We Didn’t Break — We Rebuilt: A 3-Act Story of Transformation with Jeff Eschliman

What do you do when life hits you hard? War, loss, burnout, and the plan you had no longer fits the person you've become. Today, we're telling a 3-act story about resilience and reinvention. We didn't break. We rebuilt. Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge, brain science for bold leaders ready to master their mind and own their voice. I'm your host, Claire Hayek, NeuroLeadership expert, ex-engineer, lifelong musician, and founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. In this episode, you'll learn how to reset your mindset after a real crisis. You're also going to learn how to carry lessons from the field into leadership and teams and how to design a 3-act that actually fits who you are now. You'll hear Jeff's 3 acts: military service, a 30-year homebuilding career, and a purpose-driven reinvention. And I'll weave in my own war child to immigrant engineer to musician to entrepreneur and speaker. My guest is Jeff Eshleman, Army veteran, longtime homebuilding executive, and now an executive coach who helps leaders build high-performance teams that last. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Delighted to be with you, Claire.

Thank you for joining me. Your story is so fascinating. I had to have you on the show. Please do take us to the moment your life literally cracked open. You were 20. Coming home from the Gulf, what changed inside of you that never really changed back? Tell us what happened.

It was the biggest thing for me, Claire, was perspective. Going through that example of where, you know, a person of that age, a very young man, you know, had been asked to do and had seen The worst things that I would ever see in my life. And I literally knew when I was coming back from that experience that really the rest of my life was going to be easy compared to that. And so far here today at age 55, that is still true. I often say, because I had a very good childhood growing up, you know, good parents, good core values, work ethic, all of those things. And I like to say that that You know, really set the tone for how my life was going to be.

Right.

But that military experience, and I'm a, I'm, I'm a rec— I, I'm a highly recommend on the military because even if you don't have the wartime experience like I did, just going through the training process, the, the camaraderie, the esprit de corps, the discipline that the military instills in you has been a skill set that has really carried through my entire career up to today. But that wartime experience was perspective. It was the perspective of being in an armored personnel carrier with 3 other people and essentially knowing that, you know, you're putting your life in the hands of, you know, 3 other people that you're with. And that is a special kind of bond. that is created in that sort of crucible moment or moments or era.

Mm-hmm.

And the appreciation for how ugly and how bad people can be to each other. And then fortunately, through the rest of my career, even though I've had other, you know, just it's life, right? So everybody has their difficulties and their challenges. But that perspective early on really, really just shaped how the rest of my life was, was going to unfold.

I bet. I can relate. I can definitely relate. I'm a war child. I grew up in Lebanon, in Beirut, in the midst of war in the '70s. And I mean, although life was wonderful, it was horrible at the same time. There was this dichotomy between fun, entertainment, culture, amazing food, love, family, care, and then You know, insecurity, feeling uncertain, lack of safety. Really extreme, two extreme lives in one, weaved in this at the same time. And it does change you. I can never, you know, I can never say, oh no, that was nothing. No, I know a lot of Lebanese people that have gone through that, but the ones I've spoken to, You know, they say it's nothing. You know, it made us more resilient. Yes, but it is something. It made us resilient. It changed— you said the word— our perspective. Now, we have a third reference point that we look at and say, you know, I've gone through worse and I survived that. You know, it really, unfortunately, in a way, I would have liked it to be something else. But A challenge is a gift, right? Take it as a gift; otherwise, you're miserable. So if you turn it into a gift and go, "Wow, that really forged me into the person I am now," and this experience really changed me for the better, it helped me appreciate more life and and actually contribute to others different ways. But definitely, that perspective is a gift if you use it well. If we all use it well now. When it was loud, you know, fear, doubt, adrenaline going on in your body, in your head, what did you do to steady yourself? Maybe a habit, something you told yourself, or a practice that grounded you. If you can share that with us, I think it would be very relevant to listeners that might not be in a war zone or a war child. But We all live very high-pressure moments, right?

Yeah. So I'll give you sort of the broad and then the specific. So from the broad standpoint, what, what military training does is it changes your mindset as an individual, right? So it's that resilience component, which is both mind and body and maybe even spirit, but definitely mind and body, right? So it's the mindset. Of how you approach pressure. And then it's that teamwork component because no army of one, just like a basketball team doesn't win with one great player. You have to play as a team. So the military gives you that, that high-level structure. And then what you're always doing is falling back on your training, right? So if you're from, I'm sure you're familiar with the term like muscle memory.

Oh yeah.

