90. When Your Dream Dies: How Christian "Boo" Boucousis Rebuilt His Life After Losing Everything

At 21 years old, Christian "Boo" Boucousis was living his dream. After being selected for the Royal Australian Air Force's elite fighter pilot program, he was flying F/A-18 fighter jets and doing exactly what he had worked his entire life to achieve.

Then everything changed.

A diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis abruptly ended his military career, forcing him to walk away from the identity, purpose, and future he had spent years building. What followed was a journey through uncertainty, loss, reinvention, and ultimately, extraordinary growth.

In this powerful conversation, Boo shares what happens when life doesn't go according to plan—and how some of our greatest opportunities emerge from our most devastating setbacks.

Together, we explore:

✈️ What it feels like to lose a lifelong dream overnight

✈️ The emotional impact of having your identity stripped away

✈️ How to rebuild confidence when you're starting over

✈️ Why resilience is a skill anyone can learn

✈️ The surprising lessons fighter pilots use to navigate uncertainty

✈️ How to find purpose when life takes an unexpected turn

Whether you're facing a career change, a health challenge, a divorce, a loss, or simply wondering what's next, Boo's story is a reminder that your greatest chapter may begin after the one you never wanted to end.

Because sometimes the dream that falls apart is the very thing that makes room for the life you were meant to live.

#JoyOfTheHang #ChristianBooBoucousis #Resilience #PersonalGrowth #LifeAfterLoss #Reinvention #MentalStrength #Leadership #Purpose #Podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What happens when you finally achieve your dream and then lose it? Imagine spending your entire childhood focused on one goal, every decision, every sacrifice, every ounce of effort directed toward a single destination. Then one day you get there, you achieve the dream, and shortly afterward it's gone. Not because you failed, not because you quit, but because life had other plans. Most of us will experience some version of this. A career ends, a marriage changes, a diagnosis arrives, a child leaves home, a door closes that we thought would stay open forever. The question isn't whether life will force us to reinvent ourselves. The question is what happens after. Today's guest knows that journey firsthand. At just 18 years old, Christian Boo Bukosis was selected for pilot training in the Royal Australian Air Force. At 21, he achieved his dream of flying an FA-18 fighter jet solo. But after 11 years of service, a devastating diagnosis of ankylosin spindulitis ended the career after he'd spent his entire life pursuing. What followed wasn't simply a career change, it was a complete reinvention of identity, purpose, and leadership. Today, Boo helps organizations and leaders perform under pressure using lessons learned from decades of fighter pilot training, entrepreneurship, humanitarian work, and building businesses in some of the world's most challenging environments. But what fascinated me most about his story isn't the fighter jets. It's what he learned when the dream ended. Today we're talking about resilience, fear, purpose, leadership, reinvention, and the moments that shape who we become. Boo, welcome to Joy the Hang.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Thanks for having me, Sharon. I'm very excited for our conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah, me too. You're my my first fighter pilot jet, my first top in.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

I feel I feel very special then.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

I feel very special because I know how few there are. So um, thank you for being here. Um, so before fighter jets, tell me who was who was Christian? What was life like growing up in Australia?

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yeah, it was wonderful. I mean, it was very traditional. I mean, I came from a just a solid middle class family, and I live by a river, so sp spent a lot of time in the water and probably not stuff that you definitely wouldn't do as a 12 or 13 year old today, you know, exploring the banks of the river, paddling for miles and miles and miles, fishing, water skiing. We we obviously have a very beach life in Australia, so it was a lot of sailing and just just outdoors all the time, which was which was what life was like then. I I guess one thing I struggled with was school all all the way through. My elementary school years, I kind of thrived. And then in high school I dived and I didn't really understand why. Like I guess primary school is a little more flexible in the way that you're assessed. And about three years ago, uh I was diagnosed with ADHD as part of a helping my son with his diagnosis of ADHD. And I was like, I never thought I had it. I never, you know, always joked a little bit of it, but turns out that it was it was absolutely chronic. And the underlying theme of my childhood was this dream to be a fighter pilot from as early as I can remember, for the age of four or five. I just have this memory of going to a an air show and just watching these aeroplanes taxi past and fly at incredible speeds and all the noise that they made, and the pilots in the cockpit with helmets and masks, patches, the whole thing was just overwhelming. And then that just warm smell of jet fuel. I think it was a you know, this visceral experience. And at that moment, I decided I'm gonna be a fighter pilot, and I was very unwavering in that. It wasn't something I wanted to be, it wasn't even really a dream, it was a reality that I was gonna manifest. And 17 years later, I flew a fighter jet by myself for the first time, and it's like, oh wow, that's it. It's like 45 minutes and I've done it. What next? And you just gotta you just gotta keep going. So yeah, I I you know, I my entrepreneurial side probably played out a little bit when I was a kid. I started an aeroplane detailing business, washing and cleaning airplanes to get some money and flight hours. I was a qualified pilot at the age of 14. I flew whenever I could, I studied aviation, I went to airfields. Every every time I could get away to a base and hang out in a squadron, I'd go. I was just so immersed in it. By the time that I joined, I I almost felt like I was part of the system anyway. So so yeah, kind of blessed, I guess. I know a lot of people that you know really struggle with finding something that's kind of theirs. And I'm just one of those very fortunate people, and I'm grateful for it to be able to have this vision of my life and and working hard to fulfill it.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

What did it feel like the first time you got in the cockpit and flew flew solo for the first time after wanting it for all those years?

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah, funny. It's it was mixed feelings because the day I went flying solo for the first time, the weather was awful. And it was so bad that just after I took off, they closed the airfield to everyone else. So I was by myself up around the thunderstorms. You know, but you've probably been flying for 18 months already as a pilot, just in little airplanes, so you're not you're not scared, but at the same time, you're like, oh wow, this is a little bit punchier than I thought it was gonna be. Um and then it was just just amazing, you know. The airplane only had one seat. It's the first time I'd ever flown a fighter jet with a single seat in it, so it truly was just me. Normally have, you know, instructor in the back. And you're just flying through these towering cumulus clouds and cumulonimbus storm clouds, and it's quiet and peaceful. And I was clever enough, I guess, to savor the moment. I didn't really flitter it away. Yeah, I just remember that whole flight and then and then landing, and it was just you know, it was amazing. But at the same time, the Air Force just it just it's it's brilliant at incremental gains. Like by the time I'd flown a uh a Hornet, I'd probably f flown about 250, 300 missions in other airplanes, but it just looks, feels different. That's all it's just bigger and faster, but the c it's still up, down, left, right, fast and slow. So by the time you take these incremental steps, you you're very comfortable because you you know, you know, you experience uh that anxious feeling of doing something new and doing something dangerous. And I always had that, but at the same time, the Air Force trains in you to understand that feeling anxious and nervous or fearful is normal. It's it's not a bad thing. What it is, it's it's your nervous system firing up and it's allowing you to access more potential within yourself because you know a little bit I use the free climbing rock climbing analogy. You know, when you free climb a cliff, there's a a greater imperative to not fall off in the sense of adrenaline and achievement is is that much higher. So I think you know, it was yeah, it was just uh it was a special day, it was a long time coming, but at the same time, it was it was my destiny, like it was it was it I was meant to be there so that it didn't feel that unusual.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Okay, that's interesting. So you had kind of built the muscle to get yourself there anyway, and the confidence was there, and you were like, I've got the skill, I can do it. And even though you might have been a little nervous, you're like, I I know what I'm doing, so let's let's go.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

