¶ Intro / Opening
Do you believe leadership is the solution to the problems that exist throughout society , including the law enforcement profession ? Well , I hope you do . You're listening to this , and this is kind of what we try to do each and every week is strive to give you the resources to be the best leaders possible , to be the change agent in your community .
Well , I have something special for you today in this episode . We pre-recorded this episode and I gave some instructions within the episode on how to attend the best leadership conference of 2024 .
On the show we have Eureka County , nevada , under sheriff Tyler Thomas , and he has been putting together the best week of leadership I've ever seen for the last four years , and the 2024 conference is coming up in April . Now , myself and John Kelly . John Kelly is the CEO of law enforcement life coach . Check that out at law enforcement life coach dot com .
Excellent trainer . He will be teaching at this conference . I will be teaching at this conference , randy Sutton will be teaching at this conference , and a ton of other people , a ton of other people . It's just going to be fantastic , and both John and I want to send you to this conference for free . We're talking airfare hotel . Maybe we buy you a lunch .
I don't know , but we're going to get you there in the middle of Nevada , three and a half hours from Reno , in this little gold mine town . That is just awesome . I can't think of a better week to spend just drinking from a fire hose of leadership . There will be no distractions , I can guarantee you that .
And if that is something you're interested in , first , I want to see you there , but second , maybe you want to go , but maybe financially it's strapped . Well , john and I are going to send somebody there for free , and the this episode is going to detail what that is .
Now , the reason I am opening up the episode with this is because what I said in the episode is incorrect . That's before I talked to John and then we put we sort of put our heads together and we decided you know what , let's , let's make this even better . So I offer something in the episode that's not as good as what I just offered .
So here's the catch what I just said is what you're going to go with . So you have to listen to the episode , you have to follow the instructions of the episode and you will have a chance of attending this conference with John and I in April , and you're reeking Nevada . We can't wait to see you . Here's the episode .
Welcome to courageous leadership with Travis Yates , where leaders find the insights , advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously . Welcome back to the show . I'm so honored that you're spending your time with us here today and this is going to be an epic episode with an epic leader .
I think you're going to love it because on the show today is Eureka County , nevada , undershare of Tyler Thomas , and I love his bio , as he described to me , because he put the most important stuff first . Tyler says I'm a husband , I'm a girl dad , and then I've got 11 years of law enforcement experience .
He's also a graduate of the national command and staff college and the FBI National Academy , session 285 , which tells you just how young and pretty he is , because he graduated just a year ago from that institution . But he's also the creator of the annual leadership summit held in Eureka , nevada each year .
And let me tell you something , the best week of the year in this profession is in a little gold mine town in Eureka , nevada , because you've never seen anything like this conference . This is the brain behind it . We'll get to that throughout the interview , but first off I want to welcome my good friend , undershare
¶ Who Is Tyler Thomas
of Tyler Thomas . How are you doing , sir ?
I'm doing great . How about yourself , Travis ?
Man just doing my thing . I know the weather is sort of dicey here . How's it going on up there ? Now kind of explain to people where Eureka County is up in Nevada .
So Eureka County is almost the geographic center of Nevada . We're about five hours north of Las Vegas , we are three and a half hours east of Reno and about four and a half to five hours west of Salt Lake . So kind of center of Nevada and center of some major towns .
Well , it's a beautiful area and it is nothing like Las Vegas . People think of Nevada , they think of Las Vegas . Most of Nevada is not Las Vegas and it's a very beautiful area . In fact , I'm going to be going up to the conference this year . I'm going to stay all week because I just love the area .
It sort of reminds me of kind of Apple Pie America , so to speak . But you guys are doing an incredible job there and I just kind of wanted to ask you know , here you are 11 years into profession , graduating these leadership . You really have an interesting leadership .
You're doing your thing Kind of how did you get here Like you're talking to me here on this podcast , but how did you get here today , and what gave you an interest in the profession ?
So I started my career off in a smaller town and I did seven years there and ended up running into my current boss , who is also the current sheriff , and I loved his leadership from the beginning . From the first time I talked to him and he was on patrol and I didn't even realize he was the sheriff . I was like , oh hey , what up bro ?
