Leading with Flawless Execution

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Speaker 5 Today we're joined by Jim Murph Murphy, fighter pilot, entrepreneur, and inventor of the world-renowned flawless execution enterprise coaching program. This is an all-time episode of the podcast.

Speaker 5 You're going to love this one.

Speaker 6 Let's go.

Speaker 7 Let's go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy.

Speaker 7 Hey, stand up, guy boom, ten toes. Big body pull-up in a ranked rose.
I can change the whole game when I say so.

Speaker 5 Well, Jim, I appreciate you coming on the show, taking time. It means a lot to me.

Speaker 5 And I'm really excited to have a conversation with you and share, you know, your experience, your story, et cetera, with the audience. So thanks for taking the time today, man.

Speaker 2 Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 5 So when I was looking through your work, and there's so many places we can go,

Speaker 5 knowing this audience, knowing where their head's at, I explained to you a little bit of who they were.

Speaker 5 A word that I kept seeing come out in your work over and over again, I think it's completely related to your career in the military. And I think it's something that

Speaker 5 currently I feel a lot of people have a very,

Speaker 5 I'll use the word confused relationship with. I think we're not sure where to put this word.

Speaker 5 And it's this idea of courage, right? And in particular,

Speaker 5 what I'm interested in in two parts.

Speaker 5 Courage and making the decisions for ourselves on a day-to-day basis that help us get forward.

Speaker 5 And we can start there. But ultimately, I want to get into the idea of courage and leadership because

Speaker 5 this is a term that,

Speaker 5 like I said, I just, I think I struggle with it. I have my own thoughts.
I played a lot of sports. I was never involved in the military.
I struggle with this term, where it comes out.

Speaker 5 And I think a lot of people are as well. So I'd love to start there and

Speaker 5 get ripping.

Speaker 2 Wow. That's a good, that's a good place to start.

Speaker 2 Wow, that's a, that's a, you know, we could peel back a lot of onions

Speaker 2 or peel back a big onion. You know, courage.
There's a lot to that, right? I mean, courage leveraged in the wrong way is going to get you killed. At least that's what I learned as a fighter pilot.

Speaker 2 So there's not blind courage. And I think if you really think about courage from

Speaker 2 performance, from self, from team, from enterprise, and leadership, certainly, you know, I think the real word is confidence.

Speaker 2 And if you really think about confidence, you don't get courage and confidence to act, to have a bias to action, unless you have a very compelling north star you know you've got you know lots of details on

Speaker 2 you know you can't predict the future but you can design the one you want to have

Speaker 2 and then and then i think training fundamentals and habits continue to build confidence to give you the momentum to have what a lot of people may

Speaker 2 think is courage, but it's very purposeful. So I think, you know, when you see the old old adage, you know, just charge the hill regardless of the consequences.
That's courage, maybe.

Speaker 2 But, you know, in today's world, and I think the leaders that we're talking about, your listeners, certainly in entrepreneurs, business leaders, and good military leaders, you know, there's risk assessment.

Speaker 2 There's so many other things that go into the word courage. So for me, you know, it's a lot deeper than that.
I don't know if that makes sense.

Speaker 5 No, it completely does. I've been toying with this idea, and tell me where this sits with you, that

Speaker 5 courage is really just a derivative of preparation to a certain extent. Use training, habits, et cetera,

Speaker 5 if you're prepared, using that broad term.

Speaker 5 Trained, you have the habits, you've put in the work, you're physically, mentally in a right place, then courage is really just a byproduct because you're willing to do the things others aren't because you're prepared.

Speaker 5 How does that sit with you? Where does that fall?

Speaker 2 I totally

Speaker 2 110% agree with that. And, you know, I think that courage/slash confidence, because I almost like that word a little bit better, but comes in two parts, I think.

Speaker 2 I think it comes in the fundamentals, the preparation, the self-grind, the repetition that is required to have the confidence to act.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then the other part

Speaker 2 is certainly not just the fundamentals, but it's doing the work, the research, the risk assessment, understanding trends and cycles.

Speaker 2 So you also have the confidence psychologically to make that step as well. And then overarching, you know, around this is the unequivocal pull

Speaker 2 of a North Star. And we call it an HDD, a high-definition destination.
But if there's not a higher purpose that you're pursuing, then it's really tough to go through the preparation.

Speaker 2 It's really tough to go through the research at the level that's required to get the confidence that's required to get you out of of your comfort zone to go do something that even you probably didn't think you could do yesterday before you did all this prep so a lot of people that maybe fail and don't have confidence don't have courage to execute if you will have tried several times but in a sense they weren't really compelled enough i mean you know if your back's against the wall you're compelled um so how do you in a sense, artificially put yourself against the wall so you can move forward?

Speaker 2 Because so many of us get stuck in our careers. We get confident, excuse me, we get comfortable.

Speaker 2 But maybe outside factors like environmental factors in the economy or compliance around your business causes you now to rethink your new future because the environmental factors have changed.

Speaker 2 So, you know, that's the pivot. And, you know, that's always moving forward, having that bias to action.

Speaker 2 But I think, you know, you got to really look at yourself and go, do I really have the details of the future?

Speaker 2 Because if you've got a general idea of where you want to go, you're going to have general execution, general preparation. You're not going to have much confidence.
You're not going to move forward.

Speaker 2 You're going to have zero bias to action. So to me, it's all future-based.
If your future is compelling, you will do what it takes to get there.

Speaker 2 And when I say that,

Speaker 2 you can design the future that you want. You can't predict it, but you can certainly design it.

Speaker 2 And by taking the time to put the context and the details into the future that you want, we'll start to intentionally drive the actions, the first, second, and third order actions that you need to take.

Speaker 2 They'll be aligned.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I also love it when I'm talking to someone in the first five minutes.
I have like 40 follow-up questions I want to ask because that makes my job really easy for the rest of the show.

