Each week, we interview proven leaders from our network, to learn from their experiences, and share their Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience stories with you.

• Our mission is to promote the accomplishments of our guests
• Highlight the companies where they work and the services, and products that they offer
• Share success stories from their experiences and, most importantly
• Provide strategies for job seekers and advice to talent seeking to accelerate their careers.
  

Today’s guest is Jeremy Starcher, Founder MVG FWD.

Although he spent 23 years of his career at one company, he morphed himself from software engineer, to sales engineer, to ultimately Head of Global Partner and Chief Evangelist for his firm’s product offering.  

Following an acquisition and subsequent exit, he decided to pursue his passion for coaching and consulting to help companies and individuals achieve more via a proprietary methodology that he developed.

Jeremy shared many great insights including:

• The importance of recognizing personal value and curiosity in career growth
• Development of MVG FWD reframework: six questions focusing on Motivation, Values, Gifts, Framing, Work, and Dreams
• Advice for students and early career professionals: importance of self-awareness, understanding motivations, curiosity, and continuous learning

Career Curiosity: Jeremy Starcher’s Path to MVG FWD

[00:00:04] Ron Laneve: Hello and welcome to episode 38 of the Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent podcast. I’m your host, Ron Laneve. Each week, we share the career stories of tech experts and marketing mavens, operational gurus, and sales leaders to illustrate how they have navigated the non linear career path.

[00:00:23] Ron Laneve: Today’s guest is another great example of someone who has successfully traveled that non traditional journey. Although he spent 23 years of his career at the same company, he morphed himself from software engineer to sales engineer to ultimately head of global partners and chief evangelist for his firm’s product offering. Following an acquisition and subsequent exit, he decided to pursue his passion for coaching and consulting to help companies and individuals achieve more via proprietary methodology that he developed.

[00:00:55] Ron Laneve: I’m very excited to introduce Jeremy Starcher, Founder of MVG FWD. Jeremy, thanks for being here.

[00:01:00] Jeremy Starcher: Ron. Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

[00:01:03] Ron Laneve: Unintentionally you’re part of a group of coaches that I’ve interviewed for this series and it’s interesting. Obviously all of you have become entrepreneurs. You’ve used this coaching vocation and passion as a path to a new career journey. It’s been fun to talk about that. Can you walk me through that journey that I mentioned in my brief intro and how did you get to where you are today?

[00:01:28] Ron Laneve: Leading a coaching practice with your own proprietary methodology. Pretty fascinating and looking forward to unpacking that.

[00:01:36] Jeremy Starcher: Yeah, it’s certainly not something that I planned for. So it’s not like I sat around when I was 20 years old thinking to myself, okay, at some point in time in my career, I’m going to become a coach and help people move forward.

[00:01:47] Jeremy Starcher: As a young man, I found myself in a situation where I went to school and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Rather than continuing down that traditional path of go to college, finish that degree, get a job and go, I just went into the marketplace. I think the very first decision path that I took that was really important was when my wife and I had just started a family and we had decided that it didn’t make sense for us both to be in the workplace.

[00:02:10] Jeremy Starcher: So we decided that we were going to have her come back stay at home with the kids and I would continue to work. At the time we needed both incomes to survive and what that did was it put me into a situation where I needed to go into work with an idea in my head and the value that I knew that I was creating and say, okay, this is a decision I want to make for my family and I need to make more money.

[00:02:33] Jeremy Starcher: So I boldly walked into the VPs room and said, Hey, I know how valuable I am to you. I need to make more money. Ironically, I walked out with a new position and making more money and it allowed Michelle to come home. What that taught me at a very early stage is that it is always in your best interest to understand the value that you’re bringing to any organization or group that you’re a part of. Your value realization is something that’s on you. It’s not on somebody else to recognize. It’s nice when they recognize it, but if you don’t fully believe in the value that you’re bringing to an organization, you’re going to find yourself in a wishy washy pattern as you go throughout your career. So that was the first step that I think really underscored a, I’ve got the talent, B, I’ve got the drive and C, I have the confidence to go in there and make things happen.

[00:03:24] Jeremy Starcher: Why is that important? Because as you mentioned, I spent 23 years at the same company. That is definitely not standard practice in today’s world, especially in my field, which is technology, call center specifically. Typically you’re working your way through and you’re getting promoted and you’re moving from company to company. You’re getting a lot of experience.

[00:03:44] Jeremy Starcher: I, for whatever reason was on a different path. So when I started with the company, I was a software engineer and that wasn’t by trade by the way, that was just me having genuine curiosity about how switches and databases work and allowed me to hack my way, if you will, into this job.

[00:04:01] Jeremy Starcher: From there it was just a rocket ship. It just took off. The company started to grow and that gave me the opportunity again to Jump in with all the curiosity that I can bring, and I quickly realized that software development is not my cup of tea. I can do it, but I would prefer to be in front of people and explaining to people why software matters versus trying to figure out how to code to make it matter.

[00:04:27] Jeremy Starcher: I started working in our implementation teams and started working with our customers more closely and that got me eventually on a path to being in the sales team as a sales engineer. That’s the thing that kind of propelled me forward throughout the rest of my career because I recognized that all organizations live and die by revenue. Sales is like that leading indicator of how the company’s doing. It’s an exciting frontier for people who have people skills and they’re curious and they just love to go out there and figure out what problems can we attach our solution to? Then how do I convince somebody of the value proposition that has? Then it’s just such a rush when you find someone that says, yeah, and they give you your first yes.

[00:05:11] Jeremy Starcher: So sales became a part of who I am. I never was a bag carrier, so I never had quota in terms of a direct individual contributor. I ended up going down the sales technical support and operational side and then eventually wound my way back into management, as you mentioned, as global head of partners, which was probably one of my favorite positions I’ve ever held inside of the corporate world.

