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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing
and this week it is my absolute honor
to welcome on the show veteran firefighter, Steve Sakaguchi.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics.
From the Japanese intern camps in America
during World War II, growing up in a restaurant industry,
his journey into the fire service,
some of his own leadership failures,
his journey to find the great leaders
outside the fire service,
the application of the skills he learned,
how to build a training department and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation,
as I say every week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on,
subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating
truly does elevate this podcast,
therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of over 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share
these incredible men and women stories
so I can get them to every single person
on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you
Steve Sakaguchi, enjoy.
["Skyfall"]
Well Steve, I wanna start by saying thank you so much
firstly for your patience,
we originally supposed to do this a few weeks ago
and we rescheduled because I had to take care
of some family stuff.
And secondly, I wanna welcome you
to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thanks so much, James.
You know, it's awesome to be here
and I really appreciate the invite
and no worries about the delay,
like so much has happened just in that short four weeks.
So I'm just happy to be here
and hopefully the listeners can find some value
through our conversation.
So where on planet earth we finding you this afternoon?
Well, we are finding me in Milano, Oregon,
technically Cambie, but in the little hamlet of Milano.
So I'm sitting at our kitchen table
on what we would call our tiny Milano farm.
And so, but first wanna back up.
I really wanna give a shout out to two people,
first to Brian McKender.
Brian McKender is, as I would say,
is probably the reason that, you know,
you and I are having this conversation today.
Several years ago, he turned me on to your podcast,
probably right in the beginning, 2017, I wanna say.
And he's been just such an integral part of my journey
as a friend, as being part of our peer support team.
Sometimes I joke about him being my personal peer support.
He's kind of a quiet challenger, very quiet way about him.
I didn't realize that deep down he's very competitive.
And so throughout the years,
we kind of joke about the different books
and things that we do when we joke about
pushing each other off the ledge and into the unknown.
And so here we are.
So I wanna make sure that recognize Brian
for his contribution to this.
And then also, I really wanna give shout out to you.
And maybe it's more than two now that I'm talking through
about you and your family and all the other guests.
I don't know how many people know the sacrifice
that you and your family have made
to really put together this phenomenal resource,
free resource, which is why I will always be a supporter
of what you're doing.
You gave up a lot by walking away from the fire service
to focus on this, to bring us this resource
for us to try to implement
and to make the fire service in the world
even a better place.
So I wanna make sure I recognize you for that.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, I mean, it's the whole force multiplier thing.
I mean, it's worked out so well,
but again, you and all the people
that have come on the show,
obviously provide this incredible library.
And then everyone that hits play,
listens that becomes part of this community
and tells other people about it.
So I'm amazed and in awe of how this community
is swollen to literally millions of people listening.
I don't know if it's all the same people
or different people, but yeah, it's pretty amazing to see.
So thank you so much for that.
Incredible.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Well, let's get back to you.
So let's start the very beginning of your timeline.
Tell me where you were born
and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic,
what your parents did, how many siblings.
Yeah, so I was actually born up in Seattle, Washington.
My dad, Steve.
I'm not a junior, although one of the crews found out
here recently what my middle name was
and that's Steven Tyler.
And so we always joke about if my parents
were truly Aerosmith fans or not.
They claim no, but I guess the jury stopped.
So Steven Tyler, my dad, Steve, and he,
it's interesting, his life started out
being put kind of in hiding.
So he was actually interned right after he was born.
And so he spent the first probably three years
of his life in the internment camps.
And maybe we'd come back to that a little later.
And then he went on to serve in the US Air Force,
rose to the ranks of captain on B-52s.
And then he was a medical salesman for 20 something years
with Gould and Spectrum Ed.
And then somewhere along the line,
he decided he wanted to own his own business,
be a business owner.
And so he walked away from the sales staff.
He got into a registered applicant program
through my uncle who had worked in construction
at McDonald's and the construction division
and engineering and whatnot.
And so he entered in this program
and he went through a McDonald's training program
to become an owner operator.
And so that's what he ended up doing
for the better part of the rest of his time working
until they retired.
Oh, gosh, it's gotta be about five, six years,
seven years now.
So that's my dad.
And then my mom, Annie, was actually born in Japan.
And she came over when she was 10
and was adopted by her aunt.
But the person that I knew as grandma,
Grandma Stokes was actually her aunt.
And she spent time in Seattle.
She went to UW, both actually are UW alumni.
But then later on, they became diehard Dutch fans.
And so UW got a master's in nursing.
She went in to be a Navy nurse.
And then when she came out of the service,
she ended up working in human resources,
which is kind of ironic.
I know we'll get to that a little later,
but she worked for group health up in Bellevue.
And then once we moved down here to Oregon,
following the business, she worked for Legacy Health Systems
as a senior vice president in NHR.
And then my sister, who has since passed,
she died in 17, older sister,
she was developmentally disabled.
I'd probably estimate that.
She probably matured mentally
to the age of about eight, maybe 10.
So that provided some different kind of learning,
maybe life experience growing up and different things.
So that's kind of the start where I started up in Seattle.
And then in 91, when I was 11,
that's when we purchased our first McDonald's.
And that was, it's so crazy how we go
kind of not really full circle, but how it all works out.
But that McDonald's is actually in a fire district,
and it's not a McDonald's anymore,
but it was the fifth McDonald's
that was built in the state of Oregon
and the 499th in the system.
So McDonald's has, they number all their restaurants
kind of in order.
So it was store number 499,
and it's actually now the all that glitters.
And so what's fascinating is when I was stationed
at station three in Oak Grove,
I knew that building inside and out, full basement,
only access through the back and all that,
because I had spent three, four years
every evening, weekend, whatever, working in that building.
So I'll pause there for a second.
Well, let's go to internment camps first.
So your father, I'm assuming is Japanese American then,
the war breaks out and now a member of society,
one of the Americans is now ushered into camps
along with a lot of other, arguably probably Asians,
probably some of them weren't even Japanese,
but thinking about how we, how undiverse we were back then.
So what does he talk about?
Tell me the stories of that time,
because I think it's another dark, dark,
darker side of our history.
And we get obviously the knee jerk initially of,
who is the enemy?
However, the way it was handled,
I think was arguably not the best.
And what a great question.
And he doesn't really talk a lot about it.
It's come out in some of our text messages.
We hosted a exchange student a few years ago,
and we actually went down to Tule Lake,
which is where he was interned.
And it was pretty wild because there was
some family legend, folklore, whatever,
you hear things like, is that really true?
And one of them was, had he not gone into hiding
or had his mom not been able to hide,
and I'll maybe speak to more of those details
here in a second, he would have been the first
Japanese American born in the internment camps.
And so, I was like, is that really for real?
And so we were down at Tule Lake,
and they have the registry.
And so we saw the names of him and my grandma in the book.
And then as we're walking through the small display there,
there's a picture on the wall of the first child born
in the internment camps.
And I'm looking at it, and I'm looking at the date.
And the date is June 12th, 42.
And it hit me, I go, oh my gosh,
my dad's birthday is June 9th, 42.
So that's more than likely, that's a pretty historic.
And so I sent that picture to my dad.
And so he, and that's when he'll,
he's a phenomenal writer.
And so he'll write, sometimes text should maybe be an email,
but that's another story.
And so he wrote back about his namesake.
And so his middle name is Royal,
and it's namesake is after Royal Post.
And he was a very prominent businessman
up in the Seattle area.
And my grandma was a housekeeper for him.
It was a clean house from pre-mend.
And so of course, the order comes out
to round up all the Japanese Americans, the enemies,
and let's ship them off.
And he comes in, tells the authorities, says,
no, God's son of mine is gonna be born
in a concentration camp.
And so essentially kept them protected
until my dad was born.
And then at which time they went to the camps.
So he doesn't talk about it much,
but there are some letters, I guess,
that the family has written by my grandma.
And I haven't read them yet.
I haven't seen all of them yet that speak to her fears
and the vaccinations and the things that they're doing
that she's convinced they're doing these studies
and trials on her son and things like that.
So pretty interesting.
And then just this last year,
my father-in-law actually found out
that through the National Japanese American Museum,
they have a book of essentially almost all of the names
of the people who were interned.
And they had it on exhibit.
So for spring break last year, we all went
and my in-laws, mother-in-law, father-in-law came with us.
And so we visited that museum and walked through it.
And there's very few times I've seen my father emotional,
but as we're walking in, you can actually schedule time
and they will go and find the names of your,
of who was interned, your family, or in his case, him also.
And so we went and we were able to be with him
as he placed the stamp by his name, his father's name
and his mother's name, and then walked through the exhibit
and then just looking at,
in all the different places where the camps were,
there were some other internees that were there.
And I could overhear one gentleman just talking about,
you know, he was, gosh, he must have been in his late 80s,
maybe, and just talking about it as if it was yesterday,
looking at the picture and remembering walking to
and from the different buildings.
And so I remember just kind of soaking it all in.
And at one point I remember looking at all the baggage
in some of the pictures and I got to reflecting like,
there's people that were my age, the age that I am now,
that this war breaks out and the government says,
you are now the enemy,
even though you were born in this country.
And we got to take everything away from you
and send you to a camp.
And I just remember thinking about that.
What would that be like right now?
What would that be like for our kids and for us?
Just pretty fascinating.
And then of course that exhibit is just right by
the 242nd, it goes for broke,
all made up of the Mise soldiers that fought.
And there's just these quotes about how they were fighting
two different groups of people,
there's just these quotes about how they were fighting
two wars, they're fighting a war across the Pacific
for the country, but then they're also fighting a war at home.
And so there's not a ton that he really talks about
or really that I can recall that he remembers.
And my grandma passed away in, what was it, 1998 maybe,
and she didn't ever really talk about it.
But we do somewhere have the letter that George Bush had,
typical form letter and other reparations
and the apology for the wrong that was done and the dollar,
here's what we're giving you for taking away your stuff.
You mentioned about the letter and your grandma's fears
about vaccinations, educate me,
was that actually going on in the camps?
You know, I don't know, I haven't done,
sadly, I haven't done a ton of research on it.
I don't know why, maybe it's just,
I'm not in that season of life yet,
but I do feel like at some point I do owe it
just to know the history, to kind of research
and really kind of understand all the little intricacies.
And every now and then my dad will send
different articles and things about people
who have written different essays and stuff
about all the other politics and how,
depending on with the interracial marriages,
there's differences in how you were treated
if you were the male married to a white female
or vice versa and how you could or could not go
in different places.
There's all sorts of these little complex issues
that are around it.
So at some point, I'd probably start digging
into more of that history,
but I'm just not really in that season yet.
You know, one of the other things that came to mind
just kind of thinking on it is,
I didn't know, but Tule Lake was actually the camp
that they sent all the other kind of trouble internees to.
And so not only were you at,
just a camp to begin with, now you're at the camp
where they send the bad behaving internees
from the other camps to this camp too.
