EPISODE NOTES
In this powerful Part II conversation, Bob Preston welcomes back aviation legend Rogers E. Smith—NASA test pilot, SR-71 Blackbird pilot, and lifelong student of leadership and passion—to explore how he has carried his core values into retirement.
In Part I, Rogers shared stories from his extraordinary flying career. Today, the conversation shifts from the cockpit to the next chapter of life: how to build purpose, meaning, and fulfillment after stepping away from a high-achievement career.
Rogers opens up about his philosophies on money and fulfillment, the two guiding principles that shaped his entire journey (“leadership” and “passion”), and how those same values continue to guide him through retirement. Bob and Rogers discuss the emotional transition out of a career you love, facing self-doubt, what he wishes he had known earlier, and how he stays connected through community—especially in Coronado and Mammoth.
Listeners will also hear the inside story of Rogers and his wife Judy’s longtime involvement with the Mammoth Mountain Host/Safety team, where he and Bob serve together today.
This episode is filled with wisdom, humility, and heartfelt perspective from someone who has lived boldly, stayed curious, and continues to lead with integrity well into retirement.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why money matters—but isn’t enough—for fulfillment
- The lifelong power of living by two simple values: leadership and passion
- How to know when you’re truly ready to retire
- Whether top performers regret stepping away from their careers
- How to bring your best qualities into retired life
- What Rogers wishes he knew before retiring
- Why he splits his time between Coronado and Mammoth Lakes
- How he and Judy stay active, engaged, and connected through community
- Practical philosophies for “living great” in retirement
If you’re preparing for retirement—or already in it—Rogers’ wisdom offers a grounded and inspiring roadmap for designing a meaningful next chapter.
Join us as we post new episodes weekly!
Connect with Bob: BobbyP@theretiredmindset.com, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, TheRetiredMindset.com.
VIDEO
TRANSCRIPT
Rogers: 0:00
President Kennedy, prior to going to the moon, is touring a presidential tour down at Cape Canaveral. And in this group wandering through the halls, there’s a cleaning man off on the side. And he says, just a moment, and he goes over and talks to the cleaning lady, cleaning man, and says, eventually, what do you do here? And he says, I help to put a man on the moon.
Bob: 0:34
Welcome to the Retired Mindset Podcast, where soul meets body. Hosted by me, Bob Preston. Embrace the retirement journey of transformative insights, inspiring conversations, with new episodes produced weekly. Hello, mindsetters! Bob Preston here, welcoming you back to The Retired Mindset. This time for part two of episode three, titled Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, with my friend and former NASA test pilot, Rogers E. Smith. Raj is a man that I’m honored to be able to call my friend, an aviation legend, whose name is mentioned with the likes of the Wright brothers, Chuck Yeager, or Neil Armstrong. If you haven’t yet listened to episode three, part one, I would encourage you to do so because part one, in that section, we cover Raja’s career and the time he spent at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base flying the legendary SR-71 Blackbird, the world’s fastest plane. A reconnaissance jet that flew for over 25 years. It was a class of its own, soaring at 85,000 feet and at speeds of Mach 3.2. That’s over three times the speed of sound or around 2,300 miles per hour. Yes, it’s true. Beyond his incredible career, what makes him truly remarkable and why I enjoy so much spending time with him is his level of humility and his outlook on life. I think you’re really going to love this conversation because today we focus on his philosophy, values, and principles by which he now lives in retirement. It is recorded on location in his beautiful home in the eastern Sierra, Mountain Town of Mammoth Lakes. I’m here on Mountain right now in California in my backyard on my deck. So sit back, enjoy part two, and get ready to be inspired by my good friend Rogers E. Smith. Rogers, thank you so much for inviting me into your beautiful home today. And today we’re going to be continuing with part two of my conversation with Raj. As you remember, we did part one last time where we focused mostly on his career. And then today we’re going to focus on how he applies some of what he learned during his lengthy career with NASA into his retirement life. So this is going to be a great episode. And thank you again for joining.
