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Make the Donuts, hosted by bestselling author and commercial pilot Erik Sabiston, dives into the secrets of success through engaging interviews with experts from diverse career fields.
When I was a kid, I remember looking at the GI Joe aircraft carrier, the USS Flag, and it was the most expensive toy you could possibly dream of. Nobody I knew had it. When you first step on board the aircraft carrier as the skipper. Yeah. Did you even think about that when you were walking the halls of the carrier?
Speaker 2:Once or twice a week, I had to stop and say, okay. This is amazing. I can't believe I'm here. You know, might be in a bad mood and try to get myself into a better mood. You know what's funny about the GI Joe aircraft carrier?
Speaker 2:So when I started doing social media more seriously a few years ago, there was a post that had that aircraft carrier on it. I forwarded it, and I said, you know, I had to wait until I was 50 years old until I got this thing. And that thing went viral all over the place to, like, woah. It's the biggest flex we've ever seen.
Speaker 1:That's great. I think every young kid who's a kid at heart, at least like myself, an older guy, would just love that experience to to to be in your shoes for a day. I wanna go back to the beginning. Every great story starts somewhere, and you're starting in Quincy Mass. Right?
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Make the Donuts. I'm your host, Eric Sabiston. I'm a best selling author, a dual rated airline pilot, and a career counselor. I've helped over 8,000 people make the jump to the airlines. Now, I'm interviewing successful people from a variety of professions around the world.
Speaker 1:It's time to learn their secrets for success. Make the Donuts starts now. Welcome back to another episode of Make the Donuts. I'm your host, Eric Sabbast, and tonight, it's my distinct honor to be hosting captain Chris Hill, call sign chowder. He is an aircraft carrier commander, but he's actually commanded two aircraft carriers, the USS Truman and the USS Eisenhower.
Speaker 1:So without further ado, captain Hill, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on board.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I appreciate it, man.
Speaker 1:Looking forward to it. So a naval aviator who has risen to what most people would consider the zenith of a career commanding an aircraft carrier. Did you ever imagine that you would be in this position?
Speaker 2:No. Not at all. I had other hopes and dreams. I wanted to go into intelligence. I thought about politics, all kinds of other things, but, you know, things happen and you just get sucked into it.
Speaker 2:And I quickly realized that it was an opportunity to excel and actually make a difference in other people's lives because of the impact you have on so many people that work for you. So I'm glad I went that path. That's amazing. Quincy, Massachusetts, they're celebrating their four hundredth year since 1625. Birthplace of two presidents and me and also Dunkin' Donuts.
Speaker 2:So I love the place. Real proud to have grown up there. And my dad was in the Navy, so he's one of the reasons why I ended up joining the Navy. I kinda wanted to make him proud. I also wanted to just be proud of being part of something greater than myself.
Speaker 2:That was kinda the beginning there in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1:Hey, man. So when you started out there, tell me about your progression through school. Did you know early on that the Navy was a career path that you wanted to explore? And if so, did that inform your choices in classwork and such?
Speaker 2:It did. But, you know, when you're young, you're not thinking twenty, thirty years. Right? You're not even thinking about when you're gonna get married. You assume it might happen.
Speaker 2:Right? You're only thinking in the short term, maybe four or five years. So I wanted to go to college. I wanted to get that done. And when I applied for the navy, you do it while you're in high school as a junior, and I applied for the ROTC scholarship and the Naval Academy.
Speaker 2:I decided to go the ROTC route because I had a good scholarship and plus I wanted to stay closer to home. So I ended up going to Tufts University, which is on the other side of Boston. So I took that path. They sort of dictate some of the courses you have to take for the ROTC program. Like, for instance, you gotta take, you know, naval engineering.
Speaker 2:You have to take physics, calculus, and those sort of things. And it did help that I had already taken calculus when I was in high school, so some of those credits could transfer. You know, what's really funny is several years later in 2015 this is I was going through college in the nineties. In 2015, when they decided to allow me to be on the path towards aircraft carrier captain, they looked at my grades from college, and I had to have a c or greater average in calculus and physics. And fortunately, I did.
Speaker 2:In some cases, I only had a c, but it was above that. So it's amazing that stuff actually applied later on. Now here's the problem. When I went to nuclear power school, when I was on the path to, you know, eventually get a carrier, they said, you know, things like algebra and calculus is gonna come back to you. I said, no, man.
Speaker 2:Those are gone from my brain. They disappeared like twenty years ago. But I I will say some of the, you know, the fundamentals of understanding mathematics and physics were still kind of way back in the in my brain. So it did matter early in life, and I just didn't realize how much it would matter later on in life.
Speaker 1:Well, read your bio. You graduated magna cum laude from Tufts. So what kept you motivated to reach that level of academic excellence?
Speaker 2:Well, I've always had a competitive streak to me where if I could do well at something, I was gonna go all the way or at least as far as I could go, and I tried to do well in academics. I was a saxophone player in in high school and college. I went deep into that and, you know, competed and that sort of stuff. One of the things I give advice for young people is you gotta diversify what you do is, you know, obviously, you take academics seriously and you wanna win there, but you gotta do other things that kinda stimulate the brain. And I think music is one of those things.