So that was another little tidbit
that I learned along the way as well.
It can be hard to be a good behaving intern
after you've just been taken in your own country
and put in a big prison.
So.
Right.
Exactly, exactly.
All right, well then moving on,
as you progress through,
well actually let me go back for a second.
I wanted to ask you this.
I just watched The Founder on the plane a few weeks ago
and it's the Michael Keaton film about,
obviously this is not the owner,
the restaurant owners of McDonald's,
but the origin story about the two, you know,
owners of a restaurant that made incredible burgers
and, you know, engineered their kitchen
and how their work was hijacked by an unethical businessman
who then went around, you know, the country
and ultimately the world peddling their idea,
you know, under the guise of it being his.
So what, from an owner's perspective,
what was your dad's experience with the restaurant itself?
The restaurant itself was pretty good.
You know, the system of franchisee,
it's a pretty sound business model.
You know, the way that it works
is the company owns the building
and then the owner operator will own the equipment
and everything in it.
And there's actually a rent that is paid
and it's all based off percentages,
you know, off gross sales and things,
and maybe things have changed now,
it's been a while since it's been in the system, but,
and so, and it was very tight controlled
as far as standards.
And so, and a lot of this bleeds over
to the way I see things and the way I look at things
and how sometimes the,
we'll figure it out when we get there
really is a challenge for me
or how there's 17 different ways to throw a ladder.
And so the McDonald's system is pretty regimented
and strict, you have approved vendors,
you have approved equipment,
like they control where you get all your product
and all the things like that.
So it's very standardized.
The training programs, you know, I would say,
are pretty much second to none.
There's one way to assemble a hamburger and a cheeseburger,
just one way, and everything is calculated out
because it's all tied to profit or loss
and all these other controllables.
So everything is scripted out.
You know, you can just come in
with no experience whatsoever
and you will learn how to assemble
whatever sandwich you're supposed to assemble
or drink or whatever,
they'll teach you how to do it without missing a step.
And so it's pretty fascinating
to see how that has transitioned over
as I've gone on different adventures and things.
But when it comes to change,
just like I think a lot of corporations
and just, we just evolve as a society.
We just evolve as a society.
We just do changes inevitable.
But sometimes we don't think about,
or maybe we do, but it's a necessary change,
the impacts that that has both financially,
to the owner operators.
Because once McDonald's corporate decides to make a change,
hey, we're gonna go this way.
Well, now the owner operators
have to purchase all of that equipment
and then also have to figure out
what they're gonna do with all the remaining stuff.
So I can remember having storage beds
that go into the storage units
and there's old retired out sauce guns
and the different trep tables and all these things
because the systems change,
so we gotta redo everything.
And then just like with some stuff,
things go full circle from,
hey, we're gonna steam the filet of fish bun.
No, we're not.
Okay, now we are again.
And so there's this, tends to be this full circle effect.
So that's just life.
And I think maybe having grown up in that
and just seeing that and just saying,
well, what's our options?
We either do or we don't.
And then McDonald's has pretty tight,
at least at the time, pretty tight expectations
about how they want their owner operators
and restaurants to perform.
And if you're not cutting it,
then they're not gonna allow you to continue
to be an owner operator
and run the business into the ground.
So it's pretty fascinating.
We'd be evaluated, I wanna say, four times a year
in addition to the mystery shoppers
that just come in and check.
So there's benchmarks for everything.
How long you sit at the order taking window,
how long it takes for you to get your money exchanged
and then how long it takes you to get your food.
So everything's on a stopwatch and timed.
So they would do unannounced short reviews.
They do announced short reviews and they do,
I mean, it's just three and then a long review full day.
And as the restaurant manager or the owner,
you are with your field consultant for that.
You can step in and really help you.
You had to watch how your restaurant was performing
through the busiest times, open, close and all that stuff
and watch how the transitions happen from,
this was before you could have breakfast all day, huge win,
but when you actually had to switch
between breakfast and lunch.
And then of course, somebody always comes in
half an hour late wanting something for breakfast.
And it's our fault that we didn't have that.
But anyways, I digress.
Well, just shifting slightly as well, it's interesting.
Like I said, some of the practices
that were portrayed in the film,
which is not the owners of the restaurant,
it's behind the scenes I was unaware of.
And like you said, the real estate element,
that's where they make their money.
Apparently they, I think, I forget how they phrase it.
They said they own more real estate in the US than anyone.
I don't know if they meant like,
in urban and suburban settings or how exactly that works,
but they have a lot.
They do tons of market studies.
And so they actually do all the hard work
for the competitors.
So really all you have to do is,
wherever you see McDonald's pop,
just put your restaurant right there
because they've already done all of the research
and whatnot.
That's kind of what the joke was,
is just let them figure it out.
So you have an Asian background as far as your family.
You get into McDonald's, what were you eating yourself,
you and your family through the years prior
and then when you got involved into hamburgers?
Oh man.
Growing up, every meal had rice,
regardless of what the main dish was.
So that always makes for some funny times,
like everything had rice.
My mom on certain special holidays
would make like a sukiyaki dish.
So it's kind of like a ramen with beef
and a soup base.
She would make some tonkatsu,
which is like a fried pork and whatnot.
So we'd eat some of that.
And then there's these little frozen mochi,
like a frozen rice cake that we would burn
that we would broil in the oven and stuff
and soy sauce and sugar and whatnot.
So better than that,
pretty standard American cuisine otherwise.
And then you'll hate this,
but once we got into their restaurant
and they still were frequent to restaurant,
it was almost like eating McDonald's
for the majority of our meals
when I was working there.
And it's interesting because,
now look back,
maybe that's why I have an iron gut,
but there are certain sandwiches
that I absolutely love,
bacon and cheese biscuits,
sausage biscuit or whatever.
And everybody, or at least I really love the breakfast.
So knowing that we were switching from breakfast
to lunchtime, I would always save a sandwich
and take a bite of it.
Things would ultimately get busy.
That thing would sit in the office
in the back of the restaurant.
And I wouldn't come back to it
till probably, I don't know,
four or five o'clock in the evening
or just before I'm gonna go.
And then I would finish that sandwich.
And just one time when I was working,
once I had kind of ascended up
to become a restaurant manager,
one time one of my assistant managers
had thrown my breakfast sandwich away.
And I remember walking back there,
I don't know, it must have been three or four o'clock
in the afternoon.
I was like, hey, where's my sandwich?
Anybody seen my sandwich?
And she said, well, we threw it away.
I go, no, don't ever throw my sandwich away.
I'm gonna eat that.
So, but we would eat that
because that's where we were.
And when you're running a business,
that's where you're at.
Did you struggle with any health or weight issues
when you were at that period?
No, actually, well, who knows what my blood work looked like.
But as far as weight goes,
no, I was a skinny little beanpole kid.
I look back at pictures and even today
when I look in the mirror,
I'm like, I still see that little skinny scrawny kid.
When I got hired in the fire service,
I was 130 pounds, I wanna say,
when I got hired my first year.
And now I tip the scales at about 185.
And so I don't think it's all bad weight,
but maybe other people can be the judge of that.
Well, let's walk into that phase of your life then.
So you worked in McDonald's.
What was that bug?
Who sowed the seed for you getting into the fire service
and then walked me through your on-ramp?
Yeah, so it's actually a high school buddy,
buddy of a buddy, we'll call it.
It's one of my best friends growing up
that we played baseball together and all this, Eric.
He had a buddy that he was super close with,
his name's Tate Tripple.
And Tate was a volunteer out at what was then
St. Helens fire up kind of west of city of Portland.
And so I would come up and visit Eric and Tate
and he had this little red pager thing that would go off.
And he had all the stickers on his truck,
I fight what you fear and Calvin peeing on the fire and stuff.
And so we just talked a little bit about it.
I'd hear the pager go off.
I always kind of had a little affinity to like radio stuff,
but didn't really have like the strong desire
to be a firefighter or whatever.
So he kind of, as we were talking through the years,
he's just like, you know how to think about
doing a fire service.
I would just ask questions like,
and I'd watch drill or just seemed somewhat interesting.
So he was the one that actually said,
hey, you should think about the fire service.
And so I did.
And this was in 2000.
So I had come back from,
so I went to Hamburger University,
which is the advanced operations course
for McDonald's all owner operators
and restaurant matters have to do that.
So that's how I earned that training and whatnot.
But as I said, you ought to look at the fire service.
You ought to look at Shemeck
at a community college and their program.
And so I did.
And it just so happened that that process
was open for applications.
And so I looked at it, I pulled the application up.
Well, the deadline for that next class was,
well, we were gonna be on vacation in Mexico.
And so we're looking at that and I'm just like,
you know, I think that's something I really wanna do.
And so somehow I was able to convince my parents
to change my flight.
And so I flew home on a Wednesday.
So I think we flew into Mexico on a Sunday.
I flew home on a Wednesday.
Our restaurant manager, phenomenal guy,
he was with my parents for a long time,
became our supervisor, his name's Bernie.
And Bernie would remind me of this later.
I remember picking him up from the airport.
And he drove me back.
So picked me up in Portland.
We lived in Eugene at that time.
And we drove back and I spent all day Thursday
gathering up all of the stuff that I needed.
So, and this wasn't the time now where you can log in
and get your unofficial email to you and all that stuff.
So I had to go to the DMV,
had to figure out how to get my unofficial transcripts
and official transcripts from high school
and then lane community, I think.
And anyway, so put all that application together
and hand delivered it on Friday afternoon
before the deadline and turned it in.
And so I didn't really know what I was getting into at all.
And I remember we did, you know,
that written test interview.
Fortunately, a lot of my experience
in the customer service and running the restaurants,
I was able to tie that into what that meant
to now become a firefighter or how that would help me.
And so then it was time for the physical agility test.
And there's people now that I work with
who are there for that.
So it's really funny to think about.
So when I was practicing, trying to work out and stuff,
I was this little kid, you know, 20 years old, maybe 21,
weigh 130 pounds, scrawny.
And so I take off and it was the combat challenge
was what the physical agility test was.
And so I did that physical agility test
and I was an alternate going into that physical.
And I'm not sure if I knew that or not.
I think I may have.
And so based on how it went down,
had I passed that test I was in,
if I didn't pass it, I was out,
kind of is what it came down to.
So anyway, so I'm going through that thing
and I'm on the dummy drag and I'm pulling that dummy drag.
I came out super fast, didn't know how to pace myself.
Sometimes I still don't.
And so I get to that dummy drag and I'm dragging that thing
and my legs are done.
Just barely moving.
I'm just yelling and screaming.
I kind of want to think maybe I yelled bonsai,
you know, as I was across the line.
Your grandma.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And like just collapsed over the line
and the guys that were there,
the guys and gals that were there helped support me.
And they just said, hey man, congratulations, you're in.
And I just remember that feeling of accomplishment.
And then it took like three hours for me to go drive.
Like I think that was my first experience
of like the body just literally shutting down.
Like I couldn't walk, I had to go sit.
And so it was like three hours,
I think before I was finally ready to drive home.
And so that was going into the Dementia program.
And then after being accepted,
I went and I did a ride along with Tate and automatic unit.
And I think we got one call that day.
And it was for, I think it ultimately
was a bowel obstruction or whatever.
And so I get in the back of the ambulance
and I'm sitting in kind of the seat on the side,
not necessarily the airway seat,
but the seat on the other side.
And we're just riding in, it's an elderly guy.
And the medic is getting ready to put an IV in.
And so I tell the patient,
you're gonna feel a poke in the arm when I put IV in.
And as soon as he did, the patient reached up.
And because I was just sitting there,
he reached out and he grabs my hand and squeezes
as the medic's doing his deal.
And it was in that moment that I knew this
is what I wanted to do that in this person's time of need
and in their condition and they're scared
and they're looking for comfort,
I just happened to be here.
And I remember that feeling of him squeezing my hand.
And then from there, it was just, it was on.
And so went through Shemekra's program.
First time ever in my educational career
that I actually got decent grades, A's and stuff
instead of barely passing and whatnot.
I flunked out a Japanese,
I think two or three times in my life.
So I ended up taking French.
And so this was the first time
that I actually excelled at something,
but it didn't come without its challenges and stuff too.
And I learned a lot of lessons the hard way,
which probably leads into more of my story
about the importance of mentoring.
But that's how I ultimately got in was because of Tate
and just saying, have you ever thought of?
And I haven't because up until that moment,
I was just gonna be a second generation owner operator
and go through the McDonald's system.
But it was also my time,
I got to that point where it was,
can I do something on my own?
Or do I always need mommy and daddy?
Because there's that stigma of the owner's son.
Like, well, you're the owner's son.
So you didn't really earn it.
You didn't, you're just really in that role
because you're the owner's son.
And so this was kind of my opportunity
to maybe prove to myself
that I could be successful on my own
without the direct help of mom and dad.
But the older I get and the more I dive
into some of these difficult topics,
the more I realized that even though I went out
kind of on my own to chase my own dream,
had I not had the comfort and security
and the things that I had that were there
from just who I happened to be born to,
I would have never been able to make that jump
from the restaurant to the fire service.
I didn't have to worry about food on the table.
I didn't have to worry about a roof over my head.
And I could not work and just focus on school.
And so now as I look back,
I see what having that opportunity has provided for me.
And so that's the stuff that kind of feeds
into what my passions and drives are now.
So that's how I got into the Schmecher program
and people out there probably gonna hate to hear this,
but I took two fire tests in my life.
I have one, I still have one partially completed application,
but I took two tests.
The first test I took was for Clackamas Fire in 2001,
I wanna say it was, late 2001.
And then the other test was City of Las Vegas
in the winter of 02.
And I only took that test
because I'd never been to Las Vegas
and being 20 and whatever,
I mean, everybody's gotta go to Las Vegas.
So took the test down in Las Vegas
and that was in the time where they were growing,
had a conditional job offer,
went through all the background checks
and then it was like, oh, this is real.
Like I actually have to consider
like living down here in Las Vegas.
And so ultimately I didn't get picked up to go down there.
But I know that was, there's reasons for that.
And then I ended up getting hired at Clackamas Fire.
So literally got hired at the very first place
I put an application in.
Firstly, I wanna say if I ever begin a porn career,
I'm gonna call myself Tate Triple
because that is an incredible name.
So I'm gonna give shout out to Tate,
not only for mentoring you
and choosing you to the fire service,
but his parents did an incredible thing.
Right.
So we're gonna obviously talk about,
some of the challenges that you and I
have had many conversations on
when it comes to the fire service.
But just to set the stage at the front door,
what did the bar look like for you 20 years ago?
For that it was, gosh, did we,
I don't think we had to have our firefighter one yet.
I think that was in the era.
It was an EMT, I wanna say that was it,
18 years old, EMT GED.
And yeah, because I wouldn't have had my firefighter one yet.
I was still at Chemeketa,
so I would have just maybe finished my EMT.
And so that was really it.
We, I remember taking a Wonderlic IQ test as part of it.
And then I think it was just some general fire service,
essentially like a basic math test,
and then interviewing stuff.
So that was the bar.
And what's interesting is,
I was reflecting on that,
and how when we did get hired,
that group that got hired, the two group,
actually that list, gosh, we hired four,
I think four or five groups off that list.
But the O3 groups were the first,
that were the non-paramedics that got hired.
And I can remember being on shift with crusty old paramedics.
And I remember we're at the table,
and someone just goes, yeah,
and then we go out and we hire a bunch
of these worthless fucks.
And I'll never forget that,
and how that makes you feel.
And then on top of it,
there was a diversity label tied to that.
So now, as I reflect back, I look,
and I go, so not only did I try to run from the owner's son,
now I'm in a place where,
because I don't have my paramedic,
because I hadn't got to that level yet,
so I'm at EMT, I went to fire,
I just wanna work at that fire department,
and I didn't really know why, just do.
Now I'm a worthless fuck,
and now I'm only getting hired because I'm a minority.
And so I kinda realized,
gosh, am I ever gonna shake something like that?
You're the owner's son, so that's why you're here.
Well, you're a minority, so that's why you're here.
And so I've just seen how that has kinda played out
and motivated me and inspired me
and pushed me to go do different things,
and actually, ultimately, to just help other people.
But anyway, so that was kinda the minimum requirements
that I can recall, was just 18 at EMT,
because I wouldn't have had my firefighter one yet
at that point.
Well, it's so ridiculous,
and I've talked about this a lot.
There's only one prejudice that actually has value
in the fire service, those who can and those who can't.
And there are absolutely departments
that did a horrible job of recruiting people
that reflected the communities that their departments were in,
and we're fully aware of that.
But the knee-jerk response to that was the box checking,
we need X amount of person W,
and then within that,
you get those who can or those who can't.
And this then causes the issues.
The ones that can feel like
they're constantly trying to prove themselves,
but then the ones that can't, then you're like,
well, see, so this is what makes this whole thing
just so nauseating, and I've talked about this,
I'm sure you've heard me.
The answer is mentorship,
which is kind of what got you in at the beginning.
So I'd love to kind of start that as a first topic,
because if you actively go into underserved populations,
whether it's a gender or a skin color,
whatever you deem underserved in your area,
and you remove the barriers to entry
of which there are legitimate ones,
a lot of kids can't afford three or four grand
on a fire academy, let's be honest.
So you can actually provide training,
you can provide scholarships to fire school,
you have departments looking for young firefighters
on the other end,
that is how you approach diversity in the fire service.
Yeah, you're spot on, you know, just recently,
and this is what, you know,
I'm grateful that our initial interview got pushed back.
In fact, the morning that you called,
I actually had a sense in my stomach
that it was, that something was up.
And so anyways, but so where I'm going with that
is just the other night, I was at a job fair
up in a local high school.
And you know, this kid comes up and he stands up,
he walks up next to me, and you end up,
and we're, there was, we had one of our companies,
our truck companies, there's four firefighters there,
and then we had our public community services folks there,
and then I was there.
And so sometimes we move in these big herds
and that in of itself can be intimidating,
especially when, you know, most of our,
you know, truck folks, not all of them,
but that's probably the stereotype of, you know,
six foot plus and just physically look intimidating
and just in numbers.
So anyways, I'm just standing off to the side
and this young kid comes up and he's just like,
I know that is what I want to do.
And so I said, so I started engaging,
we started talking and I must say,
I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to do that,
but we started talking and I must,
he and I must have chatted for 20, 30 minutes
and he was just asking like, okay, what do I need to do?
And all of these things and the big takeaway for me,
and maybe I'll fill in some more of that story is just,
we just have to show up.
We have to recognize that we are always recruiting
wherever we are, we are a recruiting tool.
Like we're out in the community looking
and our next great firefighter there,
we just have to be aware and seek out that opportunity
to engage and have that conversation.
You know, I finally got roped in to being an assistant coach
from my daughter's soccer team.
And, you know, so I oftentimes I'm getting out of work,
it's a little bit late and so I just go right
to the soccer field.
So I'm in my uniform, I'm in my staff bar
and, you know, one of my daughter's teammates would come up
and, oh, you're a firefighter?
Like, yeah, it's okay, that's cool.
And so we just had these little interactions
and then one day I finally asked her, I just said,
have you ever thought about being, you know,
a firefighter or EMT or paramedic?
And you just see the wheels turning.
And she's like, no, I haven't.
And so that's kind of when I realized this,
and I might even been standing off like thousand yard stare
looking out over, you know, the horizon or whatever,
just thinking about how I'm a recruiter
no matter where I'm at.
And there's an opportunity to ask a question
that maybe nobody has ever asked this person, this kid.
And just that little interaction could set the course
for them to become a firefighter.
And so going back to this kid at Oregon City,
you know, he's asking me all these things,
what should I do?
And, okay, so I know I need to do the EMT,
but then what else?
And so I recently came across this book called
Never Split the Difference, Chris Foss,
and there's all these little techniques.
Well, one of the things he talks about is
ask how and what questions and get people to think.
And so here I am talking with this kid
and I'm like, okay, well, what activities do you do?
What activities do you do?
Or, you know, are you working?
Do you have a job?
Like, what do you do?
And he said, yeah, you know,
you know, I work at a,
I want to see works out of Bowling Island.
I can't remember where and it bothers me,
but I said, cool.
And I said, so what's your experience
or what do you do in that job
that you think could relate to being a firefighter?
Says, well, you know, in customer service,
I work with customers and I'll have a talk with people.
I got to, you know, clean and keep things neat.
So that would be like, I got to keep the rig clean.
I got to keep the station clean.
So all of these life skills that he's learning.
And so as he's sharing it, I go, that is exactly right.
You are already doing the things that you need to do
to be a successful firefighter.
You're learning how to clean.
You're learning how to interact with the public.
You're learning, you know, what it means to show up on time,
do a good job, all of those things.
And all those are transferable skills to the fire service.
It's just a different context.
That's all it is.
And we can teach you how to do your fire skills.
And so, so to me, the mentoring, that's getting upstream.
And so, you know, I think he was a junior.
So maybe by the time I retire,
maybe I'll see his name come through
on an application list somewhere.
Yeah, I'll pause there for a second.
Yeah, no, it's funny the way you frame that
is we're always recruiting.
I, when my little boy was in elementary, he's a junior now.
So quite a long time ago, they had career day, you know,
and all the dads usually or local, whatever they were,
mayor, et cetera, would come in
and they'd give a little presentation.
And I would do that and I'd bring my gear
and I'd bring my axe and all the cool things that we have.
But the class would be more about kindness, teamwork,
you know, the assets, the attributes that make a firefighter.
So that way it was applicable to them
that same day in their school.
Because, you know, I didn't expect,
and the kids, most of them didn't wanna be a firefighter.
