You know, the weather was so bad that we couldn't get over it to get back to the carrier.

We couldn't land in Afghanistan.

We couldn't get over it.

And then we're going up to 45,000 feet there.

We're not supposed to fly that high with weapons on our airplanes.

The weapons have all iced over the airplanes icing over.

We're an afterburner.

The airplanes run out of gas.

I mean, it's just one of those nights where you, um, you have to have faith as it turns

out.

This is the made to advance podcast.

I'm your host, Brian Aulick.

We're here to inspire and equip you for your best future.

Awesome.

Well, it's good to honor you, Frank,

and let's grab a seat.

You guys can grab a seat,

and thanks for giving Frank that good honor.

And it's been awesome getting to know you, Frank.

I'm so glad you're here,

and I'm so glad all of you guys are here, too.

I know we've got guys from all different backgrounds,

all different church backgrounds.

Some of you know church at all,

And we just want you to know no matter who you are,

no matter where you come from,

you are welcome in this place, amen?

And so we're glad you're here.

And we're just privileged really to have this conversation.

I leaned over with Frank and I'm like, hold on.

So when I'm seeing the back of what looks like

Tom Cruise's head, that's like you.

He's like, yeah.

So that's the thing, actually, that's the thing.

So we're so grateful to have you here, Frank.

I was thinking tonight that maybe after we're done,

we could hit up that guy with the $1,700.

And then after that, we could walk over

to that guy with all the shoes, put that together.

We're going to go and come out of here looking pretty good,

I think.

So anyway, I want to meet-- what shoes are you wearing tonight?

I don't want to see.

What you got on right now?

Yeezys on.

Come on, all right.

That's how I was going to bring the Yeezys, but I just decided,

well, we'll just go with the old black boots.

So, well, we've got a great conversation ahead of us tonight

and I really wanna just look forward to this opportunity.

I've been looking forward to this opportunity

to be able to, for you guys to hear Frank's story.

He's got a tremendous background,

a tremendous faith journey as well.

And so we're just gonna dive right in, Frank,

if that's all right.

I'd love it.

All right.

Well, I'd love to just start just for some context

and maybe you could share with the guys

a little bit about your growing up experience

and things like that.

Sure, of course.

So I actually was born not too far away.

I was born in Naperville, just outside of Chicago.

We moved when I was really young to Atlanta.

So I grew up in the Atlanta area.

And from a faith perspective, my mother was Methodist,

my father was Catholic.

And so they found commonality in the Episcopal church.

And so I grew up in an Episcopal church,

very different style of worship than what happens here.

Of course, the Lord works in many ways.

And so what I thought was wonderful about my family

as a kid was that we were at church all the time.

And we were born and raised in that church,

and my closest friends were in our church.

And so my journey started there.

And I distinctly remember a point in Sunday school,

one Sunday, where one of our pastors was talking to us

about different kinds of prayer.

And one of the things he mentioned to us

was not even talking, but listening.

And it was revolutionary, 'cause I'm used to praying

like we've been praying all night.

And so he introduced us to this way of prayer

where we just closed our eyes and listened.

And the point was made that sometimes

the Lord wants to talk to you,

and you're too busy talking to him.

Yeah, that's good.

And you need to just listen.

And it actually had a revolutionary change in my life

and to how I prayed and to my relationship with the Lord.

And it was really the first time where I felt like

my sins, my failures, my errors were accepted

and were, you know, I could move forward

because I didn't have to say anything.

I just, I felt it and I listened.

And it was a chance to recognize

this really awkwardness of your spirit

when no one's talking and you're just,

you're just bare and exposed.

And so that was a part of my journey for sure as we went.

And by that time you'd already known

kind of about Jesus' death on the cross

and his work on your behalf.

So it was really, for you, that time of prayer

was really where everything you knew to be true

about God and his love for you really came home,

it sounds like, in a very personal way.

It's the first time I felt it.

Like I truly felt my soul, my spirit was moved

and was accepted and was granted grace

and was understood.

Yeah.

And by virtue of just being very involved in our church

and there all the time and coaching basketball

and being, you know, involved in the service

and the worship lead and that sort of thing,

I went to the Naval Academy to serve in the military

and it was at the very end of my senior year

that I very much felt called to ministry.

And in a conversation with someone who is a mentor to me

and an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church

as we're going through this process

of what we call discernment,

one of the comments that was made was, you know,

there's also a way to minister that's not on the altar

and maybe it's worth it

since you've already gone down this path

and you're so close to graduating

from the Naval Academy moving forward

that you might think about the opportunities to minister,

but not in church.

And I think it's relevant in a setting like this

where we're all ministers to some degree.

We can all share our walk and our journey

and there are ways to bring Jesus to other people's lives.

You don't have to be on an altar to do it.

And so that was revolutionary for me

to hear that at a young age.

That's so good and it reminds me

of my own journey a little bit

'cause I was so close to becoming a jet fighter pilot.

But then the Lord said, "I should pastor instead," so here I am.

I could have been—I would have almost been in that movie, Frank.

You know what I love as you're sharing a little bit about your spiritual journey is that you'd

heard about Jesus, and maybe some guys here have heard about Jesus, and you know or you've

heard about that this Jesus died on a cross, and he died for sins.

And it really, each one of us just has to come to that place where we realize at the

core of our beings, He did that for me.

He loves me.

And so you came home to Jesus.

And I love that you made peace with this idea of God could use you in a very different capacity

than ministry, that He could use you as a jet fighter pilot.

So it's awesome.

You met your wife, actually, early on.

Tell us about how you met.

Because you met your wife, in my mind, in the best possible way to meet a person's wife.

I agree.

And by the grace of God.

I sent you a picture, I don't know if they can pull it up,

but we had, my wife and I went to church

at a young age together, and we were in the primary choir.

