Scott Duffy flew with a Navy pilot to land on an aircraft carrier. You get 14 seconds to line up, aim for a 3-inch arresting wire, and might need multiple attempts. He draws a straight line from that to building a business: keep trying until you nail it.
Putting it together for Scott Duffy, everybody.
So while everybody's grabbing their seats this morning, Greg and I were talking. I thought I'd share a little story. I got a question for you. How many of you have seen the movie Top Gun? Yeah, man. Yeah, baby. You guys remember that first scene in Top Gun where like, Tom Cruise, he's in the plane and he like, Hands up, hands up. What.
Go. It looks like Tom. Tom Cruise is not going to make the landing, right? But eventually he does. He nails you guys. Remember that? Okay, so that need for speed. So ever since I was 16 years old when the movie came out, that was like the number one thing on my bucket list. I always wanted to land on a naval aircraft carrier. And a couple years ago, the week before, like we didn't write into secret knock, I had the chance to do it. So I was invited by the Navy to go in and go to the aircraft carrier, learn from the captain, the commander of the fleet, lessons on how they lead to then go share it with companies around the world. And. And I was super pumped up. But here's the thing. I am like the most nervous flyer that you've ever met. I'm like the total white knuckler flyer. And I hadn't put together. I was actually going to have to get in a plane to do this.
So I come down to San Diego, I go to Coronado, and the day that we were supposed to go, I try and seek out my pilot early because I want this guy to reassure me. So I walk into the room and there he is. And this kid looks like he's 14 years old.
So I asked him, I said, I have a question. I said, I'm a nervous fly. I just want to know. I said, how many times have you landed on the aircraft carrier? And he said, 86 times. So I was feeling good. I said, so what that means is every time you land, this is like old hat. You never get nervous. And he looks at me dead in the eye and he said, every time I land on a carrier, I am absolutely terrified.
But he said the terror is a good thing because it keeps me sharp. I'm like, oh, great. He said, maybe now is a good time for me to give you the scenarios I don't like. Scenarios? What scenarios?
He said, here's scenario number one. He said, scenario number one is this. He said, we fly out over the Pacific. The ships are preparing for war games. We fly out of the Pacific, we see the ship, we get clearance to land. From that moment, from that Moment, I have 14 seconds 14 seconds to line it up, turn the plane, and get ready to land on that deck. And he said, what's going to happen is this. He said, this is not like a Southwest plane. He said, this ship is moving forward. It's bobbing up and down and rocking left and right, so we have to mirror that. And he says, so this plane is going to be going like this. And he said, it's going to feel more like a roller coaster than a landing. And then he said, 10 seconds before we land, I'm going to yell brace as loud as I can, and I want you to brace for a crash. I'm like, what?
And he said, here's the thing. He said, as we come down and we're going to land. If you've seen a picture of Top Gun, there's a wire at the end of the deck, and a hook falls off the back of the plane. And. And we have to hook the wire in order to stop. But here's the thing. The wire is only 3 inches above the deck. And he said, so to give our stuff the best chance, he said, I'm gonna. Bam. I'm gonna do what's called a controlled crash. You're gonna hear this, like, metal scraping on metal, like you're gonna. Wow. And he said, in scenario number one is I hook the trap and we nail it. I'm like, are you serious?
He said, here's scenario number two. Scenario number two is we come down and. And he said, bill, we hit the deck, but I missed the wire. He said, this is where it starts to get tricky.
He said, from that moment, I have two and a half seconds to recognize I missed the wire because I'm moving so fast and pull the thing up. If I don't, I go off the other side of the ship. Which leads to scenario number three. He said, that's what we call a water landing. And he'll tell you all about that when he gets strapped up.
So here we go. We get in the plane, we take off, okay? He sees the ship. He yells, brace. I brace for a crash. We come on in, we hit boom. We miss the trap. So we go back up, and we circle back around. Second time, we come back around 10 seconds. Brace. We brace for a crash. Boom. We hit the deck, and we missed again.
Third time, we go around, boom. Brace. I brace for a crash. Boom. He misses three times in a row. Imagine this. The fourth time, he nails it. Now, I don't know about you guys, but to me, that feels like every single day. As an entrepreneur.
Sometimes here's what happens. We line it up perfect. We have the perfect plan, the perfect team. We execute flawlessly. But for some reason, we miss and we have to go around a second time, a third time, a fourth, until eventually we nail it.
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