They wanna be a YouTuber or, you know,
all these new modern jobs, but it was more infusing that.
Like we're not just running around kicking in doors.
Like we have to be kind and compassionate
to the old lady that fell down
and, you know, just trying to paint that picture.
So even though it wasn't a recruiting tool,
it was taking this job that a lot of people seem to admire
and kind of flipping it around and say,
well, we have to be kind.
We have to work together.
We have to be fit, you know, we have to, you know,
if one of us is sick or is struggling,
we have to help pick them back up, you know,
and those, so even though it wasn't recruiting,
it was a great platform to teach a bunch of elementary kids
really about bullying and teamwork and some other things
under the guise of a career day.
Right, no, that's great.
I'm glad you mentioned that.
It made me think about, you know,
talking to this kid the other day
and even starting it then, because nobody really told,
and I know you've talked about this with other guests,
but nobody told us really like
what we were gonna have to deal with.
And when we look at our recruiting videos,
it's, you know, all this, you know,
code three and fires and all this stuff.
And in some ways, it can be a little misleading
or a lot misleading.
And so we don't see, you know,
kind of the emotional toll that it can also take.
And so as I'm talking with this kid,
I'm thinking about that.
I'm like, well, I need to figure out for a 16 year old,
how do you get him on that track?
And so I talked about, you gotta be fit.
So fitness is huge.
I think I said probably three or four times,
graduate high school or get a GED.
I can either diploma or GED and EMT.
So I kind of repeat some of those things, stay out of trouble.
And I said, yeah, physical fitness
and then also mental stuff.
I said, we will see things, people getting hurt
and, you know, broken bones and people die.
And so you, however, we have the, you know,
the programs and the things to help process
through those things, but those are all stuff
you need to know kind of upfront.
Probably because of his age, I remember thinking,
I should just tell him about gearing podcast,
but maybe not to a 16 year old.
But there have been several other people
who have reached out to me throughout the years
about the fire service.
And one of the first things I'll say is,
behind the shield podcast, James Gearing, start listening.
And here are some of the episodes
you should kind of start to listen to.
And by the way, read his book.
At least you're gonna start to have a little bit more
of an understanding of what you're potentially getting into.
And so, and even talk about the family component,
especially for career shift people,
I had a winemaker who had reached out to our agency
and then ultimately his name came across my desk.
So I call him up and we talked for a couple hours,
I wanna say, and I said, so here's some things to look at.
I want you to get on, find behind the shield podcast,
listen, I can't even remember which episodes
I told him to listen to.
I said, but also you need to make sure your wife's on board.
There's not gonna be an easy process getting in and all that.
So started kind of that conversation.
And that's based on the work
that Mike and Anne Galeano are doing.
And so trying to wrap all of that up
so people know what they're getting into,
or at least I can say, I let you know,
and you made an informed decision
versus getting blindsided five years later.
And you're like, how come you didn't tell me
you're gonna have to deal with this, this, this and this?
Anyway, so ultimately he followed some of that path
and a couple of years later,
he had sent me a thank you card
and saying that he had just gotten hired
and all these things and thank you.
So I don't even know how we got on that, but yeah.
Beautiful, yeah, it's funny you said about 16 year old,
my son, I mean, he's known about the podcast
since day one, obviously, and he just started listening.
This is actually Harry Turner,
who was the British military veteran
that ended up doing conservation work in Peru,
had these like relationships with these ocelots,
still kind of leopard looking things,
nurtured one up to almost being able
to release it back to captivity
and actually got killed by a poacher's tram.
Broke his heart all over again,
you know, back into another one about a year later.
And then, you know, ultimately it's a successful release
and you know, it's thriving in the wild now.
But that was the one that got my son in.
It's funny because he's listened to Josh Brolin
and some of the other ones too.
And he's like, dad, it's so weird hearing you on Spotify.
Like I said, he's seen me do it for seven years,
but now he's old enough to be a kind of audience member,
air quotes.
He just looked at it a little differently.
He's like, this is so weird.
Like my dad sounds like a professional, you know,
and I'm his dad.
I'm the one that does stupid shit at home.
So it was kind of endearing after seven years
for him to add to, you know, the people that listen.
Yeah, that is so awesome.
You know, my son didn't even want to go,
he didn't want to go to the career fair
when I went to his school a couple weeks ago.
You know, he didn't, you know, want to go
because you're right, we're just dad.
But I will say this morning, you know,
before my daughter got on the bus,
you know, we were talking, I said,
well, today's the day I'm gonna be on, you know,
behind the shield of James Dearian.
She lights up and we're just,
we were laughing a little bit about
how in some of those episodes, you know,
you guys are too kind, you give me shout outs and stuff.
And she's like, yeah, and this time it's gonna be,
this is Steve Sackaguchi.
So we were having a good laugh about that.
And so yeah, kids are funny.
Yeah, we're just dad, not somebody out, you know,
doing whatever it is we're doing.
Yeah, ultimately we are.
And I think that's the thing.
When you forget that, maybe that's when issues come.
You know, we are just that.
We just happen to do, you know,
some cool things in our careers.
But we're speaking of that,
I wanna kind of shift a little bit, you know,
you've got a 20 year career under your belt.
As you progress through the years,
what was some of the career calls and fires that you had?
Man, you know, it's,
the one that really sticks out,
man, there's a whole, now that you asked,
like I can see the Rolodex going through,
but, you know, as an officer,
I think one of the ones that really stands out,
that I wouldn't say it wants me,
it's probably not the right word,
but one that I reflect on is if I did it okay,
and it was a motorcycle crash,
and a teenager getting on a motorcycle
and art of himself and, you know,
he was dead when we got there.
That was witnessed by friends.
And so as I'm, and this was when I was
on a two person squad rig.
So we get there and I'm, you know,
trying to size up, figure out what's going on,
and I go walking up, you know,
to see these other teenagers,
and one of them hands me their phone and says,
his sister is on the phone.
And I'm like, what?
And so his sister was on the other end of the line,
and I can't remember if I had talked to her right then
or if the phone disconnected or whatever,
I can't remember that part,
but I do remember at some point,
she was traveling to the scene where we were at,
and driving, and so here I am, you know,
in the middle of this thing on the phone,
and you can hear her getting, you know,
understandably upset and emotional,
and so like there's no way you're getting
that person to stop or whatever,
like so I don't know what happened,
but in my mind, it shifted to,
I just have to get her to the scene,
but I knew where the roads and stuff were blocked off,
so I just have to make sure she gets here.
And so I remember coaching her through
like a quarter mile at a time,
and I knew where they were coming from,
said, where are you at right now?
I'm at so-and-so, I said, okay,
I need you to look up, look to your right,
do you see, you know, a McDonald's?
Yes, I see a McDonald's, okay, I need you to look,
keep going straight, and then there's been moments
where they would kind of shift into the,
you know, oh my gosh, I know what's happened,
this is what they do, they don't tell you,
and so you'd have to regain that, you know,
so I'd say her name, say her name,
I'd get her back, and I'd say, what do you see right now?
You know, I say, okay, I see this, okay, keep going straight,
and I need you to look up,
and you're gonna see two more stoplights,
and when you get to that second stoplight,
you take a left.
And so I talked her through turn by turn to get there,
and I said, and when you get here,
I will come down and I will talk to you.
And I do remember at one point, I was trying to cook,
is there somebody else in the car?
Because she was talking to somebody else,
I'm like, is there somebody else with you?
Because then I'm thinking,
well, maybe I can just switch drivers,
and maybe that'll help.
Just, yeah, there's someone with me, I go, who?
Well, my other sister, I'm like,
well, that's not gonna work.
So the mission became just getting her safe to the scene,
and so we did.
And then we had to wait until it was,
and then got off the phone,
and I had the phone still in my, with me,
she would call again and call again,
and I wouldn't answer, I wouldn't answer,
and I was waiting to get the okay to go down.
And then finally got the okay to go down.
And so, he hit in the car with one of our,
then a neighboring agency, Peer Support,
and so we go down, I'll never forget driving up,
and there is this group of probably 30 or 40 people.
And here I am giving a death notification,
and all of those questions of, well, did you do anything?
What did you do?
How come you didn't do anything?
And all those things, and then I'm just stuck there,
because I had just left a quarter mile away
from where the roof is parked,
and so then I'm just there, and answering the question,
there's nothing we can do, I'm sorry, he's dead.
And then you're just there.
And then ultimately, because of how big that group was,
we ended up moving them back to our fire station,
and then we went back, and thankfully,
we went out of service for a little bit,
but I do remember just finally getting in there,
and just the sensations in my gut,
feeling like I need to throw up, and that kind of stuff.
But every now and then, I reflect back,
or if I drive by that area,
there's still a cross there, and all that stuff,
and I just always wonder,
even though there was nothing that we could do,
was it at least better?
Did I at least do it okay?
So that's one of the harder calls that I can remember.
And then there's always the funny stuff,
and so I was thinking back to just all the funny things
that we've gone on over the years,
and I remember working in one of our busier areas,
and we get called for a sinkhole,
and it's just one big game of telephone with dispatch to us,
and you have uninformed public under stress
that are reporting what they're seeing,
and then that's going through to someone
who's trying to interpret, and then that comes to us.
Anyway, so it's just one big game of telephone.
So I tend to err on the side of being
a little bit more conservative than not,
so it's like, well, it's a sinkhole.
Okay, so let's go, okay, sinkhole,
well, I've seen sinkholes on TV in Florida,
all these things.
So in my mind, I have this bigger picture.
So we roll up, we jump out,
we put on our PFDs, our flotation devices,
this sinkhole, something,
and we fall in, whatever, there's water, at least, whatever.
So we walk up, the other crew is there,
and looks, or maybe they came after,
well, that doesn't matter, so we get there,
and it's not really a sinkhole.
It's an area where, under water,
cold for a day, kind of washed out some stuff.
So here we are, standing around this four-foot hole,
wearing our PFDs, and the other tech rescue crew shows up,
and they're just like, what are you guys doing?
So I'm just like, yep, that's me.
So those are just some of the funny calls.
I remember early on, too,
we get called to a mechanical noise in the wall,
sounds like the house is gonna explode.
So I'm like, oh, okay, and then,
I'm a firefighter, so it's early on in my career.
So I'm like, why don't we prep?
Why don't we prep for this one?
So put on full turnouts, SCBA, all this stuff,
we show up, residents, like, yeah,
it's just this weird noise.
And so we go on checking it out.
I got the thermal imager on and everything,
and I'm walking through and you can hear it.
It's like, what is that?
And so walking around, and so we're back in this bathroom
and some buzzing, and kind of locate the sound,
and I open up the drawer, and sure enough,
there's something in there buzzing away.
And so you can probably put two into the other.
And instinctively, I was gonna reach in and grab it,
and I didn't, and then I closed it.
And I remember turning around,
and they say, well, what is it?
