022 Jen Fullmer––Boots2Roots!

There's a lot of talk about helping veterans these days. Today we'll meet someone who is walking the walk in that area, an amazing community leader, Jen Fulmer, the Executive Director of Boots to Roots, on this episode of Walking the Walk.

Welcome to Walking the Walk, the program for people who want to become better leaders and leaders who want to become better people. Start walking the walk with your host, renowned leadership speaker and author of The Sensei Leader, Jim Bouchard.

You know, one of the best parts of my job is meeting with incredible leaders in business and in the community, and today's guest is bridging both worlds. Jen Fulmer is the Executive Director of Boots to Roots, a nonprofit initiative connecting our veterans with meaningful civilian employment. And Jen knows the challenges of the military-civilian transition firsthand. She served 24 years in the Air Force, retiring with the rank of Colonel, and she wasn't flying a desk. She flew 90 B-1 combat missions to Afghanistan and Iraq. So Jen, before we get into the specifics of how you're helping veterans transition to civilian life, how the hell did you do it?

Well, my transition is, was a, I wouldn't say it was very hard. I certainly am not doing what I thought I'd be doing.

Well, that's true of most of us, right?

Yeah, well, my, my husband has a job that allows him to live pretty much anywhere and we don't have children, so schools are not an issue. And I actually wasn't planning to retire when I did. I was overseas for a year and came home in the middle of that tour for 2 weeks, and my husband was living in Massachusetts and we knew someday we would retire to Maine, but we weren't planning on it anytime soon. And we drove up to a bed and breakfast in Portland for a couple nights, and along the way we were talking about someday, and my husband and I talked, and I said, you know, when we both see it someday, we'll both know. And literally 30 minutes before we got to Portland, we stopped and looked at the scenery and looked to the left side of the car and saw this house and a for sale sign, and we said, that's where we're supposed to be. And it almost happened exactly like that. And we went and saw the house 2 days later. I said, I guess it's time to retire. We put an offer on it, and Eddie was moved in before I got back from the desert.

Well, there you go. Not everybody has it that smooth. And that's what you're helping people with now, right?

Well, that was sort of a very unique circumstance. But still, certainly, the whole looking for a job and getting prepared for that, was a whole different thing. I had the luxury of my husband having a good job and me having a retirement check that allowed me some time to be able to really put some thought into what I wanted to do, and I wanted to give back to the community. And so I started looking in the nonprofit world and used my GI Bill to get a master's in human services that has specialization nonprofit management, joined Maine Association of Nonprofits and joined a board and a committee and started volunteering a bit and decided to start my official job search in January. End of 2016. And when I did start that job search, I look back now at my resume, I look back now at one of the interviews that I did, and I could have used a lot of help.

Yeah, well, you know, you hit, you hit on something key there too. And ironically, we just talked about this with a couple of other leaders, that idea. And I think sometimes, especially as people rise to higher levels of authority, that the value of networking Right, so you joined a trade association right away and did that open up some of the networks that led you to this job or?

Which association are you talking about?

When you joined the nonprofit association.

Oh, so, well, I joined the Maine Association of Nonprofits through a board that I was volunteering on and went to board boot camp for them. No, Dave Hickey actually, I was 2 weeks into my official job search literally when the founder of Boots to Roots gave me a call. And he is a very good friend of mine. I flew with him over 20 years ago. I've known him for over 20 years. He's a guy that I respect, um, very, very much. I would take a bullet for this guy. Um, and he retired a few years before I did and is from West Gardner, Maine, and had retired to West Gardner, Maine. And he came up with the concept of Boots to Roots based on his own transition experience. And so he and his co-founder gave me a call in January and told me about Boots to Roots and asked if I would be on their board. And I said, absolutely, I'll be on your board. Uh, we'll come to find out it was, you know, a brand new— they had been helping folks by word of mouth for about a year and a half and were just starting the paperwork to make it an official 501. And so, um, it was just the two of them, and they were both working full-time at Bath Iron Works at the time. And so I met with them, and the concept was very important, it's a real gap that Boots to Roots is filling, and so I told them that they really weren't going to be able to get there from here, that they really needed somebody to run it full-time. I talked to my husband and we decided that this was important enough that I would do it on a volunteer basis for as long as it took to get it up and running. So that's where we are. So that's how I got involved with Boots to Roots. So it wasn't through the Maine Association of Nonprofits.

