A HIRED CALLING!

Derek (00:03.668)
Hey Sean, how are ya?

Shawn Dawley (00:05.252)
Hey, I'm really good. How are you doing?

Derek (00:07.092)
Very well, pardon me one second. Well, I got alarms going off here and getting set up

Shawn Dawley (00:12.836)
No problem.

Shawn Dawley (00:17.7)
And I'm gonna, let's see here.

Shawn Dawley (00:23.396)
see that light first yeah make them look better i think

Derek (00:35.476)
Yeah, I'm on a new recording system here and this is day two, I think episode two or three of this new system, so.

Shawn Dawley (00:40.804)
Yeah.

Okay, yeah, I had

Let's see, I had used, somebody had me on as a guest and I'm trying to think of who it was and they had Riverside. I'm not proficient in any of it, but I remember just being different from what I had been accustomed to.

Derek (01:00.262)
Yeah.

Derek (01:06.42)
How was your experience with it though, overall?

Shawn Dawley (01:09.22)
To be, well to be honest, we had to do a reshoot. She was very apologetic, but something happened about three quarters of the way through and she, I just heard her say, And then after the fact, some glitch in the matrix basically made it unusable. We recovered, no big deal.

Derek (01:32.404)
I hit this wall the other day where my files were stuck behind Calendly Zoom and USC firewalls. And I was like scrambling again. It was a first world problem, but I made it through. Here we go.

Shawn Dawley (01:38.244)
Thanks.

Derek (01:48.532)
Alright, so your camera is a little fuzzy on my side, how's it looking on your side? Do you look normal on your screen?

Shawn Dawley (01:55.62)
Yeah, the visual quality is what I would expect it to be.

Derek (02:02.724)
okay good deal well i'll turn on my announcer voice they say i got a face for radio and we'll get this party started so today i got

Shawn Dawley (02:11.716)
Yeah, if you could just give me a quick, if you could, wouldn't mind, are we doing this live? I'm sorry, are we broadcasting right now or?

Derek (02:19.028)
No, we're not broadcasting, we are recording.

Shawn Dawley (02:22.916)
Gotcha, okay. And then are we, how long is our session, Derek?

Derek (02:28.564)
We have an hour on the books. I have a little time after if you need to run over.

Shawn Dawley (02:32.516)
No, that's okay. I just want to make sure that I'm just confirming that. And then broadly speaking, so I can be, you know, a good guest for you. I looked at, of course, kind of what you're all about. But if you wanted to give me just a little insight as to at a high level, what you're kind of looking for, I can tailor, you know, some of my commentary accordingly to do for you what you're hoping to get out of it.

Derek (02:57.524)
Right. So we're looking at the veteran transition experience from the time you really, you know, a year or two before you get out through the process into your first civilian roles. And then now you're an entrepreneur, you have your own thing, you're doing leadership training and keynote speeches and such, how you built that out, such entrepreneurship. So you have a little bit of both, right? So I kind of walk backwards through your career a little bit and then get into.

Shawn Dawley (03:21.444)
Yeah.

Derek (03:27.412)
You know what you did when you got out, how you got into those roles, networking, all the experience of what it takes to transition. Most of my writing, most of my research is about the illicit transition because I was trying to focus in on, you know, when you're doing a doctorate, you're going to get really narrow focus, right? So that's where my focus went to. The officer transition is different and is, can be better or worse depending on how you look at it and depending on how each individual is suited, right? So.

How that was for you at your rank when you retired you did retire, right? You know, how was how was that process for you? Any veterans that you've you've seen along the way if you've been involved in hiring Through your roles that but you know, so the inspector general you were active duty still then right?

Shawn Dawley (04:02.66)
I did, yeah.

Shawn Dawley (04:19.876)
Yeah, it was full time, yeah.

Derek (04:21.812)
And then you went to Humana, that was your first civilian role or something in between.

Shawn Dawley (04:26.82)
It what? No, you're right. That's it. Yep.

Derek (04:29.244)
I'm going to go through that process and I mean it's overarching about you know there's a lot of this is how you found out what you wanted to do and what led you to where you are now and and how you built the business that you have now and inspired leadership and what that really takes.

Shawn Dawley (04:45.604)
Okay, all right, yeah, I'll follow your lead, buddy.

Derek (04:51.924)
Okay, so hello, welcome again to Ismael Rivleiter's Hired Calling podcast. We have Sean Dali. Sean is a retired Air Force veteran and now has his own business and leadership. And we're going to walk through his career and talk about the transition a little bit and what it takes to build a business in this space. So good morning, Sean, how are you?

Shawn Dawley (05:14.564)
Hey, good morning. I'm doing great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Derek (05:18.484)
So Sean, you are an Air Force veteran, you were an officer. What year did you retire and what was your rank?

Shawn Dawley (05:25.764)
I retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2016. It'll be eight years next month, which I feel like I was on that podium giving that retirement speech like it was yesterday. Time is speeding up as I'm getting older and older. Yeah. And that was after 25 years. I enlisted at 17 in 1991. So I spent 25 years in the uniform and, yeah, it's been almost a decade since I hung it up.

Derek (05:55.892)
So you were enlisted first, what rank did you cross over to the officer's side?