It is literally, you are so well trained and you're trained on execution so that when the pressure goes up, you are just relying on your training. You're not sort of making it up as you go. So that's sort of the broad. And then the really specific, and I still use this today, is just a breathing technique to recenter yourself. I've been a Toastmasters speaker. So before you go up and give the 5 to 7 minute speech, which you've memorized and you're standing in front of people, yeah. Or any situation like that, public speaking's just a great example. You can recenter your nervous system just by taking either some— you can take just one slow inhale and hold it.

Yeah.

And exhale. And it's a signal to your nervous system to say, we've been here before, you've done the work, you've practiced. So I still use that today. There's also box breathing, which is a 4-second inhale, hold it for 4 seconds, 4-second exhale, hold it for 4 seconds. That's Navy SEAL 101.

Right.

So again, military tie. But that has a specific tie back to anything or anyone can do intentionally when you feel— and it could be the anxiety of getting cut off in traffic or, you know, anything that brings us that momentary anxiety. Usually when you hold your breath is when that pressure comes. So breathing to me is the key. It's one of the cornerstones of working through any pressure environment.

Absolutely. You know what I call that? I'm often sharing these little tools. I want to call them like the brain reset. Really, it's just like a clean sweep, a breath, a cue, a little action you do, a micro-action. It's very, very short. A couple of seconds, 10 seconds, maybe 30 seconds, which moves you from your amygdala to your prefrontal cortex, from reaction to choice, to you're really back into your brain CEO, your prefrontal frontal cortex, and it just calms everything down because now you're not completely taken away by, by your amygdala. Um, thank you for sharing that. And I didn't know that was a, a Navy SEAL, um, uh, practice.

It's a—

yeah, I mean, we don't know these things, you know. I'm really, uh, I'm really glad that we're sharing this. Now, you spent 3 decades pretty much after, after the war, you spent 3 decades leading And homebuilding, right? Literally frontline and then boom, executive, right? Then unfortunately, tragedy, a fatality on a job site. How did that moment reshape how you lead, your leadership, your mindset? How did that change you?

Yeah, and it's not odd, but it's interesting how those things, like when you have those moments like probably everybody, you know, that's old enough knows where they were on like 9/11, for example. And I can literally still, I was sitting in my home office when I got the call and it was a worker that fell. And I could just tell by the tone of the voice of my site superintendent that called me the gravity of the situation. And I can still remember, you know, hanging up from that call and sort of the emptiness and dread that I was feeling in the moment.

Wow.

And that was probably the longest drive from my home out to that job site that I've ever had in my life. And the gravity of getting out there to that job site. And, and I'll, I'll tell you, Claire, this is burned into my memory. That happened at like 10 o'clock in the morning. I was out there on the job site by probably 11. Everybody else cleared that job site, the police, the paramedics, the OSHA, all— we had had people fly in from corporate that were safety people that were there to, you know, protect our interests. And I was there until probably 6:30 at night, and I was the last one on site. And there was only one car parked in front of this home, and it was from the worker that fell and died. And the lasting impression in my mind was 2 car seats in the back of that car. And I knew that, you know, whoever kids occupied those car seats didn't have a dad coming home that day.

And I, I, you just gave me, you gave me shivers. Honestly, this is, uh, You literally brought me back, brought me to this moment. I was not there, but I can completely feel what, what, you know, might have felt. And, and I'm sure I'm not even scratching the surface here.

Yeah, that's why that image is still burned in my mind today. And I use that, you know, very tragic event to— I mean, I literally say it changed who I was. I was a leader in the industry. And if you look from the outside, I was doing as much or anybody of, you know, quote unquote, the right thing to keep workers safe. And yet—

Yeah.

Something happened on my job site. And I told myself in that moment, and then it evolved from there, that I needed to be something different and I needed to do something different so that this would never happen on one of my job sites again. And if I could help it, it would never happen on any job site again. And unfortunately, in my industry, it still happened. But I used every bit of that as fuel to shape my leadership style going forward. And that meant showing up to events that, you know, where I was essentially the odd man out. I was the black sheep saying, You know, we have to do something different. This isn't right.

Right.

I had to leverage my relationships with my peers across the industry to try and change. And it's something that even though I'm an executive coach today, I'm still involved with safety. I'm still involved with homebuilding, not philanthropically, but because it's important and I have energy and I can influence change. I still do that to this day.

