Brandon Webb is a decorated Navy SEAL sniper turned entrepreneur As a U.S. Navy Chief, he led the Navy SEAL Sniper School, training some of America’s most legendary marksmen. He’s also a multiple New York Times bestselling author and, most importantly, a proud father of three. His latest book, Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident & Joyful Kids, publishes the day the episode airs.
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Brandon Webb On Puddle Jumpers And Raising Confident, Joyful Kids
Brandon Webb’s Introduction And New Book Launch
Our quote is from Frederick Douglass. “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Our guest is Brandon Webb. Brandon is a decorated Navy SEAL sniper turned entrepreneur. As a US Navy chief, he led the Navy SEAL Sniper School, training some of America’s most legendary marksmen. He’s also a multiple New York Times bestselling author and most importantly, a proud father of three. Brandon’s latest book, Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids publishes the day this episode airs. Brandon, welcome. It’s great to have you join us on the show.
Thanks, Robert. Glad to be here.
I always joke sometimes with sentences that haven’t been said before. As I’m reading, I’m probably not going to have a lot of sniper parenting experts on. Put you in rarefied air.
When I was a part of the core cadre that was overhauling and modernizing the sniper program, we were heavily invested in this meant learning about elite performance coaching, performance psychology, and mental management. What I didn’t realize is all that stuff that I was learning and teaching snipers would apply to being a parent as well. Visualization, pushing out negative self-talk, positive versus negative verbal cues, things like this. All that stuff applies to being a parent.
We’ll get into the tactics. I’m always interested to start with childhood and the early years, which seems fitting here. I usually have a thesis. We talked about a couple of Navy SEALs I’ve had on and known. Someone who ends up in the Navy SEALs to me either probably grew up in a household that lacked any structure or had a lot of structure. We haven’t discussed this, so I’m curious. Does it fit into one of those categories?
For sure. No structure and I mean that in a good way. My parents were hippies when they had my sister and I.
Not no love, but no structure.
Some of the things I appreciate is letting me run wild, figure things out, and make mistakes. I appreciate that. I definitely have some things that my father did, especially on the discipline side, that I didn’t want to repeat for my kids as a parent.
Our values are a combination of all the things we want to double down from our parents and all the things we want to do the direct opposite of in my experience. When did you know or become interested in the SEALs? I’m always curious whether it was a long-standing goal or you found your way into it later.
The Decision To Join The Seals After A Sailing Trip
I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with aviation.
Top Gun? It’s my favorite movie.
The first one. The second one, I can take it or leave it.
I find most of the purists, their expectations were exceeded in the second one.
I’m a pilot on a small plane and fly it regularly. I fly with a bunch of ex-military guys. As somebody that likes writing and storytelling.
You’re too close to this to critique it.
With the second Top Gun, the plot was just weak. I remember pitching, I’d sold a screenplay to Hollywood. They’re like, “Can we switch out Iran because the Middle East is just oversaturated.” Iran is a protagonist. I said, “Let’s do China.” “Oh no, we can’t do China. They have too much money in Hollywood.” I was like, “Are you kidding me?”
All the lessons I was teaching snipers also applied to parenting—visualization, eliminating negative self-talk, and building confidence.
Don’t you think it’s eerie that they were basically bombing Fordow in Iran in the plot? Not saying it. The only difference was from a distance or close up. I don’t think the average person realizes that that’s basically what that was.
It would have been a better movie if they had just said that we’re going to do Iran. Back to your question, I always wanted to be a pilot. I was born in Canada. My dad lost his construction company in the savings and loan crisis in Canada in the late ‘70s. Him and my mom were like, “Screw it. We’re going to chase our dream by a sailboat.”
He moved the family on a sailboat. We sailed from Vancouver to California. We lived on a boat for five years. They pulled us out of school, took us to Mexico for a year. Along the way, I got a job working on a scuba diving boat at 13. It was an incredible job. I would just do anything. I was working for tips because they legally couldn’t pay me. I would fill in scuba tanks, do laundry, clean the bathrooms. The captain taught me how to scuba dive.
I ended up having this amazing job from 13 until I was 16 when my father said, “We’re going to take a huge sailing trip. We’re going to sail it to New Zealand.” At the time, I was making good money by then working on the scuba boat. It was a private boat. We had a hot tub, private chef. It was a cool job. I didn’t want to go on this trip. I reluctantly went. I made it to Tahiti. We sailed from Ventura, California down to Baja, the mainland Mexico all the way to Acapulco.
This is before you have Starlink.
