Ep. 59: The Fresh Prince of Chiefs Phil Easton

We dive deep into the world of leadership, personal growth, and the journey of a remarkable individual who has dedicated his life to service and self-improvement.

Phil's personal history, growing up in Los Angeles and later moving to Texas to escape gang-related incidents, his love for horseback riding and dolphins, and the influence of mentors like Master Sergeant Ralph Perez, are also explored.

With insights on work-life balance, making deliberate family-focused decisions, and maintaining humility in positions of power, Phil's story is a rich tapestry of resilience, leadership, and gratitude.

Phil Easton brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, sharing insights from his 32-year military career, his ongoing growth in emotional intelligence, and his balanced life post-retirement.

Conversation:
Intro 1:39 Phil Easton Oh, thank you for the opportunity. And you did your homework. I did, and I appreciate that, man. I'm excited about this.

Why is life great right now
2:32 Phil Easton Yeah. So everyone that I've seen here at AFSA, they're like, wow, you just got this glow. All the retirees have this glow.  I'm two years on the other side. September 1 will be two years, and the stress is nonexistent. I love my job, but as far as the stress of,  just taking care of people, stress in a bad way. We have a lot of people in harm's way and decisions that you help the boss make affects people's lives and policies affect people's lives.

And the speaking engagements, being on the road two to three weeks out of the month, and doing that constantly for years for literally to probably the last ten years of my life, of my air force career has its toll on you, but now I don't have any stress.

We're blessed to live in northern San Antonio, New Braunfels, and living a blessed life. Kids are doing great. We built a house from Germany during COVID. All that worked out. So we're on the other side of all that. So that's why it's just been really, really great over the last couple of years, able to spend more time with my wife. So my job is remote, so I get to work from the house.

I come out of my office, see my wife, have lunch with my wife every day. We have Thursday date night every week and just all those things that we either didn't have time for or didn't make time for while I was in uniform. We're able to do that and travel and go fishing, horseback riding, and get massages. Those are my three things.

Where love of horseback riding stems from
4:22 Phil Easton My name, actually, Philip, means lover of horses. That's just ironic with all this. And if you were to ask me how many times I've been horseback riding in my 51 years, it's probably seven or eight. I mean, it's definitely not more than two hands full, but I just love horses. I've always loved dolphins. I've always loved horses. And so I've been horseback riding a couple of times since I've retired, but I want to do it once a quarter. I just love horses, and I love fishing, I love the outdoors, but not to the point of hunting in those things.

But I do like being out there in nature, but I just love horses, and I don't know where it came from.

How someone raised in Inglewood, California during the 1980s find their passion for horses
5:32 Phil Easton Yeah, I grew up my 1st 15 years in Inglewood, Los Angeles. We moved between both cities, subdivisions kind of a thing. But when I was a junior, right before my junior year in high school, I had two guns pulled out on me the summer going into my junior year, and I wasn't involved with gangs or anything. My mom kept, kept us in sports and church, so I wasn't in the streets whatsoever. But literally I was going to go pick up a cake for my cousin for a birthday party, and some gangsters pulled up on me and my cousin asking us what set we're from. We say, hey, man, we don't gang bang. And we went on in, but they showed a gun. And the second time, about a couple of weeks later, I was on Crenshaw getting a bite to eat and hear a car racing down the street, screeching their tires and gun hanging out the window and I duck behind the bus stop, get my food and then go back home and tell my mom both of these stories over a couple of weeks period.

She was like we got to do something different. And she said, I want you to go live with your aunt in Irving, Dallas, Fort Worth.

So when I was in Europe, and we'll come back to this story, people did call me because I would tell this story sometimes they would call me the fresh prince of Europe. I lived with her my junior year. My mom and dad sold the house and the business there in Los Angeles. We had a furniture business, and they came up my senior year, and then I moved, obviously, back in with them my senior year. And then two months out of graduation, I was in the United States Air Force.

So that transition. But, yeah, that's how I got from California, Texas, United States Air Force, 1990. But, you know, I never went horseback riding or even swimming with dolphins any of that time when I was in California, but done a lot of that, a decent amount of that over the years I've been in Air Force now.

Memories growing up
7:59 Phil Easton I grew up, even though we grew up in Los Angeles and the rolling sixties was the gang that was predominantly in Los Angeles county where we lived. And then when I moved over to Inglewood, it was the bloods. So I was fully aware of the gangs and the things going on around that you see in those movies and etcetera. But, man, my mom just did an amazing job keeping us in church. Keeping us in sports where we literally didn't have time to be out at the park or hanging out with friends, where we got caught up with gangs. So I never experienced that side of it. I mean, literally, the two incidents I talked about, and there was a third one where my cousin and I were walking to one of the liquor stores to get some snacks and gangsters rolled up on us and robbed us, robbed him of his chain. But outside of those, literally those three incidents, my brother did a great job protecting me. He's four years older than me, so any problems that I would have, and he was a big dude, he would handle it.

