Oct. 1, 2025
Next Phase Leadership with Jeff Morefield
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Send us a text We speak with 26-year law enforcement veteran Jeff Moorefield about building a real off-ramp for first responders and why transition planning must start on day one. We dig into identity, health, finances, and practical steps that translate police skills into private sector roles. • founding purpose of The On Call Project and Beyond the Badge • why identity, purpose and fear block healthy transitions • holistic prep: fitness, sleep, mental health, and money • practical tools: A...
We speak with 26-year law enforcement veteran Jeff Moorefield about building a real off-ramp for first responders and why transition planning must start on day one. We dig into identity, health, finances, and practical steps that translate police skills into private sector roles.
• founding purpose of The On Call Project and Beyond the Badge
• why identity, purpose and fear block healthy transitions
• holistic prep: fitness, sleep, mental health, and money
• practical tools: ATS resumes, mock HR interviews, skill translation
• leadership gaps in retention, culture and personal development
• one-on-ones as a simple, effective leadership practice
• building chapters, employer partnerships, and national reach
• stories that show the path from badge to next career
oncallproject.com | j.morefield@oncallproject.com | jeffmorefield.com
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Chapters
00:00 - Opening & Guest Introduction
01:04 - Jeff’s 26-Year Career Path
03:11 - The Fear of Leaving the Badge
05:16 - Military TAP Sparks a New Idea
06:40 - Data, Gaps, and No VA for First Responders
09:35 - Founding The On Call Project
12:06 - Personal Development Overlooked on the Job
14:15 - Beyond the Badge: Seminar Design
17:08 - Translating Skills to Private Sector
19:15 - Resumes, AI Screening, and Mock Interviews
21:10 - Real Success Stories and Momentum
23:02 - Building Chapters and National Reach
24:40 - Purpose, Health Risks, and Staying Engaged
26:18 - Leadership’s Role and Missed Opportunities
29:00 - Culture Pushback and Next-Phase Leadership
Transcript
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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 and glad that you're spending a few minutes with us here today.
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And we're going to get right to this.
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You're going to love today's guest.
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We've been talking for over a year now to make this happen.
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And I'm so honored to have Jeff Moorefield with us here on the show.
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He is the founder and executive director of the On Call Project, a 26-year veteran uh of law enforcement, retired as a sergeant.
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Jeff, man, thanks so much for being here.
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Man, Travis, thank you.
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And just blessed to be here.
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Uh blessed to be in your presence.
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And uh I know this has been a year, but man, I'm excited to talk.
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Oh, I hope I'm recording that.
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Blessed to be in my presence, man.
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You're too kind for sure.
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But no, Jeff, man, the things you're doing is amazing, and you're going to really inspire our audience.
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So if you're just now tuning into us, you need to stick around.
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Because what Jeff has embarked on is so far outside the mainstream, so far outside the narrative.
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There is no question of mine that God's got his hand on it and it's going to explode.
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It's already showing signs of that.
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And Jeff, I think before we get going with the on-call project and your efforts there, man, how did you get here?
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I know you did, you know, well over two decades in the profession.
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You left, and I'll just preface it, you left at uh was it is it 26 years?
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You left at 26 years.
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So that number seems a little odd.
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You know, you hear 25, you hear 30, you sometimes hear 35.
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God bless you if that's you.
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But I want to get into it, man, of your profession, your work life, your career, and then what made you go at 26 years?
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I know no one says you're in, I know it's an odd year.
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Maybe I had plans for doing something else, or that my co-workers thought I would be here longer.
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And then what made you jump to the on-call project?
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I'll just open the floor to you and you can let us know.
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Yeah, man.
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So I, you know, I started my career uh back when I was just barely 22 at the University of Central Oklahoma, uh, just as a you know, a campus cop, you know, trying to trying to figure out life.
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I was a junior in college, and at the time my chief, Jim Roberts, was like, hey, listen, we want you to be a full-time because I was doing a part-time gig there at UCO, University of Central Oklahoma.
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And uh so I did about a year there, and then I went out to Yukon for three years um and just really loved the profession.
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You know, I was a uh single guy, uh, just running and gunning, you know, hair blazing.
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I did have hair back then, I promise.
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Yeah, we all did.
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And, you know, just doing my thing.
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Yeah, right.
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And so, you know, doing my thing and just loving it.
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Uh came to Edmund in 2001 and just really enjoyed the the lifestyle and you know, got myself into a lot of different areas of expertise, uh, whether it was underwater search and recovery.
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I was on our TAC team uh for 13 years.
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Um, and then you know, I did a lot of other you know, a field training officer, uh, was a gang unit, um, basically the leader of the gang unit for Edmund PD, um, and just did a lot of different uh oh I work within within those lanes, right?
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And so, you know, I say 26, and the reason why I say 26 is because that first year at the university didn't really count towards the pension system.
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So once I hit 25, uh man, I was 25.01 and I was out.
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Um and the reason why it came like that, Travis, was uh back in 2018, I actually had a conversation with a good friend of mine who now sits as the president of my board uh for the On Call Project Foundation.
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But he did three years at Edmund PD and uh he left and went to the corporate world and he worked his way all the way up the corporate world and and now sits as the vice president of all sales uh for Samsung.
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And you know, when he and I were on a literally a golf course in 2018, he looked at me and he said, Jeff, what are you gonna do when you get done?
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And I it scared me, to be honest with you.
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Um, you know, I was in the I was in the National Guard, had already deployed Afghanistan, uh, came back with an I issue.
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Um, you know, my my my wife was a two is a two-time cancer survivor.
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Uh we just had kind of had a miracle baby during that time, and I was just in this influx of what am I going to do?
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Let me just stop you right there, Jeff, because you said something that I want our audience to catch.
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You said I was scared to death when he mentioned that to you in 2018.
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And I want to sort of preface it with it's because those of you that aren't in law enforcement that maybe listen to this, I know many of you aren't.
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And so I want to sort of inform you this.
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When you're in law enforcement, the culture is so strong, it's hard to imagine you doing something outside of law enforcement.
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So when you said you were fearful, I'm assuming that's sort of what's in your mind, correct?
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Oh, absolutely.
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It absolutely was.
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It was, what am I gonna do?
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Where what skill set do I have?
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Like the only thing I can think of is just sitting at a at a desk work in security.
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You know, uh, I I don't know where to go.
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I don't know even the language.
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Do they even does the private sector even understand who I am?
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You know, uh, I'm actually gonna take this uniform off.
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No, man, that's that's my life.
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Like, that's who I am.
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Um, that's my identity.
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Um, and so that was that was really kind of the first gut punch of like, what are you gonna do?
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Right.
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And so um, as I mentioned before, I was in the National Guard and and went out to uh I was deployed out to Iraq in in 2020 during probably the worst time ever to be deployed uh during COVID.
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And I would I was commanding a uh a troop troops, we had 120 uh of us in three different countries.
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And I remember coming back and they had a transition assistance program for the military.
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And I went through it, and don't get me wrong, it's not the best in the world, but at least it's something, right?
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And so I said, you know, what is out there for first responders?
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I mean, we're all you wearing the uniform.
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If they're doing it for the military, is there any any entity out there that is helping our cops and our firefighters and EMS dispatch all the rest of stuff, kind of figure out and and help them with a pathway of when that time is done, which is everyone, it will be done.
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Shocker.
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Um, but you're gonna have to figure out what you're gonna do.
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And when I came back to the United States, uh, I really started looking around and I talked to, you know, I I trained a lot of friends in LA, you know, Chicago and Jacksonville, Miami, New York, uh, Dallas, Arlington.
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And when I would reach out to my friends, a lot of them would say, Jeff, there is no such thing, man.
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There's there's no like transition assistance program.
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There, what are you talking about, man?
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They they once you say you're retired or are retiring, you went from a name to a number, like lickally lickily split fast, right?
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Um, and I said, Well, that's kind of not cool.
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That's kind of BS, you know what I mean?
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Because obviously the issues that we have when we go into our uh private sector is very well documented, but nobody's ever done anything.
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And so I really started looking in January of 23.
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I really started looking after I was in my um uh I was in an officer-involved shooting, I really that really amplified uh my desire that hey, I needed to start looking for uh a new line of work, a different season, right?
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So I started researching and I could find white pages.
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I could find, you know, you go to Google and then hit Scott, you type in scholar, and you could find all the first responder data on, you know, hey, listen, national average is five to seven years that we were going to survive after we take the take off the uniform.
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That's the national average.
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That's not just Oklahoma, Texas, whatever.
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That is the national average.
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Um, and I was finding white papers from the CDC, from Arizona, from California, from Florida, various different entities.
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They were backed by unions that were backed by, you know, you know, uh independent studies, etc.
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The issue that I saw, Travis, was in the military there's a VA system.
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In the uh public service side, there is no VA system.
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So, you know, you see mission 22 on the VA side, which is 22 veterans that are that commit suicide a day, right?
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Well, there's nothing in the first responder side because there's no collective avenue, there's no collective centerpiece, right?
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To to gather all this data up and to really kind of send out a message, hey guys, we you have got to have some sort of offboarding process.
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You have to, or else you're going to fall into this five to seven years.
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Uh and in fact, I just had a friend of mine pass that was a captain at Oklahoma City just pass last Wednesday.
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Did seven years after, right?
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And so that he fit within that metric.
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And so, you know, as I continued going, I was like, so nobody from LA to Chicago, the big cities, nobody has any programs to help our first responders.
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And I got just the flat no, they don't care, the agencies don't care.
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And that just it pissed me off, to be honest with you, right?
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Because all the things that we do for our agencies and sacrificing and all the things that we do, don't and don't get me wrong, we get the accolades and all the rest of that stuff.
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But at the same time, for us to onboard so methodically intentionally from the academies, the background checks, the the board interviews, the polygraphs, all that stuff that we go through for six, eight, twelve months, and then to say I'm retiring and just say thanks, and give you probably the plaque with the wrong name on it, that's the offboarding process.
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Man, that's not cool.
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I just I did not like that.
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And this was a God calling.
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Um, I'll be completely honest with you.
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Uh, I had a lot of different avenues that I could have gone.
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In fact, uh my old boss was like, hey Jeff, there's a there's an opportunity to do um uh a specific job job that would be built for a civilian, and uh no, I don't want to do that.
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And so I I really honed in on this, and this was my call.
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And I was it was fed from my heart.
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You know, I was I didn't want my brain to really kind of take over, and I just wanted to go here, and uh and and I started developing the idea, the branding, the marketing.
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I I don't know anything about nonprofit worlds, so I'm I'm going down here to this, you know, Secretary of State and dealing with EINs with the IRS and you know, hiring attorneys' offices and listen, Travis, it took about $40,000 of my own money to stand up this nonprofit.
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And that's what I wanted to do.
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And you know, coming up with the courses and the seminars and seeing some of the you know return on investment, you know, we're we're getting guys and gals in like from the academy on to think about personal development, not just professional development.
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Man, listen, we could shoot, move, communicate with the best of them, but we suck taking care of ourselves, right?
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We suck taking care of our families.
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And um, I and I hate to say that, and I know that's a little bit of drastic, but we we don't we don't do well.
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Um, and when we're talking finances, we're talking physical fitness, we're talking, you know, application of that, you know, how many times, Travis, do we go into freaking gas stations and go get our cokes and sodas and you know, Twinkies and all the rest of the stuff, you know what I mean, to kind of fill that gap because we're going from call to call to call, you know what I mean?
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Um, how are we doing on sleep?
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You know, what are we looking like on the mental health side of the house, you know, especially with peer support and all the rest of the stuff that's going out there?
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What what are we doing?
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Are we are we are we are we in the mindset of being engaged at work?
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Or are we worried about our loans and our finances and just working job after extra job after extra job after extra job just to stay afloat?
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You know, so how are we how are we uh mitigating a lot of the issues um that we're seeing?
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And so the other thing was is all right, now that we we have these guys and gals, you know, currently, how do we take care of them or give them opportunities when they offboard?
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And so what we did is we we have a thing called Beyond the Badge, which is a seminar, it's a four-day seminar.
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And actually, we're gonna kind of do some split-offs too.
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We're gonna do some one-day's here and there across the state.
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But what we're gonna do is we're we're focusing on that holistic health, that financial health.
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Uh um, we're we're looking at the mental health side, but we're also looking like, hey guys, when was the last time you did a resume?
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Like you guys ask across the board 75, 80 percent of our people haven't drawn up a resume in 20 years.