This is before GPS. We’re talking sat nav. If you’re lucky, every twelve hours you get one position fixed. My dad had the sextant. We’re navigating like the old ways. From Acapulco, we sailed to the Marquesas Islands, which is a hopping off point to get to the South Pacific because of the trade winds. When we got to the Marquesas, my father and I started arguing about everything.
Looking back, I had more boating experience. I was like, “Dad, we need to switch out the main bow anchor because it’s going to hold better in reef.” I was the kid diving to get the anchor on stuck on my teenage job. He’s like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The first night we drag anchor and being the humble sixteen-year-old, I often said “I told you so.” When we got to Tahiti, we had another argument. I don’t remember what it was, but it almost got physical. That’s when he just said, “Maybe you should go back to California. We can call your boss back.”
I finished my junior year early. I left home at sixteen and then came back. I worked on the boat, finished high school by myself. I realized I don’t have the academics to go into the Naval Academy or the ROTC program. I didn’t know about that system. Someone gave me a book called Rogue Warrior, which is about Dick Marcinko, the founder of SEAL Team Six. I read it and I was like, “Wow.” I started doing the research. I was like, “I could do this. I’m good in the water. I can dive. This is a real challenge.”
“I’ll show my dad who knows more about the water.”
I think that was part of it. I wanted to prove to myself, maybe deep down my father too, that I could do something not too many people could do. That was a turning point for me and why I decided to join the SEALs. That was it. I’m already a pilot. To bring it full circle, when I was an instructor, they sent me to go become a pilot. They call it no cost orders. They give me all the time-off I need with pay. I just went and got my instrument rating.
Implementing Mental Management Principles In Sniper Training
You had an interesting experience. You were training young men before you had your own kid. Obviously, I would assume Navy SEALs are a little more obedient than teenagers at some point. What were some of those lessons that you learned or the pattern recognition you learned as you tried to train and teach?
Teaching SEALs is very challenging. These guys are going to call you out if you don’t know your stuff down pat. They’re going to eat you alive. That’s a big thing that the advantage in the military and the SEALs you have. People are highly motivated and have to do what you tell them to do or there’s severe consequences. Which isn’t all the case as a parent, especially as the kids get older and more independent.
The big takeaways for me teaching the sniper course, eventually I got promoted and ran it as the head instructor. We met a guy named Lanny Bassham who was a gold medalist and had been a pioneer in mental management. He was auditing the course, how we were teaching. “You guys are pointing out all the mistakes that the students are making.”
“You’re essentially programming them for failure. Somebody that’s new, it’s like a blank canvas. If I’m teaching you how to shoot a .50 cal sniper rifle, your partner next to you is on the .50 cal and he’s flinching. If I say stop flinching, all of a sudden, you hear it and you’re like, “Am I flinching?” It’s just like this virus that spreads.
You start focusing on what you’re doing wrong versus what you’re doing right.
Rather than as an instructor just reinforce the principles of shooting, that we have these personalized checklists. I can just say, “Slow down. Take a breath. Breathe out your exhale. Make a nice smooth trigger pull.” That puts a very different image in your head as “don’t flinch.” These things, visualization, mental rehearsal. The core is the visualization, the mental rehearsal.
How we talk to our students is super important. To teach them how to deal with the negative self-talk, where we all have that little voice that creeps in our head, and how to push that out with mantras. We put the system in place. At first the guys are like, “Whatever. This is lovey-dovey stuff.” We’re like, “This guy’s a gold medalist. Let’s give it a try.” We did it on the first course. We had everyone graduate. This is typically one of the hardest courses in the SEAL curriculum. The sniper school is three months long, typically 30% fail.
At the core is visualization and mental rehearsal. How we speak to our students matters, especially when teaching them to overcome negative self-talk with positive mantras.
This is after you’re already a SEAL, right?
You’re already a SEAL. You’re super.
There’s just so much failure built into the SEAL process.
It’s one of the few schools you could fail and not get kicked out of the SEAL team because they knew it was extremely tough. We put all these principles in place. The failure rate went to almost zero. I was like, “This stuff works” Another thing, people walk around with internal limiting factors. They say, “I’m not good with numbers. I’m a clutz.” Inevitably, the students would always ask us, instructors, “What’s a good score?”
We have divided up the class into four students per one instructor, a mentorship program. It created accountability and an incentive. If you and I are instructors, you don’t want to show up Monday and have your students bomb the test because me and the guys are going to give you a hard time. I told the instructors that work for me, “When they ask what a good score is.”
