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Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
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Welcome back to the show.
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I'm so honored.
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You decided to spend a few minutes with us here today and I have been waiting for this guest for some time.
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We had a few scheduling hiccups on my part, but, man, I am so honored that we have Colin Winnington here today.
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He's the best-selling author of Beyond the Thin Blue Line, he's the CEO of Recruiting Heroes and he was the 2019 Virginia Deputy Sheriff of the Year.
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Colin is an international speaker and a leading advocate for America's veterans and first responders in their transition to the private sector.
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Colin, how are you doing, my man?
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I'm good, travis.
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Thank you so much for having me on.
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It's a real honor to be here and, to everyone watching, it's so nice to have a few minutes with you all today as well.
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Yeah, man, I always enjoy what you have to say and you're such an outside-the-box thinker and a leader and I had to expose you to our audience here.
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I think they're going to be really interested and I think you have a very unique story.
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You made the decision in 2022 to leave law enforcement.
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Kind of back us up I know you had a career several years before that.
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You were very successful in what you did.
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I believe you retired as a sergeant, left the Reserve Sergeant, so you had a lot of experience but kind of back us up to the decision you made to jump into this new venture, which we're going to get to here in a few minutes.
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Yeah, so I served in law enforcement for only about seven and a half to eight years or so and, like you said, it was a really successful career.
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I got promoted to sergeant really young I was only about like four and a half years in, gotten a couple of life-saving awards, got deputy of the year for the whole state, like you mentioned and actually had tests on the lieutenant's process as well, and I think I was either first or second on the list to be promoted to lieutenant.
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But just like a lot of young officers today, I just started realizing that my heart wasn't in it anymore.
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The law enforcement profession has taken it on the chin pretty hard in the last four or five, even 10 years or so, and law enforcement is obviously an identity-def and it's an all consuming career as well.
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So it was just it was a lot of things.
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Honestly, it wasn also made some good decisions as well and in the years since just have been working with hundreds of law enforcement officers and veterans with their transition as well, and trying to provide a service that I think is really lacking, especially in the law enforcement community.
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No man, I think you nailed it and I think I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you speak for so many people and I hear from people almost daily and what happened is the you didn't leave the profession, the profession left you right.
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You were promised a bill of goods, you were promised a mission oriented focus and what happened you know, and I don't blame.
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I want to be very clear and I've said this before.
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I don't blame any outside entities for what has occurred in this profession because, quite frankly, we've always had outside entities that didn't have our mission in mind and tried to derail us from our mission, whether that's the media or the activist or the crazy lady at your city council meeting or whatever it was that was.
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I mean, for 30 years, with me being in the profession, I saw that the difference was in the last decade is our own leadership bent the knee towards that and the profession changed because of it.
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Your law enforcement agency doesn't get worse because of somebody outside the law enforcement agency says it should.
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It gets worse because the leaders inside the agency agreed to make it worse.
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And we could spend many, many hours on that.
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So I think it's very, very important, but I think which which your move was so valuable?
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Because I think there's a lot of people that are maybe in a similar position as you, but they don't feel like they have the skills or ability to do that.
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It's a very fearful thing to leave a government job where security is king.
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Not everything else is great, but security is pretty premium, and I have often said this, colin, and I want to hear your take on this.
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I've often said that the leadership within law enforcement plays a role in making law enforcement believe this is all you can do.
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What's your take on that?
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Oh, 100 percent.
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It's absolutely a leadership issue.
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You know I do help veterans as well, but honestly, the military does a decent job with helping their people transition.
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They have their own transition assistance program.
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There's nonprofits that do work in that Law enforcement.
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We really don't do anything In my business.
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I actually created a half-day class where I go to law enforcement agencies and teach their officers skills like resume writing, interviewing for jobs, salary negotiations and things like that.
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At least nine, if not nine and a half, out of 10 agencies tell me to get lost when I present the idea to them and it's not because they don't trust me or anything else like that.
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They come back.
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They actually write me back and say Colin, thank you, but we don't want to teach our officers these skills because then they'll just leave.
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So my response is that's a terrible way to look at the thing.
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I think that that class should be for anybody in law enforcement, but if that's really your stance, at least make it for the retirees.
