MFREE 065: How a Naval Aviator Transitioned from the Navy Over Seas With Charles McKinney

Guest Introduction:

• Retired Naval aviator Charles McKinney joins the podcast, emphasizing the importance of planning in military aviation.
• Early Influences and Career Beginnings:
  • Born into a Navy family, McKinney's childhood aspirations of becoming an astronaut steered him towards a career in naval aviation.
  • Despite setbacks, such as not being selected for the Tactical Jets pipeline, McKinney adapted his goals and found fulfillment in flying  the CH-53 helicopters.
• Relationship Between Pilots and Maintenance Crew:
  • McKinney highlights the critical partnership between pilots and maintenance crew, emphasizing shared responsibility for aircraft care and safety.
  • He shares insights from his experience as a maintenance officer, underscoring the importance of professionalism and proficiency in aircraft maintenance.
• Aviation Mindset and Leadership:
  • McKinney discusses the mindset required for working in an high risk job, including a commitment to mission success, attention to detail, and constant learning.
  • Reflecting on his leadership journey, McKinney emphasizes the evolution of leadership principles and challenges faced during transitions to civilian life.
• Conclusion:
  • The episode offers valuable insights into military aviation, leadership principles, and their applicability to beyond military service

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The Multifamily Real Estate Experiment

Transcript

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 0:00

Welcome all you multifamily maniacs and veterans to the another episode of the multifamily real estate experiment podcast. Season three is going to be exciting because that's where we're going to dive into the minds of our military veterans and give you some information that we think is valuable for you. So today we have Mr. Charles McKinney, who is a retired naval aviator and if you know anything about naval aviation. One thing you will know is the importance of planning. So everything we do is a plan, for example, for me, and on a maintenance side, we do what maintenance means, which is a part of our planning. We all, but all that stems from the things that a commander I've put into motion working with operations, and then bring it down to us, the maintenance to execute and all that ties into the flight schedule. So, we are hoping to get some information today from Mr. Charles about his involvement with planning. And the importance and importance of that in the military and how it can be transitioned into your civilian life. So without further do, Mr. McKinney, how are you doing today, sir?

Charles McKinney: 1:07

Good morning. Good morning to you. Doing great. Thank you for the invitation. A pleasure to be here.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 1:12

Absolutely. Appreciate you joining us today, sir. Let me ask you this before we get into a little bit more about yourself. Do you have a favorite real estate quote or mantra that drives you?

Charles McKinney: 1:22

Wow. If you're talking about real estate, one thing that's been hammered home time and time again, to me, even since I was a little kid. Is location, like the first, and last rule of real estate.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 1:36

I appreciate that. Location. Mr. Charles 20 years in the military. I don't think my short introduction did your bio any service, right? So can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Where you started? Before we started recording, you mentioned that you gave a military background. So, I'd like to hear a little bit more about how you started and what brought you to the military and a little bit more about your military journey.

Charles McKinney: 1:55

You're right. It's quite a long story and I did start in the military quite literally. My father was in the Navy, so I was born into a Navy family and we moved around a lot. And I can't tell you where I'm from. That's my question. Yeah. Yeah. But whenever someone asks me that question, I tell them I'm from a military family, and that had a lot of influence. Of course, my dad was a civil engineer in the US Navy, and I like that lifestyle of living near beaches, and growing up in, in different locations. We spent some time in Guam in the Pacific as well. And that was great. I'll tell you 1, 1 thing that shaped me. My trajectory, aside from all the nice pop culture science fiction movies and aviation and not what you think, not what many people might think. Actually, I have a soft spot for the final countdown. Look that one up. That's a pretty cool movie about us Navy. All right. After that, I got interested in the space program back then. Columbia launched and it was great. And I thought, Oh, I love to do that. And then actually, we had the disaster, the challenger disaster. And that cemented in my mind, I need a plan if I'm going to do this and not just because not the danger didn't draw me to it. It was just, I thought, those astronauts were such brave people and they were willing to risk it all to punch through that sky and get out there. And I'm like, we need to keep this going. So I thought, how do you become an astronaut? And this is planning. This is the first planning. Some of the first thing I ever did was, okay, you begin with the end in mind. Okay, the goal is astronaut. What do you have to do to become that? Okay, you probably need some advanced science degrees and some experience. To fly it, the only people I see flying it are military aviators, jet pilots, from the Air Force, the Marine Corps, US Navy. So I thought, okay how do you become one of those? You gotta get selected and become, go through the flight program. How do you do that? You have to get your degree and get into the Navy into that program. What goes before that? Okay, there I was, about to get through, high school and I thought, Okay just continue on getting those good grades, concentrate on science and math and go and apply to a good school that will help me continue that. And I ended up going to Georgia Institute of Technology, got a degree in civil engineering. And got into the Navy aviation pipeline through Officer Candidate School. So I went down to Florida for the, the Aviation Officer Candidate School. And got through that, got my eyes commissioned and off to flight school. I went and, got through flight school that was, and here's now is when your plan doesn't go to plan and you have to divert and go through go to a little branch plan. So I didn't get selected for the Tactical Jets pipeline. It was crushing, you think, Oh, just wait, that's all I want to do. So I got to select something else and I ended up deciding, Okay, I'm going to fly helicopters. Because that was like the next thing. If I couldn't be an astronaut, then I wanted to always Fly like Airwolf or something like that. Yeah, Okay let's do this. When you, all these influences when you're a child, right? You think, okay, that's what I want to do. And so I did the pivot, mentally and, physically and went through that pipeline and came out the other end and selected the H 53 in Sicily. That's I wanted to go overseas. It's like the 1 thing that the military child is drawn to for myself is to continue that lifestyle. That means travel, seeing the world, experiencing different cultures. So I want to go overseas ended up going to Sicily and that was a great beginning to my career. Great flying, great locations all around the Mediterranean and the Middle East. I had a great time. People back then told me it doesn't matter what you fly, but when you fly, you're going to love flying. And I absolutely loved flying. Didn't matter what it was, as long as it got off the ground, right? Through a couple of tours flying that aircraft, I did a transition in the middle there and flew. A newer aircraft that had come out back in those days called the MH 60 Sierra. It's an upgraded Seahawk that at the time was supposed to be the future multi mission platform along with the Romeo aircraft. And now we're living those days, but back then it hadn't even come off the assembly line and we were, it was the newest thing. So I did a tour with that aircraft. And then bounced back to my old squadron, and we deployed out to the Middle East, did a combat zone, combat support mission, which was the highlight of my flying career really got to do some tactical flying, which we learned. 1st from the United States Marine Corps, the core knows how to do it. And we were just, breaking into this new area with all the new gear and the armor plating and the weapons. And it was, a little daunting, but Marine Corps took care of us and they can't think enough. The the Marine Corps reserves and the active duty Marines that helped us out from Camp Lejeune all the way out up to Pennsylvania, even out in Yuma, Oh, best flying ever, best instructor,

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 7:22

it was great. Yeah. Yuma is definitely a good place for us to build some real good pilots, so I like hearing your journey and your focus on what brings you what fuels your passion, and flying is your passion. And I think what most people do is that whenever they hit a obstacle or a fork in the road, something that's going to divert them from. What they think they wanted eventually then they give up and do something totally outside of what their initial plan was, I'm trying to get your ability to transition your thoughts from, okay, I did everything that I could to be able to fly jet, but it didn't work out. Okay, what's next? What is it that I truly want? Okay. I want to fly. And the acceptance of flying the CF, 53, which is actually my background, I work in a CF 53 deltas back in the days, actually. There's one right here. That's two. Yeah. It is three. Yeah. Flying along the volcano out in the big Island, it says one of my favorite picture and I make sure that it went on my plaque, so 53, he's an amazing. Platform. It has been a heavy lift capability for a very long time and it done some significant good in the combat environment and also humanitarian relief as well. happy to hear that you contributed to contribute it to the overall mission of the heavy lift capability. That's good.

Charles McKinney: 8:44

That's right. And I'm envious now of the the new next generation. That's going to bring the kilo oh my gosh, that's a really capable airframe. And like you said, you look at what you really want to do, the flying, and that's what really made it worth the effort in the end. The payoff was great, and to wear those wings of gold is truly unbelievable. And I also learned along the way that, oh, you don't have to be a tactical jet pilot to end up becoming an astronaut. You can still become an astronaut. Back then, there was another helicopter pilot that had become an astronaut. I believe when and as long as you can make yourself relevant to the program with advanced degrees or a certain line of study, you can still break into it. So that dream hadn't fizzled out at that point, but when I was finished doing those type that. Flying at that level, I had to move on to different types of jobs. As the career progresses, moved more into operational planning roles, helped bring riverians back. To the rivers in Iraq, and then, yeah, and the small boat operations that we used to have in Vietnam. We basically that we revive that capability in the Navy and with some really high speed, small water craft and new tactics and techniques and procedures and put them on those. Rivers back then. This is about this is 2006, 2008 time frame. And then I was able to go back to school, which is great. Never stop learning, continue to educate yourself. So I was very fortunate to be able to get in residence education at the Naval War College. That was a great time up in the Northeast, got to learn some different culture up there because I'd never lived in the Northeast of the United States, got to dig my car out of the snow a couple times, that was fun, and then I got to go back overseas, which was really another thing that I love about the military and what I really crave, that, that travel, living in, in different cultures, and Basically went to a NATO command in Italy, which was great. I got to work with people from all, all over the NATO enterprise and a couple of partner nations and learned a lot. And after that, I was able to work with our shipmates in the fifth fleet out in Bahrain for a year. And then another highlight if you could call a short tour highlight was when I was the executive officer of Naval Air Station Sigonella. in Sicily. So like full circle. Great leadership position, taking care of sailors and even Marines with special MAGTF that was out there. And it was great. Even the Air Force was on that base and doing a bunch of really good strategically capable roles. And I love that tour and to keep the the kind of the magic alive. And for personal reasons, family reasons, I stayed in, I could have retired. I thought about it at that point, really. Really heavily. I thought maybe that was the high point and I wasn't gonna be flying anymore. Maybe I could, go and take those skills out and do it commercially. But we, I remained in and went to another NATO tour for planning, real time planning, right? Real time planning, J five, planning in Broomstone the Netherlands for three years. And at that point I was really considering, okay, that's it. My I, we had. We've got the one child that I mentioned to you before, and she was graduating high school, and I thought, okay that's it. We're empty nesters, and now we can just, do our own thing, but she decided to go to school in London, and I had one more tour left, and We decided, okay we'll follow her. Yeah. And it was it was another great tour being embedded with the Royal Navy and good kind of way to cap it off, internationally with the kind of background that I had doing a lot of international tours.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 12:49

So before we get into your transition, I want to talk about fear, right? So before you join a Navy, you experience in probably in real time, the crash of the challenger crash. You still want it to fly. And as of today, which is almost mid February a few days ago, we had a CH-53 that went down about 50 miles outside of San Diego. So we know that our platform or aviation, the things that we do is dangerous. Now, what was your thought process being in that environment every time you get in the cockpit or through the planning and also getting into the cockpit, what was the mindset that you had to be in as a aviator?

Charles McKinney: 13:34

You have to be in the mindset that first and foremost, you're wearing the cloth of the nation and you're doing something that's going to be in support of our strategic directives. And supporting the mission, which is overall national defense. So when it everything comes back to service to the country, to defending the nation in 1 way or another, whether it's, your presence helps deter or you're actually bringing aid or supplying or putting steel on target, whatever, you those, it's that mission focus. Apart from that, it's attention to detail. And another thing, gotta credit the Marine Corps. A lot of things come back for me personally to the Marine Corps. Because I did a lot of time, especially in high school, in Jacksonville, North Carolina. And we know. What was in Jacksonville, North Carolina? Great souls ready to do God's work in Jacksonville, North Carolina. And from that, Aviation Officer Candidate School, what do you get? Everyone who's seen Officer and a Gentleman, you know what you're going to get. It's real instructor who knows their craft and that's what they punched in daily attention to detail discipline, spirit teamwork, all of that just comes flooding in and especially the attention to detail when you fly plan. When you breathe, when you get down to the every single minute of the flight that you're getting ready to do of the mission, and then you go and you talk to the maintenance, you talk to people, to professionals like yourself, and you're like, okay, what has this bird been through? What do I need to expect? And then you go together out to the bird and you look at everything like, almost as if you are carrying that, magnifying glass and just going over every single piece and make sure, okay, we're gonna do this. And then the system is built to, to, to baby step you up and you go through a checklist to start up. Everything is to check and make sure everything's working just right before you get airborne. And then from then on it's up to you if you're in the front seat and you got a, you got a solid crew in the back. Experience levels may vary, but you're all in it together and you just, that's where the, that's where all the training kicks in from the date from day one, all the way through to where you are at that moment. It's all been training. It's everything's been building up to that moment, even if it's your 40th flight or, your hundreds, whatever, still everything builds upon itself. And then, when mishaps happen, you learn from them. And you hold them tight and you got to keep them close right there so that you can also keep that mindset of, I don't want to get complacent. This is for real. This isn't old hat. Every flight is the first, like the first flight, and you just got to bring your A-game if you will, cliche, but it's got to be that you have to be the top of your performance every single time. You can't let yourself down. You can't let your crew down. Can't break that aircraft and let the nation down. So that's, those are the kinds of things that they get in that, so it seems like a lot, but it really happens in five seconds, just to your brain.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 16:52

Oh, man. Just listening to that just brings me back to the days of, grinding on the flight line. And it is so fulfilling every single day. Whether you fly on one aircraft or your commanding officer decided that on a Friday, three months from now, we're going to fly the entire barn, it's a lot of work that a lot of work that goes into that. A lot of planning that goes to that. But I think one of the things that I really admire You've seen the relationship that has developed between the maintainers, those guys and gals were fixing the aircraft and the pilots, those guys and gals, those officers, guys and gals were flying the aircraft, right? To your point, walking out to the aircraft, having, small talk conversation, learn, learning the pain points and also just developing a comfort. About the person who just work on the aircraft or the crew that's getting ready to go fly, right? Because as in, in naval and marine aviation crew resource management is a big part of our of our structure. And it's important that the guy and the gals in the back is just as important or in the same level, the same team, same fight as those guys and gals up front who are flying a plane. No. So I really admire those relationship and the way they created.

Charles McKinney: 18:01

It was fun too. It seems a little retro, but you get through maintenance controllers. Look, can I borrow your aircraft, for a couple hours? We're going to take it out. I promise. I won't break your air. Don't worry. Because a lot of people think it's a different, pilots and air crew get a, sometimes get a bad rap. And vice versa, and it's all good tongue in cheek fun. But the reality of situation is the aircraft is a piece of equipment that really belongs to, in my opinion, belongs to maintenance and they care for it and maybe and make it perfect and it's our job to take care of it. We're signing for it. I'll take care of it. I promise. And then you give you and everything's good when you come back. We did this.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 18:45

I appreciate when Adam did God's work and brought the aircraft back. And if the aircraft for some strange reason have some wear and tear in it you will pay attention to the detail during flights and you're able to assess and give us the information that we need to fix this aircraft appropriately, so let's, if you listen to this podcast episode and you want to know what we're talking about the aircraft belonging to maintenance control, look, there's a Facebook page called maintenance control. It's funny. It's one of the funniest page you ever read on about maintenance. It's all about looking at things from a maintenance control perspective, because to your point, Charles, that they really, maintenance control own that aircraft because that's what they do. It's in their name. Maintenance control. Every. Swinging dog tag that touches that aircraft, right there, the approval has to go through maintenance control, so they treat it as if there's a a pristine we call it classic car in their grandfather's garage, right? Our grandma's garage in the garage, right? That need care for, and that's how we treat that aircraft, right? So we get, we feel some kind of way whenever a pilot bring aircraft back, that is not in good condition.

Charles McKinney: 19:51

And that was one of my most, most, that was one of my most humbling positions was I had the privilege of being the maintenance officer for my squadron. And that was so humbling. I learned so much in such a quick time, in a short amount of time, I learned a lot. That's awesome.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 20:10

Yeah. Mainly from you. Yeah. So that brings me one of the things I like about, before we get into that, one of the things I like about your maintenance master chief, I had the luxury of working with these folks. When I was going through the maintenance, when I was an instructor at the maintenance officer school down in Pensacola. And The proficiency level of your senior chief and master chief is admirable. I don't think, I don't think there's another word I can use to describe it, but their proficiency in their craft is 100 percent admirable. So I can imagine. The level of professionalism you had in your maintenance department with training sailors, how to hone their craft and make their drop, make their jobs, their profession, kudos to you for your, the privilege of serving as a maintenance officer. So thanks. Thanks a lot. It was great. Yeah. What comes with that is, you've been in for a little while, longer than myself, and you've seen a transition amongst a young man and a young woman as a leader in the, say, for example, in the maintenance department what are some of the, what are some of the transition that you yourself had to adapt to, to ensure that you was the best leader that these sailors deserve? Yeah.

Charles McKinney: 21:24

One of the first things that pops in my mind immediately is the word trust, and it goes right back to what you said about the maintenance master chief, senior chief, and we also employed a warrant officer in our maintenance our maintenance team it's that, it's a level of trust, when we're going through some of the, our other, we'll call them upbringing jobs when you're a very junior lieutenant and then become a in the Marine Corps, a captain for us an actual lieutenant. You have these jobs, yeah, where you think, okay, this is my fishbowl and I own everything in it. And you're really just, of the training officer or the assistant operations officer. You get the right to schedule. Wow. Thank you very much. When you get to that point where no kidding your department head, and you have those lieutenants working for you, and you can't be everywhere at once. You definitely can't. I don't know any maintenance officer who's, who lives and works at the squadron to be there 24 hours a day to see all the different shifts that come through there and do their job. And everyone needs attention. And it seems day check gets the most love because everyone's in the house during the day, night shift. Oh, night check is left on their own devices. But it's that there is a balance that comes where you have to get around and make sure that everyone is aware. Of what your expectations are, and then once you deliver that, you have to just trust them that they're going to do their job that they're going to live up to the training and the level that they are. And when I was telling you about being humble part of that was learning what the experience level and the expertise level of each of the pay grades within the maintenance and, and each of the trades that everyone did. We call them rates. I think you still have military specialty, right? So it was all also learning how to put all those together and understand why certain people did certain things and then to also be able to ride the junior officers. So that they were accountable and learn that, because they have to be trained as well to then later on replace you, when they're doing their division officer tours or quality assurance, which was a big one. Yeah. But then, yeah, trust is the big one that pops up.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 23:53

Mr. Charles, at one point we have to transition from the military, right? So when you start getting promoted, Staff NCO Field grade officer officers you get a lot of responsibility and it's, it brings a lot of value, right? When you get to make an impact on a couple of hundred, at some point a thousand Marines and sailors, it's a huge responsibility that comes with so much fulfillment. And then at one point you have to transition into the civilian sector. What would that look like for you? The transition from the military to the civilian sector?

Charles McKinney: 24:33

Yeah, it was different. I'd say that's the first, part of it. Why? Because I was overseas another thing. I was embedded in a foreign military's military, and I was in my final tour, I was working in the air cell as the director of the aviation air cell on a battle staff, part of the Royal Navy in England in Portsmouth. And I was 1 of U. S. Navy officers. we were alone and not afraid if you will. And that's the main point that made my transition a little bit, I wouldn't say unique. I'm not the first person to ever do this, but I sure did feel like I was the first person transitioning overseas. And then with the ideal of remaining overseas, I had to do a lot of reading and research. Literally had to dig through the pub some a process that I thought was just going to be log step pretty easy. Okay, pack everything up, ship it to home record or wherever, we're going to live, go through the out processing, place with personnel, they run the, their procedures, assign some papers and, That's it. No, I had to actually I'll say apply for the ability to stay in place and retire. I had to do a lot of networking and negotiating with personnel at different hierarchies within my chain of command, which was an odd chain of command because I literally had a split of operational and administrative in two different countries, and I was displaced. Geographically from the closest unit that I could get to 3 hours away. So admin was a little bit of a challenge. But, because I called around and understood who were the decision makers, I was able to address them directly and get help So I had to be a little bit of a, admin jockey myself, but it was for me. And that's the one thing that I would, espouse to anyone who's considering leaving. It'll all happen. It'll happen to all of us. We're all not going to stay in the military forever, right? We're going to have to transition out is to learn as much as you can about the process as early as you can. So that you're familiar with which buttons to press when the time comes and. Knowing people is really important. You need to research and learn all the topics. And I do dove into Milpers Man for us. And I, my mind was blown in some areas because there're just things that I didn't know and hadn't even considered and thought, oh great, this is something else I have to plan for someone else I have to talk to. I have to figure out where the people are and stay in touch. And I was like. It took time, but I was able to do it, and in my case I've, I had a little bit of experience in that I have Was thinking in my mind, I was going to retire twice before, after Sigonella and after the Netherlands. So I had already done, for example, what is commonly referred to as TAP, what we call a transition GPS in the Navy. So I'd done that twice already and then did it for a third time in England with the Air Force and So I had that experience already and was able to facilitate the kind of the look into the civilian side. But I will tell you, if I were retiring and heading back to the United States, it would be a lot different because it's a more familiar area. A lot of support resources there and. Veterans are thought of in a much different way. Military is thought of in a much different way. I, I believe I read for many years, and probably even still that a list of the most trusted organizations In the country and time again, military was number 1, and then it was like, a lot of space and a lot of space. And then it was like, maybe a couple of services, like a fire department, law enforcement, there, and then it went down, but it's always been a top, we trust our military because we're not the type of country that's going to have a military coup. And we go out and risk our lives all the time. So it was different adjusting to a different country. To be thought of as a military veteran from another country trying to break into a civilian world. That's, that, that really at the time and still ongoing is suffering from some economic woes and like the world really for last few years. So it's a challenge, no harder than say. going through flight school or, flying in a combat zone or anything else that every single person in our military faces on a daily, on a daily basis. So that's one thing about being in the military is you come out of it with a lot of resilience and a lot of know how, we call it salt,

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 29:43

both shoulders. Yes, sir. So how did your background as a planner help you to transition?

Charles McKinney: 29:52

Oh, it helped dearly. I will say it's nothing special. A lot of it people underestimate themselves. People know how to plan. If you didn't, really, how would you celebrate your kid's birthday, party it's that it can be that simple. It's just, it's it's kinda like Yoda, that, that movie Star Wars, right? When the guy Luke is like, oh I can't, use my magic and lift the ship and, the little green guy Yoda is the size doesn't matter. You just think of it and do it is kinda like planning, oh you're planning a major campaign or versus oh, you're planning, your daughter's birthday party still going through the same steps. You still have to identify your end state, your objective, you have to, where you are, you still have to have decision points and milestones to get you to that end. And in those milestones, you have to have actions and support, you have to identify, factors, key factors, you still have to do that. Operational risk management is not dead. I love everything I do and I look as I look at it and I think of what are the top five things at least you could have hundreds. But what are the top five things that could go wrong and why? And then you judge them by how severe would damage be if it went wrong? And what's the probability of it happening? So probability and severity. And for example, birth birthday someone could forget the candles. What's the probability? High. Cause you only have two people running around and what's the severity? Big severity. When your little daughter can't blow out those candles and make a whip, you're done, same thing with a major plan. What's the worst thing that could happen? Oh, the enemy could drop a bomb over here on the headquarters. Probability and maybe if they can get through our defenses, severity, you just decapitated, our HQ, so better plan for that. Better make sure it doesn't go wrong. It's the same kind of model. So the planning really did help out and why? Because in order to plan well, you have to start early. You have to think about these things. So you're not going to forget things. And I got to tell you I when my goal in military was to at least stay in to retire so that I could have retirement benefits, I saw that my father, did 20 years, he got his benefits etc. Okay, that's the goal. At least if I'm going to do service, I'm not going to leave before 20 years. Okay, so around the 20 year mark, even before the 20 year mark, I'm thinking 20 years is coming up. Maybe I should start thinking about what's going to happen to, to, to, for the exit strategy. Oh I stay in. I made the decision to stay in. Okay maybe the next tour. So I better start thinking about that exit strategy. And it just kept perpetuating. So I, really I'd been thinking about retiring for a period of probably 12 years. But a little bit before 20 and then definitely all the way through to the end of the 20 because I did 28 actually. Yes. So I really every single tour after from before 20 years and on thinking, okay, what can I do? How can I prepare? And I'm sure you're going to want to talk about kind of those areas of preparation, like financial the answer to the question of where What, you want to for and for how much you want to do it for those kinds of things did pop up and they changed every single time. I thought about it because we're in a different location. Yeah, we had assets. We had, aging parents. There are all kinds of things to consider. In

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 33:31

that. Yeah. So let's dive into that because look it sounds like we have a very similar trajectory and a, kinda like a milestone. We call it the plan of action and milestone, but the plan of action and milestone for me didn't really start until we call it PO and a and M didn't really start until about, 18 and a half, 19 years in the Marine Corps. Then when it dawned on me Oh shoot, retirement is right around the corner, man, it's like a year and a half, so what is it I'm going to do after retirement? So when Athena and I, we sat down at the table, we realized that we together, we can create some really amazing things in our thoughts. We can put some, a lot of amazing things on paper that is executable, right. But in order to do that. It comes with the timeline, right? What are some of the things that you had to factor into your timeline to plan for a successful retirement up to the 28, 28 years that gives you the confidence of your ability to continue on in the future? Okay,

