Hey there, listener! Thank you for checking out our older seasons! We're adding this note on the top of the show notes to keep you up-to-date with the show. Connect with Jen Amos and get bonus content when you subscribe to our private podcast show, Inside the Fort by US VetWealth, at http://insidethefort.com/

Last Updated: September 2, 2024

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193: Scott R. Tucker and Mike Wallace Discuss Negotiating Benefits Before Accepting Job Offers with Todd Flannery

Also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/viXaMUS44bg

Jen Amos takes a break from hosting on Thursdays to introduce replays of her husband's live show, "Take A Knee" Tuesdays.

US VetWealth Founder and CEO Scott R. Tucker is joined once again by Blue Water Advisors (BWA) CEO Mike Wallace to discuss the differences between military and civilian benefits, specifically paid time off and holidays. They are also joined by BWA Career Progression Consultant Todd Flannery.

The group discusses the importance of understanding a company's total compensation package, including vacation policies, negotiating for paid time off, and flexible work arrangements. They cover trends in remote work and how priorities can change over different career stages. Overall, they encourage military retirees to do research on potential employers before accepting job offers, consider all aspects of compensation during negotiations, and learn from experiences transitioning between different work environments and companies.

Notes About Thursday Replays of "Take A Knee" Live Show

• The show was formally titled after Scott's latest book, "Don't Forget Your War Chest," which is available for purchase at: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B08HJVPW1M/allbooks
• Mentioned events and updates may be outdated. The intent of sharing the replays is to (1) get a glimpse into Jen and Scott's ever-evolving entrepreneurial journey, and (2) to discuss career progression for military retirees seeking employment in post-military.
• Recommended to watch via video - If possible, we recommend that you watch this episode on our YouTube channel as the hosts may reference visuals. Each episode will provide a direct link to the YouTube video in the show notes for your convenience. Or subscribe now at: https://www.youtube.com/@holdingdownthefortpodcast
• To stay up-to-date with "Take A Knee" Tuesdays, please subscribe to US VetWealth's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@usvwtv

Resources Mentioned

• Connect with US VetWealth Founder and CEO Scott R. Tucker on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottrtucker/
• Connect with Blue Water Advisors CEO Mike Wallace on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-s-wallace1/
• Learn more about Blue Water Advisors: https://www.bluewater-advisors.com/

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Read our Monday, December 2nd, 2024 newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/98c0c4a5850e/holdingdownthefort

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In the Fall of 2023, Jen Amos was sought after by InDependent to co-host the 8th annual InDependent Wellness Summit™. In August 2022, Jen Amos' work on the podcast was recognized by Disney Institute and she was hand-selected as the only non-Disney employee to moderate the first Military Spouse Employment panel for the Veterans Institute Summit. March 2022, former co-host Jenny Lynne has voted the 2022 Naval Station Norfolk Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year. November 2020, Jen Amos was awarded “Media Professional of the Year” at The Rosie Network Entrepreneur Awards! The show continued to collect award nominations in the following years. In September 2021, the show made the Final Slate in the 16th Annual People's Choice Podcast Awards for the Government & Organizations category. In November 2021, the show was an Award Finalist for the 5th Annual National Veteran & Military Spouse Entrepreneur Awards. December 2021, the show was a Golden Crane Podcast Awards Nominee. September 2022, the show was a Finalist for the 13th Annual Plutus Awards presented by Capital Group for “Best Military Personal Finance Content.”

