LCDR Alden M. Mills
SDVT-2 and ST-2
Europe
1991-1998 and 2000-2005
SDVT-2 and ST-2
Europe
1991-1998 and 2000-2005
Alden Mills was born in November of 1968 in Worcester, MA and was raised with his younger brother in Southbridge, MA. Alden’s father ran the family manufacturing business started by Alden’s great grandfather. Alden’s mother was an art teacher. Alden attended high school at the Kent School in Kent, CT where he ran cross country, wrestled in the 187 lb. weight class and excelled at his main sport which was rowing.
Alden has a history of military service on both his paternal and maternal sides of the family as far back as his great grandfathers. In his junior year at Kent, Alden decided to apply to the Naval Academy after receiving a brochure from the Academy. The brochure talked about “the path less traveled” and spending four years by “the bay” (Chesapeake). Alden knew it would be hard, but he was looking for a challenge. Alden’s Dad wanted him to get a liberal arts degree and explore the world, but his Mother thought differently. She grabbed him by the arm and while digging her nails into his bicep said, “discipline would be good for you!”
As a plebe at Annapolis, it is best not to draw attention to yourself, but Alden did just that by arriving a week late. The Kent School rowing team had won the New England Championship and were invited to Henley, England to compete. “I paid a steep price for showing up late, but it made me grow a great sense of humor.” Alden started out majoring in Naval Architecture but had underestimated what was involved in designing ships and submarines. He quickly switched his major to Political Science. Alden excelled at rowing. He was named captain of the Freshman team and was a three year captain of the Heavyweight Crew Team. He was the first at Navy Rowing to stroke the varsity crew for three years in a row.
In the fall of his senior year Alden selected the SEALs as his service selection. I asked why he decided to follow the path for SEALs. Alden said the representative from the SEALs told him, “We go knock bullies back all around the world. If you want to do that you should tryout.” Alden had a history of being bullied in school because he was always the biggest kid in his class, and he never forgot that. Alden signed up and received an order for BUD/S. He was also invited to try out for the Olympics. He made the initial cut and was offered a spot to advance to the Olympic training camp. The Navy told him he could go but they would pull his orders for BUD/S. Alden turned down the offer and headed to Coronado, CA to join BUD/S class 181 as the last member of his Naval Academy class.
BUD/S has the reputation as being the most demanding and most grueling training of the US military training programs. I asked Alden about his most vivid memories from BUD/S. He said, “the memorable cast of characters that were instructors”, “I had never stayed up for five days straight before”, “it was so cold I would vomit” and “hallucinating (from the sleep deprivation) was unsettling.” Alden said he wasn’t physically prepared for BUD/S but the Naval Academy rowing program gave him the confidence to get through it. “Making it through Hell Week was a gut check and it made everything else seem achievable.”
Despite that confidence he developed a severe lung infection and was coughing up blood during 2nd phase. The doctors found that he was taking asthma medication that he hadn’t disclosed before entering BUD/S. Fortunately for Alden, they decided to have him take a breathing test rather than drop him from the program. If he passed the test, he would be rolled back to class 182 but he could still become a SEAL. With some quick thinking and creativity Alden passed the test. Now he faced a tough decision. He had been taking that asthma medication for the last 10 years, but if he wanted to continue, he would have to stop taking the medication. He stopped and never took it again. 122 candidates started with him and Alden was one of 12 graduates. I asked Alden what he learned in BUD/S that would help him throughout his life. He said,
Toward the end of SEAL training in the summer of 1992 each candidate submits his top three service selections. Alden’s top pick was working in the SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team (SDVT). Ever since he was a kid he had been fascinated with underwater vehicles, technology and launching off the back of nuclear submarines. He got his top pick. After screening for hypothermia tendencies and claustrophobia Alden was assigned to SDVT 2 based in Virginia Beach. It was December 1992.
No other Special Forces units have the capabilities of the SDV Teams. This required 5 months of advanced, intense training. “It was every bit as intense as BUD/S but the stakes were higher. This is where you learned to be a real SEAL”. The focus was on tactics. Too many tactical mistakes and a candidate could be dropped from the program.
At the conclusion of the advanced training, Alden had one month to prepare for the SEAL Boards. Each candidate would appear before a board of officers and a board of non-commissioned officers. Each candidate would be tested on every aspect of their SEAL training. Alden passed and headed for 6 months of mini submersible training. At the conclusion of this training Alden was selected to be SDVT platoon commander. The platoon consisted of 12 SEALS and 4 technicians.
