Top Gun Leadership: Lessons from the Cockpit to the C-Suite, with Matthew "Whiz" Buckley

Success wasn't supposed to feel like this. More money, more stress, and no real freedom? You want more. Real growth, real wealth, and real freedom. Welcome to Deck of Millionaire Dakota, where we break down the exact strategies to scale your business beyond $10 million of enterprise value. No fluff, no theory. Just real conversations with business owners who've done it, those rapidly on their way, and the experts who know how to get you there. Hi, I'm Justin Goodbread, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and relentless coach. I've spent years helping service-based business owners like you build wealth, create lucrative exits, and take back control of their time. Because financial freedom isn't just for the lucky, it's a formula. And if you're ready to stop playing small and start building a business that works for you, not because of you, this is where it happens. Let's decode the path to Deca Millionaire status together. Friends, one of my favorite movies of all time. I'm talking about the best movie that I've ever seen in my life. Has to be Top Gun. I mean, you know, come on, Maverick and Goose, back in the day. I know I'm showing my age, but you can almost see it. You can feel the adrenaline. You can hear everything. And then, not too long ago, the new movie, Maverick, comes out. And I got to tell you, I was sitting in the theater. To me, it was like the most pro-American movie I'd seen recently. It was like, yes, we're back. And this is golden now. I don't know if everything we saw in the theater is accurate or not, but our guest today, I bet he could dissect this. Joining us today is Mr. Wiz, Matthew Wiz Buckley, who was a Top Gun fighter pilot. Matthew, Mr. Wiz, how are you, sir? I'm as right as the mail, Justin. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Man, we're going to have a good time in this conversation today. So first thoughts, what was your opinion of the newest movie, Maverick, that came out? Well, quick story. I'll really age myself. I knew I wanted to fly fighters for the Navy since my earliest memories. Right. So I knew I had to study, get good grades, do all that stuff. And then I was a junior in high school when Top Gun came out. And it was awful because everybody and their mother now wanted to fly fighter jets for the Navy. So I had to work even harder, sadly, to reach my dreams. So the first movie, the flying scenes were, for what they had at the time technology-wise, were okay. The storyline was pretty legit. Maverick, the storyline was an absolute joke, but the flying scenes were legit, right? One of my close friends, Captain Brian Ferguson, Ferg, he was the technical advisor for Maverick. He got orders from the Navy for two years to Paramount. good friends with Tom and Jerry Bruckheimer. So all the actors flew. Like when you see one of the guys passing out, that's him passing out in a real F-18. So they shot a lot. So the flying scenes were great, but the story was absolutely awful. If we have to call a 60-year-old essentially out of retirement to come lead a strike against, it was Iran, clearly, even though they didn't want to name the country, right? If we have to call somebody out of retirement to lead that strike, then our current crop of Top Gun graduates suck. So I didn't like the storyline, but you know, willful suspension of disbelief, right? Well, I appreciate you joining us on the show today. As we jump into your particular story, the thing that's been perplexing to me that I'd love for you to pull the curtain back and talk with our audience on is how did you go in mindset and practice from being the man, the man who's literally flying the machine where I just can't imagine that particular feeling of itself. But the man flying the machine now to building companies of eight figure where you are not the man, you have multiple people who are carrying out the mission. What did it take, Wiz, for you to change in your mindset to move in that direction? Trust. In a fighter squadron, you trust the men and women in that organization with your life, or they're not a member of that organization for long. As a single seat F-18 fighter pilot flying off the pointy end of a boat, it ain't just me. By the time I walked up on the flight deck with my helmet, my helmet bag, that F-18 had been prepared and fully gone through maintenance checks and fueling and hydraulics and checks and rechecks. And then a young man or woman, plane captain who essentially owned that airplane, checked that thing thoroughly, man. So before I even start the engines of that airplane, I trusted everybody along that line to do their job. A lot of folks look at the chaos of a flight deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the most dangerous environment on the planet, but it's not because it's controlled chaos. If everybody is doing their job, good things happen, right? So it's trust. And for me, I went from first and last day of work in American Airlines was 9-11 to helping run a multi-billion dollar volatility firm on Wall Street. It's the hiring process, man. The United States military has the absolute finest HR system in the country. You shouldn't be able to get in the door or make it near a fighter jet unless you pass through a lot of wickets. As a matter of fact, I'm sure a lot of folks have seen the, I call them the JV team, the Air Force Thunderbirds, the Navy Blue Angels. If you notice when they march out to the airplane, they go right up the ladder and they sit in the jet. They don't do a pre-flight. Why? Because they trust the ground crew. They've already checked that out and they shake hands with the plane captain like, I know you checked this plane out. My life's in your hands. Now let's fire up the engines. So it all comes down to trust. I have an acronym. I took from the military and applied it to the business world, ART, A-A-R-T. In the military, we push accountability and responsibility where? Down to the lowest level possible. This ain't the Soviet Union military, right? Where we're not doing anything until a general tells us to. Absolutely not. I was a young kid from South Jersey, South Philadelphia at the age of 27, flying an F-18 over Iraq. In hindsight, man, I was a kid, but that's what the military does is they push responsibility down and the ability to execute to the lowest level possible. And that's trust. So ART, A-A-R-T, Authority, Accountability, Responsibility, Trust. I use those four letters throughout my organizations. I'm going to hold you accountable. And it's interesting because one of the tough transitions I had from a fighter squadron to a Wall Street firm was in the military. We have SPAS, not $300 back rubs, single points of accountability, not MPAs, not multiple points of accountability. If an aircraft carrier runs aground, if the commanding officer is asleep, getting chow with the sailors down in the reactor room, checking out electrons and protons and neutrons, he or she is fired. Well, whiz, they weren't on the bridge of