Not all heroes wear capes, but some do fly! In this episode, Jeremy shares his journey from the schoolyard where he dreamed of flying aeroplanes to how he lands black hawk helicopters on ships in the middle of the night. Jeremy's story is an exciting one that is a fantastic example of humility and what following your passion can do for your career and life.
Not all heroes wear capes, but some do fly! In this episode, Jeremy shares his journey from the schoolyard where he dreamed of flying aeroplanes to how he lands black hawk helicopters on ships in the middle of the night. Jeremy's story is an exciting one that is a fantastic example of humility and what following your passion can do for your career and life.
Chris Potts (00:08):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Career's Night Podcast where we ask our guests, What's your job? And how did you get there? Today's episode is with a good friend of mine, Jeremy. It's really exciting. He's got a really different career one full of excitement, and it was super interesting having this conversation with him. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, but let's start with introducing yourself and telling us exactly what is your job.
Jeremy Mierendorff (00:37):
Well Chris, thanks very much for having me. It's a absolute pleasure to be here talking with you, and I feel quite privileged noting the guests that you've had so far. It's also great to be back in Melbourne and doing this in person. So my name's Jeremy and I'm a army officer a helicopter pilot by background. So most of my experience or almost all of my experiences on the Blackhawk helicopter so an aviation officer. And at the moment I am in Canberra working in a role that manages the essentially army's cargo and utility helicopters. So that's our CH 47 Chinook fleet and our Mrh 90 helicopter fleet, and also a couple other things that we have at this moment. So that's kind of what I'm doing at the moment,
Chris Potts (01:31):
Which sounds really interesting and I'm sure to most people listening extremely foreign. I'm looking forward to this conversation because a hundred percent of my knowledge of helicopters and army and all that comes from movies, so I'm really looking to forward to hearing how it actually plays out. But can you start by telling us a bit more, I guess we spoke beforehand that there's two points of time in your career that the Army pilot period and then now in the management side of it. Can you tell us a little bit about a day in the life when you were flying helicopters and what your job looked like then?
Jeremy Mierendorff (02:06):
I guess for me I was always someone who was very keen to fly as a kid. I was obsessed with aircraft and wanting to be a pilot. When I got older, initially I was focused very much on wanting to fly in commercial airlines, and then at a point in time I got introduced to what the military's like, and I think that was late primary school. And that seemed quite exciting to me. It seemed quite dynamic and challenging and exciting.
Chris Potts (02:36):
I don't remember much about primary school, but in what regards is military introduced to?
Jeremy Mierendorff (02:42):
Yeah, so as a child I moved around a lot and at this point in time I was living in Darwin and I became good friends with a guy whose father ran one of the army units in Darwin. And so because of his position, I got exposure to some of the things that he did. And because Darwin's a sort of military location, there was lots of visiting aircraft and ships and that sort of thing, which kind of introduced me to that side. And also my friend happened to be someone who was also an aviation buff who was also really keen on being part, but he was very much focused on the military side. So he kind of introduced me to that.
Chris Potts (03:30):
So if I'm picturing it, the two of you'd catch up at school, you'd get out your airplane book, compare pictures
Jeremy Mierendorff (03:35):
That's pretty much right. Yeah, we would compare which aircraft we thought was better and why and would get into arguments about why our particular aircraft or why we thought our aircraft was better. But anyway and we became great mates and we're still great mates and so for sure to say he happens to live in Canberra as well. So we catch up regularly. But yeah, so throughout high school I was very much focused on joining the military as a military aviator. I was very fortunate I got accepted into the Defense Force Academy into the army. Through that I then went to the Royal Military College done tru, and then fortunately things worked out and I was accepted onto pilots course and completed pilots course in Australia. So you do a fix wing component and then you do a helicopter component, basically teach you how to fly, and then you do what they call an operational type transition, and that's where you move from your training aircraft to your qualification onto your military type. And for me, that was black hole. I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to go and do that in the United States. So went to Fort Rer and Alabama where I was taught how to fly the American Black Hawk and then come back and convert onto our aircraft. And at that point we transitioned into the squadron. So I was very, very lucky. I got the opportunity to post to our helicopter regimen that's located in Sydney that does a very specialized task. And so that's when my professional kind of journey begins out of training.
