Moment 175: How To Build A ROUTINE You’ll ACTUALLY Stick To!: Navy Seal Jocko Willink

0:00This episode is brought to you by Me Undies. While Me Undies can't totally help your love life this Valentine's Day, they can offer you insanely comfy undies and loungewear to buy or gift. Me Undies has so many awesome Valentine's Day prints and styles. Plus, you can match with your partner, friends, or even your pets. This Valentine's Day, give the gift that'll keep them thinking of you and score huge sight -wide savings at meundies .com slash Spotify. That's meundies .com slash Spotify. Me Undies. Comfort from the outside in. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead.

0:36And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors.

1:11Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett.

1:29For it is this idea of waking up early. Now I'm not someone that wakes up early. I know you know long clock and you're usually up by 11. Well, so no meetings before 11. Okay, so I stay up quite late. What's the best case you could give me for changing that? And do I need to change that? Because what I do is I flew into LA and jet lags and flying back in a couple of days. I'm going to be jet lags when I land as well. So what I'm trying to do is just protect my sleep at all costs because I've come to learn that. It's really the foundation of my performance. So if I'm unslept and I show up at work, the chance that I'm not going to show up correctly in a variety of ways, emotionally, creatively, whatever is high.

2:12And that for me is the greatest risk. So I just, in the last year or two of my life, I've just said, okay. Prior to sleep because then everything else seems to follow. But when I heard that you wake up sometimes at 4 .45 or 4 .30, like pretty much all the time and you, I've literally seen you on social media, upload your alarm clock day after day after day. I go, shit, maybe I should rethink. No, I think if you're, if you've got a system that's working well for you, and then I wouldn't change anything, right? If you feel like you're performing well, you're physically healthy, you're getting all the work done that you need to do.

2:48You're a naturally more of a late night, late morning type person. I'd run with it. It's, if you were telling me, yeah, sometimes I get up, sometimes I don't, sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't, I'm not, don't work out every day. You know, sometimes I feel groggy. If you were telling me that kind of thing, I'd say, okay, pick a time and start waking up at that time every day. It doesn't have to be 4 .40, it could be 8 o 'clock, it could be 7 o 'clock, it doesn't matter. It could be 11 o 'clock, but try and go to bed around the same time, and try and wake up around the same time, and that's going to be a great foundation for everything that you're doing.

3:25And I would say when you wake up in the morning, do some kind of exercise, because I think that is very helpful in getting your day started correctly. What are your non -negotiables in your life? In times of habits, routines, disciplines? I wake up early, and I work out every day. That's kind of my, that's, that's, those are the minimum requirements in my life. Trained Jitsu, I don't get to train, train Jitsu every single day, but if I can train Jitsu, I'm going to train Jitsu. I'm going to work out every day. If I can surf, I'm going to surf, you know. I obviously have to work every day. I work every day doing something.

4:11You know, I've got a bunch of different companies. I've got to write books, podcasts, so I work every day. Are you ever undisciplined? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Chocolate chip cookies. There are, there are a discipline laps for me. Yeah, so yeah. I'm not a cyborg. When people look at someone like you, that's, you know, don't all the things you've done, you've been in a sale, and you've, you've written all these books and started these companies, and actually the drink I'm drinking now is one of your products, which is the, what's that in front of you there? Yeah, it's an energy drink called the girl, cool girl.

4:48Delicious, by the way. Well, thank you. I think my mouth has been connected to my brain during this interview, so I think it's working. I understand there's misconceptions that people have of me, because they assume, it's kind of like the halo effect. We assume because someone's done something well. They do all things well. But there are so many things that I think we'd really liberate people and make them inspired if they could see how deficient I was in so many things in my life. You know, because they just assume that if you've done one thing, well, you have a good podcast, you have a good, you must be like, you know, the perfect picture of what are the big misconceptions, generally, moving away from this idea of imperfection, but just generally about Jocco, because you've, you realize you've become a bit of a character, right?

5:31You know, like Navy Seal that comes with an identity package. Yeah, I think the biggest misconception I think, and it's not just me, but it's really the military in general, is the misconception of this kind of authoritarian, and even authoritarian dictatorship from a leadership perspective. And even when we were having this conversation, I said, I'm going to let, I'm going to let my subordinates plan. And you kind of had a ston look on your face, like, what are you talking about? Why would you let your subordinates plan? And so there's an idea and a misconception that the leader is going to stand up and bark all the orders.

6:12So that's one misconception. Another one is I look like a Neanderthal, and so people are thinking, I'm going to scream and yell at everybody, and I never yell at anybody, you know, my business partner, Lafabin, who's worked with me, who's in my task unit at Seal Team 3, and deployed to Rolotti with me, and we now, we've written a couple books together, we have a business together, and he was like my direct subordinate in Romotti, and during a workup, and, you know, like I'm never yelled at him. And he likes to point out that he gave me plenty of reasons to yell at him, but never yell at him, because what good is that?

6:50And by the way, if I have to yell at somebody, what does that say? That means if I have to yell at you to get my point across as a leader, I've made like 47 other mistakes. My goal is that I don't even have to say anything. That's my goal as a leader. My goal is I don't have to say a word, and you already know what to do, and you make it happen. And I look at you and give you a thumbs up and say, good job. That's my goal. So I think the biggest misconception is the idea of someone in the military or myself being a authoritarian leader, being very close -minded. Like, you know, I got asked a question the other day about, you know, if you were, if you were, if China attacked Taiwan and you were taking troops in there, what would you be focused on?

7:32And I said, I'd be focused on keeping an open mind, because if you have a closed mind about what the mission is, about how it's going to happen, about what your troops are going to do, about what the enemy is going to do, if you have a closed mind about those things, you're going to get caught off guard. You have to have an open mind. You have to be accepting of the information that you're receiving. You have to be accepting of the other ideas that other people have. And if you have a closed mind, you're going to fall apart. Kind of counterintuitive in some ways, because the reason people often think they've been made the leader because they have loads of the correct ideas.

8:09So I think as people often climb in life, they go, well, I've been right so much that they've put me here as CEO. So now I need to defend my righteousness or all costs. Even when I'm not, you know, sure, because that's a weakness. Yeah. And you quoted Steve Jobs earlier. And I think actually it's from your book, which was, I don't hire people so I can tell them what to do. I hire good people so they can tell me what to do. So yes. In a leadership position, you should be listening more than you should be talking.

8:46Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode.

9:21We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors. Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett.