The NAVY SEAL Approach to Self Storage

What does it take to think like a Navy SEAL and win at both life and business? 

Scott Meyers interviews former SEAL and leadership coach William Branum. 

With 26 years of military experience, William shares how the mindset required to survive SEAL training can be applied to leadership, business, and personal growth. 

 From breaking through self-limiting beliefs to improving team dynamics, William reveals actionable insights, emphasizing that success is a choice and mediocrity is optional.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
04:06 Why most people fail: aiming for the minimum
09:50 Why mediocrity is easier but always comes at a cost
14:25 Rewriting the story: overcoming self-limiting beliefs
18:12 Business as a battlefield: preparing to win every day

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Chapters

• 4:06 Why most people fail: aiming for the minimum
• 9:50 Why mediocrity is easier but always comes at a cost
• 14:25 Rewriting the story: overcoming self-limiting beliefs
• 18:12 Business as a battlefield: preparing to win every day

Transcript

Announcer (00:03):

This is the Self Storage Podcast with the original Self storage expert, Scott Meyers.

Scott Meyers (00:10):

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Self Storage Podcast. I'm your host Scott Meyers, and in this episode we have a special guest that is in the house. So we are on site at the Self Storage Mastermind in Salt Lake City and William Branum just got done absolutely blowing everyone's mind and not rocking the stage here. William Branum is a former Navy Seal served 26 years in the military and the leadership skills and everything that goes into becoming a Navy SEAL and to achieve the success that he had spills over into anyone's life, personal life and business. So he has created, he is an entrepreneur and has created a business out of that because as it turns out, there's a whole lot of leaders out there that aren't very good. The leaders, they're in the leadership role, but they need help. The best leaders that I've seen and I've witnessed in the world are those that come from our military because the consequences are so much greater. And so we asked William to come out and talk to our folks about maybe exposing some of their weaknesses, giving 'em some tools and some resources, but then also ways that they can spend time with him to become better leaders. So with that, William,

William Branum (01:12):

Thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here.

Scott Meyers (01:13):

Yeah, my pleasure. Tell me, I mean, there's some questions, there's a whole lot of questions that people have when they meet a Navy seal and first of all is you're a different breed. You guys operate at a different level and tell me either what made you want to, or you feel like you were called to become a Navy Seal and when did you think that, Hey, this is something I want to do and I think I got what it takes?

William Branum (01:34):

It's funny. I think that's a funny question because I'm just a regular dude. I grew up extremely poor outside of Meridian, Mississippi, mediocre mindset. I was barely made to eat a season in school, no natural athletic ability whatsoever, but I was heavily involved in the Boy Scouts and I knew that I always wanted to be part of some sort of small elite military organization, although I didn't know what that was. So because I was so involved in the Boy Scouts, it was also an outlet to, because that's where my friends were.

(02:10):

So the organization that I was a part of, they paid for me to go to a National Jamboree one year, and this was my summer between my 11th and 12th grade of high school. I met a kid on that trip who had his whole life planned out. He said, I'm, when I graduate high school, I'm going to go to the Naval Academy. I'm going to fly F 14 Tom, like the movie Top Gun and I'm going to be a Navy Seal. I'm like, that's super cool. What's a Navy seal? I want to do all that. And so he explained it's the hardest military training in the world. They jump out of airplanes, blow stuff up, scuba dive, all these other things. I liked the water back then. I don't like it so much anymore, but I liked the water back then and I was like the scuba diving aspect of it.

(02:48):

I'm like, I want to be a Navy seal. So I came back from that National Jamboree still saying I'm never going to join the Navy because every man in my family has been in the Navy and these big great floaty things out there in the water that I want to know part of. They had the ugliest uniforms, Marine Corps, great looking uniforms, cool commercials, fighting dragons with swords and seals. Oh my God, maybe I'll be a marine scout recon sniper or something. But then I heard about Navy Seals. Then I came back from that trip. The Navy recruiter was the first person to call me when I got back and said, Hey, have you ever thought about joining the Navy? And I was like, well, I kind of want to become a Navy seal. I want to go to the Naval Academy and I want to fly F 14 tomcats. And they're like, why don't you come on down here and let's have a conversation? They showed me a recruiting video, very cheesy for the SEAL teams and I'm like, where do I sign? And the rest is history.

