This was an incredibly inspiring conversation I had with Jeff Gore on his Lightbulb Moments. Jeff’s a personal mentor of mine and you can see why, he’s gone through many challenges and because of his perspective, helped me get through a few challenging moments of my own by offering empathy but also a kick in the ass when I needed it.

When I think about my evolution as a leader, Jeff engrained a philosophy in me to “throw the rope back over the wall for the others climbing behind you”. In other words, be the leader for others as leaders before you were there for you. You can read through this inspiring conversation where Jeff talks about his own journey becoming a multi-faceted leader.

Lightbulb Moment – You Build your Best Skills in the Toughest Times

Jeff Gore’s sales career started off in technical recruiting during a recession in the early 90s. While today it was largely considered a mild recession compared to a few that have since followed it, Jeff was taken aback when he realized he was starting at a time where most of the success in the recruiting world was in the rear view mirror.

“What I’ll never forget was when my first boss / mentor came up to me when I first started and told me that I was ‘here for the after party’ and that the good news is if you can get good in this environment, when the economy comes back, you’re going to be really good at what you do. And I took that to heart.”

Jeff had to get very creative when finding not only job openings but also candidates in a pre-LinkedIn era. The good news is that people were easier to reach on the phone, but the bad news is when Jeff was calling potential hiring managers whether they were hiring, most of the times he would be laughed off the phone.

“I remember vividly that I was able to pick up an open requisition for a Mac Developer with a good pay rate. I found a Mac users group that met at MIT and stood up in front of the entire group to pitch this open job to the group which ended up getting 20 or so interested candidates for the position. I ended up filling that position quickly and I was off to the races and became very successful in a bear market.”

At the time, Jeff was living at home in Norwood, MA, and because of his early success, he was offered a promotion to move to New York City to begin his career as a manager. Jeff went to college at Babson College which was a 23 minute drive to Norwood and had never lived this far away from family home.

“I hadn’t yet grown up as an individual but even though I was petrified, I took the promotion. I saw a move to New York City and take on all of the unknowns that existed there as an opportunity to grow up. I took the job, moved to New York City . . . then I fell flat on my face.”

Jeff moved to a new city with a new title but ultimately, in the fog of new experiences, he forgot the discipline that earned him his promotion in the first place.

“I wasn’t living up to my own expectations. I wasn’t pushing myself enough, I was quick to blame others and got away from the fundamentals of the business that got me there in the first place. When I wasn’t immediately successful, I started feeling sorry for myself.”

Jeff’s first experience with professional failure isn’t different than most when things go bad. He was looking at all of the things that were holding him back whether that be people were not contributing the way that they should, the market was not as good as Boston, and overall, everything was happening to Jeff as opposed to Jeff making things happen for himself. While failure is inevitable in every one’s life, it was Jeff’s ability to bounce back and get out of this mindset that was inspiring.

“I needed to put myself out there on a personal front and I didn’t. I found excuses as to why I wasn’t putting myself out there, and then I brought these excuses into my work environment. I felt that I was out of control of my life and I played the blame game. Everything was happening to me. In reality it was the opposite. I needed to focus on the things that were in my control and not the things out of my control. I could control my work ethic, get back to the basics in sales, establish a vision for myself and if there were any people that were in my way I needed to figure out a way to run those people over and rise above. Really taking control of my own life.”

Jeff was lucky to have a few good mentors that spent extra time with him, challenging him on his business plan, and asking him about his own vision of what he wanted to do for himself both professionally and personally.

After a period of time, Jeff remembers a time when he went back to Boston for Thanksgiving and he realized just how small his hometown was compared to New York City. At that moment, Jeff realized that not only was the world a much bigger place than he had previously thought, but he had started to think of New York City as his home.

“The lessons I learned from that experience were really about pushing myself, getting out on the edge and loving to live in the uncomfortable. In New York City, the world is your oyster and it became home for me after a period of time. It was a launching pad for my confidence to fast track myself to team manager, to office manager to regional director.”

Lightbulb Moment – The Holistic Leader

Around the year 2000, Jeff’s life had been mapped out. He just got married, his new wife, Valerie, was pregnant with their first son and they had just bought a house in Boston. Jeff’s vision for his life that he started to canvas in his New York City days was starting to come to fruition.

“All of a sudden out of nowhere, two things happened. The .com crash happened and then 911 happened and the world was upside down. The business became unstable and because we had grown the business fairly rapidly, we focused too much on the success and didn’t invest in ways to make our business recession proof and resilient.”

Jeff had been promoted a few times at this point was at the near top of the organization so as this instability showed up in the business, the business needed for him to move out to the West Coast for a period of time to bring stability back. Shortly after that, Jeff had to uproot himself again to Chicago or the business was going to be at further risk.

“That was an eye opener. I went from making very good money, bought my first house with the white picket fence, had my first son and having what I thought was the perfect situation. Fast forward a year later, now I’m in Chicago, the business had gone from a very large number to a quarter of what it was and my pay was close to 20% of what I was making just the year before.”

Going to an unfamiliar city and experiencing tough times was nothing new for Jeff having gone through his New York City experience previously, but this time Jeff wasn’t going through this alone, he had a wife, a baby and another one on the way. Going through this stress with a young family started to test their own fortitude.

“What I learned from Chicago was that this was about being a family unit. Not a business unit, but how my marriage became more about being a team and that ended up impacting how I was viewed as a leader. With me showing transparency on how to figure out stability on the family front I was then able to offer more perspective at work. This acted somewhat of an inspiration to those young in their careers looking for a more holistic approach. No one’s perfect, but when you start to become vulnerable and authentic, it starts to have more impact in others. This was when I started becoming a more holistic leader.”

Lightbulb Moment – Filling the Void

Later on in life, Jeff started seeing the people that were the rocks for him in his life start to get older and start to need him to own more than his own work, his own family but to expand his influence to his extended family. One of those rocks in Jeff’s life had passed on and created a moment for Jeff to try to assume the void in his own way.

“My father in law passed very quickly and it was tragic. He was clearly the patriarch of the family and he left a big void. I had to make a decision, ‘Am I prepared to step into this void? If not me, who else is going to do it if it’s not me?’ It wasn’t just for me or my family, but now it’s about the extended family I am now a part of.”

“This holds up in all environments. When shit hits the fan, and you consider yourself a leader, you have to be present. At the end of the day, there are people that are impacted by unfortunate situations and they need somebody that is confident that can make the best out of the situation they’re in and come up better because of it. Being ‘present’ to me means to draw on all of the strengths that you’ve amassed in your life, draw on the competencies that you’ve built and realize that you know there’s going to be a moment in your life that is going to call upon you to step in and fill a void that presents itself in one shape or form. That’s called leadership.”

In speaking with Jeff, it was clear that his Lightbulb Moments stemmed from challenging circumstances that forced him to become a better person to get through it. In each moment, he found a new, better version of himself on the other side of it. As we round out a challenging 2023, there are many people going through such moments currently that need to find a new version of themselves to get through it and become better on the other side of it.