Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates

Next Phase Leadership with Jeff Morefield

• Travis Yates • Episode 126

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We speak with 26-year law enforcement veteran Jeff Moorefield about building a real off-ramp for first responders and why transition planning must start on day one. We dig into identity, health, finances, and practical steps that translate police skills into private sector roles.

• founding purpose of The On Call Project and Beyond the Badge
• why identity, purpose and fear block healthy transitions
• holistic prep: fitness, sleep, mental health, and money
• practical tools: ATS resumes, mock HR interviews, skill translation
• leadership gaps in retention, culture and personal development
• one-on-ones as a simple, effective leadership practice
• building chapters, employer partnerships, and national reach
• stories that show the path from badge to next career

oncallproject.com | j.morefield@oncallproject.com | jeffmorefield.com


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Announcement :

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice, and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates:

Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored and glad that you're spending a few minutes with us here today. And we're going to get right to this. You're going to love today's guest. We've been talking for over a year now to make this happen. And I'm so honored to have Jeff Moorefield with us here on the show. He is the founder and executive director of the On Call Project, a 26-year veteran uh of law enforcement, retired as a sergeant. Jeff, man, thanks so much for being here.

Jeff Morefield:

Man, Travis, thank you. And just blessed to be here. Uh blessed to be in your presence. And uh I know this has been a year, but man, I'm excited to talk.

Travis Yates:

Oh, I hope I'm recording that. Blessed to be in my presence, man. You're too kind for sure. But no, Jeff, man, the things you're doing is amazing, and you're going to really inspire our audience. So if you're just now tuning into us, you need to stick around. Because what Jeff has embarked on is so far outside the mainstream, so far outside the narrative. There is no question of mine that God's got his hand on it and it's going to explode. It's already showing signs of that. And Jeff, I think before we get going with the on-call project and your efforts there, man, how did you get here? I know you did, you know, well over two decades in the profession. You left, and I'll just preface it, you left at uh was it is it 26 years? You left at 26 years. So that number seems a little odd. You know, you hear 25, you hear 30, you sometimes hear 35. God bless you if that's you. But I want to get into it, man, of your profession, your work life, your career, and then what made you go at 26 years? I know no one says you're in, I know it's an odd year. Maybe I had plans for doing something else, or that my co-workers thought I would be here longer. And then what made you jump to the on-call project? I'll just open the floor to you and you can let us know.

Jeff Morefield:

Yeah, man. So I, you know, I started my career uh back when I was just barely 22 at the University of Central Oklahoma, uh, just as a you know, a campus cop, you know, trying to trying to figure out life. I was a junior in college, and at the time my chief, Jim Roberts, was like, hey, listen, we want you to be a full-time because I was doing a part-time gig there at UCO, University of Central Oklahoma. And uh so I did about a year there, and then I went out to Yukon for three years um and just really loved the profession. You know, I was a uh single guy, uh, just running and gunning, you know, hair blazing. I did have hair back then, I promise. Yeah, we all did. And, you know, just doing my thing. Yeah, right. And so, you know, doing my thing and just loving it. Uh came to Edmund in 2001 and just really enjoyed the the lifestyle and you know, got myself into a lot of different areas of expertise, uh, whether it was underwater search and recovery. I was on our TAC team uh for 13 years. Um, and then you know, I did a lot of other you know, a field training officer, uh, was a gang unit, um, basically the leader of the gang unit for Edmund PD, um, and just did a lot of different uh oh I work within within those lanes, right? And so, you know, I say 26, and the reason why I say 26 is because that first year at the university didn't really count towards the pension system. So once I hit 25, uh man, I was 25.01 and I was out. Um and the reason why it came like that, Travis, was uh back in 2018, I actually had a conversation with a good friend of mine who now sits as the president of my board uh for the On Call Project Foundation. But he did three years at Edmund PD and uh he left and went to the corporate world and he worked his way all the way up the corporate world and and now sits as the vice president of all sales uh for Samsung. And you know, when he and I were on a literally a golf course in 2018, he looked at me and he said, Jeff, what are you gonna do when you get done? And I it scared me, to be honest with you. Um, you know, I was in the I was in the National Guard, had already deployed Afghanistan, uh, came back with an I issue. Um, you know, my my my wife was a two is a two-time cancer survivor. Uh we just had kind of had a miracle baby during that time, and I was just in this influx of what am I going to do?

