I have met hundreds of business leaders over the last twenty years who told me that the key to their success was grit. In some ways it’s almost become cliche. But how do successful small business owners develop the mental toughness and determination they need to succeed? Is grit something they have to be born with or is it a learned behavior? How does the average person keep going when all logic tells them that it’s time to close-up shop and move on? Passion is certainly one key ingredient, but ultimately it comes down to being comfortable with risk and learning how to manage stress.
Like runners training their bodies for a marathon, the mind can be trained to handle ever-increasing amounts of stress. Entrepreneurs live with stress levels that most people simply cannot, or will not, endure. I believe some are truly born with this ability. Others develop mental toughness through training and life experiences. One great example of this – let’s call it learned persistence – is the way the military teaches young people how to survive in combat.
Photo Credit: United States Marine Corps
When someone enters the military and begins basic training, they take part in a transformative process that is based on pure psychology rather than sadomasochistic punishment designed to produce blind obedience. Few outsiders understand this. Drill instructors who scream into trainees’ faces, or deprive them of sleep, or force them to hike twelve miles with a fifty-pound rucksack slung across their back, use those conditions to ratchet-up stress levels in a controlled environment so that trainees learn how to make reasonably sound decisions when they’re tired, hungry, and stressed-out. Why? Well, being shot at by another human being is one of the most stressful things a person can go through. If you can train an eighteen-year-old how to make good decisions using sleep deprivation, impossible time-demands, mind-games, and physical challenges, they will be better able to keep their heads and make sound decisions when real stress threatens their lives.
Thirty years ago, I went through ROTC basic camp at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Like everyone else who was with me that long hot summer, when I walked through the doors of the barracks, I had everything taken away; every possession, every luxury, even the ability to decide when to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. Losing complete control of your life breaks a person down and creates an empty vessel. Again, this isn’t wanton brutality, it’s pure psychology. As I developed as a soldier and learned how to handle stress better, those things were given back to me in a methodical, controlled way. People who have gone through this training develop the ability to prioritize and place everyday occurrences in perspective. This leads to a mindset where deductive problem solving is much easier. Sometimes soldiers can prioritize without even thinking. We learned that, if a person has food in their belly, a reasonably dry place to sleep, and is immediately safe, every other problem can be managed and solved.
An unidentified MARSOC medic provides aid to a wounded Marine in Afghanistan.
Kyle Davis is a former Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) medic who served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. During those deployments, he saw the worst that mankind has to offer and treated multiple battlefield causalities in some of the most stressful environments imaginable. In 2020, he was accepted into a program at West Virginia University’s School of Medicine where current and former special operations medics with undergraduate degrees are recruited to become physicians. He was a little over half-way through is first year of medical school when we spoke.
Being in a class with other medical students who are both younger, and who have never been exposed to the same level of stress, Kyle quickly recognized what the military did for him. “The military made me good at assessing things quickly and making a decision. Where someone else who hasn’t had the same experiences might take a piece of paper, sit down, and write out the pros and cons of a decision, I can process that same information in my head, figure out what I’m going to do and explain why in about ten seconds. I know making that decision doesn’t mean something else won’t come up that I might have to circumvent along the way. Being adaptable and not thinking my whole world’s coming to an end just because things aren’t going to plan is just part of life. Letting stress affect your ability to adapt just makes things worse. I learned a long time ago that getting stressed-out doesn’t make my performance better. Calm produces calm.”
Mike Durant is the founder and CEO of Pinnacle Solutions in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1993, he served as a pilot in the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and took part in Operation Gothic Serpent. After years of chaos, famine, and civil war, U.S. forces deployed to Somalia to restore order and alleviate the suffering. Durant was part of a task force assigned to locate and arrest the leadership of a Somali militia that was robbing United Nations aid convoys and destabilizing what little government there was. During a raid intended to capture high-value targets in the middle of Mogadishu, his helicopter was shot down. Mike sustained multiple injuries in the crash including a broken leg and back. He was taken prisoner by militia forces, beaten (which resulted in more broken bones), and held for twelve days. After being released he went through multiple surgeries but eventually returned to duty and served until 2001. His experience was truly heroic and featured in a book and Hollywood movie called Black Hawk Down.
In 2008, Mike and a couple partners took out a loan and started Pinnacle. Like the 65% of small business owners we looked at earlier, he used his house as collateral. During our conversation, he talked about the doubts that were going through his head as he signed the loan documents. It was a sizable amount and if things went south, he knew he’d lose his home. Later that day, he gathered his kids together and told them, “Look, I’m starting this business and if it doesn’t work, we’re not going to be able to live here anymore, but we’ll be okay.” His kids took the news in stride.
Mike never had to sell his house. Over the last fourteen years, he’s grown the company to over 500 employees and Pinnacle now has a global footprint. He attributes that success to the grit and determination he developed as a soldier and member of the special operations community. As a person continues through progressively intense selection and training opportunities in the Army, their ability to think under pressure increases dramatically. If a basic trainee can handle the psychological equivalent of a marathon of stress, a soldier who makes it through Special Forces selection is ready for the Olympics.
After going through some of the Army’s toughest training, being shot down, nearly beaten to death, and fighting his way to full recovery, every challenge Mike Durant faced in the business world seemed manageable, perhaps even trivial. His mind was fully conditioned to hand incredible stress and endure hard times. Like all business, there was always stress with Pinnacle but compared to what he had experienced in the military, it didn’t even register on the anxiety scale. I asked him if there was ever a time he thought the company might not work out, or if he ever had one of those, “Oh my God what have I done?” moments that many entrepreneurs have. Without pausing, he said every time they drew funds from the loan in the early years, the stress level went up, but he never worried about failure. “Nothing is certain, but I was pretty sure we could work it out.” That type of calm and confidence was almost totally attributable to his military service.
Now, just to be clear, you don’t have to be a military veteran to develop the mental toughness needed to succeed being a small business owner. Roughly 94% of all businesses are not veteran-owned and a majority of averagists never serve one day in the military. That’s totally fine. In fact, it’s better than fine. It’s the American way, and we’ll meet some extraordinarily tough small business owners in the next story. But most people who start businesses and make it past five years have experienced some sort of event, or series of events, that has toughened them up like a soldier. They have had successes and failures and learned how to keep both in perspective. They are fighters, survivors, and American Averagists.