Speaker 5 No, so, uh, so one, just to reframe what I think you said, which I completely agree with and I love that preparation leads to confidence and the action taken through our confidence.

Speaker 5 Courage is really just a third-party label put on that action that that's not actually what we have.

Speaker 5 That's a label put on the actions we take, the confident actions that we take, the necessary confident actions.

Speaker 5 Courage is the third-party label put on that, but it's not actually what comes out of the preparation. Confidence comes out of the preparation.

Speaker 2 That's what I think. And

Speaker 2 those steps of confidence come in past experiences. A lot of people call those memories.
I don't call them memories. I call them confidence blocks to the future.

Speaker 2 Mixed in with that pulling mechanism, that clear, compelling, high-resolution future that you designed for yourself, those two things are magic in a bottle, if you will. So,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 that's what I believe. You know, I get this question all the time.
I used to, when I flew the F-15, you know, gosh,

Speaker 2 you must have so much courage to go up and fly a single-seat twin-engine supersonic military jet fighter all by yourself in your early 20s. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I never looked at myself as bravado or having confidence in, you know, the whole Maverick thing.

Speaker 2 You know, no, it's really about all these parts and pieces that have come together to give me the confidence to go operate that machine and be better than anybody else on the planet.

Speaker 2 That was very purposeful. It took time, energy, a lot of sweat equity, a lot of minimal equity.

Speaker 2 And oh, by the way, the organization I was working for, the United States Air Force, takes it pretty serious to be the most dominant Air Force on the planet.

Speaker 2 So, you know, they had some really good mechanisms that they put me through as well.

Speaker 5 I'm sure that despite that, you had days where you didn't, you didn't want to get up and get in the plane, or you didn't want to go do the briefing, or you didn't want to go do the physical training.

Speaker 5 And I think, you know, one of the things that

Speaker 5 I've had audience members reach out to me and ask questions about. And, you know, we have these different forms that we talk to.
You know,

Speaker 5 how does someone, you know, so. In your early 20s, you're flying a rocket ship attached to your ass going faster than any other human most likely will ever go, right?

Speaker 5 And I'm barely making it through an accounting job struggling to get up on time to get to work. Okay.

Speaker 5 So sometimes I feel like

Speaker 5 we'll call them, I don't want to make this more than it is, but everyday people, the guys, the guys and gals showing up and punching the clock and whatever, who want more from their lives.

Speaker 5 They want maybe to start their own business or whatever their thing is.

Speaker 5 I think sometimes they get lost in,

Speaker 5 well, Jim's just friggin' special, right? There's just something different about this guy. Like, yeah,

Speaker 5 how can you address that question where you somehow have been touched with some magic dust that gives you that ability and they don't have it, essentially?

Speaker 2 Great question. Um,

Speaker 2 I grew up on a farm in central Kentucky, um,

Speaker 2 middle class, maybe lower middle class, uh, great parents, um,

Speaker 2 you know, hardworking grind environment. My dad was an entrepreneur.
My mom was a farmer, always grew up in agricultural areas, but I was an athlete like you. I was pursuing professional athletics.

Speaker 2 You know, I was fortunate enough to, you know, get a scholarship and play for a D1 baseball school in the SEC, played for the University of Kentucky.

Speaker 2 You know, pro ball was, you know, ultimately my goal. But, you know,

Speaker 2 I think that you have to be compelled. I mean, and, you know, what I see in so many people that say, oh, I'm stuck in my accounting job.
And I'm like, well, why are you doing that?

Speaker 2 Oh, because it pays my bills and my BMW and my mortgage. And my two kids are in school right now.
And I am trapped.

Speaker 2 And now it's too late, you know, because now I have to meet the demands of life. And, you know.

Speaker 2 What I see so many times is people just really aren't willing to pursue something that is compelling enough to get them away from the trajectory that they've been handed.

Speaker 2 And I've always been a big believer that you drive your own trajectory and it starts with the future. And I've always been a big believer in goals aren't the right word.
KPIs aren't the right word.

Speaker 2 I love this word HDD.

Speaker 2 It's not a word, but it's a phrase, high definition destination, because unless there are details in the future, almost like a movie, it's hard to compel you to act and do something different, go on a diet, work out, you know, all these things that we struggle with.

Speaker 2 So, you know, this HDD has to really, really be compelling. And my first HDD that really pushed me outside my envelope was to join the military.
I want to be a professional athlete.

Speaker 2 And I wasn't particularly a great student either as a jock. And I don't get drafted to play professional baseball.
And everybody in my life expected me to do that along with me.

Speaker 2 And when it didn't happen, it was a shock. So luckily, I'd graduated.
from the University of Kentucky.

Speaker 2 So I, you know, I dragged myself back home to my one horse town and look everybody in the eye who thought for sure I was going to be in the big leagues one day.

Speaker 2 And I had to tell them, although I went very far in my baseball career, I didn't have what it took to go to the next level. And gosh, that was a tough pill to swallow.

Speaker 2 And I had to live with that for a while. And then I had to go get a real job, which, you know, I had a hard time mentally putting myself in that role.

Speaker 2 And I, and I had a sales job and I learned a cold call and prospect and convert and drive pipeline and all those things.

Speaker 2 And it was a great training ground for me, probably one of the most important things I ever did.

Speaker 2 It was a short period, but I was miserable because it didn't fit my mental state of where I thought I i was going to be as a professional athlete

Speaker 2 so then i met a fighter pilot and this person you know got my attention i said wow here's somebody doing something not everybody can do physically demanding patriotic in nature that appeals to me i'm you know good southern boy i'm like that's cool but a pilot you know i'd always liked airplanes built models as a kid but that really wasn't in my dna and nobody in my family had ever been in the military but i started it's it piqued my interest so i went out and started taking some flying lessons and loved it.

