Yeah. Normally, what's making me want to take my road instead of your road is just my ego.

I think my idea is better. Yeah, that's not a good game. Not a good game. And so when we talk about... You could ask, here's why I think my idea might be better, but I'd be very interested to hear why you think that might not be true, right? Because maybe it isn't, and I'd like to know, actually. And my default mode, my default setting is I want to use your idea.

Whether you're my boss, my peer, or my subordinate, my default is I want to use your idea instead of mine. That's my goal. So when you come to me and you say, I think we should do it like this, my immediate response, which I've trained and practiced is, okay, why should we do it Jordan's way and not mine? Yeah, that's good. You know, I've done that with, particularly with my kids, because I run a couple of businesses with them. And my default there certainly is,

Like, if you've got a plan, and it's a reasonable plan, and you've worked it out, and you're motivated by it, how about I leave you the hell alone? Because you've already done something really good. Right, right. And then... I call it the minimally viable plan. If you come to me with a minimally viable plan...

That sounds like it can work. And that you'd implement. We're going to go with it. Yeah, well, that's because you've solved the motivational problem, right? Well, and it's also, see, that's also how you optimally train partners and subordinates is...

If they have a minimally viable plan and it's clear that they're going to implement it and they implement it, then they learn to implement and they learn to modify their plan on the fly. And then they get good at doing that. That meta skill, right? Which is the meta skill of making a plan and modifying it on the fly. You definitely want to encourage people to develop that ability. Definitely. And by the way, when I say, when I listen to you,

You listen to me. So when I say, hey, Jordan, that sounds good. Let's go ahead and execute it that way. I got one question. And now you actually listen to my question. We're doing it my way. And by the way, here's another thing you need to think about. You don't want to hear any of it. Yeah, because you've already taken a pretty good blow by that point. 100%. Yeah, well, right. And if you make an offer to someone like that,

the probability that if they're reasonable people, the first thing they want to do is reciprocate is extremely high. So you cede as much territory as you can, assuming that you've agreed on the aim. And it's also, you can negotiate the aim too. You can say, I find this vision of possibility compelling. It's worth sacrificing for, worth putting some effort in. But first, are you interested? And if not, well, then we can talk about some other things. But if you are, like...

Are there elements of it that you think might be altered that would make it even more compelling to you? That's certainly what you want in a partner or someone who works for you, clearly. You want them optimally motivated. You know, when I set up my businesses with my kids, I said, when we were figuring out the business end of it, I said, well, I have a lot of marketing clout and you want me bought in and you want me to prioritize what I'm doing with you

given all the other things I'm doing. So you have to remember that. But other than that, I want you to bring me the deal that you're maximally thrilled by, right? So that's the goal. And then, well, if someone brings you that deal and it turns out to be acceptable, there's no enforcement requirement because it's their thing. It's their thing. And then you can have a piece of many things and that's a very good deal and shepherd them and...

and help people develop along the way and learn a bunch. And so, I don't know how it is that we ever got the idea that the boss was the person who barked out orders. You know, I mean, no one who's effective... If you have someone that's working for you that requires that,

They're either really immature and still in that disciplinary phase, or you shouldn't be working with them. Right? If I have to force you to do something, we aren't suited for each other. No.

You know, compelled labor is not what you should be looking for. Right, that's slaves. Yeah, you don't want slaves. And why not? Because they're not very effective and it's no fun being a tyrant. Yeah, well, I guess, so there's a whole philosophy in warfare, which is the strategy of the indirect approach, which means instead of me assaulting you head on, I am going to maneuver around to your flank and attack you from an area where you're not reinforced.

And, you know, I always joke with people that we learn the opposite of the indirect approach. We learn that the, what is it, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So if I've got a problem with Jordan, what I should do is go, hey, Jordan, I noticed that in the meeting today you talked like this. I didn't like that. Yeah, right. And that seems like it's the best way to handle things. It's direct. Take that direct approach. Yeah, yeah.

But when I use that direct approach and I attack you, I attack your ego, what's going to happen? Your ego defenses are going to come up. You're not going to want to listen. You're going to be argumentative about the whole thing. We're in a power struggle. What do you call it? A primate dominance hierarchy struggle. Oh, yeah, definitely. We don't want to get into the primate hierarchy. No, we don't. No, no, no. Unless your goal is primate dominance, right? Which is not... Well, that's a better goal than abject failure. But it's not the highest goal. No, no. And a problem like that, it's like...