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And even then they're like no, we don't want to teach these people these things.
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And these are people who have served law enforcement.
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They've served the communities for 20, 30 plus years and really deserve to have a successful life after law enforcement and our leadership is actively making decisions to try to prevent that.
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And it's just, it sickens me a lot of times because again, these people have sacrificed, you know a lot.
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You know emotionally, physically, relationship-wise, financially.
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And the fact that agencies can't even be bothered to put on a course like that just shows how we're actually standing in our officer's way.
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A lot of times it's sad to see.
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Yeah, I just want to reiterate for our audience because I think sometimes they hear me speak about these leadership issues and especially those outside law enforcement are thinking well, there's no way this can be true.
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Colin just said that nine to nine and a half out of 10 agencies are rejecting any type of things he has to offer, which as far as providing additional skills or mentoring officers and things like that.
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That is absolutely true.
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I actually heard this just last night.
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That that is absolutely true.
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I actually heard this just last night.
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Just for the record, this podcast is dropping this week but I'm probably home by now, but I'm stuck in Joplin, missouri, in a snowstorm in a hotel right now.
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So I was with a group of officers just last night and I had someone tell me that.
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I had someone tell me that when they went to their chief and said chief, and this guy had 25 years on and he said chief, chief, god is calling me outside his profession to go do this or that, the chief didn't encourage him.
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The chief got mad, and I hear that all the time.
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In fact, there's officers listening to this right now that are inside agencies, that are doing other things outside the agency, whether that's a side business, or they're building their own skills or even a hobby, and their department is actively going against them in trying to do that.
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And, by the way, I don't have any reason or even know why that is happening, other than the sickening cowardice, narcissistic type of leaders that are permeated so many of our agencies.
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And it really is sickening, right, colin, when you say nine, nine and a half half out of ten, because I'll tell you right now, I always encouraged people around me to do these type of things.
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In fact, my mantra to rookie officers was always okay, congratulations for being here.
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Now, while you're here, begin working on your next career, because one of the one of the beauties in law enforcement is you could be retired at 50, 55 or 60 and you've got a long life to live.
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Do not leave this job after 20, 25, 10 years without any other skills in this job.
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And they kind of look at me kind of weird, because we lie to them.
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Call it in the academy.
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The indoctrination starts in the academy because we do this big pitch of oh man, you could stay here 20 years and then never work a day in your life and you're retired.
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This and that and that is a lie because, first off, you're not going to live off that pension and, second off, who wants to not work after 20 years?
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You want to at least do something that you enjoy or something that you love, and so we should be encouraging people to build those skills because, colin, I think you're going to agree with me on this.
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When you do that, that makes your department a better department, does it not?
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Absolutely so.
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I'm actually on March 31st.
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My second book is actually coming out.
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It's called the Thinning Blue Line.
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It's all about the vacancy crisis in law enforcement and one of the things I talk about in there is that retention is far more important than recruiting.
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In my opinion, retention is what's killing law enforcement right now and the idea that if you're teaching your officers these skills, that they can make them successful after law enforcement, that if you believe that's actually just like hurting your vacancies, you're so wrong.
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If you're going to treat your officers really well and treat them so well that you actually help them to do very well in their next career, imagine the impact that's going to have on your recruiting.
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You're going to have young potential officers see your agency as one that actually gives a crap about your officers, which is going to drive in application numbers so much more than agencies that are trying to hold on to their officers for dear life and not actually try to improve their life or improve their career.
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It's a very it's currently it's a very short-sighted view of the problem.
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They see me coming in and teaching, or anyone coming in and teaching this subject, as people leaving.
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They're not thinking about the long-term where you can actually use that as a recruiting tool to say, hey, we actually care about our officers.
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We care about them so much that we want them to be successful, even once they're long gone from our agency, and rightfully so.
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Officer wellness has become a bigger topic in the last couple of years.
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It's still not the way it's supposed to be, but what I always say to chiefs who turn me down is like okay, you claim to care about your officers.
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If you only care about them while they're serving a need for you and filling a seat in your agency, you don't actually care.
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The way you show you care about someone is that you care about them even when they're no longer serving a need that benefits you.