Speaker 1:Okay. I love that because I was a music teacher too. So John Coltrane, Miles Davis or somebody else. Who is it?
Speaker 2:Definitely John Coltrane.
Speaker 1:Yes. I love it. I love it. Yes. But but you graduated there and then you ended up getting a master's as well from Georgetown?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in 02/2005, about ten years later, my focus has always been on history, politics, and so it was more like international relations and security studies when I went to Georgetown University. And that kind of supplemented of what I was doing in the military anyway. So that was a lot of fun. And when you're an adult actually going back to school, you take it even more seriously because you enjoy every class and you actually do all the reading.
Speaker 2:So when you're writing papers and you're looking for, citations and looking through other papers, you can actually reach out to the author of the paper and get some original quotes from them. I did a lot of that. It was fun. Especially in Washington DC where there's a lot of think tanks.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you're talking to a young person right now, maybe in high school or college, what's the advice you can give them about the academic portion of your career and how that can help that?
Speaker 2:Your academics is the priority. Obviously, everyone's spending a lot of money on those classes, and we kinda forget that sometimes. But, you know, you wanna delve into that stuff and even take some interesting courses. Like, I'm a big fan of liberal art. Not everybody is, but, you know, I was taking classes on, like, modern Irish history, German writers of the twentieth century, philosophy, all this interesting stuff that keeps coming back later in life in conversation.
Speaker 2:It just makes you a more well rounded person.
Speaker 1:I like that because, you know, you're on a you're an aircraft carrier captain. You're commanding the CAG, the department heads, all these different disciplines which, you know, in their world, they've risen to the pinnacle of their career as well. You're commanding a bunch of type a, you know, outstanding personalities. Do you feel like that liberal arts focused helped you relate to people better in different groups and different areas?
Speaker 2:Oh man, I don't know. I think so. You find yourself later in your career being you know a little bit about everything, but you're a master of none. But if anything, you diversify what you read and what you think about, and so you can have a conversation with anybody. As a leader, you do a lot of talking with people.
Speaker 2:Some of that talking is just about social life and, you know, fun things. And I've spent a lot of time on the bridge of an aircraft carrier talking about all kinds of weird things, the environment, you know, bugs, whatever. Like, just fun stuff to keep people interested in the job. And, you know, the same thing when I was flying in the e two Hawkeye for about twenty years. There's a crew of five people.
Speaker 2:It was like a party ready to go anywhere else, and we do a lot of strange conversations. And, now I don't know if that relates to college or whatever, but, again, it's about diversity of thought and, you know, kinda expanding what you know about. And that's fun, and that's what you can get from college.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of the Hawkeye, what got you into aviation?
Speaker 2:So I originally when I was in the ROTC program, I said, you know what? I am gonna go intelligence. I love the idea. I love the shows, the movies about it, and they took away that option in 1995, and you had to become a line officer. So I could drive ships, submarines, planes, or be a navy seal.
Speaker 2:So those were the options available. And I said, I'm gonna go aviation. Plus, my dad had served on an aircraft carrier, the, USS Kitty Hawk, back in 1970 to '71. He told me all kinds of stories about it, and he said, son, you need to become an officer someday. And he's like, trust me.
Speaker 2:Go for it. And so I said, okay. I will. And, you know, again, at that time, I I still wasn't thinking that far in the future. I didn't really care what platform I flew.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to be closer to the Boston area where my roots were. So it took me a long time to kinda break away from that. In fact, I still maintain strong connections to Quincy, Massachusetts and the people back home, I think.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. My sister lives up that way and I love to get in town. I love to go down to we're on Back Bay Boston quite a bit. Yeah. That's where we get the overnight.
Speaker 1:But I I still like the other parts of the downtown. Okay. So your naval aviator, what's your call sign?
Speaker 2:It's chowder, like clam chowder with an a h on the end. Best part about the call sign, it forces Southerners to speak with a Boston accent when they say it. Although some people will say chowder, and I was like, no. No. It's actually chowder.
Speaker 2:And it came from a a Simpsons episode back in, like, probably 1997 or 1998 that everybody watched. I didn't watch it, and they said your call sign is now chowder because it was said in the Simpsons episode. That was it. Well,
Speaker 1:I'm glad I'm not a believer. I'd probably be call sign homer. You commanded two aircraft carriers, the Truman and the Eisenhower. You know? So what's that like?
Speaker 1:I mean, what are
Speaker 2:the daily things that you did that helped you be successful? You know, you cannot be successful unless you have a strong team around you. I had an executive officer, an XO, who's strong in both ships. I had a great command master chief who's in charge of all the enlisted on both ships that took care of me. I had department heads who were outstanding, and they collaborated.
Speaker 2:I had 20 on each ship. They were awesome. And without them, without the crew, without the chief's mess, that's our middle management, I would not have been successful. So it wasn't really about me. I had to get up each day and do my thing and just let them drive the command, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:It does. It does. And it makes me wanna go back even further maybe to when you were a nugget. You're you're brand new. You're flying the Hawkeye off the carrier.