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If you don't think that that's a hindrance, if you don't think that that caused a cause a mental block to go into the private sector, you got another thing coming, right?
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The other thing is too, is we've all interviewed in front of boards.
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We've never done one-on-one with an HR.
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Well, guess what?
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When you go in the private sector, and if you do want to go work in the private sector, you're gonna do a one-on-one with an HR.
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It's not gonna be in front of a board.
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Right?
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Then the other thing is is like, where well, where do I take a skill set?
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Well, you know, I had a construction company come up to me the other day and they said, Jeff, we would love a cop literally to sit as a foreman on a site and just make sure people are getting where they need to go and they're on time, and I will pay them six figures with benefits.
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That that's a skill set we can do, right?
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That's a very simple skill set, right?
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Um, you have you have other cops that have done budgeting, you know, within their time, you know, whether they're captains, majors, etc.
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You know, especially with fleet management and all the rest of the stuff, you know, personal management, whatever.
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Do you know that that also translates into the financial sector?
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You know, so what we've done is we've created these relationships with different entities that we plug them into.
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Like we we will see their their resumes.
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Um, and a lot of times it's blank, you know, when they come through our seminars.
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And then so what we'll do is we'll give them a shell and then we will go through and we will methodically go through their resume and we will build it out.
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And these are from specific HR groups that understand AST uh settings and and all the things that they need to do to make sure that you have the correct resume before you go out because a lot of this stuff is being read by AI, etc.
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Right.
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Right.
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Um, and then the other thing is to to kind of mitigate the fear of the of the interviews as we work with a Society for Human Resource Management, and we will sit them out down there and do mock interviews one-on-ones, and then they get feedback from it.
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So when they do go out into that private sector, they have applied for a job, they they gave them the resume.
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Now they're able to literally speak to that HR individual and not be afraid of it, right?
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So it's bringing down a lot of the walls that have prevented us from being able to go into the private sector successfully.
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Um some of the examples I have is Oklahoma City firefighter, uh, was in the mural bombing, was forced retired in 2018.
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2000 um, he had a gym down in in uh in Norman.
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2020 happens, COVID shuts down the gym year and a half, just on the struggle bus to try to figure out what he's gonna do.
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Has a heart attack, dies.
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Thank God his wife is there as an as a nurse, gives him CPR, and four days later woke up with no residual.
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And right now sits as a regional sales manager for Bitcoin.com.
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Right?
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So there are things that we can do.
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It's just we're not given the opportunities, Travis.
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Nobody has done this, nobody's even thought this process out, right?
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And so that's what we want to do.
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We're only going on two years, and right now the visibility that we're getting right now is just it's every day.
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Um, to where we're getting a partner from here, uh, a donor from there, you know, hey, we'd love to level your people up here.
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How can we support?
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Blah, blah, blah.
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Um, so as we're getting our messaging out there and and telling people that, hey, we're in Oklahoma City, you know, we're looking at you know covering the state of Oklahoma.
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But hopefully in about three years, you know, we'll be regional.
00:16:35.039 --> 00:16:42.080
Uh, we want to put chapters in in various different regions, whether it's in Wichita, Fort Smith, Arlington, whatever it is, you know, we want to do that.
00:16:42.080 --> 00:16:52.960
But hopefully we become national to where we can build these relationships and give this out to all of our first responders uh when they do want to offboard into the private sector.
00:16:52.960 --> 00:17:00.320
And Travis, that's that's also including whether you know you don't want to you don't want to work, you just want to go be a volunteer somewhere, right?
00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:03.759
There's a mindset change that you have to go through, right?
00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:10.880
Um, six to eight hundred critical instances in a in a career is going to catch up to you, right?
00:17:10.880 --> 00:17:16.480
All that cortisol, all the rest of the stuff that we have that that we've been sitting on and marinating on, right?
00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:24.240
If you're not doing anything anything with that and not keeping yourself active, we are built as strivers.
00:17:24.240 --> 00:17:29.119
And so if you don't give that striver a purpose, you're going to fall.
00:17:29.119 --> 00:17:30.960
You're having you're having patching mechanisms.
00:17:30.960 --> 00:17:36.079
And that's why we all fall to the to the cardiac issues, the cancer issues, and the and the suicide issues.
00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:44.160
And that's the top three of all of us that you know, if we don't, if we don't stay engaged, um, we will fall to it.
