How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist ｜ OZAN VAROL
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 5 minutes
Words per Minute
187.90927
Summary
In this episode of The Order of Man, host Ryan Mickler is joined by Ozan Vrol, a rocket scientist who formerly worked with NASA. In this conversation, we talk about what it means to test as you fly and fly as you test the difference between strategies and tactics, why it matters, and why it s important to give your mind space to play. And why thinking like a Rocket Scientist will help you make giant leaps in your personal and professional life.
Transcript
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We've all heard the term. It's not rocket science and how that's true of most conversations and
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topics and activities. There are benefits to thinking about problems the way that a
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rocket scientist does today. I'm joined by Ozan Varol, a rocket scientist who formerly worked
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with NASA. In today's conversation, we talk about what it means to test as you fly and fly as you
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test the difference between strategies and tactics and why it matters, why it's important to give
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your mind space to play and why thinking like a rocket scientist will help you make giant leaps
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in your personal and professional life. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest.
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Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more
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time. Every time you are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your
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life. This is who you are. This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is
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said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is
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Ryan Mickler and I am the host and the founder of this movement, The Order of Man. I'm glad that
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you're tuning in, which is probably a little bit less than you normally would because you don't have
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your long commutes that you're used to, or maybe you're not working out at your traditional gym.
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So I understand that for many of you, it's been interesting to say the least in trying to find
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your routines and your habits and your systems in the wake of everything being shaken up and stirred
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and mixed up. And either way, whatever's going on in your life, I'm glad that you're tuning in.
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This is very important that we continue to have these conversations regarding what it means to be
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a man, how to make ourselves more capable as men, and then stepping up, of course, in our lives and
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the lives of the people that we love and care for. That's our responsibility and our obligation.
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And frankly, our honor. I know for me, as I step into my role as a husband and a father and a
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business owner, a leader in my community, a neighbor, a friend, whatever it may be that I'm
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definitely more fulfilled and satisfied in my life. So this is a podcast and a movement to encourage
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you to do the same, and then give you the resources you need to become more capable of doing. So
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I've got a really good and interesting conversation lined up with you today.
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The guy's name is Ozan Virol. He's a former rocket scientist. I'm going to talk a little
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bit more about him in a second. Before I get into that, I do want to mention my friends and
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guys, with that said, let me get into the introduction. Again, my guest today is Ozan
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Verol. He is, or was born in Istanbul at the age of 17. He moved to the United States alone
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by himself to study astrophysics at Cornell. And while he was there, he served on the operations
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team for the Mars exploration rovers. And then if that wasn't enough, he then pivoted and graduated
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first in his class from law school. And he also earned the highest grade point average in
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his law school's history. So obviously this is a very intelligent human being that we get to have
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a conversation with today. He now teaches law as a professor and his works have been featured in
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the wall street journal, newsweek time, CNN, and the Washington post today. He's here to share some
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of his knowledge with us from his book. Think like a rocket scientist. Ozan, thanks for joining
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me on the order of man podcast. Right. And I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much for having
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me on. Yeah, you bet. Uh, I, I can't remember who got us in touch initially. Maybe it was your,
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your publicist or publisher, but, uh, got this book, think like a rocket scientist and I'm excited
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to dig into it today. Awesome. Yeah. Let's, uh, let's do it. It's important conversations. You know,
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we always hear the phrase that, you know, this isn't rocket science, but in your case, you know,
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some of what your background is, is, is quite literally, it is rocket science. And, uh, and I
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think it's good because a lot of the times we, and look here, here's what I fall into. I wonder if
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we're opposite this way. I'm really curious about this. I tend to think less and react more. And I
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wonder if you fall on the other side of that spectrum, like how would you define yourself when
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it comes to thinking versus acting and finding that balance for yourself? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I,
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I tend to find practical applications more interesting than, than theory. Um, so then just
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to give your listeners a little bit of background here, I majored in astrophysics and in college
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and then worked on the operations team for the 2003 Mars exploration rovers project, which
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sent two rovers to Mars. But then I pivoted and went to law school and ended up becoming a law
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professor, which is my, my day job currently. Um, and one of the, one of the reasons why I did
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that was because honestly, with the substance of the astrophysics classes I was taking, there was
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too little practical application. Um, and it was all very theoretical and I've always been more
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interested in, in practical applications compared to, to theory. And to go back to your question about
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whether, you know, the, the balance between thinking less and, and doing more, I'm probably
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somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. And many of my classmates were definitely very firmly on the,
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on the, on the, on the think side of the spectrum. And so it wasn't a great fit for me. I was thinking
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about going and getting a PhD in astrophysics and that just would have been miserable.
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Yeah. Well, uh, and I, you know, I gotta be honest, I, from my perspective, I'm like,
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oh, and then you go to law school. I'm like, I don't know if that's, that's, that's quite the move
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either, but it sounds like it's worked out well for you, man.
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Well, I mean, you know, law school is, I remember, um, so I went to Cornell for, for undergrad and so
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I was an astrophysics major and my senior year, I was seriously thinking about doing something else.
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And so I took this law class that was taught by a Cornell law professor, but he teaches it only
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for undergrads. And so you go in, you read real cases and he uses the Socratic method, which is like
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he'll cold call on a student and then it's question and answer. You're, you're on the spot. And it felt like
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a breath of fresh air to me. Uh, it was like, you know, we were reading these real disputes between
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real people and real businesses. So for me, that was a lot more hands-on and practical,
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like something that I can sink my teeth into compared to say, you know, the quantum mechanics
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Right. Yeah. I could see how that would be a challenge. You know, it's interesting as we think
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about these, and I don't know if it's a spectrum necessarily. I don't know if that's the right term,
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but you get the point, you know, between thinking and acting. And it seems to me that the people who
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act need to think a little more and the people who only think probably need to act a little bit
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more. So it's like trying to balance yourself out based on your strengths and weaknesses and
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I agree with that completely. And one of the things I'm doing this year is actually trying
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to consume less and create more just because sometimes acquiring knowledge can be an excuse
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for not actually implementing it. I mean, you can, you can read every self-help book known to man.
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You can take every online course available, but if you're not actually executing it and you're
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simply collecting information, that information becomes an obstacle to doing. So I completely
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agree with you on there. But I think there was a happy medium that many people are missing right
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now. Yeah. It is interesting because I'm in the quote unquote self-help space and I've actually
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thought very much the same when it comes to books. You know, I used to, I used to wear the number
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of books that I read as a, as a badge of honor, right? The more books I read, the better I was.
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And, and what we do is we trick ourselves into thinking that we're actually moving the needle,
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right? Like consumption is important, but at some, at some point we've got to produce.
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And if, uh, if the production is, or excuse me, if the consumption is at the expense of the
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production, it's not, it's not healthy for anybody. I agree completely. Yeah. I am really
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interested about, you know, the title of the book is think like a rocket scientist. And I like how you
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broke out the book into segments. Stage one, launch two is accelerate three is achieve.
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It seems to me that stage one would actually be thinking, strategizing, planning, and you start
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with launch. So help me understand that a little bit. Yeah, exactly. So the first stage is all about,
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um, conceiving the idea. And there's a number of sub stages involved in that. Um, so for example,
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the, um, the second chapter in the book is about first principles thinking. Um, because often when
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we start thinking or when we start doing, like if you're more into, into the practicalities and you
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jump into, into doing mode, we're too stuck with what we've done in the past and what other people
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have done. So we look at, you know, people who came before us, say you're thinking about launching
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a podcast or a blog, you look to what they've done. And then we copy what they did with little
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variation, uh, businesses sort of look at the rear view mirror and do what they did yesterday.