the carrier. Doesn't matter. As the admiral firing that captain, I would say, well, then you should have spent less time eating, sleeping or looking at stray electrons and more time training people how to train your boat. You're fired. Right. So we have a single point of accountability in the military. When I went to this trading firm in Chicago, whiz, we lost a couple million bucks. We had a problem getting quotes from one of the exchanges to our traders. Can you debrief and figure out what happened? And absolutely, man. So I got, I think it was about 10, nine or 10 tech directors in this room. I call them booger eaters, right? You know, Chinese, Ukrainian, American, like look like the United Nations, but all these tech people in the room. And I said, OK, let's start this debrief. We lost a lot of money today. Didn't get quotes from the Phil X to the floor. Who's in charge of this? And man, you literally could hear crickets chirping. I'm like, who is responsible for this? Still some crickets. And I'm like, what am I not speaking English here? And then, you know, some intrepid soul raised his hand finally and said, he's like, well, I do this. And, you know, she kind of does that. And I'm like, everybody shut up. Who has 51% of the vote in this room? Whose throat is going to get choked or whose back is going to get patted as a result of the success or failure of this? So the business world loves MPAs, multiple points of accountability, and people can hide and kind of do this. That's how people get killed. So very long answer, short question. It has to do with that accountability, authority, responsibility, and trust. I'm going to hold you accountable. You have the authority to execute. I've given you as the commanding officer my vision, go make it happen. And then responsibility and trust. If I don't trust you, I don't want you in my organization. It's funny because I got the reputation in that firm in Chicago. I did two-minute interviews. I knew in two minutes whether you were going to be a fit or not for my organization because I have to. And it's funny because some veterans have a tough time transitioning to the business world because they're too into it. Like, I don't want to fail. I want this mission to succeed. I actually have to throttle back veterans every once in a while. Because where we come from, mission failure can be death or somebody getting hurt, or we're just going to fail the mission. And we don't want that. Whereas a lot of folks in civilian worlds is like, it's a jobs program, man. We failed. Well, on to the next thing. Uh-uh. And that was one of the big things I took from the military to the business world. Also, in answer to your question, is debriefing. I think that debrief with the tech directors was the first time they had ever been in something like that. 45 minutes to the second after my wheels touched the runway, we get together behind closed doors. The name tag comes off the uniform, the rank comes off the shoulder, and we are a bunch of aviators. If you were the admiral of our battle group and you flew with us today, you're taking that stuff off too. You ain't an admiral in the debrief. We are nameless and rankless, so to speak. It's about improving our future execution. If you sat in a debrief, like a fly on the wall, you might think we hate each other in a debrief. I got to fly with the Blue Angels one time and man, they were. The first thing that happens in a debrief though, guess who leads it? The boss. The boss says, here's what I know I gooned up during the execution of this mission. And he rips through things. And then once he do, he turns it over to the, and goes, what do you got for me? The next time I fly this mission, what can I do better? And this is where we do away with apple polishing, right? When I teach people how to debrief, a lot of businesses are like, well, boss, I think you're handsome and good looking. And no, no, no, no, no, no apple polishing. I don't want to hear any of that. This does a couple things. First of all, lowers the barriers to communication. If businesses do debrief, first of all, they don't call it a debrief. What do they usually call it? A postmortem. Who the hell wants to go to a postmortem? I plan on going to one in my life and I better not be awake for it, right? And usually if they do a postmortem, it's not the way we run a debrief, man. Debrief is about what worked, what didn't, and how are we going to improve our execution? And there's no really names involved. If there was a bad mission that happened in my squadron, when they left the debrief room, all I heard about were the lessons learned. Ain't no whiz did this or uh-uh. It's not who's right or wrong. It's what's right. So the debrief was another powerful way to improve execution. Once people start debriefing and getting lessons learned, the organization starts humming. It's a flywheel. And we get into what I call a corporate battle rhythm. We plan. We brief that plan to everybody who's going to execute it. We execute. and then we do what 90 to 95% of companies in the world don't do, we debrief. This isn't a, oh, will that initiative suck? On to the next one. No, everybody in the boardroom right now, why did that initiative or launch suck? What didn't work? What do we got to fix for next time and improve our execution? You know, when I work with companies and teach them about debriefing, it's funny because I'll start teaching people how to debrief and stuff. old red in the back will be like, I knew this was going to fail. How? Well, the last five times we've tried this, it didn't work. I'm like, oh my God, man, why didn't you debrief for the last four times? It's the definition of insanity. So trust and then creating that culture of accountability. Let me share with you a quick story about my buddy on the Blue Angels, 50,000 people in the air show crowd in Oklahoma and intake, it's called signs intake. He's like, hey, I was 50 feet low on the loop break cross. I'll fix that. And I'm sitting there going, how many people in that air show crowd in Oklahoma saw him 50 feet low? Nobody. How many of the other blue angels who were busy doing their own flying paint, we call it, saw him 50 feet low? They didn't. Who saw him 50 feet low? He did. So in that debrief, when he goes, hey, fellas, I was 50 feet low. I can fix that. What does that do? That increases that level of trust in the organization. Like, man, he called himself out on something that I didn't know he did wrong. And he said, he's going to fix it. So it's that culture. That's how you build high performing teams. But getting back to your original question is how does the leader do that? By setting the example. I'm pretty damn sure I'm robbing a village somewhere of an idiot. So anytime I started debrief, that's what I lead with. Like, here's what I know I screwed up. I'm going around the table and pointing at each one of you what can I do better How can this thing get better the next time I do this If you got a new hire or somebody sitting in the room who are terrified to speak up they like wait a minute