Travis Yates:

Let me just stop you right there, Jeff, because you said something that I want our audience to catch. You said I was scared to death when he mentioned that to you in 2018. And I want to sort of preface it with it's because those of you that aren't in law enforcement that maybe listen to this, I know many of you aren't. And so I want to sort of inform you this. When you're in law enforcement, the culture is so strong, it's hard to imagine you doing something outside of law enforcement. So when you said you were fearful, I'm assuming that's sort of what's in your mind, correct?

Jeff Morefield:

Oh, absolutely. It absolutely was. It was, what am I gonna do? Where what skill set do I have? Like the only thing I can think of is just sitting at a at a desk work in security. You know, uh, I I don't know where to go. I don't know even the language. Do they even does the private sector even understand who I am? You know, uh, I'm actually gonna take this uniform off. No, man, that's that's my life. Like, that's who I am. Um, that's my identity. Um, and so that was that was really kind of the first gut punch of like, what are you gonna do? Right. And so um, as I mentioned before, I was in the National Guard and and went out to uh I was deployed out to Iraq in in 2020 during probably the worst time ever to be deployed uh during COVID. And I would I was commanding a uh a troop troops, we had 120 uh of us in three different countries. And I remember coming back and they had a transition assistance program for the military. And I went through it, and don't get me wrong, it's not the best in the world, but at least it's something, right? And so I said, you know, what is out there for first responders? I mean, we're all you wearing the uniform. If they're doing it for the military, is there any any entity out there that is helping our cops and our firefighters and EMS dispatch all the rest of stuff, kind of figure out and and help them with a pathway of when that time is done, which is everyone, it will be done. Shocker. Um, but you're gonna have to figure out what you're gonna do. And when I came back to the United States, uh, I really started looking around and I talked to, you know, I I trained a lot of friends in LA, you know, Chicago and Jacksonville, Miami, New York, uh, Dallas, Arlington. And when I would reach out to my friends, a lot of them would say, Jeff, there is no such thing, man. There's there's no like transition assistance program. There, what are you talking about, man? They they once you say you're retired or are retiring, you went from a name to a number, like lickally lickily split fast, right? Um, and I said, Well, that's kind of not cool. That's kind of BS, you know what I mean? Because obviously the issues that we have when we go into our uh private sector is very well documented, but nobody's ever done anything. And so I really started looking in January of 23. I really started looking after I was in my um uh I was in an officer-involved shooting, I really that really amplified uh my desire that hey, I needed to start looking for uh a new line of work, a different season, right? So I started researching and I could find white pages. I could find, you know, you go to Google and then hit Scott, you type in scholar, and you could find all the first responder data on, you know, hey, listen, national average is five to seven years that we were going to survive after we take the take off the uniform. That's the national average. That's not just Oklahoma, Texas, whatever. That is the national average. Um, and I was finding white papers from the CDC, from Arizona, from California, from Florida, various different entities. They were backed by unions that were backed by, you know, you know, uh independent studies, etc. The issue that I saw, Travis, was in the military there's a VA system. In the uh public service side, there is no VA system. So, you know, you see mission 22 on the VA side, which is 22 veterans that are that commit suicide a day, right? Well, there's nothing in the first responder side because there's no collective avenue, there's no collective centerpiece, right? To to gather all this data up and to really kind of send out a message, hey guys, we you have got to have some sort of offboarding process. You have to, or else you're going to fall into this five to seven years. Uh and in fact, I just had a friend of mine pass that was a captain