Scott Meyers (03:43):

So you get into the training, you're getting into this, you're understanding a little bit more of what this looks like and then even when you start the Navy seals training, tell me the difference in the mindset that you have to have and that the rest of the guys have to have in order to make it through that to the end. What is the secret sauce, if you will? What is that piece or those pieces that allows somebody to get through that training? First of all,

William Branum (04:06):

Well first I had no idea how hard it was going to be and I actually failed the screening test to the physical fitness test to get in to be selected twice before I finally passed it. And the mindset that I had in the beginning, again, I started off with this mediocre mindset as I was looking at the standards, the minimum score required just to be looked at for the program, and so I was setting my sites on the minimum standard. I wasn't thinking about how to destroy the standard, and so that's why I failed. That's why many people fail in almost anything. They look at the minimum standard as long as I can make it to the minimum, no, let's try to destroy the minimum. The minimum is there just because you need some sort of standard. But when I got to SEAL training, I think the thing that is true about me and everyone else is I wasn't thinking like, well, if I don't make it through this, I'm going to go do something else. This is all I want to do. I was front side focused. There's no other options in my life. I'm either going to graduate this training at some point. I mean, it took me 13 months to get through that six month block of training. I got hurt several times and they almost kicked me out, but I was like, I'm either walking out the front door as a graduate or I'm leaving in a body bag. It's pretty much that simple. There was no other options for me.

Scott Meyers (05:27):

Do you think all the successful Navy seals have to have that adopt that mindset that it's

William Branum (05:32):

The majority of them For sure. Guys that I know that I've talked to, guys that are out now and they are in the entrepreneur role and coaching and other things like that, we all have pretty much the same answer.

Scott Meyers (05:44):

Do you think people are born with that mindset? Do you think they adopt that mindset in order to get through?

William Branum (05:51):

I think anyone can become whatever they want to become. You can have whatever mindset you, again, I didn't have this go get 'em. Drive sort of mindset. Like I said, I was like a C student in school. No natural athletic abilities at all. I feel like I've had to work harder to get what I have than other people around me. So I think that the mindset can definitely be learned. You just have to want it. If you don't want it, you're not going to work for it, but if you want it, you'll do whatever you need to do to get to the end and it doesn't matter what you're doing.

Scott Meyers (06:27):

I do want to jump ahead and we'll come back to the progression of your career, but now you're a successful entrepreneur and you've parlayed what you've learned from a leadership standpoint and again at an elite level and you're now taking that into the workforce and into the private sector and you're helping folks and whether it be CEOs or their teams to achieve the best that they can be. Do you think that everybody has and can adopt a Navy SEAL mindset at that level, at a top level?

William Branum (06:57):

Yeah, I believe anyone can, but it goes back to the original question you asked and my original answer is, do you want it? It's not easy, it's not free. It's going to cost you something, but if you think about it, everything costs you something. What are you willing to pay?

(07:14):

They talk about being in shape is hard. Well, being out of shape is hard also, it's easy right now because you're comfortable, but heart disease and poor health and all these other things happen because you didn't take care of yourself in the first place. So getting in shape is hard. Being out of shape is also hard. Being in a good marriage is hard. Getting divorced is hard. All these things are hard. What are you willing to pay? What kind of hard do you want? Do you want to be awesome or do you want to be mediocre? This was a lesson that I learned actually in hell week because I saw a boat crew that was winning all the races during hell week and it was boat crew three. And I was like, what are they doing? Who are they? I want to be in that boat crew. I want to be surrounded by winners. And so again, I'm just like a mediocre guy over here just trying to make it through. But I knew I recognize winning and what I wanted to be around, and so I made sure that I got Monday night of hell week, we reshuffled boat crews because we lost a bunch of people and I got myself into that boat crew and what I realized is there was no one exceptional in that boat crew. We all just had a different

