Nothing Ever Gets Written Down

Richard Lowe: Hello, this is Richard Lowe with Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I’m here with Jay Stifflemire, a retired US Navy veteran, technology leader, entrepreneur, author, husband, and father of three. Makes me tired just listing that. He spent 20 years in the Navy serving aboard seven warships and has spent more than two decades working in technology across enterprise IT. cybersecurity, cloud transformation, and program and project leadership. Today, he’s building JLS technical solutions and JLS publishers while increasingly focusing on AI strategy, intelligent automation, and how organizations can responsibly navigate the next generation of technological change.

He’s also the author of Minds of Tomorrow, Raising AI Native Kids, which grew out of a much more personal question. What does all of this technological change mean for the world our children will inherit? Jay, how are you today?

Jay Stifflemire: Pretty good. Thank you for having me.

Richard Lowe: Welcome to the podcast. So let’s just start with publishing. Your says JLS Publishers right there. What does that mean?

Jay Stifflemire: Oh, well, it’s an interesting story how we started this. So back in December of 2023, I was on my last job. My last day was the two days before Christmas. And it was an unexpected departure, right? And so I’m like, yeah, I got some savings, but what do I do now, right? And so between December 23rd and January 1st, January 2nd, actually, I would say, I decided to create a book publishing company because I’ve been in the IT world for some time.

I’ve been an independent consultant with JLS Technical Solutions as an IT consultant since March of 2021. In the contracting world, you know, it’s lucrative, it’s difficult, you know, contracts come and go. Usually if you’re an FTE, you have some more stable work. As a contractor, it’s not as stable. So Unbeknownst to me, I don’t know why I did it. It’s call it a, I don’t know, a calling or some sort, but I always wanted to write a book, I guess. And so coming from a business perspective, I didn’t want to just be an author, right?

Anybody can write a book. A lot of people have, and that’s great. And I think that’s the path that they want to do. But for me, I wanted to write a book, but also I also see what’s coming with the technology and how it’s changed our course of our history in the last 20, 30 years. So I came from a business perspective. I put my CEO hat from JLS Technical Solutions into consulting and basically rolled that right into JLS Publishers. Branding is everything.

Marketing is everything for a successful company. Especially in the book business, marketing is key, getting here on the podcast, getting people to know about the work and the message more importantly. So essentially I created JLS Publishers back in January 2nd of 2023. The book that we published back in December, God’s Plan, Your Breakthrough was our first book, but it wasn’t my intention. I started out wanting to write a memoir for my kids. I think one of the things that we, I was raised, born in the 70s, raised in the 80s.

And the one thing that I see from the elderly is we always ask those stories with grandpa, grandma, aunts and uncles. during family time and Christmas and all the holidays, we talk about it, but nothing ever gets written down. So my first book when I started JLS Publishers was to write three book series for my kids to help them understand. I am on my third marriage. Finally, I met my soulmate in Tokyo when I was stationed in Japan on my last hitch in the Navy.

And I essentially wanted to put all those conversations that we have had with our grandparents and everyone else in our history back in those holidays to put it in a book so I can give it to my children so they can actually see what I went through with my first marriage, my second marriage, and moving on to my third marriage and what made me go to Japan. I never wanted to go to Japan, but I did. I accepted orders there. But that’s kind of like, I don’t know if that’s a long story short, but that’s how we created JLS Publishers is a whim and here we are.

Richard Lowe: It’s the virtual machine, virtual screen is doing weird things with me. Oh well. It’s all good. It’s all good. It’ll do. I got my Halloween shirt on. I’m all ready for it.

Richard Lowe: Yes. So yeah, that sounds interesting. Yeah. I have a similar story. I left Trader Joe’s after being there 20 years. back in 2013 and had some savings and decided to move to Florida and put in new roots and tried some different things and finally settled on ghostwriting because I could make it work and have never looked back.

