Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Business Lessons Learned With Navy Seal William Branum - 166

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

 In this episode, you’ll discover how a combat navy seal, William Branum launched a successful CBC based company and how he overcame self-destruction on the way to personal success.  Here���s what you’ll discover: 0:50 - Meet former Navy Seal William Branum and discover more about the Non-Profit he leads to help combat vets self heal and transform. 1:48 - How entrepreneurship is truly like being an athlete and why you need to view and treat yourself as a high-level athlete.  6:27 - Will shares how to prepare with and deal with stress as a leader.  22:04 - B opens up and shares how in his most trying times focusing on getting 10% better in a single area of life or business at a time leads to massive breakthroughs over time.  24:40 - See how Williams' product and company are different from the majority of competitors in his industry. Facebook marketing is still working better than ever before in 2020 and why testing big in the beginning is key.  40:10 - B and William discuss how PTSD is something that not only veterans are experiencing but how the majority of civilians and individuals like you may be experiencing it as well.   43:35 - Hear William share the top secret Navy Seal hacks on how to achieve success in your life. 45:27 Discover how William came up with the name Naked Warrior for his business name. 

My mission in Naked Warriors to help veterans and first responders, like, we're all stressed. We all have anxiety. We all have, like, emotional baggage. CBD, it was a modality to help me, you know, get out of this red zone so that I can get into, like, orange or yellow so I can have better self-talk and just, like, improve my overall quality of life. Hey, welcome to The Empire Show. My name is Bedros Kulian, and this is an inside look.

And today we're going to talk about something really special. special. It is about being a high performer in every category of life, even in entrepreneurship. And I've got a very special guest, my good friend Will Brenham, retired Navy SEAL, and founder and creator of Naked Warrior Recovery. Will, welcome to the show. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Welcome. And so, first of all, thank you for your service. Thank you. As a Navy SEAL, you've definitely seen a lot of action. And the way we were connected and became friends was through another Navy SEAL, our lovable Ray Cash Care. Ray Cash Care. Yeah, lead instructor for the project. And one badass dude. So, first of all, the theme of this particular show is about

treating whatever it is that you're doing as though you're an athlete. And I always think that people forget that as an entrepreneur, if you want to really hit the peak levels of success, you probably ought to treat yourself as an athlete. You ought to sleep at the same time and wake up at the same time and eat right. And we always talk about all that stuff and drink lots of water and work out, but we don't go into the weeds of what those things are, what supplements we take and what level of sleep we try and dive into. And I imagine as a Navy seal, you probably had some routines to keep yourself at peak performance. Would that be a safe assumption to make?

Try your best to be as high performance as possible. Yeah, yeah. So can I ask some of the habits that you guys had or the lifestyle that you live to keep you guys, you know, kind of fight ready, war ready when needed? So we generally go through a workup. So we have a planned schedule for when we're going to deploy. So we know we're going to deploy on this date.

we may or may not know exactly where we're going to deploy, but we go through an 18-month block of training. And in that block of training, we're focusing on tactics, techniques, and procedures. We're focusing on just team building, you know, from a leadership perspective. And, you know, we have, you know, new guys come in the team every day. So we have to train them up on new tactics, techniques, and procedures, how we're going to do things, violence of action, and build their mindset. But in addition to that, you know, that training is hard.

It beats your body up. You know, everyone thinks about going through buds. And, you know, that's certainly how you get beat up there. And then they break you down and they try to build you back up. But when you're in the team, I have so many injuries from being in the teams, many more than I did, you know, going through buds. So, you know, we've hired fitness coaches to come in. we have human performance programs. We've hired nutritionists to come in.

They go and they travel around with us at times and go through different blocks of training where they'll kind of be sitting on the sideline and like kind of coach us on like, okay, for recovery, you need to do these kind of more mobility exercises. And when you're trying to in between blocks of training, we might, you know, do a different workout segment where we're lifting heavier or doing more, I want to call it like, Jim Jones style workout where it's like strength endurance because when you're when you think about athletes you know you think about basketball players they're high endurance you think about football players they're very powerful and very explosive high strength so when you think about

special forces you have to be both of those there are times where you have to do this like maybe a 10 kilometer hike we'll call it a hike to get to your target. The helicopter drops you off here. You have to patrol in. It could be through the mountains. It could be wherever. And then when you get to your target,

you have to be very explosive, violence of action, take care of business, and then sometimes you're walking back out. So we do our best to to prepare our team to be able to perform

at that high level of, you know, long endurance, explosive in the middle, and then endurance again. And, you know, we try to focus on sleep. We focus on nutrition. We focus on just physical ability and functional movement. Sure. And I imagine there's, so now I'm just picturing, you know, helicopter drops you off. You guys are patrolling, whatever, five, 10 mile or kilometer hike. There's their endurance, especially. you're loaded up with gear, you're not just... Body armor, weapons, water. And then you get to your target,

and now you have to go explosive, violent, a lot of strength, but also there's the stress inoculation that's take place, because someone's probably shooting back at you. Someone's doing something that's, if they had it their way, you'd end up dead. And you may not even make it to your target before getting contacted.

Yeah, so how do you guys deal with kind of building your mindset or your maybe nervous system to deal with stress because in sports stress can create a fumble how many people do we see where they run their best 440 in training or sprinters who run set records during training and then somehow slip off the blocks because the stress was too high so how do you guys deal with that so we tried we try to address that as much as possible in training yeah so during this 18 months of working of workup we try to put the training cadre, tries to put the platoon or the task unit into

as stressful as situation as possible. So sometimes they'll just kill, kill the leadership. And now the most junior man, you're in charge. So let's, or we'll even, you know, usually start the mission and maybe the junior man is in charge. I like doing that when I was a leader, where I would just be, I'm a new guy, I don't know anything, and I'm training my new leaders.