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That's when you really show that you care about somebody, and providing a class like that or resources like that is how you would actually show your officers you give.
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No, you nailed it and if anybody listening out here that has an open mind, if you want to improve retention, colin just said the single thing you should do is care.
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That's it.
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Stop with your program.
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Stop with your checkbox training.
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Stop with you saying you're for wellness because you've implemented some program from some organization inauthenticity.
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Colin and the vast majority of cops I talk to will say, oh yeah, my chief or my sheriff says he cares or says patrols the backbone of the profession.
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But we all know different, because actions speak louder than words and we've got a lot of work to do and I'm glad we talk about this and people say well, travis, you're being negative or calling or being negative.
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We can't fix this without speaking about the problem.
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You know you're not going to go to the doctor today and the doctor's going to immediately give you some medicine.
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You're going to go.
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Hold on, why are you giving me this medicine?
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He's going to talk about the problem.
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We want the best law enforcement has and we want the best people coming out of law enforcement to then embed in the private sector, because there's some incredible skills and talents that law enforcement can provide you.
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To go into the private sector, colin, talk about some of, because I know one of the hurdles.
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People listen to this and I think we've all battled this.
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When you stay in this culture of law enforcement, you're made to believe man, this is who you are, this is your identity, this is all you can do and you've got to get past that because if you retire and you're not past that, you see, you either see a miserable human being or you'll see them work in bank security somewhere because they've been told this is all they can do, nothing against bank security.
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But I got a feeling that wasn't the end.
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Go for that person when they started law enforcement.
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So explain the specific skill sets that we have the privilege to learn in law enforcement that can transition easily into the private sector.
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Yeah.
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So there's two things I usually hear from law enforcement officers who come to me to help them with their transition.
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The first one is that they feel they're absolutely not a fit for anything in the private sector.
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They have no transferable skills Absolutely false.
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The second thing they say is they feel they can only be successful in security or investigative type of positions.
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Again, like you said, there's nothing against those type of roles.
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They're fantastic, you can do very well in those type of positions.
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Again, like you said, there's nothing against those type of roles.
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They're fantastic, you can do very well in those type of industries.
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But there's a lot of cops who just want to be done with that part of their life.
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They've served 20 or 30 years and they want to go on to something different, and they absolutely should.
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There are so many transferable skills that you've gained during your law enforcement career that absolutely translates so phenomenally well.
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You think of things like problem solving.
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Communication is a huge one.
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This younger generation can't talk worth a crap because they live behind their phones, they live behind their screens, but you as an officer, you're going on calls for service every single day and having to build rapport with complete strangers in just seconds and if you don't do that well it can get violent really fast.
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So your communication skills are phenomenal.
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Teamwork is a huge one.
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Coaching and mentoring If you're an FTO big skills.
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You can highlight there your ability to problem solve and coach and mentor FTO sergeants anyone who's ever led a team or a unit or a program are actually program managers as well.
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We don't use that term in law enforcement project management or program management but those are absolutely huge terms in the private sector and the skills that you have in law enforcement translate so well to those roles.
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Again, back to the communication side sales.
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A lot of cops could do phenomenally well in sales because of your ability to build relationships and build rapport with people.
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That's absolutely a skill that salespeople need.
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I got into recruiting again, nothing to do with law enforcement but my skills that translated so well from law enforcement do phenomenally well in recruiting as well.
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And there's no limit to what officers can do and I really encourage them to pursue what they're passionate about, to actually go after something that brings them fulfillment, because when you leave law enforcement, like I said earlier, it's a very identity-defining career.
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It's all you are.
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When someone asks you who you are or what you're about.
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You say I'm a cop.
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That was my answer.
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When you go to the private sector, you're not going to really say if someone asks you, tell me about yourself.
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Your first answer isn't going to be I'm a financial banker or I'm a software engineer.
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It's going to be something different.
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But when you're in law enforcement, the first thing you say is a cop, then maybe family, whatever else.
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So when you leave that identity to find a career, you need to try to find something that brings you fulfillment and passion as well and also, hopefully, pays you well too, and that's very possible.
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Yeah, I mean, and you deserve it.
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If you spend, if you put up with what you have to put with the law enforcement, you should spend the second half of your life doing something you're passionate about, right, and if you get paid for it, that's a bonus.