Jay Stifflemire: Well, interesting note that you said about the ghostwriting. So for this particular series that I was trying to do for myself, for my kids, our kids, is I went on Urban Writers, I hired an editor, I hired A ghostwriter, And we went through the scope of the project, the three books, and unbeknownst to me, I’m a new person into the publishing world. I didn’t really, it’s an expensive adventure, right? So that’s kind of what led me to, all right, we’re going to put that on pause.

And then I had another manuscript from Jordan Shaw, and there was a little bit too much editing that required. I was focused on getting a book out and that’s kind of where God’s plan came up to be the first one. And I spent about 18 months editing it and just going through fact checking, doing all the things that needs to be done. It is creative nonfiction. So there’s some composites in there, of course, to protect certain individuals. But yeah, life usually never happens the way you plan it out.

Jay Stifflemire: And this is no different with JLS Publishers for sure.

Richard Lowe: That sounds interesting. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Ghostwriting is an interesting career. I enjoy it a lot. I enjoy helping other people get their message out. Of course, I’ve also authored a bazillion books with them out there. I think I’m at 113 plus now. That’s my own books. I retired a bunch of them. took them off sale ’cause they were older books, and kind of, ooh, I wrote that.

Jay Stifflemire: It’s a legacy thing too, right? I mean, even if it’s not on available, you have that forever. Your family has it and just, and I think that’s another thing that I’m looking back with the AI, ’cause back then two years ago, AI was a fresh topic, right? Today, completely different. Next year is probably going to be a pivotal change for us. But essentially, my thought with JLS Publishers is we’re going to be a small boutique publishing company, accepting only manuscripts that fit 4 categories or 4 genres.

right? We publish in four lanes, one being faith and redemption, right? Faith to me is very important. It has been for many years since I was a kid. confidence in relationships, going back to the marriage, what happened during my first marriage, my second marriage, my current marriage. What can I share from my experiences with others? And then family legacy, that’s where I’m talking about, you know, writing a book for my kids, right? I think that’s, I’m not sure if anybody’s ever done that.

I’m sure they have, but for my kids, it would be great to have that legacy printed in a book that they can carry with themselves. It won’t, you know, obviously it won’t be 100%. I mean, I’m sure there will be some composite stories in there because, you know, every time I think of composite, I’m thinking a TV show that says based on a true story, right? You know, and there’s certain things that you have to fill in the blanks or protect in certain cases.

And then 4th, the 4th lane that’s near and dear to my heart, because I’m 54 years old. I have a seven-year-old boy, a five-year-old boy, and a two-year-old girl. And so parenting and technology is, to me, that’s our future, right? You know, we’re not going to automate I hope not. the thing is, we kind of are. I battle with the algorithm every day with my kids on YouTube, right? And so with JLS Publishers, we have four authors, some are pen names, but more importantly, my envision of JLS Publishers is to create something to be a part of this AI revolution, right?

What is most important? AI is going to come in, we’re going to have to deal with it regardless of how we look at it, but what can I as a human do? to kind of put the stamp on legacy and stamp on history on what’s important. And what’s important to me is what I talked about, faith in redemption, confidence in relationships, family legacy, and of course, parenting and with this AI. So in that four kind of swim lanes, that’s our primary focus.

We’re not going to go outside of that. And if anything, when I die, I can say, I was part of that AI revolution that came in to basically be good or bad for our humanity, I guess. But, I just want to, I guess, put my own stamp on the future or the present and future.

Richard Lowe: Makes sense to me. Yeah, I’m in, well, I’m in a lot of lanes because my clients are in a lot of lanes, but my own lanes, I do have a book called ADHD Christian, which is.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, certainly me. And I have one called a book about relationships, which is actually very, very balanced. It doesn’t sound like it, but it’s a balanced approach. It says the red pill and the blue pill are both wrong. And here’s why. So let’s make enemies on all sides, right? You know, and and a bunch of other books. So I’m I keep I have a lot of lames. But I like to write. And my clients are all over the place.

