Operation Next Chapter
Operation Next Chapter is a leadership and life podcast for people navigating transition, pressure, and purpose.
Hosted by Marc and Cole — two former U.S. Air Force First Sergeants — the show is built on real stories from the diamond: moments of crisis, accountability, compassion, and growth that shaped how they led people when it mattered most.
Each episode breaks down lessons learned in high-stress environments and translates them into practical guidance for everyday life — at work, at home, in relationships, and in personal growth.
At the heart of the show is a simple mission: RECLAIM — your leadership, your finances, your health, and your next chapter of life.
Whether you’re a veteran transitioning out of service, a leader feeling the weight of responsibility, or someone looking to live with more intention and resilience, Operation Next Chapter is here to help you move forward with clarity and purpose.
Because leadership doesn’t end when the uniform comes off — it evolves.
Email us at OperationNextChapter@gmail.com
Operation Next Chapter
More Can Be the Enemy
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We're constantly told to chase more.
More money. More success. More followers. More possessions. More achievements. More commitments.
But what if the pursuit of more is actually keeping you from what matters most?
In this episode of Operation Next Chapter, Marc and Cole explore how the relentless pursuit of more can quietly steal your peace, your purpose, and your contentment. We discuss why our culture often equates success with accumulation, and how learning to focus on what truly adds value can lead to a richer, more meaningful life.
Whether it's overloading your schedule, chasing the next promotion, buying things you don't need, or comparing yourself to others, "more" can become a distraction from the life you're trying to build.
Sometimes the greatest growth comes not from adding more—but from simplifying, prioritizing, and being intentional with what you already have.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why "more" doesn't always mean "better"
- The hidden cost of constantly chasing the next thing
- How comparison fuels dissatisfaction
- Finding contentment without settling for mediocrity
- Simplifying your life to create space for what matters most
- Living with purpose instead of accumulation
Success isn't measured by how much you have—it's measured by how well you live.
Listen now and discover why less can often lead to more of what truly matters.
#OperationNextChapter #LeadershipWithoutTheUniform #MoreCanBeTheEnemy #Purpose #IntentionalLiving #Leadership #PersonalGrowth #Mindset #Contentment #LiveWithPurpose
OperationNextChapter@gmail.com
What's funny is when our income was the lowest, what was enough was endless. There was there wasn't. And now that my income has grown, what is enough? I have an answer for that. And it doesn't cost me a dime. It'll cost me gas to get there or a flight to get there to visit, you know, friends and family and everything else. But the object, I I know exactly what it up is. And it's very, very small.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to Operation Next Chapter. We're marking goals.
SPEAKER_02We need 15.
SPEAKER_00We are figuring out what to do with all of the stuff. I didn't think that we had a ton of stuff, right? Because we have purged. Let's be honest. I've spent a lot of time in the military where we moved every two to three years, but we have lived in this house that we're in right now for 10 years. Holy stuff that we have accumulated over those 10 years. We don't know exactly what we're doing with the house. We have thought about Airbnb in it, Cole Jacob and Jacob family household stuff, family pictures and everything else all over the walls for other people to come stay here. They don't care about that, right? And so trying to figure that out, trying to navigate all that, trying to purge the stuff that has just been collecting so that we can ultimately purge and go live in our camper. The more stuff that we come across, the more stuff that I just want to get rid of everything. I want to be a minimalist. I am tired of clutter.
SPEAKER_03So what I'm hearing you say is more is the enemy.
SPEAKER_00A hundred percent. And the enemy, as you just said, we took a 4,000 or a 3,000 pound load of it to the dump today. So it's it's just getting rid of that stuff. And I'm not saying the stuff was bad, right? It served its purpose and it was really cool to have and everything else, but it wasn't needed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's something that we can all relate to. Nobody's unique in this aspect. I mean, there might be a couple onesie twos out there, but we've all accumulated stuff. And like you said, we've lived in our house for almost 11 years now. Same thing. Like you accumulate stuff, and funny how you find places to hide stuff or just get it out of sight. And I'm sure that's the stuff that you didn't realize you had or you forgot you had, right?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. Yeah. I I mean, I'm not gonna lie, there's a closet in the hallway, and again, I don't have a monstrosity of a house, right? I I don't have a 10,000 square foot house. But there was this closet, and I I couldn't tell you the last time I opened the door to it. Well, I can tell you. It was last week, and it's not a big closet, but man, it held a lot of stuff. And so it's just those things. And again, it was really cool going through the stuff and looking at the memories and all, you know, this stuff, but that's all it was.