It was January 1994 and Alden and his platoon would go through one year of training to make sure they were combat ready to deploy overseas. “You were building more and more confidence every step of the way. You were also emotionally girding yourself for making the ultimate sacrifice.” Alden recalls asking himself if he was ready to die for his country. “What pushes you forward is your teammates.”
International waters are 16 miles off shore and SDVs had to get SEALs much closer to complete their missions. They spent a lot of time in cold water because “there are not too many places where the bad guys are where the water is warm.” Alden said the SDV had three kinds of missions. Direct Action, where they blow things up. Recon, where they attach something to an enemy ship or submarine or collect reconnaissance of an enemy harbor. Taxi, where they were dropping off or picking up SEALs in a clandestine way. Alden mentioned that they did some “James Bond kind of stuff that made you proud to be an American.”
Alden did two 6 month deployments with the SDV Teams. One such mission had National Command Authority which had direct exposure to the White House. This mission was and remains classified. Alden said, “I loved what I did with all my heart.”
In January of 1996 Alden transferred to SEAL Team 2. He had allowed his weight to go up to 260 to provide a little insulation in the cold waters where SDVs operates. Now he would be doing a lot of running and training on the obstacle course, so he had to get his weight down. Despite his years in the Teams, he was now part of a new team and had to be indoctrinated on how SEAL Team 2 does their missions.
In January of 1997 Alden and 4 teammates deployed to Stuttgart Germany where they joined teams from the SAS and other US Special Forces in Bosnia. Their mission was to track and aid in the capture “Dr. Death” who was responsible for 60,000 deaths and who created a “breed out” program in Bosnia. Alden and his team traveled in search of Dr. Death in a bread van to maintain the secrecy of their mission. His team’s mission was to conduct reconnaissance, identify patterns of movement and obtain evidence of his identity. Alden and his team spent 11 nights and 12 days on a cliff taking photographs and uploading them to the command center. Eventually they obtained a positive ID and another team was sent in to secure the target and deliver him to the Hague to be tried as a war criminal.
Alden talked briefly about the atrocities that the locals showed his team. Village homes were marked with an “X” or an “O”. The “O” meant survival and the “X” meant death. The Bosnian soldiers would allow the children to live but forced them to watch their mother be raped and their fathers head cut off to be used as a soccer ball in the street. This savagery was still too fresh all these years later for Alden to speak in great detail.
Alden was rated as the top platoon leader 3 times. Twice with SDVT-2 and once with Team 2.He was invited to go through the selection process for TEAM 6 and he was selected. Alden had recently been married and he knew that if he accepted a position at TEAM 6 he would be in the Teams for 20 years. Although his wife was willing to support whatever decision Alden made, he decided it was time to leave. “It was the hardest decision of my adult life to leave the SEAL Teams.”
I asked him why it was so hard to leave, and he talked about the comraderie developed over the years. I asked what created such a strong bond. “Because you are surrounded by guys all willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for each other. That is an insane amount of trust. Imagine being around 15 men willing to give their life for you. As a team you are unstoppable.”
Alden decided to attend business school and was accepted by Carnegie Mellon. “Carnegie made it clear that they were taking a chance on me because I didn’t have the grades, but I had something they needed. I had bucket loads of leadership experience.” On Friday Alden was jumping out of a helicopter and the following Monday he was sitting in an advanced calculus class on Monday. “I found it very confusing. Since the age of 18 I had been in the military and now I had to learn to be a civilian.”
Alden had left the SEALs without a clearly defined path to follow but he knew he wanted to be in an entrepreneurial role. To pass time while on the submarines, Alden kept a sketch book where he drew different products and inventions. He wanted to be involved in bringing a product to market.
I asked Alden why some Special Forces members gravitate to toward entrepreneurial roles. “Special Forces guys are not great with big bureaucracies. They want to be given guardrails and then be left alone to accomplish the mission.”
Alden enjoyed his time at Carnegie, earned numerous academic and leadership awards and felt it was a good place to transition to civilian life. Despite his successes Alden said that he felt he lost his way in business school. “I lost the currency of purpose and replaced it with the currency of a paycheck. I ended up picking my job based on who was going to give me the most stock options.” Alden got swept up in the Silicon Valley wave of technology and took a job with a software company rather than bringing the widgets from his sketch book to market.
Alden eventually left his job and set out to plot his career course. He contemplated going back to the SEAL Teams and the CIA was interested in his skills. Alden’s wife Jennifer reminded him his goal was to take a product to market. “You work out every day. Why not do something that is part of your daily life?”