The boss just pointed out 10 ways he messed up I think I can. That's how you improve your execution, man. Instead of beating your head against the wall repeatedly and repeating these mistakes. So long answer, short question. It's trust. It's accountability. And that debriefing process, holding people accountable. And that's a two-way street. I brief anybody in any of my businesses, nonprofits, anything like hold me accountable. As long as you're not making fun of my haircut or tell me to get my boots polished, I might need those things. I'll take that too. But make me better. When you get your wings, you're flying training aircraft. And then you go and fly the F-18 for about a year to learn how to fly the F-18. Now, when you get to your first fleet squadron, you think you're ready. Well, you fly on the skipper's wing for like the first month because he wants to make sure you're not a complete idiot. You might've snuck through this whole time. So I'm flying on the skipper's wing for about a month. And I'm thinking we're like buddies by now, right? And, you know, flying with them a bunch. And I didn't have the best hop one time. And I remember in the debrief, it felt like he ripped me to shreds. I was like, oh my God. I remember going to the officer's club later and I saw him walk in. And I remember doing like a, you know, the tactical 90 degree turn with my beer. Right. And he came up to me. He's like, Wiz, what's up, man? I'm like, well, Skipper, you know, I think you were a little hard on me in the debrief. And he looked at me and like the color ran out of his face. Like I was the world's biggest idiot. He's like, what are you talking about, man? He's like, I know you can do better. I would never have let you in one of my F-18s in my squadron if I didn't think you had the ability to do what you didn't do today. I think the world of you and your beautiful bride, it is my job for you to get better. And I would have failed had I not taken you to the woodshed a little bit. And that was like a two by four to the head. That changed my career. I'm like, man, it ain't personal. It's professional. That really made all the difference. So there's a lot of wisdom there, Wiz. I want to hone in on a couple of things to kind of set the stage where my questions come from. My coach and one of my instructors was a colonel plus in the military. And he gave me one of my core values that is yes, sir, no, sir, no excuse, sir. Now, Jocko Willis written the whole book about it, right? But that's literally, he's like, yes or no, sir. And you smile because I'm sure you've heard something like that many times in the military, which is exactly what you're talking about. So I'm thinking in terms of the business world, oftentimes the business owner walks in and they see a problem. They see something that didn't align perfectly. And there may or may not be a reason for it. It could be the human in the seat didn't do their job right. Or it could be that their system, for example, go back to that room where you said you had a bunch of people, no one raised their hand. It could have been there was not even a system that they even knew how to follow to actually lead to that level of success. From a leader's perspective, how can we discern between ineptitude of a human versus ineptitude of the leader of the organization? So a couple of points I want to raise. Let me go back to our previous discussion real quick. The three most powerful words in the military and in my companies are, I got it. Like if you and I were in a fighter squadron and I said, Justin, I need this done by this date. And you looked at me and said, Wiz, I got it. What happened in my mind mentally? It's done, right? Most people in the business world experience are like, oh, yeah, I'll do that. I got it. It doesn't happen. I got to find out it didn't happen. I got to end up doing it on my own. So in the military and the companies I run, I got it means it. And if it isn't going to happen, you're going to be the first one to come to me and says, Wiz, it's not going to happen. Here's why it's not going to happen. here are the recommended courses of action instead. Boom. It doesn't just kind of like fade. So I wanted to add that to that last section is that culture of I got it and mean it. Now, to your question on if it's a person or infrastructure issue, I use the rule of three in a debrief, meaning this, like that tech example I gave you. If in a debrief, somebody comes up and says, I goon that up. I'll fix it for next time. Awesome. Another cycle of whatever, another debrief, same person, similar or another issue like that. Then I hold the mirror up to me as a leader. I'm like, wait, am I just not getting this stuff across to them appropriately? Is this a communication issue? Is it an infrastructure issue? Does something not exist to help this person? Then we'll go from there. The rule of three is this. If there's a third debrief, similar type of thing, now we're figuring out it's most likely the person. So infrastructure is kind of the second. It could be the first debrief too. Like those tech directors are like, we've never sat in a room like this before and talked about something that failed. Somebody usually just jumps on a laptop and I'm like, no, stays are over with. And as a result of this debrief, we wrote down a bunch of lessons learned. The next time we have problems with the quotes thing, you open the SOP, the standard operating procedure to, hey, this is what we do. I'm like, you don't have this? That's what's funny is leaving a fighter squadron, going to Wall Street, people thought I was a genius, right? I'm like, this is like breathing to me, these things, and you're not doing this. A lot of businesses are successful in spite of themselves. So I kind of use the rule of three, first, second, the third debrief, maybe they're just in the wrong seat, but still on the bus, right? Maybe they just, whatever they're doing isn't where they're supposed to be and we'll find them a different seat on the bus. Or if they're just on the wrong bus, then we'll get to that point too. When it comes to debriefing, I like to tell people that debriefing is like Vegas and church. What goes on in a debrief stays in the debrief. What we're doing better leaves the debrief with no names, but it's a church-like environment where you're allowed to get everything off your chest. No punches are pulled. Like I said in the debrief, if you were a fly on the wall, you might think we hate each other. And it's not that. It's about improving execution. Because in a debrief, everybody from the boss all the way around gets to unzip their flight suit a little bit and say, hey, here's what I know I gooned up. And then solicit feedback from everybody else. The finger might go like this a little bit as if they have to point something out to you. Hey, Wiz, did you also notice X, Y, and Z? it might just be like, man, I did not see that. But I say what? Thank you. I know I didn't notice that I did that. Thank you for pointing that out to me. When you can find gratitude in constructive