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Jim (cont'd):  


Jim:     how are you?

Donovan:    I am doing well, Jim, how are you doing?

Jim:     I loved your book… I have to tell you, I read your book over vacation… and I said, first of all it is just a great story of courage, and a great story of patriotism… and then I went right to the back, and it says that he says that he works for Frito-Lay, and I am thinking this is my world… you work for Pepsi Dallas… and I am thinking how did you go in this tour… how did you go from Iraq to Afghanistan to packaged foods?

Donovan:    You know I get asked that all the time, and the short answer is that I spent my first two wedding anniversaries in Iraq, I missed most of my daughter’s second year of life in Afghanistan and I wanted to be a father and a husband. And I though, well what company has got leadership in the same way that the marines get leadership. Where can I go to spend time with my family, but also learn to lead the others, the same leadership model that I was taught Marines, and Pepsi and Frito-Lay seemed to match up very well against that.

Jim:     Alright, when I look at your background, what I think of is that if you were in my time, what you would have done is you would have worked at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, or Merrill Lynch. Did that ever occur to you? or is that game done for someone like you who is highly qualified as a leader?

Donovan:    Well, that did occur to me, but I simply thought look I went to Princeton University. I probably did not deserve that opportunity, there are a ton of people who would have loved to gone. But for whatever reason I got it, so if I got it, that is a responsibility. What can I do to give back since I have this tremendous responsibility? Now, in retrospect I will take the Marines over Goldman Sachs any day of the week.

Jim:     Not bad, I wonder if you would take the Army over Merrill Lynch after we read about today with Bank of America? The Army does not fair that well in your book. Well, it is not like you knock the Army, but you do compare the two.

Donovan:    Well, you know there is a very healthy inter-service competition between the Marines and the Army and I would be a very poor Marine if I did not take a few digs at Army brethren. But hey, they are overseas and they are fighting just as hard as we are. It is an honor to serve beside them at the end of the day.

Jim:     I found so much irony, look the story is amazing, but I found so much irony in the Marines going over… and really not having all the equipment… looking as if we were not funding the soldiers at the same time obviously I pick up the paper and every crummy bank in America is getting a billion dollars… how about some irony as a business person, seeing who is getting the money? and who didn’t have the money? and who was serving his country? and who was wrecking his country?

Donovan:    Well, you know what I will say this for the corp. They teach us that it is not about money, it is not about equipment. It is about two things, it is about integrity, personal morality, and it is about having a decisive and creative mind that can adapt to any situation. You have those two components, and you lay your servant leadership on top of that, and you will be fine regardless of the tools or the money that you have been given. So, I really was not all that concerned about what we were or were not given in terms of gear, and I hope that I can take that into the civilian world and model that same mentality. Serving others, and doing my best with what I have been handed and taking care of it as a steward, not an owner.

Jim:     What do you do for Frito-Lay?

Donovan:    I run a sales zone.

Jim:     Which means?

Donovan:    Which means that I work in a giant warehouse. I have about 160 folks who come in at about 2:00 am every day, and they grab their trucks. They pull out and those trucks are loaded with chips. And they drive those trucks to a store, and they put those chips on the store rack. Some days, I have my knee pads on and I am out putting those chips on with them. And some days I am in my office planning the next 6 months of my business. It is a great, great job.

Jim:     Have you been to the Aberdeen proving grounds yet for Frito-Lay?

Donovan:    I have not, not yet.

Jim:     You have got to get there… I mean it is really unbelievable… I mean you have got to see the stuff that is coming out… it is really amazing… Indra Nooyi the CEO, set me up down there, and I think that you will love it… I always thought that it was funny Aberdeen proving grounds, that is a military thing… why did you write this book? I wanted to get the business stuff out, but the book is hard hitting… the book is about people’s lives… the book is also, I think, if someone like me who is a 64 year old civilian dad… I say, we put you in harms way, we were not… we did not help you enough… I know that the Marines are about integrity, but I felt that we trained you in the desert and we put you in an urban environment and we had people shoot at you, and you did not know who was right and wrong.

Donovan:    You know what, I will say this, you always could have a little bit better training. It is like you could always have a little bit more money. But at the end of the day, a Marine is a Marine is a Marine, and we go and we get the job down regardless. But I wrote the book, quite frankly Jim, because I failed my men. I did not write them enough awards. I did not recognize them appropriately for the magnificent heroism they displayed in combat. And I really regret my failure as a leader in that area. So, when they were telling me that they were not telling their families what they did, when they were telling me that they wish their story had been told. I thought you know what, I messed up, I will make it right. I will tell your story and I will give it to you. And one thing led to another and now it is a book.

Jim:     Well, you sure did because I can tell you that it may not… maybe within in the platoon you did not recognize them… but this is a national best selling book that really tells it like it is… and you should be very proud of what you have done. It is an unbelievable story.

Donovan:    Well, the important thing is that my guys are proud of me. I wrote this to honor them, and the nice thing that has been that the vast majority, well, really every one of them that has called me or emailed me has said, thank you sir I very much appreciate you telling our story. And that is what matters. There is no pride on my part. I just did my job.

Jim:     Alright, now you in this book… every minute, every second is tense, every day is different, every hour is different… what you do now every day seems like it would be the same to me, every hour the same, how are you able to handle that?

Donovan:    Well, every day is not the same, every hour is not the same, but here is how I handle the job now. I try to take the lessons that I learned in the Marines, about serving your people, and about always making sure that you act with integrity no matter what the short term gain is for acting without it, because you will regret it in the long term. I try to take those lessons and apply to them to how I lead and how I serve them everyday. There is 160 of them and I have got to take care of them.

Jim:     Okay, Indra Nooyi and Pepsi are lucky the have you. I wish that you had gone to a Merrill Lynch, I wish that you had gone to a Citigroup… there are not enough of you left… there are not enough people like you on Wall Street… but you know what, I do not think that people want to go to Wall Street anymore… I think that they want to do what you do, they want to do something right, and good and clean… and I think to do that you have got to go to Pepsi.

Donovan:    Well, you know what, there are thousands of other young men and women like me in the US military, and you can take great hope that they are coming out and they are taking the same set of values and principles and applying them across the various areas of life. They are going to do a great job for our country. We can be very proud of them. I am just one of many.

Jim:     Donovan Campbell, it is an honor to have you on the show. Thank you very much.

Donovan:    Jim, it is an honor to be here, thanks for having me.

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Jim's comments AFTER the interview:     The book is “Joker One"… you know that I do not do books on the show… So what do you think?… What is the takeaway?…
Go to Amazon, and get it.