Jay Stifflemire: And that’s, clients, that’s okay. The clients, and what it sounds to me, your swim lanes are very similar in your belief. I would say it’s very similar to mine. And, you know, these days it’s gonna, it’s gonna, I don’t even know what to say really, but I guess getting back to the point of JLS Publishers and making that stamp is just to really understand how AI is going to change this. What am I going to do with these kids? How can I keep them human?

Sitting at the dinner table, asking them questions, going back to kind of, I don’t want to say back to the 1950s, even though I wasn’t born yet. But when I see, you know, when I was raised, I watched Leave It to Beaver, you know, all those. Right. 50s and 60 movies and the family orientation. And honestly, I believe we’ve lost that. And what I’m hoping that JLS publishers will one day mature into is the four areas of humanity that we need to really hold on to so AI doesn’t change us the way it could very well possibly do.

Richard Lowe: Exactly. Well, changing the subject slightly, I noticed you were in the Navy for just a wee bit of time. And I wrote a book called Stuck in the Middle. It’s very, very current. And it begins with the current war in Iran. That’s how new it is.

Richard Lowe: And I have my own thing to say about that.

Richard Lowe: And it’s, yeah, we probably have similar beliefs, I think.

Jay Stifflemire: I can almost assure we do.

Richard Lowe: And it talks about the geopolitics. I like geopolitics. So it talks about geopolitics and where the world’s going in a multipolar world as opposed to a single polar world. I also wrote Shield of Ashes, which is about World War III. Yeah, which postulates Trump in his third term during World War III.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, that was a fun book to write because all these different technologies and different things learned all about the US missile missiles and how they work and how they can shoot things down and so forth is a lot further along than I expected. I came back from the Star Wars time when everybody was going, ha ha, what a joke. And now we’re shooting down missiles like they’re.

Jay Stifflemire: Exactly. I mean, Star Wars was the 70s and 80s. And, you know, it’s like, whoa, this is actually real world. And, you know, sometimes I think to myself, you know what I, because I haven’t worked for the government. I do know that. And, you know, I think big corp, I think they’re pretty much the same way. You know, you got corporate intelligence, things that, they’re going to let the public know, but in behind the scenes, like with OpenAI coming out in 2022, OpenAI had that stuff well before 2022, right?

It’s just, that is the time that they decided the public, we’ll go ahead and let the public know, right? So yeah, I definitely can peel back that onion and we could go down a rabbit hole when with the wars in Iran and the current situation and our political powers. And I’m same as you. Even though I do not like politics, it interests me because of the fact that it’s going to affect me and my family. And 2, also, I am retired.

Even though I’m retired, some may know this, some may not know this, but even though I’m retired, they could possibly recall me. Like you wrote a book on World War III and And while I may be over 50, there may be an age cap when they start recalling people. But part of my retirement, the reason I get a pension is to keep me on the hook, I guess, is for better terms. That could be debatable, I guess. But if the military came or the Navy came and knocking on my door and saying, we need you, I think my decision would be either yes, I’ll go with you, or I guess I’m going to Leavenworth.

Richard Lowe: Well, in this book, the war takes 7 days, so there’s really not, it’s a nuke war, so.

Jay Stifflemire: Well, it’s 7 is biblical, right? I mean, I see the bridge there. There’s probably some underlining. things that you thought about when you created that and put it seven days, but nuclear war wouldn’t take long at all.

Richard Lowe: Well, I’ll tell you the first part. You’re a fascinating person, so I’ll tell you the opening couple chapters, a group of North Korean terrorists shoot 2 ICBMs, one to Beijing, and wipe it out and these are 10 new 10 uh megaton Warheads and one to the three gorges Dam and you can imagine what that what would happen there so China’s in chaos and then the war China of course takes revenge on things and starts shooting wildly and things and then that’s just the start and that you know Trump and and the one Chinese leader left managed to smooth things over a little bit only after the Chinese try and nuke Japan and fail because the missiles actually work and they shoot down all the missiles coming in, most of them.

