Scott Schimmel (00:00.258)
Yeah, Bob Goff used to do that all the time when we record. And then, but he would clap and then start talking. And so I had to like start telling him, like, we don't need you to clap. This isn't a professional shoot here.
Joe Lara (00:08.187)
decibel.
Hahaha!
Scott Schimmel (00:17.1)
Well, hey everybody, I'm Scott Schimmel. I'm here with Joe Lara. We, you don't know who we are, consider us like friends of Vector Accelerator, founders of Vector Accelerator, and at least today, hosts of this show. We're happy to have you here. We're happy to be together. And Joe, the reason we're on this episode is because the other day you posted something on LinkedIn. You're kind of like an irregular poster in that, not that you post irregular things, but...
You do it so frequently and when you do, it has like a lot of meat and a lot of weight. And I don't know what it is. You have like this natural art of like posting something that just people are drawn to. So you posted this thing about your identity and the nuances of the different parts of your identity. So what I'd love for you to kind of share what was behind that post. I guess we can link to it right in this thing. let's link to it.
Joe Lara (01:11.196)
I'm pretty sure we can.
Scott Schimmel (01:13.459)
But tell us about the post and what kind of prompted it.
Joe Lara (01:17.576)
So I'm trying to remember the year I heard this phrase, but I was coming out of the military and I was starting to network air quotes right now for those that are listening air quotes networking and I ran into this Non-military veteran this gentleman older gentleman who said well I've been in business for 30 years and to me that just sounded so impressive that phrase sounded so impressive and As I got been in business 30s like man. I've been doing this military thing for 24
Scott Schimmel (01:26.418)
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scott Schimmel (01:40.817)
Ha
Joe Lara (01:46.12)
And so it's comparing like, I don't know why I thought 30 years, man, he must be like an expert. He must be this badass. and then I, and then I don't know when it was, but it was probably maybe a couple of years after at a different time, at a different occasion, somebody had said, you're in the military. Thank you for your service. And I thought about that phrase, thank you for your service. And as a veteran, you're like, eh, feels weird hearing that. But then I started thinking about it a little bit more. Like what if that, to that person, like,
I sucked at the military for 24 years, know, whatever. wasn't, what if I was horrible? And then I thought about that original statement from that gentleman of 30 years. I'm like, well, what if he was a really horrible business guy for 30 years? Not a great leader, not successful, lost a lot of money starting businesses and family. Yeah, yeah. He's horrible at it. So then I realized, man, we put a lot of emphasis into what we do and it almost becomes our identity. I mean, you think about when we first meet each other,
Scott Schimmel (02:29.794)
Right. We don't like them.
Scott Schimmel (02:42.096)
yeah.
Joe Lara (02:44.68)
at a social event, hey, what do do for a living? That's like the first question that comes out of my mouth. And we put a lot of weight to it. I'm guilty of it too, still to this day. But I thought about that as a veteran and I'm like, man, I think people, we'd like to put each other in boxes and sometimes we put our own selves in boxes. And so not only do we do that to others, but if you're a veteran and you're considering transition or separation or you're about to make that jump, you associate.
as a veteran, you are a veteran. And I just really wanted to make a post that would kind of challenge assumptions when it comes to identity.
Scott Schimmel (03:25.004)
Yeah, it's interesting as you're saying that in work scenarios or maybe like around town or social settings, we ask questions like, so what do do? And I'm trying to think of when we don't. And it's probably the things that come to mind are like weddings and funerals. It's like, how do you know? It's like the question before, what do you do? It's like, it's essentially it's another version of who are you? And I think that's, that's kind of where my mind was going. saying that.
because the thing that you do is a way for us to kind of have a shorthand understanding of who are you. And if I can get a sense of, you're a business person for 30 years, now I'm getting a sense in my imagination, like you said, like you must be successful, respectful, diligent, I mean, whatever the kind of associations you make, but they're not necessarily true at all. And so,
And I'm sure most of us get stumped when we're asked that question because it's like, which, you know, we're trying to, we're trying to discern in a split second, what do I reveal? What do I share? What can they handle? Where will this go? Do I even want to go there? So I, I, I don't know about you, I've got like, and this is kind of pointing to you, the post that you made in my head, I've always thought of pick a card, any card sort of, cause there's so many different variations of what I do professionally.
