July 10, 2026 – The Mission Generation Arun Gupta and Faceplant Melisa Buie

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:26
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there, riding the roller coaster life of being an entrepreneur, or at least you’re in line waiting to get on that roller coaster. You’re the next in line, and you get to get on the front row anyway. Thank you so much for being with us, and for being an entrepreneur, or just interested in entrepreneurship. There is nothing more interesting going on in the world today. I promise you, the only reasons we care about the Kardashians is because of their entrepreneurship, and anyway, I just love the entrepreneurial story. We’ve got a great show for you today. Two fantastic guests. First up, we have Arun Gupta, and we have a very far-reaching conversation. A lot of it stems from his company, Noble Research, and makes you question the big things this interview does. Should we live to be 200 years old or live to be an infinite number of years? Should we have infinite life? All of these are great questions. You know, the Muslim religion, I think, believes that you get a bunch of origin virgins when you get to heaven, right? That sounds pretty wonderful. In my religion, you get to see all of your parents and those of you know your family and friends that have preceded you into heaven, and so that sounds pretty cool too. And so I don’t know if I want to live to be 200 years old, and it all comes down to the quality of life, which Arun and I discuss as well. So, anyway, great conversation after that. Dr. Melissa Buie is with us, and we’re going to talk about failure and funk and unhappiness and face plants and all of that kind of stuff, and she has a system to help get past all of that, which is so critical and is absolutely essential. If you don’t have a plan to get better out of the funk, you will never stay in the funk. And let me just add one thought into this. The greatest thing to do to get out of unhappiness is to work and to move forward and to get things done very hard. I have found to go do extreme exercise like carrying wood to the backyard or mowing a really steep hill or something like that, and being frustrated at whatever at the same time, you end up getting hot and sweaty, and your focus is on your body and the extreme heat that we have, and getting your job done, and not letting your body fail you, and at that time your mind escapes, and all of these horrible things that we are thinking of can disappear anyway. Failure is such a critical part of the entrepreneurial journey. I’m excited to consider that part of it too, with Dr. Buie, and so I think she is going to be a great guest. Coming up in the next weeks, we have some fantastic stories for you as well. Let me see, I’m checking to see if we’re on billionaire alert. We’re on pre-billionaire alert. How about that? We have a guest in the next week or so who is going to be a billionaire anyway. Great show today. Thanks for being with us. We’ll get started a second

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Jim Beach 4:32
are back, and again, thank you so much for being with us. I’m very excited to introduce my first guest today. It’s been an amazing career. Please welcome Arun Gupta to the show. He started off in money financial markets, worked at the Carlyle Group for a couple of years, and then became a partner, and eventually a venture partner at Columbia Capital, where he worked for 22 years, then. That is a venture fund, and they raised some amazing companies while he was there. Since him leaving there, he’s become a lecturer at Stanford and also Georgetown University, and has started a new organization called Noble Reach Foundation. We will learn about it. He has also written a new book called The Mission Generation: Recap, Reclaim Your Purpose, Rewrite Success, Rebuild Our Future. Arun, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Arun Gupta 5:31
I’m good, Jim. How are you?

Jim Beach 5:33
I am good. So, Carlisle Group, I think, is at the center of every good conspiracy theory. Well, I just love joking about the Carlisle group. Any comment?

Arun Gupta 5:46
No, I thought it was one of the, you know, best places to kind of learn your craft with great individuals, so have nothing but fond memories of the place.

Jim Beach 5:56
Yeah,

Arun Gupta 5:56
so good, good friends with many of the folks that I work with over there,

Jim Beach 6:03
all right. Do you hear any of the crazy claims, any of the BS out there in the Twitter verse about companies and conspiracies and things like that?

Arun Gupta 6:17
I mean, you definitely see a lot of it, and you know, a lot of it just fall by the wayside, because there’s usually very little to substantiate it.