And then there's just so much preparation. Yeah. What what we value as fighter pilots is the opposite of how the world works, which is we want the minimum amount of high-intensity execution in the day where we're focused and we perform at the very best. And a human being can't do that all day. You can only do it a few hours a day. And to make sure that we optimize every second of that time, you know, we value preparation, we value visualization, we value reflection of performance, we encourage multiple perspectives on our performance. And you're really conditioned to be a sponge for, you know, we most people would probably call it criticism, having every, you know, every movement in the cockpit analyzed. But for us, it was appreciating that that's how you learn. Like that's that's that's the piece that you take away with you. So tomorrow you're a little bit better. Tomorrow you can push your comfort zone out a little bit more and just do that every day. And even once you're a qualified fighter pilot, it doesn't go away. It's such a complex thing to do. It gets it's so fast and so overwhelming, and so there's so many different missions that you fly that you're always kind of on the tip of your toes, just trying to just trying to keep within reach of everything you need to know.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Yeah. What did becoming a fighter pilot teach you about discipline, fear, and confidence?

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Well, I never had a problem with confidence. I was lucky there, and I was blessed with d determination and resilience, so I always I never let anything really get to me. I just kept going. When it comes to fear, I I guess as I said, fear is not a bad thing. Fear is just a heightened sense of self, a heightened version of of yourself. And I think the word discipline, I like to use it more interchangeably with habits. Like look people look at discipline as doing a whole bunch of stuff you don't want to do and and and sticking to this really high standard. But the the great thing about discipline is the more disciplined you are, the more habits you get. Good habits. And when something becomes a habit, it's not an effort. So you I I wouldn't when we talk about discipline in in the Air Force, we say, you know, do what you say. So if you say something, commit 100% and do it. Don't don't uh don't partially commit to things. I I I had a um one of our clients is a former US Navy squadron commander, and he said he really misses being a fighter pilot and being a squadron commander because he'd he said you'd walk through the corridor and you would say, gosh, this corridor would look nice in pastel blue, and then he'd get to work the next morning and it was pastel blue. Like that's the level of of integration you have and respect to a leader. Like it's it's such an amazing community, you know. It's just there's nothing like it, you know. There's there's there's egos, of course, but the whole organization, because it's a life and death if you get it wrong, yeah, is always committed to working together to the best of our ability to show up as the best version of myself for you, and you show up as the best version of yourself for me, and we're gonna go downtown and and absolutely kick ass.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I love that. Was there ever a moment when things went horribly wrong and you were you were fearful, or were you were was everything pretty good for 11 years?

SPEAKER_02 10:09

No, you're you're always well, I mean, stuff happens, right? I had four near near misses mid-airs, which means that you basically passed within 10 feet of another airplane without realizing it. So in those moments, you sort of go, gosh, uh, you know, for one half inch of movement on the stick, me and that other pilot wouldn't be here anymore. So you appreciate life like you really appreciate that you're that you're there. There's probably just this underlying fear that because you're only you know, from when you start to when you qualify as a fighter pilot two two and a half years, you're you can only fail two missions. That's it. And the third one, you're out. So there's a fear of losing the dream a little bit. And because I was a really happy person, and because I am resilient, like sometimes my instructors thought I wasn't taking it seriously enough. And there was one day where they sort of said, Look, they brought me in and they said, Hey, if you don't take this seriously, you're not gonna get through. And I'm like, I am taking it seriously, but I can be happy and serious at the same time. I didn't say this at the time, of course. But but I was just thinking, like, what's wrong with coming up the stairs and saying hi to everyone in the morning? And I'm still like that. I walk the streets, any person I pass, hey, how you doing? Most people ignore me. But you know, I think it's important. You know, it's there's nothing wrong with bringing a bit of happiness to the world.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Couldn't agree more. So we're gonna shift gears a little bit. After 11 years of service, you received a diagnosis that ended your military career. Tell us about that moment.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yeah, so being a fighter pilot is a can be a painful profession because you're always pulling high G, and G is the force of gravity. So when you fly and fight the jet, you're constantly under high G. So your body's weighing anywhere between 1200 to 2,000 pounds. So you're getting a lot of compression. So I I had a lot of pain during my career, which I thought was just everyone has pain, but it just got progressively worse. I could barely walk. It took me 30 minutes to get out of bed in the morning, and I flew one mission and I was looking out to my left, and my head got stuck. There was something mechanical in my neck, and I just had to fly the jet back looking sideways. And and I got some therapy and some blood tests, and anyway, I was diagnosed with uh a room, it's a rheumatic condition. It's also called bamboo spine. And what happens is the bones in your spine just slowly start to fuse together, and it converts all of the soft tissue into bone. And yeah, so that was it. Like 11 years I so when I got the diagnosis, it was a relief in some sense, because now I knew why I was hurt all the time. So it wasn't I I guess some people have this out of the blue, that's it, your job's over. Mine was like a pathway, and this condition is chronic. It's it's the same sort of class as MS, Crohn's disease, all these conditions, immunodies, immunoconditions. So I had a little bit of time to prepare for it. Uh, and I did a non-flying job for just under a year. And I really, if I wasn't a fighter pilot, I didn't want to be a pilot. Like that's I didn't just want to be a pilot. It was just fighter pilot or nothing. And I was trying to think what might be like that in life. And contrary to what a lot of people believe, being a fighter pilot isn't doing what you're told. It's the opposite. You you you want to have the the the freedom and the cognitive bandwidth to be able to operate in a very dynamic environment. So I felt, well, I I can't really do a job where I have to follow the rules too much or do what I'm told. Which led me down the route to become a business founder. And at the time, it was after the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and I thought about starting a business in Australia, and I felt, you know what, that's tough. Like a lot of lot of businesses already here, a lot of very qualified people. I'm just a high school graduate that can fly a fighter jet. That's my only skill. So I I bought a book, you know, my first business for dummies, those, you know, for dummies books. It had just come out. And it said, if you're going to start a new business, make sure you go somewhere where supply will never meet demand, because that way, if you don't know what you're doing, you'll still be successful. And back when I was in the Air Force, I served in the United Kingdom for three years, and I met uh a guy over there who was in the British Army. And he and I got on really well. We said, hey, one day let's start a business, and we did. We flew to Afghanistan and started a what was initially a security company that morphed into a humanitarian company. And and our company just did the work that the UN felt was just a bit too dangerous for them. Uh so it was uh, you know, migration of refugees, building schools, clinics, monitoring projects. It was just a mixed bag. It was it was pretty much if if you can think of something that needed doing, we did it. We we set up an ambulance service, we uh built the first mortuary in Afghanistan. We did a lot of stuff and it was amazing. It was incredible. I we I lived in Afghanistan for three years, then relocated to Dubai and then back to Australia. And and when we sold it, it was you know nearly 6,000 people. It was a big company.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Wow. I guess so. I I mean, I I have to ask, most people would never choose Afghanistan to start a business. Why did you choose Afghanistan? You just saw a need, or why did you path of least resistance?

