Brandon Webb - Total Focus: Make Better Decisions Under Pressure

S taring through my scope at the man in my crosshairs, I take a slow breath. An Afghan farmer. An Afghan farmer with a rifle slung casually over his shoulder. A farmer who looks a lot like someone trying not to look like someone whos up to something he shouldnt be. I feel the pressure of my finger against the metal trigger.

Feel that pressure slowly increase.

January 2002. Im standing sniper overwatch for my SEAL platoon as they approach a group of villagers in this mountain community in northeast Afghanistan for an exploratory chat. Everything seems cool. Everything looks innocent. Except for that farmer.

Something is off.

The thing is, these are Pashtun people, exactly the kind of people who, a few years from now and in this same region, will shield Marcus (Lone Survivor) Luttrell from the men trying to kill him. Our goodwill with these folks is a precious commodity, especially because were out here in Taliban country. If I shoot this guy and it turns out he is as innocent as hes trying to appear, we can kiss that goodwill good-bye, and I will have to live with his blood on my hands for the rest of my life. But if I dont shoot him and it turns out he was up to no good after all, some of our guys could get hurt as a result. Hurt, or dead.

I cant call this in. Theres no more intel to gather. It is what it is, and its up to me.

I have a decision to make.

Do I pull the trigger?

I took a deep breath and looked down at my laptop. It was now twelve years later, and I was no longer in the service; I was sitting at the bar of the Jane Hotel in New York City, staring at an e-mail that held an offer to buy my business for $15 million.

Amazing, I thought. Considering that only a few years earlier, Id been broke. No, worse than broke: with a negative net worth, because Id owed nearly a hundred grand after my first business venture collapsed around me, taking all my life savings with it. And now here I sat, my new business barely two years old, and this big media company was trying to buy it from me. For $15 million. Amazing, all right. Still...

Something was off.

If I said yes, I would be $15 million richer, arguably set for life. It would mean Id won. Right? But it would also mean the business Id built with my own hands, for a community I cared about deeply, would no longer be in my control. And the people whod built it with me: What would happen to them?

I couldnt call this one in, either. I had all the information I was going to have. There was no more advice to ask for or guidance to seek. It was what it wasand it was my call. I had a decision to make.

Do I pull the trigger?

Do I shoot the farmer?

Do I take the offer?

Both of these are decisions that, once made, cant be unmade. Theres a lot of blood involved in one, a lot of money in the other. Both could affect the lives of a lot of other people, to say nothing of my own, for years to come. The two situations are different in a thousand ways, similar in a handful of ways, but identical in one.

They both require total focus.

Before I tell you the outcome of those two scenarios, I should probably give you my rsum. Heres the two-minute version:

Tossed out of the house at the age of sixteen.

Spent the first thirteen years of my adult life in the U.S. Navy, where I served in a SEAL platoon in Afghanistan immediately following 9/11.

Back in the States, rose through the ranks of SEAL snipers to the top position as course master and helped redesign the entire SEAL sniper training program, the schoolhouse that produced a generation of legendary snipers including Marcus Luttrell, Chris Kyle (American Sniper), and a ton of others youve never heard of but who were just as effective on the battlefield.

After leaving the service, traded my sniper rifle for a MacBook Air, signed up for a new career as an entrepreneur, spent the next few years going through business training in the school of hard knocksyears that were nearly as brutal as my time going through BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) and the rest of SEAL training. Maybe more so. Raised millions of dollars and lost it all, my brainchild beaten to death by nuisance lawsuits in the California courts. Sat in my car on the La Jolla coast, staring out at the Pacific Ocean, and made the phone call to my lawyer that killed the business for good.

Soon after which my wife filed for divorce. Full stop.

# End of first minute #

After getting my teeth kicked in, forced to regroup and reinvent myself. Took a corporate job as an executive with a defense/aerospace company, where I was put in charge of $40 million in business related to a classified communications program. A cherry post, but with the blood of entrepreneurship coursing through my veins, I felt like a caged rat.