The Enemy Always Attacks You Mentally First: How Faith, Risk, and Self-Talk Determine Your Outcome (Part 5 of 7)

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (00:00)
The other thing is, is when you're taking risks, you know, it's not just, I'm gonna just be willy-nilly and just go for it and not think about consequences. When you take on something, you want to really analyze it and go, what are all the risks? What can go well? What could not go well?

Ralph Owens (00:09)
Bye.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (00:23)
And then you start thinking in terms of, if it doesn't go well, what am I going to do? If this situation happens, what am I going to do? And then you've got to be willing to, well, let me go seek someone who's done it before or seek someone who has faced this challenge.

Terry Baylor (00:36)
Right, that's key.

Ralph Owens (00:38)
Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty, the podcast. In this episode, we delve into the power of faith, resilience, and boldness to take on risk. Join us as Philip McKibben shares incredible stories of triumph, whether on the football field, in the world of tech, or in life's toughest battles. We explore how facing our fears, making calculated moves can lead us to victory. Get ready for a conversation that will inspire you to take on challenges

Defy the odds and rise like never before. Let's dive in.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (01:30)
Now, a lot of times when I'm speaking to groups,

⁓ I would relay a story that I've told many times because I've coached football at every level, ⁓ from the little guys all the way up to professional football. ⁓ and, ⁓ I remember many years ago, I was coaching at Crest V. I was coaching our JV team and we were playing a team that was way better than us. We shouldn't even been on the field with those dudes. and I remember that week I.

I brought a pail and a rock and I brought a sword and we're in a locker room and I start talking about faith and I start talking about, we going to be willing to rise up like David and slay this Goliath? And I told them, what I want you to do is go home and I want you to find a rock.

And every day, when you come in before practice, I want you to take that rock and put it in the pail. Because we're going to use the rock as a symbol of our faith. And we're going to say that we're going to prevail this week, that we're going to operate with no fear and that we don't care about the circumstances. We don't care about family members who are going to tell us we can't do it. We're not going to care about colleagues who don't believe.

Ralph Owens (02:52)
Yes.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (03:04)
We're gonna believe. And every day I would ask them, what do you fear? And when you put the rock in the pail, you're gonna take control over that fear and you're gonna go, in the name of Jesus, I put this rock in this pail. I'm gonna slay this demon. I'm gonna slay this thing holding me back. I'm gonna be better speaker. I'm gonna be a better student. I'm gonna ⁓ overcome doubt.

Ralph Owens (03:18)
Good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (03:34)
I'm going to overcome fear. I'm going to overcome me talking myself out of what I want to do. And we did it every day. We practiced hard every day. And then the day of the game, we're in the locker room.

I brought out that pail and it was heavy. And I said to them, I don't care what happens in this game. We're gonna fight until the very end. And you are gonna be left standing. And you're gonna step over this giant and you're gonna slay this Goliath. And then I said to the young men, I said, who amongst you is willing to carry my sword into battle?

Ralph Owens (04:01)
Mm-hmm.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (04:22)
and who amongst you will carry my shield? I actually had a shield and a sword. And those dudes were, they were all like putting their hands up. And then I told those young men, when we go out on this field, we're gonna walk out hand in hand. We're gonna walk to the 50 yard line. You're gonna take one knee and you're gonna take this sword and we're gonna plant this sword.

Ralph Owens (04:27)
Nice. Nice.

Yeah.

Terry Baylor (04:31)
Okay.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (04:52)
in the middle of their field. And I want you to take that shield, and then we're all going to yell, and we're going to tell them, bring it on. They're in for the fight of their lives. And they did it. And that team was looking at us like, who the heck do you think they are? And I remember they came down. They got to the one yard line. I called a timeout.

Ralph Owens (05:10)
Yeah.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (05:20)
And I said, who amongst you will carry my sword? Who amongst you will carry my shield? They're not gonna score. They ran the ball four times and we stuffed them. Game is still tied, going into the fourth quarter. We can't do anything. I called another timeout, last timeout. And I looked at those guys and I said, do you believe?

And I said, how many rocks did you bring today? You know, how many did you do over the week? And I said, all we're going to talk about is the feeling we're going to have when we win this game. We're going to win. It's been predetermined. We have the faith. You don't give up no matter what happens. So they get the ball. Their guy is about to score.

