Joe Miller (00:01.774)
 Hey, Jeff, I'm really glad to have you in Titans of Transition podcast with me. You know, I came across you on LinkedIn and got your face looked really familiar. We talked a little bit about had we met in the past. I'm not so sure we have, but I was really intrigued by your whole Lewis and Clark interest and your Lewis and Clark leadership. And I thought maybe, you know, in keeping with.
 
 transitions and how we like to talk about transition stories and lessons learned. Why don't we just get right to it and talk about this whole Lewis and Clark thing? And how did you get into doing what you're doing today?
 
 Jeff (00:42.065)
 That is a that's a story at 20, 25 years into making Joe. So I fell in love with this story of Lewis and Clark back in 20 in 2000, I guess. And just something about this.
 
 adventure that these guys go on in the early 1800s. You know, they carry this map and there's one word written across the West, conjectural. They had no idea what they were going to encounter, what they were going to see, and they went anyway. They went anyway. That's the...
 
 Joe Miller (01:21.986)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (01:25.107)
 just to me incredible, but I fell in love with that story and started reading and studying about it. And by happenstance,
 
 I had a boss at the time who said, well, you know what you ought to do? You ought to look for the leadership lessons in the Lewis and Clark story. And I'm like, Ron, that's 200 years ago. We're in business today. How could it ever apply? But I started rereading some of the books and their journals specifically. And he was right. There was a lot of leadership lessons in there. over the course of my career, my background is IT.
 
 Joe Miller (02:05.624)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (02:06.101)
 45 years in information technology, but woven through there was this love for this Lewis and Clark story, for telling the story. It helped me overcome my fear of public speaking because I'd get up and talk about Lewis and Clark. And they always tell you to talk about something that you're passionate about. So it really, it started back in 2000, but then over time it became more and more
 
 of what I do today.
 
 Joe Miller (02:39.118)
 So just digging into the history and the whole story and then doing this application to sort of leadership lessons, you built a framework off of it probably. And you have a book, right? Coming.
 
 Jeff (02:55.125)
 I have a short ebook that I wrote several years ago called Everything I Learned About Leadership I Learned From Lewis and Clark. I have a new book coming out in May of this year that is related to the Lewis and Clark Trail. It's called Uncharted Moments. it's the story. So my wife and I traveled the Lewis and Clark Trail for like six or seven years in the early.
 
 Well, 2003 to 2009 timeframe, it was the bicentennial of their expedition. And our goal was to be where they were 200 years to the day after they were there. And we were fairly successful over that time period. But the book is more about
 
 talk about transitions, it's more about where we are today in our life and how those adventures formed the foundation for us to be able to do the things we're doing today. Not to bring anybody down, but my wife has a disease and so I am her full-time caregiver. And so.
 
 gave up my company other than my writing and some Lewis and Clark leadership things that I do that we'll talk about to transition into being a full-time caregiver. And the book is really the story of that foundation of our relationship and how it built through those uncharted moments of those early journeys that we went on.
 
 Joe Miller (04:38.638)
 So that's the second book you're talking about at the moment. Yeah. Just unpacking. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (04:40.873)
 Yes, yes. The first book was just a small little e-book on leadership traits. And you know what that ended up doing? I wrote it, didn't even really publish it. It's on my LinkedIn profile. People can download it. Someone, a woman, Jean Siegel, found that she was wanting her company does experiential leadership development programs.
 
 They have a huge program that they do out in Gettysburg all summer long and they wanted to build one on Lewis and Clark. So she reached out and asked would I be interested in helping to build a leadership program.
 
 based on that story and it's like, oh heck yes. So we started writing that in about 2018 and launched it in 2021 and I've been one of the primary facilitators of that program. We bring leaders and aspiring leaders from all over the country to the Schamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington on the Columbia River. And we spend three days
 
 really dissecting your leadership and putting it together again in what we call a new way forward. So we use the story of Lewis and Clark to weave through there about what made them successful 220 some years ago and how can you take those lessons and apply them to your leadership today.
 
 Joe Miller (06:16.568)
 we if it's okay, why don't we talk about Lewis and Clark? How did they
 
 decide to work together? What was the original inspiration? Was there one or the other that really drove it? how did they, you you talked earlier on about how they just sort of launched out there without like a detailed plan. It was more of just a general discovery and risk taking. how did they get together in the first place? Where was the vision for?
 
 Jeff (06:48.917)
 Well, they knew each other from the military. Merriwether Lewis served under William Clark in the military. Clark ends up retiring to help take care of his older brother, George Rogers Clark, another historical figure. Merriwether Lewis became the private secretary for President Thomas Jefferson.
 