I know, that is a mouthful, isn't it?

Yeah, it certainly was not what I was expecting, but we've been building it now for 2 years and it's been very successful. And the feedback that we're getting from our teammates, which is what we call our clients, we call them teammates because we're— this is a 50/50, we're teaming together. The feedback that we're getting is that it's a very needed service and they're very appreciative and folks are being successful. So that's how I ended up here.

You know, I like— there's a couple of things that I want to touch on based on what you just said. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I know we had a little chance to chat a couple of weeks ago. The idea that you identify your clients, if you will, in the technical sense, as teammates. You know, one of the struggles we have in the leadership space these days is getting people to accept the idea that, you know, a leader isn't someone who's going to do everything for you, right? And that really we all have to accept responsibility for our own lives and moving ourselves forward. So it's interesting that you approach it that way. It seems that that would be something that especially military people would respond to quite strongly, right? Because leadership in the military isn't definitely is not limited to position of authority, is it? You want leaders at all levels, and it seems like you're really bringing that imprint over to this organization too.

Well, it's ingrained in the military. You know that in, in the Marine Corps and in the Army, folks refer to each other as battle buddy. In the Navy, it's shipmate. In the Air Force, it's wingman. In the Coast Guard, it's shipmate as well. And that, that refers to all the people that you work with. Anybody who I worked with was, was my wingman. And wingman implies that that's somebody who has your back, who is there for you. You know, when people go to Afghanistan or Iraq or World War II or Vietnam or Korea or any other conflict, you ask them why did they do it. They might have signed up in the military because they wanted to support their country. They might have done it for a number of different reasons. But when in the heat of the battle, you will almost hands down hear from people that the reason that they were there and fighting so hard and didn't leave and ran into active fire and why people get the Medal of Honor and why people do the things that they do is because they are doing it for that person who's next to them, their battle buddy, right, or their, their shipmate. And so, and so teammate is, is a word that all the services can relate to because we've all been part of a team, and that working together— and it also implies that when they're working with Boots to Roots, they're working with folks who've been there, done that, right? So there's an automatic sort of connection there, which is important because a lot of folks don't know sort of who to talk to, and sometimes you don't want to reach out to a state or a government agency, and there's a comfort in knowing that you know, you're reaching out to another team member.

No, I agree with you. I think that's incredibly important. That's a perfect transition. Why don't we talk a little bit more about exactly what you do for your teammates and how, you know, what the— how's that process? How do people access you?

So, so what Boots to Roots is doing, we, we are working exclusively with active duty military and their families who are transitioning to Maine. Maine has a very large National Guard footprint and and they do a great job and we've got a great team up there. But that would— after Brunswick Naval Air Station closed, there really isn't any active duty base in Maine. There's Kittery Shipyard, but it's, it's, it's a little different than a traditional active duty base. And so when active duty folks come back to Maine, if they're not already kind of hooked into the network, it's hard to get connected. If you're the National Guard, they've got a great support network. And once you're in the network here, Maine has an amazing network of veteran support services, and we're tied into all of them. But a lot of times people need help sort of getting hooked into that. I wouldn't have known where to get hooked into if Dave hadn't called me about Boots to Roots. And so it's very important to—

I just lost my train of thought. To be the channel for that, right? Because— no, I agree with you 100%.

Yeah.

