Flying Beyond the Expected w/ James Cooper | 230

In this episode of Biz/Dev, we sit down with James Cooper, COO of Anatra, to talk about what it takes to build, lead, and adapt at the edge of what’s possible in aviation.

James shares his perspective on an industry being reshaped by new technology, where competition is growing and progress requires a willingness to keep testing what comes next.

Along the way, we discuss leadership, trusting your direction, and knowing when to evolve as the world around you changes.

LINKS:

James on LinkedIn

Anatra on LinkedIn

Anatra Website

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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[00:00:00] David: Chumbawamba will forever be- 

[00:00:02] Gary: What? ... 

[00:00:02] David: this Chumbawamba tub thumping by Chumbawamba I'm 

[00:00:04] Gary: just in... Matt, edit this out. I'm embarrassed for David for even remembering that band. 

[00:00:08] David: You don't know? Come on. That is a great song. Oh, 

[00:00:10] Gary: I know who they are, but I would never admit that. Ooh. 

[00:00:12] David: Oh, I love that song. I, Matt, if you cut that, you're fired

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the BizDev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxer, your host, joined today per usual by Mr. Gary Void. Hello, sir. 

[00:00:27] Gary: Hello again. How are you? 

[00:00:29] David: I am good, man. It's not raining here, which is rare right now, which I'm not gonna complain. It's been a drought here.

I'll take the rain, but man, it's been a lot. 

[00:00:37] Gary: Yeah, I've just been sitting in- 

[00:00:39] David: In the sweltering heat ... 

[00:00:41] Gary: yeah, 95 plus for the last, like month and a half. 

[00:00:44] David: Why do you live there? That's just north of hell. I don't understand why you choose- Well, 

[00:00:49] Gary: the humi- the humidity makes it all better. 

[00:00:52] David: Yes. Perfect. Humidity. More importantly, we are joined today by James Cooper, who is the COO of Anatra.

I have lots of questions because I'm not sure if I'm talking to Maverick or not, but I'm very excited to find out. Hello, James. Welcome. 

[00:01:09] James: James, good to see you, and I've got answers. 

[00:01:12] David: All right. I'm ready. So we start out with some icebreakers, as it were. These are not in the show notes, so I lo- I do this on purpose.

You have no idea what I'm about to ask, and we ask really snarly stuff. All right. Are you ready? 

[00:01:26] James: I'm ready. 

[00:01:27] David: All right. Are you... I have to pi- I have a list, and I have to pick the right one. Are you a standing desk or a sitting desk person? 

[00:01:36] James: I'm at a sitting desk now, but I've used standing desks, and when I've had them, I used them.

[00:01:41] David: Okay. 

[00:01:42] James: I think I would prefer a standing desk. I just happen to be at a sitting desk at the moment. 

[00:01:46] David: Okay. I owned one for 10 years, and I think I made it stand four times. 

[00:01:50] James: This is not the question, but I eat a vast majority of my meals standing up. 

[00:01:56] David: Interesting. Even at home? 

[00:01:58] James: Yeah. Breakfast, lunch, snacks- 

[00:02:00] David: So, so you're with-

dinner at home ... friends and family and you just stand up at the restaurant and chill out? That sounds fun. 

[00:02:06] James: I don't do a lot of lunches at restaurants. I'll sit there. Fair. So I'll stand if I can. 

[00:02:11] David: That's int- I don't think I've ever heard anybody who prefers to eat standing up. All right. I'll take it. All right.

Are you a grill guy or an oven guy? 

[00:02:22] James: Grill 

[00:02:24] David: That's pretty much a gimme, right? Most manly men are gonna say grill, even if they don't own one. Are you hardcore into the grilling? No. Are you a smoker guy? Do you have the Traeger in the back and all that? 

[00:02:34] James: No, but I do a fair amount of cooking, and I've tried everything that you can do on a grill and you can do in an oven.

I've tried them both- Mm-hmm ... and I just prefer the grill. I think the grill's a little more consistent. 

[00:02:45] David: I just feel manly when I do it. It's the only time I actually feel manly, so- Really? ... fire and metal pokers. Let's see here. Are you into modern stuff or vintage stuff? That's been coming more common nowadays.

[00:03:01] James: Probably vintage. 

[00:03:02] David: Vintage? Okay. What's the last vintage thing you bought or admired? 