And when it dawned on me that he was a sheriff was after the conversation . I realized , wow , I did not know he was the sheriff for the entire conversation . So I started talking to him back and forth , ended up coming down here and going through the motions and eventually he had a vacancy at the undershare spot .
I felt that I was the person for the job and I've been in this role since 2020 of October , october of 2020 . That's how I ended up down here in Eureka and I've been here , for I will be going on five years in April .
Well , and that's a very unconventional way to become undershare right and I think that is telling with Sheriff Jesse Watts is who you work for of seeing a talent , seeing someone with leadership ability that maybe they didn't have the 25 , 30 years in law enforcement or they weren't a police chief somewhere or whatever silly authority thing we think is leadership .
He just saw a leader . He didn't care what the rank was I don't know what rank you were when he saw you but he didn't care the rank . He just said this guy would be a great undershare . Now all of the gurus would say , oh no . Now , tyler , you got to work your way up the ranks and you got to do your time this old military nonsense .
But you have proven , proved positive , that leadership has nothing to do with ranks . It's got nothing to do with . It's got everything to do with the abilities and skills to lead , regardless of where you come from . That's why I always say everybody's a leader , I don't care what rank you have , ranks got nothing to do with leadership . And so you were .
You were thrust into an undershare of role , an upper level executive commander role . Kind of tell us how that was and what you thought it would be and what it ended up being .
Yeah so I talked with the wife . We thought it was a good move at the time . A little girl who was just over one and currently beat the schedule to begin with .
But the more I did the job , I realized , like the administration part of things , I think , is where a lot of people think oh , you got right through the ranks to learn the administration side of things .
Well , yeah , that does help , but you learn as you go and I've really had a hone in on calling the experts and calling people who have been in leadership roles for a long time to ask for advice , and a lot of it is learning to fail forward , and what I mean by that is , yeah , I've screwed up in this position , but you have to learn from those screw ups
and really , as long as people don't die and you don't really get sued , what are you to lose ? Obviously , if you lose your job , then you really screwed up . But if you have a boss who supports you failing , that's where you're really gonna learn and that's how we can create these leaders is getting them to understand that they're gonna make mistakes .
Learn from the mistakes and grow from them .
That's so important to have a leader that you work for that understands we're all human . Human performance plays a role . Many of these things that occur in law enforcement are sort of first time events for a lot of people . It's such an unknown profession . It's a profession that attracts controversy from a whole host of different people .
But to work for somebody that acknowledges , hey , we don't expect you to be perfect , we used to expect you to learn , and learn from mistakes . Right , don't do mistakes twice .
That is so important , because the opposite of that is a leader that thinks they're always right , the things that they know more than everybody else , and that is a recipe for abject disasters , or not .
Well , 100% you can't as a leader .
If you think you know everything and you act like you know everything , then people are going to treat you as if you do know everything , and that's where you're gonna alienate people within your office or your agency , or even just the line level the other guys out on patrol or detective agency or division rather and so you can't . Just no one knows everything .
And that's where people get themselves in trouble because they've been in law enforcement for X amount of years , they've been in their role for X amount of years , and then they get comfortable and they stop learning , but yet they still think that they know everything .
And that's what I love about what you and Jesse have pulled together there . And I have to think that this recruiting and retention issue is we're saying it's a global crisis , it's a nationwide crisis in law enforcement , recruiting , but what I've been saying for years is no , it's not , it's a leadership crisis . People will work for leaders .
I don't care what that job is Digging ditches , police work , fire , whatever it is If you're a true leader over that organization or over that job , people are attracted to leaders . That's just since the Bible I read . That's exactly what it is .
The people are attracted to leaders and , of course , the greatest leader of our times , jesus Christ , they were attracted to him . And it's the same today . If you're a leader , people wanna be around leaders .
And so when you hear about the recruiting issues and retention issues and I'll just describe to folks Tyler , where you're at I mean you're kinda in the middle of nowhere . I think Walmart was an hour and a half away . I think you got one restaurant Probably . The economy probably isn't as great there as it is maybe down in Las Vegas area .
So you gotta convince people to come up in the middle of nowhere in a beautiful area , but it's not exactly convenient for people . You would think that that goes against everything that recruiting stands for . Come to our city . It's beautiful , and look at this and look at the pain . Here's the bonus money . That's what everybody's trying to do , right ?