And then we move on to Pakistan and India and all the other countries and Iran and so forth, just going through the world one by one as different powers start shooting each other until finally the end comes. And it doesn’t end the world, but it It does. It does kill a lot of people.

Jay Stifflemire: Well, it’s and you know, the first thought thinking about that is water, water, polluted water, water.

Richard Lowe: Satellites up there because it’s a satellite war that can’t be launched anymore because that I don’t remember the name of the effect, but there’s an effect where you have too much junk up there. It won’t. You can’t do it anymore. I even put that in there. Anyway, you know, it was an interesting book to write. And then On top of that, I wrote at the same time, stuck in the middle, kind of goes over all of the things that are happening in the geopolitical arena.

Anyway, there’s eight books in that series. There’s going to be 20 when I’m done. Whoa. Yeah. One of them is turn off the TV. Turn off the TV, get off the couch and get a life.

Jay Stifflemire: That is too funny. And it’s true though. It’s true. I mean, with in essentially in the my book, Minds of Tomorrow, which I hope comes out later this year, it’s in final editing phase. But the one thing that which some parents continue to do today, you know, dinner time, you’re going to sit at the table, your phones are in a box, we’re going to have a conversation face to face, kind of like that leave it to Beaver kind of time frame where everybody’s sitting at the kitchen table, the TV, well back in the 70s and 80s, having a TV tray sitting in front of the TV and eating dinner.

I experienced that, but getting back to the round table, right, with your kids and asking those things and just taking them outside, right? And it puts a lot more effort on the parenthood, but one thing now talking about parenthood, I gotta say, I give a shout out to every person that’s ever had a child in our human existence. I think after all I’ve done, I’ve been to 24 countries, I’ve sailed six of the seven seas. I lived in Japan for five years.

I’ve lived in multiple states in the United States. I don’t know, I want to say at least 15, 20 zip codes here just in the United States. But parenthood is the most challenging. I just don’t, it wows me. Parent hood wows me.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, I have a stepson, know what you mean?

Jay Stifflemire: It’s just, and actually interesting enough, during my second marriage, I had two stepdaughters, 10 and 13, I think they were when I met them. And so I almost felt like God was saying, all right, here’s, we’re going to give you a trial run here, right? You know, because our life is, I don’t know what, only he knows. But I made some mistakes and some of those mistakes that I made with the girls, I’m trying to not make with my own kids.

So whether it’s a stepchild or your own child or even a foster parent or if you’re in charge of a child, I would say even at daycare or at school, it is just the most challenging thing, rewarding. But man, I just see how how much I’ve learned since I’ve had our first child.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, something that infuriates me is when I see helicopter parents. You know what the term means, of course.

Jay Stifflemire: Yeah, and I, got to admit, I may be one of those at some times. I mean, my kids are still kind of young.

Richard Lowe: And I. There’s a time and a place for intervention. And there’s a time and a place for understanding that the teacher might be right.

Jay Stifflemire: And the one thing I’ve caught myself, and it’s almost, I hear the story, your first kid is your child kid. The second one, you’d make changes, what you messed up on the 1st and the third one, which where we’re at, I’m doing things completely different than our first child. And, you know, it’s a learning process, right? As far as you go. And Once we had our third child, I’m like, man, I told my wife, I’m like, we’re outnumbered. What do we should do?

This is insane. What are you killing me? And so, yeah, it’s absolutely, I certainly agree with you. And being a helicopter parent and going back to that is, you know, I told my oldest son, he’s 7 now, and I keep on telling him, look, you’re going to be 8. You need to start learning this and this, and I need to teach you this and this. I almost feel like he’s acting like a teenager now and he’s only 7.

