In this podcast bonus episode, Adam and Christopher host a discussion with the General Fraternity’s 2018 class of leadership consultants. Adam, a part of that class, joins Gabe Castro (Jacksonville) and Tre Nelson (Northwestern State), with Christopher serving as moderator, to talk about their experience, takeaways, and why others should consider the opportunity to work for the Fraternity after graduation.
The Gavel Podcast is the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc. and is dedicated to keeping you updated on the operations of the Legion of Honor and connecting you to stories from our brotherhood.
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The Gavel Podcast - Ep 26 Bonus - Consultant Class of 2018 with Tre Nelson (Northwestern State) and Gabe Castro (Jacksonville
[Intro Music]
0:00:40.3 Adam Girtz: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The Gavel Podcast. I'm Adam.
0:00:46.0 Christopher Brenton: And I'm Christopher.
0:00:47.3 Adam Girtz: The Gavel podcast is the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and it's a show dedicated to keeping you updated on the operations of the Legion of Honor, and connecting you to the stories from our brotherhood.
0:00:57.5 Christopher Brenton: To find out more from the fraternity, you can always check out our website at sigmanu.org. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at @SigmaNuHQ or by searching for Sigma Nu Fraternity.
0:01:08.5 Adam Girtz: Cool. Alright, Christopher. It's a little crowded in our recording booth today. There's a lot of men in here. I don't know what's going on.
0:01:20.1 Christopher Brenton: Well, yeah, so we've got a pretty cool episode for our listeners this week. We're doing something different, which is a fun way to start off the new year, kind of bringing some new energy to the podcast. But Adam and I, for a long time have been wanting to bring together a group of current and former staff to be able to have a conversation around the leadership consulting experience. And so we're fortunate enough that we've assembled Adam's consultant class to kind of sit for a short interview to talk about their experience. And so we have two awesome guys, who are joining us for the podcast today, who I'll give them the chance to introduce themselves in a minute. But Gabe Castro and Tre Nelson. They, along with Adam, were a part of our 2018 consultant class.
0:02:16.2 Christopher Brenton: And so the three of them are going to have the opportunity to be grilled by me as we talk a little bit more about their experience, what they liked, what they didn't like. I assume that will be a very short list. But most importantly, why we would encourage others to join the staff as well, or to consider the opportunity to be a part of the consultant experience as well. So without further ado, Gabe and Tre, Adam and I have a tradition for our guests who come on the Gavel podcast to do a kind of a quick Sigma Nu story, if you will. So for the listeners, if you wouldn't mind, your name, your chapter designation, and institution. And then if you want to do a brief description of what you do, and then also... Maybe actually let's do that first, what you do, and then we'll get into after that, what's your Sigma Nu story? What brought you to Sigma Nu or like what... How were you convinced ultimately to join and to be a part of this experience?
0:03:20.8 Gabe Castro: Yeah.
0:03:22.1 Christopher Brenton: So Gabe, if you want to start off first.
0:03:24.8 Adam Girtz: Yeah. Gabe.
0:03:25.5 Gabe Castro: Yeah, I'll go ahead and start. So hi everyone. My name is Gabe Castro. I am a part of the Kappa Theta Chapter over at Jacksonville University at Jacksonville, Florida. I currently serve as a building coordinator for a residential life team, working for my alma mater, finishing up my master's degree here in the summer. And my Sigma Nu story, I'll keep it short because it is a little bit long winded, but I wasn't really interested in Greek life, my freshman year, but I was looking for that sense of community. And a couple of the guys that I met through intermurals and such, I was a freak athlete in college [chuckle], so playing all those games and stuff. And ultimately it was kind of like the people that I bonded the most and I really saw the sense of brotherhood with the Sigma Nu chapter in Jacksonville University. So after that I rushed and it was the best three years of my life, wouldn't change a thing.
0:04:23.7 Christopher Brenton: That's awesome.
0:04:23.7 Adam Girtz: Cool.
0:04:24.3 Christopher Brenton: Tre.
0:04:25.0 Adam Girtz: Glad to hear Gabe.
0:04:26.1 Christopher Brenton: You're up next.
0:04:26.3 Adam Girtz: Tre. Let's hear it.
0:04:27.3 Tre Nelson: That is super awesome. Hey everybody, I'm Tre Nelson. I am a member of the Mu Rho Chapter at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. I'm from Baton Rouge, Louisiana originally, and I live here in Baton Rouge now, and I'm the director of Economic Development and Community Initiative for Oxford Health, which is a hospital system here in the state. And similar to Gabe, I was not originally interested in joining a fraternity. I've seen movies about fraternities growing up, but neither my parents were Greek.
0:05:04.0 Tre Nelson: And whenever I came to Northwestern State, I had a chance to meet a lot of the guys who were in Sigma Nu, and I really saw some of the opportunities that the organization had and really just that sense of brotherhood. I've never had a very close knit group of guy friends. And even beyond, like just the guys in the organization, the orbit of people that were around Sigma Nu were just phenomenal. Like Gabe said, I mean, it was like some of the best years of my life being in the chapter. Then obviously with consulting later on. I've loved every aspect of my Sigma Nu experience.
0:05:41.5 Christopher Brenton: That's awesome. Well, Adam, not to let you off the hook since you are also being technically interviewed, and I think it has been a while since you have kind of talked about your own experience. Adam, why don't you kind of run through the Quick Sigma Nu story intro for us as well?
0:05:58.8 Adam Girtz: Cool. Yeah, would love to. So I do think it's interesting and Gabe and Tre and I have probably talked about this at the carriage house late at night or at McAdoo or something like that. But I do think it's kind of cool that the three of us, you both, all three, really did not go into college planning on joining a fraternity. Because I'm largely the same way. I had never considered it. And you didn't see that as part of my future vision for myself, but ended up making really good friends with the guy who ended up being my big brother at an on-campus job that we worked at.
0:06:39.0 Adam Girtz: So we spent all night... Whenever we were both on shift, screwing around and cracking jokes and just making each other laugh hard enough to have to mute ourselves on the campus call line that we were doing. because one of us was pulling a prank on the other one or whatever. And from there, that was my freshman year. And then in the spring of that freshman year, started hanging out with his friends who then from there made me realize, oh, all these guys have one thing in common, and that's they're part of this fraternity called Sigma Nu. And so I ended up going through the recruitment process the fall of my sophomore year then. But I always kind of like to say I didn't join a fraternity. I joined Sigma Nu. I didn't go out to other groups because I wasn't interested in the fraternity experience.
0:07:32.7 Adam Girtz: I was just interested in this group of people that I had connected with so well, and from there kind of grew to love the fraternity for what it represents and for the values it holds and for the mission that it has. And then the opportunities there, whether it's you're serving as a recruitment chairman or a commander or living at the house or bonding with alumni, bonding with potential new members, and really kind of building that community. And then the opportunity to join staff and join a new brotherhood as well beyond my home chapter. All kind of fell in line for me as far as where I wanted to see myself and the people around me. So definitely, for me it was, yeah, I joined. I didn't join a fraternity. I joined Sigma Nu. So I would say that's my story up until joining staff.
