Austin Gray: Welcome back to the OWNR OPS podcast. This is Austin Gray, your host, and I have a very special guest, Christian Ruf, on the podcast. He is a former 160th Division Night Stalker helicopter pilot—a super cool dude. I spent last weekend with him and about 10 to 15 other guys at an event in Asheville, and it was awesome. He’s working on a project called Uncommon Elite, where he pairs up Special Operations guys—ex-Navy Seals, current Navy Seals, helicopter pilots—basically all Special Forces, and pairs those up with high performers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. We go and do hard stuff together.

Austin Gray: I won't spill the beans on everything that we did at the event, but it was basically just a lot of fun stuff where we challenged ourselves physically and mentally, did things as a group, and worked on leadership skills. Christian shared some stories and some other Navy Seals shared stories about leadership, and I had a lot of fun. So thanks for being on the podcast, Christian. We're just going to jump into a bunch of different topics here, but I'm excited to have you on.

Christian Ruf: Thanks for having me, man. I'm glad you could make it last weekend.

Austin Gray: Yeah, it was super fun! Anyway, tell me about that house you were just talking about.

Christian Ruf: Yeah, I'll pull it up here. I think it sleeps 16 or 18. Let me just see—I’ve got it pulled up now. Now I'm determined. Okay, so here's what we're thinking about. While Christian's pulling this up, I had so much fun at this event. Not only was it fun, but it was challenging. I left the event with so many different ideas and things to think about as a leader in our own small business—personal development, things to contemplate. I was all amped up, and Christian was like, "Well, why don’t we throw one in Colorado?" I just said, "Yeah, let's do it!" So we are in the works of finding a spot in Telluride right now because we think that would be the coolest.

Christian Ruf: So I found one from July 21st to 27th. It’s sort of on the outskirts, so it’s not in the downtown area, but it’s not in Mountain Village. It’s in Telluride. Twelve guests, four bedrooms, nine beds, five baths. I think it has a sauna, dude. This thing is massive. I was wrong; it’s $15,000. So everything is doable; you just have to figure out how to make it work. I kind of want to book it, but my business credit card is currently maxed out with booking the other events we have coming up, so I've got to sell those first.

Austin Gray: Nice! Is it $15,000 a night or $15,000 for the week?

Christian Ruf: $15,000 for the whole week. So if we had nine people, yeah, it’s totally doable. We just need to get nine people.

Austin Gray: Sweet! Well, let's work on it. For those of you who are listening to this episode, it’s going to be published several weeks after we put out the initial feelers. But if you’re listening to this episode and it is something that you’re interested in, reach out to either one of us on Twitter. Some of you have probably already heard about Uncommon Elite, but for those of you who haven't, tell us about Uncommon Elite, Christian.

Christian Ruf: So it started off of a tweet, man. Somebody, Clint Fiori, the business broker—your Twitter’s very own business broker—was tweeting about how he had an accountability coach. At that time, I was already doing some coaching, mostly with executive teams. I saw that tweet and everybody was piling on it; they wanted to learn more, you know, they wanted accountability. And I was like, "Huh, interesting. Let me try something." So I retweeted it and said, "If you're looking for an accountability coach, I've got plenty of dudes with really interesting backgrounds—special operators that have been with Seals, Delta, Rangers, 160th, Green Berets. My network's pretty big in that regard, and I know guys would love doing it." I retweeted it just for the hell of it, and my DMs started blowing up. All of a sudden, these people wanted some sort of accountability through working with a former or current operator. I was like, “Okay, interesting, there's something here.”

Christian Ruf: What I realized is that accountability is one thing, but coaching and development is an entirely different thing. Where my expertise is is in development. So for me to just go out and be like, "Hey, I'm going to give you accountability," didn’t really sit well with me. I thought about this, and at the time, I was also seeing some traction. I was really getting back into coaching more and becoming more full-time rather than just something I did on the side. So I said, "Screw it, let’s just see what happens." I had really no plans other than to just see what I could build, and it started growing. That was in July, and by January, we had 18 individuals and five executive teams that we were working with—actually, no, 19 individuals and five executive teams.

Austin Gray: Wow.

Christian Ruf: It’s myself and one other guy, and where it's really going is I'm going to scale it more. At the same time, some of my clients were asking, "Can you do an event?" I was like, "What do you want out of an event?" They said, "Oh, I just want to meet your other clients." I thought that was interesting, so I started connecting my clients. They started talking because most of them had something in common or a way that they could build a relationship. What I realized is that there’s this huge lack of a tribe. There’s a huge lack of camaraderie, and there’s a huge lack of people in your corner. I didn’t just want to be the only person that was in everybody's corner. I realized that my clients could be in each other’s corners too. I said, "Okay, great, I’ll do an event," and Austin, you just went to that event. I had no expectations other than going in, doing some hardship with some people, and just seeing what happened. What do you think happened?

