Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: My favorite thing about flying the A10 was its maneuverability, especially low altitude, you know, when you're. You're popping over the peaks and diving back down and taking out a target.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to Hangar X Studios, where former fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types. Buckle up for another episode of Hangar X.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Hey, welcome to the Hangar X podcast, and we're excited that we're sponsored today by XTI Aircraft. This is where we bring on some of the leading voices in the world in aviation, aerospace, and everything vtol. And today, I'm excited to have my friend on Tammy Barlett. Tammy, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's nice to see you.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: It is so nice to see you. And my goodness. So you went in the Air Force and you flew the T. What's The Tweety Bird? T37. Yes, the T38. The A10. Talk about that. That's a bad mama jama right there, that airplane. Then you flew the Reaper and the Predator. You had this incredible career. Lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and. And now I know you're doing some incredible work with pilots, aviation executive, around mindset, training, innovation, and we're going to get into some of how all of that relates to our current world of aviation, aerospace, and also where we're going as things are either becoming. They're both becoming more automated and more complex at the same time, which is an interesting dichotomy. But before we do that, Tammy, I'd love to hear about your whole story and how you even got interested and said, you know what? I want to go in the Air Force and fly a flying tank.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it didn't start there.
It started with a little bit of interest in the military when I was in high school. And at the time, I was going to college full time, and there was a Navy guy in my class. You're gonna love this.
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Yeah. Go Navy.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And I said, hey, you know, I pulled him aside after the class, and I said, you know, being in Minnesota, there's not a lot of bases. We don't. I didn't know anyone in the military. I just seen things on movies, so all I could think about was boot camp, camp. And I said to him, I'm really interested in the military, but I don't know a lot about it. And I was thinking about the Navy, and he looks at Me and said, that's awesome. He's like, but I think you should consider the Air Force.
And I said, okay. And this was probably 1994. And he's. I said, well, tell me why? And he said, well, he goes, they're the cleanest. They treat their people the best. And he said, and they're probably more advanced with how they're at this point, how they're, you know, integrating women. And I said, okay, that's valid. And so I went to the University of Minnesota. I said, I. I want to join Air Force rotc. Tell me about it. And they said, okay, yeah, you can do it. This is how it works. And do you want to be a pilot? And I. I'd honestly never considered being a pilot. I knew I could be whatever I wanted to be. That's what I was raised. I was raised like that, but I hadn't thought about it because I didn't know anyone around that community at all. And so when they said that to me, I paused for about 10 seconds and I thought about it and said, yeah, I want to do that.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: Sign me up.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: That sounds awesome. So that's how it started.
Yep. I went into. Go ahead.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Yeah, no, go ahead now, getting in 95. I know that there's probably a lot of budget cuts, but I'm also guessing that also made it very competitive. So as you're going down to flight school, what are some of those things that you learned that maybe even applied the rest of your life that allowed you to graduate well enough to fly a 10s? Because that's not open to everybody.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: It's not.
So I graduated college in 98, went casual status for a few months because there was a delay because it was so backed up. And then I went to pilot training at Laughlin in 1999. And I would say that the one thing I learned in the military is the mind, the no quit mentality.
And I look back on my life prior to the military, and I quit things because I just. It's got hard, and I could. And when you are put. When you're put in a situation where you can't quit, it changes you and how you approach things. And so that's how I saw it. I'm like, I can't quit. I can't fail. And so I. No matter how hard it got, I just kept going. And then what I learned from that is I applied that to the rest of my life. So either even in situations in the future when I could quit, I knew that I could get through much harder Things, because I'd seen it before and I'd done it before, and I. So my philosophy at this point in my life is I will fail out before I bail out.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Oh, I like that. Fail out before I bail out.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I will run towards failure with all I can. Because the truth is that more often than not, you won't fail. There'll be a sharp. You think you're going to run off the end of a cliff, and really what happens is there's a sharp curve to the right. You got a beautiful view, and, you know, you see so much success that you didn't think was there.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: Yeah, it really is. It's about reframing. You know, that's something I learned. Right. I was afraid to fail earlier on, but then I realized every time I failed, I learned something.