Chris Potts (05:15):
And you say that you were very lucky through all those pieces and got those opportunities going back from the transition from school to army, then you finished year 12, went through all that. Yeah, that's fine. Does VCE, any of the year 12 results play into what you get accepted to in the army or is it a
Jeremy Mierendorff (05:36):
No. So at the time, and I dunno what things are like now because I haven't been involved in the recruiting side, but certainly at that point it was quite competitive to get into the Defense Academy. So it had quite a high UAI or equivalent depending on what you wanted to do. So at that time, what they offered us was engineering science or an arts based degree. And throughout high school I focused a lot on the science based subjects because similarly to one of the guys that you interviewed recently on the podcast throughout high school, I was told that if you wanna be a pilot, you need to do science and maths. And so that's what I focused on when I moved into university, I kind of had a bit of a think about what are the things I actually wanna learn and want know about? And so rather than doing a science or an engineering degree, I focused on an arts based degree. So I did politics and management where my majors with a minor in Indonesian.
Chris Potts (06:35):
Wow, that's really surprising for where you are now.
Jeremy Mierendorff (06:40):
And because of that, it just broadened my perspective on things and I really enjoyed it and it was a fantastic experience going through the Defense Academy. Certainly something I would recommend to anyone considering doing that. But yeah, I picked subjects that really had no impact on whether I was gonna fly or not, but I was very committed to, that's what I wanted to do.
Chris Potts (07:04):
So how do you leverage Indonesian and politics into being accepted to learn to fly?
Jeremy Mierendorff (07:10):
Those subjects don't really directly impact what you learn and how you get onto to flight school, but what it does teach you to do, and what I learned was how or what is the best way for me to study and to learn? And that's very important for pilots course because it's such a intense and demanding program that you need to understand how you learn and retain knowledge and everyone's slightly different with that. So I guess that environment throughout the Defense Academy really developed my self knowledge of how I learn and retain things. So that's kind of how it impacted my progression through course. For me, learning is very visual, so I will often create study charts that have the information that I need to know on it and recall that knowledge out of my mind. I'll visualize what I've learned. So, or how that translates into learning to fly is we do this thing called chair flying, which is basically your upcoming flight, which we call a sortie.
(08:21):
There'll be certain things, components of it that you need to do. And so chair flying is sitting in your chair pretending you're in the cockpit, visualizing everything you're gonna do from start to shut down. So all the buttons you're gonna push, what you're gonna say, the radio communication, how you manipulate the controls, all of that sort of thing. And then once you are comfortable with that, you then weave in contingencies. So what happens if my instructor springs an emergency on me? What will I do? Because that will happen <affirmative>, you just dunno what it will be or what happens if it happens for real. And that's why they do that is so that you can react to something instinctively.
Chris Potts (09:08):
And that way of learning visual obviously played out really well for you. Would you say it's a requirement for what you wanna do for learning to become a pilot? If that's not someone's learning style, is it still appropriate for them to pursue?
Jeremy Mierendorff (09:23):
Yeah, I think so because it's all about how you absorb knowledge. So if you're not someone who's visual like that then I'm sure there'll be another way.
Chris Potts (09:34):
You've gone through the academy and spent some time in America learning to fire the Black Hawk, found yourself back in Australia at this stage,
Jeremy Mierendorff (09:41):
Whilst I was in America we have a liaison officer over there. He was a guy who spent a lot of time in the squadron. I ended up going to, and whilst I was there, I got the opportunity to pick his brain about what life was like there. And that just reinforced my desire to go there. So when I came back, I was very I guess forthright in saying, Yeah, this is where I want to go. I understand not everyone goes there straight away. Often there's a path to get there, but ultimately that's where I wanted to go and because normally to get into that squadron, you would go to another squadron first, build skills and then go there. But I was fortunate I got the opportunity to go there directly.
Chris Potts (10:23):
That squadron's an elite squadron or?
Jeremy Mierendorff (10:25):
Well, it does very specialized role. So it's an organization that's focused on domestic and maritime and what we call special recovery operations. And that was its primary remit. So a highly trained organization that is on a very short recall notice to go anyway globally. And so what it means is that it has a I guess a high requirement of the people there to be able to operate in a broad range of different differents or flight ranges. So generally it needs people with experience to be able to build on that experience.
Chris Potts (11:13):
And how many helicopter pilots they have the tribu to be in the
Jeremy Mierendorff (11:18):
Yeah, so, so the squadron that was there would typically have probably about anywhere from 20 to 30 pilots in there across a broad range of experience from very new guys and girls to experienced pilots. But there's also other people that operate the aircraft as well. So we have to make sure that the system works. So yeah, pilots are one component, but it's a very big sort of group.
