transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:22] All right. For that, for our one Instagram follower who questioned if we had a smee coming on a show or not about BBHM. So, you know, we put it out a while ago. He's like, hey, we got a smee coming on. And he was like, hey, man, is it really a smee? Or is it just like somebody who read a bunch of tech babes is going to talk about it? I'm like, no, we have a smee coming on, like for real. And I get why people think like that. A lot of programs come on and they say they got smee's and it's just somebody who learned a lot, right? No, we got a smee, right? So we it's our pleasure to be joined by Captain Charles R. Harmon, branch head of Enlisted Plans and Policy Opnav N132. So thanks for joining us. We appreciate this so much.

Speaker 2:
[01:08] Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1:
[01:11] Yeah. And my first question was, do you know where you are?

Speaker 2:
[01:18] What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1:
[01:19] Like Permission To Speak Freely Podcast.

Speaker 2:
[01:21] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good to go.

Speaker 1:
[01:26] Yeah. And I and I earlier before we came on, I saluted the team and I, you know, just thanked everybody just for being plugged in and getting to us, right? And like kind of understanding that there are people listening is good touch points. My first question just out the gate would be, first of all, how was your day? Let's start there before we go anywhere further.

Speaker 2:
[01:49] Well, you know, every day you wake up is a good day. What you do with it's up to you, right? So you make the most of what you can. You're here in the DC area, so you know how the DC Navy works. So, you know, every day is different. That's, I guess, the advantage of being at this level. But the other piece for me is every day I get to do something that helps a sailor somewhere. And that means a lot to me.

Speaker 1:
[02:19] Yeah. And then for our trusty followers, listeners and supporters who's looking at NCC Sawyer, like, hey, it's another person there too, right? We also joined by NCC Joey Sawyer, man. Hey, how you doing?

Speaker 3:
[02:34] I'm doing good, man. How you doing?

Speaker 1:
[02:36] I'm good, man. We appreciate you being here. Y'all know Damon, y'all know Aaron, y'all know me. Y'all didn't come here to hear me and Damon and Aaron talk about what pizza was better out of New York pizza and Chicago pizza. Y'all don't need to hear that Chicago pizza is better. Y'all want to hear about SEM BBA, so we're going to get right into it. My first question is, Billet-based advancement has been in the conversation for a long time. We recently interviewed retired Fleet Beldo, and when we researched her, she was talking about BBA. But it seems like we finally push in the red button on it, which kind of dates back a few years. So my first question is, why now do we finally push that red button?

Speaker 2:
[03:23] I think a lot of it had to do with the inventory. Obviously, this was started before my time in the seat. So I think what really drove it, but based on the results we've seen, is our overall inventory in the Navy is short. We had those two really bad years of recruiting, coming right at the end of COVID, and that created a lot of gaps at sea. I'm talking over 20,000 gaps at sea. So we're bringing that number down, and part of bringing that number down is getting the right person in that billet. Not saying that all billet base of vacements is what you have to go to sea do, because that's something I hear a lot of too. That's not the case, and we can talk about that later. But it was really to help us fill a lot of gaps, and I'll give you a couple of numbers. So after three years of the Massachusetts, why did we start at the Massachusetts? Well, we had to start at Massachusetts because we had to pull the senior chiefs into the Massachusetts billets to create the gaps for the senior chiefs, to pull the chiefs into the senior chiefs, and so on and so forth. So we're kind of going down, and as you know, we just recently, this last March exam, most of the E-5s that took the E-6 exam, they took a rating knowledge exam so they could play in the marketplace and be part of the bill of base advancements. Historically, master chief billets were being filled by a master chief at 40 percent. Currently, we're filling master chief billets with a master chief at about 94 percent after three years. So that's really when we started peeling the back, and if any of you guys have done a carrier tour or been on a flight line somewhere, there was a lot of times there was a senior chief as your maintenance master chief at the squadron because they've known the master chief wanted to go do that job, just to be frank. You go on a carrier supposed to be like 23 master chief, departmental master chiefs, you might find 12, but you found a whole lot of departmental senior chiefs. We flipped the script on that by bill of base advancements and by encouraging you to go in to fill those jobs, it's allowing us to fill the gaps at C at the CACU level. That's after three years, we're in our fourth year from master chiefs and so on and so forth. We're seeing some big gains at the supervisor level. I'm not saying all the gaps are filled, but we are seeing some significant gains on the C duty gaps, and that's really what gives us the momentum. Of course, quite frankly, we don't call it a pilot, but another reason we chose master chiefs. Smaller group, easier to monitor, easier to measure. And once we saw the success, then the ball just took off.

Speaker 1:
[06:01] Yeah, you answered my second question. My second question was, were we beta testing? Now, some people just looking at the questions from listeners, some people would question why that route, as far as the accountability piece on those master chiefs that wasn't picking those billets. Why a systematic approach versus, hey, we are going to force you to pick a billet or get out of the Navy? That's a question that came from some of our listeners.

Speaker 2:
[06:30] Quite frankly, we can't afford for you to get out. We need that depth of leadership. We need that knowledge. We need that deck plate leadership, just to be quite frankly. If we forced everybody who was a new master chief to make that hard decision, and they chose to beat with their feet, there's going to create some gaps that we just can't overcome. We can't go recruit a master chief off the street, right? Can't go recruit a senior chief. We got to grow those people. And so we didn't want to put them into a situation of having to make that hard decision, to be quite frankly. And the part of build-based advancement was, okay, you know, beforehand, the results come out, you've frocked a master chief. People actually retire as a frocked master chief, because they could have their retirement ceremony as a master chief, even though they never got paid, and their retirement on e-carbons never got saved as a master chief. We saw, they wouldn't obli-serve. You give them orders to a carrier, they'd be like, nope, not me. They wouldn't obli-serve. So with some of those things, with the way it's set up with build-based advancement, once you got orders in hand, you could frock, and then once you actually check into the bill, you start getting paid. And at that point, there is no opportunity for you to look for an off-ramp to keep from getting out there and feeling that child that we need you to feel. So, it really, you know, for the organization, it's great, but mainly for the sailors out there, now they have, you know, they got a Mass Chief where they should have a Mass Chief. But also for the senior chiefs that were having to go do Mass Chief work. I mean, go think back to your careers. Let me tell them for you, the junior guy in the senior bill, you know, as a chief, you probably feel a senior chief bill. As a senior chief, you may have failed a Mass Chief bill, because you had to go do the work that somebody else was getting paid to do, right? Because we promoted them. They just weren't going. And it wasn't no better. The senior chief level is about 50% of senior chiefs to fill the senior chief bill. Chiefs were a lot better. But as you know, when you're a new chief, when you're newly minted chief, you don't get a lot of... Historically, you didn't get a lot of choice where you went. When we did that chief realization or optimization or whatever title we wanted to put on it, we put you where we needed you. And so the chief percentages was much higher than it was for the senior chiefs and master chiefs. So that drove a lot of that. The way it's set up, the way it is, is one, we're going to get that three-year obligation out of you, so we know we're going to get some time out of you in that next higher pay grade. And quite frankly, not just the Navy is going to benefit, but the sailors under you are going to benefit. And when I talked to a master chief or senior chief who took the same route, I will say all of them is happy, but I will say the majority of them are happy that they've done it and it worked out the way it was. And also they feel like they had some say by going in the marketplace and actually picking a set of orders rather than somebody forcing them to go and I'd rather have a volunteer or a little pressure on the volunteer rather than somebody being voluntold to go do the job. You just see a different outcome. I mean, I've been around for 34 years. I tell everybody the reason I'm a captain in the Navy is because my very first senior chief. So, personally, I expect more from the chief's mess than maybe your average officer or sailor, but I know what it did for me. And so I think it really matters having the right person in the right position at that right pay grade when you're out there dealing with 200 plus E3 below sailors.

Speaker 1:
[10:00] Yeah, I got one more question connected to that. Then I'm going to shut up. I know Damon and Joey got a bunch of questions. My last question connected to just that idea is I read an article that was published in Divis Today, an article published in Divis Today, that quoted you saying that carriers where every department has a master chief, like we are seeing carriers where every department has at least one master chief for the first time ever. That was the quote in the Divis Article. So my question is, and I know you were using that as an example whenever you were being interviewed, are we looking at carriers like a measuring stick of success of this program? So i.e. like is manning a carrier the greater good of all of this, right? Like when we sit back and look, we like, hey, the reason why I'm saying that is because at some point you got some other commands like the ceremonial guard, for instance, that we'll kind of talk about later. Is that in the picture when we're talking about the success of the program right now?

Speaker 2:
[11:03] So when we look at the really the measuring stick is how many mass chiefs are sitting in a mass chief bill? So we're closing the gap. So they're what we call misalignment, right? So either they wasn't a mass chief in the bill at all, or there was a senior chief doing the mass chief work, or even in some cases a chief doing the mass chief work, based on what the bill requirement was, right? And so the measure stick is that 94 percent of mass chiefs sitting in a mass chief bill, the goal would be to get that as close to 100 as possible. I'm not one of these guys who says it's going to be 100 percent. I don't think it will ever be 100 percent. Just through the natural churn of the Navy, you're always going to have people detaching, you're always going to have people that's going to, you're not going to get that face-to-face turnover. There's just going to be places where it happens. And quite frankly, again, when I go back to, we're still down about 11,000 in inventory. I probably don't have every master chief. Well, matter of fact, I know I don't in some rates have every master chief I have a billet for. Because when they were selected, and then they chose to retire. And I'll tell you some couple other key things that we look at, because a lot of times I get, well, you're forcing everybody to retire. Retirements have not went up. Master Chief retention has actually gotten better through Sam. So retirements have not went up. And so watching that very closely, because I hear that all the time, that I'm making people have to make that hard decision. I say me, I don't mean me, the Navy, but we're making people make these hard decisions, but the numbers are not there. I mean, we watch this thing so super close. We brief senior leaders. It was just even a few weeks ago, we briefed CNO on CMBBA distribution and the impacts. So every senior leader in the Navy, next week I'm briefing the Assistant Secretary of the Navy on CMBBA. So your very senior leaders are watching this, and I have to be able to account for that stuff. So again, there's not just the carriers. That's just one of the things that we use. And then, I don't know if you guys know Fleet Walker or not. Me and Fleet Walker spent a lot of time together, whether we worked to or not, it's just the nature of our jobs. And he was a little more or two tours, I think he told me. And we was out there together not too long ago, and he said that's the first time that he could ever remember every maintenance master chief's parking spot, actually had a master chief's name on it, or a spotter had a master chief's name on it, and not a senior chief in the Moore. So that's another place, you know, the Moore sometimes, especially from a 113 guy there, you know, the Moore is not somewhere where everybody is jumping in line to go. So when you look at, you're filling those opportunities, which is, you know, key right now, based on what's going on in the world, having that maintenance master chief being the experienced master chief, not saying the chief couldn't do it, but having that senior, that master chief there with the experience to take those young sailors to sea, especially in a combat situation, to me is just as important as how many master chiefs are on the carrier.

Speaker 1:
[14:11] Yeah, yeah. Commanding ability to have a master chief for nothing. So I do totally agree and understand that.

Speaker 4:
[14:19] Hey, I got a quick question for, it's something I think just not too long ago came up with the 30-month vice 24 months. What was the reason? I was thinking it may have went back, shifted the other direction when I was thinking it was happening, but it moved to 30 months out. What was the reason behind that?

Speaker 2:
[14:41] Couple of things. Yeah, you're right. A lot of people wanted 12 months. But you know how much churn that would create? There's no value in 12 months, personally. You talk Amex scores, Surfmech scores, you're talking about your body, your qualified body is leaving in 12 months, forcing them to move. Let's be honest. If I'm screened and I want to get paid and I want my time and rate to start, I'm getting on that first opportunity, or at least put my name in the hat for that first opportunity because I want that to happen. And so the 12 months and 18 months saying was going to be detrimental to readiness because the sailors, even though they could still do it, if we forced them to do it, it's going to be worse than if we just give them opportunity. And quite frankly, the 30 months, so 24 months put them right. Their last time to look for orders was right when they'd be going back for in front of the board. Because if you don't, as Senior Master Chiefs screened, if you don't pick orders, you have to go back in front of a board. And I will tell you guys those statistics, you don't want to be one of them. Yeah. It's not favorable from what I've seen so far. I will tell you that 92 percent of the Senior Chiefs and Master Chiefs are picking orders in their first 12 months. So as long as we have over 90 percent selection rate in the first 12 months, not meaning they're going to leave in the 12 months, but at least they got a set of orders. You go, again, that's a good match-reach stick because anything above 90 percent in the Navy is pretty damn good. I mean, just being honest, I mean, you guys been around a while like I have. It's hard for us to get 100 percent on a whole lot of things. So if we get 92 percent of the people saying, hey coach, pick me, put me in, I want to go play in the first 12 months, if we're eligible, that's a good place to be. And so the 30 months was looking at, we wanted to give, and I know we'll talk about it a little later, some of the meal to meal, some of those things that happen, life happens, let's be honest. The more senior you are, the more life happens to you, unexpectedly sometimes. But even on the meal to meal side, we wanted to give sailors some flexibility. I may have just got to shore duty. I may want to stay a senior chief on shore duty for two years, and then pick a set of orders to go be a master chief because I need a break. And when you talk some of the ratings, their only opportunity to go fill that master chief bill may be in sea duty. And so we wanted to create a little bit of flexibility there for the sailors. Again, with over 90% selection, people selecting orders in that first 12 months, I didn't see any value personally, and this is exactly how I briefed it to leadership. No value in crushing people, making them force 12 months. To me, that would have forced more retirements, would have forced more, you know, maybe geo-bachelors, a lot of other things that we're giving them the 30 months to kind of plan out, or, you know, I need to catch my breath before I jump on the next, you know, thing floating. It give them a little bit of space to maneuver. So that's really where it came from, is just thinking about what we do that helps the sailors and not force them into making a quick, hard decision that they may not make six months from now.

Speaker 1:
[18:01] Thanks, Sam. All right. Hey, I got just a couple of facts for a minute. This right now, we're talking about, Sam, we're talking BBA. BBA applies to all rates right now, and except for new special warfare operator, MU, TAR, Cell Res. The latest literature we got from SEMBBA is Nav Admin 22125. That was in December 2025. The Advancement Manual just got updated on 22nd of January, 21st, 22nd of January, around that time. Then the BBA Handbook came out January 28th. If you are familiar with Chief Sawyer down here, you know all of those things. You got it from his Instagram and things like that. My quick question for you, Captain Harmon, is can you just give a quick explanation of CA2P and A2P? I would say for dummies, but in this case, I'm going to say for Damo. So a quick explanation of CA2P and A2P for me to understand, even though I know it.