Austin Gray: Well, we were texting yesterday, and I think, very simply put for me, like I played football in college, and it brought back some of those moments of camaraderie that I realized I’ve just been missing in my life. Because whenever you’re in entrepreneurship, it’s really easy to get siloed out. I’m literally in a corner of my garage, and I’m up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning cranking out four hours of work before my daughter gets up. While I’m doing that, sure, I'm talking with people on Slack, communicating with team members, coordinating schedules, sending out cold emails, things like that. But there’s really no physical camaraderie in this portion of business. I realized at that event, like I miss that part of just being in the weight room with a bunch of other guys throwing weight around with loud music. It’s fun, it’s a lot of fun, and it’s because you’re doing hard stuff with people who have a common goal. When we were there at that event, it just hit me. I was like, "Man, I miss this!" So, yeah, what you’re putting together—I mean, there was so much gold that came out of it too for everybody.

Christian Ruf: For sure.

Austin Gray: I remember at the very last day, we were going to go do some hard stuff, and it was raining and whatnot. Good conversation started happening, and then all this stuff started coming out around each person in the group. I remember you walking up to Zach, and Zach looked at you, and you guys gave each other knuckles. It was like, “This is what we’re here for!” There was one event attendee whom I consider a friend now, and I know you do as well, and I'll keep his name private. He asked a question like, "Does anyone else here wake up in the morning and think, ‘I’m not going to be able to pay my employees, and they’re not going to be able to feed their families?’" That was the gist of the question.

Christian Ruf: Right.

Austin Gray: I think I was the first one to speak. I said, "I wake up every morning thinking all my clients are going to fire me, and we're going to have to go work for my in-laws.” It was just like, everybody else was like, "Yeah, me too." Here you have all these incredibly successful people, including one extraordinarily successful individual, and it happens. Just remembering that and realizing, “Okay, everybody in this room is independently successful on paper, with achievements and all that,” but there is that internal struggle—an internal angst.

Christian Ruf: Totally.

Austin Gray: It creates two types of people: it creates people who go and deal with it and figure it out and then win; and it creates people who don’t, get stuck, or never take the leap or grow because they’re not accepting of a level of fear. What that weekend proved to me—and that I didn’t even quite realize—was that it’s so much easier to go after those bigger things when you have other people in your corner.

Christian Ruf: Yes!

Austin Gray: I left the weekend thinking, “Man, Christian, you need to pony up here and do something!” So I’m about to go book a house in Telluride for $15,000 and just be like, "Let’s go figure it out!"

Christian Ruf: Yeah, we could figure it out one way or the other. But yeah, I thought that was so cool, man. Even this week, that one guy and I have been talking back and forth, and it’s just funny how when you open up about that stuff, you immediately see that other people have the same types of struggles or uncertainty going on in their mind. When everybody started saying, “I think about that every single day,” it was like, "Okay, sweet, this is normal." Whenever you put yourself in these positions of entrepreneurship or leadership, there’s something about that that just makes it easier to move forward when you know you have other people out there going through the same stuff. You can pick up the phone at any point and say, "Hey man, how’d you handle this? Here’s what I’m doing right now. I have X amount of team members," and somebody else may be a bit further ahead and have gone through that situation before.

Christian Ruf: Exactly.

Austin Gray: So Uncommon Elite is quickly becoming—well, it’s really like, structurally, it’s becoming two separate entities. There’s the entity that is the coaching, and I’m going to grow that in a meaningful way, and then there’s the entity that is the events and community portion of it. A question I’ve already gotten is, “Hey, is this a paid community? Do you have to pay to join?” No, you just have to come to one of the events. I think the way we think about this is that, in order to get into the community, for lack of a better word, or the tribe, or whatever you want to call it, you just have to come to one of the events. I have absolutely no intention of doing some monthly community membership thing. I just don’t think that is on brand for me or for what I want to build.

Christian Ruf: Right.

Austin Gray: So as a business, it's really just like the events business.

Christian Ruf: Cool!

Austin Gray: The other thing I would mention that I found some benefit from is—and I think I shared this with you—like leading up to it, we all get in our own routines. We all have our own to-do lists and our own goals that we’re chipping away at. Several days leading up to the event, I was like, “Dang it, I have to get out of my morning routine. I have to go get a flight, travel, do all that stuff.” But like, the second I got there and other people started coming in, it was very clear to me that this was going to be something very healthy. I was going to be able to put the phone away.

Christian Ruf: Totally.

Austin Gray: Yeah, I actually forgot my laptop charger, so I didn’t even work while I was there, which was actually a great thing. Just to be able to shift out of that day-to-day work mode was also a very healthy thing to do for several days, especially at a cool place like that.

Christian Ruf: Yeah! It’s sort of a reset in a way—maybe not even a reset, maybe a recalibration. Like, I came out of that with more energy than I had before, and I think it's just by the virtue of being surrounded by other ambitious individuals. Because, dude, it’s something I miss.

Austin Gray: For sure.