Yeah. We'll say in contact drills, which is basically learning how to be in a gunfight and how to read the terrain and learn how to maneuver and tell people what to do and how to get there. And we try to keep it as very basic and simple as possible. But sometimes if my leader had, you know, maybe he froze. He wasn't sure which call to make or whatever. I might say, hey, what do you think about that piece of terrain right over there? And then just enough information to trigger what they need to know.

And so then they would make the call. And if they made a bad call, I might actually, and it was bad call after bad call, I might say something to the training cadre to like, hey, make this even harder for us. Gotcha. So that, you know, there's a lesson to be learned in there. There's a lesson through failure. So then we would be able to go back and we could dissect like what went wrong. So we were in this situation.

Why didn't you take that advice of like, you know, maybe what we should have done is pulled back and moved around that terrain, come over the top and flank the enemy. So it's so similar to like a preseason training for athlete, you name the sport. Right. Where that's concerned. And when I think about as an entrepreneur, like for example, we've had Fit Body Boot Camp, it's been a brand now since 2012. So going on whatever eight, nine years, we've been franchised. And a year and a half ago, we decided that we're going to create a supplement, the Trulene supplement line. And that, to me, was going into another season, if you will, because when you're creating a supplement line, injecting millions of dollars into it, building a team around it, and then you're going to launch it, and you're going to hope that it's successful and profitable and so that you can continue making money and not lose money.

It takes a certain level of mental discipline, of physical performance, to be able to make all of the money. the decisions because truth be told when we launched trulean in hindsight if i go back and look at it i would have only created one product which would have been the way protein i would have created it in three flavors and just launched that first made that the most tastiest awesomest thing for people to talk about instead we came out with 15 skews and now people were talking about the hydration products some were talking about the protein some were talking about the vegan product and we were trying to sell it all. So we were went out of came from obscurity to hey now we also do supplements but we had everything. And so people got confused and in the market space confused buyers don't

buy. Right. And so all of a sudden we found $1.4 million of inventory stuck on shelves in a warehouse in Simi Valley. And very quickly my leadership team and I and I, you know, of course panic sets in because, well, you know, Aaron our VP for that company, he's like, dude, I feel like I let you down. I was like, dude, you didn't let me down. You don't let me down. You said, let's create 15 skews. I said, okay, let's do it. I made the final decision.

It wasn't you. And so now that we know that was a bad idea, we could either hand ring and stress and freak out over it, or we can go to the drawing board and go, what is the most popular thing of the 15 and start selling more of that. Right. And then go to the next thing and then the next thing, which is what we did. And we recovered and everything was fine. Had I not had the mental discipline that I developed through launching FitBody Boot Camp, had I not put myself through hardships and adversities like my six-week challenges

and consistently working out twice a day, had I not just been doing tough things in my life that were hard and made me want to quit, I would have found a million opportunities to quit while launching FitBody Boot Camp and while launching Trueling. And so I see whether in battle, business, or sports, the training for peak performance is the same. It has to be physical, mental, emotional, some degree, spiritual. Where nutrition is concerned for you these days,

because yesterday when you and I were talking upstairs, I hope you don't mind me sharing this. Like, you've been pretty banged up. Sure. As a seal. Yeah, 26 years. You've been pretty banged up. And even before then, as a 15-year-old, you were shot.

Yeah, I was shot hunting with my great-uncle, yeah. I'm laughing because of the story that will told us, told me yesterday, I was laughing because at the age of 15, when that happened to you, you know, you were like, holy shit, the mind wants to deny what happened. And the way you said, well, if I spit up blood. Right. If I spit blood, he shot me and I'm going to shoot him back. I just love that. Those dots connect. I love that. Thankfully, he didn't shoot anyone and, you know, you still have a pellet, several pellets in your body. 30 plus. 30 plus pellets in your body. But so being banged up, obviously, and now I think we're the same age, 46 years old.

46, yeah. Yeah. You probably have a very different way of putting your body through nutrition and recovery so that you can operate in a new phase of your life, which is entrepreneurship. Right. You launched Naked Warrior Recovery. What's the reason why you launched a CBD line when there's so many different CBD products out So there are a lot of CBD products out there.

But, and it was kind of fortunate for me that there were in the beginning. So I'll say it was a year, just over a year ago, I was, let me back up a little bit. So I was driving to work one day listening to a podcast, probably five years ago, before CBD was cool. And the guy was talking about medical marijuana and everyone knows about THC, but he said, there's this other molecule in the cannabis plant called CBD. and it has all these medicinal benefits. And I'm thinking about myself and, you know, how I'm dealing with stress and how I'm dealing with stuff that's in my head, emotional baggage.

Sure. And, you know, I'm using prescription meds. I'm using a lot of alcohol just to go to sleep at night. And but I still maintain a top secret clearance. So I'm like, well, I know that if I were to use something that's related to marijuana, I'm probably going to get kicked out of the Navy, so that's not an option. So we'll just continue with our bad habits of dealing with stress as best as we can. Sure. So fast forward, I retired from the Navy. I was still interested in CBD. I was terrified of it because, you know, I grew up

in the Nancy Reagan just say no, war on drugs. Right. So I've been inoculated into that, conditioned into like, oh, marijuana bad. CBD, maybe I feel like it's good for me, but I don't really know. Right. And then, so fast forward a year ago last June, I was in Virginia. I had lunch with Ray and I said, Ray, I'm going to go take off and see if I can find some CBD here in Virginia because maybe your CBD is better than the CBD in Hawaii. I don't really know. He's like, you want CBD? I've got some at home. So he handed me a bottle. And I took it. And that night, I felt I slept a little bit better. And then when I woke up, I was a little less pissed off, a little less anxious.