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And so first principles thinking, which appears in that first stage launch of the book, for example,
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is a way of looking at the assumptions that you're operating under and actually questioning them.
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So often the analogy I use, I think at one point in the book is like being in a jail cell,
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uh, we're operating in this jail cell, but we're not even aware that the iron bars are there.
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We're just simply doing what we're doing. You're free to open the door and leave anytime,
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by the way, the jail cell was constructed by us. It can be modified by us, but we're so stuck in,
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um, in the grooves of, of habits, uh, based on routines and processes that we have in place that
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it becomes really hard to, to step back and say, you know what, I can actually leave. Uh, so one of the
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examples I give in the book for, uh, for, um, a real life person who's put that into practices
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is Elon Musk. When he started SpaceX, one of the deeply held assumptions. So this was the jail cell
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that all rocket scientists, all traditional aerospace companies, I should say were operating
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under was that rockets couldn't be reused. So once a rocket sends, it goes up to space and delivers
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as cargo, it would either burn up in the atmosphere or plunge into the ocean and it couldn't be reused
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again. Now imagine for a moment doing the same thing for commercial flights, like, you know, you fly
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from, you fly from Portland to New York and then all the passengers leave the plane and then somebody
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comes up to the plane and just torches it. Just demolishes it, right? Yeah, exactly. And that's what we
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did for rockets for decades. And a Boeing 737 is actually about the same price as a modern rocket,
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but commercial flights are so much cheaper because those planes can be reused over and over again.
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Yeah. And so, you know, first principles thinking looks at that and says, well, okay,
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this is an assumption that we're all operating under the traditional aerospace companies,
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at least. Is there a better way of doing this? Is there a way of creating complete and quick
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reusability so rocket stages can be reused over and over again? And there's still quite a bit of work
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to be done to get there, but both SpaceX, which is Elon Musk's space company, along with Blue Origin,
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which is Jeff Bezos' space company, have made quite a bit of headway there in terms of recovering
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used rocket stages and then, you know, sending them back out to space like certified pre-owned
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vehicles. So that's one way of reframing ideas or questioning assumptions when you're in that
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initial, initial thinking stage when you're thinking through what you're going to do.
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Yeah. It's interesting. You know, if, if we were to fast forward a hundred years or a thousand years,
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those, those, uh, those people are probably going to ask or, or, or look at the way that we've done
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it now currently or moving into is like, that's just the way you do it. And they'll think that
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the way it was done a hundred years earlier was so barbaric, right? Like why would they do it that
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way? Almost just foreign. I guess the question though, is how do you know what is a principle,
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you know, a foundational principle that you can operate off of and what is an assumption that
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you just have bought into? Yeah, that's a, that's a good question. And it's hard to tell the difference
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until you really break apart a system and, and you try to get to the fundamental components. And
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sometimes you reach those fundamental components, take something away, and then the system stops
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working. Um, and then, you know, you've sort of uncovered a raw material that you can't do,
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do without. And so this goes to the doing part and the testing part, but often to be able to sort
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of hack through the assumptions that you're operating under, you might actually hack through a core
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component. Um, but if, as long as you're, you're testing and not implementing right away, um, you can
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contain the damage and you can realize, well, okay, this is one of the core components that can't be
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removed from the system. And so I'm going to leave it in there, but I'm going to experiment with the
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others. Right. I mean, that has to still work, right? Like if it can't work, then you probably
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have dug too far. Right. Exactly. Or maybe, maybe not even with the principles, you know, I'm thinking
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about in the context of, of ingredients, right? Is, is maybe you don't need to take that out
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altogether, but can it be replaced, right? Is there something else that's more effective? You
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think about cars, for example, do they need to run on fossil fuels or can they be run on
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solar power or water or whatever? Fill in the blank. You're, you're way more familiar and,
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and, uh, fluent in that language than probably I am. No, that's, I think that you're spot on Ryan.
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And the, the other example that come to, came to mind is, is the raw materials of a rocket. Uh, rockets
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used to use carbon fiber, but now one of the other things Elon Musk is doing is using stainless steel
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instead, which is cheaper. Um, and so carbon fiber was assumed to be one of the non-negotiable raw
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materials, but that also has been negotiated. So, you know, often I find that the, the, the correction
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runs in the other direction. So it's not that people are questioning the raw materials and then
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breaking the system is that they're not questioning assumptions enough. So they're not, I mean,
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they're nowhere near the raw materials in terms of like questioning the assumptions and the processes
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that we're operating under. And so, yeah, it can be a concern to question too much where you're
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getting rid of a raw material, but, but the people I, I encounter on a daily basis, the corporate
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executives that I work with are usually doing the opposite where they're not, they're not questioning
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enough. Sure. The greater risk is that you're not thinking deep enough, not that you're
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thinking too deeply. Right. Exactly. So let's, let's riff on, uh, on, uh, on Eli, Elon Musk here
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for a minute. Sure. Why, like, what about him? Let me, let me back up and rephrase it a different
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way. Why didn't somebody else think of this sooner? Like why, why, what about him makes him think the
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way he does question these assumptions, create new ways of doing it and, and prove has proven time
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and time again to be very, very innovative? That's a great question. Um, so the first thing that
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popped to mind is he was an outsider to rocket science. So he was, you know, he found that PayPal,
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which was initially x.com. And so he's coming from Silicon Valley from the internet world. Um,
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and then once PayPal is sold to eBay and Elon cashes out, he goes to a beach in Rio. Although
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his idea of beach reading, uh, wasn't the latest Dan Brown novel. It was the fundamentals of rocket
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propulsion. And so he knew very little about rocket science and he picked it up by reading textbooks.
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And one of the advantages that he has as an outsider is the ability to see things that the insiders miss.
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So when you're, when you've been doing something for such a long time, uh, you're so ingrained in the
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conventional wisdom that it becomes harder to step back and question assumptions and, and, you know,
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see where the jail cell is that you're operating under. But when you're an outsider, like, like Elon was,
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it becomes easier to come into a new industry and see these like seemingly obvious insights that
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everybody else in that industry had missed. Um, and there's so many examples of, of people doing
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this. Like the other example that came to mind as I was explaining it is Reed Hastings, who's the
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co-founder of, of Netflix. I think he came to video rental from the finance world. Um, and he was,
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he had incurred a bunch of late fees for, um, renting Apollo 13 from Blockbuster, I think. And,
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you know, didn't return the movie in time. And so he's, um, he goes to the gym one day, he's on the
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treadmill or whatever equipment he might be on. And, uh, and it, it dawns on him that with a gym
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membership, you know, you pay 30 or 40 bucks a month and you can use it as much or as little as
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you want. And he says, Oh, well, why don't we take that model and apply it to the video rental
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industry where you pay a set fee every month and then you can rent as many movies or as little
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movies as you want. And you don't have to deal with late fees that, that I had to, uh, had to pay for
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renting Apollo 13. And that was the genesis of, of Netflix. And again, it's such a sim seemingly
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simple idea, but it's, it's so hard to see it when you're, when you've been immersed into,
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into that industry. It reminds me of a great quote by, I think this is Arthur Schopenhauer,
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but he says talent hits a target that no one else can hit, but genius is a target that no one else
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can see. Um, and in both the case of Hastings and Musk, I think they were able to see targets
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that no one else could see because you know, amateurs, they were amateurs to the industry
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that, that they were disrupting. Yeah. Amateurs. And then, and then a willingness to take some,
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some risk as well. A lot of people can see these things. And I mean, how many people do you talk
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with it that say, well, you know, I had that idea 10 years ago. Well, great. You didn't act
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on it. So, so. Right. No, right. Exactly. Are you familiar with, uh, exactly. Are you familiar
00:19:36.040
with, uh, the, the blue ocean strategy, that book and the work? Okay. That's what, what this sounds
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like. And, and for those of you who may not be familiar, it's, it's basically melding two industries
00:19:46.660
or two, uh, non-correlated ideas or thoughts into one and creating uncontested market space.