The shooting tests are extremely hard, you need 80% to pass. This means you can only drop four shots. In the past, if you’re shooting a 90, that’s pretty good. I said, “Tell them perfect. Tell them we want perfection, 100%.” When we started saying that, all of a sudden, we started getting perfect scores for the first time. The stuff works.
When I got out of the Navy in 2006 and was a young father, I remember my oldest Jackson was in first grade. He was super nervous to give a class presentation. I just worked with him on this visualization. “Imagine you’re up in front of the class. You’re nervous.” I walked him through the whole thing over and over. We went and gave the presentation. He’s like, “Dad, that stuff works. I felt like I’d already been there ten times.”
I started to use this stuff on my kids in teaching them. They all read that guy Lanny Bassham’s book on mental management. He tells a good story about mental performance in the book about a pilot that was shot down in Vietnam. This guy, Captain Jack Sands, was an avid golfer. He got captured as a prisoner of war. He’s in the Hanoi Hilton, which is this terrible POW type environment. I was in POW training for four days and it was terrible. I lived in a concrete box and went to the bathroom in a coffee can. It’s not a pleasant thing. This guy’s been there for four years.
Is that where the guy in Jim Collins’ book, Stockdale? Is that where he was too?
Stockdale, McCain, were all on the hill. This guy’s happy place was he’d close his eyes and just play all his favorite golf courses. The war’s over. They flew these guys back to North Island in San Diego. They’re putting him in a bus to go to the Balboa Naval Hospital to get checked out. The bus drives past the back gate where the golf course is.
He’s like, “Stop the bus. Let me off of this thing. I got to play golf.” They’re like, “you’re crazy.” He’s in terrible shape, but he goes. He walks in the clubhouse. The guys initially try to throw them out. They’re like, “Who’s this vagrant wandering into this officer club?” They find out who he is. They deck them out. They take them out and he shoots. He shoots a full 18 holes. He shoots like par. They’re freaked out. They’re like, “How is this possible?”
He’s been playing in his head.
He’s like, “I’ve been playing perfect golf in my head for four years. I haven’t hit a bad shot.” This stuff works. That was a big influence on my parenting.
Critique Of High Care And Low Standards In Modern Parenting
Let’s dive more into the book. I am a whole bunch of statements and thoughts. We’ll dive into the principles. To me, I am not a fan of parenting. We’ve swung the pendulum way too far from our rigid, non-emotional parenting to emotional but no standards, as we’ll talk about. The results are objectively poor. You can look at any data. It’s not just reporting. Kids are not doing well. To me, it’s a core leadership issue. Parents not seeing themselves as leaders or ironically, they’re leading in the workplace in ways that are very different than at home and things that they know are best practices.
The book’s titled Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids. Those words are interesting because kids seem very unconfident. They seem to be dependent, looking at their parents for answers, systems. The joy from childhood is gone too. There were some kernels in what you said there around, and part of the research I’ve done is, how do we get back?
We came from high standards, and low care to high care and low standards. The perfection story is interesting because a lot of kids are suffering from perfectionism too. It seems like there’s this in between that you’re focused on and how we restore these standards but also develop independent strong kids that feel supported. Many people feel like it has to be one or the other. It’s the intersection that’s the real answer here.
I was lucky too. I was a divorced dad. Their mom is a great mom. We co-parent. My goal was always, how do I raise them to be independent, good decision makers, and expose them to many different things so they find their thing. Not my thing.
We’ve been on a sports field. In club sports, it’s not about the kids. It’s about whatever parent that never made the soccer team.
I coached little league and then the parents were the absolute worst. I remember I had a woman doctor. The father was in biotech investment banking and they were the worst. They’d show up halfway through the game, start screaming at me because their kid’s not in the infield. I’m like, “If you’re here for the first three innings, he was playing short stop but you have to rotate the kids.” The parents are the worst.
Everyone talks about kids. There’s another officer I’ve since spoken to. He’s like, “Don’t talk to me about kids. It’s the parents. The kids didn’t hold themselves on account. I had plenty of eighteen-year-old kids doing incredible stuff. I’m going to blame the parents.”
This is exactly why I wrote this book. I had never in a million years set out to write a book on parenting. I just had kids very young. As my kids were in their teen years, I was intentionally bringing them around my professional friends. They would meet my kids and be like, “Wow.” A firm handshake, looks me in the eye, has a conversation and asks interesting questions.
I started just getting inundated with these YPO parents asking me for advice. That became clear to me. Maybe I do have something to offer in the parenting space. As you said, it’s shocking that a parent who can be so successful professionally, obviously loves and cares about the kids, but totally screws up the job as a parent and creates monsters. Worse, these kids get into bad peer groups and drugs.