Jim Beach 6:27
Yeah, well, that’s what makes it fun. All right, let’s get on to a real conversation. Tell us about the book, The Mission Generation. First, who are you referring to in the word generation

Arun Gupta 6:39
here? It’s a great question, Jim. We in talking about the mission generation, talk about how it’s not about age, it’s about agency, and that the mission generation really is about folks who are looking to break the old mold and trying to combine personal responsibility, personal ambition with civic responsibility, our traditional career pathways have been such that we have siloed people into 30 year careers, and the notion that if you’re making money, you know it can’t have meaning, and if you’re doing something meaningful, you know it lacks financial security, and we’re seeing in the world that we’re in right now, folks really looking to build their careers more around meaning and purpose, but doing that in a way where that they’re able to build opportunities that will enable them to seek financial security as well, and the way we look at it is that look, my dad had one job for 40 years as a worked in the Navy. I had one career for 30 years across venture capital at multiple firms, and going forward, people will have four to six careers going forward. And what we’re seeing in that context is that the scaffolding required to enable people to maneuver across those careers, we need to build now, and that’s what we think the mission generation is looking to do, which is building these careers not based on the institutions you’re part of or the title you might be seeking, but really trying to build them based on the problems that you care about, which is much more your purpose marker,

Jim Beach 8:23
all right. How do I make that jump from caring about something to making it, you know, create enough money so I don’t starve to death.

Arun Gupta 8:32
Well, this is, I think, the whole point, Jim, and why we’re writing this is that those don’t need to be mutually exclusive, and it’s odd that we as a society have created these as mutually exclusive, if you’re working on a health tech opportunity where you can build products and solutions that are helping others, those don’t have to be devoid of being profitable opportunities, there are plenty of, you know, problems that one can go work on in the work that we’re doing here at Mobile Reach. How we really try to identify young folks to go into public service is to start their career there to understand what the problems may be, but that doesn’t mean you have to have a full 30 year career in public service. You can go in for two or three years and then come out and decide you want to be an entrepreneur or join an entrepreneurial venture or go to a large company, and in that capacity continue to work on those problems in a way that enable and unlock career opportunities and financial opportunities.

Jim Beach 9:42
Are there certain industries that we have to exclude from this, you know, you speak of healthcare, that’s very clearly within a mission. What if I just want to build skyscrapers to rich men’s vanity? Is that all mission do?

Arun Gupta 10:00
I think all work has a mission to it. Let’s just start with that, right? I think mission, I think work is dignity, and so mission can be beyond it’s whatever gives you purpose and meaning, and one can get purpose and meaning in the work that you’re doing, not only with the impact you’re having through it on the outside, but with the people that you’re impacting on the inside as well. How you’re, how you’re interacting with your colleagues. How do you find purpose and mission and mentorship? How do you find purpose and mission and building organizations as well? So, to answer your question, absolutely, can have mission in that capacity. What we’re really, really trying to push on, though, is I don’t think people are intentional with why are they doing what they’re doing right, and asking themselves why am I doing this, and what am I getting out of it. And so I think there’s a growing swirl of individuals now that are in a world of changing very rapidly, looking for new pathways to build those careers, because the old ones are leaving them feeling hollow and empty.

Jim Beach 11:18
All right, what about that first job when the economy is bad and people are complaining about getting jobs. Should I take a job with purpose or should I just take a job to get money on the table and then hope to transition later?

Arun Gupta 11:35
Look, I don’t think there’s a right answer on any of these things. Again, it depends what you’re transitioning to. My advice to young folks, though, when asked about what kind of early career jobs to be taking, is to focus on jobs that either one get you closer to a problem that you care about, that you understand that, and so you can build your career around that, or the second is to put yourself in jobs that have some sort of entrepreneurial, you know, uncertainty associated with it, because I think that’s the world you’re walking into, and it becomes incredibly important to start building those skill sets going forward. What I’m careful of is, you know, putting yourself in situations whereby you’re saying to maximize, you know, the dollars you may have today, but you don’t, you lose agency on the career that you’re building for yourself going forward.

Jim Beach 12:35
In the book, in particular, the second part, you talk about resistance and how we need to move from resistance to resolve. Who is resisting? Who are the agents of the resistance? Your parents, for a young kid.