Ralph Owens (06:05)
good.

Yes.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (06:20)
One of my guys got on his horse, hopped this dude, did the technique we taught about stripping the ball. He stripped the ball, got it from them, turned around, ran it all the way back, scored. We won 6-0, it was the last play of the game. And we ended up going to the championship because of it. And could you imagine?

Ralph Owens (06:30)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Come on,

Terry Baylor (06:45)
Wow.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (06:50)
When those guys ran on that field and they hugged and all I could say to them was, let this be a lesson in life. When ⁓ your loved one dies, when someone gets sick, when you lose your job, when you're dealing with an addiction, when you're dealing with some problem, understand that

Terry Baylor (06:53)
my gosh.

Ralph Owens (06:54)
yeah.

Yes.

Terry Baylor (07:01)
Yes.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (07:18)
First off, the enemy is always gonna attack you mentally first. That's where the self-talk comes in. And that when that voice tells you you can't do it, what you need to do is use the principle of faith. The word of God says faith coming by hearing, hearing the word of God. So when that self-talk comes, you utter, Father, God, I believe.

Ralph Owens (07:23)
right.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (07:48)
I'm going to overcome this. I'm not going to listen to the enemy. I'm not going to listen to my circumstances. No matter how bad it looks, I'm going to trust you to the end. And today ain't the end. we, look, even in my current situation, I'm constantly dealing with self-talk.

Ralph Owens (07:56)
So good.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

See.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (08:16)
and it'll come from family members, loved ones. My wife, God bless her, will be like, well, shouldn't you worry about your job? And I have to rebuke her at times and go, baby, stop.

Ralph Owens (08:16)
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (08:28)
No, I'm not going to worry about my job because God has me. And I've realized that I'm adding to her faith now by telling her we're going to trust God no matter what.

Ralph Owens (08:37)
Hmm.

That's right.

Terry Baylor (08:42)
I'm

just, hey, man, just, brother, you blessing me today. This right here is so rich and I hear, there's so many things that I'm hearing, right? I'm hearing community, right? I'm hearing faith. I'm hearing there's a certain level of mental wellness that we have to exercise. Now that mental wellness is a part of that spirituality plays a part of that, right? But we also have to be cognizant of what we're doing.

Ralph Owens (08:43)
Yes, sir.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (08:46)
Come on. Come on.

Ralph Owens (08:46)
Yeah.

Terry Baylor (09:11)
to nurture a positive mental space to actually be able to pick ourselves up. I hear so many things, man. I just appreciate you sharing it, just being just ultra transparent here. Again, I'm speechless. I'm speechless. I really am. It's so good.

Ralph Owens (09:32)
You

just because we're in a special moment right now, and I know a lot of people are gonna be blessed. I have one more point I just need to point out, because I need you to talk about this. Because this is something that we all struggle with, right? Taking risks, right? We've been groomed to be risk-averse in our life, right? And there's a purpose for that, which we ain't gonna dive into today. But the importance of managing risk instead of avoiding it, right?

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (09:51)
Yep.

Terry Baylor (09:52)
yeah, for sure.

Ralph Owens (10:05)
And then I'll bless you with this, right? Cause I've learned that, okay, everything is possible because I partner with God. I don't wait for him to drop it out the sky in my hand. David first moved and then God acted, right? So everything that you saying, Phil, about if you just work hard and you believe God will do his part, but he's going to meet you there. Me and Terry were talking about this earlier this week, the lady with the issue of blood, she had to fight through the crowd.

Terry Baylor (10:15)
Mm. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ralph Owens (10:35)
to touch the garment, right? So God

partners with our efforts, right? But talk about, to me, it really resonates because at the point where I'm at in my life, I'm recounting how I could have took more risk and got a lot further than I am today, right? If I had not been so scared to do so.

Terry Baylor (10:40)
Sure, sure.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (10:56)
Yeah.

Well, look, and I'm not ashamed to say this. I am. ⁓ I'm 62 years old. And it took me.

till I was 58 before I got into...

the head of technology role. There were people that I worked with that got there 35.