[00:03:07] James: I don't buy vintage things, but the th- the thought process there is I found music that I liked in the '80s, in the '90s, and my Metallica and my Megadeth, and they're still good, and I'm still gonna listen to them. Oh, man. Do you like Wu-Tang Clan?

I'm not a particular fan, but I noticed this phenomenon- Oh, thank God ... when I was a kid because my dad did it too, that he had this era of music that he liked, and that was good. He just stayed with it, and that was fine, and now I totally get it. 

[00:03:38] Gary: Yeah. Even psychologists have studied this, and apparently between the ages of 11 and 18 is where you form most of your musical taste.

There you have it. So that's why everybody goes back to like when they were in high school was the greatest music ever and yeah. 

[00:03:52] David: I would challenge that it goes up to college. 

[00:03:56] James: I think there's probably a large nostalgia component to it as well. 

[00:04:00] David: Mm-hmm. 

[00:04:00] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:04:01] James: And th- those, those times and those memories that you would form would be so important to you and would resonate so much as things were new and novel and you were growing.

So there's probably something there that ties it in as well. 

[00:04:15] David: Chumbawamba will forever be- What? ... this Chumbawamba, "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba. 

[00:04:19] Gary: I'm just in- Matt, edit this out. I'm embarrassed for David for even remembering that band. 

[00:04:24] David: You don't know "Come On"? That is a great song. 

[00:04:25] Gary: Oh, I know who they are, but I would never admit that...

Ooh. 

[00:04:28] David: Oh, I love that song. I-- Matt, if you cut that, you're fired. I love that song, and it reminds me of college. At Texas A&M, we did what was called Cut when they did Bonfire, before that all got weird. We would go out and everybody would blast it in their Jeeps as we went out to the thing to cut the trees down.

That's Chumbawamba for me. I guess the, the song is "Tubthumping," not Chumbawamba. But anyway. 

[00:04:48] Gary: Okay. Matt, you can keep this in, just change the band and the song. 

[00:04:52] David: Oh. 

[00:04:53] Gary: Rude. 

[00:04:54] David: To some trash by Wu-Tang. All right. Fair enough. 

[00:04:56] Gary: No, not Wu-Tang. We were talking about metal with James. 

[00:05:00] David: That's... Yes. Anyway. That's fair. All right.

Let's see. Are, have you-- Are you still a... 'Cause this is an interesting question to me because it's changed so much. Are you a wave, fist bump, or handshake kinda guy? I bet I know the answer to this. 

[00:05:16] James: I like a nice handshake. 

[00:05:18] David: Uh-huh. 

[00:05:18] James: There's a lot of utility in a handshake, but I also enjoy fist bumping a lot.

So I'll coach little kids' sports teams, and the fist bumps comes in real handy with the kids. They seem to like it. Although I'm a big fan of the high five. I don't know if the high five needs to go away fully or not. 

[00:05:34] David: I-- The only thing I don't like about the fist bump is now, my whole life- In business at least, you walked up to another man sp- and specifically, a woman generally, but specifically a man, and there was no question this was going to be a handshake moment, right?

We're introducing ourselves, we're saying hello, and there's just the, "How you doing?" We stick our hand out, and that's the end of the conversation. Now you have this weird, one guy's got his fist up, the other guy's got his hand out, and you're doing this little gang sign before you know how you're engaging with that person.

That's the only thing I don't like about the fist bump, if you missed that, that 

[00:06:06] James: cue before. I think professionally you go for the handshake professionally. 

[00:06:10] David: Yeah. I still shake hands and I still... People-- I've done this, where they're coming at me with a fist and I'm handshaking, and the, and I'm, like, running into their fist, and, like, you feel like such a weirdo.

Anyway, all right. We have broken the ice. We are ready to go. My first real question. Are you, you feel better? You warmed up? You good? 

[00:06:30] James: Sure, yeah. 

[00:06:31] Gary: He's confused. He's like, "Guys, we're supposed to talk about business stuff." 

[00:06:35] David: What did I sign up for? Why am I here? Tell me about Anatra. That's, it sounds like a really interesting company.

[00:06:42] James: We are making unmanned cargo aircraft, primarily for logistics. 

[00:06:47] David: Okay. I don't think I've ever heard of unmanned cargo craft. 

[00:06:51] James: Interesting. 

