Branding Matters

How to Succeed in Business by Getting NAKED with William Branum

โ€ข Branding Badass โ€ข Episode 77

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On today's show we talk about what it means to get NAKED. That is, Emotionally naked! My guest is William Branum - a Navy SEAL veteran who shares how the challenges of military training helped him change his life by changing his mindset and how he has turned this mindset into a business. 

William talks about why is it important to have a purpose when building a brand, and how exposing your fears is one of the best ways to conquer them. We also touch on the importance of branded merchandise in creating brand awareness to drive new exposure.

Today William is a sought-after speaker, business coach and Founder & CEO of Naked Warrior Recovery.

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About Me
Hey there, I'm Joelly - the Branding Badass. My BADASS superpower is helping you build a brand that matters. From branded merch to keynote speaking, when you work with me, you get results!

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Joelly Goodson :

Hi, I'm Joelly your Branding Badass! Welcome to Branding Matters, a podcast I created and host to help you create brand equity. On today's show we talk about what it means to get NAKED. Why it's important to have a purpose when building a brand. How exposing your fears is one of the best ways to conquer them. And what role branded merch plays in creating brand awareness. My guest is William Branum, a Navy SEAL veteran who shares how the challenges of military training helped him change his life by changing his mindset. Today, William is a sought-after speaker, business coach and Founder & CEO of Naked Warior Recovery. I'm really excited for this conversation, and I hope you're gonna enjoy it as much as I did. Branding Matters is brought to you by Genumark - one of North America's most trusted branded merch makers for over 40 years. Did you know branded merchandise is one of the best ways to create brand awareness? It's true. Whether with your team or your fans, there's no better way to show your appreciation, connect with your audience and build communities that by combining thoughtful design, with great products that tell your brand story, when you partner with Genumark you get more. More personalized service, more creativity, more innovative solutions. And more importantly, you get it all from a talented team of branding experts who have the experience and know how to make your job easier and more fun. From promotional products, custom uniforms and clothing to sports co branding, web stores and warehousing. Genumark makes it happen. And being ISO certified, you can rest assured, knowing ethical sourcing and sustainability are front and center. Genumark is big enough to matter, but small enough to care. So if you're looking for the right partner to help you create brand awareness, email BrandingMatters@Genumark.com. That's Branding Matters at G E N U M A R K.com. And now on with our show! William, welcome to Branding Matters.

William Branum:

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

Joelly Goodson :

It's great to be here. It's great to have you here. I mean, first of all, I just want to say you're the first Navy SEAL I've ever met in person. You know, I did a little bit of research about Navy SEALs. And I discovered that only 6% of seal applicants actually meet the requirements to go ahead. Did you know that statistic?

William Branum:

I did not know that.

Joelly Goodson :

Yeah, that's right from the military.com website. So for people who don't know, what is a Navy SEAL, and then tell me about the moment when you decided that this is something that you just had to do.

William Branum:

The SEAL teams are very different from the other special forces in the US military, the acronym is seal, it stands for sea, air and land. And that's because that's how we, that's where we work, we work, you know, in the ocean, we work on the land, and we can come from the sky, to any target anywhere in the world. And so that's that's how we operate. I mean, basically just says, you know, where we come from and how we do it. So we can do it all. Where the army is much more focused on land, they don't like the water, many of those guys can't swim. I mean, I would argue that I'm not a very good swimmer myself, but I, I can get out there and do it. I really we do. We do hard things that other people don't want to do. Sometimes we do some pretty sexy things that everybody wants to do. But most a lot of times it's it's hard things that no one else wants to do. It is the most elite, most highly trained military organization in the world. And I can say that with confidence.

Joelly Goodson :

Well, only 6% of people make it through. So that's impressive. Okay, so then tell me about the moment when this was something you decided that you just had to do?

