EntreLeadership - #354: How Living Without Limits is Possible with Scott Parazynski

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

One glance at Scott Parazynski’s resumé—which includes a career as an emergency medicine and trauma physician, five Space Shuttle missions, seven space walks, and a death-defying summit of Mount Everest—and it’s easy to assume that he’s a total adrenaline junkie. While that may be true, Scott credits his achievements to his ability to visualize his success, one small step at a time. Tune in to hear Scott, who now runs a thriving tech start-up, share how he turned his incredibly ambitious dreams into reality—and the powerful lessons learned along the way.   entreleadership.com/podcast The Sky Below by Scott Parazynski Scott Parazynski's website Scott's business website - Fluidity Technologies Download: Mission Statement Mapper Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you noticed that most leaders are also achievers? And I'd be willing to bet that you, the person that I'm talking to right now, I bet you're an achiever. Because who else uses their free time to listen to a business and leadership development podcast? Let's be real. You are not normal. But here's the deal. If we are not careful, there's a danger to achievement, to performance,

and to personal growth, because the danger is that we can get so focused on moving forward individually, that we forget the whole purpose of leadership, other people. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Alex Judd, and today we get to learn from one of the most remarkable achievers on the planet. Scott Peresinski has lived in locations around the globe. He's attended one of the most prestigious med schools in the United States. He's nearly qualified for the Olympics.

He's summited Mount Everest, and get this, folks. He's been to space five times. That's right. He's an astronaut, and he's now also built and is running a thriving business. But I'm going to challenge you, as you listen to this, of course, you should admire his achievements and his experiences. But don't just stop there. Listen closely for the humility, the servant mindset, the focus on teamwork, and the relentless desire to lift up others. Because it's in those principles that we can learn lessons which translate.

send achievement and point all of us towards leadership. And as with any great leadership story, Scots started with a vision. I wanted to become an astronaut since I could walk and talk. My father worked on the Apollo program when I was very young. So he helped design and test the Saturn 5 boosters that first sent men to the moon in the late 60s, early 70s. So I had model rockets and posters on the wall and even the opportunity to see Apollo 9 launch from the Kennedy Space Center as a young kid My ambition all through life was to set the first boot prints on Mars. It didn't quite work out that way for my personal career. However, I was able to do some really amazing things with incredible people and

extraordinary 17-year career with NASA involving five space flights and seven spacewalks. So, you know, I was able to live out my boyhood dream. Every kid on the block wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. They would, you know, actually wheel in these big tube televisions into the classroom and we had watch the launches as they took place. And so, you know, I just kind of held onto that dream. I didn't talk about it so much all through my education. I thought, well, people think that's kind of silly. You can't grow up to become an astronaut. That's, that's too far away. But, you know, I kept on plugging away at it. I knew what I wanted. And I was able to sort of deconstruct

the steps that I thought would be important to prepare myself to become an astronaut. So I I worked hard on my education. I was involved in athletics and team activities and had some language skills and all these things kind of positioned me well for eventual selection. I became an astronaut in 1992. Every kid growing up goes through the phase where they say, I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. Like literally everyone says that sentence at some point in their life.

But you're one of those select few that stuck with it. So was it something from your parents? Or was it something growing up that gave you the capacity and the ability to persist with that dream or persist with that decision? What was it that made you not lose sight of that? I think two things were really central to that. First and foremost, my parents, they were so supportive of me trying difficult things. They were willing to let me fail. I think as parents today generally were probably overly protective of our kids.

And I'm probably guilty of that as many parents are. but they would allow me to try new things and they supported me. And so even though I sometimes bit off more that I could chew, they were there. And I think also the fact that I was an only child allowed us to travel the world a little bit. So when I was a kid, we lived in West Africa, the Middle East, and in Europe, I graduated from high school in Athens, Greece. So that sense of adventure and willingness to try new things really set me up for, I think, success in life. And the other thing that I really draw a lot of strength from, actually, is my experience in the Boy Scouts, believe it or not. I became an Eagle Scout. It's a long pathway to get there. Lots and lots of merit badges, service projects, and ranks.

And a lot of people really get discouraged and don't make it all the way to the Eagle Scout Award. And so for me, I just kind of broke it down into manageable, achievable, rewardable steps. And as you get further and further along, success begets more confidence and follow-on success. So I have sort of done that same thing throughout the rest of my life. Getting through college and medical school, pursuing a career as an astronaut, even now as a tech startup, CEO, you have to kind of figure out, first off, where you want to get to, but then what are the steps along the pathway that you can achieve and build upon? And so I attribute a lot of my tenacity and success to that. Very cool. The number of places you lived is remarkable.

Senegal, Lebanon, Iran, Greece, all over the United States. And I know you moved around with your parents this whole time and ended up going to med school at Stanford, got your medical internship at Harvard. And then like there's this whole like story where you almost qualify for the Olympics and Luge. And it's like, how does that happen? And you get really into rock climbing. But you're telling me at all of those steps along the way, it's in the back of your head.