00:19:54.380
It's actually really interesting. Yeah. It's a great book. And, and, uh, the contrast to blue
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ocean is the red ocean and it's red because everybody's fighting over the same fish and,
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and, uh, everybody's going after the same low hanging fruit. But if you can create a new market,
00:20:10.760
find a blue ocean for yourself, then, you know, you're not competing with, with everybody else,
00:20:16.060
which is a, which is a huge, huge advantage. Um, and so, yeah, so certainly the ability to take
00:20:20.980
risks is, is another one, the ability to, to implement. I mean, as you said, it's, it's one
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thing to conceive an idea, uh, to think about it theoretically, but it's something else completely
00:20:32.880
to actually put it into, into practice. So I'm sure, you know, the experiences of, of, of individuals
00:20:39.680
like Elon Musk have, have helped them as well, because this wasn't the first time Elon Musk
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disrupted an industry. He's been doing that for much of his life. And so there's certainly other
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things going on as well. Um, besides the factors that we mentioned. Yeah. This is why when we talk
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with a lot of guys, for example, uh, and I'm trying to think about it in the context of what, you know,
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most men would be experiencing, right? Most men aren't looking to start a, uh, uh, a company that's
00:21:05.160
going to fly people to, to space. Right. Right. But you know, they may, may be interested in,
00:21:09.900
in starting a new job or launching a business. And, and what a lot of these guys will say,
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or even think is that, you know, I've wasted the last 20 years of my life in this career or this
00:21:19.920
pursuit. And now I'm going to pursue something completely different. I'm like, man, that's not
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a waste. That's 20 years of experience that nobody else has. And you can see things in a way that nobody
00:21:28.980
else in this new industry does. Absolutely. And I see the same statements me made when it comes to
00:21:36.700
failure as well. Right. So people will say, well, I worked on this for a year and it failed
00:21:42.060
and it was a complete waste of time. Well, not necessarily. I mean, if you take, if you can
00:21:46.820
take what you learn from that failure of, of a year of trying something that not working and apply it
00:21:52.020
somewhere else, that's not a failure at all. That's an investment. It's an invaluable learning
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opportunity. It's a data point that most other people don't have. Yeah. This, uh, this actually ties
00:22:03.160
in. We're fast forwarding here in the book a little bit. You had two, I think,
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subchapters called, uh, nothing succeeds like failure. And then the next one is nothing fails
00:22:10.580
like success. It's a really interesting concept when you put the two together, nothing succeeds
00:22:14.760
like failure and nothing fails like success. Can you walk us through that? Sure. So to begin with,
00:22:22.920
with the first one, which we already started to talk about, which is nothing succeeds like,
00:22:26.840
like failure. Um, before I get into the substance of what I talk about, um, I do want to,
00:22:32.940
uh, riff on a little bit on this fast, uh, fail fast, fail often, fail forward mantra that's so
00:22:39.900
popular these days in, in Silicon Valley. Um, entrepreneurs are told to celebrate failure.
00:22:46.000
There are now conferences dedicated to celebrating failure. Um, there are these, uh, what are called
00:22:54.460
fuck up nights where people get together, thousands of people from all over the world, get together and
00:23:00.140
talk about their, their failures. Uh, Silicon Valley companies are now holding funerals for failed
00:23:06.620
startups complete with like bagpipes, uh, DJ spinning records, alcohol flowing freely. Wow.
00:23:14.160
I don't buy it. Yeah. I'm kind of on the page with you. Yeah. I don't buy it for two main reasons.
00:23:20.080
One is if you're celebrating something, you're not learning from it. Um, and two, no matter what
00:23:27.300
Silicon Valley tells you, failure sucks. The whoever says they celebrate failure and they don't mind
00:23:32.660
failing, I think is lying to you. Um, I failed more times than I care to remember in my life and
00:23:37.360
every time it sucked. Well, it's supposed to hurt. Like that's the point of failing is you don't want
00:23:42.580
to do it again. Right. And if it doesn't hurt, you're not going to learn from it again. I cite a
00:23:46.920
number of research studies in the book that basically explain, and one research is about
00:23:51.480
entrepreneurs and the other is about cardiac surgeons that when people fail, they often don't
00:23:56.600
learn from their mistakes because either they're celebrating their failures or the opposite.
00:24:00.540
they're blaming their failure on other factors. So they're blaming it on other people. They're
00:24:05.760
blaming it on bad luck as opposed to doing some internal soul searching and realizing what
00:24:12.380
mistakes they may have have made. And so one of the takeaways from that chapter is that it
00:24:19.040
can be just as dangerous to celebrate failure as it is to demonize it. So I think the goal should
00:24:27.300
be not to fail fast, but to learn fast and failure can be a really, really great teacher
00:24:35.280
if you know how to get the right lessons from it, which is why the title of the chapter is,
00:24:41.060
is nothing, um, nothing succeeds like, like failure. And I, you know, share a number of tactics in the
00:24:48.460
book about how, how people can, can learn from their failures, detect their failures, detect their
00:24:53.800
mistakes and learn from them. And then, as you said, the counterpart to that chapter is nothing
00:24:58.740
fails like success, which is the, the last chapter in the book. And, um, and the chapter opens with,
00:25:06.400
uh, one of the greatest disasters and rocket science history, which is the Challenger space shuttle
00:25:12.200
disaster. And, um, and in that case, uh, what happened was the O-rings on the shuttle and O-rings are like
00:25:20.300
these rubber bands, um, that sealed the solid rocket boosters to prevent hot gases from escaping.
00:25:27.680
They have performed this crucial function, but on the eve of Challenger's launch, the temperatures
00:25:32.720
at Cape Canaveral were just uncharacteristically cold. Um, and these O-rings tend to turn brittle in
00:25:40.200
cold weather and they have to be flexible to be able to perform their functions. A number of engineers
00:25:44.940
raised their hands and said, we should delay the launch, but the management overruled their
00:25:48.880
recommendations and, and, and went ahead with the launch and disaster ensued. And the, uh,
00:25:53.980
the recommendation to delay the launch was due to the cold. Like this was, this was an anticipated,
00:25:59.520
uh, potential error or, or something that would happen with these O-rings. Yep. Absolutely.
00:26:05.080
Absolutely. And six months before, and the NASA had been flying space shuttles with dangerous damage
00:26:12.100
to O-rings for about five years before Challenger. Um, and in each case, and this is getting to the,
00:26:17.460
to the title of the chapter, because nothing bad had happened to the shuttle itself,
00:26:22.460
the missions were all characterized as successes. Right. Right. You know, even though the O-ring
00:26:27.220
is damaged, you succeeded. So there was no reason to do things differently. But six months before
00:26:32.220
Challenger's launch, um, one of the engineers working on the, on the shuttle wrote a very prescient memo
00:26:39.200
saying, you know, if we don't do something about the problem with the O-rings, about the damage that
00:26:44.420
we're seeing on these shuttles that are returning back from space to, to their O-rings, the, the,
00:26:50.300
the, the result could be a catastrophe of the highest order, the loss of human life. He wrote
00:26:55.540
six months before Challenger and the memo was, the memo was ignored.