William Branum:

Well, I always knew growing up that I wanted to be part of some sort of small, elite military organization. Although I didn't really I don't even think I knew the word elite because I grew up in Mississippi, and I wasn't that smart. But I was heavily involved in the boy scouts. I was an Eagle Scout, and which is where I found out about the SEAL teams. So I was going to this national jamboree I grew up very poor. But I was so involved in the boy scouts, the Boy Scout organization that I was a part of paid for me to go to this national jamboree. And they have it once every four years. And so we partnered up with another troop. And I met a kid in that troop. And you know, this was we were all high school kids. And he said, you know, he's like he was very deliberate about he's gonna go to the Naval Academy. He wants to fly an F 14 tomcats like the movie Top Gun, and he wants to be a Navy SEAL. And I'm like, all that stuff sounds really cool. I want to do all of that. What's a Navy SEAL? And he explained to me the most elite military organization in the world, blah, blah, they jump out of airplanes, they shoot guns or scuba dive, they do all these things. And I was like, that's where I that's what I want to do came from. I was the summer between my 11th and 12th grade of high school. Wow. Okay, so the Navy recruiter called me like a week after I got back from that trip and was like, Hey, have you ever thought about joining the Navy? And quite honestly, almost every Every man in my family has been in the Navy and I had zero intention of being in the Navy because they have the ugliest uniforms. They wear these weird little white Dixie cup caps. They it's like

Joelly Goodson :

a lot of women find it attractive actually they've you know,

William Branum:

and Yeah, but I'm or whatever. I'm a redneck kid from Mississippi. So it wasn't it wasn't exciting for me. But I was like, Well, I want to be a Navy SEAL. And I want to go to the Naval Academy and I want to fly it. He's like, okay, come on down here and we can talk about it. So we went down there, he showed me this really terrible cheesy movie GCI or whatever. And I was like, Yeah, where do I sign? So basically, I joined the Navy before I graduated high school. So I was joined in what's called the delayed Entry Program, the summer between before my 12th grade of high school, then I went to high school. I graduated and went off to boot camp right after that.

Joelly Goodson :

Oh, so you were 18? Right away? Did you ever see the movie American Sniper?

William Branum:

I have not.

Joelly Goodson :

Can I ask why?

William Branum:

I don't watch a lot of military movies. I've seen some and I'm like, I can't watch this anymore. It's why I'm curious why there are a lot of inaccuracies.

Joelly Goodson :

I was gonna ask you, actually. So I saw that movie with Bradley Cooper. And because it came out in 2014. That's why you watched it because it was Bradley Cooper. I don't really care what you're talking about. But it's Bradley Cooper. So yeah, But I was just curious, because I mean, it's based on a true story, right? About a guy, a Navy Seal, who comes back and how we gets sort of back into civilization and does has all these challenges. And by what I sort of research with your story, it seems like a pretty common theme, right? And I think we're going to talk a lot about why you're doing what you're doing based on that. So that's why I was curious to know if you saw that movie. So I'm sure while you were Navy Seal, no dough, you were in some pretty horrific places and saw some pretty unimaginable things that I don't think any civilian could ever see. And then you leave the military in 2018. And you returned to civilian life. And I read a really interesting quote that you wrote, and you said that that transition into civilian life was the hardest military mission you've ever been on, which I thought was very interesting, coming from a Navy Seal and things that you must have experienced. So can you elaborate on that?

William Branum:

Yeah, it's funny. I've right before this call, I was talking to a coach to do a TED talk on life transitions. We all go through them. But usually we don't prepare ourselves for those life transitions. And you know, when I was in the SEAL teams, I've spent my entire adult life in the military. Being in the military, I knew my purpose. I knew my mission. And I knew my team, and I had a pretty badass purpose. I had a badass mission and a badass team just like your shirt says, badass. Exactly. Well, you're a badass, that's why you're on my podcast. And I was in such denial about getting out of the military or retiring, like the military's like, you can only stay in for such for this amount of time, based on you know, your rank and things like that. So my transition, you know, I had, I had purpose, I had a mission and I had a team and a badass purpose, a badass mission, and a badass team while I was in the military, my entire adult life. And I was in such denial about getting out of the military, I was still returning emails, the day on products, projects that I was working on the day before I got out, I'm returning emails, and I'm like, wait, I should probably turn my Blackberry in because I'm not going to do this job after tomorrow. So I turned my Blackberry in, and then we hit retirement ceremony, and then I was done. And for me, it was like, if you've ever seen the movie, The Avengers where Thanos like snapped his fingers and half the world's population goes away. That's in that movie. I don't I don't think he was in the Bradley Cooper Cooper movie. That's, I don't know who who plays in the Avengers. I didn't see it. Sorry, Iron Man, Iron Man and some other people like that. Who ever played iron? Man? I have no idea. Robert Downey Jr. Yeah, that guy? Yes. So anyway, in that movie, you know, and then everyone was like, What the hell happened? What's going on? Like, what do I do now? That's exactly the way I felt. And it took me a long time to figure out what my new purpose was, my new mission was, and who was going to be on my new team. Because, you know, we can, we can be as awesome or thinkers, awesome as we want to be. But if we don't have a team around us, you know, I think Jim Rohn said, Once upon a time, you know, you're the sum of the five people that are in your, that you surround yourself with. And I can't tell you how true that is. So I would on a mission to find people to surround myself with and you know, some of the people that I would I call my new SEAL team. They are the Navy Seals of entrepreneurs. They're former Navy SEALs, you know, people that I served with, so I try to find the people that are really good at the things I want to do. And I try to surround myself with those people. There's no map, there's no real clear path on what to do when you get out of the military. You know, you can go find a job like some nine to five or whatever, just to pay the bills. I'm not a nine to five kind of guy. I'm much more but let's go figure some stuff out. And so that's really been the mission I've been on for the last four years.

Joelly Goodson :

When you say it was more challenging or the most challenging military mission what made so challenging for

Unknown:

I had no direction. I had no, no purpose I had no, I you? had no idea what I was going to do

Joelly Goodson :

Did you have support?

William Branum:

marginal, I guess, only when I went out and looked for it, you know, I'm, I'm a man. And I don't like to ask for help. And that's probably the biggest downfall I've had is asking for help, like showing weakness. I never wanted to do that in the SEAL teams. If I wasn't like, pulling my weight, someone was gonna tell me, or if I didn't know how to do something, I could ask someone else, hey, can you help me figure this out. But when I got out, I didn't have that support system, that team to help me figure out what my next My next admission was going to be. And so I I had a lot of failures, in entrepreneurship in you know, maybe just getting a regular old job, I had a lot of challenges with that. Because that's just not the way that I'm wired. And I didn't know what I was doing. And the other thing that I've had conversations with other people about is, the military does a very, very good job of preparing you to be in the military, they bring you into boot camp, you have months at a time where they're, they're like they they take your old identity away, shave your head, do all this other stuff. And they they make you a part of the of the organism of the military. So it's several months at a time where you're just complete immersion, the transition from the military, the training that they give you. They give you a one week, one week of training that it's required for everyone, and they teach you how to write a resume, and how to balance a budget.

Joelly Goodson :

You mean training to leave?

William Branum:

Yes,

Joelly Goodson :

strangely. Okay. That's it?

William Branum:

Yeah. That they don't, yeah, there's no like no help to get a job or figure out what your what you're going to do next that like, you can go figure that out.

Joelly Goodson :

Wow. And so you suffered some pretty challenging times during that time, right? I mean, you kind of hit rock bottom, is it fair to say?

William Branum:

oh, yeah, for sure. 26 years of service, and maybe some not so often relationships that I've been a part of, I got a lot of noise in my head. And so it was very hard for me to control the noise. That noise was just consuming me all the time. And so I would, the only way that I could really like check out was to like, pretty much just drink myself to sleep at night, or drink. So you pass out or however you

Joelly Goodson :

Self medicate, right?

William Branum:

Yeah,

Joelly Goodson :

Very common. This is where you decided to start your business naked warrior recovery. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And what inspired you to start that?

Unknown:

Yeah, so I had heard about this molecule called CBD. I don't think I really noticed anything when I took it. But what I noticed over time is my life got better, but I couldn't really measure it. I didn't really notice it got better until bad things started happening again. So I'd like to say that, you know, water boils at 212 degrees. And I was probably living my life at 210 degrees. So it didn't take much for me to like some sort of surface command and like, Yeah, and so I went from like, to 10, like taking that bottle of CBD or from 210 to 205 to 200 to 195 to 190, maybe 185 I got out of that red zone of like, anxiety, stress, whatever it was what however you want to frame it, my fuse got longer, I was able to respond to triggers rather than just react to them. And then also, with my time in the military got a lot of stuff wrong with me.

