CEO's You Should Know x MCON

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I grew up in a small town called Viera Beach,
Florida on East Coast, about two hours north of Miami.
I grew up in a with a military family, served
a couple of tours of Vietnam, A second airborn grandparents
serve in World War Two. So come from a multi
generational military family, which has been which is definitely shaped

(00:20):
you know, however, view the world. And where'd you go
to school? I did my undergrad at NYU in New
York City, and they did grad school at Florida State
University outstanding.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
And then of course you talked about military service, and
I know the apple doesn't fall for from the tree.
You did service, so we appreciate what you've done for
our country. Can you tell us a little bit about
why you joined and how many years you served?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah? So I served in the Marine Corps, the Infantry Marine.
I served four years in the in the infantry de
ploint through Southeast Asia and it was you know, it's interesting.
Why did I serve in the military. You know, I
want to say that, you know, I wasn't rebelling from
my father because he told me, he said, son, I
support you whatever you do. And enlisting in the military

(01:03):
and not going straight to college. He's like, but just
don't join the Marine Corps. And what did I do?
I joined the Marine Corps. I'm looking back on it
as a young person. I definitely I don't believe I
was intentionally doing that. Just the Marine Corps, the Spree Corps,
the high standards that spoke to me. And so it
was just a funny, you know, kind of anctubal story,

(01:23):
you know, of him telling me that. But yeah, I
will say that the military, my experience in the Marine
Corps I was described as some of the best and
worst times you know of my life. But I wouldn't
trade it for anything. And the experience, everything you learn,
the relationships. It set me up to be successful in
so many other things. I had no idea post service.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, I'm glad that you talked about that WEEKO and
just a little bit later on we talk about leadership
in the series and CEOs you should know. And I've
talked to so many people that have had outstanding military service,
like yourself, and taken that to the private sector, whether
it's for a nonprofit, and there's so many correlations. And
I'm a big sports guy and as you know, between sports,

(02:04):
the business world, and the military, there's a lot of
things that you can integrate when it comes to structure
and teamwork and honor and duty and all those things
of leadership. So I want to talk about that in
just a little bit, but we're obviously here to talk
about MCN that's coming up in Las Vegas October twenty
three through the twenty six. Now there's a lot to
talk about with all your speakers, You've got a huge

(02:25):
list of people, and I know you put this together,
and I guess the first thing before we talk about
mission and vision, the speakers and all the events that
are happening during that event coming up very soon this month,
about the Ridin story about starting it, because I know
you've got a lot of irons in the fire that
i'd like you to talk about today that you do,
whether it's right directly with the military indirectly. But when
you came up with this idea, what did you want

(02:47):
to do? What did you want to kind of put
together here?

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, So MCN is this culmination of a couple decades
of like building communities, building event and media brands and
PLOWFMS with myself and our partners, and you know, and
then also like myself having lived, you know, the experience
and being very involved in it. But then also my
partners who did not serve in the military, but they're

(03:11):
you know, they're patriots, they love our country, they want
to support service members in their families as much as possible.
It really was identifying this white space that existed quite frankly,
and you know, if you look at it, virtually every
other community in our country has a large scale, annual
tent pole celebration, for lack of a better term, celebrating
those people or this thing or this theme. Two examples are,

(03:34):
you know, if you've ever ever heard of Dragon Con,
it's almost like twenty thousand people all celebrating fantasy and
dragons in that whole world, you know, which is amazing,
and that's their thing and they love and they're passionate
about it. Another example is the Essence Festival, which is
the largest celebration of black culture in this country. It
takes place in New Orleans every year. I think it's
over fifty thousand people at this point. It's just an

(03:55):
amazing celebration of black culture. But for us, the military
is visibility and as important as we are to this
country and our service, we don't have a large scale
celebration of our of what we did. And so we
are all about and we built MCON to create the
largest celebration of military culture at the end of the day,