SPEAKER_02 14:59

You know, I I think we put ourselves in safe situations and then complain the whole time as why is my career progression so slow? Why aren't I making money? You know, Afghanistan was a blank canvas, and and it meant that you know, everything inside the Western world is a construct of of law, systems, biases, beliefs. And when you go to Afghanistan, there's no system, there's no rigidity, there's nothing to conform to. It's just let's go. I I had a book of legislation in Afghanistan, only had about six pages of law in it, the rest were blank pages.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

But I'm just curious though, but before we move on, can can you just take me back though? Because I'm like, you're in Australia and you're thinking, where in the world can I start over and start something? And how is it? Did you start researching on the internet or how did you go about identifying that Afghanistan would be would offer the best possibilities for you for success?

SPEAKER_02 15:51

You know, I I just keep things simple. I just keep, you know, if if it's common sense at a macro level, the the details will work itself out. So you you know, I knew from being in the military what had happened in Afghanistan and what had happened in Iraq. Right. And we knew that there were construction programs and there was a whole bunch going on. Like we knew, we knew it was very active, a lot of donor money coming in there. But again, but what we were specifically going to do, we weren't 100% sure. And I think that's a good way to go into a business. I think a lot of people, and why nine out of ten businesses fail, is they have a great idea that's great to them, but not to other people. So my philosophy in business is you don't really have a product in cert or service, you're just helpful. So you you need to f ask people how they, you know, what's what's their aspiration, what's getting in the way. How can I help you? And then and then help. And what happened now in our company is because we were very moral and ethical in the way that we conducted business, was over time we just created this reputation of just getting things done in a very honest way, caring about our people, which was important to the organizations. So we we possessed the values that the United Nations had, which made it easy for them to engage us. I I wish it was like some deep thinking, Sharon. I really do. But it was what's the simplest way we can start a business and help people?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

And well no, it makes sense to me now because I I I knew that you were in the military. Obviously, we talked about that, and I it it would make sense to me now that you saw certain things in Afghanistan and therefore wanted to go over there and help and find a way to help the people there. It totally makes sense. So the connection now the connection works. So so anyway, so you go over there, you pick an area of Afghanistan, and then you just grassroots start building a company.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yeah, a lot of coffee, a lot of going to bars, a lot of just all of these companies have platforms where they're telling you that this, you know, these are the this is how much money we have this year, and this is the sort of projects we want to do. And it's such a small place. You know, Afghanistan's a big country, but the community of people that were there to help rebuild it was quite small. So within six to twelve months, we probably knew half half of the people in Afghanistan. And it was a very social environment. You know, it was behind sort of 20-foot-high walls, was a very normal life, and people wanted to connect at a human level. So you would just be out having lunch or out, you you would everyone would say hello to each other if you're a westerner, and everyone was there to help. So you could just have really open and honest conversations about things.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Was there a language barrier at all?

SPEAKER_02 18:25

No, we I mean, I spoke a bit of farsi and dari after a while, but we always had fixes with us. So we we had a probably a headquarters team of about 12 Afghanis. When we first got there, we just lived in a little hotel and just ate potatoes, coriander, and tomato for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Um we didn't know anyone. And then gradually we just, you know, cu just kept a really curious view of things and just kept putting ourselves out there until it landed. And then once it landed, you know, eight uh eighteen months to two years in, it really fired up.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, for other entrepreneurs who might be listening, what kind of capital would it take to do something like this? Were you none?

SPEAKER_02 19:04

You can't, it's impossible to raise money. It was all bootlegged. So it was just I mean, our first contract was a six million dollar contract, so that was helpful. And then we just kept reinvesting. And we always made sure that we got paid the first payment up front. Uh we were always positively cash flowed, which was easy to do because everyone knew you couldn't you couldn't borrow money, you couldn't get a you couldn't raise capital, like it just had to be done at a really raw human level. We would get paid with trucks that would back up in the front yard and the the the truck would be full of hundred dollar bills. So and I and I think also something that's really important is business in business is you just have to do things that not many people are doing. And if you really if people really need what you what you have, then you don't need to raise capital. And I've never raised capital in 21 years of business. I've always started companies and products that people want to pay for and then cash flow the growth of the business.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

It's a good way to do it. What did living and working in Afghanistan teach you about people?