Joelly Goodson :

Are you talking physically or are you just talking emotional trauma?

William Branum:

yeah, there's physical injuries, physical injuries. And, and so the pains that my struggle with every day were just not as bad. And then when I when I stopped taking that CBD, they started creeping back. And I'm like, I haven't felt that for a long time. You know, my fuse started getting shorter again. So I tried a different brand. I had similar results. So now I'm very interested in the CBD industry. And it was just barely legal at that point in the United States. So what year 2019 Okay, so it was April of 2019 that I tried CBD for the first time. And then fast forward to I think, August, September of 2019. I was at a business conference, the same guy who gave me that first bottle of CBD. He was speaking at this thing, and he invited me to be like his VIP guests. So I got to go to all the like, all the VIP events and learn about social media because I didn't know anything about social media at the time. I shunned it because of my, my, my previous job. And there was a they were doing q&a And there was a girl in the audience. She was putting CBD into kinesiology tape for pain relief. And so she was like, but I can't market it because social media shunts it. So how do I market it and and that was like CBD, all I cared was like, she's a CBD girl. I need to go talk to her. And so I tracked her down after the event. And I was like, Hey, you're the CBD girl, right? She was like, Yeah, I'm like, I want to be in the industry. I'm thinking, This is my new purpose, my new mission. She's going to hire me. I'm going to help her like with their company, and she's going to train me up on CBD and all this other stuff. And she was like, I'm not hiring anybody right now. I'm moving this thing forward. But she was like, so do you want to do a to b b2b or b2c? And I was like, I don't know what those letters mean, I want to do the CBD. And she was like, Well, why don't you just start your own CBD company and I said, I don't know how to do that. And she said, You are a Navy SEAL. You can figure it out. So I asked her if I could have my man card back and put that pocket not to give that up again. And I started researching the end of Three, I'm like, How do I start a CBD company Google. And so as I was researching this, I found that the industry was incredibly dirty. So my mission became like, let's create the well well hold on. What do you mean it was dirty. So CBD became legal in the United States, December 20 of 2018. So this was the passing of the farm bill that made hemp legal, hemp and marijuana really at the end of the day, they're the same plant, it's just how they're bred. So hemp has to be classified as hemp, it has to have point 3% or less THC. In the plant marrow, anything above that is considered marijuana. So hemp once upon a time, it was a it was a an industrial crop, they are able to either use it like to make clothes or paper or things like that. Or you can extract the oil out of it and use the medicinal qualities of that oil for consumption. And so there were once that happened there, like this was like a mad rush of everyone that had a good idea to just like, extract some oil from some plants and sell it as CBD. And so the FDA went out and did a bunch of testing a bunch of other organizations went out and did just independent testing of like products that were in the market it gas station at the smoke shop at the whatever at the whatever. And they found that more than 70% of the products that were out there either had higher than the point 3% THC in the product. They had high levels of heavy metal, mercury, arsenic, lead things like Oh, my God really has asides, herbicides, all this like just like, if you're putting something in your body to be a medicine, you don't want to put in a bunch of poisons and toxins in your body as well. So there was like, clearly, like, there was stuff that was clearly marijuana. Like they just extracted it and called it CBD. There is some CBD in that or there was oils that were put out there that had zero CBD in it. And so people were just like this get rich quick, that's just like, make a bunch of money and whatever. And so I started like doing all this research and like, holy crap, that's what. So my, my mission was like, let's create the highest quality product on the market. And so as you know, I got going down that road, doing more research. Okay, there's everybody. Everybody has a premium quality product. I'm like, Okay, so what's our new mission? So I looked at myself, I looked at where I came from, what's my, what's my why, what's my purpose again? And so I was like, Okay, so there's this metric out there that 22 veterans take their lives every single day, we've lost more veterans to suicide than we have in 20 years of sustained combat in two theatres of war. So maybe our mission is to eliminate veteran suicides

Joelly Goodson :

22 suicides a day?

Unknown:

Yeah, it actually they have

Joelly Goodson :

Is tha all across the US?

William Branum:

Yeah.