There's a lot of folks in it. And that's— again, this is something I hope people listening will appreciate this. It's not limited to folks transitioning out of the military. We hear this all the time with especially aspiring and emerging leaders. You know, how do I advance myself? I don't know anybody. And I said, well, duh, you've got to get to know people, right? And reach out to the folks that can help you build that network. Sometimes it's through mentoring. Sometimes it's through an association. And I'm sure in this world, it's by reaching out to an organization like yours, to Boots to Roots. And I do want to emphasize, I appreciate that Yeah, there's a lot. I'm not saying that everybody has to share an experience to be helpful to one another, but it does lend another level of credibility, doesn't it? Because if I'm not a veteran, one of my regrets, but if I were, it would mean something to come to you because you've walked the walk before. You've been there.

Right. No, it does. And so what we're trying to do is we're the only organization in Maine that is working with active duty military before they come to Maine intentionally. Ideally, we would work with them up to 12 months prior to coming back. And what that allows us to do is in the first couple of months, we try to get the— help them with sort of a self-assessment to figure out sort of where their skills lie, what they might be interested in the civilian world, do resume help with them. And it's very intensive one-on-one to really help translate using job descriptions, you know, what they're doing. So they're not only describing things that they've done, but they're actually describing it in a way that an employer is going to look at look at that resume and say, "Yes, I can see exactly how this person can benefit my company and can fit into the job that we need them to do." And so we spend a lot of time—

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but isn't that one of the big— that's what I hear from veterans. That's one of the big challenges, right, that civilian employers sometimes can't connect the dots, so to speak, that there are certain job descriptions or skill descriptions in the military, and you can help bridge that, right, that the employers can understand what that means and how that person's skills can be useful?

Yeah, it's critical because, and that's one of the benefits of us having been in, us the peer mentors and myself, of having been in the military because I can read something and say, you know, like the other day I was working with a Marine who's coming back and he had put on his resume, evolution, ordnance evolutions. And I said, then what is that? And he said, you know, blah blah. So I know, I know what it is.

Yeah, but I don't know what it is.

And so we narrowed it down to basically those were training exercises. Okay, and so training exercises where they had objectives and they had to do risk assessment and they had to do these different things. And so we got down and we peeled that back and we were able to write that in a way that— and then you look at the job description and the job description talks about problem solving and so forth. So we were able to to reword that in a way that told the skills that he had. It doesn't matter the subject that he was using them with. But I told him, I said, first of all, ordnance evolutions, nobody knows what that means. And so what you're telling me, and I do a lot of readback, what I'm hearing you say is this. Is that what you did? Yes, exactly. Okay, well, that's how we're going to say it. Perfect.

Yeah. No, and that's key too, because again, another challenge we face all the time is The idea, because there's so much transition, I'm sure you know this in your work, there's so much volatility in the job market right now. I mean, I remember I was challenged on an interview myself not too long ago. I was quoting the figure of 3 to 3.5 years that anybody was staying in even a middle-level management position, and I was corrected, it's 1.5 years now, which sounds crazy, but the idea that you can transition your skills across different domain sets I think is critical. It's critical in the civilian world. Must be even more of a challenge for military, no?