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Scott R. Tucker 0:00

Okay, we are live. Welcome back. I'm Scott Tucker with us fat. Well, here with Mike norm Wallace from Blue Water advisors have another take any Tuesday conversation, we thought we'd talk a little bit about the differences between active duty, there's benefits, but specifically around the vacation time when you get holidays time off and some adjustment for that me personally, I've been self employed for over a decade. So I recognized how nice it was to have the military paid vacation, so to speak. And while I kind of get to dictate that for myself, being self employed you I saw a lot of clients and friends going through retirement, getting out of the military, and just having a big shock, when it came to, oh, I don't get nearly as much time off, or maybe my schedules not quite as structured as I thought it'd be all of a sudden I'm flying across the country when I wouldn't expect it to do to go consult somewhere or whatever it might be, you know, with the Labor Day weekend and us enjoying those nice four day weekends, especially if you're stationed overseas, I think we get extra days off. And that doesn't happen in the civilian world. So you know, Mike, I figured you've probably got a lot of experience yourself on this and let alone you know, what's going on today in the marketplace. How are these bargaining tools? How much do you leverage this conversation when you're when you're going through the process? How important is it to an individual when they're thinking about, you know, it's time to stop following orders and get out of the military and make my own life? Oh, wait, you know, I gotta go deal with the employer says so it's yet another dilemma, you know, stressful thing. I'm not gonna have as much time as I assumed I would have by not being in the military. So yeah, and we're lucky to have Todd Flannery with us today. A recent I'm assuming reason, Michael, I'll let you do the full introduction. Sure.

Speaker 1 1:44

Unknown Speaker 2:49

You got it. All right. Here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 2:51

To your point, Scott. Right. I mean, you know, it is coming more in vogue, I think for members to have these conversations, the first thing that our members, you know, maybe it kind of jumps out as them as they reach that point in the conversation where they're negotiating compensation. Right. And they think it's solely about compensation. What many of our members realize that I see Todd already smiling here is it's about everything is not just about compensation. You know, we throw the moniker on the label, right? It's your total comp plan. But that's not just monetary, you're gonna have conversations potentially, about what we call PTO paid time off, right, those vacation and those holidays, you know, much of that often is negotiable. Right? And we see the full spectrum. I think, Todd, right. I mean, guys will start, you know, a new job. Sometimes I've seen it where a company or employer doesn't offer any PTO, and you accrue it, as you go through time with the company. Sometimes you can negotiate starting with a pile of PTO or paid time off and accrue a little bit. Some of it treat it as use lose. In other words, you use it during the year, but you don't carry me over some companies will allow you to carry some over to a set level, right. So it's not a one size fits. All right. And so members have gotta educate themselves. So coming off a holiday weekend, right? We enjoy this. That may not be right, you know, the standard for every company out there. And Todd, all segue back to our time at Amazon. Well, I forget the blackout periods, but it was somewhere around Thanksgiving through I don't know, new years or something like that. I mean, that period, the company had a policy and said you're not taking any time off. Really. I mean, there might be short windows where he maybe got a Christmas day in or something but there are a lot of teams that work right through that and you had to have people doing the heavy lifting in the our job right? So again, understand what it is you're getting into, and don't just take take it for granted, right in many cases is going to be a negotiated outcome. Todd, any other thoughts? On that, I mean, from our time at Amazon I know that was maybe unique and black compared to ATI, I don't know, you know,

Scott R. Tucker 5:05

your experience has been actually me as Todd to build on that question a little bit, I give us a 30,000 foot view of your retirement process, your job hunting and how much this part of the conversation came up for you and your family. Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:20

Well, Scott, thanks very much norm. I agree with everything that you said there from the 30,000 foot view, when I joined Amazon, I didn't do a lot of things right and didn't quite understand the total compensation package that norm talked about, I can't say whether the position I went into that was going to be negotiable or not, specifically, when it came to time off, but quickly learned about having that as part of your compensation package. And then when I made my progression from Amazon to my current job, it, it became a lot more visible to me, and understood eyes wide open going in what the vacation time was with ATI and was able to leverage that in my decision to ultimately come work for ATI. So it varies from company to company, as Norm said, it varies from holiday to holiday, there are certain holidays that we get off at ATI, and there are others that that aren't. And the old days, I'm going back six plus years of that 96 hour lib that doesn't exist, at least not where I've seen it. Okay, it's probably out there somewhere. But it's not to, it's not holding the standard. Yeah, exactly how

