MAVEN

About MAVEN

Oracle Corporation's Military Affiliated Veteran Employee Network - MAVEN. The MAVEN Podcast shines a spotlight on veteran-affiliated employees, activities, partners, and organizations that are making a difference by contributing to causes greater than themselves. We talk experiences, career readiness, military transition, and the many ways we may all continue the mission to serve.

Publisher

Oracle Corporation

Category

business · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Apr 2022

Latest episode

12 Nov 2025

Latest episodes

48 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 Nov 2025

   Unlearning the Linear Career Path: Maureen Peters, Strategic Employee Experience Program Manager, MAVEN Co-Lead, and Veteran Advocate

   In this episode, Maureen gets real about growing up constantly on the move, learning to roll with change, stay grounded, and find the good in every new chapter. Surrounded by family and friends who dedicated their lives to service, she reflects on what it really means to live with purpose and give back. Maureen also reminds us that careers (and life!) rarely follow a straight line and sometimes, the best moments come from the plans we didn't make. Tune in for an uplifting chat about resilience, purpose, and the beauty of embracing the unexpected. https://www.linkedin.com/in/maureenpeters/ ----------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;33;10 Unknown You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organizations and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the Maven podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer, and in this episode, I'm joined by Maureen Peters, Strategic Employee Experience Program manager, Maven co-chair, and military ally. In this episode, Maureen gets real about growing up constantly on the move. 00;00;33;10 - 00;00;52;27 Unknown Learning to roll with change. Stay grounded and find the good in every new chapter. Surrounded by family and friends who dedicated their lives to service. She reflects on what it really means to live with purpose and give back. Maureen also reminds us that careers and life rarely follow a straight line, and sometimes the best moments come from the plans we didn't make. 00;00;52;28 - 00;01;10;20 Unknown Tune in for an uplifting chat about resilience, purpose, and the beauty of embracing the unexpected. We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent. As we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode, and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. 00;01;10;21 - 00;01;37;12 Unknown Maureen's contact details are on the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn. Maureen, what's going on? Hey Chris, what's up? Oh not much. What's what's going on? On your side. You know, busy, busy life. It's, kind of the standard around here. Just dealing with having a kid away from home for the first time. That's always fun to think that. 00;01;37;14 - 00;02;03;23 Unknown Yeah, you get used to it, I guess I hear. I don't know. Still working through it myself. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big change. It's a it's a big life transition. So that I look at you inserting the terms at that. Yeah. Nice. Well that's good. So you got the full background on your. I know the folks can't see this because it's audio, but the video background as far as how's how's Nashville in the fall? 00;02;03;25 - 00;02;22;26 Unknown It has been cold and rainy. So. But we are just getting the turning of the leaves on the trees, so it's great. I see all these trees and all this great color and everything else. It's. It's really nice. It's nice time of year. I just got back from, Florida, though. I've spent a long weekend in Florida, so it was warmth and sunshine and the beach. 00;02;22;26 - 00;02;51;20 Unknown And so, definitely hoping I can get back to that soon. Yeah, but, yeah, it's a nice place to visit. Yeah. Although summertime is probably not as moderate as now. Yeah, I was going to say that's why it's perfect. Fall spring. Not too hot. Gorgeous. Just again ordered. So. Maureen's here. Maureen has joined. Well, I'll let Maureen tell her story, but, Maureen's here as the co-chair of Maven. 00;02;51;20 - 00;03;14;20 Unknown So our military affiliated veteran employee network community inside of Oracle. And Maureen is an ally. And there there are some connections that again, I'll I'll pass the mic over and she'll she'll cover those things. But we're we're talking to Maureen today because this is episode two of season four. And we have a lot of things that are going on. 00;03;14;20 - 00;03;35;02 Unknown As was indicated just as we started talking, we want to talk about the perspective that Maureen has, the skill sets that Maureen brings to her role here, as well as what the vision for Maven is moving forward. If you listen to episode one, Scott pay for it briefly talked about what we were trying to achieve, some of the neat things we were working on. 00;03;35;02 - 00;03;53;05 Unknown It's what he said in the hopper. And so, you know, we'll take, perspective from Maureen, but before we do that, like we always do, Maureen, tell us a little bit about you. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. And who the heck can follow? Scott's opening the season for that was, like, pretty good, wasn't it? 00;03;53;07 - 00;04;18;24 Unknown Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is Maureen? Gosh, Maureen is, you know, a wife and a mom, and, you know, I grew up in a normal household, and, you know, I had friends and family who've served and everything else. And, I met my husband, similar to Scott. You know, he was saying that, you know, he was kind of not looking for the drama, the relationships or anything else. 00;04;18;24 - 00;04;39;15 Unknown And then bam, he found his wife. So it was kind of the same thing for for me in my world, you know, my husband and I wasn't looking for that relationship or that drama, but I, found my husband. He was recently transitioned out of the Marine Corps. You know, some people will say that I'm a military spouse, but the reality is, is, I don't deserve that honor. 00;04;39;15 - 00;05;10;11 Unknown He was in and out of the Corps before. I mean, once a marine, always a marine. So, you know, I live with that. But I never had to deal with PKS or deployments or anything else. I mean, my best friend deployed, the last year that she was in the Air Force, so, you know, spent a lot of time with her family, supporting her family, sending her monthly care packages with themed holidays and, you know, just trying to get her all the good stuff and help her through that last, that last year before she was ready to hit the button and leave the Air Force after 20 years. 00;05;10;11 - 00;05;32;21 Unknown So I'm a wife, obviously to my husband, Sam. I hope that my husband would say that is his lucky man. I know I'm a lucky woman. We had two beautiful kids. As I mentioned at the beginning, my daughter, just started at the University of Tennessee this fall. So goggles and I have a 16 year old son, who was a junior in high school and just starting his wrestling season. 00;05;32;23 - 00;05;55;12 Unknown So, as you can imagine, you know, between work and life and, you know, everything else, there's just a lot going on. It's always busy, always busy. Oh, now you're not. You're not originally from Tennessee. I am not I'm, one of the California transplants that the Tennesseans love so much. I left California, we left California about three and a half years ago. 00;05;55;13 - 00;06;17;21 Unknown But I'm not a California born and raised, either. I actually moved to California from Michigan. Let's see. I would have been almost 11 years old when I moved to California. My dad was on contract at Apple back before Apple was super cool, and he had been commuting back and forth for about a year and a half. And so when they asked him to extend his contract, he said, well, only if you move my family out to California. 00;06;17;24 - 00;06;40;18 Unknown So we moved to California in January of 89. And, it was amazing. I mean, going from, you know, Michigan cold winter to California in January and it was like 50 degrees outside. We were running around in our shorts and t shirts and everybody thought we were nuts. So when his contract ended, we had the opportunity to either stay in California or move back to Michigan. 00;06;40;18 - 00;07;02;00 Unknown And who wouldn't want to stay in California? There's a reason that it is the Golden State. It is beautiful. It is. Yes. And it always will be. So, you know, around 11, you said that you came from Michigan to to California. And what was it like moving from the Midwest into the West Coast? Yeah. You know, that's a that's a hard it's a hard transition. 00;07;02;00 - 00;07;27;05 Unknown My parents both grew up in Cleveland and or outskirts of Cleveland, Rocky River and, Lakewood for my mom and my dad went to UD. So that's what, you know, brought us to and brought him to Michigan. So it's really hard. I we had no family west of the Mississippi. All of my parents, siblings and family members were all in the Illinois, Ohio, you know, Indiana, Michigan area. 00;07;27;05 - 00;07;51;19 Unknown So it was really hard. It was a new start for us. But, you know, church and school and sports got us our own little network of people that have become our family, nice and and we're. Whereabouts in California? You don't have to be specific. Was it Northern California or where exactly? Where? Yes, absolutely northern. So, you know, Silicon Valley, my dad worked at Apple and he worked at tandem. 00;07;51;19 - 00;08;07;10 Unknown Both my parents worked for Cisco. I worked for Cisco. My brother worked for Cisco. You know, we all kind of had our little tenure there at one point in time. So we were in the Bay area, and about a year or so, I think, after my husband and I got married, we moved up to northeast of the Sacramento area. 00;08;07;10 - 00;08;30;14 Unknown So, and as expansion kept getting, you know, more and more and everything was growing, we just kept moving further and further out to kind of get away from it all. And, you know, so we loved it. Absolutely loved it there, but it was just too busy. And so when we after Covid and everything else, we decided that we weren't going to move, you know, we were trying to figure out where we wanted to go. 00;08;30;16 - 00;08;49;25 Unknown And a morning was not about to move back to Michigan. I did not want grand jury weather from November until April. So we were kind of figuring out where we wanted to land and, I had been traveling to Tennessee when I was working with Cisco. You know, they had an office in Franklin, which is just south of Nashville. 00;08;49;25 - 00;09;19;28 Unknown And so I had been traveling there, you know, fairly regularly and, loved it. You can't beat Nashville live music on Lower Broadway, which is totally my jam. So it was just one of the places it was a little, little south of, you know, where the family was closer to them, but not nearly as south as Florida. And the heat, although I really do miss the water, having lived in Northern California, being about an hour from North Shore and being, you know, like an hour and a half, two hours from San Francisco. 00;09;20;06 - 00;09;36;19 Unknown We had the best of all the worlds, right? I could go to the beach, I could go to the mountains. You know, now I'm kind of landlocked in Tennessee. I love it here. Great. I'm in a rural community. So I am I'm like an hour north of Nashville. So, just shy of the Kentucky border. And it's beautiful. 00;09;36;26 - 00;10;03;24 Unknown Beautiful here. I absolutely love it, but I do miss my water. Yeah. So North, you said North Shore. Is that Tahoe? Lake Tahoe? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we spent most of our time, honestly, in South Lake Tahoe. That was my little happy place. And, you know, it's kind of the same, you know, as I, as we drive to eastern Tennessee and kind of hit that plateau, we start to climb those hills and, you know, get those Rockies, like, you know, that that hits home. 00;10;03;24 - 00;10;21;03 Unknown That's I'm like, oh, I really love this part of the state. It's just gorgeous, nice. But there's something to be said about the fact that I pretty much drive two lane country roads everywhere and get stuck behind a tractor and you're like, okay, you're just behind the farm equipment. It's all right. You know, it's a slower pace of life. 00;10;21;05 - 00;10;43;02 Unknown Sit on the front porch or the back porch. Drink some bourbon. That's a big change to, you know, wine country and everything else was so close in California. And there's no wine in Tennessee. Unless you're like strawberry, a blackberry wine. So became bourbon drinkers. Okay. Yeah. So the change, the change in the adaptation, then, I guess is something that you're familiar with. 00;10;43;04 - 00;11;04;22 Unknown What are some of the things that stand out as kind of the prominent considerations of when you're getting ready to make those types of decisions? Family first, you know, honestly, like what's going to be best for, for my kids, that's, you know, they are the driving force behind pretty much everything I do. I lost both my parents before I was 40. 00;11;04;22 - 00;11;25;21 Unknown So they are they are my everything. You know, it was what's going to be good for them. What's going to be healthy for them. You know, how do we make sure that they're going to be set up for success? So was there a lot of planning going into it before? I mean, you're talking about coming out of the pandemic, just trying to figure out what you're going to do, and then you decide that you're going to you're going to relocate. 00;11;25;24 - 00;11;44;28 Unknown Yeah. You know, it's funny, my husband was born and raised in the Bay area and, so he joined the Corps because he wanted to travel and see the world. And he didn't get very far and, stayed in California. So it for him, it was really nice because when we go back to visit family, it gave him an opportunity to see a different part of the country. 00;11;44;28 - 00;12;07;09 Unknown So different outside of California. So he had always wanted to move, but like I said, my parents, you know, both had their cancers. They, we struggled, you know, through their, their trials and tribulations. And so it was never something I was going to do or leave, just, you know, so after a while, we just kind of decided through the pandemic, why are we still here? 00;12;07;10 - 00;12;27;05 Unknown You know what? Where could we be that suits us better? And, after my dad passed, my parents had had this trip planned where I'm okay in the family. Everybody has to get all 50 states. That is a that is a goal that everybody in our family has, you know, tried to achieve and you can't, you know, can't be in an airport that doesn't count. 00;12;27;05 - 00;12;46;02 Unknown Your feet are on real ground. That's airport ground, and you can't fly over it. So you got to actually, like, touch the land. And, so my mom was trying to get her last seven states when my dad passed unexpectedly. And so they had this big trip planned. And, we had told her that we would go on the trip with her. 00;12;46;02 - 00;13;05;13 Unknown So we did a five week road trip in a minivan, and my kids and my husband racked up 26 states. So that's that was kind of our thing is we're driving this five week road trip. Where do you want to go? What do you like? What do you seem that, you know, speaks to you, Nashville or. Well, Tennessee was one of the one of the states. 00;13;05;19 - 00;13;36;26 Unknown Tennessee's South Carolina, we really like the South is. And so what specifically or explicitly got you to to to decide on Tennessee, what do you have any influence on that work did not have any influence actually. And maybe this will go into the kind of conversation that we've got today. But I have I have worked for Mote since my son was an infant and I was in mergers and acquisitions for, you know, a little over a decade, both here at Oracle and, and at Cisco Systems. 00;13;36;29 - 00;14;01;08 Unknown And so, I mean, the conversations I'm in due diligence. You can't sit in a cubicle and ask questions and, you know, do the things that you're supposed to do when you're under NDA. So my role had always been remote. My kids learned from a very early age to walk silently into my office and to not be anywhere where they could potentially show up on camera. 00;14;01;11 - 00;14;27;10 Unknown So yeah, so work didn't have any place in it, but huge value add and benefit that Oracle was going to be moving into Nashville. So I got here and the office was brand new and and by office we are leasing an office at the moment. So when when I came to Nashville, we I think we have to provide one floor and we have slowly taken over, pretty much every floor in that building and acquired space in a building a block away. 00;14;27;10 - 00;14;43;28 Unknown So, I love to go down when I can, when we've got events to do, especially with Maven. I'm an owl leader in Nashville as well. I go down, I try to be down there, at least, you know, once or twice a month. But, that commute over the ridge is not something that something I want to do every day. 00;14;44;00 - 00;15;02;24 Unknown Kind of like everywhere else, traffic in those big cities is is no joke. Yeah, I got better things to do with my time, man. Yeah. Yes you do. And we're going to talk about those things here shortly. What is what is owl. Owl is Oracle's women's leadership. It is another ERG that Oracle has is focused on women's leadership. 00;15;02;25 - 00;15;22;15 Unknown Owl is like all the other ERGs, is open to everyone and to all the allies. So it's not just women. We have men that come and attended as well. Right? When you're talking about leadership development, it shouldn't make a difference whether it's male or female, right? That doesn't have any bearing on it. It's all about, you know, who you are and what you're trying to do and achieve. 00;15;22;15 - 00;15;45;08 Unknown And so we have a lot of early in career people in Nashville that are our, you know, sales development groups and whatnot that are in office. It's been it's been really wonderful to to be a leader to help, you know, mentor these young ladies, through their tech journey. What are some of the things that you do for Owl that stands out is probably something that you look forward to doing most. 00;15;45;11 - 00;16;06;09 Unknown Oh, so last year I created this, what we call munchkin learn because we didn't know if it was going to be breakfast or lunch or happy hour or something along that line. So we have a we have a quarterly lunch and learn that we do. So it's a lot of things like last year's programing we started off with mentoring, then the importance of mentoring. 00;16;06;11 - 00;16;33;21 Unknown Then we moved to your brand and knowing what your brand is. And from there we moved to strategic networking and about how to, you know, network and meet the right people and, and grow that network and how wonderful your network can be for you and helping you throughout your career journey. And then our last one was about, kind of internal mobility, like how do you navigate what that looks like? 00;16;33;23 - 00;16;53;06 Unknown You know, again, a lot of them are early in career. So this is our first job right out of college. And, you know, they maybe didn't go to school to be in sales or, you know, one of my mentees went to be, you know, supply chain management goes like, well, how do you how do you pivot your career from sales to supply chain management? 00;16;53;06 - 00;17;18;17 Unknown And Oracle's a huge, vast company. And, I'd like to think that I've, you know, I've got a lot of connections throughout all the different, you know, lines of businesses being in mergers and acquisitions. Yeah. We were acquiring like, man, the first time I was at Oracle, I mean, I think I worked on not all of them came to fruition, but I think I worked on 42 acquisitions in the two and a half years that I was at Oracle the first time, because I am a boomerang. 00;17;18;20 - 00;17;43;09 Unknown So I was here, 2011 through 2013. Those were our big acquisitions like Taleo and Right now and Eloqua and everything else. It was chaotic and fun and, and everything else. But there's a lot and I think people, you know, they come in and they have their their role and they know their role, but they don't really know how big Oracle is and where they can go. 00;17;43;14 - 00;18;04;24 Unknown I mean, you know, I had a, one of my favorite VP's that I worked for, Suzanne Posner. She just retired, spent 25 years at Oracle, had been in, you know, marketing and sales and finance and operations. And, I mean, there's just so many different places that you can go. You don't have to have a linear career path. 00;18;04;27 - 00;18;26;06 Unknown You know, you can have a nonlinear career path and, you know, experience so much and you don't even have to leave the company to do it. So second that, yeah, I, I've been here forever too. Almost forever. I was like, we won't date you. Don't do that. Okay. No, no. You got to leave some some mystery to the experience. 00;18;26;09 - 00;18;55;18 Unknown So M&A so you said you joined in 2011 stayed in 2013. Yeah. And during that time with all of that activity around M&A, what was the common theme amongst all that change that was occurring from people that were coming into Oracle as a result of that M&A? Yeah, it was really hard. The hard thing about M&A, I think what people don't don't realize is that people, people and talent, to me, that's the most important thing. 00;18;55;19 - 00;19;15;24 Unknown Right. But there's a lot of redundancy. So I was specifically focused on sales, go to market, and incentive compensation, which is always just such a touchy topic anyway, you know, so you want your salespeople to come over because it's going to take time for your Oracle reps to, you know, learn the product, the technology and how to sell it and position it. 00;19;16;01 - 00;19;36;11 Unknown They have their own finance people. They have their own HR people. When you're acquiring them and integrating them into a line of business that already has H.R. Support and, you know, finance support and arts support and things like that, there's a redundancy in jobs. And, so, so that was hard. That was very hard on me, that weighed heavy on my heart. 00;19;36;11 - 00;20;02;19 Unknown And in a lot of ways, because, you know, well, you don't know everybody, you know, you can't keep everybody. And so that makes it a little challenging. So with that and you talking about roles and how you're going to integrate roles into what already exists, does any of your experience help with how you're going to manage those things that people are thinking, or what they're wondering about as they're coming into the company and the unknowns? 00;20;02;21 - 00;20;21;10 Unknown I think that that's kind of what drove me as I'm. Yeah, innately just, you know, I want to help everybody. And, and I don't like to say no. And, you know, I want to make it easier for people to do their thing. And so I think that's kind of how I ended up in, you know, the strategic employee experience world. 00;20;21;11 - 00;20;41;20 Unknown I want people to have a good experience. That's why I mentor so many people, because, you know, as as hard as it is to navigate your career and everything else, it's it's hard to do it alone. So, you know, I try to do everything that I can to take on as many mentees and share my knowledge and my wisdom and, you know, just help people through it. 00;20;41;20 - 00;21;03;27 Unknown Because at the end of the day, it's the people that matter. So you left. I did leave, I went to I went to Cisco Systems. I was there for about five years. That's a whole nother story. And, so Cisco was doing a lot of layoffs, and, you know, I got impacted, and, it ended up being a blessing in disguise. 00;21;03;27 - 00;21;23;19 Unknown You know, my mom was. I'd already lost my dad at that point in time. He had retired from Cisco and passed away six months to the day that he retired from Cisco. And, my mom, was ill, and, you know, so that time away, I took time. I got laid off, I think, and end of October, maybe. 00;21;23;19 - 00;21;46;07 Unknown And so I was like, well, I'm not going to even attempt to look for a job until the beginning of the new year. Having been an HR and recruiting in the past, like, it's a tough it's a tough time in November, December to be looking for a job. So I was just going to take the the severance that I had and just enjoy my time and, you know, funny, I had my my great Oracle M&A people that I had worked with was like knocking on my door, hey, you should come back. 00;21;46;07 - 00;22;08;13 Unknown I was like, no, no, I don't know that. I want to come back to Oracle and look at me now. I've been here, come back for, seven years. So, well, my boomerang and the way that Oracle calculates their, you know, time and service, I think I'll hit my ten years, in January. Nice. Yeah. Congrats. 