The Off Ramp: Empty Chairs, New Chapters, and Betting on Yourself

In this episode of Exit Buddy: Veteran Stories to Guide You, Kathleen and Rachel sit down with Joey Meininger, an Air Force veteran who spent 20 years as a firefighter, became a command chief, and then had to figure out what it meant to be “just” himself without the rank, title, or guaranteed paycheck. He shares how growing up overseas on an Air Force base, choosing firefighting over a flying job, and spending decades running toward other people’s worst days shaped his calm-in-the-storm perspective. From sitting alone in an auditorium after his retirement ceremony, staring at empty chairs, to helping other veterans face their fear of the unknown, this conversation digs into the part of transition TAP class doesn’t cover: grieving identity, betting on yourself, and learning you don’t have to do it alone.

Chapters

• 00:31 – Welcome to Exit Buddy & Joey’s Story
• 04:27 – Perspective from Other People’s Worst Days
• 06:25 – From Chief to “Just Joey”
• 08:59 – The Empty Chairs Moment
• 10:16 – What TAP Doesn’t Cover
• 13:23 – Preparing Emotionally Before You Separate
• 14:16 – Location First, Job Second
• 17:14 – The Fear That Keeps People In
• 18:45 – You Can’t Do It Alone

Key Takeaways

• Everyone Has an Off Ramp—Don’t Stay Just Because You’re Scared: At some point, every service member leaves. Staying in only because you’re afraid of the outside world, losing guaranteed income, or starting over is an understandable instinct—but not a great life strategy. Fear shouldn’t be the primary reason you delay a transition you already know is coming.
• Your First Job Is Not Your Forever Job: With most veterans changing roles in the first year, Joey urges you to choose location first, job second so you’re not uprooting your whole life every time you change employers.
• TAP Covers Resumes, Not Identity Grief: TAP is great for job search basics, but it doesn’t always prepare you for losing rank, status, and built‑in community. Joey’s story shows that becoming “just Joey” was a much bigger emotional shift than he expected.
• You Don’t Have to White‑Knuckle Transition Alone: Joey’s biggest message: you cannot and should not do this by yourself. Lean on other veterans, cohorts, and community, so you have people to call when the auditorium is empty and your next chapter begins.

Follow us for more real veteran stories to guide your transition, and share this episode with someone who’s standing at their own off ramp and afraid to take the exit. They may need to hear that they’re not the only one scared of the unknown.

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Transcript

Joey Meininger 00:00
Serving is such an honor. Whether you serve four, six, eight, ten, twelve, twenty, or thirty years, everyone has an off-ramp. You cannot do this forever. Towards the end of people's careers, they're literally sticking it out and staying in the profession because they are afraid to make that leap. They are afraid to battle the unknown. We've had this for our whole adult lives, and now we're having to take our skills and abilities and go into the outside world and bet on ourselves. We're going to have to bet that we land where we're supposed to land.

Kathleen Smith 00:31
Welcome to Exit Buddy: Veteran Stories to Guide You. This podcast shines a light on the real struggles and triumphs of veterans navigating life after the military. In each episode, we dive into heartfelt stories of resilience, setbacks, a little humor, and growth as veterans transition and find new purpose in civilian life.

And here for the journey, we're your hosts. I'm Kathleen, and I'm Rachel. If you're looking for inspiration, practical advice, or just a reminder that you're not alone in your transition, Exit Buddy is here to help you thrive beyond the uniform.

Enjoy today's story from our next honorary Exit Buddy. Rachel, how are you doing today?

Rachel Bozeman 01:12
Kathleen, I'm so excited to be here, and I can't wait to hear another story.

Kathleen Smith 01:16
Yeah, so we're excited to welcome Joey Meininger today, an Air Force veteran who served 20 years as a firefighter and now dedicates himself to helping transitioning veterans navigate the emotional challenges of leaving military service. Joey, thank you so much for joining us today.

Joey Meininger 01:33
Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thank you.

Rachel Bozeman 01:34
Joey, we are so excited you're here. We like to start our stories kind of at the beginning. It never makes sense to start in chapter three, so much goodness happened in those first chapters. So we want to start in your first chapter and kind of how you decided to join the military, and then how you went into the brave world of firefighting within the military. We'd love to hear more.

Joey Meininger 01:56
So my dad joined the military pretty early on in his life. About 18 years old, he joined pretty soon after that I was around in this world and welcome to this world. So that's all I knew. We grew up — I say my home was primarily Germany. From kindergarten to about the 10th grade, I spent time in Germany on an Air Force base there that's now closed.