Arun Gupta 12:53
Yeah, so when we talk about it, Jim, as far as resistance, we define four layers of resistance. The first is yourself. There’s a lot of internal resistance, you know. Can I do this? Am I qualified? Fear of failure. The second can be relational, people close to you that you know from a place of love are saying, hey, are you sure you want to do that? It seems risky. The third is societal, you know, like, hey, why would you do that? You know, like, that’s not really prestigious, you know, the prestige markers, and the fourth could be, depending on the institutions you go into, um, you know, lock in, like, if you’re in academia or public sector or in the industry, leaving to go do something else that can feel alienating, so I think the resistance takes those dimensions, and the reason we layered it out that way is so that people can get again thinking about how those resistances impact them, and to be thinking about what is truly keeping them from pursuing mission-driven work.

Jim Beach 14:05
Tell us about the Noble Reach Foundation, please, and what your goal is there.

Arun Gupta 14:11
So, we’re a half a billion dollar foundation, and what we’re really trying to do is rekindle a spirit of national service again, and the way we’re doing that is really trying to think Teach for America, but pointed public service, trying to get our top tech talent to go in and serve for two, three years with the idea that when they come out they’re part of the community of what we’re calling dual citizens, private sector citizens, citizens that understand the culture of both, the language of both, and have networks in both, and so in this we really want to change the perception of again back to your question about how do you start your career about how. How one wants to build what they’re doing, and you know, in our first cohort we had 250 applicants for 20 spots in federal. Today we have 1000 applicants across the 30 spots, and then in this upcoming cohort here we had about 3000 and so what we’re seeing is that there’s a real grounds flow of people that are feeling a level of uncertainty, they’re going to scale and are looking to scale in a meaningful level, and in that capacity we’re really trying to shift the perception of service, so that much like Teach for America, people view it as something, a place that they want to start their career and be a community that they want to be part of.

Jim Beach 15:48
When do they do these programs? After college, during college, does it run?

Arun Gupta 15:56
Yeah, our programs are run after college, after graduation. Um, really, it’s the time for anyone here to three years on school, so you could have done a two year, you know, associate program in a firm as well. You’re then applying to come into government, serving in an agency, and you will be there for two years. We are now collaborating with OPM, which is the Office of Personnel Management at the federal level, for a program called Tech Force, and helping them scale that, where we now look to bring in 1000 people each year, and we are now also collaborating with state governors, state mayors, and to bring in that same talent at the state and local level as well.

Jim Beach 16:47
What are your thoughts on every citizen being required to serve in either the Army Teach for America something at their 18th birthday or thereabouts? Israel has that model, a lot of other countries, Switzerland does, I think. What are your thoughts on that model?

Arun Gupta 17:04
I’m a big fan. I’m a big fan. They also recognize the political realities. I don’t think that happens here in the US, but our whole notion, though, to that point, Jim, is how do we create the incentives and the conditions where people want to do that, they’re not doing it because they have to, but they do it because they want to, and I think there’s an opportunity for that now. I think you know, look, this generation is coming off of a lot of change, post-COVID, geopolitical conflict, environmental conflict, great power competition, and now AI, and that’s a lot of swirl in a short period of time, and so I think this generation also wants to be part of something bigger than, and in that context is looking to serve in a different capacity.

Jim Beach 17:57
Yeah, I would love to see some form of government requirement, some sort of work, I think it would be great for the citizens, and you earn privileges, like if you complete the classes, you then are entitled labor and light later in life to get unemployment benefits, or you know, something like that. There should be a reward for completing it, maybe you get, you’re allowed to get a driver’s license afterwards, because you’ve completed and shown that you’re willing to give back, and I think you’re right, probably will never happen, but boy, I wish America would do that. I think we’re not serving, yeah,

Arun Gupta 18:35
look, no, I think that’s right, and I think what you’re getting at is at the core of what we’re, how we define and talk about the mission generation. We talk about it in the context that 250 years ago founders kind of came together with arguably one of the greatest entrepreneurial ventures by signing the Declaration of Independence, and that system of independence, you know, created the greatest country in the world, and in that process, so I think the challenges will reflect on where we are at 250 year anniversary is needing to take that system and overlay a system of interdependence, right, and how do we make sure that we have the systems and crosswalks in place that we were emphasizing not just independence, but interdependence, because that interdependency is going to be, I think, essential and critical for us to maintain leadership if we move into the next century. A

Jim Beach 19:36
quick investing question, What are your thoughts on the next big wave. Obviously, AI, what’s the next wave? Is it AI impacting our factories, our education system? What do you think is going to be the biggest next industry? I.