SPEAKER_02 20:06

We're all the same. You know, we we create stories about people, you know, and and we're all we behave in in the way that aligns with our beliefs, and our beliefs are are driven by our biases. So we really are a product of who we are, not who we want to be. You know, and and you just in Afghanistan, you would see people having dinner at night in their apartment and the wall would be blown out, there'd be a sheet over there and it'd be sort of 10 degrees, and there's laughing and there's joy, there's there's not a lot of misery. I mean, sometimes when you're driving around and you know, that whole 20-year period really disenfranchised young men. And and if if as you were driving through the streets, you could see sort of aged 18 to 30 that there was a there was a bit of a darkness there because all of these foreigners are in here doing all the work. And I sort of understood that, like, and why it's important not to disenfranchise people. I mean, we this can get very philosophical, you can go back to you know empires and civilizations. But if you think about it, you know, humans, we aren't probably naturally civil, but we we are civil when it suits us. That civility can break down very quickly and and very easily. I mean, if you look at what's going on in Israel, Ukraine, Russia, I mean, Ukraine and Russia is basically the same people, you know, it's they're literally brothers and sisters. Yet, because this there's a psychopath who runs the show, the it amazes me that so few people who are psychopathic can drive entire populations to behave in a way that is not a positive for humanity. Yeah, World War II, you look at Hitler, Mussolini, you you look at the Roman Empire. There was just, you know, there's I I was a student of medieval history, and when you look at all the kings of England, there was just the mad king, the good king, the and they set the tone for for an entire generation, just based on their position of authority. And their personality. And I think when things are good and everyone's earning money and everyone's happy, sort of that which is reflected in the post-World War II era, you know, everyone just keeps the status quo. But in a world of scarcity, which we are now, people tend to fall back into their tribal kind of programming. And finding middle ground is very hard. I I read an amazing book called The Fourth Turning, and it talks about you know, every fourth generation, there's a turning and a reset back to the first generation. So the the current we're currently in the fourth turning of the World War post-World War II generation. So the first generation is the is the is the innovators, the second are the growers, the third sustain it, and the fourth blow it. And there's a lot of history of this in family businesses as well. And I feel like the reset that's coming, and I feel like it's coming for sure, is is going to be painful, but I think it will also reconnect us and and and help us understand that humanity is frail. Anyone can be a winner or a loser. It just depends on the day. My grandmother passed away last year. She was 99 years of age. So she lived during World War II. She was in her twenties. She grew up post-World War II. She moved from the United Kingdom to Australia. And in her last sort of five uh 10 years, you know, she was sort of she just said, What's going on with the world? She's like, I just don't understand it. She said, Just no one cares anymore. There's no sense of community. Like people are mean. Uh and she was the kindest, gentlest, most generous human you could ever imagine. She was so generous that she was 98 and someone was trying to steal her car at the shopping center at the supermarket. And rather than panic, she just walked straight up to this thief and said, You don't need to do this. You don't need to do this. You're better than this. And ended up sitting in the car with him for an hour and talking amount of a life of crime. Wow. You know, that's just not normal. So I feel her spirit of generosity, and I'm nowhere near where she is with it. Understand that if someone cuts you off on traffic, they're not an idiot, they're just not aware, they're just busy, they're they're distracted, their mind is somewhere else, they're just being human and they just made a human mistake. Yeah. You know, and I think we kind of need to reconnect with that a little bit. I think we're we're moving further apart. You know, technology's slowly eroding the fabric of connection. And you know, we need to be, and I tell this to leaders that I work with is the human connection piece. You have to be intentional about now. It's not going to just happen. You've got to craft the time and don't tell people what to do. Don't talk about work. Just ask them questions, just be kind.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah, no, I appreciate that you you shared that message because that's why I wanted to start this podcast, because I was feeling the same way. And I started doing a lot of research, and I actually became a health and wellness coach a couple of years ago, and noticed out of the you know, eight key pillars of our health, a big one is having good social connections, and it's one that's really lacking. I was reading work by a Dr. Vivek Murphy, who's a former U.S. surgeon general and wrote a book called Together. Anyway, he discovered that isolation is an epidemic in our country. And that just blew my mind. I mean, think about we can FaceTime anybody night or day, we can get on our little tablets and talk to anybody at any time. I can talk to you in another part of the country and stay connected. So it really was like what is happening at a deeper level that we're feeling so alone and lonely.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

You know, we we process 11 million bits of information a second in the brain and we control somewhere between 10 and 40. You know, we we are subconscious beings, you know, we are we are meant to be around other people, and there are so many cues that you get when you're physically present that are invisible through Zoom. You know, you you and I would feel much more connected in our conversation if we were sitting on on the on the couch relative to speaking through through Zoom, because this is impersonal. I have a camera, a computer, and you know and there's also a fountain look at this emerging research that humans are engineered to interpret a three-dimensional world. We're we're not meant to function in two dimensions, uh, and even that creates a limitation in in the way in which we process and comprehend information and solve problems. Uh, and and you that's what's manifesting in the world on social media. We're we're we're we have biases that we're constantly fed and reinforced rather than asking ourselves, is what I believe believe is actually true, or am I just making it true because it's what I believe? So I've lived all over the world. I've lived in Australia, I've lived in the United Kingdom, I've lived in Afghanistan, Dubai, Papua New Guinea, the United States. You know, you I love living in the United States. Every single day, I don't have a problem here with people. They're kind, you know, maybe it's a park city, Utah thing, I don't know. It is a park city, Utah thing because it wasn't like this in Miami when I lived there. But but you know, there's there is a kindness and a humility here in this country. And sometimes the megaphones kind of shout over the top of that, you know, the media, the the leaders of both sides of the house. And I it's not an American thing, it's every country's got this problem right now. You know, we're just polarizing to this silly construct of the left and the right. I mean, if you think about that in itself, left and right, like how ridiculous. It's just another human construct made to create more conflict. We should be as one.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

And and honor our different perspectives and respect that we're we're allowed to have different ideas because we grew up differently, but we should all be committed to being better together.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Right. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That's yeah, I couldn't agree more. So let's go back to Afghanistan. What you described that experience, rather, as your real MBA. What lessons did you learn that no classroom could ever teach?

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Everything, everything from negotiation, cash flow, management, people leadership, dealing with cr a crisis. You know, one one of our or a number of our people were killed in Afghanistan due to terrorist attacks. So you you have to deal with that. You have to, you know, they they live all over the world. So we'd have to fly into the country and be with their families. We started up a program to to refurbish secondhand laptops for the children at the Kabul Children's Hospital that had suffered a severe injury from a landmines. You know, it was just raw. It was so human and raw that it was real. Like I and I missed it when I left. I really struggled adapting back into the first world where you know, one night I just went into this rage as I sat listening to these finance guys talking about the colour of their car seats on their BMWs. And the the day before I'd been in a hospital with a four-year-old child that had all four of their limbs blown off. You know, and it and it's just yeah, I have this philosophy that if you have nothing to worry about, you worry about everything. You know, whereas in Afghanistan, they were just worried about food, fire, shelter, and water. Like they just were back to basics, and anything else on top of that was a happy bonus, you know. So it taught me a lot about humanity. It taught me a lot about, you know, one day we were driving during what they called the May Day riots. There was an accident, a US military logistics truck lost its brakes and came down a hill and killed a whole bunch of people in a car accident, and it just triggered off the whole city. And we were driving around trying to get to one of our clients' homes, and we came around a corner, and there's just thousands of people in a rage running down the street, and the police are running away from them as well. And we reversed the car, and in Afghanistan, they have these big deep drains for the snow, and our driver backed into a drain, so the car was basically pointing up towards the sky. And we thought in that moment, we're done, like this is this is it. But, you know, 10, 20 seconds later, uh a man from the house that we were in front of just grabbed us and pulled us inside and kept us, you know, in those mobs, they're not looking for trouble, they're not trying to find people to hurt. But if you're in a way, you're gonna get steamrolled. And you know, took us in, we spent a few hours in in his house, and uh Sahi, our interpreter, was was helping us have a conversation, and it was just, you know, people are good, you know, people are good, but the narrative of the world is not good. But but we as individuals and as a community are good are good people, humanity is fundamentally good. Yeah, that message is just getting lost in the hate. You know, I I read Johan Hari's uh book, Stolen Focus, and he talks about the the reason a lot of people rant and and post about hate on social media is they get you know 28% more views if the the word hate is a strong trending word in the algorithm. So he so that so you think of you know social media being around for almost 20 years, just prioritizing the word hate. Like clearly what what's gonna happen? People are gonna become gradually more hateful towards others because that's what they keep getting fed.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

So, how do we change the narrative? How do we how do we shift that?