Speaker 2:
[19:11] So CA2P, let's break it up in two ways because it's a little bit different. C and shore, right? CA2P. I don't know how long you guys have been in. I've been in since 92. So I was a sailor who got capped, command advanced to position. And then we turn it to map, right? And now CA2P is nothing more than map. With the exception of we're asking for, if you're on sea duty, we're asking for a couple of things. A 36-month obligation, meaning you got to extend your EOS for at least 36 months from the day you get promoted. And you need to remain on sea duty for 36 months past the day you get promoted. Now, if you're on a 60-month sea tour, and you're in year two and looking at the data, guess where most people got mapped about year two at the command. Occasionally there was others, but looking at the general on the average, most sellers were getting meritoriously advanced at year two, three. So if you're on a 60-month sea tour as an E4, E5, and the command advanced you to position, and from the day you're advanced, we're looking to get 36 more months on that current sea tour. And in some cases, that's not changing their PRD. I get that question a lot, but I look at my AOs and my ABHs and my ABEs, you've got those 60, 60, 48, 48-month sea tours. We're not adding to their sea time. You know, CS, is there another 168? There's a lot of sailors, OS has got FCA, he's got these 60-month sea tours, ETs, I mean, I can go down the list. If you're advancing them, which you probably know as a command, as a triad, whether that sailor is ready for the next pay grade, at that two, three-year mark, you're not asking them to stick around that much longer. In some cases, nothing any longer than their PRD. So that's the one thing is on sea, you got to give us 36 months past the day you get advanced. You got all the serif for 36 months from the day you get advanced, and then you have to have passed the current. So if you're in E5, so E5 study six, right now, it would be an RKE or you P&A'd the last Navy wide investment exam, right? So even the nukes and the seals and the others that are not playing, they could still be CA2P as long as they P&A'd the exam and there's a billet. The other thing is there has to be a valid funded, vacant or will be vacant in the next six months, billet for them to promote into, right? So you can't just promote them because you want to. There has to be the desire, the need there. And then the last thing is, obviously they got to be recommended for promotion and all that stuff. But to me, as a prior CO, having that decision space, I call it a skipper's risk, right? That command pin that you wear, that's your risk pin. How much risk are you willing to take? And I know my sailors, and even when I got the MAP sailors, it was heartbreaking when they got out of the Navy 12 months later because I didn't get to ask them to stay longer. I didn't get to ask them, you know, are you staying? I mean, you know, I probably could have, but I couldn't require it of them. And so that's the sea side of it, right? The shore side, the only difference is, is on the shore side, you must have to serve for 36 months past your PRD so that we can get you back out to sea. And so I know a lot of sailors on the shore side don't like it, but I will tell you the numbers, the last time I checked the numbers, the last cycle of CA2Ps that was pushed through, it was over 400 and so on, which is not bad. And we recently, the guys in Millington, they've created a tool called Bootstrap, that we're trying to get out to all the commands. We're getting it out to the TICOMs and to the ISSEs. But it will tell you every sailor that's eligible to be for a CA2P. It will tell you every billet in your command that you have that's available for you to CA2P into. And that alone, the commands that we've displayed it to, and the reason they, I don't know who come up with the name, so I'm not going to credit anybody with the name, but it's like, pull yourself up with your boots perhaps, right? We're giving you an opportunity to promote some sailors and keep them on your team and keep them in the fight. And I, you know, my, when I brief triads, my thing is, if you're, I look at separation data. The reason sailors lead the Navy is not because of money. That's far down the list. That's number nine on the list of when we compile data. The number one thing is leadership. Their command and leadership. The number two thing is their command climate culture. So I tell triads, if you create the atmosphere where sailors want to be on your team, you guys know what you've been there. If you create that atmosphere, savers will stay. They will stay, they will, they will, they will, if that's your top sailors, they will stay with you and stick around a little longer. Again on the shore side, just looking at to get them back out to sea. Because I'm again being honest, missing the two years of recruiting in 22 and 23. Well, you know when those gaps are going to hit the fleet? 27 and 28. Because those sailors that we didn't bring in would be our E-6s and E-6s, and we're not going to have them. So, you know, we're hoping that with the CA2PPs, it will allow subcommands to, we call self-heal, but like they can pull all these sailors, these hard-charging superstars, give them an opportunity to promote them. And I've seen subcommands that there's one carrier who promoted 48 sailors in one day. Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 1:
[25:17] Carrier stuff, that's incredible.

Speaker 2:
[25:19] You ain't mapping 48 sailors in one day. No. So, but does that answer everything?

Speaker 1:
[25:28] Yeah. Now, it's a part of this where, just with CA2P, it's also a part of it where ISIC has a say, ISIC could also have a say in this, right?

Speaker 2:
[25:38] Yes. ISIC could actually move sailors. So, let's say you're at the squadrons and the wing there, your sister squadron has a vacant AE1 billet, and you have a couple of AE2s that are up for CA2P, but you can't move them. The ISIC can, if the sailor agrees, sailor has to agree.

Speaker 5:
[26:02] That's the key to all this.

Speaker 2:
[26:03] Sailor has to agree. They have to agree to obligate, they have to agree to stay on board, and then they would have to agree to move to that other spotter. But as long as the sailor agrees, yes, the ISIC could move them over and CA2P them to another spotter. And then even at the... I don't see the TICOMs getting involved as much, but we're actually, we want to give them the picture so they can actually see what's going down, down below. And, you know, we recently, I recently briefed one of the TICOMs and demonstrated the tool to them, and I know that their flag leadership is really interested in seeing how we could use CA2P to fill some of their critical gaps with some of the sailors that are already on board, already trained. Again, if you create that atmosphere, sailors will stay on your team, in my opinion, you know, and in most cases I'm seeing there's not a whole lot. There is some sailors doing six years of sea duty, you know, maybe some doing seven, but the majority are still got enough time left at sea anyway on their PRD that they're not actually extending their PRD on sea duty.

Speaker 1:
[27:11] Yeah. Now, I got a question, and it's connected to Chief Sawyer as well, but like connected to you when it comes to information. And a lot of our questions came in about sailors asking about, are we going to mandate some Infocon or something about SEM BBA? And I think this is more like a how you feel kind of question. Because you go to these CDSs and you talk to a bunch of sailors, and I'm sure you enlighten them. But we rolled this thing out pretty slow, right? And I'm not holding anybody to the fire. I'm not indicting anybody, right? But it kind of rolled out in segments. I think at some point, it was D. Seaman there. I saw EMs there. That was like phase one. And then we hit a phase two, and then we hit like a phase three, and then we did that. Then we added Master Chiefs, and we had a Senior Chiefs, and we added Chiefs. So we took like four or five, six years to really roll this thing out. So now we're about four to six years in, maybe five or something like that. And it's still people expressing that they got gaps in like knowledge, and asking like when leaders are going to learn and all of these things like that. Is that, well, I guess I'll just be frank, is that a disappointment at all, that the information is not getting to? Well, my other point was that a lot of these younger sellers are learning this in real time, like when it's time for them to like make a career. And so my first question for you, Chief Sawyer, is like, is that some of the impetus that made you be like, hey, let me turn my camera on and give these tips and information so that sellers could kind of deal with them in real time? And then my question for you, Captain Harmon, is going to be, is that disappointing? And like, are you surprised by how much sellers are learning when you go to these CDSs?

Speaker 3:
[29:07] Yeah, so I'll answer real quick. 100%, I get tons of DMs, tons of feedback on a lot of information, especially like when I did put out those videos about BBA, about SEM, because there was a lot of lack of knowledge and then there was a lot of misinformation from the he said, she said, rumor mill about what sailors perceived was the truth when it was far from it, unfortunately. And it seems that there's just a lack of, for lack of terms, knowledge on where to find the information, although it is all there on MyNABHR.

Speaker 1:
[29:45] Everything is on MyNABHR.

Speaker 3:
[29:46] Yeah, it really is. And that lack of understanding that all these resources are on MyNABHR, I think is one of the huge issues overall, is that if leadership was taught to navigate MyNABHR a little better, it might help break some of this down a bit easier so that the information could be put out a lot easier to our sailors.

Speaker 2:
[30:14] Yeah, and I'll piggyback off that a little bit. So there's an NC Conference, Command and Career Counselor Conference in L'Amour, the week of May 4th, and our 630 career counselors across the fleet going to be out there. Like we maxed out the capacity. Right. And my team, I plan to be there on day one, if there's some other things going on up here, as the DC world goes, and I don't have any control over my calendar. But if I have any kind of control, my intent is to be there on day one, to do a BBA Sim Policy Lecture, right? And then my team's going to stay there all week, and a team from Milletons is going to stay there all week. Because my NCs out there is really the key that's going to pull all this together, because that's who the sailor is probably going to talk to the most, especially when it gets career decision time. So we want to arm them. And what I do, and I'll be quite frank on the CDSs, I'm not a fan. I don't get the audience, I don't get the questions that I get when I just do an all hands. So I did an all hands here in North Fork and Little Creek about three weeks ago, one one day, one the next, and plan to go back again. I've done them out in San Diego. My team went to Hawaii and did them. We get a lot better questions. We get a bigger audience, and we get everybody from an E3 to a Master Chief sitting in the audience and asking questions. CDSs, it's just the kind of people, they listen to you brief, they don't say a lot, they don't ask a lot of questions, and they go on about their business. If you're lucky, they come up and find you afterwards and ask a couple of personal questions. But I see more value in going around and doing the all hands and doing the triads. And then to your question about disappointing, absolutely, especially when I go in and I roll in with an NISC and all their COs and EXOs and their CMCs, and it always starts out about telling me how bad CM and BBA is. And when I start asking them, where's their data? Have they read? They haven't even read the first half of it. They haven't read Chapter 13 of the Advanced Manual that talks about BBA. They haven't read Chapter 10 that talks about CA2P. They haven't done any of the homework. They just tell me how bad it is and how it doesn't work. Ironically, when I did that with about 13 triads, there was two triads there who loved it. Eleven who told me how bad it was. Those two that loved it, their manning was about 90%. I'll tell you, what this skipper did was brilliant. He posted every sailor that was eligible to be CA2P, he posted in the P-Way. Every billet that was going to come available, he posted in the P-Way. He told me his performance and his qualifications from his sailors were through the roof. He was pulling those sailors up. He was promoting his E-5s to E-6s to fill his vacancies that were coming. And he was keeping, and this was a sea duty command. And he was pulling his E-4s up to his E-5s. And then there he was, you know, just, so his vacancies were more at the apprentice level, which recruiting is doing an outstanding job the last couple of years and on track to do, have a record year this year. And they're going to fill those lower vacancies. But again, when recruiting can't fill those, and we personally, detailing is not going to fill them because we're not going to have them in inventory. So if the commands don't educate themselves and create the atmosphere to encourage sailors to one, stay in the Navy, and two, potentially stay on their team through these command advanced opportunities. Yeah, we're going to be, we're going to see our apprentice gaps that we just lived through here the last couple of years, we're going to fill them at the journeyman level. And so I really disappointed when commands haven't educated themselves on CA2P or just PBA in general or SIEM. To me, that's key for taking care of your sailors, right? You guys are CMCs, you know, your number one mission is heads and beds. Like you need to make sure those sailors are fed, they're well taken care of. And that's, you know, I hold skippers and exos, I mean, I think they need to be a part of that too, because, you know, again, if we take care of the sailors, they'll take care of us, you know. Like I said earlier, I'm in this uniform today, or I'm a captain today because of a senior chief, and he used to tell me, you're as only as good as your people make you, and your people is only as good as you make them. And it took me a while to realize what he was talking about, but as you get more senior, as all of you are, you realize how important it is to take care of your sailors. So when I go out and there is this big knowledge gap and the leadership level, I'm extremely disappointed.

Speaker 1:
[35:14] Now, I've got a question just for the three of y'all. Because I got a CMC, I got captain, I got an NC. Is somebody somewhere listening? And they like, nah, Damo, like we really don't have enough time, right? I don't have enough time. I got the Advancement Manual. I opened it up. I started looking at it. Then I had like three to four seller issues or whatever like that. I never got back into it. More seller issues. I'm inundated with things every single day, all this stuff. Right now, I got my own answers to those questions. But just from your perspectives, point of view, and maybe starting with you, Chief Sawyer, then the Damon, then the Captain Harmon, just to kind of get the full picture. What's some advice that y'all would give to some of those high OpTempo commands on how to take a pause and figure out how to get this information out there, whether it's taking a pause or not?

Speaker 3:
[36:08] I think from my perspective in the NC world, there's always going to be work coming in, always customer service, always people needing to route 1306s, re-enlistments, whatever the case is. There's very rarely a true emergency that I have to deal with at that very moment. And so there's going to be times where you just got to shut the door for an hour or two so you can take that brand new information, you can download it, you can decipher it. So that way you at least have a baseline level of knowledge because you know you're about to get a flood of questions on it. Especially with things when the Advancement Manual did get updated. That was one of the things I did. I just shot my door. Thankfully, I got two NC1s that work with me. They handled the front line stuff and I was just able to go through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure I understood everything. Then I was able to brief my NC1s and we were just able to march on. But you have to find that balance of ensuring that the work is going to continue. And so sometimes taking that strategic pause and realizing that maybe what you think has to be done right now, that can maybe wait 30 minutes, an hour, two hours for you to be able to interpret this new information and be able to put it out properly to avoid things like shooting from the hip.

Speaker 2:
[37:31] You know, I mean, there's several ways I think you can do this. I'll be honest, I'm one that I like to read either. I mean, like I go through NavAvans and I look for the highlights, but there's a lot of great stuff that my NavAv HRPAO and them put out with the handbooks, trying to get it smaller. There's the FAQs. They do a lot of things. They're looking, creating a kneeboard where it's a one-pager with some highlights to get out there. But, you know, I go back to my XO days and a plan of the day. You always puts, XO always puts a quote, a question. You know, I can remember back in my early, early days as a young, young sailor, you know, when it's around test time, they would be, and when we used to do BMRs or BMRs were more, you know, but there was always a basic military requirement question, a plan of the day every day. You could easily put one line in the plan of the day every day to address C2P and SIM. One line. And you wouldn't have to read the whole chapter. You wouldn't have to read the whole nav-av and you could take one thing out of there. You could make sure it's correct and you could put it in the plan of the day. Now, granted, maybe a lot of sailors don't read that, but if it's one line about C2P or SIM, chances are they're probably gonna look at it.

Speaker 3:
[38:54] Yeah. Yeah. So I apologize. I did have a good question. I kind of want to circle back on C2P, specifically looking at shore duty, sir. So I've noticed specifically from my command at Swarmic, we would love to be able to promote sailors via C2P, but we are fighting two main issues. The first is my AMM does a great job. But the second is that six month requirement for that bill to be vacant. Is there any potential in the future, maybe to expand that for shore duty? Because I understand that timeline when it comes to sea duty makes sense. Excuse me. But if there's a little bit more wiggle room for shore duty, we might be able to get away with potentially promoting some of our sailors, especially at my command, we're very engineer heavy, and they are driven a lot of them by the potential to promote.

Speaker 2:
[39:48] Yeah. When you talked about the six month, you mean the six month, you know, long as the bill is going to become vacant in six months, you're saying expand that to 12 months? Yes, sir. Probably not. I will say, so I say this all the time when I give these talks. It goes back to a conversation earlier, like why have we been so slow at rolling this out? Because we're still building the damn airplane, right? We're still looking for tweaks and peaks. Change one of the best manual, my Master Chief is working on right now. There's things that even after it came out, that we want to make some adjustments on. Still looking at things like final multiple score, just made a change to that, right? On the RKEs. Looking at, do we institute a P&E on the RKE, like the P&A. I mean, these are just things that we're still building. So not to say that it's not in the front of my mind to change it, not to say that it wouldn't change as we get, as this continues to move, we get healthier, we get a chance to continue to look at this. This, you know, BBA is not going away. I mean, the TARs, we're in conversation with them about bringing them in. I know, mentioned earlier, they weren't in. You know, I'm constantly talking to the Nukes and the SOs and the SBs. And so, you know, my goal, depending on how long I'm in this job, and hopefully I don't get fired before my time is up, but, you know, it would be to have everybody in. The cell regs would be really hard, really, really hard, because of the way their billet base is. And the MUs would be really hard, but just about, you know, everybody else, I think there's a way forward. You know, and looking at things like the non-nuke submarines that already come into SIM. So the natural thing is for a couple years of SIM, we'll have to roll it on down, because if not, they're going to create a bunch of gaps for themselves by promoting people up and not promoting the other people up. And so, so, you know, I'm not saying to know, I'm not saying it's impossible. This is not something at the front of the conversation right now.

Speaker 1:
[42:19] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[42:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:21] My question is, you got something, Damon? Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[42:24] Well, first, hey, I'm having some difficulties, man.

Speaker 1:
[42:27] You got to get that question while you're in here, man.

Speaker 4:
[42:29] Hey, hey, hey, hey. Damo asked a question earlier about time, right? We just got to make the time. Sales depend on us to make that time. So that's just something that has to happen. You know, if you don't schedule, it's not going to happen. So you got to schedule it and you have to make that time. But I had a question about CA2P real quick, was that when my AMO came to me, he had this list of CA2P and things like that, and he had critical NECs on it. And I'm pretty, I kind of know the answer because I talked to Fleet Walker on it. But for everybody, but everybody else, can those NECs be waived at all?

