Your Circle Will Make or Break You

Choosing Your People Intentionally

"You become the product of those closest to you."

When you first enlist in the Air Force, you're balancing two worlds. The world you came from (your civilian friends, your family's expectations, the habits you built before you raised your right hand) and your new Air Force world. That balance is harder than anyone tells you.

Many young Airmen keep bad-influence friends from their previous lives. Friends who are still doing the things you used to do. And because those friendships feel comfortable and familiar, you keep plugging into them: on leave, over the phone, online. But there are more consequences when you're in the military, and most people won't say that out loud. Just because your civilian friends can do something doesn't mean you can. The rules changed when you swore in. Your friends' rules didn't.

If you hang around people who are low achievers, you become a low achiever. If you hang around people who hold themselves to a high standard, you rise to meet them. This isn't motivational poster stuff. It's pattern recognition from 20 years of watching it play out.

The Partying at Lakenheath

At Lakenheath, I was a young Airman in England for the first time. The base was full of people my age. The pub culture was strong. And the easiest thing in the world was to fall in with the partying crowd. I did. I went out. I drank too much. I drove drunk through the gate more than once and got lucky every single time. (I told you about that in The Pitfalls, so I won't repeat it here.)

What I couldn't see at the time was that the people I was partying with weren't going anywhere. Not career-wise. Not personally. They weren't bad people. Most of them were good people making bad decisions, same as me. But their trajectory was flat or sliding, and by spending all my time with them, mine was too. When I got to Okinawa, the pattern only escalated. Bigger party scene, stronger peer pressure, and consequences creeping closer and closer to career-ending.

The Shift

The shift didn't happen overnight. I wish I could point to one dramatic moment where I walked away from the wrong crowd and into the right one, but it wasn't like that. It was gradual.

When I finally decided to stop partying, I had to give up those friends. That's the part most people skip over. Finding better people is only half of it. The other half is letting go of people you genuinely like who are pulling you in the wrong direction. That part is lonely. It's hard. And it's necessary.

I didn't have a grand plan. I just started spending my time around people who were going somewhere, and slowly their direction became mine. Who those people were, and what they did for me, is the rest of this module. Because choosing your circle isn't only about who you cut loose. It's about who you let in.

You'll find the full breakdown in AF101's First Term Airman Center (FTAC) section. That's where you meet your first circle in the Air Force, and why it matters.

The "Jack Turds and Enablers" Reality

Quit Hanging Out with Jack Turds

I'm going to be blunt here because this is one of the most important lessons in this entire course.

Every unit has them. The people who do the absolute minimum. The complainers. The ones who spend all their energy finding ways to get out of work instead of just doing the work. The ones who are always talking about how terrible leadership is, how unfair the system is, how much they can't wait to get out.

I call them jack turds. And they're everywhere.

The tricky part about jack turds is that they're not always bad people. Some of them are funny. Some of them are charismatic. Some of them are genuinely fun to hang out with. That's what makes them dangerous. You don't realize you're becoming one of them until you look up one day and realize you haven't tried at anything in months.

The enablers are worse in some ways. They're the people who don't actively drag you down but who normalize the drag. "It's no big deal." "Everyone does it." "Don't be a tryhard." They create an environment where mediocrity feels acceptable and ambition feels embarrassing. If the people around you make you feel weird for wanting to excel, you're in the wrong circle.

The Networking Lie

There's a common misconception about networking that I want to destroy right now.

Most people think networking means staying connected to people so they can help you later. Building a Rolodex of contacts you can cash in on when you need a favor. Shaking hands at events and collecting business cards.

That's completely wrong. At least in my experience.

My definition of networking: Adding value to other people's lives with no expectation of getting anything in return.

You help people because it's the right thing to do, not because you're building a transactional relationship. The ironic part is that this approach to networking has opened more doors for me than any strategic relationship-building ever could. Former peers and supervisors helped me get jobs on the outside, not because I'd schemed my way into their good graces, but because they knew my work ethic and felt confident introducing me to hiring managers.

You can't fake this. People know the difference between someone who genuinely cares about them and someone who's working an angle. The genuine ones are the ones who get the calls years later.

ACE: Filling the Gap

I want to tell you about something I built that started from this exact mindset.

When I was at Kadena AB in Okinawa, I noticed a gap. There were professional organizations for NCOs: the NCO Association, the Senior NCO Association. But there was nothing for E-1s through E-4s. No organization. No structure. No place for junior Airmen who wanted to develop professionally, volunteer, and connect with other high-achieving peers.