So, you know, water boils at 212 degrees. I was probably living in this 210, 9, 10, 11 degree range. So I woke up and I was like 205 degrees. I was a little bit less. And over time, I was, you know, maybe I'm 200 degrees. And so I went from like living in this red zone to like orange and in yellow. not quite ever making it into the green zone. And as I kind of, you know, I used the rest of that bottle,

and something happened to me that I didn't expect, because I didn't really research CBD that much back then, is, you know, I would do these movements where I'm grimacing in pain. I know, like, it's like someone is stabbing me with a knife when I do like this movement or some other movement, and that movement was just less bad. It was more dull. It wasn't so sharp.

So I ran out of the product. I didn't order anymore. And then, but I knew that I, I wasn't sure if I really got benefit or not, placebo effect, something. Sure. But then I ran out and things started coming back. You know, I started moving back up to orange and I'm like, well, maybe let's try something else. I tried another brand.

And fortunately for me, from what I know, from what I know now, they were pretty good brands. They were reputable brands. Yeah. And so I moved from like going back into the orange, back down to like in the yellow. I'm like, okay, I want to be in this industry. I want, but I didn't really know how. And actually it was at the Empire Business Summit in San Diego where we met. I met someone in the industry.

I found out how to get in the industry. And that allowed me to start my own company so that I can help other people find, create a quality product. because there's a lot of trash out there in the market right now. A quality product that's going to help people get the recovery that they need. And to that point, like recovery is huge for me now. And it's funny. Right around when I started turning 37, 38 years old, which was about a year after I tore my bicep, I found that when I would get injured from lifting, my recovery took longer.

So I'm like, all right, maybe I need to start really focusing on mobility, flexibility, warm upsets, right? before just jumping into a heavy set. Those days of going to right to a heavy set, we're gone. And these days at 46 years old, like I'm very precise on how I train, what temperature I keep my gym at when I'm training, and even to the point where my level of hydration, because I know my tendons are more brittle at 46 than they were at 36 or 26.

Right. Yeah. Right. And those muscles are always going to be stronger than the tendons and the connective tissue that hold it together. And so, you know, I'll use like, for example, I use collagen, like, it's a, I forget the brand that I buy, but it's this collagen, it's like five different types of collagen, like eggshell and all these other ones, in my protein powder. And, you know, I do the best that I can to keep my body alkaline and not acidic.

I used to never even care about that stuff. I stopped drinking coffee or anything caffeinated at 1 p.m., whereas before, if I needed a little boost at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, All the way through, yeah. Yeah, right? And then it's just like, well, I'll figure out how to sleep later. You know, I really kind of dose up the magnesium at night, like 45 minutes before bed, to help me follow sleep into a deep...

And I found that all these little nutritional hacks and things like flexibility and mobility training before I work out have kept me entry-free. Right. I operated a higher level because I got a deeper sleep at night, so I operated to make better decisions at work. And then I was truth be told I'd heard about CBD I had never taken it and after meeting you at the Empire Business Summit You know you went on to to make this thing and one day you texted me hey what's your address and And we met it we linked up that's Christmas first that's right in Christmas I was in Hawaii yep that's right yeah every Christmas we go to Maui and you and your family came there

And we got to talk and by the way What was this, the blood restriction? It's called Katsu, K-A-A-T-Su. I want to explain that. It's a really cool device that has. So basically it's, and I use this for recovery as well. Yeah. For working out and for recovery.

But basically, it's a pneumatic, there are pneumatic cuffs where you control the amount of pressure that are, that is applied to the cuffs. And what it does, so there's some physical and metabolic things that happen to your body when you, when you do this. So basically, it's putting pressure. pressure on the veins, it's still allowing blood to come into the extremity, arm or leg, whatever you have, but it's not allowing as much blood to leave, depending on how much pressure you have. Sure. So, and this runs through a cycle. So when you apply this pressure and it's not like wrapping a band around your arm or a tourniquet that cuts off the blood flow, you still have blood flow,

you want blood to come in, but less blood to leave. So what happens is you're putting pressure on the circulatory system, and what that does is it's starting to push blood out into your capillaries. So your capillaries are part of your circulatory system, but they don't get used that much. Also, it's pushing blood into your tendons and ligaments when you're doing that. Areas typically don't get blood? They don't get very much blood flow. So you're getting blood into those brittle areas as you get older. So some of the metabolic things that happen is when you have that extra pressure, you're kind of artificially raising the blood pressure in the limb, is your endothelial cells start producing.

nitric oxide. So nitric oxide is this great hormone that you produce to create vasodilation. It's good for all sorts of other stuff. So you start creating more nitric oxide. And the more you do this type of work, your body realizes, hey, we need to create more endothelial cells. So you start creating more endothelial cells, growing more endothelial cells, and start creating more producing more nitric oxide naturally. And by the way, those of you feel like, wait a minute, this nitric oxide thing sounds familiar. That's right. There's supplements that actually have, I believe,

niacin in it to create vasodilation to give you a better pump. It's usually pre-workouts that have that in it. They create vasodilation. What was the actual cuffs called again? K-A-A-T-S-U. Katsu. So you can look those up or you could reach out to Will and he'll hook you up with some.

You can read about them on my website. There you go. And so to that point, like again, And I never thought about that kind of stuff until as I started to realize that every injury, like a small muscle strain or tear, puts me into a funk, man, because like working out is just something I love. It's therapeutic for me. It's a great way to kind of anchor my day.