[00:05:35] Jeremy Starcher: A lot of twists and turns, but all along the way there was a natural curiosity that I had not only for myself, but for what technology could be used for. I think that curiosity, I was never satisfied or happy to I knew the answer allowed me to open a lot of doors in my career.

[00:05:54] Ron Laneve: Curiosity has definitely been the most common theme throughout all these conversations.

[00:05:59] Ron Laneve: When you look at 23 years at the same company, on the surface, it seems pretty linear. Hey, he just took steps up the ladder, but it was, as you described, it was nothing like that whatsoever. It was, a mix of intentional decisions and probably some serendipity along the way.

[00:06:17] Jeremy Starcher: Without a doubt. Working for a small company when I started, it was a very small company. I think I was employee number 13. You are forced to wear many hats. If you want to stay relevant inside of the company, you want to always find a way to provide value. That obviously resonates with me because I’m just curious about everything.

[00:06:33] Jeremy Starcher: I learned how our financial team worked. I learned how our administrative team worked. I learned how HR worked. I learned how software service and support works. I learned how obviously software is built. It gave me the opportunity to experience a lot of roles within the organization that maybe a more traditional path would require you to be more intentional with.

[00:06:55] Jeremy Starcher: Oh, I don’t know, maybe finance is my thing. Now I have to go and get a job in the finance team versus, Oh, I’m curious how that’s going to work. So let me just go and work with the financial officer and figure out if I can solve a problem for him or her. That is not something that you see on my resume. To your point, when you look at the resume, 23 years at the same company and that’s great. It’s staying power. That’s loyalty. But it doesn’t necessarily shine a light on how many different facets of the organization I was able to learn and more importantly, end up leading and coaching through change. One of the things that I’m the most proud of in my career is the vision of seeing a movement to the cloud before most people did.

[00:07:35] Jeremy Starcher: Now, granted, this was not something new to Ohio, and this was something that was being driven by a much larger market force. But inside of our company and inside of our niche product set, there was just a not resistance, but a inability to see how important it was going to be for us to operate as a SaaS provider in the future.

[00:07:55] Jeremy Starcher: I’ve held on to that vision for many years speaking with our chairman, speaking with our CEO, speaking with our vice president team, our exec team. Trying to get folks to recognize that there’s something that we need to be doing to prepare for the inevitability. Fortunately because of my curiosity and because of the credibility that I had with all the people I just mentioned, I was given some leeway to go out there and start doing some due diligence and start looking at the marketplace. What should we do? Eventually led our company to acquiring a cloud platform that in 2020, when COVID hit us, became our number one revenue producing platform because all of a sudden you had to be able to get your software up and running quickly.

[00:08:35] Jeremy Starcher: You couldn’t worry about a three month or a six month implementation cycle. It literally saved the company from being challenged like most companies were back in 2020, when everyone was going home and trying to figure out how the workforce was going to work. That time period really helped me understand that my passion is not necessarily working in a corporate environment and helping shareholders get to where they want to go. That’s important. That’s valuable. Clearly.

[00:09:08] Jeremy Starcher: But my passion is doing the things that nobody sees yet. My passion is the guy that’s knocking on the door that says, Hey we’ve got an issue that’s coming up, or we’ve got an opportunity that’s coming up. Let’s start preparing for that, or the guy that’s always we could do better. We could do better. Let’s figure out a different path. How can we be more efficient? How can we be more productive? I think all of that kind of led me to where I ultimately wound up, which is, Hey, why don’t I just go ahead and launch a coaching practice?

[00:09:34] Ron Laneve: Great story. But before we move forward, no pun intended I have a couple more questions, if you don’t mind. At the time it was called Virtual Hold Technology, right? How did you get the opportunity to go work there in the 1st place?

[00:09:47] Jeremy Starcher: That’s a great question. So when I was in college, I moved out into an apartment for the first time. Living on your own and, paying your own bills, it’s a lot more expensive than you ever think.

[00:09:59] Jeremy Starcher: You’re in college, you do stupid things. You don’t plan for the future very well. I ended up in a situation where I needed a job so I could start, Paying the bills. So I I needed a job I could bike too cause I didn’t have money for gas. That’s how terrible the situation is. My sister’s roommate’s father actually worked at a company at a call center and they needed people to help. It was within a mile or two of my apartment. So I could take my bike and ride to there and back. I’ll just do it for the summer and hopefully get through this hard time.

[00:10:28] Jeremy Starcher: I started going to this call center. I’m not a phone talker, but whatever, you know what, you got to pay the bills. 30 days later, they, for whatever reason, this guy gave me a promotion to being a supervisor. So now I found myself in my first management role, if you will, where I had other college students that are there working the floor and they’re looking to me for guidance. I’m like, wow, what is happening right now?

[00:10:53] Jeremy Starcher: That, that gentleman that gave me that opportunity, he was the call center manager at the time, eventually left the company and went to VHT Virtual Hold Technology. Within 45 days of him being there, he called me up and said, Jeremy, you’ve got to come and join this company. They’re going to change the world. We need people like you, people who understand the call center, people who can come in here and help us with our data strategy because that’s what they hired me for.

[00:11:19] Jeremy Starcher: Now, little did I know back then that, startup companies have to be very careful about who they hire and they have very specific needs. In this particular case, they didn’t have anyone that understood relational databases. More specifically, they didn’t have anyone who understood how a call center and its technology stack uses relational databases to create dashboards and reports for the call center.