And I used to go, well, it's because they're this and they're that, and they knew this person and that. Certain truth to that. But the bottom line was the number of years I spent in wasted being afraid, just trying to fit in, not trying to stand out, afraid to take a risk, not even understanding how do I even approach these things. And

⁓ I was fortunate enough, like when I mentioned about meeting the CTO, Aaron LaBerge, he was a young guy and I remember him telling me how he helped create StarWave and the things and challenges they went through. And one of the things that always amazed me was if you're willing to put in the work, I mean, because look, faith without works is dead.

You know, you gotta have the faith, you gotta put in the work. The other thing is, is when you're taking risks, you know, it's not just, I'm gonna just be willy-nilly and just go for it and not think about consequences. When you take on something, you want to really analyze it and go, what are all the risks? What can go well? What could not go well?

Ralph Owens (12:29)
then.

Bye.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (12:55)
And then you start thinking in terms of, if it doesn't go well, what am I going to do? If this situation happens, what am I going to do? And then you've got to be willing to, well, let me go seek someone who's done it before or seek someone who has faced this challenge.

Terry Baylor (13:08)
Right, that's key.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (13:10)
And then you want to be able to ask them, look, tell me what you went through. What should I think about? What should I consider? ⁓ Then you do your research. And it doesn't take long to do this. ⁓

And you go, okay, what are the potential outcomes of this? And then once you develop your plan, you develop your risk mitigation strategy and we do it every day. We just don't realize it that you can do it on the job. And then it doesn't hurt sometimes to have someone to just talk to about it and go, I'm thinking about this and being willing to ask the question, what am I missing? What am I not seeing?

Ralph Owens (13:35)
every day.

Terry Baylor (13:36)
Yep.

Yep.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (13:51)
And I learned this very young, many years ago. I was an intern for Hughes Aircraft Company and I was brought there and I was given a project to write ⁓ the guidance program for the M-REM missile. And I remember my boss telling me, have one month, your job is to write this program and your missile has to take off, fly and hit the target.

And if it doesn't, then your internship is over. So imagine the pressure, first real job. And he said, okay, in two weeks, you're going to do a test and we're going to witness it. I wrote the program. did the test. My missile launched and then it nosedived and crashed. And you could imagine how I felt. And he said, well, you got two more weeks. Good luck. It was no, I'm going to help you.

Ralph Owens (14:42)
You

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (14:50)
it was you better figure it out. And I went to my mentor and then she started introducing me to different people. And I started doing exactly what I start talking about, asking people, OK, when you write this program, what are you thinking about? And, know, when this happens, what do you do? And then they just start talking to me about, well, OK, there's the sequence. So code for each part of the sequence.

Ralph Owens (15:03)
Yes.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (15:18)
and then test for each part of the sequence and then do the whole test. And in a month happens, all the leaders came to witness this. And I remember the boss saying, well, he was really, he said, was nice knowing you and you're a guy.

Ralph Owens (15:22)
Mm-hmm.

you

wow.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (15:45)
And I looked at him. Now he didn't know I'd already tested it. So I knew it was going to work. And I said, I'm not going anywhere. I'll see you tomorrow. And he says, okay, begin the test. And you know, I punched in the code, the missile launched and it kept going and it kept going. And then it changed direction like it was supposed to. And then it hit its target.

Terry Baylor (15:45)
my gosh.

Ralph Owens (15:52)
Yeah.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (16:14)
And I'm thinking he's going to be like, well done. Great. was like, all right. All right. Get your next assignment. See you on Monday. That was it. And see that taught me a valuable lesson because even though I felt good about it, it was like, okay, so you did one thing, right. What about the next thing? Keep going. And that.

Terry Baylor (16:19)
Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (16:39)
I had

to learn that I needed to congratulate me and be okay with me getting my own self praise as opposed to I had people that was pissed off that I did it. There's always gonna be haters that don't want to see you succeed. And especially when you come from a different group that does not look like the majority and that are already questioning, how did you get there?

Ralph Owens (16:44)
That's good.

Terry Baylor (16:44)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ralph Owens (16:51)
That you didn't? Yes.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (17:07)
You know, and I

Ralph Owens (17:08)
Yes.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (17:08)
don't know how many times.

Terry Baylor (17:10)
The third grade never changes. It's still the third grade, man.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (17:12)
Yeah, that's true.

That is true. Very true. You know, I've been told, I mean, in this climate we face, I've been told you're a DEI hire. And so I go, well, I answer it with, am I a DEI hire? Why did it take me until I was 62 to get here?

