474: Building More United Communities. With Force Recon Marine, Jake Harriman

Summary

Podcast Summary: Jocko Podcast Episode 474 - "Building More United Communities" with Force Recon Marine, Jake Harriman

Release Date: January 22, 2025

Host: Jocko Willink and Echo Charles

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Introduction

In episode 474 of the Jocko Podcast, retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink and Echo Charles engage in a profound conversation with Jake Harriman, a Force Recon Marine Officer and the founder of Nuru International and More Perfect Union. The episode delves into Jake's transformative journey from a Marine Corps officer to a humanitarian leader striving to unify communities both abroad and at home.

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Jake Harriman’s Early Life and Military Beginnings (00:00 - 10:08)

Jake Harriman shares his humble beginnings, growing up in the Wetzel Settlement, a tight-knit farming community in West Virginia. Raised on a mountaintop farm, Jake describes a childhood marked by self-sufficiency and community service, instilled by his parents who emphasized helping others as a moral duty.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (05:23): "Poverty is kind of a mindset. It's a condition of the mind."

Jake's father, a Navy veteran, served as a signalman during the Vietnam War, while his mother was a trained schoolteacher. Despite attending the Naval Academy, Jake initially resisted military life but felt a compelling need to serve, driven by his father's unspoken sacrifices.

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Naval Academy and Early Military Career (10:04 - 28:14)

Jake recounts his journey through the Naval Academy, initially pursuing engineering but ultimately committing to the Marine Corps. Despite failing to secure a Spot in SEAL training (BUD/S) on his first attempt—a humbling experience akin to his friend Leif Babin's experience—Jake persevered and earned his designation as an Infantry Officer.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (13:15): "I tried to learn, I worked my butt off... but I failed to make the cut."

His determination led him to eventually join Force Recon after overcoming significant setbacks and embracing the lessons of humility and resilience taught by his enlisted comrades.

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Deployments and Lessons in Leadership (28:14 - 53:06)

Jake details his deployments, including his first during the USS Cole incident and subsequent involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom. These experiences exposed him to the harsh realities of war and the human cost of conflict, profoundly shaping his leadership philosophy.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (37:20): "Leadership is leadership. A lot of the same lessons apply. It doesn't matter where you are."

A pivotal moment occurred during the Battle of Nasseria, where Jake encountered a fleeing Iraqi father and his family, witnessing firsthand the desperation that fuels extremism. This encounter ignited his commitment to addressing the root causes of violence and poverty.

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Transition to Humanitarian Efforts: Nuru International (53:06 - 89:39)

Driven by his wartime experiences, Jake founded Nuru International with the mission to eradicate extreme poverty in unstable regions, thereby combating violent extremism. His approach combined military discipline with sustainable development, focusing on empowering local leaders and building resilient communities.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (57:01): "We're in the best country in the world. We have to take ownership. We have to lead."

After witnessing the limitations of traditional aid organizations, Jake envisioned a hybrid model that integrated security with economic development. This model proved successful in increasing crop yields and fostering community cohesion, ultimately laying the groundwork for scaling these efforts globally.

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Founding More Perfect Union: Uniting American Communities (89:39 - 135:15)

Returning to the United States in 2020, Jake observed deep political and social divisions exacerbated by societal isolation and economic disparity. Recognizing a parallel between the communities he served abroad and the fractured American society, he launched More Perfect Union (MPU US) to bridge these divides.

Mission and Vision: More Perfect Union aims to unite Americans across political, racial, and socioeconomic spectrums through community-building activities, fostering mutual understanding and collaborative problem-solving.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (101:09): "Prosperity brings peace. It actually creates a really solid front and a barrier to these extremists moving in."

Strategies and Initiatives:

1. Brickyard Centers: Local chapters where veterans facilitate community service projects, social gatherings, and civic engagement programs.
2. Partnerships: Collaborations with organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Goruck to amplify impact and resource sharing.
3. Leadership Training: Equipping veterans with skills to lead community initiatives, emphasizing servant leadership and empowerment.

Jake emphasizes the importance of restoring agency and dignity to individuals, believing that empowered communities are less susceptible to extremist influence.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (118:53): "We’re going to reclaim our own agency. America’s so amazing because we have all these freedoms and rights. But those freedoms and rights come with responsibility and duty."

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Impact and Expansion (135:15 - End)

Since its inception, More Perfect Union has rapidly grown to include over 35,000 members across 31 active Brickyard locations nationwide. Jake highlights successful projects such as rebuilding efforts post-wildfires and election security initiatives, underscoring the organization’s role in fostering national unity and resilience.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (132:10): "Imagine if you can scale that. Right. It doesn't. You don't have to create some crazy program or raise all this money. Just do small acts of kindness will go a long way."

Jake's concluding remarks inspire listeners to take actionable steps in their communities, advocating for personal responsibility and collective effort to mend societal fractures.

• Notable Quote:
  Jake Harriman (130:50): "I challenge you, do something about it. You got to believe again in what America can be."

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Conclusion

Episode 474 of the Jocko Podcast offers a compelling narrative of Jake Harriman’s dedication to leadership, service, and community building. From his experiences in the Marine Corps to his innovative approach in founding More Perfect Union, Jake exemplifies the values of humility, resilience, and proactive leadership. His insights provide a blueprint for individuals seeking to make meaningful contributions toward a more united and prosperous society.

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Key Takeaways:

• Servant Leadership: Leading by example, listening, and valuing every team member.
• Humility and Resilience: Embracing failures as learning opportunities.
• Empowerment: Building local capacity and fostering self-sustaining communities.
• Unity through Action: Bridging divides with tangible community service and collaborative projects.

For More Information:

• More Perfect Union Website: mpu.us
• Jake Harriman’s Social Media:
  • Twitter: @jakempu
  • Instagram: @jake.ryan.harriman
  • LinkedIn: Jake Harriman

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This summary captures the essence of the conversation between Jake Harriman, Jocko Willink, and Echo Charles, highlighting the significant milestones and lessons learned throughout Jake’s journey from military service to leading efforts in unifying communities.

Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

This is Jocko, podcast number 474 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[Echo Charles]

Good evening.

[Jocko Willink]

It is early morning, April 2003. The fog is lifting along Highway 7 in southern Iraq. A small car blazes up the road. Jake Harriman, the platoon commander, fires a warning shot. The driver of the car immediately bolts from it, frantically waving his hands, and starts sprinting towards Herriman's position. Herriman's face and those of his men are as drawn and depleted as the vast rock desert that surrounds them. Taking the man for yet another suicide bomber, they train their sights on him. As they do, another vehicle, a black truck, roars out up weapons shredding the man's car like Sonny Corleone's Lincoln Continental in the Godfather. The man screams and turns back. Herriman orders his men to open fire on the truck. The six Fedayeen members of Saddam's brutal special forces have no chance against the overwhelming American firepower. But it's too late. At the car, the man who is trying to flee across American lines sobs uncontrollably. There's blood everywhere. In the passenger seat, his wife is dead, shot through the head. In the back seat, their six year old daughter bleeds from the stomach. Her baby sister is already dead, a mangled, bloody stump where her arm once was. A few feet from the car, Herriman stops running. The Marine Corps officer and the Iraqi father embrace and begin crying. There are no words. There never will be any words. And that right there is an excerpt from an article written by Robert Strauss for Stanford Magazine. And the article is about a graduate from the Stanford School of Business who, previous to that attended the Naval Academy and was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer. An individual that did four tours, including two combat deployments to Iraq as an infantry platoon commander and Force recon platoon commander. And following his service in the Marine Corps, he created a successful organization, Nuru International, which sought to eradicate extreme poverty in the world's most unstable regions in order to help end violent extremism. And in doing so, he lived overseas in impoverished areas for over a decade while spearheading that organization and eventually turned it over and returned to America, where he's involved in a new project called More Perfect Union, whose goal is to help unify our country. And he's learned a lot of lessons along the way, and it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share his experiences and those lessons learned. Jake Herman, thanks for joining us, man.

[Jake Harriman]

I'm humble, brother. Thanks for the opportunity.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I Guess I'm thinking that the last time you and I saw each other was at Leif Babin's wedding.

[Jake Harriman]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

That's where I met you. That's correct. Last saw you.

[Jake Harriman]

It's a good time, I believe.

[Jocko Willink]

Babin's wedding. So you were. You were. Were you out at that time?

[Jake Harriman]

I was out. I was. I was living in Africa.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

At that time. And I came home for life's wedding.

[Jocko Willink]

Right on, right on. Awesome. All right, well, let's just get some background on you. Where you born and raised, that kind of thing.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, I grew up, little farm, mountaintop in West Virginia. Place called the Wetzel Settlement.

[Jocko Willink]

The Wetzel. So give me some history on that.

[Jake Harriman]

Just all farmers, bro. There was small community, obviously. No zip code, no post office. It was fantastic, though. About 40 families living up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

[Jocko Willink]

And so were your parents farmers.

[Jake Harriman]

So we farmed to live. We grew up in technical poverty. I never say we were poor. I didn't feel like we were poor. We lived off the land, grew all of our own food, hunted for meat. And my mother always told us, hey, look, there's always somebody worse off, you know, worse off situation than we are. And we need. Our job is to help those folks. So we did a lot around the community, kind of bringing folks food, chopping wood for them, make sure they had enough food in the. Or wood in the winter. We try to do a lot in the community like that. And it was really tight knit community. People helped each other. We had folks who helped us as well. And I grew up in this kind of really tight tribe of folks up on this little mountain in West Virginia who by American definitions, were all in poverty. But like I said, poverty is kind of a mindset. It's a condition of the mind. And I think we really worked hard to help one another so that we could have those choices and help our kids grow up. I was one of those kids to grow up and kind of achieve our dreams. And so that was really. It was really a grounding upbringing for me.

[Jocko Willink]

So did your parents have jobs outside of farming?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, so my dad drove a school bus for the. For the county. He also on the side, worked at the local feed store.

[Jocko Willink]

I apologize to all school bus drivers at this time. I was that kid in the back, you know what I mean? Sorry, school bus drivers.

[Jake Harriman]

That was back in the day when corporal punishment was still okay. My dad had a big paddle that he administered the punishment for the kids, like you in the back of the bus. But my dad was awesome. Yeah, he was one of my heroes growing up. He was in the Navy himself.

[Jocko Willink]

What did he do in the navy?

[Jake Harriman]

He was a signalman on the Midway during Vietnam. They were in the Gulf of Tonkin. He was in four years. Didn't really talk about it a lot, but he was really my only connection to the military. But.

[Jocko Willink]

And what'd your mom do?

[Jake Harriman]

My mom was a trained school teacher. She. That's what she went to school for. But once I was born, you know, she became full time mom. I was, I was the oldest of four and brothers or sisters. So one brother, two sisters.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there's good 50, 50 split.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, that two and two.

[Jake Harriman]

It was great. It was great. Yeah. And we had an amazing childhood. Like, you know, lots of woods, fields to play and building forts, having a good time. It was, it was a great, great childhood.

[Jocko Willink]

How big was the school that you went to?

[Jake Harriman]

So we had one school in the whole county in Preston county, and There was about 350 people in my class. Yeah. So it was pretty, pretty sizable. When I first went, went into the school system were a lot of really tiny schools around the country or around the county. But they consolidated everybody into one big.

[Jocko Willink]

School, one big high school. And what were you into in high school?

[Jake Harriman]

Well, when I was growing up, I was a little runt. I was tiny. I got beat up by all the bullies. I was not athletic at the time. I was grown into my body, but I was really fast, so I was able to run away from a lot of those guys. But over time, as I kind of hit adolescence, I really grew. And my dad had been an athlete. He was a three sport letterman kind of growing up.

[Jocko Willink]

Did he grow up in the same hood?

[Jake Harriman]

He did, yeah, yeah, he grew up in the same hood. My dad was kind of a legend, you know, and so I always try to fill his shoes. But by the time I hit high school, I had started growing a lot. And I had a coach that kind of took me under his wing, put me in the weight room and started playing football. Loved it. And that kind of came into my own as an athlete at that time.

[Jocko Willink]

Any other sports besides football?

[Jake Harriman]

I played basketball a little bit, but football was my main sport.

[Jocko Willink]

Any wrestling?

[Jake Harriman]

No, I did not wrestle. My best friend wrestled and he wrestled with me a lot, but that's voluntary.

[Jocko Willink]

Wrestling?

[Jake Harriman]

Yes. Basically beating the crap out of me.

[Jocko Willink]

And what, so you're in the school, what were you like? Maintaining good behavior. Were you getting good grades? Were you, what were you doing?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, so. So because I was a runt and, and I, I was really not athletic growing up. I, I kind of dove into books. I was the little nerd, you know, and if you see pictures of me at that time, it's really awkward.

[Jocko Willink]

Full nerd status.

[Jake Harriman]

Full nerd. Little suspenders, little pot belly glasses, braces, feathered hair parted in the middle. I was. You've seen Napoleon Dynamite? Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

It's pretty much that was me. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

But then when you got in high school, you. Did you grow out of that?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, I grew out of it, but I, I still had a passion for learning, you know, I, I still got pretty good grades.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have some kind of a plan when you're going through, what do you think? In military?

[Jake Harriman]

No, I, I wasn't at all. In fact, I, my, I was pretty good at math and science. Thought I was going to be an engineer. My. My uncle had been on my mom's side, had been an engineer. My, My goal was to become an engineer. That was kind of the path out of poverty in West Virginia. And. But my best friend, actually the one that wrestled, had a dream to go to the Naval Academy. Since he was like six. I didn't even know what it was. He's talking about it all the time. And, you know, we play football together. And he's like, he's like, bro, you got to, you got to do this with me. We got it. We got to sign up together. And so we both applied to the Naval Academy. And I got in, he didn't. Dang. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. Yeah. Yeah. He ended up going to the Coast Guard Academy. Got into that. And, And I, when I got in, it's kind of like the dog that caught the bus. Like, I, I had no idea what I was getting into. And they sent the packet of materials and they're like, yeah, you're going to have to. I found out you got to wear a tie every day and you got to like, you know, you're going to be in the, in the service for six years. I'm like, yeah, I don't think that's for me. And I actually turned it down.

[Jocko Willink]

No kidding.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. I wasn't, I was a real idiot.

[Jocko Willink]

And you know what your dad say about that?

[Jake Harriman]

You know, at first he was not happy, but my dad has always been a pretty gracious guy with me in my decisions, you know, and he's always super dumb. He kind of had the mentality of like, I gotta learn life. I gotta, I gotta like, take my lumps, you know, and he was great. And they, he and My mom were both supportive about it and I think my mom secretly just wanted me to be closer to home. So all my buddies were going to WVU West Virginia University to party. And so goal party. At the time WB was known as like this big party school. And so I, you know how you are in high school. I'm like, we're going to be buddies for life. And you know, I'm going to go with them and do the thing. I go to college and instantly realize I've made a really big mistake. I, I wanted to see the world. You know, growing up in West Virginia in really technical poverty, we never went anywhere, never went on vacation. I'd never been outside of the state. One trip, my grandparents took my brother and I to the beach in Ocean City, Maryland, which was huge for me, but that's it. And so I never, I got kind of the adventure bug. I wanted to see the world. And I also had this kind of growing weird pull that I needed to serve. I had this like crazy pool, kind of Call of Duty or whatever you want to call it, but for my dad and, and he never said anything. But I remember, like we were kids, we'd watch this little black and white tv. The, you remember they used to have parades for the fourth of July, right? So we had this little black and white TV and we'd sit, he'd make us watch these parades and my dad would like tear up, you know, and when I was a kid, I'd be like, you know, he's got something in his eye. What's, what's going on? Because he was a pretty tough guy. I never seen him cry. And over the years I began to realize as I learned more about him, he had really close friends who were Marines in Vietnam that, that he lost. And, and my dad understood the cost of freedom. And, and as, as we, as I began to grow up, I began to feel like, you know, my dad had served. And there were so many things that, opportunities I was experiencing that I realized I could not experience in other countries. And I really felt like I, it was time for me to serve. My mom had been someone who serve other people her whole life and so I really felt like I needed to serve. So once I got to wvu, realized I'm a total idiot, I gotta try to get back in. And I worked my butt off for. It took me a year, almost a year and a half to get back in. But I somehow was able to finagle a nomination from Senator Byrd. I mean, I don't, I just don't take no. Very well, man. I just, like, hustled and tried to, like, you know, weasel my way back in.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have to write a letter explaining. I mean, you had to write a letter explaining why you made this decision before and letters, your mind, interviews.