I think you know the story. I mean, this is people. You can give them all the rules you want, all the guidelines you want. But I believe unfortunately, the story of a loss due to a lack of hits harder. And and you know our brain listens differently when it's said out loud. I call this the say it out loud rule that that I've Kind of came up with. I'm always saying, you know, say it out loud. You don't have to yell it, but you have to communicate it out loud because automatically the brain engages 3 different parts of itself when you are saying it out loud, when you're communicating. And I applaud that you are still involved in that and you're still, you know, speaking about it. Because I'm sure you are making a difference. Maybe you're not seeing it. It might not be obvious, but I'm sure it's having a ripple effect. When you tell people, when you say it and you tell the story, it's going to sit with you. I can tell you for sure that it's sitting with me now. I never thought of that. I worked in engineering and safety. I mean, it's huge. Construction site and mining sites. I worked in mining as well, industrial sites. It was huge. There were still some accidents, but I never experienced a fatality. And I know that I've heard of some. And it was horrible. It was dramatic. It was a big traumatic event for a lot of people on site. And the aftermath is— it's really not something that you can take lightly for sure. And I totally believe your sentiment towards it. And I can feel it as well. So, thank you for being open about sharing this with us. Let's talk team. Okay. So, when you were faced with, you know, hiring process, recruiting, you know, lack of personnel where you really had to go out there, How did you hire for character? And how were you able to retain your best people? I think it's something that a lot of professionals in HR and recruitment struggle with. Obviously, everybody's got their own way. And it's a thing. We always talk about retention, especially now with the new generation. I mean, the young generation, Gen Z. I'm just curious, what's your take on that? What's—

Well, from a recruitment standpoint, what is a bedrock fundamental is having an organization that really knows who they are. And by that, you have really well-articulated both core values and core competencies, right? Right. So core values are who we are as an organization. And then core competencies are how we do it.

Mm-hmm.

So when you have the fabric of that and the foundation of that in your organization, you can start to paint a picture, especially through your vision of the organization and where you're going. And you make that the cornerstone of who you hire, right? So the CV or the, or the Resume is the skill set, right? Which is obviously important, but character is, in my mind, where you should really start.

Absolutely.

So, first of all, I'm into setting a really high bar. So, my leadership style is called expectations leadership, which is tell people what you want. And be crystal clear about it. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with the story of Shackleton. He's one of the guys that led one of the first expeditions to the South Pole.

Right.

And he put an ad in the London paper in, I think it was like 1903, right? And it said, men wanted for hazardous journey, long hours, Complete darkness. He basically said, you're signing up for peril.

For now.

The last line says, glory and recognition in case we succeed.

Oh, wow.

Okay. And he needed 39 people to go on this mission. Guess how many people he got? All of them. Not only did he get all of them, and you can imagine just with that type of description, The 1/10 of 1% type of person that he was looking for for this mission. So if you're going to try and go to the South Pole and be the first people that ever have ever done it, you're going to have to have a special kind of— what would you call it— constitution.

Right.

And/or resilience. Just a little sidebar, if you've never read the book Endurance, that's a chronicle of the story, and I highly recommend Anyway, so set a high bar for what you want. Hire on character, right? And then for retention, retention for me is communicate the vision of what the organization is. And a really good organization will communicate this all the way down to the individual team member. So that on at least a quarterly basis, because that's how business works, right? It's always changing.

Yeah.

It's always evolving. And that's one of the big challenges with leading an organization is because it's always changing. I mean, hell, it's hard enough just to keep the team communicated with when things are going well. But when things are changing, especially when they're changing rapidly, if you don't keep the team well informed about, you know, where the proverbial ship is headed, Then everybody's scattered. Everybody's disjointed.

Yeah. So, if you can share with us, actually, let's just unpack this a little bit further here. So, if you can actually share with us a ritual or a tool or something that you used and that you probably advise execs to use to keep the A-players from leaving, what would you say?

So, I'm a big fan of communication strategy and In general, right? A systematic rhythm of communication. So that would be like a leadership team having a strategy meeting once a year.

Right.

Having an all-hands team meeting once a quarter. Having a webinar once a month where you keep the team up to speed on what's happening from month to month in any given quarter. And then the— now to answer your real question here, I'm a fan of a daily huddle. So this is right from J.D. Rockefeller, Rockefeller Habits. And it— when you first tell people having like a huddle with your team every day, they say, well, hold on, isn't that just adding more meetings? The short answer though is a daily huddle is if it's in person, literally you stand up. You don't sit down.

Right.

Because you're only going to be there between 12 and 15 minutes. You do what's called What's Up, which is what are you working on today? Stucks or Delights, which you share anything that you're currently stuck on or you share delights. And then the third is at least one day, at least one component a day is sharing a critical metric from the organization. And I would submit to you that if your organization does daily huddles, because I've lived this, right, you not only will not do more meetings, you will do less.

Absolutely. You know what, Jeff? I practiced this in engineering and I can second that. I didn't exactly ask those 3 questions. I don't, you know, details. But the huddle works, people.

It works.

Whoever's listening, this is gold. This is a gold nugget. Write it down. Do it. A project was going to hell. Nobody was talking. The stakes were really high, losing millions every day that the project was delayed. And we started doing those. That's one of the suggestions. I was actually sent to manage the whole team and get the whole project on track. And it was like, are you guys talking to each other? We don't have time.