[00:11:45] Jeremy Starcher: That’s what they brought me in for. Help us understand what data we have in our system and how it maps to the contact center so that we can have a value proposition that we can go back and demonstrate, not just talk about in a PowerPoint slide.

[00:11:58] Jeremy Starcher: Again, I’m early twenties. I have no database training. I have no software engineering training, but I do have the fact that I’ve been working for a contact center. I was a supervisor, a project manager, an account manager for them. I eventually got to a point where I had to start producing reports to our leadership team at the contact center, as well as our customers on how we were performing, which led me to the need to understand okay how do I hack into the database and run my own scripts?

[00:12:28] Jeremy Starcher: The reporting package that came with the contact center package wasn’t flexible enough. So I walked into my interview at VHT. I met with the, at the time, the head of development and one of her lieutenants. They had up on a board, they had a problem they were trying to solve. I walked up there and I said, why don’t you do this? I wrote a query with an inner join with the tables that I saw up there and the lead engineer looked at me and he goes. You gotta be kidding me. And I go, no, I think that’ll work. What do you know? It worked and they hired me on the spot.

[00:13:01] Jeremy Starcher: They said, we got to have you come in here. So that’s how I got to VHT. Another one of those opportunities where, you know, back then I wasn’t making a whole lot of money and I had a family and I negotiated a little bit higher salary than they wanted to give me because I recognized, oh, I have something that you want and that you need, and I’ve demonstrated to you already. So let’s just make sure that we’re exchanging that value. So that’s how I got to VHT.

[00:13:28] Ron Laneve: Wow. I don’t think we’ve talked about before that was, that’s a great story. The other thing I wanted to, just point out, this is also 2001, which was a pretty . Time for the dot com b ust and 9 11 and everything else going on. You are working at a startup company, a software company in Cleveland, Ohio, right? Which was virtually unheard of and, revolutionizing or changing the call center space. Which, probably people take for granted these days. But at the time was ahead of its time and a product ahead of its time. So what a fascinating story.

[00:14:03] Jeremy Starcher: It was the product and the solution and the value that it created that kept me at that company. So just real quickly, if you’ve ever called a contact center and you’ve callback rather than waiting on hold, that is what Virtual Hold Technology brought to the world.

[00:14:20] Jeremy Starcher: First company that did it. We were the only company that did it for decades where we were, they won’t, we could sit on top of any type of contact center technology stack. That’s what made it such an interesting thing, because if you’re not familiar with contact centers, there’s a whole bunch of switches and servers and databases and telephones, obviously.

[00:14:38] Jeremy Starcher: There’s a bunch of different technology vendors inside of that space. Being able to go in to talk to a contact center, who has a myriad of different technologies required me to know all of that. As a sales engineer, that was my job, was to go in and show their switch operators, how they were going to make changes to their switch, to fundamentally route the call away from where they normally route the call to, so we can offer a call back.

[00:15:02] Jeremy Starcher: It was a really hairy environment. A lot of it was us making it up on the fly. I can’t, there are a number of stories I could tell you where we’re literally in the data center for the client software engineers over here, coding the software because we want to make sure it works. I’m out in the contact center, shielding him and making sure that no one knows there’s a man behind the iron curtain.

[00:15:23] Ron Laneve: Pre SaaS, right? You’re not releasing things through the cloud or anything like that.

[00:15:27] Jeremy Starcher: No, this is when, Google was just getting started back then. Chrome was this thing that no one really knew about. Google, the website was this thing that was like, Oh, what’s this thing? I can remember the developers going, yeah, we’re using this thing called Google. This is before it became a verb.

[00:15:42] Ron Laneve: Cell phones probably weren’t even a thing really yet either.

[00:15:45] Jeremy Starcher: The iPhone didn’t come out for another seven years. Yeah I remember very specifically that we had a whole different way of communicating back then. But of course, we were also all together, which is something that was not so much rare back then. But it’s certainly rare now to find a company where you’re not just virtually spread in multiple locations.

[00:16:05] Ron Laneve: Thanks for sharing that. I know what is it about a year and a half ago you moved on from that opportunity. You’ve been working on your new endeavor MVG FWD. You started to lead into kind of some of the motivation and some of the reasons for doing that. Can we unpack that now a little bit more detail? What is MVG FWD and what are you trying to do?

[00:16:26] Jeremy Starcher: It’s important to note that we went through two acquisitions at VHT. The first one was with the PE firm. That one was rocky at first, cause just the first time I had gone through that myself. But it ended up being a really good acquisition. It ended up being the right thing to do for the company. That was also how I got into channel partners and becoming the global head there. But more importantly, it was the second acquisition that kind of started to stir the pot for me. Because the second acquisition was a company out of California bought us and the culture fit wasn’t there. Our organization’s culture was vastly different than the new organizational culture that we were going into. So after about a year and a half of trying to figure out how to fit inside of that and try to navigate my way inside of that organization, I quickly realized that maybe it’s just not the right fit and it’s time for me to actually make a change.

[00:17:16] Jeremy Starcher: I started to ask myself what does that look like? Because if you never worked for a company for 23 years, it can be a little scary to consider going and doing something else. In my case, I had a limiting belief that the only thing that I was good at was selling callback to contact centers.

[00:17:34] Jeremy Starcher: That was the only thing that I was really good at so why would I go anywhere else? Cause I’m not going to be able to do it. It was just a limiting belief. I didn’t call it that back then, but it was something that was underneath all of that. It was my perspective at the time. A good friend of mine, a colleague of mine suggested that I start to read two books, which kind of shifted my way of thinking the first one with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which I would encourage every person in the world to read at least once through.