Speaker 2:
[43:11] So I go back to my command, you know, your command pin is your wrist pin. If the CEO, and then, you know, me and Fleet Walker talked about this, if the CEO says, this is my guy or gal, and I'm willing to take the risk, if they don't have the NEC, yes, I have, I, at my level, have approved every single one of them. They have to come up to my level because we want to track them. I know that Millington's looking at, hoping to get to, and I can't, you know, I don't want to promise this, but how serious we're thinking on NECs is Millington wants to get to the point where if you submit a CA2P, and they say it doesn't have the NEC, they want to send in the school for you and bring them right back to your command, you know, with the NEC. You know, that's the goal, and you know, money's tight, so we're trying to work through that. Where do we work it? But I, you know, talking to senior leadership, the flag leadership, I have the authority to say yes to every single one of those NECs. Now, if it's a critical NEC, like SAR swimmer or something like that, it keeps you from getting underway, then that might be a different conversation because we would hurt the command, but for the other NECs and I have my last trip to Lamore, I put that out and I saw a whole bunch of ETPs for NECs, for a lot of squadrons out in Lamore so they can see it to peace and folks. So yeah, absolutely. Again, you know those sailors and you know your command better than I do. And so if you as a triad tell me that is my guy or gal, and I want them to stay on board and they want to stay on board, I even see in some of the letters CO says, we will send them to school as soon as we can, or if we get a quota or we already have a quota reserved, like commands are actively working at to get the sailor to NEC. But yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we want to accommodate. I mean, again, we have COs and triads to do a whole lot of stuff, and we asked them to be responsible for a whole lot of stuff. And so we want to do everything we can to support them.

Speaker 1:
[45:15] Question, just from your own personal thoughts, and maybe it's coming from some things y'all working on. You mentioned some things that y'all working on and rolling out and add into the program. What do you personally think could be better about the program right now? Maybe some things y'all are already working on or just some feedback that you've taken in from these CDSs and things like that.

Speaker 2:
[45:36] I'll be honest. The biggest thing right now is our billet base. So if BBA has taught us anything, it has taught us that our billet base, when we went in about so, so, you know, manpower is your billets, manning is your sailors. When people go in and buy manpower, they're looking at the cost. They're looking at the dollar value. And we are historically always doing stuff on the cheap, right? Because we want to save every penny we can. And so when we go in and buy manpower, we don't necessarily buy the body we need. We just buy a billet historically. Why? Because you're going to give me the body I need. Like I found commands where we had chiefs and E5 billets because that command is special. And it's part of the bigger, you know, national security apparatus. And so they're going to get everybody they want when they want. So it was just easy for them to go in and buy a bunch of E5 manpower and not any, you know, and have nine E5s at the command with 300 some people there. Because that was the easy button, especially for the manpower folks. Well, what Billet-Based Advancement has done is and it's done across every rating. So every rating really needs to have as close to perfect pyramid as possible. And so we've done a zero base review and I've got a lot of ratings that look more like Damon because everybody's billets are at the E5 level. And I pick on the OS's and the FCA's, they're probably my two worst offenders. But when you have a diamond shape, you never create enough E4's to fill your E5's when you're talking about Billet-Based Advancement. And then when you have everybody's in E5, you don't have enough and you haven't and then your E6's go in. You fill all those E6's of jobs, but then your E7's go out again. You don't ever, you'll never fill all your E7's. And so, I think, you know, the thing that we hope this drives us to is it forces commands. It really is seeks your resource sponsors to take a hard look at what their really requirement is, what their billet desire or need is. And then, you know, working with the ECM's, which I work with on a daily basis, we want to scope a billet pyramid to where when a seller comes in, and it's not always going to work in every rate, but most rates, you could have a pretty good pyramid from E1 to Master Chief, right? So Master Chief is supposed to be the one percenters. So just, you know, easy math. You should, you know, so at the top, you should have around one percent of that rate should be Master Chief billets. And then you just keep kind of working its way backward. And again, on some of your more technical rates, E4 to E3, or E4 to E1, there's a little bit of, you know, it's okay if it's a little bit offset. But really that E4 to E5 to E6 to E7 to E8 to E9, that needs to be about as close to perfect as possible. And so I think for me, not having that billet base right beforehand, but we would have never got any traction on fixing the billet base if we weren't doing billet base advancements, because we'd have still been putting E files and E6 billets, we'd have been putting Chiefs and Senior Chiefs billets, and everybody would have got what they wanted rather than fix their billet base. And so I, you know, for personal opinions, and where my team is doing is mainly like, we're making recommendations, but I can't change that. CMP, you know, he can't change it because it's resource sponsor type stuff. And so it takes a lot of work to get the billet base right. But we have a team. And I think, you know, again, if we if we if every billet base was perfect, this is would be pretty smooth. But but fill in the gaps. The advantage and I'll you know, I'll use something else, too. So 99 percent of the FROC chiefs went in and applied for a billet. The very first day they were able to in my Navy assignments. That, you know, to me that that's that's phenomenal. Because and the other thing is all those who go to orders in October, November or to get ARA aid, which we haven't even talked about, but it's CA2P for the chiefs really. Yeah, they got ARA. They started getting paid one October and their time and rates already started. Yeah, they're going to be about they're going to be very for seeing chief before those people who wait 24 months to pick a set of orders or get to the bill. Right. And so last last cycle, we saw 208 ARAs. So frock chiefs are now in the chiefs bill. Yeah, like we're crushing the money folks. They that the money folks, I get more complaints from them than anybody because before, we always promote everybody in the last cycle, the very last increment. That's where the majority of our promotions come in. We spread that out so we don't have to pay it all at once. Now, the way we're doing it, there's more people getting promoted sooner than they ever were under the legacy system. You don't see that as an individual, but when we look at our big Navy scope, we're promoting people way sooner in the increments than we ever were under the legacy.

Speaker 1:
[50:54] Yeah. Now, what's the metric on, because I'm about to get to my selfish question in a second, then I got questions from listeners. Damon, if you got more questions after this, please ask because I got my selfish question, I got about 15 questions from listeners. What's the metric on how this information is translating to detailers as far as the conversations that detailers are having with CMCEs, our sellers that's looking for orders and stuff like that?

Speaker 2:
[51:23] Not as good as I would like. Just being upfront. You know, this is a learning environment, right? We all, it's new. You know, this is the first time we've changed advancements in over 50 years. So it's new. You know, sometimes folks who've been around forever, don't like new things, you know, we, and so some people ignore it. Some people don't want to hear. Some people tell me it does, just doesn't work. And so I say all that to say that there is, there is certain, the communication flow is not what it needs to be to either, you know, to the details to the sales, quite frankly, and we're working on that. I work with the Purves 40 team daily. I do most of my trips with the Purves 40 team. And so we're, you know, we're trying to bridge that gap, but it's still at the level it should be. Just me, and that's just me being honest.

Speaker 1:
[52:28] I mean, I'm happy to hear that cause that validates, you know, some of them, especially my personal thing, but Damon and Joey, do y'all got any other questions just from you guys? I got some listener questions after this. So I'm just trying to make sure y'all got y'all questions.

Speaker 4:
[52:44] Yeah, I just got something on the Lamor thing real quick, maybe a selfish thing or whatever, but. We gotta be selfish a little bit. So when I look at all the billers for MyCommand or whatever, I feel like we, I don't know what's going to happen with it, but when I look at it, it's no applications, right? Like that's one of the biggest frustration thing, I think, with a lot of people from Lamor is the fact of nobody even applying for these billers. And I kind of know some of it maybe because the shore duties and things like that to stay out here, you got to go from C to C a lot of the times. But we talked a little bit about it when you guys came out to Lamor. I guess my question is, I guess sooner or later we're going to have to force, we met the force to be by his to Lamor, right? Like I don't even know the solution for this.

Speaker 2:
[53:39] So I don't want to get ahead of myself, but trust me, Lamor is important. It's the front of our conversations. Matter of fact, I got a meeting on Lamor Manning tomorrow. And so we're looking at every opportunity that we can, because we're with you. Like I say, 99% of the chiefs applied. There was literally 150 people applied for the one day I'm sure duty bill in San Diego, right? So and then the other 149 I did get are going to complain that there's no bill that's in there. And you go back and you look at some of the people who are the Supreme Master Chief or Senior Chief who didn't go to a bill it, they never applied for anything other than Jacksonville and they're stationed in Jacksonville. They've done their whole career in Jacksonville. They've made five applications in two years for Jacksonville. And then they're the same ones who says, CNPBA doesn't work because as a Master Chief, I can't go down the P way here to the C6 bill it so I can stay in Jacksonville. The Navy don't need them to stay in Jacksonville. I need them to go out to Libby Island because I need an AWO or whatever out there. And so, you know, the Moor is one of those places where it's hard to homestead. They're just not shore billets out there. You know, I am, I'm working a couple projects trying to create more shore billets. That's dollars, you know, and that's, there has to be infrastructure and a lot of other things. But there is some changes going to come, I think, potentially to the way billets are advertised, the way you can see them, some things, because, you know, we, we, there is probably some cases where sailors are waiting for that once, one, one billet to pop in Jacksonville or that one billet to pop at San Diego. And we really need them to go out to Whidbey or to Lamore or something, you know. And so, now, I'm, we're having those conversations like how do we, how do we keep the, you know, the West Coast Master Jet Base manned, you know. And quite frankly, some of this is just inventory too. I was, you know, looking at comparing them side by side with more to Oceania. The VFA community right now, they just hurt. There is rates where they, we just do not have the inventory, especially the qualified inventory. And there's just, we, that's where the CA2P is going to be crucial, is bringing some of those savers up and taking that chance that they don't have the NEC right now and figuring out how do we get them that NEC, but keeping them on the team and filling those gaps so that those gaps don't get worse. But yeah, we, trust me, I have at least three or four conversations a week about L'Amour and I actually just went out there last week on vacation because everybody talks about it's such a bad place. My family never been there. So we went to, we went out through there. I took them there and went up in Yosemite, which was absolutely beautiful. Went up San Francisco for a day. And I'm like, man, my wife's like, you know, after 34 years and lady you're thinking of trying to get us out of here sooner than this, right? So I think there's people, they, whatever the stigma is about Lamor, I think when you get out there and you see it, now I will say as a junior sailor, it's a little harder to get around. But as a more senior person, that's some of the best base housing I've ever seen. You know, not to get off track, but only like, I'm looking at all that. And I, you know, I just told CFP recently, everywhere I go, I walk on base. Because I was a young sailor who showed up without a car, E1 on my first ship. I couldn't afford a car and I had to walk. Luckily, I was in Mayport. Mayport is easy to walk everywhere. But I, you know, I walked in a little more here a few weeks when me and Fleet was out there. They're like, you don't want us to drive you? I was like, no, because I want to see what that young sailor has to deal with, like getting around to the galley, getting around to the gym, getting from the barracks and getting over to the outside. That's a little bit painful. We got to do better about that. And that's just some of the things that... And it's just not there, but I walk every base that I go to and do all hands, because I like to get an idea of what the young sailors are having to deal with, because truly quality of life and quality of service is what's going to keep some of these sailors staying in the Navy. And since I have responsibility for enlisting retention, that matters to me too.

Speaker 1:
[58:25] So, my selfish question is I'm at Ceremonial Guard, and I selfishly think that Ceremonial Guard wasn't really thought about when SIM and BBA were thought about. I don't think somebody was like, whoa, what about the Ceremonial Guard? So, we, our billets, like the billets don't matter as much as having people in them. So, like we don't need an OSCS for anything. We don't necessarily need a BMC for anything. So, here's my scenario, and shout out to Fleet, who, of course, is a conversation for him, right? But we got a chief, ADC, right? He made chief after getting the orders. So, he came as a first class, made chief after getting the orders, automatically kind of enrolled into SEM. He was at the guard before. He was a guardsman before.

Speaker 2:
[59:31] He did my funeral with me. I don't know exactly who you're talking about.

Speaker 1:
[59:34] Yeah. So, you know who it is, right? So, yeah. So, he was a guardsman before, and he is a superstar, right? He's a rock star, great chief, great guardsman. As soon as he got there, it was like, hey, he has to pick orders and leave. Then, I'm calling detail and I'm like, hey, this here should be stroke of a pen. This guy, he's got it, right? He came in, I'm still working on my qual. He came and he got called. Me and him talking, he's like, yeah, we're going to work on this chief for the troop together, and then, well, commander of troops together, and then he, in three weeks, he was called and I'm like, hey, what happened? He passed me out, right? But he got the experience, so he came, he led, he took over collateral, started doing stuff, doing a job, going on Navy Weeks, doing things with you. Soon as he got there, he's like, hey, I'm picking orders because I might have to leave here. I call detail, I'm like, hey, no way. This guy rocks, he's doing a job, he's doing everything he need to do here. Why would he have to leave? It's like, well, the only billet available is a BMC billet, and he's not a BMC, so he could compete for the BMC billet. I'm like, he's here already. We don't want the BMC because he tried to test it. The BMC wasn't a guardsman. Then on top of that, it's a mail purse man that says, my CEO has to screen all E7 and senior people anyway. It's like, well, whether your CEO got to screen them or not, Sim overrules all of that now. I'm like, well, and shout out to the detailer. I don't think he meant any harm with any of this. Then it's like, this should be much easier than what it is. Can I ARA this seller into this billet, come to find out somebody picked the BMC billet, so the BMC billet then got filled by that person because my ADC didn't win because he wasn't a BMC. So we were dealing with this for a little bit. I came and griped about it on a podcast a couple of times. I wound up talking to the branch head, and the branch head was like one of the branches. He's like, hey, just do an ETP. And I'm like, I talked to the detailer about this a long time ago, and the detailer told me I couldn't do ETP. He was like, no, just do an ETP. So I know that's kind of layered. My last thought is that that's how ceremonial guard billets are, period, right? So I think we would be doing an ETP every time we fall into that scenario. I would think it would just be a way to just change that. And I know I got a smaller command, and that's why I said it was selfish.

Speaker 2:
[62:10] It's, so, is your billet fact G? I haven't looked at it. Fact G. So, quite frankly, if you had done an ETP alligate because it's a fact G, we would have probably approved it to the BMC billet. Because we got it, the detailers are trying to force you into the rate specific. But on fact G, they're, how do I say this? If it was up to me, I'd kill all the fact G billets. I'd make them all rate of billets, right? I'd make it, it would be a BMC billet, period, not a fact G billet. But the problem with that is when you do that, because most of your RDCs, most of your recruiters, a lot of your special programs, they're fact G. Why? Because we want to send the best and the brightest and the superstar to that billet more than we care about the rate. However, we have to give all those billets a rate and a pay grade so that you get promotion opportunity. There was a BMC promoted because of that billet. So to help the detailers out, that's what they're looking at with Billbakes Advancement, is trying to make sure that the BMC that got promoted for that fact G billet gets into that billet. But a fact G billet, if it has submitted the ETP and being in ceremony or guard, without knowing all the details, I would, based on seeing all the ETPs, because every single one of them comes to my desk and goes up to CMP for CEM, for CA2P, they land with me. But for those, because I use White House. It's another good example. The other billets are wonky, like it's about because it takes so long to screen. DevGruz, another one, takes so long to screen. We have these places in the Navy where it takes a while to screen and we've been making exceptions to those, especially when they're FAC-2 billets, because we understand the process. I do believe that in the future, as the entire Navy shifts over to Bill of Base Advancement, you will have less and less of these cases because your ADC will be coming to your ADC or your BMC FAC-G billet as the FROC chief because that's about when you're going to be rotating about the time you're advancing. We mapped out, if you do a 30-year career with Bill of Base Advancements from E-489, and one of the admirals uses the term fast lane, slow lane, middle lane, if you're willing to, every time you're else will advance to move to that billet, regardless of what it is and where it is, in that next higher pay grade, you could advance to the Navy and only do two tours in the same pay grade in 30 years. One of those is going to be as a Master Chief. Chances are, your other one's probably going to be as a E-6 or a First Class War Chief because you've got to wait on the screenboard to decide whether you're going to move on that. But if you're willing to move and take what's available, as soon as you're eligible, you're going to move fast to the Navy. Now, it's okay if you decide to get in the middle lane and you just take the normal course. Then there's going to be people getting slowly and they're going to wait 30 months before they make a decision. That's okay too, but there's some risk. Because you wait 30 months, you apply on that last cycle, and then you don't get selected for anything, and now you're going back up in front of the board. For you guys here that's Master Chiefs, I'm just, you don't have to answer, but I'm going to ask you, if you're sitting on that might be now board and somebody who was screened for 30 months and didn't pick a Master Chief build to go to, what's your thoughts on re-screening them? Exactly. You don't have to answer. Right? And so, so I, you know, so yeah, I met that guy. He was awesome.