I think it's a challenge because we're not used to putting certain things in terms that aren't military terms. And so that takes some practice. You know, when I work with folks on a resume, we'll start— I don't ever have anybody do a master resume. I say you can build up bullets and sort of information as you go, but you always want to start with a job description. Yeah. And that's how you need to build that resume. And it's amazing to see when somebody talks to me about, say for instance, I was dealing with a Marine about a year ago who had been in for about 10 years. He was a team leader and he was a team leader in Afghanistan. He was in the infantry. And he said to me, he said, "I don't know how to relate this. I was in the infantry. What did I do?" And so what I told him was, I said, "Well, look at a project manager. A project manager who is assigned a project in a company or business. Their boss comes to them and they say, 'I want you to I want you to do this task. This is the project I want you to handle. And his boss came to him and said— say they were in Afghanistan and they had to do a convoy from one base to another that's in a remote area in Afghanistan. So his boss comes to him and says to the small team leader, I want you to do this task to get this convoy from point A to point B. Well, the first thing both of those people do, the project manager and in the civilian world and the team leader in the infantry, the two of them are both gonna start and look at, what does that entail? What's my— I gotta do some research, right? I have to do some research on what's been done before, what are sort of the things that I need to consider, what are the problems people might have run into, what could we possibly face, all this kind of stuff. So you do all this research and then you come up with an objective. And so each of you has an objective and then you figure out how are we gonna meet that objective and what resources do we need. And what are the steps that we need to take? And oh, by the way, if we don't have the resources, how do we coordinate with our boss or whoever to get those resources? And if we can't get the additional resources, then one of two things happens. We either tell our boss, I can't get there from here, or if I can, here's the risk that you're gonna have to accept. And then where there's a risk acceptance discussion, and then you execute. As you execute, there's safety things to consider, there's quality things to consider, there's feedback. Then you have to have measurements of success. Once you get those measurements of success and you get to the end, then you have a hot wash and figure out what you need to do better next time and so forth. When you look at all these, that's just a very, very basic example.

No, no, no. You know what? You say basic, but it is. Of course, all the power is in the basics. I'm a martial artist. I can't help saying that, right?

Yeah.

But the thing is, and you've hit so many important points, I hope employers are listening to what what you're saying, because first of all, and again, I'm going to emphasize, at all levels there's a leadership imprint in the military culture, right? So that people, even at the— I don't want to say lowest levels, but you know what I mean, most the frontline level.

Oh yeah, the youngest entry level.

They're getting this, right? They're getting it embedded from day one, and that alone— I mean, technical skills, we can train technical skills in a specific domain to anybody that's willing to learn them, right? But that idea of, you know, that imprint of leadership is something that's very, very difficult to build, and they're coming ready for it. And everything you've just talked about, you've hit so many of the key areas that, you know, business today is struggling with: flexibility, dealing with uncertainty, managing risk, right? And your people that you're bringing in through this transition, I mean, that's the skill set they have. My God, you know how difficult that is to build in a civilian organization? And you're handing them over ready-made.

I've had numerous kinds of risk. The risk question is interesting. Throughout my career, I've been mentored many, many times on that. And you know that there's, not only is there a risk assessment to be done and to understand how you look at assessing risk, but also understanding who has the authority to accept risk at different levels. And that's something also that you learn in the military. I, you know, I would, and I learned this as I went, obviously I've made many mistakes and that's how I learned, but. But when you get to the point where you say, I know that I can accept risk in this decision-making process up until this point, and at that point, that's not my— this says I don't have the authority to accept that risk. I now need to go to my boss, and maybe my boss doesn't even have authority to accept that risk.

But you've got the process in motion now. Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

So, so anyway, going back real quick, I just wanted to follow up the point when we talked about the prior prep into the networking part, because once we do the— once we do resume prep with these folks and help help them sort of, you know, translate those things that we just talked about. Then I hand them to Bruce McMillan, who is an amazing volunteer that we have. He was a Navy veteran in the Vietnam era in destroyers in the European theater for about 6 years. Then he got out and he was in business for many, many years, over 20 years, and then he owned his own consulting firm for over 20 years. And he's worked with over 100 companies doing executive mentorship. He's also done mock interviewing for a couple of universities in the state for the last 12 years. He's amazing. What he does is, I will, once we have a good resume based on a job description, even before someone has an interview, we'll have a prep session with Bruce, and Bruce gets on the phone with these folks. Bruce has their resume in front of them and the job description, and he helps them with basic interview prep skills and things to think about, how to research a company, how to, you know, think about the way you're answering questions. And he does all that basic prep. It usually takes about an hour to an hour and a half for his first session.

Session.