Speaker 1:You're doing deployments and stuff like that and cruises. What are the steps if a young naval aviator is watching this right now, look at them and say, here are the steps that I took to reach being a captive in aircraft carrier?
Speaker 2:Oh, man. That's kind of a long story, but I'll be as brief as I can. So, you know, it doesn't matter. For aircraft carriers, a CO, you have to have served on an aircraft carrier with a platform that goes on one. Right?
Speaker 2:So it could be helicopters. It could be strike fighters. It could be the e a 18 g Growler or the e two d Hawkeye. So any of those platforms, you get on that path, and then you continue on. Eventually, you have to become the commanding officer of a squadron.
Speaker 2:You do that at around, I guess, seventeen or eighteen year mark in your career. You have to be successful there, and then you might be considered for a major command slot, which could be something like, going down the carrier path or becoming an air wing commander, and there's other options out there. So it's a it's a long slog to get to that point, and you have to have success all the way along the way. It's not easy to become the the commanding officer of a squadron, you know, as a commander, as an o five. But, yeah, once you get considered for the nuclear path, as we call it it's actually called the aviation nuclear path, AVN.
Speaker 2:After you become a squadron CO, you have to now be successful at nuclear power. So you go through about a year and a half of training in, you know, all the physics and everything to do with nuclear power. It's a tough grind, and you're in the same class as as young people who are going into submarines or working on nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers. So you're like the old dudes in that class, and, you get extra help because you're behind, and they're fresh out of college or whatever and or high school in some cases. And then they let you become the executive officer of an aircraft carrier, so you're the second in command.
Speaker 2:You have to be successful there. And then you become the commanding officer of what we call a deep draft, which is like a medium sized ship. And so I was the commanding officer of LPD 24, the USS Arlington. It was an amphibious warship. And then you can go on to be an aircraft carrier skipper.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So even at the squadron level, the Navy's looking at officers and saying, well, this gal or this guy might be the next one.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're always looking. And you can sometimes spot junior officers early on that you think might have the potential to be a commanding officer of a squadron. That's kinda where you're looking first. And then once they become the CEO of a squadron, then we're kinda looking at you say, hey. Can we put them on the path to one of these major command billets?
Speaker 2:And, yeah. So everyone's kinda being watched in that sense.
Speaker 1:Could you just share a couple aspects of a young junior officer that you're looking at that can tell you early on that this person may have that potential?
Speaker 2:So I'm looking at two things. I want to see that they're mature in terms of leadership. I don't expect them to be the best leaders, but I expect them to think about it and to care about it and make mistakes and learn from them and reapply what they learned. That's important. It's an indication of maturity because maturity goes a long way.
Speaker 2:And, you know, we're all young. We're all stupid. We all did dumb things, but, you know, some people do that, but they also have the spark in them for future leadership, leadership, and and we we look look for for that. That. The second thing is we're gonna give you a job.
Speaker 2:I don't care what that job is. It could be to, you know, take care of paperwork or, you know, fly in the plane. You gotta be good at the tactical stuff. Like, whatever we throw your way, just master it. Right?
Speaker 2:And take it seriously. Get into the publications. You wanna become smarter than your leaders. So as a, you know, commanding officer squadron, I was not the smartest guy in my squadron. I always had younger people that knew more that were, you know, more proficient in what they were doing, and we encouraged that.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, we let them lead some of the major strikes or whatever in combat. So the tactics is number one, and I'd say close second is their potential for leadership of hundreds or thousands of people.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Interesting. So it's a lot of soft skills, a lot of people skills then. Are they good with working with people, motivating people, taking orders but giving orders? And it looks like are they professional in their in their free time?
Speaker 1:Are they, you know, eating an auto dog and watching a a video or are they over there reading their Natops or something like that?
Speaker 2:Right. I'm not expecting people to not do fun things as well, know, play video games or you know, watch TV and watch shows or whatever, but spending some time becoming experts in their trade craft. You know? If your job and we have folks come in as 18 years old who will give them a broom and say, sweep. And, you know, my advice to them is become the master of sweeping.
Speaker 2:Like, just be great at it and be proud of you of the results. Now now the job of the leader is to notice those results and point it out and say, hey. Nice job. Right? Just basic, you know, sailor recognition goes a long way.
Speaker 1:Wow. That's fantastic. You've you've maintained high morale on these deployments. These deployments are brutal. You're doing the nation's dirty work.
Speaker 1:I mean, the tip of the spear. What are some of your tips to give to other officers and how to maintain that kind of high morale?
Speaker 2:Oh, man. This is a I can go a long way on this. And I, you know, the one question we always had is I mean, the first question is what is leadership? And to me, it's getting people to just care more about what they do. Right?
Speaker 2:So how do you do that? And I'll I'll borrow a quote from Eisenhower, which you mentioned before the show. You know, morale is the greatest single factor in successful war. So as a leader, I was always looking for that one thing that could really make a difference. Now I could be a caretaker leader.
Speaker 2:I could be a good person. We have a lot of them. You know, day to day stuff happens. I handle it, I move on. But if I'm gonna take that next step and try to inspire people to be the best versions of themselves, I need to focus on morale.