Speaker 2 Then I started hanging out at air shows and watching military fighters and researching them. And lo and behold, this movie Top Gun comes out.

Speaker 2 And although I was compelled to kind of fly and I was doing it part-time and I thought it would be cool until I sat in that theater and I was completely moved because I was at a perfect age to see that as my future.

Speaker 2 on the ninja motorcycle, flying the F-14, wearing the white uniform, pulling G's, doing all that cool stuff. It was there.
It was the music, the drama, it was all the pieces came together.

Speaker 2 And I said, I can put myself in that script.

Speaker 2 So now I have to create that script myself to figure out how in the world I'm going to get out of central Kentucky and figure out how to get into the Air Force, Navy, and the Marines and get into pilot training, which is a whole nother story.

Speaker 2 But because I then started purposely building the resolution, the context of my new movie. There was no going back.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to continue being a salesperson. I want to go go do that.

Speaker 2 And I figured it out. It wasn't easy.

Speaker 2 It was a tough pipeline. It was probably harder than getting into the big leagues for a guy like me because I was an average guy living a very average life at the time.

Speaker 2 But now I had built this new future picture, this new HDD. And now I was unbelievably compelled.
I wasn't going to say no. Nobody was going to tell me I couldn't do it.
I didn't have the right degree.

Speaker 2 I didn't have the right GPA. I wasn't an Air Force Academy grad.

Speaker 2 So I figured it out. And you will too.
But you got to purposely design in great detail your new future, which means I had to have a new group of mentors or peers.

Speaker 2 I had to physically get in shape in a different way. I had to start reading and absorbing materials and on, you know, online and get up to speed.
You know, I had to change my vernacular.

Speaker 2 I mean, I had to absolutely immerse myself into the new future as if it was here.

Speaker 5 I think a lot of people listen to that and are nodding their head. And that's an incredible story.
And I have a bunch of follow-ups. But where my brain goes first is the idea that

Speaker 5 I think most people are capable

Speaker 5 of playing a movie in their mind in which they're the star and they are doing exactly what they want, living the life they want, et cetera.

Speaker 5 Where they struggle to translate that is into into the present actions that lead to that future. How do you,

Speaker 5 you know, how do you advise people? How do you help people? How do they do that? It's, it's, that to me is often the most challenging. It's not, it's not.

Speaker 2 That's the problem. That's what's going to get you stuck.
That's what's going to keep you from moving forward is to go, how am I going to accomplish this?

Speaker 2 If you ask how first before the why is compelling, you're. destined to fail.

Speaker 2 So first you do have to physically walk into the future.

Speaker 2 So people that I consult with, I do this with major companies and corporations, but I do it with a lot of individuals, athletes, business people.

Speaker 2 You know, for example, you know, for you, Ryan, maybe I would have you walk three years into the future. You know, so what's today's date? April what?

Speaker 2 24th. April 24th, 2024.

Speaker 2 So we're going to go, let's just go to April 24th, 2027.

Speaker 2 And when we open up our eyes, we're going to close our eyes for a minute. We open our up our eyes.
Today's April 24th, 2027. Ryan, what are you doing today?

Speaker 2 I want you to explain to me in great detail what you're doing right now today. And then I'm going to ask you why you're doing those things.
And I'm going to have you write it down.

Speaker 2 Then I'm going to say,

Speaker 2 okay,

Speaker 2 what are you doing for a living? And why?

Speaker 2 What meetings are you taking today or deferring and why?

Speaker 2 Where are you in your spiritual journey today and why? Not where are you now? Not how do I do that? Just where are you on that day, April 24th, 2027? Tell me about your friends.

Speaker 5 Who are they?

Speaker 2 How much time are you spending with them? What do they do?

Speaker 2 Who are your mentors? Do you have an A-team? Have you put together a team of people that are helping you out that you refer to? How often do you meet with them? Tell me about their names.

Speaker 2 Tell me what they do. Tell me why they're compelling you.
Tell me the value they're bringing you on that day, April 24th, 2027. Tell me about your hobbies.
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 Tell me about your finances. I want to know what's your cash situation.
What kind of debt do you have, if any? What are your material goods that you have? What type of investments are you making?

Speaker 2 And where are those investments? I want to know as much about your finances as possible.

Speaker 2 And oh, by the way, if you ask the question how, you go, Murph, all I have is a savings account right now or checking account, then you'll never envision what a true financial freedom really looks like.

Speaker 2 So tell me the different buckets. Tell me what they look like and get crazy.
I want to know what it looks like.

Speaker 2 So as many of those buckets as you can put together, the more of a consciousness you're going to have. Because if you just say, on this day, I want to do this professionally.
Well, that's not enough.

Speaker 2 That's not very compelling. That's like somebody telling me when I was on the farm in Kentucky, you should join the military.
I saw a cool commercial for the army. Be all you can be.
No compelling.

Speaker 2 There was no way I was going to move on that.

Speaker 2 But if I saw a movie and I saw these different components, like I'm telling you now, you can construct those. And the more time you spend, try to do it on a single sheet of paper.

Speaker 2 I do it all the time, personal HDD. The more time you can spend and the more details you can add to it, work with it over the next three weeks, month, and then refer to that paper often.

Speaker 2 The tactics, the hows will leap off the paper. Because now the clarity, the consciousness of the future is so compelling and clear, it's almost in its present state.

Speaker 2 The steps that were unclear and uncompelling will now unlock.

Speaker 2 That's how powerful that process can be. Now, you know, a lot of people have called this in the past.
There's a lot of different words for it, visioning, you know,

Speaker 2 picture boarding or vision boards. I mean, there's a lot of different techniques out there.