I learned what to do, what not to do, and what I would do next time. And I realized, you know what? If I don't fail, I'll never actually get to be the best at what I want to approach. So I actually completely reframed how I even thought about it.
Success and failure.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: And I would honestly say that's probably a lot of the reason you have succeeded, because you are willing to fail. And I find it very interesting because there's so many sayings out there, fail forward, failure is part of the process. But the. The truth is, is that a lot of we don't teach the how. And I know we'll get to this in the future, but in talking later, but my core, one of the things we talk about a lot in my course is how do you fail? How do you embrace that? Because we don't talk about the how. We just tell people to do it. It's okay. Just fail. But there's a. There's a way to reframe it where you can understand how it. You know, how you can go about doing it.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I got a story about that when I get to it. But now I have to ask you a question, because I want to know this. I know the audience does, too. You're flying the A10. You're in combat, and I've watched you guys. You're coming. You come rolling in, you got this 30 millimeter cannon, and you're just tearing things up downrange. Tell me about one of your favorite a 10 stories and what was like to be at the controls of that. That. That machine.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Well, I don't. I don't want to let you down, but I want to let you know I did not actually get to go fly combat in OEF or OIF. My first assignment, the A10, was in Korea, which, when you fly in the DMZ, is considered combat. I'm sure there was something targeting me, but the chances of them actually pulling the trigger, pretty slim. All that being said, though, I still flew the plane, and I still got to shoot the gun. And my favorite thing about flying the A10 was its maneuverability, especially low altitude. You know, when you're. You're popping over the peaks and diving back down and taking out a target low. You know, you stay low, you pop up. You're like I love doing.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: Now on a pop up. What was your height above the ground?
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. You know, I'm gonna be honest.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: 50, 100ft. What would be a guess? 200ft?
[00:07:46] Speaker A: I don't even remember. I don't know. It's been so long. It's been a long time. So I apologize. I don't know the answer to that, but it was super fun, I can tell you that. And I loved it. I mean, the roll rate's amazing, and you can pull, turn really fast. And obviously the gun itself, there was one mission. It was actually my last flight in Korea. And normally they set the. The limiter on the gun to, you know, 200 rounds. And I went up to the.
The maintenance guy that day to.
[00:08:18] Speaker C: You mean when you pull the trigger, you'll only 200 rounds will come out.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: So basically, that's your. That's your limit for the day.
[00:08:24] Speaker C: Like, oh, okay.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Like, you can't. They don't want you to wait. Like, if you're just doing training, like, okay, there's just 300. Just 200 rounds today. You can only shoot, so, you know, you'd have to limit your bursts so you could do a couple passes. But I went out to the jet that day, and he's like, hey, we got to do some maintenance on the gun, and it's full, so. So we need you to shoot all 1170 rounds out.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Oh, boy. Well, the F14. The F14 would carry just over 400 rounds. And we limited each birch to 50 rounds. So basically, we had eight trigger pulls.
But that was every flight. We had 400 rounds in there.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it was different, but that was.
