Entrepreneurial Leadership and Battle-Tested Perseverance

War, Suicide, Prostitution and Murder.

Sounds like the script from the Netflix series Narcos.

Thing is, I’m not talking about Pablo Escobar.

I’m talking about Andrew O’Brien. And he knows hardship.

By 23, he knew more hardship than most of us will care to take on in an entire lifetime.

He has an Iraqi war vet on the brink of suicide whose mother was both a prostitute and a murderer. For the record, the murder his mother committed occurred against her then husband whom she asked Andrew to help her frame on someone else.

Luckily, his suicide attempt was not successful. He testified against his mother in court. And he was leaving the Army.

Still, something had to change for Andrew. So, he made change. “All of these experiences led me to want to share my story with the world to give them hope and empowerment to help the change the world,” he recalls.

Listen to the full 30-minute interview here.

During 2013-2016, he spoke about his story of perseverance at the White House, Pentagon, and all across the country.  He would not let these experiences break him; rather he let them make him, “I think that a lot of people are selfish. There are people who go through sufferings and challenges, but by sharing those challenges you face in life could really save other people lives!”

But in 2016, the department of defense cut the mental health budget by 75%. And the military was Andrew’s biggest client. So, in his words, “My biggest client was no now no longer a client at all.”

Andrew needed to figure something out. He said he needed to reverse engineer his success. And he was not going back to work for someone else. “I was born an entrepreneur, I am not meant to work for other people,” -- calmly, but sternly stated.

He then created The Publicity Guy to help entrepreneurs gain mass media exposure to tell their stories. Why Entrepreneurs? Because as Andrew puts it, “true entrepreneurs want to change the world.”

And so he started his business. But his leadership to take on a team was not there yet. “For the first few years, I was a solopreneur…I didn’t know how to lead in the civilian world.”

Andrew was familiar with military leadership. The kinds he calls, “here’s the mission, get it done”. But that wasn’t going to work with his business. He needed to retrain his thinking to best accommodate his team.

So, after speaking with a few mentors, he felt the confidence to hire a team. And he let them work they way they wanted to. 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. All in effort to balance their work and life. Something that is so important to Andrew. As he said, “I [finally] learned the skill of being a leader, not a manager or boss.”

Being an entrepreneur is challenging. But to truly leave your mark, entrepreneurs that transcend strictly business to business leadership make their grand vision and tangible reality.

And the inevitable storms that will hit every entrepreneur? “I don’t believe in pulling over and waiting out the storm.”

Business is driving through that storm, those hard times, constant disappointment [with personnel and finances] and as long as keep driving through it, you will make it out it so much faster.”

But why are so many people waiting out the storm?

“Fear…When you let go of that fear and you just keep driving…you will see success so much quicker, so much faster than if you just pull over and wait it out.”

Andrew continues to drive forward and has continued to maintain the strong standard of entrepreneurial leadership we expect out of ourselves as military veterans.

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Written by Tim Paul, founder and host of Leadership Strike Group. The only 5-day a week entrepreneurial leadership podcast interviewing today’s most successful entrepreneurs, under-35 execs, and brightest thought leaders.