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Well, it's like everything, isn't it? It's like climate change, it's like littering on the street. It's you you change. Yeah, we I have a program with my company Afterburner where we help executives become more effective, and they're like, Well, there's no point me getting more effective because it's my boss or it's this other person that's the problem. And I'm like, no, you're the you're the agent of change. It's it's you. You are you think of the Nelson Mandelas of the world, you know, the Dalai Lamis. The there are individuals that are a force for good and hope, as much as there's individuals that are a force for hate and vengeance.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

So the more the more hope and positivity we put out on social media, the more the algorithm will change, you think?

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Yeah, well, it's a good call, probably. It doesn't care, right? It it doesn't it it's agnostic, but yeah, you know, no no one goes to a car race to watch the cars race, they go to see the wreck.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, same boxing match, same thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Yeah, yeah. You don't go to the movies to watch a movie about people that stop a disaster. You you go there to see the superheroes that save the day. So so we kind of you know have this primal programming where we we just we're just a little bit negative in the way that we process information and we we tend to you know to latch onto the hate and be afraid is why everyone's indoors now. Well, it's why we don't have people walking the streets all the time. It's why we're you know, when I was a kid, you'd be down the park every weekend with neighbors, with friends, with family, but we're also afraid that fear is a much stronger motivator than aspiration, that you know, it just it just the negativity reinforces the bias that we have that it's safer to be negative and it's safer to be afraid. Because if I'm afraid and I'm indoors, I'm not gonna get hurt, you know. I have a four-year-old son, and we really try hard to get him hurt, if that makes sense. We don't push him in front of a car or anything like that, but you know, we we we make him climb up a tree, and if he falls out and hurts himself, it's okay. Because what we want him to understand is that getting hurt is just a moment, it's just a moment, and you will always get better. You always get better. And and I think once you because for a child, they they're just in the moment, right? That what I am now is permanence, that's why I'm having a tantrum, that's why I'm emotionally responding because I'm in this moment and I hate it. So so for um, and I guess as a fighter pilot, you learn this idea of if then. So if this happens, then what? And I want to sort of help Josho understand that if you get hurt, then you get better. Yeah. And we've seen it over time as he gets he's doing jujitsu and he's he's starting to get more comfortable. We're not talking great deals of pain here, we're talking about you know, falling over while you're playing soccer and bumping your knee, you know. It's like it's like, hey dude, that's that's normal. And as you know, you you look at the the fundamental drive, like after World War II, everyone said we don't want to do that again. You know, I don't want my kids ever to experience that. So we husband and baby our children generation to generation. We we build an environment and a business model that's engineered towards making people's lives easier and more comfortable. So what happens is your your your resilience gradually reduces because you're used to being safe and comfortable all the time. Right. So when we talk about pressure and talk about performance under pressure, a lot of what people see as pressure is not pressure. It's not a big deal. Yes. But because we because we haven't had a big deal for a while, we we we we don't know how resilient we are. What I saw in Afghanistan, though, which gives me hope, is I call it normalization theory. A human being will normalize to whatever their environment is and still be happy and sad. You can have nothing and still be happy and sad, or you can have everything and still be happy and sad. And on balance, I would say the people in Afghanistan, not now, not with the Taliban, different story, but at the time we were there, there was a genuine hope and optimism and a lot of happiness that was never in the news.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Yeah. And to your point, I my childhood I had very little, and in my adulthood, I am blessed to have have much more. And you know, I would say the same. It wasn't when I had less, I wasn't less happy. I was a very happy, had a happy childhood, even though I mean I didn't know any better, right? And now that I have more, I still have days when I fall back into the, you know, I'm not happy, and there's no reason for me to not not be happy. So yeah, it it's not based on what you have for sure. It's an inner feeling. So and I think the point about raising children, I've raised two. So mine are 24 and 29. And I had the same approach in that, you know, you've got to allow your children to make mistakes. If they forget to bring their homework to school, you can't rush home and get it for them. You they've got to deal with the consequences and learn that it's not the end of the world, you know, that they will figure it out and and work with the teacher and whatever amends need to be made will be made. And you know, they're gonna ride a bike for the first time and they're gonna fall. And you know, it's you're right. They've got to get back up and get back on the bike, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:58

So we we forget that as adults. We we kind of I mean, if you're brought up that way as a child, you're gonna be that way as an adult. You're you're you're you're not gonna you're not gonna look stand up for yourself, you're not gonna try new things, you know, you're not going to and and one of the biggest complaints we have in businesses that we work with is they say there's never a consequence for things not going well. Like there's no consequence. We did just instead of embracing the the standards of the 50s and 60s, we've embraced the mediocrity of of a homogenous world. And I think there's some some truth to that. You know, I I think we let too many things slide. And and when you let things slide, things start to break.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

I agree with that. You say leadership is a missing piece of the performance puzzle. Why?

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Well, leadership is everything. I mean, and you've got to look at first of all, define leadership to me. Leadership is taking people into the unknown and making a commitment to grow them along the way. You know, leadership is not management, leadership is not shuffling paper and and and telling people to meet a standard. Leadership is fundamentally uncertain because to lead to somewhere, the gap between some where we are and where we're going doesn't exist. It's it's coming. Which means that it is full of missteps and mistakes and learnings and disappointment and joy. So leadership at its core starts with personal leadership. You cannot lead people if you do not lead yourself, if if you don't, if you don't tidy up, if you don't eat well, look after your health, if you're not humble, if you don't offer up acts of service, then you're not gonna be switching that on when you're a leader. The way in which you lead is the way in which you lead yourself. So the first step of leadership is personal leadership. And that to me is taking yourself into the unknown and growing yourself along the way. And if you do that, then you don't have to worry about everyone else because they're just watching what you're doing and they're gonna do the same thing. I mean, that is what that's what the entire Air Force is built on. You you take young men and women off the streets, kids, with no skills at all. You put them into a machine where they're going to be flying very fast, where anything can go wrong, and you can kill yourself through a moment of inattention, and they take that raw clay and build a beautiful pottery vase out of it. So it's doable, but the key is just these little it's the ability to look at life not through the lens of this year, next year, and the year after, but looking at life as through the lens of today and tomorrow, today, tomorrow, and creating what I call a missionizing your life, like creating what is today's mission? Like what needs to be delivered? Like at the moment, I mean what must be my twelfth editorial round with my publisher, the final one. So my mission yesterday is to get to the halfway point, page 148, and my mission today is to finish it and finish proofing a book in two days. And because everything else, my phone is off, my team can't talk to me, that is my mission. I'll get it done. You know, that process can take some people two weeks. Yeah, can take some people forever, they just never get it done.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