Speaker 2 But for me, I like to put it on paper and I like to spend a lot of time because every word and every edit, my consciousness is getting more and more real, and things are becoming more compelling and more urgent.

Speaker 2 And that's what we want. We need the urgency to give you the bias to act.

Speaker 5 So I'll tell you, in the darkest moments of my life, journaling, in essence, has been one of the primary tools that has helped me get out of that.

Speaker 5 However, in every one of those instances, the moment that that dark time has passed, I have started, you know, then it becomes, it goes from every day to every other day to once a week to doesn't happen.

Speaker 5 Now, I completely agree that the proper compulsion provides motivation to continue going,

Speaker 5 but there are going to be,

Speaker 5 how do you advise your clients or people if you're standing on stage?

Speaker 5 You know, you hear this often, right? I mean,

Speaker 5 everyone loves Goggins, right? Stay hard, motherfucker, right? Like, you know, keep going.

Speaker 5 There's this idea, but, but, and that sounds great and i i love to yell that sometimes when i'm mad at myself too but like

Speaker 5 how do you actually what is the process for getting up in the morning going i don't want to do 100 push-ups but i know it's good for me and i made that commitment to myself because i want to get my body together i'm all right so

Speaker 2 and and and

Speaker 2 you know

Speaker 2 I know a lot of these guys you talked to or met them. And, you know, obviously I've had military background, athletic background and, you know, entrepreneurial background.

Speaker 2 Maybe doing 100 push-ups is not what you should be doing. Yeah, yeah.
Maybe he should be doing that, yeah, yeah, because that's part of his HDD, but maybe that has nothing to do with yours.

Speaker 2 So, why in the world are you doing it? Yeah, because a motivational poster told you to do it, because somebody on Instagram showed you that this is the way.

Speaker 2 Get up at five in the morning, have two cups of coffee, do 100 push-ups, eat this protein.

Speaker 2 You know, that's somebody else's plan.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 2 what is yours?

Speaker 2 And you know, you want to do only the things that drive momentum, inertia into your pre-planned future. That's the thing.

Speaker 2 Most people have no idea in detail what they're going to be doing three years from now on this day. I do

Speaker 2 because I plan it out. Now, the actual daily tactics,

Speaker 2 those take care of themselves because they're aligned only to one thing, my unequivocal. pull to my HDD.

Speaker 2 If they don't have anything to do with my pre-planned future, then I don't spend any time on it. 100 push-ups, I don't do 100 push-ups.
That has nothing to do with my HDD.

Speaker 2 Now, being in shape, you know, having the specifics that I physically put into my HDD, where I want to be in three years, my resting heart rate, where I want to be from a physical aspect, you know, what type of diet am I on?

Speaker 2 What type of nutrients are taken in? How many times am I going in to get a physical at my age? I mean, all those things are in my HDD.

Speaker 2 In order to get my

Speaker 2 heart rate at a certain level, I know I'm going to have a mix of cardiovascular activity and aerobic activity. You know, that's going to drive my plan.

Speaker 2 So everything I do is designed to get me to my pre-planned future, including my friends group, my peers, my spirituality. I mean, all the things that I'm doing.
So

Speaker 2 everything I'm doing daily is aligned. and giving me an incremental step towards that pre-planned future.

Speaker 2 What I find out when most people are stuck is they just don't have a compelling HDD. They've never designed one.
They live life quarter to quarter, day to day, month to month, year to year.

Speaker 5 I, you're speaking.

Speaker 5 I couldn't have asked for you to give a better answer than that someone else's plan because I completely and utterly agree with you. Um,

Speaker 5 it's funny. I, uh, back in 2020, um, I had started, uh, started my own insurance agency.

Speaker 5 And seven days after I launched, zombie apocalypse hits upstate New York, where I'm from, because while you're from Kentucky, I'm from probably a very similar looking small town just in the north. And

Speaker 5 I'm stressed out, all this money dumped into this new business, excited, and the world shuts down. And the minute

Speaker 5 the local gym opened back up, I was like, I need, I want to do something I've never done before. So I took on deadlifting and I set this goal for myself and I started deadlifting.

Speaker 5 I started at 185 and two years later, I hit my max at 465. And

Speaker 5 along the way,

Speaker 2 185 to 465. That's a compelling HDD.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
I was very motivated. I wanted to get to,

Speaker 5 I wanted to get to five plates on each side, which would have been 495.

Speaker 5 And life took a couple of turns. I will get there.
It's still, it's, that has not been checked off. But what I did was prove to myself I get up doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 Well, I documented this journey on Instagram, you know, and I just posted myself doing deadlifting. People started going, I got to start deadlifting, and I got to do this.

Speaker 5 And they're asking me all these questions. I'm like, guys,

Speaker 5 I'm not, one, I'm not a deadlifting coach. Two, I'm not posting this to tell you to deadlift.

Speaker 5 I'm posting these mostly for myself as an accountability, but also to show you that at 40, at the time I was 42, now I'm 43, at 41, 42 years old, you can take on a physical challenge and

Speaker 5 make good on it, right? Like, I got kids,

Speaker 5 you know, I was married when it started. I was divorced when it ended.
Like, you know what I mean? Like, you can have life events happen to you and keep plowing through.

Speaker 5 And my next question for you is set up in so much as

Speaker 5 these distractions, right? In my case, getting divorced, COVID, et cetera, all these different things, things that happen to everybody.

Speaker 5 You know, nothing about my situation is so extreme or so unique that whatever, but we all have these moments these things that come up and what i find with a lot of the people that that i work with um

Speaker 5 which is a lot of uh startup and executive coaching is

Speaker 5 they've had something happen and they allow it to just knock them right off right off tilt right they they they they've not set up to endure or like i don't know if you've read uh nicholas uh naseem taleb's book anti-fragile right like they're not they haven't set their life up to be able to handle those moments.