00;22;08;15 - 00;22;33;03 Unknown Yeah, that's a pretty good. So let's stay there for a minute and talk about an antidote and anticipate a change. Life change. Prioritization and then goals. I mean you had unplanned change in career and then clearly you had the mindset to, to look at it from a perspective of an opportunity to do something else and focus on something else, which is your family. 00;22;33;03 - 00;22;58;11 Unknown And you said that early on. Family first. Yeah. What's interesting is you gave yourself the time. Help us understand, how did that go down to where you decided that I'm going to do this until I don't want to? And you, you gave yourself an end state of when you wanted to go back and continue on your career. You know, I don't know that I, I don't know that I've really put a lot of time and like, a lot of thought into it. 00;22;58;11 - 00;23;33;10 Unknown I just. I, I've worked for people in the past that taught me a lot and, you know, good relationships and unhealthy, toxic manager relationships. So I knew when I left Cisco that it was time to allow myself to be picky about who I wanted to work for. When you get bounced around from manager to manager to manager and it's not your choice, it doesn't feel good all the time and, I'm a big believer in people and personalities. 00;23;33;10 - 00;24;05;25 Unknown And if I were to think about my 515 strengths, positivity is is one of mine. Shocking, right? Blows my mind. Didn't see that coming. Arranger achiever positivity. Individualization. What in the world is my other activator? So yes, probably no surprise whatsoever. So individualization is one of my strengths. I. I always see the good, I always look for the upside in people, and I always try to find something that I can relate to them with. 00;24;05;25 - 00;24;25;13 Unknown Like, you know what? How can we connect together? Because connectedness is very important. So I knew I wasn't going to just work for anybody. I wasn't going to just take a job to take a job. I had done that before, you know, I've been down that road. So when Oracle came knocking again, my coworkers, they were like, it's really different. 00;24;25;13 - 00;24;47;19 Unknown You should think about it. So I came back to Oracle in April of 2018. I think I was back for not even a whole month, I think. And my mom was told she had about three weeks to live. And so I looked at my boss and I was like, I'm sorry, but you know, I've gotta I gotta spend some time. 00;24;47;19 - 00;25;06;12 Unknown And they were like, do what you need to do. Take it, take as much time as you need. And that was a huge change from an Oracle perspective. I was not expecting that. I was thinking, how am I going to manage this? And, so yeah, so it's gone a long way. I had some really great, really great managers. 00;25;06;15 - 00;25;09;29 Unknown Being back at Oracle. 00;25;10;02 - 00;25;30;27 Unknown So let's talk about that culture selection. You decided things leading up and and then for painting the picture for everybody that's listening, you know, the story, the reason why we talk about an individual and we ask for a little bit of backstory so we can see things develop and look where the true heart of someone is sitting when decisions are being made. 00;25;30;27 - 00;26;01;00 Unknown And of course, contributions to things that are for the greater good or bigger than one individual where it comes from. So how how did that make you feel when you came back and sorry for your loss on both your mom and your dad? And when you're now faced with a new situation in your career and what you heard the news about your mom, and you are allowed now to take the time that you needed, what did that do for you? 00;26;01;02 - 00;26;16;16 Unknown Yeah, I think it just took one of those many balls in the air that I have to figure out how to juggle every day. I just took it out. I didn't have to worry about it. And let me be clear, like, I mean, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 17 years. Yes, 17 years old. 00;26;16;18 - 00;26;32;00 Unknown You know, she lived for 23 years battling this. You know, my dad had his cancer. My parents. I think one of the things that I learned, one of the best things I learned from my parents was like, like a short live it to the max. So when I say that my parents, like, struggled with their cancers. Sure. 00;26;32;00 - 00;26;48;24 Unknown Absolutely. But that they still travel the world, did they still act semi-retired while they were still working? Yes, because they knew like they didn't know how long they were going to have. And that's one of the things that, you know, I've really tried to instill in my children and in my family life is too short. You know, you've got to do the things that you're interested in doing. 00;26;48;25 - 00;27;11;19 Unknown You can't wait until you're financially stable to have babies, and you can't wait until you know you're this old to be able to travel. No, go live life. I mean, don't put yourself into debt by any means, because, you know, I'm definitely fiscally responsible. But, you know, there's there's something to be said, you know, go out to dinner, go have the laughs, go do the fun things and, that's kind of how I live my life. 00;27;11;20 - 00;27;37;18 Unknown You know, I don't live to work, but I, you know, I don't necessarily work to live either. You know, you have to you got to find all of that balance and coming back to Oracle's been has been a great thing for me. It's really allowed me, the space to just explore what I'm interested in doing. So I came back doing M&A and I had a manager that was very supportive and, you know, it was like, hey, like, are you doing what you want to be doing? 00;27;37;18 - 00;27;54;05 Unknown Are you happy with what you're doing? And, you know, having a manager that says, hey, get involved? I mean, you know, that's how I met you. You you ended up in our organization. I found out about me. Then I was like, what is this organization? How do I get involved? Actually, I think I'm pretty sure you said to me, you need to come be involved. 00;27;54;07 - 00;28;22;07 Unknown But, you know, I was, you know, I'm like that. Something like that. Hey, we need you. You can be part of our team. And and it was like, the minute I joined Maven. The minute that I came aboard, it was like coming home. It was. It was familiar. It was, you know, people that just have the same, you know, mentality and that, you know, love of other people and camaraderie and teamwork and support. 00;28;22;07 - 00;28;46;16 Unknown And, you know, we're all going through different things and different stages in our lives. But, you know, that's how we connect. That's how we, you know, pull together as a group and, and support each other. So it was like coming home and having that sense of belonging has been I mean, tremendous. Now, thanks for that and thanks for sharing that that the perspective is, is nice. 00;28;46;18 - 00;29;16;04 Unknown One, two here, to to make the correlation between, the, you know, of the multiple sides there could be in one's life. You know, there's the, the personal and professional. And when you find an alignment in seeking opportunity and it seems like with your enthusiasm of all your strengths, as you mentioned, no surprise that when you when you look at things, you see things a certain way and opportunistic is is one way of saying, well, that looks like something I want to get involved in, and then you do it. 00;29;16;06 - 00;29;40;03 Unknown That is, in fact, if you haven't yet met Maureen, that is her M.O., you know, she sees something and it seems to be aligned with what needs to occur, and she'll drive it. And there's a lot of excitement that will come out of that from from the people around her to and, and so that that energy is not only appreciated, but it's, necessary in sometimes when, you know, we try to boost people up, keep moving things like that. 00;29;40;03 - 00;30;08;27 Unknown So, so around 2021 ish, 22, you got involved and you started to do things, talk about some of the things that were happening back then and where things are now. One, 2 in 2 areas, one your career and then two with Maven. I think I was still working in M&A when I joined Maven, but I think I really quickly transitioned into a new role. 00;30;08;29 - 00;30;38;10 Unknown My VP that I was telling you about, Susan Posner, she had posted in the Women's Apple Channel, that she had her role open, focused on customer and employee experience. And I've read the job description. Oh, that sounds amazing, right? If I have the ability to like, you know, touch the employee experience and make that something that can be so much better and so much grander, and, and help our customers, you know, at the same time, that would be a huge shift. 00;30;38;10 - 00;31;15;23 Unknown And again, I worked at M&A, so, you know, was never in the depth of an organization, you know, like a sales organization. I supported them. I help them from an operational perspective and everything else. But I never actually been in the business. So that was a big change. And, I really enjoyed that. I it was a lot of fun and, you know, for an org to actually put some people and money behind having an experience at work, not just here to make your number, but we want to we want to look at you holistically as an employee, and we want to look at we we designed, a program called Living Your Best 00;31;15;23 - 00;31;47;25 Unknown Life. And it had five pillars focused on career development, continuous learning, social, getting involved and, you know, everything else giving and wellness because all of those things are what make up people and the things that make them happy and feel fulfilled. And we wanted our, you know, our employees to feel like they're, you know, they were valued and that, you know, we cared, that we encourage them to go learn. 00;31;47;25 - 00;32;10;11 Unknown We encourage them to pursue, you know, careers. And so we wanted it to be like this destination location and within Oracle to say, you've got all of this opportunity to, you know, to be who you are, bring your authentic self. And you know, that spoke to me because that's how I live my life. I'm 100% authentic. And, you know, some people like it. 00;32;10;11 - 00;32;31;21 Unknown Some people might be a little much for, you know, sometimes more. You can get a little crazy with her energy. I'm pretty sure there's somebody sitting across the microphone. For me, it was like, hey, I need to tone that down a little dosage, right? Moderation. So I know I can be a little much and that's and that's cool. 00;32;31;23 - 00;33;03;14 Unknown But, you know, it gave us it really just it allowed us to focus on so many different things, you know, and when you can plan quarterly giving events, you know, things where we are, you know, for example, we we created, these volunteer projects that we would run across, you know, eight major locations. Right? So imagine the imagine the lift of trying to get people to help you because you're not boots on the ground in those locations to run these volunteer projects. 00;33;03;16 - 00;33;23;05 Unknown We did all we did a lot of to lift ourselves so that they just had to, you know, make it happen on the ground. But, you know, get our remote employees to use an Amazon wishlist to donate school supplies, get the People's in the hubs to fill the backpacks, and then to give them to our customers to give out to their customers. 00;33;23;07 - 00;33;47;11 Unknown We did it with, chemo goodie bags. We did the same thing. So yeah. So we were able to bless our customers with items that our employees were donating, you know, the goodness of their own hearts to want to contribute to these projects. And, you know, we had, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt and Stanford and, you know, we were able to say, hey, we've we've made these 100 chemo goodie bags. 00;33;47;14 - 00;34;06;26 Unknown We care about your patients to help them while they sit in the chair for four hours and get an infusion, you know, so we did volunteer projects. We did heart healthy bingo. And you know, February, you know, we get our employees, hey, get up, go be active. You know, we do the same. Maven, right. Hey, Maven. Friends coming up. 00;34;06;26 - 00;34;27;20 Unknown We want people to be out there. Go do something. If that's meditating, that's fantastic. It's all about, you know, your mental wellness and your and your health, well-being and everything else. And so it was really, really impactful for a line of business to have employees that were driving these programs, you know? So I try to do the same. 00;34;27;20 - 00;34;48;03 Unknown I try to try to do that with Maven. I try to do that with our, you know, try to, you know, where we can make sure that people understand we're we're not just looking for you to be the little worker bee and not care about anything else. We really do want you to have that exceptional employee experience, and that's important work. 00;34;48;03 - 00;35;24;21 Unknown And to think the thing that I was looking at around the time that you're talking about, where these things started to become more prominent in our workplace, it it was a little confusing at times because there's a separation from work and personal activity at times where people are like, I just want to come to work, you know? But if you think about the majority of the time that one spends with their mind on work and then being at work, you know, these things, you had to unravel how you felt about this stuff because you did find value once you participated in these things. 00;35;24;21 - 00;35;47;01 Unknown It was a nice break in the monotony of of a concentrated effort to do what was required of you and your role in the workplace, and these breaks allowed you to distribute your focus. The relationships evolve in different capacities, you know, explore different ways of doing what you do, whoever you are, and whatever it is that you were doing, it was it's important work. 00;35;47;08 - 00;36;10;25 Unknown And so the volunteering component is as important as the work itself because of the things that you talked about, the philanthropic outcomes and the benefits in those types of things, of whoever's receiving these things. But you feel good, you know, and you feel like you're doing things that are personally adding to who you are and who you want to be. 00;36;10;27 - 00;36;32;23 Unknown So that's the essence of continuing the mission to serve, right? It's it's not just service in the military or in that sphere. You know, the military affiliated community is, you know, your service to people is to service to self. And some of those things, you become selfless and you do things for other people. You feel good, you're helping other people feel good, and then you're bringing harmony and unity. 00;36;32;23 - 00;36;54;07 Unknown And in the sphere of where you are, your circle. Yeah. So you when you came in to Maven, you were helping in key areas and then you, moved into an operational role where you drove a lot of activity. There was a spurt there. So a couple of years ago where we were doing a lot of events. 00;36;54;09 - 00;37;27;19 Unknown Yeah. And, you know, coming out of Covid, man, I was just going to say, yeah, people only had that interaction. They were, you know, craving that engagement, you know? So the timing was really great between both me joining Maven and me joining the sales organization. And, you know, because people were they were hungry for that, you know, that ability to connect and, you know, do things and maybe, you know, with as many people as they are remote, you know, you can still engage people and do amazing things together, even though your remote. 00;37;27;22 - 00;37;58;08 Unknown Yeah, it changed the whole dynamic of what what connectedness means, right. And and adapting to the new way of doing it, the new style of connectedness through remote or virtual engagement, you know, and reintegrating face to face interactions became equally important. So now you have that balance. And so we've done pretty well in managing that. You've been a key part of that, having you move into the co-chair role and helping lead the vision and the strategy, and not just the operational functions, where you you're now kind of the trifecta, the triple threat, right? 00;37;58;08 - 00;38;21;16 Unknown So you have the experience and the passion and the purpose deep inside your heart of wanting to do this, as demonstrated through what you just talked about for years, you've been doing these types of things with M&A activity, bringing on new employees from an acquisition in high stress environments, getting them assimilated in and integrated inside now their workplace, making them feel like they're a part of something which is a huge challenge. 00;38;21;19 - 00;38;41;09 Unknown And then, you know, you moved into a role where that was your job, which is amazing. And then now it's an all volunteer environment to where it's it's not even a hobby. It's a passion where all of those things meet each other. Talk a little bit about what you're doing now in that space as a co-lead, and then the strategy and the vision for what's to come. 00;38;41;11 - 00;39;07;00 Unknown You know, I still suffer, you know, from this imposter syndrome. Like, how am I the co-chair? Why am I the co-chair? There's got to be other people who are, well, more suited for this. And, you know, I didn't serve. I mean, I've got so many friends and family that have served, but I didn't. And, you know, so that it it's been a little bit, challenging, but I, I, I think about it, from the people mindset. 00;39;07;00 - 00;39;27;04 Unknown What do they need? What are they looking for? You know, Scott talked about servant leadership and everything else. So I feel like that's definitely, a huge play. And what I do and why I'm here and everything else. Because it is about giving back, and it's about, you know, touching those people and the things that we can bestow upon them and bless them with. 00;39;27;06 - 00;39;51;02 Unknown And it and it's not even tangible things. Right. It's the time, it's the support, it's the energy and those types of things. So that's kind of what I think of when I'm thinking about, oh my gosh, how did I end up in this position? Why am I in this in this role? Because I do. I have such an innate love for people who are serving our country and who have served our country. 00;39;51;02 - 00;40;08;26 Unknown I mean, I have an immense pride in our country. I have an immense pride in the people that do this. It's very honorable. And I know that there are so many veterans that I talk to regularly that are like, I don't need you to thank me for my service, you know, or, I say things like, they selflessly are serving our country and they're like, no, I was selfish. 00;40;08;26 - 00;40;28;16 Unknown I did it because I wanted the benefits. I'm like, nope. I'm pretty sure you put yourself, you know, on that line that, you know, and you probably know a whole lot more about the statistics behind, you know, how many people actually serve. We've got law enforcement. We have our first responders and and the military. And I think that is just huge. 00;40;28;16 - 00;40;51;03 Unknown And, you know, Maven and what we're trying to achieve from a maven perspective, I mean, I fell in love with the mission. You know, that ability to continue to serve. Am I the person that's going to show up and take on a tough job and totally slay 100%, you know, hard work? I love that. I love that about our community and love that, you know, that is a driving force. 00;40;51;03 - 00;41;16;14 Unknown So my messages to hiring managers and to companies that they that people that they can get, you know, that you can talk about talent and you can talk about smart people and you know, everything else. But those soft skills, that resilience, you can't tell me, military spouse, I mean, those spouses go through so much, right? They are managing so much. 00;41;16;14 - 00;41;38;23 Unknown And and I think that that's just we have to we have to advocate for them. We have to, you know, do everything that we can to keep these military spouses employed to, you know, that when they change stations, they shouldn't have to give up their entire world. Oracle's very lucky we have that flexibility. So why are we not doing everything and shouting from the rooftops? 00;41;38;25 - 00;42;04;14 Unknown You know, about the things that we can do to, you know, support more military spouses through these, in these changes, you know. Yep. No. That's good. That and very specific and intentional. So thanks for thanks for yeah. Revealing yourself to that part and how important it is is obvious. So as we wrap this up what's what's big coming up that Maven is going to help support and drive. 00;42;04;17 - 00;42;25;06 Unknown Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's it's really about how do we support our military spouses, how do we get our word out and advocate and talk to people about transitioning out of service and and coming into Oracle and what that looks like? And I think that's going to be a huge thing. You know, we're hiring right now like mad for data center technicians. 00;42;25;08 - 00;42;41;02 Unknown This is a great opportunity for people that are transitioning out of the service to come in and take those types of roles, right. They've got the skill set. They know what it's like, spend a couple years and you go and you learn the skill and the training and everything else, and then you see where it takes you from there. 00;42;41;02 - 00;42;59;17 Unknown And so I think that's that's a lot of what we're going to be focusing on is, you know, how do we, you know, how do we support those that are transitioning out of service. How do we make Oracle a place that they want to come to, and how do we support our military spouses and offer them, you know, flexible employment? 00;42;59;19 - 00;43;42;02 Unknown Yep. No, I gotcha and thanks for that. So, Maureen, thank you for being consistent with who you've been and then bringing those traits and values inside what you do for others. And again, you know, the mindset of looking at what other people are going through and considering, you know, where their their minds are set under pressure on change, you know, whether it's a merger and acquisition, where your professional career is up in the air based off of things that are uncontrollable, settling in to what you need to focus on and having you as a as a representative, along with the others that do this kind of work, have them settle into some norms that they 00;43;42;02 - 00;44;04;23 Unknown can wrap their head around and focus on, maybe be distracted by until things are worked out and a little bit more concrete. Change is tough. You demonstrated the experience by choosing to go through change in your relocation and of course, the things that go along with family and and the unfortunate realities of what goes along with family as well. 00;44;04;27 - 00;44;23;29 Unknown There's a lot of things that you're doing that you're paying it forward to those coming up behind us. And so we're grateful for that. Grateful for your support. Final comments. Yeah. So, you know, as as we're talking about it and as I think about it, you know, that linear career path is something I think that those that are in the service are so used to. 00;44;24;03 - 00;44;50;15 Unknown And, you know, you climb those ranks and you know, and at Oracle, you don't have to have a linear career path. You have the flexibility. You have the ability to change, you know, different lines of businesses, different job functions. There's so many different things that you can do and try your hand at. And, you know, I think it just provides a lot of opportunity for people to, grow in whatever areas they're looking to, to grow themselves. 00;44;50;15 - 00;45;11;09 Unknown So I'm blessed, you know, I'm blessed to be here and I'm blessed to be a part of Oracle. I'm blessed to be a part of me. And there's something to be said about finding joy in all the things and and finding joy in your work. And and maybe as if it's another full time job, I feel like. Right. 00;45;11;11 - 00;45;27;20 Unknown But I love it. I absolutely love it when you're when your heart is happy and your heart is full. There's no better way to live. And we will leave it there already. One. Keep moving forward.