(08:22):

Mindset. We just wanted to win. We didn't talk about it. We just wanted to win. So there's two options. I tell people this a lot. You have two options in buds in steel training. You can either quit or you can keep going. If you decide to keep going, you have another option. You can either keep going and be mediocre or you can keep going and be awesome. Why don't you keep going and choose to be awesomes a choice? It's your decision to make at the end of the day and you have to make that decision every single day.

Scott Meyers (08:51):

Why don't some people make those decisions even if they know that, but even if they know that I'm not making decision also as hard, why do people always defer to the secondary or the latter knowing that the life's going to be hard if they don't make this decision? Do the heavy lifting now. Standard?

William Branum (09:06):

Yeah,

Scott Meyers (09:07):

Minimum standard.

William Branum (09:07):

The minimum standard because it's easy. It's the path of least resistance. I think we're probably evolutionarily programmed to take the path of least resistance. Like okay, we go out, we find rather than going hunting, we found a beehive full of honey. So we eat that and our bellies are fat and we feel good and we don't feel like going and hunting anymore. We don't go hunting until we're starving. Oh my God, now I have to go do the work in the meantime where we could have just kept going hunting and going and resupplying and never actually gotten hungry. But we always wait. We take the path of least resistance, that mediocre role because it's just easier. I don't want to work today. It's too hard. I don't feel like it.

Scott Meyers (09:50):

And what are the consequences of not?

William Branum (09:51):

Consequences is you're going hungry. Consequences of living a mediocre life and not living up to your actual potential. We all have more potential than we ever put. I still don't live up to the potential that I have and I'm 51 years old.

Scott Meyers (10:05):

So William, you're coming into these organizations and I think they're calling you in because they recognize that they're mediocre. There's something that's not working. You're meeting 'em not at the beginning stage where they have a choice but they're at the mediocre stage yet still faced with a choice mediocre performance. Either the folks that are underneath the C-suite level, they can't lose their jobs if they don't to the line, if they don't step it up. And the CEOs of the folks that are sitting in the C-suite, they know that they need to step it up or competition is going to eat their lunch. So tell me, when you come into an organization then we're right now we're all mediocre. We're recognize that. Then what is the approach and how does the mindset change?

William Branum (10:42):

It depends on the organization and it really depends. When they bring me in, I prefer them bring me in when they're still doing well. But who does? No one does. No one ever thinks they need it. I mean, when I retired, I didn't think I needed a coach. I ended up hiring 2, 3, 4 coaches for different things, different skills, and I realized that, but I had to do some internal work. We're only good in the seal teams because we hire other people to help make us better. A coach is the most valuable. You're going to get more ROI off of that than pretty much anything else. But we don't generally wait until, we don't generally look for coaching until we need it or help until we need it or so far beyond when we actually need it. So most organizations bring us in either when they're hitting that mediocre spot or as a last ditch effort to pull the stick back and try to come out of a nose dive, and that makes it a lot harder. So the sooner that companies can bring us in, the more help that we can give and we can get you back up to cruising where you want to be.

Scott Meyers (11:51):

So you come into an organization that is doing well and that's the time when you want to come in and maybe, I mean, you're not calling them, they're still calling you. So perhaps for instance, in our organization or for myself, I say, okay, we're doing well. We can always do better. Like you said, we can always use coaches. We'd always do better. So maybe the CEO e recognizes, Hey, I've hit a glass ceiling. Why aren't we breaking beyond and we're doing extremely well, but maybe our competition has an edge or we've kind of plateaued. So how do you help them break through that glass ceiling or make them recognize or allow them to see that there is greater than they can do better? What does that conversation and how can you help organizations from that standpoint?