But how's your recruiting going knowing that you and Jesse are two of the two duo leaders some of the best leaders I know in this profession how's your recruiting going there ?
You know , of course we have vacancies and of course we are accepting applications and obviously laterals get put through a faster track .
But you know we do see a lot of applications coming through and a lot of them are from out of state who have seen I'm not as vocal on social media and active as Sheriff Watts is , but a lot of the applications that I have received from out of state have been from East Coast , some from one of the Dakotas I don't quite remember , but they apply here because
they're seeing what Jesse is standing up for , not what he's putting out about the department , not the patrol statistics or you know a number of detective cases we've solved . It's what Jesse is standing up for and how he's standing up for it that people are attracted to and then , as you described , that's , they're coming for his leadership .
They're not coming because we have a Walmart in about an hour a half away , in one restaurant in town .
¶ Why Eureka
Yeah , I didn't know if that was true , I just trying to go off memory . I didn't have a lot of places to eat last time I was up there .
Yeah , what Walmart is ? An hour and a half away at the very moment . We did actually just have one of our gas stations restaurants actually burned down Couple months ago and he actually just bought a different one and reopened it . So we do now have two restaurants , a coffee shop , the .
We only only have , I think , 77 hotel rooms between hotels and air BMVs .
Well , I would say this , tyler , because you put me up in a room every time I come there you do not have any five-star hotels . I will tell you that .
No , I would say they are about three point . Oh , you're giving them that much credit , okay , okay , but that's what makes it so unique is that this conference is being held somewhere where you don't have five-star hotels , you don't have casinos , you don't have the live entertainment other than what you see out your hotel window on occasion .
Well , to do the job that you and Jesse do , you can go two different directions , right . You can buy off on the narrative . You can get in line with what the deal J says and get in line with all the reform movements and do all this stuff that is not proven to work . You can look at the state of law enforcement today . You can look at crime today .
You look at you everything it hasn't worked . It's made things worse . Everybody knows that . That has any brain cells left . You can go that route and that's a pretty successful route for a resume , but you're never gonna make , you never gonna change anything . You're never gonna impact people . You're never gonna have people want to come work for you , right ?
You guys went the other route . You said listen , everyone's talking about we want guardians only . And you guys have said Now we need law enforcement professionals . Call them what you want guardians , warriors , whatever .
We're out here trying to make things safer for our community and , oddly enough , when you take that stance , which was a stance all law enforcement had up until about I don't know eight years ago , people will go across the country to work in that environment , will they not ?
Oh , they will and , as you're aware , people don't leave bad jobs , they leave bad bosses or bad leaders .
Yeah , it's so accurate , man , and I love the Although it's a small case study , right , but that's what I've been saying . You guys throwing out all the bonus money and you're lowering standards and you're doing tick-tock video . Go have at it , but no one's gonna work for anybody . That's not a leader .
You know they may be forced to at some point If , but no one's gonna take a job in an organization when they can see the cowardice and leadership . And you guys have broke the mold there where no one should ever .
I'm not trying to offend Eureka I love Eureka but I'm saying you're competing against Las Vegas Metro and you're competing against Los Angeles and these cities that have everything to offer for a police officer , but many of them are choosing you because leadership trumps all of that , does it not ?
oh , it does , and you know , we have let you know 17th Street like see , it's not attractive for people to want to come here , and it in families .
It's hard on families because you know it's you really have to hone in on the community activities In order to fill a part of the community and if you don't do that and you're always leaving town to go to these bigger towns . That's what makes it hard here .
And yet we're still seeing people wanting to come work for us because of I would say mostly because of sheriff Watts being out on the platform . That that , you know , being visible is what's helping our recruiting .
So this leadership conference I don't know if you've got a particular name for it . All I know is Half a little years ago , you asked me to come up there and teach and I get up there and I see the lineup and I see what , what happened that week ?
And I thought , of course it's in an awesome venue you , I don't know if it's still at the opera house , but it's awesome venue , so unique . And I thought this is this is one of the greatest weeks of all year for me and but you know , but you are sort of the the brainchild behind it . What got ? What got you lit up to go ? We need to do this here .
Yeah . So sheriff Watts promoted me in October and then , in November of 2020 , I went to a sheriff's and chief conference where I heard Paul Butler speak and Within five minutes I was .