Speaker 5 How do, how do you advise people to do that? Because to me, and I promise I'll get to a question here.

Speaker 5 To me,

Speaker 5 so much of success is not the top.

Speaker 5 While that's amazing and wonderful and should be celebrated, it's, I get the most joy out of

Speaker 5 On April 1st of 2022, I divorced my wife at 10.30 a.m. a.m.
I signed a lease on a new apartment at noon and I sold my business at 2.30 in the afternoon all on the same day. Same day,

Speaker 5 did all three, right? So to me, I look at that day and like the divorce thing was not necessary, was a net positive because we're just different people and we actually have a good relationship.

Speaker 5 So it's all good. It's not like one of those horrible, contentious things, although, you know, there's obviously, it's obviously a distraction.
My point is like,

Speaker 5 I look at that day as a win, not because I sold the business or got divorced or whatever. I look at it as a win because there were all these distractions and still able to get through that moment.

Speaker 5 I don't know that I performed my best in any single one of them, but I was able to sustain them to keep growing. And

Speaker 5 how do people do that? I don't know that I have a good plan or whatever. Maybe it was just a lifetime of having conversations like this, but like,

Speaker 5 how do you...

Speaker 5 How do you consult people to sustain, to weather the storm? Because that to me feels like where so many people spin off their goals.

Speaker 2 Well, good for you. You know, you must have had a higher order guiding precept that,

Speaker 2 you know, allowed you to look at that day and call this a win.

Speaker 2 You know, for me, it's two parts.

Speaker 2 It's, you know, first and foremost, for me personally, and, you know, I don't get into, I need to get into this in a lot of detail, but spirituality plays a big part of it.

Speaker 2 You know, do you have an opportunity to really get quiet? You know, is there a higher order? You know, do you feel at peace when you're really quiet? So that's one thing.

Speaker 2 The other thing is designing the future. And even though there's a plan for you spiritually,

Speaker 2 you can still design the future that you want to have and live with purpose in the here and now.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 those are two things that work hand in hand for me personally.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 pivots, going backwards, going sideways. You know, I equate it to flying from,

Speaker 2 let's say, New York to LaGuardia. I I mean, excuse me, from New York to London, you know, as a pilot, you know, in my GPS, you know, in my instrumentation, I'm going to put an exact destination.

Speaker 2 And when I take off, my intention is to fly straight there, just like your intention was to get to your guiding precept, whatever you consider Nirvana.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 There may be times where you get a really strong crosswind that's trying to drift you off course.

Speaker 2 And, you know, if you're you're one degree off course when you first take off, you're going to miss not only the airport, you're going to miss not only London, but you might even miss England.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, you know, extrapolate that over time. So you need the resolution, the context of an HDD, not just an overall goal.
So you can boom, make that correction and stay on track.

Speaker 2 Now, there might be a thunderstorm, a level five thunderstorm that would not allow me to even keep on my present track, plus or minus 20 degrees, either side of my center line.

Speaker 2 I might have to actually hold. I might have to go backwards for a while and turn in the other direction and go 50 miles and come back and wait.

Speaker 2 And I might have to do it again and wait and wait and wait until the weather dissipates. So I can then deviate around the weather and finally get to my destination.

Speaker 2 So rarely ever is it an unabated straight line. I mean, we live in chaos right now.
The complexity of our world is amazing.

Speaker 2 because of this complexity, you know, a straight line is impossible, but intentional actions are not. And, you know, I want my actions to be aligned.

Speaker 2 At least I know I'm going in this quadrant because that's my direction.

Speaker 2 You know, and if things are causing me to go left or right or back, I'm going to try not to do those things because they don't align to my future.

Speaker 2 So, so for me, you know, breaking it down simplicity, you know, spirituality, personal HDD, and then guardrails, if you will,

Speaker 2 in order to get there.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So one, I had that exact same t-shirt that you're wearing.
wearing and for those who are not watching on youtube and listening it's trust god not government so amen to that there you go um

Speaker 5 and and and i'd have to agree with you i think that uh and i i've said this before on the show i believe secularism is destroying our culture and destroying our society and ultimately destroying the mental peace that people have doesn't have to be

Speaker 5 a god in so much as the Judeo-Christian values, although that I believe in those values. I have them tattooed on my arm.

Speaker 2 And by the way, just real quick on your spirituality, you know, again, with your spirituality, generality gets you generality.

Speaker 2 I find that the more specific you are about your future and your spirituality, the more aligned and specific your actions are.

Speaker 2 So if you struggle with your spirituality a little bit, like I have many times in my life, if my spirituality is not real strong, my decision making aligns with my spirituality not being so strong.

Speaker 2 And I find out that when I look at entrepreneurs and there there are stories of giant entrepreneurs, I mean, you know, you can look at, well, I don't know, Uber, you can look at Papa John's, you can look at, you know, almost Tesla once, but, you know, where sometimes the leader gets disaligned with his or her own principles that made the company strong in the first place.

Speaker 2 You know, people notice. And, you know, as a leader, your team's going to notice.

Speaker 2 And so it, you know, so it's really important to stay sharp in both areas because, you know, you will always have a consciousness.

Speaker 2 You will always have guardrails, principles about the things you'll always do and never do that are aligned to your spirituality and aligned to your HDD.

Speaker 2 If they start to diverge, then that's where ambiguity comes in. That's where decisions aren't as sharp.
That's where people notice.

Speaker 2 And that's when people then vote with their feet and go, you know, this wasn't the place I thought it was. This, or we're not heading in the direction that I originally signed up for.

Speaker 2 And boom, we're gone. I call that ethos.

Speaker 2 The reason I love the military and I love being a fighter pilot is I enjoyed the fighter pilot ethos, which is different than the Navy SEAL, different than the Rangers.