You know, I have memories of us.

Yeah, so that's, I'm the corny one over there

on the right side, you can't see my jams and knee-high socks

thank God, but my wife is the sinner in the back

with the blonde hair, and we have pictures together

at four and five and six years old, you know,

at church together and in choir together.

And then in our particular case,

we went to separate high schools.

I went to a public school in Fulton County,

and she went to a private school

and we were in different youth groups.

But then many years later I was in flight school

and our, actually, oddly enough,

we were in an arranged marriage

'cause our mothers coordinated the first date.

No kidding.

And so I called her up on Christmas day

and I said, "Listen, I've been told I have to ask you out."

And she said, "Well, I was told I had to say yes."

(laughing)

And so that's how our, and actually,

what frustrated both of us the most

was that we were in love right away

and were married within that year,

engaged six months later,

and that our parents knew better than we did, even at 25.

Wow, is that, well, I mean

It does make it easy to meet in church,

'cause you have, for me personally,

having that spiritual foundation in a marriage is,

it is the foundation, right?

It's on what everything else is built.

And so when you already share the same beliefs,

to a large degree, everything else

is icing on the cake, really.

Yeah, that's such a great point.

And what I often will tell couples is,

if you get married or get in a relationship

where you are oriented to different end goals spiritually,

it might feel like you're doing okay now,

but that is gonna bear its way out over time,

and you're gonna feel the distance over time.

And so I think you've just given a great plug

for everybody who's not connected, who's single,

all the dudes need to get connected

in Young Adult Ministry, I'm just saying, all right?

We got some great ladies out there, so that's so cool.

And what a great story of how the two of you met.

So she's been a military wife for a long time, basically.

Yes, she has, and it's quite a challenge for them.

Now, how did you know, I mean,

I get that you were entertaining, okay, where's my calling,

and that kind of thing, but really,

how did you end up saying, I'm drawn towards the military,

I'm drawn towards being even a pilot?

I know it wasn't sort of a straight A to B to become a pilot.

No, it certainly wasn't.

No, what I was drawn to, I feel like,

more than anything, was service.

I wanted to serve, I really felt strongly

that it was more important to serve others

and to serve my country in this case.

I wanted to go to a military school,

I felt called to do that.

I couldn't tell you exactly why.

My family wasn't in the military, my dad was a physicist,

My mother was a programmer, and so it was very abnormal

for me to go the route I did.

But then, you know, the example that I use, actually,

when we were on the Blue Angels,

we'd go to different cities,

and we would give presentations,

usually to young men and women,

and it wasn't our job to sign them up to serve our country.

But I would say, if I could give you,

paint a picture for you, why I felt called to serve,

it would be this, is picture a town,

whether that's Grand Rapids or Detroit or something,

with two large buildings.

And you go to the very top of the building,

and there's a plank, there's like a two by 12

that runs in between the two buildings and spans 50 feet.

And if you walk from one building to the other,

there's a knapsack with a million dollars in it.

You know, and now granted we're talking

to 15 year old kids, right?

But it's a lot of money.

And so if you walk over there,

now the downside is you have a 10% chance of living.

Nine out of 10 times you're gonna fall over and you die.

But if you get over there and you bring the money back,

it's yours and you're a rich man.

And you play Xbox the rest of your life, right?

And so, but you also have a one in 10 chance

of living on the way back too.

So now your chances of survival are pretty slight.

And then my would ask, you know, who would do that?

Who would be willing to risk their life

to get a million bucks?

And you'd have a couple of tough guys.

Yeah, I'll do it, I'll risk.

And in general, most people know enough not to.

And then I'd say, all right,

let me change the scope a little bit.

And so for the case of this group is,

whether you're married or whether you're a granddad of 22

or whatever the case might be,

it's, there's no money on the other side.

Instead, it's your wife and your two children.

And that building's on fire.

And if you don't walk over there

and bring them back one by one, they're gonna perish.

Who's gonna make that trip now?

And every hand goes up.

Because it's about service.

We're not important individually,

but the lives of those around us are.

And so I've said, that's the best way I can illustrate

why I felt called to serve.

I just felt like it was the right thing to do,

and I felt like the mission was worthwhile.

And so, whether I did it,

I actually expected to serve for five years

and was in for 25.

Is that right?

But it's one of those things

where when you love what you do, it's not work.

You know, it's a calling.

and you didn't start out actually heading

towards being a pilot.

No, not at all.

I actually, if we talk about failure later,

I'll share that more with you.

Okay, gotcha.

But yeah, I definitely, I will say,

when I found out that I was gonna be a pilot,

I cried for a week straight.

Okay.

Which is ironic now.

It is very ironic, yeah.

So we'll get to hear about that a little bit later.

So you had three different deployments

where you're flying off aircraft carriers

in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I thought, probably just,

the guys being in the room here,

I thought it would be great to hear

maybe at least one story that you go,

this was just a really challenging

combat mission that I was on.

Yeah, of course.

I can remember almost all of them, right?

And so I have a picture of Afghanistan,

and it's one that I took,

my third child was born on this day.

So it's relevant for me,

because any time you're 9,000 miles away,

and I actually, I dialed in over,

this is the village we were overhead that day,

but I dialed in the GPS coordinates for the hospital

my wife was at with our giving birth, to see the heading.

You know, if I flew on a heading of 358 for 9,283 miles,

I'd be with my new daughter, right?

And so it's one of these emotional times

where I'd rather have been with my wife and kids.

But we were there, and if you see that picture,

what's really interesting is that's Afghanistan.

That's how all of Afghanistan looks.

And Iraq is much the same.

But there are good guys down there

and there are bad guys down there.

And it's really hard to discern who's who sometimes.

And so that makes that mission very challenging.

But the other aspect is, if you could look at a black slide,

it's just nothing.