Christian Ruf: So yesterday, we got another one coming up in March, from March 21st to 24th. It’s in Hilton Head. A guy reached out to me about wanting to come hop on a call with him yesterday afternoon. What he’s sharing with me is he’s a very successful investment fund manager—also has a fractional CFO business—like, 35, extraordinarily successful, but what he’s missing is he’s like, “Yeah, dude, I just miss being an athlete and being surrounded by other athletes.” He misses, like, "This is going to sound weird because it doesn’t compare to what you did, but I miss being in investment banking and it’s 12 o'clock at night, and it's me and the other analysts trying to figure out this problem." And we’re miserable and we haven’t slept, but we’re there, and we’re doing it. I’m like, "No, dude, that’s exactly the same—different context but same function." These events are providing that opportunity to get back in that and also network, make friends, and build relationships. I’m sure some of these events will probably birth some business too. It already seemed like they were headed in that direction this past one, so it’s just getting ambitious people together.

Austin Gray: I mean, you were dropping all sorts of ideas for local service businesses.

Christian Ruf: Yeah!

Austin Gray: I was telling somebody about the—

Christian Ruf: American Snake Solutions!

Austin Gray: Yeah! The snake spraying franchise coming to the United States in the next 10 years, right? But so someone else has to be doing it because I’m laser-focused on this American Snake Solutions.

Christian Ruf: I thought that was super interesting though. I mean, the one dude has—what did you say? It’s just him, a sprayer, and a truck?

Austin Gray: Yeah, it’s just him with a sprayer in a truck. He’s got like 200 to 250 clients that pay him anywhere from $150 to $250 per quarter. He just buys all this stuff on Amazon, mixes essential oils, waters it down, and then goes and sprays people’s lawns for snakes. It actually works; I’m a proud paying customer because it really does work!

Christian Ruf: That’s awesome!

Austin Gray: But I need a way to pay for college. ROTC seemed like a cool way to try and do it. I always had somewhat of a military lure, so I did it. Towards the end, you have to compete for what you do in your military career, and the hardest thing to do is get into aviation. The Army has mostly about 90% helicopters. I said, "Okay, cool, that seems hard and fun." I might as well try for that, and if I don’t get it, then maybe I’ll get the next time. I ended up getting it, went to flight school, hated flying, hated flight school. My first duty—I did not do well in my flight school class. I was very much towards the end of the list, and so I got the Blackhawk. Depending on how you do on the list is how the aircraft you get—you know, the top one or two go and choose the gunships, the Apache, and then I got the last one, the Blackhawk.

Austin Gray: Wow.

Christian Ruf: So I go to Germany for three years, had the time of my life—skied, mountain biked, flew all over the place. Fell in love with flying, fell in love with leading. I had 50 dudes and eight aircraft that I was running for the majority of those three years, and yeah, it was amazing. It was so much fun! Towards the end of it, I thought to myself, "Well, this is really fun, but it’s not quite challenging, and I need to do something that’s a little bit more challenging if I’m really going to feel like I accomplished something here." So there’s a unit called the 160th, and the 160th is arguably the world’s highest-performing helicopter unit. They service Special Operations exclusively, and there’s a subunit within it that services exclusively tier one organizations, and tier one organizations are really at the top of the military food chain. The 160th is their air component. I said, "Okay, cool, let me go try and do that," and I had a commander at the time that told me I wouldn’t be a good fit and that I probably wouldn’t make it, but he’d write me a recommendation. So I said, "Okay, cool, f*** you very much, I’ll go do it."

Christian Ruf: I think it was like 25. I flew back to the States for a week, went through the assessment, got in, and then got ordered to go back, move to Tennessee, and go through their training pipeline, which is about a year long. I moved back to Tennessee and I started what’s called Green Platoon. Green Platoon is essentially a 9 to 12-month pipeline where they take the new Night Stalker wannabes and put them through an insane course to develop them from being a mediocre pilot and an average leader to really an uncommon flying operator. Halfway through the process, you find out what airframe you’re going to fly. I knew I was going to fly Blackhawks, but I didn’t know if I was going to fly Blackhawks that are assault aircraft or Blackhawks that are attack aircraft. In my mind, I thought, “Oh, I just want to do assault. I don’t really care to shoot anything or be that attack thing; I just want to bring people to a target.” And they said, “Ah, guess what? You’re going to fly the DAP,” which is the gunship. It’s called the DAP, which stands for Direct Action Penetrator—which could really mean a number of things if you think about it in this context.

Christian Ruf: It’s take all the weapons from an Apache and strap them to a Blackhawk with a refueling probe so you can take more ammo, more fuel, go longer distances, and shoot more things. They said, “You’re going to go fly that,” and I thought to myself, "F***, this will be different. This will definitely be different." There’s a personality that goes with the DAP; they’re kind of the red-headed stepchild of the organization, which is very small. There are now only 10 of them in the world and a very select number of pilots that fly them—talking less than 20. I made it through the training pipeline, and I went over to the DAP hangar and began my 160th career. There’s a whole lot to unpack from how that training pipeline ties into what I do now. But the very core of it is that organization selects people based on their attributes and their attitude, not their skill.

