Scott Schimmel (00:02)
What up, Joe? Welcome to another episode, the Vector Accelerator podcast. I'm Scott Schimmel here with Joe Lara. And we had the tremendous opportunity last week to jump in with ⁓ over 500 veterans per day for an hour each. It's a partnership that we have with Allegiant Vets that we continue to shout out here, especially the CEO, Marcus Haney. it's ⁓ folks going through the SkillBridge program. So these are, from my understanding, active duty.
SkillBridge interns who were thinking about their transition. And we were invited in, you and I, Joe, to talk for an hour each day, each morning, with all these folks about how they're approaching transition. So one thing I think comes up in transition is the question, what am I gonna do? What's your plan? And that has a very finite fixed answer. Is it this or that? Are you gonna go into school?
Joe Lara (00:32)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Schimmel (01:01)
if you're gonna go to school, what are you gonna study? If you're going to a job, what's your industry? What comp, you know. So they're very like fixed points. And that's, think, the focus of the question. But you and I have found that if you kind of fixate on those questions and like where the downstream effects will be, you will likely miss out on making informed choices about what you do. So enter Vector Accelerator where we wanna help you
answer that question by going through a process to get clear about your identity, about your purpose, and about your community after the military. And that is not as simple as taking an assessment or a test or plugging some answers into an app and they'll tell you what to do. Although you can do that and there's good information that can come from that. We have found that actually almost like circling around that question and looking at it from different perspectives is just a better route. And it's not endless.
You don't have to take years to get to clarity. What we actually promise is in three short modules, you can, and it works. Fortunately, we have Dr. Evie Trevino, who's our in-house researcher. She's a quantitative psychologist who has taught us how to measure qualitative impact, how to measure that this thing actually delivers what we promise. It delivers clarity, and it does. And in addition to those three exercises, there are a whole host of other perspectives, other vantage points to look at.
that decision, what are going to do that will help you be more informed, more conscious, more clear about what you're doing. So, man, that was a long preamble to get to the of this one, which is when you think about what you're going to do, it's going to include work for 90 % of the people. Some people are going to go to retirement and just kind of volunteer and do stuff, but there's going to be work involved. And what we have found is helpful is to actually think about your perspective about work.
Joe Lara (02:41)
That's good.
you
Scott Schimmel (03:00)
And so what we got to do for about 45 minutes was lead a bunch of veterans to think through their perspective about work. What is work for is kind of the underlying question. What to you, what is work all about? And I don't know if you've used silly phrases, Joe, like I have when people ask me how I'm I don't know, I'm just working for the man. I'll just say these things like, we're hardly working or working hard or, you know, every day.
just grinding, I'm busy. So I have found that these little phrases can often really kind of share, symbolize these deeper thoughts that we have about work. And the first question that we're asking veterans, I'm gonna ask you now is when you were growing up, what did you learn? What did you kind of absorb about what work is from the people raising you, your community, your culture, your family? What did you learn about work?
Joe Lara (03:56)
Yeah, you're so right. Because I think we kind of stick to cliches and don't even really consider work. It's just something that we just do, right? It's just the do thing. But how we do it, that's, think the root of some of these questions is how do we approach it? And so I remember being asked this question years ago by you in a room with, I think at the time, 15 other veterans and...
the immediate thing that came to mind was I learned about work ethic because it just seemed growing up in my house, we weren't well off and, ⁓ my father had multiple jobs and so he was never home trying to make ends meet, do those things that, you know, he felt were necessary. And, my mom worked just as hard, but in the home. so there's this constant cycle of, of busyness, it.
⁓ it was still a mystery as a kid, but I just observed there's a lot of adults working really hard. Eventually I'll have to do that as well. I don't know when, but I'll have to step into that role myself. So that was the one thing that I remember vividly writing out in my journal was work ethic. And when I thought about how I approached my military career, it was very much the same way. and you know, there's, pay grades in the military with
junior enlisted, senior enlisted officers, but it's a pay grade. And, ⁓ and I could be a certain pay grade, get paid the exact same amount as the other guy. But my work ethic is just 10 times 10 X and, you still get paid the same. There's no like bonuses or anything like that. Right. per se. So there are times where people would say, dude, chill out. Like, what, like, you know, what's that for?
Scott Schimmel (05:36)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Interesting. Yeah.
Yeah, what's that for?
Joe Lara (05:53)
And so phrases like at certain times, certain people, are you brown nosing? Or like, no, I'm not talking to the man. I'm just working hard. First one in last one out kind of mentality. And I got a point to my upbringing, you know, and I never really thought about it until that question came up.
Scott Schimmel (06:00)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I started to think about it more as a dad than I think I did for myself growing up. Although I got very similar messages as you. When my son had his, I think his second job as a teenager, I asked him one day how it's going at work. And he was just sharing that he was working with a bunch of other teenage boys. And as I'm not unfamiliar to this, but it sounded like what became the norm for them was how can we
pull off working the least amount possible, you know? And he was sharing that and I just, the dad part of me started to rise up of like, well, you you're gonna get fired. Like, obviously you're gonna get fired. And then there's another part of me that's like, well, that's actually a good thing. You better be fired now and learn these lessons as a teenager versus later on. But what I ended up telling him was just a story about myself and my first or second job as a teenager.