That's what Afghanistan looks like at night.

And because the fact is, unlike Holland or Atlanta,

there's no ambient lighting, there's no cities.

They burn fires for warmth.

They don't have, you know,

necessarily the same amenities that we do, right?

So it's really challenging.

And one particular mission that I felt like

still sticks with me is,

just a day when the weather was absolute garbage.

All of Afghanistan and Pakistan,

Our carrier would be in the North Arabian Sea,

which is a huge body of water that extends

from basically Saudi Arabia all the way to India.

And you're hundreds of miles off the coast,

but for us to get to Afghanistan,

we'd fly 30 minutes to get to the coast.

You'd fly an hour over Pakistan,

and then you'd be in Afghanistan.

And so it was every bit of an hour and a half

just to get to where you were going,

and then you'd have to get gas from an airborne tanker.

And anyway, one particular day,

I had one of our newest pilots in the squadron

that was my wingman for the day.

I was somewhat senior, and the weather was awful,

and so we thought for sure

It's not worth the risk, right?

And then we're on the carrier,

but you go through the motions and we're strapped in

and you're ready to go and you just go,

man, there's no way this is happening.

All of a sudden you just, you feel a bit like Ross's car.

You're pushed back in it and going,

oh my God, we're going.

And off you are into the dark.

And now we're airborne for hours and we're in Afghanistan.

And it was just one of these nights

where it was such a challenging,

it was dark and the weather's awful.

And we had lots of Americans that were in combat

getting, taking fire.

So we're bouncing from one battle to the next.

all the while the weather is just getting worse and worse

and worse to the point where we're getting updates

that this airport's now closed, this airport's closed.

And so what's happening is all of our options,

should things go wrong, have just disappeared.

And now there's nowhere we can land.

We're going back to the boat,

but we've been extended over and over again

because of all the firefights.

And the weather is so bad that we go to get gas

to try to get home and we can't,

I mean, we get gas in an F-18 with a probe

that sticks out of the nose into a basket

and you have to, you thread a needle with it.

and it's really precise and it's challenging.

And the basket's just all over the place

'cause the turbulence and there's lightning

in every direction and you're going,

how do we survive this?

We can't land, we're over hostile country.

I have a very junior pilot, I'm able to get gas

by the grace of God and then he can't.

And so you're going through all these different scenarios.

And I'm trying to direct the tanker

to get us to good weather and it was just,

and then once he did get gas, that's why we're here,

but the weather was so bad that we couldn't get over it

to get back to the carrier.

We couldn't land in Afghanistan, we couldn't get over it,

and then we're going up to 45,000 feet.

We're not supposed to fly that high

with weapons on our airplanes.

The weapons have all iced over, the airplane's icing over.

We're an afterburner, the airplane's running out of gas.

I mean, it's just one of those nights where you,

you have to have faith, as it turns out.

Well, it's amazing, and I think it gives perspective

on anybody who came from work today

and thought, "I had a bad day."

(audience laughing)

Well, I'll tell you what gives me perspective

all the time, it's 747 here,

And my brothers and sisters are doing it right this second.

They're over there, they're over Syria and Afghanistan

and it's two in the morning right now.

And I just thank God every day that we have men and women

who are willing to do it.

Amen.

Let me ask you a question.

Let me ask you a question about,

I'm sure it's on everybody's mind,

which is what was it like to fly as part of the Maverick,

the movie team, and just to hang out with Tom.

And I know I've heard incredible things

about what Tom Cruise is like when it comes to stunts

and his participation, so yeah,

just tell us what that experience was like.

Absolutely, I was surprised to be involved in it at all.

A little bit of background, as I was with the Blue Angels,

I was transitioning us to a new airplane.

I'd flown for a lot of years as a Blue Angel pilot,

and they were making this movie,

and they were looking, they were trying to find

the right experts to use as the pilot.

So for the carrier scene, they were using the person

who taught carrier landings at that time,

and for the dog fighting scenes they used the Top Gun instructors.

And then they had a couple scenes that you saw in the video

that were low altitude, really low altitude.

And traditionally in an F-18, 200 feet is the lowest you go.

And that doesn't sound that low,

but the airplane is so dynamic and so maneuverable

that at that altitude you're allowed to look inside for one second.

We call it mission cross-check time.

So you're looking outside at the terrain, the obstructions, whatever,

but you can come inside to turn your radio channel

or your dial-up a weapon for one second.

but they wanted the airplane at 10 feet.

And so you're in a car basically,

but you're at 600, 800 knots.

And so it's literally,

you know, if anyone comes to the breakout session tomorrow,

I have a short Blue Angel video about focus,

but we put a spring on the stick.

And so it's a 40 pound spring.

You're doing kind of a low curl with it.

But if you relax 40 pounds, like an eighth of an ounce,

you've crashed in less than a second, a millisecond.

You're right on the razor's edge.

And so they were looking for someone with experience.

And so I was asked to do it

because I'd done it more than anyone at that point.

And Tom was great to work with.

The scenes that you just showed were all the scenes I flew in.

And one of the things I love about that movie,

for those of you who've seen it or hopefully will see it,

are like the scene where the Mach 10 airplane flies

over that shack and the roof comes off.

It's one of the -- everything you see

on Top Gun Maverick is real.

They filmed it, you know.

And some of the scenes where it's an F-14 or a Chinese

it's not China, it's Chai-ran.

That's the actual country we're, I think, at war with.

But it's a real airplane that was filmed that they re-skinned

to make it look like a different aircraft.

But for that scene over that shack, it was me

in a Blue Angel airplane.

They re-skinned it to look like that Mock 10 airplane.

But the roof did rip off.

And the director almost didn't use it

because he thought it looked fake.

Which I think is remarkable actually, right?

Because nowadays, every time you see a movie

that has aviation, it's everything CGI.

>> Right.

>> Always. Because it's cheaper.

And we flew 800 hours at like 13 grand an hour

that they had to pay to the Navy.

I mean, millions and millions of dollars to get real footage.

And so that actually happened.

The roof ripped off the building and those sorts of things.

But as it related to Tom, what I really thought was great about Tom is,

I didn't feel like he was a prima donna.

A couple of the actors were and some were just really generally good people,

but he was one of, if not the hardest working person I've ever met.

And we had a day together where we were briefing at 6 a.m.,

we flew all day long, multiple flights.

We were coming back, we were landing at 9 or 10 that night.

It had been a long day.

And I said, "What are you up to this evening?"

because I was flying back to Pensacola where I lived.

And he said, "Well, I'm gonna take,"

he had a small jet, a Honda jet.

He was gonna take the director down to LA,

drop him off, and then fly to Florida to see his son.

I said, "Well, you're gonna sleep, I'm sure."

He goes, "No, you flew all day today,

"I get to fly tonight."

And he wasn't kidding.

He's just a pilot's pilot, he loves to fly.

Just goes after it.

And so I was quite impressed with his work ethic.

And I think you told me that you flew

closer to the ground than actually Navy pilots

would be allowed to.

Oh, far more, yeah.

I mean, the head of all of Naval Aviation,

the three-star admiral that owns every airplane,

was calling me before and after every flight

to brief and debrief with me.

That was the level of attention that I was receiving

for some of those flights for a movie.

That's crazy. - It's crazy.

It's also crazy to think $13,000 an hour

is what they rented those planes for.

I mean, I go to Hertz and I'm like, this is too much.

And that's just the gas, actually.

That's just the gas.

I mean, if you had to pay for the aircraft

and the insurance, the hangout, forget about it.

It's amazing.

Here's another quick funny aside.

Tom wanted to fly the airplane, of course, because that's what Tom...

And Tom's a very good pilot.

If you see the movie when the P-51's flying, that's him.

And so he said, "Well, I'd like to fly it."

And they said, "No."

And Paramount said, "Well, what does it cost to buy a Super Hornet?"

And they said, "It's like 85 million."

And they go, "Oh, is that it?"

Turns out Boeing won't sell them airplanes if the Navy doesn't allow it.

But they were to some degree debating whether they should just buy their own plane for the

Navy.

Yeah, it's just 85 mil, right?

Talk to the guy with the shoes, you know what I mean?

(audience laughing)

Well, one of the things that I've really appreciated

as we've talked is just you've had some incredible

experiences working in teams.

And I really, as you talk about your experience,

and guys, as you're listening to this,

I really want you to think about what the role

of community and relationships with other guys

in your life looks like as Frank shares a little bit

about his experience with teams.

Sure, I would love to.

I actually, I sent Brian a video,

and then maybe we can play it.

I wanna share a little Blue Angel

kind of behind the scenes stuff.

Watch this video.

This is a Blue Angel maneuver called the Fleur de Lis.

So it's supposed to look majestic.

All these airplanes are in close formation.

What I love about that from a teamwork perspective,

it's all of us, it's not the Diamond Pilots, the solo,

it's the whole team, and we're flying close formation,

and then in an instant, everyone maneuvers very dynamically,

splits apart, breaks up.

If when I would fly, sometimes we could take our friends,

you know, another Hornet pilot could get in with me,

and that was the one maneuver

where they'd almost all G-lock,

where they'd pass out from the intensity of the Gs,

'cause it was such a dynamic and hard maneuver to fly.

But the way we do-- - Now hold on,

there are two guys then in, I mean, you pass out,

so what happens? - Well, so I'm flying,

'cause I was the Blue Angel lead solo,

and then if you were a Navy pilot

and a lifelong friend of mine,

a couple times during the year,

we were allowed to give them a ride

in the back seat. - Oh, the buddy

Yeah, the bunny passed out.

Thankfully, one of us had to be awake in the middle.

Well, I did see, I just begged the question.

I'm sorry, I think I'm so caught up in the flying part

that I'm a little trying to get my mind around

this whole thing.

Yeah, right on, right on.

What's cool about this,

if you've seen the Blue Angels fly,

the way that maneuver happens is through communication.

And so what we'll do is we'll be in the airplane,

we're holding onto a stick that controls it,

left, right, up, down, that sort of thing.

But the way we all fly like that is that

the lead aircraft says something like, "Up we go."

And it's programmed, and we almost sing it.

Up we go, and on the G and go, everyone flies,

everyone moves the stick together.

And you don't just move it at the same time.

You move it at the same exact precise second, the same distance,

and the same rate of change, because all of those things matter

in three-dimensional space, right?

And so on the up we go, everyone pulls back.

And it's akin to being at a stoplight where, you know,

everyone's bunched up and the light turns green

and the first car goes, second car has a little delay,

third guy is like talking on a cell phone so he didn't go at all,

and then you have this accordion thing that happens, you know?

And so, but for us, if we did that,

no one would come to an air show

'cause it would just look like garbage every time we turned.

And so we have to do it using this communication.

And then at 10 degrees nose high, smoke on and ready, break.

And on the K and break, we all maneuver.

And so you go on this communication aspect, right?

And that's critical.

We cannot fly a Blue Angel air show

without being on the radio constantly talking

and almost, like I said, singing to one another.

So that thing happens.

But if you could pull up the other picture,

I wanna show you,

and this is what I was explaining on the phone,

the real secret behind the Blue Angels

and communication is what happens after we land.

So this is a picture of our ready room, and we're very kind

of careful about showing too much of our background.

We keep some smoke and mirrors going on.

But this room has all the Blue Angel officers,

and not just the pilots, but every officer,

the maintenance officer, the public affairs officer.

Everyone goes into this room, and the show ends,

and we come back, and we sit at this table.