Joelly Goodson :

Wow. And, and so, there, I saw an article about a month ago that said that they think the statistic is probably closer to 42 a day, you know, current world events with pandemic and people being shut in, and all this other stuff. They believe it's even higher than that. So CBD was a modality. It's not a cure, but it was a modality that helped kind of turn down the noise in my head to help me drink less to help me have more positive self talk. Once I was like, got to turn the noise down, then I had to change the way that I was thinking. So your company is Naked Warrior Recovery, but you're wearing tons of swag, which is my wheelhouse, by the way, GET NAKED, your hat, your T shirts. So tell me about GET NAKED

Unknown:

It's a two part thing. So I kind of described it a little bit like ticking that armor ticking that ego off that we hide behind so we can find the healing that we need, we become vulnerable. But it's also changed your mindset change the way that you think about things. And so naked is an acronym also, because you know, we love acronyms in the military. And so the acronym the acronym stands for the end is for never quit. The A is accept failure. The key is to kill mediocrity, the E is exposure fears, and the D is do the work.

Joelly Goodson :

So can you elaborate a bit on each one?

William Branum:

So the N is never quit. And I don't mean never quit smoking, or drinking or porn or whatever bad advice that you potentially have. I mean, never quit on yourself, never quit on if you started a project, the program is something that you is going to be hard, then you take that thing all the way to the end. And the way I say to do that is you're going to have days that you are going to feel overwhelmed. Like I don't think I can do this. What I tell you to do is I tell you to create small victories. So a small victory could just be like return one email, turn on your computer, make one phone call, do three things, three super small things, create those small victories. And when you do that, you create momentum to actually start doing the work. But you have to really compartmentalize what you're doing. And not look at the big thing. You can only do like one step at a time, you'll run a marathon one step at a time. You don't run 26 miles at one time. You do it one step at a time and or one mile at a time. One more water break at a time. And so in SEAL training, we have this thing called Hell Week. It's five and a half days. You don't sleep the entire time. Actually they let us sleep for about two and a half hours and that was the worst punishment that could have done to us. But it was one thing is constant during Hell Week. You're cold, you're wet, you're miserable. They carry this bone on you on your head. You run about six marathons during Hell Week. Like you run everywhere you Freeze your butt off in the ocean, the one thing that is constant no matter what is they feed you four times a day. So it doesn't matter how much it sucks, all you got to do is make it to that next meal. And that's a small victory. So you do the same thing in your life, you just break this thing up that you have that's overwhelming, you chop it up into bite sized pieces, and you just accomplish one a day. If you can accomplish 10 A day awesome. But just focus on one thing at a time, one step at a time. Keep doing that until you've reached the end of whatever it is you're trying to complete. And then that's that's what never quit is all about. The A is accept failure, because failure has been the biggest teacher of my life. I can do things perfectly. And I don't learn. But I learned through failure. I learned like Okay, so what if I try this? What if I try that? What if I keep doing this? And that's how I learned. And I've found that that's how most people learn?

Joelly Goodson :

Absolutely, But I have also have found that people fail. And they just become so downtrodden. From that failure. They're like, let's give it one heave ho. And if it doesn't work, well, I don't know what to do with my life, my cipher, whatever. Yeah. And so, you know, Thomas Edison, he discovered more than 10,000 ways to not create the incandescent light bulb, Michael Jordan has missed more than 3000 shots in his basketball career. But, you know, he's one of the greatest basketball players of all time, he wasn't focused on the shots that he got, right, he focused on the shots that he missed. And every time in a game, he missed a shot, he would go to the gym that night, and he would practice that shot in every scenario possible. So he accepted those failures. And he became better from those failures. I've had massive failures in my life, all of the plaques or whatever you see on the wall, those are, those are based on failures, I wear my failures, I put them on the wall as reminders, I failed all these times in order to succeed. So you have to accept failure, never quit, and keep going. That's what accept failure is all about. I totally agree with your failure. I don't think there's anybody out there who hasn't succeeded without failing. And we have an event. It's funny, you talk about that, because we have an event in Calgary, it's actually I think it's international. And it's called FuckUp Nights. And what it does is it brings on people who have failed miserably, but you know, have overcome it. And they share that with people because instead of hearing about businesses, or entrepreneurs who talk about their success stories, and how you know, they go from rags to riches, I think it's way more compelling and interesting when you hear about people's failures and how they overcame it or so if you go from success to failure, and that success again, I think there's way more of a connection being made, because you can relate to that, right? Because we all fail versus someone who has never experienced that. So I love that. Okay, so K?