Rogers: 3:22
You’re very welcome in my house and back again. And just for you, I wore the hat for the team that we share. Right? The host team at Mammoth Mountain. That’s where we’re located right now.Bob:: 3:34
And I think this is really exciting to be here on Mammoth because you and I share two passions: the coast of San Diego, right? That’s right. And also the forests and the mountain life in Mammoth. And so here we are. We got we did part one on the coast in Coronado. And then today here we are in your beautiful mountain house. So thanks for having me over. Okay. So, like I said, we’re going to focus more on the retirement side of Raj today. Okay? If that’s okay with you. And one of the things that I did in preparation for our discussion was listen to some of the TED talks you’ve done in the past. There was one that you did with NASA. And in that podcast, this really stuck with me. And you said that money is a necessity. I see the smile coming on your face. Money is this necessity, but not sufficient for fulfillment in life. So I’m hoping you could expand upon that. Tell us a little bit what you meant by that and you know what that means to you.
Rogers: 4:36
Well, I believe it’s really important for everybody to have a passion for what they want to do, whatever it may be. Schools and give little talks to the little people. And uh we take a pressure suit and so on with the SR background and answer questions. And I the question I would ask the class, they’d all be seated around and say, Well, what do you want to be when you when you finally finish school? What do you want to do? What do you want to be? And about half of them would say, I want to be rich. And I’d say, Well, just what you said, that that’s important, it’s it’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient for fulfillment as a person in inside yourself that you have achieved because you need to follow your passion. And so that’s uh fundamental to my journey as I decided early on, as we talked about before, I wanted to be a pilot, in particular a test pilot, but I wanted to go to school and I wanted to study aeronautics. Airplanes were fascinating to me. But when I went into the Rock Canadian Air Force on their program to go to university, and ultimately in the summers I went to flight training. They paid my way, but I’d never been in an airplane, never any airplane of any kind. So people always say, What was your reason for doing that? Well, I developed a passion for studying and learning because I was in a very competitive, I was in the center of a working class area. It happened to be predominantly uh Jewish, and I went to when I went to school, I took Jewish holidays off. But most importantly, the people around me were really serious about school. In order for me to be in their group, I had to hold my side up and I had to work very hard. So these are the things that have meant a great deal to me, and they’re foundational. But one of the story about what led me to it was an article that was I read by a man that came from the Netherlands to re-energize the Heineken beer sales in Canada and the United States. And he was being interviewed and asked, what does he look for in people that he is going to hire? And he said, Well, I I follow the three C’s. They have to be competent, they have to be collaborative, they have to be able to work with each other, and they have to have good character. And you say, Well, what’s good character? Well, one is passion for your work, the second, and we’ve talked about it, really, really important at all levels, is have the ability to control your ego, to work together. And another one is in that sense, no, no one of us is smarter than all of us. You may not believe that, but you need to practice that. You need to, if you want to have a team or a company or an organization to work to make that extra effort to be successful.
Bob: 7:36
So the last time we spoke, uh, you told a story about your uncle, as I remember, and how he got you in or into being interested in uh being a pilot in aviation. And I wanted to tell you about a story. My uncle was a fighter pilot in World War II.Rogers:: 7:55
Okay.Bob: 7:55
His name was Billy. We always, I never met Uncle Billy, but he was a fighter pilot and he went on over a hundred missions. Wow. And one time over Germany, he got struck by enemy fire and knew he was going to go down. But he was able to pilot, I think it was over sort of the western part of Germany, northwestern part of Germany. He was able to pilot his plane into Allied territory in Belgium. Oh yeah where he didn’t where he then attempted a bailout. And in a failed bailout attempt, he hit his head or something and perished. And his never was able to even land safely. So there was just an interesting story. He was 23 years old.
Rogers: 8:41
Yes, yeah, that’s amazing, isn’t it?
Bob: 8:43
Yeah, incredible.Rogers: 8:43
Well, our inspiration’s uh coming from various angles, and we’ve talked about it before, maybe we’ll talk about it later. And I feel like I was lucky all the way along in my journey of the mentors that I had that that instilled or helped me to open the doors to fulfill my passion.
Bob: 9:04
Sure. Yeah. Well, that’s something I’ve always admired about you, is that you’ve really helped me as a mentor adjust to my new role up here. And that’s how I think we’ve bonded and become good friends. Well, let’s talk about that aspect of passion. And I’m also going to ask you about leadership. I know these are two of your core values and principles in life. And so maybe you can expand upon that, where they came from in your career and if you apply them today in retirement.