[00:09:01] Speaker C: A 20 millimeter cannon versus a 30 millimeter cannon. It's very different.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it was awesome. It was so much fun.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: So, Tammy, with your experience in both the MQ1 the Reaper, and MQ9 the Predator, and we're actually looking at an entire transformation in aerospace where. And there's going to Be a lot of autonomous, like air taxis. But what I'm curious about is now that we have the, you know, we're having a higher amount of complexity I think. But it's also then the complexity is sometimes you're helped with that as a pilot, an air crew, as an operator, charter operator, whether you're doing life flights. But now all of a sudden you have a very different cockpit that you're managing. It's going to be a completely different mindset. I would love for you to share some of those things. You learned both from the atam, which is very manual because it was very similar to the F14. We barely even had a computer in that thing. To flying autonomous or semi autonomous aircraft to where the industry is going now, what it might mean actually for the operator.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: That's a really good question because I did start off, starting off if you want to go back to the T37. So we have steam gauges, no GPS, very obviously all man. There's no autopilot. In fact, in a manned aircraft, the only autopilot I ever had was altitude hold. I never had anything else. And so I was always manually flying it. And then you transition to the MQ1 and the MQ9. And what was very interesting was that it did the job of flying so much better than I could. And plus now there's, there's this extra load on the crew to do other things that you actually wanted it to fly by itself so you could manage what was going on with the mission. And so we would have to force ourselves to manually, manually fly it sometimes, otherwise we got really uncomfortable. So I think that's, that's in my opinion one of the biggest things is that we need to maintain that ability to operate the aircraft without the systems we expect are most likely to crash on us or not. Where I shouldn't use the word crash, but the systems that might stop working and we need to be able to fly it anyways because we get so used to the automation that, you know, and I think even airline pilots talk about that, you know, how the plane actually lands better on its own. And so they have to intentionally practice that kind of stuff, I think is one of the biggest things.
And just being able to mentally go from the load of I'm operating systems and the plane is doing its own thing. And now suddenly something fails and I'm. I have a handful of aircraft and how do you process when that overload happens? You know, if you've mentally prepared in advance, then you'll deal with it better you know, because there's not just the physical operating of the aircraft, but there is, like, how am I going to react to it? I think too many people don't actually consider when they're planning for the what ifs and their contingencies, how they want to think, feel and react. They think about the process, think. They think about the steps. They think about the intellectual piece behind it, but they don't process in advance again, how you want to think, feel, and react. And I think that's really important when you're operating something that's so automated. And then suddenly now it's all in.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: Your lap, like a critical system fails, an entire display fails. Because, you know, it's interesting. I do a lot of flying in the SR22. It's a G6 and the autopilot, the G1000, and the autopilot.
You can even tap on an airport, say, I want to land on this Runway. It'll actually create a glide slope that you can actually couple to, and it'll, in a perfectly clear blue day, fly you right down to final. You can click off the autopilot and just squeak it on. You can get so complacent. So whenever I go up with my instructor, the rule is no autopilot. And we're doing emergencies. And I think that comes from the military training because, you know, I remember I showed up the first day to do my cirrus checkout, and I'd written every flow, every emergency procedure and every system on three by five cards and memorized them. He goes, nobody does this. He goes, we don't even need to do ground school. We're gonna go fly the first day. Usually we don't fly for the first couple weeks. But there's a mindset, though, in there, isn't there? And how would you categorize that mindset that we were taught in the military and that you're now bringing out into the aviation companies the pilots, the executives you're working with?
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Well, I think it's extremely important in aviation, no matter what you're flying, that you're prepared for the unexpected. That you and you people say to me, well, Tammy, I can't prepare for everything. And I absolutely get that, but you shouldn't prepare for nothing. And the best way to go forward is to pick one or two of the most likely what ifs, and then continue to build up an arsenal of ways to deal with the challenges that are coming your way. Because I think one of the things in the Air Force, and I know it's Slightly different in the Navy, but regardless, we still go through a lot of emergency training. And in the Air Force they have something called the standup. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but when Navy guys would transition halfway through pilot training into Air Force pilot training, they were like, what is this?
Because what would happen is in the morning, all the instructors would gather around the edges behind their desks. The students would get their checklist in flight guide, sit right in front of them. They would be an instructor pilot at the front, and they would throw an emergency scenario out there. Hey, the winds are 130 at 10, you're on Runway 13, you're rolling down the Runway, you see a light in the cockpit. Lieutenant Barlett, you have the aircraft. And I had to gather up my checklist in flight guide, put it on the table in front of me. And I had to go through, you know, essentially standing at attention. Every switch I'm going to touch, everything I'm going to think through. And it felt like hazing.
And I look back on it and I think, you know, maybe it was initially initiated a little bit of hazing because it's a little bit brutal, because if you screwed anything up, it was, Lieutenant Barlett, sit down. And you're not flying today, you're done. You need to study. And so everyone was always like, oh no, am I going to get sat down?