Charles McKinney: 34:32

I do have a checklist, because I can't remember everything all the time and I don't want to. So I'm a checklist. I'm a checklist guy, but I will say off the top of my head. Definitely on the checklist. This is an easy 1 that's been checked off annually ever since before I even got my commission. And it's something my father taught me. He said, when you get paid, pay yourself first. So you get money from whatever job you're doing, let's say you have 100 for that period of time, you got to take a percentage of that and pay yourself. And what does that mean? You got to put it in a savings account some kind of, you have to do something with it where it's not used, where it's not consumed. I have started long, like I said, all the way in the beginning of having automatic diversions for a certain amount of money that comes in certain percentage of money that comes in to emergency fund. And that's no kidding. It's it goes into this account, which I don't see except for once every month to see how much it's grown and make sure nothing happened to it. And it just keeps building. Oh, but you can invest that. That's a different conversation. Then you got your investment play money. Okay. You can, you can take that and go and play in the stock market or whatever. Then you've got the money that comes in and just bounces right out into the IRA. That's, this is way back, IRA. Then it turned into the Roth IRA, but then gone, that money's in in there. Max it out. Every year, right? And don't even think about it. And then the, then TSP came along. Oh, there you go. Percentage automatic, gone. So what I see in the bank growing in my checking account is just what's left over from paying myself. And then from that goes the budget of, okay, rent or mortgage, school or whatever, fuel, groceries, all that, bills, all those kinds of things. That all gets sectioned off. And then what's really left, we can decide, Oh, do we want to do something fun like go out to dinner? Or do we just throw it in the other account, for safekeeping and build that up for fun later, bigger fun later on? And I'm, this is a personal thing. People have their vices and their hobbies go at it, minor are what are somewhat we'll call limited and not very expensive. With that, the idea is to being debt free. So another thing that I learned is Get that good credit and maintain it. Don't use a credit card for credit. Use it as a means to not deplete your liquid cash and then pay it off in full because you're not spending money that you don't have with a credit card. So you're building credit and my credit is amazing. It's in the little, little dial. It's in the green. It's way over. It's good. Unfortunately, I can't really do too much with it because I live in a different country, you got to maintain it because you never know. But yeah, being debt free is the first thing, paying things down so that when you, so that you don't owe when you're leaving, because you don't know. What your stream is going to be your incoming stream is going to be. So that's 1 of the 1st things on the checklist. The other 1 is or the other 3 in a row are you have to decide and we talked about this already a little bit about you have to decide. These 3 things, at least 2 of them, you have to decide where you want to live. What area you want to live, what you want to do. That's a big one. You have to decide what you want to do. It can't be five different things. It has to be like one or two pick one, and focus on it. And we'll get to a little bit why later on. And then the other one is how much money you need. Now there's how much money you need. And there's how much money you want. And then there's like a combination of needs and wants. And, you come up with your number. How much are you worth a month? How much do you need to be worth a month? And then that may answer where you need to go to do it. And what you need to, and what you do in order to get that. Because say I want to, go back to Seattle and be a mechanic. But I need to make,$250,000 a year, something's not gonna work there. right? Something needs to adjust. So probably the what, probably need to change that from mechanic to senior project manager and get like a pm, an 8:00 PM certificate, whatever else you need to get some experience and build it. And then apply for a good job and go for that goal, maybe you can promote in a couple years. Th those are all things that need to be considered. When you're before you, you punched that button and that all goes into the mix for the planning 2 to 3 years, 36 months. I say at least 36 months and it's not just, oh, I picked that out of the air. That's just experience and how long it takes to get things done. It just takes a long time sometimes to get things done, especially when you're working in the military and in a senior role because you're over 20. Years, right? You just don't have it. Or if you have a family, you just got it. Life happens. So you need to spread it out and be realistic. You can't say I can knock that out and in eight days, good to go. Maybe you can by yourself if you have all the resources, but likely you're going to be depending on somebody else. Who may be in the hospital for a week or may have to go on some travel or, whatever we all always have to depend on some kind of institution, some kind of resource, which is usually tied to people. And when that happens, your timeline just has to spread out a ways. I'll give you an example. One of the things you really need to get squared away, in my opinion, before you retire is your medical status, your medical record, and, service record as well. And that, oh gosh, that takes, that can take forever. It took me more than 15 years to get certain things. Changed and updated in my service record over my career. I started something and it just never would never get done. I'd get go back and forth with the Bureau. Those things take time. You really got it. That's something that needs to be on an annual tickler. Really? If you're in the military. But medical it could take a year to get things sorted out with your record. And when you go to file for a VA claim, which is going to be, at the very least, 180 or 80 days before your exit date, if you want to participate in certain programs. But in order to be ready to meet that 180 day gate, you need to start months in advance to request all of your records from other, whether it's the hospital, military, or you've got some services out in town or private doctors, whatever dental it, it took me for each institution and there are five involved a month for each one and I didn't know this. Until after the 2nd, 1, I should have requested all 5 records at the same time. And it would have just taken 1 month, but I requested 1. It took a month, and I was wondering why the other weren't a part of it. And they said, you had to do that separately. And guess what? Each 1 of those was a month as well because of privacy rules and how the system works. So I, luckily, I clicked on and applied for the rest of the other 4 at the same time, and those didn't all take a month. But still, again, that's an example. Takes time. That makes

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 42:10

sense. Yeah that's definitely one of the big struggle and one of the things that we, what I tell people a lot is even tell my children, that's look we will do things whenever they become important to us, so one of the reasons for diving this deep into our veterans background is to, and also some of the planning and exit strategy. It's to ensure that we can give this information to the younger version of herself, or, those people we have trained to replace us, so they can plan their transition a lot smoother and a lot earlier, to make sure that whenever they go in a civilian world, they leave the military and they leave in a good standing, so that's

Charles McKinney: 42:48

good. That's right. And also on that point, I will say, and I know, this it's better to teach someone how to fish than to give them that fish for a day, which is basically saying, give them the resources and the materials and then tell them, hey, you need to read this. I can't tell you everything. You need to read all of these things. Yeah. Yeah,

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 43:12

you're 100 percent correct, Mr. Charles. Alrighty. So Mr. Charles to podcast, we're going to go into the focus round, which is, the we love our acronym, right? So it's five, it's the acronym of five letters, FOCUS, and we talked about them earlier. Mr. Charles, what do you do for fun? What I do for

Charles McKinney: 43:29

fun I used to Go to the beach now, where I live soccer is my number 1 sport. So if I could ever get, but that requires a group of people. If I can ever work in that's great. But at this point it's a. Really, truly taking care of my family in a way that I haven't I wasn't able to through deployments and missions and working in the military we're enjoying a little puppy that we got, a couple of years ago, which is great to raise a little puppy and spending time either helping people out or trying to get a sustainable life going by growing plants. Yeah. Makes sense. So

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 44:07

what is one opportunity that was a game changer for you?