Arun Gupta 20:00
Well, I think, look, AI is going to impact all industries. I don’t really view even AI as an industry per se, but as a utility that will be subsumed across industries and across, you know, our daily, daily households as well, and how we operate. I think alongside that, though, as far as technologies coming down the pike, you know, I think things that are happening in the life sciences area will have great impact on, you know, longevity and medical care. I also think quantum, as that becomes emerges, will have really meaningful impact on so much of our security, both cybersecurity, national security, in a very profound way, in being able to unlock new solutions that we can create alongside

Arun Gupta 21:00
AI.

Jim Beach 21:01
In your book, you talk about the mid career pivot. What if our lifespan doubles to 150 years? Is that good for society, for culture, for economics, for real estate? Do we want our people to live that long? Does society still work?

Arun Gupta 21:24
Yeah, that’s probably above my pay grade as far as how the society work. My gut will be society will have to adapt, right? This, and this is why we talk a lot about what we’re trying to talk about in the mission generation, about needing new scaffolding and systems to support 60 year careers and 70 year careers. Our systems today are set up for 20 to 30 year careers, that’s what we’re set up for, and in a world where you are working for 7080 years, you’re not going to be doing one thing for 70 or 80 years, that’s what we put out there, and so how do you provide those on and off ramps for folks to be able to invest those capitals that they build beyond financial capital, experiential capital, health capital, trust relationships learning, capital, curiosity, and an impact in a meaningful way, so you can sustain yourself over that period of time, and so it’s why we think this is a meaning. We’re at a real inflection point right now, is that we don’t have those systems in place, and even how academic institutions I believe are the slowest as far as moving in this direction, use words like we’re preparing students for a career, like what does that mean, even like it feels very antiquated, and so I believe there’s a lot of building ahead, and so that’s what we really talk about, the mission generation being about, which is builders of this of these new systems to sustain many the macro dynamics that you’re alluding to.

Jim Beach 23:15
You talk about a beginner’s mindset at a late impactful part of your career. How do I have a beginner’s mindset post pivot?

Arun Gupta 23:31
Look, I think the way you have it is by embracing curiosity and also being able to reflect on your past experiences and how you bring them to the table. I think many times when we think about pivoting, Jim people think about it in the context of having to start all over again, and what we try to assess would be with the capitals is that you know, even when you pivot, there’s so many different assets and capital that you’re bringing to the table, experiences, learnings, judgment. How do you talk about it? Having said that, what’s incredibly important was being comfortable being uncomfortable, being comfortable being curious, and applying that in the beginner’s mindset, and one thing that I see with so many folks, you know, in my contemporary cohort is that people feel comfortable when you stay in their lanes of expertise, and because there’s a safety in that, and there’s a security in that. The problem with that, though, is that there’s not a growth that comes with that, and it’s vulnerable, and that’s the script we’ve been given, though. As you get, you know, overstay your lanes, stay comfortable. This is what you’ve worked so hard for, but what we challenge there is that what if the energy we get could. Got a discomfort in vulnerability that I enjoyed before, like, and that usually comes from the beginner’s mindset, where you’re kind of putting yourself out there, trying to learn a new skill, a new trade, a new industry. I felt 50 people that are MBAs, you know, wanting to feel like you’re making that experience as meaningful as they can for them. It was very vulnerable to think about even beginning to write a book. It was very vulnerable to think about, like, starting a foundation, and so all of those things, though, all of those vulnerabilities, I felt I had to have a beginner’s mindset to embrace it, but it also gave me a lot of energy, and arguably I feel younger today than I did 10 years ago as a beginner on that path.

Jim Beach 25:54
Very well said. Very interesting. Final question, you’re talking about conviction. Part of my concern with this younger generation is that so many of them have zero convictions, they are very comfortable playing games in the basement at home with mom and dad upstairs. What do you do if you don’t have a true purpose?