And it depends on who I'm talking to. If I get paired up with some guy playing golf and they're like, what do you do Scott? And I'm like, yeah. And I'll just say something like just, I'm an education or I help veterans or something. That's just, I'm trying to shut the conversation down. And I, and I did that recently with the guy. It was just me and him playing golf randomly. I don't play that much, but, just, this guy is like, we're talking for a couple holes. And he asked me what I do. I say something about education. And he's like, okay, cool.
And then like a whole later, I'm like, OK, I guess I'm supposed to ask him. I don't want to be friends. You know, I just want to I just want to put my head down. And he says, I work for this. I work for this veteran transition program inside the VA. And I was like, and that case. So you posted four kind of side by side photos of you and they're very different. And maybe you can just kind of walk us through the little what do you call it, like the pop up book of your life here?
Joe Lara (05:30.845)
in that case.
Joe Lara (05:37.884)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (05:46.37)
your different communities.
Joe Lara (05:46.438)
Yeah, what's funny is I was even debating should I even show this photo. to answer your earlier question of like the stuff, why I put the content I put out and how do I get attention, it's because it's, for those that don't know what we're talking about, this photo has a picture of a stormtrooper. Star Wars, classic, crispy white glistening stormtrooper. So that's me in a full blown costume.
Scott Schimmel (06:13.262)
You
Joe Lara (06:14.36)
And yes, I'm a grown man that wears plastic sometimes. Let me give a little bit of context of that. So the first photo in the series of four photos is me in the military holding a weapon. was taken in Afghanistan. It was my last deployment. And for the longest time, that was my identity. After that is the next photo of me wearing a suit, business attire, and where I learned how to wear a sport coat and I learned how to
Scott Schimmel (06:17.454)
You
Joe Lara (06:43.442)
present myself in a civilian context. think for the last, since 2016 until now, I've been in the business world and I've been working with many non-military people. So just making that switch and just realizing, man, I have so much to offer and in a professional setting. And then you have this Stormtrooper, which is just showing the quirky side, I think, that we all have in us. We all have our hobbies and things and maybe not as extreme as mine, but...
That's tied to one, a love of nerd stuff, but also like I'm finding a way to do nerd stuff, but also contribute through charities. And so imagine you're a sick kid in a hospital, but in comes this stormtrooper or Darth Vader. Dude, you know, they might forget that they're in pain or suffering for even a split second. I'm all for it. And then the last photo is just me is just what I consider that's my dad photo. Cause at the time that was taken at the highest building in Boston.
Scott Schimmel (07:29.976)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Lara (07:40.024)
My son was graduating college and he was 21 and we're having our first adult beverage together when he's the legal age. And I'm a present dad, but all of those photos are just slivers of my life. And of course we all have slivers of our lives. But to tie back to the identity piece, I think, and this goes back to your golfing situation where you don't want to get into what you did.
Scott Schimmel (07:46.702)
Yeah.
Joe Lara (08:06.994)
There are themes though, across everything you do. So you might do 20 different things in your life, but there's themes that cross all of it. And so the thing that I want to present in my, in that little post I made on LinkedIn was in all of these images, it's service and impact. That's the theme in all of it. And that's who I am. And that is my identity. And, and it doesn't stop there. There's so much more. We're so complex and I don't want veterans to shortchange themselves and only introduce themselves as a veteran in transition.