And this is the most -- in my opinion,

the reason the Blue Angels are a high-function team is

because of what happens next.

So at this table, starting with the senior person,

the commanding officer of the organization,

goes through five minutes, 10 minutes,

however long it takes,

and lists every single thing he or she did wrong.

Not just for the flight, the whole day.

I met a young man today when I was signing autographs,

I forgot to take my sunglasses off,

and I feel like I lost that engagement

that I wanted to have, that direct contact.

Or I ran a stop sign on my way home, you name it.

Or I put the whole team at risk

by maneuvering the aircraft too aggressively.

It runs the gamut, but you list everything.

And you don't talk about the things you did well,

You just talk about the things you did wrong.

And everybody does it in order.

And then we start debriefing.

Because the idea is it's important

to be your own harshest critic.

If you're willing to identify and admit your own mistakes

and your own failures, then you move forward

as a team together.

And what in practice happens is it's incredibly liberating

to be willing to admit your mistakes.

But it also takes being vulnerable a little bit, right?

Where you are -- it takes confidence.

But once you do that, if you're willing to admit

when you've failed and what you've done wrong,

then it allows for this open dialogue that follows

that's incredible.

And that's why the team is so great.

It's 'cause we're willing to admit our failures.

And this is so-- - Do you ever have to

challenge another guy?

Like, would he always catch his own failures

or would you have to say,

hey Frank, I know you were in the movie,

but that last whatever, you know,

you ever have to speak to him? - I would say,

generally, the culture is such that people would say,

you're right, I'm sorry, I left that off.

It was just a recall issue.

Yeah, I gotcha. - But in general,

everyone works really hard.

You know you're doing it right

when you're listing something you did wrong

that no one else knew about

or would be able to know about, right?

And that's that level of honesty and integrity.

And so I just think it's really,

it answers the Blue Angel team aspect,

but it also speaks to all of us in ministry

and in worship together, right?

And if we're willing to be vulnerable,

and we're willing to admit when we've failed as a group,

you know, in a group, in open conversation,

I think that's the way you move forward together.

It's powerful.

So good, and I really hope, guys,

as you're hearing Frank share that,

take these things to heart.

I think that part of what he's saying

is the reason why they are performing

at such a high level as a team

is because they have guys who are willing

to be transparent with each other when they mess it up.

And I think way too often, we're so busy pretending

and fronting and putting on a good face for people

that we don't have the opportunity to get guys around us.

We're in a place of challenge.

And so one of the things, Frank, we'll be doing,

actually, this weekend is just talking about,

guys have opportunities to join groups

around here in Enghedi, and you can put it

on the Connect cards, you can sign up tomorrow,

get in relationships with other dudes

who really wanna perform at a high level in life,

and you need a team to do that.

You just can't do it solo and do it well.

So that's such a great example.

I think the applicability, let me just say this as well.

The applicability for all of us here,

it's not just a air show team, right?

It's if you run a company, if you're a mid-level manager,

it takes someone in a senior position to do it,

or if you're a father, and to be willing to admit

of people who work for you or who are beholden to you

that you've sinned or that you've failed.

It really is powerful.

And all of us have the opportunity to do that,

but it does take courage and confidence to do it.

Yeah, there's a certain amount of humility

you just have to be okay with letting your guard down

and saying, "I messed up."

That's right. - Yeah.

One of the things that you've had to deal with

throughout your career is just dealing with adversity.

And that's something that each one of us can resonate with.

We've all had to fight our own battles.

And I thought it would be cool for the guys to hear

some of the ways that you've encountered adversity

and then not let adversity defeat you.

Okay, yeah, absolutely.

Naval aviation and aviation in general,

one of the really unique things we do

is before you ever fly in an airplane,

you study, you have to memorize everything that can go wrong

and depending on the aircraft,

it might be pages and pages of rote memory

and the idea is that you can't just go up

on your first flight and say,

well, I only memorized the first six out of 24 things,

so hopefully the other 18 don't happen on this flight,

I'll study them tomorrow.

You know everything about the aircraft,

because when something does go wrong, you have to know how to react.

So if you guys could queue up that video, the next one.

This is a video of a friend of mine, a Canadian F-18 pilot,

flying at an air show in Canada.

And his airplane's fine until right about this second.

(Airplane engine)

And the video is remarkable for a number of reasons.

Primarily, it's because of how fast it happened.

And so this is critical for air shows

'cause the airplanes are so low.

Normally we're at 10,000, 20,000 feet.

You have tons of time to sort this out.

If you're at 200 feet, it happens really fast.

What's also remarkable about that video is

the fellow's name was Brian and he lost his right engine.

You can actually pull up the next picture

'cause we do this on the Blue Angel circuit a lot.

We do it, but with two planes

and we're really close together.

So when an engine fails for us,

it's disastrous instantaneously.

And even the next picture,

this is a little bit Midwestern here,

was me when it happened to me over the Great Lakes.

who was at a show in Milwaukee, same exact maneuver.

My engine didn't quit, I flew through a flock of seagulls.

And so the right engine just exploded right away,

you can see that, and the left engine kind of petered out,

thank, by the grace of God, a minute later.

How often do you lose an engine?

I mean, is this highly uncommon, or is it no, that happens?

No, it happens fairly, not every day,

but it happens with some unfortunate regularity,

mostly because of birds.

Okay, wow.

Birds don't fly at 20,000 feet,

where F-18s normally fly, but in air shows,

we're down between zero and 200 feet all day long.

Yeah, so back to the Canadian friend,

So yeah, so what was remarkable is he lost his engine

and you see how quickly it happened.

So his aircraft was almost a total, well it was a loss.

There was a way to save it that I'll get to,

but he survived the loss of the engine,

he survived the ejection,

and actually as the aircraft rolled off to the right,

it's just almost dumb luck.

