115: Elegant Strength: The Executive Mindset Behind France Margaret Bélanger’s Success

Seventeen years, six men, and one rule: no advice allowed. On this panel, three members of Dwayne Kerrigan's mastermind group, the "Honey Badgers", pull back the curtain on the framework that's carried them through startups, exits, burnout, and grief, and explain why the group that changes them most is the one that refuses to tell them what to do. In this episode: Curt Cronin breaks down "dynamic subordination," the Navy SEAL handoff principle the group uses to know who leads and who steps back in a crisis Sam Hazledine explains why "nature abhors a vacuum" is the real reason humans default to giving advice, and why it usually backfires Michael Grandjean opens up about losing everything and the one thing that got him through it: learning to forgive himself Dwayne and the group unpack the "event, meaning, emotion, behavior, result" chain and how the stories we attach to events quietly run our lives Sam introduces the idea of becoming a "mindful steward" instead of a "benevolent dictator" as a business scales The group previews Dwayne's upcoming Founders Council program, built on the same gestalt-style mentorship model

FlyGuys CEO Joe Stough returns for Part 2 of this conversation on scaling technology companies through operational excellence, culture, and AI. Joe breaks down the four-element operational excellence management system he built plus the cultural foundation of the golden rule and iron sharpens iron and explains how the company's AI data infrastructure platform now serves seven industries through one configurable pipeline. If you're building a company that needs to scale past its current ceiling, this episode is a playbook. In this episode: Joe walks through FlyGuys' four-element Operational Excellence Management System (OEMS) — leadership, individual development, incident learning, and continuous improvement — built on a fifth "element zero": culture. He unpacks FlyGuys' five cultural principles: the golden rule, iron sharpens iron, goal zero, raving fans, and one for all and all for one. Joe details the Waitr acquisition that used almost all of the company's post-SPAC cash within two weeks of going public — a transaction later written down by $190 million. He explains how FlyGuys' AI data infrastructure platform now serves seven verticals (construction, solar, asset management, agriculture, public safety, insurance, and telecom) through one configurable pipeline. Joe shares his networking philosophy — prioritizing "vision alignment" over job titles, including the mid-level ExxonMobil manager who opened the door to a multi-year enterprise contract. He gives direct advice for business owners bringing AI into their operations: don't skip the architecture expertise, and pair AI orchestration with real industry knowledge.

Joe Stough built a piece of software that ExxonMobil, Shell, and ConocoPhillips ran their worldwide safety operations on and he says none of it would have worked without a psychological framework he almost let disappear along with the mentor who created it. In this episode, he traces the throughline of intentional culture across three very different companies. In this episode: How Joe's early experience running Dynamic Systems International shaped the fundamentals he built his next company, Syntex, on — starting with hiring a lawyer on day one The Interpersonal Technology framework — eight personality styles built on Carl Jung's archetypes — that Joe credits for turning daily blowups with his first CFO into a working partnership How Joe's Impact software went from one language in one country to twenty-four languages in a hundred and eighty countries in a single year, landing ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell as worldwide clients within six months Selling Syntex to IHS in 2010 in an all-cash deal — and being pulled back to the office six months into "retirement" Why Joe took over teaching the Interpersonal Technology program himself after his mentor, Dr. James Gwaltney, passed away in 2016 How FlyGuys runs an "Uberized" marketplace of over 22,000 drone pilots delivering data instead of rides or food

At 500 knots each, two F-16s point straight at each other with less than a second to react, one of them upside down. That's the moment Michelle "Mace" Curran walks Dwayne through in Part 2 of this conversation, and it's just the entry point into a masterclass on what she calls "the space between": the pause between feeling fear and deciding what to do with it. In this episode: The near head-on collision during a Thunderbirds training pass, closing at roughly 1,000 mph, missing by what she believes was inches and the split-second decision-making that got both pilots through it Why Michelle earned her call sign "Mace" (Mach at Circle Entry) by accidentally breaking the sound barrier on her second flight in Japan, and how she turned it into a badge of honor The physical disruptor, wiggling her toes, that a flight instructor taught her to break out of over-control and hypervigilance, and the neuroscience behind why it works Why the Thunderbirds' hiring process (40 applicants, 3 spots, a 12-officer interview panel) weighs personality, composure, and preparation over raw technical skill Her "bubble" routine in her third year with the Thunderbirds, strict self-care boundaries that helped her show up better in a public-facing role Why she sees fear as a signal, not a stop sign, and how that reframe applies as much to a hard business call as it does to flying a fighter jet

She's the second woman in history to fly lead solo for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and she still describes her early years in a fighter squadron as "classic imposter syndrome." Michelle "Mace" Curran spent years running from failure before she realized what was actually driving her forward, and in this conversation with Dwayne Kerrigan, she pulls back the curtain on the debrief culture that rebuilt her confidence — and the messy, control-freak transition from single-seat cockpit to solo entrepreneur. In this episode: How a moment in the bookstore at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum led, four years later, to Michelle's children's book What's Your Call Sign? Why Michelle calls her first Air Force assignment "classic imposter syndrome" — and how she learned to tell the difference between being pulled toward a goal and running from failure Inside the Air Force flight debrief: how "root cause" and a single "lesson learned" sentence turn every flight — successful or not — into a team-wide teaching moment What changed when Michelle transferred to a reserve squadron in Texas right after it had debriefed a near-catastrophic mishap Why leaving the military for entrepreneurship exposed her as, in her words, "a control freak," and what she's doing to build a real team instead of running her business like a one-person cockpit How hitting the USA Today bestseller list with her book The Flip Side actually coincided with a dip in speaking bookings — and the lesson she took from it