Chris Potts (11:51):
I guess if I can recap the journey so far, all the way through school, you want to be a pilot, late primary school, early secondary, you sort of refine that to I wanna be in the military and fire helicopters. You then go through the traditional training within the military and then you, you're aware of this squadron that you want to join that has a total of 20 to 30 pilots in it. There's a traditional path to getting into that. And you've thought to yourself, I don't want to take that traditional path. And one thing I think I know about the military is it's pretty regimented. There's not a lot of shortcut taking within the military, but I could be wrong. So I'm interested in how that ambition played out for you to make that transition.
Jeremy Mierendorff (12:37):
That's an interesting question. So I guess as I was going through course, I was very keen on going this direction and everyone I spoke to when they asked me, Where do you wanna go? I'm like, That's where I want to go. But I do understand that there's a pathway to get there. And so I had the expectation that I would go to the other regimen first and I would spend some time there and build up my experience. And then at a point I would go there and I remember sitting in the crew room one day, I was doing some planning on the computer for an upcoming flight that we were doing, and the head instructor came in and he asked me, he said Whereabouts do you want to go? And I told him where I wanted to go and he said, Whereabouts do you think you're going? And I said, Well, I think I'm going over here. And he's like, Well congratulations, you're going where you want to go. So I don't know how that all came about.
Chris Potts (13:38):
I'm not gonna let you get away with I don't know how, if you had to guess, what was it that got you into that position?
Jeremy Mierendorff (13:45):
Look, I think it was probably right place, right time. And they were looking for people and I was just one of the lucky guys that was there that got the opportunity.
Chris Potts (14:04):
I'm really keen to understand what that opportunity is and what sort of work this does. I appreciate that there's some sensitive information and all things military and I suspect that this is one of those. So tell us what you can about your time in that role, what it included and the type of work you
Jeremy Mierendorff (14:21):
Were doing. So I think the thing that I found really attractive about it was the dynamic nature of it. So it was never the same. So one day you could be off doing a particular type of mission and then the next day you were on a plane going somewhere else, doing something completely different. And so that sort of dynamic nature was, I found it very exciting. And then I learned once I got there that the people, the team environment was something I found really attractive. And if we split the people into two parts, there's the guys that you work with that ensure that aircraft system does what it needs to do, but then there's also the customer that you work with as well, the people that you are helping achieve what they need to achieve. And so if we look at the first part, the people you work with, what I found was that all these people are very similar to you.
(15:35):
They're all very focused on doing the best they can to achieve the things that they needed to achieve, but they also enjoyed doing it <affirmative>. And so what we found, well, what I found was that it's a demanding job, but everyone was having fun and enjoying it with a bunch of people that they really liked. And so you are kind of doing really interesting, unique things with a bunch of mates which is great. And then if we look at the customer side because that particular unit works with a very sort of selective group of people or who don't move in and out of those positions often you get to learn and well, you get to meet all of these people that you become friends with as well. So ultimately you are working to fly an aircraft with a bunch of friends, delivering a bunch of mates onto a target to do what they do and then coming back and picking 'em up again. And you're doing that collectively. And so that became a massive driver for me. So yeah, I think a combination of the dynamic role and the people that you're working with was ultimately what really attracted me to doing that. If that answers the
Chris Potts (16:55):
Question. It does. I'm guess I'm sitting here a little bit curious to know a bit more about what you call the customer. Who, what does the customer do? Who are
Jeremy Mierendorff (17:04):
They? So the customer is the ground force essentially. So we worked in the special operations space, which the main units that we worked with were the special ed service regimen and the second commander regimen, and also the first commander regimen as well. And so each of those units does similar roles but different at the same time. And so that, that's who we refer to that is often referred to as the customer, the ground force that you work with.
Chris Potts (17:35):
Very good. And I'm gonna start pushing the boundaries on what you can and cannot say here, but so you said the work is dynamic that one day it's one thing, the next day it's something different. And from what I gather as it's all at really short notice and things like that, I presume we're not talking about a typical army mission or things that are planned in advance. What are your flights? Where are you flying people to? What are they doing?