at Oklahoma City just pass last Wednesday. Did seven years after, right? And so that he fit within that metric. And so, you know, as I continued going, I was like, so nobody from LA to Chicago, the big cities, nobody has any programs to help our first responders. And I got just the flat no, they don't care, the agencies don't care. And that just it pissed me off, to be honest with you, right? Because all the things that we do for our agencies and sacrificing and all the things that we do, don't and don't get me wrong, we get the accolades and all the rest of that stuff. But at the same time, for us to onboard so methodically intentionally from the academies, the background checks, the the board interviews, the polygraphs, all that stuff that we go through for six, eight, twelve months, and then to say I'm retiring and just say thanks, and give you probably the plaque with the wrong name on it, that's the offboarding process. Man, that's not cool. I just I did not like that. And this was a God calling. Um, I'll be completely honest with you. Uh, I had a lot of different avenues that I could have gone. In fact, uh my old boss was like, hey Jeff, there's a there's an opportunity to do um uh a specific job job that would be built for a civilian, and uh no, I don't want to do that. And so I I really honed in on this, and this was my call. And I was it was fed from my heart. You know, I was I didn't want my brain to really kind of take over, and I just wanted to go here, and uh and and I started developing the idea, the branding, the marketing. I I don't know anything about nonprofit worlds, so I'm I'm going down here to this, you know, Secretary of State and dealing with EINs with the IRS and you know, hiring attorneys' offices and listen, Travis, it took about $40,000 of my own money to stand up this nonprofit. And that's what I wanted to do. And you know, coming up with the courses and the seminars and seeing some of the you know return on investment, you know, we're we're getting guys and gals in like from the academy on to think about personal development, not just professional development. Man, listen, we could shoot, move, communicate with the best of them, but we suck taking care of ourselves, right? We suck taking care of our families. And um, I and I hate to say that, and I know that's a little bit of drastic, but we we don't we don't do well. Um, and when we're talking finances, we're talking physical fitness, we're talking, you know, application of that, you know, how many times, Travis, do we go into freaking gas stations and go get our cokes and sodas and you know, Twinkies and all the rest of the stuff, you know what I mean, to kind of fill that gap because we're going from call to call to call, you know what I mean? Um, how are we doing on sleep? You know, what are we looking like on the mental health side of the house, you know, especially with peer support and all the rest of the stuff that's going out there? What what are we doing? Are we are we are we are we in the mindset of being engaged at work? Or are we worried about our loans and our finances and just working job after extra job after extra job after extra job just to stay afloat? You know, so how are we how are we uh mitigating a lot of the issues um that we're seeing? And so the other thing was is all right, now that we we have these guys and gals, you know, currently, how do we take care of them or give them opportunities when they offboard? And so what we did is we we have a thing called Beyond the Badge, which is a seminar, it's a four-day seminar. And actually, we're gonna kind of do some split-offs too. We're gonna do some one-day's here and there across the state. But what we're gonna do is we're we're focusing on that holistic health, that financial health. Uh um, we're we're looking at the mental health side, but we're also looking like, hey guys, when was the last time you did a resume? Like you guys ask across the board 75, 80 percent of our people haven't drawn up a resume in 20 years. If you don't think that that's a hindrance, if you don't think that that caused a cause a mental block to go into the private sector, you got another thing coming, right? The other thing is too, is we've all interviewed in front of boards. We've never done one-on-one with an HR. Well, guess what? When you go in the private sector, and if you do want to go work in the private sector, you're gonna do a