If there's a meeting and it goes sideways, the most appropriate approach to that, I would say, is certainly not to ignore it. Although if it only happened once, you could probably file it away for further consideration and not act immediately on it unless it happened again, right? Because you don't want to jump the gun. But my approach in this situation would be something like,

You know, I was watching that meeting, and here's a bunch of things that went well as far as I'm concerned. But I thought this one part, to me, seemed to slip sideways. And the discussion got counterproductive. And I'm wondering if you saw that and what you think happened. And that's... embedding it in a more positive message, that's also extremely helpful, you know, because lots of times, too, you see when people are negotiating...

and they're on a trajectory of success, they forget to start the discussion with that. It's like, given that we're on a trajectory of success, and these are a bunch of things that you've done right and we've done right,

Here's something we might be able to improve. Well, that's a lot easier on people. And it's certainly not a strategy of avoidance. And then it does have that investigative quality. Because you don't know, right? And sometimes you think things went sideways, right?

And that was actually the person's intent because, you know, they felt that someone needed to be corrected. And maybe they're right. Maybe it was time to produce a bit of an emotional disruption. And there was a strategy behind it. You don't know. That's why it has to be an earnest question, you know? Yeah. If I come to you and say, hey, why did you act like that in the meeting? Yeah. Why did you dress down Fred in the meeting? That was uncalled for. Right. That's just terrible. But if I say, hey, like...

I noticed you went pretty hard on Fred. Yeah, right. Was there something going on that I didn't know about? You know, I was sitting there kind of, I was a little bit surprised by it. Is there something going on between you and Fred that is not right right now? Is there anything I can do to help it out? Yeah. And that is a totally different approach. And getting back to the indirect approach, that indirect approach, obviously it took me four sentences to ask you that question. But you provide some context. But

And you also don't make the person into an enemy immediately. Of course. Because why would you do that? To show you're right. Yeah, that's not good. Yeah, showing you're right has a cost. Yeah, that's for sure. Being right has a cost. Just being right sometimes has a cost. Yeah. You know how many times you get in an argument or a discussion with your wife and you get to prove that you're right?

Good job. Yeah. I know there are higher, there are hierarchical levels of right, right? You can be right locally and pretty wrong contextually. Yeah. Right. And so that questioning approach seems to be much better in taking the fact of that multi-level embeddedness into account. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, okay. So back to the leadership training per se. So

What size are the groups that you, like, what's the process that you use when you're invited in by a corporation, for example? So what we'll start off with is an assessment. We'll go in there. We'll sit down with people. We'll interview people throughout the chain of command from junior people to the senior people. And we'll figure out what's happening. Right, right. When I ask, you know, the senior person, hey, what's the mission of the company? And they rattle off an answer. And I ask a junior person, what's the mission of the company? And they go, I don't know.

Right. Or you say, hey, how's your interaction with your boss? And the guy goes, I don't even know who my boss is. But you ask the boss and he says, oh, I've got a great relationship with all my people. So we start to figure out what's going on. That's just exploration. Right. So what does this thing do? Exactly. And then once we've assessed it, we figure out what areas they need improvement on. And once we figured out what areas they need improvement on, we go in and we start to

formulate plans and we give them instruction on how to cover these problems and how to overcome these issues that they're facing. - And who's we? Who's your team? - So we've got about 15 people that are our actual consultants, our leadership instructors that go in and work with the companies. Then we've got a bunch of people on the back end that set everything up. But yeah, there's about 15 of us. Some are former military, some are not.

Some are just people that were civilians and worked in civilian companies and they were good leaders and they really liked what we do and they understood the way we teach things and came on board the company. And so, yeah, it's about 15. And how many companies have you worked with approximately? A lot. I mean, you know, on varying scales, hundreds of companies. And, you know, from the actual biggest companies in the world,

all the way down to small startups and little construction companies and energy companies. Just really everyone because... All right, so you're learning a tremendous amount doing that too, eh? Because you get to do an exhaustive audit of all sorts of different complex machines, essentially. Yes. Right, right. And you should get a little bit better at all of them each time you do a new one. Yeah, and...

Leadership is leadership. It really is. And so it doesn't matter if you're working with an oil company, you're out in the field or construction company in the field. These are, you know, hardworking people or a finance company or a tech company. The leadership issues that they have and not only the problems that they have in those companies.

are leadership problems. They're not a process problem. It's not that the people aren't wearing the safety gear. It's that the leadership isn't doing a good job of explaining why that gear is important and how it's going to help them. And it's not that people are pushing up against the regulations in the financial company. It's that the team doesn't understand why those are important and how it impacts them. The leadership is not leading. And so we look at every problem inside of an organization as a leadership problem.