Speaker 1:
[66:11] Yeah, he's great. And so I guess, you know, my, the kind of pinpoint to my question is, that all means that ceremonial guard will still be able to recruit like former guardsmen, right? Because that would be the goal is to still, is still find this guy that was a guardsman before, bring them back so they could lead and kind of do it again. But now that brings me to the first listener submitted question. It's a longer one, but I thought it was a good one and it's kind of connected to this. It says, I'm currently in my first tour of a two tour program. With SEM effectively killing FACG billiates, how are we supposed to stay in the program? So he says, they want me to apply for billiates within my rate, but rates attached to CCS billiates appear to have been randomly assigned and there is no consistency. For further context, my detailer just informed me after I asked repeatedly, that the current policy is that any CCS billiate I would like to apply for, that's not my rate, has to have already been advertised and no one selected for it. With that billiate being an advancement opportunity for a SIM candidate, there's not a good chance of that. If I don't get any CCS billiates after my three looks, I'm back to my rating detailer as needs of the Navy. If we are selecting SIM candidates as an avenue for advancement instead of keeping people in the program, we are not going to have the best people for the job. This is also a challenge at the school at Dioami as the school at Dioami is only twice a year, and it's joint with the Navy assigned only a certain number of spots. I'm having trouble keeping the question concise, so if you need clarification, please let me know.

Speaker 2:
[67:52] I'm very aware of the CCS issue. It's one of those that it is a two-tour requirement. A lot of people come over, cross-fright, frankly. If you're having trouble promoting in your parent rate, CCS has a very high promotion rate, because senior chief, right? And so we see a lot of chiefs come over. And some of them, don't get me wrong, I think the majority of them do it because they really want, they enjoy that work and they really want to make a difference. But it is a very high promotion rate, because senior chief. And that's one of those ones where every ETP that's went to the CMP for CCS, he has approved because we are aware that it's a two year program, that there's other things in play there. And so, you know, that goes back to that communication, getting down to the right people and everybody knowing. But, yeah, I'll tell you another billet, just three MCs. There's three MC billets that have this weird rate of sign. And I won't pick on any rates, but I want to tell you in 34 years, I've never seen one of those as a three MC. But they got to sign three MC billets so that they'd have more mastery quotas because when you look at their rating, they didn't have enough billets to have that good pyramid. So a lot of those facts, G billets, three MC being one of them, allow Denlo promotion opportunity, knowing that that rate is never going to be a three MC. So when we see an ETP for a three MC, CMP has been approving every one of those as well. So those two right off the gate, we got to take a look at the curve. I got some ideas on the CCS one. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to get ahead of leadership, but we have had me and some of the senior enlisted leaders have had quite a few conversations. But yeah, unfortunately, that's one of those ones that is going to take some ETPs to get that one through for now until we figure out exactly how to kind of build a... So I'll go... So Ceremonial Guard, I'll use you guys. You go into some of these niche small commands and we almost got to build a rating pyramid out of your factory billets, if that makes sense. So like, we got to get the right number of V5s, right number of V6s, right number of V7s, right number of V8s, so that when a sailor comes there and they get screened, there's an opportunity for them to stay there. And when you get into these second tours, right, as a CCS, they're not going to stay at that same command, but if they're at the beginning of their second tour, and we need that second tour out of them, that's where the ETP is going to come in. Again, I've seen quite a few exceptions of policies for CCS. So for a detailer to say, that's not a way, I've been seeing them. And they've been approved for the ones I've seen.

Speaker 1:
[71:04] Yeah, and that's what a few of my detailer questioners earlier that you already answered anyway. Another one, this is another longer one. Some of these ain't as lengthy, but this one says, I think there's a legitimate concern with command ranking only carrying 10% weight in the DGM. What we're seeing is applicants who were ranked number one by the command for billets, they also ranked number one as their application. Rank preference are still losing out to competitors who rank that same billet lower, third or fourth, or score higher overall due to other factors. The primary driver appears to be pay grade merit worth 25% of the scoring element, section 2C. Applicants already in the pay grade receive full credit and in many cases are being selected over screened applicants who are not yet officially in the pay grade, even when those screen applicants are the command's top choice and have that billet as their number one preference. This effectively gives greater selection advantage to applicants who may not be the command's top pick for that billet and who may have ranked it lower in their preferences solely based on pay grade status. This creates a situation where pay grade holds more practical influence than both command endorsement and applicant preference alignment, which seems misaligned with the intent of selecting the best fit seller. Additionally, I like clarity on whether the scoring elements are automatically generated once the seller is screened and whether there is any visibility into those scores. A transparent scoring calculator will allow applicants to better understand their competitiveness and make more informed decisions in the marketplace.

Speaker 2:
[72:41] Sales scoring criteria, I'm assuming it's what they're talking about. So a couple of things. For the E-5s and E-6s now, your FMS, your final multiple score, is 50%. So how well you do on the exam in your E-Val is 50% of your sales scoring criteria. That's gonna put your top sailors, they're gonna have a leg up. Now, the flip side, if somebody already in the pay grade, or I'll use, I'll pick on the two, my two mass chiefs there, you know, you've been a mass chief, you're wearing it, you're doing the work and you go apply for another mass chief billet, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna have a leg up. It wouldn't be fair to say the screen guy beat you out. And so I have seen some complaints about that because there will be a somebody who already wearing a mass chief will apply for the billet that somebody screened to be a mass chief applies for. Nine times out of ten, the person already wearing a mass chief is gonna get the billet. It's gonna be no different for scene chief, it's gonna be no different than, than for the chiefs, right? Because we don't want to punish somebody. I don't want to say punish, but we don't, we don't want to just to take away from somebody that's already wearing it just so that the screen person gets their top priority even on the command side. The funny thing about the command ranking is only about 20 percent of commands are even going in there and putting in comments. So there, we went in and we pulled the thread on this. There is very little weight to the command stuff because nobody's using it. They say that, but we don't have very, we have very little evidence of the commands going in there and doing anything. And so that's, I tell people all the time, you want to get the person you want, go in and use the command comments because it carries some weight point-wise. And I don't remember because we just recently changed the scoring criteria. But it's like 15 percent. But if nobody's using it, nobody's getting that 15 percent. So you use it, you're getting the 15 percent, your command, right? And so the sales score criteria is another one of those things that we keep playing with a little bit. FMS was another one that we played with. I think FMS, if it was up to me, we'd get up to about 70 percent because that way you're making sure that the sailor who has the highest score and the best evals have the highest chance of promoting and getting the position. So I want to lean more toward that. Obviously, I'm not the final decision maker on that, but that's just my personal opinion. I'm happy with 50 percent, but I think a little more would be better. I'm 100 percent in support of somebody who's already wearing it, having extra points. I'm also in, you know, for cumulative collective seatime there. If you're coming off sea duty and you're applying for that Masjid build on shore, you should be beat out. The Masjid food's on shore duty trying to go to a Masjid, to go right back to shore duty. So, you know, there's extra points in there for that, for the sea. But I will tell you that Millington, Avro Hames, Burst Ford, his team are working to come up with a way. And my understanding is it's already going out. But, you know, like I go back and use that example of 150 applications to one billet, they're coming up with a way that's, that looking at, looking at the sailor, looking at their NECs, their pay grade, their EVALs, their advancement exam, looking at everything, personal preferences, and going to send out, you know, they were, their goal is if sailors get some kind of notification. Ideally, it would be down to the text, but we can't, you know, we don't have everybody's cell phone number. So we're working through the details, but they will get something that says, these are your top 10 choices from us. This is where you would best from, based on what you've told us and what's available, these are the 10 billets we think you had the best chance of getting selected for. And when we talk to sailors about that, they like that idea because a lot of them is not sure. And if they had a better idea of getting what they wanted, or, you know, here's the 10 choices you got a better chance of getting, the 10 billets you got a better chance of getting, they like that idea. We'll see how it goes. I think that is in the very near future, that that will be out and that will help some of that. But yeah, the whole point of if you're already wearing it, it's going to be hard to, you know, and you're a screen guy, but your NEC is going to come in to count. You're, if you're coming off C duty. And then, you know, a lot of people don't like, we found one, personal preferences. So you go in there and you set your preferences in M&A, and I was dealing with a screen master chief who, who didn't get any of his billets, but he was applying for San Diego, even though his preference was Japan. And because his personal preference was Japan, he wasn't getting any of those points toward his applications to San Diego. So some of that is understand that M&A, I think M&A is hard to use myself. I haven't used it, but I've watched people and talked to people. But the other thing is the sellers have got to go in there and make sure they're setting even when they set their personal preferences because you get some points for that. If you set everything in Oceania and you're applying for all the more billets, people that have got the more of their personal preference is going to beat you out on those billets. So that's some of the things you got to look forward to.

Speaker 1:
[78:37] So another one from a listener said, for FROC CPOs, I thought this was interesting. I'm sure there's an explanation for this. It says, does the minimum TIR of E7 and E8, 36 months include them? Are they eligible for E8 at their 36 months if they haven't been paid, or it took the whole 30 months to get a line? Could they be eligible for E8 without getting paid for E7?

Speaker 2:
[79:05] No. Their 36-month timing rate don't start until the day they get paid.

Speaker 1:
[79:11] So, and that's coupled with, like, some people talking about it. I got to find it. Oh, right here. It says, Sim, as I understand, as of now, your TIR for E9 eligibility does not start until you're paid for E8. With the long delays, is there any consideration for fracking and starting the TIR sooner? It says, I apply and was selected for orders in my first window after being screened about 11 months ago. Due to required schools, funding, etc., I will not be paid until this November. Expected no later date for next command. So people in my shoes will basically have to wait close to five years to even be eligible for the next rank. Holding pay until you're in the appropriate billet makes sense. The year plus pause and limbo does not. Then somebody responded, they said, this also delays your high three at the screen rank, forcing you to have to potentially go beyond intended TIS. This really hits hard for the sevens that screened on the back end of their careers. I could wait on the pay, but having to wait on TIR as a FROC chief sucks.

Speaker 2:
[80:22] Yeah, there's no plan to change that because I will tell you, the majority of people are not going to be in that case. Now, they only advertise, so the way the M&A cycles are, they advertise all the rollers plus 30 percent of the billings. So, you know, my guess is, maybe, you know, granted they got a job in October, they're probably one of those raids or one of those billings that requires a long training track to get to. But I just had this case, just had this case. Person got orders, got frothed to Senior Chief, going to a pre-com. They were in San Diego. Everything was good. Pre-com was in Pascagoula. When they got time to go to Pascagoula, they no longer could go. They're now in due. So now I got this problem where this person's frothed. Now they want to do an exception of policy to get them paid. I'm not going to figure out how to endorse that. You needed to get to that pre-com in Pascagoula. All those things, I always say, I've done a lot of recruiting. The recruit man is this thick. Why? Because somebody's tried. All policies are written because we've all tried. As soon as you find those loopholes, you create things. Again, on the frocking piece and the time and rate, we have data where people, I mean, obfuscate for orders. There's like 6,000 people a year that take orders and don't obfuscate and actually execute the orders prior to BBA and SIEM. Really trying to get that down to where you have to obfuscate, you're not going to get the benefits of the promotion until you're actually fulfilling the work. And in some cases, it may be a little longer. There's not a whole lot we can do about that, to be quite honest with you. Not looking to change it, because as soon as you, I can't just change it for a couple rates, you got to change it for everybody. And if you change that for everybody, where the timing rate starts, and they wait 30 months doing the chief's work, and they already got 30 months timing credit for senior chief, and they actually only go for six months as a senior chief in a billet, now what, is that fair to the guy or gal who went immediately to the senior chief billet and got their timing rate started? So part of that is to encourage you to go quick. And unfortunately, there's gonna be times in the cycle where you may only have suit duty to choose from. Right now, it's about a 55-45 split. So about 45% of the billets that are being advertised are short duty. When I look at it across all ratings, some ratings, it's less than that. Some ratings, it's more. I'm surprised at one of the most seagoing rates in the Navy, all their mass chief billets are short duty. You make the best chief, you're golden, you ain't ever going back to sea. I was shocked to learn that. I learned it in the shot. So, I say all that just to make, you know, a guy, I mean, I understand where they're coming from, but at the same time, the reason we did the whole fracking thing, not paying you, is because so many people fell out prior to getting there and actually performing the duties of the billet that they were promoted to go do. And so that's where all this comes from.

Speaker 1:
[84:10] Yeah, and I'm assuming it's a scenario where somebody is holding out on picking a billet and they're holding up somebody else from promoting into that billet, right? I know you spoke to like, I know you already spoke to when Chief Sawyer brought it up, like y'all already looking in the ways to fix that problem too. So the Dool Mill thing, you talked about it. We talked about it. Here's one of the questions. Dool Mill was never one. This is the way, I'm reading these as people wrote them, right? So Dool Mill was never once brought up in discussions when establishing this program. When senior leadership has to decide between advancing their career and their families, we lose CPOs and SCPOs who are making an impact on the deck plates. Seeing short rotations for Dool Military were established to ensure family care and career advancement. Now, if you want to advance, you may hinder your spouse's career. Because if you have children, unless you both go back to see, one will be on shore. How will this keep senior enlisted with experience in the Navy ready for wartime?

Speaker 2:
[85:18] So I will be honest, I haven't seen many cases where mill to mill was impacted. They may, I'm not saying that they didn't happen, but very few has been brought to our attention. The one or two that was brought to my attention, it was ironic that the individual, everything that the detailer offered the spouse, they didn't want. They only wanted a certain billet, or they didn't want to do anything at all, which was unfortunate, because it just makes it harder on the other mil-to-mils who were trying to do everything they possibly can to do what the Navy asked of them. This question comes up a lot. So we're not fortunate. Again, when I go back to billets advertised, if both people are screened, and there's a few, I forgot what the number is off the top of my head, but there is several, every cycle that's mill to mill, screened at the same time, and one of them will have to choose shore duty, and one of them will have to choose sea duty, just like they always have, right? Depending on who that is, they choose. So the problem or the case could be, again, this is what they got to look at. There may not be a shore and a sea billet for two nines in Norfolk, but there might be a sea and shore billet in L'Amour for two nines. So, you know, do we want to move to L'Amour? I mean, this is the reality, right? You were promoted to, the reason you were promoted because there was those gapped billets that were coming up in your rating. And so you were screened to fill those. And so that's the, most of the cases I've seen, they're like, well, there's no billets right here. Yeah, there's not, but there is two billets that you could both go to and see one shore in this other location. Well, we don't want to do that. So that's the downside. I got it. You know, in Millington's thing is, if one goes, they will get the other one there within a year, I think is how we, is kind of what we've laid out. Unfortunately, if they choose to go somewhere where there isn't a billet for both of them, that could mean one of them is delayed. That's unfortunate. But again, it goes back to, if there's two billets in a location, that both of you could, one could go see, one could go shore, you may have to choose to pack up and move in order to make sure that both of you get promoted.

Speaker 1:
[87:59] Yeah. And then the last, it's a couple more, but I think the last one that speaks to a bunch of this is somebody's asking about, will it ever be a time, right? Where an E6, let me just read it, the expansion of BBA, why are screen E7s with PCS orders to a first class billet not allowed to re-enter the negotiating window, even if only for three to five additional looks, to attempt to obtain E7 orders? This not only affects high three, but TIR, also it delays their clothing allowance. This could potentially cause the screen sellers to be in a first class billet for up to 30 months. So I think they bringing up my ADC scenario, right? Just got to a command. Now, got to pick orders, Vice, how come he didn't stay behind?

