Making a salary & having available cash compounds the anxiety in transitioning. If you know you're getting out, you need to buffer with 3 to 6 months of cash reserves. If not--you may take a job or offer somewhere while you KNOW you'll be moving again in less than 3 years.

Launching is a great strategy, like in education to get a new degree. But going into a new job & knowing you're not staying won't help you settle & finish your transition.

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You can't do everything you need to transition alone. Consider how a unit prepares for a campaign or to maneuver. The unit succeeds not on the strength of an individual member, but the collective, synergistic strength of all its members.

Same thing in your transition.

Instead of trying to be a resume expert--find the expert to help you craft the best resume possible. Find the recruiters, career coaches, mental health counselors, & corporate mentors to be your team to help you engage in your transition.

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Its hard to corrollate spending $1000 on a resume to land a $100,000 job. Or gaining skills that you won't use when you get out. Have a clear budget to spend toward your transition, & make sure you're getting the best impact for investment.

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Lets talk about Transitioning Mistake #2: Lack of Homework. The homework it takes to transition is constant, cumuative, & iterative if you wait until you can take offers, youre behind the pace. You start your transition homework the day you join.

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I came across an real estate investment book which outlined 7 mistakes investors make in rehabbing properties. I thought I'd make a mint flipping homes in San Antonio, but didn't work out that way.

Now--I wish I had stuck with it.

But those seven lessons can also be applied to the "flip" our lives take when we transition out of the military.

This 1st mistake is to "Think it's Get Rich Quick". Not taking the time or patience to think the long game, or to not expect delays or frustrations to make the transition possible.

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“STAR: Needs to dominate. Being a member of the group is not enough. If he or she can’t make it to the very top, they’re disappointed.” *If you have a three-car garage in main home, vacation home, and your ex's home--you're a star. If you're a natural--and you get the audience you want with little effort--you're a star. If professionals and journeymen claim they wouldn't have succeeded without you--you're a star.* You don’t choose to get here, you’re chosen. In the military, we call this senior rank: E-7 & above, O-5 & above. 15-25 years of waiting. We literally use stars to designate senior rank. In music, the stars are the Billboard 100. Or the top 50 iTunes podcasts. They become single names: Michael, Taylor, Bieber, Rogan. Our “stars” in uniform can become similarly recognizable. Today, there’s Youtube stars making $15 million a year, streaming video game commentary to a million people. Stars are everywhere--but you can't plan to become one. You willing to take that flight?

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“PROFESSIONAL: Exudes self-confidence. Is willing to risk everything to make it. Passion and desire are almost equal to talent.”

If you use your skill or sell your product 3-4 times a week--so frequently it never sits is the garage--forget that, if you don't even have a garage & you’re doing this on the road, in a dive bar, with your friends, for crowds big & small, when no one is looking, & it's all you care about--you're a professional.

This is where you want to be.

Steven Pressfield has a great book called “Turning Pro”. There’s a moment when the excuses fade away, and you stop living your life as as amateur. In the military, there’s these explicit moments when it happens: Making the choice somewhere around 10 years to go for 20.

Civilians have to be professionals at both where they are & where they want to be. There’s a constant refinement. But there comes a day where being the best possible only gets us to a percentage of being the best civilian possible.

What's your choice?

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“JOURNEYMAN: Plays every festival it can, year after year, honing its live act hoping to infect people.”

*If then product, service, or skill is in your garage or long-term memory—& not gathering dust—& you use it once a week or so--you're a journeyman. If it's something you do every day for a small audience--family excluded--just because you enjoy doing it, you're a journeyman."

Journeymen look at the job search when they have to look at the job search. It’s something the do because they have to. It’s something they dread.

This is how the services enable (or disable) members to be ready for their transition. TAPS is mandatory within a year or 18 months of getting out. No one at work is talking about being prepared-because they themselves aren't.

But civilians operate at least at this level every day. They’re one foot in their current life, one foot on the horizon.

Being a journeymen is a start, but there’s more that must be done.

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“HOBBYIST: Earns his living outside music, his career is first, music is second.” —Bob Lefsetz

*“If that product, service, or skill is dusty in the corner of your garage--or your attic or your brain--and you break it out a few times a year, you're a hobbyist” —Travis Collier

In the rule of the garage, the hobbyist tinkers. The hobbyist just buys the tools, but never puts in the work. They don’t even master the tools they want to use.

Think about the weekend your friend got the urge to start a landscaping business. They buy the gear, but it’s been in the garage growing rust the last two years. They thought it was too hard, didn’t consider building business before buying the heavy equipment.

What does this mean for your transition? You can’t be a hobbyist about what you want next. You have to be focused on putting the work in—you have to even enjoy the work you have to do. Even when it sucks. Imagine if someone was a hobbyist in uniform?

#military #transition #briefing #alexa

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“The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you'll need later.” —Seth Godin

I dropped continuing this series for the last month. Thank you for being patient; I’m back.

This break actually exemplifies the ideas presented in this rule. The rule the garage is his idea of the level of effort you put into the craft, family, or community build upon four levels: Hobbyist, Journeyman, Professional, or Star.

Taking this break is me not being professional about the platform I’m building towards my military transition in 2021. I want to be a big media platform, but I have a small media time & budget. My lesson here is this: To be a professional, I have to focus.

More importantly—I’ve let the platform drive the work. How can I generate supportive content more easily?

Thank you for waiting. Now, back to work.

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