Right, right, right, right. That's the same basic attitude that behavioral psychologists bring to bear in the clinical world is that if you have a client, for example, who isn't progressing,

then that's a psych... it's not like the client has no responsibility, but that's also a failure of leadership. You haven't specified the goal with sufficient clarity, the person isn't properly motivated, or you haven't broken the task down enough so that the steps forward are implementable. Now there's some people, perhaps, perhaps, who are aiming down pretty hard, and it's hard to find the part of them that would

move forward in good faith like i had very few clients that were court mandated that's just a non-starter right because they're not interested in they're not playing the game their game is the court told me forced me to do this right you can't there's nothing there's no leading in that situation or it's very very difficult yeah we'll have most of the companies that we work with are companies that

have reached out to us. They want us to come out. And they're usually doing pretty well. Like they're doing pretty well. They want to do better. It's great. And so when we roll into those companies, their attitude is like, oh, you're here to help us. We have open minds. We're ready to listen. They've had to put their ego in check to reach out to us just for a leader, a CEO of a big company and say, you know what? We need help with leadership. That's a humble move in its own right. Which by the way,

is why that company is doing well. They're doing well because the CEO of the company or the COO of the company says, hey, you know what? The market's shifting. We need to make a move as opposed to,

The market's shifting, but we'll keep doing what we've been doing. Why do you think, given that, and I'm certain that that's correct. Like, I've watched really good managers. I worked with a guy who ran a big law firm and a couple of people who are very good at this, ran big law firms in Toronto, managing partners. And basically what they did was wander around their office and

ask people how things were going, like continually. And they'd see a problem and they just tap something, you know, a tiny bit and fix it. And so everything just went smoothly. But the reason I'm asking this is because the vision of a leader is more drill sergeant, quasi-psychopath who orders people around. But the reality is that in successful companies, the leaders are leaders.

people on a quest who are looking to make something good better. And I guess I don't understand why there's such a huge divorce between the stereotypical portrayal of a leader and the reality. I mean, you see movies about great coaches and so forth, or Ted Lasso was a good example of genuine leadership, but that stereotype still

That stereotype's still pretty powerful, that parody. And it's just not true. It's not true in the fact that it doesn't make for great leaders, but there are without question tyrannical leaders out there. And look, we saw this in the military. I see it in the civilian sector as well. You can...

You can crack the whip. You can crack the whip and you can get promoted and you can make things happen. You know, you can be a leader that is just a complete slave driver, abusive to your people. The higher ups, what do they see? They see the numbers. They see the metrics being met. Hey, good job, Jordan. You're doing a great job. Meanwhile, your whole team is going to quit, may quit, whatever. They're miserable. You don't care. You just want to get promoted. Yeah.

And one of the things that happens in the military is... So that power drive orientation can work, and it can work for some period of time. And I think that's right. That's partly why it's also attractive. It's like if you're a real failure, an ineffectual in all regards, the tyrant looks pretty attractive. And partly because... Maybe it's also partly because if you're that kind of ineffectual failure...

That capacity you have for aggression and force is pathetically underdeveloped. And so that makes the tyrant even more attractive because they have that willingness to grab people by the collar and shake them that it's not like you forego that because you're moral. You've never been able to develop the skill.

But that doesn't mean that that's the highest level of leadership or the optimal level of leadership. Absolutely not. And eventually, like you said, it's short term. Now listen, that short term, in the military, generally speaking, you're in charge of a, you're in command of a unit for like two years. So what happens? You show up at the unit.

You know, everyone's, the new boss is around. Everyone's a little bit, you know, okay, let's see what this guy's like. It takes them six months before they realize like, oh, this guy seems like he's a bit of a tyrant. Right, right. And then six months later, well, you know, you start, we're confirming this guy's a tyrant.

Now, six months later, you're getting ready to go. You're on deployment. Yeah. You hate the guy. He hates you. You're totally dysfunctional. You still do your job and you do it to the best of your ability despite working for this tyrannical leader. So you work so hard and the troops work so hard. They still make this tyrant look good.