criticism, you all can sniff out whether it's deserved or not. There are some people who would complain it's not hot enough in hell, right? So you put that into that category. But as long as it's constructive, you should be showing gratitude because that person cares. So you want to become a Deca Millionaire, but you're just not sure. You're just not sure if good bread here has what it takes to help you scale your financial advisory practice super quick. I'm going to offer your workshop to you. We have these every single month where I give my best, my best of the best over a two hour live coaching program. But let me tell you, they sell out stinking fast, man. They are gone before you can shake a stick at it. So If you want to learn my secrets to marketing, my secrets to converting, my secrets to building systems, my secrets to hiring other advisors, my secrets to radically scaling and having the most amazing life possible, then friends, you got to check out the workshops. Click the link below. But again, I'm telling you, you better act. They sell out super fast. So friends, I wanted to give a little bit of Wiz's bio here just for this next question for a frame of reference here. Wiz, as we know now, is a Top Gun fighter pilot. He's also the CEO of Top Gun Options. the founder of No Fallen Heroes Foundation. He's a public speaker. That in and of itself is phenomenal. That's a world that's hard to deal with. Executive consultant. He's a host of a podcast. He sits on the board of advisors. So a lot of hats that he wears. So with that many hats, not every one of our audience has perhaps that many hats that you or I might wear on a day-to-day. Nonetheless, I think this question is relevant to all of us. Whenever you're flying missions, or we're flying training, et cetera, you are doing hundreds, thousands of miles an hour, just cruising, and you were having to make the most important decision at that point, decipher through the noise, look at the hundreds of decisions that you had to make every single moment and pick that one and execute it flawlessly. Business owners aren't any different. They're dealing with things that are happening all around them constantly, bunch of different decision points coming in and they're having to identify that one decision that's going to break through or give them mission success using your terminology. What advice would you give to that business owner based on your experience, based on not just experience in the cockpit, but also in the boardroom, et cetera. What advice would you give to the business owner who's saying, I'm struggling identifying that one. I keep finding myself focused on inferior decisions versus this one thing. What has helped you as you now transition in these multiple seats? A couple of things. The first thing I'll answer is trust your gut, your instinct. You did not make it towards the top of the pyramid that you're on. By chance, by luck, you actually did things that resulted in your success. You failed, probably. You succeeded. You did in the middle. More failure, more success. But folks, there's a saying, it's lonely at the top, right? There's a saying for a reason, right? The commanding officer of a ship runs the ground. He or she's fired, right? It's lonely at the top. Because when there's decisions ultimately to be made, people kind of step back a little bit as you're like, oh, man, that falls on me. Trust your gut. in my over three decades of military business, all sorts of nonprofit stuff. I can never say a hundred. I'm going to say 99.9% of the time when I've gone with my initial instinct, it was absolutely correct. This is why you train. This is why you, you went through those sleepless nights. You're paying payroll off your credit. I've been there, man. I've done all of it, right? You should be at the point now where you go, man, listen to yourself. I believe obviously in God and I believe I'm divinely guided and I've made a ton of quote wrong decisions in my life. But in hindsight, they all ended up being okay, right? It's funny because I remember being up in Chicago and somebody kicked my door open one day like, whiz, whiz. I'm like, whoa, is anybody dead? And they're like, what? I'm like, who died? And they're like, nothing. There's this issue. I'm like, then relax, because I come from somebody kicking in my door. Somebody did die or something horrific is happening. So I'm like, always put things into perspective to throttle back. In my world, if something got screwed up, we're handing a flag to a widow type of thing. In the business world, if you've got a roof over your head, lungs and work and internet and running water, you're doing better than the vast majority of people on this planet. So always keep things in perspective. So trust your instinct. I actually put this on the screen in my keynotes. I will show a big cockpit with a bunch of instruments all over it. But there's one instrument in the middle. That's the attitude indicator. Whether you're going up or down, turning left or right, there's a bunch of other stuff. And the reason I show this is because I talk about an incident where right out here in South Florida, an Eastern Airlines jet flew right into the Everglades at night. Three dudes in the front cockpit, a landing gear light wasn't illuminated, right? They put the gear down. One of the lights is the gear not down or is it the bulb? They're all focused, solely focused on this. The first officer accidentally like had hit the control yoke, which disconnected the autopilot. And they just entered this slow descent. And I think it was like 99 people or how many people died because 50 years of aviation experience between those three guys were focused on a 10 cent light bulb channelized attention. So back to the cockpit, that attitude indicator, because I work with a lot of companies are like, Wiz, I got 20 number one things to do. I have, no, you don't. You got a number one and you got a 20. So what I'll do is I'll work with executives or whoever and say, what is the number one? There has to be a number one. Profitability, revenue, customer set, whatever it is. Then I'll say, give me some more instruments. Technology, compliance, legal, finance. You know, I'll populate that cockpit with the rest of their things. And then I'll animate that and say, in the military, what do we do as an aviator? We have a scan. I don't focus on one instrument for too long because if I do, when I come back to the attitude indicator, we're flying into the Everglades. So in the military, we call it a scan pattern. Always coming back to the attitude indicator. I can go check on something. I got to come back. And I'll have people number it. That's your number one, that big attitude indicator. That's the number one thing we have got to focus on. Great. I want you to rank one through, I think I have 10 instruments in that cockpit, one through 10, order of priority. They do it. And then I'll tell them, when you're feeling task saturated, I have 10 number one things to do. Get rid of number 10, period. Stop. How do you feel now? Still kind