It’s shocking how someone can be highly successful professionally, deeply love their kids, and still struggle as a parent—sometimes with devastating consequences when those kids fall into bad peer groups or drugs.
You just said something that’s interesting. I was with a family where all the kids came in when the adults were at dinner. They said hello. They looked everyone in the eye. My wife and I were commenting on that. Character has just fallen down the list for people in this achievement culture that we’re in, where it’s just not a priority for them. To me, that’s one of the most important things by far.
I couldn’t agree more. I was given an interview with the Wall Street Journal. I was taking my two oldest on a ski trip. They were in and out of the zoom call. The woman who was a mom that was interviewing me, I could tell she’s impressed. I’m super proud of the kids. My oldest, who was afraid to speak in front of the first grade classroom, was a debate champion in Oregon.
What makes me happy is things like when my daughter was visiting me. She was in her third-year undergrad in London. She was in my Lisbon place. Over dinner, she’s like, “Dad, I just want to thank you for supporting me. I just want to let you know that I’m doing exactly what I want to do. I’m in a very good place.” That’s all you want to hear.
I always joke too. I just want to have people come up to me after a game or after a thing. Be like, “You know what? Your kid’s a good kid.” Not that they’re a good athlete, they’re a good debater, they’re a good whatever. They see in their house that they’re polite. I just find that that’s been so decentralized in favor of achieving things.
You said a quote early in the book that jumped out at me. “There’s no greater mission as a parent than raising a child who knows who they are, has the tools to thrive, and become the captain of their own life.” Why do you think so many parents lost sight of that mission? There was a quote I saw on LinkedIn. Someone said, “I’m not a nest extender, I’m a bird launcher.” At what point did parenting become a lifetime job and not something you hoped to grow out of and retire from?
It’s interesting because it’s easy to say, “Oh well.” I think it was the millennials who were the generation where it was the participation trophy. It was easy to generalize that. What’s happened is, you look at the way that we used to parent. Even when I was a kid growing up in the ‘80s, you had the village of sorts. The neighborhood would help raise the kids, the family units.
If the neighbor yelled at your kids, they had authority to do that, if they were rude.
There was no big drama. There are lawsuits now like, “To my kid, you stress them out.” We’ve lost a lot of that. These parents are isolated. Even the ones that are successful and have the resources, they too much outsource everything. They don’t realize you have to be there for the kids and manage that journey for them. You and I talked about stress. I talked about that biosphere project in Arizona where they were growing the trees inside this dome. They couldn’t figure out whether the trees would grow to a certain height and fall over until they found out that the trees didn’t have the stress of the wind to grow.
You and I were talking about before the show, kids need that. As long as it’s safe. I went out of my way to manufacture tough situations, like “Take the subway.” They would visit me in New York. “Take the subway by yourself.” My daughter had, as an artist, got recognized on Instagram and did an event at Saks. She was an insta artist. She had a sneaker business where she’d paint on shoes and sell them online. Puma hired her to be an in-store artist. I’m like, “Here’s your subway card, your MTA card. Go for it.” It’s that thing that may seem trivial, but I know lots of parents that would be terrified to let their kids.
There were parents that were arrested in Maryland because 7 or 11-year-old kids were walking a mile from their home. Everyone freaked out over this. In 50 years, the comfortable range that parents feel their kid has gone from a mile to a 10th of a mile. Even though this is the hardest thing for people, the dangers are less. The reporting of bad things happening all around the world is up.
I still can’t find a confirmed case of someone putting a razor blade and an apple at Halloween, or whatever these things cause it. The milk carton campaign that this guy lost his kid in this horrible way. The trauma that caused kids and parents who stopped letting their kids go outside. These risks have not gone up at all. People’s fear of these risks have gone up. These aren’t real risks statistically. That’s part of the problem.
As someone that coached youth sports then, my youngest was my challenging one. My ex, we had at one point asked. She’s like, “I’m going to ship him off to you.”
“We’re going to send him to the military.”
We looked at military academies. It was bad. It was in middle school. He was failing out. We found the issue. He had a bad teacher. He got suspended from school. When we dug in and found out the core issue behind it, we took his side and pulled him out of school. Anyway, he got to high school and he had a gross spurt. He’s a basketball player. He’s 6’2 or 6’ 3 as a freshman. He makes the basketball team. Two weeks later, the coach kicked him off. We got this email from the coach and was like, “He’s the best freshman I have, but he doesn’t listen. He causes distractions.”