[Jake Harriman]

I mean, the whole, the whole nine yards. And to this day, I actually. I don't really know why they let me back in, you know, but. But they did, and. And it actually gave me an edge, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, because you've been in the real world, you kind of understood the opportunity that you had.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And you're a little older, little older.

[Jake Harriman]

Than the other guys.

[Jocko Willink]

Those years, going 17, 18, 19. You can. It's possible to gain. Gain some level of maturity. It's also impossible to not. I don't know how much I matured in those years. I was freaking. Just an idiot. Okay. So now you end up getting back into the naval academy, and now you show up for plebe summer. Like, it's on Plebe Summer where I.

[Jake Harriman]

Met folks like Leif.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Jake Harriman]

Donnie Fall. Donnie and I were in the same company, actually. He's been another guest for you.

[Jocko Willink]

Right on.

[Jake Harriman]

And Leif and Donnie and I started playing rugby together. That's when I learned about rugby.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. I was too small for football. I lost insane amounts of weight during plebe summer. You know, I went down to like, 175. And I'd played outside linebacker, quarterback in high school. I was not about to be able to play that in college football, and so I was kind of depressed about it. But I heard about rugby, and some of the guys who, you know, had played a lot of football decided they wanted to go out and try it out. And I had some upperclassmen in my company who were, who were really into. And they were good, and so they kind of invited me out.

[Jocko Willink]

So you went for it.

[Jake Harriman]

Went for it.

[Jocko Willink]

And since you played football, it's kind of.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, it's a lot. A lot of similarities. I. I actually really grew to love the sport. It was really awesome. There's a lot of strategy. Of course. My first week on the pitch, I just got the crap kicked out of me. I got knocked out. I mean, because you don't know how to hit people, you know, without a helmet, uh, you know, when you're coming straight from football. I'd knocked myself out. I, I, you know, I just felt like a fool running around there, not knowing what I was doing. But I just worked my butt off and, and really worked at it and had a little Bit of natural talent and coach started kind of noticing and, and Don and I were able to make the travel squad, you know, when we were plebes, which was a lifesaver.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

It got us out of a bunch of the stupid, stupid shenanigans you have as a, as a freshman at the academy.

[Jocko Willink]

How was the shock to your system showing up for plebe summer? Was it? Did you like instantly regret this horrible decision you made or were you like, oh, this is what I signed up for as an opportunity?

[Jake Harriman]

Definitely not what I signed up for. I, I, I knew nothing about the military, so my dad, like I said, my dad had been in. I knew nothing about it, though. He never talked about it. They send you this little book to prepare. It's called Reef Points. And it's got all the stuff that you're supposed to memorize before you go. I mean, it's a book. And every other kid, like Don, my buddy, he had memorized the entire thing front to back and nerd. Yeah, yeah. So when you show up, that's what they do. They quiz you on this stuff, you know, I mean, stupid stuff like weapons 4 daft on an Arleigh Burke destroyer, whatever it is. And I didn't, I basically got the book. I'm like, I'm actually working a job this summer. I don't have time for this stuff. So I just threw it in the trash. So I show up and it's like I'm getting blasted every day, you know, and they were trying to weed me out because they felt like, this guy's a complete gorilla. He's an idiot, he doesn't know anything.

[Jocko Willink]

Doesn't really want to be here if.

[Jake Harriman]

You didn't, doesn't want to be here. Didn't put any effort in. And so my, my classmates were getting, you know, they call it getting raided, you know, ask these questions. They knew everything. They would just focus on me. I did a lot of push ups that summer. A lot, a lot of extra burpees. But it made me strong. And I also was not going to quit. I knew for a fact, like I said, I had a little bit of an edge. The other guys, a lot of the kids didn't know if they really wanted this or not. I didn't have any other choice. You know, I'd been in the other side, we didn't have money.

[Jocko Willink]

I got nothing else.

[Jake Harriman]

I got nothing else. Yes. I mean, that's what it was like, man. And I knew, like, I had to make this work, you know, So I was really determined.

[Jocko Willink]

So What'd you major in? When do you pick your major at the Naval Academy?

[Jake Harriman]

I mean, you go in kind of having a general idea most.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have a general idea, what you wanted? Engineering.

[Jake Harriman]

I had studied engineering at wvu, so it was just natural to kind of want to do the same thing. But when I got to the academy, everybody kind of takes courses that lead toward engineering. It's kind of weird. Even if you study political science, you get a bachelor in science degree, political science, which is weird. And everybody's got to take engineering courses. So I decided to take this course, this path called Systems Engineering, which sounded kind of cool. It was different to me, but it was the hardest major at the school. So quickly, again, realized another dumb decision. But the good thing for me was I'd already taken classes at wvu. And my kind of secret weapon was, you know, when you transfer. There is no transfer when you go to the Naval Academy. It's not like you go two years at wvu. They need you. Two years at the Academy, you got to start over. And you're supposed to be able to test out of some of those classes. But what they do is, it's plebes. They take you into these testing rooms and they turn the lights down a little bit. It's warm, no one's yelling at you. So what does everybody do? The proctors leave the room. You just put your head down and go to sleep. And I just slept through all those tests. So I think I tested out like one course, you know, so I kind of had a little bit of a leg up because I'd taken a lot of the courses before, felt pretty strong about it. So the first couple years weren't that bad.

[Jocko Willink]

And then at what point did you start looking at like, okay, I'm going to this college. I'm going to be in the freaking military for six years. What are the job options? At what point did you start thinking about that?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, so I went in thinking I was going to be a Top Gun pilot. I. I was. It's as. It's the most cheesy possible thing you can imagine, right? Saw the movie, thought it was cool. That's what I'm going to do. Right. When I get in, though, they're like, your. Your eyes aren't good. You've got like. I think I had 20, 40, 20, 50, something like that. You know, I was never going to be able to be a pilot. So then I have no idea now what I want to do. So I'm looking around and there was a. There was a SEAL who was a company officer there. And I thought, you know, I was super competitive, and I thought, you know, well, this guy seems like a badass. Like, I want to try to, like, do what he does. I didn't know anything about the seals. I. Other than, you know, the movie stuff. And I tried to learn more about it, and over time, I'm like, that's what I want. And as a competitive, I was really competitive. And I never, you know, growing up a little rural community, I never really, quote, unquote, failed at anything I'd tried for. I was always able to achieve what I wanted to achieve. And I thought we had 15 billets, 15 spots for seal candidates to come out and go to Buds. And I think there were like, 250, 300 guys that wanted those in my class, out of a class of about 9:50, something like that. And so I was like, I'm going to work my ass off. I'm going to get this. And I went for it. And I failed. You know, I did everything possible, worked. I got up super early, you know, did all the workouts, did all the interviews, made the relationships. And I remember our senior year, you go home for Thanksgiving, and they told all of us that we're going for. For a Bud slot. They were like, okay, guys, we're down to about 20 guys. And you go home. When you come back, we're gonna call everybody while you're home, and we're gonna let you know if you made the cut for the last 15. And I thought I had it locked up. And I go home and I got the phone call, and they're like, hey, look, we're really sorry you didn't make the cut, and I didn't unders. It's like it almost didn't register. I'm like, wait, what? And I didn't make the cut. And I'll tell you what, it's. It's probably the best thing that. That ever happened to me at that. Up to that point in my life, I was really humbled. And that was my first big lesson in humility, which was a gift. It was a gift from God, man, because it really helped me a lot.

[Jocko Willink]

Leif Babin didn't make the cut either.

[Jake Harriman]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

Because you. You guys are the same year group, right?

[Jake Harriman]

We were roommates.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Jake Harriman]

Both going for it.

[Jocko Willink]

He says the same thing, surprisingly enough. And he didn't go in the Marine Corps. He went to the fleet.

[Jake Harriman]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you talk to him about it, he was. He learned so much in the fleet. And it was humbling. And he learned like, how awesome an opportunity if he gets to go to buds. Like, it's such an awesome opportunity. So he, he is very appreciative of the few years he spent on, on, on the ships after not getting selected. I forget if he told me this or not, but did guys that got selected when you didn't, did any of them quit? I think he told me there's like.

[Jake Harriman]

A, who dropped out.

[Jocko Willink]

A couple quitters from buds. Yeah, like guys that they put.

[Jake Harriman]

There might have been one or two. I, I remember hearing about a couple guys.

[Jocko Willink]

But the Naval Academy, generally speaking, does well because they're so freaking down selected and trained.

[Jake Harriman]

And there's a couple guys in my, in, in the, in that class who were, who ended up being rock stars. I mean, they crushed it. They ended up over Dev group.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there's, there's a bunch of studs in that year group for sure. All right, so now do you get. Did you fill out your, like, because you, you pick what you want to do. Did you have buds? Number one.

[Jake Harriman]

Buds number one.

[Jocko Willink]

And then number two, you had Marine Corps.

[Jake Harriman]

Marine Corps.

[Jocko Willink]

I heard that was a big no, no. Like, I heard that if the Marine Marines look at you like, oh, you want to be a seal? You don't want to be cool? See you later.

[Jake Harriman]

It is a big no. No, you're exactly correct. And I got a lot of, a lot of about that. But my philosophy was like, I, I don't want to mess around here if I'm going to do this. And, and look, none of us knew anything about combat then, but I'm like, you know, if I'm going to do this, I want to be on the front lines. I want to be making a difference. And if I can't do it, a buds, you know, the Marines are, are in my mind at the time, hey, that's the next best thing. I didn't want to, I didn't want to be on a sub. I didn't want to be on a ship. You know, I wanted to, to focus on being a ground pounder, kind of hooking and jabbing. And after I didn't make the cut for buds, that was also the beginning of my education about the culture and legacy of the Marine Corps. And I became so enamored with the Marine Corps, I began to feel very lucky that I had been picked to be a Marine. And to this day, if I was them, I probably would not have picked me because of my attitude. After I didn't make the cut for buds and thank God they did. And one of the guys there, one of the other company officers was a recon officer, was a force, former Force recon. And I didn't know anything about what that was. I mean, because they, you know, Marines didn't talk about it at the time or whatever. And you know, Marines, Marine, and, and. But he kind of took me under his wing at that point. It was kind of helping me learn a lot about the Marine Corps and I just really got excited about it and he helped me train and, and I really learned a lot more and he started telling me more about the recon community.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you, when you get Marine Corps, when you get selected for Marine Corps at the Naval Academy, you don't know what job you're going to get. Right. Like you're not going to get that. So you could be anything.

[Jake Harriman]

You go Marine ground or Marine air.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

So if you're Marine ground, if you're Marine ground, I mean there are tons of moss. You can end up like a supply guy, you could end up a finance guy. Infantry and intel, artillery, tank, you know, all kind of tracks.

[Jocko Willink]

So you only know coming out of the Naval Academy and you, you're going to go to the basic school is your next stop.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you go to the basic school, you only know you're either going to be air or ground.

[Jake Harriman]

Yep. It's going to be air ground. And that's all you know. And in fact. And you have air and ground guys together going through the basic school. Every. The philosophy of the Marine Corps is every Marine Corps officer is trained to be a rifleman, just like every Marine is.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Jake Harriman]

Whether you're in the cockpit or, or on the ground. And that really helps us later on down the road, obviously, relationships. And I'm calling Cass. I know, I know a lot of the guys in the cockpit. Right. So. But that's the philosophy.

[Jocko Willink]

So you show up to basic school. How's the basic school for you coming out of the Naval Academy? It's not a shock to your system because you're used to all this crap.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, I kind of, I enjoyed it. It was six months. I learned a lot. I had a really good crew and it was Echo company, actually. Tribute to you. And we had, we had a really good, tight knit group of folks that I went through with. I really enjoyed it, learned a lot. But I was, I was pretty stressed and nervous about selection for the different Moss mos. Selection because I don't know if you know much about how they do it.

[Jocko Willink]

I do, yeah. They break the class up in thirds.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Number one guy gets the first pick, but then the number one guy of the second tier.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

The second third gets the second pick and then the number one guy of the third. And they do that so that they can balance out. So not, you know, the. The Marine Corps gets an equal distribution of the quality of people coming in. If you're going to base the quad L, you can't base the quality of a human being on how well they performed at the basic school, but it is a level of judgment that they're making, and so that's what they do. And so you're free. A little bit nervous because if you graduate, you know, I don't know what you'd have to graduate, but you could be pretty low.

[Jake Harriman]

You could be last in the top third.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Jake Harriman]

You know, top third of the class and get like your worst. Your last mos that you pick. I mean, that's. It was scary, man. Yeah. So I worked really, really hard because I wanted to make sure I was at the top because I wanted to go infantry. You know, I found. I thought that was my calling. I. I really felt drawn to the other infantry officers that were there who were kind of our. Our cadre, the guy that was at the Naval Academy. Same thing. And I really wanted to. And you can't go, you can't go Force recon unless you go through the infantry, at least at the time. You could also go ground intel at the time, but. But it was mostly infantry guys.

[Jocko Willink]

And this is still like 1999. There's no war going on, so it's all peacetime, 90s activities going on. Any challenges at the basics school for you? Anything hard for you?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, I mean, there were lots of things that I. There's always suck fest. Right. And, you know, whether it doesn't matter what level of school you go to, you know, whether it's the hard stuff, the soft schools, or whether it's the basic schools that everybody goes through. There's always moments where you're kind of like this. Just. You really hate it. And there's a little bit of the bureaucracy of the Marine Corps that kind of seeps into some of the schools where you're kind of like, you start to get a taste for, you know, some of the all services struggle with that.

[Jocko Willink]

Right.

[Jake Harriman]

And it's not really a meritocracy, you know, and. And sometimes some of the knuckleheads get through and you're just like, how did that even happen? And so, yeah, there was, there were some There were some bad moments, but for. For the most part, I really enjoyed it. I. I most enjoyed, though, infantry officers course. Which came next?

[Jocko Willink]

Where'd you graduate? What number did you graduate from? The basic school.

[Jake Harriman]

I was the honor grad.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so you were number one. So you got your number one pick, which was Infantry. And. Infantry.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And so then you go to the infantry officer course.

[Jake Harriman]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And that's a epic course.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, I loved it, man. I loved it. It was one of my favorite courses I ever went to. It was. It was 12 or 13 weeks, and I remember thinking, becoming super comfortable at night, you know, they. They worked well.

[Jocko Willink]

You guys were not on nods, I'm assuming.

[Jake Harriman]

Not on nods. We did.

[Jocko Willink]

We did 90s, bro. No nod.

[Jake Harriman]

90S, no non 90s. And no. No GPS. Yeah, all Compass and map, you know, and so we really. They really drilled it into us. We got really good at night moving, you know, long distances at night, being really comfortable with the terrain, comfortable with, you know, nav.

[Jocko Willink]

And.

[Jake Harriman]

And also just every possible weapon system that we, you know, in the Marine Corps inventory. So it was a. It was a good time. I got really tight with my buddies, and it was a tough course. It was. It was a really physically demanding course. And where was it?

[Jocko Willink]

Is it. Is it.

[Jake Harriman]

It's in Quantico. It's in Quantico. My. The. The kind of. One of the penultimate moments is what they called the room of pain. It was like the.

[Jocko Willink]

I like it already.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, you would. You would love it. You would love it. It's this kind of exercise. You got a fire team go in, and you've got all these insane threat, you know, you got different members being thrashed different ways. You got one guy in the ring, and you got a fresh instructor in there beating the shit out of the guy in the ring, right? We've been exhausted, you know, days without sleep, and we're in the ring and this guy's just being the shit out of you while the other guys are getting hazed. And then you just. You rotate. You got one team leader who's on. On a. On a treadmill or bike who's calling the switches, and he's watching his team of when they just can't take it. And the guy in the ring is just kidding. Like, he's about. And I remember that was. That was a tough moment, you know, I think I passed out in one. At one point. Everyone was just getting beat up. It was good. It was a really good exercise, you know, and that was the first time, like, okay, this is good shit. This is what we went through to actually get. Make the final kind of exercise. And then the final exercise was Live Fire X, where we kind of put everything together, all the tools that we developed over the 12 weeks.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. I always say the Marine Corps freaking outstanding. My kids always. Every time, they always go, we know, dad. The Marine Corps is freaking outstanding. I went to a Marine Corps boot camp graduation the other day, and it's just like, you know, I'm sitting there just thinking to myself, the Marine Corps is freaking outstanding. But one of the re. You know, that's kind of my own belief. But one of the things that really shored that up a lot was I had James Webb on the podcast, and he was talking about, you know, he's like, graduated from the Naval academy, went to the basic school, went to officer infantry course, had seven days of leave or something. Flew to Vietnam.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Got put out in the field. Like, they pointed at a ridgeline. They're like, hey, that's your platoon up there. He walks up to that ridgeline, and, you know, the sergeant that's running it, because their other platoon commander had been wounded or killed, and he was not there, they said, yep, I've been running it. You got it now, sir. And that night, they get into a massive, like, firefight. He's calling. Calling for fire and cast and everything else. And I said, oh, did you feel prepared? And he was like, yes. And that's. That's just awesome. Like, to have a. A school that. That you can go to that can prepare you day one to be ready to lead troops in combat like that.

[Jake Harriman]

I feel confident coming out of there.

[Jocko Willink]

Pretty awesome.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So you get done with that. What's. And then. And then what's next? You get. You get assigned to a battalion.

[Jake Harriman]

I got assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines based out of Camp Pendleton.

[Jocko Willink]

Check.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. And it was incredible unit. Love the guys. I learned so much from my Marines there. You know, you check in, you know, boot second lieutenant, thinking, you know, everything, and instantly got humbled. I think. I think I, as a leader, my whole adult life has been about leadership, which basically means I've made every possible mistake out there.

[Jocko Willink]

Welcome to the club.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. And. And I think my time as a young second lieutenant, I luckily, I had a really good section leader who was. Who helped me grow. The staff sergeant, he taught me a lot. And I. I went there full of piss and vinegar. I'll never forget. I really wanted to go to Force Recon. That was my goal. That was my target. And, you know, I'D heard a lot of, kind of about the legends of these guys. And I thought that's where I want to end up. But you just don't go there. You know, the way it works in the Marine Corps is you got to kind of earn your stripes, you build a reputation, you do well, and then you get invited to selection even to try out, right? Well, I didn't want to, I didn't want to wait. So I remember I show up, I show up to three. One, I check in my unit, I've got like a week or two with my guys and I found a gear list for a force recon selection that was going to be happening the next week. And I remember thinking, I'm just going to go over there and show them that I'm ready. I mean, I'm embarrassed even saying this. So I pulled together the kit and I've been training, I've been, you know, working my ass off, like working out, you know, what I thought the selection would be. And I took leave and I went over and I Show up at 4am at the pull up bars and it's just chaos. There's like 30, it's dark, there's 30 guys there, 30 other guys that we've all got our 50 pound rucks and the gunnies are just screaming and, and no one's checking IDs or anything. And so I just start taking the selection and about halfway through the day I get in, we get into pool phase. I'm dying, by the way. I'm literally dying. I'm flopping around, you know, just embarrassing myself in every event. We get into the pool phase and finally the, the, the captain running the selection, looking into the pool and, and I'm drowning. And he looks over the gun and he's like, hey, who's the, who the hell is that guy drowning in the pool? Gun. He looks at those lists and he's looking through stuff, he's like, I don't know who that is, sir. Rando, Rando, get that guy out of the pool. So, so they yank me out, pull me over to the captain, he, and he starts dressing me down. Who are you? I said, well sir, I'm a second lieutenant. So he's like, second lieutenant, like what the hell are you doing here? Like, well sir, I just, I just really want to be here. I really wanted to take selection. They all just started laughing. And I'll never forget he looked at me, said, listen kid, go back to your unit. Come back over here when you got some hair on your balls. Right. And I was just mortified. I was embarrassed, you know, I, my hands were bloodied from like, we had to do like, you know, double triple O course stuff sliding down the rope because I couldn't hold on to it. You know, I was just completely beat up going back to my unit. That was my second really big humbling moment where I'm like, I am not a badass. I am not super tough. I gotta, I gotta earn this, you know. And I remember just coming back to my unit and beginning to develop a new appreciation for the fire team leaders and the squad leaders that I worked with, the section leaders that I worked with, who they're the real heart of the Corps, you know. And I began to learn a lot about that.

[Jocko Willink]

I did a couple ARC deployments out here on the west coast when I was a young seal. And so we, you know, we like did the whole workup package with the Marine Corps with Force Recon and I had a bunch of good friends with from Force Recon and they eventually became. What was it? That one. And so I saw like those guys, it was kind of, it was kind of awesome. But yeah, we, that, that's one of the reasons why I was held the Marine Corps in such high regard because I worked so closely with them and just had kick ass time with those guys. So you end up doing your workup with. What was it? Did you say three one. So you end up doing your workup with three, one. And then any, any challenges during the workup?

[Jake Harriman]

Oh yeah, every day. Every day was a challenge. I mean trying, trying to understand. So I, I learned the most about leadership, I think from my infantry unit in the beginning about servant leadership. I've, I've become super passionate about servant leadership. I think it's the most powerful form of leadership out there. And I learned most about that while I was in the infantry. And I learned from the, the, the corporals and you know, the sergeants that worked with me and they taught me a lot about, you know, just basics, leading from the front, leading with authenticity, being humble, being able to, you know, listen well. And just cause you're wearing the bars doesn't mean you know everything, you know, and, and I mean basic stuff that.

[Jocko Willink]

We know that's a real indicator that you might, might not know anything.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, cake eaters, right? Yeah, we are. Yeah. I developed a really deep appreciation for the enlisted men that I got a chance, the fortune to work with. They taught me a lot. And those guys, and then the guys at the unit over force, they made me the leader I am today.

[Jocko Willink]

And then you did some landings at Red Beach, I'm assuming.

[Jake Harriman]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had lots of, lots of time on Red Beach. It was, it was good to go, man. Right on.

[Jocko Willink]

And how was that? So where'd you go on deployment?

[Jake Harriman]

So first one we did did a westpac.

[Jocko Willink]

And what ship were you on?

[Jake Harriman]

Gosh, I don't. I was on the Taro at one time. Bellawood. Yeah. So, yeah, they're the ship. Time was not my favorite time for, For a lot of reasons. But. But yeah, we. We did a westpac. That, that first one was when the coal got hit. USS Cole.

[Jocko Willink]

Y.

[Jake Harriman]

And that was the first time I had experienced anything close to, you know, combat. You know, I remember those, the sailors that lost their lives in that attack. The coal had been ruptured and it was in danger of sinking, so we were running security patrols around the coal because there were little, little dinghies that were trying to do a re. Attack to sink the coal. So we were trying to keep them at bay. But I remember those guys that lost their lives carrying that they were carrying the body bags out and just thinking this, having a sobering moment of like, you know, well, this is, this is war. This is not, you know, everything that you think you're prepared for, you're not really prepared for, you know, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

[Jocko Willink]

So you get done with that deployment, come home, and it's right into another workup or what happened next.

[Jake Harriman]

Another workup? Yeah, we get home and usually you have about a, I don't know, four weeks, three to four week time where everybody goes on leave. You know, you got Marines who've been there forever transitioning out to another. Another unit. They go to their, their schools, phase, whatever it might be. And then you get the new guys and you retrain. Yeah. And then you have an official. You get locked onto another mu. You do another workup, then you deploy again.

[Jocko Willink]

By the way, that's the same. At least it. It can vary, but that's very much what the SEAL teams did. And it's because we used to be tied to the big Navy, just like the Marine Corps tied to big Navy. So, like when I was doing those arc platoons and I did a strike platoon onboard aircraft carrier, like you're just in their cycle. So that's why we would. We've done the same type of deployments as, as the Marine Corps for a long time, as opposed to the army that was doing, you know, in the height of the war, was doing 14 and 16 month long deployments and the SEAL teams and the Marine Corps, like, yeah, we're doing six months and then.

[Jake Harriman]

Go back, but okay, yeah, so we did. So then we did another one, the second one. On the second one. It was after 9, so 911 had happened.

[Jocko Willink]

Where were you when 911 happened?

[Jake Harriman]

I was training out at 29 Palms with my guys and we were actually running convoy.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your position now? What was your job because you got done with your platoon commander tour as an infantry guy?

[Jake Harriman]

Well, at that time when 911 happened, I was still a platoon commander. Okay. I was 81 millimeter more platoon.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it.

[Jake Harriman]

And so we were on a convoy operations, doing immediate action drills out in the desert. And I remember we were in convoy and a couple trucks back. There was a lot. One of the kids had a radio, PFC had a radio. And I thought he was like listening to, I don't know, whatever the, Whatever the, The low. The. The latest fad was of artists. But I was pissed. So I stopped the convoy and I went back to like confiscate the radio. And the kid was listening to the news and they were all. All their faces were like white, you know, And I was like, what's going on, guys? What's happening? And so I started listening and we were listening in real time. It's like as, as, you know, the planes were hitting, hitting the skyscrapers and I, right after that, I got a call on the radio saying, hey, base is locked down. Get you guys back tech orders immediately. We, of course, we didn't know it was going to happen at the time. We thought we were going to war immediately and all this kind of stuff, but of course that didn't happen. For some folks it did, but we were in the stack for, for much later. So we went back, continued training. You know, the world kicked off. We continued training. We then did a deployment. We were deployed. We were doing. We helped stand up, you know, Camp Lemonier at CJTF hoa.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jake Harriman]

In Djibouti.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Jake Harriman]

So we, yeah, that's not a fun place to be, by the way. So we, we did a little. Helped stand up. That basically base. We're training for some counter.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you deploy on a ship over.

[Jake Harriman]

There or you guys okay, pulling a ship over there? There was some activity there in Yemen at the time. We were looking to do some operations and so we helped stand all that stuff up. And then after we were finished there, we did a couple other things and then we were transitioning home again. So I'M thinking, okay, after this time. You know, Afghanistan had been going for a little while at this point. People have been talking about Iraq, but it's just been a lot of talk. Nobody thought we were actually going to invade. And we get our guys home and everything off the ships, which, you know, is a huge ordeal just getting all that stuff done right. And I remember moving into my new apartment that I was renting, you know.

[Jocko Willink]

Some up in Oceanside somewhere.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, that's exactly right.

[Jocko Willink]

Should have bought that thing because it's worth freaking 3 million.

[Jake Harriman]

Oh, my gosh. I can tell you it was not worth $3 million at the time. But, yeah, just. Just moved in and my XO called. Battalion XO calls me back in after about a week after we got home. He's like, hey, I hate to tell you this, but get all you guys. We gotta get back on the ships. And I'm like, what do you mean we're getting back on the ships? Said, you know, we're the most. At this point, we had. We were the most senior infantry battalion in the Marine Corps because we had just gotten back.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Jake Harriman]

So nobody left the unit yet, and. And guys had just started going to leave, so we had to recall everybody getting briefed on the war plan kind of in real time. And then they were waiting for us. So everybody was up on the. Up on the line in Kuwait, up on the border there on the berm. And they had left a spot. Rct1 left a spot for us to move us up there.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn.

[Jake Harriman]

And. And that was. I just remember. I can't believe this happening, because I was so angry. I'm like, we're not going to. And no one's. We're not going to invade Iraq. This is another drill. They're yanking these guys out from their families. I didn't have a family. I was like, okay, whatever. But they had families. And over there. And I remember we're sitting on the berm, you know, dug in. Of course, we're digging fighting holes. And we're dug in. And we're in MOP4, running drills in MOP4, you know, over and over and over again. And I'm just getting more and more pissed. I mean, how long is it going to be before they pull us off the line? And then one day we hear this brevity code over the radio. Lightning, Lightning, Lightning. And that's the call for incoming Scud missiles. And I'm thinking, oh, that's an odd drill. We haven't run that one recently. So I'm like, hey, guys. You know, I'm like, yelling at them to grab their. Their. Their gas mask, to don the gas mask. And then I start hearing stuff and whistling out in the sky. I look up, man, no shit. Scuds flying overhead and a couple of them blowing up, you know, pretty far behind us. But we're diving in our holes, grabbing our stuff, and the company commander is freaking out. He's running down the line, yelling at us to get in our trucks. Said, hey, the President just said, go get in your trucks right now. So we. Everybody scrambling to get their gear, getting in the trucks, and I ran down the line to our sister company, and a buddy of mine who was in my class at the Naval Academy, was a platoon commander over there, and. And I looked at him, and we traded letters. You know, you write these letters to your. Your family, you know, just in case, you know, gave each other a big hug, man. I was like. I was like, man, I don't know if we're gonna see this guy again and go back over. And. And I remember they got back in the trucks, waited a couple hours, then they blew the berm. You know, we're waiting for nightfall. Blew the berm, went through the berm. Tomahawk missiles flying over our head.

[Jocko Willink]

So Norse, even. Even, like the day of, you didn't think it was really gonna go down.

[Jake Harriman]

Not until it actually happened, Jack. Yeah. And General Mattis had come and given this amazing talk to our NCOs, which was. I mean, that guy's a legend. I don't know if you've ever met him, but he's incredible. And he gave this really inspiring talk to the NCOs, and I'm like, wow. You know, it'd be really amazing if something was actually going to happen, because, you know, these guys are ready. I'm just super cynical and jaded, you know, which is just a terrible attitude. But, yeah, man, that. It kicked off, and. And we went through the breach, and.

[Jocko Willink]

Then you guys are rolling up, and. And how's that?

[Jake Harriman]

So it was spotty, you know, as I'm sure you've heard, in the early days of the war. So RCT1's job is to go straight up the guy, through Southern Iraq. And RCT5 was supposed to take the oil fields, the Ramali oil fields. You had the seals in Basra. There's a force element in Basra as well, doing some stuff. And of course, the army, their job was to seize the airfield, the Baghdad airport. And so we're moving through southern Iraq, and I remember thinking southern Iraq at the time was a really, really poor place. It was desperately poor. You could see it all around you. There was a terrible food problem. We found out later that it was a real hunger problem. And what we encountered later was that Saddam, the regular Iraqi army, they were kind of retreating a lot as we would advance to kind of make a final stand in Baghdad. But Saddam had been pushing his Fedayeen guys, these Special Forces guys, were his Special Forces south into these villages and coercing these poor farmers to fight us. You know, they would drop off food, you know, threaten them, coerce them, you know, have them pick up weapons. These guys didn't even know how to use these weapons, right? And we were fighting these farmers by the hundreds of thousands in a lot of these early engagements because we were just rolling through cities, you know, as we. As we moved through the south, the first major contact was Nasseria. The Battle of Nazarea. Task Force Tara was right in front of us. They got hit hard. People calling him medevac stuff. And our job was to move in, to provide them relief and secure the corridor for the entire division to go through. So we had to fight the guys back. The intel had said that it was basically that the city had been surrendered. Well, the intel was bad, that they were there waiting for us. And I remember there were a bunch of, you know, guys there with the white flags, you know, saying they. They were surrendering. But when Task Force Taro rolled up, they pulled out weapons and mowed a lot of those guys down. And that was the first. That was the first real engagement. And I remember we had to. We had to secure the corridor and then fight through the city. And then we set up a defensive perimeter north of the city where we had to dig in because we were low on ammo. We. We're going on no sleep and low on food and supply chains. Were. We're having trouble keeping up.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you guys have to lock down, like, a route through Nazaria?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, so we had. We basically had to fight them back to lock in this corridor so that.

[Jocko Willink]

The supply route could.

[Jake Harriman]

Well, it wasn't just. It wasn't even the supply. It was actually the. The combat units moving through the city. We had to secure the corridor. Um, and so that was our. That was our prime mission in the beginning. And then after the main element was able to move through and set a position, then we would move through and we moved through the north, and that's when we dug in to wait. And once we were dug in, I remember that's when this kind of event happened that you opened up with. And the guy whose family was slaughtered by the Fedein, he was one of these farmers who was. They were starving, but he didn't want to fight us. He was trying to escape across our lines to safety. And that was one of the most powerful moments of my life. That event changed the entire trajectory of my life. And it took me a while to get into the new type of work that I was going to be doing eventually, but it opened my eyes to this connection between the desperation and lack of choices that people around the world and other countries have. I mean, we have so many choices in this country. We have so many freedoms that we take. I took for granted. And encountering folks like this farmer and his family who just got slaughtered, they had no choices. This guy, he couldn't even feed his family, you know, I mean, I. I have so many choices about where I want my kids to grow up, what I want them to eat. This guy had nothing, you know, and when I stood there with him in that moment, it was an incredibly human moment. And up to that point in the war, it was just kind of like training and execution. You know, we'd been trained for this. We were just executing, executing, executing. I wasn't really thinking a lot other than just thinking on the. And shooting and moving on the battlefield. But in this moment, I. For whatever reason, it's like my eyes. The scales drop from my eyes, and I. I could see this man for the first time, and I put myself in his shoes and I thought, man, this isn't fair. You know, it's not fair that the GPS coordinates of a person's birthplace dictate what choices they have in this world and the freedoms that we enjoy here. Every human being should be able to enjoy those freedoms and those choices. And I just felt like in that moment, God gave me this awakening, and I wanted to dedicate my life so that I could try to ensure I never saw that look of absolute hopelessness in another human being's eyes again. Like, I saw that man that day. My heart broke for him. And. And, you know, we all do things in combat, we all remember things. And I had did a lot of things after that, a lot of things before that, but for whatever moment, reason, that moment, God seared that in my mind. And for years after, I would see his eyes every time I closed my eyes at night to go to sleep. You know, it was like this. This. This thing that burned inside of me that would not go away. And that's what drove me eventually to. To. To do other things. But.