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And easily, colin, that's what you're here for.
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You're here to mow that passion with a salary that can supplement you as you move on.
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And if anybody's wondering well, I don't know what my passion is, I don't know what my purpose is, well, it's easy.
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Answer this question If money was no option, if time was no option, if resources were no option, what would you like to do?
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Answer that question and then go pair up a job or a salary that can meet that goal.
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And I think one of the reasons, colin, we see so many people kind of afraid to get out of that bubble you said most cops, and it doesn't.
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It doesn't surprise me, because I see a lot of officers that will retire for a year or two and boom, they're right back at a sheriff's department.
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They're right back and doing a background investigator job.
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You know, because there's fear there.
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Right, this is a skill set they have and there's fear to enter into other skill sets, but you know you mentioned a lot of skills they already have that private sectors are looking for.
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I'll mention a few others man, decision making, working without close supervision, stress, you know making decisions.
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Under stress I mean the skill sets in law enforcement.
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The private sector, I would.
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I would assume part of what you do call it is informing the private sector of why they need this type of skill set, is it not?
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Yeah, absolutely so.
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My business really has two functions.
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The one side we have worked with candidates to help them really articulate their skill set and make sure that they can highlight themselves as good as possible.
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The other side of my business is I'm actually working with companies around America that want to hire veterans and first responders.
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So I reach out to these companies and the big part of my pitch, basically, is explain to them what they have to gain by hiring law enforcement officers.
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A lot of companies have incentives to hire veterans, which is awesome.
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I love that there's not really the same emphasis currently to hire law enforcement or first responders.
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So what I do is I try to educate what they have to offer and what they have to gain by hiring a law enforcement officer.
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Right now, job hopping is such a common thing in the private sector people switching jobs every six to eight months.
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For the most part, cops aren't doing that.
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When they go find a company that treats them well, they're going to stay for the long term and you can somebody on who can really, you know, be a problem solver, who can take a new skill that they're new to but really run with it and do phenomenally well.
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So educating companies about what law enforcement officers have to do is a huge part of what I do every day as well.
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So if someone is listening to this and they're in law enforcement regardless of tenure, you know I'm not retiring enforcement regardless of tenure.
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You know, hey, I'm not retiring.
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And one of the issues that that even I experienced was when it comes to retirement planning or or a second job is, as you go, wow, I'm going to be here for the next 25 years, 30 years, 20 years, I don't need to think about that.
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And, of course, I would always tell them oh, no, no, you need to think about that now, you don't.
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Whatever you're doing here.
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Let's say you love working traffic collisions okay, well, in the private sector, how can you use the skills and the training and expertise you're building to transition that?
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Oh, you could work for an insurance company, you could work for attorneys, you could do all these other things.
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You get to take the skill set in the private sector and I always tell them when you're falling in love with a certain segment of law enforcement, that's what you want to eat and breathe.
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I believe every law enforcement officer I certainly hope I would always try to find out what they love within the profession and drive them there.
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That's how you're going to get the best productivity and that's what's so great about the professions.
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There's so many different jobs within the job and then I would tell them okay, now that you're learning this, always be thinking about how you can take what you're learning outside.
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And so, regardless if you've got a one year on or 30 years on, what is the one piece of advice you would tell them right now, if they're listening.
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Basically what you just said start early.
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One of the biggest mistakes I see officers make when they reach out to me is that they have waited far too long to start thinking about what they want to do next.
00:17:44.432 --> 00:17:56.281
It's not uncommon for me to talk to people who've already resigned or retired or are within a few weeks or months of retiring, and that's pretty scary because, I will be honest, the job market right now is brutal.
00:17:56.281 --> 00:18:02.833
It's really rough and it's probably going to get worse when the people who are leaving the federal government end up trying to get into the private sector.
00:18:02.833 --> 00:18:03.919
That'll make it more competitive.
00:18:03.919 --> 00:18:07.368
When AI takes over more, there'll be less jobs potentially as well.
00:18:07.368 --> 00:18:12.077
So the private sector is very challenging, so I need everyone to start the process early.
00:18:12.077 --> 00:18:19.979
You don't have to be applying for jobs, but do simple things like make sure your resume is up to date and as strong as possible.