 And it was really Jefferson's vision of, let's find this Northwest Passage. Let's explore what became the Louisiana Purchase. At the time that they're doing a lot of the planning, it still was Spanish and French territory. But it was Jefferson's vision to form this group of soldiers, if you will, that would
 
 Take on that expedition and what I found really interesting Joe was the first thing that Merriweather Lewis did was he sat down and wrote a letter to his old army buddy William Clark and said hey I want you to be co-captain on this expedition
 
 So imagine in today's business environment, Your boss gives you this great new promotion. And the first thing you do is you say, hey, I want this other person to be my co-supervisor, my co-manager, my co-CIO. But that's what he did. Because I think.
 
 A couple of things, I think he knew that the skills that William Clark brought to the table complemented his own skills, Lewis's own skills. Lewis was a visionary, he was a very eloquent writer, he was very disciplined. Clark was more of the outdoorsman. He was living in Kentucky, Indiana at the time. So he brought some of those skills that maybe Merriwether Lewis didn't necessarily
 
 Jeff (08:43.327)
 have. And they spent a good several months planning of what they were going to do. But when you're taking a trip into the unknown, how do you plan? Right? You try to imagine the circumstances that you might encounter, just like we do planning today in business. We think we know what next year is going to be like, and usually by January 15th, that's all blown up and it's all different.
 
 Joe Miller (09:11.054)
 Yeah, exactly.
 
 Jeff (09:12.693)
 So they set out and they build this group, build this amazing team of people, 32 other men and one woman, Chicago, Wea, go on this 8,000 mile journey across the continent to the Pacific Ocean and return alive.
 
 Joe Miller (09:35.437)
 and return alive. So that's a major goal met. You know, I think it's really interesting. And one of the, I guess, the earliest lessons I learned in my leadership journey was not to think that I had to go it alone, nor should I. you know, often people, launch into a new level of their career and they're excited about it. I know I was early on.
 
 Jeff (09:36.637)
 Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes.
 
 Joe Miller (10:05.454)
 And I was kind of over the end of my skis, you know, in terms of my personal awareness of what I could handle, what I couldn't. And later on, I realized I really was ill equipped in certain areas. And it was a real it was difficult for me, but so freeing and so beneficial when I realized that partnering even with people who reported to me and turning things over and acknowledging
 
 Jeff (10:10.497)
 huh.
 
 Jeff (10:30.943)
 Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (10:34.552)
 that I really needed that person's gifting and skills to make the success of the overall endeavor really happen. That was a big thing for, and people talk about, well, it's obvious, you you ask for help when you need it, but especially, you know, I was heading up IT as well, CIO too. And you know, when you're owning your career, you kind of a little bit full of yourself or can be, I know I was and,
 
 Jeff (10:41.897)
 That's a huge step. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (11:01.683)
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (11:03.18)
 So that was a big unlock.
 
 Jeff (11:06.473)
 Yeah, well, and you're trying to impress the hires up, right? So you don't want them to know that you don't know what you're doing. So it's hard. It's hard to ask for that help. And I love the old adage, know, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Right. You need to surround yourself with smart, smart people. And I think that's part of what when you unpack this team that Lewis and Clark built.
 
 Joe Miller (11:10.659)
 Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (11:14.614)
 Right, posers.
 
 Joe Miller (11:23.777)
 Yeah, exactly.
 
 Jeff (11:36.435)
 They hired for skill, they hired for character. They needed hunters, they needed boatsmen, they needed blacksmiths. All skills that they did not have themselves, but knew that they would need that going forward. And that's who they were pulling in to form what became known to history as the Core of Discovery.
 
 Joe Miller (11:56.953)
 Yeah, I mean, I think people tend to understand that. They do the project management thing. Where it gets a little bit gray is where they think they should have the skills and the abilities. And then they're a little bit more, it's kind of more what I was talking about. But yeah, on that kind of endeavor, you absolutely have to identify those kinds of
 
 Jeff (12:09.961)
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (12:18.185)
 Well, to that end about the skills that... So the way I encourage people to look at it is understand your strengths and weaknesses, right? Know where those are. And the saying is maximize your strengths and make your weaknesses irrelevant. But I think you also have to look at your weaknesses and you look at them through this lens.
 
 What of those weaknesses can you outsource to someone else to perform? Because there's probably some weaknesses on that list that you can't really outsource. My own story, I hated public speaking, hated it with a passion. You know, I'd be up the night before, sick to my stomach, palms sweaty and all that stuff. But I knew that in order for me to become a CIO,
 
 I had to be able to get up in front of people and talk. And I couldn't outsource that to somebody else because if I have this great vision and I asked someone else to deliver that vision to the team, who are they going to follow? They're going to follow that person. So I had to quote unquote get over it.
 