[Jocko Willink]

And yet, like, three minutes later, you probably had to get back in your vehicle, man the line, and start checking stuff, and you got to kind of carry on.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you think about it? Did it hit you in that moment, that profound. In that. That moment?

[Jake Harriman]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

Or did you have to look back.

[Jake Harriman]

And go, you know, well, I. I'll tell you what. There. There was. There was probably. I don't know how long it was. It felt like forever. It was probably realistically, like, 45 seconds, 50, you know, minutes or something like that where I felt this deep human connection with this guy, and I started having all this, like, emotions coming out, and I'm like, okay, I got to shut this off now, you know, because I. I mean, all of my guys are back. I knew that they were waiting for the sun to come up to start shooting at us again. And it wasn't those six guys. There was a lot of guys behind them. So I just switched that off, got him and his daughter back to. Through our lines, and I actually found out later they evacuated her back and she made it. I found that out, actually.

[Jocko Willink]

Long able to track her down.

[Jake Harriman]

I've never been able to find her or him, for that matter. But, yeah, I mean, I continued to push, and we continued to take the fight to them all the way to Baghdad. Baghdad fell, as you know, and they then pulled us off the front lines, you know, mission accomplished. We thought the war. The war was over and pulled us off the front lines, and we did a relief in place. We were in Diwani waiting for retrograde, and then they. They sent us back. And on my way back home after that kind of initial phase in the war, I got the call to come take selection at Force, which was like, I. I just couldn't believe it, you know, And I'm like, I finally made it. And I kind of forgot about that moment temporarily, you know, but that moment would resurface later on when I was in combat with my guys at Force, kind of over and over again in different encounters we had.

[Jocko Willink]

I don't. I don't know if I. I have, like. Well, I. I was just thinking, like, what moments do I have it. I remember this one. We. It was like the first we did an op in Fallujah, and this was in 2003. We rolled into Fallujah. We were going to. There was a bad guy in some. It was like a hotel. It was a hotel, actually, not like a hotel. It was a hotel using this thing. And so we Rolled in there at night and boom. And there's like wounded people, wounded people on the Breach. There's like blood everywhere and smoke everywhere, and it's just chaos. And we end up. We just take all military age males off target and. And we get them back to. We actually get them back to. I think it was Camp Fallujah where the marines were and. Or might have even been. Actually, I think it was an army unit at the time because they had BRADs. Anyways, when we got back there, so we now, I think we pulled like 10, 15 guys off target and we're walking down the line and I'm like, oh, this. This guy, like, looks normal, looks normal, looks normal. And then there was this dude and I looked at him and I'm like, oh, this guy fucking hates me and he wants to kill me and he wants to kill all of us. And I was like, oh, this, this. This is the enemy right here. Like, this guy is the enemy. And sure enough, that guy was the bad guy that we were looking for.

[Jake Harriman]

Really?

[Jocko Willink]

And it was, it was. But it was the first time that I saw, you know, like, eye to eye with the enemy that we had heard about and talked about and read about. It's like, oh, yeah. And this guy, he. It's this guy. It's on. Like, this guy wants to kill us. And we're going, we're going to be. We're going to be at each other's throats. Not this particular guy, but this group of people, they. They want us dead. And these other people, they're. They don't want anything to do with that guy. Like, they're. Their body language didn't want anything to do with them. Yeah, but so learning that early on that even as a, you know, a howly, like, even as an American, you know, howly guy, we. You can look and, and you can look and go, okay, this guy hates us.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I don't use that term loosely. Like you could see, this guy hates us. So that's just like a little moment that I remember going, oh, yeah, it's a little, A little switch in my mind where I learned something new. Yeah. Not only learning, like, all these civilians, like, they, they have no beef with us, but this guy, he has beef with us, and it's deeply rooted. It wasn't like, oh, this guy's. You know, later you'd learn like, oh, there's a kid that's 17 years old and he's planning an IED because he's gonna get paid.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

That guy doesn't really hate me. He's just trying to make money for his family. So we got to figure out a way to address that. But this guy, he hates me. He hates me.

[Jake Harriman]

And he's trying to destroy us.

[Jocko Willink]

And he's trying to destroy us.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So that's a good thing to keep in mind.

[Jake Harriman]

That's a good point too, is. Is there's evil people in this world, you know, and I was honored to serve with just amazing leaders who we work together to destroy the enemy of the freedoms and the people we love in our way of life and, and frankly, you know, the better side of humanity all over the world. But sometimes in, in war, there are those who are exploited by those individuals just because they're in a desperate situation.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh.

[Jake Harriman]

And yeah, and over the years, I just began to see, as a military, we didn't have a very good solution for those folks and that in these broken, fragmented communities that were so desperate because they were in these conflict areas, ISIS and Al Qaeda and their affiliates, they can exploit those, those fragments, you know, where those weak, vulnerable. Those guys, like, they, like they, they attack weak targets. They don't attack strong points. And the access points were in these vulnerable communities. And if we could do something about that in a more comprehensive way, then our kinetic strikes can be combined with that kind of work to actually start to make some sustainable gains. So it's not whack a mole, right?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. I had such a lucky career, but, you know, part of it, The Battle of Ramadi, right.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Right. And what the different lines of operations that the coalition forces were working was like going out and, you know, hiring this guy, this Iraqi guy to put in, you know, an irrigation pipe, and we're going to pay him some ridiculous amount of money, like a thousand US dollars, right. Which was. Might as well be $50,000 to dig a trench for them. But then what does he do? He takes that thousand dollars and he hires two of the kids that otherwise would have been trying to get 50 bucks to plant an I.D. well, now they're digging a ditch to put an irrigation thing in. And this was the kind of thing where when you got to see this counterinsurgency effort in action, and look, there's bad guys that need to be killed. That guy that I just was talking about, like, that guy's there too, and he's going to come out and he's going to try and kill Americans, he's going to kill Iraqi civilians. He doesn't care. We got to kill that guy. But at the same time, if you can get that civilian, like, commerce kind of, you can get the commerce start to move a little bit. You can get people working towards some sort of normal, stable existence. They start to see that and go, dude, I don't want this freaking Al guy over here. And so. And this was, you know, Colonel then, Colonel now, General Sean McFarland was just exquisite in the ability for him to. To press forward with these various lines of operations in the heat of horrific battles. Be like, oh, yeah. Oh, we just had, you know, four Marines wounded or two. Two soldiers killed. And we're gonna go back in there tomorrow into that exact same neighborhood, and we're gonna, you know, rebuild a wall that one of our tanks knocked down. And that takes some serious discipline and an understanding of what the overall effort of the war is. So.

[Jake Harriman]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

It was pretty awesome to see that, and. And I was very lucky to be a part of it. So you. You get done with that deployment and. And now you're coming back and you find out you got to bill it to go to Force Recon. And you're pumped.

[Jake Harriman]

I'm super pumped. Yeah. And now. Now the hard work starts because I got to pass the selection that just crushed me last time. And then I gotta get through school phase. So in a similar way, I think for you guys, we got a series of schools we have to pass through as well before we even get to our platoon. So you take selection, then you go through your school's phase. If you get through that, then you pick up your platoon and then you start a new workup with them. And at the time for force, we did what's called a green side workup and then a black side workup. The green side workup is the classic kind of reconnaissance mission, right? Deep reconnaissance, you know, jump dive, various insert methods to be able to collect and tell the enemy, send that back. You know, classic reconnaissance, but way deep behind enemy alliance kind of stuff. And then the other side, the black side workup is. Is all about direct action, hostage rescue, vbss, a lot of the same stuff that you guys train for. And so I remember selection. I trained so hard for selection because I was not.

[Jocko Willink]

How long did you have when you got home to get ready for selection?

[Jake Harriman]

Not long. I had about two months because that's.

[Jocko Willink]

Gotta suck coming back from freaking sitting.

[Jake Harriman]

On the burner, because you know what that's like. Yeah, I mean, you're sitting over there.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, eating MREs.

[Jake Harriman]

And I would try, you know, I. You try to run around the perimeter to try to stay. I mean, you can't, you know, lifting sandbags and all this kind of stuff. But so I was, I had to work really, really hard when I got back training with the guys at the unit who were in the kind of like selection platoon. And a lot of those guys ended up, ended up serving with incredible guys that to this day I just look up to. And I remember taking showing for selection that time and it was a very different feeling. And I, I felt like I was very humble. I'm like, I just, I hope I can show, show well, show, show well for my unit that I came from, from 3 1, represent them well, not let those guys down. You know, it was more about other people this time. And then just like this cocky kid who just thought he was the shit. And so because of that, I, I, you know, throughout the day I, I did pretty well, you know. And so by the end it was, I think probably there were 20, 25 guys that showed up that day for selection that had gotten orders. By the end it was me and one other guy. Damn. On the, on the beach who did the final run, which is a crazy rock run, similar, I'm sure a lot of stuff you guys do. And that guy I made it with at the very end ended up being in the platoon with me. You form these relationships and friendships with guys like that as you're going through selection schools phase and, and that are just these really deep bonds, you know, these are your brothers that you go through stuff with and then of course then you do real combat together and those bonds go even deeper. As you know, I felt really, really fortunate both to serve with the guys in the infantry and also at Force.

[Jocko Willink]

So the selection from for force is basically a day.

[Jake Harriman]

It's just a day.

[Jocko Willink]

Just a, it's a total kick in the nuts for a day.

[Jake Harriman]

A day.

[Jocko Willink]

And then you're gonna get, and then you go to a bunch of schools.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. So our first school that everybody goes to is either called ARS or brc depending on what coast you were on at the time.

[Jocko Willink]

BRC is out here in Coronado, right?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, right, it's in Coronado. It's like our kind of buds. It's, it's similar, similar kind of time frame. A lot of the similar, you know, training, a lot of the water work, a lot of the, the suck fest and patrolling, all that kind of stuff. And so BRC is where as, especially as a platoon commander coming in, you really have to do well. Because unlike, unlike the infantry side, what I found out in the force recon side is you really only got one shot. And if you mess up early, you get a stain on your reputation that kind of follows you through the community the rest of your time. So I was pretty nervous, man. In the beginning, I did not want to let my guys down. I did not want to let my unit down. I came from. So I worked really hard to try to, like, do well at brc, do well at the schools. And I, you know, I failed a lot of things along the way, but I think my. I tried to maintain this humble attitude, learning attitude, both from the instructors, but also from the other guys, you know, in the schools. I think that helped me a lot as I went through.

[Jocko Willink]

True. And then from there, you get assigned to a unit. When you get done with all those schools.

[Jake Harriman]

All the schools.

[Jocko Willink]

So you do jump school, dive school. Do you do both those?

[Jake Harriman]

Jump school, dive school, sear school.

[Jocko Willink]

Get the. Back in the day, we called it the double trouble because they had the dive pin and the. That's right, the parachute pin.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's what the. That's what the Marines called it.

[Jake Harriman]

Double trouble.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Jake Harriman]

We're not as cool. Was the Trident. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And so what unit you get assigned to?

[Jake Harriman]

First Force Recon. So West Coast. And then first platoon was my platoon. Right on.

[Jocko Willink]

And now do you get basically tasked out to, like, a battalion that's going on deployment? How does that work? Or you get.

[Jake Harriman]

So it was different ways. So I worked. We worked for what's called the meth. So the Marine Expeditionary Force, under the meth, you have METH would deploy. Museum. Right. So you're familiar with the muse, Marine Expeditionary Units. And every MEW that goes out, you have an infantry battalion, and it would have a Force Recon Platoon as well. And in peacetime, before 9 11, you would have the MUSE go out, and they were like, the Marines Ready Force, if anything happened, you know, around the world, kind of first responders. That was what the muse purpose was.

[Jocko Willink]

And the special why I volunteered to be on Ark platoons right. Back in the 90s, because there was guys that were on the mew that went to Somalia.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, right.

[Jocko Willink]

Meanwhile, that's my first deployment. I was sitting in Guam, and I'm like, yo, what put me. There's a ship that's going to war.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Put me on that thing.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Because that used to be. Yeah. Like, the emergency response.

[Jake Harriman]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

From the Marine Corps was like, oh, we've got freaking. A battalion of Marines and all the other assets that you have. We're gonna send the Send Them you, and we'll make it happen. Let's get it on. So that's why did two of those freaking things in the 90s, chasing war.

[Jake Harriman]

You didn't have to chase anymore after a while.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, didn't have to chase for very long. Only 13 years. 13 years, man. 13 years.

[Jake Harriman]

You know what's funny, actually, when I first got to selection, when I finally got over there and I'm taking selection, the guys remembered me from that first time when I came through, and they completely busted my balls, like, the whole time and stuff, you know? But what I learned later was, you know, they kind of thought I was crazy.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Liked it.

[Jake Harriman]

They kind of liked it a little bit in probably a sick, twisted way, but it kind of helped me get in my footing when I was over there. And I really tried to adopt the kind of mindset of, like, I'm here to learn. I got to earn these guys respect. You know, I. I was coming in with my little four years of experience, and I had team leaders that have been in it for 16, 18 years. Some of them seen, you know, a lot of combat, and here I was supposed to lead them, right? So I took on this kind of philosophy of, like, I got to earn the right to lead here. I got to earn the right to have their respect. And I worked hard to do that. And a lot of that was through. Of course, you know, I'm the leader. I got to make the call. I got to make the decision. But it was a lot about listening, a lot about owning my mistakes when I made them when they were many, and trying to learn never do that again. And. And also really trying to make each guy understand and know that he's valued on the team, that his input's important if we're going to win, you know, and to really help us to work together as a tribe, as a family. I was really, really passionate about that.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, no, it's awesome. And. And even, like, the ID of making the decision, I would try not to make the decisions, because if the boys make a decision. Cool. Unless they're doing something that just doesn't make any sense at all. I might have to say, hey, hey, bro, you sure you want to go? But most of the time it's like, hey, sounds good, chief. It sounds good. You know, Fred, or whoever my LPO is or whoever's making a call, I'm totally good with it. And. And that. That also means that when you do speak up, everyone's like, oh, he's saying something for a reason. He's Not. He's not a guy that's just running his suck for no reason. I gotta. You know, there's something going on. I'm missing something. If Jocko has to come in here and talk, there's something going on. So, yeah, now he does. Doesn't. That doesn't excuse you from the responsibility to call.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And you know, I tell that to the young officers. Like, hey, if you. If something goes wrong, no one is going to ask you what your chief's input was, and that's why you made the decision. It's the chief. Chief's fault that doesn't happen. It's not. Don't even think about that. You own that decision. 100. You own what your platoon does. 100. That's the way it goes down. So, yeah, you got that attitude. You sounds like you nailed it.

[Jake Harriman]

Well, I used to. No, I didn't. I did not know. I. I used to tell them, though, look, 90 of the time, we're going to go with what you guys want because I trust you. You guys are the experts here. You got way more experience. But what I. In return, all I'm asking is in the 10% of the times where I'm listening and hearing you and I say, guys, I hear you, but we got to go this other way. I'm asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to trust me. And it's like earning that trust. Right? And it wasn't often, but it was like rare occasions.

[Jocko Willink]

You gave them trust over and over and over again.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you give people trust, they're going to give it back to you. So I never had a conversation like that with really with anyone I've ever worked with of like, hey, listen, I'm going to listen. Most of the. I just did.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And they pretty much figured out, okay, yeah, he's going to let me do whatever I want. And if I start doing something, something stupid Jock was going to come and go, hey, bro, you might not want. Might want to go over there. And everyone kind of understood that. I never really had any. Any issues with it.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And so you get done. So you go through a full, full workup again. The green side, the black side. All good. Any. Any major challenges there?

[Jake Harriman]

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I remember. So part of the black side workup, we have to. So in the mew, the special operations capability is the Force Recon Platoon. So you have to pass what's called a sock wall. We have a series of missions you got to pass, and you got a. We had a Group they used to call Special Operations Training Group. That would be the evaluators sog.