SPEAKER_03It was like, uh how about the stuff that you were like, why do we have this?
SPEAKER_00Um, I I can't tell you how many times we've said that in the past few weeks. Where did this come from? Where, yeah. Did you buy this? I don't remember buying that. I didn't buy this, you know. Well, why do we have it? Did the good idea fairy just drop it in the house and say, hey, I think the Jacobs should should have this? Just stuff. We have I found a cracked baseball bat. Why do we have a cracked baseball bat? Who knows? Why did I keep that? Why was that in, you know, stuffed in a corner? I would say more is the enemy. And I said it to Jenny, I've said it to a couple people. We're doing Nicholas and Dylan a service right now because if we don't know what to do with this stuff, when we pass away, they're not gonna know what to do with this stuff. And they don't want your stuff. That's right. They don't want this crap to go through. We're doing them a service right now by going through this stuff. And we're doing a service right now because I'm going to make a commitment not to accumulate stuff that I look back on and say, Did you buy this? Because I didn't buy this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny. I was, you know, thinking about our week in Midland, Texas. If you've ever been to West Texas, Midland Odessa area, you probably know there's not a lot to do there, right? So we rented an Airbnb and it was just big enough for the five of us to stay there. It was very simple, well decorated. It was meant to be like an investment property, it was meant to be an Airbnb. It wasn't somebody's house that they'd rented out, like there was minimal stuff in there, just what you would need to stay for a few days or a week or whatever. And that just helped the mental recovery of not having a lot of stuff taking up the space physically and mentally. And so it was the perfect way to spend a week with them. And we didn't do a whole lot. We had a lot of conversation. We went to the grocery store, we cooked there. It was a great little week away from Tucson. Although the weather between here and there is identical, hot and windy and dusty. You know, I was thinking about that too. Like, there's not a lot of stuff here. It was just the bare minimum, the essential stuff. And we've talked about that too, essentialism.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, it's funny you mentioned that. That's that's what we're going for with our house right now. Again, I don't know if we're gonna Airbnb. I don't know what exactly we're gonna do. I know we're not getting rid of it, so we'll say that. But that's what we're going for, you know? The kitchen. We've gone through the kitchen about four different times. And and again, we're moving into a camper, right? So we don't have a big group of space that we can take stuff with us. When's the last time we use this? Do we want to leave it for it to be in the Airbnb? We have like three pans in the camper. We have like three pans here in the house. Going through stuff with that mentality, I'll be honest, it's been freeing. And I totally understand where you're coming from. You know, that's part of that declutter. Oftentimes in life, that's what stuff, that's what it is. We get all this stuff, and it's really cool. You know, the new house, the new car, the new it, this and that, everything else. And we keep, keep doing that. For me, that creates clutter and occupy space in my, not only in my residence or you know, where I'm at, but in my head. Uh it clutters my thoughts. You know, you're always thinking about that stuff. I'll give you another, for instance, this morning. I we used to drive, the boys and I had RC cars, gas-powered RC cars, right? They were great. I advertised the whole lot of it. I sold all the cars and everything else about three weeks ago. It's probably been a month ago. I took five totes full of RC cars and parts to a guy, and I thanked him for taking it off of my hands. He got a great deal, but I got a great deal as well because it it got out of my head.
SPEAKER_03And you know, that stuff, those RC cars and the parts, everything you had, there was a season for that. And I'm sure you had memories coming up running those with your boys, and that season is ended. That's right. And now it's on to somebody else, and they might be in that season. And we go through that. That's okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yes. You talk about the memories. And, you know, again, I'm replaying the memories. Even when I find five gallons of fuel, I go back to exactly what you said, Mark. Replaying those memories, and instantly, you know, I'm standing in the corners fighting with black widows to pick up this fuel, but I got a big old grin on my face because I'm going back to those memories that we had. And they were they were great memories. It's okay to move from season to season, from chapter to chapter, if you will. And it's okay to declutter, it's okay to get rid of the stuff. It's okay to take a vacation, you know, to an Airbnb to spend time with your family where there's very little except family. And the memories that you guys built from that, the conversations you had that last week, priceless. And they don't take up any physical space in life. They just they'll be mental memories for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_03And the physical stuff that you guys have that you're dealing with right now, they all had a purpose at some point in time. And this move was just meant to be to declutter because if you guys weren't moving to Florida, that stuff would still be sitting there, right?
