Fighting for Success: How Combat Shaped a CEO Mindset

0:00Jeffrey Harvey:After my fourth deployment overseas, I kind of decided it was time to take a break and move back home. I was always interested in the law. I think my true passion really is leadership.

0:32Welcome back to the BILF pod, where authenticity trumps authority. Now, for those of you that are tuning in for the first time, my name is Mara Dorn, and this is BILF. For those of you that have no idea what BILF is, do you know what BILF stands for?

0:47Jeffrey Harvey:Boss, I'd like to follow. Oh, thank God you knew that. Yes, it is Boss, I'd like to follow. You're right. I am so excited about today's guest. I mean, this guy is a true BILF. We have today. We have Mr. Jeff Harvey. He has such an incredible background. Now, I was telling you a little bit before that one thing that you and I have in common, for those of you that don't know about my background, is I was on my way to law school. Like, I really thought that I was going to be a JAG officer or I was going to be like Aaron Brockovich. Like, that's what I really, that's what I thought. I had, you know, but then, you know, life didn't work out and I ended up in sales.

1:23But I'm just meeting somebody that's so successful. And your background is really extensive. And I just want to say, first of all, thank you for your service. Thank you. And I know that you have a million accolades, but I think the most impressive for me to read is that you did a tour. And everybody that you were on tour, you brought everybody back safe.

1:43Jeffrey Harvey:Yeah. So that is, I mean, that's so commendable. And what an achievement. Yeah, thank God. Yeah, right. Thank God, right? Right. And so then from there, you became a lawyer and now you work for a prestigious law firm where you are the CEO of Community Legal Services since 2020. You also received an incredible prestigious award for being one of the best places to work, which is that's so crazy. A law firm, one of the best places to work. I mean, that's that is incredible. But without further ado, I'm going to let you talk a little bit about your background and just how you kind of got into law and what you're doing and just your whole, you know, what it is that you guys provide to the community.

2:24Jeffrey Harvey:Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I went to college on an ROTC scholarship. And so I was thinking about this the other day. Unlike a lot of my friends in college who spent their last semester trying to figure out where am I going to work, I already kind of knew where I was going to work because I had the commitment in the Army. me. So I went in with both feet and at one point had thought I was going to stay 20 years and maybe be a general or do something like that. And after my fourth deployment overseas, I kind of decided it was time to take a break and move back home. I was always interested in the law.

3:00Jeffrey Harvey:I really, I think my true passion really is leadership. But there's a whole component to that, that the law place. And so, um, decided to move back home and go to law school. Um, and then found my way into community legal services. It was kind of, kind of by luck. Um, you know, people asked me when I was in school, what I wanted to do. And I said, I wanted to run a law firm. And typically you don't run a law firm until you've either built up a humongous book of business or you've started at a large firm and you've worked your way up. Um, and so luckily for me, I was at a hearing one day and ran into somebody that I had known who said, hey, I need a director of operations.

3:36Jeffrey Harvey:And so they hired me on the spot. So were you a prosecutor or were you a public defender or? I did. I was in private practice. I did a lot of local government law. Nice. And so I'm not going to go into names of places, but, you know, I was kind of assistant city attorney for certain cities and things like that. Yeah, that's amazing. And then today your job is to provide services to people that are underprivileged. that are underprivileged? Yeah, so community legal services provides no-cost legal assistance to low-income, seniors, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, people that cannot afford legal assistance.

4:12Right, and now do you, my question for you that I really want to know is, do you select who you're going to take on? Is there like a whole process or you just take anybody that says, hey, I need a lawyer, I can't afford it? Is that how it goes or there's like a vetting process?

4:26Jeffrey Harvey:It's both, it's both. So our primary funding comes from a couple of different places, Legal Services Corporation, the entity formerly known as the Florida Bar Foundation. They all set kind of income standards and guidelines. We do get some funding to help seniors and survivors of domestic violence that really has no income guidelines. But that's kind of one of the threshold issues is, you know, do you make little enough that you qualify for the assistance? Right. Then there are a million people in our 12 county service area that have legal needs. Yeah. And even though we're the, I think, eighth largest law firm in Central Florida.

5:07How many lawyers do you have at your firm?