Speaker 1 6:27

we all managed, and we're wearing a uniform to stretch into 112, or whatever, you know, yeah, we stretch on both ends. And like,

Scott R. Tucker 6:35

you know, it's I think this is a common theme that, hey, we want to get our first gig out of the military and have it be the best, you know, perfect situation. Hopefully, we did everything right. But clearly, there's going to be learning curves, I mean, for asking both you, do you think it's almost just you gotta get into that first job and just see how things play out? Before you start thinking about, you know, nuancing this too much? Like, I want to get certain amount of times, but then you never know, if you're at a company, which is like, Oh, we just don't do that day here, or we don't allow that much time. Like, is there is there just a bit of a little bit of tough love and just kind of, Hey, I gotta show up at the I was part of the many things gotta learn switching over. It's just maybe we should put this type of thing on the backburner? Or should we move it up up higher in the priority list than then it's typically moved

Speaker 1 7:21

up? Well, let's see your comment, kind of struck a chord with me, when you said hey, we just got to step up, take a swing step in and just kind of do this. The danger of that is we are fairly confident in saying our membership that comes to us that walks through the door that we you know, are there enduring partner until they find their next success on land someplace. The danger is you can not to speak in absolutes, but fairly confident in saying our membership, if they're not happy, where they land, they will leave and we articulate that them a lot. So we kind of spin that all the way back to come to the discussion, do a lot of homework up front, there's value in doing this, there is value in building a strategy, there is value in figuring out what are those things you want to preserve. If having 14 days a year, a time off is an a big rock for you to put into your strategy, you know, then I would say build your plan around that. And if you somehow land someplace where you only get three days of PTO, a year, just as an example, right, you may not be completely fulfilled or happy in that environment, and the clock is ticking until you will just go you know what, this is not a good fit for me. And I'm going to step out. So we encourage members to do that homework upfront, right? And And now, I can't promise everybody that you're gonna land on the best fit every single time. Right. But But I don't want you to be confused that that should be the goal. The goal is I want people to land at a good place or them right away. Right. Canina thoughts on that? It kind of gets into the strategy discussion. I know you're looking at that for our September. You know, it kind of gets into that a little bit. But yeah, I mean, we've lived right.

Speaker 2 9:11

Yeah, I have. And I think it's important to just as you take a look at what you want to do holistically I knew coming into this job, what what my vacation was going to be and that was acceptable for me. And it. It's a little different than what I had at Amazon. It's definitely different than the vacation I enjoyed in the Navy. But I knew what it was I knew what to look for. I had an idea going in that at least this part, the paid time off was fit into what I wanted from a job and as it turns out, it's it's been exactly what I needed. You know, could I make some tweaks to it? Sure. But it wasn't it wasn't a showstopper for me, but I think just making sure that you're aware of what you're walking into is a big bonus.

Scott R. Tucker 9:52

How is the recent work from home phenomenon played into all that it's just in general that people need to take less time off They try to coordinate it more, are there more opportunities to negotiate that part of it? Because let's face it working from home, you're saving time one way or the other not driving, whether or not you're more productive or not is another question. But this has got to come into the conversation at some point, because I, you know, whether companies are moving to three weeks or four weeks, there's all sorts of changes going on as part of the competition to recruit people, right? Because we're trying to offer different reasons to get you to join this company versus another one. So, you know, are those things that you can also kind of keep in your back pocket? Is that considered a benefit? You know, the work for home? You know, I

would love to know what Todd thinks about this. And just so the audience knows, we haven't got together before. We haven't teed up any, you know, a line response here. Do things jump, I'm