Shawn Dawley (06:00.1)
I became a staff sergeant, so to the Army and Marine folks that might be listening, our staff doesn't equal your staff, so that was an E -5 in the Air Force. I think those are E -6s, perhaps, out of the branches. But yeah, I made it to the NCO ranks, very proud of that, but shortly thereafter I was commissioned and then went to pilot training.

Derek (06:24.628)
What type of program did you participate in for the commissioning process? Was it Boost or something similar to that?

Shawn Dawley (06:28.772)
Yep. No, so I took full advantage of the tuition assistance program early in my career. So the first four years I was an aircraft mechanic on KC -135s. And at that time, this was pre post 9 -11 GI bill, but college was a lot less expensive, you know, back then. And on active duty, they paid like 75 % of my tuition. So I was able to, you know, probably knock out.

three quarters of that bachelor degree with tuition assistance, then used a little GI bill money to get that bachelor, and then went to officer candidate school. So I definitely was not academy material coming out of high school. And I didn't do ROTC. I just went to the whatever it was, three month finishing school program once I had that sheepskin in hand.

Derek (07:26.388)
So that's an interesting story and we share that in common. I was also aircraft mechanic F -18s and chipping away at college while I was active duty, finished my associate's degree and then got out a few months later, I believe. Definitely appreciate seeing the value and continue education while you're on active duty and listed if you have the opportunity and you're busy schedules to squeeze in school to do that, to figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it later.

Take the opportunities that you can. That's interesting. Okay. So when you changed over and how many years did you spend as a pilot?

Shawn Dawley (07:54.884)
Mm -hmm. That's right.

Shawn Dawley (08:04.004)
Close to 20, you know, counting your pilot training is about two years long, which you add everything up. So counting that close to 20 years.

Derek (08:16.34)
And when you left the military, your first role was with Humana. Tell me about that.

Shawn Dawley (08:22.884)
Yes. Yeah. So.

Derek (08:25.396)
Tell me about the transition process and finding that role, preparing your resume, being able to speak to your experience and transition into a new kind of company, new space.

Shawn Dawley (08:38.468)
Yeah, yeah. And I am absolutely a well -versed expert on my transition. I know my transition inside and out, and it may have validity for other folks, but you know, when we transition out of the military, in some cases, you can do a, what I would call perhaps a direct transmission. So let's say that you were a civil engineer and you specialized in HBAC. Boy, there's a job waiting for you that fits.

every aspect of your training. In my case, much of what I think I had to offer was harder to really identify. So I had been in leadership positions. I had some degree of strategic planning experience, financing. So I was able to find a corporate role that where I could deploy some of that, you know, harder to define, but still I think important leadership.

that I picked up along the way. So coming out of the military, I knew that I didn't want to go to Silicon Valley and be part of a, you know, dot com startup or something like that. You know, that I didn't have that aspect about me. And so I think that there was something comfortable about going from one big multi -level bureaucracy to another, because as much as we complain about the bureaucracy of the DOD,

You know, there's a lot of Fortune 500 companies that have their own, you know, flavor of that. And so I think that that first job, I was probably looking for something that structurally seemed consistent with what I had just graduated out of. And, you know, Humana, a wonderful company, primarily their business model is built around Medicare Advantage plans, but they are one of just a few contractors that have the Tricare.

contract and at the time they were bidding on and then won what was called the Tricare East region. So that was a pretty large operation and as a guy with zero clinical background, I have no medical credentialing, I was able to find a business role within that slice of humanity. I think there are probably 50 ,000 employees and so there's a lot of stovepipes and departments and I was able to find one that kind of married up.

Shawn Dawley (11:02.532)
with what I had just kind of come out of. And I think that that allowed for an easier transition. If I tried to jump right into another Fortune 100 company and I was trying to weigh in on mergers and acquisitions and market capitalization, things like that, that would have been a bit of a stretch for me at the time. So finding somewhat of an operational role that was tangentially associated with the military was probably, it was a little more comfortable for me.

So yeah, that's how and why. And then, by the way, it's headquartered in my hometown. And so I knew a couple of people that could make some introductions and, you know, your network is really important. You know, one warm introduction inside the firewall is worth a thousand cold calls. Right? I mean, if you're just another Joe Schmoe pushing your resume past the HR filter, I mean,

works, but yeah, the fact that Humana was headquartered, is headquartered in my hometown meant that I had a couple people that could, you know, set up some introductory interviews for me.

Derek (12:14.388)
Thank you for that. So it also sounds like you're saying that the fact that Humana had the TriCare wing or TriCare arm provided some similarity between your previous job and your new job and maybe gave us some buffer space to where the language may have matched a little bit better and maybe a little bit more room to assimilate with people who have similar experiences.

Shawn Dawley (12:41.956)
Yeah. So, you know, I never worked in DHA, the Defense Health Agency, you know, with one of the agencies, you know, a purple agency that supports the DoD enterprise. I didn't come out of that tribe, but between my general sort of like MBA slash strategic value I could bring, there was probably some value that Humana placed on the fact that I was a card carrying 25 year tri -care.

beneficiary because you know when when you are working with the customer, the customer's a DOD and being a retired officer, you know, you may have come from a different subunit, but you're still part of that big extended family. So I could see where Humana probably looked at it as, hey, this is a kind of a win -win. This guy came out of that culture when he is going to represent the company and he's talking to a

room full of either DoD civilians or flag officers, it probably doesn't hurt that once upon a time, he was an enlisted man, he was a pilot. So there's some intangible value in that. Yeah, so all of it coalesced to make that my first landing spot.