Ralph Owens (17:24)
Yeah.

Terry Baylor (17:25)
Wow, now this.

Ralph Owens (17:34)
Right. That's right.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (17:35)
That ain't a D I hire, you know? And...

Terry Baylor (17:38)
That's

a great response. So Phil, speak to that a little bit, right? Because ⁓ there are lot of initiatives, right? And rightfully so. ⁓ There should be some right sizing is what I'll call it. But let's say that a person is in a situation where they actually are benefited from a program, right?

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (17:39)
Hey!

Terry Baylor (18:04)
What kind of advice would you give that person? Because they have to balance the reality of, okay, yeah, it has this label. ⁓ And they're also balancing, will ⁓ this support be there tomorrow? And again, to your point around the self-talk and the self-praise, what would you-

give some, what kind of advice would you give someone like that? Cause it's no different than an internship really. mean, that's, that's honestly it's the same thing, but yeah, what, kind of advice?

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (18:37)
Well,

I'll say this. Those programs are designed to level the playing field to give everybody an opportunity. In reality, those programs in execution were not leveling the playing field. ⁓ They were helping different groups that weren't getting the opportunities to get those opportunities. And many of those groups did not look like you and me.

Despite what the current political climate has tried to convince people, there is a handful of people that look like you and me that get in these positions. And we only get in those positions based on our hard work and our merit. Because I don't know how many times I've been interviewed. ⁓ I remember one particular interview I went through.

Terry Baylor (19:08)
Mmm.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (19:37)
I went through 30 interviews.

Ralph Owens (19:41)
Wow.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (19:43)
The other candidates went through two. I went through 30. And because there were like, well, we just got to be sure. Exactly. And, um, you know, it reminds me of something because I had went through an interview, um, with one of the large consulting firms and they had hired me to be the managing director.

Ralph Owens (19:50)
That says a lot.

Yeah, they got to find something wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (20:13)
and they were going to pay me a grip. I'll admit it was nice. This was happy. She was already thinking, we're going to go upgrade the house and everything. And I went through all these interviews and the partners was like, this is the guy. The one dude who decided not to interview me, had his second interview me, when it was time for me to start.

Ralph Owens (20:17)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (20:40)
He was like, well, I don't believe he can do it because, you know, he didn't work ⁓ at the big five firms. Now he didn't want to acknowledge that I started ⁓ with a small company. I developed an entertainment media practice that was profitable in year one. You know, back in the year 2000, ⁓ year one, we brought in over $10 million in revenue.

for a startup that had nothing, that's ridiculous. And I had learned how to speak to business people and learn how to explain technology. So long before I got the ESPN, I had been cultivating those skills. And when I'm going through the interview, they offer me the job.

Ralph Owens (21:11)
Wow.

Terry Baylor (21:14)
Yeah,

that's significant.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (21:38)
But they wouldn't start me because this guy wouldn't sign off. And eventually he convinced the HR person to go, we got to come up with something to use it so that we don't have this guy. And I remember one of the partners called me and was like, I'm so sorry. This makes no sense. You're the best candidate we've had. You should be the person. And ultimately I did not get the job. They hired another person.

Ralph Owens (21:50)
Mm.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (22:07)
That person lasted six months. And then of course they came back to me later. And by then I'm like, I didn't moved on. I had that situation happen to me. I don't know how many times. I even remember having a boss who took my resume and then put his name on top of it. And we were going for the same job, not knowing it. And the CFO wanted me and the head of

Ralph Owens (22:17)
Mm-mm. Yeah.

Terry Baylor (22:22)
Wow.

Phillip Gregory McKibbins (22:37)
of technology wanted him. And I remember telling him, look, I would never disparage a colleague, but I'm going to tell you right now that I've been in this industry. I've worked with ad sales. I know what they need. ⁓ when this guy hired me, I took this over him and made it. Well, he does not know the industry. He is going to target your main person and you're going to have problems with him in the next six months.

And the guy said, well, I'm going to take my chances. And six months later, my phone rings. You were right. I'm sorry. We should have given you the job in the first place. By then I was at ESPN and I told him, even though this is a higher position and even though you're offering me more money, I'm going to stick with ESPN because my word is my bond.

Terry Baylor (23:18)
Wow.