00:26:59.420
Is the, the hot gases escaping where they should be? Is it just that they're flammable? Is that,
00:27:04.140
is that the issue? Yeah, exactly. Um, and so, but the managers, the NASA managers were looking at
00:27:11.480
their past successes and saying, look, as long as we repeat the process that led to success in the
00:27:16.500
past, we're going to be okay. Right. Um, and then 17 years later, it happened again with,
00:27:22.860
with the space shuttle Columbia. And so NASA ended up fixing the technical problem that led to the
00:27:27.860
Challenger launch, but NASA didn't just have an O-ring problem. They also had a conformity problem.
00:27:33.540
And that problem, that underlying cultural flaw wasn't fixed. So then it happened again with the
00:27:38.940
Columbia where the technical flaw this time around was completely different. It was this foam piece
00:27:43.920
of foam that separated from the shuttle and struck the shuttle's thermal insulation, which is
00:27:49.540
responsible for protecting the shuttle from the heat of re-entry into the atmosphere. And a number
00:27:54.880
of engineers noticed the foam strike during the launch and they raised their hands and said, while
00:27:59.900
the shuttle was in orbit before it went back into the atmosphere to land, they raised their hands and
00:28:05.500
said, you know, we should ask the Pentagon to reroute some spy satellites to survey the damage in orbit
00:28:11.700
to see what can be done. But the managers, again, ignore the request on the basis that because foam
00:28:19.500
shedding, shedding had happened before and all of those missions were successful, um, then there is
00:28:26.480
no reason to do things differently. So success is a way of breeding complacency with the status quo.
00:28:32.380
So when we succeed, we assume everything went according to plan, right?
00:28:36.820
Too busy lighting cigars and popping champagne corks. We fail to realize that we succeeded despite
00:28:43.340
making a serious mistake or despite taking, uh, you know, a serious risk that we probably shouldn't
00:28:49.660
have been taking. And as a result, we don't learn from success. Um, and, and so it can be harder for,
00:28:56.980
and this is true for people and businesses, um, both, it can be harder for people and businesses
00:29:03.320
to survive their own success than to survive their failure. How do you, how do you identify that though?
00:29:09.420
Because, you know, I imagine with, with space shuttles, for example, there's certain tolerances
00:29:13.560
that these things can fall between and that's considered, you know, quote unquote safe or whatever
00:29:18.100
the term is. Like, how do you, how do you determine whether something ought to be analyzed or reviewed
00:29:26.020
or should everything be, you know, it's like, we only have so much time to focus on so many things.
00:29:31.620
So how do you determine what to focus your attention on?
00:29:34.780
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so I think with, with the space shuttles in particular,
00:29:40.860
with the challenger in Columbia, uh, disasters, and these are well-trained engineers raising their
00:29:47.160
hands and saying this can lead to the loss of human life. So I think at that point, if you're
00:29:52.740
a manager, um, and you've got your people raising their hands and saying, look, something can go
00:29:59.400
seriously wrong with this. Um, I think in a case like that, where you've got someone with a very
00:30:05.120
well-trained guts that, you know, great experience saying we need to do something. I think it, it,
00:30:11.320
it makes sense to pay, pay attention to what they're saying, at least investigate, right.
00:30:15.980
Instead of just saying, well, we're just going to keep doing what we did yesterday.
00:30:19.420
Why hire though? It's, it's fascinating. It's like, why even bring those people on if you're not going
00:30:23.200
to heed their advice? Like, isn't that the point of having them?
00:30:26.040
Exactly. Totally. Totally. And so this, this goes into the, you know, the problem about conformity
00:30:31.260
and groupthink that I mentioned before. It's like, yeah, you're right. Why hire those people
00:30:34.920
if you're not going to listen to what they're saying. But as you can imagine, this is so common
00:30:39.220
across so many different industries. Yeah. You know, where CEOs bring in these brilliant people
00:30:44.240
to work for them and they don't, they don't listen to what they say. Um, and so, so that's
00:30:49.100
one aspect of it. And then the other aspect of it is, is, um, to, and this goes into the investigation
00:30:56.260
part. We tend to investigate what went wrong only after a failure, but we need to do that after
00:31:03.700
success as well. So don't just save the postmortems for catastrophic failures, but after you succeed,
00:31:11.080
and I, I do this in my own personal life too. Um, I look back and ask myself like, okay, so that was
00:31:17.880
great. That was a success, but what went wrong with that success? Right. Where were the points
00:31:23.420
of potential points of failure where I just got lucky? Um, and so I did this after I finished writing,
00:31:31.080
think like Iraq, a scientist. And, and for me, the writing process was overall a, a success,
00:31:38.180
but there were a number of points, um, in the writing process where things could have gone
00:31:43.660
haywire. So at one point in the process of writing the book, for example, I found myself in a complete
00:31:49.820
rabbit hole on this issue where I spent a month researching this very narrow question and didn't
00:31:56.680
write anything. Um, and if I kept digging down that rabbit hole, I would have blown the deadline.
00:32:01.840
Um, and so, but something I course corrected, I went back to, to the drawing board. I sort of
00:32:07.840
ditched all that research and actually ended up not including that point at all in the book,
00:32:12.540
but that was one point that was one point in the process where things could have gone sideways.
00:32:17.980
And so I'll do that review and then I'll create a set of criteria going forward. The next time I write
00:32:23.080
a book about what to do and what not to do, but most of us don't. And I, I wasn't doing this before
00:32:28.280
either, before I wrote the book, um, before, after I wrote the success chapter, I said, well,
00:32:32.780
I should probably, uh, walk the talk and apply this process to my own life. And that's been
00:32:38.260
really, really helpful to do that sort of review after you succeed when you're least likely to do it.
00:32:45.040
Man, let me, uh, let me hit the time out, the pause button real quick. Uh, I know a bunch of
00:32:49.540
you, like I said earlier, stuck at home with the fallout from Corona virus. And rather than binge
00:32:55.180
watch tiger shows on Netflix, I know that most of you, probably the overwhelming majority of you
00:33:00.800
would rather be doing something productive. Uh, and that's why I want you to join us in our
00:33:06.040
brotherhood, the iron council. I've seen a lot of online groups popping up over the past month or so,
00:33:10.600
but I'll tell you what, we've been working on this for the past five years, not the past five weeks,
00:33:16.120
the past five years to ensure that when you join with us, uh, you'll have a proven track record of
00:33:21.360
success to tap into. Uh, also when you band with us, you'll tap into the brotherhood and the
00:33:26.180
camaraderie that comes with it. You'll unlock access to our planning system, which is very important.
00:33:30.620
And of course, all the results it produces, but most importantly, uh, when this COVID-19 thing is
00:33:36.040
all over and it will be, uh, you'll be among the relatively few who took this time as an opportunity
00:33:42.060
to grow in every aspect of your life. And of course you'll be better off for it.
00:33:45.760
So if you're ready to band with us, or at least you want to know what it is we're doing,
00:33:49.040
then head to order of man.com slash iron council. Again, order of man.com slash iron council.
00:33:55.300
Go ahead and take a look, see what we're all about. And then lock in your seat again,
00:33:59.980
order of man.com slash iron council. All right, guys, do that after the show for now,
00:34:04.620
let's get back with Ozan. Yeah, I think it's natural tendency to fall into one of two camps.