2. 

   23 Oct 2025

   Earn Your Experience: Scott Payfer, Director Onsite Reliability Engineering, MAVEN Chair, and Navy Veteran

   After 23 years of service as a United States Navy Submariner, Scott retired and embarked on a new journey joining the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Engineering team where he quickly found his stride leading and building successful teams. In this episode, Scott takes us through his incredible journey, from growing up in a military household to enlisting in the Navy. His path was filled with invaluable lessons, but not without facing and overcoming self-imposed barriers. Not one to phrase it this way, Scott humbly shares the pivotal moments that helped him evolve into a true leader and someone people actually want to follow. He opens up about how the most rewarding experiences in life cannot be rushed or faked and he explains how he learned this lesson the hard way. Tune in for a raw and powerful conversation on leadership, relationships, and perseverance. ----------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;29;13 Unknown You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organizations and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the Maven podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer, and welcome to season four's first episode, where I'm joined by Scott Pay for Oracle Site Reliability Director, Maven chair, and Navy veteran. 00;00;29;19 - 00;00;55;15 Unknown After 23 years of service as United States Navy submariner, Scott retired and embarked on a new journey joining the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Engineering team, where he quickly found his stride leading and building successful teams. In this episode, Scott takes us through his incredible journey from growing up in a military household to enlisting in the Navy. His path was filled with invaluable lessons, but not without facing and overcoming self-imposed barriers and not one to phrase it this way. 00;00;55;22 - 00;01;13;07 Unknown Scott humbly shares the pivotal moments that helped him evolve into a true leader and someone people actually want to follow. He opens up about how the most rewarding experiences in life cannot be rushed or faked, and he explains how he learned this lesson the hard way. Tune in for a raw and powerful conversation on leadership, relationships, and perseverance. 00;01;13;13 - 00;01;33;18 Unknown We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent. As we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. Scott's contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn. 00;01;33;20 - 00;01;59;08 Unknown Scott, what's going on? Good morning. Good morning to you, Chris. It's a, a beautiful Seattle Friday morning. We got drizzles up here. So, typical Seattle weather for those are up there. As we tell the visitors, it's always like this. Always raining. Don't bother coming. Don't bother, don't bother coming. Yeah. Clearly don't work for the Chamber of Commerce in the tourist. 00;01;59;10 - 00;02;26;16 Unknown That is actually my job now. Yeah. Well, good. Well, I'm glad to have you here. So, season four, episode one. We're kicking off the Oracle Maven podcast with Scott Paper, who is leading the Maven employee resource group. So the Oracle, veteran affiliated community, it's our 10th year anniversary. Did you know that? I did, thanks. Entire early to you, Chris, for, raising that to my attention. 00;02;26;23 - 00;02;56;28 Unknown Yeah, I'm a little younger at Oracle, so I wasn't here when the foundation was laid. Or, you know, when when the apple fell from the tree. You know those things? Yeah. Bunk. That and it's been a great ten years. I mean, obviously the community's been around before that, but when when Oracle was focusing on bringing people together in the communities and, you know, Veterans Day this November 11th will be ten years Maven was was born. 00;02;57;00 - 00;03;16;17 Unknown And we've gone through some iterations and I think we've made good progress on what our focus is and, and how we contribute to the company's. The employee community, you know, indirectly goes to the bottom line of lines of business inside the company. But then, you know, of course, focusing on relevance for our customers and, and all these things that are independent of each other. 00;03;16;17 - 00;03;39;01 Unknown So Scott leads Maven as the the chair, along with co-chair Maureen Peters, who we will have on soon. And we brought Scott in to kick off this season because, you know, we'd love to hear what's going on and what the future is for this year. On what Maven will contribute to and and how we'll bring people together, continue to bring people together. 00;03;39;06 - 00;04;04;01 Unknown But before we get there, Scott, let's let everybody know a little bit about you. Yeah. I appreciate you, having me on and giving me the opportunity to talk. We're real excited about fiscal year 26 and where we're going with Maven. I get the opportunity to work alongside the pretty motivated board of volunteers keeping the, military affiliated community plugged in and connected. 00;04;04;03 - 00;04;27;08 Unknown And it's been really rewarding. Right. So I have to thank you to in front of everybody, or at least audibly in front of everybody, for bringing me in. So, Chris, Chris really spurred my interest in jumping into the team. We met in person. His energy and enthusiasm kind of convinced me that maybe the community was was where I wanted to get back into. 00;04;27;08 - 00;04;50;29 Unknown So, I'm pretty passionate about it. Coming off of a, 23 year career in the United States, a and submarines got to work in, electronic warfare, electronic surveillance measures, and then, submarine communications. And that turned into, information systems. It at the end of my career, when I joined, we were still printing out and routing around pieces of paper. 00;04;51;01 - 00;05;13;15 Unknown Then they decided that the things we printed off could be connected, made networks, computer networks. And it, grew over time. Right. So we got to see the whole evolution of that. Not going to talk about how old that does make me feel when we're working on virtual computers everywhere, and nobody ever actually touches a real machine anymore. 00;05;13;18 - 00;05;33;19 Unknown So that was, that was my formative, career was 23 years in the Navy. But as anybody who spent a fair amount of time in the military, Terry knows, it's, it's a string of a bunch of mini careers. As you grow and develop a bunch of little tours of duty here and there where you have different kinds of jobs. 00;05;33;21 - 00;05;59;04 Unknown Couldn't couldn't say more about my experience, there and how it formed me, into what I am today. I'll kind of walk through some of the key points as we go, but I think, the, the idea that someone would spend 23 years in the military is, is, kind of a you get ideas about what that person might have done that for, why they would have joined in the first place. 00;05;59;06 - 00;06;20;00 Unknown And it's probably not what most people would think. When I was growing up, I was a military vet. Not vet. Sorry. Military brat. I mean, you you came out, a vet came out, born, born a Navy guy, right? I was, I've always been a sailor all my blooming life. Right. The, the reality is true, though, right? 00;06;20;00 - 00;06;38;18 Unknown I was, I was a son of a son of a sailor. My, my dad was in the Navy. My mom was in the Navy. I was adopted as my stepdad. Might as well been my real dad, though, because I never even knew it. Right. And then my biological father was a sailor, too, right? It's just it's in my blood. 00;06;38;21 - 00;07;03;06 Unknown Until I was raised, I never lived outside of and maybe or military town in my life. Ever. And, we moved around a lot when I was younger. And then we settled in Connecticut. And I think there was just the foregone conclusion that that was the path. That was the way, you know, my parents raised me knowing I was going into the Navy is never my thought process. 00;07;03;06 - 00;07;23;01 Unknown I was just enjoying life, being a kid, playing outside stickball and mountain biking and playing basketball on the on the outside of the school, you know, but, I didn't really think about it. And then my dad's like, yeah, you're going to go to the Naval Academy. I was like, well, I mean, that's cool. How do you do that? 00;07;23;08 - 00;07;46;11 Unknown Right? Well, first off, foremost, you got to actually study, show up, do homework, go to school. Those were all things that weren't really at the top of my list in high school. Not even on the list. A lot of times. Right. So I was, was smart, but not motivated and, and not really focused, when I was in high school. 00;07;46;14 - 00;08;11;18 Unknown So I ended up barely passing. I was already signed up for the Navy, ready to go off to do the deployed entry program. And recruiter, my recruiter gets a call from me like, hey, man, I'm. I'm not going to graduate on time. And he's like, hey, yeah. That's a that's an emergency. Right. So more from my recruiter coming in, setting up a class with the high school, pulling in a bunch of other kids that had failed. 00;08;11;18 - 00;08;34;04 Unknown It was, was chemistry that did me in. Right? I took chemistry three times, and then finally I got the the, the Idiot's Guide to Chemistry version of chemistry. And I was like, okay, I can I can sleep my way through this, I guess. So I did that in summer school when everybody else was enjoying the summer and then off to boot camp. 00;08;34;06 - 00;08;51;13 Unknown Thank God, because I would not have been able to find another job other than dairy Queen. If it were that. Not the dairy Queen was a bad job. No shade. I enjoyed my time there. Let's talk about the the shakes. The dairy Queen shakes for man. Yeah, the the blizzards where you can turn them upside down. 00;08;51;13 - 00;09;17;06 Unknown You know, I actually really enjoyed working there, but, the the reality is I needed a change, and I wanted to get as far away from my hometown as possible. Was there anything personal? It's not like I had a bad relationship with my parents. I just didn't have a great plan for what I wanted to do there in Groton, Connecticut is kind of like there is really nothing there except Marines except submarines and the military industrial complex. 00;09;17;06 - 00;09;38;15 Unknown Right. There's there's Dow or Pfizer or there's a bunch of other like, plants. There's a casino, and then there's the world's largest service. Right. And that's it. Right. Like that's that's what's there. And I, I didn't want to spend my life in that place. So like, at the time, I was getting introduced to a bunch of, you know, new kinds of music. 00;09;38;15 - 00;10;05;04 Unknown I grew up when I was younger, only interested in hip hop, and I discovered that there were other genres of music in my senior year. So I found Jimi Hendrix, found grunge rock, and found Seattle. Right. So then I'm in school, ironically, graduate boot camp go back to my hometown for a year while I'm in school getting trained because that's where all of the submarine rates get trained is my hometown. 00;10;05;06 - 00;10;20;20 Unknown Spent a year there wanting to get the heck out. And finally, the first chance I got, I was like, I want to go to Seattle because that's where all the rock and roll and mountains are right? I was an avid mountain biker. I always wanted to snowboard. And, and I got out here and I fell in love with it. 00;10;20;21 - 00;10;42;23 Unknown It was like the first time I'd ever seen a real mountain with snow in the summertime. You could see them from base. I think it was, like, superimposed. And it blew my mind. Right. So I spent another year waiting to get on the boat. In school. So a big part of what makes me who I am is what I experience in between my classes. 00;10;42;23 - 00;11;04;15 Unknown Right. It was it was interesting because I was raised to have this really strong work ethic and be super committed to whatever I was doing at the time. I wasn't necessarily motivated to go hunt down opportunities, but if you gave me work to do, I was going to go do that work. I like hard work. I mean, it could be just picking heavy stuff up and moving it and then putting it down. 00;11;04;15 - 00;11;26;21 Unknown It could be whatever, right? Chip and paint and painting. I didn't care, right? I got something to do. Worthy task. If I could see a good outcome, I would attack it. And instead they gave us the most menial dumb stuff to do in between. And then it was like these, these middle grade leaders that kind of washed out and ended up just watching over the waiting to go to school. 00;11;26;24 - 00;11;45;06 Unknown And so there were times they had us moving furniture from one side of a building to the other, and then the next day we'd come and move it back where it was the day before. I thought that was the worst. It was going to be, because that was in a condemned building. Right. Well, I get out to Seattle, I go, and they put us in a subbasement. 00;11;45;10 - 00;12;09;08 Unknown Right. There's this little tiny storage closet that somebody thought would be good to convert into an office. And that's where we sat in a bunch of broken furniture, waiting for random tasks and to go sweep the building that already had janitors, like, three times a day. So it was like it was not what I signed up for, to say the least. 00;12;09;08 - 00;12;41;11 Unknown Right? I'm like, almost two years in, I've yet to really step foot on an operational submarine. I did a little brief stint in Groton where I was down on the USS Springfield. They have these vertical launch tubes, and they put it in drydock, send us down or wait in school. And that was actually a lot of fun for me because it was my job to take this pneumatic, what they call a needle gun, which fires off these little needles to chip away the epoxy paint and repaint it. 00;12;41;13 - 00;13;04;05 Unknown I put my Walkman in with, auto reverse, punk rock and grunge music every day, all day. And just went to town. Right. I'm in the superstructure of this thing. Needle gun and, missile tubes and just having a blast, right? I mean, a lot of people would be like, that sounds terrible, but it was like Zen for me, and I was, like, plugged in. 00;13;04;05 - 00;13;25;22 Unknown I was like, good to go. I got my tunes, I got my hard work. Something's going to look good when I'm done. I don't really care. I don't need much. So then, you know, I was I was happy with that. I go to this other place and it's once again like, nope, this sucks. So then I stepped foot on the ship with this, I mean, I, I spent my youth with pretty good chip on my shoulder, right? 00;13;25;22 - 00;13;49;05 Unknown I didn't I didn't really care. You know, I was a punk. I was a smart ass. And I was really a pain, right? To anybody that could have to be in charge of me because I always knew better. Right? I outwork you, right? And I was smart enough to get away with whatever I was being a punk about, but I wasn't smart enough to get out of my own way and just stop talking. 00;13;49;07 - 00;14;14;04 Unknown So, I stepped foot on the ship thinking that I would just be that bulldozer punk that got away with everything, and immediately everything changed. I met my first chief. JP Barnes was, the epitome of, like, the coolest dude you ever met. So, like, you, you pulled a dude right at a Top Gun and dropped him on a submarine, and he was in charge of me, right? 00;14;14;06 - 00;14;33;21 Unknown He was a rock and roll drummer. He was crazy, but super fun and really smart, and just cared about doing a really good job and being the best. And so we spent the next four years on my first ship doing all of that. Right? I fell in love with the ship. I fell in love with the mission. 00;14;33;21 - 00;14;53;11 Unknown I fell in love with the crew. And most importantly, I fell in love with being good at something and actually learning and working hard to get better at it. Right? I I'd never been academic before that, never had a reason to I didn't care, right? Well, he challenged me, right. He gave me the responsibility and opportunity to grow into it. 00;14;53;11 - 00;15;13;12 Unknown And and he did that with the whole division, right? Our whole crew, at one time, I think when we were at our biggest point, we had 11 people, right? He was responsible for 11 people. And I'd say over half of those guys all went on to be senior enlisted leaders or a duty officer converts. Right? They all all went off to be super successful. 00;15;13;12 - 00;15;34;08 Unknown Right. And I was like, okay, I'm going to I'm going to go boo everywhere I go, right? I'm just going to channel that. And so I took it and I ran with it and a lot of early success. Right. Because if you work hard, that's like 90% of the equation. But 10% is probably the hardest part to get right. 00;15;34;11 - 00;15;56;21 Unknown And that was all my my attitude. Right. So then I get to this mid-career point, you know, and and that was that was a pretty big switch for me, but I should I should clarify, I skipped over a big chunk. So another piece of me read, I move out to Seattle, I get this great opportunity to work with a great division. 00;15;56;23 - 00;16;16;17 Unknown And it wasn't like right away I started getting stuff right. I mean, I was still heading for disaster, with my attitude. And, I was out with my friend. He was dating this girl. She had a friend. They came over and I met my wife, my best friend to this day. Introduce me to my wife, Melissa. 00;16;16;20 - 00;16;36;10 Unknown She came over to his house just impromptu, and we kind of just never stopped hanging out after that. And then the rest was just kind of history. We just. We hit it off as friends, hit it off as, boyfriend girlfriend, hit it off as husband and wife. And I'm not going to say that, you know, everything was just smooth sailing. 00;16;36;10 - 00;16;54;20 Unknown We were a military family, right? It was. There were tough times, but it's just always been good to be with someone who is my my best friend, you know, every day. And you might not get along with your best friend every day, but they're always going to be the person that gets you the best. And so I lucked into that. 00;16;54;22 - 00;17;09;25 Unknown And so we were both very young, and neither one of us were of drinking age yet. So we, we just kind of jumped into that and went all in. Neither one of us was even looking to start dating. Right? It just kind of happened. I was actually kind of done like, yeah, I don't I don't need drama in my life. 00;17;09;25 - 00;17;29;02 Unknown I don't need that extra stuff. And then I met her and I was like, well, maybe, maybe I kind of do. Right. So then, you know, signed on for, you know, what was probably the best mission of my life, which was getting together with her. And right in that time, you know, we were both going to community college at Olympia Community College. 00;17;29;05 - 00;17;51;25 Unknown And I had never been a strong student. She was kind of not taking it super seriously. And together, we just kind of found how to focus and be good at it. And we just from there was like, we were super students, right? I like, you know, I graduated Olympia College with at 3.98. I graduated high school with I don't even know if they measure GPAs, GPAs as low as my GPA was. 00;17;51;25 - 00;18;12;25 Unknown Right. I couldn't even tell you. And that was all like a natural confluence of events, right? I had a supportive crew at work. I had a supportive wife who was motivated and smart and dedicated, and it changed everything for me. Right? It took it from I'm just a punk kid who wants to go be a lefty up at the, ski resort. 00;18;12;28 - 00;18;45;09 Unknown That's my like and dream to like, hey, maybe I can go be, you know, a professional doing something technical and being good at it. And it just changed everything for me. So having a supportive chief at work and a team that was awesome. And then also having a wife who just like, Holy crap, I got so lucky. Like she just showed up and dude, I just I wish everybody could find somebody like that to be in their life because she is like the cornerstone, maybe the keystone of my whole thing. 00;18;45;09 - 00;19;04;10 Unknown Right? Like she keeps everything in line. And it's always been good to have somebody in my corner like that. So back to the ship. So we're on a ship. I'm trying to decide what to do with my life. I'm still I still got the chip on my shoulder. I'm still convinced that I don't need this organization. It is the Navy, right? 00;19;04;10 - 00;19;23;05 Unknown I'm just like, yeah, I'm here, but I'm only doing one tour. Guys. Like, I'm going to get exactly what I want out of you, and then I'm gone, right? I'm not staying. It comes down my final days of my first enlistment. We're getting underway. I'm the. I'm the rescue swimmer on the ship. And I had been really belligerent. 00;19;23;05 - 00;19;40;28 Unknown Right. They weren't coughing up these orders that I wanted to to agree to re-enlist. And the detailer, who is the guy who assigns you your next set of orders, had had enough of me, right? He was like, I am not. You're not getting what you want. This is where we need you. And I was like, well, then I'm gone, right? 00;19;41;00 - 00;20;07;26 Unknown I have a plan, right? I would have been I would have been, up the creek if I had, like, actually gotten to go through with my plan of just tossing them in the air as I ran off the brow of the ship. It would have been a bad day. I would have had no job. So fortunately, the day we're going up to see the career counselor comes up with my orders, he goes, Will you re-enlist now, please? 00;20;07;29 - 00;20;24;14 Unknown And so I get my orders in hand and I'm like, yeah, I'll re-enlist. And he goes, did you still want to do it in the bridge, the bridges, the hole and the top of the sale of a submarine? I was like, yeah, I want the captain to re-enlist me, and I want to do it in the bridge while we're going through the Hood Canal bridge, which is a floating bridge. 00;20;24;16 - 00;20;44;13 Unknown They were like, goodness gracious, like you. You couldn't make anything harder if you tried, right? And I was like, well, I'm going to get what I want. So I'm giving you more of my life, right? So, we go up there and I kind of just that, that happenstance, it's like this theme I just got. I just keep getting lucky, right? 00;20;44;16 - 00;21;06;23 Unknown People say it's not luck. You worked hard. No, there's a fair amount of luck, right? Timing and luck are important in everybody's life. And, what is it they say opportunity is, when preparation meets opportunity. When preparation meets opportunity, right? If you're not prepared for it, when the opportunity shows up, you're not going to be ready. Right? 00;21;06;23 - 00;21;34;09 Unknown So I had worked hard to get to that point and be ready to succeed in that next phase. Right. And got lucky and the door opened and I was able to leverage the next opportunities. Right. So it kind of kept going through my career. I had really good success. As a junior guy, I was I was running circles around folks, you know, and, and I knew it right in my in my heart, I knew I was good at what I was doing. 00;21;34;09 - 00;21;49;23 Unknown Right. It was, hey, if you work hard, if you study, you get good at what you're doing. It kind of builds that ego that I never had. Right? I had confidence that I never had when I was growing up, and it was new to me. I didn't know what to do with it. So then that started pumping my head up a lot. 00;21;49;25 - 00;22;08;07 Unknown Right? And I, you know, did what I always did. I had a chip on my shoulder and now I got something to justify the chip on my shoulder. Right. Some men around, you know, kind of being a bulldozer. Right? I just kind of don't take no for an answer. Do whatever I want. I'm all about my team winning, and they did right places I would go. 00;22;08;07 - 00;22;36;21 Unknown I would go to a team that was struggling. We'd work our butts off together. We'd end up being the best on the waterfront or whatever. And, you know, again, I had great raw materials. Right? I show up, I get given a tough job, I volunteer to go take a tough job, and I find out that, you know what was painted as a terrible opportunity ends up being like a golden opportunity, because there's all these great people just waiting to be moved to the right place and and guided to something better. 