Jeremy Mierendorff (18:05):
Yeah, so we did a lot of our areas that we operated in. So we operated in a domestic space, which is the domestic counter-terrorism space. So flying around the country assaulting a range of complex targets and by complex and talking about things like high rises or football stadiums or any sort of large areas of public significance where there's gonna be, what could potentially be a target of someone willing or keen to do something bad. So often they're quite a challenging target to fly to with lots of obstacles and that sort of thing. So we would spend a portion of our time ensuring that we could go anywhere around the country and operate in any of the major cities or also in the rural areas assaulting a range of different targets to deliver the guys in the back to a target to resolve a situation. Because ultimately if that gets enacted, it is a force that is a no foul mission, it's to resolve a situation for government. Gotcha.
Chris Potts (19:26):
Yep. All right. And requires some genuinely good piloting.
Jeremy Mierendorff (19:31):
Yeah, I, I'd say so. It requires a very specialist type of flight capability.
Chris Potts (19:38):
Excellent. You said there were three parts. That's part
Jeremy Mierendorff (19:40):
One. Yeah, so the other one is, the second one's very similar. So it's a maritime based response option. So should there be an offshore vessel that needs to be apprehended, whether that's essentially, imagine a large ship of some sort, you need to put a force on board to basically stop that ship. And so that is another area where we would spend a lot of our time rehearsing for because assaulting a moving ship is challenging. You need to locate it and you need to get your aircraft to it. And then often large ships have lots of obstacles and they're moving. And normally when you do it, it's very dark and so there's lots of things working against you, but it's also one of, for me, one of the most interesting and dynamic and rewarding circumstances. So that's the second part. And then the third part is what we call special recovery operations, which is basically the capacity to deploy globally because there's either a person or a piece of equipment that you wanna recover from somewhere.
(20:54):
So it's about going somewhere, getting it and coming home. And that's the other option that we did. But because of that, what this gave government was also a very short notice response option for when other circumstances happen. So for example, one of my first operations, well the first operation that I did as a brand new left tenant in the squadron was deploying to Pap New Guinea at short notice because an aircraft had crashed into the side of a hill just out of Cota. And on board were among a bunch of other people, were a bunch of Australians. And so the Australian government we were tasked to go there to find the aircraft and then recover the victims from the aircraft and bring them back. So because we were such a very short notice organization, we were airborne and in country within a very short period of time providing this task. So we just, my point is we give government options to even do things that are outside of that remit that I just spoke about, those three options.
Chris Potts (22:04):
Yeah, it's amazing. And I'm sitting here trying to work out which direction to go cuz there's about a million things I wanna cover off. But I think I, I'm interested that, again, going back to when you were a child and you wanted to become a pilot that was about flying airplanes and cool engines, and I can only imagine what the motivation for a 12 year old is to become a pilot. And from what you've described, it's about the people that you're working with, the tasks that you're doing, and I guess ultimately rescuing people and doing really amazing things for this country that the country never understands or appreciates. Was that a conscious change for you during that journey or at what stage did that become the driver as opposed to the Black Hawk
Jeremy Mierendorff (22:52):
Or, Yeah, I think when you're going through pilots course, you're very focused on the end. And like I mentioned, it's a deliberately challenging process because I have a certain expectation of people when they finish it. And so throughout that course, and typically it takes broadly plus a minus six months, about two years to get through the entire training continuum, always, there's a saying that you're always two flights away from removed from course because if you fail a flight, you then have generally one, well, one option or opportunity to do that again. And if you pass it, you continue. If you don't generally your time is done. And so you learn to I guess you learn to deal with that constant pressure. So you're very fixated on the end. And then once you finish course for a short period of time, you feel kind of invincible until you get to the squadron and you realize, wait a minute, I've only just received my P plates and I'm also the brand new guy in a squadron full of very experienced people.
(24:11):
And then your focus now changes on building that experience and proving yourself in the squadron. Now there isn't an expectation that you need to prove yourself, but you want to prove so that the senior guys in the squadron and that you know, are someone that they want to have there. And so yeah, you're constantly focused on doing the best that you can, but I guess once you become comfortable, once establish yourself in the organization, then I guess you get a bit of capacity to absorb everything else that's going on around you. So I think after being in the squadron for a couple of years and then getting the opportunity to normally by that point you start getting put in leadership positions and then you start getting exposed to actually leading a bunch of high performing individuals to achieve some pretty interesting and unique tasks. And so that I guess for me is that point at which things shifted from wanting to just fly and do things well to actually enjoy the flying side, but I enjoy the leading side more and that became the rewarding thing for me. And then when I got the opportunity to go back and command the squad, and for me, that is certainly a career highlight. That was two years of a fantastic experience and that'll remain with me for the rest of my sort of journey. So what does that mean? What does commanding the squadron mean? Yeah, so you're essentially the guy that is responsible for everyone in the squadron and all of the tasking that the squadron has and how it goes about achieving that you are essentially are managing director or the CEO of that particular business unit.