[00:18:01] Jeremy Starcher: It’s just a wonderful reminder that the most powerful people in the world from decades, centuries ago, struggled with the same issues that we struggle with today. Like their perception, the fact that they’re going to be challenged, there’s going to be obstacles, there’s all kinds of great goodness that comes away from reading Marcus Aurelius.

[00:18:20] Jeremy Starcher: The second book was the Six Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni and the table group. This book is what inspired what got me started with the MVG FWD reframe work, which we’ll get into in a second. In it it posits that there are six types of working genius that you’re really good at two of them. When you do them, you’re in the flow. You’ve heard of people say the flow, right? I was in the flow. That, that’s one or two of your working geniuses, what you enjoy doing, what motivates you. You have two working geniuses that you can do if you want to, but if you do it for too long, it just gets Boring or you get exhausted and then you have to, that it’s like drinking a cup of coffee with the hole in the bottom.

[00:19:01] Jeremy Starcher: It just drains you completely. So you gotta be very careful. This was transformational for me because nowhere had I ever considered or thought that I was wired in a certain way, that I had a certain physiological design that kind of pre programmed me. To fit really well with certain work efforts and not so well with other ones.

[00:19:21] Jeremy Starcher: The very first question that it asks in that book that I remember, maybe it’s not the first one, but the one I remember was what motivates you, what gives you energy? I stopped and I said to myself, I can’t answer that question. I don’t know what the answer to that question is. It created a moment of, Terrifying anticipation, because it was like, wait, I can’t make a decision on what to do next in my life until I figure out more deeply who I am, how I’m wired, and why I’m here.

[00:19:56] Jeremy Starcher: I know that those are all philosophical. Those are big, questions that everyone likes to talk about, but I didn’t want to be able to just talk about it with colors and buzzwords and feelings. I wanted to get really precise. Can I describe myself to myself that is accurate?

[00:20:12] Jeremy Starcher: Can I use that to understand what my next step should be? What’s amazing about this is I love walking. I think walking is something that everyone should be doing more. It started when I was training for my Mount Everest trek. But I will get to that in a second, but I went for a walk that day and when I came back from my walk, I was coming down the hill. Living a cul de sac at the bottom of the hill. My garage door was open and my cars were in there. One of my license plates. Says MVG FWD MVG FWD. That’s my mantra. It’s always been my mantra.

[00:20:47] Jeremy Starcher: In that moment, I had this idea in my head it was like, Hey, if you want to answer the question that’s been bugging you, what gives you energy? You need to figure out a framework that you can use to help you dig deeper. So I came downstairs and went to my whiteboard and I wrote MVG FWD up on the whiteboard because I like things like that and I was like what could M stand for?

[00:21:08] Jeremy Starcher: It was like a screaming thing, Jeremy, you know what M stands for? It’s, it stands for motivation. You have to ask yourself the question, what gives you energy? And conversely, you need to know what drains your energy because you want to align your next steps with that. Cause we all have to do stuff that we don’t want to do. But very rarely do we sit around and say to ourselves, Oh, I’m going to intentionally schedule time in my day to do the things that I love to do.

[00:21:35] Jeremy Starcher: If you don’t do that before, you’re restless and you’re exhausted and you don’t know which way is up. So that started about a year and a half ago and I was like, okay, I got to go deeper.

[00:21:44] Jeremy Starcher: We’re all we’re onions, man. We got layers and layers and layers, and you’ll never, ever stop finding new things about yourself. If you continue to just go deeper, just be curious and just keep going deeper and going deeper. So that’s what I did for the next several months. Then I ended up on another podcast.

[00:22:03] Jeremy Starcher: For some reason we started talking about this and the next thing I know, I have people asking me, Hey, do you have a book about this? Or, Hey, do you have a resources that I could read? Then I started thinking, maybe I could do something with this. Huh? Those were the kind of bricks that were laid on the path that eventually got me to say, you know what, I got to do this full time and I got to devote all of my energy into helping people find their forward in life, no matter where they’re at and then help coach them through that.

[00:22:30] Jeremy Starcher: So that way I’m being fed because I’m learning constantly by working with other people. But more importantly, it’s tapping into one of those six working geniuses that I’m so darn good at, which is ideating. It’s helping people get through the fog. Of their normal way of life or their normal perspective and shine some clarity inside and say, okay what’s truly important to me and how can I be intentional with making moves in my life that draw me closer to that design and purpose than what I am today.

[00:23:00] Ron Laneve: Isn’t it amazing how sometimes it takes other people to hit you over the head with what you should be doing because they see it from the, they almost see you talking about it from the outside and it’s so obvious to them but it’s maybe not to you. Every time I have a conversation like this, it just makes me pause and just stop and think about that. No question there. It’s just one of those things.

[00:23:22] Jeremy Starcher: But you’ve hit the kind of nerve of what a good coach does and why coaching is important. Because it is so easy to get in a rut in, in the way that you approach your day. Just tactically from how you schedule your day to what kind of tasks you’re doing throughout the day to how you even view tasks.

[00:23:39] Jeremy Starcher: I don’t do to do lists any longer. That’s scary for a lot of people. But there’s some freedom in that because you want the flexibility of responding to the day as it’s presenting itself to you. I’m a huge believer in being incredibly present minded.

[00:23:55] Jeremy Starcher: Yes, we need to have an idea of what the future looks like. We need to know where we’re headed, but we need to be working in operating and what’s happening in our lives right now. In this very minute. That’s really hard to do when you box yourself into because you had a list of things you got to get done again.

[00:24:09] Jeremy Starcher: I’m not suggesting you don’t have a list of things that needs to be done, but there needs to be some wiggle room for you to be able to respond and react. Because opportunity, You never know when it’s going to come at you. You never know when that next opportunity to learn something about yourself or to have an, a greater impact on people.