Rogers: 9:30
Well, I think it’s the same theme that we were just talking about. The people, I’ll pick out one in particular, or two. When I came to what’s Utopia for a test pilot and still is, is now Armstrong Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It was Dryden named when I was there. That’s where I really always dreamed of going. And ultimately, and along where I worked, I did some work out there and I was finally invited to apply. And one of the people that I worked with closely was a man named Bill Dana. Bill Dana was a famous test pilot, would have been even more famous if he wasn’t right at the time of all the astronauts. But he flew the X-15, he flew the last flight. That was a rocket plane that went to 300,000 feet, but a rocket, not air breathing. And six and six times the speed of sound, right? Mach Mach 3.7 was their top speed in that program that lasted for three or four years. He flew the last flight that went to Mach 5.38. So even Tom Cruise, when he says Mach 10 now, that’s not too ridiculous when you think of the SR-71, which was first accepted as a design in 1959. Incredible. And in its time and even now, it’s uh inspirational and amazing, basically with slide rules, that they were able to accomplish all that. So the inspiration at NASA back to Bill was Bill Dana. When we first came there, we, another friend of mine, Ed Schneider, came in the Navy billet that was there for a year and then came with NASA. So we joined at the same time. And Bill said he met us and said, because they hired a new pilot about every generation. He said to us, I’m only going to give you one piece of advice, and that is the famous line to me is always take your job seriously, but never take yourself seriously. And that means control your ego. It’s just a different way of saying that. And indeed, the way that’s the way he lived his life. You would never know when you if you met him, and he met when people came in, he said hello to them. Uh, he didn’t wear patches, he didn’t talk about what he’d done. He talked about what we needed to do. And that’s what I like to talk about, is what I’ve learned. Not so much I was lucky to fulfill my dreams. But the most important thing is, what did I learn along the way? And can I inspire somebody out there to follow their dreams? But you you may have to be disciplined and work hard, and even on the way up, sacrifice some time studying on the books instead of with your friends out. So that’s these people, and Tom McMurtry was the headman when I had hired me. They were all of the same, they they followed that principle in their own lives, and they transmitted that to people like me. So and I was in utopia. So right.
Bob: 12:39
So I love that comment by Bill, and I love the fact that you tell that story. I like to live my life that way. You call it, you know, that you told the story the way you did. I I refer to it as being remaining humble and you know, having a lot of humility in life, and that’s how I like to live. And as a result, I find that sometimes people underestimate me because they don’t know much about me, right? Because I’m just being Bob, you know? Of course. And so it’s kind of an interesting way to live life. And then when they learn a little more about me, they’re always kind of, oh my goodness, you know.
Rogers: 13:12
So yeah, and and it’s uh for me, it’s sometimes uh I if I somebody meets me and says, Oh, what did you do? And I’m hesitant to start talking about it because then it it overwhelms the conversation. So there’s a right place for it, and I let people lead me on, not the other way around. I don’t go forward telling me, hey, I’m my name is I did this. I I try to have them draw it out of me if that means they they might be interested, and I’m not just blowing my own horn. I think that’s amazing.
Bob: 13:48
It just is a you know, a slight, you know, sample of your own humility, and that you want to, you know, have people have their first impression based on you as a person, not on something you’ve accomplished in the past. So I really admire that.
Rogers: 14:04
Yeah, and I just we talked about use the word utopia, and we’re the other side of me is living in the other utopia that I I dreamed of. And when I came to Edwards, I came up skiing uh several times during each year or a few years, and then said, somebody said, Why don’t you try to find a place up here? Uh-huh. Fortunately, our timing was right and we could afford this place. But uh, so that’s that’s a great combination. Yeah, for sure.
Bob: 14:35
So let’s talk a little bit more about those two values, leadership and passion. I think you probably have some things to say about that as well, and why those two things have been important, not only in your career, but also now in retirement.