00:34:09.960
One is, you know, you haven't been a success. And so you start to identify not as failing,
00:34:16.820
but being a failure, right? Like being a failure as a human being. Uh, and then I think there's
00:34:22.460
another camp that, you know, these guys have levels of success and naturally they just become
00:34:27.460
complacent and comfortable and think that, Hey, because I've done it this way and it seems to have
00:34:33.400
worked that if I continue to do the same thing, that I'll just continue to experience the same
00:34:37.740
results. And, you know, I run into that as well. It's like, as we've had success with this movement,
00:34:41.560
I'm realizing that in order to get to the next level or the next point, yes, there are first
00:34:47.760
principles, right? Like we talked about earlier, but there's also new things I need to apply and
00:34:51.520
new information I need to learn and new feedback I need to consider. Right. Absolutely. Um, and, uh,
00:34:58.540
and what you're doing, Ryan, I think is, is very rare, uh, because when, once people succeed,
00:35:02.940
they tend to just rest on their laurel laurels and, and, um, and not do things differently. Um,
00:35:09.480
I want to go back to something you mentioned at the beginning of that question, which is this
00:35:13.660
difference between our, when you fail thinking that I am a failure, uh, it's a really dangerous
00:35:19.420
way of thinking. And it's a very common way of thinking, but there's a huge difference between
00:35:24.000
saying I'm a failure versus this project failed. Right. Right. Because if you say this project failed,
00:35:30.840
it's no longer personal, it's no longer a part of your identity. Like you can distance it,
00:35:35.580
distance the project from yourself and realize that looking at that project that failed, you didn't
00:35:41.760
fail. You can try again with a different project and perhaps succeed. But once you put that distancing
00:35:47.020
between you two, learning becomes easier because now, okay, this project failed. Let's get curious
00:35:52.520
about what happened and why it failed and what can we learn from it? Whereas if you internalize it,
00:35:57.380
if you personalize it, it becomes really hard to, to take a risk again on a new project that
00:36:03.940
actually might end up succeeding. Well, it's just interesting because I think all of us have a
00:36:07.900
tendency to give meaning to phrases and words and experiences that aren't always there. Right.
00:36:14.580
So if you failed once, that doesn't mean you're a failure. If you identify it that way, you'll start
00:36:19.500
behaving that way and recreate those results. Uh, but also on the other side of the thing, we,
00:36:25.560
a lot of the times we, well, it's like this thing you were talking about where you're having
00:36:29.840
celebrations for, for failure. It's like, we try to reframe it in a way that makes us feel good
00:36:34.760
about it. It's like, just tell yourself the truth that you failed. You're not a failure. You fell short
00:36:42.560
like that and you can improve. And that truth is what's going to help you succeed moving forward.
00:36:49.720
But if you look at everything through the, the, the rose colored glasses, you're not going to
00:36:54.300
succeed. If you look at everything, like you're a loser, of course, you're not going to succeed. Just,
00:36:58.700
just tell it like it is and act accordingly. Exactly. And we tend to have a, an obsession with
00:37:06.260
grand openings, but the opening doesn't have to be grand as long as the finale is. So if you look at,
00:37:12.980
if you look at any major achievement in history, it didn't spring into existence overnight. Uh, there
00:37:19.920
was a trial and error process like Einstein's for several proofs for E equals MC square failed. Um,
00:37:26.520
Thomas Edison famously said, I haven't failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Um,
00:37:32.740
James Dyson, who was the British inventor spent over 15 years developing more than like 5,000
00:37:38.540
prototypes of this bagless vacuum before he settled on, on the one that worked. But if you can take
00:37:45.260
what, what, what didn't work from a failed project and apply it to something else, so if you're not
00:37:51.540
celebrating it, but if you're also not internalizing it, there's a happy medium there. Um, as you, as you
00:37:56.840
mentioned, where you can actually learn and grow from that, from that failure. Um, another favorite
00:38:03.020
example of mine, which I mentioned in the book is, um, in 1989, Pfizer, uh, developed this drug that was
00:38:11.340
intended to treat high blood pressure. And in clinical trials, the drug ended up being a failure.
00:38:18.720
Uh, but the male participants in the trial reported a strange side effect and that's how Viagra was born.
00:38:26.840
Right. Uh, so that's, that's sort of one example of taking what looks like a failed project, uh, to
00:38:33.600
treat high blood pressure and applying it to, to another field to, to create this revolutionary drug.
00:38:39.080
Well, and I think this, this ties into being open-minded about how all these things come
00:38:44.360
into consideration. Cause if you, if you scrap the project at, at first glance, you don't really
00:38:48.380
analyze what's happening or how it might apply to something else you're doing, then you're limiting
00:38:53.000
yourself to potential victories and successes. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, because often the, you know,
00:39:01.040
when, when something fails, um, it may have succeeded if things had gone slightly differently.
00:39:07.660
And so if you keep an open mind and if you see, okay, this particular angle failed, but if I pivot
00:39:13.460
just a little bit, I actually might hit the target. Um, and so, which is why this review process,
00:39:20.960
which we talked about after success, but certainly after failure as well can be really, really useful
00:39:27.760
because it's possible for good decisions to sometimes lead to bad outcomes. Um, certainly sometimes
00:39:35.020
bad decisions lead to bad outcomes too, but some of the decisions that you made that produced a failure
00:39:40.540
may have been good and you want to keep those in place. You don't want to scrap them. Um, and same
00:39:46.820
thing with success. Sometimes bad decisions lead to success. As we saw in the case of Challenger and
00:39:52.740
Columbia, the decision to, to launch, even though there was serious damage to the O-rings and pre previous
00:39:57.920
missions, you can make a bad decision and decision and you get lucky. And so you succeed. Um, so that's
00:40:04.400
why that review process is so important going back and looking at what, what happened and then sorting
00:40:11.100
the good decisions from the bad and keeping the good decisions, even though they produce a failure
00:40:16.060
in this instance. Yeah. I think it's important to remember that the, the adage that correlation does
00:40:22.640
not equal causation, right? So we might see the result of things and think, well, I got to scrap
00:40:27.560
this entire thing. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's, let's take a step back here for a second,
00:40:32.220
figure out, okay, was there, there's certain actions that led to that. And there's certain
00:40:35.700
actions that didn't, maybe we just take the bad and leave the good and drive on with that, which,
00:40:40.140
you know, ties into something that I actually was really interested, uh, in the book itself.
00:40:45.140
And you talk about reframing questions for better answers. That's actually something that we
00:40:50.920
address quite often here is because I heard a quote one time and I love this quote and it says,
00:40:55.560
the quality of your life will be determined by the quality of questions that you ask.
00:41:01.060
And, and I'm, I've always been fascinated with asking better questions and the guys that
00:41:05.900
have stuck around for any amount of time with the order of men stuff that we're doing know that it's
00:41:10.540
like, ask a better question. You're more likely to get a better answer. So I'm really curious, uh,
00:41:14.920
on your take on reframing questions. So you come to the right answers.