[Jocko Willink]

So I bet I know like a bunch of these I'm sure you're talking about. Yeah, I knew some legends, I knew some force recon legends because. And, and the reason I knew that they were kind of legible because when debt one formed up, a lot of those guys were there and they were like, oh yeah, we got so and so and so and so and so and so. And I was like, oh yeah, I know that guy. I know that guy's pretty awesome.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, yeah, those guys, I mean, there were a lot of really good legends there. And so the SOTG crew would roll in, they got to evaluate you and you know, you got to do a hostage rescue, you got to do the, you know, taking out the, the terrorist leader in this camp. You got to do a vbss, right? So all these different missions. And I remember the VBSS mission that we decided to train on one time is a classic example of how I was still an idiot after all this time, all this time of learning these lessons. So, you know, we, we had the, the mission was briefed. The sea state was too high. So we had subject matter experts coming in, you know, our weather guys coming in telling us their job is to brief you on the conditions. If the conditions are no go, you, you don't do the mission. But I was cocky and I'm like, no, we got this, we're going to go forward. And the guy looks at me, are you sure you're going to. I mean, it's like I can't remember what it was seas day five, right? I don't remember the numbers at this point, but it was bad. And I said, no, no, we're going to do it. My guys, we're good. We've done this a hundred times. Like, we're good. So I remember briefing the guys are like, you said what, sir? I'm like, guys, we got this, you know, we got this. And so we go out there and we pull up the little cricks next to the, to the, the target ship. And you remember those little ladders, right? You gotta, you gotta throw that thing up there and it's this little tiny thing. And dude, the, the sea state is insane. So I mean like the little rubber boats are like going like this next to this thing, right? No, none of my guy, they're got like, I'm not getting up that I'm not going first. So finally I'm, I'm like, oh, get out of the way. I'm, I'm gonna lead, show the way here, right. I stand up in that thing, the boat pitches hard like this toward the boat. I went like a lawn dart out of the boat, head first into the side of that vessel. I mean, smashed my head, knocked me out. And I went between the rubber boat and the, and the ship crushed me. And I. Next thing I know, I'm 12ft underwater, sinking. I'm waking up 12ft underwater, sinking fast. Because I got all my gear on me, you know, I got probably 80 pounds of gear on. And we got these, you know those old horse collars.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Jake Harriman]

They used to, you know, with the little two things you gotta pull. So I'm like, oh, yeah, I gotta pull. So I pull, and only one side inflates. It's, like, faulty, right. So now I'm still sinking. So I'm, I'm desperately, like, trying to get to the surface. Right. Luckily, it's not a real mission. We got a rescue day. Divers, you know, in, in boats there who are ready to go, they pull my ass up out of the water. I was able to get near the surface. They pull me up out of the water, into the boat. I'm just completely embarrassed, devastated. So what did I do? Of course, the radio on my back, I had not waterproofed. I fried the radio. Just a total debauchery. Total, complete mission fail. And I remember going into the guy. So the guy that was in charge of the force platoon in MEW is called the MSPF commander. He was my boss, some colonel. And so I remember I went into his stateroom on the boat thinking, I'm done. You know, you got, this doesn't happen. You know, platoon commander goes to this, they get shit canned. They bring up the next guy. I'm like, everything I've worked for so hard, I've just blown it because I was an arrogant idiot. And I walk in there, and I'll never forget what he said. He said, do you understand what you did? And I said, yes, sir. I, I, I, I'm, I'm so sorry. I understand. This is it. I started telling him who should take over and all this kind of stuff. He said, no, no. Do you understand what you did wrong? And I said, yeah, I, I, I, I guess I, I didn't listen to the guys I should have listened to. He's like. And I'm like, I kind of had a cocky attitude about it. He's like, he's like, yeah, listen, this is your one buy. He said, if I don't let people fail, you're not going to take chances sometimes when you need to take chances, but you need to do them in a smart way. You got to take risks, but they got to be informed risks. Okay. If you got experts telling you information that you need for the battle, you can't wait for 100% of information, but you better use the information you have to make good decisions, decisions. This is your one shot. Okay, we're going to reset the mission for next week. You're going to do it again. If you fail that, you're done. Okay, but you got one more shot. I couldn't believe it, man. I knew no precedent for this, but the guy let me through, and he taught me so much about the ability to let your people fail sometimes when not everything's on the line. So they can learn from that. And I did learn from that a lot. And after that, I had a. Took on a whole new mindset when I was doing mission prep and preparation, all that kind of stuff. And, and my guys especially benefited from that lesson that I learned.

[Jocko Willink]

Make sure you have positive buoyancy. If you're doing shipboarding, make sure you waterproof your radios. And that's. That's. That's real.

[Jake Harriman]

You know, those were other lessons I.

[Jocko Willink]

Used to tell guys all the time, like, if you're working with the water, it's a real world mission because the water will kill you as fast as anything else.

[Jake Harriman]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

You're not paying attention. Or if you don't have. You know, I got very. Again, I had a very lucky career. Like when we. When we started doing VBSs from the water, we. I was like in the first platoon that did it, you know, on the, on the. In the regular SEAL teams. And my platoon commander was like, had a bunch of experience doing it, and we would have to go out over the horizon to practice it because they didn't wanted to. Want to see what we're doing. Awesome.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

But what, you know, he just instilled in us these basic, like, hey, make sure you have positive voyage. Like, he just had a whole list of things to make sure we did. And those things always stuck with me. So, yeah, you young Marines out there and people in, in, you know, if you're in the Navy and you're doing what. If you're doing boardings over in the Persian Gulf or wherever, man, just make sure you have positive buoyancy.

[Jake Harriman]

Amen.

[Jocko Willink]

So you get done with work up. Where are you guys going on deployment?

[Jake Harriman]

So they put us into a little area Basically southeast of Baghdad, called North Babylo province.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

And at the time, they were trying to stand up the new parliament and they were getting some of the new.

[Jocko Willink]

So what year is this now?

[Jake Harriman]

This was 2004. 2004 going into 2005.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, check.

[Jake Harriman]

And the problem was a lot of those guys were being assassinated. So there was this area called North Babil where a lot of insurgent activity was happening.

[Jocko Willink]

Is this like, this is south of Baghdad? Yeah, on the Tigris, maybe like a half an hour south. Or is it further?

[Jake Harriman]

It's probably a little further, probably 45 minutes south. But it was on the Tigris, Right in a massive bend in the Tigris. I remember even the maps as I'm looking at it, but it was a little known area. We didn't have coalition forces in there. They hadn't been in there for about six months. So because of that, it become kind of a hive of insurgent activity. There wasn't a lot of intel coming out of there. So they wanted to put us in there to do some RNs number one, and then to do some DAs to start taking out some of these targets. So we were getting target after target after target. It was a. It was a pretty good set of missions that we were starting to get. And how were you working out of.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have like a forward operating.

[Jake Harriman]

We had a father in.

[Jocko Willink]

In North Bapol.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, it was closer to Baghdad, but it was called FOB Falcon at the time. And I remember one mission in particular. Another great lesson learned in this mission. But remember the deck of cards? We actually got one of the deck of cards one night. So we're all super excited. Or one of the cards in the deck. And we're doing the mission brief. I bring my team leaders in. We're kind of figuring out how we want to do it. We want to do a Hilo, hard hit on this target. So on The Tigris, suspected 20 tangos. And our job was to bring the. This guy back. And so we briefed the guys. My job was to go brief the pilots. And I go into the ready room. And you know how these missions are. Normally you get these old crusty pilots who've been doing this forever. I go in, it's a. It's a busy night. And I got this kind of. I'm looking across the table and looks like a bunch of high school kids. These are like brand new pilots, man. And I'm like, oh, sorry guys, I'm in the wrong room. I go to leave, they're like, no, no, no, you, Captain Herman, you're here to get so and so. I'm like, yeah, who are you guys? Like, we're your pilots. And I said, you're not my pilots. There's no way. And they're like, no, no, no, we're. And of course they're indignant, right? They're pilots. Not, not sure in confidence tell me all their qualifications. So finally they convinced me, you know, we can do it. I brief them on the brief. We go out and do the test fire. Get in birds, about 1am take off. There's four, four birds, four sticks. And the goal was to, to do basically a simultaneous multi point breach to enter the building, get this guy and come out for a hard hit. And as we're coming in into south into this area in south Baghdad, we start taking small arms fire, which happens a lot with these things, right? But the, the pilots were not used to that. They had not, they were pretty inexperienced. So in this year I've got my team leaders kind of reviewing the, the, the, the mission plan. Pretty calm this year. Sounds like you take a squirrels and a bunch of cage and just start shaking them. These guys are like screaming, right? They start banking those helicopters everywhere, all over creation and they set us down pretty probably over a kilometer radius all over south Baghdad. Kicked us out of the birds and took off. And we had no idea where we were. And I remember one of my team leaders to this day, this guy's a legend. He's over there kind of positioning the guys security perimeter and I'm, you know, I'm ashamed to say all of our real world missions and training and all this kind of stuff, I looked, I stood there looking like a dummy, didn't know what to do. And he runs over and he punches me in the face as hard as he can. And he's like, hey sir, you got to wake the fuck up and start shaking me. I'm like, hey man, I don't know what's going on. Because I could hear one of the team leaders had landed on the target and they were pinned down. And I'm like, I don't know how we're gonna, we're gonna. I have no idea where we are. He's like, listen, you gotta take a moment, take a few deep breaths and you got to calm down. Everybody's looking at you. You got to make a call here. Think about the assets you have at your disposal. We got a lot of assets out there. You're going to figure this out, but you got to figure it out. So calm down. So I. Then he went back to the guys.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn.

[Jake Harriman]

So I took a couple deep breaths, started thinking about it. I did start calming down. And I remember we had a Spectre gunship on station, and those guys have. We used to call it the finger of God, which is the laser indicator for calling in targets or calling in bombs and obviously on us on a foggy night with nods, you can watch that beam all the way down to the ground. So I told the pilots, light the target up with the finger of God, because it was foggy. And I got on the radio, I said, it's all the team leaders. Hey, guys, throw your nods on, look up in the sky. Follow that down to the ground. That's the target. Move on the target. And so we all started moving, you know, through the alleys, made it to the target for some, by some miracle, God, that knucklehead was still there. We did the breach, grabbed him, pulled him out. Those idiot pilots landed, coming in again, got on the birds, got out right as the reinforcements were coming in. And good ending to the story. But it never would have happened had it not been for the calm decisiveness of that team leader who's basically like, look, sir, in moments of chaos, you can't freeze, right? You got to make a call. You got to calm yourself down. Think about the information that you have available to you. So that was a real important lesson for me, Jack.

[Jocko Willink]

That's a good one. How you said you. What was your op tempo like? Were you getting like a hit every night? Every other night. Every few nights.

[Jake Harriman]

Every. Every two to three days, we would get a hit. Yeah. And then after that, we. It was. We were there for about six months, then we got, you know, pulled out of the rotation and started on our way home.

[Jocko Willink]

And this is now 05 that you pulled out. And now what's your next plan? So you got two combat deployments, two non combat deployments. You're pretty experienced freaking young Marine officer with a. That's. That's setting yourself up for a really good career, you know, like, this is looking good.

[Jake Harriman]

I was feeling, you know, it was interesting. So I, The. I had a lot of mentors of mine at the time who were like, hey, look, a lot of good options here. You know, if Debt one was standing up, my buddy, this guy Steve Fiskus had been there kind of before me. I had an opportunity to maybe I could go over to Debt one, be with those guys. There was the guy I actually passed selection with who was in my platoon. We had been training for CAG selection as an option. And then I've been talking to the guys over at the agency about the special activities stuff. So I was looking at these. You know, we're competitive. You know, we want to take the next step. But I could not shake, even after all this time, I could not shake that first experience I had with that farmer. I still was having dreams about him. And I felt as I had more operational experience, I began to see that. I felt we had a critical gap in our national security strategy to fight these violent extremist organizations. We need to do the kinetic strikes, but we also need an element that can work in these fragile environments for long periods of time and empower people with choices, eradicate poverty, to create a barrier, a corridor that is a barrier to the spread of these groups. And aid groups couldn't do it because it's too unstable, it's too unsafe. So we had this idea, like, hey, what if we could. We started hatching this idea on the way back from this deployment. What if we could take.

[Jocko Willink]

Who's we?

[Jake Harriman]

Well, I would kick it around with the guys in my platoon, like, what if we could make a hybrid? Like, take former operators that no combat, combine them with, like, these aid folks that know how to create sustainable solutions to poverty. And we can make these composite teams that could embed in these gray zones and we could live there for like five to seven years and work with these local leaders to eradicate poverty and scale that and to create a resistance corridor that could stop the spread of what eventually became isis, but at the time were elements of Al Qaeda. So that was the idea that we had come up with. And the closer I got to home, I'm like, man, somebody should do this. And I just felt really compelled by again, sometimes one person in your life, you have an experience with them, it shapes you forever. And that experience, that Farmer, really, really impacted me. And as much as the hardest thing, one of the hardest things in my life up to that point was to leave the guys in the mission and the track that I was on because you know how, how hard that pool is, you know, and to stay. But I really felt compelled that somebody need to do something about this. And so on the way back, I made the decision that I was going to transition out. My time was up. You know, I was, I, I, I could renew and go take selection for one of these groups, but I really felt compelled to go take on this new mission.

[Jocko Willink]

So, so what's your, like, game plan? Did you have a bunch of money saved up? Like, how Are you going to survive?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. So that's an excellent question. Money? No. Plan? No. And ideas for how to form this thing? No. So I. Oh, for three. Oh, for three. And. But I'm. I'm very stubborn, you know, And I. I was really determined to do this. So I get out. Fast track out of. They used to do what's called tap tamps class, which is like a horrible excuse for transition planning for people going out. That's much better now. Yeah, right, Exactly. We all felt the same. So I'm coming out and all of a sudden I'm out. I'm missing the guys horribly. They had my paddle party. You guys, I think, have the same things with your. Do you do this?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, they give paddles or plaques or stuff like that. I don't think it's the. The seal teams can be very low on ceremonial, even like informal ceremonial. The seal teams is like, yeah, later. You know, that's. That.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, we're a little less. For us, like. I mean, one of the. The most prized possession that I own still is my paddle I got for my guys. And they. They do. It's. It's pretty awesome. They do a big, huge bonfire on the beach. All the guys you care about show up and they pass the paddle around the circle. And of course, everybody tells a story about how you're an idiot, and then sometimes they'll say something nice about you too, but then you get this paddle that they've handcrafted for you. So it's. It's an amazing experience. And I missed my guys a lot. And I was struggling. I started now. Now everything has slowed down. I began to experience a lot of nightmares, a lot of anger, a lot of stuff. You know, we all experience as we begin to transition out. And this mission that I thought I was going to do, I'm like, what was I thinking? You know, how am I going to take on extreme poverty? What do I know about that?

[Jocko Willink]

You can't even get your own dumb ass out of poverty right now.

[Jake Harriman]

I was trying to pay my rent, man. I was running out of money because, you know, deployments. I was young guy, single guy, blowing money. I get home, I gotta get a job. I don't know what to do. I'm feeling really lost. So I remember I was living in Carlsbad. It's a little tiny apartment. My neighbor was out there one day. I'm like, hey, man, I'm trying to find a job. He's like, well, my dad has a seafood business down the coast here in Carlsbad. We're looking for a truck driver. So I actually got a job driving a seafood delivery truck for a while. I was delivering, delivered in. I had a route in San Diego, Orange county and la. One of the best jobs I ever had, by the way, because I actually used that time to help kind of decompress the world a little bit, think about what my next step would be. And the guys in the kitchens, these restaurants give me sick food every time I stopped into, which is awesome. But as I was trying to figure out what to do, I knew I had to build an organization. I literally bought this book, which is the equivalent of Nonprofits for Dummies, which had a little workbook of how you kind of, like, try to put something together. And I was failing miserably. I didn't know what I was doing. And so I had a friend who was at business school, Don, and. And he's like, hey, man, look, if you want to build something, you should probably go to business school because you don't know what you're doing. And I'm like, I don't know. How am I going to get a business school? I had an engineering degree from the Naval Academy, which, by the way, I didn't use a single day after I graduated. And so I. I just decided to apply, man. And so I was like. I remember making a bargain with God. I was like, hey, I've heard of Stanford and Harvard. Like, I'm gonna apply these schools. If you really want me to go to business school, you'll get me one of these schools. And I applied and kind of forgot about it. I didn't seriously think I was going to get in. And I remember dropping the truck off at the seafood farm one day and. And kind of hoofing at home, and there on my doorstep, man, acceptance letters. I couldn't believe it.