00;22;36;21 - 00;22;54;07 Unknown So my initial approach was small teams was easy, right? I knew the task, I knew the job, and I was able to work with that team to be successful. Right. But they were all we could smart already. I didn't have to do anything hard. I just had to, like, get them out of their own way, make them work together. 00;22;54;09 - 00;23;16;07 Unknown Right. Which was really just show up and be alongside them and work hard with them. Right. And then they were good. And that elevated me, I elevated them. It worked great. Until I got put in charge of other leaders, right when I got put in charge of other leaders and had to distribute responsibility, and somehow suddenly, my way wasn't the only way. 00;23;16;09 - 00;23;37;04 Unknown It was a real challenge for me. I hit this point in my career where hard work wasn't going to be the only thing that get you there, right? You got to learn some new skills in this angry youth. So he's carrying around on my back. That was old me was just making all kinds of problems for me, right? 00;23;37;04 - 00;23;57;16 Unknown I mean, I was still being successful, but I was alienating everyone around. It was just a it was a hot mess. And, and I wasn't really popular, right? I didn't I didn't win because I was doing good for the team. I won because that's all I cared about. Right. And, and at the detriment of those around me too. 00;23;57;16 - 00;24;18;28 Unknown Right. So I think I probably did a fair amount of knocking people over, as we pushed our way through to success. Right. Well, guess what, dude? Like, there's more than just your division that makes a submarine crew successful, right? There's multiple divisions. Everybody needs to win for you to win. Because if the ship loses, you lose. Right? 00;24;19;00 - 00;24;40;06 Unknown And I was like, no, no, that's fine. But I mean, we're going to win them, right? That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be the best. And it took quite a few kicks in the teeth to to really understand that, you know, I'm going to have to evolve and, and that didn't come right away to me because I kept like, happenstance kept happening, I kept getting promoted. 00;24;40;06 - 00;25;05;27 Unknown And I was like, well, you were wrong. I don't have to evolve. Right. And, it was, it was interesting because the military facilitates that, where if you work hard, you're probably and you're even competent, partially. Right. You're probably going to get promoted over time because, well, you stayed and you don't entirely suck and you're willing to work hard. 00;25;06;01 - 00;25;29;12 Unknown Okay. We can work with that. You get given a larger amount of responsibility, like a department, and suddenly you got to distribute that stuff. And and your message just isn't landing because you're not out there doing the work of people, and you don't understand the technical pieces of the other divisions. Right? So if I've got a navigation division and a sonar division and another division, all over there, I'm responsible for helping them be successful. 00;25;29;12 - 00;25;50;02 Unknown I understand how they do that stuff. How am I going to go in and tell that guy how to make his division successful? Right. Maybe he knows better than I do. I couldn't accept that. And so I fought my way in to a couple of opportunities. One was there's a senior enlisted job. On submarines called the chief of the boat. 00;25;50;05 - 00;26;13;17 Unknown And, at this point, I was a senior chief, and I was at 12 years in the military, which is pretty fast, right? I don't think anybody really expected that, and, the least of all me, right? I was like, oh, wow. That's that's sudden and new. So then it was just reaffirming that everything I was doing was right. 00;26;13;20 - 00;26;32;21 Unknown So then I go, and I get this job, and, I start I was on shore duty and instructor duty job, and, you know, I'm taking for granted that my next gig is going to go be the senior enlisted leader of a submarine. Right? I'm like a baby in this grand scheme of things, right? Like the. 00;26;32;28 - 00;26;58;08 Unknown So you. When did you go into the Navy? How old were you? I was 18, so you're 30. You're an e a 30 year old e? Yes. Got it. Just emphasizing you're a baby. Yeah, but at the time, no 30 year old thinks they're a baby, right? Like, not at 30. You're like, oh, man, I'm old now. Like, I'm the old guy in the room, right? 00;26;58;08 - 00;27;18;00 Unknown Yep. And then you walk into a room of old guys who are all seasoned and salty. They've been doing it since, you know, the Noah's Ark, right? They cast off lines back there two by two, and then, and then they get the ship underway. Right. Those guys are the guys I'm with now, right? And I'm like, oh yeah, man, I'm going to start throwing my weight around. 00;27;18;00 - 00;27;34;28 Unknown I'm the new young guy who's going to teach you guys all how to do the right thing. Like sit down, kid. Right. And so I show up and I'm like, not to be pushed into the corner, like, okay, it's my turn, you guys. You've aged out. Time to get off the bus. I'm in. Put me in, coach. 00;27;34;28 - 00;27;55;25 Unknown I'm ready to go. And, and I keep trying to politely tell me over and over again like, hey, go get good at what you're supposed to be doing right now. There we we literally just promoted you. The you are super young. Haven't had any minutes in that role yet. So like don't be in a rush. Go get good at what you're doing. 00;27;55;28 - 00;28;13;24 Unknown And as like, I'm good at what I'm doing. Trust me, I know. Right? Because this is the theme, right? I always knew, I always knew I was doing the right thing and then you couldn't tell me different. So then, I go, and I have this board with a crew of people that are all mentors to me throughout the time. 00;28;13;27 - 00;28;41;08 Unknown And, and they interview me. I sit in there and it's a board of all other chiefs of the boats. And Cmmc is like command master chiefs. So only 80 nines, right? They're all interviewing me for this thing. And I had gone nuts. I studied every book you could get on how to do this. And I brought, like, this binder of I had written up like, procedures for how I was going to do everything, every facet of the job. 00;28;41;10 - 00;29;01;18 Unknown Right. And, and, and an old friend of mine, who's now one of my longtime mentors, Eric Antoine, looks and he goes, well, this guy's really smart. Look at him. He's so smart, right? He's reading the book and I'm thinking, like, I've got this very different shade, and I haven't started yet. And he didn't know me from anybody. 00;29;01;22 - 00;29;27;01 Unknown Right? He had he had done three tours as a chief of the boat. That does not happen, right? Nobody puts themselves through that. And he goes and does it three different times. So I was worried already. Right. And, and they send me off like I do my interview. It's it's pretty rough. It's weird. It's uncomfortable. It's the first time I've ever, like, not felt like I had the answers to everything. 00;29;27;03 - 00;29;45;24 Unknown And I'm a little sweating it, right? They had me sitting outside, they debated or whatever. So they bring me back in, and, and they look at me and they're like, yeah. So you pass your board and I'm like, why does that feel like a pregnant pause after that? And then why would you have to emphasize that I pass my board? 00;29;45;24 - 00;30;11;17 Unknown Why is it not congratulate you? However, we're not going to make you a cop right now. Like so. Wait, I passed, but I'm not ready. And so I could not could not process the depth of this failure at that moment. Right? I'm thinking like, okay, so I worked my butt off, I studied, I've got all of the I'm like, the number one guy here and there, and I'm doing all these great things. 00;30;11;17 - 00;30;34;26 Unknown And how am I not the guy? So then, you know, I go home and my wife, knowing who I am and knowing how things have gone, she has assumed already that it's a foregone conclusion. Right. So she's got a steak dinner, she's got a cake all done and ready to go, like we're going to celebrate. And I show up and I'm like, yeah, I didn't, I didn't make it. 00;30;34;29 - 00;31;04;09 Unknown Look, I'm not I'm not going to be the guy. And she's like, well, are you hungry? At the time, I'm just like numb, right? And I was like, yeah, I could eat, but, so, so that was like a pivot point in my life, right? Like I got thrown sideways pretty hard. And, and the lesson there wasn't ready to be received as like, well, okay, so I walk away. 00;31;04;11 - 00;31;22;05 Unknown I'm gonna. Well, forget these guys. They don't want me. I'm gonna go be an LDO limited duty officer. Right? If they if the senior enlisted ranks don't see who I am, I'm only going to be a limited duty officer. And I'm going to get commissioned, and I'm going to go lead that way. Right? Maybe I'm just not meant for this crowd. 00;31;22;08 - 00;31;42;24 Unknown So then I spend, like, nine months under the tutelage of a limited duty officer who's my department head. You know, we work right alongside each other. I'm the department chief at the time, and he's kind of mentoring me. I put it together, all this things again. I'm, like, completely convinced that there's no outcome other than scout pay for wins this thing. 00;31;42;26 - 00;32;12;14 Unknown Right? I'm going to get this thing and, I submit my paperwork. I put it all in, and, you know, the results come out and I'm not on the list. I'm not even a second choice. I'm not anywhere remotely close. Right. Until that point, I had never been on another type of submarine. Right. So in the military, especially in the Navy, if you get into senior enlisted or officer ranks, they're expecting you to have different kinds of platforms. 00;32;12;17 - 00;32;39;04 Unknown So you have a wide variety of experience. I had only ever been on deterrent submarines by that point. So SBS and that's a very specific kind of mission, which is only one kind of mission. Well, the fast attack class submarines, right? They do a bunch of other kinds of missions. I not had any experience in any of those things, which is where they send all limit to duty officer communications officers. 00;32;39;04 - 00;33;02;04 Unknown Right. Like that's what I was qualified to go do if I got picked. I was actually completely unqualified at the time to go do it because I had no other experience. I did not cross that. I thought, well, I'm super good at this other thing, so it outweighs the lack of experience. So, you'll see that lack of experience is actually a key driving thing. 00;33;02;04 - 00;33;26;13 Unknown And how I fell off the cart here. So I'm young, I'm ahead of my time, but I'm actually way behind in this experience gathering things. So then I'm like, well, I'm going to go get experience, right? Like, like I'm going to work my way into getting experience faster, right? This is my like my knuckle dragging worker brain is just like, I'm going to go get it faster than everybody else. 00;33;26;16 - 00;33;50;18 Unknown I mean, that's fundamentally you can't just you can't get experience faster than you get it. It's just it comes and you have it. So then, opportunity to go to a fast attack pops up. There's a USS Jimmy Carter. It's a special mission submarine that goes out there and does undersea research, development and testing. And I was like, oh, that sounds super cool. 00;33;50;21 - 00;34;07;10 Unknown And one of the guys that was on my board for Cobb is the chief for the boat there. And I'm like, and that guy is the guy to go learn from. And they said, you know what? Yeah, you're right. That's the guy you should go learn from. And so I was like, all right, I'm in. Send me. 00;34;07;12 - 00;34;28;11 Unknown And they sent me. And boy, did I learn a lot about how little I knew the entire time. Right. It was kind of like back to grade school because here I'm like this thoroughbred over here, like, thinking that I'm running circles around everybody. Well, that place is like a triple screening place, right? You got a it's a special mission set. 00;34;28;14 - 00;34;49;24 Unknown They don't bring in anybody. That's not the number one in their graduating class from a rating. They don't bring in anybody. Everybody has a top secret clearance. Even the mechanics. Right. Everybody on that ship is a beautiful and unique snowflake in their own way. In a good way. In all the best ways. Right? They're all smart, they're all capable, and they're all running circles around everybody. 00;34;49;24 - 00;35;12;21 Unknown Right. So this den of alpha competitors, and I'm like one finally my people. Right. Let's go run circles around the world literally did that. But also, it was it was weird to not be the obvious number one all of a sudden. And now I'm showing up and I'm just like an extra dude. Like, they already had a full complement. 00;35;12;21 - 00;35;27;01 Unknown They did not need me. So then I showed up and I'm this extra guy. I'm the chief of the boats, Pat. Right. Like going and running and doing all this stuff. Well, I'm getting trained in there, like get a load of this guy, right? He doesn't even have a reason to be here. He's just here sucking up our good air. 00;35;27;03 - 00;35;47;29 Unknown Right. And, it took the entirety of my time. There was only on that ship one year to get even a portion of the crew to, like, say, okay, well, this guy doesn't entirely suck, right? Because I had worked my way into those jobs. I just kind of showed up, and I was like, being, mentored. So I left there. 00;35;48;02 - 00;36;08;27 Unknown Yeah, I got to tell a story. So I show up to that ship, and I'm talking about experience. So this is. This is how far off my perception of what my skill set really was from reality. So I go there, and the full measure of a enlisted submariner is whether or not you're qualified, you're senior in rate, job. 00;36;09;00 - 00;36;35;05 Unknown Right. So for nuclear, for, trained folks in the engineering team as engineering watch supervisor, the senior guy, in the engine room for the forward folks that non-nuclear trained folks, it's, it's diving officer to watch. Right. So you're in charge of reaching, maintaining order depth and driving the submarine. You have a team of guys down there moving the yokes, and you're telling them very directly what to do. 00;36;35;07 - 00;36;55;06 Unknown Why don't have a lot of experience doing that. Right. And I'm on the most complex submarine that's ever been built, which operates very, very strangely. Right. It has some very strange handling techniques, and it's much more complicated than what I learned on my previous ship. So I sit in the chair and they're immediately like, this guy does not have a clue, right? 00;36;55;06 - 00;37;18;00 Unknown Like, no idea what we're doing. And I again go back to my academic setups. I'm studying everything. I'm working hard. I've got my book, I'm doing the equations right. So, and a submarine buoyancy is something you have to manage. So you move water around the ship to determine how it's going to sit in the ocean so that you do what's called neutral buoyancy. 00;37;18;00 - 00;37;41;12 Unknown So you're under the ocean, but you have to stay at a depth. So then it's a complex math problem because it takes into account depth. It takes into account temperature, takes into account salinity of the water you're in. And those things are all variables that are always shifting. And, I had not really had a lot of experience running all that stuff. 00;37;41;12 - 00;38;01;27 Unknown So I was like, in this calculation mindset, this little book. Right. And I would do all these calculations and Eric and my buddy, comes in and he had been driving submarines since before I was born. You know, I think he was, already a master chief when Jimmy Carter was still president. I'm not really sure. 00;38;01;29 - 00;38;23;08 Unknown Probably fact check that, but he, he comes in the room and he looks at me, and he's he's always, always crawling up my back, really frustrated with me because I'm struggling to grasp it right now. Finally, he reaches down and he says, what are you doing? Because I'm struggling to maintain doing the basic thing like maintaining depth. 00;38;23;08 - 00;38;56;10 Unknown I'm like trying to wear it. Periscope depth. I'm trying to keep the ship from like, accidentally surfacing. And I'm not doing a great job. And he looks at me and he grabs the notebook out of my hand that I live by any flings it across the control room and he goes, just look what's happening. And I looked at it and I go, oh, it was like, well, if you're doing this or you're doing this right, it tells you what the ship is doing, whether you've got too much weight on or not enough weight on you guys stop doing math and try to figure out what is actually happening around you. 00;38;56;10 - 00;39;17;02 Unknown You have to like, look up. And from experience, he could walk in the room and know immediately what changes you needed to do, right? He knew. He knew how much weight needed to go where because he had done it so many times. Right. And, and that experience was not something you could study your way into or buy your way into, right? 00;39;17;05 - 00;39;40;03 Unknown You couldn't just work hard, you had to see it. And that was the first time I had to, like, really step back and like, oh, oh. Conceptually, I didn't understand what was happening. I had read all the books. I don't understand the math behind it, but it's the difference between an engineer and an operator, right? Like the guy that makes a bullet doesn't really know what it's like to be out there firing it. 00;39;40;08 - 00;40;00;12 Unknown Right? So that was my, like, culminating event. Like, oh, hey, you just flipped it around on you. And the same thing was true with my leadership style. So it directly overlaid with all the other lessons I was learning. I was like, hey, you're alienating everybody around you, and you don't understand why fundamentally, because you're working for yourself, right? 00;40;00;14 - 00;40;21;04 Unknown You're working for yourself. You care only about yourself, and what you're delivering is all about you, right? You're sitting in that seat and you're looking at this book thinking you're the guy making a difference. I'm just doing math. I'm not driving anything. The dude's in front of me. You're driving stuff, right? They're all qualified to sit there, right? 00;40;21;04 - 00;40;55;15 Unknown I just had to sit back and look and spot check. But I'm over here thinking I'm going to cure cancer right? That's not the case, right? You're part of a team. And so that all flipped everything around for me and really taught me a big lesson, right? He also introduced me the concept of servant leadership. Right. Servant leadership is a, is a pretty incredible and powerful thing that is thrown around a lot because it's one of those key words and tricky phrases, but the true embodiment of it is you just show up and it's not ever about you anymore, right? 00;40;55;15 - 00;41;17;22 Unknown In every facet of everything you do in leadership and in how you live your life, you just work for those around you because you're part of a community, right? So that got me finally over the fence and into the yard I wanted to be in. Right. I got my senior enlisted leadership job, as that. I wanted finally. 00;41;17;22 - 00;41;46;02 Unknown And I'm like, okay, I'm just going to, you know, I, I made a mistake. I went and I photocopied that exact experience and leadership style and I tried to overlay it on an entirely different organization. When I finally got to my job, I was the chief of the bow of the Henry, Jackson, which is another SBN. I, I showed up, they were like two weeks from getting ready to go out to see they'd already done all their training cycles and everything. 00;41;46;02 - 00;42;08;20 Unknown They built their teams. And I'm just like this new guy showing up, right? And, same thing. Captain, it was the new captain. John Moretti was my captain on that ship. Really awesome guys up prior enlisted, retired full bird captain. Now, but he and I had never been to sea with this crew together or apart, right? 00;42;08;20 - 00;42;27;14 Unknown Like, we were both new in the roles. And then we had to get this ship out to sea. And so I showed up in the whole chief's quarters, which is what they call all the senior enlisted guys on the ship was chiefs. And the chief's quarters is where we all live, right? It's the chief's room, but it's also the collective, right? 00;42;27;16 - 00;42;51;01 Unknown Your leadership team is called your chief's quarters. So I show up, and I'm, like, in a position where I have to actually earn their trust in a very short amount of time, and instead I show up knowing that I know how to make them better. And I take this model from this alpha team that I just came from, and I immediately slap it on them like a label and say, here's how we're going to be the best. 00;42;51;04 - 00;43;08;08 Unknown Like, these dudes are all ready to go to sea, which means that they've already proven to everybody that they're ready to go do that. And the very first thing I do is go tell them, yeah, that's great, but we're going to do it my way, right? I forgot everything that I had just finished learning because I had checked that box. 00;43;08;10 - 00;43;36;05 Unknown Right. So, it's about halfway through, one of the chiefs says to me, you know, because I had shown some emotion about something, I was empathetic to something that was going on with him. And he's like, man, that's like the first time I've ever seen you, like, care about somebody in a non-working way. And, and I was all this time, I'm like, I'm a servant leader. 00;43;36;07 - 00;43;57;24 Unknown I'm leading for the team. But in actuality, I'm just a guy who is following my plan, thinking that everybody gets that. It's because I'm trying to be a servant leader. Well, yeah, it's one thing to carry the book around with you. It's another thing to actually embody it. And I wasn't embodying it. So, because he told me that flat out to my face. 00;43;57;24 - 00;44;21;23 Unknown That's what it took to penetrate my dome. And actually bring me to where I was missing the mark. And so from that point on, I realized, okay, so leadership is not going to be from a book, but you can get stuff from a book. So then I went back to books, started reading about what I was missing, which is clearly engaging with human beings. 00;44;21;26 - 00;44;39;10 Unknown Okay, so I had this leadership framework that would work, and it's a communication problem now. Nobody gets what I'm trying to tell them we needed to do or why we would need to do it, because they didn't take any time whatsoever to actually spend time to learn who these people were. Right? And I didn't do that. I was all business. 00;44;39;16 - 00;45;04;26 Unknown Always had been, always would be. And so. I took the time to learn how to talk to people, to learn how to learn about people through engagement. I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, which is a little bit of an outdated book. There's some stuff in there that probably isn't appropriate for the times, but the general concepts of taking every person you meet, right? 