 And as I mentioned earlier, I use the story of Lewis and Clark to help me get over that fear of public speaking by going to rotary groups all over the state of Indiana talking about Lewis and Clark. Getting the reps in.
 
 Joe Miller (13:47.097)
 Getting the reps in. Yep, yep, yeah. So that's a great thread, which I imagine is part of your content, part of your teaching and your books. Is there another thread that comes to mind in terms of lessons from Lewis and Clark?
 
 Jeff (14:05.119)
 So when I look at that expedition and the reason that it was successful, it really began with that vision that Thomas Jefferson had in handing that off to others to execute. I love to say a vision without someone else to execute it is just a dream.
 
 You have to have a team that can do that. He handed it off to Lewis and Clark, and they brought this team on board. So they spent months training their team. From day one, they started training. As soon as they camped for that first winter, they spent that winter loading and unloading the boats, because they knew they would have to be doing that forever.
 
 overcoming obstacles, what things do you need to help you to be able to overcome obstacles? You can prepare, you prepare as much as you can, but then you have to build this environment of trust. Trust of the team and the leader, trust in the leader of the team and trust in each other. Sometimes to overcome obstacles you have to be innovative.
 
 look for different ways of doing things. And then a word they wouldn't have used back then that we use today is agile. And I mean lowercase a, right? You have to have that agility to pivot. When there's a grizzly bear chasing you, you don't have time to follow the plan, right? You just run. So.
 
 Joe Miller (15:30.05)
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (15:39.902)
 You
 
 Jeff (15:43.795)
 Those are all threads that weave through this as that. And then, you know, it's the other thing that doesn't get enough part of the story told of Lewis and Clark is they are not successful without the tribes of Native Americans that they encounter. The Native Americans were welcoming. They helped them.
 
 They help feed them. help them to understand the path ahead. Just time and time again, they get through a difficult situation through the help of the Native Americans. And today, business, we'd call that our ecosystem of partners, right? To use a fancy term, but that's really what they built was an ecosystem of partners.
 
 Joe Miller (16:32.632)
 Kind of similar to kind of the first thing we pulled on in that it's maybe helped them to address things they needed to respond to once they were in it, you know, and recognize the need and the fact that they weren't resourced to address it. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of like those major challenges hit to be willing to reach out and to get help, get other partners.
 
 Jeff (16:46.067)
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
 Jeff (16:53.097)
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (17:02.722)
 Yeah, that's really, really interesting. In your own, and I don't want to pry, but in your own challenge right now with your wife's health, does any of these things we've talked about so far, do you feel any of those kind of applied and helped you be equipped to deal with this curveball that you've both been hit with?
 
 Jeff (17:23.381)
 Absolutely. our mantra is this is not the retirement we dreamed of. Right? But all of those things really, really begin to apply. We have to have a strong team around us, family, friends, professionals. We have to be prepared.
 
 We don't know really from day to day what obstacles are going to be in front of us. So you build some resilience because you've overcome previous obstacles and you keep reminding each other of that. You fall back on the relationship that you have with this other person as you try to laugh through some of the experiences and cry together during some of the experiences. But then that concept that we were just talking about,
 
 ecosystem of partners, healthcare providers, and doctors, and nurses, and physical therapists are all part of our world and our environment, helping us to overcome the obstacles that are in front of us.
 
 Joe Miller (18:27.502)
 Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (18:33.358)
 You said something really interesting there, Jeff. And that was the.
 
 kind of the look back idea to take encouragement into going forward. So reminding yourself of what challenges you have overcome in order to sort of power or embolden you to take courage to move forward. Can you talk about that a little bit?
 
 Jeff (18:44.765)
 Resilience. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (18:55.221)
 Yes. Well, it's one of the ways that...
 
 Maybe the only way that you can really develop resilience is by understanding obstacles or challenges that you've overcome in the past. In the Lewis and Clark program that I helped teach, we use a tool called the four S's. So you just think of a quadrant. there's, know, quadrant, there's four sections. You know, there's...
 
 Now, off the top of my head, I won't be able to remember all the S's, but there's strategic behavior, there's supportive people, there's solution-seeking behavior, all of those things. So what we encourage the class to do, the participants to do, is sit down with that matrix, that quadrant, and think about a problem that you've overcome in your personal life.
 
 and then go through each one of those squares and just write what comes to mind. One of them, one of the squares is a word we don't use often anymore, sagacity, sage wisdom, sagacity. I had to look it up when I first encountered it.
 
 Joe Miller (20:11.502)
 Thank you for defining it. was at a loss.
 
 Jeff (20:15.997)
 Believe it not, Lewis and Clark use that word. It's in their journals, but it's sage wisdom. So for us today, that might be a meme, one of those adventure posters that you hang on your office. It might be a song lyric. It might be a Bible verse, whatever that is. It's that sage piece of wisdom that you fell back on during that time. So you've got those four quadrants that you think through.
 