Rogers: 14:48
Well, the passion thing I think I’ve talked about in terms of, you know, people say, what was driving you as a, you know, starting as a six-year-old in the middle of Toronto and Canada with nice people, great people, but a working class area. And I might did not live with my parents because my father was overseas with the Air Force, not a pilot, but and my mother was working because they she actually drove a streetcar because they didn’t have enough men around, they were all off in the Second World War. And so I was free to roam the streets more than average. And there’s lots of avenues that you could have gone down, sure. But I had this motivation, and I had some teachers that were, for example, I loved hockey, and I, as a 10-year-old and so on, uh, I had a scrapbook, scrapbook that I religiously cut articles out of the paper. And she, I can remember, she walked when she walked to school. She walked right past my house, the house where I lived, but not with my parents. I lived with another family, marvelous family, good fortune. And she wanted me to bring my scrapbook to school. It’s a big scrapbook, just full pictures. For me, it was great. I remember sta I can remember standing on the sidewalk waiting for with this huge scrapbook that likely not many in the class were as passionate as I was. Anyway, I I the passion is comes in many forms, and in that case, I loved hockey. She supported me in that dream of hockey. I later on, when I was 13, 14, I worked at Maple Leaf Gardens as somebody selling peanuts, cracker jacks, and ice cold drinks in the stands. That was because I really wanted to watch the games. Sure. So all of these people were instrumental, and that’s the passion part of it. The the character part that includes your ego is one of the intangibles that’s really important, is discipline. To make the choice to study that extra hour, or really study the books, or really take the time away from playing street hockey or whatever it is for a bit. I I don’t know where that comes from. It comes from the passion, I guess. But if you don’t have discipline, you can have talent, and we’ve all met people that have great talent, but not much discipline, and they didn’t succeed where they I had people compared to me, they set a really high standard at school. But later on, when I went through school, I always put it down to hard work. I I ended up coming out of the high very good high school nearby in that area, well known, and then applying and getting into the honors course in engineering, which is engineering physics. So you take honors math and you take uh physics as well as engineering in the second first two years are common, and then the third and fourth, you specialize in aeronautics, was aeronautical engineering, was one of the specialties. But when I went to apply for that, I thought, and the people that I was rubbing shoulders with were people that were in the paper of how many, how many it’s a little different system, but it’s grade 13, how what kind of marks they got, how many firsts they got in their papers or their exams. And they were in the papers, and I was able to get into the same one with them. When I graduated four years later, I did out of 105, I stood seventh. Wow. But but I always said it’s just because I worked hard.
Bob: 18:28
Okay, Raj, you mentioned along the way that you had some incredible mentors. And I’m sure what you noticed in those mentors is their ability to be good leaders and their leadership capabilities. And I have a hunch that that helped you develop your thoughts on leadership. I want to also ask you to tell a story because you and I have another thing in common, is we both have an affiliation, at least in our background, with UCLA. And you told me about a man who you were very fond of and looked up to. And I’ll let you tell the story, but maybe you can talk about that and maybe apply that to some of these aspects of leadership and how that’s affected your life and how you see things today in retirement.
Rogers: 19:13
Yeah, sure. I was at uh NASA Dryden, as I said. It’s now renamed in honor of Neil Armstrong. And another story which I won’t tell all of it, but I end up Neil Armstrong worked there before he went on to other parts of NASA and before he went to the moon. And so that in itself was inspiring. And I I did work with him and met him, and he was a great inspiration, but I didn’t work with him, but uh, he was one of my heroes.Bob:: 19:43
Well, you took over his desk.Rogers:: 19:44
Is that I when I was introduced to the office, there were about six pilots at that time, research pilots, test pilots. And Bill Tom McMurtry had hired me, said you’ll be sitting seated at that desk over there, right opposite Bill Dana. I knew who Bill Dana was, and that uh so on, and and the people all around were names that I knew. And so sure enough, I did sit at his desk, and I did there was some little remnant in this desk, in a desk drawer, and it turns out that’s where Neil Armstrong sat when he worked there.
Bob: 20:18
Amazing.
Rogers: 20:19
So they offer uh when I worked my way up and I became the chief pilot and then director of flight operations, they offered NASA, not offered, but they wanted you to go to these courses, and one of which was a weeklong course at UCLA. It was in the, I always get it mixed up, I always call it Robinson, it’s School of Business, it’s not correct. Anderson. Anderson, yes. And a man named Moisha Rubinstein, who had uh not too long ago retired as a had a dean of engineering, his daughter was one of the professors there. So Moisha actually ran this course face to face and organized it. And so he was a dynamic individual, very tall in stature, but really tall in his capabilities to motivate people. So I had about 40 people from around the world, and he would mention as the first few days went on that how he became a professor, he came from Israel and he worked as whatever the correct title is for the first step as a professor, and he decided this is where he wanted to work. But he wasn’t about to drive from way, way out an hour or more each way. So he needed to live that he wanted to live nearby. So he and his wife, for six months or more, they went around the neighborhood, and when they saw something that was perhaps reasonable.
Bob: 21:46
This was like in Brentwood or or Bel Air. Bel Air, yeah, right that’s around the Westwood area. .
