7. Brandon Webb: Former Navy Seal Sniper Turned CEO

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 7 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author and former Navy SEAL sniper turned CEO, Brandon Webb. As a US Navy chief and SEAL with more than a decade of service, he served multiple combat deployments in the Middle East and Afghanistan and was the head instructor at the Navy SEAL Sniper School, which produced legendary snipers such as Chris Kyle and Marcus Luttrell. How cool is that? And during our conversation, we talk about his book, Total Focus. We also talk about how to make better decisions under pressure and some military lessons that apply to business. I read his book Total Focus in early 2020, and I really enjoyed it. There's a lot to learn. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with the amazing Brandon Webb. Thank you for joining the podcast. I'm very excited for this conversation today and also to share your story with the Book Thinkers family because there's a lot to learn. To start, I'd like to bring you back to the most stressful time in your entire life, which is Sniper school. Now before sniper school, you've got to go through BUD/S, and BUD/S has been popularized. It's the Navy SEAL selection process. You've probably— everybody in the audience has probably seen videos of carrying the logs on your shoulders and getting sprayed with hoses, and we know that that's tough. But then you go to sniper school and it's even worse. And so in the book, you talk about the cold bore exercises that you've got to go through daily and why it's important to sleep with a bullet in your pocket. And so So let's start there.

Every day in sniper school, when I went through, you had to wake up and take a shooting test. It's like wake up in the morning, um, before you ate breakfast or did anything, you, you would go to the assigned, uh, yard line on the range. And usually it's from, from 100 to 1,000 meters. So you'd show up there Then they'd always throw something crazy at you. You know, okay, run to 800 meters and, you know, drop down and your target will appear in 2 minutes type thing. And so you have one bullet. The reason I put my bullet in my pocket at night is because temperature of the air outside, the barometric pressure, Those are like big— like barometric pressure accounts for a lot of different factors, but the temperature of the bullet also matters. So I didn't want my bullet to vary in temperature. I just put it in my pocket, take it out when I'm ready to shoot, and at least I'm getting a constant. And so, you know, we would take this shot and you're basically— you're either in the target zone or you're not. And if you're in, you're good. It was like a kind of like a bowling pin on the target. And if, if you're in the majority, it was an 8. If you're in the head or heart, it was a 10. So, and if you're outside of that, it's a fail. And you can only miss a few shots and you're failed out of the course. So it was an extremely like stressful way to start your day.

I can imagine.

You know, and imagine you've like missed 2 In a row and you're like, shit, if I miss this one, I'm done, I'm out of here. Which happened to a few guys. So yeah, it's an extremely stressful way to start your day. But that's kind of the cold bore in detail. And it was called a cold bore shot because it was the first shot fired out of the gun.

That is a high-stakes situation. The whole purpose is to prepare you for when you're actually out in the field. What a fantastic experience to prepare you for business. And you say in the book about halfway through that being a business owner is a lot like being a special operator in the field. And that means there's a— there is an importance in knowing a lot of different disciplines. So could you talk about that for a minute or two? Like, how does a former Navy SEAL sniper turn into a CEO and sort of what's the overlap?

There's a lot of things that translate, like military skills and Navy SEAL skills, sniper skills, that translate well. Funny, I was watching Napoleon Dynamite the other day. He was talking about all the different skills.

Um, bo staff skills.

Yeah, yeah. Um, but, you know, many things translate well. to business, and there are many gaps that I had to fill. I remember how intimidated I was just looking at basic financial statements like a profit and loss balance sheet, which is very simple arithmetic. Like, I could teach probably a 3rd grader to get it, but when it's foreign to you, you just don't understand. And so, you know, I— and then there's a lot of skills that, that I see guys, especially coming out of the military, they, they don't translate well. Like, it's not like— especially in the SEAL Teams, when you're with a platoon for maybe a year and it's all about you and the platoon and against the world kind of thing, and, and you'll do anything to win, but In business, it's about relationships. So you can't take that short-term approach to maybe screwing somebody over on a transaction, getting a short-term gain, and, and it's really not realizing it's going to affect you and your reputation in the long run. And I see many guys make that mistake. So the challenge is like figuring out what translates well and putting it to work. and leaving the other stuff behind. But, you know, one of the things you and I talked about before the interview is the, you know, a good plan executed now is better than a great one, you know, executed, you know, a week from now or never. Because I also think of it, you know, it's It's a lot like taking a trip on a sailboat. I'll use the example because I grew up on sailboats. You know, you can plan the trip and know like, okay, this is my destination, and you can do your best to kind of plan for things that are gonna maybe come up— bad weather, you know. Political environments and the countries you're traveling, like Mexico and other places to avoid, like North Africa. But you just never can plan for everything. You have to eventually untie the boat and take off and kind of adapt to the changing environment. And so that's why I see a lot of people get into this kind of paralysis state where they're just like, oh, now it's not the right time. I gotta wait. I gotta plan. I gotta— and for instance, I saw an opportunity with my marketing team in March to go after a kids' vitamin supplements category where it was really being underserved. And there's these big kind of dinosaur vitamins companies like Flintstone Vitamins that, that had traditional model of retail distribution and nobody was selling direct-to-consumer. And obviously COVID, health and wellness is at the top of everyone's mind and you want your kids to be healthy. So we took that product from concept Like we saw the opportunity, we took it from concept to selling product in, what's it, I would say March, April, May, 3 months.

Mm-hmm.