00;45;04;28 - 00;45;24;24 Unknown No matter where they're at in the hierarchy and treating them like an important piece of the the collective right and engaging with them on a personal basis. Those were all things that, you know, were like mind blowing to me. Like most people get that at some point in their life. And I just and wrap my mind around it. 00;45;24;26 - 00;45;49;18 Unknown And then, I read a book by Simon Sinek called start with Y. Right. And it was all about conveying why you're doing something. So between those two things, several other key books, the, the servant leadership style that I was taught, things started to come together for me and then, like, really built my framework for how I engage with the world. 00;45;49;20 - 00;46;19;19 Unknown So then understanding that I'm a product of all of those failures. Right. That then led me to growing and maturing and success. Right. Those are things that, they were they put me in a place where I wanted to actually take time to learn and engage with people. Right. I had learned it's not all about me, and I had learned it's all about the team and about the people around you. 00;46;19;19 - 00;46;37;05 Unknown I had learned that you have to take time to get to know people and invest in them. For them to want to invest back and and then so finally things started to take off me. And I say this because that's like towards the end of my career, right where we're at like 17, 18 years, I ended up doing 23. 00;46;37;05 - 00;47;01;12 Unknown So I'm finishing up my chief in the boat tour, you know, already have made a kind of a mess of things by being a once again, back to bulldozer mode and on my way out of the military, I really got it right. I really understood, like, you know what? It doesn't really matter what my title or position is if I'm not bringing value to the people around me right then it doesn't doesn't matter, right? 00;47;01;12 - 00;47;21;26 Unknown If I'm not helping uplift the weakest person in the team, instead of grinding them to a pulp and waiting for them to fail out and get out of the way right then, then it's not. It's not how you build a quality organization. Right? And then so finally, I, retired from the military because I've just kind of felt like, hey, it's time to go, right? 00;47;21;26 - 00;47;48;29 Unknown I mean, I'm, I'm starting to get a little churned up. I need to go commit with my family and spend some time with them. And, and after a very brief time and, and Department of Defense acquisitions program, where I had a chance to recoup figure out who I was as a person, not just a sailor. Then I got, old friend of mine, Devin Saturday, who's now back. 00;47;49;06 - 00;48;14;15 Unknown The Oracle recruited me into the team. He was the young man who pinned my master chief anchors on me when I was at sea. And then he recruited me into the job. So, it changed everything for me. Coming to Oracle. Really? It proved to me that all of the things that I had learned, right, made me qualified to come into a really wildly different place and still be successful. 00;48;14;17 - 00;48;41;13 Unknown Right. So all those things in the military that were like, not tangible, right? None of those things that I just talked about, really, the big lessons were being very smart, very technical. I didn't talk about development. I didn't talk about tearing apart radio equipment, antennas or any of that stuff, which we did. But those weren't like the formative things, formative things with the people and the engagement and the philosophical things that I got out of my military time. 00;48;41;16 - 00;49;06;02 Unknown So when I showed up at Oracle, bringing that with me and some technical background, like it just felt like home, and I'm able to navigate this place with, you know, where I would say relative success. So coming from the military into an individual contributor role as a reliability engineer with, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was great at two years of that. 00;49;06;05 - 00;49;29;02 Unknown And then all of this history in my brain was building up. And first opportunity I had, I jumped into a manager role. And it's just been a natural fit since, full circle now, right? Why am I in Maven? Why do I care about being the chair of Maven? It's a volunteer thing. And don't I have enough time eaten up by my day job? 00;49;29;02 - 00;49;54;03 Unknown The answer's no. Why? Because you can't be a servant leader if you're not actually embodying the work. And so I got a lot out of my veteran time in the military. Taught me a lot. And there are a lot of veterans out there that, you know, they bring that value in with them, too. Right. And what I was missing, because I joined Oracle during Covid, was that sense of community. 00;49;54;05 - 00;50;15;07 Unknown It was an empty building when we showed up right. Nobody was coming to work. Downtown Seattle was a ghost town. I was flying back and forth cross-country on an empty plane. And so I was missing people engagement. And so meeting you, Chris, getting to know the team and and Maven, I was like, man, this is this is cool. 00;50;15;07 - 00;50;40;22 Unknown These people understand that that background that nuanced history that you bring from different branches. And we're just kind of we're able to just lock in and and just get it right away. We can probably say like five sentences to somebody and we're like, yep, I get it. I know where you're coming from. I understand your perspective. And it just it filled that, that last piece to be really satisfied every day. 00;50;40;24 - 00;51;06;25 Unknown And and from there I was hooked. And so all about all of that long, long story, right, is all about. Hey, you know, I'm a senior manager in a massive billion dollar company. Things must be awesome. And you must be the best at what you do to be able to land that job. And the answer is now tons of learning, tons of mistakes, tons of wrong turns and bad decisions. 00;51;06;28 - 00;51;28;11 Unknown Are informed how to get there, right? And and there's no straight path. And so now I just I make it my point to help people see that in themselves. Right. In our board as employees in Oracle, helping them navigate their careers within our company and then veterans, separating and joining the company or looking for other jobs. Right. 00;51;28;13 - 00;52;03;07 Unknown So the the inReach and outreach that Maven brings to us, is is very, very fulfilling and satisfying, right? It's it's that piece of the puzzle that makes this less just a job and more something I really care about. So that is that is the full story about me. Pretty lengthy, I know. But, it I feel like if I don't give credit to all the other stumbles, then, you know, get a you get a fake picture, right? 00;52;03;07 - 00;52;28;19 Unknown So I just wanted to make sure I was thorough. The thoroughbred was thorough. Because you said that early in your story. Thanks for sharing, Scott. No, that's it's important. And, you know, some some would say, you know, on on and I'll digress here for a second, but some would say on podcasts, you know, what's the proper duration. 00;52;28;19 - 00;52;48;06 Unknown Well, it's it's all subjective, right. And it's a matter of what the intention is to, to provide. And so what we try to provide on this is just a reminder for if you've made it this far in any of the podcasts that we have, the conversations are including the stories of individuals that are one willing to come on and discuss these things in a moment. 00;52;48;11 - 00;53;05;19 Unknown You know, and you can say it's vulnerable. You can say it's impressionable. You can say it's, you know, storytelling and it's all of those things. But it's also the the matter of fact, the fact of the matter is it's relevant to when you look in when you're looking for culture and you're looking for an organization to join, you want to know more about the people. 00;53;05;19 - 00;53;32;04 Unknown And you know, in the veteran community space, the veteran affiliated community space, there's a relationship with everything that Scott's mentioned and everybody else that's been on to talk about their their story and the development and the process and the knocks, the bumps, the successes, the failures. But I think, you know, yours specifically. What was nice to hear the story is you had a bunch of people willing to be patient and see the the potential in an individual. 00;53;32;04 - 00;54;11;16 Unknown That and it doesn't happen for everybody that you see. People look at the outside of who this person is based off of their actions, their behaviors and their personalities. But they see something different and they try to figure out how to reciprocate the grace given, to understand what to do and when to do it. And, you know, there's the firm, there's the nurturing, there's the the hand-holding, and then there's the, the out, right, throwing the notebook across the room and being direct, you know, and these factors weigh into all of the things that matter when you're trying to join an organization and see if you're a fit. 00;54;11;18 - 00;54;36;27 Unknown And so the compatibility is one of those things where something we hope in these conversations on the Maven podcast, we can somehow, in a very small way, contribute to that process in any community, not just the veteran affiliated. This is anybody listening things are a process, and if you have the time to self-reflect, like Scott has mentioned, what, he didn't take the input. 00;54;36;27 - 00;54;58;14 Unknown He didn't take the opportunity to do early, but he eventually understood it. And and the switch flipped. You can see the things and you can you can recall these things and then you can hopefully you know, in reliving these things, in the storytelling, you know, the parts of those things, people can relate to that and then give gratitude for it. 00;54;58;16 - 00;55;26;04 Unknown And so, you know, having having senior enlisted in this case, in the community, you know, the enlisted is often look towards the wisdom to, to be able to come in and grab you by the ear and show you the way, you know, giving gratitude to those folks. Three main things from your story, Scott. And then I just wanted, you know, I'd love to talk a segue into, you know, how you bring all of these things into, you know, leading an organization, which, again, is volunteer, right? 00;55;26;04 - 00;55;43;25 Unknown Nobody has to do it, you know, wanting to reconnect. You talked about, you know, the things that you were missing, you know, and and then coming into an organization and then deciding this of your time out to volunteer the drivers of that. And so I'll kind of just throw this out here in increments three, they're wanting to reconnect. 00;55;43;28 - 00;56;14;06 Unknown Well, how does that happen? How does how does how does one get to the part to where there is the realization of saying, I'm missing something, and here's what I want to do the next? Is that the point to where the investment, you know, at some point all of us realize that something occurs, an event occurs and has us go all in and that that giving, giving of oneself into the investment of whatever it is that you're going to commit to with relentless, fearless tenacity. 00;56;14;09 - 00;56;34;05 Unknown And then finally, the value of rejection, you know, in the world of success and how that feels, you know, in some would say immediate gratification, kind of how that conditions your mindset to say, well, I'm going to do this and I want something in return and I want it now type of thing. The value of rejection is to kind of serve a purpose. 00;56;34;05 - 00;56;56;19 Unknown So, you know, with those three things, let's talk about how you're taking your experiences and the people that have helped you get to where you are today. You know, what are you doing with it now that you're in the role of both your day job and the volunteer role? Yeah. So that's, those are great questions. I like the, I like the way you frame them. 00;56;56;19 - 00;57;18;08 Unknown So the first question, how do you get to the point where you realize that, you're missing some sense of community, right? So, I spent a big chunk of my time when I first got out trying to reinvent myself. Because you spent 23 years reciting. I am a United States sailor. Enough times, you start to believe that that's what you are. 00;57;18;10 - 00;57;39;06 Unknown But you forget that you're also something else, right? Which is a person like, I'm Scott. I'm not a United States sailor. I'm not a retired master chief. I'm not a submarine, or I'm just a guy out here doing a job. And I and I need to really grasp that because all of a sudden, you don't have this core identity in your life. 00;57;39;09 - 00;58;04;28 Unknown Which you don't realize, is such a big piece of your identity until it's not your identity. Right? You walk away, you put away your uniform in a box. And I wouldn't say it was like hurting my ego. Like I didn't miss the authority and responsibility. So that wasn't it. I was enjoying my job as an individual contributor, and learning about the cloud. 00;58;04;28 - 00;58;23;24 Unknown I had a great time doing that. Being hands on keyboard, making change in the cloud, fixing things that were broken right up my alley. I loved it, but at some point, you know, you go to work, you go home, you go to work, you go home. It's just that's just a task. It's it's not being part of something greater. 00;58;23;24 - 00;58;51;18 Unknown It's not being part of a a team. And we are very insulated during Covid. Right. So like there was just seven of us and we had to be spaced out and you couldn't be in the same room at the same time. And it was just we fell off and then so I, you know, we got some people together, you know, we we had a socially distanced social event, you know, one time the distance may or may not have been the appropriate amount of space. 00;58;51;18 - 00;59;12;25 Unknown And then eventually we realized we were all in the same room. So we might as well just be together. Right. And it was a great I was like, oh, man, this feels awesome. It just feels good. Right? And I identified quickly that it wasn't the loss of the military, it was the loss of the community, the loss of the people around you feeling like you're part of something. 00;59;12;27 - 00;59;38;14 Unknown And then the, the military aspect of it is it's just, you know, you spend your adult life living a certain way. You kind of look for people who can understand that background. Right? It's just nice to have somebody understand you, people who are allies or are outstanding. We have a lot of great allies in the company and in the community. 00;59;38;17 - 00;59;59;03 Unknown But if you haven't lived the life, you know, there are some things you just won't. Right? You can't get it because once again, you can't just read about experience. Experience is something you earn through time, through involvement. Which brings me to my second thing. So you asked a question about, you know, how do you get to the point where you just go all in? 00;59;59;05 - 01;00;32;09 Unknown So I read a quote somewhere, it was misinterpreted and misattributed to Thomas Jefferson. It's actually attributed to Witold Gombrowicz, who's a, Polish author. He says, do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act action will delineate and define you. So, one ironic that a quote about action I would have attributed to the totally wrong person, and to really just I try to live that in the things that I do. 01;00;32;09 - 01;00;47;02 Unknown Right. Like, why wait, if you think something needs to be done, go do it. Right. So we met and I was like, hey, this thing's cool. What are we doing with it? Right. And and then from there, it's always been like, that's the first question I always ask. Okay, that sounds awesome. What are we going to do? Right. 01;00;47;02 - 01;01;07;00 Unknown Are we going to go? Are we going to go run an event in Austin? Sure. Let's do it. It's not planned yet. And it's like in three weeks. Well, let's go do it. Why not? Let's try it out. What's the worst that could happen? Right. It doesn't work out when we learn something. So, I've. I've really enjoyed the opportunity to be part of the action oriented piece of our community. 01;01;07;02 - 01;01;27;25 Unknown Right. So going all in was just. It's just in my nature. I don't know any other way. Right? I'm going to lean into the windmill every chance I get. Right. And then finally value of rejection. Yeah. So that's a tough one for me to process. I don't like to talk about it. So I make myself talk about it a lot. 01;01;27;28 - 01;01;56;07 Unknown Getting out of the military, I got to know a lot in the military. I got told no, a lot. And every one of them ended up being a piece of my philosophy. Right. So rejection, is is probably the world telling you you're in the wrong spot, right? When I was, I got out of the military, I did a corporate fellowship with Skill Bridge through Amazon, and it was, for a job I was pretty well qualified for. 01;01;56;07 - 01;02;21;21 Unknown It was for training, development, with operations teams in the warehouses. So I show up there. I'm. I'm pretty stoked. I'm inside the doors of Amazon. Like I have succeeded. Right? I'm going to go be one of the Uber rich south like Union knights. And and I'm going to love everything. Right. And I get in there and it's curriculum development and it's not really what I was thinking it was going to be. 01;02;21;21 - 01;02;45;19 Unknown And they dissolved that team and laid off a bunch of people, and there was no opportunity. So I ended up interviewing for a job called a vendor manager job, which is essentially interviewing people who are, selling stuff on an Amazon and, and building that deal with them. Right. You're managing the vendor vendors who manage to sell stuff on the Amazon platform. 01;02;45;21 - 01;03;08;03 Unknown And so I go to this interview, the manager is this Harvard MBA and she like ate my lunch. I have an MBA, but it had been a minute since I did that studying. And I have to admit this out loud, right? I got told by the recruiter, hey, here's some stuff to go study. And there were some key things, right? 01;03;08;06 - 01;03;23;21 Unknown The night of the interview. Like, I got to go in the next day. It gives me the study guide. I'm wiped. Right. I am getting out of the military, I just retired. My brain's not in a great spot, and I'm just like, you know what? If I don't know it yet, I'm not going to know it. So I don't even open the doc. 01;03;23;24 - 01;03;43;04 Unknown Right? He said it was like CliffsNotes, like here, like SparkNotes for younger people or or Google for everybody else who wants to know how to do a job. Right. And I didn't even open it. So I showed up and I just got annihilated. Right? It was terrible. And I did not get the job. I felt like the biggest failure on Earth. 01;03;43;04 - 01;04;05;16 Unknown Right. Well, I wouldn't be in the job I love today being successful at Oracle if I had not gotten that job at Amazon. Right. And, And I know that now. Right? Even even now, you're still learning, right? So the value of rejection is, well, you're being redirected, right? Because of where you chose to put yourself. Right. 01;04;05;16 - 01;04;39;16 Unknown And you know that you can't be again, you can't make up for experience and rejection is just an experience. Yep. Good. Couldn't said it better. So as as we segue into wrap this, what is Maven doing this year? What are we doing? All right, so, what are we doing? We're going to capitalize on some of the things we learned last year, continue to push out, the outreach to other organizations, be that veteran service organizations and partnerships. 01;04;39;18 - 01;05;02;09 Unknown We're going to push to continue to increase the value we're adding to the business, which we've been doing for quite a while. We've been baked into, business priorities and company priorities for a for as long as, I think you've been involved in the program, we've been pretty well aligned, with, with a lot of the business priorities. 01;05;02;09 - 01;05;44;12 Unknown And then, you know, we're going to keep fighting to grow the on site, in-person events. Right? Build community inside of Oracle, build community, wherever we're at, and expand opportunities for people to get engaged, to find that value in each other, to learn about each other, learn about the veteran community. And then, most importantly, I think is, because while we're building value into the employees, and, and giving them a sense of ownership and pride and where they come from and what we're doing here at Oracle, we're also giving them opportunities to volunteer and go radiate that outwards. 01;05;44;12 - 01;06;09;12 Unknown Right. So another thing that employee resource groups do is we're we're meant to meant to help bring our culture and our vibe out to the community. Right? People like me, I didn't know about Oracle when I was on submarines, right? It just wasn't in my schema box. I didn't understand what Oracle even was. I had heard of Microsoft and then I heard Amazon, but I had never worked on an Oracle database. 01;06;09;12 - 01;06;32;02 Unknown I didn't know anything about it. So. Well, we're pretty awesome company, right? So how is a veteran know that Oracle is an awesome place to work because a veteran told them Oracle's a great place to work, right. And everyone we've pulled in from outside has cited that as the reason they chose to come in. Right. It's the oracle culture. 01;06;32;08 - 01;06;51;24 Unknown It's the maven culture. It's the thing that they love is that they come here and they know they're going to be around people that they want to be around. They know they're going to be around people with similar values, with similar intentions, with similar goals. Right. And a lot of companies are good at it. Right? I think Oracle is great at it. 01;06;51;24 - 01;07;17;10 Unknown And we our job, our mission right, is to help spread that word and get it out there. We've really had a great year for that. And we're going to exponentially grow that impact. We're going to really shout it from the mountaintops, right? And really bring the spotlight on it. So we had a, what we like to call the pilot, event down in Austin, big on site thing. 01;07;17;10 - 01;07;38;18 Unknown It went fantastic. Had a bunch of vendors come in from veteran service organizations. I think we had almost every human being in that campus come out meat barbecue, lunch with us. It's a bunch of people got to socialize with veterans and allies and it was really awesome. Community event. Right. So what does that matter for fiscal year 26? 01;07;38;18 - 01;08;07;26 Unknown Well, we've got the model. Now. We know what that looks like. We know how to do it. And we're going to do that at multiple locations now. Right. We're going to improve and expand that engagement to the community and to our employees. So they feel that support deep. Right. So that's that's the big picture stuff. We've got some other things in the hopper which will unveil throughout the year, but, volunteerism, community engagement, alignment with the business to drive the bottom line. 01;08;07;28 - 01;08;29;06 Unknown Love it. I'm stoked. I can't wait for it. Final thoughts? Yeah. I just go right back to it if you think it needs to be done, don't wait for permission. Dive right in. Go after it and, and you'll find that it will pay you back tenfold. I love it, we'll leave it there. Scott, thank you so much. 01;08;29;07 - 01;08;55;29 Unknown Appreciate it. Thanks for sharing your story. It is important. You know, we have a variety of of folks that come through with their experiences. And, you know, those that do come through the veteran affiliated community, especially who are, you know, who separate as a senior individual, whether it's enlisted or officer, that's it's bringing great leadership qualities and traits and stories that can help infiltrate some of the mindset of those that don't think they can or don't know how to. 01;08;55;29 - 01;09;16;00 Unknown And, you know, it's just one piece to the puzzle that just you accumulate. And, hopefully as you bring people together, those stories can continue to be shared and everybody learns and grows together. So with that, thanks, Chris. Already one keep moving forward.