[Jocko Willink]

From both.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. And so I decided.

[Jocko Willink]

Must be a good essay writer or something.

[Jake Harriman]

Dude, I had a lot of help. I had a lot of help, man. I think they had a quota for a kid from West Virginia or something. But yeah, man, I still got in and was on this kind of mission. I felt compelled.

[Jocko Willink]

How long is that school?

[Jake Harriman]

Two years.

[Jocko Willink]

You had to move up there to.

[Jake Harriman]

San Francisco, move up to the Bay Area.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you. Do you get the GI Bill if you went to the Naval Academy?

[Jake Harriman]

Yes. You do, but I didn't know about that, and so I missed out on that.

[Jocko Willink]

So did you borrow money? Like, how are you eating?

[Jake Harriman]

Huge. Student loans.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I like them apples.

[Jake Harriman]

Oh, I'm still paying those apples. Right now, it's.

[Jocko Willink]

It's. You had the GI Bill.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You just didn't know about it.

[Jake Harriman]

I mean, anybody out there listening right now do not do most of the things I've done in my life. You'd be okay. Yeah, you know, I. Yeah, I did. I didn't even. I didn't know I qualified for the GI Bill. And. But I did, and I just, of course, wasted it, so. But yeah, got Stanford, man. And it was a strange experience because I was thinking, hey, here's this kind of like liberal school. They're going to put me in a box as a Marine. There weren't many vets there. I think there was probably two or three guys that I knew of that were there out of a class of like 250, 260. And I remember thinking, they're going to hate me. So I didn't tell them really what I was there for or what I'd done. And so you get these mixers, you know, the first week, and everybody's kind of like wearing their resume on their sleeves. Like, oh, I would work at Kleiner.

[Jocko Willink]

Perkins, or I already don't like this.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, dude, I'm telling you, I work here. I worked at Google. I worked here, you know, these kind of big shot guys and they're like, hey, man, what'd you do?

[Jocko Willink]

I said, well, I hunted down insurgents.

[Jake Harriman]

No, it's even worse. I was like, I. I drove a seafood truck in San Diego. And they kind of laugh and I'm like, no, no, I'm serious. I drove a seafood truck in San Diego.

[Jocko Willink]

That's awesome.

[Jake Harriman]

And it was super awkward. But over time, I made some good buddies there who didn't care what I did. And then I kind of slowly let them know what I had done and why I was there. And they became this incredible group of classmates who really helped me build this thing. I had totally judged them the wrong way. They really appreciated my service and they really wanted to get behind me. They offered, they had volunteered tons of hours, helped me build out the model for how to build this thing. They helped introduce me to potential donors. I was going to class and then, you know, leaving class to go pitch guys in Silicon Valley about, you know, to give money and all this kind of stuff and getting like, one maybe for 20 meetings of no's. But over time, man, we raised about 350 grand to get started.

[Jocko Willink]

And that's how you kick this thing off.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. Packed my bags, moved to Africa.

[Jocko Willink]

What's nuru mean?

[Jake Harriman]

Nuru means light or hope in swahili check. Yeah, I wanted to be relevant for the people I was working with.

[Jocko Willink]

So then. So what's like the first trip to Africa? Do you, when you go there, are you like a one way ticket?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, I had. In between your first and second year of business school, you do an internship. And I had. Was fortunate enough to. There was a nonprofit working in Africa, was trying to figure out how to skip their business in a. In the middle of nowhere in the wilderness. And they were looking for somebody crazy to kind of to put out there. And I volunteered and went out there and for 10 weeks, learned the language, worked with a bunch of farmers, built a program, started growing it. And it was you. I was out in western Kenya, so out in the bush and yeah, started kind of laying the groundwork for what I was going to do. And I had no idea what I was doing at all. And I remember graduating after that internship. I graduated, packed my bags, moved to this place. We wanted to start the project. It was in a village. And week one, I got jumped by a pack of thieves. Black widow spiders and safari ants swarmed our hut. We had an earthquake. I got malaria. And then the last day of the week, which was also my birthday, I got struck by lightning. I mean, you can't make. Make this stuff up, right? I mean, it was a bad week.

[Jocko Willink]

You got struck by lightning?

[Jake Harriman]

I got struck by lightning, bro. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you get knocked out?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. So I was trying to set up a little satcom unit so we get Internet so I can maintain comms with, you know, people back in states. And I was sitting on this stump inside the house.

[Jocko Willink]

There's thunder and lightning. Is it raining?

[Jake Harriman]

Like, oh, yeah, dude. I mean, I'm talking like.

[Jocko Willink]

And you're just out there holding that freaking sack.

[Jake Harriman]

No, no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm in the.

[Jocko Willink]

Known as a lightning rod.

[Jake Harriman]

I'm in the hut on a stump with my laptop up, trying to get this network up. And the satcom antenna is outside with a cable running into my laptop. My buddy's in the hut with me. He's like, dude, that's. This is a powerful storm. And I was like, yeah, yeah, whatever. And next thing I know, I'm. I'm on the other side of the hut against the wall, laying on the ground. I thought my legs were on fire. And I'm opening my eyes, my buddy's over me, shaking me, and he's terrified. And I said, dude, dude, my legs are on fire. He's like, no, you're all right. He's Like, I'm like, what happened? He's, of course. Then when he realizes I'm okay, what does he do? Yeah. Starts laughing. Yeah, he starts laughing. He's like, dude, you just got struck by lightning, and he's just dying, laughing. So that was quite an experience. I, I, I felt like I could handle thieves. I could handle some of those.

[Jocko Willink]

How much did the thieves get from you?

[Jake Harriman]

Oh, they didn't get anything.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, really? No, they did you fight them?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. You had to. I mean, because they were trying.

[Jocko Willink]

By the way, this is how you get, like, stabbed and like, get your throat.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, but, but you had, I mean, I had to establish presence. There was three of them, but the first two were small. They, like, ran away. The second, the last guy was not small. And, and we had a security guard who was working down the road who came up after that, and at the end.

[Jocko Willink]

So let's go. Let's hear it. So you're walking down the street. Where are you?

[Jake Harriman]

No, so it's outside. We're in the hut. I'm with the rest of my team. So there was four of us, three civilians that I'd hired and myself. And I hear something outside. So I go outside the hut and I'm hearing some wrestling. And there's this guard down the road, and he starts yelling. He's like, screaming. I run down and there's three guys on him. They turn on me and start, they jump me, right? Because they were sneaking across the border from Tanzania. They'd heard that these westerns were in here with, you know, they thought we're gonna have all this money and all this kind of stuff that they were trying to take and thought we were soft target. And so they just jump me, man. And the first guy I threw off, threw off of me and was able to hit him pretty hard in the face. Wasn't. Wasn't hard. He was smaller. He just took off running. They didn't sign up for this. They thought it was going to be, you know, in and out, steal some stuff. Second guy just ran. Third guy, though, is a pretty big guy and got up and started throwing haymakers. And we're like wrestling on the ground, and I'm trying to put him in a chokehold, finally get him in a chokehold. And then the security guard who'd been bashed in the head by this guy with a stick is bleeding. He runs over and starts beating the shit out of this guy with a stick. And I'm trying to get him off. I don't want him to kill him.

[Jocko Willink]

Mine's Jake.

[Jake Harriman]

And so. So I get him off, and I'm like, this guy's, like, submitted at this point. And so we tie him up and call the local, like, cops who are, you know, not really cops, but they come in a truck and take this guy away. But we had to kind of establish a presence. And then I went back into the hut, and the team was like, hey, what was that? I was like, I don't know. His neighbors are having some problems out there. I don't know what. Because I couldn't let them know. They would have been terrified. And this is not what they signed up for. They're like regular people, good people.

[Jocko Willink]

How long did malaria knock you out for?

[Jake Harriman]

I was out for about a week. And I got the medicine, which was key, but a lot of the folks worked with couldn't afford the medicine. Their kids would die from this stuff. Man. It's nasty. But, yeah, I ended up getting it two or three times. But that first time was the worst.

[Jocko Willink]

We. We pulled in. I was on one of those ARG deployments, and we pulled into Kenya. This is in, like, 1993, maybe. Maybe 19, 1994. And, you know, I'm young, single, dude. I don't care about anything. And as we're pulling in on the Navy ships back then, they'd say, like, oh, we're doing tours. Like, you could go do a tour. And, you know, the. The. Some people would go do a tour. I'm not doing a tour. Like, I'm gonna go be a frogman and go, you know, drink and party and everything else. And we have no idea what. There's no Internet. I can't tell you where Kenya is on a map. Or Mombasa. We're pulling in my mom. I don't care about any of that. Like, but one of my other buddies is like, hey, you know, I'm gonna go climb Mount Kilimanjar. There's two tours. Okay, cool. And he's like, you know, he's working out, getting in shape for it, and he's. And so then they're like, hey, start taking your malaria pills. And so he's like, taking the malaria pills. Long story short, like, at one point, I ended up, like, I woke up in the morning outside on the beach.

[Jake Harriman]

There's.

[Jocko Willink]

I'm near, like, a low level swamp. There's mosquitoes just feasting on my body. And, you know, I'm just hungover, passed out outside. And I did that for, like, four days or however long we're there for.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And then so then we all come back to the ship and you know the guy that climbed Mount Kilimanjaro who's like, one of my best friends, you know, I'm like, how was it? He's like, oh, it's great. Blah, blah, blah. And he's like, how was your time? I go, it's great. And then two days later, or whatever, he's down hard with malaria. He got malaria. I never took a single pill.

[Jake Harriman]

That's insane.

[Jocko Willink]

And I was, like, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. So I have a feeling that the alcohol all killed the malaria would have entered my system. It was just like.

[Jake Harriman]

No, highly likely.

[Jocko Willink]

But he was down hard.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And you. You have that forever, right? Don't you have malaria forever? Kind of.

[Jake Harriman]

You have an element of it in you? Yeah, for forever, but, yeah, check.

[Jocko Willink]

All right. So did you. At what point did you start to, like, feel like you could make. You're making a difference? Like, how did this go?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, so I. It was really about my team. So I. I make a lot of mistakes as a leader, but I'm pretty good at building good teams. And my philosophy is, you always want to bring in people, hire people smarter, faster, better, stronger than you are. And that was the case with my team at nuru. I hired some really incredible people, and we started having a great impact. So we were increasing crop yields from, like, you know, three bags of corn on an acre to, like, 18.

[Jocko Willink]

So you hiring, like, agricultural wizards and stuff like that.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And.

[Jake Harriman]

And folks who really knew how to build sustainable models. Because our whole philosophy was about, you gotta. The local leaders we're working with, they gotta own it. Right? They need to own it. They need to be able to scale it on their own. They need to. This needs to be theirs so that it'll last. And then we're just there to. As scaffolding to build out an organization they can run. And then we leave, we exit, leaving behind a model that continues to grow on its own. And the key are the local leaders and know, seeing them as the solution. Seeing them as, like, here's the folks we need to empower. It's not about us and our ideas. They're usually dumb, but it's about building this, like, great camaraderie with the leaders there and unlocking the potential they have to solve their own problems. But building a. An economic model there to fuel the growth of the organization on its own, independent of us after we leave. And so, yeah, and then.

[Jocko Willink]

And then how long do you have to stay, you know, in order to Mentor a leader.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And. Well, first you got to identify that leader. You got to make sure that they're not corrupt and crazy, which can take a couple years in its own right. And then get them trained up and then get some support team around them. So you mentioned earlier, like, five to seven years. Is that what kind of a timeline you're talking about?

[Jake Harriman]

First project was seven years until exit, but after that, progressively we got faster to the point where we had a project in northeast Nigeria in, like, Bokoram and ISIS West Africa territory. We exited after four years. We were rapidly behind a really strong organization that's still scaling to this day. And I think the key in a lot of these areas is just. It's restoring agency. You know, when people feel like they don't have a voice. We started the conversation about me growing up, and it's about mindset. When people don't feel like they have a voice or an opportunity to lift themselves out, they're just filled with hopelessness. And that's when you get in this trap, this cycle of poverty. But we were just restoring agency, dignity, giving them the tools they need to do it themselves so they could believe in themselves again.

[Jocko Willink]

So when you look at. Is there like a community that grows around this? Yeah, this what you start.

[Jake Harriman]

So what it ends up being is when we first go into an area, there's a lot of fragmented villages, right. And they're all just trying to survive. They're not connected. They're just trying to keep their own family alive, frankly. But. And then you've usually got, like, a negative, violent extremist organization out there that's trying to infiltrate. So what we do is we unite that community together. And many times within the community, within the villages, there's warring tribes. And that divisiveness actually makes it more of a target for these groups. So our goal is to bring these two warring groups together and unite them around a common goal of improving their lives together, improving their communities.

[Jocko Willink]

The prosperity is going to bring peace.

[Jake Harriman]

Exactly, dude. Yeah. Prosperity brings peace. It actually creates a really solid front and a barrier to these extremists moving in. So the extremists go elsewhere. And so you build that to thousands of families over time, and it creates a really strong component, strong element for people who are actually making their own choices, you know, and it's a new freedom for that region.

[Jocko Willink]

So that's what you get to see is you get to see sort of this expanding community. And then they do. They do. They sort of absorb smaller villages around them, like, hey, we got a good way to do this. Do you want to learn it, too?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. And usually the way it works, we work in remote rural areas. So it's all mostly through farming and livelihoods or, you know, working with animals for. For pastoralists. But we work. The vehicle is through. We form farming cooperatives. So other villages, other farmers will join the cooperatives, and then the cooperatives form unions, and there's. There's power in the. All these cooperatives working together, they can offload all of their grain into real markets and capture that value to continue funding the program. And it's pretty cool to watch it happen, man, like, because it. Especially when it takes off totally independent of you or of me. And it's funny to look back and think of how wrong I did it in the beginning and how it's operating now, independent of me entirely. There's a new CEO running it, and they're scaling. They're now in their fifth country and in really tough places that other NGOs can't go to be able to do work kind of on the front lines helping stop the spread of these groups.

[Jocko Willink]

So how many years total did you do Nuru in Africa or with Nuru before you turned it over?

[Jake Harriman]

I lived in these villages about seven and a half, almost eight years. I was with Nuru from founding until transition, about 12 total. So my time in the field, though, was about six, seven and a half, almost eight.

[Jocko Willink]

You must feel very comfortable in the bush at this point.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, man. I loved it.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you learn any skills down there? Did you learn any, like, hunting skills or anything like that? Did you go in the field and hunt?

[Jake Harriman]

No, I grew up hunting. I learned a lot about farming.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

Which was ironic. I thought I was a farmer coming from West Virginia, but those guys taught me farming, bro. Yeah, I learned a lot about. I learned how to make bricks out of mud, which is fascinating. I learned a lot about defense with different types of weapons that are not guns, which was cool. Yeah, we lived in a lot of. Really. I actually learned some interesting things about building out a. What it really is a human network, but doing it through different types of activities than what I was trained in before, because we needed that to be able to detect when, like, Bokoram or ISIS group had. Was targeting us, so we could move or, you know, get out of that situation. So I learned a lot about that. You know, I learned a lot about myself and about people, how people work. I also learned the power of, like, this was a really molding time for me also in leadership, because I learned that people are people, bro. Everywhere. Doesn't. Doesn't matter what language you speak, you know, what you look like, how much money you have. People are people. And you're driven by a lot of the same things. And so leadership is leadership. A lot of the same lessons apply. It doesn't matter where you are.

[Jocko Willink]

That's 100% accurate. What eventually I'd say inspired you, but what made you decide, okay, I'm gonna turn this over? Yeah, it's on the right path. I like the trajectory. I see where it's going. It's going to be solid. What made you decide to move on?