[00:06:52] Gary: Well, aircraft, when you say aircraft, expand upon that. What type of aircraft? Is it basically drones? Are there different types of drones or? 

[00:06:59] James: Drones is a, a word that can be used for it, although typically people picture something very small, which we'd call maybe a group one or a group two.

Ours are a bit larger. Picture something that can carry 500 pounds, something that could carry two people is about the size of it. So they'll be unmanned, but if you picture something that two humans could climb into, that's about the size that it would be to carry 500 pounds around. 

[00:07:24] David: Okay. But it's still, there's no room for a pilot at all.

It's purely unmanned. There could be a person in the back cargo space. 

[00:07:32] James: Correct. And that's something that hypothetically down the road we think about is for casualty evacuation purposes. If the aircraft is large enough for a person, eventually we'll be at a place where we're very accepting of putting a person in an unmanned aircraft to get them from somewhere where they can't get care back to a next echelon level care.

So we're not there today. I don't think anyone's gonna be comfortable climbing into a tube with no pilot on board, with no medical people on board. Typically, when you do medevac, you've got medical professionals on board. But depending on the time and the place, we may not be willing to send something into harm's way to get someone out, so there will be a time when we have single person, two person unmanned vehicles that can drive in, fly in, put someone on board, and then get them back to next level care.

[00:08:24] David: So is Anatra mainly focused on the military space, or do you do this also for commercial? 

[00:08:29] James: It's dual use, but the applications are across defense and commercial. Defense first because the use cases are very much known to the Department of War, known to our allies, non-NATO allies as well. They've started to push for these kind of things, to send out requirements for these kind of things.

The commercial space is gonna take a few years because regulations have to catch up. So we're working currently, I say we meaning state, federal government, on unmanned traffic management, for instance. Where would these fly? Where is legal? What are the regulations? The government just came out earlier this year with a directive to speed it up, figure this stuff out faster.

Obviously, businesses aren't gonna make large investments in unmanned aircraft before they can actually use them. So I think there will be a bit of a follow from the defense space to where you can waive things, you can fly on airworthiness certificates, you can fly over the water. If you're talking about combat operations, you may not need any kind of actual authorization from a FAA type of entity.

The, the Defense Department can just go ahead and use that aircraft. But over time, we will figure out what the traffic management looks like. These will become more and more economically feasible for businesses, and then that'll transition to the commercial space. 

[00:09:50] David: So when you say you guys are building these, that, that, that seems like a lot that comes to mind.

When you... Are you designing them and someone else manufactures them? Are you doing the manufacturing? Who's doing the software? Is that all you guys? Is it you're a one-stop shop? 

[00:10:05] James: For now, yes. As we expand, we'll expand the manufacturing footprint, and that could be contract manufacturing as well as we try to scale, and then ideally growing into our own manufacturing capability.

Right now, as we're doing development, we'll do our own building, our own software, and our own development of the aircraft. But as we scale, like I said, we'll look to engage more contract entities so we can build up our capability. 

[00:10:32] David: That's so fascinating. So where are you guys on the road map, as it were, or your runway?

Are-- You're-- I looked you guys up a little bit. You're pretty new, couple years old. So are you guys fielding, are there actual aircraft that you guys have built that are being used in some sort of military thing or testing thing, or are you just fielding contracts? Where are you on that, that runway? 

[00:10:56] James: Yeah.

So understand that when we're talking about this business, there's gonna be a lot of no pun intendeds, like the runway, this thing's ready to take off, all those things. So we'll just gloss over them as we hit them. We 

[00:11:10] Gary: won't blame 

[00:11:10] David: you. Yeah. I totally missed it. I say runway like every day, but man, I missed a good pun time.

Anyway. 

[00:11:16] James: Yeah. We have our, we have a clean sheet aircraft that's in development, so we're developing that one. It's in CAD designs currently. But we also have an aircraft that is flying with a person on board, and we're able to put some autonomy systems on it and then test it with a person on board. So various states of development between the two aircraft.

We are not actually fielding these currently with any Department of War entities. But that's where we are in development, and we're close to being able to work on contracts. 

[00:11:46] David: It sounds like there's a lot of similarity in the process of flight versus driving. Waymo and them had a dude in the car for a long time, even though the car was pretty much driving itself, but they needed that assurance that someone could grab the wheel.

Is it similar kind of a thing at your stage? 