Speaker 2:
[88:48] Well, yeah. So this has come up a few times, actually. You can, when the chief results come out, if you had already got other orders, we had a case where a service member had, they picked these six orders in June. Results come out in July, early August, whatever it was. They went through the season. They didn't go back in the marketplace initially because they didn't think they could. And I don't know if that was because somebody totally couldn't or whatever. But luckily for them, somebody at their command knew me personally and e-mailed me and said, hey, why is this this way? The reality is they can go in there and play until they execute those orders. We don't want them to execute the first class orders. We want them to go back in the marketplace and play for chief. But a lot of them are being told they can't. I've reconfirmed with the detailing team down there, they can go back and play. If somebody runs into the case where they're not allowed to go back in the marketplace as a froth chief and they got orders to an E6, I take emails all the time. I'm the only Charles.R. Harmon in the global. I want them to email me because I want to fix that problem. That doesn't help the Navy to put a froth chief in an E6 bill. As a matter of fact, it takes away an E6 promotion because I need that E6 bill to be available for some new E-screened E5 to go pick orders to go to. I believe there is a misnomer or there's people that don't know the policy or maybe there's people that is enforcing something they shouldn't be forcing some of these froth chiefs to go fulfill. Now, if you made it in, you know, you were executing six orders right at the season and you went immediately. There's not a whole lot I could do about that, right? You could, you had to go do that. But we're also trying to track those down and keep them to a 12 month minimum. So if they executed in October, November, right after season into those first class orders, the goal is to get them out of there within a year, which sucks for the command, which sucks for the member. But those are, that ball was already in play. And so that, and we don't know what the chiefs results are going to be. So we don't want to stop cutting E6 orders, waiting for the results to come out. And so that makes it, it's going to be hard. There's always going to be some that roll right into a E6 billet as a FROC chief. Unfortunately, you know, right after season, but ideally by the ones, you know, if you're December later, you're getting back in there. At a minimum, you're calling a detailer and seeing what you can take as a chief. Yeah. You know, there may be some, there might be some award billets out there that needs a chief in them that we, that's been advertised and nobody's taken. And there might be an opportunity to put them in it. And that's, you know, that's, that's one thing I don't think we'll ever be able to fix because again, we don't want to shut off the E6 is going to E6 billets waiting for chief results because we won't know whether they made it or not. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[92:23] And you, you answered it. You answered this already, like in another answer. This question is the apple question. You kind of already answered it a little bit. But the question is this. I just said my last question was my last one. This is legit. It says, how many ETPs for early promotion actually get approved? Not those in current travel zone, right? So it says with the amount of sellers that are being upheld. I'm dealing with that now. My BMC who got the bill that we wanted the ADC to get. He got upheld, right? So it says, well, BMC now, but FROC. It says with the amount of sellers that are being upheld to support their current commands mission, triads are put in a bad spot by telling someone they will be postponing their pay because of the oil manning levels and ships being deployed.

Speaker 2:
[93:17] Yep. Every uphold ETP that has come forward has been approved.

Speaker 1:
[93:22] Nice. Nice.

Speaker 2:
[93:26] Cause that's no fault of the sale.

Speaker 1:
[93:28] Yeah. Nice. Nice.

Speaker 2:
[93:29] We're not going to penalize the sale. I think the problem is the commands are not submitting them. They're upholding them, but they're not submitting the ETP. Matter of fact, I just pushed one through the pile earlier this week for a senior chief.

Speaker 1:
[93:46] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[93:47] Senior chief who's being upheld until January 2027 before he goes to his Master Chief Pillar. He's going to become a Master Chief and start getting paid.

Speaker 1:
[93:58] Yeah. That's a game changer right there.

Speaker 2:
[94:00] Because it's no fault of his that they're upholding him essentially almost a year. Again, I haven't seen a single uphold be denied. If it has been, I would encourage people to resubmit it because I wasn't tracking it. Initially, and I'll be honest, when SIEM and BBA first started out, it's really all built-based advancements. Essentially, the goal is to get away from calling it SIEM. It's all built-based advancements. It's all listed marketplace. They're all listed, it's going to play in the marketplace, and everybody's going to be built-based advancement. But when we first started, there was a lot of no's to the ETPs because we had to break the cycle of continuing just to do the norm. If we approved every ETP, then everybody would have just submitted an ETP and actually not tried to get in the system and start to play in the marketplace and actually negotiate for builds. So there's a lot of no's initially. ETPs for Master Chiefs, I see very few now. Very few for folks. Like I said, the upholds, I've seen them across all three pay grades and CMP has approved every single uphold ETP that's went across this desk. And then I see very few ETPs for Senior Chiefs now. Still seeing quite a few for Chiefs as we expect for the first year, really 18 months. But I use that as we talk about some data points. The fact that I'm not seeing a lot of Master Chief ETPs tells me that we've pretty much flattened out the process. Right? And as I've seen it slowing down into Senior Chiefs, I think your ETPs that we'll see in the future are truly an exception to policy, and will probably be reviewed, looked at pretty favorably. Initially, a lot of the ETPs was just people didn't want to break the old way, and they were just asking for the world rather than actually try to navigate the new process. And so I think two years from now, the ETPs that we see for the sevenths to nines will be so limited that it would be hard to say no to because they will be a no kidding ETP.

Speaker 1:
[96:19] Yeah, so my personal round up, and I'm sure Damon got some thoughts too, but my personal round up is education, perfect translation of information at all levels, right? Triad level, sailor level, leadership level, detailer level, all that, especially what your, when we talk about chiefs and senior chiefs that don't get ETPs, that's super duper education. Kind of disparity right there. And it happens too, right? It's a real thing that actually happens. So they, you know, things like this, like you coming on something like this, having these kinds of conversations, help Chief Sawyer doing what he does helps in those situations. And it's just about tapping in. That was the last listener question I had and my last like general question I had period for you, Captain Harmon, but Damon might still have some, so I don't want to kind of shortchange that.

Speaker 4:
[97:17] No, no, I'm good, man. I most definitely appreciate both of you coming on, man. Joey, of course, we love seeing you out there, man. But sir, hey, it's so many questions out there that you didn't answer today about, you know, coming on, tapping in with us, that people going to look forward to seeing, because back to the ETP and things like that, people really is not reading Avadman's or they're not tapped in, or people don't really understand the process. So I think you coming on really going to help that. And like, if they were all leadership, we need to tap in because sailors need that too.

Speaker 1:
[97:57] Yeah. And it's still going to be some people that's, it's going to be some people that was arguing with you while listening to the episode, right? Like it's some people that's blowing the lid right now, right? That's like, Damo, how could we have you push back on this?

Speaker 3:
[98:09] How could we have you push back on that?

Speaker 1:
[98:11] But and then for the listeners who wrote lengthy, like listeners wrote like seven page questions, right? Like whole storybook questions. Love y'all. Like, you know, I'm sorry for real. I love them. I'm like really love them. But I'm sorry that we couldn't get to them all. But what I hope that we did was get to trends, right? It was and we we kind of did a percentage thing and I sent it to the team, Captain Harmon, so I know they had it. And like TIR, like pay TIR, delayed advancement was the big question. Marketplace fairness and scoring was a big question. Orders, timing, and delays, big question, mil-to-mil, that took like, and we kind of, we got percentages, right? So 15% of the people that submitted questions had to do a mil-to-mil. The information gap in training took about like 10%. I think if anything, you know, I learned in this conversation, the most like I learned really was about that information gap. And in the training, and like we have to figure out, it's kind of like with Seller 360, when they were like, hey, commands on it? And then it's like, hey, how good is Seller 360, right? It's as good as how your command makes it. Like, oh, Seller 360 sucks, the Navy Seller 360 program sucks. No, your commands, Seller 360 program sucks because they gave it to commands now, right? But thanks, we appreciate you. Thanks for coming in, sitting with us, and just having a real conversation and getting after some stuff. These things don't get to happen that much. So we appreciate you, Captain Harmon.

Speaker 2:
[99:50] No, man, I appreciate you got to have me on. Any opportunity I get to get stuff to the deck plates, I will take that opportunity all day, every day. They make a lot of fun of me at work because I'm always TDY, because I'm always trying to get out to as many locations as possible. Because I believe, I'm an old school man, face to face. If I can talk to a sailor face to face, and they can hear it from my level, and hopefully that calms some of their fears. I'll tell you, after every all hands, the sailor comes up and say, hey sir, I did not know that I could apply for short duty bill and I just got to short duty because my command told me I could only get advanced if I go back to sea. That's disappointing. But I hear that quite frankly, and as soon as I told this sailor who was making plans to separate, that they could start applying for short duty jobs in the next hour pay grade, they're like, if I get a job, I'm standing in the Navy. So I hope that I saved that sailor, right? And I go back to, we ask a lot of triads, we ask a lot of commands, and so I want to do everything that we can to support them. But as you guys are senior leaders out there, I say this to the senior leaders here in DC all the time, you know, my biggest concern is making sure that we promote enough sailors through the command advance to position, to fill some of those key positions at these commands, because we're not going to have the sailor in an inventory to promote to them. Even if we were still doing a Navy wide advancement exam, we would have much greater gaps at the E5 and E6 levels in two years than we have ever had because we had all those apprentices that didn't come in the Navy for two years. And so, you know, bill of base advancement is going to be key to our success as far as fleet readiness and making sure that we got the right sailor in the right place. And it's not going to work for every sailor. It's not going to work for every situation. There's going to be some hard decisions you have to make sometimes. You know, and one of the other things which ironically you didn't bring up, but I hear a lot of as well, it's going to slow down advancements. Well, I'll tell you, looking at the eight and nine quotas, we're above the historical average. And that was another benchmark for me is like, did we reduce the amount of eights and nines that we're going to select? And we are above the 20-year average. And I'll keep watching that very closely because, you know, if I start seeing those quotas go down, then that'll raise some concerns. So, you know, when somebody says you're slowing down advancements, that's just not so. We're actually seeing a higher rate of people screened. Same thing with retirements. I'm not seeing a big jump in retirements. Retirements are less for the Massachusetts than they were in the past 10 years. So there's some key indicators there that tells us or, you know, makes us think that this is working. And if I can fill all, you know, fill the supervisory gaps, see, I will say, there you can see the gaps out there. And the more I've gotten better across the supervisory pay grade, because I was looking at that too. But it's still got some ways to go. But we're seeing some positive impacts and effects from this. So again, gents, I really appreciate you giving me the time. Always willing to talk. I think the lieutenant told you, you know, I've done a lot of recruiting. So my boss tells me I can talk to anybody about anything that means nothing at any time. So I'm very good at that. But no, I enjoy the opportunity to touch base with you. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1:
[103:39] Yeah. Before you go, you made me think of one more question. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2:
[103:44] Yeah. I was not worried, man. I'm on your down. You tell me when you want to stop.

Speaker 1:
[103:48] This is the last one legit, right? But you made me think of something because I'm thinking about you and Fleet Walker. I'm thinking about y'all seeing like big numbers, right? Y'all getting the end result, these big picture numbers. This is that, this is how it looked, laid out flat, where a lot of the questions are coming from people with like anecdotal information. Like, I know this person right here that's dealing with this. Now, is it ever an idea for you guys to publish the numbers that you see? Is it already happening and I just don't know about it? But is it ever an idea for other people to see, oh, this is what SEM and BBA looks like on a higher scale. It is a success, right?

Speaker 2:
[104:31] I've seen no issue with publishing them. I brief them all the time. When I brief it in all hands, I have a slide that shows the percentages of Chiefs, Senior Chiefs, and Master Chiefs who are taking orders just in the first year. That's why I got to memorize. I've briefed it so many times. I know what the numbers are. We're always looking at them. But we brief it from an all hands call, all the way to C&O, we brief those numbers. And so, there is no issue. And we probably don't post them. And that's probably a great idea, is to get it out there so they can see, especially with the E6s rolling in, or the E-Files who took the RKE this past March. When they start selecting orders here in June, July, probably August cycle, I think it's August, it's the first cycle they're eligible to start playing in the marketplace. It will be something I'm tracking very closely, because I want to, you know, I've kind of, you know, you go back to it's taking a long time to roll it out. Well, we wanted to create opportunity by pulling people up. And so, you know, the Chiefs and the E6s went pretty quick. But the E-Files will be a little bit longer before they roll in, because I need to get the E6s in there, or the E-Files are going up for E6, I need to get them in there, get them in billets, so I can create some more opportunity for the E4s coming up. And, but, you know, again, I want commands to take advantage of the command advanced to position as much as possible. The commands that are doing it, they're night and day from the commands that are not, quite frankly, on their manning numbers. And so I was, I wasn't tracking that until somebody pointed out to me. So that was a very, again, another data point. So I think we can, we can put a lot of numbers out there and probably should. So that's a good idea. And the lieutenant's written this down. So I'll take that for action.

Speaker 1:
[106:28] Thanks, Lieutenant. Yeah, like I said, Kevin, thanks. We appreciate you. Have a good night. Thank you.

Speaker 5:
[106:36] I'm like, they can't make this up, man.

Speaker 4:
[106:38] Like I'm talking about, we done went through a whole day, hey world, we done went through a whole episode, episode over, we saying our goodbyes and Aaron and Pop did that.

Speaker 5:
[106:52] Hey, write down your passwords, people.

Speaker 1:
[106:54] Aaron missed the entire My Navy. Hey, Aaron, can you sit up a little bit? Can you?

Speaker 5:
[106:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[106:59] Aaron missed the entire My Navy HR Sembba conversation, man.

Speaker 5:
[107:04] Oh, great.

Speaker 1:
[107:07] Legendary, legendary. Hey, so not only was Captain Harmon with us though, but Joey Sawyer is with us, man. What's up, bro?

Speaker 3:
[107:15] Hey, what's going on, man? Just happy to be here, bro.

Speaker 1:
[107:19] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[107:19] Glad somebody is, man.

Speaker 1:
[107:21] Yeah. So this, man, it's been, we're going to talk for a little bit. Not too long, we're just going to hang out for a little bit. But this been, it was kind of spur of the moment because we hit you up to join us for this conversation just because you're a career counselor. We needed that kind of voice in a room or ear in a room. But before, even without all that like, man, I think Aaron, a couple of weeks ago, he brought you up a clip of yours and he mentioned it. The next week, he mentioned it again, a different one and then I mentioned one. So then I'm like, we banned just, and it's your Instagram moniker, Fat Chief, we banned it. I'm like, yo, we ain't talk about Fat Chief till we get him on here, man. It's been a spur of the moment to just get you up on here, man. I have a quick chat with you and just get some of why you do what you do and all those things. Before we go there though, I want to congratulate the reservists that were selected for chief. Right? And after that, right, we got to talk this DGM 007. Right? We got to talk this DGM 007 real quick. And then a couple Joey things. Like for the listeners who want like the Joey episode. Right? We talked about this. We like you got to open invite. You know, you could come back. We could have full kind of read out. But this DGM 007 is my first question, right? Because things get weird nowadays. This thing is real, right? It's real. All right. So this thing is real. So it says alignment of enlistment career paths to prioritize occupation-focused standards. Purpose to realign enlisted career paths with the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy. Priority of technical mastery at every level by codifying clear occupation-focused standards, right? Background over time enlisted career paths, a key tool for enlisted selection boards, have incorporated language not directly tied to enlisted occupational standards. This includes references to the MOVSM, Participation in First Class Petty Officer Association, Chief Mass Involvement, MWR, and other Command Collateral Duties. While viability activities do not directly contribute to a seller's technical mastery of their specific rate. So pretty much, Bupers 31 is directed to remove all verbage that does not directly support and enlisted ratings occupational standards from the ECPs. These changes will be reflected in the next update and will be implemented for the fiscal year 2028 enlisted selection boards. I am confident this revised language will provide a clearer and more effective directive. POC is Fleetwalker and Command Master Chief Rick Strainie from Bupers 31. So that's that.

