Vector Accelerator (00:00)
Hey Joe.
Joe (00:05)
I love how we start these. It's like the best.
Vector Accelerator (00:07)
Hey, Joe.
Welcome back to another episode of the Vector Accelerator podcast. It's been a couple of minutes since, Joe, you and I were on an episode and the people have spoken. They've been saying, you know, where did Joe go? It's been like two months. Where did Joe go? And I keep saying, I don't know. I'm worried, but you're back. This is your official comeback. We had some interpersonal conflicts and we worked through it. ⁓
Joe (00:30)
Yes.
Vector Accelerator (00:35)
And this is our reconciliation tour, but none of that serious Joe was out of town. That's, that's what, that's what it was. You also started a PhD program. Correct. You, you have a bachelor's degree, you have a master's degree and now you're working on a PhD. ⁓ that's a lot.
Joe (00:37)
Yes. Yeah. hmm. Mm hmm. Yep.
Mm hmm. Yes, all
of it's true. All of it's true. And we just recently moved. ⁓ Yeah, closed desk row this month. And there's a bunch of boxes all over the place. But yes, it's all positive things, though. I can't complain, but really, who cares?
Vector Accelerator (00:55)
Anywhere. Yeah, yeah. yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I don't. What we want to talk about today is in the context of Vector Accelerator, which we, I don't know, a year and half ago launched with a curriculum that has been ⁓ tested and refined really primarily between you and I over the last decade inside the Honor Foundation. ⁓ The original and still big program with Vector Accelerator is a 10 chapter
journey through the story of your life. And the folks that go through it and take the time to do the work, we have tracked, we can actually measure impact and they get clarity about their life. However, so here's the, here's the but and the reason for this episode. However, sometimes people that we're learning will initially hear this idea of, yeah, you guys are right. I need to think about some stuff in my life before I pick the next job.
Joe (01:39)
Mm-hmm.
Vector Accelerator (02:05)
So they're excited about the general idea, but then I think what happens is they kind of like apply and log in and then they see 10 chapters and videos and a workbook and whatever excitement they had wanes a little bit. And so then people get stuck. So we've been noticing that feedback has been similar to that for the past many months.
And so we've been kind of scratching our heads and our original strategy was to come back to everybody and say, sack up. Like, yeah, it's, you know, this is your life. Make the time you're worth it. This is worth it. Look at the results. Like quit complaining about some work on yourself. Do it. That's that was kind of strategy A and that's still a strong message. You guys do need to sack up and do the work on yourself. However.
Joe (02:40)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Vector Accelerator (02:57)
People have also said, man, if you could just give me a shorter version of this, it would be great. So we've relented and created a short course, a vector accelerator accelerated course. And that's what we wanna talk about today. Am I framing that right or am I being too mean?
Joe (03:17)
No, you're spot on and it makes sense. I don't want to sound super old, but I'm going to anyway. ⁓ It's the generation of now. And we probably had it in the 80s when we were latchkey kids, but I don't know, especially when the microwave was invented. Man, I could get a hot dog now. people are on different paths of speed to transition.
Vector Accelerator (03:37)
huh.
Joe (03:47)
Some folks have a little bit of a runway and are seeking the deep dive. Other folks are kind of maybe pulling the book off the shelf and peeking through the chapters and wanting to look at the end and say, is this something I really need to go through? Is there a shorter version? Can I just get this done? So yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense.
Vector Accelerator (04:05)
Yeah. Yeah.
And there are other veteran organizations that support veterans through transition that do amazing stuff in the kind of like the we'd call it phase two part of career readiness. That's where you get into LinkedIn, interviewing, networking, all that stuff, which we touch on. But the real purpose of Vector Accelerator is before you get there, figure out who you are, what you want, what your priorities are, blah, blah.
Joe (04:32)
yeah.
Vector Accelerator (04:33)
And so what we're finding though, that the long course, the existing current version of Vector Accelerator is fantastic when there's already an audience, when there's already a crowd. that's like, this is almost like, hey, if you work with or support a veteran service organization and you would love to see more impact, you love to see people pick jobs and stay in those jobs because it's the right thing for them and they're committed to it.
We would love to talk with you to create a partnership where the Vector Accelerator course sits either in front of or on top of what you're doing. We're all ears. That being said, we have a new short course that we're launching very soon. In fact, you could probably sign up now if you really felt like it. And this short course, here's the promise, three exercises, that's way less than 10 if you do that math. It's not 10 exercise, it's three exercises.
and it ought to take you about three hours or less to hammer it out. And so we want to get into the three exercises because we're going to help you answer three important questions. The first one is what drives you and what drives you is actually it's a historical look at your life. You have a resume. You have experience, work experience coming out of the military.