genuinely curious. No, no, no. I

mean, it's, it's a good question. So I personally think that that's a huge amount of flexibility. I like as I think maybe a lot of workers would would like that benefit. But let's talk trends right now. Right, the trend, and we're doing a lot of posting on this. So for our members, if you'll go to our LinkedIn page, and if you want to follow Blue Water advisors, you can certainly do that. But we post we've got a lot of articles that was posted, sent to me by a member, Joe Kerrigan, up in DC and he shot it to me in the Washington Post article. And there are quite a few businesses that are trying to get away from this that that recognize that their workforce just didn't riff, the same long term in a remote, you know, kind of status. That's not to say that a lot of these companies are going one or the other. But they're definitely weaning it down. In fact, I just read an article plan, even from Nike, Andy Jassy right at Amazon, he just said, Hey, minimum three days in the office, right, and we prefer more, but they're really in the workforce back in and and that's not uncommon from a lot of companies that are out there. I mean, I know you work remote flan, right? I did I miss, you would see it as a benefit and some flexibility. But yeah, it definitely

was a benefit. I came on board right at the height as COVID. So when I reported on board, I say it's a benefit. But one of the negative parts was it took me a good six months before I even met someone new outside of office, in the company. Yeah, we're we are a large, publicly traded company. And we've got sites across the US. But you know, my onboarding, 50% of it was done via meeting like this. And that made it really difficult to establish those personal connections, as we started to come out of the pandemic, I found it beneficial to be able to come back into the office and spend a lot of time here now it helps that the the office is full of good people, people I enjoy working with, but it is a benefit to be able to, you know, say hey, I've got to be at home today, because dog is sick child is sick, whatever the case may be, and being able to be fully remote, my position allows me to do that. But I also have to take that take into account that some of the folks that I work with are actually on an operations floor and they're not at home. So I've got to balance that between what I need what the company needs, and how that goes. But Scott, to your question, is it a benefit? I see it as a benefit to be able to work at home for several of the reasons that you mentioned. And I'm happy to have that opportunity. Yeah,

I think it's articulated a little bit sharper than that. Having the latitude to pick and choose your work environment that best suits you throughout the week, right? I mean, because you clearly articulated there are times where you'd like to be in the office, you wanted to engage with those good people that you are with, but having the flexibility to have a day or two, or you could work remote if you wanted to, you know, that's important too. And, again, for the membership and what I would kind of put in your hip pocket there. This is something that could be negotiated, right? It's the it's these kinds of things that many of our members come to us and they go, Oh, I thought it was just a compensation negotiation, how much I'm getting paid. Doesn't have to be right. It can be all those things. Hey, you know, is the company receptive to remote work 25% of the time up to 25? Whatever it happens to be, get those answers out early out. Yeah. Mike, you

always talk about strategy, you know, thinking about, hey, what are your priorities? And, Todd, I want to get your thoughts on how your priorities changed from that, you know, first, you know, search job search you went on prior to land in Amazon, and then during your progression, but from my perspective, I think you know, about a couple of things when it comes to time off or work at home. It's like, you're obviously do I like the job that I want to stay in. But you kind of mentioned, hey, my coworkers, you know, as you're getting to know, maybe you maybe have a great job opportunity. They pay you well, you liked what you do. But for some reason, maybe you don't feel like the relationships in the company are going to be the best fit for you. Well, maybe you could work from home and leverage that in that aspect. Active, have the job won't be as negative or on the on the flip side, what if it's just an awesome work environment, and you're like, I'm not so worried about taking that having as much paid time off, because, hey, I love going to the office because the people are awesome. And I can kind of work from home, and they're really flexible there. So maybe I don't need to negotiate for extra time off. And I can be more flexible that I don't have to use sick days if the kids sick and stay at home. Like those are other things to leverage. I'm just whether that's not those points, specifically or not, Todd, I'm just wondering, what are your various priorities, how they shift, you know, right, when you're coming out of the military versus the second time around? Or the new new progression? Yep.