Speaker 4:
[110:29] Yeah, I got some thoughts. What are they? My first thought is that I do think we do need them. I think we have lost a little bit when it comes to knowledge and rate and all that stuff. I think we have lost a little bit, but I want to really talk about the things that was said and specifically named. I think people are going to see lawyer the shit out of it. That was one of my biggest things. You say MW, you named them. When you name them, I think that that's just what my biggest thought was, Damo, when I first saw when you name those things, man, people are going to see lawyer and look at, well, I ain't got to do this. Hey, you still got to be aware around the sailor. For one, that's one of my things I think about. Then sometimes competition get tough. Those are my quick thoughts, though, but I think naming them was a big deal for me, naming those collateral.

Speaker 5:
[111:33] I don't think anything really changed. I think it's going to be, they said the ECPs, right? So I think it's just going to say that this person has these qualifications, like anchor on the exact in-rate stuff. I think everything that they listed is still going to be referenced in the precepts and the convening order. So I think the ECP is only going to be straight, just technical, and the convening order ECP is going to still say, hey, use that to establish best. When you talk about best fully qualified, I think the best, those things still matter. You got to be able to lead your peers. I think the ECP is only going to list just this exact rate stuff. Nothing with the leadership and command involvement and benchmark collateral.

Speaker 1:
[112:25] I mean, that's just your thought, right?

Speaker 3:
[112:27] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[112:28] I think that's what it is.

Speaker 3:
[112:30] So a couple people reached out to me after posting my video, and they said in their occupational standards, I think IT was one of them, that they're already writing the occupational standard to get rid a lot of that language surrounding collaterals. So I'm guessing this has probably been in the works for a little while. Well, I know we've talked about it openly, but there's been nothing pen to paper until now.

Speaker 1:
[112:57] Yeah, I mean, last Mekron was heavy on that, right? So I think putting pen to paper to something that we've been heavy on for a while is a good thing, right? I'm also along the line of, these things still got to get done.

Speaker 3:
[113:19] And that's the thing. So people read this and they're like, no more collateral duties. There's some collateral duties that are still required for the command of function. And I kind of pointed that out as well.

Speaker 4:
[113:31] Let's get all of them.

Speaker 3:
[113:34] Maybe not all of them, but yes, a lot of them, for sure.

Speaker 1:
[113:39] Yeah, like, you know, I could see, like, MOVSM., man, like, shout out to everybody that got it, right? It's still some holdover sellers that are super motivated, still listening at this point. You know, some of the triads and some of the admirals probably clicked off, right? But probably not. But it's still some holdover sellers that are super motivated about the MOVSM. Whoever went and got it, congrats. But it's strictly for things you do outside of the command and, like, who you are as a person and things like that, right? That's MOVSM. We talk in first class by the Office of Association Chief of MOVSMWR. And then it says, and other command collateral duties, right? So that there is capping off a bunch of things that's not described or disclosed. I got questions about that, right? But my only other thing is, like, based on, and I don't want people to be too specific, right? But for some of these things that's listed, like the first class MOVSMAS, our chiefs MOVSMAS, the MWIR rep committees, from y'all's experience in the last, like, 10 years, how robust is the participant? Like, how robust are these committees and commands that y'all have been at recently anyway?

Speaker 4:
[114:58] For mine, I mean, it's okay.

Speaker 1:
[115:01] Maybe I'm using the...

Speaker 4:
[115:01] No, I mean, it's okay. It ain't like, you know, over and beyond, but I do think you have your same way, like everywhere, you got your select view, you know what I'm saying? You got a first class, and that's probably 30, you probably going to get by 10 of them killing it, you know, or something like that.

Speaker 1:
[115:22] I'm doing good.

Speaker 4:
[115:23] 10 is a good number, you know what I'm saying? No, no, shout out to the first classes.

Speaker 1:
[115:27] This kills the FCPOA, bro. That shit is dead, bro. This kills that, yo.

Speaker 4:
[115:33] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[115:33] You don't think so, Aaron?

Speaker 5:
[115:35] No.

Speaker 1:
[115:35] Okay, why not?

Speaker 5:
[115:39] It's not going away. You still, there are people who are the major, I call them usual suspects, and these associations are top 10, that like Damon's talking about top 10 percent. They're usually still the movers and shakers at the command doing things on a deck plate level or mobilizing different initiatives or getting things done. I know for me, whenever I want to get a pulse of the command, I'll talk to certain cabinet members of an FCPOA, a JEA, even the, yeah, I'll talk to the associations. They have a bead on things. They still got the pulse. They still compel hearts and minds to get things going.

Speaker 4:
[116:23] Before this message though.

Speaker 5:
[116:25] What was that?

Speaker 4:
[116:26] That was before this came out.

Speaker 5:
[116:28] I mean, like, to what you said about the Sea Lawyers' stuff. You can do that. It sounds real good. That shit sounds real nice. It ain't going nowhere. You still have to leave periods, because guess what? They get their names selected on, for advancement to chief. You still gotta motivate the unmotivated or the tired, or it's not going anywhere. Well, you can go ahead and Sea Law if you want to, but it ain't going nowhere.

Speaker 1:
[116:56] Yeah. From most of the conversations we had, I feel like you had a different experience than me, right? So what's your percentage, based off of the last 10 years of your career, what's your percentage of motivated, and this is a question for everybody, but Aaron Moore, what's your percentage of a command period? So the command is 100 percent. What's your percentage of valuable, motivated sellers at the command? And take off the CMC hat where you take ownership and then shit, whatever. Get rid of that, go back a couple of commands before becoming a CMC. If you had to scale out how much of your command was actually motivated, hit hard.

Speaker 5:
[117:36] Can I do it by each command or should I do it just general?

Speaker 1:
[117:40] Whole career.

Speaker 5:
[117:41] 50 percent.

Speaker 1:
[117:45] Okay. What about you, Joey?

Speaker 3:
[117:52] I want to say maybe a little lower, like those 30 percent that are truly motivated, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[117:59] I would say 30, right? I would say around 30. And that's why I say Aaron had a good Navy experience. But I would say most commands I went to, 30 percent of that command was worth their salt.

Speaker 5:
[118:11] Could I just get some reference for what I said, 50, for me? Yeah. So if I go back a couple of commands again, I was at, I was in the car with Vincent, right? And I was there from 09 to 13. And because the out tempo of things we was doing, it engendered a lot of motivation. And then from there, I went to RTC. And it's like, if you're not involved, you don't advance, and just that vibe at that place, it does motivate you.

Speaker 1:
[118:40] Yeah, that's why I say that. That's why I say you had a different, you know.

Speaker 5:
[118:44] But when y'all said 30%, I was like, yeah, that's probably close to the actual fleet.

Speaker 1:
[118:50] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[118:50] Average experiences, real stuff.

Speaker 1:
[118:53] I mean, you put a chief's mess, right? A CPOA right now. I mean, a regional CPOA, how much participation is in a regional CPOA? You know, I mean, we got people that...

Speaker 5:
[119:12] It depends by region, though. I mean, I was like, well, Joey, where are you at right now, bro?

Speaker 3:
[119:15] I'm in San Diego.

Speaker 5:
[119:17] I'd imagine that's pretty motivated because how you pissed off in San Diego.

Speaker 3:
[119:20] Like, it's definitely pretty relaxed, I would say. So definitely no pissed off vibes over here.

Speaker 4:
[119:27] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[119:30] And I was in San Diego in the Vincent. So how you pissed off in a gas lamp, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1:
[119:35] I just think it's a conversation to be had about the people that's like at this point right now was only doing it because it was on the ECP.

Speaker 5:
[119:46] I call those stress stuffers, man.

Speaker 1:
[119:48] Yeah, but some of them were doing the best they could, you know, versus the other group.

Speaker 3:
[119:52] Like, man, I was at a command a couple of years ago where the first class is like the FCPOA, right? And again, no shot to the first class. I could talk about the chiefs, but the FCPOA, it died like around COVID. Like it just died. Like their whole committee or their whole association died. And it was one, it was three people trying to bring it back, right? So, I'm gonna motivate a region of first-classes, like, hey, we need this thing, we need to bring this back, right? And they were the fray of motivated sellers that you've experienced 50% of, right? These three of 118 in a region were the three trying to be like, hey, let's do this, right? I've been in chief, like CPOAs, in the last few years where it's like, yo, where is the energy, right? Where's the, you know, I'm not gonna say motivate, like, where's the energy, right? Like, how can we, like, what can we all do to boost it? And I'll admit, even when I was the president of the mess, I lost energy, right? It wasn't a lot of, it wasn't a lot of reciprocal energy, so I lost energy. So, you know, again, like I said, some of the, for me, some of these things were, man, I got, I got to, man, this, this is the worst. That was because we had Captain Harmon over here. So, like, I think this, I got to take about the season. Like, I got to take about the chief season, right? Like, you know, things be hanging on by the thread, bro. Like, you know, I think people are coming to work nowadays. And it might be a post-COVID deal, but I think people are coming to work, to work, to do, like, check in the box. And I'm not saying everybody, right? There's some great people out there that's doing great things. It's not all encompassing. But I think it's somebody, now again, not everybody, it's somebody that read this shit like, we're done with this. I'm done with the association. What's your thoughts, Joey?

Speaker 1:
[121:56] I did get a lot of comments from people saying, no more bake sales.

Speaker 3:
[122:01] Right.

Speaker 1:
[122:02] But I think you're on point, like, they're going to, you know, why would I need to focus on collaterals? Because it says right here, technical mastery. So I'm just going to go with that. I'm going to come work. I'm going to be the best that I could be within my rating. And that's it.

Speaker 3:
[122:20] Yeah. And like I said, my thing is, my viewpoint is limited. I'm at a small command with a bunch of junior sellers. So I can admit that I don't see, you know, the full picture. But, you know, some of these committees ain't really been hitting for a little bit, you know, anyway, at some places. You know, I don't know MWR. You got a rep committee at your command here?

Speaker 2:
[122:45] You have MWR.

Speaker 3:
[122:46] Is it is it hitting?

Speaker 2:
[122:49] The the the E5s are really how to answer the question.

Speaker 5:
[122:55] What?

Speaker 3:
[122:57] No, no, I love these kind of questions on the pod, because like people, they be at their command. So you got to be like careful to what you answer.

Speaker 2:
[123:03] I'm not. They know they know what I'm about, man. They had to deal with me for the past 18 months. I've seen over this, man. Yeah. It's hidden because the E5s make it happen, not the first classes.

Speaker 3:
[123:14] So the E5s are killing it on your recreation.

Speaker 2:
[123:17] On the NWR, like the Cormanball, they did the heavy lifting on that.

Speaker 3:
[123:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[123:22] And that was a success. Then in the chief that they had, they were the ones that made it happen. They would have fun. Police for real. They really made things. They really make things happen.

Speaker 3:
[123:31] What have they done since then? Like what have they done this year since January?

Speaker 2:
[123:36] A lot of things in the barracks. So like, I forgot how to call them. It's kind of like, are you doing LA? Like not a crew swap. It's like a pseudo barracks swap meet. Every time there's a big game, a sporting event, anything, they always will have, they out there doing burgers, doing potlucks, doing their little game. They always doing something in the barracks.

Speaker 3:
[124:02] Yeah, that's good. What about you, Damon? You got a rec committee at Chica Man? Yeah. Or MWR, it should be called a rec committee, not MWR, but you got one of them at Chica Man?

Speaker 5:
[124:12] Yeah, we got one. They trying, they trying, they trying. Holiday party was a success, but after the January moving forward, man, that's about it, like, they come up with some ideas, man, and some come up and I don't blame it, I blame it all on them, you know, like this aviation shit is real, man.

Speaker 3:
[124:35] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[124:35] They always going, they always going and going and going and going. So it ain't all them, but we most definitely could do more. I tell you that.

Speaker 3:
[124:44] Yeah. I guess my point is a lot of people kind of moved away from prioritizing these things anyway. On here, I think a lot of people, yeah, I think a lot of people moved away from it.

Speaker 2:
[124:57] Do you think an after effect is that the people who do it now is a higher quality of person? They really want to do it because now if they feel there's no incentive, they're doing it for like, quote unquote, love of the game. Like this is a passion. It would be a better associations because there's people doing it for the right reasons, not trying to stat stuff and be seen or clout chase.

Speaker 3:
[125:24] Yes. The answer is yes. I think so. My question would be, right? Why do you need a CPOA, a FCPOA, a JEA, and a CSAT and a fully functional cellular 360 program?

Speaker 2:
[125:43] You need all of them?

Speaker 3:
[125:44] Yeah. I said my question, so I'm looking for an answer.

Speaker 2:
[125:48] I actually like dominate the combo, especially after being gone for two hours.

Speaker 3:
[125:54] Like, why do you need?

Speaker 2:
[125:57] Go to each one, man, CSAT or whatever.

Speaker 5:
[125:59] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[126:00] And the reason why it's a real question is because all of them, like, I don't necessarily disagree, right? But we go to commands where CSAT, JEA and your MWR committee, hey, I'll be doing the same thing sometime. Like, and it's like, that's not the purpose. Like, CSAT has a specific purpose.

Speaker 5:
[126:22] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[126:22] Right? So CSAT is like over here, right? It's the Coalition of Settlers Against Destructive Decisions. That's over here. That's a completely different mission set than JEA, right? So that's the real reason I'm asking. So somebody can answer. So somebody that's listening could understand that there are differences to the purposes of these programs.

Speaker 5:
[126:47] Hey, for me, I'm kind of like, I guess my thought process is like what we're doing with the program. I've been at commands where there's a kick in the ass at these programs, right? And I've been at commands, they haven't doing anything. When I say, damn, why the fuck we got this? Why are we even doing this? If there ain't nobody going to do nothing with it, why are we hoarding $4,000, $5,000, $6,000? We're not doing anything with it. We're just doing, you know, fundraising and making money and doing that for the sailors, right? And then when the flip side of that, you got some is just you only got the committee. You know what I mean? Like, ain't nobody else really doing anything with it. So I'm kind of going both ways, but I also think it's a process to it, too. We are learning from, you know, junior sailors, then the first class got their mess, and then when they get to the mess, I think it's a learning process to know how things work until you get to the mess and how things function and all that stuff. And then, of course, all that being said, I feel like the help of making a healthy JA or first class mess is having chiefs that's helping it with that process also. Making it something because sometimes sailors is going, I like doing this, I like doing that, but they also need some mentorship. They need some guidance on stuff to help out. So I think as long as you have that full team there to help out, it can be successful.

Speaker 3:
[128:12] Yeah. So, hey, I'm about to, I know we got some questions for Joey and I want to get into those. But Aaron, what's your kind of justification for having each of those different programs?

Speaker 2:
[128:25] I'll go back to your first point with the blurring or the CSAD and the JEA. CSAD does have that exact thing, but some things in the JEA help with in that CSAD vein. If a junior sailor is, if they're in the community or they're doing fellowship with each other, or they're building with each other, that lends to them not being prone or being swayed to destructive decisions. So I think a JEA helps with that. Most JEAs are always actively looking for mentorship and doing things. So at JEA, you need a JEA that way, it gives a junior sailor avenues to do things.

Speaker 3:
[129:10] Got to go.

Speaker 2:
[129:12] That you could do things that aren't destructive. For a second class parasail association, Donald's face, you may be hearing me, maybe Donald's face.

Speaker 3:
[129:22] I'm just saying that you kind of twisted CSAT and JEA together, and I got confused there, but...

Speaker 2:
[129:28] What I'm saying, there are certain things that JEA does that supports the mission of a CSAT.

Speaker 3:
[129:36] So do you need CSAT then?

Speaker 2:
[129:45] Yes, if the JEA isn't, yes, if JEA doesn't make that like a point of emphasis.

Speaker 3:
[129:57] All right, Aaron.

Speaker 2:
[130:00] All right, all right. Okay, moving on. Why do you need, put me in a pinch. Why do you, why do I think you need a second class association?

Speaker 3:
[130:12] Yes, if you got a JEA, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[130:16] I don't consider a second class a junior. That's a critical middle.

Speaker 3:
[130:23] Don't have to answer.