3. 

   12 May 2025

   Investment: Josh Johnson, Director of Programs Special Operators Transition Foundation, US Army Veteran

   In this episode, Josh shares real-world insight into the challenges of transition, the importance of self-discovery, and why success beyond the military comes down to one key word: investment. From developing a shared vision with your family, establishing a strong network of connections, to executing that plan with the same tenacity forged in service, Josh offers a grounded, motivating roadmap for anyone standing at the edge of a major life shift. As his military chapter came to a close, Josh—a retired U.S. Army veteran with nearly 32 years of service, much of it within U.S. Special Operations—turned to the Special Operators Transition Foundation, or SOTF, for guidance in navigating what came next. That experience didn’t just help him find his footing in a new career—it sparked a deeper calling. After spending his first few years out of uniform applying the skills he’d sharpened over decades of service, Josh returned to SOTF—not as a participant this time, but as a leader. Now, he’s committed to helping other transitioning special operators find their way forward, giving back through the very program that helped launch his own next chapter. https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafhijohnson/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafhijohnson/) https://www.linkedin.com/company/specopstf/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/specopstf/) https://sotf.org/ (https://sotf.org/) --------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;41;08 Unknown You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organizations and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the Maven podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer, and in this episode, I'm joined by Josh Johnson, director of programs for the Special Operators Transition Foundation. As his military chapter came to a close, Josh, the retired U.S. Army veteran with nearly 32 years of service, much of it within US Special operations, turned to the Special Operators Transition Foundation, or so for guidance and navigating what came next. 00;00;41;08 - 00;01;02;19 Unknown That experience didn't just help him find his footing in a new career. It sparked a deeper calling after spending his first few years out of uniform, applying the skills he'd sharpened over decades of service. Josh returned to Sota not as a participant this time, but as a leader. Now he's committed to helping other transitioning special operators find their way forward, giving back through the very program that helped launched his own next chapter. 00;01;02;20 - 00;01;25;20 Unknown In this episode, Josh shares real world insight into the challenges of transition, the importance of self discovery, and why success beyond the military comes down to one key word investment from developing a shared vision with your family. Establishing a strong network of connections to executing that plan with the same tenacity forged in service. Josh offers a grounded, motivating roadmap for anyone standing at the edge of a major life shift. 00;01;25;20 - 00;01;45;00 Unknown We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent. As we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and please remember to check in on your buddies and family, Josh's contact details in the podcast description, and you can always find me on LinkedIn. 00;01;45;03 - 00;02;07;16 Unknown Good morning Josh. Hey good morning Chris. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for joining me on this early Monday morning. I appreciate it. Anything exciting happening in the next couple of days or how was the weekend? Weekend was good. We're, my wife has a long list of honey do's, and she was out this week, so I took the opportunity to can kind of knock some of those out. 00;02;07;16 - 00;02;28;08 Unknown So I'm repainting kitchen cabinets. So I got to do all the sanding and prepping and start painting that. So, not as relaxing as a typical weekend, but not bad. Not bad. You can do that with your hands. You feel like you accomplished something? Yeah, that's some tedious work, too. That's mean. Got to get it right. Or you can see it right one podcast time, right? 00;02;28;08 - 00;02;46;16 Unknown You get that, you get to listen all your good. Do you pick up on anything? Any good ones? Man, I listened to a couple, Sean Ryan's got, health and wellness doctor, and he's just going through the whole food process and, you know, trying to figure out how to eat, right? And, some good stuff, right? 00;02;46;17 - 00;03;06;23 Unknown He's like, hey, man, if if, if you don't have that ingredient in your in your cabinet right now, don't eat that food. That's a pretty simple thing. So just, you know, full whole foods, whole ingredients. Yeah. Yeah. He's digging, digging into the, the whole saturated fats and oils and all that. And, you know, it's good stuff. Yeah. 00;03;06;24 - 00;03;28;27 Unknown No. It's good. Those little things help. All right. Josh is here to talk about the Special Operators Transition Foundation. And of course, as we typically do, we we lead in with a little bit about our guests. And so, Josh, if you would mind tell us a little bit about you. Yeah. So again I appreciate the opportunity to get on the Maven podcast and have this conversation. 00;03;29;00 - 00;03;49;29 Unknown You know, we've, sort of the Special Operators Transition Foundation and Oracle has, has built a really strong relationship over the last, I don't know, year or so. And it's only getting stronger. And so, you know, pull up through like this to get on and and talk with folks and you know just explain what we do. I'm very appreciative of that, of the opportunity. 00;03;49;29 - 00;04;06;21 Unknown So born and raised in Utah come from a decent sized family. Five of us total spent a lot of time, you know, in sports because, you know, the more practice you have, the less chores you have at the house. So, you know, you spend as much time out of the house as possible and leave it, leave everything else to the little siblings. 00;04;06;21 - 00;04;26;10 Unknown Let them do all that. Join the army early with this lofty goal. As a 17 year old terrible student of becoming a, an FBI agent at the time, I had the opportunity to talk to an FBI agent who was like, hey, we want accountants, lawyers or linguists. And I was like, well, not going to go to law school. 00;04;26;12 - 00;04;49;17 Unknown Math is my worst subject, apparently. I need to go learn it, learn a language. So I joined the Utah Army National Guard, to be a Russian linguist. And when I got down to the Defense Language Institute, Monterey, California, I found out that I do not learn languages very well. So, struggled in that and ended up not passing that which was one of the first times I ever failed anything. 00;04;49;17 - 00;05;09;29 Unknown That was kind of a, a kick in the guts and a reset. Came back, got married, had a baby and was doing like, construction. And then the National Guard and realized that that I probably want to try something else. Law enforcement was still on my mind, but I was too young to go be a police officer in the state of Utah. 00;05;10;02 - 00;05;34;21 Unknown So I joined active duty, became a military policeman, did that for about ten years. And then we were stationed in Belgium. I had gone back to the states, to the Army's protective services, detachment, like bodyguard school. And in my mind, I had this picture that was going to be all of these, like, top performers. Because who why wouldn't you want that? 00;05;34;21 - 00;05;56;02 Unknown You know, guarding all these, you know, important people. And it was it was a little like this, a little disappointed. But there were two Navy Seals in the course. And when we were doing our intros, everyone's like, oh, you know, I'm stationed in Belgium and we're going to be providing security for the, the secure. And, you know, all these everyone's kind of going around where they're going to be assigned. 00;05;56;05 - 00;06;15;07 Unknown And the two Navy Seals and one of them gets up and he goes, we're actually here to learn how to kill guys like you. And I just started laughing. I was like, well, that's a different mentality. But through the program, I mean, it was a great course of great training. We learned a ton. I just wasn't overly impressed with the people I was surrounded with. 00;06;15;07 - 00;06;42;27 Unknown And I kind of got thinking about the people in the, in the organization. And it it dawned on me that I was just ready to be surrounded by, kind of a, I would say high caliber, but at least people that were looking for something more because it can become shift work and all that stuff that comes with being a military policeman, it can become, kind of, hey, let's just get this done and get over it and get through with this. 00;06;42;27 - 00;07;03;17 Unknown And and I get it right. It's long hours, midnight shifts and all that stuff. And so there's not a lot of training that was going on. But I just decided I wanted to try something different. So I came home, took my wife out to dinner. Been gone a month, and she was like, well, how was the trip? 00;07;03;17 - 00;07;22;14 Unknown And I was like, it was good. But, I think I want to go Special Forces. And it was like the record player stopped, the restaurant got suddenly quiet, everyone staring, and she was like, are we going to talk about this? And I said, I feel like that's what we're doing now. And she's like, sounds like you've already made a decision. 00;07;22;14 - 00;07;47;16 Unknown I said, well, I think I have. And so ended up, you know, we talked it through and there were a lot of of misconceptions and, you know, rumors and, and all these different things. And we ended up finding we had a chaplain, who had been a who had been a prior 18 alpha. So Special Forces officer made it to the rank of major. 00;07;47;16 - 00;08;09;18 Unknown And then he decided he wanted to go to chaplaincy and so we had a chance to talk with him. And he was like, here's the deal. Like, as in any other MOS in the military, you're going to have people that make, you know, terrible decisions. He goes, but there's a lot fewer of them. And, you know, all of these rumors that you hear, they're just really not all that true. 00;08;09;18 - 00;08;35;12 Unknown What you're hearing are the bad highlights. It kind of eased some of that concerns that she had. And I just got a fire in my belly and just decided that it was going to happen. So I tried a really hard, which was super interesting because I'm, you know, rushing through these little Belgian towns carrying five gallon water jugs and just whatever people are going to be like, what is crazy American doing? 00;08;35;15 - 00;09;01;26 Unknown But I went to selection and I did well. And man, what, what an ordeal. The, if anyone ever know if anyone's ever heard anything about, Special Forces assessment selection, it's a three week process. Week one is all like individual assessment, swim test, PT test, psychological eval. Some run, some rocks, a little bit of classes on land navigation, to just get everyone to kind of a baseline. 00;09;01;28 - 00;09;25;27 Unknown And then week two is all individual assessment. So primarily based around land navigation skills. So I mean you're walking you kind of start out small or you're doing like 4 or 5 mile day and night iterations and then it pluses up and then you culminate with like a 25 mile night in day assessment. And that's a hard pass. 00;09;25;27 - 00;09;53;13 Unknown If you don't pass out, you're out. And then you go into team week and team week is it's a unique experience because they give you all of these crazy tasks and you have to, you know, immediately build rapport with the people you're working with. Establish a plan, enact that plan. And it's things like, here's an old Army Jeep with three tires, and year four, you know, 12ft poles and some lashing rope. 00;09;53;14 - 00;10;17;12 Unknown Move this thing eight miles down the road, or, one that they referred to as the fat bastard or the down pile up. It was a, an Army duffel bag. The old school army duffel bag filled with 300 pounds of dirt. And then you got these, four lashings, you know, poles, and you make a litter out of it, and you carry that thing, and it felt like 100 miles, I'm sure was only like 5 or 6. 00;10;17;15 - 00;10;41;00 Unknown But you just do it. All of these different tests, day and night iterations of all these different tests, and they're looking at, you know, what your leadership ability is, what what you're going to be like as a as a team member, do you have the ability to dig in when things get tough? And so at the end of that, if you pass all of those gates, that's just the entrance exam to go to the the Q course. 00;10;41;02 - 00;11;02;28 Unknown So I was in Belgium at the time, so I had to go back. And the army rule was you have to complete two thirds of an overseas tour before you could return. So at about eight months left. So we just, you know, kept trying to get better and better shape, brush up on some skills that I didn't didn't have, got it to a bunch of infantry manuals or Ranger handbook and things, you know, things you don't necessarily do as an MP and then showed back up. 00;11;02;28 - 00;11;27;21 Unknown But I got selected to be an SF medic, which was an incredible, I always had kind of an interest in medicine, first aid and whatnot. So you go back, you do, what they call phase one, which is like, it's small unit tactics. So kind of like a mini ranger school. It's about 45 days long, multiple patrols that you're testing day and night and, and you've got, you know, three different positions. 00;11;27;21 - 00;11;55;18 Unknown So you got to you got to you got to get tested out and go through and finish that went into the to the SF medic course. In the medic course is one of the most insane, intense, incredible courses that the military has to offer. So it's a year long process that takes you from a basic medical get yourself, or yourself, your, paramedic license. 00;11;55;18 - 00;12;18;25 Unknown So you go and do some rotations at, at a hospital, and then you do some rotations on an ambulance crew. So you're seeing, you know, emergencies, and then you go into the trauma side and they've got these just incredibly well laid out scenarios with, you know, mannequins that give biofeedback and just all these things. And every day is just kind of a test. 00;12;18;25 - 00;12;44;04 Unknown Just a test and, work your way through that, and then you end up going into advanced medicine where you're learning surgery and dental and laboratory work and you name it. At the end of this, you're allowed to be what, what the Navy refers to as a, an independent duty corpsman. So you can be the sole medical provider, for American and, local forces. 00;12;44;06 - 00;13;12;22 Unknown And I'm telling you, SF medics come out of there with skills. I mean, far above, at least on the tactical, the hands on emergency trauma stuff. It's pretty funny. We go through these hospital rotations. We do two of them during that course, and the SF medics will get in there, and they're faster than doctors. On some of these things, like sinking a chest tube, somebody's got, you know, taking a wound to the chest and there, that cavities filling up with blood pressure. 00;13;12;24 - 00;13;37;10 Unknown And, you know, guys are sinking these chest tubes because they've done 30 or 40 of them, whereas the average doctors read about one, saw PowerPoint on it, had somebody kind of walk them through it. And so you get you get done with that and you feel like you are just super well trained. And it was kind of the first time I ever walked out of an Army school feeling like, man, I know something I like. 00;13;37;10 - 00;14;19;16 Unknown I legitimately know how to do something. Then you go back, you do the big culminating exercise. It's called the Robin Savage exercise. And it's a simulated unconventional warfare exercise. It's about 45 days long. You get your mission, you go through planning, you do this big long, you know, infill helicopters and rocking and linking up with Partizans and, you know, moving into a guerrilla base with these, you know, guerrilla fighters that are taking on this big, long government and the scenarios that the, that the instructors come up with and the local population that's been doing this for the 50, 60 years that SF has been in existence. 00;14;19;18 - 00;14;40;01 Unknown I mean, we got we got tested to take out a, train bridge one time, and I was like, okay, this will be kind of cool. Sneak out in the middle of the night. You're replacing, you know, you know, simulated explosives and whatnot. And we were on the tarmac and, you know, hey, the train is going to come by at this time. 00;14;40;03 - 00;14;55;11 Unknown And sure enough, a train went by and I was like, are you kidding me? You guys got a train to do this because it went over the bridge. It stopped, came out, they did an evaluation, and then the train went back and I was like, you, you legitimately got somebody to drive a train in the middle of the night to for this exercise. 00;14;55;11 - 00;15;21;27 Unknown So super cool, train to come out of that go to language school, which, as we already know, I'm not super strong on learning languages. It I was able to to learn enough Indonesian to pass the test and move on to first Special Forces Group. First group. So you've got five active duty S.F. groups, and they're all kind of regionally aligned for a special forces group that has a primary responsibility for what they call Indo pick. 00;15;22;02 - 00;15;42;28 Unknown So Asia. So I got to do a lot of work in the Philippines and Thailand and, India and Bangladesh and just really get to understand that that area and then, you know, all the big wars kicked off. And so we're doing rotations in between, you know, our AOR and then go into Iraq and go into Afghanistan. 