And if all we did was look at your resume and look at your job skills and what you've done, we would be able to predict into the future what you're qualified for and therefore gainful, perhaps secure employment. But that's not the problem we're trying to solve. What we're trying to help you solve is what do I do with the various things I've done professionally in the military and then match that with what also I care about? And that's where...
rubber reeds the road because sometimes your work experience has nothing to do with what you prefer. It's the bill that you were given. It's the job and you said, yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. I will get this done. So the question what drives you is a historical look at your past and you're going to through this exercise, think about different stories from your life of moments where you felt like
Well, moments you're proud of, moments that you accomplish something and it's both inside your military experience and beyond it. You can go back, some people go back to childhood. I know some of the stories I think about really, if I'm honest, there's a couple of elementary school, one or two in middle school, a couple in high school, college, and then career. And what you're able to do as you look at all of those stories, especially if you follow the prompts, you're able to actually start seeing these threads and themes. You did some of that work. This goes back 10, 11 years now.
But what drives you? did you kind of discover, uncover as you process that question?
Joe (07:24)
I love this question so much. think also, this maybe is like a pro tip, think about your past, but like life shaping stories. And what I mean by that is I can think of in the military, and it might seem super mundane, super just kind of generic, but this one time when, and I can see people's faces, I can see the environment I was in and
What makes it so powerful is this, right? And it's a dot dot dot, right? And then I started thinking about, okay, yeah, I was doing my military job at the time. And yes, I was doing whatever it is that's written in my D 214 and my evals and all that paperwork, but how I was doing the work, the strengths I was pulling into it, the things that motivated me, the best parts of it that made me feel alive. That's what we're trying to get at. So it's much less of.
the what you were doing and the more about how you were doing it, the feelings that were involved and what made you feel like, man, I want to replicate that, that thing. So that's really what we're trying to get at, at the root of all of these questions. And I love that first question, because man, there's a million stories and it goes outside of the military too. You're absolutely right. Some of the life shaping stories occurred maybe in your formidable middle school.
Vector Accelerator (08:32)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joe (08:50)
a high school age, maybe there was a coach or a football thing or sports thing. don't know. There's a lot of life shaping moments that you can actually see the best versions of you popping out. Annotate that, write it down. That's what we're trying to get at here.
Vector Accelerator (09:07)
Yeah, and the less you edit that because some of the stuff that sticks out to you, you can, the voice in my head is, don't share that with anybody. That's like, that was no big deal, essentially. And one of the stories that comes up for me, it's, I've found myself being embarrassed by the story, but I wanted to make the golf team my freshman year of high school. And I thought I was pretty good because I could beat my dad and my mom, which are the only people I'd ever played golf with.
Joe (09:12)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Vector Accelerator (09:37)
And in my head, nobody else knew how to play golf. So if I wasn't good enough to play baseball or basketball, these other big sports, at least I could find my identity and my thing being a great, excellent golfer. And I went and tried out and I just, I was awful. I didn't know. I, and I just absolutely sucked in front of everybody. I did not make the team and they were like, there was a varsity team, a JV team, a frost soft team and a freshman team. made none of those teams. And what it came back to for me,
was a gut check and a look in the mirror. I have 12 months. Do I want to do this? Is this something that's important to me? And it wasn't necessarily the golf part that sticks out to me for this story, but it was the relentless pursuit of achieving something that really mattered to me. And so that's one of a dozen stories I could think of where regardless of the context of what I was pursuing, it matters to me to have a goal and go after it.
to the point of almost being embarrassed that I'm so like singularly focused on things. So when I think about what drives me, it's having a really big audacious goal that I'm not qualified for, that I cannot do on my current skillset, experience, resources, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get there. And now I can look at that as a lens and say, what's the next thing? Because if I get a job where there's not a big challenge, I know myself that I will get so bored.
Joe (10:58)
Hmm.
Vector Accelerator (11:01)
and so irritable and irritating and I'll cause problems and I'll just hate every single person around me. So there has to be a big thing because I can look in the past and see those are the moments that I feel alive.
Joe (11:13)
Love it.