Christian Ruf: When I think about entrepreneurship, business leaders, and those who really crush it, and maybe those who don’t, it comes down to a real core set of attributes: tenacity, urgency, and integrity. If you have those three, you can pretty much accomplish whatever you want, and you can learn the skills along the way. That’s the same way the 160th does what they do.

Christian Ruf: So day one, 1st pilot. I got to start all over again from square one—a new pilot. It didn’t mean sh*t to anybody. At that point, I had 35 guys and six aircraft that I was responsible for, and these were all dudes that a guy I shared a cubicle with had a silver star for getting shot in the leg during a Delta Force hostage rescue mission. He kept flying with a tourniquet on his leg. He aerial refueled and kept flying; never stopped, never quit. This is a dude I was, quote-unquote, in charge of. So I grew up very quickly. Over the course of the next five years, those guys taught me everything. They taught me how to lead, how to fly, and how to shoot. That’s when I really realized that leadership has very little to do with what you bring to the table and more so what your team does for you. If you have a team that’s willing to work on you, then you will have every leadership opportunity that you want.

Christian Ruf: So yeah, I spent that time deployed all over the place—all combat. It was basically deploying, training, deploying, training. Eventually, I got to the point where I was married and my wife was pregnant. I was on a one-on-one deployment, and that was a little bit higher. I had already been considering getting out, but that was really the final straw for us, so I got out in April of 2021. By the time I left, I was the longest-tenured officer to stay operational—actually flying, not doing some sh*t staff job. I was one of three officers in the history of the unit to achieve a particular skill set level that’s normally not granted to them. I say all that to illustrate one point that I try to bring to every leader: I didn’t achieve any of that stuff on my own; I achieved all that stuff because I had a really solid team behind me that pushed me and put me in positions that challenged me. A lot of what I’m doing now ties into that. When you have people in your corner—whether you’re leading them or they’re peers or whomever—if you find your tribe and you push them and they push you, everybody wins.

Austin Gray: I love it! There are so many different areas I want to go with this. I think what I’d like to do is, rather than talk about more specific stories because I know you’ve shared some of those at the event, we’ll just say if you want to hear those stories, come join an Uncommon Elite event. For right now, for this podcast, I’d love to dive into leadership. One thing you mentioned at the event was that you came in with like 350 flight hours, and then you quickly moved into a leadership position.

Christian Ruf: Yep.

Austin Gray: How or why—like, what allowed you to do that? Skills versus attributes?

Christian Ruf: I mean, what allowed me to do that was that I didn’t have a choice; they just put me there. That’s the first thing. But what allowed me to excel was that I realized my lack of flight experience had nothing to do with my ability to lead. People get wrapped into, “Oh, I don’t have any flight hours” or “I’m not that proficient as a pilot.” That’s not what my guys needed. They didn’t need me to be the expert in flying; they needed me to make decisions. So I focused on making the right decisions and developing them as pilots. Here I was, this mediocre pilot surrounded by the best pilots in the world! I didn’t need to be the best pilot in the world. I had them. I literally had eight to ten of the best helicopter pilots in the world in one room. I didn't need to be one of them. They needed me to take the intent of what we were trying to accomplish, get their buy-in, and make a decision.

Christian Ruf: As soon as I figured that out, as soon as I figured out how to get that buy-in and make a decision that was not from consensus—not groupthink, but what’s the best idea applicable to what we’re trying to accomplish—they then taught me how to fly. Over the course of three years, I focused on their development, their performance, training them, getting every resource they needed, and removing any obstacles that were in the way of executing the mission, executing the plan, and, in the background—really unbeknownst to me—they were turning me into an exceptional pilot. I think it’s interesting to see, like, when I see guys come into this CEO role or this president role or any sort of leadership role, even if they have the best skills, what’s most important is that they’re going out and building relationships, removing obstacles, and setting their team up for success—not necessarily doing the actual thing.

Austin Gray: Does that answer your question?

Christian Ruf: Yeah.

Austin Gray: You get thrown right into the fire here. It sounds like there was a point in time that you had to maybe shift your mindset from “I’m going to be an elite pilot” or “I’m going to focus on being the best at my craft as a pilot” versus “I’m going to be someone who is in each and every team member’s corner and help them.”

Christian Ruf: That’s exactly it. That’s where guys who don’t make it, that’s where officers who don’t make it fail. They come in and say, “I’m going to be the best pilot in the world.” Well, your team doesn’t need that. Your team needs the best leader for them. You would see these guys come in and by the six-month mark it became very apparent to everybody that they were there to fly and not to lead. By the 8 to 10-month mark, they were out. I lasted four years, and when I walked in, I realized who I was sitting next to in my little corner of the hangar. I thought, “There’s no reason for me to be the best pilot in the world; I’ve got them right here.” So I just focused on them and the team, and in turn, they then gave some of their attention to me and built me up to that skill level without me really realizing it was happening.