Really growing up in that environment and seeing how my dad navigated life — he got to travel, it seemed like everything kind of worked out for him — it seemed like a pretty good fit for me. Probably my junior year in high school, I took the ASVAB and kind of made my journey there.

I often joke to people that my dad was a recruiter at the end of his Air Force career, so I didn't necessarily have a choice in joining. Probably one month his quota was a little bit low, and I took one for the team. It worked out pretty well for me.

I went to MEPS, and during MEPS it's a tough decision for a 17- or 18-year-old kid to make on what profession they want to do. They offered me a bunch of things, including a flying job. They said, “Hey, you could be a radar guy on an AWACS.” I didn't know much about the aircraft at the time or the locations you can go to, so I just thought it would be a good opportunity and jumped on that.

Once I got back to the recruiting office, a buddy of my dad's — another recruiter — said, “Hey Joey, didn't they offer you firefighting?” I was like, “Yeah man, but no thanks.” I had no prior family knowledge or any history or any lineage in the fire service, so all I knew was it was a pretty dangerous job and wasn't something I was interested in. And then he sold me on it. He said, “Well man, let me tell you, their schedule is awesome. They live together, they cook together, they train together. It's like essentially you get to hang out with your buddies.”

Kathleen Smith 03:49
He was a recruiter.

Joey Meininger 03:51
Yeah. And I was like, tell me more. Interestingly enough, my dad came back in the office. I said, “Hey, can I switch my job to be a firefighter?” He was like, “I guess. I mean the other job is a flying job. You don't want a flying job?” I was like, “No man, I think I want to try this out.” And I jumped ship and joined.

Probably 20-something years later, I reached out to that recruiter and thanked him for kind of taking that step that day and pushing me in that direction, because it really turned from a job into a passion. And that was kind of how the journey started into the Air Force.

Rachel Bozeman 04:27
I love it. So it sounds like you were able to do a lot of incredible things, and with that I'm sure there were some lessons that you also picked up from your time firefighting there. Was there anything that you picked up along the way that may have kind of assisted with your transition into the civilian world?

Joey Meininger 04:45
Yeah. In a profession like that, where you're meeting a bunch of people you've never met in your life on probably their worst day — either it's a medical emergency or it's something that's a no-kidding, your house is on fire — it really puts perspective on what an emergency in life is.

A lot of times we get stressed out because things don't go our way or we face adversity. But doing that job for so long made me realize nothing else is really that serious. We have time to solve the problems, because I've seen events where we don't have time. So it's really allowed me to be the calm in the storm in some pretty crummy situations for folks.

In the back of your mind you don't want to trivialize anyone's feelings when they share they're having a bad day, because it's all about perception. I shared the other day: the worst thing when you're a little kiddo and your ice cream cone falls on the ground — that's the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to you. And you don't want to trivialize that, because it might actually be the worst thing that ever happened to them. But as you grow into adulthood, especially with some of the big challenges we face, you're able to take a step back and say, “Okay, well I've seen what life or death looks like, and that's not now. So let's just calm down, take a deep breath, get through whatever it is we're facing.”

That's what that job really provided for me, and it's helped not only in my current profession but it's helped other people navigate through challenges in life as well.

Kathleen Smith 06:25
I really appreciate that perspective — that no one's dying today, and let's just take a step back and look at this with perspective. I'm sure that really helped you through your recent transition of leaving your only adult life that you've ever known. How do you change your mindset? How do you accept that what you have built is not what is going to be moving forward? I think this is one of those big challenges that a lot of transitioning service members have — they have to rebuild themselves, they have to recreate who they are. How did this transition work for you?

Joey Meininger 07:10
I was okay walking away. I had been a chief for quite some time. I did 20 years in the fire service and then stepped out and did a command chief role — a pretty strategic leadership type deal. So I was happy to hand them their cell phones back. I was happy to hand the emails back. You couldn't convince me that being just Joey wasn't the greatest thing in the world, because I felt like I was ready to transition into a place where I could have authentic relationships. People liked me for me. I didn't feel that there were transactional things going on.

Especially when you get to some of these key positions, it's “Are you really checking on me, or what is it that you want?” So for me I thought, “Man, this is the day that I have this title removed and I can be just Joey. I can't wait for it.”

And then it happens, and you're like, “Well wait a second. I was this person. I was pretty important. My picture is up throughout the bases, people knew who I was, and I had instant credibility based on the position I was in. Now I am just Joey.”

It took me a little bit to realize, “Well wait a second, this isn't as easy as I thought it would be.” And I think that was the first step in the transition — to say, okay, well what you wanted, you got, but you have to work a little bit to figure out what it is you're going to do to move forward and create this new identity.