[00:12:04] James: You don't have to, and we're in a unique position because we can do that, because our manned aircraft is an aircraft we're retrofitting with all autonomous systems. So we have the capacity to do it, which really is a benefit for us 'cause it speeds us up a lot.

So if you don't have someone on board, you're very much limited as to where you can go and how you have to do this. But if you do have someone on board, they can just turn a system on and turn a system off. They can fly it to the working area, engage a system, monitor, take back control, bring it back from the working area.

It very much helps speed our development, and which in turn helps speed the development of our clean sheet aircraft, because we can take all the lessons learned from the actual flying with a manned aircraft and then translate them into our, the amphibious clean sheet unmanned aircraft. 

[00:12:50] David: What does clean sheet mean?

That's a new term for me. 

[00:12:52] James: It's a design that we're making. 

[00:12:54] David: Okay. So you-- it's whole cloth, you guys are doing it. 

[00:12:58] James: Correct. 

[00:12:59] David: So... Go ahead, Gary. 

[00:13:02] Gary: I was just gonna ask if you can get into a little bit of the technology used on the plane for the piloting. Is it strictly remote or, I know you're saying autonomous, so is there any kind of like the self-driving cars?

Are you using LIDAR and radar and stuff like that to navigate? You don't have to give us any secrets, but just an idea. No, I want all the secrets. Let's just- Yeah. 

[00:13:23] James: Blame it. We'll just cut it out. Autonomous is a bit of a loaded term because it, it could really mean certain things to certain people, and generally autonomous means it's operating on its own.

Whatever system it's tied to is operating it. So our first offerings will be what we call pilot on the loop. So imagine me sitting in a console watching the aircraft. I can take control whenever I need. Maybe we even decide I'll handle the takeoff, I'll handle the landing, and then once it's airborne, I'll just press the autopilot engage, and the autonomy takes over and it flies itself.

We anticipate that being something that can be used and will evolve to fully autonomous. We also envision that our aircraft will be used with entities that have an AI meshed network. So whatever company they're contracting that from, that is the thing that will integrate, that will tell all the aircraft where to go.

So you would buy our aircraft would integrate into whatever swarm you're doing and follow the instructions of the, the AI mesh network that is controlling it. So it can be pilot on the loop, but we envision it being fully autonomous at some point. It's a matter of comfort level. It's a matter of how much control you want to have and really the advancements of the technology.

[00:14:38] David: Is it cheating? Most military drones are piloted by a dude in Nevada, right? Is that against the rules? Is that not a step in this? You have a dude in the plane right now. It seems like the logical step would be remotely and then fully autonomous. Is that not normally a step in the process? 

[00:14:55] James: Doesn't need to be.

Okay. I think we can go to a place where you can have autonomous systems that actually control. It can be controlled via preset waypoints, much like an autopilot would do. So you can control it the whole way if you desire, but it could also be something where I just monitor. The plane's doing fine. It does its mission just fine.

I don't need to take over and control it, and I don't have to be hands-on at all. 

[00:15:21] David: So are these planes, is that the right term, plane, drone? Are these long distance things, or are these still pretty short? I'm assuming they're-- Are they electrical or are they mechanical? How does that-- That would change your range a lot, like electricity doesn't, the batteries don't last that long.

[00:15:36] James: Yeah, definitely. And that's something interesting to see in the industry is a lot of people are trying to get toward battery powered, which is great. That's got a lot of benefits later on. But what it does is it gives you a few limitations for range. Where would you recharge them? The weight of the batteries doesn't dissipate over a flight like fuel does.

So one of our aircraft is pure fuel. It's aviation gas right now. It's easy to modify to make it a heavy fuel, so a JP-5, a JP-8. That's what the military uses. It's easy. They have it. They know how to use it. It functions well with everything else they use. And our CleanSheet design is a hybrid aircraft, so it's batteries, battery-powered motors that are powered by a fuel-powered generator.

So what that does is gives you A lot more range because you've got the generator. The generator can recharge the batteries, but it's also a nice step toward electrification if and when it is reasonable to do so for future customers that want it. We picture a time where I know batteries will be able to get smaller over time.

It's just a matter of time. It might be a little while. They'll get more ubiquitous. We'll have some kind of systems that can do remote charging, whether that be small, almost portable nuclear reactors, whatever they are. We're not there yet, but 

[00:16:59] David: that'll come. That sounds petrifying. 