5:08Jeffrey Harvey:We have right now 60, almost 70. Wow. It's, you can only help so many people a year. So between the type of issue, how far along they are in their issue, because the earlier you get to us, the more we can do with the least amount of resources. and then obviously the income piece is typically how we select who our clients are. Right. I mean, that in itself is incredible. You're running this incredible practice. I mean, just giving back to the community, that's a big part of what I believe in is hope, giving back, being servant leadership. You talked about that. So let's like kind of dive in. Now, I know because I run a huge sales team that it really takes quite a person to run a whole bunch of different personalities, right?

5:51Right. That's it's a hard job in itself. So, I mean, not to mention what you're already doing. But on top of that, you're managing all different types of personalities. You have men, you have women, you have people that are a type, you know, people that are hedge. I mean, just a million types of different people. And here you are nominated for this award. You win the award. But how do you do that? How are you able to run this incredible practice and navigate all of these people? Yeah. So, first of all, I think it starts

6:19Jeffrey Harvey:from the top and it starts with authentic relationships. I love that. You know, the people that you are leading have to believe that you are truly interested in their best well-being, best, you know, interest. Bingo. And so that just takes being you, you know, listening, being you. But then from there, it's more of a science than it is an art. I guess it's kind of an art too. The average person can't manage more than seven people. Right. Like that's just a rule of thumb. And so once you get larger than that, instead of building a team, you're not trying to build teams of teams, which require team leaders.

6:57Jeffrey Harvey:And then sometimes you've got teams of teams of teams, right? And so that's kind of for me, you know, once I became the CEO, I think the first thing that I really focused on, whether I knew it or not at the time was, do I have good connections with everybody in the firm? But the immediate second thing that I started to do is build a team. Think of a structure that would make the organization work. And how do I start putting that team together with people in each one of those places that can manage and ideally lead? The other thing I think is I made organizational priorities. And I committed very early on that my first priority as the CEO was my staff.

7:36Jeffrey Harvey:Because in a human services organization without my staff, I literally don't have the product we're trying to push. Right. And kind of flip around to the fourth priority, which really circles back to the first, it's individual growth and self-development and leadership development. If you're working someplace where you spend most of the time that you spend on a weekly basis, if it is not somehow making you into a better person, it ends up taking away from you. And you can only be there for so long before you're so drained that you're not effective anymore. And so we're constantly looking for ways to give people opportunities to grow, both as a leader and a person.

8:22Jeffrey Harvey:A lot of companies have opportunities like that, and they kind of make it very narrowly. It has to fit your job function. And I kind of look at things bigger. If you work for me, you're filling a specific role right now, but I don't know what roles I'm going to have in the future. I don't know what needs I'm going to have in the future. And so to have you grow in a way that may not directly impact the position you're in, but somehow have a benefit to the company later, it's a win-win. It's a win-win. Yeah. Because if you're not growing, what are you doing? You're stagnant. Right. Which is funny because, you know, our organizations are completely different.

8:56I mean, although, you know, we did agree that everything is sales, but my organization is set up the same way. We have leaders and then we have people that we have head leaders and then we have agents And you're absolutely right. Like it all comes down. Number one is authenticity. People can feel it. If you are not authentic and people really just are not bought into you, you're definitely not going to be able to lead a team. They can smell it. They can smell it a mile away. And I don't know about lawyers, but salespeople, we are eccentric people. So we need a lot of love. And I think you do lead with love.

9:26I think that, I mean, that's how I lead too. That it's very personal for me, my relationships with the people that I bring in. And I would say that almost everybody that I know that's close to me works, either works with me, works around me, or you need that because people feel that, you know, and that authentic connection. And then you're right, the constant leadership development. I mean, we use, we just took our agents to Patrick, Beth, David, and it's, you know, it's all, it all goes hand in hand because if you aren't learning and you aren't growing, then you can't evolve and you're not able to give back because we do give so much of ourselves that we need to learn how to decompress, but also develop as a leader and then teach this skill, which it is a skill.

10:05It's a skill. It's an art. It's a science, right? Just getting along with people, connecting with people. How hard is that? It's hard. Some people really can't do it. They cannot, no matter who they are, connect. It doesn't matter. But it's so unique that your organization is the same way. And I was listening at the beginning, we were talking, and I heard before you came in that the culture at your firm was not good. So let's talk a little bit about that and what it's like when you're culture, because I don't think people realize that culture, I say this all the time, culture is everything. You know, I'm not the smartest, not the sharpest tool in the shed, but the one thing that I really, when I first started building was culture.