Vector Accelerator (11:15)
There's, okay, so there's a cheat code. So the process that we have for you to do in the workbook is to think about it. Like Joe said, I like that word, annotate. Write them out, the more detailed the better, and then come to a weekly azimuth chat that we have available to anybody can come and share some of those stories out loud and have someone else, they don't have to know you. Just listen and say, hey, it sounds like this, sounds like that. Or ⁓ find a friend, we call them advisors in the.
in the vector world, anybody that you trust just to sit down with for half an hour, an hour and say, can I just, can you help me kind of distill these themes? That's the traditional way. We also have a hack and you, don't know who's listening, but you might be afraid of AI and robots taking over the world. If that's you disregard this fast forward a minute, but we have designed a custom AI tool where what you can do is
put in your stories that you've annotated and written down and you can share those. Either you can type them. That's what I've done. Type them in. Here's the stories. I just type them. You can, if you're journaling, like in a physical workbook in a journal, you can take a picture of that and upload the picture and it'll read what you write. Or if you're really fancy, you can do a speak to text. Just push the button. This is all inside of chat GBT, which you would need an account for, which is free.
If that's barrier to you, again, skip it. But what we have done is customized this thing. And by the way, it's private. There's no access to your info. So don't worry about that part. It's all stays inside you and your little robot world. And it'll actually analyze and look for threads and themes. And it is crazy wise. is almost creepy when you do this. And then when it gave me back my kind of analysis of the top two things that drive me.
It was like, I don't know, you were watching me for the past 40 years of my life. How did you know that? How did it know? It analyzed what I said and looked for themes and threads. that's, again, you can do this exercise and spend an hour. You can actually do this exercise and spend weeks or you can do it real fast with ChanChi MBT. It'll tell you in about, you know, nine milliseconds. But the point is not just to get the info. The point is to really sit with it and try to process it and start.
Joe (13:27)
Mm-hmm.
Vector Accelerator (13:36)
bringing it up in conversation, start thinking about it every day so that it's useful for clarity. that's that's a you know, chapter one. What drives you? Chapter two is what guides you. And that's where we want to help you get some bearings on where you're at in your transition. You might traditionally think of your values, which is a part of this exercise. But we want to help you create more or less. It might be a little goofy, but a compass.
for you, North, South, East, West, a compass for you to reflect on what are the things that are gonna guide you? How do you wanna be treated? How do you wanna treat others? What are the things, the activities that fuel you? What are the things that are gonna distract you? And the fourth one is who are the people that can carry you through this transition well? And in the clarity of those four different categories, that ultimately turns into this.
This is what will guide you through this transition because if you're like everybody else in the world, when you're in transition, the thinking part of your brain tends to turn off and the survival part of your brain turns on. And if you know, because there's a lot at stake, you're you worried about your financial health, you're worried about what people are going to think about you. That's it's a threatening state. And so for most people, their ability to think really clearly
goes down and they're much more prone to make sort of gut level instinctual decisions to get out of this awkward feeling of being in the vulnerable state of transition and they'll make decisions for the wrong reasons and they'll end up regretting it not too far into the future like a few months maybe in a few days I shouldn't have done that I was operating out of a sense of fear or anxiety stress we don't want you to do that that's a terrible way to go through transition
And frankly, if you start looking at your LinkedIn profile, you start looking on like job boards, you can start thinking about interviewing, guarantee you if you haven't done this exercise, what guides you and put those things into place, you're probably gonna make some poor decisions. You're not gonna be thinking clearly. Joe, for your transition, what were the things in those realms that kind of helped ground you and guide you?
Joe (15:50)
Yeah.
On the values piece, which is part of it, not all of it, I think just starting right there because there's values that we aspire to and then there's values that we actually live out. I think a lot of times, and there's certain ones like maybe it's ethical, doing the right thing when nobody's looking, that's a value or loyalty. That's something that I lived in the military. So I want to pull that forward. Great.
But how about things that you admire in others and you want to aspire to, but you'd never really had the chance because you were locked over here in this job or career that was almost forced upon you in the military to some extent. So maybe it's a little bit of exploring of values or traits in people that you admire. And you're like, man, I think that's a good North star to aim for, right?
And then the second, I think it's out of the four, the fourth one was people. I know for me people, and it's funny because at the time I didn't like people, I didn't like people. But I actually went towards that and I'm talking about new names, new individuals broadening that network to really explore and figure out, okay, is that person really who they say they are?
