Curiosity: S4:E40🎙️LIVE with Ron Higgs

31 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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1:15

Ron Higgs went from Naval Academy to lieutenant commander to founding his own consulting firm. He credits curiosity and learning across startups, nonprofits, and aerospace and defense. After staying too long in the familiar defense industry, he realized he had to leave to keep growing.

success?
Because if I understand correctly, uh, you went through the Naval Academy and you retired as a lieutenant commander, which is pretty awesome. And then you got into the civilian work, and now you, you have your own consulting firm. What, what do you think makes you so successful?
Um, curiosity and love of learning. I think a combination of both. As someone who, 17 years old, boom, right, the Naval Academy prep school, made Naval Academy and then a career in the military. I mean, I was 41 years old before I had a job in corporate America. And so there is that innate curiosity about when I got to corporate America, well, how do things work here? How do people like startups? How do people start businesses, nonprofits? How does that work? So there's all sorts of curiosities I had about different things. And I stayed in aerospace and defense after I got out because it was safe. And then I got to the point, like, if I stay here much longer, I won't be— I'll be too old to really go anyplace else and do anything else. So I'm gonna just leave. And I