Speaker 2:And to me, morale is not happiness necessarily. Happiness is more chemicals in the brain. Morale is something deeper. It's spiritual. It's grit, motivation, pride, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And so I believe leaders can create it. Now, the number one thing you need to do to create morale is to love and value people. They must actually feel loved and valued. And I can go over a a entire list of things you can do to accomplish that. Everything from the frequency that you communicate to your subordinates, like it should be almost every day.
Speaker 2:People need to hear your voice. And while you're communicating, what do you say? You're recognizing people. You're pointing out faults. Right?
Speaker 2:Because you have to maintain high standards. People want that, but you're also recognizing the good work that people are doing. And, you know, one of the things I've realized over the years, that's not an easy thing to do to recognize people because you're on an aircraft carrier and you have thousands of people under you. Who am I gonna talk about? Right?
Speaker 2:So your leaders below you feed you those names and say, recognize this person. Please recognize this department. So that goes into loving and valuing people, and you cannot be afraid to use the term love. That's number one. Number two is everyone has to have mission and purpose.
Speaker 2:K. I learned this term. I was involved in the George Washington investigation. They had some difficulty in a shipyard period. They were there for many years, and one of their of our conclusions of, you know, some of the things that were happening there was that they had lost mission and purpose.
Speaker 2:So what does that mean? I mean, everyone must understand what the mission is. It must be very clear. Now for when I was on the Eisenhower, the mission was simply to launch and recover aircraft to stomp on bad guys. That's what we do.
Speaker 2:Right? It's a military thing. Now the words are a little crass. I get that, but it resonated with the sailors at the time. And interestingly, we eventually did exactly that.
Speaker 2:So the mission, clear, spoken about all the time. Everyone has to memorize it and believe in it. And then purpose. People have to believe that they're playing a role in that mission. They have to feel like they're part of something greater than themselves, part of a team, something to be proud of, which goes back to, you know, being loved and valued.
Speaker 2:So that that's the kind of, like, the basic stuff to produce morale. There's other things like making sure people get sleep, and the navy were never really good at ensuring people got sleep, but we've gotten much better at that. We still have work to do. And you go down the list. Even food matters.
Speaker 2:You know, people want good food. Wi Fi on ships, that's a new thing for us. So the ability to, you know, communicate with the people who love and value you back home, like mom and dad or your spouse and your kids. So we actually had Wi Fi on both those ships, and it was a game changer for me. You know, talking to my own children on the phone was it's just something I'd never done in the Navy before.
Speaker 2:Right? So all these things come together. They should produce morale, and when you have morale, you should start to see success. We've all been in, you know, units or organizations where morale was low. We know what that's like.
Speaker 2:We know that, you know, things tend to break more. We're not successful in inspections, and knows what's gonna happen when you go to combat. So for both the Eisenhower and the Truman, both ended up in the Red Sea. Both were challenged on the morale front because, well, you know, the whole chain of command was doing their very best because I told them to take care of morale. There were other things working against us like the fact that, you know, they were fighting a real enemy, that they were you know, it's hot.
Speaker 2:People sweating all the time. We didn't take any breaks. We didn't do any port calls. You know, some of the stuff that's normal in the navy. We took all that away, but I think deep down in the end and I've gotten feedback from some of the sailors who said, thank you, sir.
Speaker 2:You reminded me that morale mattered, and it got me through this deployment. So I think it works, this philosophy. And I call it the way of the warrior sailor. I like branding, you know, it's just my thing.
Speaker 1:But Yeah. You're a marketing guy. You should come work with me. That'd be great. Thinking of what you're coming to, well you've been in for how long, close to thirty years right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, about twenty nine and some change.
Speaker 1:Nobody wants to think about the end, but when that moment comes, and I hope it's a long time from now for you, but when that moment comes and you look back and you think about the good times, what's the first time you're gonna think about?
Speaker 2:Oh, the first time, you know, just some of my buddies in my first squadron, some of the ridiculous stuff that we did that I can't even mention mention on the show, but the, you know, the conversations, they were so funny. It's funny. Your your first operational command, the friends you make there, you keep them for probably the rest of your life. And I tell a lot of junior sailors, I'm like, this is it. Like, these are the friends that you're gonna talk to on an app called WhatsApp later on in life.
Speaker 2:Like, we didn't have WhatsApp back in the nineties, but we're using it now with some of the original people from my first squadron in saying a lot of silly things.
Speaker 1:That's great. I now having gotten out, I was a warrant officer, but I was enlisted prior to that. But now that I have had senior leaders also leave the military, the bonds have gotten even closer for some of them. Now it's more like friends and family. Whereas before, I ignore sort of course, I still have to call them sir.
Speaker 1:Can't get over that.
Speaker 2:Right. Right.
Speaker 1:And I never will because it's out of love and it's out of respect, but those bonds will probably grow stronger, especially if you're you're a present leader, if you're in the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'll just say, you know, when you're in combat or, you know, in any unit and you're deployed, those bonds really build. You create that connective tissue between humans and their souls and that, you know, results in friendships. That actually contributes to morale as well. That's esprit de corps.