I knew that I Came to an agency that was there's only like four of us working here , and so we I knew instantly I needed to bring someone into , rejuvenate people , get people ignited , like we can , let's do this job . There may be four of us , but we're gonna do this job and we're gonna do it as best as we can . And Then it turned into well .
There's a lot of county leadership here that I think would Appreciate this message and could learn from this message . And then it turned into well , if I'm gonna invite the county , I might as well make you know an event and see if I can draw people to Eureka as part of a recruiting effort in a way .
And then you , after sitting down and eating lunch with Paul that same day , sheriff Watson , we were like , wow , why don't we try and make a conference out of this ? And I started reaching out to people .
You were obviously part of the first year , and ever since then , I've been able to find people that are willing to come travel to this area to speak on leadership because they're passionate about it .
And those are the people I want to bring , because if we're going to try and grow leaders within our agencies , our areas , we get a passionate people teaching about it .
Well , I love the idea that you're sharing it right .
It'd be one thing for a department to say we need to build the leadership up in our agency and we're going to bring a couple of speakers in for our agency , but you have opened this up for free for anybody in the country to come to kind of tell us your idea behind it , because it takes a significant amount of budget .
I mean , I see your speaker line up . I mean I know what I cost , but the other guys are costing more . I can guarantee you that I see your speaker line up and I'm like this is an expensive venture . You know , in the middle of Eureka , hotel rooms and speaker fees , you're probably providing a few meals here and there .
I know you're going to be providing my meal when I'm there . You're going to take me out to that . I don't know if you have a stake place , we'll figure one out . Maybe it's Jesse's backyard , but you're .
I mean it's a huge commitment , tyler , and obviously you had support for that , but this is probably a year long process for these resources and for this planning , is it not ?
Yeah , and I've gotten ahead of myself . I planned 2023 and 2022 because I was going to be gone at the National Academy for the first four or 10 weeks , actually first 10 weeks of 2023 . I would get back right before the conference , so I had to have everything buttoned up , and so it does take about a year .
Really , the issue is finding speakers and I don't want to say interviewing them , but kind of figuring out what they are , what they are and what they can bring to the table and how I can fit them in and what day , you know , are they good for a first day or are they good for , you know , the last day ? What's their message ?
The reason why I made it free is the first year I charged people and I didn't see a turnout of Nevada agencies . I was like , well , this is free in Nevada , why aren't Nevada agencies sending people here ? So then the next year I had it for free and charged for online , because that was significantly harder to try and produce this for people to watch .
And eventually it just was like I'm never going to make money on this unless I'm charging 13 , 14 , you know , maybe $1,500 a seat , and that's not my goal . My goal is I want line level guys or sergeants or lieutenants in some agencies .
I want them to be able to go to their command staff and say , hey , I want to go to this training and it costs nothing , but maybe travel and hotel and maybe some people take some time off so it doesn't even cost the agency anything .
I'm trying to take it out of the hands of the chiefs , the sheriffs that are penny pinchers , that don't want to send their line level guys to high level executive training .
I'm trying to take that excuse out that they don't have money , because if they're not spending any money to send someone to this training but the return on an investment is tenfold , what's their use now ?
Yeah , so tell us about this year , tell us the dates , tell us who you have coming and how can people get ahold of you to get there .
So you can reach out to me . Is it cool if I give my phone number out on here ?
Yeah , give it out . I'll put in the show notes as well .
Okay , you , 775-374-1539 . Feel free , text message is best right now . I am at home with a newborn , so answering calls and text messages are sporadic . But , yep , feel free to shoot me a text message . My email is T-T-H-O-M-A-S at EurekaCountt-N-Vgov . Or send me an email and I'll get you registered .
It's again , 100% free and that's the best way people can get ahold of me .
Yeah , just a minute , tyler , I forgot about the little baby at home , so we're not going to give you information . I'll edit this out . So let me just cut him in at the cut here and I'm going to say all right , tyler , we're going to talk about the conference .
While we talk about it , I'll just let everybody know in the show notes we're going to have Tyler's contact information on how to reach him to go to this conference for free . Let's talk about , tyler , the lineup you have , because it's very impressive . I'm looking forward to it myself . Who do you have ?