But to me, it's I really value my time. I value it in on a second by second basis. And and I get antsy if I feel like I'm doing something that's not delivering something. Um and people talk about, well, you need to be an intentional life, and then other people say, Well, you can't be intentional, you've got to be in the moment. And you've got to be both. You you've you've got to know, you know, those plasma balls at the museum, the big glass things that have the electricity in them? Yeah. When I when I look at what neural energy is and the brain works and what focus is, I I I had that ball pop in my mind once when I went to the museum with one of my other son in Australia. And when you put all your fingers on that glass ball, the electricity is very weak and insipid and it bounces around everywhere. But you put one finger on that ball and you get this very powerful single spark of electricity that goes to your finger. And that's what intention is for the brain. When you create that level of this is the one thing I'm going to achieve by lunchtime, then the electricity just slowly starts to mean the brain is insane. Like you think of, you know, at the age of 51, all the stuff I've remembered over 51 years, all the stuff I'm still learning, and somehow it's all in there. But to get it out, you you've got to create this singular point of focus. And I would challenge that most humans don't do that. That's just not how they think. They just exist day to day, they don't bring awareness to their day.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

I'm jealous. I'm jealous of you because at the age of 51, you're talking about all the things you've remembered. At the age of 60, I'm talking about all the things I've forgotten.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Well, you're probably forgetting the stuff that wasn't important. So you're just valuing maybe, maybe 55 is when you it finally fills up. Don't get me wrong, like, yeah, I've forgotten a lot, but well, I think what I've forgotten is not that important, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

I know. I just am like, you know, sometimes I'll look back at, you know, I'll see a high school post or something, and I'm like, I just don't even remember that. How do how are people still remembering things that happened 40, 50 years ago anyway?

SPEAKER_02 40:59

But you're not meant to. That's the thing, right? We have social media which just keeps us constantly connected to acquaintances and people in our life that we're not meant to be be in touch with anymore. We're meant to move on, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Keep moving forward, right? Just keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Yeah, but but you just you just get bogged down. You know, I was telling my wife this, I'm like, I was asking her the question. I'm like, how can you spend so much time connecting with people that you we never spend any real time with?

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

Um, but it goes back to that again, those primal instincts of of recognition. And and and I guess when someone sends you a message or comments on your post, you're like, oh, look, someone cares, someone's interested. I don't know. Technology is definitely a bit of a nightmare for humanity, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

It has its uses, but I agree. I mean, it has its pros and cons for sure. So tell me about Afterburner. What's that's your new company? How did that come about?

SPEAKER_02 41:51

I bought it off the founder, Jim Murphy, a few years ago. It's a it's a company that takes fighter pilot thinking and then brings it into the real world. And we've worked with nearly two and a half million leaders, almost 4,000 companies over the last 30 years. This year's our 30th anniversary. And I just, well, two things. One, it's my life. It's exactly what I did in my life. I was a fighter pilot, then I was in business. And two, it just works. Like you see people that listen to what we say, that practice what we preach, and then eventually for them to take on the cognitive model because it takes the flying part away from the fighter pilot. That's not the important bit. What gets reprogrammed as a fighter pilot is your entire cognitive model. I I would love to fMRI a fighter pilot's brain. I think the way it's structured and works is very different to non-fighter pilots. And the the cognitive model is is what you know neuroscientists and psychologists call iterative thinking, which is effectively, you know, anything you think and do, you can iterate tomorrow. You can improve upon it. So that's that's to me, it's like I didn't I've never reinvented myself. I've just slowly evolved into the version I need to be. And you're never and you're never quite there. You know, you're there's always something else you can be. There's a kinder version of yourself, a more present version of yourself, a more giving version of yourself, you know. It's always the good attributes that you never have time for. Yeah, so I I try and bring awareness to that, I think. And as a fighter pilot, you know, for example, if you're in a bad relationship, you know it's a bad relationship, you want to have the conversation, you know. And I've been in relationships where the other person doesn't want to do that, they just want to maintain the status quo. And it's not that's not healthy. That's and what I've learned through life now that I've you know found my life partner is a growth-minded person needs to be in a growth-minded relationship. If you're with someone that just can't grow as a person and they are who they are, they hang out with all their old schoolmates and they can't move on, you're you're just gonna grow apart because one person's gonna grow into another version of their of themselves and the other person's not. And and those two people are gonna be too different to live together. That they're diff they're they're now different. They were they were the same and connected here, but now through the embracing of curiosity and growth, this person has outgrown the other. And I think what happens is so I I had two of those relationships that I moved on from. At the time it was hard because I didn't know what was going on and it was messier than it needed to be. And then when I sort of had someone explain that whole growth thing to me, it made sense. So the second time, the la the third time round was like, right, right, this is I'm gonna grow, you gotta grow too, or let's not even bother with this.

unknown 44:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

And and we both committed to that. It's been great.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

That's wonderful. And that's good advice for people. And it's good for people to hear because a lot of people will go through divorce and just understanding that it's not all it's not always that someone did something wrong. Oftentimes we just grow apart, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:34

Yeah, and what's ironic about divorce is it it forces the person that wasn't growing to grow and then all of a sudden afterwards people are like, oh, maybe they weren't that bad after all. Like there's a lot of post-divorce regret, I think. Because of the complexity it brings to your life, obviously. But equally, you know, I think that a lot of people look back and say, gosh, we probably could have worked on that together. And I and we do that a lot more now, obviously. I don't know whether the divorce rates got better or worse, I don't know. But you know, certainly not a lot of people that are in couples therapy.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Oh, that's good. So you developed the G I D get it done method. How did that, or mindset, I guess, how did that originate?

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Well, you know, when I'm with my wife when we first met, you know, she would notice me mumble G I D. Like I'd walk in the house, there'd be a sock, or I'd walk in, the shoes would be, you know, and I'd just go G I D, G I D. And it's like, what is this G I D thing that you're saying? I'm just like, I'll just get it done, get it done. You know what I mean? Like something needs to be done, just do it. Just step into it. Don't think about it. Don't just certain things just need to be get to to you know, the world tends towards entropy, so we're always tending towards chaos. So you you if you like to be in a non-chaotic environment, you've got to intentionally do it. So the whole mindset really boils down to how do we fulfill intention? And we fulfill intention through our actions and behaviors. So the method is set the intention, daily check in with your progress and ask yourself, like, where really am I now relative to where I want to go? And that's really important because there's a couple of strong cognitive biases called the planning fallacy and the optimism bias, where we often underestimate how hard things are. So, what what you start to get really good at is you start to moderate expectations day to day. If you if you think in life, you know, what why are people unhappy? Well, someone's not meeting their ex what they expect them to be doing. It's an unmet expectation. So often in you know, in life and in success, it's not what you're doing, it's that your expectations not set correctly for where you are. So you and and again, the you know, every single day in the in the in the training system of a fighter pilot, the expectation's just a little bit higher, but you take the learnings from yesterday to fill that gap, apply them, and then do it again. That's so so that's the uh curiosity part. So the intention first, the reality second, the curiosity as to why I'm not closing the gap, and then identifying two or three things that you can do. Don't don't put off work, don't ideate, don't do some more thinking, but just two things first thing in the morning you can do to just close off what you didn't where you didn't get to today. So that's what iteration is, right? So iterate Monday by reflecting Monday afternoon and applying the iteration first thing Tuesday morning.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

I like that. I like that. So you can apply that same thing to marriage and divorce or relationships in general. You want to learn from mistakes you made yesterday, right? And keep building on that. So whatever you end in your first two marriages, now you can look back and reflect and say, okay, uh this is what I want to create in my third marriage, correct?