Speaker 2:It's sort of that collective morale. Yeah. So it it definitely works. And then it ends up that you might not feel loved and valued by your chief or your boss, but you're gonna feel loved and valued by your best friend who you've built that bond with through an entire deployment. So there's always someone there to carry you, you know, in tough times.
Speaker 1:Command's lonely, right? Who's the one person on your last cruise that you could point to and say this was the person that made the difference for me.
Speaker 2:I had three actually on this last deployment that made a difference that I spoke to every single day, and that was the executive officer. Even though he works for me, it could be an awkward relationship, but I decided, you know what? He's my friend, and I don't have that many people to talk to. And I realized the risk of having friendships with people who work for you, but I think you gotta get over some of that. Right?
Speaker 2:We can we can put up the professional wall if we had to. So the executive officer and my command master chief was wonderful. She would challenge me, and that's exactly what I needed. And she would get me to change my mind, and it worked. And I needed that kind of feedback.
Speaker 2:And then just an interesting one is as we're out in the Red Sea, the next commanding officer wrote me and said, hey. Do you mind if I come out early so I can see what you guys are doing? Do a long turnover. I said, heck yeah. Come on down.
Speaker 2:So he was with me day he didn't have a job except to learn, but he became, you know, one of my best friends, somebody I could talk to every day and complain to. You need someone to complain to. Right? You don't wanna complain to your boss. They don't wanna hear it.
Speaker 2:And sometimes your complaints are irrational. We know this, but, you know, that's what friends are for.
Speaker 1:That's great. Alright. So what's the most fun you had on this last cruise?
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed talking to the junior officers on the bridge as we're driving the ship. We'd be very busy and then, you know, there'll be a lull when we can just have a conversation about whatever. Right? And we had a lot of interesting conversations. Usually very dark inside the bridge at night and we're monitoring the seas, we're looking for other ships out there, we're worried about threats.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, there'll be a lull and then we'd start talking about some strange topic, you know? I love those times.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a lot of fun. Okay. Let's switch gears then. Throughout your career as an aviator, you flew How many different cruises did you fly aboard ships?
Speaker 2:I think as an aviator probably six, I think. Yeah. That sounds about right. One, two, three, four, five, six. Yep.
Speaker 2:I noticed you're a
Speaker 1:patch guy A lot of people don't understand. I think it would be great to explain to the audience that Top Gun is not just about fighters. There's a lot of other airframes involved. I was wondering if you could touch a little bit about your experiences at Top Gun.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's always been like three traditional Top Gun paths. One was the strike fighter path. The other one was the air intercept controller or AIC path, and the third one would be the adversary pass path. So so people were trained to become adversary pilots to mimic the bad guys.
Speaker 2:The AICs, the controllers, were usually enlisted ship folk, like, operation specialists, typically e five, e six, e seven, or e two Hawkeye, a naval flight officers like myself, And then, of course, the strike fighters. So we would have classes together. We'd go through the syllabus. We'd get evaluated over several weeks. It was it was tough.
Speaker 2:And, you know, when everyone graduates, you graduate together and everyone gets a patch. I ended up coming back as an instructor after my first operational e two squadron tour. I was actually the first e two guy that was on the Top Gun staff. And we have continued that tradition. Now we have one or two Hawkeye guys on every Top Gun staff.
Speaker 2:And we realize that in air to air warfare or even air to surface warfare, nobody really does it alone. We all rely on each other. The intel piece, you need someone with a long range radar like the Hawkeye to see the targets and start directing people towards them, and then the fighters to shoot the missiles and, take them out. So we practice this all the time. We are the very best in the world at that, the US Navy.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And when does that selection process for that school take place? Is it after your first cruise or?
Speaker 2:Usually, it depends. For the strike fighter guys, it's after they've done their first operational tour, which may include one or two cruises. For me, it was, you know, in the middle of my second cruise at that point. But you're it's early on when you're a lieutenant typically. So you're in o three.
Speaker 1:And for young naval flight officers, what kind of advice can you give them specifically to that career path that'll help them be successful in the aircraft and around the boat?
Speaker 2:Right. I I well, first of all, I highly recommend that people just delve into the tactics and become the master of that. You have to learn to fly your aircraft the very best. I realize that requires hours to fly. It requires simulators, but cherish every moment.
Speaker 2:Be tough on yourself. Like, really figure out what mistakes you made and how you can be better. When you're doing a debrief, the focus should be what you screwed up, and you should be able to talk about that so other people don't talk about your screw ups. Right? It's you know?
Speaker 2:So we pride ourselves in, you know, pointing out all our little faults. And, you know, if there's a contentious one, we say, okay. We'll we'll we'll think about it, and we'll get better. Right? So we we do that.
Speaker 2:But just becoming a master through, you know, that what we call a p bed process, a plan, brief, execute, debrief, do it all, and then you should be successful. And then, like I said earlier, like, we're also looking at your maturity, your intellect. Are you able to analyze a problem, think deeper? Can you be creative? Can you come up with new ideas?
Speaker 2:If you're gonna disagree with the leadership, are you going to hit the the publications and point out where we're wrong professionally? We love that. Right? Tell us where we're wrong, but be, you know, efficient and professional about it, and we'll change. And so there's a lot of junior officers that are out there who do that all the time, and I love it.