(26:07):
So yeah, you ensure that, or the administration and welfare of the workforce is looked after all of their development the things that you need to do to ensure that they have what they need, but you're also responsible for making sure that business unit can do the things that it's required to do. And then once it gets triggered to go do something, you are responsible for actually achieving what you're asked to do. So you're kind of the figurehead, you're the accountable person, the responsible person, you'd stopped flying by this stage. No, no, no, you still fly. And so by that point, generally you've built up, because for that particular organization there's a bunch of unique qualifications that you get. And for some of them it takes a long time to get that qualifications. So by the time you are the squadron commander, generally you've built up a whole range of experience and qualifications.
(27:02):
That means it's vital that you fly. So when you have a formation of aircraft that is off on a task, there's a couple of key positions in it. So one is the flight lead, and that's generally one of the most experienced pilots in the organization. And their job is essentially to ensure that that formation gets to where it needs to get to at the time it needs to get there. <affirmative>, they kind of control the flying side. And then you have another key position in the formation, which is the air mission commander, and generally that is the squadron commander. And so you're responsible for ensuring that the mission is achieved. So when you go off on a task it's not just your formation that's airborne, you'll be coordinating with a bunch of other assets that are either overhead providing some sort of a reconnaissance feed. You might have to renez with another aircraft elsewhere to get fuel. You might be coordinating with another assault element who was also a assaulting target so that you guys arrive at the exact same time or at the times that you meant to. So the flight lead is making sure the aircraft gets where it needs to go, but you are maintaining oversight of that whilst thinking about the entire mission and making sure that goes ahead,
Chris Potts (28:17):
Which undoubtedly brings a whole leap of stress and challenges to what is already a stressful situation doing a stressful job. And I'm not sure what the question is, but bear with me here. I have in my head this image of people coming out of, and as you acknowledge, coming out of that first training being really confident that I can fire these things the jobs you're doing is high adrenaline, I would've perceived a certain amount of ego and confidence that is not only there, but essential to be successful in those jobs. You can't second guess yourself as you're trying to land on a ship in the middle of the ocean, dodging obstacles and things like that. So I'm looking at you, and we've known each other 18 months now and a few of our other guests we met through the nba. And I suspect that a vast majority of our peers through that course should have no idea about some of the stuff you've done and that leadership position. And because you come across as a super calm, relaxed sort of guy who you've gotta work pretty hard to get some of these stories out to talk about some of the amazing things you've done in your life. So am I right in thinking that arrogance, confidence and all that is important or is that sort just not there at all from the outset?
Jeremy Mierendorff (29:38):
Yeah, well first of all, I appreciate the kind comments. Yeah, look, I would say I don't have, a lot of guys don't have a lot of time for arrogance. There are some people who, there are a rare amount of people who are actually arrogant, confident, and are actually really good at what they do. There are some of those people but generally by the time guys come into the organization that arrogance if there is an arrogance or an ego, it's kind of not there. And if it is there, it'll either disappear. Or if that person's not the right fit, then perhaps they go and try something else. I think it's important to have a sense of confidence, but I guess it's more of a quiet confidence. We have a bit of a philosophy of being quiet professionals, and so that doesn't kind of lend itself to the big egos and that sort of thing.
(30:47):
And overconfidence can get you unstuck. And what I've said to a bunch of guys that are coming through is what you don't wanna be is you don't wanna be someone who is over confident and then you get yourself into a circumstance where you're flying in aircraft and you're in a situation that is bad and you've got people in the back that are relying on you to get them out of it. And if you don't have the capacity or the ability to do that, you're in trouble. And I think overconfidence can get yourself into that situation. And that's why it's important that we build that experience and that knowledge in our workforce so that when you put in that circumstance where everything's going bad and there's only one option to get out of it, they've got the capacity to figure out what that option is and lead the team behind them through that.