Using Consequences As A Learning Tool For Character
The coach emailed you. That’s an interesting telling thing. He’s just preparing for the parent to come storming into his office in this environment. He’s a freshman in high school. This is the talk that the kid should get.
He’s basically just listing out his reasons. To your point, I know so many parents that would just over advocate for the kids. There’s a time to advocate, but there’s a time to go, “Let’s take this seriously. This kid’s got a problem.”
So many parents over-advocate for their kids. There’s a time to advocate—but also a time to step back and say, ‘Let’s take this seriously. This kid has a problem.’
“These sounded like you-problems. The other problems sounded like teacher problems.”
I remember I flew out to Oregon and sat him down. I had this whole conversation about the talented jerk. I had this guy. It was a brilliant jerk. Nobody wants to work with talented jerks. You see it all the time. They’re genius engineers, artists, or musicians. If they’re an egomaniac and a jerk, nobody wants to work with them. I had this whole conversation with them and used it as a teaching tool. I said, “Buddy, you got to listen. You got to take this feedback.”
You told him the hard truth. You didn’t sugarcoat it for him.
We sided with the coach, “I’m not going to the coach and getting you back on the team. That ship has sailed.” That year he had to watch all of his buddies suit up for the game and walk the hallways. When he made the team in sophomore year, we got another email from the coach. I put these in the book.
He said, “I don’t know what you guys did, but he’s a totally different player. All the things that I had to say about him have changed for the better. He’s a leader. He’s a team player.” To get that second email, I was like, “That feels good as a parent.” A lot of parents would just overreact. Not go, “We have a problem at home.”
This is why I wouldn’t teach. When you and I were growing up, you disrespected the teacher, you had a problem. The triangle was the teacher and the parents against you. Now, the parents come right behind the student. The teachers are left to fend for themselves. It’s just never the kid’s fault. In fact, in that example you gave before, the kid would be like, “Mr. Webb is just mean.” “What happened?” “Mr. Webb wouldn’t let me turn in the assignment after the deadline.”
The parents are like, “That’s the standard.” They’re like, “That’s not reasonable.” They tell the kid that’s not reasonable. My example I use a lot is if you don’t see the danger of this graduating into organizations and colleges irrespective of the political piece of it. I went on to Columbia University for the year after October 7th. All of these kids were breaking actual university policy that existed. No one held them accountable. They kept saying red line.
When they finally started suspending them because they’re defacing the library or taking over, they were generally shocked that there were actual consequences. That someone was going to hold them accountable. This behavior from parents and institutions, as it goes into the real world, people are surprised. I love that story of your son. You didn’t say, “I’m going to get on you,” but “This is a you-problem. You need to fix it. Here’s what needs to be done if you want that slot.”
To your point, a lot of parents wouldn’t take that approach. I don’t know if it’s because of my military service or not. This is the raw feedback that I liked that I was used to in the SEAL teams. We got to fix this behavior.
Did he go on to be captain by senior year?
He wasn’t the captain, but he was just a good kid, a good player. The kids need consequences. You need consequences for poor behavior. I remember watching that train wreck of the Charlie Sheen documentary. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s crazy.
He’s a mess.
He says, “I never had any consequences. I got away with murder.” Literally, from the time he was a teenager until he was in his 30s. He’s like, “No, I could break the law and I’m Charlie Sheen. The cops would let me go. I wish someone had just held me accountable because it might’ve made a big difference.”
Boundaries are important. Constraints are important. That is just entirely missing. To me, it’s not cruel, it’s kind. I always say there’s an action in consequence, organic result or development. It could be positive or negative, but it happens and you learn from it. I said to my daughter before, she did a lot of babysitting. I was like, “Before the parents come home, clean up. People appreciate it.”
She did it constantly for this family. They knew she was going on spring break. They gave her $100. She sent me a note like, “Thanks, it’s always clean when we come.” You start to learn that. On the negative side too, parents are just interfering with this organic process. They’re interfering, they’re getting in the middle of the consequence. The kid doesn’t feel the full cycle of action, reaction, consequence. The parents mute it and something in the circuit is broken basically.
They’re modeling behavior that the kids are going to use later in life. As you know, once you get in the household, in the real world, that doesn’t work too well. I remember one of my YPO friends runs a big company and had this intern. This is 2019. This intern is in this boardroom meeting and the CEO is giving a presentation. The intern raises his hand and interrupts the CEO. The CEO is like, “Excuse me, who are you?” He’s like, “I’m Joe, the intern.” He’s like, “What do you got?” He’s like, “I think your tone is just a little bit aggressive.” The guy was like, “You can pack your things and get out of here. You’re fired.”