Vector Accelerator (17:06)
You
Joe (17:27)
I like what they're doing on the outside, but how are they as people? And not that I'm chasing perfection or that I expect perfection in others, but there's something about certain people that just it's a connection. And you were one of those people, ⁓ Greg, Sean, certain individuals just really stood out as purpose-driven people, at least aligned with how I was aligned. And I realized I need to be around these folks. Not that I'm going to
be clones of them, but there's certain aspects that I think can help guide me in the direction I want to go. I can't do that alone. I'm just kind of flailing on my own, just kind of guessing and fishing where maybe there's no fish, right? So I think it's really important. At least for me, those are the two things that really stood out was seeing values and traits in others that I admired and realized, man, I want some of that. And actually I can choose.
Vector Accelerator (17:57)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. ⁓
Joe (18:26)
go for that. And the
other thing is who am I surrounding myself with? And realizing, man, I can actually belong to this crowd. Holy cow. That's pretty fascinating. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Vector Accelerator (18:30)
Yeah.
Yeah, new people, new tribe.
So what drives you? What guides you in the third question? Again, before you start looking at your resume, LinkedIn, Airbnb, and all that stuff, I believe we believe you need to do some soul searching and answer this question. What kind of life do you want to have? Because that's ultimately one of the biggest questions that's coming up as you transition. You may or may not have felt like you had a lot of choice in the matter.
for what happened to you in your military service, you might not even felt like you had a choice to enlist in the first place. You might've just felt like that's the track that you were on, and that was the kind of decision you had to make. And yet here you are, and you have maybe more freedom to choose than you ever have in the past. And so the question for you is, what kind of life do you wanna have? And the exercise is not to just make up some fantasy life to escape your current one, but we want you to look at three different perspectives of your life in the future.
like, I don't know if it's planning or whatever, it's like the plan that is the most likely life for you. What does that look like? And really, that's I don't want to get too like heady. But I remember I took physics in high school, and there was this concept of trajectory. And I think it was something like an object in motion will stay in motion the same kind of trajectory, you know, same path, same speed, unless it's active. So whatever that is, that's life. That's how life happens.
Joe (19:57)
show, whatever.
Vector Accelerator (20:04)
So whatever trajectory you're on, that's kind of plan A. So just map it out. Goes to Christmas future. If you stay on this path that you're on, if you just kind of like put your resume into a little AI tool and say, Hey, what am I qualified for? And where should I probably live based on what, you know, where my people are in my family and et cetera. ⁓ there's also that phrase, you're the sum total. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. It's kind of what you were just referring to. So based on who you spend time with, you kind of predict your future.
what your life is gonna be like. You could probably look in your family and be like, nah, I'm probably. So that's plan A. Plan B then would be, okay, if that first one is, let's say good, what's the better version of that? What is like, okay, if you're gonna stretch for something and it was gonna go really well, and not just professionally, but you personally, that's the kind of option B, door number two. Door number three, I don't know if you wanna call this the bridge to something else, but it is what could your life be like?
If and then fill in the blank if maybe you had different qualifications that might require some training or some education some credentials If maybe you had some other opportunities you met some other people If you learn how to deal with some of the stuff that you're dealing with I don't know things like addiction things like trauma from your past like Because the path that you're on unless you get kind of fix that stuff hit, you know face that stuff heal it You're likely going to carry it forward. So the bridge to this
door number three will be some version of, don't think that's possible right now, but there's something about imagining that that does something in my heart and my soul. And to spend some time actually imagining that, not to maybe frustrate you, but actually to be a mirror to you and say, is there actually another way to think about that, that third option for life? So your thoughts on that.
Joe (21:58)
You're taking me back to 2016 or 2015 actually when I started going through these similar type questions and the natural progression for me was maintain my TSSEI clearance, top secret clearance, maybe look at government work because I was pretty good at it, just continue it as a civilian, nothing wrong with it. It made sense. It was...
Going to put us in a certain part of the country most likely the East Coast where it was really cold and I just kind of drew that line and I sat there and looked at it and it didn't sit well with me and Then I took home taking home to my wife and said what do you think? She's like, you know, don't like I I don't like the cold yeah, yeah DC area, Virginia and That's the next natural aggression so but it was really important to write it down and just stare at it Even though you might think it's what's obvious duh
Vector Accelerator (22:38)
Yeah.
Joe (22:53)
write it down and stare at it. It's different when it's like on paper for some reason. I don't know. ⁓ And ⁓ so there's that. And then there was the B, which is, man, what if, right? And that'd be kind of cool. And I remember drawing lines to one of my favorite aspects because of the first question that we asked. One of my favorite aspects inside the military is when I got to teach. And the topic was leadership.