00;15;42;28 - 00;16;09;18 Unknown And so you get just a really good understanding of the capabilities of special operations. I got back got to become a an SF team star. And and typically that's an E8 position and it's about a two year assignment. But I when I first got there, SF, I got assigned to a dive team. So underwater operations team, and there was only one per battalion at the time. 00;16;09;18 - 00;16;40;12 Unknown And then they decided they wanted to grow the capability. Well, at that point, I was a diver, a dive supe, and a dive medical technician, and they were like, hey, we want we want you to to go stand up another dive team, grow that capability, within the battalion. So as a non promotable E-7, I got picked up to go do that ends up I got I, I ended up with almost four and a half years as a team sergeant, which is, you know, twice as long as the average person gets. 00;16;40;15 - 00;17;09;24 Unknown It was awesome. Just incredible. Some of the best soldiers have ever worked with doing some, some really cool missions, building the capability and growing the team from the ground up was was pretty fun. As I left that, I, I got the opportunity to go do a, a two year, the kind of impact the military exchange or military military professional exchange, opportunity program or other. 00;17;09;27 - 00;17;39;10 Unknown So I was the sole U.S. guy with the Australian CSR. So Australia's tier one unit got to to run a gun with those guys for two years. And one of the just I mean, I'm living in Perth, Australia. I'm one kilometer away from probably the most beautiful beach in the planet, running with with with guys that are just super motivated and very well trained and just thoroughly enjoyed that. 00;17;39;12 - 00;18;07;26 Unknown When I came back, I was a senior eight, getting ready to get looked at for, E9, but I kind of decided that I was it was time, right? I was a 20 years at that point, and they assigned me to a company that one of my really good friends was, he was a company SA major, and he was like, hey, I want you to be my operations are and I want you to, you know, get us ready to, to to do a combat rotation over Afghanistan. 00;18;07;26 - 00;18;36;02 Unknown And I said, well, yeah, I'm, I'm cool, but I think I'm, I think I'm going to get out. And so guy's name is Danny Roscoe and he's famous for, for saying that he's only got a, you know, a 12th grade, California public school education, but he's got a master's in trigonometry. He essentially tricked me into staying in for the rotation and then during the rotation, he said, hey, I want you to go be the battalion. 00;18;36;05 - 00;19;05;10 Unknown You know, first sergeant and then ended up making certain major. And so you know, came back, took over that exact same company as a company. SA major took him back to Afghanistan and then came back. And then I ended up closing out my, my time, what we call the advanced skills company. So managing all the training for parachuting, diving, shooting, some of the Intel courses, the jacks, they're called. 00;19;05;10 - 00;19;27;22 Unknown So tax and NSF. Just a great way to to close out, a career. And so I ended up doing just under 32 years, after I told that guy I was going to get out at 23 and stuff. But it was good. It was it was an incredible experience. So I retired in July, kind of at the beginning of the whole Covid scare. 00;19;27;22 - 00;19;47;20 Unknown And there was a bunch of, of issues with trying to get my, you know, VA claims process, because the morning I was supposed to go in and meet with my VSO, there was an 8:00 and an 830 appointment. I had the 830 appointment at 815. The world shut down because of Covid, and they're trying to figure out what I was going to do. 00;19;47;20 - 00;20;05;14 Unknown And the Army at my unit essentially said, hey, go figure out how to be a civilian. You're going to retire. We're going to give you the time to go do that. And so, you know, you're working on, you know, what that was going to look like. And I think, like most of us, when the time comes, we're ill prepared for it. 00;20;05;17 - 00;20;24;24 Unknown And I remember sitting down thinking, okay, well, let let's figure out this process. And I just stared at a wall trying to to, you know, whiteboard, trying to figure out what I was going to do and realize I didn't know. I didn't know how to become a civilian. And about that time I'd heard of this organization, at the time, it was called Your Grateful Nation. 00;20;24;27 - 00;20;48;06 Unknown And it was, SOF specific, Veterans Transition organization. So I called and interviewed for it, and and it was a rough interview. I was I was surprised at, you know, how detailed they wanted and, you know, the information kind of really digging into, make sure that I was going to be the the right guy because their reputation was based on. 00;20;48;06 - 00;21;17;20 Unknown Hey, we're bringing in the right people, putting them in front of the right organizations. But I was I was selected for it, went through that program, ended up getting picked up for a role with a company called West Shore Home. And they're a home improvement company based out of, Carlisle. Well, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. So left Washington State, where we were where we were stationed, moved out to Pennsylvania, and I was hired as the director of training and leadership development. 00;21;17;22 - 00;21;35;25 Unknown So if there is if there is a, a way to take an Army sergeant major and put him into a civilian organization, that's the place, right? So they didn't have one at the time? It was a brand new concept that they were trying to develop. And they said, hey, you know, you've got experience building a team from the ground up. 00;21;35;28 - 00;22;01;06 Unknown You've got all this experience and training and, and, you know, development, go figure this program out. So I ended up working for them for about two and a half years. It was great. Built this program from the ground up. Just learned an absolute ton about that specific industry. And then just civilian organizations in general ended up getting poached to go work doing leadership development consulting. 00;22;01;09 - 00;22;25;18 Unknown And that was fun. I got to meet just, I don't know, 20 or 30 different organizations, everything from police departments to cruise ship line up, an Alaskan trucking company up in Minnesota, just all these different organizations. And so I got to learn a bunch about a ton of different industries, through this process. But the entire time I had been very active as a mentor for a while. 00;22;25;20 - 00;22;46;18 Unknown And that then while I was in the program, became the Special Operators Transition Foundation. So they did a name change to to better align what they do. Just to make it a lot simpler, it was an advertising, decision. But the line, you know, the the name of the organization changed to align with the actual mission of the organization. 00;22;46;23 - 00;23;02;27 Unknown And I'd been very active, you know, helping new guys come into the program and trying to figure out what they wanted to do. And now suddenly I had all of this experience from, you know, being out of the military and working in these different roles. And they asked me if I wanted to come on, and become the director of programs. 00;23;02;29 - 00;23;22;26 Unknown And so and in January of 2023, I started in the role that I'm in, I'm, now, so, it's great. So now I run the process that all of the fellows coming through the Special Operators Transition Foundation go through. I get to do their initial intake call. I get to kind of figure out what what it is. 00;23;22;26 - 00;23;44;15 Unknown And they're they're looking for and what they want to do. And then we run them through this process. And that is the longest 32nd intro I've ever given. It's it's necessary. Yeah, I assure you then it was good because there's a lot of things impact impact inside of that that and I've been taking notes as you've been speaking and sharing. 00;23;44;15 - 00;24;09;15 Unknown So thanks for thanks for sharing the detail. Because it it does it might feel like it is lengthy, but it tells the story of the things exactly what we're talking about. You know, I mean, the one thing the most immediate, the closest thing to the end of, of what you shared is, you know, the choices that you're making and how it shifts in the master and in trigonometry. 00;24;09;18 - 00;24;28;05 Unknown I had to think twice about the because that's exactly what occurs. I think, you know, the top three things that occur when, when the longer you're in and the closer you are to a goal. In this case, let's say retirement at 20, there's a lot of contemplation goes on. It's probably preset as a baseline of what you expect to do right. 00;24;28;05 - 00;24;53;03 Unknown At 20 I'm going to get out, you know, not 21, not 1920, not 23 unless things happen. And so certain things and it seems in your experience, something happened to where it the options that were weighed brought more value than, than what you were considering. I mean, it's no joke. It was what, 13 years after that expectation. So it's not like it was hasty. 00;24;53;05 - 00;25;14;03 Unknown It may have felt that way, but it does. It does play a part in how challenging it can be when somebody's contemplating, how do I go from where I've been for so long to something new and what influences me to get away from that? Is somebody going to validate how I'm feeling and then pull me away from what I've been doing, or somebody's going to give me a reason to continue on? 00;25;14;06 - 00;25;37;28 Unknown Yeah. And and I really love that part because it does express some of the things that I think we should dive into is, you know, how how we're making decisions and what are the influences from a personal level, because even early on, you coming back from training, I'm sure your wife wasn't expecting at dinner for you to share that you wanted to go last. 00;25;38;01 - 00;26;02;26 Unknown Yeah. Versus go right or go straight or whatever it is you can compare it to. So let's start with that a little bit. Discussing with family how important is it in anything that we're doing. So I had this conversation with our fellows a lot. Most things in the Army you don't have much of a choice out, right? You maybe get to re-enlist and say, hey, you know, I want to go to this. 00;26;02;28 - 00;26;22;12 Unknown You know, I want to go to Europe. I want to you know, go to a specific unit or whatnot. But typically speaking, you march in order, you act on those orders. And so there's not a lot of choice that happens, but there are those kind of pivotal moments of all I do. I stay in the CMOs. 00;26;22;14 - 00;26;42;09 Unknown Am I going to go to 20, you know, you know, it's kind of that ten year mark that I think most veterans kind of look at. It really kind of. The three decision points are after your first enlistment at the ten year mark and then at the 20 year mark, and those are the times that you really need to have those conversations, with the family and say, hey, where are we at? 00;26;42;13 - 00;27;01;16 Unknown Right. Is this going to be a good decision for the kids? Is it going to be is this the right decision for what we're going to do? Is this right for me and my career? You know, I had that opportunity to go to Australia, but I had actually had that opportunity a few years before that to go compete for that, for that slot. 00;27;01;19 - 00;27;20;07 Unknown And we sat down with a, with a big family decision. And my daughter was just starting kind of her high school years, and she was super involved in a bunch of sports and, a bunch of academic stuff. And she was doing really well. And, we had to make that decision. Is this the right time for the family? 00;27;20;09 - 00;27;41;22 Unknown I do remember my son advocating for us to go, and we're sitting at the table and he goes, I just want to put this out there. If we go to Australia, I'm the one with the accent. I just laugh and my wife goes, well, it kind of seals the deal for me or that girl. But but perfect. So you know, and that was tough, right? 00;27;41;22 - 00;28;11;16 Unknown That, that was, that was a unique opportunity to take the family and and and and take them overseas. And we just made that decision as a family that it just was not right. The it wasn't the right call. And ultimately it, it, it it it worked out. You know, I got the opportunity to do it later. There's a really cool process in the Army that, if you were kids are in college and you are overseas, the Army will put them on TDY once a year and bring them out for a spring break. 00;28;11;16 - 00;28;30;08 Unknown So you got to bring both kids out to Australia, and they got to experience it. And so we didn't we didn't really lose out on anything in the end. But at the same time, it it wouldn't have it wouldn't have had the same opportunities for my daughter and my son. If we would have uprooted them in the middle of, of high school. 00;28;30;08 - 00;28;45;14 Unknown And that's a big one. Can I hear that from from guys all the time, fellows, I should say, coming through the program. Hey, you know, where is it that you want to live in, like, well, you know, I've got kids in high school, and I just don't think it's the right thing to to to uproot them in the middle of it. 00;28;45;16 - 00;29;09;07 Unknown It's a valid decision on the enlisted side, I think especially with special operations, you got a little bit more control of of your assignments and you can kind of if you plan it the right way, you can you can set yourself up in a position that's going to do that for the officers. What you once you leave company command, it's a two year rotation. 00;29;09;09 - 00;29;30;21 Unknown You just go on staff position, the staff position, the staff position. And that's that's disruptive for the family, particularly in those teenage years. And so I get a lot of the fellows that when I say, hey, what's driving this decision to get out? And they're like, it's it's family. Right. It's it's been around the kids being being an active part of my family. 00;29;30;24 - 00;29;57;10 Unknown And I get that. We were reflecting on this a while back. There was a three year period back when I was back on the SF team, three years in a row. I was home less than 80 days per year, and we figured it out. The longest I was home, the longest I spent the same or the longest I spent in my bed, was 21 days in three years. 00;29;57;12 - 00;30;23;26 Unknown And then that. That's rough, right? You got deployments, you got training cycles, you got red cycle task, and you got all these different things that you have to do. And the whole time your, your, your spouse is essentially a single parent and your kids are living without either mom or dad. And so when you get the opportunity to involve your family, I think it's one of the most important things that you can do, because it's not just you. 00;30;23;29 - 00;30;43;18 Unknown I mean, if you're single guy, single guy or gal and live, you live your life, take whatever assignment you know you can get. But if there's a family involved, there's a lot more decisions that have to be made. And one of the things that I talk about with the fellows, you know, we'll get people like, hey, my kids are in high school, but I ended up getting this job, you know, two states away. 00;30;43;18 - 00;31;06;20 Unknown And so, you know, it's a great job. It pays a lot. It's doing what I want to do. I'm so used to being gone from the family. You know, we're used to it, and I. What I tell them is, every other time you've been away from your family, it has been an army decision or a military decision to take you there. 00;31;06;22 - 00;31;27;15 Unknown You are now choosing to be away from your family, and you're going to do it. And so is your family. And I really want you to ponder that. And I got to be honest, eight out of ten come back and say, yeah, we had a talk and there's just not the right choice. We're going to find something different. 00;31;27;18 - 00;31;50;09 Unknown And I think that is I think that is the right call. Now for some families it works. But I've just seen it. I've seen it go bad too many times in the military. I've seen it go bad too many times from this position that if your family isn't at least an equal part of that equation, it's it's probably not the right decision. 00;31;50;11 - 00;32;12;02 Unknown Strong point. Because even if it were not the military, if you think about what separation brings and distance brings in any movie you watch, there's a there's a hardship that occurs and then there's an evolution of thought. I would imagine everybody's going through it, whether they acknowledge it or not, or understand it to be what it is. The distance creates. 00;32;12;02 - 00;32;44;07 Unknown Now, the opportunity for individual growth versus with your partner or the family and your perspective starts to shift. And so if it becomes a norm, like a habit being developed, you start to understand what independence really feels like. And you do things on your own and it draws you further away. And I think that's the oversimplifying it. I think that that includes some of the complications to where trusting in advocacy, trusting in opinions, trusting in validation. 00;32;44;10 - 00;33;03;14 Unknown And we always say, you have a buddy. What better one to have than your family to be able to talk about the things that you're going to decide in the planning phase? Because what you described, I was just imagining the similarities. Since we're talking about transition, the similarities of what we already recognize, what you're used to is planning. 00;33;03;14 - 00;33;28;20 Unknown We're planning for an an active or an event. And what do you do? You go find some opinions, you know, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it. And you start to develop the the contingencies around those things. So what because of where you are and your experience is the role that you're holding and some of the the advice and things that you share with others to consider. 