I do remember a story when we were growing up, we were going up to one of the local stores and he had a nice chrome bike. I remember back in the day with mag wheels and everything, and we were inside playing Galaxa. I remember the game at the store, and we could look out the door of the store and can see the front of the tire, or just make sure nobody stole it. We didn't lock it up. We were just in there for a quick game, and then we look over and it's gone, the bike is gone. So I have my little cheap bike. We go. Literally, we go into the hood, into the gangster territory.

And my brother, like I said, he was,  probably 260 in high school. And we went down there and got his bike back. I mean, he was fearless. I knew I was scared. But my point is, my brother protected me, my mom protected me, where I didn't experience a lot of what a lot of people during that time experienced, especially when it comes to violence and gangs and things of that nature.

What comes to mind when hearing “The Forum”
10:45 Phil Easton The LA Forum on Manchester Boulevard that I, I won't say drove by with my brother, but took the bus by every single day. My junior high school, actually, the end of my elementary school, middle school and high school, they shipped us out or bused us out from Inglewood out to Westchester.

30 to 45 minutes. And we went down Manchester. So I went by the forum twice a day every day.

When we moved to Inglewood, we lived on, basically Crenshaw and Manchester. And the LA Forum is on Manchester, heading out towards Marina Del Rey and towards the beach and pass by there every day. Remember the three-peat. Remember celebrating up and down Manchester. Big Laker fan.

Importance of having a mentor and strong presence in life
12:50 Phil Easton Obviously we see it a lot in the military, but right now we're talking outside of the military, but just mentors in general, having someone that you can always bounce ideas off of, always lean on for advice, that's going to give you unfiltered advice. But still deliver it in the right way. You need some individuals that's going to be honest with you. Regardless of what you want to do, but also tell you, hey, here's the pros and cons.

But also you have to have a perfect mentor that's not going to try to influence you too much based on their experiences. I use all my experiences and say, hey, you could do it this way. You can do it this way.  You got to figure out what's best for you and your family, not what was best for me and my family or whatever the situation is. So you gotta have somebody who's pretty balanced in that. But having a mentor, both personally and professionally, and sometimes it can be the same person, is extremely important.

And I couldn't have made it through this 32 year career or even life. My mom, the matriarch and patriarch of our family, has really guided me on several personal and some professional decisions, so having my brother and my mom and then the mentors that I imagine we'll talk about from the military, there's one in particular that definitely shaped and changed your career.

At my retirement ceremony, August 2019, he was there and I gave him a shout out. His name is Master Sergeant Ralph Perez. He was my section superintendent when I became a TI  basic military training instructor in 1999. And before that time, I was aircraft maintenance growing up, and my career was definitely kind of just flatlined. It wasn't going down, it wasn't going up.

I felt like I was a great maintainer, but I wasn't winning awards. BTZ, no. Four EPR, first one, mathematically impossible to make staff, first time. All those things because I didn't understand about the Air Force. We talk about the whole airman concept now. That wasn't really a term back then, but, going to school, self-improving yourself, being involved in the community was a thing back in 1990, and I didn't know about it until 1999 until I got there to BMT and I was in section one of the 322nd Training Squadron. And he, over those first year or two, took me to the education office. All those stories you hear great supervisors do and put me in for drill meets, and I started winning awards and my career took off from there. 1999 is when my trajectory changed.

What he considers as his core strengths and strategy focused jobs
18:03 Phil Easton So core strengths for me, very strategic.

It does, but I think it's just me as a person too and I don't know how familiar you are with five voices, but I'm a pioneer guardian. So pioneers are both present and future minded, but definitely strategic.

And I enjoy planning, I enjoy putting strategies together and executing them, and I've always enjoyed doing that, but the jobs I've had as well has forced me to do it. That's what our jobs are. So I think that's a major strength of mine. I also think that being well organized and attention to detail, which was sharpened even more as an MTI (Military Training Instructor), but I was pretty much that way before, but a much higher level as a TI, and then also the ability to build strong teams. I think those are some of the things I think I do well when it comes as far as things that I'm working on.

New friendship from past 2-3 years and how it came about
22:43 Phil Easton A relationship in the last couple years that I think will expand and flourish. So I met a senior master Sergeant Christopher Smitty Smith. He's a senior NCO academy instructor, and I'm blessed to be able to do some contractor work for the Air Force. So I go down to the leader development course to pre squadron command at Air University, and I facilitate that three times a year. But when I was down there and we had done some five voices stuff with the SNCO academy staff, I met Chris Smith, better known as Smitty. And, I mean, literally, we talked probably twice a month. And I can just tell it's one of those individuals that I clicked with immediately in the class that we taught for the Academy and one of those relationships that I would love to continue to forge in the future. I literally just talked to him yesterday. We were catching up. He's got some great endeavors that he's doing. He's just a really humble person who seeks out mentors and I can see that being a relationship, and I get to meet a lot of different, chiefs and that leader development courses for E7s , thru E9s, and O-3s through O5s. And so I've been blessed to meet a lot of new chiefs and seniors and some masters that I would love to continue relationships with, especially from a mentorship standpoint.