Arun Gupta 26:17
So, you know, I think this answer of like having purpose only comes from actually being out there and engaging and acting,

Arun Gupta 26:28
and what do I mean by that? In the world, what I mean is that, like, we again have created this pedagogy that says, hey, look, once first get clarity, you know, once you have clarity to write what you want to do, then go do it. I think in the world we’re in, you just kind of start doing things right and recognize that they may not all be the right things, but like use them, whatever your actions, as a way to get signal and feedback as to what really does give you purpose and meaning, and I think that’s a little bit of what’s lost with folks that you’re describing, is that they’re feeling like they have to sit there and think about, like, this, what really makes me happy, they don’t have any answers, and then they find other things to go do, but if we circulate more pathways where we put them in front of things, and are putting them to work, and trying things, they will, they will themselves take up the signal of, like, what is giving them their energy, and, and, and pursue those routes, and there’s studies that show that, and so I think some of this responsibility is incumbent on us, in our younger generation to provide those pathways and make it easier for young folks to kind of engage in the world in a more meaningful way.

Jim Beach 27:52
I love it. How do we find out more? Follow you online, become part of the solution as opposed to part of the problem,

Arun Gupta 27:59
so you can go to Noble reach@www.noblereach.org and as far as the book, if you’d like to learn more, there go to the Mission generation.com And I really appreciate your time for this conversation.

Jim Beach 28:16
Likewise, likewise, great information. Thank you so much for being with us, and I hope the book continues to sell well for you.

Arun Gupta 28:22
Thank you.

Jim Beach 28:24
And we will be right back.

Intro 2 28:39
Well, that’s a wonderful question. Actually, oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s, that’s all, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

Jim Beach 29:01
We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce an amazing person. Please welcome Dr. Melissa Buie to the show. She is a writer, an engineer, and operations executive, and author, problem-solving expert. Listen to this show. She went and got her master’s degree in physics from Auburn, and a PhD in nuclear engineering and plasma physics from the University of Michigan. She then decided to design a spaceship, and she built her own spaceship. I don’t know, my God, a degree in plasma physics – it just makes my mind go crazy. What that means. She has multiple patents and has written 40 technical papers, and spent nearly a decade teaching graduate engineering. She has two books out called Problem The Recently that we’re going to talk about, Problem Solving for New Engineers, and Face Plant: Free Yourself From Failures Bunk. Unbelievable, Melissa. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Melisa Buie 30:04
I’m doing well, Jim. And thank you for having me.

Jim Beach 30:07
Certainly, you know about space and aliens and stuff with those degrees. I mean, it’s like it reads CIA operative alien specialist in the subtitle. Are you in the CIA, Dr. Booth?

Melisa Buie 30:23
I am not. I am not with the CIA. Are you? No, swear

Jim Beach 30:27
on that.

Melisa Buie 30:28
I swear on that. Yes.

Jim Beach 30:30
Okay. The first thing I read is that the CIA teaches you how to swear that you’re not in the CIA.

Melisa Buie 30:35
No, but I read a lot of history, so I love the history of the CIA.

Jim Beach 30:44
It’s so dark, though. They’ve done so many bad things.

Melisa Buie 30:48
That is true. That is true.

Jim Beach 30:50
All right. Very fascinating career. The things that you learned doing that are just mind-boggling. Why did you decide to get that PhD? What was that, your.. what was your ultimate goal with that?

Melisa Buie 31:07
I just.. I love education, and I went to.. I went to work for a couple years at the Naval Research Lab after my master’s, and I, and then that was during the Reagan administration, and we were working on Star Wars and building theoretical lasers, lasers on paper, I like to say, and it was fascinating to me, the just all that we were thinking about and contemplating for the future, and I wanted to be a part of that, so I decided to go get my PhD, and yeah, haven’t looked back.

Jim Beach 31:53
They always make fun of him for just the entire idea of Star Wars, but to me it seems to have worked. We are now shooting missiles out of the sky, which was exactly the Soviet Union fell, and I don’t know. I think Reagan was smart enough to think that if, if I spend a lot of money and they can’t catch up, that eventually that they will collapse economically. I thought that he knew what he was doing. It seems to me every goal that he had succeeded with Star Wars.

Melisa Buie 32:26
That certainly appears to be the case, and the prototypes that, or that we were thinking about, and building on paper, conceptualizing on paper, building the models for, like, you look now at some of the prototypes that we’re building 40 years later, and you will see those lasers being developed. So I think he was, he had some good advisors. Dr. Teller did a lot of advising for him, and certainly knew a lot about physics.