[00:17:01] James: Yeah. 

[00:17:02] Gary: Sounds like an F1 engine.

[00:17:04] David: Sure. That's fair. Yeah, you're all into your F1. That's so amazing. I just-- It's so funny. I, last night I was talking to another startup founder who is doing similar stuff, but it's all with vehicles on the ground, not planes. And it's like, man, there's a, a whole thing happening. He was electrification of e-exactly what you're talking about, big trucks, turning them into generators in their existing engines into generators to power batteries that they can use for military applications.

That was this whole... So it's wow, to talk about this two days in a row in obviously very different capacities, but that concept clearly is a hot thing. 

[00:17:44] James: There's something there. 

[00:17:45] David: Yeah. May-maybe someone's got a good idea here. But is the fascination, is... I imagine there you have a lot of competitors. Obviously, this is not my normal world, but is your secret sauce, as it were, is it on the software?

Is it on the building of the plane? What is it that makes your company unique in your space? 

[00:18:08] James: It's certainly our autonomy stack. So the autonomy stack, the way we go about it, the linkages between the software and the hardware and during the development. But also there's more to it. People talk about a moat.

I like to think about it more like a, a defense of a fort. So it's not necessarily one thing, it's several things. Like maybe one part is a moat. Maybe one part is you've got some weapons set up, you've got some barbed wire, you've got some pits dug, all kind of things. So certainly the autonomy stack is a key piece of it.

The software, the way it ties in, another key piece. Another key piece for us is the fact that the airplane's, it's fixed wing. It uses, it can use heavy fuel. We can do hybrid. So it may sound counterintuitive that making it simple and reliable is part of the secret sauce. But it certainly is

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[00:20:02] David: So you are the COO. Have you been with Anatra since the beginning? Or did you join a little later? 

[00:20:11] James: Yeah, joined a little later. The founder started it. I came on board probably a year and a half after he'd started it. 

[00:20:19] David: Okay. And your background, you were at Bandwidth, which is one of the local celebrities around this area, Raleigh.

Mm. Those are-- That's a great company. But you... That sounds like you did something completely different. And, but you have a military background, you mentioned being a Marine, and I think I saw that you were a pilot, which is pretty amazing. So how did you come back to this? It seems like you left and came back.

[00:20:44] James: When I left the Marines, I was very interested in doing something totally different. So it's easy to go right into some kind of government contracting work, and a lot of people do. And it wasn't uninteresting to me, I just wanted the challenge of getting into private industry and get into private business and see if that was something that I would like or enjoy or could do.

And I did, and I'm eternally grateful I did, because going to a, a company, a publicly traded company, a technology company, a software company, it's a great challenge if you don't come from that background to try to step into it and figure it out. But what it also does is it gives you an opportunity to see things that you never would have.

If I just stayed in that same lane, in the defense lane and went into maybe defense contracting, I may have never seen how highly regulated business in some other lane, like telecommunication or software development, a global business works. Really never seen and understood the fusion of the legal side when it comes to regulation and the marketing side and the biz dev side and the actual operations side, and the way that people services works in a commercial company.

So to get to see all these things really supercharged the education in how a real business works, how a little more mature business works, how a technology business works. And that's been a huge benefit. Coming from a, a place where I didn't have any kind of software development background, to get to live it and see it is very helpful because almost everything has software development in it.

Whether it's aviation, we've got software development. We're doing AI, we're doing autonomy. It's great to be able to know and to understand how that process works, how everything else ties together. There's a lot in the military that you don't get in the private side, but then there are things that just don't exist there.

We had legal in the military, but it was very different role than what legal does on a private business where you're dealing with lawsuits, dealing with mergers- Mm ... dealing with foreign regulations. So it was great for me to see that. And then I got interested in finding something different, and I found a, a founder that had an idea that I thought was just too good of an idea to not pursue.

Very interesting, worked very well with what I knew and what I do, and it made sense to pursue it. And I'm been here now for about a year and 10 months. 

[00:23:14] Gary: Yeah, it sounds like it's a really good fit for you. Mm-hmm. It's almost like two worlds combining. 

[00:23:19] James: Yeah, it is. All the... They say luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and I certainly believe that.

And if you take all the aggregate of all your experiences, and if you use them somehow to figure out what it is that I want to be doing and what I'm a great match for, you can s- pretty much see where it is that you ought to be. And a lot of my background just worked out well to put me in this place right now.