SPEAKER_02 47:32

And also just on the way through life, like if sometimes you just have to say, This isn't this doesn't suit me. This is I'm I'm not in this season of my life anymore. This is you know, I I always have this saying which is you know, you've got to be careful when you save someone who's drowning because they might take you down with them. And we're taught that at school when we do our life savings. Everyone in Australia gets trained as a lifesaver at school, and you do these, you know, drills where you go out to someone who's drowning and their job is to try and pull you under, and you've got to kick them away. And for some reason, that just always stuck with me. And I've I've all I've applied it to people. I'm like, this person is drowning, and I'm they're gonna take me down with them. I've got to kick and and keep swimming. And and I think that's that's important in in life because you know, it's your life, and the life you live is your responsibility, no one's gonna give it to you, and it therefore behooves you to try and live a life where look, not everyone's like this, I guess. Maybe if this is a high performing thing, but where you're you're just constantly growing and moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Well, not everybody's like that, but I think you know it is important that we all take a minute to reflect on our own role in whatever happens too, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:36

And that's the important thing about the mindset, it's not iterating someone else, it's yourself. You you you can you can only this is the only thing in life you can control, right? Is you, yeah, and so that's what you invest in.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

So if someone feels stuck right now, what's the first thing they need to do?

SPEAKER_02 48:49

They need to ask themselves, what's the point? Like I'm stuck, so I'm in a pothole, but where's the road going? Because if you don't know where the road's going, you're just gonna sit in a pothole, you don't know which dish which way to go. So so the first thing is, you know, and I think there's nothing wrong with thinking big, like I want to be a rock star. Okay. Now that might not be where you end up, but you might end up in a band with some friends, what whatever, right? So the the the first thing you you do is is you connect with something that means something to you. It doesn't need to be meaningful. Meaningful is like an external version of meaning, it needs to be meaningful to you, and that may be that you want to be the most available parent and coach every team and do that. That is the meaning in your life. The work is the enabler. So you don't you don't have to have meaning at work. Like, don't I've I've worked in very meaningful jobs, and I'll tell you right now, most of the time it just feels like work, even though it has meaning. It's not a get out of jail free card because you're highly motivated to be a fighter pilot or a business owner. It's still problems, it's still work. So the meaning part is is the bit where you fill your bucket up again. So that's that's the key, right? Do something meaningful, preserve that time, and over time you'll start to you you can get a full day's work done in two hours if you focused, okay? It's been proven hundreds of times, whether you want to call it deep work or flow state. You don't need to be at work for a whole day. The reason you're at work the whole day is because nothing's getting done. But if you actually get it done, and and that's the key here with the intentional leadership mindset, is if you set three, I'm gonna get this finished today, I'm not gonna get started. I'm not doing a to-do list, I'm doing an achieve list. I'm gonna achieve this, I'm gonna achieve this, I'm gonna achieve this. Before I do it, I'm gonna go to my boss and go, hey boss, here's the three things I want to get done today. Just want to make sure that aligns with your expectation. Yes, it does. Go there lunchtime. Here's the three things you want. Boom, boom, boom. People don't talk like that. That's not how business works. People just hang around and wait and have their face there, and then they just get pushed around, pillar to post, reacting to the world, not owning it and delivering. There will be people inside organizations that are very good at that, and people wonder, you know, why has Sharon left work early today? Sharon's never here. And the boss has got nothing to say because Sharon's delivering three times more than everyone else. Right. Because Sharon is an intentional, objective-driven human being.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

My boss has always said that about me.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Thank you for bringing that up.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

I had a feeling.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

You had an epiphany listening to a keynote speaker that changed your life. Can you tell me what happened?

SPEAKER_02 51:23

Yeah. So I just finished building a hotel and I went to an event where someone wearing a flight suit, a friend of mine, was speaking for this company called Afterburner. And I thought it was a bit cheesy, flight suits talking about business. But when I went and watched the keynote, I just my head exploded because it was the fighter pilot world mapped across. It was a big insurance company that had the event. And when those two worlds collided, I just saw myself up on stage and I went, I want to be part of this message. So the universe being what it is, provided because that individual who'd been doing it for 10 years just so happened to have decided to go back into the Air Force, didn't want to do it anymore. So I I took over the license for Australia and Asia. And then three years ago, I bought the whole company. That was the epiphany. And then I went to church a couple of months ago, and the pastor came up to me who I'd never met, was a friend's church, and said to me, You're a boo. And I'm like, Yeah, how do you know my name? And he said, You know, the Lord has a plan for you. You have a platform to help people. And I'm like, Yeah. And he goes, Well, what you do is important. The world needs this, and just keep going because God sees the bigger plan. And I was like, Wow, that was I felt it, you know, like buzzed. So for me, well, that certainly gets me out of a rut, let me tell you. Is you know, I think I think what we do in this organization is good work, it helps good people become great leaders to offset some of the people that get into leadership roles because they're just good at manipulation and playing the game.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

That's amazing. I I love that story. So, how did the pastor know about you? How did he know who you were? Do you know? Through still wow, through the man upstairs.

SPEAKER_02 52:53

Yeah, through the boss.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

That's amazing. It just gave me chills when you told that story. Yeah, that's incredible. So, what does purpose mean to you today?

SPEAKER_02 53:01

Well, I this word purpose is misinterpreted, I think. You replace the word purpose with purposeful, all right. So when you look at doing purposeful things, you eventually find your purpose. So, what's what's something purposeful? Well, opening a door for someone is purposeful because the purpose of that is to show deference to another human being. That's a very purposeful act, just something simple like that. Be purposeful with your time, with your children, with your family, with your wife, with your husband. Because when you try and find this big purpose, it doesn't you'll never find it because it doesn't really exist. You know, I it wasn't my purpose to become a fighter pilot, it was my dream. It it was it was different. And and we struggle with purpose because we don't do purposeful things, we just do things. We we just do stuff. You know, I I in the Air Force had a habit of when I made a coffee, I just made a coffee for the boss and I put it on his table every morning. And some people would look at that as being a suck-up, but to me, I was just respecting that he's a busy dude. I'm at the coffee machine, uh it's no skin off my nose, and maybe that just helps perk him up in the morning to make his day a little bit easier. Yeah, I I see so many people fighting leaders. By the way, I respected this man enormously, he was a good leader, and he because he demonstrated through his actions that he cared for his team, that he deferred to the team, that he had no ego tied up in his role. So, you know, it's very easy to have acts of kindness derided by other people. Forget about it. Like honestly, yeah, again, I've been blessed in life. I just don't care what other people think about me. Could not care less. Never have. As a teenager, you name it, being bullied, whatever, dude. You know, I just it's liberating when you just do the right thing and don't worry about what other people say.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

I like that. And but I think, you know, myself included in there, it's on it's on several podcasts where people are talking about how do we find our purpose, right? How do we find our purpose in like and you're saying don't worry about your purpose, be purposeful.