one-on-one with an HR. It's not gonna be in front of a board. Right? Then the other thing is is like, where well, where do I take a skill set? Well, you know, I had a construction company come up to me the other day and they said, Jeff, we would love a cop literally to sit as a foreman on a site and just make sure people are getting where they need to go and they're on time, and I will pay them six figures with benefits. That that's a skill set we can do, right? That's a very simple skill set, right? Um, you have you have other cops that have done budgeting, you know, within their time, you know, whether they're captains, majors, etc. You know, especially with fleet management and all the rest of the stuff, you know, personal management, whatever. Do you know that that also translates into the financial sector? You know, so what we've done is we've created these relationships with different entities that we plug them into. Like we we will see their their resumes. Um, and a lot of times it's blank, you know, when they come through our seminars. And then so what we'll do is we'll give them a shell and then we will go through and we will methodically go through their resume and we will build it out. And these are from specific HR groups that understand AST uh settings and and all the things that they need to do to make sure that you have the correct resume before you go out because a lot of this stuff is being read by AI, etc. Right. Right. Um, and then the other thing is to to kind of mitigate the fear of the of the interviews as we work with a Society for Human Resource Management, and we will sit them out down there and do mock interviews one-on-ones, and then they get feedback from it. So when they do go out into that private sector, they have applied for a job, they they gave them the resume. Now they're able to literally speak to that HR individual and not be afraid of it, right? So it's bringing down a lot of the walls that have prevented us from being able to go into the private sector successfully. Um some of the examples I have is Oklahoma City firefighter, uh, was in the mural bombing, was forced retired in 2018. 2000 um, he had a gym down in in uh in Norman. 2020 happens, COVID shuts down the gym year and a half, just on the struggle bus to try to figure out what he's gonna do. Has a heart attack, dies. Thank God his wife is there as an as a nurse, gives him CPR, and four days later woke up with no residual. And right now sits as a regional sales manager for Bitcoin.com. Right? So there are things that we can do. It's just we're not given the opportunities, Travis. Nobody has done this, nobody's even thought this process out, right? And so that's what we want to do. We're only going on two years, and right now the visibility that we're getting right now is just it's every day. Um, to where we're getting a partner from here, uh, a donor from there, you know, hey, we'd love to level your people up here. How can we support? Blah, blah, blah. Um, so as we're getting our messaging out there and and telling people that, hey, we're in Oklahoma City, you know, we're looking at you know covering the state of Oklahoma. But hopefully in about three years, you know, we'll be regional. Uh, we want to put chapters in in various different regions, whether it's in Wichita, Fort Smith, Arlington, whatever it is, you know, we want to do that. But hopefully we become national to where we can build these relationships and give this out to all of our first responders uh when they do want to offboard into the private sector. And Travis, that's that's also including whether you know you don't want to you don't want to work, you just want to go be a volunteer somewhere, right? There's a mindset change that you have to go through, right? Um, six to eight hundred critical instances in a in a career is going to catch up to you, right? All that cortisol, all the rest of the stuff that we have that that we've been sitting on and marinating on, right? If you're not doing anything anything with that and not keeping yourself active, we are built as strivers. And so if you don't give that striver a purpose, you're going to fall. You're having you're having patching mechanisms. And that's why we all fall to the to the cardiac issues, the cancer issues, and the and the suicide issues. And that's the top three of all of us that you know, if we don't, if we don't stay engaged, um, we will fall to it.