Meetings.

I'm like, no, 5 minutes. I give it 5 minutes every morning. They started liking each other actually.

Yes.

They started communicating better. They got to know each other. And then everything just— honestly, it's so simple and it works. So, thanks for bringing that up, Jeff. So, let me move on here because I definitely want to know before we wrap up. You created a 5-year exit plan after that and you executed it in 3. Why coaching and why then?

I asked myself 2 questions. Number one was that classic question of what do you love to do so much that you would do it for free? And for me, it is people development. I mean, I used to love the satisfaction of building somebody a new home and giving them the keys and letting little Johnny pick out his room. A lot of satisfaction in tangible results. But what I figured out through my management and then my leadership career was the secret to success is in people and growing people. And I love that element. That was, you know, of many things that I didn't care for in public companies and corporate life, the working with people was my true joy. And so I said, what if I could do that? And then the second question was, Now, what if I could earn a really good living doing what I love to do? And that's how I landed on executive coaching. And now I'm living my dream. I get to do exactly what I want with who I want, when I want. And I get to pour into them and help them discover whatever they're looking for in their life. Whether that's harmony or execution.

Yeah. Yeah, it's all about impact. I totally get that, Jeff. I mean, a lot of you know I was an engineer and a songwriter at the same time for years, for 20 years actually. I'm still a songwriter but that's a side note. Then, I just rebuilt everything again. I combined those into— it was exactly that same thing. It's like, what do I really want to do? How do I want to spend the rest of my life? What really matters to me? How can I contribute? How can I live my life Fully, and what can I focus on? And you know, it for me it appeared through entrepreneurship, speaking, and neural leadership. The common thread here for for my story is the voice. You know, owning who you are, owning your voice, stepping into your power. Owning your voice is not only about learning how to speak; it's really just about being truly at your full potential and and stepping into your power. And taking up space and contribute like you should fully in your life. We have one life. And that's definitely one of the drivers. And so many times, and I'm sure you can relate with that, Jeff. Don't want to put words in your mouth.

But absolutely, it's so hard.

It's hard. It's hard being in power.

Purpose.

It's up and down. It's up and down. There's no steadiness in being an entrepreneur and leading your own company and all that. And this is your driver. Yes, this is the path. It's the passion. People feel it, right?

The North Star.

The North Star. Exactly. All right, so we're up to our rapid fires. I'm going to ask you 3 questions. So, 30 seconds max, max, max if you can. All right, are you ready?

Let's do it.

Okay. One line you repeat to yourself on hard days.

I ask myself 2 questions every morning. So that I don't have to have a hard day, which is, who do I need to be today? And the second one is, what do I want to get from this day? So I never want the sun to set without me taking something, and it doesn't have to be huge, but a lot of times it's big. And when I, I'm priming myself every morning so that I don't need to have a bad day, and that doesn't mean that I don't have 'em, but They are rare.

Yeah, that's priming is the keyword here. I know Tony Robbins talks a lot about that and so many others. Thank you for sharing that. A book, podcast, or a talk that really changed how you lead, really affected or inspired you?

Yeah, the blue one on the bookshelf behind me here is called The 5 Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell. And I've been teaching out of that book since 2015. And what I love about it, it's a really good framework for leadership, right? Very pragmatic. So I'm a highly recommend on that for leaders out there because it builds a leadership language that you can help evaluate yourself and others.

Perfect. Thank you. Finish this sentence. Ready? Resilience is Discipline.

Discipline equals freedom.

Love this.

I always ask people, I've asked people if discipline is a good or a bad thing, and it's, it can be both, but you would rather choose the discipline that you choose, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Discipline equals freedom. Love that.

Jeff, thank you so much for joining me on the show. I love your story and I hope our listeners wrote down, took down a lot of the gold nuggets you shared. And that we shared, I guess, in a way we do have parallel stories, different but yet the same. And I'm sure a lot of you out there have similar stories. So why don't you write to us? Write to me, tag me, tag Jeff. You could see there's a QR code here. If you scan it, you'll get all my socials. You'll get access to masterclasses, webinars coming up, the free resources you can download. So please do. If you are listening to the audio, it will be in the description. So look for that link. I will also put the LinkedIn link Jeff, so you can connect with him if needed. And would love for you guys to follow the show. As always, your support really helps us keep going. I do this show for one reason, is to add value to our listeners and grow, help people grow and help myself grow because we never stop learning. Jeff, thank you so much. One last quick word.

Thank you for your time. I think you have a wonderful podcast and I was glad I could contribute.

Thank you so much. Again, lead boldly, stay human, and remember to turn every challenge into a gift. See you next time. Take care.