Jim Beach 33:04
Well, it is a fascinating career. Tell us about the book Face Plant. I love the cover, looks like about to fall right on my face. Tell me about the book.

Melisa Buie 33:14
So Face Plant is it’s a book that every entrepreneur, every leader, every listener to your show, every human being deals with, but nobody wants to talk about. It’s a topic around failure, so not the, you know, not the fail fast, fail forward, bumper sticker version of failure, we’re talking about in this book, the real funk that failure puts us in, the shame, the fear, the paralysis that keeps us stuck. The three of us came together and spent years examining our own biggest failures and what we discovered and developed through this process was a four step framework that we called Free, which is in the title, and it stands for Focus, Reflect, Explore, and Engage, and it actually gives you a really practical process to work through failure, so instead of just pretending that it doesn’t bother you, you can actually, you can actually deal with that and learn and grow from the failure. So the book is it’s part personal storytelling, part brain science, and there’s a whole lot of workbook in there. So we want people to be, you know, playing actively on the field and engaged in life, not sitting in the bleachers, just watching other people from the stands.

Jim Beach 34:49
Oh, I love that attitude. Go through the free again for me, please. All right, reflect, I, I got two reflected. Engage, help me on the other two.

Melisa Buie 35:02
Okay, so free stands for focus, reflect, explore, and engage. So focus is about getting clear about what actually happened, so separating the facts from the story that we tell ourselves, and reflect is about examining our automatic reactions, so we all have autopilot fear responses that kick in when we fail, or when we even feel like we might fail, and then explore is about looking at what options there are out there, so what could we do, and then engage is about taking action. It’s about stepping back into life with new tools, so running small experiments or starting some type of problem solving. It’s all of this is based on a Japanese practice called Hanse, which means self reflection for self improvement, and it’s this key insight that you kind of cycle through repeatedly. It’s definitely not a one and done type fix.

Jim Beach 36:16
All right. Thank you. That is a great framework. I love it. I had to go and check the authors. You’re all three of you are women, right?

Melisa Buie 36:27
We are. Yes,

Jim Beach 36:29
I.. what about the failure? I don’t know if you got this. Men, we define ourselves by our position and our title. Who are you? I’m the CEO, or blah blah blah. Who are you? I’m the left side tackle, you know. Who are you? I’m the receiver, you know. We all have our names that we define ourselves by. And a huge problem with men.. I had a guest on this the other day. When men retire, they can’t define themselves anymore. They don’t know what their title is anymore, or how to tell people who they are, because their identity is their job, and when we lose that, expectedly, unexpectedly, or especially unexpectedly, that we’re really just lost, and that’s more so men than women, I think, right? Women are smarter than men are, and they define themselves as well. I’m first of all a woman, and secondly, I’m a mother, and you know the eighth thing I am is a nuclear physicist. See what I’m saying? Did you get all of this?

Melisa Buie 37:32
We did not talk about this in the book. We didn’t deal with the differences in gender or race as related to failure, certainly there are there’s some literature out there which does tend to indicate that there is a difference in the way we respond based on gender, there’s a difference based on the way our, you know, race and around, you know, certain privilege, but we didn’t deal with that in the book. We wanted to really just focus on a universal tool that anyone could use, right?

Jim Beach 38:17
Yes. All right. Well, I’d rather have a solution than the damn problem and anyway. All right. How do we acknowledge that we are lost or afraid or failing or not where we wanted to be in life? How do we acknowledge that and understand it? And then use that to act to go to your free methodology seems like just acknowledging that you’re not where you wanted would be a huge step.

Melisa Buie 38:51
Certainly that is the case, and I think you know one of the things that we introduce in the book are these these patterns of patterns of failure or patterned responses that you keep showing up that keep showing up in your life, and we tried to make it, we tried to make the book kind of funny, so we called these our usual suspects, so these are the patterns that really keep us there, our go-to conspirators that we like to say that show up again and again, and what I mean by conspirators are these are the these are the responses that kind of go to responses that we have when we’re faced with failure, and so what what happens from a brain perspective is our brain gets hijacked, and it, like, doesn’t allow our prefrontal cortex, our rational thinking part of the brain, to engage, so it’s been that’s been hijacked, and when that happens, we there’s four. Autopilot responses that we go into, and one of those is our fight response, and we call this conspirator the machine, and so what that looks like for an entrepreneur is the person who powers through, they work harder, they never quit, even when they’re about to drive off a cliff. Another response is the flight response. This is the magician, so they’ll make excuses, blame the weather, the economy, their coworkers, anybody, but look in the mirror. Another response that’s called freezing, that we call it the magician, we made up funny names. I’m into

Jim Beach 40:46
the funny names on a big one. Why is the magician the one that won’t fake face up to the reality so badly?