[00:24:26] Jeremy Starcher: I got so boxed into, okay, this is my job, this is my role, this is what I have to do on a day to day basis. We want to move the company forward and all those things. And those are all great. That it prevented me from living the life that I wanted to live, which is, it doesn’t matter if these tasks get done today or tomorrow. What matters is that we know what those tasks mean, that we do them with excellence, that we can time into a larger vision. More importantly, That I understand what it’s taking or what it’s requiring of me. I have to give something to get those tasks done. Am I willing to continue to give, to get those tasks done?

[00:25:01] Jeremy Starcher: What’s amazing to me is how many people I talk to and they go that just seems so simple, but I don’t know how to put that into practice. Okay, that sounds great. If you were on stage, doing a TED talk, everyone would be clapping right now because everyone knows and relates to it. How do I do that?

[00:25:17] Jeremy Starcher: This is the part where it just separates people who are interested in personal growth versus people who are just. They’re just not everyone is, and that’s okay, but the bottom line is you have to do the work. You are the only one that can do the work. If you’re not willing to do the work, no one’s going to do it for you.

[00:25:34] Jeremy Starcher: So you’ll just find yourself in the same career, in the same job, ask yourselves the same questions over and over again. I want to help bring people out of that monotony, right? That’s what ultimately attracted me to becoming a coach.

[00:25:47] Ron Laneve: One of the core foundations of this discussion, I would say is the word fluidity or fluid, right? There’s nothing is ever status quo or standing still at the same time. When you use words like framework, it can imply a process that’s set and is followed and is the same every time. Which I know in the coaching profession just isn’t true because everything’s always different and unique.

[00:26:12] Ron Laneve: I know when you use the word framework it’s evolving and it isn’t set in stone. That’s all leading up to my question of where are you in the evolution of your framework? Have you written a book? You mentioned that is there a process that your clients follow? Are you specifically targeting individuals or companies, let’s talk, Talk about the model.

[00:26:37] Jeremy Starcher: So I was very intentional with calling it framework earlier on.

[00:26:40] Jeremy Starcher: I actually call it the reframework now. The reason why I do that is because it’s intentionally trying to encourage people to reframe their perspectives. That’s where it all starts. And there’s a lot of neurological science to this as well. If people are interested, they should go and look up some of these great.

[00:27:04] Jeremy Starcher: Neurologists that are out there talking about how your autonomic system is the one that experiences everything first. Your emotions are created by that nervous system. The rational brain is the last thing to get involved. The left side of your brain is the thing that actually sequences things together and puts a story to it.

[00:27:19] Jeremy Starcher: It gives you the words. That’s the part that I want people to go back and start to test. Because so often our perspective is the way that we are telling ourselves how something is occurring it affects everything. If I have a limiting belief that I’m not going to be any good to any person except for selling contact center callback, I never will.

[00:27:40] Jeremy Starcher: But if I start to get out my pen and eraser and I start erasing that and deleting that and saying, no, that’s not true. I might believe it right now, but that’s not true. So I got to figure out how do I change my belief structure so that it empowers me. So the MVG FWD reframework is a customizable approach to you. I say customizable from the standpoint that your answers are going to be different than mine But it just basically asks six questions and then We jump into each one of those questions. There’s all kinds of tools that we can use to help you Put words to things and triangulate if you will on what’s true for you. But in a nutshell what we’re asking is MVG FWD MVGFWD.

[00:28:25] Jeremy Starcher: M stands for motivation and the question that is asked is what gives you energy and I have a lot of resources that come that people use to help them answer that question. You would be surprised at how much insight people can get just from starting to evaluate and be critical about what’s driving them forward or what’s pulling them forward.

[00:28:44] Jeremy Starcher: V stands for values. Values is one of those words that people think, Oh, I know what a value is, or, Oh, companies have values, but they never live into them. It’s one of those buzzwords, if you will. But the question I’m asking with this isn’t really necessarily, do you think that honesty is a good value to have? The question is what is driving your operating system? Because your values are something that you put Value to not to be redundant, but that’s what a value is. When you see it in practice You value that. Honesty for instance is one that you see it in practice Oh, I value that. of course you have other things like integrity and character And that’s what most people think of when they think of values. I try to take it down another level with my clients and say let’s not stop there because yeah, we all have like the standard set that we want to ascribe to. But what is it that you see in the world that when you see it, it just lights you up and you’re like, oh man, I really value that person or I value that action or I value that thought or whatever the case might be.

[00:29:41] Jeremy Starcher: Let’s put words to that. So for me, for instance, creativity is one of my values and I’m not an artist, so I don’t sit around and draw. But what I love is when people use creativity and ingenuity to solve a problem. They’d like to think outside of the box.

[00:29:55] Jeremy Starcher: When I see that I’m immediately attracted to it. Now on the flip side, I am not a data person. I don’t value data. I don’t value detail. So when people come at me with a whole bunch of that I shy away. When I was younger in my career, I thought that was like, that’s terrible. I’m never going to make it anywhere because I’m supposed to be data driven.

[00:30:14] Jeremy Starcher: I’m supposed to be all about the detail. There are people out there who are, and that’s what diversity is all about. Making sure that I’m matched up with someone who cares about detail and they’re matched up with someone who’s way up here thinking about ideation and problem solving and all that kind of stuff. So that’s what values is meant to drive you towards.

[00:30:31] Jeremy Starcher: G stands for gifts. Simple question, what is my superpower? We’re all designed uniquely. We might have shared traits and qualities. But the bottom line is that you’re like a snowflake. There’s never going to be a Ron like you up till now, and there’ll never be a Ron like you after Ron. It just won’t happen.