But over the last couple of years, that's where my opportunity's been because I'm almost two years retired. But there's also friends that chiefs that I serve with that, especially that live in San Antonio, that my wife and I said, hey, we want to be really deliberate about continuing to forge those relationships. We have relationships in uniform, but, just based on the pace, you don't never get to that next level of friendship. But there's probably four or five couples there in San Antonio that my wife and I said we want to be deliberate about them and go start having dinner with them and hang out with them. So we're working on that piece now that we're on the other side.

Advice to leaders regarding focus and strategy
25:03 Phil Easton The Air Force is working on their talent management plan, something we've been working on for a while. The advice I would have for folks is that for leaders is to continue to find out what your passion is and go after it.

Our jobs on what the Air Force selects us for and the assignments obviously dictate that you can't always go straight to your passion, but try to navigate, make your desires known. Try to navigate your career into the things that you're passionate about. Example, for me, after I met Ralph Perez, and I became a basic military training instructor, I knew that my passion was mentor, molding and developing others.

I knew it from there. I did that for five years, but I had to go back to maintenance. So I went back and went to Charleston. I was a section chief, expediter, pro Super QA superintendent, all those things, and then non volunteered to Misawa. But then as we become chiefs and other ranks, you get more opportunities outside of your career field. And I put in an application for the commandant at the PME center at Kadena because that's where my passion was. I was blessed to be able to be selected for that. And then the command chiefs wanted me to get ready for command chief.

I became the MSG superintendent as a maintainer at Kadena. One of the most difficult jobs that I've had, but it prepared me and rounded me off what I needed as a maintainer from the support side. And then I got into command chief, where I can continue to mentor, mold, develop and help people from a personal and a professional standpoint. So my point is that I fell upon TI duty to find out what my passion was. But those are opportunities. So if people want to be a first sergeant, they want to be a developmental advisor, they want to be a PME instructor. Whatever it is, figure out what your passion is and go after it.

And then come back to your career field. And then figure out how do you get back into what you're passionate about and stay focused on your career, but also don't do it at the detriment of your family. I think about the times when I wasn't balanced, which was when I was a TI, thank God my family stayed with me, not because I was doing anything crazy. It's because, just like marriage and family. But marriage, more importantly, is like a bank account and if you don't invest into it, you go bankrupt.

And I spent a lot of time on the job and not a whole lot of time physically or mentally present at the house. Sometimes I was present physically, but not there mentally. I remember coming home and my wife wanted to talk, and I'm out. I'm asleep, because I had just spent an 18 hours day at work. But marriage and family is like a bank account. You have to invest into it.

What to do when feeling overwhelmed and unfocused
28:25 Phil Easton Sometimes your better half checks you and gets you refocused. But for me, it's like preparing mentally. Before you go into. Before you get home, you know that the kids are going to want to, run to the door and see you. And. And they're happy to see you, but you have the stress of the day. So how do you respond to them when they come running to the door? Because how many more you have to think about it.

If you, they run to the door and you don't give them the level of love or the level of attention or the response that they expect, how many more times are they going to run to the door? Sooner or later, they're going to start running to the door, and then you have to come in, dad's home, ten minutes later, they come down. I mean, you got to prepare yourself. You're like, you know what? I had a really tough day right today. And, you know, sit out in the car and prepare yourself. Come back to the door and say, hey, I need to be present. I need to show my kids that regardless of what kind of bad day, they're number one, right, and put those things aside for a few minutes as you get into the door and you greet everybody and hug and kiss your wife and ask them how their day was, and then later on, you can get back to whatever was stressing you out or the email that you just read or the phone call that you have.

But you got to be deliberate about it, because if you don't, I told, at my retirement ceremony, I told them my goal was to make sure that after many years, you got the center aisle, and on that front left side is your wife and your kids. I wanted to make sure my wife, Yolanda, Brianna, and Ariana, my kiddos were there on that front row, and if you're not deliberate about it, sometimes those rows are going to be empty. Then you sit back at the end of that career and ask was it worth it? I mean, you're a chief, you're a command chief. You're 30 years or whatever, but the family that you had is not there. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? And I wanted it to be worth it, and it was because I did it in my career with my wife and my kids loving me and appreciative for the sacrifices that they made and for the sacrifices that I made. But you got to be deliberate about it.