Speaker 2:And I think, I hope we encourage that as leaders in the US Navy.
Speaker 1:Well, as a leader, let me ask you another question, sir. What would you consider to be the biggest or the most consequential decision that you ever had to make?
Speaker 2:I haven't had too many super difficult decisions. I would say sometimes, you know, if we're on a deployment and it's long, I have to be the one that has to tell the crew if it gets extended, and it is not uncommon to extend the deployments at the very last minute, which is difficult for the families. It's difficult for the crew. It's not like they're not being patriotic. It's just that we made plans for a seven month deployment, then it changes.
Speaker 2:Right? And it's tough walking through that process. I don't like it at all, but, you know, it's something that I have to do. There have been times where on an aircraft carrier, we have an entire medical department and people get sick, and we have to make a decision if whether we send them to a hospital ashore or we, you know, do surgery on them on the ship. We can do some surgeries.
Speaker 2:Some it's not recommended because it's a little too dangerous. But there have been times where I said, you know what? I can't do a medevac right now. Let's go ahead and do the surgery here on the ship. And you're taking risk if something goes wrong, if there's an infection, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:You know, I'll tell you, in all those cases it brought the team together, they became very professional. You know, our surgeons, our corpsmen, they made it happen and it was awesome. They were actually proud to have done something like that, which we normally wouldn't do, you know, at sea.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Would never have considered something like that to be within the scope of what you're doing, but of course it makes sense. I mean, you're commanding a floating city.
Speaker 2:Right. You're in a floating city. We might be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean trying to get somewhere and we can't fly anybody off. You're stuck. So you got what you got on that ship for sometimes a week, week and a half.
Speaker 2:Hey, everybody. I want to
Speaker 1:take a quick second to thank my friends at Phantom Products for believing in Make the Donuts sponsoring this first season. They're powering us, and on top of that, they've powered some amazing lighting applications. Since 1943, they've been providing lighting to the military. They used to light the shipping lanes for military transports during World War two. They provided lights to the New York Police Department, the New York Fire Department, and first responders all over this country.
Speaker 1:They're family owned. They're American made. When I was in Afghanistan and Iraq, I was using this Phantom TLS, and it's an awesome light. It's got covert secure white. It's got cyan.
Speaker 1:It's got infrared. It's got these built in flash patterns if you need it. In a roundabout way, without this light, there's some people in this world that probably wouldn't be here. So I wanna thank Phantom Products again for believing in the show, for sponsoring us, and for the great stuff you guys make. Check out the website, we'll drop it down the show notes.
Speaker 1:And again, Phantom Products, thanks for helping us make the donuts. When I first got the idea to ask you to come on the show, I did a little research and I did get to see some of your social media posts. It's unusual. When I went to employment, we were told, you know, no leaks, no nothing like that, no social media, and I'm sure that still applies. But the idea of having, like you said, WiFi, what?
Speaker 1:Well, what's that? You know, I can't imagine that on the ship. How has that changed the military in the last maybe decade? How has social media changed how we fight wars?
Speaker 2:Well, I you know, as far as a war fighting tool, social media, sort of. Right? We know that there's information out there that people will believe based on what they see in social media. Our goal in The United States, not just the Navy, is to put out the truth as quickly as possible. So I played a little bit of role in that.
Speaker 2:There were times when the enemy said that they had sunk my ship, and so I could play a video of the ship showing that it's clearly not sunk and, you know, with a date stamp, so it was new video. And I had to do that several times. So that's one way to kinda battle the narrative, and I think our enemies don't have the same filter for morality that we do. So, yeah, I'm not gonna lie in anything I post. Right?
Speaker 2:That's just how we do business. At the same time, I found that as a leader, and you're right. This is very unusual to do social media, certainly in a combat zone where there's missiles and stuff flying around, drones flying around. It was a way for me to communicate with families back home that their people were doing well. Their sons and daughters and spouses were kicking butt every day, and they appreciated that because, you know, the news doesn't always report fun stuff.
Speaker 2:News reports some things that'll seem pretty scary, and then, you know, maybe I'll do a post about here's what the food is today. Right? It's taco Tuesday, my absolute favorite day of the week. I said that every Tuesday. Two guys got ta or, got tattoos with taco Tuesday on them on their calves.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's crazy. I always said, this is the way at the end of every time I spoke every day, And and people started getting this is the way tattoos from the Mandalorian show. Yeah. So it was an interesting experiment to try, but it is fraught with risks. You know, I did acquire some people who did not like me.
Speaker 2:There were some trolls. You know, you just gotta kinda ignore it and just move on because I believe I'm telling the truth, and I want to talk about the US Navy and our accomplishments. And I wanna say amazing things about the young men and women who were serving in the navy. And I think it that goes against a lot of the culture of the day where we assume young people, you know, generation z, they're addicted to technology. They they only care about themselves.
Speaker 2:They don't like to work. That is not true. There's actually no science behind it, but from my observation, it is absolutely not true.