[00:30:54] Jeremy Starcher: Your nature, the way you’re designed is unique. Your nurture, the way that you’ve grown, your experiences is unique and your emotions, the choices that you’ve made is unique. All of that creates this incredible unique fingerprint. If people would lean into that and embrace it and endorse it, maybe they could find a little bit more joy in their life. Cause they’re like, okay, this is what I’m really good at. These are the things that I value. This is what motivates me. Okay, let me shape my life around those things as much as humanly possible.

[00:31:24] Jeremy Starcher: Then F stands for framing. It used to stand for faith. And then I quickly found out that faith drives a different perspective on things. I didn’t want it to go down a spiritual thing, although that’s important framing is really about, what is the story I’m telling myself what’s my belief system. Do I believe in a certain religion and that’s fine. We need to understand that. Do I believe that I am worth it? The deeper you go on this, the more enlightening it becomes because you’re like, wow, I’ve really held myself back.

[00:31:55] Jeremy Starcher: W stands for work. I kept it very generic because we all have to work. Work at a simple level is just getting things done. The question there is what work or what effort when I’m doing it brings me fulfillment, satisfaction and joy? It’s a way to take some of the other things we’ve talked about and channel them directly into tasks and efforts that, that really light you up. It’s not about changing careers because you figured out, Oh, I shouldn’t be a software engineer. If that’s the case, change the career. It’s really meant to be, hey, there are other things that I can do to balance that out so that by the time I get to the end of the day, I’m not completely drained.

[00:32:34] Jeremy Starcher: The last one is the only one that’s forward thinking is D for dreams. The question there is, what’s my vision for the future? The challenge is that dreams are best loosely held onto. Aspiration is what a dream is meant to bring to you. But if you hold onto it too tightly, if you’re too, if you’re too sold that I’m going to be at this particular place at this particular time, you’re probably going to end up being disappointed because life is going to happen between then and now. Maybe by the time you get there, what’s important to you has shifted and changed. So D is just let’s look to the future. Let’s not spend a whole lot of time there, but we have to know where we’re going before we can get there.

[00:33:12] Jeremy Starcher: So that’s the MVG FWD reframework. There’s no sequential order. I wish there was, it’d make a lot easier for me to be like, okay, step one, step two, step three. But it’s really where are they at right now? What are they, Facing, what’s the challenge? What, where are they trying to grow? Where are they trying to lean into?

[00:33:30] Jeremy Starcher: One of those six questions is going to be important to helping them get through that. Then there’s a bunch of resources underneath that. Most coaching has, they have a methodology they’ll go and do Clifton strengths for instance, or Myers Briggs. That’s a lot of personality coaching, but normally where you start, because you want to make sure we have an understanding of who the person is.

[00:33:53] Jeremy Starcher: I like to take them all and just I want my clients to take every single one of those things they can and bring those results to the table. Let’s start to triangulate on where do you see the words that really resonate with you? Then at the end of the day, I want them to have a little cards.

[00:34:07] Jeremy Starcher: Little reminders, that they can look at and say, man, i’m really feeling bad right now. Oh, I forgot I needed to schedule some more wonder time in my life. Or I can just sit around and ask questions and I didn’t do that this week. So let’s go, let’s make that happen.

[00:34:21] Jeremy Starcher: I have not finished the book. I’ve started writing the book. It is my intent to write the book. But I wanted to get a little bit further down the road and I wanted to have a little bit more experience working with people. So that way when it does come out, it has the best opportunity to impact as many people as possible.

[00:34:41] Ron Laneve: Individuals or companies, coaching or consulting?

[00:34:45] Jeremy Starcher: A little bit of both . I really enjoy working one on one with people. I just really enjoy it. I learned so much. However, I’m also learning to learn in a team setting and helping, corporate cultures understand the importance here.

[00:34:58] Jeremy Starcher: As a result, I am a certified giant worldwide guide. If you’re not familiar with them, they brought five voices to organizations. Five voices is a much easier way to understand Myers Briggs and there’s a ton of application for people. When my individual clients come on board the very first thing they do is they take the five voices personality profile. So that way we have some place that we can start from and I can understand how they process data, how they make decisions, what’s important to them, just based off of their natural inclinations.

[00:35:31] Jeremy Starcher: But then I use six types of working genius. I use CliftonStrengths. I’ll use DISC. I use values finders. There’s several values finders online that you can take. We can do spiritual gift testing. There’s all kinds of stuff that I ask people to do because More often than not when I ask them to describe themselves to me I hear the same things over and over again. What do you value? Honesty, integrity, character. Thank you. I appreciate that. I want to go a level deeper. I want you to go a level deeper. I want you to really, truly, fully appreciate what it is that you value. Do you value family? Everyone says family, but let’s take a look at this .

[00:36:11] Jeremy Starcher: It’s not to say that you don’t, but at the same time, it’s okay for you to say, it’s not a core value. That’s not something that just drives me forward. So that’s the approach that I take with individual clients. With corporate clients. It’s a little bit more geared around the five voices for teams because there’s a whole year long process and workshops and tools and homework and there’s some one on one coaching that happens there too, which is fantastic. I used one to feed the other to be honest.

[00:36:38] Ron Laneve: No, I like how you can do that. I’ve a lot of the coaches I’ve talked to have specifically chosen 1 path or the other for different reasons. It seems like you’ve built a, I don’t know, a fungible path that can service both individuals and teams.

[00:36:54] Ron Laneve: We can go on and on about this topic for a long time. I appreciate you sharing all that. I don’t want you to give away the whole the whole plan either.