I always just say “just Joey,” because that was kind of my theme. I left like “just Joey, just Joey.” I realized it wasn't just as easy as taking the uniform off and walking away and saying, “Don't call me Chief, I'm Joey,” because it definitely hit me when I didn't expect it.

Rachel Bozeman 08:55
I think just Joey's pretty great.

Kathleen Smith 08:59
It is. But I'm going to interrupt you, Rachel. I heard that after your retirement ceremony you actually just sat there and looked at the empty chairs. Tell us a little bit about that.

Joey Meininger 09:09
Yeah, I think it was a deliberate moment for me to say goodbye. It was a deliberate moment for me to say the show's over, there's no encore. It was the closure I needed. People come out to your ceremony, they say goodbye, they do all their things. It's a Friday like most other people's ceremonies. Then to me it was important that now they're going to go live their lives. They're going to go out to their Friday, go with their families, do whatever it is they want to do. They had a great time at my ceremony, but come Monday morning I'm gone and it's over.

So I needed to just sit there and see all that in one moment. I needed to see that there were no more faces in the chairs. I needed to see that to be able to close the door and try to take those first few steps into being just Joey.

Rachel Bozeman 09:58
Absolutely. So kind of now transitioning, if you will, to talk a little bit about the work that you're doing with those transitioning veterans and really just some of the goodness that is there. What are maybe some of the challenges that they're facing and ways that you're helping assist those folks that are transitioning?

Joey Meininger 10:16
Our transition programs that are congressionally mandated are awesome and amazing, but in my opinion the lens we look through when we're going through the course is essentially job placement. As we leave the service we're like, “Okay, how am I going to land? Where am I going to work? I've had this job my whole life.” So as you're going through this course, that's what you're really keying in on.

You're not as keyed in on the medical stuff, Tricare, all those other things that are very important. You're focused on how am I going to make an income. The program is great for that. It teaches you how to build profiles and talk in the corporate world and understand military jargon doesn't work well. But what they don't talk about is the emotional side of transitioning. What they don't talk about is when you do have that moment where you're like, “Well maybe I don't want to be just Joey. Maybe I missed something.”

I think there's a vulnerability out there where people don't admit that. People are glad to leave the military. They served honorably, they did well, they're ready for the next chapter. But what I find with most veterans that I communicate with is the conversations always start the same: “Yeah, so where did you land at? What was your job?” And I play the game, go through it. Then I usually hit them with, “Well how are you feeling?” And that's the one. “Why didn't I expect that?”

When you're opening up and being vulnerable, it's like, “Alright, I'll put some skin in the game. I'll be a little bit vulnerable to you.” I'll tell you about my challenge in transition, and then I can just see it in their face: “Okay, well I'm not alone. Thank you for sharing, because I feel that same way. I'm scared. I'm worried.”

For me it's been a great opportunity to close some of those gaps that you can't really teach in a TAP course. You don't know what you feel like until you walk away. So for me it's just good to be able to reach out and help people follow their next chapter and make sure that they have somebody they can lean on and reach out to in times of need.

Because I think it ebbs and flows as well. Sometimes you may be fine in your first five or six months, and then I've talked to people that transitioned and said maybe five or six months later they just sat in their kitchen and cried and bawled, and it hit them at that point. Everyone's different. But if you prepare for that — a lot of times I try to hit it left of bang, so six months prior to separating — I'm like, “Hey man, I know you're so happy. I know you're doing all your medical stuff. I know you can't wait to take off that uniform and start your next chapter, but here's what's coming. Here's what you can expect. And if it doesn't happen to you, awesome, but here's what you can expect.” It just kind of preps them for that mental status.

Kathleen Smith 13:23
So let's talk a little bit more about your tactical advice that you share with veterans. You and I have sort of the same mindset: people think that veterans transitioning out believe that first job is their forever job right after the military. The Department of Labor actually keeps statistics on this, and more than 80 to 85% of veterans in their first year transition to another job. So all of this pain that people go through trying to find that first job, they're going to have to do it again in another year. Making sure they have the right preparation and understand the ins and outs that, as you said, aren't completely shared in the TAPS program. What are some of the tactical pieces of advice that you share with people?

Joey Meininger 14:16
I think one of the big ones is: as I transitioned, I thought there were two paths. Based on where I was going to be next, you have two options. I still believe this. You pick the location that you want to retire at, or you pick the job in which you want to do, and the location is where the job is at. So that's kind of the fork in the road on your transition.

But what I try to encourage people to do, just based on those stats that you shared, is you know there's a good possibility — and I would call it pretty probable — that you're not going to be doing that same job within your first year. So you've uprooted your life, you've landed in this location, and maybe it's not the ideal location. Maybe it's not about chasing the job. Maybe it's about chasing location, and then the job will follow.