Speaker 2 You know, there are specific ethoses within the military. And the one that attracted me the most was the ethos of the fighter pilot.
So,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 those things are really important when you're building a company.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think a lot of people,

Speaker 5 myself included at different times, now much less because I've learned these lessons the hard way and had to adjust and grow as a human.

Speaker 5 We believe that it is possible to compartmentalize our life and that somehow

Speaker 5 a disassociation with our spirituality or our relationship with our partner or our family or

Speaker 5 we are terrible with our health, but somehow we're going to be a killer in the boardroom.

Speaker 5 That to me

Speaker 5 is one of

Speaker 5 like that can absolutely destroy you because it creeps up on you.

Speaker 5 To me, it's, it's like the lobster boiling in the pot, right?

Speaker 5 You don't, you forget about your health because you think that, you know, you can be amazing in the boardroom, but you don't need to watch, you know, you can drink every night before you go to bed or, or I'm going to cheat on my spouse or just.

Speaker 5 ignore them, which may even be worse in many cases, or, or disassociate with spirituality.

Speaker 5 And somehow I'm going to be able to maintain in my business, or if I focus more on my business, then those things don't matter.

Speaker 5 It's not an immediate or acute,

Speaker 5 often pain. It's this, it's this slow rising pain.

Speaker 5 And all of a sudden we find ourselves in a situation where our business is falling apart or people are leaving and we don't understand why, yet we're 40 pounds overweight.

Speaker 5 We haven't had a solid conversation with our life partner in months. Our kids don't want to talk to us.
And, you know, and we find ourselves hungover every day when we show up.

Speaker 5 And, but I'm working hard. Right.
And like,

Speaker 5 I don't, I have not figured out a good way.

Speaker 5 And this is where this question comes in of conveying the interconnectivity of all these things and how important it is, how we, we can't, we have to address them all in time.

Speaker 5 Not that we have to address every single one at the exact same moment would be my assumption, but I'm interested in your take, but we can't disregard the interconnectivity of all these different aspects of our life and how they impact each other.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I tell people all the time, and I work with CEOs a lot, I go, you have one HDD, right?

Speaker 2 But you can have other HDDs that serve it fractal, if you will. So you've got an HD here, which is your HDD.

Speaker 2 And when it's yours and you're married, it better be you and your spouse's because that gets disaligned. Everything fractally underneath it, your trust, your business, I mean, those HDDs are affected.

Speaker 2 So I get many executives going, oh, no, my family life, Murph, is completely compartmentalized and different than my business life and my career.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I professionally argue that why don't we just try it?

Speaker 2 Please bring your spouse in and let's together first design you as a team, your family's HDD, because the business is one of your assets, probably your most important asset financially, but it's not your life.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the problem potentially that you're having a lot of times right now is your pursuit of your corporate dreams are driving everything.

Speaker 2 And I find out when you get these things aligned and you get your team together

Speaker 2 and you develop the HDD together, you're going to learn a lot about your spouse and she's going to learn a lot about you as well.

Speaker 2 And you can really build serious force multiplication if you're both aligned. So you both design the future that you want to have, realizing that the business is one of the aspects of your HDD.

Speaker 2 And then you build the business HDD. But if you're a 51% owner of a business, you're a majority owner,

Speaker 2 you know, you have to understand that, you know, your team and your life's HDD has to be laid out first in great detail, and then you build the business HDD.

Speaker 2 If not, at some point, there's going to be a disconnect and either the marriage is not going to work out or the corporation is not going to work out. And, you know, I know this, you know, firsthand.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I've lived that. And, you know if your partner's hdd now starts to separate from yours

Speaker 5 um that's that's the canary in the cave right there so you got to keep those arrows aligned yeah you hit it right on the head it took me a long time and a divorce to understand

Speaker 5 that

Speaker 5 You can actually go much farther, much faster. And it is way more fun when your partner is aligned with what you're doing than your compartmentalized idea.

Speaker 5 For some reason, I think for a lot of us, particularly men, that is not intuitive.

Speaker 5 I feel like we have to either hear it from a mentor or someone we trust, or we have to learn it the hard way in my case. But

Speaker 5 it's absolutely true. It's absolutely positively true.
You show up at work and you feel like you have a new energy and you're like, why? Because.

Speaker 5 the person who i care about who i'm sharing my life with they're on page with where i'm at right now versus oh my gosh, you know, I, I, I, you know,

Speaker 5 they don't like here or I'm going traveling and they're going to give me crap or what, you know, and you start having all these thoughts and putting all these things out in the atmosphere that aren't because you, you haven't taken that time.

Speaker 5 And I think it's wonderful. I know a lot of people who work with executives and high performers that don't bring their spouses in.
I think it's wonderful that you do.

Speaker 2 So to, you have to think about this too.

Speaker 2 you know, you got to get out of the how, you know, you got to get out of the here and now actions. They have nothing really to do with the future that you're going to design.

Speaker 2 So, when you do your personal HDD, you know, a business HDD, about the farthest I want to go is about 36 months. Why? Because in the business landscape, everything changes.

Speaker 2 I mean, AI, boom, now the entire landscape has changed, right? So things happen in business that require a shorter timeline for your HDD, that drive your strategy, that drive your tactics.

Speaker 2 And everything's getting compressed due to the complexity in the world. However, your personal HD should not because

Speaker 2 everybody goes through life

Speaker 2 lessons. And, you know, unless you're the exact same age as your spouse, which you may be or not,

Speaker 2 you may be going through different cycles of your life at different times. So I think it's really important that you reach out a little further in the future, five, eight, maybe even 10 years.