(31:42):
So I heard a really good saying recently and it was from a guy in the US but I'll paraphrase there. I think it's true, but when a pilot graduates course, they essentially have two buckets. One bucket is a luck bucket and the other bucket's the experience bucket. And there'll be, there will no doubt be circumstances where you'll have to draw out of the luck bucket, but what you want to be doing is as you're drawing outta the luck bucket, you wanna be learning from that and putting in the experience bucket because eventually your luck bucket's gonna run out, but you wanna have the experience bucket full to rely on. So I think that's pretty true, and that's what we try to do is to build experience and knowledge into people so that when they're in that circumstance where things are going bad, they can make the right decisions to get people who are relying on them home.
Chris Potts (32:35):
I think that's really cool visualization. And I'm tempted to sit here and explore with you how four empty your luck bucket might be, but I, I'll avoid that conversation and instead, so you did the commander role for two years at some stage you decided enough was enough of that?
Jeremy Mierendorff (32:53):
No. So the appointments only for two years. Sometimes through circumstances, guys may get a third year, but it's normally two years whilst I very much enjoyed it. At the end of two years you kind of feel like you need a bit of a breather <affirmative> and it's time to do something different, not because you don't enjoy what you're doing, but it's just because constantly on working and you're constantly thinking about what's happening, what may happen, where is everyone, what are they doing? And that not only impacts you, but it also impacts everyone around you. And so it kind of means that my wife and kids kind of have to not necessarily drop things, but they kind of support you to achieve what you need to. So at that point, it's kind of important to give back to them and go do something else. Yeah, if the opportunity come back came around again to go do it again, I absolutely would. But yeah, I know that's just something that's just not completely unlikely in my career.
Chris Potts (34:04):
So what is it that you're doing today?
Jeremy Mierendorff (34:07):
I lead a team that's responsible for managing our cargo and utility helicopter fleet. And so how fleet is spread across Australia and in different organizations and our job is essentially to make sure that the right aircraft are available at the right spots at the right time with the right amount of enablers to support that. We also engage with the whole variety of stakeholders who help make that happen. It's a function that's necessary, but it's a capability management role, which is very important to have that knowledge for future appointments. But it's you do it for a couple of years and then you move on and do something else.
Chris Potts (35:00):
So you came into this role from the commander
Jeremy Mierendorff (35:02):
Role? No, so for the Army at least, and in some ways for the other services at a point in your career, the organization will invest in you and send your way to do what they call command and staff college for 12 months. And this is a, imagine a master's level postgraduate program that focuses on geo strategy, geo politics, some history, leadership and a few other things. And it's designed to prepare I guess mid-level officers for senior appointments. And so typically once you come out of Squadron Command, you'll compete to go and do this course. And then Army will make a selection of out of all the people available at a bunch of people to, that'll go to this course, it it's normally run, well, it is run in Australia, but a small amount, get the opportunity to go overseas and do it offshore if they want.
(36:07):
And so range of countries around the world will send their officers to Australia to do an exchange program and we'll send some of ours overseas. So once again, was very lucky and got the opportunity to go to it in Singapore which my wife and I were very excited to go and do. And that is another career highlight for me. So I did a subcu to the Singaporean Armed Forces for 12 months and did their command and staff college program in Singapore. And so that's what I did for a year, year after squadron command. And then normally should the officers want to, you can then compete for what they call military assistance or staff officer positions for a high ranking officer. And so I was lucky to get the opportunity to do that for our vice chief of the Defense Force, Admiral Johnson. And so I came back and work for him for 12 months, which was another career highlight that was a highly demanding role, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed and I found extremely rewarding particularly at that point in time because there was a lot going on around the country when I was in that role.
(37:32):
That was when the bush fires kicked off. It was when Covid started. So it meant in his portfolio there were a range of things that were out of the norm that we had to work on amongst other things. And for me to be part of that, it was great. And the other highlight with that is I work with some amazing people on some very sort of complex strategic issues that was thoroughly rewarding the completion of that. That's when I moved into this role. So my role has evolved over the last couple of years. It started looking at the implementation of a helicopter acquisition and then it kind of expanded to incorporate the management of this fleet of aircraft as well. So that's what I'm doing now and that I've still got one more year of that, which
Chris Potts (38:31):
Leads very nicely into what I call the final three questions, which is the first one is what's next for you?