I want to go to space someday. Absolutely. You've got to visualize success and, you know, see your pathway towards that. And so absolutely the experiences that I sought out were strategic. They were also, you know, exciting and enjoyable for me. Participating in the sport of Luzes is one of the most exhilarating things I can possibly imagine. But I took a, you know, very structural. approach to all the things that I've done in my life. If you're not going to try to be the best

at whatever it is you're doing, you should find something else that you're more passionate about, I think. That's pretty powerful. And I know there was a point at where you almost qualify for the Olympics and Luge and there's people trying to convince you, no, you should stick around for the next go around because you can probably make it, but you decide, no, I'm going to space. And that is my focus. My focus is not the Olympics. I think so. So often there are those points in people's lives where the decision is not between good and bad anymore. It's between good and best. Right. And so you're choosing, you're choosing between the Olympics and this far off dream of,

I still want to go to space. Was it hard not to get distracted on the journey? It can be. It's a long path. But if your true passion is a faraway lofty goal, you have to keep focus. And resilience is something that's for some reason, you know, coded in my DNA, I have something I'm pretty strong at. So same with climbing, you know, big mountains, which I've done as well.

You have to withstand a lot of pain and suffering for that, you know, euphoric 30 minutes on top of the mountain. So, yeah, for me, it was pretty clear when I was finishing up my medical training and I was also involved in the sport of Luge. I realized that I needed to continue on with my career and continue on my path, hopefully to become an astronaut. And so luckily, I made the right choice at the right time. And so application opens up. I believe you're in Denver at this point. You find out that they are accepting applications. When that occurs, how many people apply to become an astronaut at any given time?

And then walk us through some of that application process because I know it's rigorous. Several thousand people will apply from across the country. Some military, some civilian. of course, I was a civilian physician working in Denver, Colorado at the time. And so I really didn't think I had a shot at it, quite honestly. I hadn't finished my residency training at the time. So I decided that I would go ahead and apply. I had spoken to other folks who suggested, get your name in the hat that may take three

or four cycles before you eventually get selected. So I decided, well, I'll hopefully get recognized, maybe get an interview this first time, and then maybe two or four years down the road, maybe I would get the job. But I ended up getting an interview, went down to Houston, Texas for a whole slew of medical exams. Everything known to medical science and then a few kind of tortuous tests that they threw in just for good measure, I'm sure. And some psychiatric kinds of assessments and things. In a big interview with some wonderful people, there were 22 other candidates in my interview week. all told, I think they interviewed about 120 people for a class size of about 20.

Wow. So down-selected from a much larger pool. And after my interview, I ended up just waiting for, turned out to be a little bit over three months. And every time the phone would ring, is this NASA? And if it is NASA, what are they going to tell me? The very last day of March, 1992, I got a call from the head of the selection committee. and he said, hey, I'm still interested in coming to work for us down in Houston. You know, I was very polite.

And I said, yes, sir, yes, sir. I'd be very happy to do so. And I said, yeah, whatever you do, you know, don't tell anybody because we haven't issued the press release. We're going to do that tomorrow. So it's just between us, right? And so I'm, oh, yes, sir. And then, of course, you know, as soon as I got off the phone, I called everyone that I knew.

Of course you did. Okay. So I've got a question there, though. they are coaling this list of thousands of people that are PhDs, they have their doctorates, they've spent time in serving our nation and the armed forces, and they get that down to a list of 20-something and then they ultimately make their selection. Most of those people on that list, even that didn't make it down to Houston for an interview, are probably brilliant, imminently qualified, probably. So many well-qualified people. Yeah, way more qualified people for the job than they have opportunities, unfortunately. So what is the selection committee looking for? Like what is the psychological factor or the mental factor?

Or is it a physical thing that they're looking for in the individuals that they end up selecting? Well, it's a great question. And, you know, first and foremost, you need the requisite skill set. So degree in math, science, engineering, medicine, you know, something relevant to the space program. need physical fitness and to be free of any risk of significant illness because they're going to spend millions of dollars training you over many years and they hope that you'll fly multiple missions. So there's a, the medical screening is to make sure that that works out. Ultimately, you know, there's a great deal of luck, I think, to get the nod. The selection committee is just looking for someone that they wouldn't mind spending, you know, a few weeks to a few months in a tin can

with. You know, it's, you know, it's the, it's the crew compatibility is this point. person, team player, you know, they have a sense of humor, you know, would they be able to, you know, chip in and do things not necessarily as a sign, but just to kind of, one of the attributes of astronauts is we have to wear lots of different hats. It's not just myself as a physician doing clinical care in space. It's doing medical research science, but also engineering. It's, you know, flying robotic arms and spacewalking. You have to be sort of a jack of all trades. But it sounds like you're saying a big piece of it is likeability to a degree. Like, can we actually spend time with this person? It's very important, especially on these long-duration

missions, Scott Kelly, who recently returned from 340 days on the International Space Station. That's a lot of confined time with a very small social circle. So if you don't have a sense of humor up there, it can be really hard on you, but it's also going to be really hard on your crewmates. And if you get frustrated, there really isn't much. leaving. You don't really walk out the door and say bye. You can't float out the hatch and, you know, take a walk in the park. It's, yeah, you're, you're in there until your ride comes. What are the things in the interview process that they're asking to determine someone's likeability, humility, ability to cross context? Like, how did they identify that in an interview

with people that are obviously have been thinking about this singular interview and putting on a good face for years and years and years and years? Well, it's, it's, It's not easy to tease all of that out, quite honestly. So it's an hour and a half interview with people that you quite honestly idolized. And I was at my interview table and I knew the seven or eight astronauts, you know, they were the pantheon of my heroes, of course. And I, you know, there's John Young who, you know, walked on the moon and flew the first space shuttle flight and flew in Gemini. And there were many other astronauts there as well.