Tell us when the dates are and who's coming in , and what are you looking forward to .
So it starts April 15th , which is a Monday , and it rolls through that Thursday , which is April 18th . On Monday we have Randy Sun and a good friend of his , Bob Bemis . He's their partners in a company organization called the Wounded Blue . Yep excellent and you know , if you haven't interviewed him , definitely reach out to him . It's a great organization .
No , I've known Randy for years . We're on a show regularly weekly together . Just a good dude and he's a phenomenal speaker , so he's going to be fantastic .
Yeah , and then on the next day we have Tom Rizzo , which a lot of people . He taught for Street Cop and that's where his name became popular .
He has actually never been to Nevada , so we will be the first agency in Nevada to host him , which I feel pretty honored , because you know , we're competing in Vegas and Reno and he has elected to come to the middle of nowhere .
Yeah , Tom's got that . Tom's got that ivory tire program . Very , very good stuff and I think he's going to be bringing in that's day two . You say is Tom , is Tom right ?
Yeah , yeah .
So he's going to be teaching half day , and actually he was going to teach a full day , but the sheriff came back and told me that he met a guy at the cops conference that absolutely needs to come , and he does not care how much you're cost to bring him , and so on the second half of the second day I'm bringing in a guy that I have recently been in
contact with for about a year now is John Kelly . He's from Florida . He has his organization . Sometimes heroes need help too . I think his message is going to fit in this weekend , and that's why I'm bringing him on the second day as well .
Nope , I've met John . I know John . I've interviewed with John and he's going to own as a law enforcement life coach and he will bring it . I'm just glad you didn't cut my day , you cut Tom's day . Let's get to Thursday .
Thursday is going to be Sheriff Wayne Ivey . Everyone obviously , I'm sure , knows him from Florida .
He was actually the first speaker that was a confirmed speaker for this event this year and honestly , I was so shocked I put out a feeler through my NA graduates that I was with and he called me withina day of me asking if anyone could get a hold of him for me and so instantly I knew I needed to bring him because his leadership , he's passionate about it .
And then the best day is the last day , which is going to be you , travis .
Yeah , you got to say that You're on my show , but yeah , we'll do the courageous police leader on the last day . We've got a lot of new things in there since the last time I've been there . It'll be fun days All eight hours that day , is it not ?
It is all eight hours that day .
¶ Leadership Conference With Undersheriff Tyler Thomas
Yeah , I get contacted all the time about people go hey , I need to come to the class , you can come to the seminar and I've just been saying it's free in Eureka . Man , come to Eureka , you know . I want you to come to my area . Nope , get on a plane , we'll see you in Eureka . It's going to be a phenomenal week and I cannot tell people this .
Maybe people are listening that aren't in law enforcement . How special this is . Nobody's doing this . Tyler , you've been the FBI , na , you've been all . Nobody is putting conferences like this together . Now you may get your typical conference right , which is we drink half the time we gamble , the other half the time we play slots .
The other half the time we have maybe one big keynote speaker in the middle . But this is legitimate street cred leadership folks out there that are slinging it . They're going to be there and it's going to be like a fire hose man all week long , right ?
Yeah . So my goal is I don't want it to be like one of those drinking conferences and , yes , you will drink from a fire hose , but it's in a social network environment . So you're going to be teaching in an opera house and sitting in an opera house and it's not going to feel like a classroom .
You're not going to have a whiteboard unless someone needs a whiteboard and an easel , like Mr Butler does but you are there to learn from the instructors and the people that are sitting around you , and I'm trying to make it as interactive as possible .
If you're just joining us , we're speaking to Eureka County undersheriff Tyler Thomas . He is the picture perfect model of the power of one . One guy decides let's put this conference together every year . Incredible amount of work . Why aren't more people doing this , tyler ?
I mean no offense to my man , tyler , but why are you like the only guy I know out there that decides to do this ? What do you think is going on with that ?
Well , I think a lot of it has to do with risk . There's a lot of risk in this to put on an event every year . This will be the fourth year , but I'm putting it on every year and , uh , I'll take it , it'll be fine . I'm expecting the citizens of this county to see my expenditures in this and see no money coming back .