0:08:32.0 Christopher Brenton: That's awesome. Thanks for indulging me on that.
0:08:34.9 Adam Girtz: Of course.
0:08:35.6 Christopher Brenton: Well, listeners, so we just kind of talked about this, but we wanted to have the opportunity to have past staff members on to do kind of a little bit of a mini reunion but then also an opportunity to kind of celebrate the experience of what is unique to the men who have joined the staff, our staff family, and have worked for the fraternity. It really is kind of a fraternity within a fraternity. And so we want to celebrate that. But then we also want to be a little bit truthful. This is a promo. We are trying to help individuals, I think, who might be thinking about the Sigma Nu experience, working for the fraternity after graduation, or who have never considered it, to actually give it some thought, because we do have a job application deadline coming up. We are looking to attract prospective applicants to consider coming to work for our team.
0:09:41.5 Christopher Brenton: And so we wanted to put together this episode just to shed a little bit of light or shine a light on what is we all think an amazing experience. And so this gives us the opportunity to dive into that a little bit. And maybe for some who have never thought about this, it's your first look into what you might experience if you give it a shot. So I'm going to be serving as the MC for this experience. I, of course have my own Sigma Nu, leadership consulting experience at a class that I joined with. And perhaps we'll save that for another one of these in the future. But for now, I'll be walking these three guys through a set list of questions and hopefully some eye-opening opportunities for prospective listeners to learn a little bit more about what is we think a pretty cool job opportunity. So, without further ado, I want the first question to really set the stage for what I assume is a huge hurdle for people who are thinking about Sigma Nu as a job opportunity.
0:10:49.4 Christopher Brenton: And that's the fact that when you come to college, your career counselor, maybe even your high school career counselor at no point did they ever introduce to you the opportunity to work for your fraternity. That wasn't a box that you could check of something that you were interested in. There was no pre leadership consultant track, to your college curriculum. But of course, all of us kind of ended up here. But I imagine whether we were pre-med, we were business majors, we were communications majors, what have you, there was kind of that first moment that Sigma Nu kind of ended up on our radar and then ultimately led to our decision to apply to come and work for the fraternity. And so I kind of want to start there, for the three of you what was that moment? And ultimately why did you end up applying?
0:11:43.3 Adam Girtz: Gabe. Now, let's keep the order man. Gabe. Yeah.
0:11:51.1 Gabe Castro: Yeah. So like Christopher said, I mean, it was never on my radar. It was never anything that I even knew I could do, right? But my past leadership consultant Rob Grabowski, shout out Rob. He would, it was around the time where, around this time the journal fraternity was looking for applicants. And I was doing my journal consultation right with my leadership consultant. And he was just kind of like asking questions about like, hey, like what are your plans after graduation? What are you looking to do?
0:12:25.5 Gabe Castro: And I just kept, I was very blunt with him. I was like, I really don't know what I'm doing. I'm applying, but nothing seems to be falling through cracks. And so he just, he ran through the application with me, he helped me through all of it. So I gotta give a huge props to him. And so that's kind of how I did it. It was a little bit of a recruiter type deal where he reached out to me, said, "Hey, I think you would be a great fit for the role." And he was right. I mean, I did it for two years and I loved my experience. So yeah, that was kind of a little bit of how I ended up being a consultant for Sigma Nu.
0:13:03.4 Tre Nelson: Yeah. And I would say my experience was similar to Gabe's where Evan Weinberger, who eventually... He was my consultant and then I worked with him, and then he became my boss as well at Sigma Nu, a very awesome kind of arch there. But Evan came down and I thought Evan was a really, really awesome guy, and I got to see the work that he was doing and that interests me. And yeah, I think when you're in school, even if you're all on a very specific track, you don't always know what you're interested in doing for the rest of your life, or at least the next couple years after you graduate. And I was really just trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life across the board. And I also wanted the experience of just experiencing something outside of my state that I had been in, just growing up in Baton Rouge and going to school in North Louisiana. I wanted to travel, I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to meet new people, and I wanted to experience that, an extent of the brotherhood.
0:14:14.9 Adam Girtz: Well, funny because, yeah, we are so similar in that way. And I do think there is something to be said about that recruiter model, right? A lot of the times, and I would hazard to bet that if we asked across the entire staff team, this same question, we'd get a lot of that same answer. That a current leadership consultant put them onto the idea and talked to them about it. And having that connection there is really huge. Mine was the same. I met with Tyler Richter while I was serving as recruitment chairman. And that was my first introduction to the fact that that person existed within the fraternity. Again, because like both of us, or all three of us here, both of you, I didn't really ever even consider the fact that I was joining a national fraternity that had structure outside of, hey, you're just a chapter that has letters that... Maybe there is some organization out there for it, or somebody owns the rights to that that allow us to call ourselves that.
0:15:19.5 Adam Girtz: And I guess I understood that in a nebulous way, but that was my first realization that, oh yes, like there is actually a support structure system here. There is an entire group of people that are dedicated to building up these chapters that they've started. And I know that that's not... Having worked for the fraternity now since graduating, I've realized that we are definitely in that top tier when it comes to building and providing that support structure. That that's not something that every organization has, is able to do. So that was my first introduction to it. And got a really great first impression with Tyler Richter, who is still on staff. So if anybody's... That name it sounds familiar to you, that's telling on yourself because he's our risk reduction director and if you know his name, that means that your chapter has heard from him probably or that you were a Midwest chapter that he visited.
0:16:24.5 Adam Girtz: But anyway, so Tyler, and then Mark Gockowski was our second consultant and worked with him while I was commander and that's where it got more serious, like, "Oh, this is potentially something that I would want to do as a job when I get out of school." And then same, as with Tre, I grew up... I went to the same high school in Minnesota, K through 12 and graduated from there and went to college about three hours away. Even further North, I guess. So really, my big thing was like... I not only do I want to, but I need to get out and experience new places outside of the Midwest, because the US especially Midwest, it's a very culturally homogenous place to grow up.
0:17:09.5 Adam Girtz: So you know, it is really cool to get out and meet all these guys from different states and hear and absorb different accents and all that stuff. That and just different life experiences. We'll get into this later, but probably one notable memory for me was Tre making gumbo for us when we were on staff. Man, that was so cool. And it's like those are the types of experiences that you don't get to have unless you work in a place where people are coming from literally every corner of the country to come join staff. So that was really attractive to me for that. And then, really then it was just timing starting to line up. I'm a big believer in going with your gut and when it feels right, it's probably right type of thing.
0:18:00.4 Adam Girtz: And starting to see the things line up where my long-term girlfriend at the time, now wife, she was going to be technically graduating, but going into a year long program in Des Moines where we live now. And she was going to be doing pretty rigorous coursework and then work on top of that. And then for me to be able to go and travel for a little while, kind of lined up there. I wouldn't be there distracting her from her studies and it would be easier for her to not miss me as much while I'm on the road cause she has something to preoccupy herself with in becoming the person she is today there. So that stuff started to line up. And then, yeah, just the travel and the experience of being able to kind of pick where I wanted to go.