[00:37:00] Jeremy Starcher: That’s the cool thing about it. It is that it is truly customizable. I just spoke with a gentleman out of Georgia the other day called me up out of the blue from the website and just, we started talking and he’s I have no idea what this is, but this sounds really interesting to me. Can you send me what’s our next step?

[00:37:17] Jeremy Starcher: I said there’s really no next step. The next step is let’s get coaching. Let’s get to work. But all of this information is available on my website. If you want to ask yourself the questions and go do the work yourself, it is there. What coaching allows you to have is that outside influence, that outside voice.

[00:37:34] Jeremy Starcher: That kind of keeps you honest. I’m not an accountability guy. I’m not gonna sit here and give you homework and then make sure you do the homework next day that’s what I mean by accountability. I will hold you accountable to the process I will say hey, are you being honest here? Are we shying away from something that we need to jump into a little bit more? Is there a conversation that you need to have that let’s practice on how to have that conversation so that you can get past it?

[00:37:57] Jeremy Starcher: One of the books that, that I love and I would recommend to every single one of your listeners is The Obstacle is The Way by Ryan Holiday. It is absolutely amazing how often we allow obstacles to just block us and then we never get past it. Part of that starts up here in the head. That’s why, sometimes I have people who hire me just to help them through a particular sticky relationship that they’re in or a particular career change. Because that’s what they need in the moment.

[00:38:26] Jeremy Starcher: That’s what a coach does. A coach that doesn’t necessarily just come at you with all the answers. Here’s the framework and here’s everything you need to do. A good coach is going to be responsive to where you are and is going to know just what to say to get you to take that next step forward.

[00:38:41] Ron Laneve: Are you currently taking on more clients right now?

[00:38:44] Jeremy Starcher: I am. I’m being a little bit more selective than I have been in the past. I really enjoy working with any age group or people in any walks of life. So it’s not like a lot of coaches will say, Hey, if you’re not a C level executive, I don’t want to work with you. Or if you’re not if you’re not in the tech industry. I think that what I bring to the table goes above and beyond any particular field of interest.

[00:39:08] Jeremy Starcher: I’m really looking for people who are actively seeking massive transformation and personal growth for themselves. They’re asking themselves I want to play a bigger game and I’m just not sure how to play a bigger game. Those are the people that I would love to work with.

[00:39:22] Ron Laneve: I like the way you put that. That’s a great segue, into the next topic. When I started this podcast, it was really about helping people in their career journey, figure out.

[00:39:32] Ron Laneve: What they should do next, or how to approach what they should do next. It’s evolved into this nonlinear career path. However college students, college graduates, individuals entering the workforce soon are still a cohort to me that that I know could use some advice, could use some mentoring from those of us who’ve been there and done that. They don’t get everything they need in college. They don’t even know what jobs are out there. I asked this is a really open question. Some of my guests take it down a very technical path and talk about specific skill sets to develop some talk about the concept of curiosity and communication, et cetera, you laid out how you got out of your early days of working to achieve success.

[00:40:16] Ron Laneve: What would you advise to the cohort I mentioned? To the students of today thinking about how where do I go? What do I major in? How do I think about this entering the work world? What are the key skills that need to develop? Especially with all this AI stuff happening.

[00:40:30] Jeremy Starcher: Even today, our students who are coming out of college or coming out of high school, they are not aware of the leaps and bounds that as a global society we’ve made in terms of understanding neurology and how you’re wired and how your brain works.

[00:40:46] Jeremy Starcher: The reason why I’m bringing this up is because I think if you get too curious, About asking questions like what should I go do? What should I get technically skilled in before, what you’re going to be good at, because your wiring is not going to change. It’s going to set you down a path that you may have waste a couple of years before you actually get into doing something that you enjoy and that you love.

[00:41:09] Jeremy Starcher: The first step is, in my opinion, take some of those personality tests, do some initial assessment of yourself. Ask your friends and family. You know me good. When I do it, when I light up, what are those things?

[00:41:22] Jeremy Starcher: Can you help me? I wouldn’t be too concerned about finances tied to this because I think the second you come out of college, You go into the corporate world, you get those golden handcuffs on you. Before you know it, you’ve limit the decisions that you’re willing to make just simply because of the finances involved.

[00:41:39] Jeremy Starcher: I would practice financial peace. I would try to not have any debt if I could possibly handle that. Then I would be looking for opportunities that allow me to lean into what I’m good at doing. I would shy away from the ones that require me to try to strengthen the weaknesses that I have.

[00:41:53] Jeremy Starcher: The reason why is because it’s good to know your weaknesses, but you got to grow your strengths. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to spend a lot of time trying to work on something that you’re not good at. All it’s going to do is drive you crazy and take a lot of your energy. But that all starts with kind of a deep and fundamental understanding of who I am as a person.

[00:42:11] Jeremy Starcher: Not, okay, I was a jock in high school or I was a nerd in high school or put whatever labels you want on this thing. Or I went to college and I realized, Oh my gosh, the world is ending so I became this like raging social justice warrior. Which is great I’m not taking away from that. What I’m saying is be careful what you pour yourself into because that is the adventure that’s going to dictate what your next step could look like. More importantly, it’s going to shrink your window because now all you’re going to be doing is looking, okay, I was told I should be an engineer. So I’m going to go to school and to be an engineer.

[00:42:43] Jeremy Starcher: The next thing you know, you’re not looking anywhere else besides being an engineer. So just like I instruct my clients today let’s take a step back. Let’s not assume we know anything and let’s do a deep dive into who we are, how we’re designed and what we are naturally passionate about because that is going to put you on the path to fulfill your destiny. I hate to say it, but that’s what’s going to happen.