Alden then began his entrepreneurial career by starting PT Metrics. This was a device that you wore on your wrist, and it recorded the weight and reps performed on various pieces of fitness equipment. It would then create a workout for you. The Bluetooth technology hadn’t reached the level necessary to make the product commercially viable. He shut the company down.
His next venture was BodyRev which was a product that provide functional training and built strength for everyday activities. Alden was successful in attracting investors, but the company wasn’t profitable. Alden recalled the day his investors sat him down and said “this is a cashflow statement and you don’t have any cashflow. They told him that the company should file for Bankruptcy and told Alden to go get a job and he was starting to embarrass himself.
Undeterred, Alden decided to keep his team intact and told them he had one more product they could try to bring to market. It was called the Perfect Pushup. These were two disc that rotated. The idea was to put your hand on the handles of the discs while in pushup position. As you did a pushup, the discs would rotate your hands to take some of the pressure off your shoulders. Alden created an infomercial, and the product was a hit. The year was 2006. This led to the development of Perfect Pullup and The Perfect Ab Carver and soon there was over a 100 sku’s of “Perfect” branded products. In 2011 Alden sold the company to a private investment company and he stayed on in a product development role until 2015.
After leaving the company Alden and his wife decided to follow a dream they both had of living in Europe for a year. Jennifer told Alden she had multiple offers to rent their home, but all the offers wanted the home for two years. Although they only had enough money for 18 months, off to Barcelona they went. While in Europe Alden began planning the next phase of his life. He eventually decided to focus on something that he is incredibly passionate about – Helping people achieve their dreams…helping them Be Unstoppable.
Today Alden is a Keynote speaker and provides training that teaches people, teams and organizations to Be Unstoppable. He has authored two books. Unstoppable Teams is about the 4 essential actions of high performance leadership. Be Unstoppable is about the 8 essential actions to succeed at anything.
Alden and his wife have 4 boys and in his spare time he has taken up mountain climbing. In 2018 for his 50thbirthday he climbed Denali. Denali, located in Alaska, is the third most prominent peak of the Seven Summits, the highest peak in North America and the third most isolated peak on earth. He is now training for a 22,800 foot climb of Mt. Aconcagua in the Andes Mountain range in Argentina.
I asked Alden if he had a message to people looking to find their currency of purpose. He thought and said, “no one defines what you can do except you. Unstoppable is a choice. Your life is up to you.”
Thank you, Alden, for your service and sacrifice that allows the rest of us to sleep easy at night. And thank you for setting an example of working through adversity and overcoming obstacles to achieve our passion.
Alden has a history of military service on both his paternal and maternal sides of the family as far back as his great grandfathers. In his junior year at Kent, Alden decided to apply to the Naval Academy after receiving a brochure from the Academy. The brochure talked about “the path less traveled” and spending four years by “the bay” (Chesapeake). Alden knew it would be hard, but he was looking for a challenge. Alden’s Dad wanted him to get a liberal arts degree and explore the world, but his Mother thought differently. She grabbed him by the arm and while digging her nails into his bicep said, “discipline would be good for you!”
As a plebe at Annapolis, it is best not to draw attention to yourself, but Alden did just that by arriving a week late. The Kent School rowing team had won the New England Championship and were invited to Henley, England to compete. “I paid a steep price for showing up late, but it made me grow a great sense of humor.” Alden started out majoring in Naval Architecture but had underestimated what was involved in designing ships and submarines. He quickly switched his major to Political Science. Alden excelled at rowing. He was named captain of the Freshman team and was a three year captain of the Heavyweight Crew Team. He was the first at Navy Rowing to stroke the varsity crew for three years in a row.
In the fall of his senior year Alden selected the SEALs as his service selection. I asked why he decided to follow the path for SEALs. Alden said the representative from the SEALs told him, “We go knock bullies back all around the world. If you want to do that you should tryout.” Alden had a history of being bullied in school because he was always the biggest kid in his class, and he never forgot that. Alden signed up and received an order for BUD/S. He was also invited to try out for the Olympics. He made the initial cut and was offered a spot to advance to the Olympic training camp. The Navy told him he could go but they would pull his orders for BUD/S. Alden turned down the offer and headed to Coronado, CA to join BUD/S class 181 as the last member of his Naval Academy class.
BUD/S has the reputation as being the most demanding and most grueling training of the US military training programs. I asked Alden about his most vivid memories from BUD/S. He said, “the memorable cast of characters that were instructors”, “I had never stayed up for five days straight before”, “it was so cold I would vomit” and “hallucinating (from the sleep deprivation) was unsettling.” Alden said he wasn’t physically prepared for BUD/S but the Naval Academy rowing program gave him the confidence to get through it. “Making it through Hell Week was a gut check and it made everything else seem achievable.”