Think bigger, think impact, think what do I want to do and how do I want to solve the problems in the world? Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (08:44.17)
The phrase that probably comes before that then implicitly is I'm just a I'm just a whatever. I'm just I'm just a veteran. I'm just a teacher. I'm just a business guy. And to your point, there's a lot there's a lot more to that. I love the stuff that you do with Star Wars. know being a nerd is a spectrum. I'm also a nerd. And I mean, you eclipse me and lap me a few times around the sun. However,
I just was at Disneyland a couple of days ago with my kids and I had this flashback. This is before all the Star Wars stuff, the Star Wars land. so I don't know, 10 years ago. And I couldn't wait when I was a kid, I couldn't wait to have kids so that I can introduce them to Star Wars. And my son got into it and long story short, he was five, six years old. And there used to be a part of Disneyland where you can walk in and meet the Star Wars characters. And so we, it was like, I think Kylo Ren or it's definitely Chewbacca because that's who we met.
And you don't know who you're going to meet. You just kind of go around this door and then all of a sudden there's Chewbacca and fully. I've never seen it before. Now, if you go there, it's like pretty normal, but I've never seen a full character. I've never seen a full Chewbacca, that's for sure. And we got to take a photo and I just start crying. literally I'm like, I can't help it. I can't. This is like, I can't believe I'm meeting Chewbacca like this figure. So to imagine that you do that for kids, I mean, all all that you do to
Joe Lara (09:58.248)
Joe Lara (10:05.138)
Yeah
Scott Schimmel (10:12.014)
create those suits and all the time, hundreds or thousands of hours you spent doing that. I'm sure that makes it worth it. So the lesson I get from you is you don't, you don't really hide that and you haven't really put into a corner. You've, I think, had this really open curiosity and engagement to figure out how far can I take this interest of mine and can I figure out a way to make it useful for others too? I think that's just, that's just super cool.
Joe Lara (10:17.885)
bedtime.
Scott Schimmel (10:40.372)
I don't know what your advice is for someone else in that scenario.
Joe Lara (10:44.296)
So to kind of, yeah, thank you Scott for sharing that. So the whole Star Wars thing, whatever, I think I've always loved it as a kid growing up and born in 74, the movies were a big thing, the original movies were a big thing. But you always got your ass kicked if anybody knew that you liked this stuff, right? Not cool at all. And then at a certain point, I don't know when it became chic, it became trendy and it became cool to be a nerd.
Scott Schimmel (11:03.823)
yeah, yeah, yeah, not cool.
Joe Lara (11:12.264)
I don't know, but it's always been in the back of my mind, like, man, I always admired these guys that made these costumes that were like basically off the smoothie screen. And so I dove into it during COVID, went down the rabbit hole and figured out I'm actually pretty good at this. But to your point of like, what can I do more than just make a costume and even just like put it on and show up in front of a kid to make them smile? It's okay, what are those themes of what I'm about? Maybe it's service and impact and how can I use this?
Scott Schimmel (11:26.008)
Huh?
Joe Lara (11:41.106)
thing, this silly thing that's fun for me and maybe stupid to other people, I don't care. There's going to be a community of people that gravitate towards it. And can I have an impact and influence on them and how can I serve them, even though don't know them? And what I found is, let me open up a different social media account and start creating what I would consider a community of people that maybe feel
on the margins because they're in this nerd culture and they don't feel they're heard. So get this, get this. This is where I knew that I was having an impact. About a year into my journey, I got a letter in the mail from this guy named Ryan, who's a cop up in the Northeastern part of the country in Maryland. And he's like, dude, I've been following you for some time. Don't ask me how I got your address. But,
Scott Schimmel (12:33.058)
Yeah.
Joe Lara (12:35.932)
We're about the same age and I've always been this inner nerd and you just convinced me to start making costumes. Like, I love it. And I'm like, what the heck's going on here? And so, you know, he's going on that rabbit hole now. And so was like, that's cool. And we actually connected recently this year in San Diego at Comic-Con. Yeah, he's like, hey, I'm gonna be in town. You wanna link up? Like, yep. You wanna go to the basement and do karate? Yep. You know, this.
Scott Schimmel (12:43.276)
Wow. Wow.
Scott Schimmel (12:54.102)
No way.