[00:43:06] Jeremy Starcher: Tactically, I would encourage anyone coming into the workforce. Very first thing I would do is, Hey, HR, what is your talent development investments look like? Can I get a coach? A lot of companies nowadays are putting a lot of time and effort into developing a talent development program.

[00:43:24] Jeremy Starcher: It’s more than just, hey, your supervisor is going to give you a one on one and you’re going to have an annual review. It might not even be your supervisor that provides the coaching and mentoring that you need, but look for that. Go seeking for that. As a matter of fact, I would put that on my list of things that the company has to offer in order before I even start. Find out how important you’re going to be to that company because you want to take advantage of any assets that they might have for you, including personal coaching, which is growing inside of organizations.

[00:43:54] Jeremy Starcher: Ultimately It’s up to you. You’re the only one that can I don’t want to say control your destiny, but you can certainly control yourself in the way you live your life and set yourself up for a fulfilling life if you take yourself seriously,

[00:44:09] Ron Laneve: You mentioned something that a lot of my guests have, and that’s, I would call it allowing yourself to be vulnerable. To your point, you said, ask others to tell you what they think you’re good at, or what they see as lighting you up.

[00:44:23] Ron Laneve: I don’t think enough people do that. They try to figure it out themselves because that’s what they’re told they got to do. Use that collective wisdom, use the people around you that know you so well. It’s a tremendous asset.

[00:44:33] Jeremy Starcher: Your mom always told you, be careful who you hang out with. I think that you have to, you have to know what you’re looking for. You have to know what questions you have or what information you’re looking for. You got to know who to approach. Who can I trust? Trust is an important thing here. When you’re becoming vulnerable, you are opening yourself up to potentially changing something major in your life because of something somebody said to you.

[00:44:54] Jeremy Starcher: Always surround yourself with more than one or two people. You got to have data points that don’t represent a particular group of people frame of view, and bounce that off. It takes a lot of confidence to do that, and that’s why I always encourage people to start with growing your confidence in yourself. Be curious, be compassionate, go deep ask yourself the tough questions be okay with the fact that not everyone’s going to like the fact that you’ve, you’re answering in a certain way,

[00:45:19] Ron Laneve: Is there any other books or even podcasts that you want to bring up as suggestions?

[00:45:25] Jeremy Starcher: Yeah. The first book that comes up to mind is leader shift by John Maxwell. If you are a postgraduate especially in a business environment, you’ve probably read this because it’s that important. Leaders Are desperately needed inside of the organization. I’m not talking positional leadership. I’m talking about people who have the ability to influence others in a positive momentum. John Maxwell just does a great job of talking about seven shifts in your thinking that will help you become the leader that you were meant to be. So leader shift is a great book.

[00:45:59] Jeremy Starcher: Thinking in bets by Annie Duke for any people out there who are analytical and, like data and things. This was a really interesting read for me and it taught me how our brains are naturally wired to deal with data and decisions and perspectives. She was a world class poker champion. So the whole book is around how world class poker champions think about decision making and bet making. It’s just a fascinating read.

[00:46:26] Jeremy Starcher: From a podcast perspective. I love the Huberman lab podcast Andrew Huberman is a neuro biologist. He’s just got a fascinating array of topics that you could listen to from how does caffeine affect my brain to alcohol, to sleeping patterns, to, Hey, how much sun should I get in the day?

[00:46:47] Jeremy Starcher: His perspective is all from a physiological perspective and I just find that fascinating. The biz crossover by Jay Power another aspiring podcast guy. He’s had some really interesting guests on there, specifically if you’re trying to figure out how to navigate the business world.

[00:47:04] Jeremy Starcher: Just for fun, three questions, three drinks podcast, and this is a guy out of Hudson, Ohio. The premise is basically a cocktail party, a podcast cocktail party, right? So he gets guests on, they have three cocktails and they ask three questions and then they just talk. As the conversation goes on, it gets a little fun. But three questions, three drinks podcast. That’s a good one.

[00:47:25] Jeremy Starcher: I went to Nepal to trek to Mount Everest base camp and we did an episode where I went in and recorded about two days before I got on the plane to go, and then we recorded about three days when I got home and then we merged those together. So you have like this, Before perspective and an immediate after perspective of what kind of an experience and adventure going to Nepal and doing that trek is, and I had a lot of fun with that one.

[00:47:50] Ron Laneve: So did you hike Mount Everest?

[00:47:52] Jeremy Starcher: So we went from, we did the hike to Mount Everest base camp. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. We went to raise money for kids to plant churches across the world and we ended up raising just over $600, 000. All nine of us got to the, got to Mount Everest base camp. A couple of us went and tried to get to 18, 500 feet. I stopped at 18, 300 feet. Cause I started getting a little, don’t know if I’m gonna be able to make it back down. It was just an amazing journey and an amazing feat, to be honest.

[00:48:22] Jeremy Starcher: My dad’s been encouraging me to use that more in, in Letting people know who I am out in the world because he’s like not many people can say that they’ve done that and it’s a pretty cool story. It required me to work with Sherpas, which is what I’m doing. I am a Sherpa, right? That’s what a coach does. It’s helping you get from base camp to base camp. So anyway.

[00:48:41] Ron Laneve: Yeah, no, I agree with your dad. It’s a great analogy.

[00:48:44] Jeremy Starcher: Jeremy, thanks a lot. It’s been great hearing your story. I can’t wait to watch MVG FWD, continue to evolve and and get more traction out there. and i know anyone that works with you is going to be pretty lucky to have you as their Sherpa in your words. Thanks again.

[00:48:59] Jeremy Starcher: Oh, thanks for the opportunity, Ron. It was great. I appreciate it.

December 16, 2024