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Talk about creating a culture of excellence though. And you know, and you know what, even in my sales training, executive training, doing that kind of role playing, it's not comfortable for the person who has to do it when you're on the spot. But I'll tell you that it is some of the best learning any of those scenarios or some of the best learning I've ever personally experienced it.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:15:38] Speaker C: When I went to Wall street, we actually would role play with the head of our bond desk selling a multi billion dollar bond fund to, let's say an institutional investor. But the guy who actually manages the bond fund was playing the prospective client and we had to pitch to him because you know, that he knew everything. Right.
And by the way, this wasn't one on one. This is what our entire cohort. And so everybody knew whether John showed up prepared or not.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, talk about being accountable and getting you to get in the books and study what you need to. But the thing that I liked about it, that I think was an unintended consequence is that social situations can be extremely stressful. As you know, we can't simulate, we can't Shut down both engines in an airplane and go, hey, here you go. And like deal with this and feel the stress of it. So you can't simulate that stress in that way. But social situations are so stressful for people that it can get you to that level. That what it did for me that I thought was really interesting was I was very nervous that once I had an emergency, am I going to handle it properly? And what I learned was because the training was so regimented, the situations we were put in while we were processing through these emergencies were so stressful that when I actually had an emergency, I literally was like, boom, boom, boom, step. It was like I was really calm because I had already dealt with it, had to think through this challenging process under extreme stress. Again, different kind of stress, but still stress nonetheless.
[00:17:14] Speaker C: So, you know, that's interesting. We were actually just talking this morning, our team, about, you know, we're going to have to develop a transitional training program, including simulator time, emergency procedures for, let's say, somebody who's an existing commercial pilot, or maybe somebody's coming in from scratch and wants to fly an airplane like this from day one. And what's the mindset and how do we go about doing that? But you know, it's interesting you say about the social situation because there's this thing that we call social anxiety. Think about it. You show up at a meeting, people are there, you feel it, right? It's those butterflies in your stomach, you're nervous. And it's caused by two factors.
So the first one is the fear of failing. Maybe when you show up, even at a networking event or it's a board meeting, or you're meeting with your investors, whatever it happens to be. You don't want to look stupid, you don't want to be unprepared, right? You don't want to say throw the wrong switch and be told to sat down. But now the other hand in this competing force is though, I want to succeed because I have pride in what I do. I want to contribute to the team. I want you to have a good opinion of me because I've worked hard and I've studied and these two forces cause this anxiety and they also cause stress. But there's also things when we're building a high performing team, we're trying to innovate, build a new engine, build a new aircraft, break into a market.
There's things that we can do to lower that social anxiety and that stress so that people can show up at a not as the best version of themselves that might be a little aspirational, but a little gooder version of themselves.
And what are some of those things that you found as you've worked with teams, and I can share some of mine too, that allow us, let's say we're an employer, we're entrepreneurial, we have a company, we're building something innovative in aerospace, and we need everybody at their best because we have limited resources and capital and everybody's wearing a whole bunch of hats. What are some thoughts you have on that?
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Well, there's two things I'll specifically talk about. The first one, and this is more individually, but if everyone understands this, it's, it's helpful so we talk about that anxiety you feel when you're in those situations. And the interesting thing is that our body's reaction to stress and excitement is actually the same. Butterflies in the stomach, sweaty palms. And when we, when our mind tells ourselves, I'm stressed, I'm anxious, oh, I, I'm not ready, it means I'm not ready. And that's essentially like putting a weight vest on when you're going to run a race. That's not smart. Like, let's not limit our capabilities. But if you go into that situation recognizing that these physiological responses that we have are the same as excitement, you can shift that in your mind to a way that'll be more advantageous or less limiting, I should say. And because you can say, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited. Even if you don't believe it at first, you got to stop yourself from saying, I'm nervous. Shifting that into your brain, thinking it's not ready. Because those signs are signs that this means something to you and your body is going, this matters. So I'm going to give you everything you need. I'm going to get this adrenaline, I'm going to give you, you know, all these things to actually speed up your processing. And so if we interpret it in the way of excitement, we will perform better and we will feel better about doing it and just understanding that's part of it. In fact, Michael Johnson was interviewed after one of his Olympic races and they said they asked him something like, did you have, were you nervous? Did you have butterflies in your stomach? He's like, absolutely. That's how I know I'm ready. And that's a completely different angle on nerves. So that's the one thing, the second thing I would say for high performing teams, in order to increase innovation and grow and, you know, make things happen fast, there has to be, and I know this is, this is like a, probably a popular word out there now, but psychological safety in within that organization, you have to feel like I can throw out these crazy ideas and no, I'm not going to be judged for them. You know, we're going to be, we're going to encourage these crazy ideas so we can get to the awesome ideas that will really actually work. But we have to open up and let people feel like they can fail and they can try new things and obviously within parameters, but having that non judgmental environment allows people to open up. And it's the leader's job to start that and create that and make it okay for people to speak up and say their opinions and share what they're worried about and what they don't understand.