Yeah
Joe Lara (13:02.813)
So it's a lot of fun, yeah, you never know who's listening, who's watching, who's observing, and who's being influenced by.
by just taking a leap of faith and, also those themes though, it's not, it's not deviating from the essence of who you are. It's not about being fake or trying to take the selfie and say, this is my perfect self. Cause that's not what it's about. Yeah. At all.
Scott Schimmel (13:22.06)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think for as many people as can relate to that, think there's maybe more who can relate to being hesitant to posting something that you're interested in. Like I really followed from your courage and vulnerability to do the Star Wars stuff. I remember when you like whispered that to me that you're into it during COVID and then you've kind of come out of the closet more over the last couple of years. But
My my version for you for Star Wars for you has been golf for me and I Equally growing up it that was super nerdy. It was before Tiger Woods I mean it just was like what do you you might as well play the violin for fun? Like golf was just so lame to where I grew up and I don't know why I can't explain it But I just I just love it. I love it so much and and especially I don't know about 10-12 years ago I'm like I want to be the art of putting it's so silly. It's no niche and
I just wanted to become the best putter that I could ever be. And I was like two years ago, right at the end of COVID, I started to realize I've read books about putting. have the gadgets that I have, the number of putters that I've invested in. It's just something I'm, I don't know why I'm so deeply passionate about. So with that same inspiration from you, I started asking, well, what can I do with this? And so it was very vulnerable. I'm someone who's on line a lot.
posts a lot for work. But I started to post like how-to videos, little tips of videos of me on a putting green, say, hey, here's another thing you can do. And I didn't know why, didn't feel like that's a step I need to take. And then recently I was playing, that's about six months ago, was playing golf with a guy that I kind of barely know, we're friends. And I could tell that he's also similarly passionate about golf as me. And I went up to him,
Joe Lara (15:04.295)
Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (15:19.212)
like on the 17th hole and I said, Hey, would you ever want like a putting tip? And he goes, are you kidding me? And he's like, that's, that'd be amazing. I'm like, okay, there's just, here's just one thing I've noticed. He's got like 12 things I've noticed, but I'm like, here's one thing that you can fix now. And literally the next hole, he sinks a long putt. And I'm like, dude, so I texted him after I said, Hey, you can, if you ever want to, I know this is getting weird, but I'm like, if you ever want to like just film,
Joe Lara (15:37.244)
dang.
Scott Schimmel (15:47.734)
like film yourself doing some putting and just send it to me and I'll give you like a lesson back. And he's like, are you trying to start a business? I'm like, no, no, no, I'm trying to do something with this. This is like such an irrelevant skill. If zombies attacked, if these UFOs are real, I know how to putt like you raise your hand, but there, I guess my point is there's something about pursuing it and embracing it that matters. And it really matters to my life. It means something.
Joe Lara (15:59.378)
Humor me.
Scott Schimmel (16:17.474)
to me and I think a part of what I'm hearing from you is there's a question of like, where does this fit this part of me? This thing I'm really interested in. Where does it fit in my life? Does it fit in the career space? Like the career bucket? Does it fit in play? Does it fit in like, where does it, where does it fit? And I know know even you since transitioning have had kind of a couple career, like where does this thing that I believe in? Where does this thing that I value fit? I just wonder what your thoughts on that.
Joe Lara (16:47.944)
Yeah, it's, you know, our good friend, Greg Yamamoto just told me, Joe, draw a Venn diagram. Like, it's see where things overlap. so to bring in golf and what you do for a living with working with, you know, young people who are trying to figure out themselves as adults, also with your work with veterans, there's a cross section in all of it. And so could it be, well, the golf thing is,
could be very selfish like that. There's a lot of fulfillment there. However, this aspect of service and teaching and education, because you probably also feel really good when somebody lands well or they have that epiphany and they're like, my God, now, like the clouds have parted because of Scott's guidance. I mean, that juice is probably the center where all those Venn diagrams collide for you. And I think that's the fun part of life. And I really hope.
like those that are listening, maybe you're finding yourself in a, what does Greg call it, the cycle of doom or circle of doom? Loop of doom. See, it's a loop of doom where you're just kind of doing the Monday to Friday, because you have to, and weekends, man, I got Sunday football, got Red Zone, I'm living for a Red Zone, I'm living to pay that Red Zone bill. Download it for free. But anyways, like,
Scott Schimmel (17:53.159)
Yeah, the loop of doom. Yeah, cycle of doom.