SPEAKER_00Oh, 100%. I would not have opened that closet for the foreseeable future. So the stuff is still sitting there. And and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the stuff. The stuff that was in the closet, we had again, the memories are there. And the pictures of stuff that we took off the walls and everything else, we took pictures of it on our phone, and Jenny's gonna put it in a, you know, make a picture book with the stuff in it. We'll still have those memories that we can flip through. We'll just keep them on our phone and have a digital picture book, if you will, because we got digital picture frames now. So it'll just flip through. And when those come up, be like, oh, you remember when we did this, you remember when we did that? But it's not a physical thing that's here anymore. And that's freeing. Getting rid of some of the stuff was difficult, right? It's difficult to, you know, do we really want to do that? You know, so that the answer to that question, my answer every single time that hesitation comes up is yes. Let's take a picture of it, let's remember what it was, let's move on. You know, we got these fancy computers that we carry around in our hands everywhere we go that have all this space on it. Well, that space on the on the phone that I'm carrying around is far less space than the boxes or the closet full of stuff that I had. But now I've captured the memories associated with those things on a little device that I'm gonna be carrying around no matter what, or and I can upload it onto a digital picture frame, and and it's it's saved for eternity. But it it's not clutter in the house anymore. It's not everything. It's been very freeing to strip things down to nothing, if you will, and just have a room where we walk in, there's a bed, a nightstand, a dresser, closet, an empty closet, an empty dresser, and you know, for the next person to come in here and put their stuff in it and create their memories, and when they leave, they take their stuff with them.
SPEAKER_03So well said. And you just you hit on a word, you said free. The freedom of enough. Yes. What's enough, right? I think we we think we need more and more and more. And there never is enough in that mentality, right? But in reality, the memories, the people with us, the few, the essential things that we need to sustain life, that's what's really enough. And until you're ready for that part in your life, you're never gonna have enough. Not in our society, in our culture, not in this buy more, buy more, buy more, the next new thing, new house, new car, whatever it is, like you're never gonna have enough until you're ready to not have everything you think you need.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It it's funny. In in my younger years, I don't know that there was an answer to what is enough. Because we continue to search and we continue to buy and we continue to look for and we continue to this. What's funny is when our income was the lowest, what was enough was endless. There was there wasn't. And now that my income has grown, what is enough? I have an answer for that. And it doesn't cost me a dime. It'll cost me gas to get there or a flight to get there to visit, you know, friends and family and everything else. But the objects, I I know exactly what enough is, and it's very, very small. But the memories that I will pay for, I'll continue to pay for the gas, just like you did driving to Texas, or the flight to get back to Tucson, I'll pay that. It doesn't cost me space as far as the memories that we're gonna we're gonna build in those instances. And so when when our income was low, there was not enough physical stuff to answer the question of what's enough. And now that my income is higher and we're older and a little longer in the tooth, if you will, got a little more gray hair, it's not the stuff, it's not the the physical stuff that's enough. It's it's gonna be building those memories. That's what's endless now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I don't want this to turn into a financial discussion, but if you want to give yourself a pay raise, get rid of some stuff, you know, maybe make some money on some of your stuff and stop buying stuff. Like automatic pay raise. It it like you said, when we didn't have a lot of money, it seemed like there was never enough money because we were buying or going out to eat and spending it, you know, not even knowing where it was going really. And then now with a definitely more comfortable income, the leftover is a lot. And you then you have the money to go fly and see family, to go on vacation, to experience memories over buying things. It's such an easy concept. It's hard to do, it's hard to put into practice because we are in that cultural society where we feel like we're pressured to buy stuff, right? Or buy services or subscriptions, it's endless.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Marketing big company marketing departments spend billions of dollars a year for us to spend multi-billions of dollars a year in our stores buying their products. Getting rid of stuff is freeing. Getting rid of the clutter that was in this house, even the clutter that I didn't know was in this house, is freeing. It frees up mental capacity, it clears your head, and it solidifies that what Jenny and I are doing is the right decision. And I'm not saying everybody should do this, but Jenny and I are not moving to Florida to go buy a house. We're not moving to Florida. We have no plans of buying a house. We have no plans of renting a house. We're gonna hold on to what we got, the house that we got that's on four wheels. And that's our plan, right? We're not buying a new car. We're not buying new stuff to go in the camp, you know. We're going to just make what we got, we're gonna make it work. And trust me, don't feel bad for us because we have a nice camp. We we have nice stuff, but I'm not going to buy new stuff. I'm not going to buy new clutter so that in six months when I'm in Florida and I can't walk through my camper because I got too much stuff in there. You know, now I got to buy a new house or, you know, whatever. Being happy with what you got, being happy with where you're at, and some of that decluttering of stuff. More can be the enemy. I'm not saying it's always the enemy, but more definitely can be the enemy. And I'm realizing that even in the last few weeks while preparing for this move.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's a pursuit that never ends. When you want more, because let's be honest, most of the stuff is wants. It's not needs. It never ends. And you said it. That's the contentment piece.