And so, you know, I'm kind of awestruck. And, you know, when I grow up, I want to be like. you guys, you know, of course. But for me, I think what worked was, I really didn't think I would get the job. So I was very relaxed. I went into the room and I was very, you know, candid and open. And I thought, well, this is exciting. I'm getting to meet some of my heroes. You know, maybe in two or four years, I'll be able to come back here and the next selection cycle and have a real shot at the job. So I think being relaxed has really helped me. But I would also say that the selection also is the times in between the interviews. So, you know, how do people interact with

people that they don't see as part of the selection process? How do candidates interact with the nurses in the clinic and custodial staff? I mean, I've taken these lessons with me hiring people for a variety of roles. Anyone can look good in an interview, 30 or 60-minute interview with someone. But if you ignore the housekeeper when you come in, I'm going to hear it. I've, I intentionally go talk to that person and I find out, what did you think? And if they were rude or dismissive, that tells me a lot about their character. So for the astronaut selection, we're there in Houston for about a week. And those folks are under scrutiny that entire time. They may not realize it, but they are. That's remarkable. Very good. Well, now we know, if you're listening to

this and you want to become an astronaut, you know that you better treat everyone well because that's a sign of character, but also because it's just being a good person, I think. That's part of what it is. That's right. And that's what they're looking for, I'm sure. So you find out you get accepted, along with the class of 22 others. But then I know it's not necessarily a given then that you're going to fly or when you're going to fly. But ultimately, I believe it was about a year later, you get selected for STS 66. And I think you said it's about a year of training that leads up to that day, November 3rd, 1994. I'd love for you, just because I think we don't get to hear these stories as much anymore today, sadly,

but I'd love for you to walk us through the story of you spent your entire childhood dreaming and working towards this moment. And now on November 3rd, you're sitting on the launch pad. So what's going through your head? Because you get on that spatial hours before. What's going through your head and then walk us through that launch? It's such a wild out-of-body experience. You're actually strapped into a rocket ship. on your back with your feet above heart level, you're facing towards the heavens, and the

clock is counting down. You've been in there for about two hours. And because of the fact that you're on your back and your legs are above heart level, your bladder is also starting to fill up. And so good thing you're wearing a diaper. And that's true. That is true. There's no getting up and going to the bathroom. Oh, that's not happening. No way. No way. In flight service is horrible. Yeah, you just got to hang in there. And as the clock ticks down, you think about all of your training, the people that have preceded you. You think about those who have perished, quite honestly. You think about the first stage and the Challenger crew who tragically perished 73 seconds into their mission on STS 51L.

You recognize the significance of what you're about to do. You really hope that every technician has properly tightened every bolt and, Every bit of code is ready to go because at T0, 7 million pounds of thrust are going to be forcibly ejecting you from the planet. Seven million pounds of thrust? Seven million pounds of thrust. It's crazy. It's sort of like the steepest roller coaster ride you've ever been on your entire life, but it lasts for eight and a half minutes. Oh, my word.

So walk us through the countdown, though, when they start saying 10, 9, 8, I mean, it's that iconic countdown that we've seen in all the movies. And some of us have seen live, are you shaking? Are you scared? Are you excited? What is emotionally going through your head at that moment? There's an extraordinary exhilaration. You know, it's something you've dreamt of for your entire life. And you're about to fulfill your boyhood dream to live your own American dream to be able to fly in space.

And so there's a extreme sense of excitement and exhilaration. But also there's this nagging sense of, God, sure hope I don't screw up. You've got a job to do. The actions that we take now have real consequence. And so we rely upon our training and you get your game face on. There's no better way to say it. You spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in simulators and you've experienced serious malfunctions in the simulator. The training team has tried to kill you many times in the simulator most of the time you've lived. And so you have that strength of not. knowledge that you can overcome most things. And you're very, very laser focused on the data

that's in front of you. There were times during the launch on my first flight where I was just looking at data and I was really concentrating on the major events that were about to happen, like the solid rocket booster separating. And my role is sort of the, that was the mission specialist one. So I seated behind the pilot there to help in signature. recognition of something failed? What do we do? If something else failed, if we had a hydraulic system and computer failure, what is the combined impact of those two things? And, you know, there are some pretty significant things that could bite the crew if we didn't respond appropriately. So I was very focused on that task. But, you know, there are things that are happening out in front

of you. You look out the forward window and you see this brilliant flashlight. Those are rocket engines separating the solid rocket boosters and you think, oh my God, this is, this is just the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. You kind of, you have these brief moments where you, you try and absorb the human experience of it, but by and large, you're really focused on doing the job that you were assigned because that, you know, the first eight and a half minutes of the flight are the most dynamic and critical. How many Gs are you getting up to at that point after launch? What is the max? So the space shell basically was limited to 3Gs because they're very sensitive.

You know, air surfaces, it sort of looks like an aircraft or a glider. So those are quite sensitive, as are the tiles, the thermal protection system on the craft. So we were actually throttle down our acceleration to not exceed three times gravity. Wow. So it's not that difficult to withstand. It requires forceful pressure breathing. You have to inhale forcefully. And then to exhale, you just relax your chest so that there's a different cadence and a different sense of workload on the launch.

But it's not like your face being pulled back in some crazy sci-fi movie or anything like that. So I know in the book you say it's about eight and a half minutes and then you break through the earth's atmosphere and you're at zero. zero G's at that point. You look down and you see Europe, which is pretty remarkable in eight and a half minutes. Tell us about that first moment where you kind, I mean, was it like this wake up moment where it's like, oh my gosh, I'm in space right now? Or tell us about it? Well, I had spent time in weightlessness in parabolic flight.