Derek (14:05.044)
So they were in your hometown, but how did you find this role? Were they waiting outside of your transition assistance program building when you had taps or was it a recruiting expo or how did you find the role?

Shawn Dawley (14:18.084)
No, so, you know, sometimes some companies, especially the bigger ones, aren't gonna put everything on Indeed or Monster .com. So if it is a relatively junior or entry level job where they're just looking to plug and play warm bodies, you can maybe get those by...

going to their website and looking for open roles. And like any large company, you know, Humana is really good about posting all of that. So I kind of went the other way around and I thought, all right, look, I'm at the time I was 42 years old. I do not fully understand what value I might have to an organization when it's not so crystal clear what they need. And so that first couple of rounds were basically, I think they were called exploratory.

interviews that may not be the right vernacular, but basically I got in front of some senior executives and they just we just had conversations and Their wheels are spinning. They're thinking. Okay based on the portfolio of his experience how he presents himself in the interview What do we have? Is there a role where we could leverage what he might have to offer? Now at some point it has to be a very specific bill it

whether it's one that gets created for you or, no, this guy could probably step right into this role and be effective. Me being an outsider would not necessarily know what that is. And so to make this maybe a little more relevant to your audience, our resumes are pretty good at capturing activities, but sometimes it needs to be somebody inside the machine you're looking at who can really appreciate what your value is.

because they are better positioned to map what you have done to what you can do. If I had showed up to those initial interviews promising these are all the things I will do for the company, I'd be somewhat shooting in the dark. Instead, it was more of a conversational dig where we figured out what I might kind of have to offer. And then those folks on that side could begin to think, okay, this might be a very specific role for which I was.

Shawn Dawley (16:39.588)
decently suited and then from there once you're inside you can grow and develop, you know a little more strategically but That first job is always I think probably the hardest one to get You know because you're

Derek (16:52.148)
It is.

The first one is the hardest one. You say you had a friend on the inside that helped you get in front of those people or how did you connect with those executives?

Shawn Dawley (17:01.988)
So I had a couple of acquaintances from the Air Force and from the Air National Guard who were employees of the company. And they knew me. They probably couldn't recite my resume, but they had worked with me or for me. And they had an idea, hey, I think Sean would be an asset to the company. And even they weren't necessarily explicitly

confident of what that was, but because of the reputation I'd established with them, they were comfortable making a phone call, maybe one up the hierarchy, say, hey, do you have an hour to meet with this guy? He's a good guy. I've known him. He's looking, and I think that we should probably figure out there's a fit here. And that's all you can ever ask of one of your acquaintances to do is just open a door for you.

And that's why I said earlier, you know, I could have emailed every person in HR at that company. And I'm just one more guy who's loading up their inbox. But for every thousand of those emails I sent out, they could all be outdone by one introduction.

Derek (18:22.004)
And when your friends open those doors for you, you have to be sure you deliver an excellent document and an excellent presentation of yourself when you do step in, right?

Shawn Dawley (18:31.204)
That's right. And, you know, in any transition assistance program, they'll talk about the importance of translating parts of your military bio into something that has, you know, civilian currency. And a lot of folks that I knew from the military that have been retiring would reach out to me and I said, okay, send me your resume. And they'll send me...

the seven page dossier that talks about how, you know, 19 years ago I was the assistant flight leader when I was in basic training. I'm like, dude, nobody cares. Like, I don't know how much time you think these people have. They're not reading a seven page resume. Unless you were the president of the United States, your resume is not supposed to be seven pages long. Nobody's lived that interesting of a life. No, I mean.

So one of the hardest things that I have had to kind of convey to folks that are making that transition is your hope is that they spend 30 seconds scanning it and there's enough there to make them interested enough to actually read that one maybe, maybe two page document.

Derek (19:53.908)
Whenever you transitioned, did you use any veteran service organizations for support?

Shawn Dawley (19:59.748)
Derek (20:01.716)
like the higher heroes, higher heroes USA.

Shawn Dawley (20:04.42)
No, no, I, no, I did not. No. And I don't say that because I'm against them. I'm just saying I, I was tapping into my network and I was able to get some traction with that. So I don't want to dissuade anybody from using those services.

Derek (20:11.828)
while you were in.

Derek (20:23.7)
No, I understand. I actually didn't use any either whenever I separated. And part of my research was uncovering who does use it how often, what do the numbers look like. And popular research shows 60 % of veterans transition out and go get help from a veteran service organization. I found only about 10%, but that's due to some of the limitations of my research being mostly linked in for recruitment. And my average rank was E7 when I was targeting E4, E5, which is

part of also, I think, the staff and CEOs loading up on LinkedIn who have had more experience or more coaching from people who have transitioned sooner and paid it forward and hey, this is what you need to do whenever you get out, right? So part of that is researching how to make that more efficient, more effective. So in your role at Humana, you're working to build relationships with the government still, with the Air Force, or trying to build connections there, is that accurate?