of nine. How about now? I'm breathing a little bit. Eight. we call it task shedding when i'm going into attack a target at 500 feet i can do a lot of stuff look at my radar talk on the radio fly formation getting shot at down to 300 feet i start getting rid of talking on the radio and flying formation i like dude you go ahead i be a mile behind you we got to get lower down to 100 feet what am I focusing on at 100 feet Not hitting the ground or anything attached to it So we call it task shedding So you don't have 20 number one things to do. You got one through 20. And when you're tasked saturated, when you're standing on a basketball juggling flaming chainsaws, you got to drop the non-essential chainsaws. And then as things clear up, you can start adding stuff. The other thing you got to do, you know, as a single seat fighter pilot, you'd think I'm this super type A personality. Man, I'll be the first one to admit when I need help. A lot of business owners take stuff, Atlas, the weight of the world on their shoulders. Stop. The biggest sign of strength that's not weakness is saying, I need help. Putting up the bad signal. When somebody comes over the radio, hey, Wiz, I need mutual support. I'll give it to them. So you got to have people in your company that you can task shed to. And if you don't, you're the problem. If you're hoarding all these responsibilities, my number one mission objective in any one of my businesses is to work myself out of a job, to hire myself out of a job. I was always looking for my replacement. When you interview at an airline, you know what they're interviewing? A captain. They might be hiring a first officer, but they're interviewing a captain. Right. So anybody in my companies, man, I'm like, I am interviewing you to replace me. That's how you grow. And if I am hiring you to replace me, that's where the trust and that acronym ART comes in. Authority, accountability, responsibility, trust. Right. And that I got it attitude. So if you are feeling that task saturation, start shedding tasks to people who should be able to do them. If you no kidding, have 20 number one things to do. and you actually say, I don't, let me rank them one through 20. And you can't find somebody to do one through 20. That's your fault. You're not training them. You're not delegating. Delegation is a sign of leadership. I love the quote from General Patton, lead, follow, or get out of the way. Choose one of those things. If you're going to lead, be a leader, man. Lead the hell out of it. If you can't, for whatever reason, admit that and say, I'm right behind you. I'm following. I'm going to bring my teammates around. If you can't do any of those, get out of the way. Go find a different bus. So currently in the United States, there's roughly about 33 million small business owners. According to the SBA, small businesses or companies have less than 500 employees. A lot of people out there run businesses. And in the DecaMillionaire way, one of the frameworks that we teach, we talk about the fourth step along the journey is the exit. Most business owners have not amassed enough wealth outside of their business in order for them to sustain the same lifestyle they're used to. And I'm curious around this exiting thought pattern. You know, at some point, we're all going to leave our companies. You and I, the businesses that we currently own, as you said, we're finding replacements form of this mindset. We're going to leave the company. Whenever you were looking at your departure from the military, I'm sure there was a whim of emotions, bittersweet that was happening. probably some trepidation, probably a little bit of anxiety. I say that honestly, because I'm making some decisions right now in my life, and I'm experiencing this with personally. And people say, good bread, you shouldn't at this point. Well, no, that's not true. I'm human still, right? I don't know all the facts right now. So I'm just curious, as a person who's made multiple shifts, some hard ones, some extreme shifts in your own life, how did you prepare your mind during that time period, thinking about the future that, hey, there is a next chapter after this particular chapter. So a couple of things. It's the Colin Powell doctrine, right? General Powell. So General Powell, great American man, obviously, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of State, just a great American. Sadly, was an officer in Vietnam. He saw that train wreck. When he was the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bush I said, hey, General Powell, I want you to get Iraq out of Kuwait. And before he left General Powell's office, he said, hold on, Mr. President, before you leave, what does victory look like? What is our exit plan? Man, he didn't even start planning and he was focused on what? The exit. I do not enter a trade. I do not enter an initiative. I don't do anything without knowing the exit plan. One of the chapters in my book, it really takes a blowtorch to people like Jamie Dimon or Bob Iger, the imperial CEO, like I am irreplaceable. Wrong. And a fighter squadron. If the commanding officer gets killed, the XO is up next, the executive officer. I mean, we actually have what are called turnover binders. Like, hey, I'm the schedules officer. If I get shot down over Iran today, somebody needs to be able to walk in my office, cup of coffee, read whizzes, turnover binder, and I'm the new whiz. We need a seamless transition. So you're right. We ain't going to live forever. Well, our souls will, but this meat puppet doesn't. And so start thinking about the exit before the entrance. I just did a live trade brief this morning at Topkin Options with Solo Amazon. We looked at a long-term bullish trade on Amazon years into the future. Before I pressed trade to get filled on that trade, I talked about when we're exiting, either for max profit or minimum loss. Same thing in aviation. The time for me to decide what I'm going to do if I get shot at by a missile over Iran is not when I get shot at by a missile over Iran. And it's sitting in the air conditioning on the boat, sipping on my Benti upside down caramel macchiato. A lot of folks do it wrong. So long answer to your short question is, first of all, think of it before you do anything is when you're exiting. Mike Tyson's quote is, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right? In the military, we say every good plan won't survive the first bullet shot at you by the enemy because I did have some tough transitions. Morning of September 11th was my first scheduled flight for American Airlines. I'm racing out to Naval Air Station Fort Worth to man a combat air patrol going from flying in an airliner that day to maybe shooting one down. The reason I bring that up is because you should try and minimize and eliminate all known threats, everything that's known. I wasn't a big Rumsfeld fan, but he had a great quote. Combat and business is a form of combat, right? Somebody's going to win and somebody's going to get their rear end handed to them. So why wouldn't you use the same