Travis Yates:

I think what is amazing, Jeff, about what you're doing is is obviously, I mean, this is a master's level, which you just gave our audience, so thank you for that. But you're also involved with while they're still on the job to make sure that they're successful in a way so when they do leave the job, it sets them up for success. Because the big biggest problem is no one thinks about this, no one thinks about this, and then they retire and they go, Oh, what am I supposed to do? And what's my purpose? I mean, listen, we don't have the data on what's happened to retirees, but I know anecdotally that retirees that are first responders, in particular law enforcement for sure, there's a huge, huge struggle out there. And that's why you'll see a lot of guys that six months later they're working as bank security or or they're going over to the county, or they don't know what to do. And and and and unfortunately, much of what you said is phenomenal as it is, it's a leadership failure. You're literally stepping in the shoes of what leaders should be doing right now in our profession. Why don't you think they're doing that, Jeff?

Jeff Morefield:

Man, I've I've struggled with that because I don't understand it. Um, you know, they they they say that they care, they say they want to take care of you. Um I've actually looked at this as a as a recruiting tool. And and I've looked at it also as a retention tool because I I have examples of guys that have gone through our programs and were just die hard that they were gonna retire. And the next thing you know, they're like, you know what, Jeff? Man, you gave me life. Or the case I gave me life. So I'm gonna stay here another year or two. I'm down 20 pounds, I'm rocking and rolling, man. I'm back in it. You know what I mean? Um, I think they're scared, I think it's I think they're scared. Um, and I and the reason why I say that, and I think it's also because it's unknown to them. They're still in the uniform. They don't know what it's like on the other side. And I hate to say that, um, but at the same point, why are they not reaching out to those that have been in uniform? Why are they not opening up their hands to say, I'd love to listen about it? I'd love to be able to keep our people engaged. We do 90 to 95 percent professional development in all of our in services, et cetera. When it comes to personal development, how much time is actually given within our agencies? I mean, next to none. And the reason is is because I think there's there's two reasons. Number one is I think that they're scared of the unknown. And number two, they don't know. So and what they don't do is because they're very linear mindset, they're not they're not strategic, they they don't go and seek outside entities to to help with that process, right? So or is it actually important to them? Do do they even do a is that even an important thing to them? Now I think it will be when they when they leave. But like I was talking to to my old partner, you know, for nine, nine years or whatever, we're talking about some of the the cola issues and stuff like that here in the state of Oklahoma and and in comparison to other states. And you know, we're we're we're talking, and I was like, listen, man, you in the uniform, you are you're in a vacuum of of this type of knowledge. When you step out, there's a whole lot of other knowledge that's out there that's not being fed into you. And I for so long wanted to seek that knowledge, um, but was just kind of kept in this lane, right? Uh and immediately once I started stepping out and just kind of figuring out that, hey, there is things outside the borders of Edmund, you know, you there's a lot of there's a lot of things going on that you just didn't know about that you you didn't have any clue.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, you know, I I love what you said about leaders, Jeff. I think you were actually pretty diplomatic. Uh I I think a little more sinister about it because you know, when you you look at agencies, especially larger agencies, you don't become a sergeant, lieutenant, captain chief without being very intelligent, very smart. I mean, law enforcement has changed in that way, which is a good thing. Very professional, educated people. I don't know how they don't know it. I don't know how they keep them in the box because I knew it, I was aware of it. I I I fought similar battles, I never understood it. Um, and so it is hard to talk about when you don't understand it, but it is no excuse, right? I think we have some significant problems in our profession when it comes to leadership, which is obviously what we both talk about a lot. And this is another symptom of that, right? Uh there's a reason why law enforcement has recruiting issues and retention issues, and the in the and you know, when you see what leaders are doing, they're trying to they're trying to fix it with money and finances and and they're not and they're missing it right in front of them. Well, how about this? How about you care for people? How about you care about them, care about their families? You know, I uh I would uh somebody asked me one time, how would you know if you had a great chief? And I said, Oh, it's easy. Do they know my spouse's name? Do they know my family? Do they know my likes? Do they know my hobbies? No, none of them ever do. They don't care one bit because you're a number. So we lie to ourselves and we talk about caring, we talk about wellness programs, we check the box, but the what you're doing, Jeff, is you're is thankfully you're here because you're there's a huge gap that is yet to be filled. And uh, I can only imagine, man, how busy you are. And I I can't thank you enough. And and you talked about stepping out of that lane. That had I know you it's your purpose, you've invested your own resources into this. It's obvious as quick as you've grown that this is this is God's plan for you. But you must have heard some talk behind the scenes right at your agency when you did this, because it very much is outside the box for most people to leave and have this other purpose in life.