Shawn Dawley (21:22.98)
yeah. So I was in business development for a little while, and then I took more of an operational role where I was the director of this outreach program. So at the time, the Tricare East contract, had 6 million of the 9 million total beneficiaries. And Humana had the East. And so of those 6 million, I think maybe 2 million were,

garden reserve. And so because of, you know, if you are at a mega base, there's a lot of like built in institutional support, but you know, you're talking about, let's say a battalion Marine Corps Reserve unit that's sort of like geographically dislocated. They're not going to have a lot of organic resources on the installation. And so they had a program at Humana, which really kind of went above and beyond to provide education. Because when I was active duty, Title 10,

Tricare was Tricare was Tricare. But in a post 9 -11 world where these units in the garden reserve were mobilizing, demobilizing, they were on Tricare Reserve Select and they were on Tricare. So their benefits packages was constantly shifting and it's hard to keep up with that stuff. And so I ran a department that was spread over those 33 states where we would put people on the ground to go to all those installations and help them understand.

their benefits. Everything, you know, premiums, deductibles, copays, in coverage, out of coverage.

Derek (23:00.02)
And those were all our Tricare beneficiaries. So, you know, part of the struggle for many veterans is being sure you have meaningful employment and a feeling that you're still supporting veterans. So I imagine you had some of that feeling from that role.

Shawn Dawley (23:16.26)
Yeah, I did. Now at the same time,

I was not necessarily diehard about pursuing that because what I see sometimes is folks retire and especially with guys who've been at it and gals who've been at it longer, they end up, I think sometimes becoming beholden so much to what they know that they end up in these tangential careers where they spent 29 years in the army and then they went to the VA.

Or they spent 21 years in the Air Force Reserves and then they went to a VSO or maybe their state department of military affairs. I see a lot of people that are longer in the tooth in their military careers tend to gravitate towards that. And it's not my place to tell anybody else where they should or should not spend the next chapter of their life. But it seems like that...

young man or woman who does their four or six year stint, when they come off, they feel like they've got the whole world in front of them. And it's interesting to me how often they were like, I am proud of the four years I spent in the Navy, and now I'm going to do something absolutely disconnected from the DOD. Whereas I feel like it's kind of the other way around a bit for people that are retiring at 40 to 45.

from a 20 plus year service career, it seems like disproportionately they tend to look more towards something that's still indirectly connected. To include going to be a lobbyist at Boeing or something part of the quote unquote military industrial complex.

Derek (25:12.468)
Right, something that feels comfortable for what they have their experience in. It's pretty common. But I think there's a lot to say there about finding or not finding fulfillment when you take or don't take that path. That is a trap that's common for us veterans. So when you left Humana, you went to, what's this, in Genesis, Inc.? Tell me about that.

Shawn Dawley (25:15.78)
Yeah.

Shawn Dawley (25:25.284)
Mm. Yeah.

Shawn Dawley (25:41.22)
Yeah, so I partially retired and my wife and I were doing a lot of traveling and I was keynote speaking, but I wasn't pushing real hard to develop clients. I was kind of taking them off of referrals. And then three, about three years ago, when the flood gates opened on the southern border, there was a significant number of unaccompanied miners.

that were piling up in Arizona, Texas, what have you. So, long story short, the US government all but printed money to try to make that problem not look so bad on CNN. And so, they were putting out contracts because they apparently lacked the capacity to handle it themselves, and so they needed the private sector to come in. And so, I ended up working providing executive -level oversight.

for a large operation providing services, you know, there. And that was only for a few months. And then I stayed with the company in a VP capacity, but that was never gonna be a long -term. I appreciated my time there, but left eventually when that kind of contract work was drawing up. And then finally just ripped the band -aid off to start my own business.

Derek (27:12.468)
So I want to dive into your own business here very soon, but I got to back up a little bit and come back to this topic. So three years ago, the flood gates opened to the southern border. I am in Escondido, California, just north of San Diego, about a 45 minute drive to that southern border. So tell me more about this. So you're saying that the immigration crisis caused a need for the federal government to contract with an increased contracting with

civilian firms to intake immigrant store control or what were you guys doing then?

Shawn Dawley (27:52.612)
It was more intake. I don't know what if any contracts were publicly offered to help with interdiction. Like if CBP, I have no visibility, anything like that. Basically, again, this is all public record. There's nothing I'm disclosing here. When you're spending taxpayer money, you can't put everything in a skunk works. There needs to be some visibility. So...

Derek (28:11.344)
Sure.

Shawn Dawley (28:21.828)
various organizations were looked to to help unburden this growing backlog. You had like thousands and thousands and thousands that were exceeding the typical throughput capacity of customs enforcement. And so those poor border agents, they were overwhelmed. I mean, what do you do? It would be like if you said, it would be like if you

can normally have five people over for dinner and then one day you come home and there's a hundred people in your living room like we're hungry. Like, well, this is not what I'm used to. I can't accommodate all this. I need help. So yeah, the government started issuing contracts like somebody please help with this.

Derek (29:09.684)
So that's a good segue and back up a little bit to your National Security Fellowship at Harvard University. Tell me a little bit about that.