0:18:51.6 Adam Girtz: And on top of that, I was a business management major, but in my mind I never really went into that major with the expectation that I was going to own and run my own business. It wasn't really something that I was dead set on doing, which I know some people do when they pick that major. So for me, it was also a calculation of, hey, I get to manage a region that is multi-state region of what is really a franchise of businesses. And, Tre, I know you and I have talked about this, definitely as far as work experience goes, that being able to have that experience on your resume is really cool. But then being able to talk about what that experience gave you is so easy to do because there's so much there. And I guess we'll get into that. But, yeah.
0:19:45.7 Adam Girtz: So I think that is kind of a telling thing as far as us going through more of these interviews in the future. I'd be interested to see who else also had that same story of, yeah, a current leadership consultant, a relationship with them, you spawn that. That's the same thing that happens when you join the fraternity in general, right? My joining story, and it sounds like a lot of you guys as well, was kind of that NIC five-step model to a T. You made the first connection. They introduced you to their friends and then to the concept of fraternity. And that is mirrored then in this. It's like you first make that connection and then you go from there to realize that, hey, I can join staff, and then all of a sudden, you're on staff. [laughter] But, yeah, I think it's kind of cool.
0:20:34.0 Christopher Brenton: Well, you're not wrong. I mean, I think... So I don't do this in my current role. When I was previously the director of chapter services and the associate director of leadership development, this is something that Scott, the current director of leadership development, and I talked about a lot, was just like that same concept of people join people. Almost every single person on our staff team knew, at that time, a current staff member. And you like that person. You're like, "Hey, this is a really cool guy. I want to go and work for a company that has men like him. Or if I had the opportunity to work alongside this dude, I could see him being a close friend."
0:21:17.5 Christopher Brenton: Which, flash forward, it ends up happening. You do become very close friends with these types of guys. And so I do think that's interesting. I do want to encourage, though, anyone who's listening who's like, "Hey, I don't know a current staff member. What you're saying on this podcast sounds awesome. It sounds like a really cool experience." I'll be your friend. [laughter] Let any one of us know that you're interested. We're happy to give you more information about it, but...
0:21:45.4 Adam Girtz: For sure.
0:21:47.3 Christopher Brenton: I think the important part about the relationship is that so many people come to college with kind of a pre-fixed idea of who they will be at the end of that four-year journey. Very few of us [chuckle] get to the end and are the exact person that we imagined ourselves to be.
0:22:10.5 Adam Girtz: Facts.
0:22:11.3 Christopher Brenton: And I think that it is really hard to kind of break from that vision that we have of ourselves. We are the doctor, we're the lawyer, we're the Wall Street broker. We're trying to, by force, get us to the end destination that we've chosen for ourselves. And then all of a sudden, it's like, "Well, can I take a derailment? Or can I afford a derailment? What if I go work for the fraternity? Does that mess up my end goals? How does this further my career?" I think that's a lot of... That resonates, I think, with a lot of people who have that concern of, "Hey, I don't know about this. This seems like a risk that I can't afford to take for the career that I want to have." And so I think that it's really exciting to kind of have, I think, three men on this episode who all represent very different career paths that have branched off of your Sig Nu experience.
0:23:18.4 Christopher Brenton: So we can kind of talk a little bit about when you came onto staff, who did you envision that you were going to be. In the case of Gabe and Tre, when you departed the team, where did you end up? And then also, how did the Sigma Nu experience propel you forward? Because even someone like Adam, who has chosen to remain on the team, and myself included, we can look back at that consulting experience and name specific challenges or obstacles that we overcame and then also kind of link how they transformed us into the professionals that we are. And maybe, Tre, to kind of start with you, I remember specifically I think your first week on staff, you were like, "I'm going to... " I think it was Wharton. You were like, "I'm going to... "
0:24:10.1 Tre Nelson: I think it was Wharton.
0:24:11.6 Christopher Brenton: "I'm going to the University of Pennsylvania. I'm going to go to the Wharton School of Business. They're one of the top-ranked MBA programs in the country. That's my dream." And now, you didn't go to Wharton, but you're crushing it in Louisiana, [laughter] in one of the major healthcare systems in the area, and you're crushing it. But I can't imagine this was necessarily the dream that you had for yourself at that point, or maybe a variation of it was. But you ended up kind of on a different career journey. So I kind of want to start with you. What vision did you have for yourself when you came on the team, where are you now, and kind of how did Sigma Nu maybe kind of assist with that?
0:24:57.0 Tre Nelson: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And I think you're a product of your environment around you, and then also your life ambitions are kind of based on what you know to just be reality. You don't know what you don't know. And I remember when I was in high school, I wanted to be an archeologist. That was the first job. I watched people in ancient Egypt and all the cartoons and everything and then did not once I was getting into college and everything. And I remember... Chris was right. I was very definitively going, "Hey, I want to go to the Wharton School of Business", [laughter] because I had met somebody from Wharton who was an investment banker. And Sigma Nu was so amazing for my aspirations about just what I wanted to do in life because you just meet so many people.
0:25:55.4 Tre Nelson: I to this day still do not think I've met an equivalent amount of people as the amount of people I met while I was working on Sigma Nu. because you're meeting the brothers in all the chapters, you're meeting the alumni, you're meeting people just at the universities, you're going to different events. Your network just grows so significantly. And I think that really shaped kind of my understanding of what I wanted to do in life and also what my skillsets were. I think when you're operating in college you're kind of operating in a vacuum, even if it's a great university, it's a great vacuum, you still are not always getting the full exposure of what industry can look like. And I grew up so much.
0:26:43.6 Tre Nelson: I actually was just telling somebody last week that I do not think I could operate the way that I do now and work if I had not worked for Sigma Nu because I learned so many just basic life skills, like making a budget, like how to properly interact with people in business settings, fine dining and etiquette. We talked to our staff about etiquette, how they eat at tables. And then even just small stuff. I remember Gabe and I used to go back and forth about what proper ways of growing your facial hair out looked like. Neither of us had beards whenever we were first consultants, and just those things that you feel you never had time in life to figure out. But I think Sigma Nu really put me on a foundation to where I could operate at my highest level capacity once I went into industry. And now, like you said, I'm in healthcare and it's great. Yeah. It's great.
0:27:48.1 Adam Girtz: Well, you get some...
0:27:51.2 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, imagine...
0:27:51.3 Adam Girtz: Good role models. Right?
0:27:51.9 Christopher Brenton: Oh, sorry.
0:27:53.0 Adam Girtz: You get so many good role models. Whether, like you said, the amount of people that you meet, whether it's guys that are on staff and meeting them or, yeah, meeting alumni. I know as consultants we get to go out there and meet all of these alumni that you never would've met half of these guys or 1% of these guys ever, unless you were on staff and doing that. But yeah, that's just what it makes me think of, Tre.
0:28:21.6 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. Well and Tre too. I think that I only have really a thin slice of your life now that I'm mostly viewing it through Instagram and other social media. But I can get the impression from your job that you're interacting with a ton of very different people. You are having probably to speak to one group of people very differently than another group. because you're talking to healthcare providers in one conversation, you turn the corner you're talking to, maybe like funders or community organizers who have a different set of skills and a different way interacting.