We have these aircraft that NASA that would, you know, fly like a porpoise through the sky. And at the top of the arc, they would push the nose over. We have about 25 or 30 seconds of weightlessness. And then the pilots would pull the nose up. at about two Gs and go back and forth, allowing us to experience brief periods of weightlessness. That can be kind of provocative for a lot of people, so they call it the vomit comet. It's kind of a colorful name for that airplane, but a great way to prepare for flight. I'd spend a lot of time in our weightless environment facilities, the big swimming pools where we practice our spacewalk.

So I had a sense of what weightlessness would be like, but there's nothing like that initial taste of really being in space. So when we have main engine cutoff or MECO of our space shuttle, and all of a sudden, even though your seat restraints are tightened really, really tightly, you feel like you're lurching out of your seat, cables around, you start to float around. You look out the forward windows. You can see the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space overhead. It's just a jaw-dropping, beautiful experience. Nothing like it. I know we look and we see the five or the seven people that are on that shuttle, but you've already mentioned. mentioned it multiple times in our conversation, the thousands of people that go into making that

thing run the way it was supposed to over the course of that eight and a half minutes. So can you speak to the power of teamwork at NASA and what makes something like that go off without a hitch? Like, how do you make that happen? It's such a powerful team that NASA has created and fostered over decades. I loved doing before flights would be to go through the shops where the space shuttles were being prepared and just hanging out with the workers, the folks that are doing the inspections, doing the installations of hardware. These are folks who really felt and were indeed a part of the crew and part of the mission. They had a critical role. Every person, whether they were a technician, engineer, flight controller, flight

director, instructor, scientist, physician, or crew member was part of this. bigger team. And literally for every spatial mission, there were, you know, over a thousand people who touched that mission here in places around the world. And so everyone took their responsibility very, very seriously. It's an exciting business, but it's not a business that can tolerate error. The bar is set very, very high for a reason. And so we felt very, very comfortable and safe going into these missions, knowing that everyone had the same set of values and really felt a sense of ownership for those flights. It's a remarkable metaphor there.

I mean, you are literally going on a mission, but in a very real way, those thousands of people are on the mission with you. And we see all the time, I mean, we work with businesses around the country. You own a business now. I'm sure you've seen this. The ones that succeed are the ones where everyone from the Jander to the VP to the CEO, can draw a direct line from their role to the mission at hand. That's right.

The role that you got to play is the obvious direct line, but it sounds like what you're saying is everyone across the massive organization that is NASA sees themselves as part of that mission. Absolutely. And it was really struck home to me in the aftermath of the spatial Columbia tragedy, STS 107, when we lost that wonderful crew. It wasn't exclusively felt by the astronaut. office, but every member of the NASA community felt that loss in their heart. It was a deep and

devastating loss, and it really galvanized the entire team, regardless of the position, to never let that sort of thing happen again. So yeah, there's an incredibly strong culture within NASA. It's something that I've tried to take with me to the organizations that I've been to since leading the agency. Are you at the stage of business where for you as an owner and certainly for your team, you are just overloaded with tasks and activities and you're recognizing that you're at the stage where you need to start bringing system and process into your organization? Well, from a coaching perspective, the first step that we recommend you take is start automating

any tasks that are repeated. And specifically, whenever it comes to automating customer communication, the service we recommend is called Keep. We've worked with them for years to grow our business and serve our customers well, and we've seen small business owners win by leveraging the power of this service. And so if you're at this stage where you need to start working smarter and not just harder, Keep is offering a free trial to our podcast listeners. So if you want to take advantage of that free trial with Keep, text the word Work Smart to 3344.4. Again, that's the word work smart, no spaces to 3-3-444, and work with KEEP to start automating your customer communication. So from that first flight, that first flight is a success, and you go on to fly four more, SDS 86, which I found out you flew that with the guy that coached my basketball team with my dad. That was kind of cool. Mike Blumfield was my basketball coach. Yeah, that's right.

That's great. Reading your book reminded me of how special a place Houston is, because, Because, I mean, the people of Houston, I mean, they make the space program happen in a large way. And they're all over. America's Space City. That's right. Yep, absolutely. So, STS 66, STS-S-N-5, S-T-S-100, and S-T-S-120.

I know you already walked through this a little bit. St.S. 107, the commander of that mission was a friend of yours, Rick Husband. Specifically, I think he designated you as what they called the family escort for his family. where you're going to be kind of the person that is the point person for the family while Rick is on the mission. The launch is a massive success. The 16-day mission is a success. Walk us through what happens on the morning that the shuttle is supposed to land and what takes place that day. My goodness, yeah, we had four family escorts for that crew. is such an honor to be asked by Rick to support his family and other crew members and their families during the flight. And he had done so for one of my prior flights as well. So we just on flight day

16, we expected the shuttle to come back through the atmosphere as it always had before to hear the twin sonic booms to land for them to hug their kids and have a wonderful warm welcome back in Houston after that mission. But as you certainly know, 16 minutes before the scheduled landing, because of a breach in the left wing of the space shuttle that had been caused by a piece of foam that had come off, our orange external tank, the gas tank, if you will, of the space shuttle on the launch, they never made it home. Over the skies in Texas, the spatial Columbia disintegrated, and the crew never made it home. And so it was a gut-wrenching time for the entire NASA family.