methodologies, you know, in combat, Sun Tzu, right? In the movie Wall Street, he's quoting Sun Tzu throughout the whole movie. It's funny because all these Wall Street titans think they're, you know, military guys anyway. But Rumsfeld said in combat and in business, there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. There are things we know that we don't know. And then he famously said, then there are unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know that we don't know. But the more planning and preparation you can do, when everything starts going to hell in a handbasket, you can fall back on that planning, the succession planning, or all of your solid business planning to help you to be able to make those decisions, even if you just got forced into something. Flexibility is the key to air power, the ability to be flexible. preparation is the key to flexibility. So the more prepared you are, the thorough briefings and business planning, contingency planning, before I launch a product and initiative or anything, I sit down with my team and I go, wait, before we go execute, what realistically could go wrong during the execution of this plan that we can talk about right now, instead of freaking out when it happens. I love working with companies who are like, whiz, we're doing a lot of firefighting. I'm like, the reason you are doing firefighting is because you're not contingency planning. Because when I'll dig into some of these little fires, the first thing I'll ask is like, could you have recently predicted this would have happened? Oh, yeah. Why didn't you? In the planning process right now, you should be pulling out the part of the plan that says contingency plan. We figured out we do these five things if this happened. So it's usually a lack of preparation or planning. And let me be clear, when it comes to the military, we can have death by planning, or we can have, I'm airborne, I just got retasked to go do this mission. I was carrying bombs, but now I'm doing air to air. And we brief over the radio in a couple minutes, right? So you tend to dedicate the planning, whatever time you have, right? Like Wiz, there's troops in contact. We're launching in an hour. We're going to do a pretty quick planning. We have a strategic plan three years in the future. All right, we're going to spend the afternoon and do this planning, right? But do it. And it's not rocket surgery, the type of planning that I do. It's essentially six steps. What's your mission objective? What do you want to achieve? What are the threats? What's going to keep you from hitting your mission objective, both internal to your organization and external? Step three, what are your available resources? And what was the key word? Available. This isn't if we had this, we'll get to that in a second. So what's my mission objective? What are the threats? What are the resources? Step four, what are the lessons learned? Did we do this before? What worked and what didn't? And as you and I covered earlier, where do lessons learned come from? Previous debriefs. Step five is the heart of my planning process. Who is going to do what by when? Most companies skip the first four steps and just go to, hey, here's going to, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're on dessert, man. You didn't even do the appetizers. And then after we figure out who's going to do what by when, the last thing that I just mentioned is what? Contingency planning. What realistically could go wrong that we're going to talk about right now? Six simple steps. Those six steps work for three to five-year strategic plan or our weekly routine that we're doing this week. It's a pretty tight process. I use that in a fighter squadron. I use that on Wall Street. It's scalable. What's interesting to me, and actually curious, is my instructor, my coach, my grand poobah who mentored my life, he gave me those same six steps. And so I literally have been using those same six steps. I talk about the same six steps. And in fact, I'm going down to Anguilla or however you say the name of the country down in the Caribbean to speak to one of the big four CPA firms, their top 25 clients. And they said, hey, would you come in and teach us six steps? And then just let them go. I'm like, well, I'll teach them, but they're not going to do it. You need somebody who's got to hold a hand. That's not me. you, that's somebody like you who would do that for these big companies. I'm curious as we change gears one last time here, you're a father, you're a husband, a believer, as you mentioned earlier, you're wearing a lot of hats as a business owner. You have this memory of the fighter pilot and the things you dealt with in real life that many of us would never understand, those of us in the civilian life. At some point along your journey, you even mentioned, it's not about me, there's something there. You mentioned earlier a little bit about your faith. I'm curious. You told my team that you were an accidental faith leader. Accidental. That was a term. They grabbed that. I was like, that is an interesting term. I've never heard anybody say I'm an accidental faith leader. I'm curious from your position today, as you look back in arrears, what has been your faith journey? Where are you at today and where do you see it going in the future? Yeah, man, I actually got to change that too, because hearing that back to me makes my skin crawl. I'm not. I'm an apostle. I can walk beside you, right? My faith journey, buckle up. Like I said, Irish Catholic kid from South Jersey, half my family's from South Philly. And then my little sister and I were born in South Jersey. And man, we made the Pope look Jewish. You didn't get any more Catholic than the Buckleys. I was an altar boy, you know, Catholic schools. I mean, my mom and dad just doesn't get any more, John F. Kennedy type of Catholic family. And then sadly, I was sexually abused as a kid. And then my middle sister, Monica, she was the glue. She was right in the middle of us. And she was killed by a drunk driver when she was 19 at Villanova University. That was a hand grenade in my family. I lost my mom and dad that day too. I'll never forget early in the morning, my dad screaming at the top of his lungs, getting that phone call. It changed the arc of my life. And that's when I lost my faith. What type of God killed my sister, destroyed my family, allowed me to be sexually abused. And then, you know, what's a kid like me do? Let's go into military. 