10:42I wanted to, I wanted my organization to be a place that people would come in and feel comfortable because you're right. They're here 14, 16 hours. So I used to bring everybody after work, I'd bring everyone into my house. That was a big thing for me. Bring them in, put your arms around them and build the culture. So if you, if you're here, I mean, I know every single one of my agents, I'm always, you know, trying to do something to engage with them, but culture is super important. So I want to hear a little bit about how your culture was and then how you kind of pivoted and changed it. Yeah. Um, so the place I worked at five, six years ago, um, it was, uh,

11:20Jeffrey Harvey:I'm trying to think how to explain it. There was a whole undercurrent of people that never knew if they were going to get fired tomorrow. The organization didn't have any real common goals. It was kind of just take cases. There was no clear path on those things. There was a huge disconnect between how the organization received funding and the story we were trying to portray to funders and outside third parties and the people that actually did the work. You know, I kind of back something I said earlier. I believe that if you're spending most of your time at some place, you know, that you should enjoy where you are.

12:03Jeffrey Harvey:Absolutely. So that was kind of one of my goals was to make it a place that people enjoyed working.

12:11Jeffrey Harvey:I even had a couple of times where I didn't think I was going to make it. in part, I think, because it just, it took so much out of you. I had a fellow director of mine who used to call me all the time, like eight, nine, 10 o 'clock at night and just go on and on and on and on. Right. And just, and I had a boss that there were some days you could, you could go in and say, Hey, listen, boss, I don't think we should be doing this. And she would just blow me off other days where I had to literally say, you can't do this. This is not okay. And wasn't sure if I was going to get dismissed on the spot or not.

12:46Jeffrey Harvey:When I was looking out for her and I was looking out for the organization. So unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I took over in March of 2020, April of 2020, like right at the very beginning of COVID. I had a very good mentor at the time who was the interim CEO. Her job was to basically come into companies like mine, take over for a short period of time when they went and found somebody to do it full time. And she was very... in tune to people's personalities. And so I kind of fed off of that. And that's, that's kind of what we did. So we made some progress. I tried to make sure everybody had a seat at the table.

13:26Jeffrey Harvey:Everybody had access to talk to me, spent a lot of time on the phone. And then an opportunity came up to apply for a best place to work. And I know we had tried to apply before and we didn't get enough survey responses from staff to even qualify, which tells you something, right? Yeah. And so in this instance, I said, well, let's just see where you are. And I was genuinely interested in the feedback because if there was something we could do better, sometimes people aren't going to tell you everything. Maybe this would tell me. But luckily, we went through the process and were notified. And I can't remember what number we were, number eight or number seven or something like that on the Nonprofit Times.

14:03Jeffrey Harvey:And then another opportunity showed up the next year. I think it was the Orlando Business Journal. And then a year after that, it was the Orlando Sun-Know. And I said, let's just keep doing this. And at some point there was a piece of it too, that when the organization voted itself a best place to work, it then became a best place to work. Right. And so, uh, cause you're holding that up. Right. And it's something that they are proud of. So they continue to be a best place to work. And I still think that they are. Um, it's been a few years since we've applied for the award in part, cause I was like, I was just tired of dealing.

14:33Jeffrey Harvey:Right. Um, and I think we're actually applying this year, but, um, people want to be proud of where they work. And so there are going to be tough times and there are going to be times where they're not happy with their boss or they're not happy about a policy or whatever. But when they take a step back and they think, yeah, but this is a great place to work, right? That just reinforces the culture you're trying to make. Yeah. I had a mentor of mine from the military, actually, when I got to kind of a certain level as a commander who said, you know, I don't solve problems anymore. I'm a culture guy.

15:03Jeffrey Harvey:And it kind of resonated with me. Like, I'm really not even a place to solve problems. I do every once in a while, but a lot of times I'm usually trying to set people in the right direction and let them figure it out. Yes. I love that. In part, because people learn from their mistakes. So if I'm trying to build leaders, I have to create opportunities for them to make mistakes. It's so true. Right. Absolutely. I mean, it is. That's everybody laughs at me. They always call me a pushover. Well, you never put your, in fact, I was having a conversation with one of my leaders this morning and he was telling me one of the issues that are going on.