SPEAKER_00It's the little things. It's learning those lessons. It's living life and learning that the memories are far more valuable than anything that I ever bought. Now, don't get me wrong. I started this off with the RC trucks. Do I regret buying that stuff? No. Did we use it a lot? Yes. Did we break it a lot and fix it a lot? Which again, more memories doing the maintenance, fixing the stuff. You know, instead of going to buying new trucks, we bought parts to fix the. Yes, there was memories, and there was absolutely great fond memories in that. So I'm not saying that buying stuff is the enemy. It's continuing to buy more and more and more. It's continuing to do that stuff, to pile stuff up when you have a closet in your house that you have no idea what's in it. Right? Those are the things. The RC trucks were not the enemy. Buying those was not the enemy. We got the use out of them and we built memories with them. There is an end to what is enough.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I was about to say, like, those RC cars weren't the enemy. They only became the enemy when they have been taking up space and not getting used, and now you've got to find a new home for them because your life has moved on. That season ended, like we talked about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. That yeah, that's a that's a perfect point. That's a perfect point. Because the last time those things were started and drove was probably four years ago. They served their purpose in our life. Now I I hope that they're serving the purpose that the gentleman that bought all of them, you know, for his kids. And that's why I bought them. He's got two or three kids, and that's what he was like, this is a great deal. You know, all of us can have. You know, sir. He's exactly right. It's perfect.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and like you, I'm not against buying stuff either. I'm against wasting money on stuff you don't need. And we choose to not do that. And trust me, we have conversations about it all the time. Like we have weaknesses. Like there are times where we both want stuff. We're like, you know what, I don't really need it. But we choose to spend our money on memories. We are vacationers. We take a couple vacations a year and many trips throughout the year. You know, that's the kind of stuff we want to do and remember because the physical items we've purged and we had those same conversations. Why do we have this? Where'd this come from? You know, do we need this still? And it just stress that we don't need, especially at this point in our life. There's more important things than things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it served a purpose. I don't need to buy something to make a memory. And again, it's just a season, it's a season change. If I hadn't taken a job in Florida, would we be going through this stuff? Probably not. But it's been nice. God does this things in our life for a reason, right? Everything happens in life for a reason. I asked him for this opportunity, he provided it, and it's just another way to continue to move on to the next chapter, to move through life, and it's very freeing to be able to do that. But it's all happening. It's all gonna happen. You guys started your business after years of planning. We are moving across the states, not years of planning, but years of purpose-driven life. Three years ago, could we have taken this opportunity? Probably not. But it presents itself. We're gonna take it, we're gonna run with it because we're in a position that we can do that. We can make the move with little to no stress.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a freeing feeling. Just just saying those words, that's freeing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man. So earlier on I mentioned the conversation. I told Jenny, because I'm gonna be in Florida next week, and she's already, again, Jenny is the planner, right? She's already going through the stuff that she got to do. And I looked at her and I said, You have to promise me that you're gonna take some downtime. You don't have to, because the this morning we both walk woke up and we feel slightly tired. But why do we feel this way? And it's it's, you know, just to get rid of stuff and you know, all the stuff that we've been doing. And it, you know, it's taking up space in our heads and you know, moving forward. And again, it's not stress, it's just taking up space in our heads. So I told her, I said, while I'm in Florida, I could promise you I'm gonna go for a walk on the beach and I'm gonna declutter a little bit in the evenings after work. I need you to make a promise to me that you're gonna take some walks in the evenings and declutter a little bit and take some time for yourself.
SPEAKER_02And on that note, we can end this episode and I can let you get back to getting rid of more stuff. Yes, I still have stuff to get rid of.
SPEAKER_00We all do. Yep. Great talk, bro. Here we go.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for joining us.