He needs that feedback.
The kid was shocked. What journey was this kid on to get to that point where he thought it was okay in a small meeting to just publicly call out the CEO of this company? Unbelievable.
I’m breaking the law. I always say all this achievement culture. It’s not working because as the buyer of these services of twenty-year-olds and watching teams have discussions with them to give them feedback. It’s not like the product is that much better. In fact, the problem is, and why there’s so many mental health leaves among 20- to 30-year-olds. They haven’t been given any real constructive feedback that’s about them.
Harvard might give out 66% As, but the world doesn’t give out 66% As. When you get into the world and you get some feedback that’s like, “Brandon, your speech yesterday, it was okay. You said after every word and all this stuff.” Rather than look at that as, “I can get better, but you know, I need to go crawl into bed and never get out again.” That is a function of never hearing those things or getting that feedback earlier on.
When I started writing this book, I sent my kids a few questions. What do they remember most about me as their father? What do they wish I had done differently? What sums up my fatherhood style in a sentence? My daughter humbled me. I always tried to be this exemplary leader in the household. When I had them, I was always just on my game as a dad.
She said, “We look up to you as our hero, but I wish you had shared a little bit more about your own failures and struggles. I would have known it was okay to fail and struggle.” My two oldest are very self-driven academically in school. That hit home. I take it as feedback. I’m like, “You want to talk about my failures?” I got a list.
That’s a whole another book. I like red ink. It’s funny. I’m used to people editing my writing. Red ink means there’s stuff to fix and improve. Some teachers can’t use it anymore because it’s triggering for kids. I can’t even go there. There are two things I want to tackle. You can pick the order because you talk about them in a book. A lot of parents who are reading this are leaders. Again, these lessons to me are transferable. Mental strength for adults and children. How do we define it and build it? What’s your take on discipline? I know it’s a big concept in the books, or discipline with love and balance. Which one do you want first?
Mental Toughness Is Built Through Ordinary Magic And Small Adversities
Mental strength, mental toughness. I think it comes from what I call in the book. There’s a study. This woman psychologist called it ordinary magic. It’s the everyday ordinary things of letting your kids be. Parents get in a rush. They want to get them in place. It’s easier to do the things for the kid. Let the kid tie his own shoes, pack his own lunch. These kinds of things cumulatively add up over time. Whether it’s walking to the bus by yourself or sending him into the store, “You check out. You make the change and go in there.” “I’ve never done that before.” These little things add up over time.
For me, my parents, that’s one thing I appreciate about them, just letting me out in free range. Back to the whole Navy SEAL conversation we had, if I could pick one question to ask somebody as a predictor if they’re going to make it through SEAL training. Have you had adversity in your life before? If they have, they’re probably going to.
There’s a lot of people who have studied that. They’ve tried to figure out a model of who, and it doesn’t match up to physical strength or tall or short. Angela Duckworth wrote about this. They’ve studied this thick and thin trying to figure out who will get through BUD/S.
The Navy has spent millions on Booz Allen’s study. I’m like, “Just ask them if they’ve been through what their childhood was like and have they been through any adversity.” I remember a guy in my class was a Naval Academy swimmer, an Olympic alternate. He was very gifted. He coasted through the first part of SEAL training.
He got to the land navigation and the end of the training phase. He started to suffer. He wasn’t very good at it. His squad wasn’t very good. He went from an unfavorable reputation with instructors. They were just on him and he quit. He quit three weeks before graduation. I saw him a few years later. He was a P-3 Orion pilot at North Island. I would guess he had an easy childhood, but that wouldn’t be the question I would ask.
Mental toughness is the cumulative experiences that we let our kids do. In some cases, setting them up, whether it’s sports or camps, to manufacture that adversity and toughness so they get to experience it. You’re going to get kids that aren’t going to totally lose their minds if something silly happens, doesn’t go their way.
I want to double click on something you said because at the moment, all of these things are easier to do ourselves. That’s just terrible leadership in the workplace. Rather than letting some mistakes happen, the accumulation of not having those moments of small mistakes, small frustration. Again, you forgot the cleats.
“Sorry, it’s going to be embarrassing. Borrow some shoes or figure it out. I’m not driving into school. I’ve been reminding you for three weeks. You’ll figure out a note because it was embarrassing.” That embarrassment is not something to be saved from. As I said, that’s the organic response. They’re all small. The accumulation of having it or not having it over five or ten years makes a material difference.