And so one of the things that I like to think about is just how challenge and adversity really galvanizes, you know, pulls the best out of people and especially out of the NASA team. And so over the next two and a half years, after we had gotten through the acute grief and mourning, we really had to double down and figure out what had happened and by all means never let something like that ever happen again. And so it was really, for me personally, one of the most creative times in my life. We worked with an amazing team of folks who helped co-develop all sorts of different tools, procedures, materials to affect a repair on a space shuttle in orbit should something like that ever happen again. And so every day it was a brand new idea, experiment to run. run, but ultimately we were able to find ways to repair damaged wings as well as damaged tiles in the

space shuttle. And about two and a half years after the accident, we were then safely able to return the space shuttle to flight. It was a very difficult time for everyone. I certainly considered hanging up my space suit at that point, but spending time with the families in particular and realizing how much the crew would have wanted the legacy of spaceflight to continue, I was able to able to see a path to flying one more mission. George Bush said following that crash, my fellow Americans this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. At 9 a.m. this morning, mission control in Houston lost contact with our space shuttle Columbia.

A short time later, debris was falling from the skies above Texas. The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors. The same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth, yet we can pray they are all safely home. You knew Rick well. I assume you knew most of the people on that flight. I knew the entire crew very well. What is their legacy today? First of, I would just say that I think that was perhaps President Bush's most beautiful speech ever. I thought he captured that moment so well. And

although we weren't ready to heal, it was something that we needed to hear, and it certainly was a very beautiful way to express what everyone was thinking. I think the legacy of the Columbia crew is in their flawless mission, the fact that they worked together as a brilliant team. They had trained together for a lot longer than many other crews because the space station was already under assembly. And so their mission had been successfully kind of bumped back for other higher priority international space station assembly missions. So they had trained together for for years and years a whole lot longer than other crews. And so they really had an incredible kinship among them. It was very infectious. Wherever they went as a crew, you were wrapped up

into the camaraderie that they had as a team. And so I think they'll always be remembered in such glowing terms. And in terms of the broader context of the lessons learned from the failures that happened on their mission, you really need to listen to the failures that you've had in prior emissions. So what I mean by that is on a couple of prior spatial emissions, we'd had large pieces of foam coming off. This is a problem that was unfortunately sort of written off. Hey, we've had this problem in the past. We did okay. It's. safe to go ahead and launch STS 107, Fulumbia, and that was not the right decision. There was enough information there to warrant a more detailed, thoughtful analysis of the problem

of foam coming off of the tank. And so as a leader, I think if you see a concerning trend, maybe if it's even only one or two data points, really think through, is this something that portends something more serious down the road. And I know that the flight control team and the engineering teams at NASA certainly have incorporated those painful lessons learned into the work that they do. It's a very difficult thing to do. You know, you have a schedule and you've got a budget and you want to stay on track, but if you're doing really serious work with potentially catastrophic outcomes, if you don't get it right, you really need to listen to your spacecraft. And also you need to

to listen to the people that are waving their hand, waving a red flag, saying, hey, you know, I don't think that this is safe. There were people who had raised the flag that were not listened to, unfortunately. Perhaps if they had been listened to, we might have been able to observe it with a special satellite. We could have taken some pictures, seen that there was a real issue there and potentially even sent up a rescue space shuttle to recover that crew. So from a leadership perspective, how do you walk that line of NASA, especially at that time, but even still today, is the best in the world at sending men and women to space?

And so with being the best in the world or being world class at anything comes this natural drift into complacency and being able to rest on your laurels. Right. So you don't want to be complacent. You want to stay vigilant. But at the same time, you do have a timeline. you have a budget and you have to keep moving forward. So what is the proper way to walk that line? Because it seems like that would be incredibly challenging.

It's extremely challenging. And you nailed it. The greater your successes, the greater tendency for complacency. The thing that I take with me to my organizations now is the importance of creating a culture where everyone from the most senior down to the most junior has the ability to speak up and is encouraged to speak up and say something if it isn't safe, if it isn't right. If you create an environment like that and you listen to them with a good intent, you've done the best, I think, that you can.

You may not be able to prevent every calamity, but you certainly have a much better shot at heading things off at the pass. It's certainly in the two spatial tragedies that the program withstood, Columbia as well as Challenger, There were people who were saying that it wasn't safe. And we should have listened to them. There was enough information, enough data. There were smart enough engineers to figure out that we should not have launched those two missions.

So it's never going to be an easy task for a leader, but I would just say make sure to actively seek out dissenting opinion and vet them. What is the deciding factor for you deciding to go up one more time on STS 120? after having witnessed and been so close to the families of those who just went through this? Well, I realized that NASA had done everything that they possibly could to restore safety to the program, both culturally as well as technically. We understood what had happened with the foam that had caused the accident on STS 107, Colombia. We also had a toolkit to repair things, potentially if it were to occur again, we were much more rigorous in inspecting the space shuttle before coming back home.

So a lot of very positive things had happened. But also on a personal note, spending time with the families and talking over with my family and friends, I realized the importance of the work that we were doing in space and sometimes taking risk is worthy of the benefits that work. And I realized that, you know, the crew of Columbia as well as the families wanted the space shuttle program to continue. So I decided that it was time to take one last flight. One last flight, and that flight is STS 120, and boy, you made sure to leave on an intense note. This is one of my favorite stories from your book. You get up there on, I believe it's your last of over the course of your career, seven spacewalks,

EVAs, extra vehicular activity. So you're outside the space shuttle. And this is what you write. You say, the crew witnesses something. And this is what you say in your book. You say, no one has to say anything. Right now, there is nothing to say. Everyone in space and in mission control below immediately knows it's one of those holy crap moments.