And the officer goes, well, it's yours,
and it's in the drawer.
And the look on their face was like,
and I couldn't hold it together,
so me and the driver at the time,
we just left and went out back to the rig.
So there's these funny times too that I think of.
Some of the other calls are just, you know,
the first fire where you're complete shit show,
and then you finally figure it out,
and you actually do what you signed up to do.
And I can remember,
we were implementing new hose lines,
and talking about bulk loads and all these other things,
and the crew and I, we had trained a ton
on what's our plan A.
One line goes to the door.
If it's a two line fire, what that meant for us
was one fire's going to just do an initial knockdown,
and one's going to the front door,
so we're always going to go,
we were always going to make entry if we could,
but if we needed to knock it down, we would knock it down.
Well, I kept, caught a 360,
and so all of that training kind of paid off.
Well, one of our firefighters were off that day,
but the other one was on,
so we show up, it's late three, probably three in the morning.
It's in our neighboring agent,
our neighboring company's first day,
so we get out the door, and we're headed out,
and I'm looking up there, and I'm like, where are they?
And I can see the lights,
and so when they came out of their station,
setting going left, they went right,
which whatever didn't matter,
there's probably a six one,
there's none of the other to get there,
but as we're coming up, I'm thinking,
oh, we're going to be first in,
and so we got there, fire's blowing out of the garage,
it's extended up onto, there was a split entry home,
so it's blowing up on the main entry,
and so I just say, hey,
if you get my initial reports, a two line fire,
so the one firefighter jumps out, grabs a two and a half,
goes to the garage, as I'm heading for the 360,
well, first to the front door to make it open,
I kind of check conditions there first,
and I went around to catch the Charlie side,
and I can hear the firefighter yell to the other firefighter,
inch and three quarter front door,
so I'm like, cool, all our training's paying off,
and so I come around, back around,
I come back to the front door,
and my plan was always catch a 360 front door, mask up,
and then I will shag hose at the front door,
so the fire tech team can get in there,
the nozzle on the heel,
and so the firefighter looks over at me,
sees that I'm masking up, he had masked up,
well, holding the two and a half between his legs,
knocked down initial fire in the garage,
saw me masking up, shut down the line,
runs over, grabs the nozzle, goes up,
he would say, hey, fires up to the right,
goes up to the right, they kind of seal it off,
knock it out, I peel off, I go search,
kind of that first floor,
and it was just like, that's the moment that I knew,
hey, all of our training and practice just paid off,
and we just operated that way,
so those are some of those fun, fun calls,
and I can remember one where I went to go mask up
and go in the door, and in the time that,
when I had got out of the rig
and kneeled at the front door to mask up,
the strap on my face piece had come out,
and I'm like, well, crap,
so thankfully I was able to get it all put together
and mask up again before even the second dude got there,
and so there's all those just little fun,
fun little calls, but yeah.
Very cool, yeah, it's amazing,
I don't think most people realize
what an organized chaos most fire grounds are,
and occasionally you get those flows, even with codes,
I mean, I've had so many messy codes,
so things going wrong left, right, and center,
but you get those sometimes,
it was a guy, I think I've said this before,
but kind of just had a full on,
just collapsed in a kennel,
and it ended up being a brain bleed,
but the code went so well where you walked away knowing,
I mean, again, like you said, so sad that he didn't,
and again, the proximity of his family in that call
is something that, again, like you said, doesn't haunt me,
but if you ask what some of the shittiest calls,
it wasn't the grotesque stuff I saw,
it was filling in an EMS report
on someone I couldn't save six feet from their family,
while they're being told by the doctor they didn't make it,
but so when that goes well, it is amazing,
because you train and you do your best every time,
but I don't think people realize that the chaos
that is trying to do our job in the real world,
whether it's the fireside or the EMS.
Yeah, and I can only think in all of the codes
that have been on, I wanna say one confirmed save,
and we later met her,
and then the other one was they said,
yeah, no, that person survived,
but I didn't ever meet that person again,
and the one that was the true code save, we had trained,
we all had our roles, we had it down,
like if we had a CPR call first hand,
I was on the chest every single time,
well, I shouldn't say every single time,
because there one time I wasn't,
and that code didn't go as well,
like just for us as our system,
and so it was more nasty in a buffet restaurant,
so you can imagine, so after that one said,
and that is why we stick to our planning,
but anyway, so we get there,
and it's in the lobby of a local store,
and the 42 years old, so just a couple years younger
than where I am now, and walk in and just on the floor,
and so it's boom, on the chest, start doing compressions,
and the other EMT is getting airway stuff figured out,
and the second rig gets there,
and we ultimately ended up meeting her later on,
and at the time she had,
I wanna say her three year old son,
and so we got to meet him and the husband as well,
and so it's those moments that I reflect on
and really reminds me of why we do what we do,
why we train, why we have our planning already figured out,
so we're not figuring it out when we get there,
unless you have to call an audible,
which is always that, call the play,
and if it's an audible, you call it,
but all things being considered, this is how we run it,
and so there's no question, we just go to work,
so it's reflecting on those calls
that really cements the importance of training and prep,
and just thinking through,
what am I gonna do in this situation, or blah, blah, blah,
so anyways.
So you've spent quite a bit of time in the fire service now,
when did you decide that you wanted to start looking
outside of the walls of our profession
for leadership mentors,
and then where did that journey take you?
That's a great question, thanks James.
If I could go back a little bit and even start with,
I think the genesis of my leadership journey,
just reflecting back,
I think really goes back to my time
working with my parents in the restaurants,
and just watching how they would interact with our employees,
but then also on the personal side,
really just watching how our family dynamic
and having a sister with special needs,
what that looked like for us,
and just seeing the decisions and the choices
that they would make, that some of the trade-offs,
or even maybe what could be considered sacrifice for others.
So I think the beginning really goes back to those times,
and then looking at our time in the restaurants,
it was how did they come alongside other people?
And so they would,
and we have one of our previous restaurant managers
that had a desire to become an owner operator,
and so just watching how my parents
would come alongside the individuals
and help, and just meet them where they're at,
and help them to achieve their goals and stuff,
and then just the profit sharing, the pay for grades,
all these other things that they did to just,
it was all in the spirit of helping others
and challenging others to be who they wanted to become.
And then fast forward to the fire service,
it was really probably around the time,
around 2016, 2017,
when I went into training for the first time,
and really setting up kind of our program for academies
and how we train people and how we bring,
how we develop the fundamental skills
and build on top of that to then pass on to operations
to then take what, hopefully we built
the strong foundation and training,
and then now operations role is to really build on that
and integrate, and now how do we actually
take these lessons and apply it?
But through that whole process,
I went through probably one of the biggest
career challenges and disappointments in my life,
and had designed a program that ultimately,
I think I pushed, I don't think, I know I pushed too far.
I knew just enough to be dangerous, so to speak,
and I pushed a little bit too far,
and so I ultimately was reassigned out.
And so that really, I think, was what springboarded for me,
like how can we do better in the whole process
of how do we have those maybe difficult conversations,
or how do we just seek to understand or to learn,
or how do we properly investigate things
instead of just the tendency to just cancel?
And then where does the learning take place
if all we do is cancel, and then we move on?
And so that was part of it,
and then just watching over the course of,
at that time it would have been 15 years or 20 years,
now it's 20 years, but at that time,
just watching the isms at play in the fire service,
whether that's the cronyisms, the favoritisms,
all the other isms that come in,
and just seeing how that has impacted
the trajectory of some people's careers or other groups,
or who gets what, and what is a fair or equitable process
for all of those things while taking into account
some of the other kind of soft, maybe soft skills.
So that's really kind of where it started.
And then, so I mentioned I was reassigned back out
on operations, and that was actually a time
where I took a step back.
I said it was a very difficult time for me.
It was probably one of my biggest career failures
when I look at it, and I actually got to the point
where I was ready to leave the organization,
that I was working for, and seek opportunity elsewhere.
And it really was, to kind of put it in terms
that you've used in the past,
it was that organizational betrayal,
but it wasn't just one-sided.
It was all-sided.
It was labor, it was administration,
it was all these other things, at least that's how it felt.
And really, it was a time where I was ready
to quit, and really it was like I was done.
I was ready to quit and go somewhere else.
And I was challenging that decision,
and I was kind of on my own doing that.
I mean, I had external resources helping me process that
and walk that journey.
But I was ready to go, and I'd actually applied
to other organizations, and it's funny to look back on now,
because I tend to pay attention to the details,
and I'm not perfect, so I miss things.
And in this particular case, I'd applied for a position
that was pretty fitting to my skill set and whatnot.
And I didn't make it past the application process,
and so I reached out and asked what happened.
And in my research, I figured out
that I had attached the wrong attachment.
I had just attached the questions,
but I hadn't included my responses,
and so in all this shuffle and everything.
So when I look back, that was kind of the, to me,
that was the universe saying, yeah, you're not done yet.
Your work isn't over.
There's something that you need to do,
or there's a reason you're walking through this process.
And so I took some extended time off.
I had a medical procedure done,
and that allowed me to take some more time off.
And then another opportunity opened up
to go back in to training.
And so I put my name in the hat again, was told no,
and then there was some shift in personnel,
people retired, so on and so forth.
And the then training chief, the new training chief,
who is now our fire chief, we had a discussion,
and he asked if I would come back in.
And I actually took a pause on that and said,
let me think about it.
I'm gonna start my bachelor's degree.
I'm gonna do all this other stuff.
And so let me think about it.
And I was on shift that day.
And I leaned a little bit on my faith then,
and kind of just said a prayer to the universe,
like is this what I'm supposed to do,
what am I supposed to do?
And that night, and I worked, at that time,
I worked at a fire station that,
we didn't get up at night typically.
And that night we got up in the middle of the night,
and we went on one of those nasty calls,
and I said, okay, I think that's my answer.
So later on that next day, I called and said,
all right, I'll come back in.
So I went back into training,
and then kind of towards the end of, gosh, it was 21,
we did pandemic, and I finished out my bachelor's degree,
and I was kind of given the green light.
We had started to say, hey,
let's look at some leadership stuff.
Let's look at what's out there.
And so, yeah, it was late,
probably, maybe actually probably mid-2021,
I just sent out these requests for information
or proposals to, gosh, there was probably nine
or 10 different companies all over the place.
And then just as they came in with review and whatnot.
So that's kind of how it started.
So walk me through just each of the ones that you found,
and what was unique about them?
What did you draw?
Because I mean, this is the beautiful thing about wellness,
nutrition, fitness, mental health.
Everyone is different.
Every department is different.
The part of the world, the kind of dynamic
within the department itself.
So for you on this journey,
what were the organizations that you found a lot of value,
and then what was it about them
that you were able to apply to your department?
So we had, back in 17,
a group of us had actually engaged with Echelon Front,
and three of us were able to go
to the Extreme Ownership Muster,
which was pretty, pretty awesome.