Then once he's done with that, whenever somebody gets a specific interview, we hook them up with Bruce again, and Bruce does specific prep for that specific company. We've gotten amazing feedback on him. He is priceless. If I had to pay for his services, we'd already been paying tens of thousands of dollars for what he has done. So he's really amazing. So once we do that, we get that sort of that initial package done. We get to know them, we hook them up with a peer mentor, we do sort of self-assessment, then we do resume prep, and then we do interview prep. Once we have that done— ideally that would happen within the first couple of months, and it depends on when someone calls us. If someone calls us 2 months out, we try to accelerate that process. Sure, sure. Do some of that together. If someone calls us a year out, we're looking at, you know, the first couple of months to get time to develop it. Yeah, right. Once we get that stuff, now, now we start networking. We coordinate with all the different organizations in the state and the career centers, the Department of Labor Career Care Centers, one of the guys sends out a daily job bundle, which is by no stretch of the imagination every job available in Maine, but it's a good conglomeration of jobs on a daily basis that he sends out. They're great partners, and, and our folks can review that. And then what I will do is, as I'm making relationships with different employers and I know now what this person's really looking for, what their skill sets are, and we have an employer that I know is looking for I'm a particular person to fill a job that someone might be good for, or that maybe they don't have a particular job, but this would be a really good fit for that company based on me, you know, having a relationship with them, right? You know, send them the resume, talk about it. Or I'll go to career fairs for our folks. I send our folks the career fair information and I tell them, look at the companies. If there's a company you're interested in, look on their website. If there's a job that, that you want, then Let's tailor your resume for that job and I will go to the job fair for you on your behalf. I'll wear a suit, go up and talk to the HR person, introduce myself, tell them about what Booster Roost is, and then say, have I got the person for you? And you have your resume right there with me.

It sounds like, if I'm hearing you right and if I heard you right the first time we talked, there is an important distinction though. You're working on the preparation side with your teammate. Right, to prepare this person for this job, but you're not a job placement organization, right?

No, no.

And there is a distinction.

Well, we're not a recruiting firm.

There you go, there you go.

We're here to— we are here to work with active duty military and their families who are transitioning to Maine, um, and to get them prepped and everything that that entails, whether it's the— like I said, there's 3 real aspects to it. It's employment search and preparation, which we just discussed, the main the main portions of that. The other thing is to connect folks with transition services, whatever that may be, whether folks need a realtor, you know, where do you, where are you looking to live? Yeah, a lot of folks are waiting to find a job before they figure out exactly where they want to live. Some people know where they want to live right away, and so do, you know, schools for kids. Do people want referrals for schools for kids, or veteran service officers, or financial counseling, you name it. Whatever folks may need connected. I mean, someone needs to know a good haircut place. I mean, you know. Well, I don't, but— Trying to hook them up with whatever they need to help them integrate with their new community. And then thirdly is mentoring. There's a statistic out there, a few reports have been published that show that post, or veterans, almost 50% of veterans don't stay in their first post-military job for even a year. There's a number of reasons for that, but I think one of the reasons is not enough prep on the front end and really kind of knowing where you fit in.

So it's not a good fit from the start.

A lot of times. Sometimes people just get nervous if they come back and they, you know, maybe they've been putting in resumes and maybe their resumes are too many military terms and nobody really understands, and they haven't been getting calls, and now they're starting to have financial issues and So they take the first thing that comes along. I mean, there's a lot of different reasons.

So, so that's why that distinction is so important because it's, again, correct me if I'm hearing you wrong, but because you're not a recruiting agency, recruiting agency is commissioned usually from the employer side, right? So you're not working for the employer. You're working for your teammates. You're working for the veterans without any sort. And I know you want to have good relationships with the businesses, But really, your priority, your sole priority, is to help that veteran.

Well, it is to help that veteran, but by us connecting with them early on, we are also helping the employers.

Of course.

You know, getting some really quality, quality employees. In fact, employers who understand what veterans bring to the table, many of them have actually sought us out saying, you know, hey, I've got this job open if you have anybody coming up, because they understand.