 Then the next step is to think about a challenge or adversity that you faced as a team. And you go through that same exercise of filling out the quadrants. And what that's doing is it's building that memory muscle, that mental model of, hey, we got through those things before. We can get through that next thing.
 
 And that's really where that resilience comes from in people is, you know, if you've never had a challenge, never had an adversity, it's awful daunting to face one for the first time.
 
 Joe Miller (21:18.702)
 I've never had that framework in mind or model of the four quadrants, but I have used this myself to get over challenges in the past. And I remember talking to other people about I used to call it the rear view mirror, the power of the rear view mirror. And some people immediately jumped to, you know, you should never look back. You should always be looking forward and kind of miss the point. And it really having those things. I love this idea, Jeff.
 
 Jeff (21:32.849)
 Mm-hmm. Yes.
 
 Joe Miller (21:48.057)
 having the ability to have that muscle memory, the mental muscle memory of remembering examples. Because when you're in the thick of or the heat of battle, in the heat of battle, you need that to be right there. If you're sort of lost and floundering and you don't have that fabric and that framework in mind, it can be a little bit
 
 Jeff (22:01.684)
 No
 
 Jeff (22:06.217)
 Yes.
 
 Joe Miller (22:16.408)
 hard to take courage and move forward.
 
 Jeff (22:17.267)
 Yeah. That's why one of the things I tell leaders and aspiring leaders all the time is journaling. That concept of sitting down with pen and paper and journaling is one of the most powerful leadership tools. right at your fingertips and not a lot of people use it. But if you look across leaders in all kinds of sectors, chances are they
 
 Journal or at least have journaled in their life because that's where you capture some of those things We're talking about how I was faced with this challenge Here's how I overcame it you you write those things down in the moment in the day, right and and One of the one of the beautiful things about journaling is It it's evergreen and what I mean by that is you go back and reread an old journal The lessons are different
 
 Joe Miller (23:14.734)
 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (23:16.725)
 because you're different. The circumstances are different. And you can pull out new lessons from what you wrote 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
 
 Joe Miller (23:26.03)
 Journaling is a huge thing. I have done it intensively in the past. I don't do it as often today as I used to when I was working. But I would say that recently, I kind of got some teaching picked up on some knowledge around the whole idea of how much you can maintain in your memory as humans and how we're not wired to have this
 
 long contextual arc. We talk a lot about AI and its limited context window and all this other stuff. But it's really true for us. essentially what you're doing is you're creating your second brain. And we did it on paper for years. Now, lot of people actually do it into electronic format and partner with AI to pull in. You've got to be a little careful about that.
 
 Jeff (24:04.084)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (24:09.821)
 That's right. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (24:18.377)
 Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (24:21.486)
 Pull insights, pull insights out. And I think it's very powerful not to try to rely on something that you weren't really designed to have. Even Einstein, I think this is a real quote, approximately. He said something along the lines, I don't really try to remember anything I can look up or something like that. Which at first you think, Einstein? What? And it's just kind of like,
 
 Jeff (24:31.061)
 Right.
 
 Jeff (24:42.773)
 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds familiar, yeah, it sounds right.
 
 Joe Miller (24:49.834)
 just recognizing the limitations of our capacities and putting into place and into normal practice things that that augment our abilities. Yeah, I just love that. So that's definitely a piece that I would say I don't recommend enough to people I coach is to journal. I would say it's really a good practice because you forget you forget these learnings.
 
 Jeff (25:08.457)
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Jeff (25:13.513)
 Yeah. When I had my coaching business, was the, when they signed on to have me as their, as their coach, I gave them a journal. And each, each time we would meet, they would have a journaling assignment between now and then. Yeah. Now, many of them probably did it the night before we were meeting again, maybe five minutes before we were meeting again.
 
 Joe Miller (25:25.036)
 Wow.
 
 Joe Miller (25:32.7)
 I like that.
 
 Joe Miller (25:37.742)
 Yeah, well, I mean, it's that much more often than they would have, I guess.
 
 Jeff (25:42.906)
 Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
 
 Joe Miller (25:46.232)
 Yeah, it's more about the practice, I suppose. So you said you had a book coming up. Do have a title for it yet? Did you already tell us that?
 
 Jeff (25:52.233)
 Yes. It is called Uncharted Moments, Love, Legacy, and the Lewis and Clark Trail.
 
 Joe Miller (26:01.248)
 Is this self-published? Yeah.
 
 Jeff (26:02.759)
 It is, yeah, yeah. I've done all my books that way. I enjoy that process. Yeah, it'll be out on Amazon. It'll be in some bookstores across the country. It comes out May 14th.
 
