James D. “Murph” Murphy, the Founder & CEO of Afterburner, Inc., has a unique and powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. Murph joined the U.S. Air Force where he learned to fly the F-15. He logged over 1,200 hours as an instruc-tor pilot in the F-15 and accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance aircraft. As the 116th Fighter Wing’s Chief of Training for the Georgia Air Na-tional Guard, Murph’s job was to keep 42 combat-trained fighter pilots ready to deploy worldwide within 72 hours. As a flight leader, he flew missions to Central America, Asia, Central Europe and the Middle East.
Prior to his service in the U.S. Air Force, Murph had a successful career in imaging equip-ment sales, where he helped increase his company’s sales by 500%. Years later, he be-came Director of Sales for a small paint company. The concepts he developed and utilized in business and the U.S. Air Force would become known as Flawless Execution. Applying Flawless Execution’s continuous cycle of planning, briefing, executing, and debriefing, he increased his new employer’s sales from $5 million to $52 million per year. Realizing that all companies and organizations could benefit from these same concepts, Murph started Af-terburner Incorporated in early 1996.
Through his leadership, Afterburner landed on Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 500/5000 List four times. Murph has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Inc. Magazine, Newsweek, Meetings & Conventions Magazine and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, CNBC and Bloomberg News. He was also named as one of Atlanta’s top 50 entrepreneurs by Catalyst Magazine. To date, the Afterburner team of elite military professionals has led more than 1.5 million corporate leaders and business professionals from every industry through Afterburner’s unprecedented Flawless Execution℠ training and development pro-grams.
Murph and Afterburner have shared the podium with notable speakers like Bill Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, J.W. Marriott Sr. and Marcus Buckingham. Murph has served as a panel member of the League of Extraordinary Minds with business and self-improvement thought leaders like Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey. He is the author of the seven books; On Time and On Target (2016), Courage to Execute (2014), Down Range (2013), Flawless Execution (2006), The Debrief Imperative (2011), The Flawless Execution Field Manual (2009) and Business Is Combat (2000). Murph has also been invit-ed to speak at many of the world’s most notable business schools, including Harvard, Wharton, Cornell, Emory, Duke, MIT and Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