00:41:19.000
Yeah. I love that quote, Ryan. I hadn't heard it before, but that's, I think that's spot on because
00:41:23.960
we tend to assume that breakthroughs begin with a smart answer, but they actually begin with a smart
00:41:30.680
question. Um, and, uh, there's another quote that's often attributed to Einstein. There's actually
00:41:37.020
no evidence that he said it, but I liked the quote. Um, he says, if I have an hour to, to solve something,
00:41:45.040
to solve a problem, he would spend 55 minutes reframing and redefining the problem and five minutes
00:41:50.340
actually solving it. Um, because often spending some time, um, in that initial phase of, of coming
00:41:58.660
up with a better way of framing something is going to lead to, to much better answers. So I'll answer
00:42:04.820
that question by, I'm going to give an example that I mentioned in the book and, and then share
00:42:09.540
one of the many strategies that I talk about in that reframing questions chapter with, with the
00:42:14.940
listeners here. And the example is from my life, from the Mars project that I worked on. So I started
00:42:21.380
working on the operations team for this mission back in 1999. And at the time, our mission was to
00:42:27.140
send one Rover to Mars in 2001, and then one Rover to Mars in, in 2003. Um, and in 1999 was a really bad
00:42:36.040
year for, for NASA. Uh, one of the things that happened was this other mission that we were not
00:42:41.940
responsible for called the Mars polar lander crashed and it crashed most likely because of a
00:42:48.620
fault in its landing system. Now this wasn't our baby, but our mission was going to use the exact
00:42:55.260
same landing mechanism that the Mars polar lander had used. And that mechanism had just failed
00:43:00.660
spectacularly. So our mission was put on hold and we went back and we were trying to figure out ways
00:43:07.040
of like coming up with a system, a landing system that's actually going to work. And, um, and I
00:43:13.580
remember my boss, who was the principal investigator of the mission, he walked into my office one day
00:43:19.420
and he said, I just got off the phone with, um, this person at NASA who had just gotten out of a meeting
00:43:26.960
with the administrator of NASA and the administrator of NASA wanted him to ask my boss a very simple
00:43:33.180
question, which was, can we send two rovers instead of one? So instead of doing what NASA had been,
00:43:42.320
had been doing before, which is they would send one rover to Mars every two years, the NASA
00:43:47.640
administrator said, well, can we send two rovers at the same time as opposed to one? And it, it's such
00:43:54.280
a simple question going back to sort of first principles thinking and these obvious insights that
00:43:58.960
we often miss that no one had thought about asking before because the problem wasn't just the
00:44:05.540
landing system. Of course we were going to fix that. But even if you fix that, there's so many
00:44:10.020
things that can go wrong when you're sending this delicate robot 40 million miles through outer space.
00:44:16.240
And then it has to land on this surface that's, um, littered with scary looking rocks. Um,
00:44:23.740
and so instead of putting all our eggs in one spacecraft's basket, we ended up sending two
00:44:29.820
rovers instead of one. And then with economies of scale, when you're building, uh, two identical
00:44:35.400
things instead of one, the second part ends up costing just pennies on the dollar. Um, that's
00:44:41.040
interesting. That's what I was going to ask. It seems to me that it would be significantly more
00:44:45.200
expensive. And if they're identical, then it's like, how do you equate for new technology or new
00:44:51.500
ideas or feedback that would improve the, the rover in the next two years, for example?
00:44:56.860
Right. Yeah. So they are identical, but the way that you come up with something new and which is
00:45:04.440
what we ended up doing is to send the rovers to very different locations on Mars. Uh, so they actually
00:45:11.980
ended up on like the opposite sides of the planet. Um, and the landing sites were very different in terms
00:45:17.160
of their geography, uh, chemical composition and whatnot. And so double the rovers meant double
00:45:23.640
the science as well. Uh, and each rover ended up sort of finding very different things on,
00:45:29.520
on the, the opposite sides of Mars. Um, and you know, I'm so glad we sent two of these because
00:45:36.480
one of them, they were named spirit and opportunity. One of them, uh, we were, I should step back and say,
00:45:42.640
these were built to last for 90 days. So that was their, um, lifetime warranty. Um, one of them
00:45:49.200
spirit ended up lasting for six years before it got stuck on soft soil. The second one opportunity,
00:45:54.460
and I still get goosebumps every time I say this, but it ended up roving Mars for 14 years,
00:46:01.120
really 14 years into his 90 day mission all because someone there to step back and reframe the problem
00:46:10.440
and ask a question. What if we sent two rovers that no one had thought about asking before? Um,
00:46:17.460
so I dedicate a whole chapter to exploring this idea of, well, how do you reframe problems to
00:46:22.180
generate better answers? One of the ways you do it is to distinguish strategy from tactics.
00:46:29.920
So we tend to use those two terms interchangeably, but they actually refer to very different things.
00:46:35.500
A strategy is a plan for achieving an objective. And then tactics are like,
00:46:40.440
the actions you take, the tools you use to achieve that, that strategy. If we become too fixated on the
00:46:48.280
tactic, we often lose sight of the strategy. So then we don't notice other tactics that are
00:46:53.840
available to us. But once you zoom out, once you ask yourself, okay, well, I'm working with this
00:47:00.480
tactic, but what is this tactic actually there for? What is it intended to do? In our case, our strategy
00:47:07.480
was landing safely on Mars. And the tactic we were using was, okay, well, we have to come up with a
00:47:13.540
safe landing system, but that's not it. If you zoom out and look at the broader strategy of how do we get
00:47:19.180
these rovers safely onto the Martian surface, then it becomes easier to reframe the problem and see
00:47:26.660
other tactics that you may miss. And so one tactic that we had missed because we were way too focused on
00:47:33.600
fixing this faulty landing system was sending two rovers instead of one. So moving from the what's
00:47:39.100
to the why, why are we doing what we're doing? Why are we actually, what are we actually trying to
00:47:43.260
accomplish is really, really important. And if you zoom out asking that question, you're often going
00:47:48.960
to be able to identify other tactics, other tools that you can use that work a lot better than what's
00:47:56.180
Yeah. I think this is really powerful because I know myself and plenty of men who listen,
00:48:00.400
they, we get so caught up in the minutia and the day-to-day activities and the tasks and the emails
00:48:06.400
and the responding to phone calls and filling out and filing this report. It's like, okay, like all of
00:48:12.640
that stuff, yeah, maybe is important, but I think every once in a while we ought to take a step back and
00:48:17.200
say, is this necessary? And, or is there a better way to do it?
00:48:20.840
Exactly. And another way of reframing that question or asking it is, am I fighting the
00:48:30.260
alligators or am I crossing the swamp? Because fighting the alligators, I mean, we all know how
00:48:36.760
to fight those alligators, how to, as you said, you know, answer a bunch of emails, attend endless
00:48:40.960
meetings, but are they actually moving the needle? Are we just fighting alligators for the sake of
00:48:45.940
fighting them? Or are we any cross, any closer to the other side of the swamp that we're in? And
00:48:54.140
often the answer is no. And so then you have to stop fighting the alligators, zoom out and figure
00:48:59.620
out a better way to, to try to do what you're, what you're actually trying to do.
00:49:03.360
This is interesting. And I think one of the, one of the misguided maybe, or even misunderstood
00:49:08.500
adages is, you know, like do hard things, right? We hear that a lot, especially in the space in
00:49:13.920
which I operate here. Like we want to be tough. We want to be resilient. We want to, uh, put
00:49:19.000
ourselves in difficult and demanding situations so that we can harden ourselves and be better.
00:49:23.740
But I think a lot of the times men interpret that as like doing it for the sake of it being
00:49:29.740
hard. It's like, no, it's like, it's good, but still it's gotta be moving you in the right
00:49:35.200
direction. Like you don't want to just get your, like punch your head against the wall a bunch
00:49:38.900
of times because you get to say you're tough and you can do it. It's like, what is that actually
00:49:42.840
moving you towards? And, and so having that at the forefront, I think it's very, very important.
00:49:48.200
And I, and this is something Ryan that I actually struggled with for most of my life. I mean, I've,
00:49:54.140
um, I've been in rooms with very smart people and I never felt like I was the smartest person there.
