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Rob Jones

Retired Marine Sergeant, Paralympic Bronze Medalist & Instructor at Echelon Front

Served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before being injured by an IED in 2010
Went on to compete in the Paralympics and World Rowing Championships
Completed his incredible marathon challenge in the fall of 2017, running 31 marathons in 31 days in 31 different major cities
Shares his incredible story and his strategies for staying motivated, pushing past fear, and living a life filled with purpose

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Rob Jones is a retired US Marine, combat leader, and now a leadership instructor and speaker with Echelon Front. He spent five years in the Marine Corps, with deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a Combat Engineer, Rob specialized in finding hidden Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the enemy’s most deadly weapons. On a mission in July of 2010, while executing an IED sweep, Rob stepped on an IED, which resulted in double above knee amputations of his legs. He spent the next year and a half in physical therapy before retiring from the Marine Corps in 2011. Upon his retirement, Rob was forced to adapt to a new way of being a leader. To do this, he turned to the world of sports.

In 2012, he competed in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, England, bringing home a bronze medal in rowing. In 2013, he became the first double above knee amputee to ride a bicycle across the United States, riding 5,181 miles from Bar Harbor, Maine to Camp Pendleton, California. In 2017, he ran 31 marathons in 31 consecutive days in 31 different cities.

Throughout this journey, Rob has relied upon the principles taught at Echelon Front to turn the darkest moment of his life into a life of impact—more meaningful than he ever could have expected. Rob now brings his experience to Echelon Front to help teams of people take Extreme Ownership and overcome the challenges they face in business and in life.

Speaker Video

The Rob Jones Journey

Rob Jones: Extreme Ownership

Rob Jones Speaker Sample

Rob Jones | A Double-Amputee Veteran's Journey Continues

Rob Jones | Use the Weight | TEDx Talk

Rob Jones on Why He Ran 31 Marathons

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Extreme Ownership

Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city in Iraq deemed “all but lost.” Despite seemingly insurmountable odds, U.S. forces, through heroic acts of bravery and courage, and by working alongside the local people, secured victory in Ramadi.

Through these experiences, Jocko and Leif learned many life-changing lessons, the most important being that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. Determined to not let the tragic losses that they had suffered be in vain, they took these lessons back to the SEAL Teams by instituting SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders.

After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields.

Since then, Echelon Front has grown to include 15 instructors, including Rob Jones.

Keynote: Combat Leadership Principles for Business and Life

The Combat Leadership Brief is a highly-engaging, dynamic keynote that will make the audience both laugh and cry, and quite often ends with them applauding on their feet. Using one of the most unique styles you will see in keynote presentations, Rob will have audience members up on stage, he will be out in the crowd, and he will be actively engaging with them throughout the keynote in order to maximize true learning.

In doing so, he will detail the mindsets and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, and show you how to apply them to any team, family or organization. The main focus will be the Four Laws of Combat Leadership, which are the leadership skills distilled from Jocko and Leif’s experiences in Ramadi.

Cover and Move: Put simply, Cover and Move is about teamwork. In order to accomplish the mission, every group of people has to be able to work together as a team. Most people learn this from a young age, however, the way that most people utilize teamwork is ineffective. Cover and Move will teach you the effective way to work as a team.

Simple: In order to be successful, the team must understand the mission. However, without realizing it, leaders will quite often prevent their teams from understanding by overcomplicating their communication. Simple will teach you how to avoid this pitfall.

Prioritize and Execute: On the battlefield, and in life, problems are inevitable. And, multiple problems always seem to appear simultaneously. It is our natural tendency, when we face multiple problems, to try and solve them all simultaneously as well. However, this will almost always lead to failure to solve anything. Prioritize and Execute will teach you how to see through the confusion, and solve problems quickly and effectively.

Decentralized Command: Every sin gle person on the team is a leader. And, in order for the team to reach it’s greatest effectiveness, every person on the team, regardless of their position, must have the power to lead, solve problems, and make decisions. Decentralized Command will teach you how to let go of your tendency to want to control everything, and give your power away to your team so that they can lead.

At the end of the Combat Leadership Principles for Business and Life Brief, the audience will be armed with the skillsets required for effective leadership so that they can help their team win. At work, at home, and in life.

Leadership Workshops

Rob is also available to teach full and half-day leadership workshops. Such workshops can be catered to the needs of the team, and will begin with the Combat Leadership Brief followed by a selection of additional modules that will help the audience truly learn the Four Laws of Combat and how to implement them in more detail.