This is why your next business book should be a military field manual

Mandatory Fun

In this episode of the Mandatory Fun podcast, we speak with U.S. Navy SEAL veteran turned entrepreneur Eli Crane. You may have seen Eli pitch his business Bottle Breacher on the hit TV show Shark Tank. Eli's appearance landed him a partnership with celebrity businessmen Mark Cuban and Kevin O'Leary.

Eli stopped by our show to talk about what military strategies he uses to run his multi-million dollar business.

"A lot of the tactics that we use on the SEAL teams actually work really well in business," Eli Crane states. "When you make some of the correlations in battle, you have the enemy, in business, you also have an enemy, but we usually call them the competition."

Bottle Breacher is one of the fastest growing veteran owned and operated businesses in Arizona.

Eli and his wife Jen dove into the Shark Tank with their sole product of the recycled, authentic decommissioned .50 caliber Bottle Breacher, manufactured in a one car garage.

Having enticed Sharks’ Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary to invest, today they feature an ever-expanding product line serving customers both domestically and internationally.

Bottle Breachers aims to provide the best handcrafted, personalized man-gifts, groomsman gift, and corporate/promotional products on the market.

Through their success, Crane's company has donated to over 200 non-profits in the last year alone, providing us the opportunity to support military veterans, active military personnel, first responders, children’s foundations and various other non-profits.

"At the end of the day, we do a lot more than bottle openers. What we really specialize in is man gifts." — Eli states.

As a kid, Eli always looked up to those who served in the military and decided to join a week after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. On his second attempt, Crane graduated BUD/s with class 256 and then was later assigned to SEAL Team 3 under legendary American Sniper Chris Kyle.