Austin Gray: What are some specific ways you focused on the team, or prioritized that compassion, especially with a group of type A leaders—like as type A as they get? These guys needed some love that they hadn’t been getting. They were thinking about them as individuals, but no one was actually in there thinking about them, so I just leaned into it. I became very close with a lot of them, and that quickly built the trust and respect that I needed to make the right decisions—even if they disagreed with them. But really, man, it came down to just loving these guys, but loving them in a way where there was also a really clear expectation. I call it sort of “compassion with an ax.” I came in with my heart; I loved with my heart; I connected with them as individuals. But they also knew there was a line—here’s the expectation, and I’m not going to waver from it.

Christian Ruf: If I had to sum it up in a really dumbed-down way, it’s just treating people like people.

Austin Gray: Yeah, I remember you talking a lot about that at the event. Another thing that I see you do very well—and it shows in leading that event—was setting the expectations up front. So how are some ways that you consciously think about setting expectations?

Christian Ruf: Keep it as simple as possible—speak to the room, speak to every member in the room. You get up and brief these missions, and there would be a group of 100 people. There would be generals, all these really top talent dudes, and then there would be 18-year-old kids who were solely responsible for putting fuel in the aircraft. If you only spoke to the generals, you would miss the kid who was responsible for putting fuel in the aircraft. Putting the fuel in the aircraft is really f***ing important because you can’t fly without it. Speaking to a group in a way that everyone can comprehend is one of the ultimate hacks that I took away from that. Also, just being open—like you’re not going to get it right, but you will figure it out. I shared with you guys, I had a very loose plan for this past weekend—a extraordinarily loose plan. I had a set of workouts, a set of classes, and a very strong idea—let’s say intent—of where I wanted to get everybody. I had our starting point and knew where I wanted to get everybody, but the in-between was going to be driven by the dynamic of the group. What we did on the first day, we were actually going to do on the second day, but we realized quickly that first night that we wanted to flip-flop everything so there would be more gradual growth, and it wasn’t as taxing, but more of a familiarity stage where everybody was getting to know each other before we then ramped it up.

Austin Gray: Right.

Christian Ruf: We also wanted to see how you guys were working as a team. Having a level of being dynamic in your approach, but understanding your intent of exactly where you want to get everybody, I think makes for a really talented leader.

Austin Gray: Do you think that strategy applies? Maybe a better question is, did that specific strategy apply whenever you were briefing a hundred people in the military?

Christian Ruf: Yep! Now there was definitely more definition in the plan, because now you’re talking about a lot of complexity. So there was a lot more definition in the plan that we were briefing to get everybody on board. But the difference is there in those types of teams, specifically Special Operations. We know that you go launch, and all of a sudden everything’s going to change. I never had one mission go according to plan. I honestly cannot think of a time it did.

Austin Gray: Right.

Christian Ruf: So that flexibility—we know where we want to be; we know the three to five things we absolutely have to do—the no-fails to get there—now we just go figure it out. We have processes and contingencies to back us up, and now we just act on intent, not necessarily on a specific plan.

Austin Gray: In a briefing in the military that you mentioned, keeping it as simple as possible, how long would one of those last if it was deliberate—like, if we were planning?

Christian Ruf: It could be an hour and a half, could be two hours if it was really deliberate. But if it was, "Oh sh*t, this just happened; we got to go!"—30 seconds. I’ve been in situations where you’re just given a grid, time to be there, and available fuel to go somewhere and do it. We’d jump in, and we’d just go. So 30 seconds, I’ve seen five minutes, I’ve seen 10 minutes; an hour and a half for really deliberate things. But you can sit in a room and talk about how you’re going to do something for an hour and a half, and the second you take off, you just wasted an hour and a half.

Austin Gray: Yeah, for sure.

Christian Ruf: So at the event, I shared with the group—I won’t spill the beans on what you asked me to do—but I shared that public speaking is something I've always struggled with. You shared a format for talking in front of people, and I want to make sure that I have it right because I’ve been thinking a lot about this. What you shared was like: tell the people what you're going to talk about, why it's important, three supporting reasons, and wrap up with a conclusion.

Christian Ruf: Yes, so people listen to the first 15 seconds and the last 15 seconds of what you have to say. If you come in and say, "Here’s what we’re going to talk about," and you support it immediately with "Here are the three things I want you to take away and why it’s important"—and then you launch into the discussion, and you close with “Here’s what we talked about and why it’s important”—it’s a very loose framework that allows you to go in with confidence. It allows you to go in with a punch, a headline, and say, "This is what y’all are going to take away from this and here’s why."

Austin Gray: Got it!

Christian Ruf: Then you go into your narrative; you can talk for five minutes, you can talk for an hour, it doesn’t really matter. You can explain what you want, but if you come in with the energy of, "Hey, here’s what we’re going to talk about; here’s why it’s important; here are the three things," you’re now setting the stage and you have everybody’s attention. It’s brevity—it’s just a function of brevity.

Austin Gray: Have you heard the phrase, "Be brief, be brilliant, be gone"?

Christian Ruf: I haven’t heard that phrase.