Jeff Morefield:

Yeah, I mean, they would never come directly to me. Um, but you know, you you hear it through the through the grapevine, you know, um, why are you leaving? That's so idiotic. Um, you know, what are you gonna do? You know what I mean? Like it's just all the it's just it's all the you know the um I and some of it I think honestly, Travis, comes from a little bit of jealousy, you know, and you know, that that you're able to move on, you're able to go to a another phase in your life. I call it next, and for for me, it's called next phase leadership. Like if you're not if you're not going in your next phase of life, if you're not leading into it, then you're wrong. And if you're not, if you're if you're not um incorporating a leadership style that helps others go into their next phase of life, you're wrong. Right? So those those that are sergeants, you know, lieutenants, captains, I remember going to my agency and saying, hey, listen, I have this. It wasn't something I thought of, but I had seen it. It's you know, it's called one-on-ones. And literally, it's it's a sit-down with your direct report subordinate, whatever you want to call them. It's 10 minutes of free talk, and then 10 minutes of free talk from the other person, and then it's 10 minutes of just going back and forth. And man, you talk about like I want you to know who my wife is. Like, do you even even know how old my child is? And that was that was something that I tried to bring, and I got looked at, was like, why would we want to do that?

Travis Yates:

Yeah, man, listen, I want to praise you because this is incredible, and you know, and I knew a lot about this, Jeff before we got on the on the phone on the call here, but man, uh this just excites me even more of what's going on. But in a sense, I sort of think to myself, wow, is our profession this bad that uh you doing this, which is not unique in other professions, right? Other industries do this stuff already, but nobody in the history of law enforcement decided to sort of embed this in our leadership when we've got every leadership guru and expert on LinkedIn that you can think of, and we're talking about all this silly stuff, which by the way, and I say this a lot, if that stuff actually worked, our profession would be in a different place now. So I think we should try some different things, which is why I love what you do, Jeff. It's incredible, man. How can they how can they reach you? Because there's gonna be people that want to reach out to you after this. I can guarantee you. How can they bring you to speak? How can they reach out for resources? Give us all your handles, your website, give it all to us.

Jeff Morefield:

Awesome, man. So my you know, primary one is is our oncallproject.com. That's our that's where the project is. Uh it has all the descriptions, everything that you need on it. Uh, it does have a contact on there. Um also my email address is j.morefield at oncallproject.com. That's a direct line straight to me. Um, also on on the on the speaking side, I do have uh next phase where I talk about next phase leadership. And it's it's jeffmorefield.com. Uh and it'll and it'll show you everything that you need to know. It's got a reach availability uh for any type of contact, um, able to go anywhere in the nation and talk about this. This is a massive, massive, massive need. And it needs to be at a awareness knowledge level. But then what needs to happen is an application, a skill, and a habit after that. This should this should be something once they cross that threshold of applying, this should become something that is repertorious, right? This should be a no-brainer. This should be an expectation, right? So an expectation management. These are the things that we have to do in order to take care of our people. Listen, we want to elongate our peoples. We want to give stability to the family, and we want to repurpose them into the community that they just served. So if we are not doing that, then we are failing our people. Whether you're a chief level or all the way down, this applies to everybody. And in fact, I've read studies, even one recently from Arizona, that talked about those that are at the highest levels, have the highest issues after they leave. So this that this doesn't just pertain to just your your run-em-up patrol officer. This is all the way up from the from the head sheds on the way down. All right. So um I've seen a lot of people go, ah, it's not going to apply to me. Yes, it will. I promise you, it will. So you guys can reach out to me. Uh, love to love to talk to anybody that wants to listen. Um, and and I'm available to anybody that uh that really wants to level up their people, uh, bring healthy habits to our people. And again, let them let them be stable in their families. That is the most important part.

Travis Yates:

Jeff, your authenticity uh just comes through, your passion comes through. I can't thank you enough. And I think what you just described is nothing more than a head-to-heart issue, this profession. We know all the information, but we've got to travel about eight tangents to our heart and actually care about the future of our men and women behind the badge. I mean, I'm glad you're such a part of that. Thank you so much for being here. And if you've been listening, you've been watching, thank you for being here. And just remember, lead on and stay courageous.

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