William Branum (12:30):

A lot of times there are self-limiting beliefs. A lot of times it's more, and most people don't even want to recognize or admit that they have self-limiting beliefs. I'm only good at this. So we have to kind of reprogram the subconscious

(12:45):

And a lot of times that's just like, well, look at your fitness. Fitness is mediocre. Let's make your fitness a little bit better. Fitness is really the gateway drug. It helps in so many ways. When you train the body, you start training the mind, you train the body to do hard things and push further than what it actually wants to go or your mind wants to go, but then you're like, I'm going to do just one more. Lemme just do one more. Let's just keep going. And then you start pushing your capacity, expanding your capacity physically. Then mentally now you start watching your business start to improve. I've watched that with so many businesses for so many leaders.

Scott Meyers (13:23):

I mean, it is so true. I mean, you have those little wins in the gym, you push it, you do one more rep than you did last week when you did arms. You do whatever that looks like a few more minutes on it, trim anything. And as also somebody else famous with your familiar and similar background, Jocko talks about making your bed every day because you have those wins and you have those wins in the gym that once again feeds over into the rest of your life.

William Branum (13:47):

Follow That was actually Admiral McCraven in a very famous speech that he gave. I think it was at Texas a and m where he talked about making your bed, and that's one of those small victories that I talked about earlier today.

Scott Meyers (13:59):

So these self-limiting beliefs, everybody has at least one or at least I would imagine we know many of 'em come from our childhood, some teacher along the way, some parent along the way, unfortunately placed some doubt in our mind and it stuck. How do you get 'em unstuck?

William Branum (14:14):

It's a lot of work. There's not one size that fits all, but it's really like oftentimes it's a story we tell ourself and we are the author of our own story.

Scott Meyers (14:25):

I wish everybody would hear that.

William Branum (14:26):

And we have the pen. What story do we want to write about ourself? We're going to write the story that other people told us, or we want the story that we want the actual ending to be. What's the end result that you want? Write that story. Reprogram your brain.

(14:42):

I've had self-limiting beliefs on money my entire life, and I know some of it came from church and some of it, I remember this one as a kid. I remember my grandmother, we were watching, my grandfather was watching ESPN and the sports commentator said something about the head coach of whatever football college football team. His salary was a million dollars a year, and I remember my grandmother from the kitchen saying, a million dollars this year. That is a sin. No one should have that much money, blah, blah. And this was probably 30 years ago, 40 years ago, something like that. It stuck with me Today, the seed was dropped. I'm like, why do I need to work that hard? Or I've had other reasons where money has block for money. First thing I had to do is recognize the problem. It's kind of like being an alcoholic. Recognize that you're admit that you're an alcoholic. Okay, I have a problem with money. Okay, now what am I going to do about it? I deserve a million. I deserve 10 million. I deserve a hundred million, whatever the number is, and this is what I'm going to do to get that. And that's what a lot of companies do. They we're this good

(15:44):

And then they hit that and they're like, and they don't get any better because they don't rewrite the story. They don't rewrite the mission. They don't decide what they actually want to do.

Scott Meyers (15:50):

So let's talk about what it looks like to work with William Branum to bring you into an organization. I know as you just mentioned, it's not a one size fits all and every organization has different issues, challenges, different individuals, relationships and emotions and personalities. What types of challenges are recurring that you see the most, that you have the most impact on that you can make change after you leave that you can point to and say, yeah, I made a difference here. And what is that most common one that you see for the most part when people begin working with you?

William Branum (16:20):

Mostly it's when the leadership brings us in and the team is like, I don't need this. You're right. If you don't think you need it, you probably need it more than anyone else because you don't recognize that you need help. You need to improve something in your life, in your organization, in your processes, in whatever it is because we can't, one of the great things about being a coach is I can see things that other people can't,

(16:49):

And it's like you're inside the medicine bottle, but you can't read the label. I'm on the outside of it. I can see things that you can't see. You can't see the forest before the trees. I'm standing back here. I can see it from a very different perspective. And so when I'm able to show that and demonstrate that, and then they believe me, and then they are able to step back and detach themselves from whatever the thing is, then they can actually start making the changes that they need to make. It's just giving them a different perspective.