00:50:00.720
Um, but I always prided myself on my discipline. So I couldn't outsmart many of the people I was
00:50:06.640
working with, but I could out out discipline just about anybody I would tell myself. Um, and so
00:50:11.680
that meant for me is like, I wouldn't let myself experience joy unless there was pain involved,
00:50:17.760
unless there was like serious hard work involved and serious, painful hard work, hard work. Um,
00:50:23.780
and it's only been honestly within the past year where I'm starting to relax that mindset and letting
00:50:30.720
myself enjoy small moments and experience joy, even if there was no like hard work involved,
00:50:37.540
even if there was no pain involved and reframing that mindset. Uh, and it's still a work in progress
00:50:43.660
going from like, I'm going to work really, really hard on this to, I'm going to make really good
00:50:49.980
decisions. So focusing more on the quality of my decision-making process as opposed to focusing on
00:50:56.280
how hard I work. Um, and it's just the mentality that's been with me my whole life, the hard work
00:51:03.260
mentality. I mean, my, my dad was, uh, initially a blue collar worker. I grew up in Istanbul. I
00:51:08.940
definitely have that like immigrant mindset of like, you have to put in the hours, you have to sweat
00:51:14.080
and toil and switching from away from that mindset. Even though I now make my living as a, as a knowledge
00:51:20.740
worker has just been really, really difficult for me. Um, and it's only been in this past year that I'm
00:51:26.120
now focusing more on like, it's not about working harder than other people. It's about making better
00:51:32.160
decisions. Yeah. I mean, hard work is certainly a metric, right? Certainly something worthy of
00:51:37.580
measuring, but I think we get too focused on the wrong metric at times. Like another one that I hear,
00:51:42.900
and I'm really glad you brought this up is, and I've fallen into this trap is I, you know, I pride
00:51:47.720
myself on being gritty and tough and resilient. And so I'll, I'll bang my head against the wall because
00:51:56.080
I don't want to like be perceived as being a quitter. Right. It's like, right. Well, maybe that's
00:52:02.100
not the right wall to be banging your head against. So you're, you're defining your success
00:52:08.880
by grit when maybe I ought to define my success is like applying that grit towards the right
00:52:15.540
endeavor, the right pursuit, something that's actually meaningful for me and the people I care
00:52:19.880
about. Exactly. So you don't want to do the same thing over and over again, just for the sake of
00:52:26.300
persisting and having grit, if it's not actually moving the needle. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It makes
00:52:32.440
total sense. You know, there's a, I could talk all day about this stuff is really valuable. I want
00:52:37.640
to make sure I cover a few other points that are, that are from the book. And of course, there's a
00:52:40.940
lot more that we can go through, but I was really fascinated with the concept of testing as you fly
00:52:45.780
and flying as you test, because I think there is a, a balancing act there. If you're only testing and
00:52:52.520
never flying, of course, that's a problem. If you just fly without testing, of course, that's a
00:52:55.900
problem. So how do you strike the balance between thinking about it, testing it, and then actually
00:53:01.560
launching? Yeah. And I love that. Uh, there's been so many points in the conversation where we talked
00:53:07.520
about finding the middle ground. And I think the way you phrase it is, is perfect here as a book with,
00:53:12.140
with respect to testing, um, and, and flying. And so the test as you fly, fly as you test principle
00:53:19.520
from, it comes from rocket science and it basically says tests on earth must imitate to the greatest
00:53:26.980
extent possible, the same conditions in flight. So for example, during simulations for space shuttle
00:53:34.080
missions, scientists would activate like thousands of malfunction scenarios, drawing every imaginable
00:53:40.800
failure at the astronauts. And they would practice computer crashes and engine troubles and explosions.
00:53:46.540
The more catastrophic, the better. It's like that old adage. Um, the more you sweat in peace,
00:53:52.700
the less you bleed and more. Uh, and so testing the worst case scenarios, inoculated astronauts and,
00:54:00.760
and boosted their confidence and their ability to, to deal with, with, with just about any problem. Um,
00:54:06.300
and in our lives, we often don't implement the, uh, the test as you fly rule. So we either don't test
00:54:15.280
at all. We jumped directly into flight or when we do test, we, we do so in conditions that don't mimic
00:54:23.140
reality. So, you know, we practice a major speech in the comfort of our home when we're fully rested
00:54:29.200
and awake, even though, you know, you'd be better off like practicing that same speech in an unfamiliar
00:54:35.160
setting before an audience of strangers after downing, I don't know, five espressos to give
00:54:40.920
you the type of jitters that you're actually going to experience when you do this speech.
00:54:45.820
Yeah. I, I, in, in our financial planning practice, just to drive home on this point,
00:54:50.080
I used to have, uh, uh, prospective clients come to me with their current plans and they'd show it to
00:54:55.140
me. And I said, you know, this is a, most of the time it's like, this is a really great plan.
00:54:59.080
If everything works out exactly right, the market continues to increase by whatever the,
00:55:05.440
you know, 6% year in and year out without a losing year, you don't have any sort of, uh,
00:55:10.720
medical condition or, or disability. Nobody sues you in, in the right set of circumstances.
00:55:16.180
This is a beautiful plan. It just won't work in reality.
00:55:19.620
Exactly. So it's important to plan tests for the worst case scenario as opposed to the best
00:55:25.220
case scenario. Um, but you know, another example I give in the book is like preparing for sporting
00:55:31.880
events, for example. Um, we tend to train for say a running event from the comfort of a gym
00:55:36.860
while watching Netflix, but it makes more sense to actually prepare in the same environment as the
00:55:43.760
race, like facing the wind, the rain and the cold. So you can be desensitized to those,
00:55:48.660
to those conditions that are going to be awaiting you on race day.
00:55:51.920
Right. Yeah. I can see that'd be valuable. How are you then testing as you're flying? What,
00:55:58.980
So, um, the testing as you fly, but it is a, is a little misleading. The way it's phrased,
00:56:04.200
that basically means the, the structure of the test has to be as close as possible to the flight.
00:56:10.940
So you're not flying at the same time that you're testing, or you're not testing at the same time
00:56:15.060
that you're flying. It's just, it's maybe it should be called tests like you're flying or flying
00:56:21.080
similar to how you're testing it. Yeah. So that's the basic, basic principle is that to reduce the
00:56:26.360
distance between the environment that you're, you're training under and the environment that
00:56:32.160
you're, that the actual event is, is going to take place. Right. Okay. That makes sense. And,
00:56:36.760
and what you had talked about in the book is you talk about breaking points. So you're,
00:56:41.760
you're actually looking for the point at which it breaks so that you can, I assume improve its
00:56:48.740
capabilities, whether it's, whether your capabilities or the product's capabilities or
00:56:53.880
whatever it is you're doing. Right. And so you want to break, try to break whatever it is you're
00:57:00.060
working on before flight. Yes. That would be a good time to do it. Right. Far less expensive to,
00:57:06.720
to actually find the breaking point of a component, find the breaking point of yourself.
00:57:11.760
before race day, before game day, before the actual launch. Um, and there's so many, I mean,
00:57:18.040
so many times businesses don't do this where they launch a, say a website without finding its breaking
00:57:24.740
point, without actually testing it properly and making sure that it's going to withstand the type
00:57:30.720
of pressure that's going to be applied to it on, on, on launch day. So yeah, it makes sense to find
00:57:36.200
the breaking point before you launch it. So you avert catastrophe. Right. Yeah. And it's, uh,
00:57:43.040
I'm sure you're, you're familiar with the concept of red teaming. Is that? Yes. Yes. You know, so
00:57:48.260
you're actually looking for things that could go wrong. I also try to build in contingencies if I'm
00:57:53.840
going to do something challenging or difficult and, and try to assume what could potentially arise and
00:57:59.260
keep me from achieving what I'm after so that I can prepare myself. Like if this happens, I will do X,
00:58:05.820
Y, and Z. If that happens, I will do A, B, and C. So you start building in all these little
00:58:09.900
contingency plans and hopefully none of that happens and that's fine. Right. But if it does,
00:58:14.900
you're prepared for it. Exactly. And another thing you can do is to add a redundancy as well.