 Joe Miller (26:06.402)
 Like KDP, Amazon or something. Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (26:17.513)
 wow, cool. you're making some good progress towards that then.
 
 Jeff (26:20.787)
 Yes, yes, yes.
 
 Joe Miller (26:23.214)
 Well, definitely look forward to checking that out. Well, obviously, in the show notes, we'll have references to those things. And I'll update it after it's published back into the episode for people to check back. So again, got some flavor of this transition that you've gone through. You retired, I would say, right? Obviously, you retired your
 
 Jeff (26:34.792)
 Okay, awesome.
 
 Jeff (26:47.413)
 Yeah. Yeah. My wife says retired. Why are you in your office all afternoon? But yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (26:52.5)
 Yes, I know I get this all the time. But we didn't really unpack too much. I mean, you were in that that I.T. leadership career for years. Then you went and had your own consulting business. Can you talk to me a little bit about talk to us a little bit about how you made the transition from like the full time nine to five into the consulting? What were the. Reasons for that, were there were there like aha moments or.
 
 Jeff (27:02.634)
 Yes.
 
 Yes.
 
 Jeff (27:17.309)
 It's your.
 
 Joe Miller (27:21.444)
 How did you make that shift, those shifts?
 
 Jeff (27:23.889)
 So I was working, as I mentioned, I was a CIO for a number of years. And then I shifted and went to the dark side and became a vendor. I was the product executive for Disaster Recovery as a service firm. Anyway.
 
 I wrote my first book, Amplifier Value, Leading IT with Strategic Vision. That came out in 2018. And what had started happening was I was getting invited to speak to the concepts in that book across the country. The firm I worked for loved it because I was, know, Jeff Ton, EVP of Intervision Systems. So I was promoting them as well. But what happened was it...
 
 It started to butt heads, right? I can remember this day in, it was February of 2020. I was supposed to be speaking at Butler University here in Indianapolis. And I get a phone call a couple of days before from my boss that says, hey, you need to be in Kansas City. We've got a CIO out there that is not happy with us and we need you to go make it right.
 
 Joe Miller (28:41.219)
 Fix it.
 
 Jeff (28:42.645)
 So I'm thinking, okay, so I can fly to Kansas City. I can meet with him and then I can fly home for the event. All's good and great and wonderful till I get to Kansas City and the blizzard hit and all the flights are canceled. So I actually rented a car and drove home in the blizzard through the snow and made that thing. And I made that decision right then and there that, you know, I'm gonna start slow rolling.
 
 Joe Miller (28:56.692)
 no.
 
 Joe Miller (29:02.616)
 through the snow.
 
 Jeff (29:11.669)
 this side gig, right? It's just not worth the stress and the strain. And then March of 2020, the pandemic hit. Our company was required, we needed to make some layoffs. And Joe, I raised my hand and said, put me on the list. Put me on the list. Because I was.
 
 Joe Miller (29:32.696)
 Yeah, me first.
 
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (29:39.239)
 I was ready to go do this thing anyway. so it was almost like that external push was what I needed. I knew I wanted to do this. I loved doing that. I loved running workshops, coaching people, writing about leadership and technology and business. That's what really fueled my fire. And I wanted to go do that, but I didn't have the guts, I guess, to.
 
 Joe Miller (30:08.718)
 Mm-hmm.
 
 Jeff (30:08.949)
 to leave the steady paycheck behind. And so what my wife and I did was we came up with a deal for each other. We had X number of dollars in the bank at the time that I'm making this decision. And she says, okay, if we still have X number of dollars in the bank at the end of the year, you can do it again next year.
 
 Joe Miller (30:31.084)
 a renewal. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (30:32.071)
 So that was the deal that we made, right? And so if x has begun to shrink, then you need to go get a real job. Well, as it turned out, we had x plus at the end of the year. And then the next year, it took off even more. And I think the lessons to me that I took out of that, Joe, was sometimes you need that external push.
 
 Joe Miller (30:47.726)
 Mmm.
 
 Jeff (31:00.531)
 Be ready when the push comes because sometimes you may not recognize it. I recognize that push. You have to take that leap of faith, but we did it in such a way that it was, hey, we're only gonna try it for a certain amount of time. If we hit our KPIs, if we hit our metrics, great. If we don't, then we'll try something else.
 
 Joe Miller (31:20.918)
 Mm-hmm.
 
 Jeff (31:25.813)
 So it wasn't, this is what I'm going to do the rest of my career. This is what I'm going to do for the rest of 2020, then the rest of 2021, then 22. So it was really that incremental, not an all or nothing.
 