[Jake Harriman]

Well, I, I actually thought I was going to be doing that forever. I thought that was my. I'm not like a serial entrepreneur. I'm not one of these guys that goes and starts something that like. I mean, you're a great serial entrepreneur. Both you guys. I don't. That's not me. I was like, I have a mission. I do one thing, try to get really good at it. But I. The turning point for me was I came back to, for a program to the, a leadership program in the States. I had a friend who was helping get this thing off the ground. President Bush and Clinton were doing this new thing called the Presidential Leadership Scholars Program. And they were looking for a group of like, emerging leaders working on domestic or international issues to help them take their models to the next level. And I got invited to participate, but to do that I had to move back to. Was it like a course as a six month program.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

Where every month you would do five days on site at one of the presidential libraries where, you know, the living presidents would be there with a lot of people from their administration, talk to you about lessons they learned in leadership from their administration. And then there was a team from Bush and Clinton that did kind of the overall curriculum and stuff like that. Brought in the speakers, brought in the presidents. It was, it was a really cool experience. And I was again, kind of odd man out. I was literally coming from the Bush for this program. Program. And I'll never forget, like, you know, everybody, you're wearing suits and all this kind of stuff to do this program. I didn't know suit. And I remember trying to. There was a friend of mine that knew something about fashion and style, which I knew nothing about. I mean, I had insane hair. I wore cargo pants and T shirts every day, all day. And this dude wrote this amazing. He was a Marine too. Wrote this amazing email ripping me, telling me the basics of fashion, of how to like wear button up shirts and wear shoes that don't make you look like an ass clown and like how to have a right belt and a suit and all this kind of stuff. So it was a little bit of a culture shock for me to this program. But I remember coming home and I'd been living overseas for I felt like 15 years. You know, I came home for business school, but that's a bubble, you know, I just lived there in school as a school environment, but basically 15 years downrange, first as a Marine and all these deployments and now living in these villages. And I came home for this program, to do this program with the presidents where I was like living here in the States for six months.

[Jocko Willink]

What year is this?

[Jake Harriman]

2015. And I just remember, man, I was shocked like when I got home and I did not recognize the country that I left to fight for in 2000. There was this crazy hatred and fear among Americans hating other Americans. And this didn't make any sense to me. You know, you had these, these politicians that were just running for office to like become famous, you know, and, and have like power. There's all this money in politics just like Americans. All that lack of agency I'd seen in that farmer and many others when I was overseas and these people I worked with in Africa, I started to see that in Americans eyes here at home. They didn't feel like they had any choices here. They couldn't change the situation. They were getting desperate. And I got really sad, man. I'm like, all of us have been downrange for the last couple decades trying to fight for the idea of America and protect us against our enemies. Isis, Al Qaeda, you name it. Only to come home here and see it's not going to be those guys that defeats us. It's going to be us. We're gonna tear ourselves apart. And then I got really pissed off, man. I was like, I did not watch a lot of my buddies pay the ultimate sacrifice to come home here and watch us tear ourselves apart while China, Russia, Iran sit on the sidelines just like stoke the fire and laugh at us, you know, wait for, wait to wait to attack. And I felt compelled to do something and so compelled that I was like, okay, well you know, I gotta, I gotta build something to try to help heal this divide, you know, and, and. But I didn't know what to do. I knew nothing about politics. I, I was completely underqualified. But again, I was very passionate about this problem. And so I started kind of kicking around some ideas I had some Mentors like, oh, you know what, you should run for office. And I, I thought that was a terrible idea. I said, there's got to be a better way that I can get involved here to help out. And so I met with some of my donors who have been backing us for a long time, and they were like, hey, man, we're shifting all of our philanthropy out of this space that we've been backing you in and fighting poverty overseas. And we're trying to shift at home here to figure out a way to build more of a center in American politics and help heal the divide in the country. And we've been looking around. There's a lot of good organizations out there, but not a lot of systemic change happening. And, you know, you were this crazy outsider, you were a Marine that knew nothing about aid, and you kind of built this thing that had global impact and disrupted the industry. Would you take a look at the politics industry? Is there a way to disrupt it and build something that could actually have some real systemic change? And if there's a market gap, we'll put together some capital, get you off the ground. And so I, I was fascinated by the problem. So I spent about four months and kind of studied other organizations that are doing stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

And at this point, are you turning over or no?

[Jake Harriman]

No, not yet.

[Jocko Willink]

You made the decision yet?

[Jake Harriman]

Not yet. I, I wanted to do something. Exploring. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Jake Harriman]

So I'm like reading stuff and I'm trying to, like, meet other people to try to understand what they're doing. And I thought I saw a real gap. And so I put together this 40 page strategy.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, what was the gap that you saw?

[Jake Harriman]

So I began to see that there were, There were two main problems. The way I dissected the problem, one of it was the political system, which has been hijacked by extremists and the incentives are all wrong. And we got to fix that system. And it's about leadership. We got to get the right leaders in. And there's a whole way around doing that. But the way that I felt like I could attack, the second problem that I felt I could attack more immediately was this horrible divisiveness and isolation that we were seeing in communities all over the country. Rural, urban, peri. Urban. Like, you know, we Americans were no longer coming out to meet each other anymore. You know, there was this guy named Robert Putnam, wrote this book called Bowling Alone a long time ago. It was about people aren't joining clubs anymore. They're not going to church and meeting other people like them anymore. I mean, if you think about it in your own lives, like, how often do you actually encounter people who don't think the way that you think or watch the same channels that you're watching or have the same background that you do? We.

[Jocko Willink]

We got. I'm be honest with you. We got that jiu jitsu, boy. Jiu jitsu. Like, we're in there.

[Jake Harriman]

All right.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, there's just.

[Jake Harriman]

You're right.

[Jocko Willink]

It's. Everyone's on the mats and it's all different.

[Jake Harriman]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

People from everywhere.

[Jake Harriman]

Oh. So think about that.

[Jocko Willink]

Got that little special thing over here.

[Jake Harriman]

Think about that. Right? Where else do we see that in the military?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, right.

[Jake Harriman]

In the military, like, you don't choose your platoon mates. Right. They're there, and they're coming from all over the place. Right. So what I found was. But in America itself, across the country, we've become more and more isolated, and we. We've sorted ourselves into these echo chambers where we don't actually connect with other Americans anymore. And we've lost sense of what it means to be Americans. We've lost our common ground. And I saw that as a critical gap that we need to repair. So when I start thinking about, like, how do we. How do we start addressing this? I saw what I believe to be this incredibly untapped strategic asset for the country, which is our brave men and women coming home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, and they're plugging into American society and they're building careers and they're doing good things in the world. But you know what? A lot of them are kind of missing the mission. They're missing that purpose. You know, they need a new hill to take, man. You know, as vets, like, we need a hill to take. We need that purpose and meaning. And I believe there's no greater hill to take right now than to help save American democracy. We the. You know, we're a government of, by, and for the people. And we the people have to solve this problem. We can't wait for people in Washington to try to figure this shit out. We need to do this ourselves. We need to reclaim our own agency. And that starts with really small things at the community level. The reason veterans are unique is because we still hold a unique place in American society. Both folks on the left and the right trust veterans still. And, you know, we have kind of earned the right to speak into those communities so we can form, we can be powerful conveners. So what we do, what this model I created was, hey, what if we could like train the best and brightest veterans to go into communities all over the country and launch chapters where they're bringing folks together from the left and right around common activities that bring us together. Community service projects, fun social connection activities like fitness challenges, potluck dinners, concerts, you know, civic engagement, stuff that we can do together. But these activities that bond us together to find common ground and even go beyond common ground, to find higher ground. What does it mean to be Americans again? How do we actually come back together around that common identity? What are those common values that we all share? So I began to see this and I thought, we got to do this, we got to launch this. There was a hunger in the country. I thought it was a real gap. I put together this strategy, sent that around a bunch of my mentors and like, you know, Jim Mattis and John Allen, President Bush is like, hey, you should do this. So I put about a 12 month transition plan in place for Nuru, my organization, because I'm still very passionate about that mission. But I knew I needed to start this. And I handed off the reins in June of 2020 to the new CEO. And I didn't have to worry about it. They're crushing it. I think they just had to get rid of me. And then In July of 2020, I stood up this new thing called More Perfect Union. And since that time, man, there's a hunger in the country for this. We've scaled to over 35,000 people now, members in all 50 states. We got 31 strong locations we call brickyards. Brickyards are our name for our chapters. It's building the country back brick by brick. And what our veterans do, we train and equip these veterans. We find top veterans around the country, train them at a program at the University of Montana. We partner with those guys to equip these veterans with the skills they need to launch these brickyard operations in their home state. And we're using counterinsurgency tactics. I mean, if you think about it, we're doing human terrain mapping to map out the power dynamics in the community. You know, it's not just the people who are holding titles in the community, but who has the real power and influence on both the left and the right. How do we actually build trust in those communities? Do the three cups of tea and the key leader meetings to be able to actually gain that trust and then bring them together in these common areas to do good things for the community. Community. Our first activities are these social connection activities to create understanding. Then we do community service. To build trust. And then we do civic engagement programs to create ownership in our democracy. And, you know, if you're swinging a hammer, building a house for somebody in the community with this guy next to you, it's really hard to hate that person, you know, and you're talking about your kids and you're talking about what your hopes are for them. And we're trying to bring Americans back together in this moment because if we don't, we're going to lose what we all love and what we all fought so hard for.

[Jocko Willink]

And so the expansion plan, you said we're in 31 states right now or 35 states.

[Jake Harriman]

We're in all 50 states. Our members are, but we've got 31 main locations where are what we call Brickyard centers of activity. Like this is where we've begun to scale operations. 35,000 members from all different states, you know, and it's growing so quickly. In fact, we, we went from 10,000 to 35, 000 in the last two months of last year because there's just a real hunger for people right now. You know, people are really fed up.

[Jocko Willink]

And, and do you. Do you sort of piggyback on other things like, like building homes for heroes or home. What's that? Habitat.

[Jake Harriman]

Habitat for Humanity.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you piggyback on those things?

[Jake Harriman]

Absolutely, man. We're not trying to react, recreate, you know, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel or duplicate effort. We build partnerships with other great organizations out there and we pull those partners in and run activities. So we partnered with Habitat for Humanity to do a house build in Atlanta at the Atlanta Brickyard. And we brought, we brought the folks in from both sides. Habitat brought the programming and the equipment, and we just, we built these houses together. It was an incredible event. And we tap into other like, like you talk about your jiu Jitsu clubs, right? We tap into groups like that also all over the country. We do fitness challenges. There's. You might have heard of Goruck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Goruck's one of our big partners. They've got, you know, 500 rucking clubs around the country.

[Jocko Willink]

He's been on this podcast twice. Yeah.

[Jake Harriman]

Oh, Jason McCarthy.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, Jason.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. Great dude. Yeah. So they're one of our big partners, but we partner with other groups who have some either great infrastructure or a ready member base. And then we work with them to enroll their folks into our programming to. Again, it's all about uniting people. It's all about bringing people together across the political divide.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So interestingly So I have a leadership consultants company called Echelon Front. And sometimes I'll be talking to companies and when, you know, we'll talk about like team building events. Right. And I'll kind of tongue in cheek a little bit, but talk about the best team building event that you have is what you do every day. Like, you know how many times I took my SEAL platoon out to do a team building event? Never. Because what we did was we, you know, planned a mission, went and built our boats to go and drop them out of airplanes and everyone had to get along with each other and work together and figure things out. And so when you're in a company, when you're in a business and you're making a product, you have to get together and make that product. And that right there, if you frame it correctly, can be a team building event. That's why I kind of was wondering if you were piggybacking off of other organizations, you know, like right now. And it. Well, there's fires in California right now, which I'm sure there's going to need some help, but it would be great. It's almost like a manpower.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Team. Where you go, oh, we've got fires that just took place in California. Someone's going to need to go help clean that up. The, the hurricane that swept through North Carolina. Really bad, terrible situation.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

Probably need some manpower out there.

[Jake Harriman]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

So that's just. See, and it sounds like kind of that's what you're doing.

[Jake Harriman]

That's exactly right. I mean, the vision for this is that we want more Perfect Union to be the new meeting place for America. So it's a new, it's a vision of a new civic organization for the country. So take the.

[Jocko Willink]

What's an old civic organization?

[Jake Harriman]

Great organizations that are declining. So Rotary, Lions Club.

[Jocko Willink]

That's what I needed to know. I just, I needed to know what you were talking about.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, yeah. So it's community association.

[Jocko Willink]

Father in law's Rotary Club, England.

[Echo Charles]

My mom too, by the way.

[Jocko Willink]

President, by the way, at some juncture. So I don't know. Am I pulling rank on you? But yeah, you're right. Like that was, that's a huge part of his life.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Like Rotary Club. They're exactly having dinner. They're doing like little awards to each other and stuff like that.

[Jake Harriman]

And it, those, those, those societies, those organizations are important. Important for our communities. The problem for our civic fabric. But the problem is the, the next generations are. They're not joining anymore. Right. They. We've gotten way more Isolated because of social media and a lot of different things, a lot of different phenomena for the newer generation. So we need that new meeting place, that gathering place. We need that new mobilization of Americans to come together to do good things. So for instance, the wildfires of California, it'd be great to say, hey, let's activate the More Perfect Union Brickyard in Malibu and have them out there working with teams and disaster relief organizations to be able to clean stuff up and help people, help evacuate people. Right. And we got veterans on board who are driving it. So they're used to doing emergency crisis management type situations. Right. So it's about reactivating the American spirit. Right. Like we're in a unique moment in this country and we have to act in this moment. And I think people get inspired by that. You know, if you, I've talked to so many Americans that feel like, what are we going to do? There's nothing we can do. And there's a sense of hopelessness and they're reaching out to desperate figures to lead them in these times. Right. But if you're looking around to see who's the leader going to lead us out, you need to look in the mirror like, we're the leader who's going to lead us out of this situation. We have to take ownership. America's so amazing because we have all these freedoms and, and rights. But those freedoms and rights come with responsibility and duty. You know, if you're going to wear the American identity, there's a responsibility that comes with that. And that means you got to own your country. That means you got to lead. I don't care who you are. We all have our leadership roles in this moment.

[Jocko Willink]

So how's the expansion look like? What's, how can we help out?

[Jake Harriman]

Well, we're trying to spread the word as much as we can about this movement. You can go to our website MP and learn more. You can, we can train you up to start a brickyard. We have an annual fellowship for our top veterans that we bring to Montana. Fifteen folks get selected.

[Jocko Willink]

How do you get ranked as a top veteran?

[Jake Harriman]

You're on the selection committee. No, but we, we, we recruit folks who have been doing pretty incredible things in their lives already, right? These are folks who have just really kicked ass, come back from overseas, built great careers, who are kind of like again, looking for that next hill to take. So we recruit them and we, we make them a fellow in our program and we take them through the training package and then we send them back and then they launch programming in their home. State, but you don't have to go through that program either. That's just for the folks that actually get into the fellowship. There's a lot of other ways to onboard and start a brickyard. Now, a lot of the folks that get into the fellowship are our top brickyard leaders around the country who have been doing great things already.

[Jocko Willink]

Where does a brickyard take place in a community physically? Like, is it at the ymca, community building?

[Jake Harriman]

Ymca. We, you know, we partner with YMCA for meeting spaces. We partner with the vfw, the American Legion. Like there are physical churches. Right. Is another place we meet a lot. Movie theaters. The key is the leader who's running it, the brickyard captain, this person who's trained and equipped. They've done their community mapping. They understand that the assets and the people and the power dynamics, they built those relationships. They built the trust. They get people to donate stuff. They get people to provide meeting spaces for free. They get folks, you know, to. To come up with activities. They get other partner organizations to come in and work with them. There's been some really cool stuff. Like around the. This last election, we had folks, there's a group called CISA which is responsible for our election security. Security incredible group led by an amazing woman named Jen Easterly. And so we partner with CISDA to come out and educate folks in the community about how our elections work. How can we as Americans be a part of making sure that our elections are safe? How can you train to be a poll worker at your local election office? How can you help on election day? Those kinds of things. Again, it's back to the responsibilities and duties. And we partner with these organizations to come in and educate our members and activate them so that if you have a problem in your community, you have the skills and talents and experience and network you need to solve the problem. You don't have to wait for some random guy in Washington, D.C. to pass a law in Congress. You can start to make changes now.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Another little angle which you may or may not have thought of. I'm. I'm coming at it from a different angle because I have a different type of mind. Mindset, I guess, but when I hear this right. So I speak with a lot of companies and talk to a lot of companies, and I also talk with a lot of organizations, and there's a bunch of different types of organizations, but they're like, they're basically business people that get together and they do. They. They do like, they do charity things, they do social things. They get speakers, like, all the kind of things. But one of the main reasons that people go to this is because it's an opportunity that. For them to. For lack of a better word. Echo Charles.

[Jake Harriman]

Network.

[Jocko Willink]

Network, Right. Because if you are a contractor, you're a builder, and, you know, you're at your meeting and you've got your little construction company, and you meet, you know, I meet Jake, and Jake's like, hey, dude, I pour concrete. And I'm like, dude, really? Okay, cool. Like, I got a big project coming. Oh, you do? Okay, great. Let's work together.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And, you know, now we can form friendships and we can help help each other grow our businesses. But usually those. Those groups have some sort of a charity element to them, too. You know, they're always. I've go to a bunch of these things, and they. They're always doing some charity drive, some fundraiser, so they're trying to help out. But I would just like, you know, maybe think about that as well as an angle of, like, hey, if you're in business, if you own a restaurant.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And, you know, you want to let people know about your restaurant so people can come in on Thursdays, and we have these meetings on Thursday nights, and everyone's going to come buy, you know, a piece of pizza. Echo Charles. Damn. It's a middle death reset. Right now there's no pizza going down. We're doing a little thing, a little, like, New Year's thing, and it's called deaf reset. Discipline equals freedom. Reset. And so one of the things is eating clean for January. And how's that going? It's going great.