Speaker 1:You and I are
Speaker 2:at the
Speaker 1:same age. I'm 51. Yep. Nope. I think you're pretty close.
Speaker 1:I looked at the year you graduated from. Kyle's maybe a little bit older than me. But as a captain of an aircraft carrier, you're commanding sailors from all different generations, literally. How has the Navy changed? How has that changed command?
Speaker 1:What are your insights into Gen X, Gen Z, millennials? Can you talk about that at all?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I remember going through a training class in 2011 and the instructor said, All right, we've got these Millennials. They love their cell phones and video games. They're using something called social media, and we gotta figure out how to connect with them. I'm like, oh, man.
Speaker 2:You know, at that time, we were all doing social media anyway. Right? So this wasn't a new thing. There there is a a generational trope, if you will, that the younger generation has always messed up. And this goes back to there's even comments that Socrates made, you know, I don't know how centuries ago about the the youth of his day.
Speaker 2:The problem with that is and, yes, there are some generational differences. Like, the music today stinks. I'm sorry. It's terrible. Right?
Speaker 2:I like music from the seventies. That's my jam. But in reality, the human brain hasn't changed in a hundred thousand years. So, like, why should we approach leadership differently? Right?
Speaker 2:So how is it changed in the navy? I you know, one of the things I've been trying to break is that mindset that there is a generational difference. So let's just love and value people. Let's give them mission and purpose, and let's build morale so we should see success. Now I did some research on the word morale.
Speaker 2:I went back to a magazine called proceedings done by the Navy Institute press. I typed in the word morale, and you can go back in history to early nineteen hundreds prior to World War one, there were navy commanders talking about morale and how to motivate sailors, and it's no different than what I'm saying right now. It has not changed. So I think I'm one of the purest when it comes to that, and a lot of people disagree with me on this topic.
Speaker 1:Well, I'd I'll say this on my deployments. When they were younger people, they would bring in their pop culture or their likes and stuff, and then the older guys and gals would bring in their stuff, and it almost became like a gumbo. By the time you went home, you already knew, you know, Yeet and all these other, you know, young person terms and, you know, all your friends maybe you're saying, maybe didn't understand it. I think I kinda miss that
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Being in the military because I don't have that perspective of young people on a regular basis. I kinda miss that. A little bit more on social media. What do you think the future of social media will be as far as military conflict? Will it be something that the military actually uses in a type I mean, I've heard the term social media warfare online in articles.
Speaker 1:Outside of just messaging, is is that gonna be something that the military is gonna have to kind of employ? And could there ever be, like, I don't know, military social media specialists who just work with, you know, I don't PAOs and stuff like that?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I I think maybe we'll go down that path. It has been discussed at some levels. Like I said earlier, it's about winning the narrative of truth, where the enemy can just post something that's completely false in real time, and we don't wanna go through a bureaucratic process to get a post approved to counter it. It's too late.
Speaker 2:Right? So I think we need to probably get better at something like that. But I don't know. You know, young people, next generation, a generation after that might decide that social media is not their thing. Right?
Speaker 2:Maybe they wanna move to something else so it could come and go. I don't know what the future looks like, but it's definitely going to be a lot different. If we can look back to 1995 and compare it to today, be like, okay, what just happened to society? There's a lot of negativity in social media, but at the same time, it also brings us together. You just gotta be careful about what you're looking at and what you're posting and just avoid the negativity and focus on the positive.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of positive out there if you if you allow your feed to accept that and not look at the trash. Right? Anyway, so I don't know where that's gonna go, but is it warfare? When we look at warfare, to me, it's about life and limb. Right?
Speaker 2:If I I don't see social media right now necessarily causing a a detriment to someone's life or limb. Right? So it's definitely a component of the information warfare sphere, but it's, you know, it's not the whole warfare.
Speaker 1:One of the people I greatly respect in the military, senior officer, made a comment and said that, you know, in the past, the Navy had to go through the media to tell their story. Now the Navy doesn't really have to ask permission anymore. They can just tell their story directly to the information consumers, the American people, without having to really filter it through the media that can tell the story. Like you said, you you can get rid of bad information. Hey.
Speaker 1:Guess what? I'm I'm pretty sure that we didn't sink the aircraft carrier. Right. So maybe that becomes an opportunity for commanders in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think so. There's several different levels there. I think, you know, the ability to for an individual to post something, the ability for your public affairs specialist to do something that's a little bit more curated and better visually because they're experts, and that could create, like, a wider reach, I guess. But we still don't wanna discount mainstream media.
Speaker 2:We'd like to have them come out and give their perspective and explain it in a way that, you know, impacts the public as well. They have a large audience too. So I I could see we're trying to do all three simultaneously, I think, but, you know, this is not my expertise by any means. I mean, I just got into social media like seriously a couple years ago, and I've taken a big break from it recently, but I'm gonna try to get back into it a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, we want you to do that and we want that book of yours to come out. You got a book coming out too. Right?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know if it's coming out, but I did write down my thoughts.
Speaker 1:Sir, come on.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It it I've I've written it. It's not that good, but at least it talks about, you know, the way of the warrior sailor, which is what I say morale is and how to build it like we talked about. And I give many examples of how you can make that happen using, you know, ten, fifteen years of senior level leadership. So, you know, I'm not sure if I would read my own book, to be honest with you, but I had to get it on paper.