Austin Gray: Yeah, be brief, be brilliant, be gone! So come in with what you’re going to say, say it in a way that sticks, and then get out.

Christian Ruf: I like it!

Austin Gray: My approach—and this is what somebody else used on me when I was younger—was you come with a problem and three recommendations. I then, recognizing that I did not have the experience to make solid recommendations, would have my guys come with that as well: a problem statement and three recommendations.

Christian Ruf: Exactly.

Austin Gray: So there was a situation where we had a really significant structural problem with the aircraft, and it was in all the aircraft. It was to the point where it could potentially ground our aircraft, which is a huge f**ing deal when the White House is counting on a handful of aircraft to go do something anywhere in the world at any time. I don’t know sht about engineering; I don’t know how these things are built, and I don’t know how to fix them. We were presented with a situation where we had to make a decision based on very limited insights about how we were going to get out of it.

Christian Ruf: Right.

Austin Gray: We found the right people who had the experience and could make a recommendation to come up with, "Here’s option one, option two, and option three. Here are the pros and cons of one, the pros and cons of two, pros and cons of three, and of those three, we think that option two is our best bet and why." At that point, the experience and skill and knowledge were off our shoulders. We were making a decision that met the intent of what we needed to do.

Christian Ruf: It’s a great example.

Austin Gray: I call it meeting three; have you been to the South before?

Christian Ruf: Yes.

Austin Gray: You have these meat and three restaurants where you go and it’s just like a huge slab of some sh*t slow-roasted pot roast, and then three really often underwhelming sides. What you’re getting is the meat supported by these suggestions—like the braised green beans or barbecue beans and coleslaw. It’s nothing spectacular and you end up choosing the meat and just dabbling in the sides.

Christian Ruf: Bonus points if there’s banana pudding!

Austin Gray: You got to do that right! So I think of this as that. It’s like, "Okay, you’ve got the problem, and here are the three supporting options around it—choose one and stick to it." My methodology was I would turn to my guys and be like, "What do you think?" They’ve got the experience. I would get their recommendations based on their technical experience, and I would make a decision vested in the intent and expectation of what we’re trying to do.

Christian Ruf: Perfect!

Austin Gray: I think about this as home services—you really want to go into the home services?

Christian Ruf: No.

Austin Gray: I’m just thinking something relatable.

Christian Ruf: Right.

Austin Gray: So he’s bringing us back to American Snake Solutions. I don’t know how to treat the snakes, but if I had American Snake Solutions, I’d go find that dude that knows how to come up with a concoction and treat it, and then make the decision based on his recommendation. That was largely what I did. Also, a lot of buy-in—getting buy-in. I think the best idea, the best way to select what meets the mission or whatever you’re trying to accomplish, is to do it in a way that gets everybody’s support, whether they agree with you or not. The way I think about that is these guys would come with recommendations based on their skill level, but what may be missing is how it marries up with the intent. I’d be like, "Alright, cool, Clark, that’s a great suggestion, thank you for that," or "Hey, Joe, thank you for that as well," or "Hey, Parker, okay, thank you."

Austin Gray: Yeah.

Christian Ruf: "Look, guys, these are all really good suggestions on how we can accomplish this, but this one is missing this component that I know to be true because I’m the one making the bigger decision." I would make the decision, and they’d be like, "Well, he considered my idea, he evaluated it, and he made a decision based on the best available information about where we really need to go." They’d be like, "Okay, cool, thanks Captain Ruf; let’s go do it!” Even though they completely disagreed with me, they bought into the plan because they understood the process by which I went through to make the decision.

Austin Gray: What are some other ways you can get buy-in from your team?

Christian Ruf: Respect! Respect is a very easy one. If you get your team to respect you, they will—nine times out of ten—I'm not saying this is definite across the board; they will trust your decision-making process. Even if they disagree with it, they’ve got your back.

Austin Gray: But how do you earn the respect of your teammates, especially as someone who comes in with 350 flight hours?

Christian Ruf: By respecting them first—by treating them like people. That could be anywhere from going and doing the dirty sh*t that isn’t within your role—tying up the aircraft, sweeping the hangar floor, filling the fridge. I was technically the second-highest ranking officer in my little unit, so everybody except for one person reported to me, but that didn’t keep me from going down and sweeping the hangar. It didn’t keep me from going and filling the fridge with Coors Light. It didn’t keep me from making sure there was always coffee, or cleaning up the aircraft after a flight instead of just going into the hangar and going home, while they go finish wiping everything and fixing everything.

Christian Ruf: So just having the urgency to do the things that the rest of your team is doing in a balanced way is critical. Of course, you have other sh*t you have to do too, but not pushing it out of your scope.