Like if I win in the gym, I know I'm going to win the rest of the day at work. And if I'm injured, now I'm a bit funky about it. Right. And so I started doing all this stuff, mobility, flexibility, and, you know, you. And it's been a game changer for me. And I now find that, you know, in the evenings, I start preparing. I take my 30 ounces of water with me upstairs. So as soon as I wake up in the morning, I can chug a lug. I hired a company to come and completely black out my room, like the shades, even the, what we call it, the smoke detector light, it doesn't blink. You know, like it's just

completely dark so that I could sleep deeper. And all those things I've noticed incremental changes And one thing, and everyone watching and listening to this knows that I worked with Kevin Downing for 16 months, a therapist who helped me unfuck myself mentally during some crazy time, some nine years ago. But one thing Kevin told me, because I was like, hey, Kevin, I'm here so you can help me get over my panic attacks and anxieties because they're just fucking me up. Like they can't function. I'm taking all this, God, what is that drug that kind of numbs you and relaxes you? Xanax. Yeah.

I was taking Xanax like it was no one's business, dude. you can't be creative and go in like great you're not going to bend iron on Xanax I just want to cuddle up with the iron at that point in the gym so I was like I got to get off Xanax and I need you to help me with this and he goes look there's no one thing I can tell you that's going to help you have no more anxiety attacks and have panic attacks but he goes what if I can give you one strategy to help you get 10% less anxiety attacks what if I can give you another one that helps you get 20% less and another one that helps to get 5% less. And I realized that's what it's about. Even in health and fitness, in performance,

in business, battle, or sports, there's no one thing that's going to make me a super athlete or super warrior. But there's probably one thing I could do that will make me 10% better. Incremental changes. Right. Right. And I found that after you sent me a box of these, and you sent me the cream, the ointment, I mean, you sent me a lot of stuff, actually, even the dog treats but the thing that I just madly fell in love with dude are these broad-spectrum CBD gummies and quite honestly will I thought that uh you know if I get results it's going to be because of a placebo effect sure and so I started to fuck around with it I took two a day for a whole week started to feel better I'm like ah

it's fake it's all my mind sure so I stopped within two days I was back to kind of restless sleep. I even take one during the afternoon now just because I feel it kind of like elthionine, the supplement elthionine, it kind of stabilizes my mood during the day when shit's flying at me from different angles. And so anyway, I'm a believer in the product. And then as I talk to you, I'm like, hey man, so what's the difference between your product and this? And when you explain to me how the industry is full of kind of dirty little secrets, because the profit margins matter to most other brands over the purpose of serving people. You definitely did something very different with yours.

In fact, you even have this goofy little QR code in the back that I was unaware of until you told me about it, where you can scan it and see the actual lab results of what's in these gummies. Right. And maybe you can just educate, because I really believe on the Empire Show, we're telling people like, hey, these are the supplements you ought to take, and this is what they do to you. Like magnesium is going to give you better sleep at night. And 30 ounces of water first thing in the morning is going to rehydrate you

because you're dehydrating at night when you're exhaling all night long. And your brain is like 70% water and it needs that water to function well. And so you're not foggy headed anymore. If we're telling you what to do, we also need to tell you why. Why did you go so far in putting a QR code that kind of shows the lab results of what's in here? So as I started digging into the industry and trying to figure out what products I wanted to sell and how to even how to do it. I started looking at suppliers and then I also looked at the FDA. You know, right now CBD is not regulated by the FDA

at all. It's really the wild, wild west. And the more research I did, the more I found, you know, I found that the FDA has actually gone out and done spot checks on CBD products that are in the marketplace, whether they're online, if they're in the gas station, if they're in a smoke shop, if they're in a CBD store and 90% of the products either didn't have CBD in them or they didn't have the CBD they said they had in them. You know, if it said they had 10 milligrams, they only had three, something like that. Or they had high levels of THC, so the difference between hemp and marijuana is the amount of THC that's in the plant. So to be a hemp plant, it has to be 0.3% or less THC. So all of my products, we just make sure we remove all of the THC, so there is no THC in

product. So you're not going to get stone eating a gummy bear? Not going to get stone. Now what if I wrap it up in a joint and smoke it? Would I get stone? You will not. So actually, so it's interesting. CBD, the way CBD works in the endocannaboid system is CBD is really the antithesis of THC. So let's say you have some really strong THC and you have a bad trip. What THC does is it binds to those neuroreceptors in your brain. Got it. And what CBD will do, it'll come in and it'll unbind those neuroreceptorset. It'll unbind the T-C from the neuroceptors and then you'll be able to come back down off of that high. But, you know, because hemp is a bioaccumulator, which means it pulls all the good stuff out

of the soil and all the bad stuff out of the soil. Okay, that's the part that tripped me out yesterday. Right. And as you tell your story, I'm going to explain people why this is so critical go. So hemp is a bioaccumulator. It pulls all the good stuff and all the bad stuff out of the soil. It's such a strong, it's such a powerful bioaccumulator. they're using hemp at Chernobyl to pull the radiation out of the soil so they can repopulate that area one day.