Rogers:: 21:51
And they knocked on doors, and one night tells a story, he knocked on this one door, and this lady opened the door. She obviously was upset about something, and then upset about him interrupting it, sort of yelled at him, why can’t you read? It says no solicitors. What do you want? What are you bothering me for? And he said, Well, I’m Moisha Rubenstein, I’m a you know a junior engineer professor, and I wonder, is your house for sale? And she said, Well, just leave me alone, get out of here. I have a teenage son that’s bothering me upstairs I have to take care of, and so on. So then he he had said at the beginning of the course that Thursday night we’ll have a barbecue at his house. And now he tells his story, and finally, the upshot of the story was that some weeks later, this lady called Moisha. And so he had invited her to the potlock as part of the city. No, no, he didn’t do that, but he did say the last, he said, Don’t forget the potlock is tonight and it’ll be at my house. And he gave the address, and he said, By the way, that’s the house that the lady was really upset with me knocking on her door. She called me and invited me back. And in fact, uh last week I made the last payment on the mortgage, which she carried for me.
Bob: 23:10
Incredible.
Rogers: 23:10
So the lesson was keep knocking on the doors. If you’ve got a passion, if you want to do something, if you knock on the doors, you’ll find some help on the other side.
Bob: 23:21
I think one of the things about leadership, and you’ve alluded to this, is that being a good leader, you can inspire and mentor people. And it doesn’t have to be in your career. It can be, to your point, mentoring young kids or students or people who are kind of trying. You have a lot of experience, and I know you like to do this because I’ve seen you in action out at the Super Sign on a daily basis, chatting it up with visitors who don’t know where they’re going, and you’ll offer them your input and suggestions. And so I just think it’s a it’s an interesting thing.
Rogers: 23:55
Well, it is something, I mean, one of my I’ve been in Europe and my second career, if you like, as a consultant, I was at Delft University giving some talks, and the whole thing of inspiring people is is is present everywhere. And so when the graduate students put on this forum, of which I gave a paper, but first of all, I the night before Judy and I were my wife were standing in a group, and I you realize that people from the Netherlands are very tall. They are the tallest of the nations that we would l normally consider. And so they had it put up a slide that said, leaders, they they provide vision and then they take action. So they said it another way. They said, if you have vision with no action, that’s a daydream. But if you have vision, if you have vision, no vision with action, that’s a nightmare. Right. So you need both. And so leaders can be at the local level, momentary in a small group of a larger organization. You all have a chance to do what Bill Dana said, you know, keep your ego under control, and you can interact in a way in your small group that provides impetus for the team and moves towards success. And I I think I told you this story, but I’ll tell it quickly, hopefully, as somebody else told it on the same subject. President Kennedy, prior to going to the moon, is touring a presidential tour down at Cape Canaveral, and his group wandering through the halls. There’s a cleaning man off on the side, and he says, just a moment, and he goes over and talks to the cleaning lady, cleaning man, and says, eventually, what do you do here? And he says, I help to put a man on the moon. That’s helping me. I love that story. To put a man on the moon. So that’s what leadership is. It’s making feel everybody feel that they belong. Certainly, you take your job seriously. If you don’t, you’re gonna hear about it. But you make people feel like they all belong in in some small way, it can be, to achieving what the goals are of the organization, whether it be a ski area like this or a project at NASA. That leadership quality is essential if you want to get 150% from people. If you don’t do that, you might get 50%, and maybe they might do some other things you wouldn’t like in the saddle. So that’s why leadership is it’s not something you read, I mean, you can hear and listen to this, but it’s something you have to think about and do in your own way. You can every one of us every day can be a leader and inspire people towards the objective that you’re all in involved in. Sounds simple, but hard for some people to do.
Bob: 27:02
You know, it’s interesting that you mentioned that it’s hard for some people to do because I like your two values and principles of passion and leadership, because on the surface they’re actually quite simple, right? These two principles. But yet you said it. In practice, they’re hard for a lot of people to follow through on and actually live their life under those two values and principles. Do you agree with that?
Rogers: 27:27
And how do you No, it is, it’s very difficult because the people that that you’ve been under that don’t practice that or not goodly don’t have good leadership qualities, they don’t do that with calculation. They don’t even understand that they’re pres they’re putting forward this message, I’m the boss and you’re nothing kind of thing. So for people to have to open up their minds, and I think Emerson said this one there’s no limit to what we can accomplish basically if we don’t care who gets the credit. And if you think about those things, you can say and do things, small things that make a huge difference to people that are they are they have it’s like being in the military. You have no illusions about what my rank is compared to his rank. Not so clear in civ civilian life, but nonetheless, everybody knows who’s the boss and who’s the the program manager and so on. You don’t have to re-establish that. Yeah. By f and people do it by tone of voice. They don’t realize they’re doing it. And they’re saying, they can say the same message, I need you to do this in a way that there’s a sense of partnership, uh a sense of trust and respect. And it doesn’t have to be, well, it can’t be uh worthwhile if it is not authentic. So you have to live that. You have to learn to think about taking that extra moment to say something to somebody. And I know uh we got to know each other interacting in the host world where you were the new guy. I’m, as I said uh many times before, I’m the old guy. I say, whoops, not old, experienced.