Scott Schimmel (18:00.439)
huh. Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (18:07.96)
Yeah.
Joe Lara (18:14.6)
It's, it's, that's, that, it's gotta be more than that. And, and, and so what are the, some of the hobbies you love to do? What are some of the things you love to do? There is a way to overlap it. And to be honest, Scott, I didn't, I didn't find this right away. I think it was being encouraged by other people. Like maybe you saw me make a post with the stormtrooper and you're like, yeah, can I do this with golf? I think it's me. I did that. I followed somebody else's, you know, who was ahead of me or doing something really cool and said, I wonder if I could do that.
and taking a risk and yes, the V word being vulnerable in doing so.
Scott Schimmel (18:48.726)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. So I think picking up what you just said, if as you're thinking about your life, it does help to document the things that you care about, the things that just emerge from you without really any explanation. And I think before you try to figure out what do I do with this, just first start with what is it? What is it that I'm looking at here? And then take some time to look at it from different angles and then
work on some like Venn diagram stuff, like could I fit this with that? Like I know I love teaching. I know I love guiding people, but I also overlap that with I really love kids. And so for me, it's just like I could find fulfillment maybe in a people department, HR department of a company teaching guiding people, but there'd be something missing. Or maybe I just figure that out on the side, coaching youth sports on the weekends. Like maybe that would be enough. So
There's really no formula. There's no master plan. It's up to you to figure out how do you put some of these pieces together. So I hope you experience the joy of that, the kind of generosity, openness of that, not like the anxiety of I got to figure it out now. And that's what we want to help provide through Vector Accelerator. We're to go through a process that could help you look at each part of your life independently without like the lens of survival and.
and the threat of not having a job or not making your parents proud or whatever that is for you. But just to kind of slowly but surely look at these different parts of your life and wonder, what could I do with this? What is it? And how do I make sense of it? And could it all fit together?
Joe Lara (20:27.226)
I'm a visual learner and so I as I was transitioning I wish somebody would hold up a picture of Success for me like Joe. This is what success looks like for you. This is gonna be you in five years Awesome. Now I know what to do. I got my marching orders, but that isn't what it's like and and and so to your point of Try not overthinking it. I think as people explore as veterans explore the things that they love Also pushing away the things that they don't love. That's an important part of the exercise
And just kind of looking at their life in sections and not trying to get the whole picture that whole image Looking back up at that whole transition process for myself and even now to this day. I'm still developing It's kind of like a mosaic where it's It's these small pieces that normally would be separate, but when you put them together you step back and you see this larger image like a stained-glass window where it's this beautiful mosaic of art and
Scott Schimmel (21:20.524)
Yeah. yeah. Yep.
Joe Lara (21:25.788)
And you're like, my God, I see the themes, I see the connections. It's it's, that is me. And now it makes sense in self-reflection, but looking forward, it's so hard to see. It's that's the challenge I think, and where people give up, they settle. They're also impatient. I think, I think so many veterans are impatient. They want it now. And I get it. Like, especially if you're leaving at a higher pay grade or higher rank where you're already at a high level of success. That is really hard.
This is huge punch in the ego. With that said, it's transition for a reason.
Scott Schimmel (22:03.49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, as you're listening, whether you are still serving, if you're kind of going through the season of transition, or maybe you've been out for 10 years, actually really doesn't matter to us. We're here to support you and guide you through a process that actually works to help you look at different parts of your life and start getting clearer glimpses of that mosaic that Joe's talking about. So head over to VectorAccelerator.org and we can help you get started now.
with trying to figure out who you are and how to express all the nerdy parts of you in a way that can serve others for good. So we'll be back soon with another episode. Thanks, Joe.
Joe Lara (22:44.04)
Thank you, Scott.