They're finally ready to have a mutiny. Yeah. And the deployment's over and the guy's getting promoted because the team did such a great job. Right, right. So they can find, the power mongers can find these short-term niches. Yeah, yeah. That seems exactly right. Which is just sad. Yeah. It's too bad. So let's close this. We'll move over to the Daily Wire side. We've got another half an hour there. And I think we'll talk about your other ventures there. Sure.

and continue speaking about the foundations of entrepreneurial ability. But I'm curious, obviously you're well into the making of this movie. What's in your vision for the future, for the next three or four years? Like you continue to expand outward. Where are you headed and why? Well, obviously we have these little sparks in our brain that come to us that have to be,

and so, you know, writing more books. Yeah? You got another idea for a book? Oh, yeah. I mean, kids' books, obviously. I wrote another... I wrote a novel called Final Spin, which...

which now has been an option to a movie. I did write the screenplay for that one. Oh, yeah. So we've got the director. Has Final Spin been published? Yes, it's been published. I see. Okay, and you wrote the screenplay for that. I did write the screenplay. Oh, that's exciting. So that's another movie project in development. Okay, well, that'll keep you busy. Oddly enough, yeah. Yeah? I don't know how I get myself into all this stuff. That is the question, and that's what you're trying to teach people, too, how to get yourself into all that stuff. Yeah, and you mentioned it earlier. What's awesome about today is, like,

If you have a phone, you can make movies. You can make podcasts. You can write books. You can just do this. You can do it all. And there's just no barrier for entry anymore. And then what it comes up against, there's a lot of stuff out there, right? There's so much...

so much content being produced that how are you going to stand out in it? And I would say, don't worry about standing out in it. I would say make stuff because you want to make it. Right, and make it better and better. And make it hurt a little bit. Like, it's got to have, it's got to,

when you put it out there, it's gotta be something that it's gotta be a sacrifice. It's like a part of blood, you know? Yeah. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta sacrifice a little bit. You know, if you're hiding behind something, no one wants to see what you're hiding behind. Yeah. They want to see, they want to see what's there. Yeah. And so when you, when you, when you put yourself out there, put yourself out there, you know, really be honest and, and tell the truth. And I think that's,

That's a good thing to do. And that's, you know, it's worked for me. You know, the first book I wrote called Extreme Ownership. Right. The opening chapter is about this terrible situation that took place, a fratricide, a friendly fire incident that I was in charge of. Right. And I think that if I would have hidden that or shied away from that, I don't think the book would have landed the same way. So tell the truth.

take responsibility and make things. Yes. Right. Yeah, well, that'll work. That'll work. Like, it'll be a slow start because zero to one is really hard. But truth, responsible truth and effort, that if you're diligent and persistent, you'll get to one. And once you get to one, things get easier. Right? Zero to one's hard. You're first paying customer. Right?

your first hundred people on YouTube. But like you said, if you want to write, you can. If you want to podcast, you can. If you want to edit, you can. All of this is just laying there in front of you. And your point about your goal can't be self-aggrandizement.

It'll just make you self-conscious and miserable anyways. Your goal should be to do the best possible job you can doing that, and to be pulled along by your interest, and to do it truthfully and responsibly. And that'll work. Yeah, yeah, that'll work. So that's worthwhile knowing. And I know that too, you know, and I'm sure this has happened to you, because thousands of people have told me that that's worked for them, right? So, all right, sir. So what are we going to do on the Daily Wire side? Well, I think we're going to continue this

We haven't got to your clothing outfit. I want to hear how that's going and the revitalization of these factories and how you managed to pull that off. So there was the leadership, there was the clothing, and then we talked about the books. There was one other... What was the other... We got food supplements. Yes, right, exactly. Okay, so we'll continue our discussion on the business side, and I think we'll turn to those endeavors, and I want to hear...

to we'll do a reprise of how you set that up to begin with but i also want to know how it's going and especially the revitalization of the manufacturing factories for example in the united states because the last time we talked that was a number of years ago you're just starting that like it was it had some success but okay so everybody on the daily wire side that's what we're going to do uh so join us there for another half an hour and

Thanks very much. It's real good to see you again, Jocko. It's always good to talk to you, man. Yeah, and congratulations on the movie. That's so cool. And on the next screenplay. And those are major league accomplishments and very, very unlikely on top of everything else you're doing. Especially for me. Well, we can also talk about how you...

manage so that you can engage in all those projects simultaneously. That's a very, I think we'll zero in on that because that's so cool that as you distribute responsibility, the opportunity space grows rather than shrinking. It's a good reason to give up that prideful control. So join us on The Daily Wire for that. And thank you to the film crew here today in Paradise Valley. And thanks again, Jocko. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Absolutely.

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