The Triage Method: How a Combat Medic Fixes Broken Deals | Thomas McPherson

Key Takeaways

• ◆Thomas subordinates his own capital below all investors—if there are losses, his money gets hit first, and when distributions go out, investors get paid before he does, a structural move designed to align incentives completely.
• ◆He uses DISC personality assessments for every hire, posts the top three dos and don'ts on each person's desk, and has a board-certified psychologist sit with new hires to interpret results and coach leadership on how to interact with that individual.
• ◆Thomas applies combat triage logic to business decisions: ignore things that will be fine no matter what, ignore foregone conclusions you can't change, and focus all energy on the emergencies where your intervention actually moves the needle.
• ◆When he lost all his money in 2008 (after making $150k in six weeks on margin-traded stock options), he traced the failure to misaligned incentives—CEOs collected $20 million severance packages while shareholders held empty bags—and built Lukrom to fix that.
• ◆He maintains 100% on-time monthly distributions to investors with zero impairment to capital, and Lukrom is growing 250% year over year while Thomas and his executive team absorb first-loss risk with millions of their own dollars in the deals.
• ◆Thomas frames every decision by asking, 'Will 80-year-old Thomas be happy I did this?'—a mental move learned from his 98-year-old grandmother's funeral that helps him stay calm, prioritize what matters, and avoid reactive mistakes.
• ◆He treats AI agents like employees: each one gets evaluated for a specific role, fulfills a mission, and is hired to give back time, not to replace people—Thomas views agentic AI (customer service, maintenance routing, etc.) as team members you program and manage.