Joe Lara (06:57)
Hmm
Scott Schimmel (07:05)
when I did the same thing, I was trying to do whatever I could do to avoid working hard, which was antithetical to my family's upbringing. Like it was, I don't know if it's, is it Puritan work ethic, Protestant work, whatever it was, I got it. Like good people work hard all the time. Good people do not rest. Good people do not play necessarily. Yes. So I told him the story about how when I was a teenager, I had to like finally realize that I felt terrible all the time at work. I hated it. I felt horrible.
Joe Lara (07:19)
Right, yeah. It's like a badge of honor kind of thing.
Scott Schimmel (07:34)
And then one day I just got this idea to have an experiment to see how diligent I could be. Could I, and I was working kind of like a sweatshop for this sunglass repair factory, bright lights, 5 a.m. shift as a teenager every day in the summer, 40 hours a week. And one day I was like, I wonder if I can, what's the record? How many of these things can I do in a day? I wonder if I can beat it. And that turned on something inside me where I just realized at the end of that day and the day after that, the end of that summer, it just felt better.
to crush it, to work hard. And I remember an older guy came up to me during a break. He must've been in his 40s or 50s. I don't know, he was a grownup. And he came up to me and said, hey, I know what you're doing. We're all talking about you. You need to settle down. Like you're making us all look bad. And I didn't, I mean, in hindsight, I wish I had been cooler. I was just like, I took that on as, I'm gonna do, you know, twice as much if you guys are talking about me.
Joe Lara (08:05)
Mmm.
Scott Schimmel (08:31)
But I wish I'd been like, yeah, you're right, dude. don't want to make you, this is your career. I'm just here for the summer. Anyways, I told my son and just said, you know, you're going to have to learn your version of what we're dealing with in this episode. What is your perspective about work? I've just happened to find that it feels better to give it my all, whatever that thing is. And fundamentally, though, it's all the same stuff. You have to, I believe, reflect on what work is all about for you.
Joe Lara (08:38)
Right.
Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (08:59)
because if you don't reflect on it, chances are you're gonna absorb and adopt the people around you, whether that's from your family or the military. And I think as we did this with the veterans last week, you're probably pulling in a mixture of those two philosophies, something you got from your family, something you got from the people you worked with in military, maybe a little bit of media or shows you've watched like The Office. ⁓ And then ultimately, I think you have a choice. These things...
Our philosophy, perspective about work is not fixed. It's not genetic. This is perspective. And so we ran this exercise that we have on the screen if you're watching. If not, we'll put this in the show notes. ⁓ Five of the most common themes about what work is all about. And then we invited people to vote. And ⁓ we'll start from the fifth. Maybe you do the five and we'll go four, three, two, one, back and forth. Maybe you can kind of explain what each one means.
Joe Lara (09:41)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so starting from five, work is something I get to do. I love that word get a gift to express my unique identity and perspective. It's interesting that, you know, if you're looking at the bars, this is the one where least people. It came in dead last.
Scott Schimmel (10:11)
And lost. Yeah.
Joe Lara (10:15)
I remember
one of the veterans said, what the hell is that? know, I would even get to do like, got to, there's no, you know, it's just, it's just work and, ⁓ and it's fascinating. You know, I wanted to say something, but I didn't, I cannot held back. Cause I felt let's just let the veterans stay in that moment. And it's okay. Even if I said something, I don't think the lesson would sink in it's just, but, the lesson I wanted to share is.
Scott Schimmel (10:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe Lara (10:45)
I wouldn't it be amazing if that's where we all were. Right. I mean, think, imagine a world where veterans said that phrase work is something I get to do. Man, dude, that, organization or that team is going to thrive. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (10:48)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't,
I think I got this a little bit. I certainly adopted this as ⁓ entering my career. was like, either work is going to be this slog and a J-O-B, or it's what you kind of like, what if it wasn't? What if it was something else? What if it's something I wanted to do? And that's the fourth one that ⁓ ranked in terms of lowest was work is my chance to make a difference in the world.
Joe Lara (11:14)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
you
Mmm.
Scott Schimmel (11:32)
I don't think the point is to necessarily parse each one of these things out. But a bunch of people obviously identified with that as a statement, that idea, that concept. Work is a chance to make a difference in the world. And again, I would say the same thing you just said about number five. Wouldn't that be great if that's how people saw work? Because I think it's possible. There are people who certainly do this. They think of, I'm going to work to improve other people's lives.
I guess I'm a little bit surprised that that's not higher for the veteran community. Maybe I'm just speaking at a turn here. I view you all as a civilian. I view you all who are like, yeah, I'm raising my hand to serve when me, self-centered civilian is just sitting here earning money for myself. I guess I was a little surprised that this wasn't higher.
Joe Lara (12:24)
Yeah, I'm not. just, just to be honest, cause this is a, I mean, this is what veterans do. We're honest. I think, I think it's okay to say that that's not necessarily, uh, what pulls us all into the military is man. want to serve my country. Maybe like right after nine 11, or there's a world event that just causes a feeling and emotional charge to be patriotic all of a sudden. And once in a while it'll come across veterans who.