Scott, that's a really good question. And I hadn't really thought about it until I was trying to catch up with with you asking it, leaving the military and starting at Amazon. And the work from home wasn't really an option for me, unlike norm where we have to take his dog down was actually out on the floor and had to work everyday. Sorry, no, we couldn't help it. No, Nordby great work. Really important work, too. So I only really started to think about that, coming into my current position. And as you were framing that question, I think for me, personally, the paid time off is more important because of the flexibility that I have at work. And you talk about office culture, that's extremely important to me. And it may be old school, you know, from from an old dude like me, but I like being around people. I like being with the people I work with and, and being able to walk outside of my office to the next door, knock on the door and say, Hey, you got 10 minutes to talk about this with me, instead of trying to catch somebody on the team scholars in color, or whatever that mode of communication is. So for me, paid vacation much more important than the flexibility to be able to work from home. But that's I think normal will echo this. And I think that's what Bluewater preaches is each individual is going to have a unique situation, there's there's not going to be a broad brush application two days off, versus the ability to work from home versus the ability to are the requirement to be in the office. So Norm, any other thoughts? No, I and

I loved how you kind of wove that into your answer. Right. You know, Bluewater, we've been doing this now we're wrapping up our third year, we're about ready to start year four, I have yet to see anybody's negotiation, anybody's landing anybody's pursuit. They're all unique. They're I mean, they truly are. None of them, have we seen are the same. Everybody approaches it with a different strategy. Everybody has different big rocks that they want to try to preserve. Everybody has different desires, companies and industries, they want to pursue things they want to do. I mean, and so when it comes down to negotiating what's important to you, whether it's more paid time off, or, you know, a flexible work environment? You know, I think everybody's gonna have a unique approach. The one commonality that I would put out to all of our members is do your home, right, we absolutely encourage before you jump, understand what is negotiable, what is not what is on the table. What is this mean, understand that early on and be prepared? And that's absolutely, Scott, you know, you've been around us long enough. I mean, you know, we're reaching a point now, where we've got hundreds and hundreds of individuals that have been through the pipeline, we can shed light on what it looks like, right, we can shed light on a lot of those questions that you have kind of removed the fog of war, if you will. And let's shine some light on this. And we can absolutely explain it to you and show you, you know, some some things that you may want to think about negotiating when the time comes. Right. And yeah, that

brings me to kind of, I think this would be a good question to wrap up the conversation on a little bit, maybe separate me maybe include kind of things like vacation and time off. But I'm curious given that every student that's gone through Mike's program, as you said it had a different landing report. You couldn't glean everything from Bluewater going through the program. Of course, what's maybe one thing that you kind of just figured out yourself or just something maybe you would have wished you would have caught earlier that you would share to any aspect of the last few years? Is there a little secret that you're like, Ah, I figured this out that somebody else it just it just didn't occur to you prior to that there's just something unique you learned during your experience so far,

I think, yes, the thing I figured out and it took a little while, but I think it was and learned it in the military. But it it applied to both of my applications and jobs is don't be afraid to admit failure. But make sure that you explain how you recovered from that failure and failure is a scary word. You can say mistake or whatever, whatever you want. But I think that that resonated the most in several of the interviews I had was being able to articulate how I failed but more importantly, how I recovered and And how I engaged with my peers, my senior subordinates however you want to do it, but being able to clearly articulate how you made the situation better. It's like I said, No one likes to talk failure. But it's really, really important, I think, to get across there. And I think one of you asked what I might have learned, really, really understand the market to which you're going into. And to the theme of this understand the full compensation package, it's really, really important.

I appreciate that because you we had a recent viewer mentioned that their employer defense contractor, who was I guess it CEOs, civilian, or whatever, and they said, I don't want to hire anymore, oh, fives and sixes, because they always tell us what to do. And there's, I'm sure there's a little bit of that. But at the end of the day, mistakes, failures, lessons learned. But that's what I always learned from the military is we would do the after action review. And it's just, hey, it's a simplest thing to take in the civilian world. They don't have nifty nifty phrases like that. They just get yelled at or fired. And we have this unique ability to suck it up, drive on, you know, adapt and overcome, you know, all the buzzwords, but that stuff's real, it might feel awkward and icky, because in the civilian landscape, it's a different kind of getting in trouble or, or whatever, or a different kind of reward. And you got to, I guess, kind of find your own way to relate to that. That's kind of all right. Yes,

absolutely. And it's a perfect way to put it, Scott.