[00:21:53] Speaker C: I love that. So the first one is reframing, the other one is really creating psychological safety. And I saw Jim Collins speak recently at a conference and this is interesting too. He said the top companies that he's ever studied, you know what they've mastered?
Forgiveness. Somebody makes a mistake, somebody does something wrong. Like, you know what, Tammy, you know what? We're actually good and we're going to learn from that. Right. So that kind of speaks to what you just talked about. But here's Jim Collins who studied thousands of companies and he's boiled it down to the. One of the top aspects of companies that are absolutely, that are going to dominate and succeed is their ability of forgiveness. Internally I thought that was a really interesting perspective.
And now you shared before we hit record that you also get. You've done a lot of work with the vertical flight in that whole world. Could you tell us some of what you're doing in that part of your life?
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I just recently got connected with Vertical Aviation International. I'm going to go to the conference, but I'm just getting connected with a lot of aviation conferences and organizations because the business I created, it's a mental performance training for aviators course online. It's completely 100% virtual. But the tagline I use is because you can't just pull over on a cloud.
When I was teaching in the.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: You wish you could sometimes I sure.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Wish you really could.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: I know I need a pause button training timeout. I need to reset my gut gyro here.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: I know it's like in the sim on the freeze button. You know, we don't really have one of those. That would be great. Right.
But what I found teach. So I was teaching, I taught pilot training. That was my first assignment. And it was also how I ended my career. I spent six and a half years teaching in the T38. And I learned that I could not. I mean, stick and rudder instruction was my main job, but I couldn't really do that effectively unless I could get their head out of their own way. And so I spent a lot of time getting their mind to just get in the right place. And what I learned was that upon, you know, just before retiring and beyond that, I was essentially using the mental performance training techniques that athletes were being taught and we're seeing a lot of now. And so I've spent the last six and a half years studying mental performance training for athletes and shifting the content into the cockpit. Because there's just so many parallels. I mean, if a golfer can benefit from. From mental performance training, increasing their focus, maintaining composure, defeating perfectionism, getting over failure, a pilot absolutely can benefit from it. So that's why I'm getting involved so much.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: I'd love for you to share maybe some of the top two principles from that. I wish we had time to go into all of them because I know that they not only relate to pilots, but I'll guarantee it relates to that executive, that head of sales, the head of innovation, the head of engineering. No doubt in my mind. Right. Fair.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, let's talk about the failure piece, since we've already kind of covered that and you talked about forgiveness and how important that is. When I was teaching, a lot of times I would look around at the other instructors who are, you know, bitching and moaning and complaining about students, and I say, you know, they're not. They're not trying to suck. And if you. If you look at your own people in your organization, they're not trying to fail. They're not trying to suck. And if they are, guess what, you need to get rid of them. Like yesterday.