Richard Lowe: Interesting. I remember my first day in school. So I went to school screaming the whole way. I didn’t want to go. I mean, I was putting up a fit, screaming. My mom was carrying me. She was embarrassed. She hated me. The whole thing. Got to school. Principal looks at me and says, ma’am, I’ll take care of it. I knew I was in deep, deep water then. So he brought me into his room. I’d shut up by now because I was trying to avoid what was coming. He took out a paddle because back then they could use paddles.

Jay Stifflemire: I was part of that generation myself.

Richard Lowe: With holes drilled in it.

Richard Lowe: Gave me one whack, just one. Not even hard. And at that point, I knew who the boss was. And that’s all I needed. I wouldn’t even call it abuse because it was very light.

Jay Stifflemire: We lived, we grew up in a different generation. I recall in middle school, going into the vice principal had the paddle, right? And I want to say he had holes in his wooden paddle, but it was a wooden paddle, I do remember. And I remember he said, all right, put your hands on the chair arm right here. And well, yeah, that was a different time. I don’t, how did we make it.

Richard Lowe: We made it because we learned we had to take responsibility.

Richard Lowe: I mean, I was kind of a wild kid, ADHD that was undiagnosed. But one thing I learned is who was in charge. And it wasn’t necessarily me.

Jay Stifflemire: Oftentimes, I think kids, my kids, I think they think they’re in charge, but it’s when they pressure you and push your buttons. to see if you can lose it, right? And then ultimately, if I allow them to do that, they are in charge.

Jay Stifflemire: So yeah, it’s, man, that whole kid thing, man, we could go down a rabbit hole on that one. But, you know, I kind of think, you know, JLS Publishers is, When I see the world coming, especially as a Christian trying to be a follower of Jesus Christ, because to me, those are two separate actionable titles, I guess, because to be a follower, I mean, the 12 disciples were an example, but the kids, they just I don’t know. what this AI is going to do.

I don’t know what our future is going to be. I know what the Bible says. I know what we should be watchful for. And ultimately, you know, JLS Publishers is kind of my last, right? I’ve done all this all my life. This is my last ditch effort to create something that will benefit not only myself, but my family. possibly humanity in some small one-person way, but ultimately, Christ over everything. it’s, that’s…

Richard Lowe: You’ve got plenty of years. You’ve got plenty of years left. Don’t say the last ditch.

Jay Stifflemire: We’ll see. We’ll see. I, hey, I’m not gonna, you know, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. We got the 2000 year anniversary coming up in 2032, 2033 of Jesus resurrection, there’s a lot of things. You talked about World War III, things going in Iran. The writing’s on the wall, personally, I think. And, you know, am I going to be prepared for it? Maybe, not. Is my kids going to be prepared for it? I’m hoping that I’m trying to make that last ditch effort to be able to send them to private school and get them basically.

And that’s the other thing about when you talk about kids. when you look at it, I’m being put in a position where I’m responsible for these little souls to navigate this crazy, crazy world we live in, right? And that’s daunting. It’s exhausting. And yeah, man, that’s.

Richard Lowe: Hell, just navigating myself is exhausting. Much less navigating with other people.

Jay Stifflemire: So true, so true. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Oh my goodness.

Richard Lowe: Yes. Well, What else was on? you were in the Navy. What did you do in the Navy?

Jay Stifflemire: Oh, yeah. So I went in first as a boatswain’s mate. I did boot camp in San Diego back when it was still open. I was deck seaman for a little bit and I’m like, I’m not liking this. I got to stay up. I got to drive the ship. I got to do aft lookout, forward lookout. I got to do watches 4 hours a time. It could be midnight to 4 A.m. I had to be outside on the weather decks. If it’s cold, it’s cold, it’s hot, it’s hot.

And I’m like, this job, I’m not liking it. So they called, they have the job called Aviation Maintenance Administration. And essentially it’s essentially an IT guy back then. We were back on reel to reel in the early 90s. I remember that. Yeah, reel to reel was huge back then. We had a rate called data processors. which I tried to get into. I couldn’t get in there. I tried to get into naval intelligence or intelligence specialist. I couldn’t get into that. So I chose aviation maintenance administration, where essentially there’s a software program that handles all the work orders that the maintenance technicians work on the aircraft, because we got to document everything, right?