Sure. That's crazy. So when you, so the FDA went out, they're still doing spot checks today. And I think they're going out to like today, they're like about 500 different companies. They're buying their products, bringing them in and testing them. They're testing for heavy metals. So many of the products that they tested had high levels of heavy metal. one of the ways that you you can extract CBD from the hemp plant using acetone so they were finding high levels of acetone or other solvents like that when you say heavy metal we're talking lead and mercury and mercury yeah they're they test right now for like nine nine different heavy metals i don't even know what all what they all are those two are big pesticides herbicides so let's just say

that you know this farm is organic um but the farm across the way they're spraying pesticides and whatever, all that stuff is going into the soil and the hemp plant is pulling it back out. Right. So all of our products are, we test the oil before we create gummies or our tincture or lotions

to make sure the oil is good and then we create whatever we create and then on the final product, we send that off to the lab and have the lab, you know, do a final check to make sure that it says what's on the bottle is what you're getting. So if you're taking something,

thing for a for to help heal you you don't want to be putting a bunch of poison in your body well said and so the QR code literally tells you right lab results so the QR code will take you to the lab results and then to get the actual lab results there's a lot number down here and you just go to that lot right on the bottom brilliant and that and you can see exactly what's in that product that you're taking dude and i'll tell you what for um for a product that's not governed by any like government body not that the government can fucking control anything for us anyway. That's a argument for another day.

But if anyone's seen, have you seen the movie Bigger Stronger Faster? No. So Mark Bell created this documentary called Bigger Stronger Faster, great documentary, and he talks about

kind of steroids and, you know, when people break records and they're on steroids, is that cheating and all this stuff? And he really goes into a lot of, you know, talks about wrestling like Hulk Hogan

all the way to sports and Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire and all these records being broken. But he also talks about, well, all right, let's do it naturally then. Let's not use pharmaceutical steroids. So he literally finds companies where people are putting capsules together

in their kitchen and just like, you know, using razor blades to scoop it up and put it, like, because they're not, no FDA is overseeing a supplement company. And that is what this is. That is what my brand trulian is. And so if we don't police ourselves and if we don't focus,

on putting the product first instead of the profits first. Make no mistake about it, I'm a free market capitalist, but if I'm poisoning people, like that's not necessarily what I'm, like the karmic tax that I'll pay for that is massively severe. So, and the reason, you know, when you explain this to me and why I use your product is simple last year, and I haven't talked about this on the Empire Show last year, I found out that my mercury levels were sky high to the point. where they were affecting my nervous system.

And thankfully, Jason Redmond, our mutual friend, referred me to Dr. Gabrielle Lyons. And she was able to figure that out and put me on, I think it's called chastational pills, or chastational, chastational pills. Basically I was able to get it out of my system. I went from a 9.3 and 9.7 was like the red zone, down to like a 4.1, 4.2,

which is like a normal human zone. And like anything else, I'm very disciplined, And so there's a sushi joint down the street called sushi 10, and I would go there three days a week for the last eight years. And when you're eating sushi three days a week, and I can eat like a machine for eight years, like, that's a lot of mercury I probably took in. I'm guessing it's from there.

I'm not saying that, you know, my friend Aaron, who owns the place, gave me mercury poisoning. I'm saying that may have been it. For all I know could be the fillings of my teeth. I am also a foreigner, so I have probably lead fillings or mercury-based fillings. So anyway, all that said, to me, what I put in my body is super important. And to that point, one of the recent things I added to it, because I also used to take two emergency packets a day. And as I started, as we created Truline and this whole COVID thing broke out, dude.

You know, Aaron, our VP of Trulene and I were talking, I'm like, man, people are wearing masks. And as they're wearing masks and they're not exposed to others, anymore because of social distancing and we're not like in events and no one's flying anymore. Our bodies are going to lose our immunity and our defense system. And so at some point when we go back to normal living, Aaron, people are going to catch a cold, the flu left and right. Right. I think so, yeah. Right?

And so, you know, I don't need to be a doctor to do that. But then as I said, hey, let's confirm that. Let's call Dr. Gabrielle and called her. And she's like, yep, that's exactly what's going to happen. And people are going to panic because the COVID symptoms. are similar to the flu and cold symptoms, and so we're all going to go in a panic again. And for the longest time, because I travel

and I shake hands after speaking events, you know, I would take two emergency packets a day, no matter what. Sometimes I would double up on top of that when I'm traveling during travel days or if the person next to me or whatever is coughing. And it always felt like it served me well. But as I go further along in years,

I was like, well, I wonder if there's something better. And Aaron, who does a lot of research, because he's our VP of our company, he's like, dude, just so you know, those, those, you know, emergency packets, they have sugar in them, so it tastes good. And sugar and vitamin C compete for the same receptor site, and sugar always wins. Right. And so 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C is not getting absorbed because sugar kind of almost cracks the door closed a little bit, right? Like, well, shit, I don't want to take 2,000 grams of, or milligrams of vitamin C, but only get whatever, you know, 800. 100.

Yeah, or 100 even worse, right? And I'm like, Aaron, if you were going to make, if we were going to make the best, like, immunity product on the planet, what would it have? He goes, well, it wouldn't have sugar. But in addition to that, it would have, like, vitamin D. It would have B12. It had turmeric.

It would have ginger. But turmeric only works when there's cayenne pepper because it slows the absorption of that. Like, Aaron geeks out on this stuff. I'm like, get the fuck out of here, all those things, yep. And so he lists them off, and there's 13 ingredients. I'm like, dude, so we know that people are going to need this product. We know that emergency is a lesser product, right? I go, well, what will we sweeten it up with?