SPEAKER_02 55:03

Yeah, purpose finds you. That's that's what it does. You know, I I I think that's the narrative. Like, just let it find you. It it will. And it will, it's like, you know, when you start a company and you have nothing and then it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars years later, like that's not purpose. That's not you finding it, it's finding you. Like you you you can't build a business like that going out and looking for it. You know, so so this the the key is give without an expectation of receipt, and then the universe provides. And it's not an easy role, it's not an easy job. It's like very wealthy people who are very disciplined often have children that are the opposite and have dysfunctional relationships. You you you can't tell someone to be functional like me, you know, you need to demonstrate it. You need, you know, busy people underinvest in their kids. That's what happens. Like you're too busy. So the universe comes full circle with that.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

We're about to wrap it up, but if the 21-year-old fighter pilot who had just achieved his dream could meet the man sitting here today, what would surprise him most?

SPEAKER_02 56:04

Everything that this this company exists, that I'm doing what I'm doing, that I would have been a fighter pilot, a business founder, and now owner of this company, just this whole circle of life, just everything coming back full circle. I I think that would be the key. And you know, I do think I was happier when I was younger. Yes. I was happier. I think the world has I I never had to try and be happy. Now I have to try and be happy. You know, I don't know whether that's grumpy old man syndrome or or you know, just just the fact that, you know, I I I live a wonderful life with a wonderful family, have a wonderful job, but some days I still find it like what is the point of it all? You know, like you know, w when the point of it all is to work together as a team and be a community and husband the cycle of life, and that's kind of been dislocated. And I think when when we're saying that we're looking for all these big meaningful things, you know, it could be as simple as putting a barbecue out the front of your house and inviting the neighbors around to have a street party, you know, just just something simple. I don't know. That's this is all philosophical, there's no studies. This is just kind of a my booze booze idea of the world.

SPEAKER_00 57:10

Well, speaking of happiness, what brings you the most joy at this stage of your life?

SPEAKER_02 57:14

The biggest thrill I get is when people come up after a keynote and just say that it spoke to them, and even more so when people come back three or four years later and say, I did what you said then, and I run my whole life that way. And it's really, it's really powerful. I mean that that that makes me happy. Obviously, the the the joy that you see in your children when they achieve something, my little boy is like really, really curious and really tries, and he he's just getting all these little gains, and it's to to see someone that knows nothing really, and then they're on their learning journey. I I that makes me really happy too.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Yeah. Give me an example of a time you said something on stage of what what you think you might have said that was life-changing for someone in the audience.

SPEAKER_02 57:59

I think the idea that everything that you are, who you are, and where you are is your doing. It doesn't matter whether the world threw you a curveball, it doesn't matter whether you made a bad decision, you have the power in any moment to trans your trajectory. It's just a choice. There is nothing stopping you from building a trajectory to anywhere else you want to go. Yeah, if you're 50 years old, you're not going to plan to MBA, so be realistic. But but within the realm of opportunity that's present for you in the in the skills that you not even the skills, in the physical attributes you have and the years of life that you have, you can achieve anything within that zone of possibility.

SPEAKER_00 58:42

Yeah, and it only takes one. That's what I keep saying. I said, It will be heard by the people that need to hear it. You know, it'll find its way to the people that need to hear it.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

And you want that person to be a multiplier and have that compounding effect of a network of people, you know, powered by love, hope, and happiness.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Yeah, exactly. So we're at the end. So the last word I told you about this. So one sentence answers. Here we go. Number one, what's something you know now that you wish you knew at 25?

SPEAKER_02 59:17

It's impossible to know everything.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

You thought you knew everything at 25?

SPEAKER_02 59:21

I thought I could get there.

SPEAKER_00 59:23

You still have time. Number two, what does courage mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 59:29

It means stepping over that feeling of I can't do this or this is unsafe. I mean, courage is standing up for the small thing, someone that's not being seen or heard at work. It's calling out a racist comment or somebody who is doing something that hurts someone else, be it physically or emotionally.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Number three, what's one belief that changed your life?

SPEAKER_02 59:52

Well, I could believe I'll be a fighter pilot.

SPEAKER_00 59:54

Yeah, that changed your life. Number four, when do you feel most alive?

SPEAKER_02 59:58

I think on stage for sure. I mean, that's where again you have the nerves before you go up there. Every audience is different. Some things resonate, some things don't. You've got to play the crowd as you're going to see what's which way to take this the storytelling. And nailing that to me is you're you're you know, you're you're free free climbing the mountain that you're fully exposed, you're judged whether you want to or not. So it's that personal accountability to deliver to a standard that makes an impact on people.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:28

I've always dreamt of being a motivational speaker on stage as well, but I have to tell you, I get so fearful when I stand up in front of people public speaking that I'm so much better with the one-on-one that I'm like, I don't know if I can ever make that dream a reality. I have to overcome that that fear.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:44

It's just fear's just a turbocharger turning on your system. So you don't want it to get into stress. You just want it to ride that peak pressure wave.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

Yeah, I gotta work on that. Number five, what do you hope people remember about you?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

Really simply that, you know, I was generous and and helpful. I'd I'd love to be remembered the way I remember my grandma. I don't think I've ever had so much love and respect for a human being as I as I did for her. She was she was flawed like most human beings, but ultimately she just cared deeply for her family. She cared deeply for her community, and she was infinitely generous with her with her time and resources.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:18

Well, Boo, that was the last word. Thank you for sharing your story. What strikes me most about this conversation is that it's not really about fighter jets, business success, or even leadership. It's about what happens when life asks us to become someone we never planned to be. Every one of us will face moments when the path we've carefully mapped out disappears beneath our feet. The job ends, the relationship changes, the diagnosis arrives. The dream we spent years pursuing suddenly looks different than we imagined. And yet, what your story reminds us is that our greatest strength isn't found in controlling the outcome. It's found in our willingness to begin again, to trust ourselves, to take the next step, to find purpose in places we never expected, and to understand that sometimes the end of one dream is simply the beginning of another. To our listeners, thank you for spending time with us. If this conversation resonated with you, please share it with someone who may need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube so you never miss an episode. And remember, don't wait to make the call. Take the chance or start over. You may be one decision away from a completely different life. Thanks for hanging with us today. Thank you, Boo.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

Thanks, Sharon. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:31

All right, have a great day. You too. Bye bye. Bye.