You never want to have 249 miles above the Earth's surface at 17,500 miles an hour. So tell us what was that moment and then walk us through what happened next. Yeah, it was really pretty extraordinary. We were finishing up our third of five-planned spacewalks on this particular mission. We had just relocated a large solar array truss, a big structure on the outside of the space station. We had put it out at the very tip of the space station, and we're commanding these solar panels. They're sort of like level or blinds in your home. They're an accordion that would extend out to about 100 feet in length.

And one of them, as it was being commanded to extend, began to rip apart. It was behaving really wildly. And we realized very quickly that we had to stop the extension of these solar panels and figure out what was going. on. We had basically a limp noodle out there, an energized solar panel, but we couldn't bring it back in. We couldn't extend it all the way out. It was a really critical situation. Do we have some other way to go out and fix a solar panel and allow it to be fully extended and support the growth of International Space Station? Or go out on this recovery spacewalk and throw away a billion dollar national asset, basically toss away a huge solar panel.

You said a billion dollars, correct? One billion with a bee. Holy cow. So, okay, so let me ask you this. I mean, my dad's a NASA engineer, right? So he has contingency plans for his contingency plans for his contingency plans. And I mean, the guy overplans everything. And I know that is characteristic of the organization, right?

NASA is iconic as being the most prepared organization in the world. And you get up there and it's like, essentially what you're saying is we didn't prepare for this. So in that moment, when that happens and the unexpected inevitably occurs, how does NASA respond in that moment? We were off the script for sure. This is something that had never been envisioned. You never want to get anywhere close to a live solar panel up in space with a space walker because there's really no great way to prevent electricity coming from the panel getting into the spacesuit environment. So this is something that hadn't really been conjured up before we had. launched. But what I love about NASA is its capacity in times of great challenge to come up with absolutely brilliant solutions. This is when NASA really steps up its game. People worked around

the clock for 72 hours in mission control and elsewhere around the country, working with simulators of the solar panels that we had up in space to get a space walker, me, up to the very tip of the space station, to essentially cut out a piece of freight guide wire that it begun to rip the solar panel part, and then install five what we called cufflinks, especially prepared lengths of wire that would allow us to essentially suture the solar panel back together. Of course, we had to build all the stuff with the supplies that we had on hand. It wasn't like we could go to Home Depot or Lowe's and get a solar air parakeet. We had to build it with the stuff we had on hand. So it was sort of an Apollo 13, sort of an evolution.

It really showed the true grit of NASA. When the chips are down, NASA comes up with brilliant plans, B, C, D&E. Thankfully, this repair solution that they had come up with worked beautifully. We went out on one final spacewalk on the mission, spent about seven hours and 19 minutes outside at the very tip of the space station. Doug Wheelock and myself out there, but Stephanie Wilson and Dan Tani inside controlling the robotic arm, Pam Melville, Roy, our commander, watching over my shoulder, basically, and guiding us through the procedure. And then all sorts of experts in Mission Control, Houston, looking at the robotic arm systems, the solar panels, the spacesuit systems.

It was really NASA at its very finest. And you were as far out from the space station as anyone had ever been at that point. Is that correct on the spacewalk? Right. It was a gods eye view, I'll tell you. I was on this crazy 90-foot-long, coupled-together robotic boom system. perched way above the space station and then they drove me out to the very tip of the complex and I saw the space station from angles that no one had ever seen before. It was just unbelievable.

The part that really got me is whenever you talked about, whenever you were out there, you knew that if something were to happen to your space suit, you had 30 minutes of emergency oxygen and you said it takes about 45 minutes to get back to the airlock. It's like, oh my gosh. So in the midst of all that, you've got the most. wonderful. I mean, you use your words, God's eye view all around you. You've got all the people in your crew watching you in this moment. You've got millions

of people down below live streaming this thing and you're having to sew this thing back together. How do you find the focus to be able to work in such a intense environment? It was certainly the most intense day of my life. I can't deny.

But when you are, you know, again, in the zone, as I spoke of earlier, you can really tune out the extraneous distractions. If I'd looked down at various times, I would have seen the Great Barrier Reef or the Himalayas. There are a lot of distractions out on a spacewalk, as you might guess. So I had my blinders on, and really that focus was essential because there's a large solar panel

directly in front of me. I couldn't have any direct contact with it. So I had a special tool that I called the hockey stick, an L-shaped tool about two feet in length that I could put out in front of me to protect myself from any direct contact. And my buddy, Doug Wheelock, called him Wheels, was down there. He had a really important role, retracting the guide wire. And then he was there spotting for me, keeping me safe and keeping the robotic arms safe. So everybody had their critical roles. You know, Stephanie and Dan and Pam inside as well. Yeah, the time just flew. It went by in an instant.

And thankfully, I had really amazing 45-minute commute back to the trust of the International Space Station. So I really sabred those 45 minutes of real elation, knowing that we had finished the job. No kidding. Maybe it's crass about my instant thought after I read about this was I went to, well, you saved taxpayers a billion dollars. So do you get a commission on that? Like, what is the commission on that job? You're right. As I fly back toward the airlock, my stomach growls and my beat up knuckles sting with blisters.

I'm exhausted but overjoyed. As I fly through space this one last time, I'm grateful. I can't believe we all did it. And I can't believe I got to be a part of it. I look once again drunk with the beauty of the earth and the thin blue line below. I think of the team, the hundreds of brilliant and hardworking people who came together for this, one of NASA's finest moments. We did it.

what do you think just in being at the tip of the sphere of that experience, what is the lesson that we can all learn from that experience? Power up teams, first and foremost. Any noteworthy, significant accomplishment in any of our lives is always the result of a great team, whether it's the home team supporting you, whether it's your instructors, your teachers, your support staff. there aren't really very many solitary performers in the world. Even solo sport, you know, kinds of athletes, they've got their coaches, nutritionists. There's an army of people behind you. And so always recognizing the contributions of every single person and listening to seeking out input from many viewpoints as possible. I think the other thing that I take from that life experience is just never giving up.