Scott Meyers (17:20):

As much as we try to weed that out in the interview process, people want to come in real competent and they want to know that, Hey, they got this. But the more that we can peel back they in and say, okay, is that just competence that they can handle the position that they learn? Or if they're unteachable because they think I know it all and I'm going to bring a benefit to you in the organization, that's a red flag a hundred percent. And many times that doesn't show up because a lot of folks can say something in an interview and then 90 days later we find out true colors of who they are, and then I build a team of folks. Then you end up in that position.

William Branum (17:47):

Or oftentimes, I see this a lot where organizations will hire what the piece of paper says, where they went to school, the diploma, the credentials, but not the actual capability.

Scott Meyers (17:58):

Thankfully, some of the large organizations like Apple and Google and Facebook are now not putting so much weight on having a four year degree, but I'm getting to the root and finding out how these people tick. What has been their success and can they perform for us in the battlefield?

William Branum (18:12):

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, life is a battlefield. Business is a battlefield. Hundred percent. If you think about it like it's a battlefield, like you're going to war every single day. You prepare for it that way.

Scott Meyers (18:20):

Well, William, our folks here about in the benefactors of what you've given them in just the hour long time that you've been here, but then you've got follow up, you've got resources, and then you've got a way for people to spend a little more time with you, more like on the battlefield to become better. Can you talk a little bit about that?

William Branum (18:36):

Yeah, so I actually, I have a book, it's called Mission Ready. I co-author it with a friend of mine. She's a HR professional. You can find out an Amazon, you just type in mission ready book and it'll pop up. I like to call my obsession of the book Gunfight Leadership, and what I've found is the principles that apply to winning a gunfight, leading in a gunfight are the same principles that apply to pretty much anything that you do in business as far as leadership goes. I have my presentation today. If you go to five seal secrets.com, just put your information in there. You'll get a copy of my presentation if you want me to come out and speak or you want to reach out to me, that's a great way to connect with me, five seal secrets.com, fill out your information, reply to the email that I send you, and I'll get right back to you and we will have a conversation about what your needs are and if I can be of service or not.

Scott Meyers (19:24):

Fantastic. Well, we will include all of that in the show notes, William, for those, I want to reach out to you and folks who should. I made the commitment in front of my entire mastermind and our team that we're going to come out and spend some time with you and get all trained up as much, as much as weekends.

William Branum (19:38):

Yeah, that last event, it's the SEAL Leadership Challenge where it takes place out in Temecula, California currently, and we run obstacle courses. I run you through the kill house, teach you how to clear rooms. I do a little self-defense stuff. I put you in very difficult scenarios. I make you work as a team with the people that some people you know you don't know. Sometimes you communicate with note, not verb, not verbally. This is something that I learned in the SEAL teams. When we started clearing houses and doing this combat clearance stuff, we were busy talking to one another and trying to communicate, and what we found out is if you can communicate non-verbally, you can move much more quickly and much more efficiently. And so when the people learn that skill, they're like, oh my God, you become unstoppable just in the communication side of it. Yeah. Awesome.

Scott Meyers (20:23):

Well, there you have at Storage Nation, you have been spending time with myself and Mr. William Branum, Navy Seal, and a leadership badass, and it's been an honor and a pleasure to have you here as well, and also to share you on the podcast. So thank you, my frank, appreciate your time. Appreciate you having me. And also folks, if you want to learn more about what it looks like to become a BS in Self storage, then I invite you to go to the storage mastermind.com, fill out that application. We'll have a chat to see if you have what it takes to a part of this Lil League group as well. We'll see you on the flip side.

Announcer (20:51):

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