[00:25:19] Speaker C: If they are actually are trying to. If they've proven that. Yeah. That you need to release them to the free market.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Goodbye.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: Bye. Bye.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: So assuming the people on your team want to be there and they're not trying to suck, then forgiveness absolutely has to be part of it, and that plays into failure. So I like to help people reframe failure. And one of the ways I like to talk about it is failure should inform you, not define you. And there's a significant difference. But it's really easy to flop between the two if you're not careful. So let's use the example of two pilots, and this is just an example of an error you could apply it to any profession but pilot A.
I interview them and say, hey, what's the worst thing you've ever done in aircraft? And they say, well, I had a tail strike, meaning on landing, they hit their tail. You know what it means? It was terrible. I can't believe I even did it. I don't even know what I was thinking.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: I probably should have probably crashed into the back of the aircraft carrier and got waved off three times in a row one night. And the guy in my backseat went into operations that night and said, I'm never flying with Ramstead again. That's a true story. I'll have to tell you that over a beer someday. It was a bad night. I'd been flying for 9.2 hours over Iraq and refueled four times.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:26:34] Speaker C: Was not safe to fly, but there was. I couldn't pull over on a cloud and take a nap.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Right? You can't. You gotta.
[00:26:39] Speaker C: That was a bad night. But we. And then. But you know what, though? That can. I've seen guys go have a night like that and never got over it and eventually washed out because of that. That environment is so intense. Tammy, you've probably seen it too.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I've never landed in a carrier. I think that's amazing. And, I mean, that would have been super cool. But, yeah, very intense situations. But even, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't matter whether your life is on the line or not. The principle is still the same. So if this pilot lands and they're now saying, I probably shouldn't be a pilot, I shouldn't, you know, I don't even know they're defining themselves by this one error. Pilot B. I interview him. Same thing. Well, at a tail strike, yeah, it's not good. I mean, I scratched up the aircraft a little bit, and this pilot says to me, but, you know, I learned that when you do XY happens. And so I just really focus on not doing X anymore. And so pilot B was using it as information where pilot A was defining themselves. And we have to be really cautious. And it's just literally information. Like, put on your hat of curiosity and dig into your failure. Because a lot of people, they take their failures and it's like, I'm gonna describe it the way I like to describe it. It's like a bowl of crap. Like, here is my failure. It's a bowl of crap, and people are carrying it around, and either they do what I do where they're like, oh, my gosh, look at this. Can you believe that? I did this. I can't even believe this. Or they're, like, trying to H, which is challenging. The truth is, is that some people carry that around because they don't want to forget. I'm not going to do this again, so I'm going to remember. But you don't need the whole bowl of crap. You need to spend time digging, face that failure, dig into it deep. Not. Not going on the surface and thinking what was wrong with it. But what's the real root cause? You know, from as an aviator, like, the last thing that happens, probably not what caused it. It's probably like four steps deeper. Find out what is the root cause of the problem, get rid of the crap, and you'll find there's some gems of information in there that you can go, you know what? This is what I shouldn't do anymore. It's much easier to carry around, and it's much easier to share with others so they don't make the same mistake you do.
[00:28:49] Speaker C: You know, it's interesting, you know, you're talking about, and you said it before, thought, feeling, and action.
And this is applied to so many things in my life now. It's actually what got me into coaching. I'll never forget.
Quick story. We're heading into Iraq for the first Gulf War, and we did a bilateral exercise against the Australians, and we had A. The F14 finally was doing air to ground. So I was one of the first squadrons doing air to air and air to ground, like the F18 mission. And we get done with this whole bilat with the Australians, and I was terrible. And we're heading into Iraq, and I go up to the guy in our squadron who is the best pilot I've ever met, and nobody could beat him in an F14. He would regularly beat F16s. I mean, you name it. He just was one of those guys. And I went up to him, I said, hey, would you mentor me? I need to get better. He looks at me, goes, yes, you do.
I said, would you? And I said, would you mentor me? He goes, nope, but I'll fly with you.
You know what? We went and fly and we did four dog fights, and he spanked me within 30 seconds. Every single engagement. And we get back to the debrief, which we do, the public in the whole ready room. And I'm dreading this debrief with this guy because he's kind of loud and boisterous, and I'm like, oh, boy, what did I sign myself up for? And he goes, okay, Ramsdad, when you Were come to the merge and you went nose low across my tail. Why'd you do that?