00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:51.519
I think what is amazing, Jeff, about what you're doing is is obviously, I mean, this is a master's level, which you just gave our audience, so thank you for that.
00:17:51.519 --> 00:18:00.240
But you're also involved with while they're still on the job to make sure that they're successful in a way so when they do leave the job, it sets them up for success.
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:06.480
Because the big biggest problem is no one thinks about this, no one thinks about this, and then they retire and they go, Oh, what am I supposed to do?
00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:07.359
And what's my purpose?
00:18:07.359 --> 00:18:21.279
I mean, listen, we don't have the data on what's happened to retirees, but I know anecdotally that retirees that are first responders, in particular law enforcement for sure, there's a huge, huge struggle out there.
00:18:21.279 --> 00:18:29.200
And that's why you'll see a lot of guys that six months later they're working as bank security or or they're going over to the county, or they don't know what to do.
00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:35.920
And and and and unfortunately, much of what you said is phenomenal as it is, it's a leadership failure.
00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:41.839
You're literally stepping in the shoes of what leaders should be doing right now in our profession.
00:18:41.839 --> 00:18:44.079
Why don't you think they're doing that, Jeff?
00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:48.799
Man, I've I've struggled with that because I don't understand it.
00:18:48.799 --> 00:18:55.039
Um, you know, they they they say that they care, they say they want to take care of you.
00:18:55.039 --> 00:19:00.000
Um I've actually looked at this as a as a recruiting tool.
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:11.039
And and I've looked at it also as a retention tool because I I have examples of guys that have gone through our programs and were just die hard that they were gonna retire.
00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:13.680
And the next thing you know, they're like, you know what, Jeff?
00:19:13.680 --> 00:19:16.160
Man, you gave me life.
00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:17.519
Or the case I gave me life.
00:19:17.519 --> 00:19:19.119
So I'm gonna stay here another year or two.
00:19:19.119 --> 00:19:21.680
I'm down 20 pounds, I'm rocking and rolling, man.
00:19:21.680 --> 00:19:22.480
I'm back in it.
00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:23.599
You know what I mean?
00:19:23.599 --> 00:19:28.000
Um, I think they're scared, I think it's I think they're scared.
00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:32.799
Um, and I and the reason why I say that, and I think it's also because it's unknown to them.
00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:34.640
They're still in the uniform.
00:19:34.640 --> 00:19:37.359
They don't know what it's like on the other side.
00:19:37.359 --> 00:19:45.519
And I hate to say that, um, but at the same point, why are they not reaching out to those that have been in uniform?
00:19:45.519 --> 00:19:52.240
Why are they not opening up their hands to say, I'd love to listen about it?
00:19:52.240 --> 00:19:56.720
I'd love to be able to keep our people engaged.
00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:04.720
We do 90 to 95 percent professional development in all of our in services, et cetera.
00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:09.279
When it comes to personal development, how much time is actually given within our agencies?
00:20:09.279 --> 00:20:10.960
I mean, next to none.
00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:13.440
And the reason is is because I think there's there's two reasons.
00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:16.720
Number one is I think that they're scared of the unknown.
00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:19.440
And number two, they don't know.
00:20:19.440 --> 00:20:36.799
So and what they don't do is because they're very linear mindset, they're not they're not strategic, they they don't go and seek outside entities to to help with that process, right?
00:20:36.799 --> 00:20:41.279
So or is it actually important to them?
00:20:41.279 --> 00:20:46.160
Do do they even do a is that even an important thing to them?
00:20:46.160 --> 00:20:48.960
Now I think it will be when they when they leave.
00:20:48.960 --> 00:21:03.519
But like I was talking to to my old partner, you know, for nine, nine years or whatever, we're talking about some of the the cola issues and stuff like that here in the state of Oklahoma and and in comparison to other states.
00:21:03.519 --> 00:21:13.200
And you know, we're we're we're talking, and I was like, listen, man, you in the uniform, you are you're in a vacuum of of this type of knowledge.
00:21:13.200 --> 00:21:19.519
When you step out, there's a whole lot of other knowledge that's out there that's not being fed into you.
00:21:19.519 --> 00:21:29.440
And I for so long wanted to seek that knowledge, um, but was just kind of kept in this lane, right?
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