A TSgt supervisor put me in contact with a former Military Training Instructor who was heading the newly formed First Term Airman Center. I pitched my idea: an organization for young Airmen to help better their careers and provide volunteer and leadership opportunities. He connected me with another high-achieving Airman, and we started building.

I eventually got deployed for OEF and the other Airman did the brunt of the work while I was gone. But the organization (Airman Committed to Excellence, ACE) grew from nothing to 400+ members by the time I left Okinawa. I've heard it spread to other bases and it's pretty common in the Air Force now.

ACE was a way to connect with other high-achieving Airmen who wanted to take full advantage of their careers. It wasn't about my resume. It wasn't about looking good. It was about filling a gap that needed filling.

That same mindset is what created Forever Wingman 10 years later. A coworker at Hobby Lobby mentioned they were thinking of enlisting but couldn't find good information online. I googled it and couldn't believe how little was out there. So I started building: first with just the bare amount of information on AFSCs, then adding more and more over the years.

ACE to FW is the same pattern: see a gap, fill it, help the next person, expect nothing back. The reputation and the opportunities? Those were byproducts. They were never the goal.

If you're going to build your circle around one principle, build it around service. The people who are drawn to that are your people.

Finding Mentors and Peers Who Push You

The Web, Not the One

When people ask me who my most important mentor was, they expect a name. One person who changed everything. A single pivotal relationship.

That's not how it worked for me. It was a web. Dozens of people across two decades, each one contributing something different at a different time.

My training NCO at Lakenheath, the SSgt I was convinced had it out for me with the paper shredding, became a close friend that season and taught me how to learn. The TSgt who believed in my ACE idea and cleared the path to get it started. A missionary pastor outside the gate in Okinawa who looked at me one day and said God had much more for me than the partying I was doing. He wasn't in my chain of command. He just saw me clearly and said the hard thing, and it stuck. Spiritual parents who walked me through my worst decision-making and acted as my parents away from home, because not everyone has the family support they need when they enlist. My wife, who challenges me to be a better man and father. And former peers and supervisors who, decades later, helped me land jobs on the outside because of the reputation I'd built. That's the compound interest of choosing your people well.

These were the people who showed up when my sister passed. When my father passed. They were the ones with a word of encouragement when I was down, the ones who included me when I was lonely. The web holds you up when you can't hold yourself.

Being Teachable Is the Multiplier

Having good mentors isn't enough, though. You have to be the kind of person good mentors want to invest in.

The single biggest thing that made me worth investing in was being teachable. I never assumed I had all the answers. When a supervisor gave me feedback, I listened. When I was wrong, I admitted it. When someone offered to teach me something, I showed up ready, even when it wasn't something I cared about naturally. All my best supervisors read and kept learning, and because I carried that same posture, they saw their own values reflected back in me. That's what opened the door.

And the people who didn't align with my standards? I learned from them too. Mostly what not to do. A bad supervisor teaches you exactly the kind of leader you never want to become. (More on that in Navigating People.)

Become the Mentor, Too

Choosing your circle isn't only about who lifts you. Eventually it's about who you lift. All the help I received is the help I now try to give.

One example has stuck with me. A grandmother emailed me through Forever Wingman, nervous about her grandson enlisting in the Air Force. I didn't fire back a form reply. I got on a call with her and walked her through the whole thing, the good and the bad, until she felt better about it. She was never going to do a thing for my career. She wasn't a contact worth "networking." She was just a worried grandmother, and I had answers that could put her at ease. That is the whole point.

I gave a talk at a DEP call once and told the story about driving drunk through the gate. Not to brag about surviving something stupid, but to say out loud: I'm not above making terrible decisions, and neither are you, so let's talk about making better ones. Vulnerability is how you actually reach people. Being unoffendable and honest about your own story does more than any polished advice ever could.

Your Personal Motto

I'll leave you with mine. It's simple, and it has guided every relationship decision I've made for 15 years:

I want other people's lives to be better because I'm in them.

That's the filter. When I'm deciding how to spend my time, who to invest in, whether to make the call or send the message or show up for someone, that's the question. Will their life be better because I was in it?

Build your circle around people who make you want to be better. Cut loose the ones who make mediocrity comfortable. And then become the person who makes everyone else's circle stronger.

AF101's Networking & Reputation goes deeper on the formal mentoring tools available to you, including MyVector, AFSA, and others.