I'm like, it's my opening move.
He goes, okay then. So he never once gave me any advice. He forced me to think, to put all the pieces together to say, what would you do then? Hey, when I was doing this, what do you think I was thinking? What was my strategy? He never once told me what I should do in a situation. We flew together over two months and at the end of two months, I'll never forget, we did a dog fight and I stayed neutral the entire time. He didn't get behind me. I didn't get a shot on him. But for me that was like a win. And then I went and fought our commanding officer who'd just been the commanding officer at Top Gun. And I beat him because of what this guy taught me.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: But what he forced me to do is take what I already had, turn it into knowledge and turn it into learning. And I'm actually thinking, you know, in the business world, the people that have actually helped me do that in different situations, strategy, sales, operations, you know, to actually think through a problem versus just go to somebody who might have more experience than you and try to get the answer from them.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it definitely doesn't work as well.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: No, yeah, do this. So how do you know how to tell us a little bit about you, your business, your speaking? And then I got a kind of a final question for you. But how do people kind of connect with you, get in touch with you? You're doing mental performance work for aviators across the world.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: I am. So the best way to connect with me, if you want to talk to me specifically, would be on LinkedIn. Tammy Barlett. And if you're interested in the mental performance course, you can go to crosscheck mental performance.com and you can get all the information there. And you know, there's the, there's. You can connect with me on LinkedIn if you're interested in speaking. I do. My main keynote is about how everybody needs to do mental performance training. And this is why.
[00:32:01] Speaker C: Well, you know, let's end with that note is a great question as a way to land the plan. What is the reason that all of us, wherever we're at, need to do some mental performance training? I'm a huge fan of it. My 21 year old son is trying to make a career in professional baseball. Is. And you know, some of the Fortune 100 executives that I've coached, that is where we start. But I'd Love to hear your take on that.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: Well, I think that. Meaning if you think about our thoughts, everything starts with our thoughts. And so many of us don't pay attention to our thoughts. And they can be either absolutely detrimental to what you're trying to accomplish, or they can help propel you into massive success. But you need to learn how to kind of gather them. I think that most people, they look at their mind, not the intellectual part of their mind, but the thought and thinking part of their mind, as if it's more like a cat, like cats. You don't. Most people don't train them right because they just do what they want. So people are like, well, I am who I am. It is what it is. I can't change it. And that's not true. Our minds are more like dogs. If you don't train it, it will be difficult to control and all over the place. But it is absolutely trainable. And it's just like small little things you can put in your life daily that add up to help you. And in my humble opinion, it is the step that is between, you know, mentally healthy and needing mental health support. If you shove mental performance training in the middle of those, you can stay toward optimal mind more. And everyone can benefit from that.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Yeah. And just here's a thought. Especially with all the work I do at the military, Tammy too, and just the mental health is such a crisis. When you work on that yourself and you get better, you become a better version of yourself and you're improving, you're being more effective in your role.
Once you do that, then you can also help somebody else do that. And we have to take kind of sometimes the eyes off ourself as a leader, put that on other people. And I gotta tell you, some of those situations where I've been able to have that either a voice in somebody's life or even intervention has been life changing in a very positive way.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: It is.
[00:34:18] Speaker C: I appreciate you bringing that up. So, Tammy, thanks for all the great work you do. It's been fun having you on. And you know what? As we're. I tell you what, as we're developing our curriculum, as we go through our process of building an aircraft and an entire training program, I'd love to follow up with you and bring you in and get your insights on actually things we can even do as part of the curriculum that reinforce what we've all learned and you've mastered. As far as the mindset that you need in a cockpit, especially the direction cockpits are actually going, they're evolving rapidly, and it's even hard to keep up with sometimes.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Of course. In fact, I think mental performance training will be key when it comes to these advanced cockpits, because there's going to be a lot to manage.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: There is. All right, well, keep knocking them alive, my friend, and we'll talk to you soon.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Sounds good. Thank you.