And so one of the companies that we reached out to
was Echelon Front.
There was a time when we actually integrated
the Extreme Ownership book,
which was a book that we strongly recommended
as reading before coming onto the organization.
And so trying to implant the mindset stuff.
Ultimately, we didn't find a partnership
in this current journey,
but we still have that book around,
and we still will recommend it.
It's one that I'll loan out or recommend to people.
But of the groups that we actually reached out to,
there was All American Leadership,
there was the Arbinger Institute,
Sloan, I think, or Slalom is one of the companies.
And really the ones that we looked deeper into
were the Arbinger Institute and All American Leadership.
And ultimately we ended up,
those are the two that we've been working with,
but what was really awesome about the All American
Leadership group is one, it's the authenticity,
some of the generosity.
You've had many of the guests on the show,
it was actually episode 33 with Rob and Rick,
where that seed was kind of planted with the company
and just listening to what their values are,
just the makeup of their team.
There's a lot of translations across
when you look at the military side,
across to the fire service of small teams.
And so we looked into some of their programs,
we started off doing the monthly leadership huddles,
which is a virtual platform and meet on Zoom once a month
and just dive into some of the topics.
And that's where I really started to learn
a little bit more about who they are,
what they're all about, how they connect other leaders
from all different industries.
And so you wouldn't just have fire service,
but you would have private sector,
Toyo Tires is one of their other clients.
And so it was really cool to see that across the board,
leadership struggles are relatively the same,
it's just the context that is a little bit different
or that you're applying it to.
So that was a start of it.
Then had the opportunity to engage
in the fire service leadership academy.
So we sent three people, myself included,
to go through the fire service leadership academy,
and that was over the course of seven months.
And Robin's team have really done a phenomenal job
of breaking down this big topic of leadership
into digestible sections.
And so it starts with learning to lead yourself
and learning about yourself and your own triggers
and your responses to things.
And then you learn to lead in relationships,
one or two or three other people maybe.
And then there's two sessions that are based on that.
And then you learn to lead in teams for two sessions.
And then you learn to lead in an organization beyond that.
And then you actually have to go through this really,
I guess, profound comes to mind,
but a really good experience of really establishing
what is your own personal why
or your own personal purpose statement,
and also what are your core values.
And so just going through that process
and having to ask those questions,
like what is my purpose?
What do I do so that others or so that?
So there's always a, this is what I'm doing,
and then it's a so that.
So that was really a good process.
And it was concluded with having to give a legacy talk
on the journey to where you are now,
and then explain what your commitments
over the next year are gonna be.
And so, and those are very deep and personal presentations.
And it was just really fascinating to just listen
to other classmates share,
what their purpose statements were, what their values were,
how all the materials resonated with them.
So that was one program that we walked through.
So three of us went through.
We currently have four more people going through
the Leadership Academy right now.
And then last summer,
I was very blessed to have the opportunity
to go on the All-American Leadership Expedition
that took place outside of Lander, Wyoming
in the Wind River Mountain Range.
And so that's a seven day expedition.
And that's run through the Knowles,
the National Outdoor Leadership School.
And Rick Rochelle has spent his entire life working there
and leading organizations and executives
and places like NASA and all these other people
through these courses, where you start to put leadership
into action.
And for me, it really helped kind of solidify
some of the foundational things
that the All-American Leadership Academy really talked about.
So, and there's a lot of time for self-reflection.
Part of that journey is you have to give another
kind of leadership journey talk.
So each one of us had to get up in front of our,
the team and there was nine of us that went.
And so you're out in this just rugged country
and beautiful parts of our country.
It's amazing and sharing your stories.
And so I learned a lot from that as well.
And that's, so that's some of the things
that we're looking at.
The organization hasn't invested in sending people
on the Leadership Academy yet.
Hope maybe that can be an opportunity,
but we're not quite there yet.
And then with Arbinger, we've really dove into,
there's a program called Outward Inclusion.
And we all can probably cite experiences
where just the word inclusion just incites
such an emotional or almost sometimes visceral response.
And so Arbinger has done a really good job
of taking a highly emotional and controversial topic
and really making it accessible
and really seeking to find our common humanity
and then building from there.
And so that's what we've committed to getting
all of our people trained through that class.
And we've had Desmond Lomax has been our facilitator
of that program.
He's come out twice now.
And he actually spent his 20 years
in the Utah corrections in corrections.
And so institution and then went on
to become a licensed therapist and whatnot.
So he understands the public sector's mindset
and was able to take this challenging topic
and make it accessible and for our folks
and then not make people feel called out
or in one instance, somebody shared with me
that it didn't demonize anybody
and it really was very self-reflective.
So we've gotten a lot of positive responses
from that program.
So those have been the two.
Beautiful.
Well, there's a couple of things I wanna ask you.
Firstly, in the 14 years that I spent in uniform,
I watched four different departments.
People get hired, people get promoted
and it was the same, the certifications
that these men and women needed
to get the bugles on their lapel.
But I didn't really see any leadership training.
And so of course there were some people
that were great firefighters and engineers
that became great lieutenants and captains
because they were already understanding those principles
as a senior man or whatever it was.
But then conversely in this very young fire department
where a lot of people are flying up the ladder,
chasing the money and I understand
overworked and underpaid, I get it,
but it doesn't create a good on-ramp
for understanding teamwork, community leadership.
So what have you seen as far as the wider spectrum
on promotion versus leadership training
in the fire service in the US?
Yeah, that's a great, great question.
So many things come to mind.
You're starting to see the shift.
I think the fire service is realizing
exactly what you said is we're promoting
based on technical competence in let's say operations
or crisis mitigation.
And so you just promote up through the ranks on that side.
And I think we're starting to see what the outcomes
of that have been.
And so I'm starting to see more talk
about the leadership component and what that actually means
and how to maybe connect with people.
You know, when you think about,
or at least when I think about operations
and my time in operations and being in the fire stations
and on the apparatus and responding,
that's a small percentage of what we do.
And we spend the majority of our time training on that stuff,
which is what we need to do because lives depend on that.
But we don't spend a lot of time in just
how do we do the personnel side of things?
And part of the journey of finding these different programs
was it started as this whiteboard sketch,
and then it turned into a nice little paper document
that we actually broke apart and we put our people
at the center of this document.
And then we split it up and we said,
okay, look, we've got our people or you take a person
and we broke it up into,
I wanna say it's three categories if I remember it.
We have clarity, which we can talk about
as our mind or mindset or are we,
do we know, are we connected to our purpose and our mission?
Do we have knowledge of that?
And then there's the heart side of things,
which can be our cultural competency.
And when I say cultural, it's more of
how do we interact with each other?
It's our values plus our behaviors.
That's what equals our culture.
So it's not like the culture when we talk about diversity
and things like that, it's even more simple than that.
Just right now where you and I are having an interaction,
there's a culture that exists between us.
So is there a cultural competence?
And then there's the other side,
which is there's the technical competence
or the hands of what we do.
So head, heart, hands is how that document
or almost like our people plan, training plan
has been kind of developed.
But then even within the technical competency side,
there's operations, incident response, all that.
And then there's also the station or the administrative side
or the interpersonal and some of the interpersonal stuff
falls under that culture.
So we're starting to look for us,
we're starting to identify what sorts of training
are out there that address all of those things.
And so what's really cool and exciting
is I can look at that document now and I can say,
oh, under the clarity side, we've done an ethos workshop.
So that's one thing I forgot to mention is,
so we had All American Leadership come in
and walk us through a purpose and ethos workshop.
How are our values lived out is what we could say
as an ethos.
And so we got 70 people from our organization volunteered
to engage in that process and be part of that process.
And we actually redefined what our purpose statement was.
And it went from a two line, very hard to remember
and recite statement to something very simple
that most people can just recite off
the top of their head and it's that we're sworn to serve
and dedicated to save.
And that group was made up of administrative
and operations, all work groups were represented
to go through that.
And that purpose statement is what resonated.
So we're seeing that.
And then under the cultural competency side of things,
we've brought in that outward inclusion,
we've done Leadership Academy.
There's other opportunities to provide executive coaching
and other things like that as well
to help build on those things.
One of the other guys that I went on the expedition with
works down at the National Medal of Honor Museum
and he teaches a program called Training Mission Alignment
and then Leading in Mission Alignment.
And so there's all these other ways
that we can kind of take all these what are,
I don't know, sometimes very maybe vague
or nebulous concepts and we can start to hone in
and figure out how to bring them all into alignment
so we can move ourselves in the same direction.
And then moving across onto our technical competency side,
we've started to develop our own internal office
or academies and all these other things
to hit both technical but then also focusing on
coaching and counseling
or all these other more difficult topics too.
So I think all that to say,
looking at watching what Anthony Castro's retired BC
out of Sac Metro with trainfirefighters.com,
you see that he's teaching, providing a lot of programs
and we actually are working through his commanding
the Command the Chaos program
for all of our company officers and chief officers
are working through that program,
Calming the Chaos,
Mastering Fire Ground Command is that program.
But he also does stuff for promotionals
and just watching what he's doing
and having sat through one of his seminars in the past,
he's focusing on, we've got to train people to do the job,
not to pass the test.
But that's a very challenging mindset to get over.
And I've scratched my head a lot trying to figure out,
how do you get the mindset to shift from,
oh, we're just checking boxes by doing this academy
to know we're trying to prepare you for the job,
prepare you for the role.
And while doing that,
it's specific to our organization
and it also meets the intent of the NFPA standards
and whatnot, but somewhere in there,
it's really hard to connect that because it always feels
like it comes across as over just checking boxes.
It's like, no.
So I hope that answered some of your question.
No, it did because I mean, there is a disconnect
and you talked a minute ago about some of the resources
that you found and there's Echelon Front
and there's all these other great leadership organizations.
Another thing you talked about mission statement
and again, four departments, four,
that means four cities or counties,
four things that I've been told you need to learn.
We will strive to uphold the highest level
of professionalism and badgers and squirrels
and whatever random words they put into their mission statement
that no one fucking remembers.
And it doesn't act, it's a kind of a bullshit term
because there's no mission behind it.
A mission has a beginning, an end
and then the roadmap to how do you get there?
So for example, I've never been in a fire department
that says, our mission is to reduce the amount
of obesity related deaths, reduce the amount of fires,
the car crash, whatever it is.
And of course, I'm not talking about fire departments
have to redesign roads or whatever,
but what are we doing to move the needle
on what we're responding to?
And I had, I think it was with Marine, I had a while ago
and I remember he was so frustrated
thinking back to being in Afghanistan
because he was like, we just showed up every day,
loaded up into the Humvee, drove down a road,
if we made it home that night, we went to sleep,
woke up the next day, drove down the road
and he said, we never felt like there was a sense
of a mission and I was like, God,
that is just like the fire service.
What do you do at seven in the morning?
You just show up.
When you don't look back and go, man, we are
in a much better place than a year ago.