00:18:19.979 --> 00:18:22.689
We don't use resumes in law enforcement much, but they are essential in the private sector.
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If you need help with a resume, I'm happy to help you out with that.
00:18:26.224 --> 00:18:28.451
Linkedin and networking is so crucial.
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Nowadays.
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It's really who you know, not what you know.
00:18:31.357 --> 00:18:34.309
So if you're not on LinkedIn, get onto the platform.
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If you are on it, try to build your network as much as you can, and this shouldn't be about getting like a ton of followers.
00:18:39.980 --> 00:18:42.371
It isn't an Instagram or YouTube kind of deal.
00:18:42.371 --> 00:18:49.211
But if you go to a training event or a conference across the country and you meet somebody there even if they're a cop as well connect with them.
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Don't just exchange business cards, but also connect on LinkedIn and keep the conversation going, because five, 10 years from now, that person might be the VP of a company you want to work for and you can refer back to meeting him or her at this conference and that's a great icebreaker and a great way to get yourself into the door with an organization.
00:19:05.948 --> 00:19:10.193
So start building that now, because building a network takes a lot of time.
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It's not something you can do in your last month in law enforcement and think it's going to pay off in the long run.
00:19:15.060 --> 00:19:17.554
You need to do it immediately and start that process now.
00:19:17.554 --> 00:19:24.426
And, like you said as well, travis, start thinking about industries that might align with your interests One thing I have my candidates actually do.
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It sounds kind of dumb, but it works amazingly well Write down 10 to 15 job duties, assignments or things that you did in law enforcement that you really enjoyed.
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These shouldn't be job titles.
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It shouldn't be like police officer or sergeant.
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It should be things like I enjoyed financial crimes investigations, I enjoyed mentoring, I enjoyed firearms.
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Take that list of 10 or 15 things and go onto job boards like LinkedIn.
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On LinkedIn jobs, you don't actually have to search for a job title.
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You can search for a skill or an interest.
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Let's say you go onto LinkedIn right now and type in the word firearms and that's all you put in there.
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It'll show you every job in the country that has the word firearms listed somewhere in the job title or job description and what you can do is slowly start doing research onto companies and job titles and industries that have that job interest that you have and start seeing what are these companies looking for for candidates that they're trying to hire, because you might find out that you have a lot of the skill sets they're looking for.
00:20:18.935 --> 00:20:23.883
But you might also notice that there are some things that you're currently lacking maybe a training program or a certification.
00:20:23.883 --> 00:20:34.082
And let's say you're two years out from leaving law enforcement and you look it up and you see, oh okay, I'm seeing that for every job that has firearms listed or most jobs have firearms listed they want this training or certification.
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It takes six months to complete.
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Now you have a game plan through final two years in law enforcement that you need to get that certification done.
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That way, when it comes time to apply, you're not just a cop, you're a cop who also has this amazing certification under his or her belt, and that will make you so much more competitive in the private sector.
00:20:51.412 --> 00:21:00.726
Yeah, and I think that's really great advice because at the core of it is, if you're not sure, if you're not sure what to do, education and training can only assist you.
00:21:00.726 --> 00:21:04.417
In a private sector I did something very similar, calling five years out from retiring.
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I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do, but I knew I was probably five years out and my default was just education and I already had a graduate degree.
00:21:12.933 --> 00:21:21.278
So I went out and worked on my doctorate and it took me about five years and so I got my doctorate about three or four months before I retired.
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But it seemed like a huge thing to do at the time.
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But when I think back to it I go man, if I would have waited until I retired to do that, it would have been five, because that was almost a full-time job in itself.
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It was very, very difficult for me because I'm old and not that smart and I hadn't been in school in 20 plus years, and so obviously things have changed.
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But I think back to myself I didn't even know I was doing something the right way.
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But, man, if I would have waited until I retired, I went oh, now I need to go get some education, or now I need to go get some training.
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It just becomes more difficult because you know first off you're going to have if you have to work, then you have to work a new job.
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Now you're going to school.
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If you're just going to school, that's all you're doing.
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That's not really the life I think most people want, and it probably benefited me more than I knew at the time, and I think that is excellent.