Shawn Dawley (29:21.06)
So on the officer side, at the midway point, you may get picked up to go to one of the command and staff colleges. So like when I was a major, I went to Marine Corps command and staff. So I was an Air Force guy, but I was in a cohort that was mostly Marines, but then like sprinkled in there Army, Navy, Air Force, some alphabet soup agency folks were in there and like maybe 30 foreign national.

officers, most NATO countries and Far East countries, etc. So a few years later, so after that, after that one year grad program at Quantico, I went back into the operational force and coming out of my squadron command tour, I got picked up to go to senior service school. Rather than sending me back to one of the war colleges, which is very similar,

programming to what you would have done as a major. You're looking at like the art of war, diplomatic, economic, you know, socio -political factors that are kind of wrapped around the prosecution of campaigns and things like that. So instead of doing that, every year the DOD ponies up a handful of officers to go to think tanks or like in my case, Harvard. So you are, I think the terminology, you're appointed as an officer of the university, so you're not a student.

Now you're not a professor either, but you're there as a resident fellow with sort of a blank check to just dive into research and do a little bit of lecturing on some strategic issues. So international affairs, global leadership, statecraft, foreign policy, and things like that. And that was in 2013 and 2014.

So that's an interesting way to spend a year. You're not wearing a uniform. You just kind of got the master key to that entire Ivy League institution. You can kind of go where you want, do what you want.

Derek (31:30.004)
Yeah, it's a very unique experience that you probably can't get in many other ways besides paying a bunch of money to Harvard or serving your country and being selected to go do it. One of the unique experiences you can get from the military that you probably can't get most other places. So part of this, point of this is to help veterans get better jobs and find better jobs. Also to show incoming recruitable young men that there's cool things out there that you can go do.

by pursuing this and you can end up in a career that you like to contrary to what you see with some of the news stories in the media and we see with real veteran underemployment. So contrary to that you've left the military, had some corporate experience and you used your military experience to do some interesting things including now you're mostly, it sounds like maybe full time doing your own keynote speeches and leadership training.

Tell me a little bit more about Sean Donnelly inspired leadership.

Shawn Dawley (32:33.732)
So when I look back at all the jobs I had in the Air Force, and I looked for a common thread, like, well, what was it about those jobs that I really liked? What was it about those jobs that if I hit the billion dollar powerball, I would just keep doing it? If I didn't get paid, I would keep doing it. And as much as early on, I enjoyed kind of quarterbacking the mission. So like, you know, you...

lead a four ship formation, you know, you overcome the weather, the terrain, the enemy, you put the payload on the target, you get back safely. there is a certain like satisfaction, like that type of tactical on field leadership. I really enjoyed what I found, however, was that when I was a commander and then even in maybe some support roles where I was like the chief of tactics or the chief of training, I really enjoyed seeing other people grow and develop.

I figured out that, you know what, I think I'm more satisfied being the coach standing on the sidelines watching this team perform because with whatever meager talent I had was able to set the conditions and invest in their growth and development so that they can go out there and perform. So I thought, all right, well, I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

And as a guy who actually flunked speech class in college because I was too afraid for the final where I had to stand up in front of the entire class of 40, chickened out, didn't do it, got the F. I was lucky. I had a lot of jobs that forced me to get in front of rooms and speak. And like, I'm still a work in progress, but I figured out.

After about the 100th person told me that I was pretty good at holding an audience's attention, I thought, well, maybe there's some truth in this. So I thought, well, how do I put those two things together? If, if I have continued to develop this craft of speaking, whether it's to four or 40 or 4 ,000, and I enjoy helping other people grow and develop, how do I get those two together? And that's what pointed me towards starting some sort of.

Shawn Dawley (34:54.404)
leadership development firm, company, consulting group. And so now the three main legs of the model are I'll do keynote speeches. So that's me on a stage giving a monologue to a big crowd. At the other extreme, I do one -on -one executive coaching where those are much more intimate deep dives. And I'm not doing as much teaching as I am just helping a highly accomplished man or woman.

think through their own development. And between those two extremes, I'll do workshops for 10 to 80 people. Sometimes it's a homogenous cohort where everybody in there are directors from the same department. Other times, it might be five layers of an organization and it's more topical. So like, hey, this entire department is really struggling with...

how to navigate change or organizational communication or conflict resolution. So those workshops are sometimes boresight focused on leadership development. And then sometimes they're more kind of subject matter oriented when the mix is a little more eclectic, heterogeneous. So those are the, and all three of them kind of fit together because, you know, I'll glean insights.

going through the exercise of working one -on -one with a C -suite executive that even sometimes gives me an aha moment that while maintaining confidentiality of the client can work its way into a keynote six months later when I'm talking to 500 people. So the three things, they all compliment each other well, but they are very different legs of that overall business model. And my name is Sean Daly, it's not Tim Tebow.

It wasn't like I told the world I was doing this and crowds started flocking to me. It started with pretty please with sugar on top. Can I come speak to your Rotary Club with 12 people for no money? And then you just hope that there's somebody in the crowd. He says, well, I'm actually a director at this nonprofit and you know, for, for 500 bucks, could you come and teach this class here? And then you hope as you do that, you begin to grow client base with.

Shawn Dawley (37:19.844)
know, deeper pockets. I mean, it's kind of hard to make a living giving hundred dollar speeches, right?