I realize that the repair that we tried to do and successfully accomplished on that spacewalk had it not been successful, we would have come back inside safely. We would have kept our spacewalk safe. We wouldn't have taken undue risk, but we would have gone out a couple of days later with a plan C or a plan D. Eventually, we would have found something that would have worked. NASA is not the type of organization to give up. And I think we can all learn from that, the tenacity, resilience that they display.

Well, that tees us up for this next chapter. Most people, I think, would kind of say like, okay, well, I've been to space five times. I think that's probably good in terms of a resume, much less medical school and almost qualifying for the Olympics. But you're not done yet, Scott. So the next thing that kind of occurs on your timeline is in, 2008, you set out on this expedition to climb Everest. I was reminded in reading your book how dangerous of a proposition that actually is. I think at the time that you wrote it, 250 people

had died trying to climb that mountain. It is not a, even if you train for years, it is not a guaranteed thing. But walk us kind of through, you made it up to base camp three, and then you kind of reached this crucial decision-making moment as you're climbing Everest, walk us through that decision? I had spent upwards of six weeks in the mountain. Actually, it was day 59 of my expedition. I had taken a rotation up to Camp 3. I was actually on my summit push, so at about 24,500 feet where we started to use supplemental oxygen. And I didn't know it at the time, but I had ruptured a disc in my low back. I had developed excruciating low back pain in it, trying to, and I tried to stretch out. I tried to ice my back down at that precarious spot, but without any kind of relief through the night. So I got up the following morning with the intent to continue on up at the summit was basically 24 hours away, if all had gone well. And I had to have help from my teammates just to get my crampons on, you know, the spikes that we use on our mountaineering boots. And I needed help to change out my oxygen cylinder. So this is really a serious situation.

a defining moment of my life. Should I go on and pursue my boyhood dream of climbing Mount Everest, maybe risking my own life, maybe risking the summit success and maybe even the lives of my teammates who would have done everything they could to try and save me, no one can carry you down from those altitudes. If you're going to come back and make it a round trip, it's only under your own power.

No one has the ability to carry someone down from those precarious heights. So I did the right thing. I realized that the summit was not going to be. And very, very slowly, I had to work my way down in excruciating pain, the loatzy face of Mount Everest. And then eventually getting back down to base camp. And about three days later, I made it back home to Houston, got in an MRI scanner. And sure enough, I had a rupture disc in my lumbar spine. I needed surgery.

So the question that I have there, I mean, up to that point on that mountain. And I know there's no way your life was. easy up to that point, right? There's no way it's the straight line up to Everest, but it seems as though the story of your career and of your life up to that point is that there hasn't been a mountain that you couldn't scale. You go through med school with flying colors, you join the astronaut corps, you complete all these incredible missions. And so it's almost like what we were talking about earlier with complacency. There is not really a body of work that tells you you can't reach the top of this mountain. So it seems like it would be really easy to take an unnecessary

area and an irrational risk in that moment, but you have the logical ability to say, no, I'm going to turn around. Where do you think that came from in that moment? And I mean, was it a really, really difficult decision? Because it seems like it would be easy to really want to go for it. Sadly, many, many climbers would have taken that risk. And in fact, that's why they're close to to 300 souls still on the mountain. It's a tragedy that so many individuals have made it a one-way trip. And for me, I think I took with me my astronaut training and just kind of the general mindset of team before self. My family team, for one, I have two beautiful kids at home and I did not want to make a one-way trip on their behalf. And I also didn't want to put my teammates at

risk either, having them try to somehow lower me down in a crippled state. So I kept my head about me. I kept my wits about me. I used to. I used to. the same sort of risk management framework that I used as an astronaut, as a matter of fact, and what many physicians use in clinical care. We have to always keep the big picture managing a high-risk situation like that. So I went back the following year with the knowledge that even if, you know, enticed by the lure of standing on the summit of my dreams, Mount Everest, if things weren't right, I knew that I would turn around. I would put safety before a success like that. That's pretty remarkable. You strike me as someone that pushes the envelope in terms of

adrenaline, but you are not reckless about it. And that is a pretty remarkable tightrope to walk. But that does take you, you go back, I think, a year later to Everest and you just use the phrase the summit of your dreams, right? That is it. And you make it to the top and you get to witness an orbital sunrise from the top of Mount Everest. So we didn't talk about this earlier, but you have seen Everest from the space station and now you have seen the orbital sunrise from Everest and you took moon rocks with you. Scott, you were the coolest person I've ever met in my entire life. But what goes through your head as you're sitting there watching the sunrise and the top of the highest peak on Earth? Well, it was extraordinary. Seeing a sunrise up in space is magical.

It's the full spectrum of light. You know, as the sun pops up from behind the what we call the Terminator, the limb of the earth. And you see that the diffraction pattern, essentially a rainbow-like display of brilliant light, but it lasts about 30 seconds. Up on the summit of Everest, I saw a sunrise, but it lasted on my descent about 30 minutes. So it was just so spectacular to see the curvature of the Earth. I don't know if there are any flat Earthers that listen to your show, but I can guarantee that the Earth is round. I've seen it from not only space, but also the top of Everest. So you can tell us it's round.