Melisa Buie 40:55
So we looked at lots of different names, but that was the flight, so the person who runs away doesn’t, doesn’t stay and face the music, that’s the, they’ve got excuses for everything, that was our, that was our name for it.

Jim Beach 41:15
Okay, I love, yeah.

Jim Beach 41:17
How many different signature names did you have?

Melisa Buie 41:20
We had four, so one for each of the one for each of the four autopilot responses, so freeze. We called the statue, so that’s the, that’s the entrepreneur, that’s the person, the leader who’s stuck in analysis paralysis. They can’t make a decision, they’re procrastinating all the time, and then the fawn response, we call that the satellite, that’s the people pleaser, who just kind of follows the crowd and avoids rocking the boat, so when those, if those show up for you in your life in any regularity, that’s when you know that’s my usual suspect, that’s the pattern that it’s my default pattern that I go to.

Jim Beach 42:06
All right, very interesting. I love the statue and the procrastination that comes with that. That’s one of my biggest problems is procrastinating. How do we get past that?

Melisa Buie 42:20
That’s where the free model comes in, and it’s, and it’s not just one and done, like I said. We, you want to really take a look at a failure happens, grab a, grab a journal, grab something that you can, or a computer, or whatever that you’re typing, and really walk through that free framework, and that’s a great place to start, and then once you start doing it, then you want to, it’ll help you get to a place where you’ll actually pause and remember, oh, I’ve got a choice here. I don’t have to respond with my statue here. I can run a small experiment. I can, you know, I can take these other avenues and do something small. Maybe it’s not huge and earth-shattering, but at least it’s different enough to interrupt that pattern.

Jim Beach 43:24
All right, I like that quite a bit. How do you go into an organization and redo their culture, redo their systems, their lifestyle?

Melisa Buie 43:35
Oh, that’s a big, that’s a big gigantic question. Culture is is, you know, I like to say that culture is like it’s the air that we’re breathing in an organization, and if you want to impact a culture, then it’s going to take going in and listening to the people that are there, you know, it’s not impacting a culture, is something that you do with people, you don’t do it to people, and any anyone who goes in and does a top-down organizational change, what they’re doing is not changing the culture, necessarily. What they’re doing is command and control, and that doesn’t, that may not affect the, or it may change some things, and things may be different on the other side of it, but as soon as that person leaves, it’s back to the way things used to be so to really impact the culture, you do it with the people, you help them figure out what the direction is that’s needed, and then introduce the systems and the tools that are going to make their lives easier, so.

Jim Beach 45:00
How do you deal with the pushback, the people just saying I’m not going to change, I don’t like to change, I liked the old way, or just simply I don’t like change for the sake of not liking change.

Melisa Buie 45:10
Well, so you try to get, you try to get as many of those people as converts as possible, because no one likes change, none of us like change. We like things as much as we like to complain about things, we like things the way they are, but it’s really important that we get as many of those people as we can on board with what needs to, what needs to happen, so that it’s better for everyone, but as you know, Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great, there are people who either will self to self select not to be on the bus, or it may be that the leader needs to decide this is not the right bus for you, and those people need to need to go someplace else, so it’s important when an organization is trying to drive transformation that they have the right people on the bus that will make things happen.

Jim Beach 46:23
How do you fire people effectively and without getting sued on the bus? How do we get rid of them?

Melisa Buie 46:31
Well, in an ideal world, they will – they’re the people that self-select, right, to not not join you on the road, and then hopefully you’ve had, you’ve established enough of a relationship with people that you can, that they will, they’re convinced that they’re better off someplace else. Sometimes that doesn’t happen, and it really is a difficult, it’s a difficult thing, but what I do in working with large organizations, I work really closely with HR and legal to make sure that I have the right support structure and the right and using the right language and and it’s really clear that this is the right decision for the organization.