Charles McKinney: 44:10

It, at, in, in the military or like before? In my whole life

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 44:14

overall for me I had the opportunity to be the director of the Corpus course at, in Miramar. And what I, that provided me opportunity to work with a unique set of individual, the. I think the, what I think was five of the best sergeant in the mall and what that did for me to your point earlier, we're talking about trust, right? I trust them to carry on the mission. And that gave me a lot of time to become the leader that they deserve. And that was a game changer for me. And I noticed that whenever I started to improve myself, I can now serve them better, so that was a major opportunity for me. And I became a better leader, better father, better husband, better Marine, better. Son, it was all encompassing because I had time to work on me

Charles McKinney: 44:56

You just reminded me of a really good game changer that I had. And it was definitely an exercise in learning humility. And it was when I was a very junior officer. I only had, I still only have one bar and it was still silver, but I only have one bar and I, I made a mistake in getting ready to go flying. I I made a mistake and my chief petty officer of my detachment that I was the division officer for, he pulled me aside. And he did it in the right way. And oh, my gosh, I felt so small, but at the same time, he basically gave me a bunch of tools in that discussion where I held on to him and they help chart my course as a leader going forward. And they always say that the chief will train the junior officer and I got trained. Yes. I got

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 45:48

it. And I trust that conversation paid it forward to your, to the value that you placed on your enlisted leaders, right? Yes. Absolutely. Mr. Charles, what would you say is your most important communication tip?

Charles McKinney: 46:04

My most important communication tip is to always be authentic. That's the one, look people in the eye. Give the firm grip when you shake their hand. A lot of communication is non verbal, and if you bring the presence that you want to be understood in a way, you won't even need to speak. You'll get that first, you'll give the first impression and people will feel a certain way about you and hopefully you'll be able to put them at ease. I'm not saying walk in and intimidate people. I'm saying you'll be able to come into people and they'll come into a room and people will look and go, okay, I feel comfortable with this person. And then when you speak and you treat that person as an equal or higher, not even, I'm not saying belittle yourself, but just you speak in a way.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 46:50

That's difficult

Charles McKinney: 46:52

to explain, but like Japanese there's honorific and there's like a normal kind of common way. If you just bend a little bit, people will return it in spades and it's yeah, that's a good that's it. All right.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 47:03

So what is one thing you wish you understood earlier?

Charles McKinney: 47:07

As much as we've spoken about finances and being prepared in that way. I wish I would have understood the value of compounding interest earlier and how to diversify, investments and a little bit more about the investments that I hadn't learned until later. Why? Because I didn't take the time to read about it. And, now I'm kicking myself, but at the same time, I know where to go for the knowledge.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 47:32

Like I said we will do things when they become important to us on the same way to some of the things that for example my, my buddy Nathapol syrup, Gunny Siriup. He retired several years ago and he told me to read this book, rich dad, poor dad, like back, I want to say back in 2000, 2009 ish it's a long time ago. And I did not read the book until 2017. So when I was thinking about a transition and thinking about what I'm going to do for it to fix my income, and he did it, he did his through real estate where they buy property from different places, but he also invests in a stock market to your point earlier, pay yourself first, I finally read that book, understand the difference between assets and liability, and that was a game changer towards the goals that Athena and I, we sit down and we said, because we now thought with more clarity. Of what is assets, what's a liability, and it challenges, it challenged a lot of societal norms that we were taught, so that was a good thing. So Mr. Charles to what do you attribute your

Charles McKinney: 48:36

success? I attribute any success that I have to all the others that have supported me throughout my life, and I credit first parents, grandparents who are libraries who need to, that need to be utilized as much as possible. I'm talking like reading the books until they're rubbing fine. Because when they're gone, that library burns to the ground. And then those great friends along the way, those mentors and teachers, those chief petty officers, that gunnery sergeant pulls you aside and says, and twist your ear makes you listen. Those people are the ones that every little dose they give you builds and builds and you become this superhero of a person to someone, maybe just yourself, but yeah any success that I have. To those people.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 49:31

Mr. Charles, I know we met on LinkedIn for the most part. If our listeners want to get in touch with you, how did it go by doing that?

Charles McKinney: 49:39

Oh, definitely. Get in touch with me. I'm on LinkedIn. Charles McKinney let's see my, my, if you put in the the linkedin URL, I'm C. G. McKinney. I, for the 2nd, and can be reached at. My, my business email, which is charles. g. mckinney2 at gmail. com. Yeah.

SECOND SIR HUTCH: 50:02

With that, listeners thank you for joining the multifamily real estate experiment podcast and catch you in the next episode. I'm Hutch The Marine Investor out.