William Branum:

K is to kill mediocrity.

Joelly Goodson :

Have you ever explained this as long as you are right now with me?

William Branum:

You know what, I do it on stage all the time.

Joelly Goodson :

I menat with people like asking you to breakdown each letter.

William Branum:

Usually, most people they wait till the end and like what? Ah, hold on, let's go back to the I can do it any way you anyway.

Joelly Goodson :

No, this is great. Just having some fun. So the K stands for?

Unknown:

Kill mediocrity. So I would argue that we're at war right now with mediocrity. If you look at Maslow's pyramid of hierarchy, we're at the top right now, around the world. There are some countries that are that are not. But you know, we're at the top. And because of that, because of technology, because many people have a entitlement attitude. There's a lot of entitlement in the world. And you know, some of it is based off this little thing right here that we carry around in our pocket. And you can order ice cream and have it delivered to your house in 30 minutes or less.

Joelly Goodson :

People can't see this because it's audio. So we just have to say he just picked up his iPhone,

William Branum:

my iPhone, yes, we're gonna go What's this? What is this thing?

Joelly Goodson :

Yeah, what is this thing that he just picked up.

William Branum:

And we rely on this, we rely on this phone, we rely on technology to just make our life easier, because we're programmed to look for the easy, the easy path. But that's a million years of evolution, drilled into our brain into our what we need to do, like we came from, like hunter gatherers. And then we eventually created society through farming and things like that, which made life easier. So we're always looking for the easier way. And we forget to do hard things we become so dependent on the technology at the time, whatever that technology is, technology is always going to move forward. And if we're not careful, we will be left behind and technology will run our life. And we will have a say of what we're doing and how we're doing it. So that's mediocrity. That's you know, ho hum, and we just barely exists through life instead of being exceptional through life. And so the way that you kill me the aakriti is you compete, you don't have to go and like play a professional sport or anything like that you can compete in, in small things like you can compete in giving you complete competing kindness, you can compete in gratitude. But most importantly, what you're competing against is you're competing against this ego, this ego that tells you you don't have to worry about that someone else will pick up that trash. Someone else will do that. You'd be the winner. You get out there and you compete with everyone around you in kindness, generosity and gratitude. You're going to start changing the world. You're going to start winning against that ego that thing that's telling you, you don't need to work out you can do it tomorrow. You can do it later. Now just go do it now compete against your ego and win. And then you're killing mediocrity in your life and you're gonna start killing the mediocrity and other people's lives because you will be an inspiration to them. So that's really what kill mediocrity is all about. Just make yourself a better person, compete with yourself, and people will see you do that, and they will want to be more like you.

Joelly Goodson :

I love that. Okay, so we're on to, I'm looking at your shirt, I'm going okay, so I think we're on to what the E,

Unknown:

E, the E is expose your fears. And that'll mean lions and tigers and bears, I mean, those fears, those thoughts that come into your mind when you're driving alone in your car,

Joelly Goodson :

You're an introvert? there's things that keep you awake at night, there's things that wake you up in the middle of the night, that that won't let you go back to sleep, those thoughts that consume you that are not healthy thoughts. And I think the human brain thinks, I

William Branum:

I'm a total introvert. don't know, 87,000 thoughts an hour or something like that, and 80% of those thoughts are negative thoughts. So we have to be able to beat out those negative thoughts with more positive thoughts. And oftentimes, those negative thoughts come in the form of fear. And fear is the anticipation of something that will never ever happen to you.

Joelly Goodson :

Wow, I wouldn't have pegged you for that. But for some reason, we put it in our mind that we're afraid of, we're afraid of heights, we're afraid of flying, we're afraid of water, we're afraid of having a conversation with someone, we're afraid to pick up the phone and, and be rejected. Interesting. We're afraid of like talking to our partner about like, the relationship that we're in whatever it is. And so the E

William Branum:

And so I am afraid of public speaking. I'm exposure fears is really about talking about those fears, or writing those fears down or just doing things that scare you. For example, I am an introvert. I don't like public speaking. more comfortable in a gunfight than I am standing on a stage talking to a bunch of people.