0:29:07.9 Christopher Brenton: And just, I think, from a Sigma Nu perspective, because this will be my experience, just the sheer quantity of people that you're meeting and just the actual differences that you're having to navigate from chapter to chapter, you're constantly having to switch up how you adapt to work with those groups. And it really requires, I think, the development of a skill for adaptation and being able to be a chameleon. So I see you really thriving in your job and I immediately connected to like, gosh, like that is... I bet Tre got a lot out of that opportunity to interact with a lot of people. because I know that was a personal benefit that I received as well.
0:29:49.3 Tre Nelson: Oh, yeah. Adaptability is huge. You said it best, like just every single chapter is different. Every part of your region is different. Even, yeah, I also heard the southeast in my first year and you might say, oh yeah, like Southeast. I'm sure every chapter probably has similar tropes, but completely different in every single way. And that adaptability absolutely plays out in my day-to-day with just all aspects of work. And it helps because it gives you a leg up also in the industry for people who don't know how to interact with different types of groups. And then you can also help other people learn how to navigate different circles where there might be different interests and even just different ways you have to talk to people. So yeah, you're spot on with that.
0:30:35.6 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. Gabe, how about yourself? How do you see Sigma Nu having propelled you forward in your career?
0:30:42.5 Gabe Castro: Yeah, absolutely. So I currently work for my alma mater, right, I work for Jacksonville University as a building coordinator. But the time that I departed staff was a rough one, just because that was right at the immediate start of COVID. So it was a time of uncertainty. I didn't really know what was going to happen. I don't know what it was going to do. Obviously, a lot of places weren't hiring, they were in freakout mode. But the current, or not the current, well, at the time the director of Residential Life, someone showed them my resume and saw my experience with Sigma Nu and higher education, and that was very appealing to them to the point where I basically didn't have to really interview. They just scheduled a call with me and they were like, "Hey, we want to offer to you because of your work in higher education with Sigma Nu that you've done."
0:31:31.0 Gabe Castro: But not only did Sigma Nu help a lot with my career and where I am right now, I'm very blessed. I work for the university I graduated in and they offer housing, meal plan, I'm saving a lot of money right now. But personally I feel a lot of the skills that I gained personally are sometimes overlooked by the career. And it really helped me grow out of my shell. At the time when I interviewed, I felt I was kind of like a social, anti-social, you know those? And so for the people listening to this podcast that feel like they are a little bit on the anti-social side, this is a great opportunity for you to learn those social skills. Like Tre mentioned, I learned a lot about how to navigate business settings, etiquette dinners, things like that. My vocabulary skyrocketed.
0:32:23.4 Gabe Castro: As someone who is from Puerto Rico, my main language is Spanish. Going there and talking to these alumni who are in the northeast, talking to people from Yale, Dartmouth, all those like Ivy League schools, it seemed a little bit intimidating at first. And so Sigma Nu really helped me get out of my shell, helped me with my confidence, helped me just, go out there and be like, yeah, I'm a Sigma Nu, you're a Sigma Nu, we can talk like this is normal. And just the level of connections and networking that I did when I was over there, it was just amazing. So big thanks to Sigma Nu because I am who I am because of the training that we received and just the interactions that I had.
0:33:10.8 Gabe Castro: Because not only are we... My class of 2018, we're all the same age, but then we're interacting with the CEO, Brad Beacham, who... You know what I mean? Then we're... You're talking to Scott, we're talking to Fred. You know what I mean? Like all these guys that have numerous years of Sigma Nu experience. But here we are in a room talking about our retreat and we just get to exchange all these awesome stories and share these memories. But we all share, again we share one thing in common, that's why we're all Sigma Nu. So, yeah. Big thanks to Sigma Nu, I am who I am personally and professionally due to the experience.
0:33:49.6 Adam Girtz: Gabe, I wanted to ask you something as well. So I know this to be true about a couple of other staff members, and I do, I recall you doing a little bit of this and I was just curious. But so one of the things that you had talked about like wanting to do, if not as a career, at least as a hobby was some coaching. And I know you spent some time visiting and connecting with athletic departments while you were on the road. That's right. Right?
0:34:22.5 Gabe Castro: Yeah.
0:34:23.0 Adam Girtz: I'm not confused.
0:34:24.0 Gabe Castro: Yeah, it is. It is. I should have been a little bit more driven to do so, but yeah. It's a great opportunity to network. I mean, you're going to all these different colleges and you're spending 1 to 3 days, sometimes even a week in a city. And I mean, the opportunities are endless. Whether you're going to the athletic department, you're going to the communications department, marketing department, wherever you're going. I mean, you are getting face-to-face interaction with individuals from these institutions that can put you wherever you want to go. So, I should have been a little bit more aggressive towards that, but I still had the opportunity to, see a practice session for Villanova before they won the national championship. Like that was really cool. We got to go to the big house, Adam and I.
0:35:11.7 Adam Girtz: Yeah, man.
0:35:14.4 Gabe Castro: Right. You remember that?
0:35:14.5 Adam Girtz: That was cool.
0:35:14.6 Gabe Castro: We were doing the expansion project over in Michigan. We got to go to the big house, and we got on the field, like people thought we were part of the team because we were in that bright yellow. [laughter] And so those experiences are awesome in that I don't think I'll ever find an experience like that in any other employment that I go to.
0:35:30.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah. You don't just get handed that anywhere else really right. Unless you're like a traveling sales rep or something like that. Like really, there's no other way. And you have this instant credibility as well, and the ability to go into these schools and take advantage of some of the things that are there. And that's why I brought that up specifically. Even if it was just a side project for you and it hasn't borne any fruit, still what a cool opportunity to be able to do some of those things that you wouldn't have been able to do, otherwise. And it's all over the place. I mean, if you're interested in it, I know some guys did open mics and they wanted to do some standup and did open mics while they were on the road in different cities. You get to kind of tour around like that. Yeah. So it really... It's endless.
0:36:18.3 Christopher Brenton: Oh, and Gabe too. I mean I completely resonate with what you're saying too about kind of coming out of your shell. I ended up taking classes. My degree from college was business administration with the concentration of marketing but at the time I thought it was going to be like advertising, and it was not. It was like, oh, this is a sales degree. You need to, you know, you do this because you are going into sales. And I was like, I'm not, I can't go into sales. It's like, I don't like talking to people. How can I go into sales? And then I was like, all right, well, if I'm going to do this professionally then I'm going to need to get better at talking to people. And so, [laughter] I almost looked to the fraternity as like, this is going to force me to grow.
0:37:04.1 Christopher Brenton: It's like I either I'm going to grow where I'm planted or I'm going to wilt on the vine. I just felt like... And I guess in full disclosure for people who don't know, the average consultant is going to have upwards of a thousand unique conversations a year with collegiate chapter officers, attendees at college of chapters, grand chapters, Sigma Nu Institutes, advisors, campus professionals. I mean, you meet with so many people. And so by the end of it, you're like, gosh, I have such a breadth and depth of different types of conversations that I've had, different regions, different topics. I just feel like I could come out of that experience and really be able to have a conversation with anyone to be able to relate to anyone. I felt like I was more empathetic as a professional, I could be more imaginative because I can envision different experiences because of all the different people that I met with. So Gabe, I'm right there with you on that.
