How Would a Navy SEAL Run Your Business?

Christian Ruf says he discovered early on that small business owners who come to him often struggle to hire strong leaders who can solve problems on their own.

Good Morning!

Here are today’s highlights:

• Governments love to talk about cutting red tape.

• Republican attorneys general are threatening Costco over its DEI stance.

• Small towns in the South are competing over big convenience stores, but do those stores help local economies?

• An economist who ran the numbers finds that fires can actually be a financial win for insured homeowners (which helps explain California’s insurance crisis).

MANAGEMENT

“Christian Ruf is looking for a few good veterans of the military’s elite special operations units—to help run a roofing company, an HVAC business, a forklift division, a landscaping operation and a couple of manufacturing plants. No college degree required. If they happen to have an MBA, well, he’s already helped place a Navy SEAL as president of a solar panel installation business with more than $20 million in sales and is looking for a VP of mergers and acquisitions, a VP of implementation (at a tech firm), and another CEO.”

• “In mid-2022, he turned full time to running his own coaching business, Uncommon Elite, in Hilton Head, S.C. (his wife’s hometown). Ruf doesn’t claim to be a management guru or life coach. But he believes his experience managing 12 aircraft and 70 soldiers in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment means he knew something about how to think through consequences and contingencies, build systems to manage them, and hold people operating in them accountable. He currently has 30 clients—individuals, businesses and organizations—with some paying as much as $3,000 to $4,000 a month for leadership training.”

• “Mark Edler, founder of Builders.CPA, an accounting firm for small business buyers, started working with Ruf in October 2023. Since then, he says, his firm has doubled its revenue, growing from $550,000 in 2023 to over $1 million last year. ‘I definitely don’t think we would have been able to do that without Christian’s help,’ Edler says. The accountant says some of Ruf’s advice ‘is so obvious it makes you feel a bit stupid.’ Yet he credits Ruf’s coaching with helping him to focus on what really matters, build accountability for his team and himself, and create a rhythm that’s challenging yet achievable.”

• “One thing Ruf says he discovered early on was that the small-business owners and executives who came to him often struggled to hire strong leaders who could solve problems on their own. That demand—along with Ruf’s personal connections—led him to branch into headhunting in a unique niche. While lots of firms recruit veterans, he focuses exclusively on placing special forces operators—SEALs, Delta Force, Green Berets, and others—into leadership roles.”

• “His pitch: They’re self-motivated, have experience building teams and accountability standards, and can stay calm under pressure and make split-second decisions when needed. Those interested in hiring special-ops vets, Ruf says, ‘don’t want to micromanage or teach people how to lead. They want to teach them industry skills and let them do their thing.’” READ MORE