I remember another thing Madisson said to me, when I was writing the book. She told me this story. She said, “I remember being eighteen and breaking a plate at your house.” I looked over. She’s like, “I felt like a five-year-old girl, super embarrassed. You looked up from your chess games.” I play online chess. She calmly said to me that it’s just a plate. It’s not important when we get another one. What I realized in college, not everyone has that approach. They lose it over these trivial things.
You don’t know what matters. I always say from a value standpoint, if you have a parent that yells about everything, the kid doesn’t know how to separate between insignificant things and real violations of values.
She said the same thing to me. She’s like, “Realize now that I’m out in college. Not everyone has that experience. Thank you for that.”
There’s a lot of opportunity for these prompts. These prompts I’ve heard in ChatGPT, people sending these notes to their kids and asking for this feedback as adults. If you’re willing to listen to it, it’s telling. It might give you some blind spots in terms of your leadership too.
I’m glad you brought that up because parents generally don’t ask great questions, like “How is your day?” You’re going to get a “Fine.” That’s the answer. As opposed to, “What was the most interesting thing or crazy thing that happened this week?” Watch them unravel. Every year, I take the kids on a one-on-one trip. I was in New York with my youngest Tyler. We went to dinner together.
I asked him, “What’s one thing that you’re feeling a lot of pressure that maybe your mom and I don’t realize?” It blew me away. He said, “Dad, my friends’ parents.” Talk about the parents again. He’s like, “They all put pressure on me because you’re who you are and you’re a SEAL. They’re like, are you going to be a SEAL? What are you going to do?” They’re just pushing their own insecurities. It’s tough.
We ended up having this two-hour conversation on that question. The other one I asked him was, what’s something that he feels like he’s wasting his time on lately. That was drinking. He’s like, “Dad, I don’t like to go to parties. My roommates keep pushing me.” We had that whole conversation about peer pressure. Those two questions were two, three hours of conversation at dinner that were peeling back the layers. It helped us both. The thing is parents need to ask better questions.
Contrasting Punishment With Discipline By Understanding The Why
I default to how’s your day and it’s fine. We used to do it with the kids. They still love it. We did it at their college. Rose, bud, thorn. What was the best thing, what was the worst thing? What are you looking for? You follow the worst thing was I got an F on that test, my friend got beat up or something like that. It’s just incredibly telling. Discipline and love sound like a contradiction. Discipline with love.
I make a contrast between punishment versus discipline. A lot of parents punish out of fear. Sometimes it’s love. They’re just scared that the kid did something dangerous. When you just like punishing and it’s like in the workplace. If you get a bad review and you have no idea why, you’re just getting this bad review, then how are you going to learn?
A lot of parents discipline out of fear—sometimes even love. They’re simply afraid their child has done something dangerous.
I made a whole checklist, because I love checklists, being a military guy and pilot on the discipline. What’s your emotional state? Are you in a place where you can have a conversation about this or do you need to cool down? getting to the why of the behavior, back to my youngest issue in middle school. He ended up getting suspended for a string of incidents. What put it over the top is he ordered twenty pizzas at the principal’s office when he was in seventh grade.
That seems like not a great idea.
Especially the day before, the teacher said you can’t order it for class. He’s like, “I’ll just send it to the principals under my name.”
There are so many things that we could coach the kid on that, like not your name. He’s little.
It turned out, the teacher, who was a White woman, had embarrassed him several times publicly in class. She called them a victim of White privilege. All this crazy stuff. I kept asking, “Why is this happening?” I remember just asking why over and over, getting to the core issue. He’s like, “Dad, this homeroom teacher and I don’t get along. She’s just embarrassed me. Maybe I’m just lashing out because I’m trying to show her that I’m the boss.”
We went to the principal, had a conversation. There are a lot of great teachers out there. In this case, this teacher had had a string of complaints against her. The principal was like, “I can’t do anything about it. We’re short-handed.” We pulled them out of school. We ended up taking his side and pulled them out of school.
That was the same story as the one before?
That was the same before. A little more detail. We put them on independent study. The next year, COVID happened and all his friends were technically on independent study anyway. This is a kid that was getting Ds and Fs. Boys going through puberty are at risk. There’s a lot of hormones. I called a psychologist, the woman that helped me through our divorce.
She said, “He’s at risk. You got to make him feel supported. It could go bad. You could push them away and he’s in a bad friend group.” Anyway, we pulled them in. As a kid that was getting Ds and Fs and then in high school, maintained a three-point plus grade average and pulled it together. The thing is, getting to the why of the behavior is important.
