Beyond the Uniform

Why Listen:

For those of you who smoke cigars, and you know the phrase knuckle burner - this is a knuckle burner of an episode. I went in trying to keep this to 30 minutes, but we used 58 minutes for this conversation. It's because Trier has so many great points about so many different topics. You'll learn about her career. She's the co-founder and CEO of a company called Just Work. She has a tremendous amount of experience at Goldman Sachs, Twitter, other great organizations around people management, and she has so much great advice about taking care of your people, which is something our audience knows well. But doing that outside of the military blind spots, you may have to talk about empathy in very tactical ways and share stories that I found compelling. She talked about language-specific language to use to create openers within the civilian workforce of getting to know your team and making it an inclusive environment. We talk about entrepreneurship. Despite starting two different organizations, Trier talks about how she doesn't consider herself an entrepreneur, how she's much more interested in scaling something than building it. We talk about how you may not be unique in the military, but you are a unicorn when you get out of the military - the concept of followership again.

About Trier:

Trier Bryant is the co-Founder and CEO of Just Work, which works with leaders and teams of all sizes across a range of industries creating more effective organizations where respect and collaboration combine to produce just workplaces yielding exceptional results. She started out at the Air Force Academy, served in the Air Force for 7 years, and has held roles at Goldman Sachs, Twitter, SigFig, Astra, and more.

Why Listen:

I think it's amazing this conversation I had with Josh because most of it is about adding value and - what he calls - leveraging generosity for marketing and sales. And what's crazy for me is that the way that I met Josh a couple of months ago was through a connection, and I even forget how I met him. I run a company Captivate.ai that works all in marketing, and Josh is such an expert in sales systems and marketing. I think that this is a little bit different from a typical episode. We don't talk a lot about career transition. But we talk about getting attention, using marketing and sales in a way that's authentic and genuine and doesn't feel icky, is probably the best word I can use. One thing you'll take away from this episode is just a lot of great ideas about an authentic way to get attention, to market, to do sales, to get your message across, whether that's personal or professional. Second of all, I think that Josh is an incredible entrepreneur, and I admire him. I've been doing podcasting for four years, and I often feel like an old hat at this. Josh has been doing it for 14 years, a full decade longer than I have. His thoughts on entrepreneurship, on media, PR, all of these different things; there's just a goldmine here.

About Josh:

Josh is the founder and CEO of Up My Influence, which provides step-by-step tools, coaching, and public relation hacks for entrepreneurs to dramatically increase their sales by attracting their perfect audience, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional PR services. Since serving in the Navy as a broadcast journalist, he has founded and led multiple companies including SavingsAngel, and the Josh Elledge Consulting Company. Josh has been podcasting for 14 years - most people don't even know that podcasting has been around for that long - and he has had over 2000 media appearances.

Why Listen:

Well, my guest today is an absolute Rockstar. There's a couple of reasons to listen. First of all, he started his career in marketing. He has been at the helm of very senior companies, including Kraft Foods, Wrigley, Novartis, Nestle, The Blue Buffalo Company. He's on the board of Campbell Soup. He took Blue Buffalo public. He was the head of Gerber when it was acquired by Nestle. He has an incredible history, and part of his advice is just focusing on the job in front of you, not having a sense of where you want to go. But not planning out every step and just knocking out of the park whatever job you're working on, tons to learn from his description of his previous jobs. His current role is at the Chronos Group, which is in the cannabis space, they do 50 million in sales, 1.2 billion in cash. It really speaks to the credibility of this as an industry, why veterans may consider it as a career path. And just hearing what it's like after decades of being at the helm of very large companies. What it's like to take a more entrepreneurial twist and be at the helm of a very, very, relatively small company.

About Kurt:

Kurt is now the CEO of the Cronos Group, which is an innovative global cannabinoid company with international production and distribution across five different continents. Since graduating from the Naval Academy, he has held senior positions at Kraft Foods, Wrigley, Novartis, Nestle, The Blue Buffalo Company, and Campbell Soup Company. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, and Kurt spent 14 years working internationally in Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, and Australia.

Why Listen:

I just wrapped up my conversation with Shawn, and it was so enjoyable. There were a couple of things that stood out to me. One was his great quote about always being ready for opportunities and embracing the right thing. His story is so incredible, from this perspective, starting with his unexpected medical discharge from the military, to a winding road through consulting and startups, and ultimately back to startups and starting his own company. It just really shows you the power of resilience, but also the power of being open to unexpected deviations in your career, which will inevitably happen.

Second of all, we talk a lot about networking. He gives a couple of really poignant examples where 10 to 20 years after meeting someone, he and people in his network, reconnect in a way that alters their career. It really gets away from this transactional thought of networking and moves toward something that veterans excel at, which is genuinely meeting people, enjoying them, and being generous.

To that point, immediately after recording, Shawn asked me, "How can I help you with your company Captivate.ai?" It was just so powerful to see him immediately and genuinely putting to use his principle - approaching networking from a generous and giving standpoint.

