Simple Lessons In Never Giving Up

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Marketing Against the Grain, hosted by Kip Bodner and Keion Flanigan is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Look, if you wanna know what’s happening now in marketing, what’s ahead and how you can stay ahead of the game, this is the podcast for you, host and HubSpot’s, CMO and SVP of Marketing. Kip and Keion share their marketing expertise unfiltered in the details of truth and like nobody tells it. In fact, a recent episode, they titled Half Baked Marketing Ideas They Got Down In the Weeds, talked about some outside of the box campaigns with real businesses. Listen to marketing, its grain wherever you get your podcast.

(00:54): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Martha McSally. McSally is a compelling example of overcoming adversity and fear to achieve extraordinary feats losing her dad at the age 12. In surviving sexual abuse and assault, she persevered to become the first woman in US history to fly a fighter jet in combat and command a fighter squadron in combat. Martha deploys six times to the Middle East and Afghanistan flying 325 combat hours in the A 10 attack plane ironing the Bronze Star and six air medals. She’s also a former United States representative and a former United States Senator from Arizona. She’s also the author of a book, dare to Fly, simple Lessons in Never Giving Up. So Martha, welcome to the show.

Martha McSally (01:47): Thanks for having me on,

John Jantsch (01:48): John. So I, in preparation for this, I read an article in popular Mechanics that said, why the A 10 Thunderbolt is such a badass plane . So tell us why it is such a badass fund. Because that was the plane, in fact, I think affectionately referred to as the warthog is a plane that you flew.

Martha McSally (02:07): It is, it is such a badass plane. And I picked it, I had a choice of all the fighters F 15 and F 16, F 15 E, F 11, and a 10. And I picked it. I know your audio listeners won’t be able to see this, but here’s the A 10, it’s a single seat. It’s extremely survivable. It’s got look at all these weapon pylons on there. It was built around this gun and people can look it up on the internet, but this is a 30 millimeter bullet. There’s 1,174 rounds of this just for preference point. This is a smart water one liter bottle. So, um, it’s entire mission is close air support. And so it was actually built to go after Soviet tanks. Initially the intent was being like right there on the front line and the close air support mission is troops are in close combat with the bad guys.

(02:53): The risk of fracture side is high, often on the move, you know, very complex, confusing circumstances on the ground and they’re calling for air cover to help ’em. So it was built to be extremely heavy in firepower. Also a very survivable, I mean we can lose all our electrics, all our hydraulics, one engine and have literally holes in the plane and still be able to fly back to friendly territory. It’s a bit of a metaphor I think, of my life , but like really taking a hit and you know, just continuing to survive and it’s just an incredible, you know, just the mission. I mean we often would take off in Afghanistan. I was commanding my squadron over there. We were providing 24 hour coverage to the troops on the ground. We would often take off on a routine combat mission, which is like an oxymoron. We would have maps of the entire country of Afghanistan and you would have some American troops under fire got ambushed. They need help. So we would be given a radio frequency, a grid coordinate and a call sign and told, go help these guys now. And that’s, you know, we would just have to figure it out and help these guys survive to live, to fight another day and get home to their family. So it’s an incredible mission. I’m super honored to have flown it and commanded a squadron.

John Jantsch (04:05): Well I don’t wanna geek out on this too much, but I’m just envisioning like how do you instruct somebody how to fly a plane with one seat?

Martha McSally (04:12): It’s a great question. So when I went through training, there were also no simulators and there were no two seat models. So your first flight is solo. Now we were all pilots. So we had gone through a year of, you know, training that everybody goes through just to earn their pilot wings, which is just, you know, the essentials of being a pilot. And then we go through another introductory course to be a fighter pilot. Technically we’re attack pilots, but we’re kind of grouped into fighter pilots. And then you show up, I’m not kidding, they give you a, you know, a binder like, you know, multiple three, four inches thick, all the systems of the airplane, all the procedures, all the contingencies. You basically need to know how to build the plane and deal with anything. And then you take a lot of tests, academics, you then, you know, go through different procedures of dealing with engine fire on takeoff and you have to be able to, you know, say exactly what you’re going to do.

(05:06): But I mean, we’re the superpower, when we went through the training, there was no simulator. So we would sit in these little cockpits that were like mock cockpits, but the switches didn’t work, the plane wasn’t flying and you just had to show that you could, you know, turn the right engine off if the fires on the left engine. And then later on in my time flying the A 10, I was an instructor pilot. So you then are, I’m using my hands here, but you know, your audio listeners can’t see this. But then picture your taxiing out with your instructor pilot next to you and you know, then fly on their wing and what they call a chase position. So mm-hmm Scroll back to top