Is that right, Scott? It is round. I guarantee. I guarantee it is round. But to see that all these mountains, the world is dropping down beneath you in 360 degrees. Lhotzi, which is the fourth highest mountain in the world is just a short distance away. And you can see Chauaui,

another 8,000 meter peak over to the right. It's just an incredible sense of elation there. The summit itself is about the size of a kitchen table with precipitous, walls on dropping down on all sides and it's covered in these beautiful Tibetan prayer flags and a golden Buddha is actually mounted on a tripod up top there as well. It's just dreaming about it for so many years to finally stand there was really extraordinary. So now you own and run a company called Fluidity Technologies. I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about what y'all are doing and what are the lessons you are learning now as you.

you are operating as the owner and leader of that organization. Well, it's funny. I do a lot of public speaking keynotes for various organizations. And I also do a lot of things for kids. I love, you know, hopefully trying to inspire young people to pursue, you know, STEM fields. But so I do a lot of speaking around my life experiences. But one of the most common questions is, what's the toughest, you know, going on on a crazy, difficult spacewalk or a climbing line. and I say neither. The most difficult thing I've ever done is a tech startup. And, you know,

some of that is tongue and cheek, but the active invention, which is what is probably my strong suit, I'm a creative. So I have a number of patents and identifying significant unmet needs and engineering solutions for them is something that I'm pretty strong at. But there's so much more to building a company that's the fundraising, the marketing, the manufacturing, the many facets of growing a company. And so I've learned by trial and error, but I have a wonderful team around me. We're a small tech startup based in Houston, Texas, focused on control systems for movement through three-dimensional space, whether it's a drone or it's a computer game or VR or even a surgical robot. Anything that needs very precise control, we can put you on our controls,

and within seconds, you can be flying like a fighter pilot with great precision and intuitive. ease with tactile feedback, great situational awareness. Whereas if you're flying a drone with a traditional control to learn how to do a figure eight, very basic maneuver, but it's actually quite difficult using like an Xbox gaming controller, you can do that with 30 seconds of instruction. So we're unlocking human potential for movement through space. And we're really excited about our future. Right now, our first product is called the FT Aviator catered for drone pilots. But in the future we'll be able to pilot fly by wire helicopters, industrial cranes, augmented reality environments, games, computer-aided design, even surgical robots in the human

body. What is the biggest leadership lesson you're learning right now? Well, I think hiring well, really vetting talent, making sure that you've got self-starters, talented people who are able to to wear lots of different hats, especially in a tech startup where, for many other roles, whether it's formally assigned as part of your job discretion or it's just something that needs to get done, people need to kind of see where the gaps are and get the jobs done. So I've been very fortunate to now assemble a group of incredibly talented people. We're all mission-driven, mission-focused, as we talked about earlier. And so I think finding the right people developing a mission statement that everyone is fully behind and then being really tenacious, you know, not given up.

That's a long, long road from that paper napkin idea to, you know, actually getting to an exit. Well, if there's anyone whose life is a testament to the ability to take a paper napkin idea and make it become reality, I think yours is it. I would love for you to speak to the audience right now just from your perspective. I think you have this unique perspective in that you have been able to live out and are continuing to live out your dreams. And so you have this unique perspective and that you know it's possible. And maybe it's not everyone's dream to get into space, to climb Mount Everest, to start a tech startup.

But we firmly believe as an organization, everyone has dreams and all of those dreams are valid. Right. So what would you say to that person that has those dreams that knows what they are? And now it's time to do something about it. What would you tell them from your perspective? I would say it's so vitally important to have dreams and to clearly articulate them, at least to yourself, you know, write them down, be as specific as possible, but then have the tenacity to make them come true. And what I see actually in a lot of young people, every young kid as you started the show, as an ambition to become an astronaut or to become, you know, to save the rainforest or study dinosaurs. Kids always have, you know, great dreams. But somewhere along the line, many of them lose those trajectories. And so I think it's important to remind yourself, okay, where is it that I really want to go? Study patterns of success. Who's been there before you? And what is my pathway to success? How do I break it down, you know, the Eagle Scout pathway that I described earlier? How can I break my pathway down to get to where I want to go. And I think if you can see those steps and you can

reward yourself with incremental successes along the way, you may or may not get to whatever that ultimate goal is, but I can guarantee you the doors that will open up for you, the new opportunities, the people you meet, so many great things will happen because you've pursued your passion. So I guess that would be my words of hopefully wisdom. Well, Scott, we are so grateful for your time today. What you have done over the course of your life is truly remarkable. It's inspirational. But I think maybe even more powerful and certainly more ironic is the fact that you are just so down to earth.

That is like the weirdest possible phrase to use, but I think it's true. We're grateful for the story you've lived and for the example that you set for all of us. Thanks so much. Wonderful to be with you. Thanks for the opportunity to participate. There's so much to be learned and taken from how Scott connected individually, but also how NASA connected as an institution to a mission and a vision that was greater than themselves. And that's one of the reasons why our team created the mission statement mapper.

It's to help you both define and then communicate what is your personal mission statement, your personal why, but then also what is the mission statement for your organization. So if you don't have one yet, this is an exercise that you need to walk through. And we've got a free PDF that is going to take you through the steps that we coach people through every single day. So if you want to get the mission statement mapper, text the word mission to 33444. Again, that's the word mission to 33444 or you can click the link that's in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.

To win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rudder. I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, if you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like The Ken Coleman Show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work.

If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman wherever you listen to podcasts or go to

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