 Joe Miller (31:39.701)
 Mm hmm. That's when you first said you decided to put this thing on a slow roll. That to me was very interesting because it informed, I think, or underscored where your passion was. Right. And you were like, OK, I just went through this situation that shines spotlight on.
 
 Jeff (32:00.137)
 Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (32:10.294)
 what really matters to me. And so it wasn't like a eureka moment, but it was like, hmm, moment, you know? Some people have the, you know, I knew right then and there, and then I made a shift. I've talked to some people who have said that. Other people, it's been very gradual. It's been the other boundary condition where they've looked back and they go, I guess I changed. But for you, it was kind of in the middle.
 
 Jeff (32:12.414)
 Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (32:20.201)
 Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (32:37.075)
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (32:39.682)
 What you you and I would also say you said something else about you always enjoyed the leadership stuff and working with the people, which is, by the way, not necessarily the thing that most technology leaders say. Right. We all have the framework people process technology, as I often say. We tend to have it flipped where we always leave with technology. Then we go to process. Then we go to people as the last resort to get things.
 
 Jeff (32:39.935)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (32:54.654)
 Right.
 
 Jeff (33:07.827)
 Right, right, right.
 
 Joe Miller (33:08.758)
 approved and over the finish line. But the fact that you were thinking about the impact of working with people and helping people, that's been common, I would guess through everything you've done, right? So it wasn't jolting to say, okay, now I'm going to be doing mostly this other thing outside of the context of sort of a technology delivery framework, because you're really leading from the same heart.
 
 Jeff (33:19.772)
 absolutely. Absolutely.
 
 Jeff (33:38.165)
 People first and building teams when first of all when the teams were quote unquote mine, but also helping leaders build their teams, right? And taking that people first approach that I have always approached leadership in that way. My
 
 My father was an American Baptist minister, servant leader his entire day, right? Working for people. And I think I learned that from him. He was that model for me that, know, yeah, technology is fun, but it's about the people.
 
 Joe Miller (34:20.494)
 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's where you get your sense of fulfillment and enjoy to see your impact, your influence on them, make their lives better, etc. Right. So
 
 Jeff (34:32.181)
 Well, I think as a technologist, when you're making that pivot from, I'm a technologist, I'm a software developer, I'm a systems engineer, I'm a whatever, right? And now I'm in management and leadership and that. I think one of the things that you have to...
 
 be able to do is to realize that your fulfillment, your strokes are going to come from helping others, not from being the hero on the white horse that comes in and saves the day. Yes, yes. And that's a longer tail to see. And sometimes you don't see it.
 
 Joe Miller (35:04.226)
 Yeah, cape, cape blowing in the wind.
 
 Jeff (35:19.311)
 But you have to try to make an impact on people's lives and help them get the most out of their careers.
 
 Joe Miller (35:26.072)
 Yeah, that very much mirrors my path and my journey. And I think the biggest shift for me was realizing that I really wanted to focus more on the people side was when I had to engage my first coach. And I used the word had because that's accurate. I didn't get told to do that, but I realized that I was way over my skis in the position I was in at work. And I was struggling.
 
 I found a coach and was able to have conversations with him made such a huge difference. And I realized that I didn't really have those conversations with anybody, including my wife. And so then I said, you know, I love this. I want to do this. You know, I ended up doing that was my hidden side gig for years was doing, you know, as much as I could handle with my
 
 Jeff (36:01.394)
 Absolutely.
 
 Jeff (36:09.001)
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Jeff (36:19.903)
 was coaching.
 
 Joe Miller (36:22.434)
 IT leadership job, but I was doing coaching on the side. So very similar, I think, in terms of that people side of the equation.
 
 Jeff (36:24.553)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (36:32.467)
 Well, in coaching, so many leaders, I look around and they don't have a coach. They don't have someone that they can bounce those things off of. And I encourage people all the time, whether it was my coaching service or somebody else's, you really need that person who can be objective, who can tell you when you're full of crap or tell you you're on the right path or whatever it happens to be.
 
 Joe Miller (36:57.998)
 Yeah, right.
 
 Exactly. It's just a huge benefit. And having a community of trusted peers that you can connect with too. I host a community just for that reason, to be honest. And often it's a lot of nuts and bolts discussion about technology. But we talk quite often about how to have influence in the organization. How do I grow? How do I gain that kind of respect from the most senior leadership at the company?
 
 Jeff (37:07.572)
 Yes.
 
 Jeff (37:11.166)
 Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (37:31.855)
 People are pretty transparent, and that's really important. And I think in a lot of careers, not just technology leadership, a lot of careers, you tend to get isolated and try to go it alone. And we've touched on this from several different angles. But coaching and having a coach, having a mentor, which isn't the same, but still very valuable.
 
 Jeff (37:45.13)
 Yes.
 
 Jeff (37:59.689)
 Yes.
 