0:38:21.0 Adam Girtz: And public speaking.
0:38:23.0 Christopher Brenton: Oh, yeah.
0:38:23.3 Adam Girtz: Speaking. Yeah. Not to mention speaking in front of... Getting tossed up in front of a chapter of 200 guys and sink or swim and you just, you learn how to do that and you get so comfortable with it. I realized doing college chapters a couple weeks ago, that part of my responsibilities given my new role was going to be to speak in front of the entire group of college or chapters participants and entice them to join our 1869 Club via Collegiate Giving Society. And I had the realization the night before everything started that, oh yeah, I'm going to have to do that tomorrow. And then it was like, "Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll be fine." It never once occurred to me to be worried or anxious about it. And if you had asked me to get up and speak in front of 300 people six years ago, I would've been like, "No way. Not if you pay me." [laughter]
0:39:21.5 Christopher Brenton: The hilarious thing is that our staff dreads that experience, that's terrifying. And yet any of our consultants who have to visit with Gamma Upsilon at Arkansas, or Epsilon Xi at Ole Miss, that's any lead session. because that's the average chapter size. [laughter]
0:39:37.1 Adam Girtz: Yep.
0:39:39.4 Christopher Brenton: Well, Adam, do you want to kind of round us out here?
0:39:41.9 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
0:39:42.5 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, I know you were in a unique position cause you didn't leave staff, but thinking about your leadership consulting experience and what you do now, knowing that it's very different, can you see connective tissue there?
0:39:54.2 Adam Girtz: For sure, yeah. And I'm glad that we have kind of that... I think that was part of the purpose of bringing on the guys that we did for this, is being able to see from the same starting point, all of these different, I won't say end points, but midpoints in our life experiences. So, Gabe and Tre took off and launched into the things that they're doing now. And I, from that same ending point of the consultant experience, decided to seek out a position and carve a place for myself on staff for a longer term. And in my experience, being on the road and being on the ground is one of the... because Gabe talked about, we all share this thing when you get on staff, we are all Sigma Nus and we have this starting point of being... You're comfortable with each other because we know that we share this, one similar experience at least, that common ground.
0:41:04.8 Adam Girtz: But even then, from there, knowing that I'm becoming a director in an organization where every single other person, whether they're higher or lower than me on the totem pole have been there for 30 plus years or just arrived the week before in June. That everyone has the same experience of going chapter to chapter, working directly with our students one-on-one and living the life on the road, that there's certain difficulties that are there and certain things that you experience that people wouldn't understand unless they've also done it. So, to know that our executive director Brad Beacham, I know that when I talk to him, he and I have a certain level of respect implicit in any conversation that we have. That he understands my experience and I understand part of his experience as well, having shared being on the road together.
0:42:15.0 Adam Girtz: Well, not together, but being on the road in that same way. So really that is a big thing. And what I think it does as well is it builds a sense of trust in an organization where we all know that we all depend on each other and we all support each other. And that support is that unconditional love of a parent. I know that no matter what happens, Fred Dobry's got me, because beyond being coworkers that are friends, right? I've had jobs where I would consider my coworkers some of my friends, but I've never had a job, up until Sigma Nu where I would consider my coworker my brother. And that is a... It's a deeper level of trust and commitment in an organization that is your livelihood that I think it provides a sense of security, to a certain point.
0:43:15.6 Adam Girtz: And it also provides a sense of, I know that if there's opportunities for me to develop myself, that my brothers on staff are going to help do that for me, even if it's beyond just constructive criticism on work that I'm doing. But all the way to like... Christopher, just reached out to me, and this is actually a good reminder, Christopher, we gotta talk about this more. But going to a conference, FCA, later on in the year and knowing that Christopher brought that opportunity to me because he wants to see me be a better version of myself. And that is a really neat thing to have in a workplace that I think is definitely unique. As far as experience related to what I'm doing now, I think there's another reason why we hire pretty much exclusively from within for the higher up positions within the organization. It's because the...
0:44:17.9 Adam Girtz: So I'm doing now like young alumni relations, alumni clubs, development and all this stuff. And so when I... For example when I call a prospective donor, I have so much more in terms of connections with them than any other cold call that you would have for fundraising ever. Right off the bat it's so easy to be like, "Hey, you're from Upsilon Upsilon chapter, well, I just worked with your commander for three days straight at our call to chapters, and he's a great guy. I learned this about him," and all of a sudden you have that instant credibility, right? So, I think that it's what we talk about when in recruitment. Our recruitment chairmen are selling, hey, this is a network that you're plugging into.
0:45:10.9 Adam Girtz: Like, yes, it is, but it's not free, right? It's effort spent and showing the shared commitment to the cause that we have, and then building the network off of shared purpose, right? I guess long-winded way of saying it's built in a way that you gain the experience you need to be successful wherever you're going to go because it just builds successful people like that. That's just what the program is designed to do. Being part of the consultant program. So, yeah, I would really say it's anywhere you want to go, or anywhere you find yourself, there are going to be relevant experiences that you've had. And you being on the road and doing... Living that life and doing the things that you do as a consultant.
0:46:08.5 Adam Girtz: It is instantly applicable to any field that you could potentially go into. I've had a conversation with a collegiate officer at a chapter and he said, "Oh yeah, after school I'm studying marine biology and I want to go join a group that's studying whales," or something like that. And it's like, "Well, yeah, join staff, join staff and you learn how to travel, learn how to manage your life on the road, living solo, connect with people. Then, at every school you go to, contact their marine biology department, start making those connections," and it's just so instantaneously relevant to literally anything that you would want to go do after it, and on top of that, it's fun.
0:47:00.7 Christopher Brenton: Yeah.
0:47:01.3 Adam Girtz: But hopefully I answered the question somewhere in there.
0:47:04.2 Christopher Brenton: No. Absolutely, and too again, for folks who are listening, this is just a thin slice of perspectives. We have had several staff just within the last 10 years who have gone to law school or are in PhD programs for psychology, are head men's basketball coaches at various colleges, are in sales, are in marketing, are just doing some really incredible, incredible opportunity, or they have fallen into some really incredible opportunities. I shouldn't say fallen, they have...
0:47:39.9 Adam Girtz: Earned. [laughter] Yeah.
0:47:41.5 Christopher Brenton: Earned truly some incredible opportunities based on their talent, their character. And I always love to believe that Sigma Nu was a part of that. But then I also hear feedback, past staff member, Alex Retzloff, who went to the University of Virginia for a law school, and he was telling me about not only did the obstacles that we've already talked about of learning to overcome them, prepare him for the challenges and the rigor of law school. But then also just the fact that he was two years or actually for him, because he was the Director of Expansion and Recruitment for a little while. The several years in between his undergraduate experience in law school, that maturity set him apart from his classmates who had gone straight through from undergrad, and that he was able to approach his course work with professional perspective that many of them lacked.
