Murphy Forum namesake urges students to ‘chase possible’

Brian Murphy, the CEO and founder of ReliaQuest, a member of the FSU Board of Trustees and a 2022 inductee into the Wertheim College of Business Alumni Hall of Fame, talks to students as the featured guest in the Charles A. Bruning Distinguished Speaker Series.
Photo by Kallen M. Lunt Click to enlarge

Alumnus Brian Murphy encouraged students in the Florida State University Herbert Wertheim College of Business to stay flexible about their futures, take chances, seize opportunities and “chase possible” – a motto that has driven him to build one of the world’s leading cybersecurity tech companies.

“When I say ‘chase possible,’ I go back to the playground and those monkey bars when you were a kid,” Murphy, the CEO and founder of ReliaQuest, a global cybersecurity company headquartered in Tampa, told students. “You can’t get to the last rung until you grab the first one. Then you’ve got to grab the second one. That’s kind of how opportunity is, especially in business.”

Speaking in the marquee space that bears his and his wife’s names, the Brian and Renee Murphy Forum, Murphy spoke on the second day of spring classes this month as the featured guest in the Charles A. Bruning Distinguished Speaker Series. A standing-room-only crowd included Murphy’s wife, Renee, and their daughter, Devin, a sophomore who plans to major in finance at FSU. The couple’s son, Parker, attends Jesuit High School in Tampa.

Kathleen McCullough, the college’s senior associate dean for academic affairs and the Kathryn Magee Kip Professor of Risk Management and Insurance, introduced Murphy, noting the event marked the first significant academic engagement in the new Herbert Wertheim Center for Business Excellence. And fittingly, she said, the event took place in the Murphy Forum, “now lovingly known as ‘The Murph,’” McCullough said. 

Two days earlier, the Murphy Forum served as the location of a private dinner and celebration to mark Dr. Herbert Wertheim’s $65 million philanthropic investment and naming of the college and the Wertheim Center, formerly Legacy Hall. That event also celebrated the grand opening of the world-class facility.

Murphy, a member of the FSU Board of Trustees and a 2022 inductee into the Wertheim College of Business Alumni Hall of Fame, congratulated students on the new building and Dr. Wertheim’s investment, which includes $10 million in a student-support endowment. He also congratulated them on “being students at Florida State.”

“There’s no better institution,” Murphy said. 

And few cybersecurity tech companies are as successful as his. Murphy has grown ReliaQuest – a top employer of FSU graduates -- from a boot-strapped startup that he launched on the cusp of the Great Recession in 2007 to a high-growth, AI-powered technology company with a valuation of more than $3.4 billion, more than 1,200 team members and more than 1,000 customers around the world. 

A previous article, about Murphy’s speaking appearance during the college’s Finance Day in 2023, provides details about his and Renee’s support of the college and university and how he built his company.

“I was told I was an idiot to keep growing a tech company in Florida -- couldn't do it, got to go to Boston, California, somewhere else,” Murphy said during this month's talk. “They told me you’ve got to hire out of this school, hire out of that school. We hire out of Florida State. And we beat those other companies every day, because there's a culture at Florida State. There's an attitude here, and there's a tenacity here.”

Murphy encouraged students to do what he did as an accounting and finance major at FSU: Join student organizations, seek challenges, take risks and get noticed.

Above all, he urged students to “chase possible,” words that adorn the wall outside the Murphy Forum and attributed to him.

You can’t simply hang on those monkey bars and wait for something to happen, he told students.

“You’ve just got to go,” he said. “And you’ve got to jump with reckless abandon and grab the first rung and have enough confidence that you're going to swing and grab the next one. That’s a lot of my career.”

Takeaways and tips from his talk included:

Stay flexible: “Don't be so beholden to a career path,” Murphy said. “I was 30 years old when I started ReliaQuest, so my recommendation is to keep your mind open, keep your peripheral vision open.”

Keep the emphasis on you and your organization: “I never think about competition at ReliaQuest,” Murphy said. “I don't care about my competitors. I think about ‘better.’ I think about us executing, becoming dynamic, being willing to do the things that other people aren't willing to do for the customer. We drive innovation. We don't follow trends; we create our own – and keep a maniacal focus on the problem that we’re solving.”

Be an entrepreneur at work: “In my opinion, we have a misguided definition in the U.S. of what an entrepreneur is,” Murphy said. “An entrepreneur is not somebody who starts a company. The best entrepreneurs in the world work for other companies. It's a way of thinking. Grab opportunities at whatever company you go to work for. Raise your hand, take that extra work, stay the extra time.” Also: “Go to an office. Don't be remote. I wouldn't have learned anything sitting in the side bedroom of my house. You can't learn it over video.”

Choose wisely: “When something gets difficult, you're deciding between a ‘what if’ and an ‘if only,’” Murphy said. “What if I apply for this job and I don't get it? What if I do this and look stupid? So, we push ourselves through the ‘what ifs,’ because if we don't, we get the ‘if only – if only I had done this.’ I refuse to live in the world of ‘if only.’ So, I hold myself to that every day.”

Choose wisely, Part II: “If you decide to get married, the most important decision you can make is who you marry,” Murphy said. He credited Renee Murphy for much of his success and called her “the reason I still do what I do.” After 21 years of marriage, he said, “I’m still trying to impress her.”

-- Pete Reinwald