Crew 1st Culture
The pursuit of daily growth through humility, Connection, and hard work.
Lead - Train - Execute - Have Fun
Our Mission
To share the importance of value driven leadership.
To spread positivity in a negative world.
To add value to as many lives as we can.
To share our mistakes and victories in order to help others become better leaders at work and at home.
The Underground Leadership Movement
This movement is our statement that we will no longer wait or depend on anyone to develop us as leaders. We are taking on that responsibility for ourselves and will pursue that growth and development through any means necessary. We will also do everything that we can to share what we have learned with others in order to build a better fire service by building one leader at a time. No ones efforts, actions, or inactions will stand in the way of that because for us to become better leaders at work and at home we now know that we have to do the work.
Jeremy Sanders - Bio -
I am married to my beautiful wife Erika and live on a small farm outside of Tulsa Oklahoma. We are the parents of 8 kids and the grandparents of one grandson.
My fire service career began in 2002 at a suburban department in central Oklahoma, and this year I will have 22 years of service with that same department. For the last 12 of those years I have served as an officer, including 6 years as Captain. In that station officer role, I had the great opportunity to gain experience first-hand discovering the hard work and dedication that is required to completely rebuild a broken firehouse culture. It took several years of investing ourselves into the culture change before results seemed to start manifesting but it was all well worth it. I am so very proud to say that what once was the worse crew in our department, had been transformed into the best crew.
In 2023, I was invited to be a member of the Tactical Resiliency Training cadre. This was a huge moment in my life and even though I didn’t know it at the time, this group would prepare me for the most difficult situation that I have ever experienced.
In early 2024, I found myself in desperate need of all that I had learned the previous year and had taught overs about through the TRT cadre. I believe that God spent all of 2023 preparing me for what was to come in 2024, and I also believe that going through the Morale Injury that I have had to deal with in 2024 is preparing me to help others make it through their adversity for years to come. This situation has stripped me of every formal remnant of authority, but I have learned that it can never strip me of my ability to lead and have an impact on others. I am now proudly leading from the role of Driver (Apparatus Operator), and I can do so with a good attitude because of the tools that I have been blessed with. Now, I want to share those tools so others can stay in the fight as well.
In 2020 I created Crew 1st Culture and the Crew 1st Culture Podcast in which I share the importance of the pursuit of daily personal growth. This daily growth has helped me to not only become a better firefighter and officer but also a better dad and husband at home. The podcast has now reached over 150,000 downloads in 86 countries.
In 2021 I began to speak and teach publicly and have spoken at the following venues:
·Honor the Fallen Fire Conference – Moore, OK – 2021
·Revolutionary Fire Tactics at the Lake – Lake Ozark,Missouri – 2021, 2022 & 2023
·Mid-America FOOLS Conference – OKC, OK – 2021, 2023
·SAFRE Conference – Raleigh NC – 2022
·North Florida Fire Expo – Ocaloosa Island, FL – 2023
·Fon du Lac Co. Chief’s Association Conference – Wisconsin – 2023
·Pittsburg Fire Department – Kansas – 2022
·Edmond Fire Department – Oklahoma – 2021, 2022, & 2023
·MAFFC – Atlanta, GA – 2023, 2024
·Firemanship – Aurora, IL – 2024
·Labette County Community College Fire School – Parsons, KS - 2024
My lectures/classes focus on Character, Leadership, Mentoring, Mental Resiliency, Spirituality, Mindfulness, Personal Growth, & Firehouse Culture. I have also instructed Mental Resiliency, Forcible Entry, & Engine Operations Hands on Training at multiple locations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, & Missouri working with instructors such as Ric Jorge (Tactical Resiliency Training), Josh Pearcy (Training Solutions OKC), Steve Robertson and Todd Edwards (Stretching for Success), Justin Mann (Wood’s Forcible Entry), The natural FOOLS, & The Mid-America FOOLS.
I have made guest appearances on other podcasts including: Fit To Fight Fire Podcast, 3 Point Firefighter Podcast, National Fire Radio, The Size Up, The Weekly Scrap, Firefighter Success Podcast, The 5 Tool Firefighter, Fire Engineering Humpday Hangout, The 3 Tool Firefighter Podcast, Couplings Fire Podcast, The 24/48 Podcast, The Firefighters Podcast, Fire and Iron Podcast, Station Talk Podcast, New Dogs Old Tricks Podcast, More with Stumpo Podcast, Valor Fire Training Podcast, The Rogue Tailboard Podcast, Make Due Suburban Fireman Podcast, Enduring the Badge Podcast, and Professional Brotherhood Podcast.
