Mack is a trained expert problem solver with 50 years of experience, first as an air battle manager officer in the Air Force (if you don't solve those problems correctly you and other people die, so that was some strong initial training), then as a defense risk-management consultant for Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, DARPA and others, working on high risk, high pay-off systems.

Throughout his life, he watched family and friends bounce back from some terrible setbacks in their personal and business lives. And he has had some pretty awful things happen to him through the years. A couple of years ago he realized that many of the same tools and techniques for reducing risk, that ensure astronauts don't die during a space mission for example, could also be used to make a small entrepreneurial business resistant to the risk of failure in the first five years, because that's when about 80% of them fail. And he noticed that there were collections of these risk reduction and resilience tools, and that those used for systems could be applied to our businesses and lives.

He also discovered that one cause of problems, common to both business settings and life settings, is people. Untrained people, or those who have hurtful or mean-spirited actions in mind, cause most of our problems. He reasoned - - - if we could train the people who want to head off risks before they turn into problems, showing them how to recognize people-induced risks early on, we could smooth out lives and projects. And if we could identify and avoid problematic people, mainly narcissists and sociopaths, that would be useful for everyone else. Those risk-resilience issues have been the focus of his professional life for the last 20 years. He wrote a book on avoiding and dealing with difficult, prickly people, titled “Working with Porcupines: 24 Ways to Sharpen Your Leadership Style”, available on Amazon.

For the past year he has been focused on helping people everywhere handle risks better and build resilience, in two ways: First, how to build up and maintain a resilient mindset that helps them recognize problems and problem people, and do something about them, before they cause problems for others. And second, what to do when problem people or karma or our own mistakes cause us major setbacks, in other words how to bounce back when we experience setbacks. And these setbacks can range from not getting the promotion you expected, to losing your job, having a relationship fall apart, or even losing a loved one to an accident or a disease.

How we bounce back from setbacks is unique to each individual person. But, as there are proven tactics and techniques for avoiding setbacks, there are also super-effective ways to deal with them when they occur. Mack has been gathering these proven approaches and tips for several years now, interviewing successful people, and assembling a hard hitting book coming to Amazon this winter. His new website at www.mackmckinney.com is becoming “resilience central” where people can be linked to helpful organizations and people, find books and podcasts, take online courses and bring him in to consult with their organizations to improve the mental toughness of their people. Mack also enjoys reaching people via podcasts, online sessions and in-person speaking engagements where he can provide them with tools and techniques for avoiding the hits from others and bouncing back from those few setbacks that somehow get through their defenses (“shields”for Star Trek fans ).