Bob: 29:16
You are very experienced.
Rogers: 29:17
And so you take a moment to say, this is why I really come out. I spend 10 or 15 minutes standing at the sign where normally there isn’t somebody, a host there. They’re in a bright jacket, bright yellow jacket, and they’re all there are many people out on this, relatively speaking, huge mountain or going up there that really don’t know how to get around. They really have a lot of questions.
Bob: 29:40
They’re looking at this big board. There’s a big giant map. We call it the super sign, and it shows all the different runs, which ones are open, and they they can stand there plotting their direction right for the day. And Roger likes to stand out there and talk to these people, and they look confused with awe, like, oh my gosh, how am I going to tackle this mountain? And then there’s Raj, right?
Rogers: 29:58
Well, and the other one is uh People come with with small children. Uh-huh. They and it’s the way the the buildings are, you can’t quite see the the lift, the beginning of the lift that they should go on, or the lifts are for new people. So you want to have fun here. You don’t want to be f uh frightened, like you get up too high and you don’t know how to you’re you’re frightened by the steepness of the slopes. So you can they just tell them, oh, just look around there, go over to that one first, and then after you feel you can go to the next one, and they’re oh thank you, you know, because it’s too many people get on the the one that’s right in front of you, which goes twice as high. Right. And they get up to the top, and uh we get up as hosts, we’re often up there, and uh, people are looking bewildered, especially let’s say uh an obvious teenage girlfriend who’s crying, and say, How did you get up here? Well, my boyfriend and his girl his boyfriend made me do it.Bob:: 30:57
They brought me up here, right?
Rogers: 30:58
Well, where are they now? Well, well, they went off to take a run. Well, so it it’s how extending yourself, but you have to it and somebody some people we obviously know there are many examples of people that are natural at it. Yeah, but it’s pretty straightforward when you if you get that in your mind, the that there really there’s no limit, and that is actually up in our host office, one of my contributions there that was taken on and put up there, was up there anyway, that there’s no limit. And Ralph Waldo Emerson said that one to what we can accomplish if it doesn’t something, if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. Right. So, so these are the fundamentals, these are the things that you live by and get that inner satisfaction. And as I’m always quoting people for the first line in Charles Dickens’ famous novel, David Copperfield. I always quizzing me, do you know what the first line says? Nobody knows it, but the first line says, I know not whether I shall be the hero of my own life inside here, or whether someone else will take that role. Well, that’s what it’s about. It’s about satisfying yourself. It’s not about impressing other people, it’s not about satisfying your ego and extending yourself, you know, helping people that the rudimentary things about skiing, they they don’t know how to get the the ski back on, for example. And you come along and and help them, and they’re just like, you know, you you really feel good inside yourself that you’ve helped this person. So that’s what I’m about as a highly experienced person. Yeah.
Bob: 32:46
I I love that, Raj, because you know, here you are basically in retirement. We do work, we work together, but we’re both technically.Rogers:: 32:53
Yeah, and I still consult.
Bob: 32:54
Yeah, you do. He’s got his side hustles, but here you are out on your own time, sort of helping these people with your passion and your leadership who aren’t really necessarily looking for that, but there you are to provide it. And it’s almost like being being a guide for these people that can use your input and leadership. And I just think that’s you know, just incredible. Good. Yeah. Okay, so it sounds like, and I don’t want to call towards your the end of your career, but towards the time when you made the decision to retire, you were getting some nudges, right? And it seems like it anyway. There wasn’t like all of a sudden one day you just decided, okay, I’m retiring. Oh no, no, yeah. That’s true.
Rogers: 33:35
Yeah, that’s why, because of the change of I lost my godfather. It doesn’t mean he was letting me do things that, but it was a different environment. Yeah. And Ken Slay was a great leader in that he interacted with and trusted the technical people beneath him. And you know, he he would delegate, demand, I mean, he wanted things done. But that that form of effective leadership kind of went with him.