[00:23:43] Gary: And you mentioned earlier, when we were talking about the autonomous planes, like the takeoff and the landing, if someone were to take over that remotely. Do you still fly today? 

[00:23:52] James: I do not. I'll fly commercially. Oh. I'll get in the back of planes and fly around- You 

[00:23:57] David: did that for a long time though, right? You were in the M- Marines for 20-plus years?

[00:24:01] James: I was. 

[00:24:01] David: And you're flying fighter jets and stuff, right? I saw a picture on your LinkedIn with an F-18. 

[00:24:06] James: Yeah, I was an F-18 pilot by trade. 

[00:24:08] David: That has got to be- That's fascinating ... like, that's one step under astronaut on things little boys wanna be when they grow up. I wanted to be a pilot and boy, I was not qualified.

But that's, then coming back to the regular world and just being a regular person, a, a successful person, but still, how was that transition? That's gotta be crazy. And you're like a superhero to every 10-year-old boy, right? You fly jets. 

[00:24:31] James: Yeah. I s- I suppose, and that's not lost on me. That's something I talk about a lot on.

Very fortunate that I had a job that little kids dress up like that for Halloween. 

[00:24:41] David: Yeah. 

[00:24:42] James: Kids in my neighborhood dress up like fighter pilots for Halloween. I get to go talk at my kid's school for Veterans Day. They are usually not very interested in all the other things I have to say- ... which I think are really great lessons about how the military functions, and the nature of service, and the nature of duty, and why it's important.

They're very interested in the airplanes, so. 

[00:25:03] David: The airplane is going really fast. They 

[00:25:05] Gary: just wanna be behind the cockpit, like pew, pew, pew. 

[00:25:07] James: Right. 

[00:25:09] David: Yeah. It's, uh, it's funny 'cause I don't think I've ever known a pilot, like a, a fighter pilot. My, my stepfather was in the Marines, but he was just a machine gunner on the ground.

Very different role. So do you... The, the obvious question is do you ever miss it, like going Mach one, two, whatever those planes can go nowadays? It's gotta be a, a, like, the ultimate thrill, and now you're on the ground flying commercial. 

[00:25:31] James: Yeah, it's amazing. I absolutely miss it. 

[00:25:34] David: What's your... What's the thing you miss most?

Just curious, as someone who's completely a neophyte in that. 

[00:25:40] James: One thing that it almost can't be replicated is the camaraderie that you get. And I did a tour with the infantry, so I got to be around all the machine gunners and all the infantry guys on a combat tour, and getting to see how people work together for a common goal under extraordinarily stressful and high-risk circumstances- It can't be replicated.

You can watch professional sports teams, and that's great how they bond together to win a championship. No one's shooting at them. There's- Yeah, it's 

[00:26:18] David: not life 

[00:26:19] James: or death, yeah ... no risk of death. It's just different. And none of these guys are gonna be famous. None of them are getting paid a ton of money. They just go do it.

And the level of trust between people on the left and the right of you, and you'll have guys you don't like, you don't get along, you don't like. But when you leave the wire or when you take off together and you're flying in a section, you're teammates. 

[00:26:40] David: Yeah. 

[00:26:40] James: And that's it. And your whole job is to be the best teammate you can be.

That, I miss that kind of camaraderie, and the camaraderie that comes from doing something extraordinarily dangerous and then s- surviving that, you know, doing that together, having those, those shared experiences and those bonds, that's difficult. I tell people when I... I'll talk to them sometimes, young people, about what it's like going in the military, and I try to tell them that you may never again have a job where you're as close to people as you would have in the military.

You might, and that'd be amazing if you get to do that. But that's what I miss the most. For flying, getting to fly in a, a fighter attack jet is an absolute privilege. Getting to see the men and women that work on these planes, the way that they're able to fix these planes and keep them flying, and how hard they're working to do it, it's eye-watering to watch this entire evolution, watching things on a carrier deck, watching this symphony happen of all these people.

And again, they're not getting rich. They're not getting famous. They're doing it out of either a sense of duty or they just wanted to serve, or maybe they didn't, but they ended up there and that's their job. And they're gonna do it as best they can, and they're gonna make it happen. I miss that. That's hard not to miss.

[00:28:03] Gary: James, thank you for your service. 

[00:28:05] James: It was my pleasure. 