Austin Gray: So think about this: One time we had this guy come fly with us. He wanted to be in our organization. I think he was in a staff position, but he wanted to come over and fly with us. So I’m flying with him—we go out flying, come back, park the aircraft, shut down, and he grabs his stuff and goes. He doesn’t offer to tie the aircraft down; he doesn’t thank the crew chiefs; he doesn’t ask if there's anything that he can help with or move in the hangar—he just grabs his bag and goes in like it was some fing valet. I went to my commander after that and said, "Sir, no fing way." He was like, "Why?" I shared the example with him and he said, "Okay, that’s easy." That dude never made it over. He could have been the best pilot in the world—like the Joe Namath of flying Special Operations helicopters—but he did not have the time or patience or care to do the little things, and so he was gone.

Austin Gray: Where's the balance as a leader on doing those little things but also not setting the wrong expectations? Because whoever’s responsible for, I don't know, sweeping the floor or whose job duty that is on the team—in your scenario, but if you're sweeping the floor every single night for that person, then where’s the balance between setting the wrong expectations with “You’re going to be filling that role for that person” versus, “Hey, I see that this person is tied up fueling the aircraft right now.”

Christian Ruf: Yeah, I understand where your question is going. It is very hard to find, and of course I’ll come back with, “It’s dependent,” but I think where you find it is when you as a leader understand the time you need to spend identifying where you’re out, removing the obstacles that the rest of your team doesn’t see. Because look, the crew chiefs don’t necessarily understand what the officers are doing to make the organization better. It’s just not within their scope—same as I don’t really understand how you change the oil on the engine of the Blackhawk; it’s just not my scope. But I’m willing to go and do it, and I can go and figure it out.

Christian Ruf: Finding the balance is delicate, and I think it’s shifting all the time. There’s an understated way to communicate it so that the guys know it’s not like, "Look guys, of course I haven’t been down here doing all this sh*t; you just want to understand." That’s not the way to go about it. The way to go about it is to communicate with cadence to the team, "Here are the things that we’re working on that you may not be privy to, but I’m going to share them with you so you have some understanding.” That will tie everybody in. It’ll tie everybody into what’s going on and demonstrate to the team like, "Of course I want to come down and sweep the hangar floors with you, but in the meantime, I’m working on prepping for this operation overseas, and we have to go and figure that out right now." Then they’re like, "Okay, cool, got it."

Austin Gray: Yeah, that’s a question I was asked by one of the guys. He asked that, and I know he struggles with it a lot because he’s trying to get in front of everything, but his team doesn’t necessarily see that or understand. I think it’s something that is a constant effort applied over time that creates awareness at every level of the organization. Like, "Yeah, Christian’s going to come in and sweep the floors when he can, but in the meantime, he’s working on these higher-level things that are more critical thinking—not necessarily like changing the oil."

Christian Ruf: Exactly!

Austin Gray: Alright, so you’re working with business leaders right now, you're working with executives. What are some of the most important things you've identified in the business world that guys are either asking you about, or that you’ve identified in the business world that need to be addressed to start working on becoming better leaders? What are some things?

Christian Ruf: Clear expectations! Delegation—everybody wants to delegate to get stuff off their plate. They want to play at a higher level, but with delegation comes setting clear expectations. And with those clear expectations comes creating and assigning the processes and SOPs that drive hitting that expectation. Everybody is like, "Yeah, I want to delegate this! I want to elevate up!"—and that’s fine, and you should do that, and everybody will reach a point where they need to. But communicating in a way where the expectation is crystal clear is something I see guys miss all the time. "Well, they didn’t do that." You delegated to them, but did you set a clear expectation? No? Okay, that’s definitely one of them.

Austin Gray: What else?

Christian Ruf: Meetings! Meetings are huge. I love a good meeting. A really good one starts on time, ends on time, has an agenda, and the right people are there. The amount of companies and teams I see mess this up and the amount of time that they waste is extraordinary—just extraordinary.

Austin Gray: So if you were to recommend and tell somebody how to run a meeting, how would you do that?

Christian Ruf: I would just say go get the book Traction by EOS. I think there’s a lot of good things about EOS, but I think there are a lot of lacking things about EOS. But it’s a really good place to start, and I use that meeting structure—it’s called the Level 10 90-Minute Meeting Structure—for all of my teams and all my executives because it works. There are a couple tweaks I do, but it just works, and it’s really easy to understand and execute.

Austin Gray: Hands down, go get the book Traction, read it, take what you will out of it, but if you take one thing, take the meeting structure. If you can crush that, you can crush everything else!

Christian Ruf: Exactly!

Austin Gray: What are some other low-hanging fruit for business owners—entrepreneurs or business owners who want to become better leaders?

Christian Ruf: Instant performance feedback.

Austin Gray: What do you mean?

Christian Ruf: Giving feedback to your team members instantaneously—not waiting for a 90-day review, not waiting for an annual review, not waiting a week. When something is good or when something is bad—positive and critical—giving feedback in a manner where it addresses a success or an issue right off the bat. Letting it linger until the next performance review is a sure way for change to never happen because by that time, it’s in the past. It’s also a sure way to not give your team or individuals the reinforcement they need to keep doing something well. Call it out: “Hey, you did this well; thank you!” Or, “Hey, you messed this up; next time, what do you think is a different approach?” At that point, it becomes a little bit of a coaching session where the leader is coaching the individual on how they can do something better or to the expectation the next time. I think that is vastly underused.