Speaker 2:And I feel pretty good about it. We'll see. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, we're gonna keep nagging you about it until we see it published. Does it surprise you? This surprised me. When I came back from combat, I'd show up in America and I'd see you know, you'd see how divided America is, you know, on the news and stuff like that. But, you know, in a foxhole or on an aircraft carrier, people have a common purpose.
Speaker 1:What do you think about that? I mean, I think a lot of America's missing out on being forced to hang out with people they wouldn't normally hang out with. On a carrier, there's no way to escape that. And maybe you learn to respect people and care for them a little bit more when you're not so divided. What do you think it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I've I've thought about that a lot. I mean, you know, we have people from every state, every race background. We have people from other countries in the Navy who put us all together and we figure it out. Right?
Speaker 2:We're good at that. We don't talk about that much. Just kind of like what we do. Right? And young people don't care.
Speaker 2:Right? So, yeah. I think that's a it's a positive thing, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we need leaders. I think we need leaders to come back from the war. I think we need veterans Yeah. To step up to the plate and not just hang up the coat. Think they need to keep serving, but in a different way.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's not you, maybe it's not me, but whoever it is, even if it's a political, you know, opponent, a person I don't agree with politically, I'm encouraged to see veterans stepping up and taking up the mantle of political leadership because frankly, they're the ones that know how to unite people. And maybe we need more of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I I don't know. I I do not think about that too much, but it is good to have veterans serving the country in that way. We need that, plus all the equities about, you know, some of the stuff that we deal with. We don't want the military to become too separated from our civilian leadership.
Speaker 2:There needs to be some connection there. So, I do endorse people getting into politics. I was a poli sci major. I believe in that stuff. Right?
Speaker 2:I love America. I love democracy, the republic, and the rule of law. So that's all good stuff. But yeah, you know, one thing that I I found, and it's it's almost like easier. Like, in my world, politics is the US Navy.
Speaker 2:That's my politics. And so it makes it easier to kinda communicate. We don't we don't lose communication because of, like, unnecessary political debates. Right? So that's nice.
Speaker 2:What's interesting too is that, when I would post stuff about the military, I'd have a lot of people write in to me, hey. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I connect with them, and their feeds would be from wildly different politics from each other. But they we all agreed on one thing.
Speaker 2:We're gonna support our country. We're gonna support our troops. Support the sailors who are out there, and I really appreciated that. So there is something that unites us in that way, and it was what our young people are doing.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. I love it. Pump me up. Alright. So last question.
Speaker 1:What's the best movie about an aircraft carrier that you can think of?
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. So this is gonna be a tough one. There is the final countdown, which a lot of people don't know about. Right? That's that's a fun one because the Hawkeye's in it and they go back in time to like 1945 or something or 1944.
Speaker 2:I forget. And, that's a good one. Top Gun, of course, in the eighties. Top Gun Maverick was awesome. Recommend you see that.
Speaker 2:And I'm not even allowed to give endorsements at this point, but here I am doing it. But I like the most recent Top Gun because we had people that I know who also had worked for Top Gun were advisers to that film, and I think they did a pretty good job of accurately reflecting reality.
Speaker 1:Well, since you brought it up, I was hoping you'd bring up the final countdown. If you were in that captain's shoes, would you have attacked the Japanese Navy?
Speaker 2:I probably would have and ruined history. Sorry. It's a tough choice. Right? You're with the situation real time.
Speaker 2:You're like, you're trying to save 3,000 people who eventually perished in Pearl Harbor. Right? Yes. I'd probably get involved. Oops.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if you're listening to Hollywood, my friends who work out there, Captain Hill is waiting to be the technical advisor on the final countdown part two. So the ball's in your corner right now. I think we need to make that movie happen. Captain, thank you so much for coming on the show, sir.
Speaker 1:It's been an absolute honor to have you on here, and I wish you and your family the best as you continue your navy journey. I'm jealous of your sailors who get to have a cool commander like you who really, you know, cares about them. And I'm still gonna keep bugging you about that book. Maybe you ever finally hang up the navy hat, maybe you write some more stuff. So I really appreciate having you on the show, sir.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, sir. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
Speaker 1:About navy life, please drop them down in the comments. Certainly, I'll be making some comments back and replying and maybe even we can get to Captain Hill to answer some of your questions. If you're interested in a naval career, I highly encourage you to talk to a Navy career counselor or a Navy recruiter. It's not just about flying aircraft. It's not just about commanding ships.
Speaker 1:There's all kinds of important jobs in the Navy. There's all kinds of really cool, unique jobs you've never heard of. I guarantee you go down to recruiter, you'll find something that you would definitely like. It's a great way to pay for your education and sets you up for success later in life. So don't discount it.
Speaker 1:Military service is, for many of us, the spark that launched our entire lives and and helped our families. So make sure you you consider that, and we'll see you next time. I'll make the donuts with our next guest. I promise you you're gonna enjoy it, maybe almost as much as this one. We'll see you next time.