Scott Schimmel (12:40)
Yeah.
Joe Lara (12:50)
come from a long family tradition and expectation to serve. ⁓ Maybe parents are like, you know, we're once served as well and they're like, Hey, you have no choice. You're going to serve. So it's kind of embedded in them. ⁓ I did it to escape El Paso, Texas. Like that's why, that's why I joined, but I will say you do evolve and realize what you're doing is bigger than you. And that, that's a, that's a later lesson. I,
Scott Schimmel (12:56)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe Lara (13:18)
That one makes a lot of sense to me. I also get what you're saying, but the honest conversation inside the military is like, shoot, I was trying to get away from so and so or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (13:20)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. All
right, number three.
Joe Lara (13:31)
Work is something I just have to do it is a necessary evil and I gotta say it's kind of refreshing that that's not number one, right? Because I think if we look at the data that all these whether it's still you know, I don't even know what collects them now Gallup or whatever. They're always talking about people that are disengaged at work and do not get me wrong There's some jobs in the military that just completely suck like they're just hard to do But
Scott Schimmel (13:39)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Joe Lara (14:00)
The fact that it's somewhere in the middle gives me hope for that this group is out for something other than themselves, which we'll see as we go up further up. But yeah.
Scott Schimmel (14:07)
Yeah.
that gets us to number two, work is something that enables me to live the rest of my life. And I think that for sure makes sense. That especially back to your point of being honest, yeah, work is a means to an end. In other words, that's a nicer way to say it's a means to an end. It's income and something I have to do to do things outside my work. And that is a part of what we want to help veterans explore that in transition, I think too often.
Joe Lara (14:19)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Schimmel (14:36)
What is your job going to be? What is your, you know, education path? That's that's such a ⁓ limited lens for what life is all about. And I think you and I cared just as much or even more if someone says, I'm just going to get this job that pays the bills so that I can whatever it is, raise my boys. I'm thinking of guys like Kirk, do they someone who Charlie Matranga is like, I want to spend more time with my family. I want to go camp. I want to, you know.
Joe Lara (15:01)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Schimmel (15:04)
fish like they see other parts of life that make life meaningful outside of work. Not everybody can kind of shove that into you know an eight to five sort of thing. So I don't mind that being number two. Like you said I'm glad it's not number three.
Joe Lara (15:21)
Yeah. And then that last one, work is my opportunity to provide for the people I care about. And that one obviously makes sense, right? I I made a choice to leave nonprofit work to work in a corporate environment, knowing that it would pay more because I had to provide for my kids going to college. Like those are adult decisions that we all have to make.
Scott Schimmel (15:43)
Yeah, and very noble.
Joe Lara (15:45)
Yeah. And we don't want anybody to apologize for that. Like don't, don't apologize. Hey, I need to make money for my family. Yes, you should. It's your responsibility. ⁓ but what I, what I think, you know, the mission that you and I are on, as I look at these five, I would say one, two, four, and five is what we believe can be achieved at the same time.
Scott Schimmel (15:49)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe Lara (16:10)
Could we possibly
care, you know, do a job where we are able to provide for our family, people that we love the most, prepare for the rest of our lives, you know, work really hard, earn a good livelihood, you know, but also at the same time, feel that we're contributing to the world in a way that not only makes us feel good, but there's an actual result that other people can feel themselves. And then also have a sense that
Scott Schimmel (16:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Joe Lara (16:38)
Man, it's Sunday night and again, I'm excited. I get to do this with people I love on Monday morning. that, that is the mission. That's the vision of Vector Accelerator.
Scott Schimmel (16:40)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I remember years ago working with a guy, he and I were both working in a nonprofit and that required us to also raise money for the nonprofit and for our own salary and everything. And he would use this phrase of how much, how much rent do have to pay for the view that you want? And I think the perspective was like, what, is the view you want? And oftentimes the best views cost more.
So the view in this case might be when he and I were working there was life impact. Like I wanted to be really close to that. I didn't want to be kind of upstream for making a difference. I wanted to be, I wanted to see it. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to be with people. And so that in that case, okay, what's the rent you're willing to pay? Is it do things you don't want to do like raise money and ask people for money? it ⁓ do something else so you can do this? So what is the rent you're willing to pay for the view that you want?
Joe Lara (17:28)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Schimmel (17:45)
And what we want for everyone is to figure out what is the view that you want, not someone else for you. And don't just assume that whatever the MOS says that you got to go and do that. Whatever the resume says, you got to just go, I guess that's what I am. Like we want you to actually think that through so that you're really clear. So if this has been helpful, love to hear from you. Give us a little subscribe, thumbs up something on the podcast and reach out to us if you want this as like a worksheet.
happy to send it along to you. And if you are working with veterans in a veteran service organization or transition program or bringing in veterans into the place that you work, reach out to us too. We'd to figure out how to connect with you and give you some of the resources that we have so you can join forces with us in making a big difference in the world of veterans. So Joe, until we meet again.
Joe Lara (18:37)
See you.