15:31And he's like, why do you never put your foot down on anything? I'm like, unless it's like an absolute definitive, you can't do it. That's not my job. My job is to guide people into becoming leaders. That's what a leader is supposed to do is you lead other people so they can lead. It's not to problem solve anymore. You're right. That is absolutely true that we are not there to give, it's like therapists. We just give you the tools. And then you implement them and sometimes you have to let them fall, which makes them a better leader. I mean, how many times have you fallen in order to become a better leader?

16:05Jeffrey Harvey:Absolutely. Right? It's not always easy. It's not easy peasy. It doesn't, there's not always a clear road. There's no roadmap. I mean, I always say I'm always winging it all the time. You know, people think that I have it together. I mean, you look like you have it together. You look pretty poor. You look like you do. You look like you have it. You look like you do. Not at all. But you're faking it till you're making it. That's like me. But what, so one thing I want to know when I ask about this all the time on the show is, we all have different levels of discomfort. You know, even when we look like we have it together, there are things that make us uncomfortable.

16:37And one thing I talk about is I do not like being in a room full of people that I don't know everybody. It makes me very uncomfortable. So I always have like a security blanket or an entourage of people or people that are around me. What would be something that makes you uncomfortable and how do you deal with it?

16:56Jeffrey Harvey:You know, bad news is never comfortable. and so anytime you have to have tough conversations that's all that's a that's a tough thing I have some staff that work for me that have become very good at it probably in part because I made them do that's like that's me too I don't I'm not like I like to be the good guy all the time I don't like the bad conversation no and I do it and I do it and it's important and I think the more you do it the better it becomes because at the end of the day it's just business I hate it right and so that's the other piece I think at least in that scenario if you have conversations with people that are tough and you know it's not truly anything personal it's just this is just the way things are i mean i think i think it works a lot better and i've noticed once you have those conversations and you give the person a little bit of time to kind of like absorb it and think through it yeah you know um nine times out of ten uh the way they respond will tell you something about their character a hundred percent we're we're i think we lead very similar probably i I really, I like the more I'm listening to you talk, it sounds like we really lead in the same direction.

17:58I hate this, but you know, my favorite line, this works all the time. What would you do if you were me?

18:04Jeffrey Harvey:It's part of my guidance. Yeah. It's such an easy, because then it takes the pressure off of me and then they make their own decision. But what I find you're right is when you let people give it 24 hours, they get the wind out of their sails. They come back because the way that you feel right now is never the way that you feel the next day. So the tough conversations never really have to be that tough. And then I feel like, I feel like you can do this too. Like there's certain things that we could say that might like somebody else can't say it. And then we walk out of there holding hands and everybody feels like it was great.

18:32You know, I don't. But that's how I lead the same exact way. It's funny that. And you have to have some faith in the system and people, right? I've had tough conversations with people that I thought I'll just have this conversation and it'll be over.

18:45Jeffrey Harvey:And they're going to they're going to self-select out. They're going to they're going to quit. They're going to whatever. I'm tired of dealing with them. And then they surprise you. And then I've had conversations with people that said, you know, this will be easy. I'll just tweak this little thing. And they've lost it. Yeah. How do you deal with that when they lose? Because it's happened to me. So many people just, I've had people say some absurd things to me. So what do you do when people say some absurd, inappropriate, like they've lost their shit? Well, so one of the things we did as an organization early on was develop a set of core values.

19:18Jeffrey Harvey:I like that. And everybody knows what the core values are. Like you talk about it all the time. Just so you could remember what they are. It's a pillar. Yeah, we do the same thing. And I think if it doesn't, if it's not illegal and it doesn't violate a core value, we'll get through. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's, and so that's the piece where like, and if somebody will say something absurd to me, usually kind of let it go because at the end of the day, I know I hold all the cards. I love that. So many people don't know that though. They always want to react back. I've had somebody tell me to go F myself.

19:49Like literally came to my face, told me to go F myself. and I did nothing. Zero.

19:54Jeffrey Harvey:I've had people do that to other staff members and I won't tolerate it. Like that's where, that's kind of my, yeah. If I've, and I, we had one that, um, I gotta be careful how much I talk about here, but used to say things to one of my direct reports that were just unbelievable. Um, and finally I was like enough, like this person is violating the core value of respect. There were questions on competency. And so I had to let them go. Yeah. And, um, you know, that, that was, was nerve wracking. Right. But at the same time, it was kind of fulfilling because you, you know, you're taking care of your people.