[00:28:06] Gary: Now, you brought up the carrier, and my father was in the Marines, and that was his job. He was a, a mechanic on a carrier that would work with the radar and communication systems of planes, and he was stationed in Laos in 'Nam. So yeah, he can't hear much anymore, but he remembers that fondly.

[00:28:25] David: Blew his ears off. 

[00:28:26] James: Yeah, that's 

[00:28:27] David: a thing. So my question is, you have this, a, a unique, I wouldn't say unique, but pretty close to unique experience flying jets, being at the upper echelons of the military. How do you bring that into business? How do you take those experiences that make you, and turn that into Anatra?

You're COO. This is your first time as COO, is that right? Is that- 

[00:28:55] James: Yes. 

[00:28:55] David: This is the first time you've been this level. So you're in the C-suite. Now you're... There's one guy above you. That's it. So everyone's listening to you. So now you get to craft this company into what you want. How does your military background feed into that?

Or does it? I assume it does, but- 

[00:29:13] James: It has to. Ev- everything you've ever done has to inform who you are and what you are. One thing I'll talk about is leadership. Some people are just natural leaders. They're born leaders, whether it's guys that can just pick that up and run with it on a, a sports team or in something like the Civil War, where guys get promoted up to general over the course of a couple months because of their capability.

That's not me. I had to learn it. And it even still took me 20 years in the military to even really start getting my arms around it. Some things I'm sure I was okay at, but I, I really wasn't putting enough thought into it. And because in the Marines we talk about leadership every day, it's so important, it's the major facet of who you are as a Marine.

Whether you're leading one person or leading 50,000 people, you're always a leader, and we make sure to inculcate people with that. So that's very much informed me and it's shaped who I am, and it took all those years to learn those lessons to bring with me. I'd be a very different person if I'd gotten out after four years.

I just wouldn't have had that, a continuing education, as we'd say. There's also a lot of things that you do in the military where I wish I was flying for all 22 years, but you do staff jobs, so you go do other things. You work on staff, you go be the operations person, you go with-- I was in an artillery regiment, and I got to see how they operated and learn how they operate and infuse.

I got to be at a higher level expeditionary staff. That was really a-- That's like getting a master's degree or a doctorate in how an organization functions, because at those higher level staffs, we would go do these exercises in real world operations with joint multinational NATO allies, non-NATO allies in Norway, in Morocco, at sea, where you've got all these different systems that need to talk to each other and different humans, and you've got real missions to accomplish sometimes.

There's airplanes, there's people at sea, there's boats, there are vehicles You have to learn how to infuse all that and make all that happen, and you've got these very high tempo, we call them battle rhythms. Now the, the term is operational cadence or a business cadence that you see. That's a masterclass, working in one of these expeditionary staffs, learning how to do this.

The way that information is disseminated, you can learn so much, and I've seen in businesses where it's hard for people, even a smaller org, to really understand what the strategy is, what the priorities are . And sometimes people would say, "That's just really hard," or, "It's impossible." I'd say, "It's not impossible.

I've seen it at an organization with tens of thousands of people where we're able to disseminate information very rapidly and make sure it's very clear and everyone understands, so I know this is doable." I fully understand the importance of these operational cadences, how you work your information flow, getting these operational cadences, you want them as tight as possible.

That's a lesson you learn, too. There's a lot of things you do in combat where it's every day. You do these cycles every single day because you want to stay ahead of the enemy. So you want your information cycle as tight as possible, where you can get the information, disseminate it, have people action it, bring back the feedback, and then make another decision.

The tighter you get that, if you can be better than your enemy, you can win, and in business, I'd say that's not our enemy anymore, that's our competition. So if we get our cycles tighter and tighter than our competition, we can out-cycle them, we can win. So the, just the nature of the staff work, the nature of working with people.

Another great thing is you got to work with a lot of people. If I had worked on several continents with several different militaries, different services, it's a lot of, especially in the aviation community and in the, in the ground combat element community, a lot of very aggressive personalities and people that are fairly certain that they're right all the time.

That's an interesting group to be talking with all the time. But you really learn how to deal with people. You learn how to deal with people you don't like, learn how to deal with people you don't get along with, learn how to deal with people that have different agendas than you do. And all these things that you learn as you're doing this higher level staff work translates perfectly into business.