Vector Accelerator (23:06)
Mm-hmm.
Joe (23:23)
And just facilitating with the room, not that I had to have all the answers, but I was able to tap into the brilliance in the room and just kind of learn how to work the room. So everybody left with a positive light. I love that aspect. And I'm like, man, maybe, maybe I could get a gig in teaching, but then also not just teaching anything like specifically leadership, which then led me down to that third question. I think I need to go back to school. And I found a program.
Vector Accelerator (23:47)
Yeah.
Joe (23:50)
Master's degree, focus on executive leadership, where I learned a ton. There was a huge gaps in my knowledge where I saw what I did in the military and I could draw the correlations from that to business. I'm like, boom, so cool. That didn't mean that I was gonna get a job in leadership development right away, but it gave me several things. It gave me goals to go for, which I think we all need goals. Otherwise you're just kind of just as we'll be on island.
Vector Accelerator (24:17)
Yeah.
Joe (24:19)
I think it's just part of human nature to move forward. And so for me, I needed that. I needed those targets, but not necessarily knowing where I was going to lead, but just knowing this is the right path to go because it makes sense and still pursuing all these other options. And I think that's the thing is move forward. And when you go back, just in my head, when I go back to question A or sorry, pathway A, it just kind of felt again, just for me, not that it's wrong for anybody else.
But for myself, it felt mediocre. And I looked at my life and I said, I don't think I've ever strived to be mediocre in my entire life. Why am I gonna start now? Right? Yeah.
Vector Accelerator (24:56)
Yeah.
Hang it up. What about anything on the personal front?
Joe (25:03)
Hang it
On the personal front, there's so many things that I think... ⁓
I at the time when I was transitioning, I really did put the professional side more on the forefront for the longest time. I think that's for those that are listening, ⁓ that's okay. You know, all these things that we're offering for you, it's your life, it's your ⁓ chapter book, if you will, ⁓ of moving forward. And it's going to be so different from
Vector Accelerator (25:21)
Mm-hmm.
Joe (25:45)
my examples, I didn't find, I guess, personal development until way later. ⁓ But I think there was also timing of things. So in the end, when I look back at some of my original journaling, there are aspects of there. I remember writing down creativity, not knowing what that meant. Flash forward 10 years later, and I'm like, man, there's all kinds of creativity coming out now. And you're smiling because you know what I'm talking about. But it's like, it's like,
Vector Accelerator (26:04)
Hmm. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Joe (26:14)
this journaling process is important because even if it doesn't mean that it's gonna be a plant that flourishes in the moment, and you're just planting seeds, just keep planting seeds and just think about the possibilities. Yeah, yeah.
Vector Accelerator (26:28)
So wrapping this up, what drives you, what guides you, what kind of life do you want to have? Those are, I would say, critical questions you have to answer before you start interviewing, before you start saying really yes to a life that maybe is not right for you. The good news is you can do these three questions through this course very quickly. And you can get answers very quickly that will actually yield
better results for your life. Also good news, we have made this free. So the barrier, the cost is one, I guess, trusting us that we're not just talking out our asses, two, that this would actually this work even if it's difficult, even if it feels at first, I don't know what I'm getting out of this or I just need to make money.
that you would trust that there's something on the other side of a few calories, a few minutes, maybe even a few hours that would yield better results for your life and the people around you. And we think you're worth it, which is why this whole thing exists. And we challenge you to give it a try. So the Vector short course, let's just say it's now available. And as you're going through it, if you're like, gosh, I need more, great news. There's a longer course. Please do more.
and come to the Azimuth chats. We have three of them right now throughout the week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We're going to eventually have one every single day of the week, probably a couple every single day of the week. So you can show up, talk about this real stuff that really matters. And you can keep going through this as many times as you want, which I know veterans like to do that sometimes. They just like to go from course to course to transition. You good news. You can just stay in a loop inside Vector Accelerator forever. Keep coming back.
Joe (27:49)
Yes.
Vector Accelerator (28:18)
There's actually a couple of guys that just keep coming to every aspect chat. They graduated. ⁓ you're an athlete. Yeah.
Joe (28:22)
They do. But it's awesome though. There's some good nuggets from them every
time.
Vector Accelerator (28:30)
So sign up, your life matters. You get one chance to do this transition well, might as well do it the best you can. And we know this works, so come test it and we'll see you inside of an Azimuth chat. Thanks to you, Joe.
Joe (28:44)
Thanks to you, bud.