Joelly Goodson :

Wow. Well they say that standing they say that standing and giving presentations is like the number one fear of everyone above death.

Unknown:

100%.

Joelly Goodson :

Yeah,

William Branum:

I think so. I believe that's absolutely true. For me anyway. And it's funny, I was giving a gave a presentation. And I usually start the presentation off to kind of like, get that off my chest while I'm like, Listen, I'm gonna mess this up. I'm gonna say the wrong thing. I made swear I made like, forget exactly what I was gonna say. And I have to go back and look at my notes, because I'm terrified of speaking in front of you. Because I'm more comfortable in a gunfight than I am standing on the stage. So you know, when I do screw up, just bear with me, I'll be back. So I put it out there to expose it.

Joelly Goodson :

You know what I think we all live in. We all have fears, right? And they're all different. And I think that you're not really living until you face your fears and do it anyway. You know, listen, I'm not the best flyer. I don't really love flying, to be honest with you. But I love traveling. So I'm not gonna let my fear stopped me from living and doing things. And so I've heard people talk about being fearless. And I don't necessarily know if you're being fearless, but like, I love that you say your you know what your fears are exposing it and doing it anyway, will just make you I think, stronger and happier in the long run.

William Branum:

Oh, 100%. And yeah, so one other one other technique is actually one of my business coaches. He's in the billionaire category. And he still gets stressed his anxieties, whatever, the stocks that consume him, and what he does, is he will pull over he'll stop at a Starbucks, he's driving along, I'm like, he's like, Ah, this is like too much. He'll pull over, he'll stop at a Starbucks order a cup of coffee sit down. And with a pen, or a pencil and a piece of paper, he will write down every of the one of the thoughts, the stresses, the anxieties, and do kind of a brain dump. And so there's this magical thing that happens from the brain down the arm, through the pen and onto the paper. He says that fear does not exist on paper. So you write down everything that's bothering you, and you read it. And you're gonna read that and be like, that's really the thing that's bothering me. I was afraid to like make a call to someone because they might reject me. So once you expose your fears, you control the fears and they will no longer control you. But it doesn't happen once you have to do it over and over and over. Yeah, people. Some people consider like, talk therapy. I'm not a talk therapy kind of guy. I don't like to talk about stuff. I don't like to talk.

Joelly Goodson :

Yeah, I get that about you. I've had to like draw it out of you.

William Branum:

Right. I told you I'm an introvert.

Joelly Goodson :

Yeah,

William Branum:

I mean, I can I can get out there but I have to like go recharge later.

Joelly Goodson :

I love that expression. Fear doesn't exist on paper. That's great. That's a great quote. I might steal that.Because it's so true.

William Branum:

I stole it from him. I told him I'm gonna steal it from him.

Joelly Goodson :

Okay, and I and I've heard that before about the whole connection between writing it and not doing it on a on your iPhone or not doing it on a computer but actually the hand to writing and I think that's true for that also when you're writing like a business plan or any or your goals or anything that is important if you write it down but you do it with actually pen to paper. Okay, the big D

Unknown:

So so the D is do the work. And the analogy that I generally give is I graduated SEAL training. And then I went to the SEAL team when I graduated I was like, everything is going to be easier from here on out like I did the hardest military training in the world, like everything will be pretty much downhill from here. And I couldn't have been more wrong. When you show up to the SEAL team, they do not care that you graduated. They don't care. Like if you were at the top of the class, how long it took you, because every one of those dudes have done it before. What they care about is what you're doing today. Every day you show up, you do the work, you do it better than you did the day before. That's what's expected of you. And what's one of the cool things about being in the SEAL teams is it didn't matter, my rank, my position or anything else, how long I'd been there. If I showed up and I wasn't doing the work, someone was going to call me out on it. It goes back to that mediocrity. If you're not killing that mediocrity every day, you're not doing that work, then you're just gonna be mediocre for the rest of your life. So you have to show up and you have to never quit. You have to accept failure, you kill mediocrity, you expose your fears. And you do the work and you do it every single day.