We're selling product now. It's called tigergummies.com. So that's an example of us just kind of getting after it. And I remember, My head of marketing, Alda, she was like, hey, what's the business plan? I said, keep your ROAS positive, which is return on ad spend, and sell a bunch of products. That's the business plan right now. Make money. I was like, you got it? It's pretty simple. You sell the product, make money, and we have a good profit margin. And we'll figure, you know, we'll We'll kind of shore it up in the meantime. I didn't want to spend 4 weeks writing this masterpiece business plan and losing all that time to kind of plan and get the product to market. And that's hopefully an example.

Yeah, no, it's a great example. In the book, you give that full General George Patton quote that says, a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. One of our core values at Book Thinkers is a bias towards action. And that's because so many times people are reading these personal development books and you're failing to actually implement anything. And so let's transition over to an important topic in the book for me. And this is one that I circled a trillion times, the importance of saying no. Like, we have so many opportunities in front of us, but we need to focus on the things that are important. And so we need to learn how to say no to things that aren't aligned with our mission, Is that right?

Look, opportunities are out there, right? Even in this environment we face now with the whole COVID situation, there's never been a better time to kind of start or buy a business. So there's— opportunities are always going to be out there. It's kind of opportunity management. I get asked probably on a weekly basis to join some board or be a part of this nonprofit. And I just, you have to get good at saying no and focusing on the right things. And I think one of the things I talk about in the book is the reason strategy and kind of not only just business strategy, but having a strategy for personal business and family Once you kind of nail that down, and it can change, but once you kind of nail down that direction, anything that doesn't fit into that strategy, it becomes very clear and obvious. And that it doesn't fit and that you should decline. And that's kind of how I operate. I don't want to be on the board of a national chain of shooting ranges. It just doesn't fit my personal or business strategy. And that was an example of something I got— I got offered equity and to be a board member, and I'm like, it just doesn't fit with what I want to do. It doesn't excite me. And you just have to get good at saying no to that stuff and then really doubling down on kind of the core thing it is that you want to do, whether it's related to career, or if you want to be an entrepreneur, and, you know, or relate as it relates to business.

Yeah, there are a lot of young professionals in the Book Thinkers audience, and one of the things I know a lot of us deal with is saying yes to too many things, you know, and splitting our time everywhere, not focusing on one thing. And there's an opportunity cost to that. you know, not putting your full effort into the one thing that you either are most passionate about or you're earning the most money from or that has the most potential. And so I know when you first jumped in to becoming a business owner, you read stacks of marketing books and sales books and started to understand all these concepts that you didn't know. And you give a lot of recommendations in Total Focus for some of the books that made a big impact on your life. So I'd love to wrap up today's conversation and just ask, do you have any books other than your own? Because you're obviously a great author. Do you have any books that you'd recommend for the Book Thinkers family to check out if they're starting a business?

Yeah, I mean, if I had to point to one right now, it would probably be Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. I mean, Tim has a gift for, you know, putting his OCD to good use, and he has consolidated like the best and brightest kind of minds and distilled it into this pretty amazing resource that is broken up, I think, and I'll probably get it wrong, but it's like health, wellness, um, or no, it's health, um, wealth and something else. I forget, but amazing resource. And it's, the thing is he's pulling from like the top experts in each field. So that's, that's a pretty incredible resource that I would definitely recommend. And then I would also say I get inspired a lot by reading fiction as well. Like, I remember a book that had a really massive impact on me and how I thought about the future of the internet was Ready Player One. I mean, talk about an internet disruptor. When the internet goes VR, which it will, it's going to be a game changer. It's going to change the way we shop, the way we interact with each other. Just the whole concept of the internet as it exists today is going to be totally disrupted. How we consume content will be different. There'll be whole virtual economies like we have today, many virtual economies, mostly mostly in the video game space. But when you think about that, and like every business today has to have some type of foothold in the internet to be relevant, and what like that does to the whole business community is pretty, pretty amazing. So I would also just encourage people to just read and be curious.

Yeah, I love that lesson. And on the first book, I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss. I've been following and listening to Tim for a very long time, and I owe a lot of my location independence and financial stability to The 4-Hour Workweek. And then those other books that he's written that have come along have helped me in a big way as well. And I'm meaning— I've been meaning to check out Ready Player One for a while. Actually, when I was eating lunch yesterday, I saw the movie was on TV. My brother walked in and said, Hey, you know, I loved this movie. It's fascinating. You got to sit down and check it out. So I'll take up your book recommendation there and I'll read that soon and give a recommendation to the Book Thinkers family if I like it.

Cool.

Cool. Well, hey, thank you so much for your conversation with me today. I know everybody's going to find a lot of value. For those that are looking to connect with you and learn a little bit more about your books, what's the best place to find more information?

My author page at brandontylerweb.com. It's my full name. They can find everything there. I'm pretty active on Instagram, and if it's a respectful question, I try and, I try and get back to people. And that's just @brandontweb, and you can find it on, on the author page as well.

Former Navy SEAL sniper turned CEO. Thank you. Appreciate your time.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So much for listening to my conversation with Brandon. I really do believe that we are the average of the 5 people that we spend the most time with. So if there's someone in your network that you could help elevate by sharing this episode, please do. It only takes 60 seconds. It could change their life and it could change yours. And so before I go, I want to remind everyone that Book Thinkers is both an online community and educational technology company that enables readers to achieve more and live better. For more information on our mobile application, our shop, our social pages, or our mission, please check out www.bookthinkers.com. And as always, remember that real learning requires education like reading Total Focus, but it also requires behavior change. With that, I'm signing off, and I hope you found value in this episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.