Glenn Gonzales, co-founder of Jedit, draws from fighter-pilot training to explain how progressive drills that expose you to failure scenarios build the mindset to handle anything. He applies this to business: recognize recurring failure modes, avoid getting boxed in, and build systems so you don't repeat the same problems.
Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. We're talking with Glenn Gonzalez from Greensboro, North Carolina. He's a co founder of Jedit and they have had explosive growth in the private aviation industry. A new concept we'll get him a chance to talk about. How did you describe that concept, Glenn? Hybrid.
We're a hybrid fractional ownership company.
Hybrid fractional ownership. But talk about, you've got to be prepared for anything and what. Let's just talk about your training in the military as a fighter pilot. How do they train you to, you know, there's the basics. You know, I remember, you know, my little experience with flying. You know, you do the landing and takeoff and you do the, you, you know, like the engine dies and, and then you turn it back on, you know, and think you all the little basic type things. But then you have, then you go out there and you have the surprising things happen in, in the military, you know, how do they prepare you for, for, you know, to handle the unexpected and, and is that a skill that they, they try, you know, try to develop or they make a point of developing and grade you on that?
Absolutely. It's in the military, just in general and one of the reasons we have so many veterans within our organization, we know that you're prepared for just about anything. You understand what the mission is and how to accomplish it. You understand what happens if you fall short of that mission. So once you've started out in training, just like you said, you start with the basics and then you get more complex and every single challenge and problem that could potentially be thrown at you is introduced to you so that you can absorb, continue to flow forward towards whatever that solution is and then ultimately accomplish the mission.
And that comes into. I used to, I wrote a blog one time along the fact that the greatest generals have the most systems and the most situational solutions. In other words, they've been in all of these different scenarios and they've worked their way through. Okay. When this happens, you know, this kind of thing happens, you know, you could do like one of three or four things, but it probably is going to be this way. So you at least lean over, you know, you check that one out first to see if that's where to go. Now you might not go with it, but at least you know the tendencies. And that's why even athletes do the Same thing. And their activity there makes them efficient, makes it look like they just don't sweat. Well, they don't sweat because they've done that drill a million times. Whereas if we get out there in that situation, you know, we've got a bunker shot 200 yards or something like that, we're panicking, you know, the lakes over on the left and all of that. Yeah, but pro's done that a million times, you know, and so that's what they're doing with your. Your pilot training in the military is they're turning you into pros, right?
Absolutely. You know, we. We have a saying around Jedit, and I've been here before. We've been here before in dealing with anything and everything, and it's just part of life. I've been in a similar situation at some point in time in the past. Maybe it was a different industry, a different environment, different cultural experience, but the experience itself is similar. And you rely upon those experiences to overcome whatever that situation is or to work your way through that situation. You know, one of the ways that I approach things is, you know, I'm never in a box. I'm never boxed in. I might be in a really tough situation where. But I can get up and walk out of a situation. I can run through a situation. I can go around a situation or under it or over it, or whatever the case may be. But if you view yourself as boxed in, if you view yourself in a new situation that you've never been in before, it's definitely going to be more challenging. But if you think of it in terms of I've been here before, and this is just another situation, it's similar to a previous, previous situation. You can rely upon those previous experiences. And that's what we do here at Jedit. That's how we solve problems. We rely upon our previous experience and the fact that we've been here before.
What I found while I was running my business was I found I learned very quickly that when things happened.
The.
Problem was to not only solve that problem, but to realize if that problem happened, there's probably a flaw or weakness or an opening. And usually problems come from the areas that you don't look at, you know, your blind side. And I know I could be up there. I could remember being in the cockpit, and you're just scanning the skies because there could be. There can be a big plane up there, and it's just a little pebble in the sky. And if you're not scanning all the time and looking, you can get into real trouble. And that's kind of like running a business. And so I knew these things, if they came up, they would be likely to come around again. And not only should I solve the problem, but I needed to think about how I could put things systems in place to minimize the chance for that coming up again. Or at least coming up often. Thanks for listening to the Million Dollar Mastermind. If you felt there were any valuable takeaways from this episode, please take a minute and leave us a five star review. Your feedback is important and really helps us get the word out to a wider audience. Remember, we have a valuable webinar that is absolutely free. Register for it right now@whiteallonwinning.com thanks for listening.