Speaker 2:
[130:24] Yeah, that's what I got. Okay. And then first class and chief, right? First class one fellowship is not to groom you to be a chief, it's to be an established first class. You're doing things, you should be able to fellowship customs, currencies, hailing bales, right? Recognition. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[130:45] Yeah. It's funny because, man, I like the CPOA, Chiefs Mess conversation. I also like the group what first class is in chiefs. I like that thing. I don't know what to call it because it's not like a real thing. But at the commands I've been at, I tried to make, fetch a thing like, hey, let's get with the first classes and get with the chiefs. Let's collaborate more and do these things. I like that as a thing. I think it's super effective. I think you get mentorship. I think you get a lot of things like that, especially at a command where you're seller 360 is not really effective.

Speaker 2:
[131:24] Can I give another shot at this answer, though? I'm thinking about it for a little bit.

Speaker 3:
[131:29] Yeah, go ahead, man.

Speaker 2:
[131:29] I'm trying. I'm not trying to squeeze a diamond out of a gold, but if we don't do those things, then we are no different than a regular nine to five, and nothing about what we do is like a regular nine to five. If I'm not on the floor and I wasn't on the, what was the ship that was out there during COVID forever?

Speaker 3:
[131:50] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[131:51] We're carrier. Man, I feel bad. Anyway, right. If you're out there deployed, turning or burning forever, you need each other. You need things, man. That's what makes us different. The trauma bonds and knowing people backing each other up, that's why you need those things. We have customs courtesies, we have, that's why I think you need those, man. Because if not, then we are no better than a civilian sector.

Speaker 3:
[132:14] All right, so Sell the 360 meets every, and I promise this is the last question about this. Sell the 360 meets every Monday at 10, right? Your JEA meets every Tuesday at 10, right? Your CSAT meets every Wednesday at 10. Your Second Class Petty Officer Association meets every Thursday at 10. And your Recreation Committee meets every Friday at 10. You got a second class in your division that's a part of JEA, the Second Class Association, Sell the 360, CSAT, and the Rec Committee. Is that second class going to each of those things at 10 every single day? Why or why not?

Speaker 2:
[133:02] I'm trying to let Joey get some burn.

Speaker 5:
[133:03] Joey ain't saying, Joey.

Speaker 1:
[133:10] I'm saying, I'll list one, man.

Speaker 2:
[133:12] Okay, hey, you know what? Bump it. Thanos, snap.

Speaker 3:
[133:16] He gonna crash, he gonna crash.

Speaker 2:
[133:18] We don't need none of this shit. Look, man, shut the fuck up and go to work and take your punk ass home. Hope commute don't get you. We don't need no associations, man. Look, do work, all right? 007 says, just strap your boots up, go to work, have a decent lunch break, and take your scraggity ass home. That's it. That's my stance on it.

Speaker 5:
[133:40] I don't need nothing. Hey, Damo, I will say this, man.

Speaker 2:
[133:44] Don't do shit.

Speaker 5:
[133:45] That's out there happening though. That's happening, bro. They are going to all these, and some of them got a good heart, man. They got a good heart. They got a good heart in the right place, right? They're trying to do these things and help out and stuff like that. But at the same time, as a leader, you got to look into that stuff too, though, man. I can see myself right now having one second class, and I'd be like, you got to pick something. You can't do all this. You got to pick something else, though. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[134:18] But they're going to break down to you how each of them serve a different purpose. And you know, it's like, hey, man, it is-

Speaker 5:
[134:23] You're right. You don't have to break down them too.

Speaker 3:
[134:25] Like, hey, So my question for all of y'all as we kind of enter this conversation about Joey, the quick one, just to kind of get some basics. Anybody ever talk to y'all about the signature block in your email? And I mean, like, so I say that to say, when I was a younger seller, I put my CSAT, my JAA, my Second Class Petty Officer Association, a cabinet member, my rep committee treasurer. My signature block was like 12 lines long, right? And like a mentor of mine, I was an officer, he was like, hey, man, just put your top two there, man. Like don't, you don't got to fill that up with every single thing you do at the command, right? And I say that because we've been getting more emails from sellers and I've been seeing 20 line signature blocks. It's like, hey, man, like top two. What's your thoughts on signature blocks though?

Speaker 5:
[135:24] Oh, man, Damo, this is this, this happened to me. I had to talk to my first class about this, man, on the Nemez. Hey, anybody from the Nemez, listen, this dude had like everything. When I say everything, I'm talking about gas free petty officer. He put that in the signature block, like basic stuff he does all the time. And it was on there. So he emailed me and I had to call him. I called him in there and I told him, I said, hey, man, you are you are a first class now, man. When somebody sees your signature block that looks like this, I said first, and I told him how I thought about it, man. I don't want to say what I said on there, but I said, man, you pretty much you're looking like a clown right now, having 20 freaking things. Like it was like 20 somethings he had in his signature block. But I thought, and the reason why I said he looked like a clown, because I thought he was doing it on purpose. I thought he was acting, he was putting it on there because of that. But then as I talked to him a little while, I don't think so man. I think he was literally like no shit list and all that stuff on there. I was like, that's crazy right now.

Speaker 1:
[136:31] That's crazy.

Speaker 3:
[136:33] Somebody wrote to me before, they was like, hey, just put what you're emailing about. If this MWR put MWR president there, don't do it. But what's some of the feedback, y'all ever got any feedback or any conversation about y'all signature blocks before? What's y'all thoughts on that? That was my question. What's y'all thoughts on signature blocks?

Speaker 5:
[136:54] The only reason why I got a signature block is to make it easy for me. It's at the end of my email. Every time, I don't have to worry about it.

Speaker 3:
[136:58] You'll see it soon. But for Aaron and Joey, what's y'all thoughts on what a junior seller should be putting in their block?

Speaker 1:
[137:08] I got a pet peeve with them. I think that the personal quotes shouldn't be in there. Like, it just doesn't seem professional to me.

Speaker 2:
[137:19] So, I believe, like you told, Damo, top two. If it's something that's major, like if you like the damn Subic or Washbill coordinator, that's major. You want to make sure that people are contacting you to make sure that that's a major program that's going. If you send me your sub major. With the quotes, I didn't count a quote for a long time. I converted half of the quote when I became CMC. I put my leadership philosophy on there. That's the one thing. I say, I'm CMC, I'll do that.

Speaker 5:
[137:52] What is it?

Speaker 2:
[137:53] I don't know oath, I don't know assignment. No, I don't want like no. Are you laughing at my leadership philosophy? That's crazy.

Speaker 3:
[138:03] I'm not laughing at your leadership philosophy. I'm laughing at your leadership philosophy and the audacity of it. But it's because I know you and I've heard you say honor the oath a lot of times and it was to control yourself. That's the only reason why. Yes. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[138:19] Honor the oath, honor the assignment. I'm not going to go into it. You don't care about it, but I kept it simple and clean and I put it in my signature blog. A mentor told me, yo man, make sure people know that's the one thing. You shake a hand, pound a coin, hey man, boom. That's your thing.

Speaker 3:
[138:37] Okay. All right, Joey. No, that's not dismissive at all. We got to get to Joey. I ain't even going to go. I got a quote in mind too. My quote changes every command, right? I'm serious about it. It changes every command. It got to do whatever my thought process at that command is, and that changes the next place, right? There's normally a lesson learned from the last place. But Joey, first question got to be about the fat chief thing, right? Just because I know you've gotten people who had issues with the name and conversations. My question outside of that is, what happens after this year that you do all of these burpees and you're no longer fat chief? Does the name change to just Joey Sawyer or is it Skinny Chief? Is it Progressive Chief?

Speaker 1:
[139:29] I haven't thought that far ahead on it. For those that don't know, the reason for the name, when I started this whole thing, it was January 6th of 2025 and I still am, but I really was a fat chief. I started at 267 pounds. I looked like a damn balloon. It was a bit embarrassing. I started it really to have that external validity and accountability as I'm trying to go through this transition. And then of course, my whole set of channels morphed when my sailors realized that, hey, you know, NCC's on Instagram and he's on TikTok. He should talk about career related stuff. And it just kind of took off from there. But to kind of go more into your question, what will, if there will be a name change? I don't know. Cause I think inside, I've always been a fat kid cause I just at heart. But I really don't know. I haven't thought that far ahead on it, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2:
[140:33] You should keep it bro.

Speaker 5:
[140:34] Yeah, me too. I think.

Speaker 2:
[140:35] If fat Joe is still fat Joe, he ain't that fat no more. Yeah, that's true. And then they say, why are you fat cheap? Because I was fat and I took, I took the reins of my health and my life and I'm not, but that's what I am.

Speaker 5:
[140:51] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[140:53] I was getting tight at some people with some of the comments of you, man. I'm like, how dare you? You're fat, you're moving. You're talking to a dude who's actually working out. Shut up. What are you getting mad at him for?

Speaker 1:
[141:07] And that's what, you know, internet is going to be the internet. There's going to be trolls out there.

Speaker 2:
[141:11] Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:
[141:15] But and that's the other part of it, too. Just like being authentic, because, you know, you could go on Instagram, you see all these people that are super fake with it. Like, I have no reason to be fake. So I wanted junior sailors and anyone in the Navy to see. That like we all have our own struggles. So for me, that's one of them.

Speaker 3:
[141:41] Yeah. So this came from, and I don't think it's a topic we're staying on for like 20 minutes, right? You know, just like, yeah, hey, man, they talked about like the name Fat Chief for 20 minutes, man. We finally got to like the nitty gritty. But for, I think what's more important is you touched on it earlier when we had Captain Harmon on a podcast is what made you decide, and I like Aaron's word. I started using it more, it would get you the impetus to do that. And it came from you seeing that it was a void and outside of, you know, your seller saying, hey, NCC is on here. Can you talk about some career stuff? It also came from like you acknowledge and avoid in like just basic level of knowledge things from, you know, these sellers, right?

Speaker 1:
[142:35] Oh, 100%. There is, I hate to say it, there's such a huge knowledge gap on basic Navy principles that shouldn't exist. And that's evidence if I pull up my DMs from sailors of all pay grades, ranks, ratings, basic, basic stuff, and it's frankly, it's a little embarrassing. And I don't know how to fix that gap. There's always going to be some sort of a knowledge gap because you're not going to be able to push out all the information to everyone all the time, especially in this day and age. But being able to put out that information on a platform where most of our, especially junior saliers, are now spending a lot of their time, it just makes sense.

Speaker 5:
[143:26] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[143:28] How crazy are the DMs? Like, and what I mean by crazy is like, I would assume you get a lot of DMs.

Speaker 1:
[143:36] Yeah, it varies, but I get a very consistent flow. I will say when I put out the BBA videos, I would literally get the same question about 100 times a day, and that's almost just on repeat replying back.

Speaker 5:
[143:55] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[143:56] When you started this, and this is normally the question for anybody that do anything in the military or on social media, because we were asked this a million times. This don't happen to us as much as I think that people might think it does. But when you started, did you get any real life resistance or real life pushback from anybody? Either you were at the same command wood, or they had your phone number and called you and told you you were wrong for what you were doing, or was this all embraced in a positive way?

Speaker 1:
[144:26] So I was actually very surprised. I kind of in the back of my mind thought that once people, especially the chiefs in my mess saw what I was doing, that I would get pushback. But overwhelmingly, in person, I have received nothing but positive feedback and constructive criticism, but nothing super negative like, you shouldn't do that, you're wrong for doing that. But 90% of it's been super positive.

Speaker 3:
[144:56] And you lay it out flat, right? That's kind of what I like about what you got going on. It's not a lot of, like what we do, like we read something and then we like be like, nah, this bullshit. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[145:10] You know what I mean?

Speaker 3:
[145:12] You know what I mean? What you do is you kind of, you give like the facts, right? Brass tacks, like, and give like platforms like ours, pretty much a story. Like we could take something you kind of put out and then we could do our whole analyzation of it and thought process. And like, how do really people think about these things? Is that intentional for you?

Speaker 1:
[145:40] It was. So when I actually started putting out this kind of information, I dug a bit into like the social media instructions and things like that. And I didn't want to be the person that was known like being political this way or this way. I just wanted to put out the facts and keep the opinions very narrow, if any at all, and just engage that discussion or start up that discussion. So that way we can bring it to light.

Speaker 3:
[146:15] Yeah, because the social media policy kind of does outline, you know, that that whole thing. I think we kind of walked the line, because sometime when we dig into policy now, it doesn't make like a social media clip. It's on a podcast, but it doesn't make the social media clip, right? So I think that's kind of where we figured out. Did you expect your page and your channel to reach the amount of people that it reached in this short amount of time?

Speaker 1:
[146:48] Nope. I, again, when I initially started, it was just more for me. I didn't think really anyone would watch, but maybe a few random strangers. And every day that I log on and I'm seeing more people follow, between right now, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, it's over 40,000. And that's crazy to me. Before 2025, I was never a social media guy. I had Facebook as a way for like, keep touch with friends back home. I didn't have an Instagram. So I have been learning a bunch as I've been going along with all this.

Speaker 3:
[147:28] So that's good.

Speaker 5:
[147:30] Oh, Damo. Hey, so I guess one of the questions I have, what is this looking like in a year or two? Kind of the same thing or how are you going to evolve it a little bit? If so, if you're going to.

Speaker 1:
[147:43] I don't know that there will be much evolving, but I will say, I don't know how much I can say, but there are potential ways to kind of expand with people that are reaching out to me behind the scenes. If you know what I mean?

Speaker 5:
[148:02] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[148:02] So we'll see if any of that plays out in the near future, but that's all I can really talk about with that.

Speaker 3:
[148:11] So, timing and consistency, right? My first question is timing. Bro, I'm getting your clips, right? And I'll talk to you about it before we started, but we choked about it on a pod, bro. Like, I got you running up steps. I got you running somewhere in the dark. I got you doing 35 burpees or whatever, right? But then I'm getting your clips before I'm seeing the Nav Ammon, man. Like, you got like a Nav Ammon signal or something? Like, you got a Kinepovo for us?

Speaker 5:
[148:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[148:41] You got a Kinepovo.

Speaker 5:
[148:42] It's the NCCM, probably.

Speaker 1:
[148:44] So I won't necessarily say I got to connect, but I will say that I do my best to stay informed and to keep refreshing that page, keep my eye on the message traffic. But I kind of dedicate a chunk of my time to just seeing what new policies and instructions are coming down the pipeline.

Speaker 3:
[149:10] Yeah. So the consistency part, right? So my first, well, I guess before I get to consistency, is it like people at your command, like where you like work physically now, and it's just keep coming into you asking you like, well, you're the career counselor anyway. So I guess you get all those questions anyway, right?

Speaker 1:
[149:28] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[149:29] So consistency. Are you married? Yep. Okay. You got kids?

Speaker 1:
[149:36] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[149:37] How many?

Speaker 1:
[149:38] Yeah, three kids. Actually, my oldest is 19. She recently got married to a fairly new AO. So I got to teach him how to read and write. You know how that goes. He's a good kid. So 19, 13, and 9.

Speaker 3:
[149:55] So you got to spread, right? So no two-year-olds, which I mean, is the best we're done with that.

Speaker 1:
[150:01] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[150:03] Meltdown after meltdown. I'm not zipping your jacket up.

Speaker 1:
[150:07] It's 60 degrees.

Speaker 3:
[150:08] So you don't need your jacket zipped up and then it's melted. So now you're doing burpees every day, right? You're doing some other form of working out every day. You're digging in tech pubs every day or whatever. What does, I know the struggle of doing a podcast, right? We released our episode, we record on Thursdays. The Thursday episode comes out on Monday. Last week, we recorded an episode on Thursday. I recorded an episode on Friday. We released the episode on Monday. We released the episode today, which is Thursday, a completely different episode. Then we got to cut clips. We got to do things like that. The only difference between what I would say, it's a lot of differences. But one of the major difference between what we do and what you do is, the podcast feeds itself when it comes to clips, right? So I could pull seven clips from one episode or 14 clips from one episode. You generally got to come up with whatever it is you're coming up with at that time and make your reel, your clip or whatever like that. For me, just doing what I do with the podcast, it takes time. At this point, it's like sometime I feel guilty about things, it's like barters with the family and figuring out things like, how do you manage these tasks and your time and stay consistent? I feel like you drop at least a video a day.