You know, in our airplane, if you're in two seats,

one goes up and left, the other comes up and right.

So if he had lost his left engine, rolled off that way,

and delayed ejection, it would have shot him

into the ground.

So that's just a 50/50 chance on his part

that he lost the engine and he lived.

But then he was parachuting down

thinking he was going into the fireball.

That was 18 million degrees or whatever,

'cause he's just pulling down and he avoids that.

And then he said the scariest aspect of the entire ordeal

was after he's on the ground,

he couldn't deflate his canopy

and he's being dragged to his death.

And it's a beautiful day in Canada,

it's eight or 10 knots of wind right down the runway

and he couldn't get the parachute to collapse.

So he thought he was gonna be dragged into a tree or a rock

and he survives the first three really challenging things.

But I show that 'cause when it comes to dealing

with adversity, it's not an aviation thing, right?

We memorize our procedures.

So in that case, if that happens to us,

you dump the stick right away.

And the reason you do that is 'cause the aircraft's flying

at this really low speed.

So you're pushing the aircraft through the sky

and you can't fly that way with one engine.

We don't have enough power.

So you have to dump the nose

and then the airplane has enough power to fly

once it has less angle of attack.

But in doing so, the airplane goes down.

So you're basically saying,

I accept the fact that I might hit the ground, but it's the only way to guarantee that I

might not.

So you dump the nose, you step on the rudder, you go full power, you have these procedures

that just weren't applied because it's unsettling, you know, to do that.

But when it comes to dealing with adversity, if you're able to think ahead about what can

go wrong, if you're able to identify whether it's your audio, I mean, the footprint here

for audiovisual, like I was saying, is remarkable.

And part of the reason, when everything runs this smoothly, it's because a lot of people

are working really hard and are experts at what they do, and they make it look easy,

Right? And hopefully we make the air show look easy too, but it's because they've already

figured out everything that could go wrong and they have a backup plan.

Yeah.

A buddy of mine pitched an IMAX movie about aviation to McGillivray Freeman and to Amazon

and ultimately he's giving his presentation to a bunch of billionaires who are going to

bankroll this IMAX and his laser pointer went out and he pulls out from his other pocket

and starts.

And the guy said at the end, he said, you know, we had no intention of doing this.

He goes, but why did you have the other laser pointer?

And he said, well, I was just anticipating something breaking.

He's like, that's remarkable.

And we wanna do this with you,

because you were anticipating things going wrong.

And we know if you did that for something as silly

as a slide clicker,

that you've done that for everything you do.

You know, as you say that,

it reminds me of when Jesus was tempted

by the devil in the desert in those first 40 days

before he went into public ministry.

And the thing that always strikes me

about that time in the desert

was the devil comes at him

with three very strong temptations,

and Jesus had scripture memorized

and ready to be prepared in that situation.

And I think so often with when we face the temptations we face on a day-to-day basis,

it might not be, you know, crashing a plane with that close to the ground and needing to eject.

But I think the point you're getting at is he survived. He lived because he was prepared for

what could happen. And similarly, I would just encourage us to think about what are the areas

of life that we're prone to temptation, prone to danger, prone to screwing up our lives.

What's it look like to think ahead then? What's it look like to say I'm not going to be alone

in that space with somebody of another gender

because I don't wanna put myself in a risky situation.

What's it look like to know the kind of Bible verses

you need to know so that when your mind goes sideways,

you can start claiming and praying into the word of God

instead of just hoping that you do okay?

And I think those are some great applications

for what it means to be prepared.

Now, you've had obviously a stellar career.

You have an incredible career in the military

and then in the private world,

and now you've done big picture movies.

So in the midst of all of that,

I think it would be easy to look at your life

for all of us and say, wow,

this guy is just a phenomenal success.

And it just seems like everything goes up and to the right

for Frank Weiser.

But the truth of the matter is you have faced failure.

And I like to tell people all the time,

if you're going to live a significant life,

you will fail and you have to be ready to fail.

And I would love for you to just coach and speak into the guys

on how you've wrestled with that prospect of failure.

If I were to try to diagram my life, I wouldn't say I was a success.

I'd definitely say I was a failure right away.

But I do think that failure can be the single best teacher and motivator.

I was having dinner with a group of gentlemen tonight,

and one of them mentioned Michael Jordan.

And I love Michael Jordan for a variety of reasons, greatest athlete of all time.

But he also has some really powerful quotes about failure.

I mean, he's quick to say that he missed 3,000 shots, or 9,000 shots,

and lost 300 games, and because of that

is why he was successful, right?

Like I was saying before, I deliberately went

to the Naval Academy to be a SEAL.

From seventh or eighth grade on, I was laser focused,

I'm gonna go, it's free college,

it's the fastest way to do it, I wanna be a Navy SEAL,

and did everything I thought was right.

It was in the top however many for grades

and physical fitness and everything you need to do.

And at the end of the day, the Navy does

what the Navy does, right?

And they say it's the needs of the Navy,

and they actually choose you for what you're best suited for,

or how you can best serve them, not how they can serve you.

And that's actually a pretty powerful thing

to have happen to you at a young age,

to have to recognize it doesn't really matter what I want,

it matters how I can best serve.

And so long story short, I wasn't selected to be a SEAL.

I was told to go aviation, and I was wrecked.

I was absolutely, like I said, I cried for a week.

I was inconsolable.

I didn't drink alcohol.

I was 21 at the time.

I didn't drink for a few years after that.

And my mom, I remember saying to me, I wish you drank.

(laughing)

You are inconsolable.

You need some way to calm down.

When mama's speaking that up,

you know you're in a bad place.

That's right, yeah, I was heartbroken,

I mean, my whole life.

Seven or eight years as a young man,

working to one specific goal,

and it wasn't as if like, ah, there's a chance to,

it was zero, it would never happen, right?