[Jake Harriman]

Really?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're only. What. What's today? The.

[Jake Harriman]

That's good. You're eight days in.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, eight days in. But you start thinking about pizza. I do. So. But you know, you got a restaurant, you got whatever. So it just seems like another thing to think about if you're here, if you're hearing what we're saying right now and you think, well, geez, I'd really like a group, but, you know, I only have so much time. Well, you probably have a return on investment. Not just the return on investment of the. Of the helping your country unite. Not just the return on investment of helping people that are going through a hard time, whatever that might be. But also the investment. Like, I'm gonna get an actual roi.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And being out there meeting someone and going, hey, dude, wait, you pour concrete? I'm a guy. I have a construction company. I could use some help. Okay. Boom. We shake hands, we meet each other now we're moving forward with the business, so I think there's absolutely a little opportunity for that as well. And the reason I think I thought that's because my father in law, you know, like at Rotary, it was like, you know, all his little business connections were all these, you know, friends from Rotary.

[Jake Harriman]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And, oh, yeah, I do trucking and I can ship your stuff for. Oh, you can. Okay, great. So that's another little angle to think about. You can only do so much through your phone looking at profiles of other alleged human beings.

[Jake Harriman]

You know what you said something really powerful there, which is we got to get together physically, you got to meet people face to face again. We've lost that art, man. You know, and if you're bringing people together face to face, having conversations, doing good shit together, it's really hard to dislike that person. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. Right. And. And you're learning from that other person too. And you're doing, you're doing business together, you're doing good for the community together, you're helping your kids. Right. So, I mean, what. There's nothing to lose. You know, we're in this moment where we could really do some good stuff together.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, man. I like it. Does that get us up to speed?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, yeah. No, thanks a lot for the opportunity. This. I mean, I would just say, you know, maybe a call to all your listeners. You know, if you, if you're finding yourself in a place where you're kind of fed up with the divisiveness and toxicity in the country right now, but you still believe in the idea of America, I just want to challenge you, do something about it. You know, I am nobody. I came from nothing. And if somebody like me can have any kind of impact, you can for sure. You know, it's just we got to believe again in what America can be number one. And we have to believe in each other again. And I think that's got to start today. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I got a friend that's a veteran, that's a great guy, but, you know, he. He's had some definite struggles, and one of his biggest struggles is he wants to help every veteran.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Like today, you know, he'll send me texts about how messed up the government is, how messed up the VA is, how messed up the, the politicians are. And, and I'm like, how can, you know, he wants to help everyone. And I'm like, bro, help like the veteran that, you know, that's like having a hard time right now. Just Start with that person. And so you know what I like about this is like, what can you do? Hey, you don't need to eat the entire elephant. No, you can help out in your community and bring people together, bro.

[Jake Harriman]

Here's a simple thing you can do. Here's a suggestion. People tell me, what can I do? Right? I give these talks at the end of the talk. Well, okay, give me one concrete thing. Okay, you want one concrete thing? Thing. Go find someone not like you with a different background and buy that person a cup of coffee or a beer or whatever. Sit down with them and just have a real conversation about life. Get to know who they are, you know, that's how we start. And imagine if you can scale that. Right. It doesn't. You don't have to create some crazy program or raise all this money. Just do small acts of kindness will go a long way.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, indeed. Where can people find it? So it's More Perfect Union. It's MPU US.

[Jake Harriman]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Is the, is the deal on Instagram it's MorePerfect Union US. And then on Twitter X, it's @mpu_US. This is like a little test, little quiz. You've got a bunch of different things you got to figure out. And then Facebook, More Perfect Unique union. And then YouTube, more perfect union. 9,788. You probably didn't even know that.

[Jake Harriman]

But I did not know that.

[Jocko Willink]

Hey, just so you know, there's another More Perfect Union.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, that's not us.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And it's like a super partisan kind of.

[Jake Harriman]

Thank you for clarifying.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, they self described as a left wing answer to Prageru. So this is not that. This is, that's a, that's a, that's a very partisan thing. This is a non partisan thing. That is a divisive thing. This is a unity thing.

[Jake Harriman]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

So unfortunately, and I think they started after you.

[Jake Harriman]

They did. Don't get me started on them. But, but yeah, MPU Us. You will find the truth there.

[Jocko Willink]

That's the real one.

[Jake Harriman]

That's right.

[Jocko Willink]

And you personally, you're on Twitter [e-mail], you're on Instagram@ryan. Or sorry, jake.ryan.herriman. and you're on LinkedIn, Facebook @john Jack Jake Herriman. So there we go. Echo Charles. Any questions?

[Echo Charles]

I don't have a question, but I do have a comment. So you know, back in the day when you're in that scenario where you kind of, I guess, for lack of a better way of putting it, weren't Invited, but you're starting to get after it. There was like, who's this guy? Or whatever.

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Echo Charles]

So you ever watch the movie Major League?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Remember Old school?

[Jake Harriman]

Right.

[Echo Charles]

You watch that?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah. No, Major.

[Echo Charles]

That's too bad. Anyway, so Jake, Major League, remember the part Willie May's haze? He did the exact same thing where he just shows up at tryouts and they're like, oh yeah, cool. He's doing this after a while they're like, bro, who's this guy? And then they go in the middle when he's sleeping in his bunk, they just put him outside. But then he jumps back in and he runs like a quick, the, the sprints or whatever. He's super fast. So they let, they let him in. They didn't let you back in though?

[Jake Harriman]

Apparently they didn't. Not till much later.

[Echo Charles]

It's too bad. But you know, I noticed that parallel.

[Jake Harriman]

That's good, man.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jake Harriman]

Good to meet you. Good to meet you, brother.

[Jocko Willink]

Jacob, any. Any closing thoughts?

[Jake Harriman]

No. Thanks for the opportunity. Humbled to be here and hope we can all do good things for the country, man. Thanks, brother.

[Jocko Willink]

And thanks for joining us. And, and thanks for sharing your lessons learned. We probably could have used a little bit more lightning strike prevention because that's, that's not good. But more important, thanks for service in the Marine Corps and for what you continue to do to help people in other countries break out of that poverty cycle and for what you're doing right now to help unify our country here at home. Appreciate it all, bro.

[Jake Harriman]

Thank you, brother. Appreciate you.

[Jocko Willink]

And with that, Jake Herriman has left the building. A lot of. A lot of things to fix in the world.

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

A lot of things to try and square away.

[Echo Charles]

Square away.

[Jocko Willink]

Improve can be a little bit overwhelming. Let's say we were to look at the globe and think about all the things that we need to fix. Can be overwhelming. It's a lot of stuff and it's going to be very difficult to be strong for the rest of the world if you're not strong for yourself a little bit. You know what I mean? So that's why we're on the path. That's why we're working out. That's why we're getting after it. That's why we need clean fuel. Check out jockofuel.com we have, we got protein energy recovery, we got joint supplements. We got everything that you need. If you go to jockofuel.com you can get what you need. The supplementation that will help you stay on the path, help you be Strong. Help you be healthy. What we make is healthy. Isn't that weird? People make food, and that's not good for you to eat.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's crazy, right? Straight up seem crazy.

[Echo Charles]

Well, yeah. I don't want to go into a long thing. I might, but I don't want to.

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know.

[Echo Charles]

But, you know, when you opened up.

[Jocko Willink]

Something I shouldn't have, maybe, perhaps, like.

[Echo Charles]

I said with our boy Thomas DeLauer, if you're literate, it's an express. If you're literate in health, fitness, or whatever. You're right, it doesn't. It starts to not add up.

[Jake Harriman]

Why?

[Echo Charles]

Like, you're eating food if. But if you're literate with food and nutrition, it's like, why would you eat a freaking pizza pocket for lunch or dinner or whatever, and then have everyone. It doesn't make sense. See what I'm saying? So, yes, exactly what you're saying.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, it makes as much sense as putting Dr. Pepper into your car.

[Jake Harriman]

You know what I mean?

[Echo Charles]

Exactly.

[Jocko Willink]

It's just. This doesn't work.

[Jake Harriman]

It's like.

[Echo Charles]

Brad, that's not what that's for.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. This isn't gonna help anybody. Yeah, I'm not going anywhere with this. Exactly.

[Echo Charles]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

Don't do that.

[Echo Charles]

Don't do it.

[Jocko Willink]

Put the. Put the good stuff in there, the clean stuff. Jocko Fuel can get a jockofuel.com Walmart, Wawa Vitamin Shop, GNC. The military commissaries and exchanges. Go check that out. We just were talking the Marine Corps. You can get on the Marine Corps bases. I know that. Marines be sending me pictures. They're. They're in the game. Where else? Dash Stores. Hannafords, Wake Fern, ShopRight. HEB down in Tes Meer in the Midwest. Wegmans out on the East Coast. Harris Teeter, East Coast. Publix just went into Publix. Publish is a big deal down in Florida. It's kind of a. It's a cultural thing down in the. Down in the Southeast. And people been asking for Publix for a while, so check that out. Lifetime Fitness, Shields, Small gyms. You guys know the deal. You guys got a gym, you guys got a powerlifting gym, you get a boxing gym, you got a. I don't care. You got a yoga gym, yoga studio, got a jiu jitsu place, MMA place they should have. Jocko Fielder. The clean stuff, the good stuff. If you want it there, email jfsales.com and get it there. Stay clean. Also origin USA.com American made products. American Made support the country, you gotta. You gotta support the country. Just like in. You're in a little village in Africa, you got to, like, support your other villagers. That's what we need to do here. Support the American villagers, support the American economy, support our technology, support America. So at Origin usa, we make everything in America from American made materials. So whatever you need. What do you need? You need to work out. Okay. We got workout gear. You need to go to the store. We got jeans, we got pants. We got hoodies. If it's cold out, we got jackets, rain jackets. If it's raining, we got to go to Jiu Jitsu. Guess what? We got you covered. We got shorts, we got rash guards, we got jujitsu geese. Of course, if your head is cold, we got hats.

[Jake Harriman]

Or.

[Jocko Willink]

Or beanies. If it's too bright for you, we got hats. And for your feet, if you're on doing Jiu Jitsu, we got you covered for feet because you don't need anything. But if you're working, we got boots.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So we got what you need. And socks, by the way, we got socks. So everything that you need, 100American made. Oh, if you're going hunting too, by the way, we got you covered. And maybe you're not. Maybe you're going hunting, but maybe you're just going on a tactical mission.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah, for sure.

[Jocko Willink]

Recon.

[Echo Charles]

Hell yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Right? So, yeah, check it out. OriginUSA.com Best gear in the world. Made right here in the best country in the world. Get some.

[Echo Charles]

That. What was the expression you said? Peace through prosperity. Right. You know, you come in and, like, you kind of basically do the opposite of divide people, you know, bring them together. He could. If he could be successful doing this, contributing to a little economy, right? And everyone can be prosperous. Y. It's way less likely someone's going to come in and offer him some criminal activity for money scenario.

[Jocko Willink]

I think probably there's a whole bunch of stories that. And a whole bunch of lessons learned that Jake could put together from seeing these things happen. Because I guarantee in some of these situations, because you. You introduce prosperity. And if everyone's getting prosperous, that's where you get a good situation. What. Where you have a bad situation where someone's getting prosperous and someone's not. And then all of a sudden, people start getting. People start getting killed, right? Like, you're taking all my money, Cole. I'm gonna kill you. Like, that's what wars are about. Resources.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

And even. Even before that, it doesn't actually. Doesn't even have to go that extreme, which of course.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. But even if you get a lack of prosperity, then you get a rise of desperation.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, for sure. Well, that's what he was talking about.

[Jake Harriman]

Exactly.

[Echo Charles]

Right?

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

That's the whole point. So, yeah, if you're like, hey, I don't. I don't have a job because there's no jobs, there's no money coming in, whatever, it's like, shoot, that you're going to start lowering the bar more and more as far as ways to get money. See what I'm saying? And then, you know, from there, you know where it goes. Also Jacob Star called Jocko store. If you want to represent on this path with shirts, T shirts mainly. Got a lot of cool T shirts on there. Discipline equals freedom. Good. All this stuff. This hat's on there as well. Hoodies on there as well. Some good stuff. Some shorts on there as well. All purpose shorts.

[Jocko Willink]

Like it?

[Echo Charles]

Yep. What else? We got a lot of stuff on there. Check it out. Jocastore.com also on there is what we call the shirt locker subscription shirt scenario. Different designs every month. One every month. People seem to like that one a little bit more creative fun, you know, we'll call them fun. Yeah, we're having fun on this thing. 100. We're representing. Hard for sure, but we're having fun. Good designs. Anyway, go on there. Jocastore.com and yeah, if you like something, get something.

[Jocko Willink]

Also you got your Coloradocraft Beef.com and Primalbeef.com the Good Steaks. Good.

[Echo Charles]

Very good. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

The good beef jerky, the good beef tallow. Like just the goods, man. The goods from good people. So if you need steak or you need sausages or you need hot dogs or you need ground beef, like whatever you need, if it comes from a beef, we got you. We got you. So check out primalbeef.com coloradocraft beef.com get yourself some of the good stuff. That's where we're at. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also Jocko underground.com also we got a bunch of YouTube channels. Somehow. We got official Jocko podcast. We got Jocko podcast clips. We got Jocko Fuel and we got Origin usa. Check out all those if you want to know what's happening. If you want to know what's happening behind the scenes and whatnot. Psychological warfare. Flipsidecanvas.com Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Books. Got a bunch of books. I've written a bunch of books. If you want to get kind of the distilled details of the leadership principles that we Talk about here. Get the books. Also got some fiction books. One called Final Spin. We got some kids books. Got a bunch of those actually. So if you want to get those books, check them out. You can get them anywhere. You get books. Also Echelon front, you heard me mentioned a little bit today we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you want to get assistance inside your organization with yourself. We can help you and come to one of our events or you can bring us into your organization. We also have online training for leadership. Very helpful to human beings. Doesn't matter. Oh, I'm not really in a leadership position. Yes you are. Yes you are. You interact with other humans. Yep. You're in a leadership position. If you want to learn those skills, go to extremeownership.com you can sit on your computer, you can interact with us. You can watch pre recorded courses that have tests. They're interactive. They're pre recorded but they're interactive. And then we also have live sessions. You want to see me? You want to talk to me, you want to ask me a question? Go extreme ownership.com get in the game. Also if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold star family, Check out Mark Lees mom, Mama Le. She's got an incredible charity organization, helps so many of our veterans. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to America's mighty warriors.org also Micah Fink, heroes and horses.org and then Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org and then of course more perfect union mpu us not the other More Perfect Union. This is the more perfect union mpu us also on Instagram @moreperfectunion us also on Twitter xpu us. This is a little cryptic, getting a little crazy. And Facebook more Perfect Union. YouTube more Perfect Union 9,788 all right, and then Jake, if you want to connect with Jake, he's on twitter x @jakempu he's on Instagram @jake ryan harriman, he's on LinkedIn and Facebook @jake harriman. For us I'm a jocko.com I'm also on social media. Echoes on social media but we're. I'm not on social media right now. You're not on social media right now. We're not going to be on it like a lot but we, you know, you can get in there, just watch out because there's an algorithm there that can be a problem. You know where we are. We're on Deaf Reset app. Get the Deaf Reset app for daily discipline in your life things. Outstanding. So check that out. I'm on there. Your brother's on there.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, he's on there.

[Jake Harriman]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

In full effect.

[Jocko Willink]

Kind of made it so. There you go. All right. Thanks once again to Jake for joining us tonight. Thanks for your service, bro, in the Marine Corps and what you've done to help needy people around the world, help square away their economy and their agriculture. And of course, thanks for what you're doing right now in America to help make us a more perfect union. And thanks to all the men and women currently in the ranks of our military and those veterans who've served in the past. Thank you for what you do to protect our union. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for. For keeping our country safe and everyone else out there. You know, there's plenty of division in the world. It can be in your home. It can be at your job. It could be in your community. It can be in our country. Make a conscience effort to not broaden the gap. Instead, listen, be humble, find common ground, and remember that together we are stronger. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.