Speaker 1:
[151:35] Yeah. Admittedly, part of that is a lack of sleep. If you've seen when I work out in the morning, it's pretty dang early. And so what I'll do the day before, unless there's something that's like newsworthy or it's coming out rapidly, I'll have it planned out the day before. So that way when I'm waking up first thing in the morning, I'm not having to think of what I'm about to talk about. But then you have those little micro pockets of time where you're not doing anything. Instead of pulling out my phone to play a game or to like scroll through Instagram, that'll be when I'm coming up with my ideas and doing my research and things like that. So it's just find those little micro pockets of time, but also you can bring up a good point with feeling almost a sense of guilt when it comes to the family piece. Like I try to over communicate with my wife on some of these things, because flat out, two of the things that I told myself when I started, it's not going to affect my home life. It's not going to affect my work life. If it does either of those, then I'm just going to stop or I'll make it work. So just ensuring the time management piece, which again, a lot of it for me is probably a lack of sleep, if I'm being real. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[152:59] Because, man, I watch you in some of these burpee videos, man. I'll be like, man, Joey don't want to do them burpees today.

Speaker 1:
[153:05] No, it was 106 today and I sure didn't want to do them. But you know what? The Internet's forever. And so here we are.

Speaker 3:
[153:13] Yeah. I mean, again, though, it's feeding itself, right? The invert of that. But you holding yourself accountable to a thing and it's actually just going to make you better.

Speaker 1:
[153:26] Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3:
[153:27] How much has this existence you have in social media already made you better?

Speaker 1:
[153:35] I could argue a fair amount, right? So same thing as I said before, it's all about being authentic and honest. So it's still me and my true self. But throughout the process, I have learned a great deal of discipline when it comes to just sucking it up and doing it. And sometimes, not sometimes, most of the time, you can't really teach that. And that could be relatable, not just to working out. It could be to trying to get that qual, working on a PQS. Like if you don't have the discipline to sit down and do it, if you don't feel like doing it, you're going to go do something else.

Speaker 3:
[154:28] Yeah. Where are you from?

Speaker 1:
[154:31] Originally from Carson City, Nevada. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[154:35] How long have you been in?

Speaker 1:
[154:37] 16 years, actually. Next month will be 16. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[154:41] And then like, what's your, what's your like, just command career history?

Speaker 1:
[154:47] So, Bootcamp May 2010, turned 25 when I was in Bootcamp. So, I joined a little late in life compared to most. I was already married and our oldest was three at that time. Source rating was SH when they were still called SHs.

Speaker 3:
[155:03] Nice.

Speaker 1:
[155:04] Yep. So, right after Bootcamp, went to Meridian, Mississippi. Yeah. Good old Meridian, Mississippi. Man. Got out of there as fast as I could, but still made AAP. Still made AAP, Accelerated Advancement Program. So, once I reported my first ship, they'll put on third class pretty quick and that was USS Dubuque LPD-8. Met her on her final deployment in August of 2010 and rode that out. Helped decomm the ship most of the way. Then I transferred to the USS Pellew LJ-5 in 2011 and finished out my sea time on her. Incidentally, she was decomm in the same month that I transferred to my first shore duty, which was San Clemente Island, which wasn't really much of a shore duty if you know anything about San Clemente Island, but was there from 2015 to 2018. Transferred out, and that was all in San Diego, then transferred to Hawaii to John Paul Jones DG53. That's where I put on SH-1, which they did the name change to RS-1 at that time, and then a month later successfully converted to NC-1. And actually cross-decked in the middle of that tour to the William P. Lawrence CDG110, because they were got their NC-1 billet, they're about to go on their COVID cruise, so I did that COVID cruise with them. Transferred from William P. Lawrence, did officially back-to-back sea duty to the San Jacinto CG56, and that was the end of 2021. And the next year, so September, no, October 2022 is when I put on chief. Decom USS San Jacinto CG56 at the September 2023 transfer to USS Bataan LHT5 to finish out that sea tour. And then in July of last year, I transferred to Swarming and I'm here. So a lot of bouncing around between ships.

Speaker 2:
[157:15] You decom a lot of ships.

Speaker 1:
[157:16] Yeah, I'm not necessarily proud of Black Widow. That's yeah, it's a mouthful.

Speaker 2:
[157:24] So did you a lot of a lot of anfibs?

Speaker 1:
[157:27] Yeah. So anfib, my favorite, though, not because I made chief honor, but my favorite was the cruiser. I really like that layout and I wish that they weren't decom. And I understand why.

Speaker 3:
[157:39] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[157:39] Was it Aaron Barnaby? I'm sorry, I get it, bro.

Speaker 3:
[157:42] No, I was just going to say, what made you want to go career counselor?

Speaker 1:
[157:44] So when I was on San Clemente Island, we didn't have a dedicated NC. They acted more like a departmental career counselor reported to North Island. And the person that was leaving successfully converted NC and I was talking to him and he's like, you know, you make a good career counselor, you know, you're pretty smart, know a lot of stuff about career vice and whatever. And so just like that, the island made me the departmental career counselor. So I kind of fell into it. And I just fell in love with it. It was a way to be able to help sailors that wasn't selling them Snickers bars. If you know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[158:29] Do you have the typical NC customer service skills? Like someone comes in and there's maybe some information that should be like common knowledge. It's such a thing to be like, hey, man, I know it was over here. Check this on my Navy HR or this Milper's. Are you like, hey, I got you. Do you teach them unofficially? You're like, nah, man, check this and come back and then we'll talk about it.

Speaker 1:
[158:58] I think that's situational. So if it's someone I've never seen before or they're a junior sailor and they don't know that the resources exist, I'll swing them around my desk. I'll be like, hey, this is where you're going to find this, you know, ABC. But if it's one of my departmental career counselors or if they're more senior and they should know the answer, I might kind of be like, hey, you could find the, that information in Milpurs Man, whatever. And if they're still giving me that confused look, then I'll swing them around and be like, all right, come on, I got you.

Speaker 3:
[159:32] Have you ever told somebody to like follow your Instagram? Like yo dude, I just talked about this.

Speaker 1:
[159:37] I haven't, but NC1's, every single person that they check in, they're like, yeah, we got Fat Chief in there, you should follow them. And I'm like, you don't need to put that out.

Speaker 2:
[159:45] Subscribe, smash the like button.

Speaker 1:
[159:47] You don't need to put that out. If they're not following, they'll find it and they'll make that choice on their own.

Speaker 3:
[159:55] Yeah, that's kind of like how I am too. I don't talk about it really, people find out. And then there's this other, my sellers are between 18 and 21, right? They're like really young. So I was walking, you familiar with Veronica Scott?

Speaker 1:
[160:11] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[160:12] NC1. So she came to my command to drop off something because I'm with her retirement, so she was giving me a coin. And I was walking her around because I knew she would love being at the Ceremony of God, so I was showing her stuff. And the demographic of seller I have, some of them have not seen PTSF on TikTok yet, right? Some of them do, but some of them didn't. So I'm walking around with Veronica. Veronica was pretty big on social media. And some of my sellers, like, who's she, CMC? They don't know. I'm like, that's Veronica Scott. Y'all don't know who she is. She's kind of like the godmother of the social media influence, Navy influencer, right? She went to my PAO office. She was like, hey, if y'all need help, I could get y'all some help here or here. And my PAO was like listening like, okay. I'm like, do you know who just offered to help us? That's Veronica Scott. And she's already doing, if y'all don't know, she already doing big things in CNIC, Fleet and Family. MWR has an Instagram page now and they got videos floating out on that thing. I'm probably shouting her out before she even want the world to know, but she's already making an impact somewhere else. Bro, I don't want to be here forever, but man, I'm happy seeing you out there getting that information out there. Like I said, I want you to come back on. We got to deep dive. We got to get some topics and deep dive some stuff and have some fun, stuff like that. But it's just good to see you out there putting really good information. I see like Forrest Hulahan at one point shared one of your things and was like, this is what I like on social media, not the other people putting out the vice, which is something he said, right? I thought that was good. And there's more people just embracing it and all that stuff. And I think it's good, right? And it opens the aperture to leaders like Captain Harmon to come on a show like this and have a conversation about something like SEM BBA that affects at this point almost every seller, right? And it's because people like you are out there and doing it the right way. So thanks, because you could pick up social media and you could choose to do it the wrong way. You know what I mean? And our sellers, they need it. I recently shared one of your reels in my first class. I got a first class chief group, right? I was talking about earlier. I recently shared one of your reels in my first class chief group. And I shared it with some of my junior sellers. It was the one about the uniform card, the little uniform money card or whatever. I shared that and they loved it. Good information and stuff like that, man. So me to you, bro. Thanks. We appreciate what you're doing out there, man.

Speaker 5:
[163:06] Yeah, of course. I echo the same thing Damo said, man. Hey, you're doing a hell of a job out there putting that information out, man. And I'm even talking about the mess. I'm in my mess, man. You see that new reel? Seen Fat Chief with it? It's a thing, man. I just want you to know, like, hey, you're doing, you're kicking ass out there, man. It's really a thing and people are actually talking about it. So keep that shit up, man.

Speaker 3:
[163:29] Hell yeah. We got a segment, bro, before you go. It's called Do Better. It's a Do Better segment. I wasn't going to let you go without giving us a Do Better, man. I'm assuming you're familiar with it, but for the listeners, that might not be right. We just ask somebody for something that could be better, something that could be improved upon. The ask is for a Navy thing, but it doesn't have to be Navy. It could be a personal thing. It could be a command thing. It could be whatever, but we normally just say, wish you do better. And that's how it goes. So wish you do better.

Speaker 1:
[164:12] So it's kind of tied into a little bit of why I do what I do. But the do better could be if people that need to know, especially career counselors, when it's a career... If it's a career-related instruction or policy or nav admin that's being put out, if we could get just like a tiny bit of read ahead as a community, so we could dissect it as a community, so that way we're not inundated with questions and concerns right off the jump when we don't even know what it's about either. I understand that's not necessarily realistic all the time. But there are definitely some policies, some instructions that the NC community could get a read ahead on, even if it's like 12 hours. Just so we have time to prepare, we could ask those that developed the instruction or the policy the questions that we're going to get asked. So that way we actually have an answer and we're not just leaving our sailors hanging. That's my Do Better.

Speaker 5:
[165:16] That's a good one.

Speaker 3:
[165:18] I would argue that CMC is out there that feel your pain.

Speaker 5:
[165:21] Damn right.

Speaker 3:
[165:23] Aaron, you got a Do Better?

Speaker 2:
[165:26] Yeah. Write down your passwords for your devices.

Speaker 5:
[165:32] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[165:34] I apologize to my PTS fan for not having my IT together. I felt like I was troubleshooting Link on the ship, man, trying to get this right thing in passwords.

Speaker 3:
[165:46] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[165:47] Then, yeah, that's my Do Better. Just write down your freaking passwords, man.

Speaker 3:
[165:52] Yeah. I know you had an issue with Facebook drops too for these policies and all that stuff.

Speaker 2:
[165:57] Yeah, I do. I think I don't like... Yeah, we got to go with the times, man, but the speed of the Internet, man, it causes these wildfires that get put out. I think that career counselors should get the information before, like one day before, right? And then it goes out, because y'all are the first line of defense, the first people to receive all that, right? So I think that I don't like all this. Like, I got that memo 007, a text message from in my MassChief group. I don't like that.

Speaker 1:
[166:36] The first time I saw it was last night at, like, 2100 local time, and it was a follower saying, hey, what is this about?

Speaker 5:
[166:43] That's all I can tell you.

Speaker 2:
[166:45] Especially because everything is so fake with the AI and everything is just, we have to really stress our communication channels. Like when the memo or that thing came out talking about turning location off, and me, Damo, and Damon was like, yo, I forward to them. Damon was like, I don't know, boy. I don't know, man. Damo was like, I'll do it, but I'm not sharing. It's like, me too. I'm not sharing it. You know what I'm saying? And then my mess in the group chat, the one C and G looked at the CT, he's like, hey bro, that's your lane. You can tell this is fake. You know, what's up, bro? So just like the communication channel.

Speaker 3:
[167:30] Hey Joey, this dude Aaron had me delete Snapchat and Uber, bro. And I got this message from Veronica and just didn't believe it, right? And then they had to do with her. It's just, I'm like, man, this can't be real. Then Aaron shares it, bro. I'm like, it's no way.

Speaker 2:
[167:51] This claimer, I was like, no, I don't know, man. I'm not putting to my mess, my command.

Speaker 1:
[167:55] So don't lie on me.

Speaker 3:
[168:04] So I'm like, it's no way that this is BS now that Aaron shared it, right? Aaron shares it and he pissed. Aaron pissed. He's like, why this information cover for? Aaron ain't give the full real story. Aaron like, why this information ain't coming to us in a better way? So I'm like, well, Aaron, like I really believe this. But if you say it, if you say it, I'm going to go ahead and do it.

Speaker 5:
[168:30] I went right on my phone.

Speaker 3:
[168:31] I went right to Snapchat. I got rid of Snapchat. I went to Uber. I hesitated for a second. I'm like, if I need a ride, I could use Lyft. And I got rid of Uber. I went to Uber Eats. I hesitated for a second and I said Uber Eats is going to stay around. I'm not getting rid of Uber Eats. I don't care what Aaron has to say. And then something came out later and was like, hey, that was fake. And then it was like, but-

Speaker 2:
[168:53] Captain Walker dropped it. Captain was like, hey, y'all, hey, Captain Walker forwarded the first joint in our timeline.

Speaker 3:
[169:00] Yeah, yeah, he did. Yeah, he shared it. But somebody else told me like, hey, no, that one was fake, but it's this uniform one that's real. And then like a week later, they was like, hey, that uniform one that was real, it's also not real. I'm like, what are we doing? And it's no way to temper it because we are now getting these Facebook drops, right? And they are working from the outside in or whatever. However, I could explain it, like they're working from the bottom up or however, and it's not right. And like I said, Joey, I would argue that a lot of people share sentiment whether it's other like skipper or triad members or whoever like your NCEs, your triad, like people are wanting to get the read ahead. And I can't remember the last time I saw a read ahead. I might have heard rumblings that something was coming. Hey, there's something coming about this, but I can't remember the last time I was like, hey, y'all, we're going to get y'all a chance to look at this. So y'all could be ready for the conversation. I don't know. You know? Yeah. Yeah, but hey, bro. Thanks, man. Thanks for hanging out with us, kicking it with us. Hopefully, like I said, we get you back on when it's just us, and we can have some fun. Yeah, of course, man. Do some more stuff, man, and just keep doing what you're doing out there, bro.

Speaker 1:
[170:26] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[170:27] Show.

Speaker 1:
[170:28] Damon, did you have a Do Better?

Speaker 3:
[170:30] No, I don't have a Do Better.

Speaker 5:
[170:32] I didn't have a Do Better. Thanks, Joey, for calling me out.

Speaker 2:
[170:39] Write your passwords. Hey, I'm really sorry I missed that combo, man.

Speaker 3:
[170:46] Hey, bro. I mean, it's not like...

Speaker 5:
[170:48] You're sorry about missing what combo? When you do my, like, every week?

Speaker 2:
[170:58] You sound like I'm an NBA player on load management or something. Roman Reigns, I only do two paid events.

Speaker 3:
[171:05] He said, low month or something. Low management is crazy.

Speaker 5:
[171:09] I know that's crazy, but I was just saying with Damo wasn't saying that itself.

Speaker 1:
[171:12] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[171:13] I would have just said it. I mean, I actually wanted to say something else, but I can't say it. I can say it when we turn off the mics, but I can't say it with the mic on.

Speaker 2:
[171:25] I have to say I have no IT now, so I'm good for once.

Speaker 1:
[171:28] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[171:29] As soon as we turn off the mics, I'm going to say it.

Speaker 5:
[171:32] Mississippi stand, dude.