He goes, well, we sweeten it up with stevia that's natural and monk fruit that's natural. We're not going to use artificial sweeteners. I check, got it. So next thing I know, we're making the Trulian Wellness shot, and it's become this massive game changer. And, you know, we launched it on Amazon four weeks ago, and I take two packets. the visa day now and I gave you some yesterday. But it's completely changed like my idea of reinforcing my immune system. So I took this with my energy drink today. Like I mixed it too. Yeah. That was pretty good. Okay. You know, it's funny. It's tomorrow morning I'm going to drink

your energy drink. So I might actually mix that together. So yeah, you just created a energy drink that has CBD in it, right? 12 and a half milligrams of CBD. 12 and a half milligrams of CBD. caffeine. It's about 75 milligrams of caffeine, about the same as a cup of coffee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if people are like, well, man, I need my monster energy drink. Let me tell you guys something. In my 20s, I may or may not have been known to also snort cocaine

before a leg workout. You know what I mean? As a pre-workout. You don't need that shit. You should have enough. I wish I can go back to my 20-year-old self and be like, dude, have enough discipline where you can listen to the right music and get so fucking mentally jacked that you could bend iron. Like today I cannot sleep for a day or two and then just talk mentally. I take mental pre-workout by just talking myself into an angry frenzy to go into the gym and just crush it. And I think more of us need to do that kind of stuff.

And the reason for that is it really teaches you to self-mastery because if you're always relying on chemicals. But anyway, some part of that comes with wisdom and you just have to turn into your late 30s and 40s to figure that out. Experience. You got to. It is. It is. And so anyhow. I'm going to mix the two together, but it's been a game changer for me.

So I'm curious, now that you're 46, you're in great shape, you just swam. By the way, all of you should know this. It was a GIGO Foundation? G.I.G.O. So it's, yeah. G.I.G.O. What does it stand for? I have no idea. Come on, man. You swam to Hudson. How do you not know? I was too focused on swimming.

All right. So there's this GIGO is the foundation. And shout out to them because they're doing a lot of good for our military men and women. and first responders, but both Will and Ray, along with, I don't know, it seemed like a couple dozen. There were 55 of us total. How many were seals? Most of us were seals. Probably, we didn't get a headcount of total number of seals, probably 30. Almost all of us were retired or just former seals.

There were a couple of active duty guys. And then there were some people, some first responders from the New York area that. were allowed if they passed a swim test to come out and swim with us. I think there was enough of you guys there where maybe right after you finished your swim, you guys could have gone an overthrown Governor Como, Governor Como from New York and they can open up the fucking businesses again, put New York back to business. Dude, did you hear billionaires are leaving Manhattan now? Really?

Yeah, because they're doing in the tunnels and on the bridges, they're doing checkpoints. In other words, what's your business for being out and about? Really? my business is I'm a fucking free American. I'm America. Yeah, right? And so billionaires are like, fuck you, we're out of here. And Governor Como was like, well, not Governor Como.

Governor Como and stated that. And then the mayor of New York was like, well, you know, if all these billionaires leave, we're going to have to cut 80% of the city workers and all that, you know, trying to kill people in. And the billionaires were fucking out of there, dude. Out of there. You're not going to tell me that you're going to restrict my lifestyle in addition to taxing me through their nose. Right. We're Americans.

We are Americans. We will draw the line in the sand. So anyway, so what you did is you guys did 66 pull-ups. Ray told me 66 pull-ups, and then you told me, how many miles did you guys run? So it was about two and a half miles of running and three and a half miles of swimming. Swimming, along with 66. So it was, we started off, we did 100 push-ups at the, I don't remember all the names of the park. So we did 100 push-ups at empty sky park.

where they have some monuments to the Twin Towers. And then we got in a formation and ran about two miles to where we got in the water, swam out to a barge right next to the Statue of Liberty, got out, did 100 push-ups and 100 more push-ups. 22 pull-ups, and the 22 pull-ups are significant in that 22 veterans a day commit suicide. So it's to bring awareness to that.

And really, you know, a lot of my mission in naked warriors to help veterans, and first responders, like, we're all stressed. We all have anxiety. We all have, like, emotional baggage. CBD was something that helped, it was a modality to help me, you know, get out of this red zone so that I can get into, like, orange or yellow, so I can have better self-talk and just, like, improve my overall quality of life.

Dude, let's talk about that for a moment. You know, people think, well, you know, you've seen combat 26 years as a seal. You've seen combat. You shit's been blown up around you. You've been shot at. I could imagine why you'd have PTSD. I don't have PTSD But as you explained yesterday, you do. Yeah, most people do. I bet you do. Yeah, and especially these days when you're dealing with this COVID Right. And people are getting depressed. They're getting anxious. They're getting angry. They're feeling rageful and all of a sudden these dark thoughts begin to creep in. Sure. So can you explain it the way explain it to me about like how an average person could also have PTSD just like a warrior? I mean even if you if you just look at how many people in in the in the

country we'll just say the country have some sort of anxiety disorder right or they take Xanax or they take whatever you know it maybe it's a a soccer mom who's like stressed out about the like especially right now kids are staying home they're not going to school like now I have now I'm responsible for maybe I'm a working mom I'm responsible for making sure my kid gets the education that they need and I still have a full-time job and how do I even manage that? Or I'm, you know, my kid doesn't want to do the work or, you know, I'm a business owner and nothing is going right. Everything is closing down around me. You have a bad relationship with a spouse, a significant other, a family member. All of those things, you know, pain is cumulative.

So if I just poke you in the arm like this for a few minutes, you're just going to be like, no, that's no big deal. In an hour, it's going to start to get annoying. In a day, you're going to have a massive bruise on your arm. And pretty soon, anytime anyone touches you in that spot, it's going to hurt. So that's the way that stress and anxiety and that sort of emotional thing happens. There may be someone in your life or something in your life that's like that finger that's just poking you in the arm. not a big deal right now in the beginning. And then if you tell someone about it, it's like, what, there's just poking you in the arm. Yeah, but they've been poking me in the arm or

this event or this thing or this situation has been poking me in the arm for the last 10 years. And so anytime someone, that's the trigger, you know, when people talk about the trigger, that's the poking you in the arm. Yeah. And it doesn't matter what it is. It's different for everyone. But, you know, it doesn't matter if it's combat or if it's, you know, just trying have raised your kids. Yeah. There's stress in your life. Yeah.