 Joe Miller (38:00.27)
 It's investing in your own growth and your own navigation of your career and your life. I you could have a life coach, certainly. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the reason why I really resonated with the whole thing. And COVID did it to a lot of us. I I had planned to retire in 2020. It was going to be later in the year.
 
 Jeff (38:06.377)
 Yes.
 
 Jeff (38:10.248)
 absolutely. Yeah.
 
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Jeff (38:23.253)
 Ha
 
 Jeff (38:26.867)
 Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (38:28.076)
 It was going to be towards the end of 2020, but ended up retiring in April and moving from Colorado to Florida at the same time. drove from Fort Collins to where I live in Florida as everything was shutting down. I mean, I got I went through Atlanta and, you know, there was hardly any planes flying, you know.
 
 Jeff (38:38.748)
 yeah.
 
 Jeff (38:48.257)
 my.
 
 Joe Miller (38:57.41)
 That was still when people were afraid to touch the gas pumps, all that kind of stuff. So I actually have a little FaceTime type of conversations with people as I was going through that journey. We've already forgotten, to a certain degree, how huge of an impact that had on everyone. Yeah. Yeah. It was a forcing function for many. Function for many. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (39:01.587)
 Right. Yep.
 
 Jeff (39:13.774)
 huh.
 
 Yes, yes.
 
 Jeff (39:20.765)
 It was, it was. you know, looking back, I don't know that we have understood all of the lessons from it. Personally, society, all of it. There'll probably be books written for years about that time period.
 
 Joe Miller (39:41.646)
 So I'm really glad you decided to come on my podcast. Are you making the rounds a little bit on podcasts?
 
 Jeff (39:46.343)
 I am, I am, I'm getting out and talking. I used to host a podcast for a number of years and I forgot how much was that.
 
 Joe Miller (39:50.712)
 Yeah, it's still there. mean, it's still there. Your archive is there, I'm sure.
 
 Jeff (39:57.723)
 Yeah, the archive's still out there, status go if anybody wants to go listen to it. But I loved doing that. And you have probably found the same thing, Joe, is that you get to meet and talk to so many amazing people.
 
 And I think that's what I enjoyed about the host, about being the host is I got to learn every time too, right? I get to ask the questions that I think the audience would like to ask of the speaker. And so you try to play that role of what does the audience want to know, but you're also curious yourself, right? And you're asking questions yourself about something. And I love the experience.
 
 Joe Miller (40:41.774)
 Yeah, yeah, I've really enjoyed it. I mean, I haven't recorded as many episodes, but I've been about five years in and I think I'm approaching 90 now. yeah, but I mean, I've talked to people not just in one niche either people, know, authors, like yourself, technology leaders like yourself, coaches like yourself, they tend to be more niche, you kind of cover multiple bases here, buddy. Musicians.
 
 Jeff (40:53.013)
 That's excellent.
 
 Jeff (41:04.477)
 You
 
 Jeff (41:09.459)
 Yeah, yeah. yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (41:11.278)
 I've talked to guitarists, I've talked to pianists, just all different lawyers, a guy that was a high school friend, class action lawyer. He's now retired at a big firm in Boston. Just all different. But what I was trying to pull out and learn from everyone was, how did you
 
 make these career changes and these life changes? How did you navigate your lessons? Because I know just from my coaching experience that people sort of get into this, especially in mid career, where they're like almost like during the headlights, they're like. They don't even know why they feel the way they do. And so I've tried to pull together some common themes from all those discussions, and we've touched on some of them.
 
 Jeff (42:03.518)
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (42:05.674)
 One of them is getting in touch with how they were made and what their gifts are. And I really believe that's a key takeaway is that if you discover that and you lean into that, it will help guide you into a much more fulfilling path.
 
 Jeff (42:16.051)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (42:26.153)
 Yep, I agree. I can remember one of the most profound conversations I had with my executive coach. I was CIO for Goodwill here in central Indiana and was contemplating making that decision to go work for a vendor company. And he was my coach. He comes into my office. We always did it at my office. And he says, come with me.
 
 Joe Miller (42:47.502)
 Mm-hmm.
 
 Jeff (42:56.509)
 And I just follow him and we walk out the door, we walk down the street and we're standing alongside the riverbank of the White River. And we're just standing there for a few minutes just watching the water and he looks at me says, you've already made the decision. You just need to own it.
 
 And sometimes that's the push, right? We had no conversation, just two people walking side by side down the street, watching the water. You've already made the decision.
 
 Joe Miller (43:18.786)
 Mm-hmm.
 