Bob: 34:06:
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. I I bring up the nudges aspect because I think when when I retired, I’d gotten to the point where I probably ignored some of those nudges along the way, if you know what I mean. Sure. And I was hell-bent on continuing my career, but I kind of ended up in a place where all of a sudden one day I woke up and I felt like I had to retire because I needed to make some changes in my life. And I had to move forward. And I felt like the best way for me to do that was to retire so I could have the time to refocus, reorient, and make some changes, you know, some new atomic habits in my life. But it’s kind of funny. So I guess I wanted to bring this up because of the people who might be considering retiring. I guess my input would be don’t ignore those nudges along the way that you get. Little signs here or there. It’s sort of the universe speaking to you that, hey, maybe it’s time to start thinking about this. I wish I had been better prepared for it, personally, for the retirement, because it took me a while to adjust. Now, we talked about your current cities, mammoth and also Coronado. Let’s talk about Mammoth a little bit because we mentioned this in part one. That’s how we know each other, and we become teammates on the on the mountain host and safety team. Likewise, your wife Judy is one of our teammates and one of the OGs, you know, in our department, right? She’s been doing it for a long time as well. And I guess I would just love it if you could share the role you play. We talked about this a little bit, but maybe the role you play on the mountain. And what you and Judy do as leaders to kind of keep this community connected, because I know you you do some things, right? You host sessions here at the house. And I think that’s another way that you’ve in retirement shown your leadership and you know, keeping community and connection here in Mammoth, for sure.
Rogers: 35:57
And you know, Mammoth and this being a ski host on the mountain, when I joined, there were quite a few retired firemen and policemen that had lots of discipline and so on, and knew how to talk to people. So they really taught me how to, when people come up, how do you introduce yourself, make the connection, or when you want to teach somebody something or remind them about something, how you introduce yourself. That I learned from the group. But one of the things that early on, so I got to know these people because they were getting me out of my shell and helping me learn these things. And so one day I asked several of these veterans, don’t you, as a group, as a team here, don’t you get together? Because I’m used to it from a squadron point of view and so on. And they said, Oh, we we used to do that. Uh, we used to go over to the Austriahof after work occasionally, and so I said, Well, why don’t we do that? And so they the next week or so they we did that. And we sat over there, was that uh bar there, which is like a fairly uh it’s a pretty tight environment. Tight environment, and he’s even even more so than fun place, but very, very compact. Yeah, and so I said, why why don’t we this is great? Why don’t we do it at my place? Because the the view is much better. It’s and besides the price of beer is better.
Bob: 37:31
A lot cheaper here at my house, yeah.
Rogers: 37:32
So we started doing it, and it was called a safety meeting.
Bob: 37:35
Well, how many how many years have you been doing the safety meetings?
Rogers: 37:38
I would say 20 years.
Bob: 37:40
Oh my gosh, okay.
Rogers: 37:41
Something like that. So we we they’re not formal in the sense we don’t announce them like a pot lock or something. You don’t have to bring anything. Some people do, but you’re not required to bring anything, just yourself. And the idea is to come right after work, not go home and then come at six o’clock. It’s like 4:30 to 7 or something like that. And and we can’t get the whole, certainly not now, you can’t get a limited number of people in this house, but we try to at first people came and said, Is this just for Canyon Lodge? Yeah. And I said, No, no, it isn’t. But but we can’t just invite, have everybody show up at once and all that. And then others said, Well, I don’t I don’t have anything to talk about and directly about safety. Is that is that what you do there? Said, no, we don’t talk about safety, well, we talk to each other. Uh-huh. And we get to know each other and we share stories and you learn from it. And you learn these relationships then are important at the time that you didn’t expect them when you’re somebody’s hurt or whatever, some uh unusual thing happens. It’s really much easier if you know each other. And so that was the basis of it. And now we, you know, other people do uh potlucks, we do potlucks, that’s different. But it’s it’s all about getting together and getting to know each other and getting to respect each other. And then lots of good information has passed without take anybody poking everybody in the chest.