Speaker 2 and create a solid North Star because depending on starting a company and selling a company or a different cycle in a person's life,

Speaker 2 you know, ultimately, you know, you want the HDD to endure. And there are going to be difficult times in your relationship.
There are going to be difficult times in your business cycles.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, you want to endure. And it's really hard to endure if you're in the how all the time and you're reactive.
You know, I think that's how a lot of people get divorced.

Speaker 2 You know, they're looking at the short term versus realizing, wow, you know, I'm going to get on the other side of this and the person that I valued is still there and and intact.

Speaker 2 And we share this vision in great detail of what our family will be like.

Speaker 2 And, you know, if we decide to take the tactical path, well, that derails everything, you know, and let's map out what that looks like.

Speaker 2 So I think that, you know, in business, your HDD is a little more compressed. And in life, it has to be a little bit further out because of these cycles that you speak of.

Speaker 5 I'd like to pivot, if it's okay with you, to something that's a little more cliche, but I just, I have to ask it because I wouldn't be doing myself justice.

Speaker 5 What was it like the first time you opened up one of them fighter jets and you just let it rip? Like, what, what was that like? I mean, most of us will never experience that.

Speaker 5 And I mean, I went from 60 to 160 in a Tesla one time, but I have to assume it's a little more hardcore than that. So, what was that like for you?

Speaker 2 I mean, just, I mean, speed is, you know,

Speaker 2 speed is relative to

Speaker 2 your surroundings, meaning, you know, in a car, when your butt's close to the ground, you know, 120 miles an hour feels fast.

Speaker 2 You know, in a go-kart, 120 miles an hour feels really fast. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 But in a jet at 30,000 feet with nothing but clouds to reference, you're standing still. You hear the wind noise, you see the Mach meter, you see your airspeed indicator.
But everything's relative.

Speaker 2 Now, when you're flying low and in the canyons, down low at a low level, then it's awesome. It's badass.
It's a rush. It's everything you would think it is and more.

Speaker 2 But in reality, most of the flying we do is a little bit away from the ground.

Speaker 2 So everything's really about timing. And especially for fighter pilot, I was an air-to-air fighter pilot.
So all I did is I went out and dogfight every single mission.

Speaker 2 You know, we didn't do anything air-to-ground. We didn't drop any bombs or anything like that.
So for us, it was all about closure. And

Speaker 2 you're closing 12 to 1600 knots on your threat or the enemy. You know, it's about decisions that you make.

Speaker 2 uh based on milestones as you get closer and closer to the merge when both jets pass hopefully neutral at that point Usually there's a lot of carnage that happens before the merge, but the few survivors that are left will ultimately hopefully merge.

Speaker 2 And then you're in a close-in dogfight like the movie Top Gun. But a lot of things happen leading up to that.

Speaker 2 So for us, it's all about closure and it's about the mental decisions that you have to make. And then the thing I really enjoyed about flying fighter jets is, yeah, acceleration and flying, you know.

Speaker 2 you know doing an unrestricted climb by turning the airplane on its tails and going straight up it's very cool But for me, it was physical. I love pulling the Gs.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, every day you're up pulling, you know, six, seven, eight, sometimes nine G's.

Speaker 2 And it's very, very physically demanding. And for me as well, you're in a 3D environment.
So it's extremely fluid.

Speaker 2 So, you know, really operate, you know, you, you know, you're, you're never looking straight ahead. I mean, you're always moving your head around.
The jet's moving in a 3D environment. So

Speaker 2 to me, that was really appealing. Yeah.
I missed that.

Speaker 5 How do you, you know, I was talking to, I've had a bunch of athletes on the show and, and I'm always interested in this question.

Speaker 5 And I, I played uh baseball in college a little bit after semi-pro ball, nothing, nothing crazy. Um,

Speaker 5 and I was a high school football player. And until I got injured, I probably would have played football in high school.

Speaker 5 And I, you know, I've, I've asked them this question, you know, I, I, for a long time, not, not so much anymore, but for a long time struggled with

Speaker 5 I couldn't, in the business world, I could not recreate the feeling of just leveling a quarterback or hitting a home run.

Speaker 5 Basically, what I had asked you was, we, you know, we have these moments, be they sports, be they something like being in the military that, as you said, spike adrenaline.

Speaker 5 And when we come out of those worlds and those are no longer part of our life.

Speaker 5 I found myself, at least for a long time, and I know others who struggle to recreate that. And it always feels like they're searching for something.

Speaker 5 How do you, how do individuals who maybe had those experiences acclimate into the business world and find satisfaction in a different way?

Speaker 2 It's a great question.

Speaker 2 I feel like I'm qualified to answer the question, but I'm not 100% sure, Ryan, I've got the right answer. So let me give you some context around that.

Speaker 2 So I've hired hundreds of former elite military men and women. So I think fighter pilots, Navy SEALs, Rangers, et cetera.

Speaker 2 And one of the first questions I asked them in the interview when we like them and we're going going to offer them a position is, hey, how are you going to recreate what you've become so used to, if not addicted to?

Speaker 2 And that is the adrenaline spike.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, going outside the wire or being, you know, waking up at two o'clock in the morning because a mortar strike came inside the wire or preparing for a mission or flying Mach 2, pulling 9Gs.

Speaker 2 I mean, you can't recreate that. in this world.
You just can't.

Speaker 2 So I give them this little talk and I go, what I know is you're smart. And we only hire really smart people.
And I know smart people have high EQ. A lot of them do, especially in these disciplines.

Speaker 2 So I don't want you to kid yourself, but you're going to have to find a replacement because your brain's used to this, this adrenaline spike. And so what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 And I found out that people in our line of work that go out into the real world, they find it in two places. the dark side or the bright side.
And I said, so which one are you going to pick?

Speaker 2 And sometimes people pick both for a while. But

Speaker 2 what I do know is if you decide to do the dark side, you're going to hide it from everybody, including yourself, but eventually it's going to catch up to you.