And we're not saying like this is a replacement for medical drugs, but I can tell you from firsthand, it has a calming effect on me. And I feel the anti-inflammation on my joints. You've been able to replace CBD with, let's just call it what it is, the abuse of alcohol. Right. Right. And it's worth it. If you are, if you're, if you've got, look, if you've got that emotional trauma, stress,

uh, depression you're dealing with and you want some kind of natural cure. Maybe it's worth you trying out CBD. It's worth you trying, hydrating yourself instead of taking, taking in sodas and caffeine. It's worth you trying to not screen sucking so much from the blue light that comes out of your phone and, and computer and television. Maybe you ought to try getting a good night of sleep every night of the week, you know, sleep at the same time, wake up the same time. Maybe you ought to try controlling the thoughts that occupy your mind, the people you surround yourself with.

Because when you do this kind of stuff and you have a consistent regimen of things like this that work, you find yourself relying less and less and ultimately eliminating the vices in your life that really are damaging. Right. And create addiction. Yeah. So to that point, is there any Navy SEAL hacks that you could tell us that would make us perform better in life? Navy Steel Hacks. I would say many of them are what you put out.

You know, try to get enough sleep at night. Sure. Because you can't perform. You know, in Buds, they keep you up for five and a half days during Hell Week to see how you respond to and your mind just goes crazy. You know, I saw all sorts of crazy stuff, you know, day four, four and a half those nights while we're paddling around. Yeah. But, you know, really it's, I would say the Navy SEAL hacks are, you know, have a good diet, get plenty of sleep at night, stay hydrated. Those are really the...

They're funny. It's always the foundation of stuff. Just like, you can't build a house on sand unless you have a good foundation under it, so... And I'm glad you share that. And guys, we didn't even rehearse what his answer was going to be on that. Like, this is just, you know, the Empire Show when we have an inside look like this, it's just two dudes or a dude in a... and a gal if we have like Cindy Eckart, who was here, just sitting at a bar, having a conversation is how we's kind of envisioned this to be.

And whether I've had literally billionaires sitting in that chair, Super Bowl winning athletes, it doesn't matter. Navy SEALs, the answer is always the same as the foundational stuff. There's no magical hack. It's like, hey, good nutrition, good habits, strong belief system, you know, exercise. and, you know, keep yourself dialed in mentally and physically. And if you do, all the other stuff, create the trivial support that we need. How can people try this, find it, see if, you know, Naked Warrior, gummy bears work for them?

Why Naked Warrior, by the way? What the hell is up with that funky name? So naked, well, I'm glad you asked. Naked Warrior is, so the Naked Warrior, the guy that you see on my shirt here, he, that's kind of, of the lineage of the Navy SEAL. So back in World War II, if you ever saw the movie Saving Private Ryan, you saw the beginning scene where the landing force is going into the beach. Well, before those guys went into the beach, the Navy went out and asked for volunteers. Most of them were demolition experts in the construction world that were in the Navy, and they volunteer, they were able to swim,

and what these guys would do is they would go in and they did hydrographic reconnaissance. So basically, they had a rock, a piece of string with knots in it every six feet. They had a slate. I don't know if you could see it around. And that's where they took notes. And they kind of got online and they measured three to five thousand yards of beach at night. They went back to the ship. They built a chart if there were any obstacles in the water or on the beach.

And they're taking fire from the enemy while they're doing this. And they're wearing nothing but like teeny tiny shorts. They had a cabar knife and a mask and fins. That's what they were wearing into combat. And so they were called the naked warrior. And later on in the Pacific, when the Marines would, you know, during the island campaign, Marines would go ashore, they would hit these reefs around the islands, and they would think they were in like needy water. They'd run off. They'd fall off the edge of the reef into 30 feet of water and drowned.

So then, so they went from Normandy, which was the first evolution, the first mission of the UDTs, the naked warriors, and they pulled them all out to the Pacific. And so before every island campaign, these guys would go in, take fire from the beach. beach, find the obstacles, reefs, whatever they were, man-made obstacles in the water, blow them up and get out as the landing force is coming in. So that's one side. The mission before the mission. The mission before the mission. So first to shore, you know, always the first one's in combat. Yeah. I'm not going to go any service, when services does more than the other. Right, right, but wink, wink, but, you know. Is that why Ray, so when Ray wears really short shorts, it's like three inch inseams.

Is that just a nod to the Navy SEAL heritage? Probably, yes. Or Ray just likes to show his legs. Who knows? But the other side of the naked warrior really is, so it's double meaning. So the other side of it is, you know, we're all warriors, whether we're Navy SEALs, business owners, soccer moms, mechanics, whatever. We are warriors in our lives. Yeah.

We all also have armor that we put on. So in the SEAL teams, we go out, we do missions, we come back, we take our armor off, and recover. Hit the showers when it's time to go back into combat and the arm's way we put our armor back on. Well, in real life, we don't always do that. We may put our armor on because we've been hitting the arm. We've been attacked, attacked, or we feel attacked. and we need to like put this armor on and and defend ourselves from whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's our ego that we're wearing around. And so at some point, if you never take your ego off, if you never take that armor off, you're never able to recover. So the naked warrior is really, you know, taking that armor off, giving, exposing yourself, becoming naked. Yes. Get out there and get naked. Get out there and, you know. Be exposed so that you can Find goodness in the world and everything there not everyone is against you and

Start that healing process so that you can actually grow and recover and become the best version of yourself So once again we did not rehearse this. I shoot you not We didn't we didn't. We didn't and I've never told you about what one of the things Kevin told me So it's you know when you're working with a therapist once a week for 16 months and you explore every facet of your life. And a good therapist will just kind of dig just right where you don't realize they're digging. They're just asking questions.