Bob: 39:15
One of the things I I love about your safety, we call them safety meetings, it’s really kind of a chance to get together and just socialize. And I was uh lucky enough to have attended a few last year. And as a relatively, as a relative newcomer, it was amazing for me that you and Judy invited me into your home with all these very experienced people who have been doing this for years, and in an informal environment, because we don’t get to talk to each other that way when we’re on the job, really. I mean, and so in this informal environment, maybe after a glass of wine or two also, it was so fun to hear about other people and their experience in doing this roll-up here and why they came to enjoy the mountains and what their important aspects are regarding safety. And they all have they all have stories, right? And just to learn from them in that kind of a setting is incredible. But you’re right, you have to listen, you know, and you have to want to, you want to have to want to draw it out of people. But I really, I really enjoyed it. It was fantastic.
Rogers: 40:19
For me, you have to get a little less emotional about your messages and focus or refocus on the mountains and the trees. Yes, and the uh the beautiful, you know, I used to say years ago to a couple of the senior people that I was very close to, I said, how hard can it be to have a now? It can be hard, I’m not questioning that, but how hard can it be when you get someone up there that provides you with 400 plus inches of snow every year? I know. I mean, we do, it’s more complicated than that. Anyway, that’s the back to the original themes of so now I’m I’m more not trying to undermine anybody, but trying to say, what can I, where can I help? And and that’s what I ask of you. Right. Not just because you’re a supervisor now, but that you will help me if I stray from that, because I want to focus even more on what gives me like the relevancy that we talked about as you originally talked about money and and so on. So that’s a trade we can make. Okay. But I want to focus on you know, helping new hosts that come out. How do you deal with things in the mountain? And what are what are your expectations? You know, we’re not policemen out there, we’re educators. And you could have a fight every day if you come up and poke somebody in the chest. Right. Sometimes it’s you know, I’m not talking about ignoring dangerous situations, but sometimes it’s not worth it getting into a big rhubarb over something that’s not worth it.
Bob: 42:06
So well, you got a deal. We’ll we’ll keep each other straight and uh remind each other of the importance of what we need it every day and what we need to do, all of us. And I thank you for uh coming on the show again, and it’s really been fantastic. I would love to keep going. I could sit here and talk to you for hours, but in the interest of time, we need to start to wrap up.
Rogers: 42:27
No, any time in the future that you want to.
Bob: 42:29
Okay. Any last words, thoughts, innuendos you’d like to offer our listeners?
Rogers: 42:37
Well, I think we we’ve covered the I think the big one of today we face, we in in every profession, you you face uh explosive change in capabilities and tools, AI being one, virtual reality, but also this capacity we have now to handle huge data sinks, if you like, and uh digitally figure out trends or understand what I’m mo motivated by. So that’s so there’s great power and there’s great danger, but you have to respect that change is it’s one that I quote in there that if and we talk about in the test pilot world, if you can’t accept change, you’re going to like irrelevance even more. Yeah, and there’s a retiring Sineski army four-star years ago said that. And so there are a lot of people that resist change, they don’t listen, they suffer the consequences. But uh we really need to be aware of the how to use tools effectively. Yeah, no questions.
Bob: 43:59
That applies in retirement too. A lot of us have to adapt and continue adapting. You can’t just sit back and do things the way you did 20 years ago because we’re in a new society, a new world.
Rogers: 44:07
Yeah, I’m I’m gonna give a lecture series next month in Canada at a test pilot school. And so the thing that’s that we’re doing in this little hour a day for a week kind of thing. It’s talking about we use the word ethics, and I can’t even quote it here, but ethics is really what we’re talking about here. It’s it’s code of conduct, it’s it’s how you how you value relationships, it’s how you work with others, it’s it’s how you how you talk to others. That’s all ethical behavior. It’s kind of a nebulous thing out there, but that’s really, really what we’re talking about here as hosts. Sure. And it’s in any company, and let’s say country as well, it’s really, really important. So I’m not sure that I’ve been totally aware of that at every step of the way, but it’s certainly evident now. And uh it’s uh a great opportunity for me to talk about what I believe in, and I appreciate you uh doing what you’re doing, and hopefully it helps people think or of things as maybe a slightly different perspective different and more effective perspective.
Bob: 45:26
Well, you’re a man who leads by example, doesn’t expect anything in return, and I just have so appreciated that in getting to know you in that regard. And that can’t be replaced by AI, okay? So I think I think you’re similar that joy. Okay. Raj, I am so honored you took the time to join me again after that first little technical snafu. This is going to be a great episode, and I just really appreciate it so much. You’re very welcome. Thanks. Yep. Thanks for joining me today. As we wrap up today, a quick plug to please pay it forward by sharing this episode with a friend. And if you like what you heard, please subscribe to get access to all of our future episodes. And always remember that in retirement, soul meets body.