Despite that confidence he developed a severe lung infection and was coughing up blood during 2nd phase. The doctors found that he was taking asthma medication that he hadn’t disclosed before entering BUD/S. Fortunately for Alden, they decided to have him take a breathing test rather than drop him from the program. If he passed the test, he would be rolled back to class 182 but he could still become a SEAL. With some quick thinking and creativity Alden passed the test. Now he faced a tough decision. He had been taking that asthma medication for the last 10 years, but if he wanted to continue, he would have to stop taking the medication. He stopped and never took it again. 122 candidates started with him and Alden was one of 12 graduates. I asked Alden what he learned in BUD/S that would help him throughout his life. He said,
- Limits are in your head
- The “why” is in your heart. If your heart isn’t in it, then it’s not worth it.
- The power of a team.
Toward the end of SEAL training in the summer of 1992 each candidate submits his top three service selections. Alden’s top pick was working in the SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team (SDVT). Ever since he was a kid he had been fascinated with underwater vehicles, technology and launching off the back of nuclear submarines. He got his top pick. After screening for hypothermia tendencies and claustrophobia Alden was assigned to SDVT 2 based in Virginia Beach. It was December 1992.
No other Special Forces units have the capabilities of the SDV Teams. This required 5 months of advanced, intense training. “It was every bit as intense as BUD/S but the stakes were higher. This is where you learned to be a real SEAL”. The focus was on tactics. Too many tactical mistakes and a candidate could be dropped from the program.
At the conclusion of the advanced training, Alden had one month to prepare for the SEAL Boards. Each candidate would appear before a board of officers and a board of non-commissioned officers. Each candidate would be tested on every aspect of their SEAL training. Alden passed and headed for 6 months of mini submersible training. At the conclusion of this training Alden was selected to be SDVT platoon commander. The platoon consisted of 12 SEALS and 4 technicians.
It was January 1994 and Alden and his platoon would go through one year of training to make sure they were combat ready to deploy overseas. “You were building more and more confidence every step of the way. You were also emotionally girding yourself for making the ultimate sacrifice.” Alden recalls asking himself if he was ready to die for his country. “What pushes you forward is your teammates.”
International waters are 16 miles off shore and SDVs had to get SEALs much closer to complete their missions. They spent a lot of time in cold water because “there are not too many places where the bad guys are where the water is warm.” Alden said the SDV had three kinds of missions. Direct Action, where they blow things up. Recon, where they attach something to an enemy ship or submarine or collect reconnaissance of an enemy harbor. Taxi, where they were dropping off or picking up SEALs in a clandestine way. Alden mentioned that they did some “James Bond kind of stuff that made you proud to be an American.”
Alden did two 6 month deployments with the SDV Teams. One such mission had National Command Authority which had direct exposure to the White House. This mission was and remains classified. Alden said, “I loved what I did with all my heart.”
In January of 1996 Alden transferred to SEAL Team 2. He had allowed his weight to go up to 260 to provide a little insulation in the cold waters where SDVs operates. Now he would be doing a lot of running and training on the obstacle course, so he had to get his weight down. Despite his years in the Teams, he was now part of a new team and had to be indoctrinated on how SEAL Team 2 does their missions.
In January of 1997 Alden and 4 teammates deployed to Stuttgart Germany where they joined teams from the SAS and other US Special Forces in Bosnia. Their mission was to track and aid in the capture “Dr. Death” who was responsible for 60,000 deaths and who created a “breed out” program in Bosnia. Alden and his team traveled in search of Dr. Death in a bread van to maintain the secrecy of their mission. His team’s mission was to conduct reconnaissance, identify patterns of movement and obtain evidence of his identity. Alden and his team spent 11 nights and 12 days on a cliff taking photographs and uploading them to the command center. Eventually they obtained a positive ID and another team was sent in to secure the target and deliver him to the Hague to be tried as a war criminal.
Alden talked briefly about the atrocities that the locals showed his team. Village homes were marked with an “X” or an “O”. The “O” meant survival and the “X” meant death. The Bosnian soldiers would allow the children to live but forced them to watch their mother be raped and their fathers head cut off to be used as a soccer ball in the street. This savagery was still too fresh all these years later for Alden to speak in great detail.