15 years of flying fighters, I lost 16 buddies. Along the way, I've lost four F-18 brothers to suicide, including my best friend. He was a groomsman in my wedding, Eric Swenson, Swede, transitioning out of the military, going up to Wall Street, going to Chicago. It was interesting because I was still flying F-18s in the reserves and I was in this Wall Street firm. One organization, as we talked about, you trust the men and women with your life or they're not in it for long to a Wall Street firm where I couldn't trust somebody to watch my wallet for five minutes when I went to the bathroom. There were guys who would push their own mother in front of a bus for a buck. I could not have been more disconnected from my God, my beautiful bride, my kids, drugs, alcohol. It's not a nice environment. I was lost, man. I was done for. And then about six, seven years ago, I was spiraling the drain, man. I was on my way out. If you believe the government, which I don't, they'll tell you anywhere from 17 to 22 veterans check out every day. A couple of small community colleges, Alabama and Duke, dug into the veteran suicide numbers and they're like, it's closer to 44 because Uncle Sam's only counting violent suicide, right? Guy put a bullet in his head. When Alabama and Duke went and like talked to humans Americans it like no that guy drank himself to death or she overdosed She didn want to beat her anymore So God takes care of fools drunks, and sailors, man. In 2020, with the COVID market crash, I made millions, obscene amount of money in a couple of weeks because I knew I used my brain. I pounded the market into the dirt and printed money. Another F-18 buddy had died. I looked at Susie, I said, man, we're not a Pharaoh. They're not putting this money in our casket to take it with us. Right. And it'll be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. So around that time, I said, you know what, I'm going to start a foundation to try and do something about veteran suicide. I stood in my office in front of that whiteboard. I'm like, how do you keep a veteran from killing himself? Like pay the mortgage, buy a suit and help them write a resume? No clue. And God provides because around that time, a buddy said, hey, man, there's a group of Navy SEAL veterans that go down to Mexico and they do psychedelic assisted therapy. And there's a really cool group going in a couple weeks. Would you want to go? And I said, man, go to Mexico and do drugs with Navy SEALs. It sounds like a great weekend. Sign me up. I had no idea what I was getting into. And thank God, man. I'll just give you the cliff notes. If you've ever seen the movie Lone Survivor with Mark Wahlberg, I read the book Lone Survivor. I went with Marcus Luttrell and then Jared Taylor, JT. If you drink Black Ruffle Coffee, JT. Another Navy SEAL who was a teammate with Marcus and then Robert Gallery, NFL veteran, All-American from Iowa, played for the Raiders for eight years. Horrific CTE. I rode with him. We flew into San Diego. Why? Because if you do what I'm about to tell you in San Diego, you're a felon. If you drive an hour south, it'll save and change your life. Go figure. But I rode in the car with Robert and man, I was sitting next to a six foot seven, 350 pound dead human. He was done. And to see him today, he is a completely different human. He started his own foundation to get these compounds to NFL folks. I mean, he's just Google him, look him up, Robert Gallery. What an incredible human being, But he told me, he's like, Wiz, if that didn't work, I was going back to Lake Tahoe and putting a bullet in my head. But anyway, this was not fun. This was not recreational. I've done some challenging things in my life. This was without a doubt, one of the or not the most challenging thing. 14 hours I was in it. It was the most incredible experience of my life. I got a tour. I got home and I told Susie, I'm like, I never have to travel again. She's like, why? I'm like, I saw everything. She's like, haha. I'm like, I saw everything, everything in this universe from the tiniest Adam. I saw it all. And then as I'm getting this tour, I've never seen so much beauty or anything. And then it just kind of stopped. And then I got this feeling of, and I made you too. And I was like, oh boy. And then man, I'm in space, that like scary space, but it's just like beautiful. I'm just there. And the brightest, brighter than the sun, but I could look at it just appeared and it was emanating love. I've never felt the bliss, the happiness, but I was ashamed, man. I intuitively am like, oh man, I'm pretty sure I know what this is, but I was embarrassed. I'm a drunk. I'm a horrible father. I'm a horrible human. Couldn't even look. And with a wave of whatever, it was gone. And I'll never forget. He said, Matthew, I don't make imperfect things. I got that. None of that's yours to carry anymore. I got those things, son. Now get up and let me show you what you can do. And I was healed. I experienced my sister, Monica. She was angelic. She was perfect. My dad had died years later. He died. My mom, my brother, my sisters, we are all convinced he died of a broken heart. He was right there with her and they were perfect and they were angelic. I was at peace. It was a peace. I hadn't, I hadn't seen my father smile. I couldn't remember, but they left and I was screaming out. It was a horror. I'm like, don't leave me again. And they heard me and they came back and they smiled. And this time I watched them and they went into everything. They went into my daughter, Keely. They went into the trees. They went into me, the sunset, and I was healed. They never left. They are here with you and me right now. So I got home from that retreat, man, needless to say. And I said, this is how we're going to end veteran suicide. So I started the No Fallen Heroes Foundation, and we've been given grants to veterans, first responders, and family members to go sit with these compounds. It would infuriate me the first two years to go to Costa Rica, to go to Mexico, to heal these heroes who incurred trauma serving this one. But thank you to the voters in the great states of Oregon and Colorado and New Mexico and New Jersey. held Texas Ibogaine initiative a couple months ago. One of the most red states on the planet, right? Law and order. Governor Rick Perry. Don't get any more Republican and anti-drug than that. Rick Perry went to the clinic I did last year and healed. Morgan Luttrell, Marcus's brother, is a congressman now. Dan Crenshaw, the most pro-law and order folks are now supporting these compounds for veterans healing. And then the middle of last year, it just came to me because I remember being a young Catholic kid and being told that in mass, once the priest does this, that's the body and blood of Jesus Christ. And it's funny because people who aren't Catholic are like, ah, it symbolizes it. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Through the power of transubstantiation, that is the actual body and blood of Christ. That's what you're supposed to believe. And last year, man, last summer, in a meditative moment, it hit me. I'm like, the Ibogaine and the 5-MeO that I did were sacraments to me. I had to have faith. And man, I was told God's on a cloud and a robe and a throne and don't piss them off, man, because you'll burn in hell forever. That's not the God I experienced. So last year I said, you know what? I never thought I'd be doing this, but I started a Florida-based entheogenic church. I defended the Constitution for 15 years. Now I'm going to exercise my First Amendment right to practice my religion as I see fit. And the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I think at last count, there's about 500 entheogenic churches in the United States, and ours is called Sacred Warrior Fellowship. So we use these as sacraments to reconnect or connect. Man, I've had buddies who are, they make atheists look like they have faith. on the other side of ceremony, because I know what happened in a general sense. And I just sit there like a parent on Christmas morning as people are opening their gifts. And to an atheist, man, they are always like, I'm not going to call God. I'm like, call it Steve. I'm listening. Tell me. And they're like, there was something larger than all of us. It was love and it forgave. And I'm like, I choose to use the word God, obviously. But man, knock on wood, we haven't had a single person on the other side of ceremony be like, that was a complete waste of time or I'm worse. But this is serious lifting. This is not recreational. 5% is the ceremony and sacrament. 95% is what you do with it when you get home. I'm not one to use this sentence lightly. I don't think I've ever used this sentence in my life, except to make fun of people who said it in the past. I was born again. I was given a clean piece of paper. What you do with it now is up to you. But I got a clean piece of paper, man. And I got home and I created new pathways, new habits up to eight months, a year-ish after sitting with Ibogaine. If I smelled alcohol, it made me dry heave. I got physically ill. And I was a drinker, man. I'm not proud to say, but it destroyed alcohol in my life. So go figure. Everything we just talked about is currently a schedule one drug in this country, which means what? No therapeutic use and a high risk of addiction. No therapeutic use and a high risk addiction. I literally just defined a cigarette and alcohol. They're addictive and they'll kill you. 100% legal. What I just talked about, no, not therapeutic and it's addictive. Are you insane? It was the most therapeutic thing I've ever been in 52 years on the planet and it destroyed addiction in my life. I was a coffee fiend. I couldn't even have coffee for like six months. My wife's like, what happened to you? I'm like, it just doesn't. Now I can have my, you know, my coffee and stuff like that. And my beautiful bride, we went out last week. I can have a glass of wine with my ribeye. Old whiz, a glass of wine meant a bottle for me, but now I can if I choose to. So long answer, short question. That's my mission today, man. I want to leave this place better than I found it. I want to try and help. And like I said, the faith leader thing makes my skin crawl now. I am not a leader. I will walk beside you, man. I will help facilitate you connecting with the divine. That's why I say I'm a recovering Catholic. I don't need a Pope. I don't need an archbishop, cardinal, priest, months. I used to think there was a chain of command, right? I'm a military guy. God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, saints, Pope. It went all the way down to me as an altar boy. And I'm like, man, I got a client. Ain't no chain of command, man. What I experienced with these sacraments was a direct experience, man. And it's funny because I'll talk to people and I'll say, I lost my faith. And they're like, aha, I knew it. I'm like, I don't need it anymore. I had direct experience. If that doesn't resonate with you, God bless you and I love you anyway. If it does, God bless you and I love you. This is what happened to me. And trust me, six years ago, Wiz, if I heard me on a podcast talking like this, I would have kicked my own ass. But that guy died on a mattress on the floor of a home in Mexico, surrounded by some really cool dudes. So it's been an incredible experience, man, this whole spiritual awakening. And I just want to share that word with people. This calls to you. If it doesn't, it ain't. If you just listen to all that and you're like, what? The message wasn't for you. If it does resonate, let me know. It's funny because I tell people that on the other side of ceremony or whatever, like, dude, you were right. It just wasn't. And then one day I'm like, oh, and then it was. That's the way it works. Friends, we have inside the show notes here, a link to all of Wiz's social media links. I would challenge you, if this resonates with you personally, reach out to him. Reach out to him. I think for the last hour, you've heard the heart of a warrior, not just in the military, but a warrior in the business community. Wiz, you made a statement just a second ago that you want to help people. You want to leave them better, buddy. You've helped the audience today. So I want to tell you, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, being vulnerable, as well as being just genuine, man. That's some good stuff. Justin, what does ego stand for? Edge God out. Oh, that's good. I've never heard that before. Oh, yeah. So these compounds, I'm a fighter pilot, man. I'm an options trader. Ego, ego, ego. It builds the ego is just builds a wall between us and the divine and the creator. When that ego takes a little bit of a break and you see what's on the other side, man, it's pretty beautiful. So yeah, it edges God out. And trust me, as, you know, Navy SEALs and fighter pilots and guys who... And business owners. Business owners. I started my own company. I'm an entrepreneur, man. Egos don't get any bigger than that. If you can give your ego a little bit of a break. And let me be clear real quick, Justin. There's so many different potential spiritual or healing modalities. Yoga, breathwork, meditation, walking on the beach, climbing a mountain in Nepal, which God knows why you would do that. The only elk hunting is mine. There you go. I don't like to say, but I do say radical trauma might need radical healing. So that's what these compounds were for me and ultimately as a sacrament. But yeah, man, if you can, as a business leader or whatever, give your ego a little bit of a break. you're going to be blown away on what's on the other side of that ego. That's well said. And friends, I'm going to leave it at that. You just heard an expert. Somebody's been there. Somebody's seen things that many of us would ever experience. Lean in his wisdom. If you want to reach out to him personally, he'll accept that. We're going to drop his social media links inside the show notes here. We're just listening to an hour of a man's heart. Somebody who genuinely wants to leave you better. I don't know what else to say other than you've got dreams. What are you going to do about it? We'll catch you next time. hey friends if you found this concept today amazing and helpful directly impacting your practice do something very easy take your finger and go over here that little five star right now yeah you see it yeah the five stars hit that for us it helps us and it helps us help you our mission is to bring you the most relevant content so you can apply it to your particular practice and radically break through the resistance and achieve deck of millionaire status thank you so much friends and we'll see you next time you