Derek (37:28.084)
Right. And so that was a great segue into the entrepreneurship side of it. How do you build a book? Because you said not Tim Tebow. Maybe Tony Robbins might have been the one. So you can't just walk out and say, hey, I'm a leadership expert and I want to come talk to your organization and tell them about why I'm so great at this and how they can be better at it. It's tough to build a book of business. And so it sounds like you first went out talking for free.

to organizations where they would let you come in. Like, Rotary Club, other community organizations. So, what about now? How do you scale up? How did you get more? Do you have somebody, what's the word? Marketing isn't the right word. There's a profession where they do that for a living. Publicist is more for authors, but.

Shawn Dawley (38:17.464)
yeah.

Derek (38:21.14)
somebody out there spreading your name trying to get you meetings for a fee or how is that working?

Shawn Dawley (38:27.044)
No, that's a great, great question, Derek. So what I'll set up first, so people can kind of wrap their head around it, is when you go to the doctor's office, the person at the front desk takes your insurance information. Then a CNA will go take your height, weight, blood pressure. Then the RN comes in and does a medical history, what's going on. And then eventually the doctor comes in and then you tell her and she does a diagnosis. So in that little model,

Each person you touch is operating at what you would call the top end of their license. They're doing up to what they are trained, experienced, credentialed to do. It would be a waste of time for the doctor if she took your blood pressure, height and weight, right? Let's reserve for her what she's good at and what only she can do. Diagnosis, prescribing medication, things like that.

So early on, when you have no revenue coming in, you do everything. I didn't have a benefactor that just laid a bunch of money down and said, here, go develop this huge, slick marketing campaign. So what do I love to do and what am I OK at? Speaking and leadership development. But that is like step 10 in a 10 -step process.

Step nine is signing the contract with that person who is empowered to say yes and spend the money. So I try to spend most of my time on like steps eight and nine, but steps one through seven are, you know, the customer funnel is pretty wide. And so I have managed to begin to outsource that. I mean, some stuff you can't get away from. I'll still post stuff on LinkedIn like little.

You know, nugget of wisdom, I guess, and you do that enough and somebody may like it and they may contact me and I still get that like, Hey, I've been watching your stuff on LinkedIn. Would you mind talking with me about a leadership retreat we're having with all of our executives? So, you know, I don't know that I'll ever get away from generating some of my own leads, but what I try not to do is just send out cold calls and emails to people I don't know that I can kind of.

Shawn Dawley (40:49.412)
you know, source out. And then once you get that first year's worth of clients booked, if what you had to offer was something that they found valuable, you just politely ask, hey, if you feel like those 50 people who spent the day with me are better off, I only would ask if you've got two or three people outside of your company's ecosystem,

that you could introduce me to, I would appreciate it. Because if somebody is a VP at a Fortune 500 company, they probably have friends and acquaintances at that level in different organizations. And so, you know, if you did a good job for them, you can begin to generate traction with referrals. Because that is somewhat of the lifeblood of this business.

anybody give give anybody enough money and they can come up with a really slick website, a hot sizzle reel. I mean, you can make anybody look like they're the next John Maxwell of leadership if you put enough money, but ultimately you're not buying their content. You're kind of buying them. Like it's, it's not the syllabus that you're buying. You're buying their delivery. And so the best thing you can do in this type of work is go out there and hit home runs every time you're giving a swing at the plate.

because that then creates some momentum of referrals. But you still need to do some raw client prospecting. And so there's definitely value in deciding, okay, look, I don't love doing that. I'm willing to pay somebody else to do that, to get me some leads, some qualified leads that you can hopefully close the deal on. So...

Let them do steps one through seven. And if they have to generate 100 leaves for 10 to be hot and for three to bear fruit, well, those are three leaves you wouldn't have had if you were trying to do it all yourself. And so for a cheapskate like me, sometimes it was hard to get off my own wallet because you think, well, I can do this. Well, you know, I can also pressure wash my deck, but I just assume pay the 13 year old kid down the street a hundred bucks.

Shawn Dawley (43:14.628)
to go do it, you know, and let me sit here in the office and do things that I can do that he can't, right? So, but again, I say that I'm about as cheap as you're going to find. So I had to get that one through my head.

Derek (43:28.308)
No, it's common in entrepreneurship and when you're first starting out to try to do everything, you know, you're, you are the beginning and the end of your entire business until you have employees or you figure out how to outsource what doesn't matter to you, what's in your value chain, the value you're bringing. And it's difficult whenever you're starting a business and you're getting your inbox blown up by everybody from around the world trying to sell you how they can deliver more leads to you than the other person can. What's real and what makes sense, it's tough out there.

Shawn Dawley (43:52.516)
Yeah. Yeah.

Derek (43:58.22)
What was your last paid speaking event and what's your next paid event?

Shawn Dawley (44:04.996)
Well, let's see.

So I want to be deferential to the client. I have one coming up.

The topic is about change and it's something that, that's a fairly common one. It's with the Fortune 100 company that wants to maybe peel the onion back a bit on that. But I would rather not, you know what I mean, say who that is.

Derek (44:36.468)
Yeah, don't have all your customers name or anything like that. But so what kind of problems are you going to be addressing? How did you land the client?

Shawn Dawley (44:44.004)
Yeah.