 Joe Miller (43:29.944)
 Yeah, that's true. I I think there's a certain level of inertia that you have. You know, there's the fear thing. Everyone talks about the fear thing and that's definitely there. Fear of change, know, the comfort zone that your things are okay. They may not be great. It's the okay that I'm very familiar with and isn't dangerous versus the
 
 Jeff (43:36.468)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (43:54.601)
 Yes.
 
 Joe Miller (43:58.169)
 What could the great be that has all these potential pitfalls, you know? But yeah, having again, having a coach or someone close to you, they can speak into your life and just call out what they're seeing that you see too. you kind of. It's it's back here somewhere in your consciousness. So, yeah, absolutely. Well,
 
 Jeff (44:02.825)
 Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Jeff (44:13.822)
 Yes.
 
 It's back here. it's exactly. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (44:27.628)
 What other closing thoughts might you have as we kind of bring the plane in for land?
 
 Jeff (44:33.033)
 Well, I think for the listeners who maybe are in the midst of a transition, I think some of the things that you can take away from our conversation today is talk to people, bounce ideas off of people, whether they're a mentor to you or not, maybe they're a friend, maybe a spouse.
 
 But don't try to wrestle with this transition in a vacuum. Seek input where you can from whoever you can, even if it's contrary to the way you're leaning. You'll get a different perspective. So we've talked a lot today, Joe, about people. Find people that you can talk to and have those conversations as you're in the transition or contemplating a transition.
 
 Joe Miller (45:24.814)
 Absolutely. Yeah, and I always think it's great to have a coach to help you through that. Get clarity. think you can have conversations, and it's really important. But having someone who's skilled at being a guide and helping you get clarity, it makes a huge difference. If you have a notion, I would add to what you're saying here. That's what I'm doing. Adding to it. If you have a notion.
 
 Jeff (45:42.751)
 absolutely.
 
 Joe Miller (45:52.973)
 a directional shift you want to make. Let's say it's a change to a completely different kind of job. Doing a little research by identifying some people who are in that job and taking them out for coffee or having a, buy them lunch and have a, know, essentially an interview session where you ask them what it's really like to be in that. Cause one of the things that happens often is you get this thing in mind and it's
 
 Jeff (46:03.561)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (46:14.409)
 What it's like. Yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (46:19.574)
 sort of that you start convincing yourself that it's right for you, not really having the complete context of what it's like to actually be in the job. One of the classic examples of this is people who pursue a career in something like law, because they see the prestige and the potential monetary benefits of being a lawyer. And then they don't know anything about how it
 
 process of going through, not just getting through law school, once you pass the bar and you join a firm, then you are like in the thicket. It's tough and low-poll, low totem pole stuff. And then it ties back to gifting too, you know, getting that sort of external validation is what I'm thinking about doing is it line up with all the external validation I've had throughout my life today.
 
 Jeff (46:57.833)
 Yeah, what's a day in the life? Yeah.
 
 Jeff (47:05.225)
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Jeff (47:17.001)
 Yes. Yes.
 
 Joe Miller (47:18.798)
 and where I've gotten affirmed. And if it's types of things that really I haven't got affirmed for doing, maybe have negative affirmation, whatever that's called, warnings maybe. Yeah, so you can do some of that kind of processes on your own. But I think having a coach or a mentor really helps a ton. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I talk too much. But I would say.
 
 Jeff (47:26.922)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (47:39.817)
 Yes, totally agree.
 
 Done.
 
 Joe Miller (47:48.278)
 I hope things go well for you and your wife. I know it's a challenging time. can just, I feel it from the conversation. And you know, I hope it encourages other couples going through similar things. We'll all have to go through those things. We don't escape it. So yeah, we're really looking forward to that second.
 
 Jeff (47:50.953)
 Thank you, I appreciate that.
 
 Jeff (47:56.969)
 Yeah.
 
 Jeff (48:07.763)
 Yes, that's right.
 
 Joe Miller (48:14.484)
 second book coming out, think it's going to bless a lot of people to hear your journey and how you've used your framework to help navigate the path. So where do people find you? Do you want people to find you? Of course you do.
 
 Jeff (48:17.397)
 Thank you.
 
 Jeff (48:28.281)
 absolutely. So, so where you and I discovered rediscovered each other, LinkedIn, right? So LinkedIn is a great place. Also, my website, jeffreyston.com is a good place to find out about me and my books. And, you know, if you're so inclined, sign up for my newsletter, all those things.
 
 Joe Miller (48:33.966)
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
 Joe Miller (48:42.19)
 All right, I'll put that in the show notes, both of those, yeah?
 
 Joe Miller (48:51.192)
 Love it. Love it. Jeff, thanks so much for coming on. really enjoyed the conversation and be well, my friend.
 
 Jeff (48:59.337)
 Thank you, Joe. Thank you for having me on the show.
 
 Joe Miller (49:01.614)
 All right, thanks.