Joelly Goodson :

I love that.

William Branum:

That's the idea of the get NAKED mindset.

Joelly Goodson :

Get naked mindset. Well, that was great. Thank you for going through each one of them. And you know, everything you talked about, that you did in the Navy Seals and what you're doing now I have a lot of most of my listeners are actually small business owners and entrepreneurs and it's all transferable to business, right? Everything you just talked about is what people need to do to be successful in my mind when it comes to business. And I love not only are you standing there with a T shirt with your get naked and your hat with your get naked. So obviously, you're a firm believer in branding. So I want to get your idea of why you think it's so important to help create your brand awareness for your business when it comes to merchandise and why do you why do you have the merchandise?

William Branum:

So a couple reasons that I have merchandise number one is brand awareness. But you know, having something that is a little bit catchy? What's that hook and I own a little clothing that doesn't say this doesn't say get naked in some way, shape or form. Maybe it's a flag that has it in the back that kind of spills the whole thing out or a hat or whatever. Very, very, very seldom am I wearing this? Because you know what? I fly all the time I travel all the time we wait

Joelly Goodson :

sorry, very seldom are you wearing it very seldom are you not wearing

William Branum:

Am I not wearing it? Very seldom do I not wear it? Why

Joelly Goodson :

is that?

William Branum:

I love this, because I want to I'm a walking billboard. And people most people are scared to ask. But the people who do ask like what is this get naked thing you've got going on? They asked so I have to tell them now the Get naked guy the naked guy. I'm known as the naked guy a lot.

Joelly Goodson :

I love I love that you said that. Because I mean, that's what I tell people all the time. And that's what I share with people all the time and how important it is and how that's exactly what you're doing is creating brand awareness. You know, I same thing with my badass T shirts. I did these when I started my podcast. And I've always people stopped me and go where do you get your T shirt? And you know, and then we talk about

William Branum:

your website? Here you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Joelly Goodson :

I sell them on my website, actually. So tell me about your strategy for growing your brand. I mean, swag, I'm sure is only one part of it. What are so what are some tips because you become very successful? Can you share some just quick advice.

William Branum:

But so for example, like social media, I can't advertise CBD on social media, they consider it to be an illicit substance. But I can run ads for T shirts and hats, as long as it's not attached to my my CPD website. So that was also part of it. But also because I can't I can't run ads. I've been on around 450 different podcasts in the last two years, which is your favorite branding, branding matters, of course.

Joelly Goodson :

What's some advice that you could share with some listeners,

William Branum:

you know, maybe consider hiring a coach, what a coach does is they help time collapse the lessons that they've learned, been in business for 10 years or something like that. And they have a lot of success and a lot, a lot of failure. And so they will help you to time collapse their success and failure so that you don't have to go through that. And you can speed up what success will look like for you doesn't mean that you're gonna have failure, you still have to do the work and have to get out there and do it yourself. Just because you hire a coach doesn't mean success. It means you have to do it yourself. But you can go back to that coach and say, Hey, I tried this, this didn't work. And they can help tweak you and kind of get you going in the right direction. I think that's probably step number one. Step number two is for sure create a brand that is going to attract attention. I mean, that's really all about getting naked. That's all about badass that gets people's attention. I love that.

Joelly Goodson :

Well, it was really great to talk to you. There's I feel as well, well, even if people want to learn more about you and how they can get naked. What is the best way for them to find you?

William Branum:

I would say go to five seal secrets.com Put your name and email in there. And then if you want to have a conversation with me just reply to that email. You can follow me on every social media platform out there. William Branham, er WM dot art brand, I'm on Instagram. My website is in W dash recovery.com And yeah, okay, those are those are some places.

Joelly Goodson :

All right, well, we'll chat soon.

William Branum:

Awesome. Thank you.

Joelly Goodson :

Bye. And there you have it. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and maybe learned a few things to help you with your branding. This Show is a work in progress. So please remember to rate and review on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like help creating brand awareness for your business, please reach out to me on any of the social platforms under you guessed it, Branding Badass, I promise you I reply to all my messages. Branding Matters was produced, edited and hosted by Joelly. Goodson also me so thank you again and until next time, here's to all you badasses is out there.

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