Yeah. So, so, you know, when you strip away the vernacular, what I have found is that regardless of industry or company, there's only usually about 10 or 12 things that they're really battling with. Or the flip side is they see opportunity there. I would challenge people the next time if you are out at lunch by yourself and it's a work day, is just sit there and listen to the tables around you. And there could be a table to your right.

Attorneys from a high -powered corporate firm. And then to the left of you could be landscapers from a local floral shop. And both sides may be complaining that, well, we're doing most of the work and this other group is not doing as much and we got to take care of their workload on top of ours. And so,

They'll use different language because they're coming from different industries, different sectors, different professions. But what I found was there's only about 10 or 12 problems or opportunities that consistently seem to kind of resurrect. And once I figured out that if I just strip away the vernacular that makes it particular to one company, the essence of the problem is the same there. So change right now is a big one.

Lots of companies are figuring out that life on Zoom is not the panacea that people thought it was going to be. And so what they're finding is that they're getting people in leadership roles who have spent their entire first six years of their career working from home. And so...

Shawn Dawley (46:41.604)
what I'm seeing as a general trend in certain industries. I mean, construction road crews aren't working from home. They're on the site, right? But in certain industries that went full -bore remote, they have technically proficient employees who have not developed some of those essential leadership skills that you used to develop standing around the water cooler, maybe...

your boss pulls you into a meeting, says, okay, be quiet, just kind of listen, kind of get it. Well, we're not getting that now. And so I'm having more clients say, look, we just need like some leadership 101 for this slice of the organization. Along those same lines, emotional intelligence or by whatever other words you want to put on that is kind of.

in demand right now where people are technologically and technically proficient in their craft, but like basic things like self -awareness, social awareness, team dynamics, you know, they're struggling with that. So it's interesting how regardless of the industry, I see the same things kind of manifesting over and over.

Derek (48:07.796)
So similar to how, you know, there's the language translation, translating skills, leaving the military, go into an industry, going from industry to industry really is a translation problem again as well to learn the different vernacular. You're describing different industries having the same problems but talking about them differently mostly because of the language that they use, right?

Shawn Dawley (48:29.124)
Yeah, so let's take change, for example. Well, in one industry, most of that change could be driven by evolutions in technology. In another industry, there's a lot of change, but it may be because of a changing regulatory regime. Maybe there's been legislation which has caused some upheaval. So in those two hypotheticals,

change is the operative word, but one was technologically driven, one was say politically driven, like lowercase p politically driven by the legislation. But the net effect is that both groups of people are struggling with the emotional impact of that. It's causing ambiguity, which leads to concern, which leads to anxiety, which leads to risk aversion. And so,

I can go give a very similar keynote to both groups because while I'm not there to solve the particulars and the specifics of the change, I'm there to kind of address the impact that's having on people's psyche. What my job to do is massage each keynote so that it resonates with that group. Because if it's one group that's very like,

tech heavy in their industry and the other groups change is being driven by upheaval in fundamental regulation. I just need to talk to that enough so that they know that I understand their problem because what I have found is if a client or a group feels like you understand their problem, they are much more likely to accept a proposed solution.

If they feel like you get it, what they're going through, they tend to be a little more open and accepting of, again, some perspectives. I never go to a group of people. I'm not speaking to a bunch of middle schoolers. I'm speaking to, you know, professionals, adults that live and breathe this stuff. Who am I to get up on a stage and say, okay, steps one through five, do these five things and you're good. Okay. That's...

Shawn Dawley (50:52.868)
No adult wants to be talked to like that. And it will be, I'm not qualified to do that, but instead, okay, let's maybe talk through and think about what is underwriting these concerns and then what are some general takeaways that can maybe shape your perspective so that you, the smart people in the audience, can take a fresh look at this come Monday morning and you can probably think your way through to the solution as it specifically relates.

you know, to what your mandate is. I rarely give like definitive guidance. Make sure you do these three things and all is well. I'm not.

I don't have that expertise. Nobody does. Unless you came out of that, you know, stovepipe.

Derek (51:42.836)
So you mentioned change several times. What do you see in terms of change practices, change models across industries you're working with that they're using or trying to?

the big fear of change, right? And, you know, when people like change, or babies with dirty diapers, and how is that for their parents, right? It's not very good. So what do you see across different industries and change how they're modeling it?

Shawn Dawley (52:11.108)
So in some cases, the change is being driven by, in some cases, significant upheavals. But the response oftentimes is fairly nuanced and iterative. And as a general rule, the bigger the enterprise, the less likely they are to embrace a radical approach.

to address an underlying issue. If you are a group of like 30 and you are being backed with venture capital and you've got like all the latitude in the world to react, you're gonna be much more nimble. If you're a 60 ,000 person, you know, New York Stock Exchange listed entity, it's really hard to move that bureaucracy. It's easier just to like, well, let's tinker on the margins here and there. And that -

And I get it. I completely understand why that is. So what I have helped or try to help some of the bigger companies especially understand is that oftentimes we might try to intellectualize our way through change. Like, okay, if we can just logically assess it and come up with a game plan, people will receive it and move on that. And what I help people understand is that,

By definition, change invites ambiguity. And as humans, anything that is ambiguous, uncertain, is always going to invite in some amount of fear, apprehension, concern, anxiety, or worry. And so when I'm working with the folks in the headshed is I try to impart to them, you all think about this stuff all the time and you have probably intellectualized your way.

to a solution, don't overlook the emotional impact of this momentous change on how it's affecting people's psyche. Because not everybody moves at the same speed, and not everybody sees the problem the same way. And so if there's one kind of common theme, it's that, OK, well, we've got so many smart people in the organization, surely we can just think our way.