Speaker 2 And what I'm afraid of, and I've seen this happen so many times before, it will catch up to you or us while you're working under our brand. And we've worked too hard.
There are too many families.

Speaker 2 There's too many livelihoods at risk. So I need to know if I can trust you out on the road by yourself representing our brand.
And here's what I'd recommend.

Speaker 2 I'd recommend that if you haven't found God, go find job, God, or go find a hobby, or, you know, create something that is very compelling.

Speaker 2 Because in those quiet times, your brain is going to move towards that spike again.

Speaker 2 And again, you're just not going to find the same type of adrenaline hit here in the real world that you did in the world that you came from. So you're going to struggle with that.

Speaker 2 It's going to be a real struggle. And I understand it.
So please come talk to me if you're having some issues with it. But I can tell you how I coped.
And I cope by finding the game of business.

Speaker 2 And I find out that business can be like the other pursuits in my life. And ultimately, when I really look at myself, Ryan, the word pursuit comes out.

Speaker 2 Everything I've done in life has been pursuing a goal and outcome, whether it's in athletics or at the highest level, 1v1 in the fighter pilot world. But it's all about the pursuit.

Speaker 2 And it's not necessarily the end game. You know, I'm a big hunter.
I love to fish. So it's not necessarily the end game for the animal or the fish.

Speaker 2 It's the pursuit. It's the experience to get there and all the work that goes into it.
So that's the satisfaction. And I find out business plays at its highest level.

Speaker 2 It's got some of the most complexity. So I try to encourage my folks to find their place in the business world and create that mechanism for them.

Speaker 2 So it might be if you, you know, if you're inclined to be in sales and marketing, it might be working up to closing that big deal.

Speaker 2 I mean, when I've closed really big deals or sold a company, that's a pretty big adrenaline spike. I mean, you've done that before.

Speaker 2 You know what that's like when you finally go to the bank and look at the account and go, wow. I mean, that was worth all the effort.
That's amazing. So, you know, you can find it.

Speaker 2 Now, if you're having a hard time finding it in the world that you're in now, that's because, again, you don't have that compelling HDD. You didn't design the future that you want.

Speaker 2 You're not living the future that you want. You're not future-based in your decision-making.
You're doing everything in the here and now.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So,

Speaker 5 Jim, I appreciate your time so much coming on here. There's a lot of people who listen to this show who have their own events, who put on events.
And I know you have Afterburner.

Speaker 5 Could you explain what you're doing and what your organization is providing to people who have events?

Speaker 2 Yeah, for over 25 years, Afterburner has been traveling the globe.

Speaker 2 We have a proprietary framework, a performance model called Flawless Execution that we teach companies and enterprises how to align and execute in chaotic situations.

Speaker 2 So from planning to debriefing to creating strategy, this HDD thing that we've been talking about, we do that for large companies and small companies as well.

Speaker 2 Most of our clients are publicly traded enterprises. And we do everything from coaching executives to getting large groups together.
We do a lot of keynote speeches.

Speaker 2 We do a lot of team building at Afterburner all around this theme, flawless execution or the fighter pilot mindset. So

Speaker 2 yeah, if you're next meeting, you want a keynote speaker, you want to talk about performance, fighter pilot mindset, this alignment, future-based thinking, bias to action, accountability.

Speaker 2 We didn't get into nameless, rankless debriefing or truth over artificial harmony, but there's a lot of things we teach at Afterburner, and we've been doing it for a long time.

Speaker 2 We've trained almost 3 million people in 26 countries.

Speaker 2 I'm currently also the managing partner of Afterburner Capital.

Speaker 2 We have a CEO at Afterburner, and Afterburner Capital is a private equity firm where we invest in companies and use flawless execution to grow our own portfolio companies.

Speaker 2 And we use veterans as well to help in those leadership positions and roles.

Speaker 2 And if you want to get a hold of me, though, you can get a hold of me at LinkedIn under James D. Murphy, Diaz and Delta or flawless execution.
You can go to Afterburner.com.

Speaker 2 Or if you really want to create a relationship, you want to connect with me personally, ask some questions, a dialogue. I'm part of the Minect app,

Speaker 2 Minect, M-I-N-N-E-C-T. It's a red app you can download.
There's other thought leaders on there. I've got some friends that are on there.
It's a really cool app. I've just

Speaker 2 started that movement not too long ago. So you can get a hold of me at Minect as well.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's Patrick Beck David's application that he, that he put together and everything. And I think it's phenomenal.
And what I love about that platform, and I've checked it out, is

Speaker 5 you're getting, and he even says it on his show.

Speaker 5 And I think it's, it's wonderful that people can get access to individuals such as yourself with a wealth of experience because you get a very high return rate on questions answered. And I think even

Speaker 5 45 seconds of response to a question can change someone's life. So I think it's phenomenal that you're putting yourself out there like that.
I appreciate this time.

Speaker 5 I think the way that you approach things,

Speaker 5 I mean, it really, I mean, I'm sitting here becoming a fan as we're, as we're talking and, and, and love it and just appreciate it. So thank you so much.

Speaker 5 I'll have, for those listening, guys, I'll have show notes. I'll have all the links to everything

Speaker 5 that we just discussed there. And then, or you can just go to direct either way.
But I appreciate your time. I wish you nothing but the best.
And I hope we have a chance to connect again.

Speaker 2 Yes, sir. I hope so.
And good luck to all your listeners and happy hunting.

Speaker 7 Let's go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy.

Speaker 7 Hey, stand-up guy on 10 toes. Big body pull up in a range roll.
I could change the whole game when I say so. I pull it up, shut it down.
Yeah, they know. Running this game ain't a thing for me.

Speaker 7 I never switched to no change in me. The only thing changing this season, you go.

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