And so I think that's a huge, again, layman observation
because I was never in a quote unquote
official leadership position,
but I've never worked for a department,
I've worked for four and volunteered for a fifth
for a heartbeat where I've actually understood
what the mission was.
What are we trying to do?
How are we trying to improve life safety,
improve the way that we even brand ourselves to the public,
improve relationships with the public.
It was just, yes, there's a plaque on the wall,
but ultimately just show up at seven
and just run your damn calls.
Yeah.
Man, there's a lot there, sharing that
and one of the opportunities I had in this journey
was actually went down and I'm so thankful
that Toyo Tires was willing to allow me to do this
to the CEO, Mike Gravers.
I'm very grateful, but I wanted to see
what an in-person leadership academy looked like.
So I reached out to Rob Nielsen
and it was just this, sometimes I get these crazy ideas
and then I just will just reach out
and then I go through the whole process of,
is it gonna be a yes or is it gonna be no, blah, blah.
Anyway, long story short, I ended up having the opportunity
to go down and attend a in-person leadership academy session
at Toyo Tires headquarters.
And Toyo has been working with All American
and what really stood out to me
and it really took a lot of the books.
So one of the books that the leadership academy follows
is legacy and it's about the history of the all blacks
and they talk about having rituals and artifacts
and all these different things.
And so I went to this leadership academy session
but it started out with one of the quarterly meetings
and they started out the meeting
with what is our purpose statement
and I've only been to Toyo once
but I've been able to interact with some of their employees
since and have built some relationships
but they start out, what's our purpose?
We build tires people love.
And here I am like, I don't work at Toyo
but I know their purpose statement
and they talk about their,
and then they go through their values
and I don't remember all their values
but in that particular moment,
they took a time to recognize and to call out and say,
does anybody wanna share an example
of somebody living into our values
over the last month or quarter
or whatever that timeframe was?
And so someone said, yes, I wanna recognize Wendy's team
for the value of tenacity.
And so they talked about all of the reasons why
and how that team lived into tenacity.
And I thought, man, this is so awesome.
I'm at a place that is truly living into
what in a lot of places is just bullshit on the wall.
Like you said, it's just this piece of paper,
it's just bullshit.
But they're actually attempting and being intentional
to create these spaces and create these opportunities
to come together, to hear the purpose statement,
to hear the values
and then also to share the positives
of people living into those values.
And so we went through all that
and then it's able to get a little notebook
that actually has, it's nice little notebook
and it's got their purpose statement in
and then every page that you turn has their values on it.
So you just can't get away from seeing what the values are.
And what's really cool, and that's an artifact now,
that's something that's there, that's memorable.
All of their people that I saw there,
they're still, they didn't have a uniform necessarily,
but everybody was wearing logoed attire.
So you knew that they worked for Toyo.
And so it's really cool to now see some of those things
showing up in our organization where our values of teams
trust, empowerment, accountability, mindset and service
are stamped everywhere.
And the challenge coin, the new challenge coin
has our values on it.
And those values were reaffirmed in that ethos workshop.
And it was so cool to see after all the work
that our Fire Chief had gone through
to establish those to begin with,
to then be okay to let them go
and be okay with the people rewriting them if needed.
And so it's been really exciting to just see
how we are attempting to be intentional
to come into alignment and then live out the values
that are on the piece of paper.
And then we went a little bit further
and just started to add little bullet points
that are some of the behaviors
that would fall under our rules.
And so as you're talking about the mission,
the mission with the Marine, it popped into my mind
about one of the little bullet statements
and it's under mindset is we are mission ready.
And I remember this conversation happening
amongst one of our administrative groups
where someone had said,
yeah, I'm not sure that mission ready really fits.
Like it was definitely leaning more towards
it was the mission ready.
Leaning more towards it was the mission of the fire service
to go out and save lives and protect property and whatnot.
And then, so there was a discussion going on.
This is a room full of 70 people.
And then from across the room,
one of our other administrative folks
who happens to work for this other individual said,
no, I get it.
In my role, in my administrative role,
what mission ready means to me is that,
I'm coming to work well rested,
my laptop is ready to go, it's charged up.
Like I know that my mission is to ensure that,
my job is done well so that it feeds into supporting
our overall purpose.
And after that brief exchange, it was like,
okay, you're right, it stays.
And so it was just really cool to see how that process
really connected our folks both operationally
and administratively to our purpose and our values.
And we can start to see what that stuff looks like.
So you mentioned about being in the training department
before, being a little bit too,
whatever adjective you wanna use,
finding yourself circling around again.
What would you now advise people as far as,
who are in a training department,
who are about to enter a training department,
the way that you would see the kind of dynamic now in 2024?
I would say go in and learn history.
You know, and that spool up period might be pretty short,
but go in and just try to observe,
get to understand what the history is,
what work has already been done,
what are some of the topics or what's worked,
what hasn't worked, and really kind of unpack those things.
And then one of the questions
I would probably ask myself is,
what is different now that lends this idea to be successful,
especially if it's an idea that's a recycling?
I think when I went into training the first time,
I was coming off the line and I was a good idea guy
from the kitchen table and the fire station,
we have all the answers, we know how it should be done.
And so we're going through this time
where we didn't have a consistent academy
and we were going to hire back somebody,
a retired person or whatever.
And so of course I thought that would be as most firefighters
would and so I went down, marched down
to that training chief's office one day
and wanted to share all my good ideas.
And what I didn't know, I found out later in that meeting
after he, when I went in and I was sharing all my good ideas
and what I'm willing to do to help the process and whatnot.
And I'm really close with this individual,
we're still really good friends today,
but he turns and he stands up from his desk
and he's about as red as you can be.
And he says, what the fuck do you want me to do, man?
I mean, shit, they only gave me $10,000.
So, you know, I feel about a millimeter tall
because I realized right then and there,
I don't have a whole story.
You know, I just see the outcome
and there's so many decisions and things that are made
that are so far outside of my purview, I've got no idea.
And we hugged it out, worked it out, whatever.
And then a few weeks, a few months later,
that was my opportunity.
Like we opened up for an academy coordinator
and that was my opportunity to step up or shut up.
Like if I've got all the good ideas
and I gotta go on there and do it.
But so I came in like thinking, okay, I got this idea.
This is what my assignment is to build this, it's that
and the other thing.
So, but I didn't stop to really kind of learn kind of the,
call it the political lay of the land.
And so I just did what I thought was right.
And so that's how I would advise people,
let's go figure out the lay of the land,
go learn what's been done before, what worked,
what didn't work.
If you wanna recycle an idea or try again,
just ask like, what's different now?
Has administration changed?
Does the mindset change?
Or there's still people in positions now that were then,
like all those things are gonna factor
into what you can and can't do.
And so, yeah, that's what comes to mind.
Brilliant.
Well, I wanna put one more kind of concept to you
and then we'll go to some closing questions.
I know that it's something that you wanted
to talk about as well.
So as anyone who's listened to more than basically
one episode of this show,
they'll know I'm a little bit passionate
about the work week and bringing it down
because of the fact that it's behind all of the disease
and death pretty much a huge contributing factor.
So without loading the question at all,
what is your perspective of the American Firefighter
work week and what are your thoughts
on changing it if at all?
Man, it is a loaded question.
And so I've worked, in my career I've worked the 24 48,
I've worked three 12s,
and now I've been on a 40 hour work week for,
if you put it all together, probably about six years,
but different because it's four 10s versus,
like a 24 72 or whatnot.
But what I'll say from my own lived experience
in and you probably asked, Aubrey, my family this too,
is I didn't know how much kind of that chronic sleep
deprivation or the shift work cycle was affecting me
until I got off of it and then my body shifted.
And so having now being on a more set schedule,
like I have a very, I don't wanna say strict,
but I have a routine and I feel better overall.
I'm probably in the best health and fitness
that I've ever been in in my life.
I don't find myself as irritated or short fused now
as I did while working shift work.
One of the things towards the end there is,
and we were at a one on two off or 24 48
and we had Kelly days,
I wouldn't work over my Kelly day break.
That was kind of a personal rule that I put in place.
And then, and I also recognize,
our life choices have been such and Aubrey works.
And so we have the ability that over time is not something
that we've ever lived off of.
So that was a personal choice that we made.
And yes, what I worked some and yeah, of course.
But I also came from a family business
where we worked all the time.
And I still fight that now in a 40 hour job,
I probably fight that worse now than I do.
But so I would use those breaks to get rested
and recovered and go on trips and decompress.
And so it's just interesting now to think back
or even just to listen to the conversations
of there's so much information that you're putting out there
about 24 72 and we a year ago,
yeah, a little over a year ago,
we negotiated a new schedule D shift,
but we went to one, two, one, four.
And now if we want to change that,
we got to open up the contract and bargain
to change it to something else.
But we have dynamic work days or the debit days.
And so what always fascinated me with a schedule
and thinking about scheduling changes
was there's a schedule that's on paper.
And then there's the schedule that we actually work.
And when we were 24 48 with Kelly's,
I for the most part, actually worked at 24 48 with Kelly's
because I didn't work a ton of overtime
or these other things.
And so sometimes I'm like,
well, what schedule are we actually working?
Are you actually working a 48 24 48 24?
Are you actually working 24 48?
And so yeah, it's just interesting
because I've read some of the research and you know,
obviously I've been listening to your show for a long time,
but it's funny to see out there the worst schedule,
we can work as though one on one off, one on one off,
one on four off.
The best schedule is 24 72,
but then we go and choose these other schedules
or we just try to compress it like the 48 96,
which then you probably are ending up working
something else.
Something else or a one that there's a few departments
in our area that are doing is this 1323 schedule.
And so I don't know,
it's just interesting to listen to the conversation
at one moment where we'll say we need more rest
and we need this and we need that.
But then if you actually looked into somebody's calendar,
is that actually what they're working
or was there some other motivation behind a schedule change?
So it's just interesting.
So it'll be interesting to see how long term
what the fire service does,
but in depth save the for us, for me,
I see the health impacts that changes both mentally,
physically with working a, you know,
410 schedule or 40 hour schedule.
And it's there's a lot of benefits,
but I also know there's this weird like,
oh no, I can never see myself working, you know,
four days a week.
Oh my gosh, it's this worst, the worst thing ever.
But I don't know, sometimes I think we're just,
we can be afraid of change and we don't know how good it is
until we actually shift and let our bodies reset.
But yeah.
Well, it's interesting because you on your notes
that you sent me that one with a dynamic Kelly days
or the work days still ends up being a 52.8 hour work week.
So this is the conversation that, you know,
I've had a lot where I've used the analogy of a Rubik's cube
and I'm probably told you this, you know,
we talk about the cube and we spin the colors.
And so, oh, not 24, 48, let's do a 48, 96
or the Anaheim schedule one on one off four times
and then a four or six, but it's all a 56 hour work week.
And there's no discussion on why is the cube so fucking big?