Jim Beach 47:32
How did you write a book? How do you sit down and actually write, Melissa? How does that process work for you? And then, secondly, how do you publish? How did you find a publisher and go about that process with a team around you? Two parts. Go.

Melisa Buie 47:47
Okay. So, sitting down and writing a book, I love writing. So, for me, I’ve always been much better on paper than than verbally, so I need to, I need to think through things, I want to spend time with myself in reflection, writing things out, and it helps, like it helps me get everything in order when I write, so for me it’s an. and my first book started with lecture notes, so I was teaching at San Jose State, and realized, oh, hey, this is this is really good information. I’ve gotten a lot of new engineers that I hire, I want them to know this stuff, so I started writing a writing a book that I could share with them, and then, and what was your second question? I apologize.

Jim Beach 48:49
How did y’all go getting

Melisa Buie 48:51
published? Okay, well, because I write and practice in a certain, in a certain genre of lean manufacturing, I actually reached out to a publisher that focuses on publishing books for lean manufacturing, so I went through a traditional publisher for my first book and worked with Productivity Press to do that, and then the second book, because I had co-authors, they really, really loved this hybrid model of publishing, and so we tried the hybrid route for our second book and went with practical inspiration publishing.

Jim Beach 49:41
What is their model? How is it a hybrid?

Melisa Buie 49:44
So it’s a hybrid in the sense that you cover some of the cost and they cover some of the cost and they help you with the marketing, they give you ideas for how to do. Some marketing and reaching out and with a traditional publisher, I was 100% responsible for that, but they covered all the cost,

Jim Beach 50:13
all right. Which way do you like better? How do you think the experiment went?

Melisa Buie 50:17
I, you know, I really like the experience of both, and I’ve learned a lot from both of them, and so I, I learned different things from each one, so I, I’m not sure I have a one over the other I really liked the ideas for marketing and the encouragement and coaching that I received from the hybrid publisher, I really liked the price tag from the from the traditional publisher, though. So, yeah, I mean, you got an

Jim Beach 51:04
advance or paid to write the book.

Melisa Buie 51:07
I just didn’t have any out. I didn’t have any cost.

Jim Beach 51:10
Okay,

Melisa Buie 51:11
yeah.

Jim Beach 51:15
And tell us about some of your patents. I actually have a patent, Dr. Bui gets I patented with a whole bunch of my students a paint that blocks Wi-Fi signals, so you could paint a room and create a room that’s a Faraday box, so that no Wi-Fi gets in it, because I don’t know if you knew this, but Wi-Fi is horrible for babies’ brains, just absolutely horrible. Grants has actually outlawed Wi-Fi anywhere near a school because it’s so bad for the development of a child, and the exercise I always propose is put a plant next to your router and watch what happens. But anyway, that’s my patent. Tell me about one of your patents.

Melisa Buie 52:00
Okay, so most of my patents are related to their process patent, which have to do with how to create a semiconductor chip, and so it’s related to a process called etching, where you’re removing material from a wafer and, and most of the processes you want them to be fairly selective, so that they remove material in certain areas, but not in other areas. So I did that on developed some processes for wafers and for the photo mask that are used for transferring the patterns onto the wafers,

Jim Beach 52:47
your sounds a lot cooler than mine, or a lot more profitable. That’s amazing. I don’t even know what the words you said mean, so that’s how impressive I find it, Dr. Bowie. How do we find out more about you? Follow you online, get a copy of Face Plan.

Melisa Buie 53:08
Well, Face Plan is available on Amazon, so if you search for Face Plan, free yourself from failures, funk, you will be able to find a copy there. If you want to connect with me, I am on LinkedIn. I publish every day, I post every day, and I would love connections, followers, say hellos, any of that. My website is Melissa buie.com You can also find our website for the book@faceplant.com So, any of those ways I’d be happy to connect.

Jim Beach 53:44
Fantastic. Thank you so much. And we’d love to have you back. You were great. Thanks a lot.

Melisa Buie 53:48
Thank you.

Jim Beach 53:49
We are out of time, but back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, and go make a million dollars by now.