We talk about grad school, he gives an example of a friend who sold his company for $240 million and then went to business school. He underscores this thought by showing that there is no "one right size fits all" approach to education and your career journey. It's about learning and serendipity.

Finally, we talk about his own startup journey and the milestones achieved along the way as he created and continues to build his company. I did something for the first time in this interview, which is a kind of live mentorship where I asked him a specific question about my company Captivate.ai. I think his answer will benefit anyone interested in entrepreneurship.

As always at BeyondTheUniform.org. You'll find a lot of great resources all for free, over 395 episodes, just like this one, and we've got episodes lined up for every single week going forward. So I'm really excited about that. So with that, let's dive into my conversation with Shawn Olds at boodleAI.

About Shawn:

Shawn Olds is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at boodleAI, which specializes in Enriched Analytics for sales, marketing and fundraising teams. boodleAI is on a mission to democratize data, making it faster and easier for ALL organizations to locate their best leads and prospects in any contact list. By using advanced data enrichment and predictive insight analytics, boodleAI clients have already experienced significant lifts in conversion, engagement, and retention rates. boodleAI has over 30 employees, has raised $3M in funding, and is located in Tysons, VA. Shawn holds a B.S. from West Point, an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and a JD from Northwestern's Pritzker School of Law.

Why Listen:

I just wrapped up recording this episode, and it will cost me about

$60 in books, or maybe $5 in late fees from the library because there were so many great books that Joe recommended. Here are a couple things that stood out to me from this interview. And first of all, make sure you check out the show notes for this episode at BeyondTheUniform.org. In addition to a link to Joe's company, HigherEchelon, there are also links to all of the books he describes, as well as an interview we did with Taylor justice years ago, who you'll learn was one of the founding members of the HigherEchelon team and has gone on to found UniteUS, which has exploded, absolutely exploded as a company.

So a couple of things that I really liked from this interview, the first one is that Joe has a great perspective on entrepreneurship. And he and his other two co-founders started by only investing $1,000 into this company, and they made the commitment that they would not join the company full time until it could pay their salary, you know, at a competitive rate. And it took three or four years to get there. And I feel like this is so contrary to what I would call bad advice I so often see of "burning bridges", "jumping off", Carpe Diem, seize the moment to start the company, all of these things that I think are potentially really harmful for aspiring entrepreneurs. That's one thing that I think is great. The second though, is that HigherEchelon is a company that is all about enhancing company and individual performance. And Joe gives a lot of great frameworks that are applicable to your career in life, no matter what that lifestyle is, whatever that career path is. He talks about things like people process and technology, and constantly learning about which one to focus on in your life or organization. He talks about the values that drive his companies, which I'm going to start borrowing, which is learn grow, adapt, and lead and why that's so important. He does a lot of work with transition assistance and talks about mindsets that he sees in military veterans.

And I found that really helpful as well. There's a lot of goodness here. And so be sure to to check out this episode. As always at beyond the uniform.org. You'll find a lot of great resources all for free, over 394 episodes, just like this one, and we've got episodes lined up for every single week going forward. So really excited about that. So with that, let's dive in to my conversation with Joe Ross at HigherEchelon

About Joe:

Dr. Joe Ross is the President and Co-Founder of HigherEchelon, a service-disabled veteran-owned, human and organizational performance consulting firm that works with both public and private sector clients to enhance performance. HigherEchelon has over 150 employees in 25 different states with the corporate office in Arlington, VA, but Headquarters in Huntsville, AL. Joe started HigherEchelon over 10 years ago with his business partner, Paul Maggiano. Joe holds a B.S. from West Point, a Masters of Education in Psychology and Athletic Consulting from Springfield College, and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Walden University. Amidst all of this, he also found the time to serv as the Assistant Football Coach at West Point from 2009-2012.

Brian Reese is a leading expert on and advocate for U.S. veterans' benefits. A former active-duty Air Force officer, he deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and received the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. He is a Distinguished Graduate of Management from the United States Air Force Academy and earned his MBA as a National Honor Scholar from the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. Brian is the Founder & CEO of VA Claims Insider, a Coaching and Consulting company whose mission is to educate and empower veterans to get the VA disability benefits they've earned for their honorable service.

Jason Van Camp is the author of the book, Deliberate Discomfort, which is both a Wall Street Journal and 2x #1 Amazon Best Selling book. For the last 10+ years, he has run the consulting firm, Mission Six Zero, which dramatically improve sales performance, reduces costs, and wins by providing their client's teams with a new way of solving organizational problems. He is also the Executive Director of the 501-3c organization, Warrior Rising. He is a graduate of West Point, as well as Brigham Young University's Business School, and is a 14-year Veteran of the US Army, where he served in the Green Beret.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-van-camp-076a5339/ https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Discomfort-Operations-Comfortable-Uncomfortable/dp/1733428011 https://missionsixzero.com/ https://www.warriorrising.org/