Let's make the whole cube smaller.
So I think this whole smoke a mirror thing with,
you know, it's like the cup game in New York, you know,
where's the chip?
And so, you know, that's the basal thing.
And then, then there's going to be this automatic
internal monologue of, oh, you know, I'm not working less
or, oh, they're going to cut my wages
or all the other complete bullshit, you know,
urban legends around this topic.
And then you have to frame it just very simply,
the people that make these decisions about your jobs
work 40 hours a week.
Why do you not feel that you and your family deserve you
to be home the same amount of time that they are?
That's all it boils down to.
We devolved from when we used to sit around smoking cigars,
petting the Dalmatian and waiting for a fire singular.
Now we are Jack of all trades, master of none,
running numerous calls every 24, up most of the night.
And if not still sleeping with one eye open,
arguably we should be working less than the office worker.
But for the love of God,
at least put our fire department back to the same
as the office work.
Yeah, you know, it's, you mentioned that I was just sharing
with one of my office mates the other day,
how I had a superstition when I was on shift work
and I wouldn't go to bed before midnight
because I knew if I went to bed before midnight,
we'd be getting up at night.
And so yeah, I would stay up.
And actually part of how I would operate
and is during the day when the crew is awake,
that was my opportunity to be with the crew
as officer build those relationships.
And then once the crew went to bed,
that was my time to do all the quote,
officer stuff, paperwork or whatever we had.
And so I would do that after, you know,
everybody went to bed and then I would stay up.
And you know, looking back,
a lot of it was because like you just said,
we don't know when that tones are gonna go off
or what could be the worst call ever
and push us to our limits.
And for me, I always felt behind the eight ball,
behind the power curve,
when I'm waking up from a dead sleep,
grabbing the pagers or phones off the nightstand,
trying to get dressed and fumble my way downstairs
to the rig and then have to get my mind ready for,
okay, what are we going on?
Where's people coming from?
Like, where's the hydrants?
All the navigating to the call, whatever it is.
So I always felt behind the power curve.
And so I would just stay up later
because I thought, okay, if I stay up later,
then that means I'm gonna hear the call come in.
And so that's me kind of engineering
or buying myself a little bit more processing time.
So, but then the challenge of that,
the sabotaging side of that is now I've shortened
how much I'm actually sleeping
because now I probably wasn't asleep till one
because I'm laying in bed looking at the ceiling,
just waiting for that little red light to go off.
Or in some cases, you hear the click of the lights
before anything even happens.
Or in our old days, you could actually hear the MDC beep
before everything went.
And so it's just interesting
how the body senses all that stuff.
And so, yeah, so I would probably get what?
Four or five hours of not awesome sleep
and then have to be somewhat functional the next day.
But I'm pretty blessed to have a wife that we met after
I was in the fire service.
And she's really been along the journey with me.
And so she even has helped, you know,
look over at the recliner and listening to some of our,
you know, programs, how to survive, you know,
fire service relationship is,
hey, sometimes dad's gonna come home
and he needs to hit that recliner for an hour
and decompress.
And so I had that, but not everybody does.
And that just compounds on things.
And so, yeah, but it's all gonna come,
there's something that gets, has to be traded off
for some of that.
And there's always a dollar figure
or a cost associated with those things.
And that's a hard stuff to pull apart.
And sometimes we choose, do we want more people?
And we, in our fast math, you know,
our coffee table math can be,
well, more people equals less overtime.
So then, no, we would rather take the raise,
have less people.
And it potentially continues to feed this vicious cycle
versus more people filling more positions
as less dynamic days or less whatever,
but the money's gotta come from somewhere.
That's the reality of it, is there's a cost.
And at some point we have to be intellectually honest
with ourselves about there's a cost to that.
And so, but if we come together with a common purpose,
maybe, and maybe some similar values,
then maybe we can find something that's gonna work
for everybody instead of it potentially always falling
into this us versus them type of battle.
So there's somewhere out there, there's the answer,
but you know, it takes personal responsibility
as well as agency responsibility and labor responsibility
to make it all work.
It's not just one-sided, so.
Absolutely.
Well, and we're going back to the whole mission thing.
One of the things that infuriates me,
I mean, this happened locally, we had two suicides,
was it last year, just over a year ago now,
within three months of each other, both young men.
Young, young men.
And so to me, surely your entire mission statement
is gonna shift to this has to stop.
Well, I was part of this research project
that is trying to present to the county I live in
to talk about 2472s.
You should have heard the resistance.
It was nausea.
And to me, it's like, so don't show up at the funeral then.
If you actually don't give a shit,
then don't fucking show up in the first place, you know?
But if you actually care about these firefighters
that are getting cancer and overdosing and suicide
and heart disease and autoimmune disease
and all these other things that are happening,
there's your mission statement right there.
First thing, yes, we're gonna serve the public
and everything, but number one is that we're gonna figure out
all these elements that actually affect our firefighters'
health and we're gonna change them.
And the irony is, and I've obviously talked about this
a huge amount and had some great guests on this,
the money is there, but it's in the sewer
because you're flushing it down the toilet
by working your men and women into the ground.
So it's all there, the medical retirements,
the overtime, the lawsuits, I mean, you name it,
millions and millions and millions of dollars.
Take some of that money that you're wasting,
put in a fourth shift, therefore now people are gonna
wanna test for you because they look on paper like,
oh wow, they actually care about their people.
The line goes out the door again for recruitment,
just like you and I when we first started.
And now there isn't all this overtime.
So all the people that were kind of, you know,
exactly that kind of self-serving,
I'd rather be away from my family and earn more money
mentality, which is absolutely fucking insane,
that goes away because you can't be a firefighter
at your station apart from occasional overtime.
But here's the beautiful thing, now you can go
and find another passion to do on the side
that you can do on your days off if you wanna have
that extra money, if you need a little extra
for your mortgage or your ski boat, whatever it is.
But the beautiful thing is you still go home
to your family and you sleep in your bed
every single night when you're off.
So this is what's crazy to me and we are our own worst enemy.
If your union isn't fighting for better working conditions,
and I would argue for a fitness standard too,
let's be honest, then they don't give a shit about you.
If your administration isn't, then they don't give
a shit about you.
If your city or county isn't, then they don't give
a shit about you.
So that means that you have to be your own advocate
and you have to get everyone else to understand
the ridiculousness of the firefighter work week,
the fact that all the mandatory over times
are just making things even worse and you're away
from your children and your husband or your wife even more.
And no one's thanking you.
No one's saying, I can't believe that you take another
24 hours of your life to cover while in this interim.
No, they're like, well, we're short-staffed.
It is what it is.
So either we get angry enough to actually finally advocate
for ourselves, start chasing some bullshit pay raise
and really fight the true currency,
which is time with our family, then the fault is on us.
But I think that, I get it, we're so tired and so bewildered,
but the answers are out there and I've got episodes
where departments big and small literally lay out
how they made it happen.
And it's always because they saved money for the city
or county is really what the ultimate thing was.
So all the answers are there.
It's just a case of people having the courage
to actually stand up.
The same way as they're courageous going in a house fire,
be courageous so that you can walk back
into your home more often.
I love that.
The timing of this is just impeccable.
One of our folks just announced their retirement
and I actually had just met with this individual
a few months ago and at that time they had said,
no, I'm not gonna retire.
So, okay.
And we tend to talk through about all the different stuff
and I think one of the big challenges too
is having purpose outside of the fire service.
It's really easy for us as people that wear the uniform
that that uniform becomes your identity
and when you take off that uniform,
it's almost like you've lost yourself
and I'll take a quick tangent.
But one of the things that going through that ordeal
that I went through back in 18 and into 19 was that was,
I think the universe telling me this isn't your identity
and you need to be ready for the day
that you no longer wear the uniform
or you no longer put your stuff on the rig
and go respond to call.
That's not who you are.
That's what you do but it's not who you are.
And so I think when you start looking at retirement
or on those hard stops, the injuries or things
and I've watched people, their career come to an end
out of choice or not choice and how tough that transition is
but anyway to circle back is
individual announced their retirement
and so I shot him a message like, hey, you're retiring?
And yup, and I said, well, what changed?
And speaks to exactly what you said James
is the response was money can't buy time brother.
And I'm like, yes.
And I ended up taking a day off this week
just so I could take my son Zach fishing,
even though we may or may not catch anything
just to spend time.
Cause what I'm like the reality for me, as I look at it,
my time with my kids in their influential part of life
is rapidly closing.
My daughter's entering high school next year,
hard to believe, my son's 14.
My son doesn't know what it was like
to ever have me on shift.
He's always had me home, except for times
where I have been mandatory or I have been gone.
We've, you know, when we have major incidents
and in the county, I end up being part of the
incident management team as a plan section guy.
So he knows what it's like when I'm gone for those things
but typically they get small doses of me every single day
versus being away for those long periods of time.
And so anyways, yeah, you just,
time is something you never ever get back.
And you know, I've watched how many people leave
the fire service and the next day they're,
we're just gonna fill you.
As much as we wanna become indispensable and all that,
we're just not, we're all replaceable,
but we're not replaceable at home,
nor do we, would we wanna be.
I mean, maybe get a fourth best version if I go or whatever,
but what, but yeah.
So that was, I think that just supports a lot of the stuff
that you've been pushing for so many years.
You know, firefighters that are permanently broken
or dead and gone, your purpose,
we can't help be on that.
And you know, if you really wanna stick it to the man,
I think Matt Wenning talked about it
maybe back in his episode or one of his episodes.
If you really wanna stick it to the man,
have a really long, healthy retirement.
And where you, you know, you kick it after three years
or whatever, but yeah.
My granddad did that.
He worked for insurance company in England.
And I remember the year when he'd actually been retired
longer than he'd worked.
Yes.
He lived to 99.
And actually it was cancer that got him.
Ironically, he was so bloody healthy.
Yeah.
Brilliant.
Well, mate, it's been such an incredible conversation
for people listening, we ended up kind of doing
a couple back to back of, you know,
like a few weeks apart.
So if you heard a microphone change, then that's why.
But it's, you know, been able to really pull some of the,
you know, the real lived experience leadership lessons
and some very valuable information.
So I wanna thank you so much for being so,
you're jam, oh fuck, you said it again.
I wanna thank you so much for being so generous
with your time and coming on
the Behind the Shield podcast today.
James, thank you so much.
I think I said it in the very beginning of the other one.
I just, I can't thank you enough.
It's super humbling to be here.
You know, I really wrestled with what the heck,
what am I gonna add to this?
I mean, look at your guest list for crying out loud.
And I've had the opportunity to meet so many of your guests,
which has been awesome.
But it says a lot about you and, you know,
what you've done, what, you know,
the sacrifice that you've made
so that we can try to help make the fire service
as a whole better.
So I'm really, you know, thank you,
but I'm also grateful for you.
And I just hope that we can all leave it
better than we found it.
So, I appreciate it.
Thank you.