Alden was rated as the top platoon leader 3 times. Twice with SDVT-2 and once with Team 2.He was invited to go through the selection process for TEAM 6 and he was selected. Alden had recently been married and he knew that if he accepted a position at TEAM 6 he would be in the Teams for 20 years. Although his wife was willing to support whatever decision Alden made, he decided it was time to leave. “It was the hardest decision of my adult life to leave the SEAL Teams.”
I asked him why it was so hard to leave, and he talked about the comraderie developed over the years. I asked what created such a strong bond. “Because you are surrounded by guys all willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for each other. That is an insane amount of trust. Imagine being around 15 men willing to give their life for you. As a team you are unstoppable.”
Alden decided to attend business school and was accepted by Carnegie Mellon. “Carnegie made it clear that they were taking a chance on me because I didn’t have the grades, but I had something they needed. I had bucket loads of leadership experience.” On Friday Alden was jumping out of a helicopter and the following Monday he was sitting in an advanced calculus class on Monday. “I found it very confusing. Since the age of 18 I had been in the military and now I had to learn to be a civilian.”
Alden had left the SEALs without a clearly defined path to follow but he knew he wanted to be in an entrepreneurial role. To pass time while on the submarines, Alden kept a sketch book where he drew different products and inventions. He wanted to be involved in bringing a product to market.
I asked Alden why some Special Forces members gravitate to toward entrepreneurial roles. “Special Forces guys are not great with big bureaucracies. They want to be given guardrails and then be left alone to accomplish the mission.”
Alden enjoyed his time at Carnegie, earned numerous academic and leadership awards and felt it was a good place to transition to civilian life. Despite his successes Alden said that he felt he lost his way in business school. “I lost the currency of purpose and replaced it with the currency of a paycheck. I ended up picking my job based on who was going to give me the most stock options.” Alden got swept up in the Silicon Valley wave of technology and took a job with a software company rather than bringing the widgets from his sketch book to market.
Alden eventually left his job and set out to plot his career course. He contemplated going back to the SEAL Teams and the CIA was interested in his skills. Alden’s wife Jennifer reminded him his goal was to take a product to market. “You work out every day. Why not do something that is part of your daily life?”
Alden then began his entrepreneurial career by starting PT Metrics. This was a device that you wore on your wrist, and it recorded the weight and reps performed on various pieces of fitness equipment. It would then create a workout for you. The Bluetooth technology hadn’t reached the level necessary to make the product commercially viable. He shut the company down.
His next venture was BodyRev which was a product that provide functional training and built strength for everyday activities. Alden was successful in attracting investors, but the company wasn’t profitable. Alden recalled the day his investors sat him down and said “this is a cashflow statement and you don’t have any cashflow. They told him that the company should file for Bankruptcy and told Alden to go get a job and he was starting to embarrass himself.
Undeterred, Alden decided to keep his team intact and told them he had one more product they could try to bring to market. It was called the Perfect Pushup. These were two disc that rotated. The idea was to put your hand on the handles of the discs while in pushup position. As you did a pushup, the discs would rotate your hands to take some of the pressure off your shoulders. Alden created an infomercial, and the product was a hit. The year was 2006. This led to the development of Perfect Pullup and The Perfect Ab Carver and soon there was over a 100 sku’s of “Perfect” branded products. In 2011 Alden sold the company to a private investment company and he stayed on in a product development role until 2015.
After leaving the company Alden and his wife decided to follow a dream they both had of living in Europe for a year. Jennifer told Alden she had multiple offers to rent their home, but all the offers wanted the home for two years. Although they only had enough money for 18 months, off to Barcelona they went. While in Europe Alden began planning the next phase of his life. He eventually decided to focus on something that he is incredibly passionate about – Helping people achieve their dreams…helping them Be Unstoppable.
Today Alden is a Keynote speaker and provides training that teaches people, teams and organizations to Be Unstoppable. He has authored two books. Unstoppable Teams is about the 4 essential actions of high performance leadership. Be Unstoppable is about the 8 essential actions to succeed at anything.
Alden and his wife have 4 boys and in his spare time he has taken up mountain climbing. In 2018 for his 50thbirthday he climbed Denali. Denali, located in Alaska, is the third most prominent peak of the Seven Summits, the highest peak in North America and the third most isolated peak on earth. He is now training for a 22,800 foot climb of Mt. Aconcagua in the Andes Mountain range in Argentina.
I asked Alden if he had a message to people looking to find their currency of purpose. He thought and said, “no one defines what you can do except you. Unstoppable is a choice. Your life is up to you.”
Thank you, Alden, for your service and sacrifice that allows the rest of us to sleep easy at night. And thank you for setting an example of working through adversity and overcoming obstacles to achieve our passion.