Bear Handlon: Building A Startup While Serving As A U.S. Navy SEAL Officer

Everybody Pulls The Tarp

This week Andrew talks with retired U.S. Navy SEAL Officer and entrepreneur Bear Handlon. Bear is the Co-founder & CEO of Born Primitive, a fast-growing global lifestyle brand in the fitness, athleisure, & outdoors market. He launched Born Primitive in 2014 — just months before joining the U.S. Navy. He went on to serve 8 years as a U.S. Navy SEAL officer while concurrently building Born Primitive from the ground up. In this conversation, Bear shares powerful ideas & lessons he learned as a Navy SEAL and how he still applies those frameworks today as an entrepreneur & CEO. This episode is filled with actionable ideas on how to improve your focus, compartmentalize tasks, attract people with similar values, & so much more.

Show Highlights:

0:00 - Intro
2:37 - Lessons from Red Bull marketing department
3:35 - Product vs. Brand
5:57 - Starting with yes
6:59 - Owned vs sponsored property
8:53 - Monetizing owned events
9:15 - Starting Born Primitive with 1 of 1 prototype
11:46 - Learning from free resources
13:05 - Starting company while beginning Naval officer training
15:42 - 8 years as a U.S. Navy SEAL officer
17:44 - “Perfect amount of dumbness”
18:13 - Focus
19:04 - Benefits of repetition
20:27 - Balancing structure of bureaucracy with scrappy startup life
21:30 - Calibrating expectations
24:58 - Projecting authentic values
26:31 - Maintaining culture as company grows
36:58 - Sticking to core values
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