And so I went down to flight school,

kind of committed like, all right, well,

the Lord has sent me here for a reason,

I'll be the very best pilot I can be.

And it's gonna take some effort, actually,

because all these other people that are down here with me

have wanted to fly their whole lives.

They got their dream and they have lots of flight time

and they're experienced and they're motivated.

So I have to outwork all these guys who are ready to go.

And I committed myself to do it in that way.

And then on my very first flight,

I couldn't even taxi the airplane.

I was so bad before we even took off.

I wasn't allowed to take off.

I had to go for remedial help

just to drive it on the ground, you know?

And I was like, oh my God, I'm never gonna get through this.

And then I do a couple of flights.

They give you what we call a check ride,

safe for solo check ride where an instructor gets in, they say, "All right, you're safe

at least to have the airplane by yourself," and I failed it.

And so I'm back home that night going, "Well, I fail out of flight school tomorrow.

I get one more chance tomorrow and if I don't pass, then I'm done.

I go home with my tail between my legs," you know.

And that happened a lot.

And then, you know, just a few weeks after that, my father passed away.

And that's quite a distraction, you know, in the midst of a challenging flight school.

And so it was these times that, I will tell you,

the only reason I'm here as a Navy pilot

is because of my faith.

'Cause I didn't have close enough friends

to get me through those hard times.

I was alone, my family wasn't there.

You know, you're just, you're alone but for Jesus.

And that's 100% the reason.

It was when I got down on my knees and listened and prayed

that I would be able to serve my country

for the right reasons in this way.

And for sure, the only reason I did it was because of that.

Yeah, that's such a great word.

And you know, really that gets at this idea,

we're all gonna face failure,

we're all gonna face times where we blow it up

and it wasn't good and it didn't turn out the way we wanted.

What I hear you saying is the crucial thing

is you leaned into your relationship with Jesus

in those times and you let him give you the strength

to get back up again.

And you made peace with that you're gonna fail.

I'm guessing in a kind of weird way,

you got better at it as you went.

Would you say that?

You get better at flying, but did you get better at failing?

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and actually, we have a thing in Navy.

When you're landing on the aircraft carrier,

you get graded.

There's thousands of people watching your landings.

It's a very high visibility thing.

And you get an A, a B, a C, or a D.

And then your grade is your worth as a pilot.

And you can have a case where you were either too low

or too high to start with, or you're fast or slow,

whatever your deviation was.

But if you handle the aircraft in such a way

and this might happen once a month for one pilot

your grade will be nice correction.

And it's basically the person grading you,

the landing sickness officer says,

I know you were out of parameters,

but whatever you did to get back on

was so perfectly executed that all I can say is,

you know, you get an A for the landing

and it was a really nice correction.

I bring that up because we can make nice corrections in life

and sometimes failure offers you an opportunity.

It's a quote from Henry Ford,

failure is the chance to begin again more intelligently.

And so we're all gonna fail.

And if I talk to a group of young men,

my immediate thought is if you see someone

who's been very successful,

you think, like you said, that you haven't failed,

But what almost is for sure is they failed

more than anybody else, they just weren't willing to quit.

And they were willing to pick themselves up,

in our case, through the love and support of Jesus Christ,

but they just weren't willing to quit.

There it is.

And that's such a good word.

Some of you guys, I was praying for you

as you were all walking in and as we were worshiping.

And I know some of us are coming,

you can't get this many guys in a room

and not have a bunch of us that are feeling

like we're failing, at least in some area of life or another.

And what was just spoken by Frank

is such a good word of encouragement.

Whatever it is that you feel like you're failing at,

that does not have to be the end.

The key isn't the fact that you're failing.

The key is that you say, "God, help me.

"I'm gonna get back up again, and I'm not gonna give up.

"I'm gonna keep getting after this and persevere."

And so I think that's such a great word.

Frank, I'm curious, when it comes to just looking forward

in life, and this isn't a question we talked about,

you've done so much already,

and I don't mean this to be funny,

but how do you like,

when it comes to looking forward to the future,

what do you look forward to

when you've got all the things on your resume that you do?

And I know you live with purpose.

So how do you find purpose when it would be easy to go,

wow, all my big moments are in the past?

Yeah, that's a great question

and one you hadn't prepared me for.

You know, what has been truly a challenge for me

is finding purpose.

You did talk about preparation, Frank.

I did.

I was prepared for this question.

I'm feeling adversity.

You know, I think what has truly been a struggle of mine

since leaving the military is finding purpose

and a reason to serve, and the things that,

we've become very involved in our church,

and that's helped, because we do feel

that we're able to serve.

As I was saying at dinner this evening,

I mean, I've been given a platform

for a short period of time,

because of Blue Angels and this movie,

and actually what's unique to me

is that those are two shiny objects in my Navy career,

but that's not what's important to me.

I'm most proud of the deployments.

I'm most proud of the men and women I served with.

And some young man who was having a really bad day

in the aircraft carrier and a couple moments of time,

you know, changes the direction of their time at sea

and life and so those things really matter to me.

But purpose now looks very much like

how can I serve my community?

And we serve the Lord, I serve my family,

and I serve our community in that very specific order.

And the real goal of mine is to pass that on to my children

and to do something different,

to do something that involves serving a greater cause.

Yeah, that's so good.

I just, from talking with you as I have,

you have such a rare mix of incredible life experience,

obviously, but a maturity and perspective and a depth

that it's hard to combine those things

in quite the way that you have.

I think your best days are in front of you.

I think that God has given you a deposit

of faith and conviction in him,

and you've been on the front lines

as the solo guy doing the star kind of stuff,

but your next leg of the journey is going to be you being multiplied

and far more people than you've affected to date,

merely because you're investing in other people,

you're serving other people.