Jeremy Mierendorff (38:40):
I mean, that's a fantastic question in the military. My next step, the next thing that I sort of aspire to do is what they call regimen command. So we spoke about squadron command. So in a regimen, a three squadrons. And so ultimately I would like to go back and command the organization based in Sydney, and that runs those squadrons. And so the selection for that is about to commence it. It's a highly competitive process. And essentially the senior leadership within Army sit around and they figure out who the commanding officers are gonna be or who they recommend, who they're gonna recommend to the chief army who they would like to see as the commanding officers and the chief army ultimately makes the decision. So we won't find out until around April next year, but that's kind of the next step, I think
Chris Potts (39:35):
Sounds really exciting and can't wait to talk to you again when you're in that role about what that looks like. But that's really cool. So next question, looking back over your career, and I'm interested in, what's one bit of advice you'd give to that kid sitting in year nine thinking about what they wanna do? Maybe they wanna be in the army, maybe they've got books with airplanes in it with their friends. What would be the advice you'd bestow on
Jeremy Mierendorff (40:00):
Them? I would probably say is it's the cliche thing of work hard be focused on what you want to do, but at the same time, don't apply so much pressure that you're not enjoying it. And I think a common theme throughout a number of the people that you've spoken with is, should you not exceed or succeed first time, there are other avenues to get to where you want to go. And I would say that if you don't succeed, treat it as a lesson, a learning point, learn from it and make yourself better, because ultimately that lesson will help you in the future get to where you want to go. So
Chris Potts (40:34):
It's almost that taking the balls out, the luck and putting it in the experience.
Jeremy Mierendorff (40:38):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, work hard, but don't apply so much pressure that you're not enjoying it, because if you're not enjoying it, then what's the point of doing it?
Chris Potts (40:48):
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more and finding something that you love doing and pursuing it, but if it's some stage on the way you've stopped loving it, you gotta look at why that is and what's driving that. And I suspect most of the time we forget that we love it and we just wanna be successful and put too much pressure on ourselves.
Jeremy Mierendorff (41:05):
So yeah, that's
Chris Potts (41:06):
Right. I agree a hundred percent. And last question is, looking back at your journey and your career, is there anything you would change or do differently?
Jeremy Mierendorff (41:14):
So I gave this question a lot of thought. I think I've said this a lot. I've been very lucky and fortunate throughout my career that I've been in the right place at the right time to get a whole range of amazing opportunities. So I wouldn't change anything that I've done, but what I probably would change is the way that I kind of thought throughout this process. So I'm someone who naturally is focused on the future, and when I do that, it's kind of at the detriment of experiencing what's going on now. So I think what I would change is just enjoying what's happening around me whilst I'm focused in the future. And I guess that I'll just throw a sneaky second piece of advice into anyone listening is yeah, to enjoy what's happening at the now rather than focusing solely on the future. Very
Chris Potts (42:11):
Good. I love that. And I can't let you go without just making the observation that you have spoken a lot about luck and luck in your career. Now I accept a hundred percent what you say about luck when you're flying and take from the luck bucket and put it into experience. But at the same time, I do not believe that someone has that much luck in their career and gets to the position you do based on. So thoroughly enjoyed the chat. I've enjoyed digging a little bit deeper into this person I've known for two years now and trying to understand a little bit more around that hiddenness behind it. But I still feel like you've sold yourself a little bit short here and put a little bit too much down to luck. But thank you very much for joining me and this conversation. Ive really enjoyed
Jeremy Mierendorff (42:54):
It. Thank you, Chris. It's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed
Chris Potts (42:56):
It. So that's it for today's episode, and I would like to again thank Jeremy for spending the time with us, not only for that, but for the years of service to this country. I think we can all agree that knowing people like Jeremy are out there defending us and our nation really gives us comfort and will help us sleep at night for any students listening in. I hope you took a lot outta this discussion For me, the highlight was hearing how a lifelong interest in aviation has led Jeremy to this extremely exciting and interesting job. While most career paths don't have a typical path, as we would say, it was interesting to hear how the army managed with theirs. Jeremy shared the typical journey for his career, but even within that, Jeremy was able to expedite his own journey away from tradition at a few points and sort it back into that tradition at others. So I just thought that that was extremely interesting, and I'm sure that we can all agree that for Jeremy luck was not as big a part as perhaps he's made it out to be. So that's it. Thank you once again for listening. Please do spread the word about this podcast. I really appreciate your support and if you could just pass on this particular episode to anyone who has expressed an interest in joining the military, I would be grateful for. Thank you.