Shawn Dawley (54:37.22)
to the solution and I just encourage people, well, as you're thinking your way, make sure that you're feeling your way through it as well because not everybody is gonna be on board. I mean, there's some people, if you change out the color of their keyboard, that could be enough to throw them off for a month. Like, I can't, you know, but then there's other people like they love change so much. They repaint their kitchen twice a year because they just think they love it, right? And everybody's different.

and everybody's gonna have like a different emotional reaction to that.

Derek (55:12.884)
Yeah, that's very good advice, very wise. You can't forget about the feelings involved with changes for sure. How can people see you speak for free? Is there opportunities available? Or is it all online? Or do you have YouTube videos out there?

Shawn Dawley (55:27.332)
So I do have some videos so if anybody were to go to my website that's the gateway then you know all of my social media and YouTube channels and all that become accessible from there but you know Fortunately it's getting harder and harder to see me speak for free Now that being said I still do it. I'm good. I'll do it again this week because

Let's say that there's an association and there's going to be 200 people in the seats there at the ballroom of the hotel. Well, I got no problem speaking to that group basically for free because every single person in each one of those seats is a potential decision maker that can go back to their company and say, Hey, I just saw this guy and I think that it would be worth figuring out if we can maybe bring him in and do some.

leadership or team development workshops. And, you know, other speakers have different views on that. The way I look at it is how much money would I have to spend to get that sort of like audition in front of 200 of 200 of those people? Like how much of a marketing spend would I have to exert? So when, when people say, I can't believe that you'll still speak for free. He's like, well, yeah, but.

car companies spend their own money to show you a 30 -second commercial. I'm not coming out of my pocket, but I'm spending my time. So that's kind of the way I look at it. Now, a deep -pocketed company that wants me to come do a workshop? No, come on now. I need to get paid. I need to get paid in some way. But if the audience can lead to two or three more gigs, sure, that's not a big deal.

I probably won't fly to Seattle to do it, but if it's right down the road, yeah, I might.

Derek (57:27.988)
Yeah, that's very good advice. Before we have to go here, any advice you have to other veterans as they transition out of the military about going into a situation where they get to pursue their dream job or their entrepreneurial roles?

Shawn Dawley (57:47.748)
I would encourage those people that so much of the military profession for me was relatively formulated. Like I felt like as an officer, especially that I felt like at every job I was in, I kind of had an idea what the next job might look like. And I became so accustomed to that, that it was almost decision fatigue when I got out. I was like, I can literally do whatever I want. And...

as much liberty as comes with that, it became a bit overwhelming. And so I would encourage people, okay, look through the jobs you've had in the military and which ones did you love and why? You know, write that down. Like I love this job because, and strip away the lexicon. Don't, don't try to like boil it down to its essence because,

there's probably something else you can do that captures the general ethos of what it was you loved about that last job. Like I told you earlier, I loved developing people. Whether I was the chief of tactics, teaching people on the pulse repetition frequency of this surface to air missile threat, or I was the commander doing one -on -one mentorship with some of my senior officers. Once I figured out, okay, I really love that aspect of it.

It then helped me become a little more clear on what I might want to do that would allow me to pursue that passion. And then the flip side that took me a couple of years to figure out was, and I've been married almost 31 years, but I would imagine if I were dating, as soon as you start comparing the person you're dating to the last person you were with, you're holding somebody to the wrong standard, right?

And so what I would say is, whatever that next chapter is for you, avoid the temptation to contrast it where you came from. I was not going to recapture the camaraderie that I built on six month deployments with men that I was living with, flying with, sharing misery with. I was not going to capture that in a corporate leadership role. Once I let go of that,

Shawn Dawley (01:00:10.02)
and I stopped comparing where I was to where I used to be, I was able to more fully appreciate the here and now. Cause it was too easy. Like, well, this isn't as fun. This isn't as close. The esprit de quotas. And I was very implicitly doing that. I wasn't aware that I was doing it. It just was kind of happening. So I would just encourage people to consider where you're going next and try to figure out what...

What is it about that that I can appreciate without always trying to baseline it back to when I was, you know, the command sergeant major of this huge, you know, it just, that's a tall order. I think we could disappoint ourselves if we're always comparing, you know.

Derek (01:00:59.188)
Yeah, Sean, that's very wise advice, right? To understand where you are, bloom where you're planted, and understand where you want to go next. I think a lot of times we get out and it's like, how do I get employed? I got to feed my family, but we had to do both, right? You got to plan for what's going to make you happy down the road and how you're going to maintain that happiness in your career. And so Sean, be mindful of your time today and everybody can go to.

Shawn Dawley (01:01:16.612)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Derek (01:01:22.964)
shawndawey .com, shawndawey .com to get more information about how to work with you or see where you're speaking at next and how to get more information from you. So thank you, sir, for your time and we'll talk to you again very soon.

Shawn Dawley (01:01:37.924)
It was a pleasure, Derek. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Derek (01:01:41.428)
Thank you, Bruce.