0:48:41.8 Christopher Brenton: And so that made him better prepared for the type of professional that he wanted to be, the type of law that he went to practice, and then how well he was prepared to do that once he was in the classroom or back in the classroom. Thanks guys for sharing your experience, and again, if you are listening and you're uncertain about how your career choice would apply to the Sigma Nu experience, you're trying to figure out, "Hey, what you're saying sounds really cool. I think I'm interested in that, but I'm uncertain." Please reach out and we'll provide all that information here at the end of that episode and then also in the show notes as well to kind of get you connected. So, our last major question that I have for everyone is a little bit lighter. Just talking about the experience itself, are there any favorite memories or a memory in particular that sticks out, that has really stuck with you from your time on staff? All right? Let's say within the consultant window.
0:49:45.7 Adam Girtz: All right. Number one, selling ice out of the back of a truck at Coachella with Tre. Number two, watching Anderson Paak come out as a surprise guest with Gabe at Coachella. Both of those are at Coachella, but those are two probably my favorite things. But represent the... And there's so many other trips that we did. DC, Indy, and we were all over the place. Hanging out with Gabe and Jesse at University of Michigan, getting to go and do all of these trips in the off-time with these guys was so incredible and would never have had the opportunity to do any of that without staff. So those are my quick ones to...
0:50:27.4 Christopher Brenton: Oh, and Adam, I guess really, to really quickly, let's put that in context because that's not job-related but...
0:50:33.6 Adam Girtz: No. [laughter]
0:50:33.8 Christopher Brenton: What you're describing is kind of like a tradition of our staff or has become kind of a tradition of a consultant class trip. That the guys will kind of end a semester, or end the year kind of doing a trip, and so for that particular one, a former staff member, Richie Silva, had connections at Coachella, was able to kind of get you out there.
0:51:00.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
0:51:00.3 Christopher Brenton: They were like, "What were you doing at Coachella? How does this have anything to do with Sigma Nu?" That's kind of the context.
0:51:04.9 Adam Girtz: Yes.
0:51:05.1 Gabe Castro: Yeah.
0:51:05.3 Tre Nelson: Recruitment.
[laughter]
0:51:07.3 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
0:51:07.9 Christopher Brenton: Yes.
0:51:08.5 Adam Girtz: Yeah. It's called market research, we're learning what the young kids are like these days.
0:51:15.7 Tre Nelson: Well, I would say...
0:51:16.5 Christopher Brenton: But it's an awesome opportunity. I'm glad that you get to do it and we get to highlight it. Because I highlight that because again, I think that speaks to the staff friendships too, that you work every day with these people and then you get to the end of the semester and you're like, "And now I want to go on vacation with them." [laughter]
0:51:33.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
0:51:33.9 Tre Nelson: Yeah. And you're really right about that. It's a mix of your experiences that are purely work related then your experiences that are a by product of the relationships you're building. I am literally never going to forget being in DC with everybody and watching the World Cup. I had never watched a World Cup ever really. And watching them while we were out there for our grand chapter and we had some off time after. And we stayed in DC for a few days, and were watching the World Cup at a restaurant while hanging out, and you're kind of picking up on these different social experiences. I will never forget Gabe and I going on our trips with the expansion team between Boca Raton.
0:52:17.8 Tre Nelson: And then also Arizona, very specifically had this one very vivid memory of Gabe and I, we're going around and meeting with different organizations to promote Sigma Nu and to try to get the word out. And we had just met with this really, really large sorority, it was 250 or 300 girls in there, very nerve-racking in the beginning, and we went out, gave the pitch, said, "Hey, if you know anybody here at the University of Arizona tell them about Signal Nu," etcetera. And we got out of the meeting and we go sit down in the student union, and we're looking at the Instagram account to see if we picked up any traction, and Instagram had a couple hundred followers from that meeting, and we looked at each other like, "Okay, we can do this." [laughter]
0:53:06.3 Christopher Brenton: Yeah.
0:53:07.1 Tre Nelson: So, going out and getting in front of people, like Adam talked about, we would have so many nights where even just fun stuff. Adam got a virtual reality headset and we would sit down and play it and just have that kind of bonding and that community sense, almost all of us at headquarters, but also gumbo. Making it one day like Scott and Chris and all the leaders, gave the consultants a little bit of space in our day to create a gumbo, lunch for the whole staff. And we spent three, four hours cooking gumbo, then we all ate it together. Just that kind of bonding I think is... You just don't always see that, especially in just different industries. And to know that I had that experience and also to know that you can connect with people on that kind of level even after college, it's just something that has really, I think made me who I am today and also impacted the way that I view relationships now.
0:54:10.6 Gabe Castro: Yeah, and then I'll say, as someone who came from a chapter that is relatively small, we didn't have a house, going and then moving to the carriage house and living with other Sigma Nu brothers it's like, wow, it's like my chapter away from my chapter, if that makes sense. And I consider these guys, Christopher, Adam and Tre, I consider you guys my friends, right? You were my coworkers at one point, but besides that, you guys are my friends, you guys are my brothers. So I think it's just... It goes to say that you go through the same ups and downs because we've all done the job, right? But I will say some of my personal favorite moments were definitely going to Coachella with the boys and then doing all these trips and stuff.
0:54:53.6 Gabe Castro: But also, I'll say on a more personal level, I was blessed enough to have the Northeast region. I was traveling to the Big Apple, New York, Philadelphia, DC, all these big cities, and I was able to go travel, get paid to go there. So I was going to Times Square, going to the Knicks game, going to the Celtics game and things like that. Those are some of my favorite experiences. And I got to learn to do a lot of things by myself, which I was really struggling to do. I was always somebody that needed to be within company, and then doing, getting out of my zone to do things on my own was fantastic.
0:55:29.1 Gabe Castro: And I'm very, very excited that I got to do what I did as a consultant because I am who I am because of that. But having that brotherhood outside of my chapter, it just doesn't get any better. Those days in the carriage house playing Nintendo Switch until two in the morning, just cracking jokes and stuff, and then going and then clocking in at 8:00 AM, you know what I mean? It just doesn't get any better than that. I don't know, it's just a group of like-minded people and I really wish that every single Sigma Nu brother listening to this or across the country would get the experience just to be a consultant for a day. because I kid you that they would want more, I promise you.
[overlapping conversation]
0:56:15.4 Christopher Brenton: Oh, sorry, Adam. I was going to say really quickly. I could distinctly remember my wife, who when I was dating her at the time, we were talking about getting dinner or something and I was like, "Oh, well, the guys are going... " For a full disclosure, I met my wife when she was at Washington and Lee for law school, when I was living in Lexington. Maybe a perk of coming to work you'll meet your future partner. But I was talking to her about what we were going to do for dinner. And I was like, "Hey, let's... Well, I think some of the guys are going to go to Macado's or Salerno or something palms after work," and she's like, "Do you never get tired of them?" And I was like, "I don't understand that question."
[laughter]
0:57:03.1 Adam Girtz: What's the question? No. Yeah, that's... And that's so funny. That's what I was going to say too, is it's like... Go ahead.
0:57:10.9 Christopher Brenton: It is a strange phenomenon of you literally sleep in the same house as these people. You go to work with these people, you work with them for the entire day. And when I say work, we don't have individual offices. Everybody is together.