00;33;28;22 - 00;34;06;11 Unknown What's the emphasis on planning and the similarities between what they've been doing as a service member and what is necessary to plan for? Typically, it's just an event, you know, we can call it deployment, another, choice that they're going to have to make because they're going to go do something different. What's the emphasis on planning? I think it's the the single biggest, emphasis, is planning out what that future needs to look like, you know, veterans who, who don't do a plan, who don't do the research, who don't figure out what it what they want to do, what value they're going to find in that role. 00;34;06;11 - 00;34;29;11 Unknown And they just take a first job because they need one. We know the stats on that, right? The average veteran goes for 2 or 3 jobs in 2 or 3 years because they just can't sort that out. And so our whole thought process is, hey, we're going to take your last year in the military and we're going to help you figure out exactly what that plan needs to look like. 00;34;29;11 - 00;35;06;18 Unknown And we we focus on three main areas. Where do you want to live functionally, what do you want to do and then what industry ultimately organization do you want to do. That functional area. And if you start that way and work your way down it it tends to work out and those things go hand in hand. Right? So if you tell me, hey, my sole desire and life is to be a rocket scientist, but all of my family living in Sandpoint, Idaho, hey, man, nobody's building rockets in Sandpoint, so we either need to figure out how we're going to make you the very first fully remote rocket scientist. 00;35;06;20 - 00;35;27;08 Unknown Or we need to figure out functionally a different area that you need to go down. So what is the priority and what is what is your your your main planning factor? And if it's to be in a geographic location, great. Then let's figure out functionally what do you want to do that is available in that area, what industries are available in that area, and then put a plan in place to achieve it. 00;35;27;11 - 00;36;03;23 Unknown And so starting a year out and going through a whole process of of figuring out who you are, what motivates you, what strengths you have, what experiences you're going to bring to a role, what what is going to, you know, be a passion project for you and then refining that down tends to work out our stats are quite a bit stronger than that then that we what we're seeing is that most of our fellows stay in that role for two years and then promote either within the organization or promote within that functional area out. 00;36;03;26 - 00;36;25;26 Unknown So they're making they're making a, choice to leave that specific role because of growth and not because this I don't like this culture. I don't like this company. I don't like what I'm doing. But it's because they have we have developed a plan and then enacted that plan over a years long period to make sure that it's the right choices like that. 00;36;25;28 - 00;36;59;23 Unknown And and you brought it up. Excuse me. So where do you want to live? The function that you want, and then the organization and the people you want to surround yourself with. That's how tough is that? To get them to understand what that looks like. If all they've known, or at least in the most recent. I mean, you talked about a year taking their year and then kind of using that as the, the catalyst for, for these things to understand who I work with is important, where work is important, what steps do you take to help them understand to be able to get that? 00;36;59;25 - 00;37;20;01 Unknown That's a great question. You know, we talk about the importance of networking, and we kind of reevaluated this over the last year or so. And, you know, we tell people your network is going and is going to get you your job, right. Something like 85% of all professional jobs, I'm sorry, 95% of all professional jobs happen because of networking. 00;37;20;03 - 00;37;42;19 Unknown So blanket online applications or resume submissions result in like, you know, a 5% chance of your first interview and then it goes downhill from there. And if you talk to people that that's all they're doing, they'll say, oh, I've submitted 100 applications. I've only got, you know, 3 or 5 interviews. Well, yeah, because it doesn't really work that way no matter what. 00;37;42;19 - 00;38;07;07 Unknown Glassdoor and indeed and, and LinkedIn tells you most professional jobs happen because of networking. So but what is networking. Right. And when you just tell somebody, hey go networking like oh okay. What does that mean. Well networking is we start out with, hey, talk to your friends that have gotten out. Do they like their jobs? How do their skills translate? 00;38;07;07 - 00;38;27;27 Unknown Do you know, is it is there you know, how is that organization? How does it feel culturally and it's cast a wide net. Talk to anyone and everyone just to figure out what is what is out there. I think I the Army has 207 roles and then you, you know, multiply it by that by the number of ranks within that role. 00;38;28;04 - 00;38;49;07 Unknown But 200 and 207 jobs. That's not a lot. There are thousands of jobs. It can be very broad or can be very narrow. And so figuring out what that means, we do a whole series of of webinars and just intro to the industry where I get people to come in and we talk to everything from project management and construction, project management in the defense space. 00;38;49;09 - 00;39;12;08 Unknown We've got a guy that does risk mitigation or risk management in commercial insurance. He's like, I was surprised at how well prepared I was for this role because I've done risk assessments my entire career. Right. And so now I'm just doing the same thing. I'm looking at an operation by a company or by, you know, insure a company. 00;39;12;10 - 00;39;32;00 Unknown So I start evaluating what those risks are. I've got a matrix that I put them up against and then I make a decision as to whether or not it is worthwhile for, you know, this company to insure that company. And so, it's pretty interesting almost, almost everyone that applies for the program going to say, what is what do you think you want to do? 00;39;32;03 - 00;39;55;03 Unknown And they all say the same two things consulting because that's what special operators do. You go to a foreign country, you consult with foreign military or project management because that's the easiest thing to translate. Hey, I was an astronaut was the first of those opportunities aren't everything's project management, but the number of people that actually go into consulting project management is, is way lower than the near 100% that tell me that's what they want to do. 00;39;55;06 - 00;40;16;17 Unknown But it's because we we really introduce them to multiple opportunities and industries, right? Figuring out functionally what you want to do and then figuring out the industry. And so, hey, talk to as many people as you can, have their skills translate. Do they like the job? Do they like the role? And then as you narrow down then you want to open it up. 00;40;16;17 - 00;40;38;03 Unknown So let's take Oracle for example, somebody says, hey, I think I want to get into business. You know, software sales and Oracle seems like a really good company. All right. Well, how many people at Oracle have you spoke with? I haven't okay. How do you know anything about Oracle? Like. Well, you know, I got on their website, they've got cool pictures and they, you know, they're showing all these things. 00;40;38;04 - 00;40;56;29 Unknown I'm like, yeah, but have you talked to anyone at Oracle like no I'm like, all right well let's do this. And so I'll jump into my database and find, you know, the 7 or 8 folks that we have had hired by Oracle or we'll get on LinkedIn and I'll say, all right, you know, here's how LinkedIn, this is how you use LinkedIn, right? 00;40;57;01 - 00;41;18;18 Unknown Go to an organization, you go to the people, you find the people that are veterans, and then you start reaching out saying, hey, you know, I'm a I'm a transition service member. I've been doing this, I'm super interested in Oracle. Can I get 15 minutes of your time? And I'm always surprised at the number of people who don't say yes because it's really low, which is awesome because I think veterans just want to help veterans. 00;41;18;21 - 00;41;41;22 Unknown And so now you get somebody that knows what you've gone through, right? They know what you're currently doing and they're willing to to give that time and, and be very honest about, you know, the questions you're going to ask. Okay. What is what is, work life balance? What is the culture there? You know? And so now you build up, your information about organization. 00;41;41;24 - 00;42;01;22 Unknown And then just based off of that, now you can start narrowing that network into something you want to do. I tell fellows all the time to the last two questions you should ask in any networking opportunities. Hey, who else should I be talking to? And will you connect me? Right. Because I don't I don't know who I should talk to an oracle, right. 00;42;01;22 - 00;42;18;09 Unknown I just know Oracle is a great company. They these roles seem to align with what I want to do. People seem to be happy they're I'm talking to somebody at logistics or I'm talking to somebody at marketing. But really I want to get into business development. So who do I talk to? Oh, I've got a really good buddy over there, or. 00;42;18;09 - 00;42;35;14 Unknown Hey, I'm part of this Maven organization. Let me connect you with them. And that both. Now you've got, you know, this whole audience of folks that are that are willing to to help you narrow that down. And the introduction, I think is super important. Right? Because if you know, you call me and you say, hey, what is life like over at soda? 00;42;35;14 - 00;42;49;12 Unknown If I'm like, oh, that's the greatest thing ever. And you and I get talking, I'm like, Ben, this is somebody I think it would be cool to work with. I can't bring them on my team. But man, I'd love to have been building and. And then you hit me up with, who else should I be talking to? I'm like, well, what do you want to do? 00;42;49;13 - 00;43;05;28 Unknown You're like, man, I'm all about raising money for a nonprofit. Okay, let me make a phone call. Right. So now I call and say, hey, I've been talking to Chris Spencer. This dude is awesome. I would love to have him on my team. I still have space. But, you know, what he really wants to do is what you're doing. 00;43;06;00 - 00;43;27;24 Unknown So now somebody that that that trust you that and you've said, hey, I've done an evaluation. I think this guy would be perfect. He's like, what? Yeah, of course I want to talk to him. So now you're a vetted, asset that can be brought in. And so, man, those those two questions are so important. Who else should I be talking to? 00;43;27;24 - 00;43;43;25 Unknown And will you connect me? Right. And networking is like mining, right? You dig down, you find a little bit of where you find a vein, you're going to run down that vein, hope and find the motherload. If it doesn't pan out, you come back up to where you know you've got something and you start work in the next space. 00;43;43;27 - 00;44;06;12 Unknown And so the more points of contact you have into an organization, the better you're going to be able to evaluate. And the more you have in common with the people you're talking to, the more they're going to be able to answer questions that make sense to you from where you're at. And that's what I love about networking is especially in the veteran communities, you can get some real honest answers. 00;44;06;15 - 00;44;19;12 Unknown I've had I've had people that I've talked to him like, well, what do you what do you think about your job? He goes, this is the worst place I've ever worked in my life. Like, what are you doing there? It's like, you know, I signed up for the blood money I've got, you know, another year so I can keep my bonus. 00;44;19;12 - 00;44;41;14 Unknown And then as soon as that happens, dude, I'm out of here. I'm like, what would you recommend for anyone else? No, I would not. This is miserable. I'm like, okay, so if I get somebody that's interested in talking to, you know, are you willing to have their conversation 100% right? And that's one point of data, which is why you have to have a network of people, because you could just have somebody that's angry and bitter, you know, having a bad day. 00;44;41;17 - 00;44;55;27 Unknown But if you talk to 4 or 5 people and you're like, hey, this place sucks, man. They just burn through us. We're cogs in the wheel. And as soon as we wear out, they just replace us like it's no fun. Or you talk to people who are like, I love this place. I show up to work every day. 00;44;55;27 - 00;45;23;02 Unknown My boss is super cool. I've got a gym that I can go to. You know, the people are dedicated, they're willing to help, and then you get 4 or 5 people that are telling you the same thing. Well, now you understand the culture of that organization. And so networking is is so impactful in finding, you know, hey, what is it that I want to do functionally and then what organization do I want to do it. 00;45;23;02 - 00;45;44;16 Unknown And, and just having as many conversations as possible. Yes, there's truth in that statement. Josh and I are talking as a result of networking. So one of our friends, because Doug is a friend, but he's also a military parent, happens to live in the area. I met up through somebody else, through another function inside the branch of service. 00;45;44;16 - 00;46;06;29 Unknown They, you know, Doug gets introduced to the organization. And then we had an event and he met you. Introduce me to you. Now we're here talking. And the trust that comes as a result of that because you nailed it to trust. I think that's the that's you have to establish the concrete evidence that you can trust somebody to be able to do these things. 00;46;06;29 - 00;46;28;27 Unknown Because advocacy right now, you'd love to help everybody, but not everybody is ready for help because of what they what they currently believe and what they're ready to hear and those types of things we talk the candor that veterans have. Absolutely. Getting feedback from a veteran is going to help you regardless of how you feel about it, because it's going to tell you the hard truth or it's going to tell you something else. 00;46;28;27 - 00;46;54;09 Unknown Right. And it's it's necessary somewhat of a ramble, the going going back to the two years things. If we can touch on this real quick, the expectation setting because there's, there's some some caveats to the, to the growth that occurs. And then, and then the, the timeline. And this just happens to, you know, it's not really arbitrary, but two years and that's somewhat related to service to where you're going to transition, you're going to pieces, you're going to get promoted. 00;46;54;12 - 00;47;13;12 Unknown There's a timeline that correlates to that to where now it's it's conditions yourself to believe that that equates to success, because there's some other things that hardships that we we all are familiar with, the suffering of being into a role in civilian life and the public and the private sector where we say, oh, it sucks. I don't want to be here. 00;47;13;15 - 00;47;35;25 Unknown Well, you're still learning something. And so what I've done is kind of revealed this, this notion that if it's uncomfortable, I don't need to stay. And I've been lately just more. So it's like, well, if you think about what you're learning, if you're within five years of transition, you're actually understanding what it is like out here now with that environment. 00;47;35;25 - 00;47;55;21 Unknown And of course, you don't need to stay, but it is giving you something to wear. Now you can recognize how to navigate that because now you're you're collecting what you you had mentioned. It's one data point, your experience with one leader because you also mentioned somebody in your story. There's going to be bad decisions. The chaplain had told you they're still going to make bad decisions. 00;47;55;21 - 00;48;14;26 Unknown There's fewer of them. And I think the one thing that we can all remember is when you're when you are where you end up, just maybe pull yourself out of that sometimes spontaneous reaction to what what you're experiencing to realize you're going to get something from it and you're going to become better for it, you know, because now you're learning it. 00;48;14;28 - 00;48;34;17 Unknown So maybe stick around and see what changes, because the other part is you don't know what other people are going through. And if you can remember the influence that you have, you can maybe change and help that person or that team become better. And maybe that's your purpose because we don't know that. Yeah, you know that. That's such a good point. 00;48;34;20 - 00;48;57;21 Unknown You know, on average, you know, veteran, you know, particularly somebody getting ready to retire, they're going to move into a role with less authority and responsibility than the one that they had, right. Brigade commander or squadron commander, you know, what are they saying? And you're going to take a step back. And there's a good chance that that person who is your boss doesn't have the experience that you have in that role. 00;48;57;24 - 00;49;20;02 Unknown And there is nothing wrong with leading from from where you stand right leading up that chain of command. And if if you've got a boss of struggling somebody and you've got to experience that, that you can help them out, why would you not? Right? I mean, selfishly, your, your you're making your environment better. I got a better boss. 00;49;20;02 - 00;49;45;18 Unknown They know what they're doing better. I can teach them how to you know, you know, lead through leaders intent or, you know, just establish a basic, you know, battle rhythm. All these different things that we learn, is going to make my life easier. More importantly, you're influencing everyone around you, right? And and if you can influence one, two levels up, two levels down, left and right, you just created a much stronger team. 00;49;45;18 - 00;50;08;18 Unknown That environment that you may not like is probably going to be a lot better, right? So invest in the role that you're in. And, and give it as due diligence because there's a very good chance that you're going to find, that, that what you learn from that position and what you learn from those experiences is going to set you up for success. 00;50;08;18 - 00;50;28;15 Unknown And I promise, you know this. Everyone else knows this. Somebody is watching. If you're this person's like, well, this sucks. I'm just going to do my work and punch you out at 5:00. Somebody's watching. But if somebody goes, hey, we have some legitimate problems and you're actively working on them, what do you think you could do from this level?

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