Bad recommendations he hears in his area of expertise
31:19 Phil Easton I was told when I went to TI duty that it was going to hurt my career. But, this is 1999. Things have changed since then. We've been through DSD (Developmental Special Duty) and then our current version of special duties, when I came back to maintenance, they did hurt me after five years of being a TI. But I promise you, it's the one thing that, the one point in my career that made a huge difference and impact on my career. I feel like that was bad advice back then. I did it because I wasn't loving maintenance. I wanted to do something different.

I knew I loved teaching. I just didn't realize how much I enjoyed it. So whether special duties positively or negatively impact your career, I was told that it would negatively impact my career. And I totally disagree with that now in hindsight, and definitely disagree with it after reading individuals records and knowing how the system works and more importantly, understanding how the tools that we learn in any special duty, regardless, TI, etcetera, how that can extremely help the air force and further develop the person. So for me, that was some advice that I disagree with.

We talk a lot about work life balance and I don't know if there's a such thing having work life balance. I think we have to be careful with that term. I mean, I think we got to be careful with service before self without further explanation because a lot of us have put our families before service a lot, and there's a time and place for that conversation, but not at the detriment of it. And there's so many people that have lost families or, and done different things because they feel like they supposed to do it. And then the proper balance of it, I was totally unbalanced for a long time, but I did a lot better.

Hopefully my wife would agree towards the end of my career. And I made a lot of decisions, man, based on family. My first time for command chief, second time that I was put up for command. First time I was put up, I was at Misawa as a squadron chief, but then I got selected for PME commandant, so they took me off the list. The next time at Kadena, I was eligible a year later, after getting to Kadena, they were like, hey, we wanted you to put you up for command chief. And we had just gotten there. We got there in January. They wanted to put me on the list in July. And we had just moved my daughter's, my oldest daughter was big into basketball. My wife was doing a home based business, and I didn't want to put them, put them through that again. So I asked to not be on the Command Chief list that year.

All right. And I had to talk to the MAJCOM (Major Command) command chief, which was Brooke McLean from Air Force enlisted village. And I explained to him, I said, hey, I understand how this works. And I said, I hope I'm still considered next year. I said, but for family reasons, I'm asking not to be on the list. And he honored it. All right, and some people think, hey, maybe you get blackballed or something affect you in the future.

But it didn't. Next year, I got on the list, and I was selected for command chief. And then I've asked not to be nominated for an numbered Air Force position when I was at the 86th because for the same reasons. For family, because at the end of the day, I want the family to be there on the left side, front row and I want to make sure my girls wasn't impacted and my wife wasn't.

1980s action movie named after him
36:00 Phil Easton Wow. 1980s action movie. Hmm. It's got to be one of the Batmans. I mean, I can't remember which one. I'm a huge Batman fan. That's my favorite superhero. So from an action standpoint, it would have to be something like that, I would imagine.

If there was a GIANT BILLBOARD that he could place anywhere in the world with his message on it for the world to see, where would the billboard be and what would the message say
37:05 Phil Easton I would love to have it up and down I 35. I think we've missed the boat, especially in the military, but also just in society. And there's a statement that I came up with five, seven years ago, and it speaks to humility. So maybe it'd be more important on maybe a military installation, because the statement is more for military, but it can translate. And the statement is that we're in special positions. We're not special people. There's nothing special about Phil Easton.

It was God's favor that allowed me to be you safey u calm the things you read off in the very beginning, right? I was in a special position. There was nothing special about me. You know, we think about it in your position. My position. If I hadn't to get run over by a truck there in Stuttgart, Germany, a couple days later, they gonna find a us european command senior leader to replace me. Right. But I was in a special position, and I always stayed humble to that.

There was nothing special about me. So you're not a special person. We just happen to be in special positions and we should honor that and continue to remain humble. And that's why I tried my best to stay humble in all the opportunities that I was given to even, you know, interviewing for chief master in the Air Force, all those things, I remained humble, but because I always realized that it wasn't about me, it was about the position, and to always remain humble in that situation.

Closing comments and parting thoughts
38:47 Phil Easton I just want to say thank you for the opportunity. I know we met back three, four months ago now in Wright Pat. We said, hey, we could possibly make this happen. We saw each other over the last couple of days, and I just appreciate the opportunity. So, great job on you. I looked up, passing the torch and the podcast and everything associated with it, and say congratulations to you. Thank you on your success, man.

And just continue to do this great work because people need to hear from senior leaders and, and people that you interview just to learn. So we always talk about iron sharpening iron, and just continuing to get better, and this is a way for people to do it. So congratulations to you and thank you for the opportunity.

Mentioned:
Master Sergeant Ralph Perez
Senior Master Sergeant Christopher “Smitty” Smith
Chief Master Sergeant Brooke McLean

Quotes: “What we think, we become.”- Buddha