0:57:28.6 Adam Girtz: Oh, yeah, it's a beautiful city.
0:57:29.4 Christopher Brenton: The house that people stay at, the carriage house is basically a bunk house, so it's not like you have a ton of privacy in this building either. So you were literally together in every sense of the word, for an entire day. And then your first thought is, how can I go and spend more time with these people? What activity are we doing? Where are we going for dinner? What are we doing after that? You are literally with these people for 24 hours out of the day, 24 out of 24 hours of the day, and you never get tired of them, and it is truly a phenomenon. And my wife still doesn't understand it.
0:58:09.6 Adam Girtz: No, that's funny, because that's what I had written down as a note, so I didn't forget what I was going to say, but I wrote down nine to five and five to nine. So you get up and we're all showering and shaving and doing our morning business together, going to grab breakfast, go over to the office, we're there, afterwards, we go and workout together. And then, it's go back to the house that we all share and figure out where we're going to spend the rest of our night together, right? That is such a cool part of it. And one thing I was going to mention too is a specific favorite memory. And I would love to hear Gabe and Tre's kind of perspective on this as well. But I remember driving with my car packed up to Lexington for the first time for day one of being on staff. And I just remember rolling down one of these big hills into Virginia and just being a ball of anxiety and just like, how am I going to do?
0:59:22.1 Adam Girtz: The work itself isn't what scares me. It's like, hey, I'm committing to moving to a new state and living with an entire group of new guys that I've never met. And what if they don't like me, what if I don't like them? What if this isn't what I wanted it to be? And then getting there and literally, it took not even one second. I think I felt welcome there before my foot even hit the pavement, getting out of the car. It was... Man, and I wish I remember who was the first guy that was right there, but it was probably like Rob. It was probably Rob Grabowski, honestly was still on staff. And Jesse and Richie and all these guys that were on staff just instantaneously it's like, "Hey, let me grab your bags. Here, we're meeting for dinner over here, so let's just drop your stuff inside and let's go."
1:00:16.3 Adam Girtz: And it's like, I instantly, I was like, oh, why was I ever worried about this? This is instantly a newfound family for me. And just feeling so welcome and so part of a group right away that... And there was no question whether I was going to fit in or not. It doesn't matter if you fit in or not, you're going to fit in. There's room and space for everybody. So just that memory of comfort right away of joining staff and being made to feel comfortable and welcome, I think is a very cool thing that I know doesn't happen at every place. There's definitely places that you would go work, and it's like, man, every day I'm anxious that if I step on the wrong toe all of a sudden I'm out of here, or something like that. There's a little bit of acceptance that is part of the staff team.
1:01:12.5 Tre Nelson: Yeah. And even with leaders too. I remember Chris was one of the first people that made me realize this. Okay, Chris is a leader in the organization. And then he's super down earth, we're eating pizza together at the pizza shop. And we're all hanging out. And same with Brad and Fred and Scott. Like everybody, Tim, like everyone in the organization. It just made me realize just so much about just interactions with people in the workplace. And like I said, I'm a completely different person today because of my time at Sigma Nu, and I wholeheartedly attribute a lot of my ability to navigate some of the complexities of Healthcare because of the time that I spent in Sigma fraternity as a consultant.
1:02:04.2 Adam Girtz: So I had one more, I do want to hear from Gabe again before we wrap, but I think we went through a lot of the positive memories and I have some, I would say they're still favorite memories, but it's a negative basis for a memory. There's so many hard things that we go through and whether it's somebody you broke up with a long time, partner on staff. And it's instant all the guys are right there and it's like, hey man, let's go do something to take your mind off it. Or if you want your mind on it, let's talk about it, man. Let's sit down and just talk. I remember Gabe, you and I, both getting the news that Mack Miller died. We were on campus at University of Michigan. And instantly it was... That was something that you and I both knew that we both enjoyed this artist, we had such a connection with him early in our lives. And then to be together to process that grief together. Me and Gabe just sat down on a bench together and just kind of pretty down...
1:03:18.7 Gabe Castro: Just cried. You know, you pretty much cried about it.
1:03:19.6 Adam Girtz: Dude, yeah, just like, no one, I got Gabe to slap my back when I'm trying to wipe tears out of my eyes when something hard happens. That is a uniquely staff experience, right? I can't imagine working for an insurance company and being a cog in a machine and I'm at my desk getting the sniffles because something happened. And I can't imagine being there and having anybody else give a single crap about what I'm going through, how I'm feeling, right? But knowing that I can be vulnerable around these guys because I know that either they're going through the same thing with me and they're right there in the trenches, or if not, then that they understand and they want to see me be happy and want to see me through it, right? So I think that part of it too. Like, I have a definitely some memories of tough times and going through that and having such a great support system through it is a... Makes it a favorite memory.
1:04:24.7 Christopher Brenton: Well, I guess... Oh, sorry.
1:04:27.3 Gabe Castro: No, no, no, please.
1:04:28.2 Christopher Brenton: There you go, Gabe.
1:04:28.7 Gabe Castro: No, please, go ahead.
1:04:29.7 Christopher Brenton: No, no. I wanted you to get the chance to respond.
1:04:32.7 Gabe Castro: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I wholeheartedly agree. We go through these hardships, especially for a lot of us, we're far from home, right? When we go through these regions and stuff, for example, I went to undergrad in Florida, got to northeast region. So very far from home, driving in snow, uncertain if I'm going to get caught in snowstorm because I don't know how to navigate it. And being able to just hop in a call and be like, yo, dude. I don't know, I'm feeling kind of iffy today, what's up and you just... Next thing you know you're on the phone for two hours just talking about your day and things like that. So again, I know we've kind of sounded like a broken record, but it's like your chapter away from your chapter, it's a brotherhood within itself. It's a fraternity within it. It's a chapter within its own, right?
1:05:26.2 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
1:05:27.2 Gabe Castro: When you work for staff and it's truly a blessing and a privilege to do so.
1:05:32.2 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
1:05:35.9 Christopher Brenton: Well, I want to bring us here to a close, don't want to scare too many listeners away from a...
1:05:44.6 Adam Girtz: We busted through our time. We were like, oh yeah, 20-25 minutes. No.
[laughter]
1:05:49.3 Christopher Brenton: A run tap was going to be too off. I never expected it to be 25 minutes. Personally, I kind of anticipated an hour long. But we don't want to get to an hour and a half and then people will never even listen to the episode. [laughter] But the last question is just kind of final advice. You know, if someone's on the fence or maybe they haven't even considered the opportunity, what final advice would you give that person about applying?
1:06:16.7 Gabe Castro: Yeah, so my advice is do it, do it. Go ahead, apply. Because even if you're not like if you're interested, just go ahead and do it because even if you don't get hired or you don't end up doing it, you still get interview experience. And that is always good on your book, on anybody's book. So you get a chance to travel, go back to headquarters, look at the rock, go back there to where everything started. So just do it. You get a chance to meet people, network anyways. And if you do get it, you're going to have the time of your life traveling and just visiting all these places and getting this rigorous and amazing training that is going to make you a better version of yourself. So that's my advice is if you're on the fence, just do it. Take the jump, take the leap. It's worth it.