Making sure that there are consequences for sure. No freebies. I tell the story about how I had bought tickets to SeaWorld. The kids were arguing in the car. I was like, “I’m going to turn the car around.” They called my bluff. I take the next exit. “Dad, what are you doing?” I’m like, “I told you like this.” Everyone starts crying. Two weeks later, we go back and they’re perfectly behaved.
What I’ve seen is parents’ default to two things. One, they make these ridiculous threats that they’re never going to follow through on. They do it in the moment without any warning. Again, I like the parameter. “If this happens, this is going to happen.” There’s no yelling. There’s no whatever, like you said.
Telling someone, not giving them any heads up, and then giving them a draconian consequence, or threatening something you’re never going to follow on through. Much better to be like, “We’re just not going to discuss again. If we bring it up again, here’s what happens.” It also sends the note you’re in control of this.
To your point on the draconian piece, that was a part of when I was a kid, I got the belt. My dad got the belt when he was a kid. I would screw something up. There would be no talking. It’s like, “Get up to your room.” I drop my drawers and get my butt lash, the leather belt. That was it, end of story. There should be some feedback here.
What you want to know is, we were joking about something that doesn’t happen anymore. Most people, you only need it once. If you understand what I need to do that gets me to that, then I will not do that. People are self-adjusting audiences.
Back to the love, I always tried to be strict. Lead with love and explain it like I would with a subordinate at work. “This is the behavior. This is the reason why this is happening. These are the ways you can correct it. It won’t happen again.” When you do it early on, you end up with great kids. I remember getting compliments when the kids were all under twelve years old out at a restaurant. They’re all reading books.
I was like, “If you’re bored, bring a book. No iPads.” The people are like, “I could never take my kids out to a nice restaurant.” I lost my first business when I left the Navy, but I started to build it back and have success. I want to eat a nice meal. I want to bring my kids. I’m going to teach them how to behave appropriately.
I’ll augment the last question I usually ask about a mistake in your case. What’s a parenting mistake that you learn the most from?
One of the mistakes would probably be over-discipline. There’s a story I tell in the book where my oldest, his girlfriend in high school, moved away and left him with some pot. His bright idea was like, “My sister’s cooler than I am. I’ll get her to sell it.” That whole plot got unraveled because their mom found it. She’s a clean freak. She’d make Marine Corps drill and drill instructors proud.
She found this in my daughter’s backpack. The younger brother is at home. He’s trying to give his sister a heads up. He’s like, “You might not want to come home. Mom found the pot.” This whole thing blows up. We figure out the oldest Jackson is a mastermind behind it. This is a kid that has worked his butt off in high school, has amazing grades. He’s running the computer science class. He’s done well in the speech and debate program.
“You’re going to risk it all by selling drugs at school? How can you be so stupid?” His junior prom was coming up. His mom wanted to take away prom. I didn’t agree with it at the time. I thought it was too much, but I’m like, “Okay, we’re a solid front.” I went along with it. He ended up going anyway. He left his mom a letter. It was a heartfelt letter. I have also put that in the book. That’s a case where we just went too far. When that happens, as parents, you can say you’re sorry. Saying sorry to your kids is not a sign of weakness.
“I learned. Next time I’ll give you fair warning.”
We apologized to him. We just took it a little bit too far. We had a family chat about it and that was it. It’s a story we laugh about. The over-disciplining happened a few times. Like I said, as parents, it’s good you’re showing them how to manage conflict. When you screw up, it’s okay to say, I’m sorry. That’s important.
Brandon, we know people can find the book Puddle Jumpers. I’m sure wherever books are sold. Where else can they learn about you and your work?
I have everything on my author page, which is my Substack and all my socials. That’s at BrandonTylerWebb.com.
Brandon, thanks for joining us. The world needs your message on parenting. I wish you a lot of success with the book launch. It takes a village. I’ve been there. I’m sure you’re exhausted at this point.
It’s a good conversation. Looking forward to carrying it on when your book comes out as well.
You can learn more about Brandon and Puddle Jumpers on the episode page at RobertGlazer.com. If you enjoyed this episode, if there’s a nugget in here that you’d love to share, just send a text or email the episode to someone. That’s how new people discover the show. That’s what’s kept us growing. If this episode made you think or see things differently, we’d love it if you could share it with someone. Thank you again for your support. Until next time. Keep elevating.
Important Links
- Brandon Webb
- Brandon Webb on Instagram
- Brandon Webb on Facebook
- Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids
- Rogue Warrior