00:58:20.060
So that if one component fails, the other continues. And, and so for your personal life,
00:58:25.620
that could mean like, okay, so you now currently have a stable corporate position, but what happens
00:58:32.560
if there's a major reorg and your position disappears? Yeah. Is there a redundancy in place?
00:58:37.780
Like, is there a second, second source of income that, that you can use? And so I, I always think about
00:58:43.700
this when I'm structuring, designing my own life is, is diversifying, um, my income streams so that
00:58:51.220
like, if one thing isn't working or stops working because something unexpected happens, I can lean
00:58:57.580
on, on the others. It's just really interesting. I don't know if this is a defense mechanism or what,
00:59:02.760
but it seems to me that we as human beings have this incredible ability to, uh, see catastrophe in
00:59:10.140
other people and think that it will, it will never happen to us. Right. So we see somebody get
00:59:14.520
disabled or, or face a lawsuit and we're like, Oh, that really sucks, but that's not going to happen
00:59:18.920
to me. And so we don't do any planning when we see other people struggle. Exactly. Yeah. That's such
00:59:23.920
a good point. And that's just all the more reason to like dig the well before you're thirsty and start
00:59:30.520
preparing now and before a crisis strikes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I took a lot more notes and, uh, just for the
00:59:37.540
sake of time, I'll leave them here in my, uh, in my notepad and let the guys who are listening,
00:59:41.620
who want to know more, read the book. Cause I'm telling you guys, there's a lot of great
00:59:44.820
information in here. That's very, very applicable to everything that you might be dealing with
00:59:48.580
outside of building rockets and launching them towards the moon or Mars. So, uh, I do want to,
00:59:55.300
I was going to ask you a couple of questions as we wind down here. Uh, the first one is what
00:59:59.000
does it mean to be a man? Um, that's a great question. And, and the, the answer that popped
01:00:06.600
to mind as we've been, as we've been talking about, like first principles, thinking and
01:00:10.320
reframing problems to generate better answers is, is a particular practice that I want to
01:00:15.400
leave, uh, your listeners with Ryan, which is that it's considered very unmanly to say,
01:00:23.460
I don't know. Um, and I want to suggest just the opposite. I think people who are striving
01:00:30.800
to improve themselves say, I don't know frequently. Um, and we hear that message all the time,
01:00:39.600
right? Like if you're a man, you fake it until you make it. And we've all become experts at the
01:00:44.500
faking part. But the problem is when you pretend to know the answer to a question, you're not only
01:00:50.200
fooling other people, but more importantly, you're fooling yourself. And as physicist and Nobel
01:00:55.780
laureate Richard Feynman says, you are the easiest person to fool. So you can't, you can't learn what
01:01:02.580
you think you already know. And, and the best way to learn from your failures and just to learn
01:01:09.020
period to grow is to be more open about saying, I don't know. Um, and it actually takes a lot of guts
01:01:16.600
to say that, especially in this day and age, when you're listening to someone explain something to
01:01:21.060
you and like something doesn't make sense, instead of nodding and like bluffing your way through a
01:01:27.040
makeshift answer, just step back and say, you know what? Like I'm, I'm ignorant in that area or
01:01:31.920
just, I just don't know. Could you please tell me more? Because that's the, that's the key to growing
01:01:36.820
and learning. But before you admit lack of knowledge on something, you're going to put your
01:01:43.080
blind blinders on and you're not going to learn and grow. I think that's a great point. I think,
01:01:48.460
I think the guys who listen to this podcast understand that. And now it's just a matter
01:01:53.260
of ensuring that we, we apply that right. When we bump up against something that we aren't familiar
01:01:57.380
with is, you know, ask the questions, get familiar with it. You may not know that doesn't mean you
01:02:01.980
can't learn it, go out and learn it. Exactly. Yeah. So the last question I have for you is how do we
01:02:07.120
get connected? If somebody is listening and wants to, wants to know more, what's the best way to do that?
01:02:12.260
Well, if people want to check out the book, it's called think like a rocket scientist,
01:02:15.360
simple strategies you can use to make giant leaps in working life. And that's available
01:02:20.080
everywhere that books are sold. But the episode it's, it's being released on April 7th and the
01:02:25.620
book won't come out until April 14th. But if you pre-order the book, you'll get a bunch of amazing
01:02:31.420
pre-order bonuses that, you know, are at least 10 X the, the cost of a single copy of the book.
01:02:38.160
And you can find those pre-order bonuses at rocket science book.com. And you'll also find links
01:02:44.020
there to purchase the book. And then if you're interested in keeping in touch with me, I have
01:02:48.380
a weekly email that goes out to 19,000 people every Thursday that shares an article that I wrote
01:02:55.580
that week, along with recommendations for other articles, books, tools, really anything that helps
01:03:00.540
us reimagine the status quo. And you can sign up for that by heading over to weeklycontrarian.com.
01:03:08.460
Well, good. Well, I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate all your insight. And of course,
01:03:12.160
your experience in bringing this world that many of us are not familiar with at all into something
01:03:18.380
that we can apply into our own lives. It's very, very powerful. So I want to, uh, on a parting
01:03:23.100
note, thank you for your work and thank you for taking the time to share with us today.
01:03:28.440
Thank you so much, Ryan, for having me on. This was a great conversation.
01:03:32.980
All right, gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with Ozan Virol, uh, man,
01:03:37.520
what an amazing individual. And you know, it's interesting as smart as an, as, and as intelligent
01:03:42.560
as this human being is, uh, he has a very, very powerful ability to explain things in
01:03:49.500
meaningful and significant ways. And then of course, uh, the, the ways that we can digest
01:03:54.480
that information and then apply it in our lives. And that's the most important thing.
01:03:58.060
The knowledge is great. The information is wonderful. Uh, but if we're not turning that
01:04:02.300
into wisdom, which is practical application of said information, then, you know, obviously we're
01:04:07.260
leaving, leaving a growth on the table. So I would encourage you to pick up a copy of his book.
01:04:11.760
Think like a rocket scientist. You're not going to be disappointed. Very, very good. Of course,
01:04:15.460
went through a lot of that information here in the podcast, but there's so much more in the book that
01:04:19.840
I know a lot of you guys would get value from. So make sure you check that out. It just released
01:04:24.080
today as of the recording or release of this podcast. So go check it out. Think like a rocket
01:04:28.860
scientist. Also connect with us on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, everywhere, except
01:04:34.700
for maybe like, uh, I don't know, tick tock. We're not there yet. I don't know if we'll ever be there,
01:04:40.100
but most of the, uh, the platforms that you guys would be engaged in. We're there. All right. Check
01:04:45.260
us out on Instagram at Ryan Mickler, Twitter's at Ryan Mickler, Facebook at Ryan Mickler. YouTube is
01:04:50.400
at order of man. All right, guys, we're going to be back tomorrow for the ask me anything with Kip
01:04:56.180
Sorensen. Uh, and we'll plan on talking with you then until then go out there, take action,
01:05:00.700
become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast.
01:05:05.140
You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
01:05:08.940
We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.