1:07:05.4 Tre Nelson: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. Do it. I would never go back and change my experience with working for Sigma Nu. I very frequently have people ask like, I'm turning 27 tomorrow, and so many people in healthcare are usually like 20, like 30 years older than me. And they're always asking like, "Oh yeah, what did you do before you got into the hospital?" So I was like, "Well, actually I worked for Sigma Nu fraternity and managed fraternity chapters around the country." And, it's like just this experience that I learned so much about just being a productive person. And everything I know about myself now through my time at Sigma Nu, so I say, do it. Just apply. Take the leap. Do it.
1:07:58.2 Adam Girtz: Agree. So my advice would be if there's anything that's holding you back from applying, there is somebody on staff right now that has gone through that same thing and overcame it, joined staff and wouldn't regret it for a second. Whether that's long-term relationship, being far from home, traveling on your own, is it relevant to my experience? All of those things. There is somebody on staff who has gone through that, if not multiple people that have gone through that and can talk to you about what their experience was like because of that. And ultimately why it ended up not really being a big deal or an obstacle that was as big as they thought it was going to be. So that is one thing that I see in having conversations directly with potential applicants is there's always a million reasons not to do something. But really what you need to find is that one good reason to do it.
1:09:12.8 Adam Girtz: And I think there's no shortage of good reasons to join staff and to share in this experience that we've all had. So yeah, that was my first... So funny, I love you guys because as soon as I hear the question, I think of the answer that I'm going to give, and then Gabe gives it and then Tre gives it. And I'm like, okay, well I'll just figure out something else. My first response was going to be like, my advice, do it. [laughter] So Gabe got me, man. Yeah, it's like if you're thinking about it, if you're on the edge do it. Worst case you fly out to Lexington and you get to meet some of these guys and have a good time and enjoy that experience and then you move on into something else that you have or you find something that's even better for you. So absolutely, absolutely. Just do it.
1:10:13.0 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. So if you are listening to this episode and you are interested in learning more about working for the fraternity, or you are now convinced and you're going to apply what you need to do is head to sigmanu.org/employment. That's going to be your primary hub for all the resources and information that you need. So that's where you're going to find an interest flyer that kind of gives a little bit more of the detailed breakdown of the job responsibilities as well as kind of the benefits.
1:10:42.6 Christopher Brenton: You can also find your application and then there's some additional resources that are there that go into testimonials and other perspectives that could be valuable for getting a better sense of what the experience is going to be like. Your second contact or your second resource is going to be Scott Smith. So Scott Smith is our Director of leadership Development. He basically has been at one point or another the supervisor because he has been kind of supervising our consultant program for many years now. He has basically been the boss at some point of almost every single staff member, I think, except for three or four people on our team. So it's a pretty extensive list of individuals that he's had the opportunity to work for.
1:11:30.4 Adam Girtz: Gabe holding up a picture of a goat. [laughter]
1:11:33.5 Christopher Brenton: Yes, absolutely. But you can reach Scott at scott.smith@sigmanu.org. He's going to be available to answer any questions that you might have about the experience. He'll also be the person that you'll submit your application to. And then Scott, every applicant receives at least a telephone interview. And so Scott will be the one to conduct that initial kind of onboarding interview just for him to get a better sense of you before we either bring you out to Lexington or conduct an in-person interview for that second... Sorry, a virtual interview for the second round, depending on kind of travel conditions and whatnot. As far as timelines, so Sigma Nu accepts applications on a rolling basis.
1:12:20.6 Christopher Brenton: So if you are antsy and really want to get this application out, if you're listening into the middle of the summer, and this is kind of outside of our primary deadline period, if you are a young alumnus and you have graduated, and so you're no longer kind of bound to this typical semester system, feel free to apply to any time. We have standard cycles of when we onboard a new consultant class, but there's always a chance that if the right person comes along, we'll make the fit work. And so we're always interested in taking applications on a rolling basis to fit people where we can and where we need them. But primary applications are due twice a year. So the first is going to be October 15th.
1:13:06.2 Christopher Brenton: So fall applicants, those are the early decision applicants, when we're looking at a pool of candidates that we're trying to fill, like if we have like five slots that we're looking to fill for an upcoming consultant class, we're going to fill those slots first with our fall applicants. So, October 15, early decision deadline. For our next deadline, it's going to be March 1st. So this is our spring deadline, and that's actually at the time of this recording the deadline that is coming up. So, we are currently accepting applications for the March 1st deadline. And again, regardless of when you apply, the October 15th or March 1st, both are going to have a anticipated start date of June 1st of that year. So June 1st, now 2023 when we're recording this episode.
1:14:00.7 Christopher Brenton: So we need to receive the applications by then. If you have any concerns about meeting that deadline, but are very interested, again, just reach out to Scott. Sometimes we can be some or can be a little bit flexible with our submission deadlines. So don't count yourself out just because you maybe are listening to this episode for the first time and it's March 10th, and you're like, "Hey, I really want to apply, but I think I've missed the deadline. What do I do?" Still reach out. We may be able to accept your application. But those are the biggest three things. Sigmanu.org/employment. Reaching out to Scott Smith at scott.smith@sigmanu.org and then also making sure that you hit the March 1st or October 15 deadlines.
1:14:50.9 Christopher Brenton: We'll put all of this in our show notes, so that way, if you are using any podcast app, you should be able to quickly access that information and then of course, we're going to be sharing this on social media and other places online. So you can follow this information, follow the chain of links to get to this information as well through those platforms also. All right, guys, thank you so much for being a part of this episode. It really was a special opportunity to assemble the Avengers of the consultant 2018 consultant class. But Gabe and Tre specifically want to extend thanks to the two of you for joining us. And Tre, I want to, and I'm sure Adam does as well, actually, all of us on the call want to extend an early birthday congratulations.
[overlapping conversation]
1:15:44.1 Tre Nelson: Yeah, appreciate it.
1:15:44.7 Christopher Brenton: It's very exciting for you.
1:15:44.8 Tre Nelson: Made it to 27.
1:15:47.0 Christopher Brenton: Yes. [laughter]
1:15:47.1 Tre Nelson: Thank you.
1:15:47.9 Adam Girtz: Big year. 27 Club.
1:15:51.4 Christopher Brenton: Adam, any final thoughts to close this out?
1:15:53.0 Adam Girtz: Yeah, Gabe, Tre, my boys. It was great to see you guys. Good excuse to hop on a call with y'all. Yeah, man, y'all already know, anything I could say y'all already know. So, thank you for being here for this, this was really cool. And for listeners, so if you enjoyed the show or you enjoyed listening to the podcast, consider sharing it with a brother. That is the best way for us to make our rounds around the fraternity and start to gain a listenership. This is a really cool way to hear back and forth between our alumni and the general fraternity. So, really love hearing from you guys. So if you ever want to reach out, the email is news@sigmanu.org. That's N-E-W-S not N-U-S, news@sigmanu.org. You can reach out to us there. And yeah, share the show with a brother. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you again soon.
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