And now it's not going to be you in the plane so much

as you helping equip other people to fly on all kinds of levels in life.

I think you've got great days in front of you.

Thank you. I hope so.

(Applause)

One of the things that I did plan on asking you

was just these days, how do you sustain your spiritual life?

I wanna ask that question specifically

because I want our guys to hear,

because we got one more question after this,

so we'll have to keep it moving.

But yeah, just on a day-to-day basis,

if we can have a spiritual experience,

and it was like even I think back

when you felt God's love and presence

all the way back when,

but how do you sustain that day after day?

Let me give an example,

'cause there's some young men here.

And my middle child is a son and he's 14, and he's just now gotten to the age where

he wants to be physically active.

So he's exercising a lot.

And I was telling him, you know, one of the best ways to get in good shape is it's not

about the intensity of your workout, it's the consistency.

You need to do it five or six days a week.

That's the most important thing more than anything else.

And I believe that also is true for spirituality.

And it's the consistency.

It's being at church every Sunday, but not just being there on Sunday,

coming to the various events that happen through the week.

and the consistency of surrounding yourself

with Christian men so that a simple conversation

when you're out with another family at dinner

isn't about the Super Bowl or Taylor Swift,

it's about your relationship with the Lord.

And you have a deep conversation

and your phones aren't out

and you're not talking about nonsense,

you're talking about real stuff that matters.

And so there's consistency in that

and it happens from this.

It happens when we get together.

And so that's the first thing I think is truly valuable

is just consistently being present with the Spirit.

The other one that rings really true for me that I love,

there's a woman named Peggy Noonan

who is the speech writer for Reagan.

And she's an editorial columnist now,

but she wrote a book about Ronald Reagan,

and he was, I'm sure when we were kids,

he was the president, so we didn't really,

we weren't involved in politics.

But as I read the book, she talked about his deep faith

and how it very much allowed him to lead our country.

And she had a story where he was on Air Force One

staring out of the window of the airplane,

and someone came up and said, "Do you need something?"

And he said, "No, why?"

And they said, "Well, you're talking."

And he goes, "No, I'm praying."

and he was staring out the window praying

and just talking to Jesus on a random flight.

And he wasn't a bit ashamed about it.

He didn't have his eyes closed or his head bent.

He was just having a conversation.

That was the intimate level of his relationship with the Lord

that he could talk to him as if it's you and me talking here

and it was so cool to me.

And I read that 20 years ago and it still rings true to me.

I was on the plane up here today talking to the Lord

to just tell him what was on my heart

and what I wanted to get across this evening.

And so I think having that relationship

in terms of pushing forward your spirituality,

really matters.

Yeah, I love that.

Not as important, and we often will say,

it's great to make some space at the front end

of your day in particular, to be still before God,

but I love that you're not leaving it there.

You're saying, hey, let's make our whole day,

as we're coming and going, a conversation with God,

as we're just doing our life.

Fantastic.

The last question I wanna ask you

is a question about just manliness,

and that's something I'm gonna talk about

a little bit tomorrow.

And I'm just curious to know, you've had all of these

different exciting experiences and events in your life.

And tell me about what you would view as one of the most

manly experiences or manly examples you've ever seen.

For sure.

You're right, I have served among some incredible

men and women.

And some of my closest friends did go on to the SEAL teams

and put themselves in a degree of danger

that I can't fathom even,

having spent 25 years as a Navy pilot.

I watched an interview of Tom Brady not very long ago where someone said, "Who's your hero?"

And he paused for a moment, and you could tell he was trying to, you know, comport himself,

and he said, "My father is."

And so for me, I kind of alluded to it earlier, but when I was in sixth grade, my dad was

diagnosed with leukemia.

And it was…it's really troubling as a young man going through puberty and growing up and

kind of at that coming-of-age time to watch your father go from a 200-pound man to 110

and not able to walk on a breather

and really physically disabled.

But what has allowed me to be,

to a large part, successful in life is

that the image and the example he set

at a time when it was so challenging for him

to just get out of bed in the morning,

but to live a good life, to still work,

and to provide us an example.

He lived for 10 more years.

And he did it because my sister and I were young still.

And so I think there's some real truth

into the fact that you don't have to,

well, I mentioned this on the phone,

there's a John Wayne quote, I love this John Wayne quote,

and he said, "You don't have to fight to be brave.

"Millions of good, fine, decent folks

"show more bravery than heavyweight champs,

"just by getting out of bed every morning,

"going out to do a good day's work,

"and living the best life they can against the law of odds."

And it speaks to all of us.

And so my father's my hero.

He gave an example that I'll never emulate.

I mean, there's a expression about,

you know, a woman in labor finally knows

how a man feels when he has the common cold.

(audience laughing)

'Cause as a group, we're such whiny babies

when we're hurting, you know?

And so for my father to be so strong for all those years,

for our benefit, really, really resonated with me.

And I just think that's the ultimate definition

of manliness and courage,

because it's not just a 15-second firefight.

It's a marathon, it's life, it's all day long.

It's doing the hard thing.

And we struggle, we fail, all of us do,

as parents, as friends, as men,

but you have to pick yourself up again,

and you go forward, and I think about the whole idea

that you see really tough men, police officers,

firefighters, whatever, when you see them being vulnerable,

that's super powerful, right?

When they're willing to put themselves,

but when you see tough, strong, confident men

join together in fellowship and in prayer,

that's the strongest thing in the whole world.

And so to me, that's masculinity.

It's strong, confident men being willing to be weak.

So good.

Well, that's a good word to end this conversation on.

I'm looking forward.

I think we're going to be able to do a podcast interview

tomorrow as well.

And so people will get to hear more of your wisdom.

We've got a workshop tomorrow.

But until tomorrow, I want to just

ask if everybody here could just give Frank a great big round

of applause and say thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]