Now , with that being said , I do ask for donations of organizations around , and that's what does help fund this , but a large part of it does come out of our regular early budget that gets approved every year . So , in order for me to stand in front of the citizens , there's some risk there that , hey , I'm spending their money and I'm not charging people .
So what's the real return ? Well , the real return is the cops that are out on our streets that are acting like leaders , and the citizens can trust them . And we talked about this community-oriented policing . Well , I think the old model is old .
We have to have a new model , and everyone's a leader , I think can help with that , and that's the investment of this training .
I tend to agree with you , but there's also something you didn't mention you mentioned earlier , which is if you think you're the smartest person in the room , you would never have a conference like this right . But you clearly have indicated to our audience that man .
You reach out to experts , you reach out to other people just as he watched us the same to try to get better yourself , and that is the key ingredient to great leaders . The key ingredient to great leaders is a humble spirit that understands that you're just one person , but they need everybody else to help them with that leadership role .
And this week-long conference , this drink from a fire hose leadership conference that I can't I mean I can't wait to hear it . It's just an indicator of where you and Jesse are coming from . I can't thank you enough for doing it . It's going to be the best week of the year . I cannot encourage people enough to get to this conference .
Give them the date again , tyler , and then down to the show notes . We'll tell them how to contact you .
Yeah , just real quick , just thinking about it , you will be the second instructor that has spent all week with us and the first instructor . His name's Al Malinchek . He's retired . He's been retired for a very long time . He's spent all week with us the week that he came and taught .
And for a retired person who has over 30 years of law enforcement to walk out of this training to say that they've learned something and he was there taking notes , I think that says something about what kind of conference this is .
Well , and I'll tell you , John Kelly , I told him , john , I'm staying there all week , you're going to be there all week and he had some silly excuse , like he's some big high level speaker for some conference . He's got to travel . Whatever , john , john , I'll see you there all week and you'll love John , by the way . But yeah , man , it's fantastic .
It's going to be the highlight of my year . I can't wait for it . I appreciate the opportunity . I never discount that One day no one will want to listen to me , but I certainly appreciate folks like yourself and Jesse that bring me up . And Tyler , I can't thank you enough . You're an inspiration .
I know maybe in the terms of some people listening , you're young in the career 11 years in under sheriff but that is where we get better . That is where we improve is leaders like this that are at levels not only with leadership , but they have the authority to do the right thing , to impact so many people in such a positive way .
And this conference just exasperates that . I mean it's going to be exponential at the impact your agency's having , even though maybe you don't have as many officers as other people . This conference really elevates that . I can't thank you enough for doing it . I can't thank you enough for being here on the show .
You're welcome in those dates Again , on April 15th to the 18th , completely free . Yes , it's kind of geared towards law enforcement , but it's open to the community , it's open to citizens . I don't care if you're a bagger at Walmart , you can be a leader in Walmart .
Okay , you're right , it doesn't matter where you're at . We need leadership all throughout our society . Those of you that are listening , I certainly appreciate it . I'm not sure how many listened to the end . Maybe you get to the good stuff and you leave , but it's been good all the way through . But I'm going to .
I'm going to show you my appreciation for listening to the end . If you're listening to this right now , if you will go to wherever you're listening to this podcast , leave a review . Here's a hint it has to be a pretty good review for me to pay attention to it . Leave a review on the podcast , take a screenshot of that podcast and contact me .
Where do you contact me at ? Go to TravisYHorg , hit the contact button and send me the copy of the review . Who you are , where you work
¶ How You Can Attend
for . I'm going to take those applications for the next four weeks . So the date this podcast drops , you'll have four weeks to do that . I'm going to pick one person out of that to fly you to Eureka Nevada . I'll buy your plane ticket to come to Eureka Nevada to this conference . So you have to do some work on your end , right ?
You don't have to do what I just said . You'll have to get permission to come , or you have to take vacation to come and then you'll probably have to get a place to stay . I'm not going to pay with a hotel , but I will play for the plane ticket , and hotels are cheap there . I don't want to scare anybody . It's very cheap there at this 3.8 star hotel .
It's a pretty good little place to be . But you tell me what your airfare is , I'll send you the money and I'll see you in Eureka , nevada , in April . So thank you for listening and just remember , lead on and stay courageous . Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates . We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www . travisyates .
org .