I just talked to a guy last week who's looking at Florida, and I said, “Yeah man, focus on the area. Obviously we know where our marketability is — in bigger cities or places close to bases — but choose a location you want to be in, and then pick the job. That way, in the event that you are one of these 85 percenters that don't find that to be a great fit, then you can transition into something pretty easily and still not have to uproot your life.”

I think if you look at some of the things, especially towards the end with our senior folks in the services, that's one of the frustrations that kind of forced them out: “I'm tired of moving.” I know personally I moved six times in my last eight years and I felt like a nomad. I couldn't tell you my address because I was always living out of boxes. So for me, finding a place where it was going to be at least my five- to ten-year plan was the most important.

That's one of the tactical things I always try to tell them: focus on the location and the job will follow. And I think one of the things that I hear as well is, “Well I'm a little worried because I'm four months out. I want to pick the location, and I haven't got the job offers or the interviews.” But we have to understand that corporate doesn't work like that. In the military we see vacancies six months to a year out because we have PCS cycles, but civilians don't know that and they're not really tuned into hiring you four or six months out. That is very stressful for you, because that's what you've known your whole life. So with veterans, that's just another piece of advice I give: keep the location, but realize the actual narrow-down to what you're going to be doing probably won't be super visible until about one or two months out.

Kathleen Smith 17:14
So now that we've talked a little bit about the tactical, let's talk about that other scary side of the transition. What's the elephant in the room?

Joey Meininger 17:24
Personally, I believe serving is such an honor. Whether you serve four, six, eight, ten, twelve, twenty, or thirty years, it is a great service to your country and a very admirable thing to do. But everyone has an off-ramp. You cannot do this forever.

What I found through some really intimate conversations is that towards the end of people's careers they're literally sticking it out and staying in the profession because they are afraid to make that leap. They are afraid to battle the unknown in the outside world, because we have guaranteed positions, we have guaranteed income. We've had this for our whole adult lives, and now we're having to take our skills and abilities and go into the outside world and bet on ourselves. We're going to have to bet that we land where we're supposed to land.

A lot of times that is a deterring factor for a lot of folks making that career decision: “Hey, is it time for me to get out?” Well, if it's time for you to get out, it shouldn't really be based on you being afraid of what's next. And I find way too often it is. You stay in because you're afraid, and I don't know that that's the best life decision for people.

Kathleen Smith 18:45
You've provided us some really great advice and really great perspectives. What is one last piece of advice you have for our audience?

Joey Meininger 18:52
I think just recognize you can't do it alone. Depending on what position in the military you had, we have admin professionals, medical professionals, maintenance professionals — you name it. A lot of tough jobs out there. And to be honest with you, a lot of these jobs are very hard to do. At the end of the day, when you raise your hand to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, that is an unlimited liability clause. You essentially swore an oath that you will protect your country at all costs. I don't care what job you did — that takes courage.

As you transition, you've built this courage in yourself so much that you think you have to be super courageous when you take the next chapter on, and you have to take it on alone. And it's definitely not the case. I appreciate what you guys do with this podcast and getting perspectives out there. A lot of transitioning veterans — there are cohorts, there are so many of us that are out there trying to be in this space and trying to help people. The reason why is because there's a genuine need.

I think that would be my last little piece of advice: just realize that you're going to get in your feels. Realize that there are going to be times when you're going to need somebody else to help you navigate this. And realize it's not really about a job. It's about an identity on the way out and who you are. There is no answer day one. It may not be an answer six months out. I'm coming up on two years in June, and I feel like I'm pretty comfortable now being just Joey, but it took quite a long time to get here.

Kathleen Smith 20:43
Joey, thanks so much for sharing your story with us today. I really appreciate your time.

Joey Meininger 20:47
Yeah, of course. Thank you.

Kathleen Smith 20:50
I really loved listening to Joey's story and having him share more of, shall we just say, the softer side of transitioning, and his great story about sitting in the auditorium after his retirement ceremony and just having closure — saying goodbye, looking at the empty chairs in the auditorium, and realizing that one part of his life was ending and he had a new part to look forward to.

As he said toward the end of our episode, it's actually taking him two years to find what it is to be just Joey. So his advice to you — I'll summarize: take some time, understand it's going to be scary, but you're going to get through it. Please lean on the community.

Thanks so much for listening to another episode. Please follow for more episodes. Be sure to subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter, Veteran Voices, so that you can connect with others in the community and you can connect with all of our guests. Bye for now.