Before you know what, you're like, and then I was three years old and I was sucking my thumb and this happened. You know? And so I was like, well, Kevin, you know, I don't really understand why when I come home from work, my wife is walking on eggshells, my kids are walking on eggshells.

The fucking dog is walking on eggshells around me, Kevin, and it fucking pisses me off, man, da-da-da. He's like, okay. And he's like, okay. chair. I'm like, I can tell you're walking on X-Shows right now, Kevin. He's like, well, you're a big guy, and I'm around the second floor, and I'm just a little worried. There's a window right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Kevin, just to give everyone a visual, he's, he's, he's 64 years old now, and he's got just white, white hair. Think Einstein without the eyebrows. And so when you first meet

him, you're like, something's off with this guy's face, but you can't really tell. Back to the future. Yeah, yeah. By the third session, I'm like, fuck, Kevin, you've got no eyebrows. And he just laughs, right? So. anyway so he goes hey I'll tell you what he goes it's it's very clear that you're stressed at work and anxiety and all that stuff and you know it probably feels like you go to battle right I'm like yeah I go you don't know what vendor you don't know who your competitors are these days someone gets funded you know a hundred million dollars and a new brand is built overnight and you're competing against a well-funded business and you know you have someone that you think is your ally and they

start stealing your clients and I go it's just a shady fucking way this entrepreneurial world you know I go fuck yeah I'm in battle and he goes okay I see that but he goes when you get home do you think that maybe you can take the armor off like that's literally what you just said and I was like what do you mean he goes well why you tell me like your routine when you get home I go well I park in my garage it's a detached garage you know way over there I walk across the pool deck and then I walk through the back door. He goes, I'll tell you what, let's create a routine for you. When you park, as you're walking across that pool deck, just picture your chest plate falling off. He goes, just picture your sword falling off. Just picture your helmet falling off. And your armor falls off. You were in

battle, and that's great. But now show up as dad and your husband, not as someone who is looking for a fight because you were fighting all day. And I go, how would that look? He goes, maybe a smile, maybe a little pepping your step. And so I literally, every day still do that. And I change my cadence because, dude, the reality is I'll have my backpack over my shoulder, still grimacing. God gave me a very grimacy look on my face. And I'll be grimacing and in my thoughts about what I'm going to do tomorrow. And if I walk into the house that way, the family's like, whoa, dude, right? And I take it as why are they walking on eggshells when I've given this amazing life? When in reality, they're like, we'd love a much lesser life

and just a dad who's approachable. Right. And so, you know, this was eight years ago, the story I'm telling you now, but I share this with you because I still do that eight years every single day. Even when I come back from the gym on the weekends, just because when I'm in the gym, I'm in battle again. I'm fighting my inner bitch who wants to quit squatting or lifting or

deadlifting. And I'd rather go to McDonald's quite honestly, right? And so I do that. And within the third or fourth time, Walking in the house with my armor off My wife's energy my kids energy I think the first and second time they're like yeah, right. He's just trying to lure a sin What's going on here? Yeah, what's yeah He's just trying to fuck us up You know third fourth time. They're like I think this guy learned a new lesson, you know in therapy

And it's completely changed who I am, but I really do believe that that that I guess the naked warrior ethos It's not just a Navy seal thing like if we it's vulnerability and the way I see it is if we could just put the armor down down, be a little more vulnerable. And as you said, not everyone's out to get you. Right. It's okay to ask for help sometimes too. It's okay to ask for help. And as you do, you realize, holy shit, man, it's easier to ask for help with a smile on my face with a little kick in my step. And as Tony Robbins always says, you know, if you're in a bad headspace, just change your state. Act happy. And soon, you start actually releasing the happy hormones, which is goofy enough to say, but it works. There's

science behind it. So how does someone find these amazing gummies, but all the Naked Warrior Recovery products? Where did they go? I'm going to tell you that in just a second. Ray actually told me something that makes these taste even better, is if you put them in the fridge or in the freezer. Okay. They taste even better. I will have to try that tonight. So you can find, you can find these in all of my products at NW-recovery.com, NW for Naked Warrior dash recovery. You could also go to NakedWarrior.com, and it'll take you there. But I didn't think people wanted to type naked into their search engine. So, who knows what?

So NW. DashRecovery.com. And I also created a discount code empire to save 20%. Oh, very cool. All of your listeners. Very cool. And for the record, one, I didn't know about that. Two, I don't get a commission or a percentage or any of that stuff.

From time to time, Will will send me these. But if you didn't send it to me, I'd buy it anyway. So now that I told you that, you'll probably stop. Sending me this stuff and I'll end up buying it, but I do appreciate it. So go to NW-W-W-R warrior recovery. I'm sorry, nw-dash recovery.com to get your hot little hands on these amazing CBD products that are actually very good for you and very clean. Use the keyword or discount code empire during checkout.

Get that 20% off. Thanks for doing that for our tribe here. And how can people find you, learn more about you and what you do? I'm on Instagram at Naked Warrior Recovery. I'm also at william.r.r.r. Awesome. Well, Will, thank you so much again for your service for spending time with us here on the show. Guys and gals, if you like this episode, like I know you did, do me a favor. Give us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a comment and of course take a screenshot, share it on social media, and be sure to tag Will and myself. And we will make sure that we repost that. And you all have a wonderful day. Take care.