Cool. Well, awesome, guys. Well, I wanted to keep this short and sweet. Since we had, you know, Todd on and I'm going to remote. It's all came on, you know, kind of last minute. So I appreciate you joining. Sure you got to get back to that. That real work today. Anything else that you want to leave us with? No,

thanks, sir. Well, I say no. And then I start talking, Scott, thanks very much for having me on. I really appreciate it. Norm. Thanks, again, for the invite. This is fantastic. And you know, for the listening audience, and folks that end up watching this, please pay attention to what norm is putting out there and what Scott offer you it is invaluable. And it will help you as you start your career progression. It is just invaluable information that I've taken advantage of. And I hope that you do the same. So again, Scott, Norm, thanks so much, Austin.

Go ahead, Mike. Thanks, Scott. And I echo all of that, that flan said there. And if you couldn't tell by his responses, right, I love the credibility that that Todd brings to the table here. And for the listeners, you know, you're probably sitting there scratching your head, there's no less than 1000s of organizations out there in the ocean of goodwill. What what makes Blue Water differ? Well, you got somebody like Todd, who's been there, done that. And he's going to be a key part of walking you through as an enduring partner to your next success, right. And if you want to build a house, you can read it out of a book, or you can go to the architect and the builder and actually do it right. And that's the same approach here, right, the credibility of having been a hiring manager, the credibility of having experiences in corporate America, in defense industry, right government contracting, whatever your swim lane happens to be, those are the individuals that we look to kind of bring to the table here to reinforce the message out here and Scott, in your case, right, and that financial industry, that SVP, you know inside that I can't speak for flan. But you and I have had this conversation, I felt very rushed. It was almost a little bit of a hostile conversation when it was thrust upon me, Hey, you, you either do this or you don't and if you're not going to do this, you gotta have your wife sign this piece of paper and you gotta come back and it was like this big, just band it was it was a little bit threatening, right? And if for nothing else, you know, that's how I made my decision. And I wouldn't wish that on anybody else. I want people to make an informed decision and sky you bring that to the table. Right thanks, Dean. We'll get you the next time I see Steve Wieman popping in there also tall enough to ride the ride right love so but anyway, Scott I just say thank you for you make the time you make you know our members time priority you explain to him you know, just really what they need to understand about the program so they can make the right decision for them. So thank you for and thanks for having us on board. Yeah, no,

absolutely. I love the idea of just kind of getting getting some random thoughts out there that might not come up right away, you know, when you're thinking about getting salaries and stuff. So thinking about this kind of vacation topic was unique because hey, you know talk to the cohort members and graduates have gotten have already gotten hired by jobs and asked what is it like to work from home in the civilian world as opposed to working from home from the million military world it's a it's a little it's very different because you're still accountable in different ways. And and they're more a little more cutthroat in the civilian world if things aren't working out right so but we got to take that from both sides you know, you have control as the employee to decide you want to work for so we want to give you the power to do that. So well. Cool, guys. We're gonna awesome really appreciate the conversation and for anybody listening Hey, shoot us your topics. Let Mike or I know if there's some you want us to talk about. If you'd like to come on like Todd and join us, Todd, YOU'RE WELCOME BACK. Anytime anytime you have something you want to share, or if you got some you want to talk about about your company, if you're doing hiring, you know, we can use this as a way to showcase stuff as well. Thanks. And work, Scott. We're doing this by year. So any thoughts or feedback on how we can best do this show? You know, we appreciate it. But for now, see you next week. All right. Take care. Okay.

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