You bring all that stuff with you. You bring the good, leave the yelling at people behind, leaving the, the knife hand behind, maybe some of the more aggressive tendencies, leave those behind. Bring the lessons that you learned on how to run a business, how to run a big organization, how to make sure that we're aligned, how to make sure information is disseminated appropriately, how to deal with risk.

A few jobs I had, they dealt significantly with risk and risk management, and the kind of risk management you do in aviation is far more severe than most things you'll do in the commercial world. Now, there's a lot of things in the commercial world where people are operating equipment, and they probably operate with very much similar mindsets, but it's very easy to translate that then because you know what it's like when you're in a, a situation that you can't cut corners, you can't miss things, and you need to protect your people and your assets because I can't be losing people to death, to injury based off the equipment.

And even similar, even if life's not on the line, how do you professionally assess that risk? So that's, there's a lot to it, but someone who's been in the military, even if it's for a few years, there's a lot that they're gonna bring into the commercial world just based on having had that experience.

[00:34:51] Gary: Great. Now, with that said, James, what would you say from that experience are three pieces of advice you would give to a new entrepreneur or someone starting a business? 

[00:35:02] James: Oh, just three pieces- 

[00:35:03] Gary: Based on what- ... based on 

[00:35:03] James: all experiences? 

[00:35:05] Gary: What you would say are three pieces of advice that you would give based on your experience that you think would help guide them.

[00:35:12] James: Okay. One I'll tie back to is leadership Again, in the Marines it's easy because we talk about it all the time. It is a central concept on who you are and how you behave. But if, even in a business world, if you have people that work for you, your number one job is leadership, and if you don't think it is, then I think you're doing it wrong and you're missing a big opportunity.

And it could either be anywhere between you're just missing an opportunity to improve everybody and make the organization better, or you could actively be having negative effects on the organization if you're a bad leader, and that happens. And the thing about it is it's insidious. It'll take time. It's not gonna be the kind of thing that rears itself after 24 hours.

It's gonna be time of making an, a place toxic or making a certain department in an organization toxic and people not want to be there, and then it takes a long time to recover from. So I would ask people or challenge everyone to focus on leadership. You can study it, you can reflect on yourself. Plenty of books, there's plenty of podcasts, there's plenty of things you can look at to figure out how can I be better at actually leading the people in the segment that I'm leading?

Number two is for people that are going into a business, most people don't actually want you to succeed, so be very mindful and trust yourself on who you're listening to and why. I take advice from everybody, but take it appropriately and determine who do I wanna listen to? Who do I think actually has our interest in mind here?

A third thing would just be it's difficult, it's challenging. It might be one of the most fun, interesting things you do if you're to do something entrepreneurial, extraordinarily worthwhile, but it's hard. Again, no one's out there throwing money at you. You gotta figure out how to make it work. 

[00:37:11] Gary: Now, James, if anybody wants to learn more about you or about Anatra, where's the best place to find you guys?

[00:37:17] James: Oh, you can find us on our website. It's anatracompany.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm one of the numerous James Coopers on LinkedIn, but if you look up James Cooper and then tie me to Anatra, I should be the only one that pops up. 

[00:37:33] Gary: Plus you're the only one with a cool F-18 in the background of your banner.

[00:37:37] James: That's true. I don't know, I don't know if you can search for that yet, but with AI all things are possible. Can you search for 

[00:37:40] David: jet pilots? I want, I wanna work with jet pilots. Makes me cooler to be near a jet pilot. All right. Thank you, James, so much for putting up with us. This has been a lot of fun. 

[00:37:52] James: I appreciated it, gents.

It was a great time. 

[00:37:55] Gary: Very cool learning about Notron and what they're doing. Any kind of a- autonomous vehicles nowadays are definitely attention grabbers. Whether they're doing it right or wrong, they're still attention grabbers. 

[00:38:05] James: Yeah, it's an exciting space certainly, and it's absolutely the future. It's where we're going.

[00:38:10] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:38:10] David: I agree with that. On that note, we are out. Thank you again, James, and we will be back next week. Thanks everybody. 

[00:38:17] Outro: That wraps up this episode of The Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's wife. Yep, I finally took the mic, or wrestled it away from David.

Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, a US-based provider of UX design, strategy, and custom software. This podcast is edited by audio whiz Matt McCracken and Christy Pronto, marketing guru for Big Pixel. Want to connect? Shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net or find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X, and LinkedIn