Well, I was the software administrator for that platform or that software. I did that for 20 years, been to the Gulf three times, served on seven ships. And so I’ve essentially logged and records, flight time, landings, anything dealing with naval aviation maintenance. That’s what I did for 20 years.

Richard Lowe: Were you in the Gulf War?

Jay Stifflemire: I was in the, when I joined in 91, we were at the curtails because I had to go through school and all whatnot, but I did do a deployment 94-95, I did deployment in the Gulf, yes.

Richard Lowe: So you missed the Gulf, the 91 war?

Jay Stifflemire: I missed the action, but I was there for the backing, I guess, after the action.

Richard Lowe: Yeah. My understanding is in 2003, he ripped open.

Jay Stifflemire: Well, the thing is, you know, the Navy never stops deploying. I was just talking to a co-worker the other day and she was in the Army. And I said, because my dad was in the Air Force, my brother was in the Air Force. I was the crazy person to go in the Navy. And, usually in the Army and the Air Force, you’re not going to deploy over unless there’s really something going on, right? Or you’re going to do an overseas duty, right? Where the Navy, we’re deployed all the time.

Jay Stifflemire: Navy and yeah, Navy and Marines, we’re deployed all the time. It doesn’t matter peace time, war time. we’re always deployed. And out of the 20 years, 14 years of it was either deployed, I was either deployed or in a deployed status. And I only had six years of the 20 years as shore duty, which is basically means I don’t go anywhere, I stay home. So I traveled A lot. And honestly, I don’t want to say it broke me, but I’m tired.

Richard Lowe: When I was at Trader Joe’s, I hired a consulting company that was all ex-Marines and special forces. Best group I ever hired. They were on the ball. They got things done. Everything was checklisted. It would be on budget, on time, no arguments. It was great having these veterans. So I wanted to hire more. I always wanted to find veterans to fill positions.

Jay Stifflemire: Well, we vets appreciate that. And you know, In honest terms, the one thing that the military has over a lot of corporations is, time. the Navy’s been around for years. I know the Chief’s mess, Chief’s mess or the goat locker as they referred to it in the enlisted community, senior E-7s, E-8s and E-9s. That’s, you know, the goat locker is one of the oldest fraternities in our existence in the United States. But yeah, I mean, You can’t go wrong with the processes of the military because I used to be in charge of the library of all the technical books to do all the work.

And I can tell you the processes are documented. And if you met, here’s the thing. If I messed up in my job or the maintenance technicians messed up on their job, planes fall out of the sky, people die. Right.

Richard Lowe: Understood. My my grandfather was in World War Two and he was captured by the Japanese on the Corregidor, rather in Manila. He was in the Manila Death March, not in the Bataan Death March. There’s another one. He was on the Penang. I think it was the Penang. It was a little boat, not really even a ship. They part of the Yangtze River Patrol and that got decommissioned and he went over to the Philippines, got captured, spent four and a half, three and a half years in prison camp.

And then never really was the same. I met him when I was 17. Nobody liked to talk to him because he they thought he was whacked.

Jay Stifflemire: And I think there’s there’s some reasons behind that that are I talked to him.

Richard Lowe: And my conclusion at 17 years old was he can be as whacked as he wants. I didn’t go through that. He’s earned the right. And I eventually wrote a book now called that’s that’s not remembering the title, but I wrote up his whole journey through the prisoner work campus stuff, and it was brutal. Because the Japanese were the worst.

Jay Stifflemire: Well, you know, interesting enough, while I didn’t live in Japan during wartime, I did live there almost five years, and I met my current wife, who’s Ukrainian. She and I met in Tokyo, a city population, metro area of 36 million people, and Japanese wonderful culture, but completely different. It’s almost like it’s a different world over there, right? They have different processes, they have different rules, they have different regulations. And so, yeah, it’s, even I wouldn’t say just Japanese, but across the Asian continents, Just like any other culture.