Christian Ruf: We never waited. It was never like I had a crappy flight, and then a week later my instructor told me I had a crappy flight; he was telling me in the cockpit while we were doing it so that the next time I did the maneuver, I could do it better. Instantaneously addressing anything that is out of line is key.

Austin Gray: Yeah! I once had an instructor throat chop me. We were—it was one of my earlier days flying the DAP—the gunship—and I was pressing the target. I was getting too close. I was shooting very close, but this was getting too close, and he just—I remember him—he just took his arm and whacked me across the aircraft on my throat. He said, "Sir!" because I technically outranked him. He said, "Sir, if you ever f***ing do that again, I will land this thing and strangle you." I was like, “Understood!” I never did it again. Now that was a little harsh, but when the stakes are that high, he wasn’t going to be like, “Hey, sir, could you please reconsider?” So it worked.

Christian Ruf: Exactly!

Austin Gray: That’s a very violent example, and I don’t recommend that, but I never made that mistake again!

Christian Ruf: Exactly!

Austin Gray: I think that what I miss is that quick feedback mechanism. Like, if I ran a route the wrong way, or I can easily just get blasted by a safety. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s a small little example. But I love the feedback mechanism of addressing it quickly. Now, I think you have to be a little more delicate in the business world, right?

Christian Ruf: Yes, you do!

Austin Gray: But the premise is—like you gave feedback at the event.

Christian Ruf: Yes!

Austin Gray: It is a great word—please don’t chop your people!

Christian Ruf: Yeah, for sure! We won’t go down that rabbit hole. We’re at the hour mark here, so I want to be respectful of your time. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with the listeners, just in regards to leadership?

Christian Ruf: Yeah, go find a peer group! Go find people to push you. I learned leadership from my guys, but I also learned leadership from the guys I was doing it with. I always had one or two individuals who were at my level who were trying to figure it out at the same time. Finding those people to be like, “Hey, I’m having this issue…” Having that sounding board that isn’t necessarily a level above you or below you in the chain.

Austin Gray: Right.

Christian Ruf: Go find these people! Uncommon Elite, right?

Austin Gray: Yeah! Uncommon Elite.

Christian Ruf: Or just f***ing network. I found it just by reaching out to people on Twitter. I just found it reaching out to people like I’m very active on Twitter. I found it reaching out to other coaches in the space. They won’t be on my team just by virtue of different backgrounds, but I go and confide in them, and they do the same, or we just figure it out together.

Austin Gray: For sure! To kind of wrap this up, now that we’re back on the Uncommon Elite topic—let’s, yeah, we were texting yesterday brainstorming some ideas for that Telluride event.

Christian Ruf: Yeah!

Austin Gray: I think I’m just going to—I’ve got to figure out how to book it today, and we’ll just find a way to fill it. Does that one have a gym?

Christian Ruf: It does not.

Austin Gray: No? The one I sent you does have a gym. Do you want one with a gym?

Christian Ruf: I think it’d be cool to incorporate some sort of daily workout.

Austin Gray: Yeah, because we could just bring gym equipment and do it outside. The one I’m looking at now is like a giant deck overlooking mountains, so no one will suffer for a cool place, and I can bring enough kettlebells to keep everybody happy.

Christian Ruf: Sweet! I’m all down with that.

Austin Gray: How much of this do you want to share? Are you going to keep the events hush-hush, like we did going into this one?

Christian Ruf: Oh, like what’s going to go on during the event?

Austin Gray: Yeah, this one may take a—I think the one we’re going to do in July will probably take a different approach; it’s longer.

Christian Ruf: Okay!

Austin Gray: So I think it’s more of like the dates I’m looking at are from like the 21st to the 27th. So this would just be people are going to have to work—there are going to have to be periods in that week where people will probably have to be doing stuff. I think of it more as almost like a co-working opportunity with a twist to what we do. It just happens to be in a beautiful spot!

Christian Ruf: Yeah! I think the core of what we’re going to do is with most of the events, it’s like a four-day thing, but this would just be a slightly different approach.

Austin Gray: Sweet! Alright, well, we’ll save the service business idea conversation for later.

Christian Ruf: Yeah!

Austin Gray: For the next one, maybe you just have to come to an Uncommon Elite event to get all of Christian’s ideas and possibly buy a domain from him.

Christian Ruf: Totally!

Austin Gray: Well, cool. Let’s go ahead and wrap it up. Thank you guys for listening to the OWNR OPS podcast. Once again, I’m your host Austin Gray; this is Christian Ruf with Uncommon Elite. If you guys like these episodes, please make sure to like, comment, and subscribe if you're listening to this on YouTube. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, make sure to follow and like the podcast. If you wouldn’t mind, we would greatly appreciate a five-star review. But Christian, thanks so much for being on, you bad man!

Christian Ruf: Thanks for having me!