They trust you.

Well, they trust, they trust the veterans because of the past performance of folks who have worked for them. Yeah, have proven their worth as a great employee. And so that's the experience that they have. And so they want more of that.

Right.

And so that's why, you know, they, they reach out to us. You know, the other thing is, if there's a thing, there's a report that was published by the Veterans Administration in 2015, the federal, you know, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, and there it was an economic opportunity report, and there's a thing called the UCX rate, which I didn't know about. It stands for unemployment compensation for ex-military, right? And what that UCX rate is, the rate at which somebody is using their unemployment benefit. For instance, you're entitled to 26 weeks of unemployment and If you use all 26 weeks, that's a high UCX rate. If you use 10 weeks, that's a lower UCX rate. The state of Maine since 1988, 1988 to 2013, and this report was published in 2015, was number one in the nation with the highest UCX rate for nearly 3 decades in a row. And what that says to me, and you know, there's probably a lot of information and statistics statistics behind that, but what that says to me is veterans aren't getting hired quick enough in the state of Maine. Oh, that makes sense. And so, you know, if you can do all this prior prep, our goal is to get folks hired within 2 months of setting foot in Maine. And that prior preparation is what really facilitates that. And that allows folks to do a couple different things. Number one, hopefully they won't have to collect unemployment. Not only does that cost the state of Maine money, but it also does something for someone's psyche when they to collect unemployment.

Yeah, absolutely. I've been there.

Right, exactly. Well, then you know, you know, and a lot of people don't want to do it, but some— if you get to the point where you're not getting hired, then you have to do something. The other thing is most folks who are in the military will come out, separate or retire, with what's called terminal leave. In the military, you get 30 days of leave per year, and you can roll that over up to 60 through a year. So once you're at the end of your time of duty, you can take all your leave at the end if you want, which is called terminal leave. So for instance, my official retirement date was in September, but I came to Maine in July. So my last 2 months, I still was— I was still getting a full active duty paycheck for that 2-month period. Yeah. So a lot of people come out with 30 to 60 days, not everybody, but so that's why we are— 2 months is our goal. It's a great, great window if you can take advantage, right? Yeah, because it allows people to get back, get settled, you know, hopefully they've had some interviews ahead of time or at least circulated resume, you know, hopefully we've done some of that networking ahead of time and so that they can be employed prior to them losing an active duty paycheck or have a very small window of time when they can live off their savings while they're getting hired. In fact, we— I think I told you this before— we're working with 36 folks right now that 16 of them are back in Maine. The other ones are still on active duty. Of the 16 who are back in Maine, 14 are hired, and 80% of them were hired well within 2 months of getting here.

That, so that is a perfect way to wrap this up. That's what a great punctuation point. We could listen to you all day, and we're going to. You have to have you back for a number of reasons. First of all, not exclusively to this project, which is hugely important. I would like to promote this again. But I'd also like to hear more about your experience as a military leader and how you've, how you've brought that over to the civilian world. But before we do say goodbye for today, we've got to tell people how to get in touch with you.

Boots to Roots at bootstoroots.org is our email. And then bootstoroots.org is our website. And there are numerous places you can send a message to us, which will go to our email on the website. There's also a donate button on the website, and we're looking for volunteers as well. So there's a page that has volunteer descriptions and some of the skill sets that we're looking for in our volunteer team. Most importantly, that folks are dedicated and committed to rolling up their sleeves.

Hey, you can wave this one off if I'm stepping out of bounds here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, in the short time that we've gotten to know each other so far, I can, I can really offer an endorsement and say reach out to Jen. I know her already as a person who cares deeply and passionately about what she's doing. She's very focused on helping you out, so please reach out to her. Am I out of bounds, or is that okay?

I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for that kind endorsement.

All right, Jen, thanks so much for being on Walking the Walk today. I hope we get you back again real, real soon.

Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it.

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