I mean, you talk to Russia, Ukraine, I mean. All different. All different. But the Japanese, I got to learn, right? And because I was there, I didn’t speak the language. I know a little bit, but not much. My wife obviously knew more. She spoke fluent Japanese when I met her. I think she only knew about 25 or 30% of English when we were dating. And anyway, there’s a long history, but going back to Japanese, Yeah, I can understand that. they, kamikaze, man. I mean, that’s got to be crazy. You’ve got to be crazy to even fathom that idea. But they did it, right.

Richard Lowe: Not just kamikaze, the Yamato was a kamikaze ship. It was a one-way trip. The whole battleship.

Jay Stifflemire: I didn’t know about that. See, you taught me, you taught a sailor something new.

Richard Lowe: Battle of Leyte Golf, the entire Japanese thrust from the north was kamikaze.

Jay Stifflemire: I’m sure I studied that in my training, which I forgot. But I’ve been to Manila, I’ve been to Guam. But yeah, that’s, they were in it to win it, period.

Richard Lowe: The book’s Behind the Wire, by the way.

Jay Stifflemire: Behind the Wire, I’ll take a look at it.

Richard Lowe: That’s my grandfather’s. I wrote his book based on his interviewing him and his writings.

Jay Stifflemire: And you kept his legacy alive to this day.

Richard Lowe: Kept it alive. Yeah. it came out pretty good. He’s an interesting guy. He’d been through a lot of interesting times. I’m not sure I would have gotten through it. He did.

Jay Stifflemire: Well, God bless him. He, well, he had help in ways that we probably don’t even know.

Richard Lowe: Yes, he did. So, you know, we published a lot of books, but we’re coming up on the time. So anything finally you want to say to our listeners?

Jay Stifflemire: No, just I appreciate the opportunity to get JLS publishers out there. We’re, I mean, we are two years old. We only have one book published. I have another one in the pipeline, hopefully by the end of the year. God’s Plan Your Breakthrough has been accepted as a finalist of Author of the Year by International Impact Book Awards. I’m heading to Holly. Yeah, it’s great. I’m heading to Hollywood on the weekend of October 10th to see if he wins or if that book wins.

And then we’ll see how it goes from there. And I just hope that I can provide some thoughts that other people didn’t think about and to help people through certain situations that they’re going through. Because the one thing back in the early 90s about my Navy career, there were two there were two people that I do want to recognize before we close is that, I had a, they call leaders, leaders, leading petty officer, LPO, it’s usually E6. And I had two of them in the early 90s.

And I had a, there was a time that I struggled very much. And I don’t think I would be here today if it wasn’t for them to say, you know what, We understand the mission. We understand what we need to do as sailors, but they kind of stepped out of that role and more of a human role into to be there for me to ensure that I wasn’t alone going through this difficult time.

Jay Stifflemire: And that’s kind of the premise and the backbone of what I’m trying to build with JLS Publishers is content that a person can go to, which many people have many different voices, great voices. There’s a lot of good books out there, great books out there. But if one person, one person reads any of our books and it helps them, it’s all worth it.

Richard Lowe: Of course, that’s why we write books. That’s why I ghost write. I like to help people. Yeah. Well, how can people find you?

Jay Stifflemire: JLSPublishers.com. We do have God’s Plan. It’s available on Amazon and a few other places. We do have a shop page on our website. And so yeah, JLSPublishers.com. Short, simple, sweet.

Richard Lowe: Okay, well, thank you for coming on the podcast. This is in Leaders and Their Stories. I’m Richard Lowe. We have these irregularly, usually a couple a week, and I find leaders out there who I interview. Thank you for coming and visit the writing king.com for more. Thank you very much.

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