(04:16):
celebrating things like culture and service and sacrifice and purpose
and community and really remembering and celebrating what that service is,
because all too often there is this there's this there's
this perception of the broken veteran that permeates many pockets
of American society. And the reality is that, yeah, there's

(04:36):
a number of men, there's a lot of men and
women that we need to help and support in the
ways that to get them through whatever they might be
struggling with it's related to their military experience. But the
reality is the vast majority of us that serve are
out there doing amazing things in their communities, building businesses,
executives in the workplace, and their schools, churches, you know,

(04:58):
whatever they're doing. And so we we want to celebrate
people doing extraordinary things in their lives because of their
military service, not in spite of it. And one of
the best ways to do that is create these at
scale tech poles where you're bringing together huge brands, huge
partners that are endemic to the military community, VADO, D
and otherwise, and you know nonprofits that we work with,

(05:20):
but then also all the other groups that may be
more tangential but they are more poripherially or loosely supporting
the military, but they don't know how to do it
in the most authentic and impactful way, and we want
to help educate them to do that because at the
end of the day, the military and men and women
the serve make extraordinary sacrifices that most people have no

(05:41):
idea the true realities and what those hardships look like.
And so how do we bolster that, how do we
celebrate that at scale? And that's what I'm comes all about.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Not standing well, a lot of talk about when it
comes to the guest lineup, which is absolutely extraordinary. I
know you've packed a lot in when it comes to
this event, but you know, one of the really cool
things that we love to talk about not only miss Envision,
but I think more specifically, you know, if people in
our listenership are being introduced to MCON for the first time,
if you were to kind of give a thirty thousand
point View, Waco about what this exactly is. In short form,

(06:10):
what would you tell them?

Speaker 1 (06:14):
I would say that MCON brings together the military community
like no weather event and the country, and we are
building a program a platform to inspire, inform, and entertain
our community so that for every man, woman, kid, a
family member or the supporter that comes through that door, Yes,
they're going to have a great time with all the
activities and the speakers and the culinary experiences, but most importantly,

(06:39):
they are going to leave their experience, whether it's one
day or all four days, and they are going to
be exposed to a deep stack of resources that they
most likely have not been exposed to. And so they're
going to go back to the local military base in
Las Vegas, or they're going to fly across country back
to where that is, or go back to their home
wherever that might be, and they're going to be better

(06:59):
on armed, and more equipped with information and knowledge that
can help them live their life to the best of
their ability post service. And that is what that is
what we are trying to do with them COIN is
we're trying to improve outcomes and quality of life for
service members veterans in their families.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
You know, Wiko. One of the things the resumeates to
me that you're talking about right there in any CEO
that I've talked to, any company about a product or
a service that they offer. The human condition is that
we want to be able to relate to each other.
And when you talked about that white area that you had,
that hole in the industry that wasn't there that you
and the other people put together when it comes to income,
we're talking about people that could be suffering from many

(07:39):
different things, or have different experiences or same experiences, are
all coming together and saying, you know what, I'm not
the only person on the planet that's feeling this way.
And when you hear that speaker talk or you're sitting
next to that person saying, hey, you know what, we
had the same experience. Is this is what it really
is all truly about, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
That's exactly where I mean. We've got pro athletes sharing
their journey and how they've had mental health struggle struggles,
but they are now pro athletes post service, which is incredible.
We've got amazing entrepreneurs who have founded multi billion dollar
businesses sharing their struggles and their journeys, and you know,
all of our services, all of our journeys, and our

(08:15):
experiences are relative. And you might be you might come
to the event and you might be rock bottom looking
for what's the way just to reboot the trajectory of
where I'm at right now. Or you might be in
the place where you're looking to scale your business and
you need to raise capital, or you've already had successful
exits and you want to impart mentorship. The reality is

(08:36):
that everyone's coming for a different purpose, and we want
to we call it engineered serendipity. We want to give
people an opportunity to have connections with individuals and organizations
that can support them and help them accomplish whatever the
next chapter is. That is a huge part of what
we're trying to accomplish. You know.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
One of the other things I was thinking about is
I was hearing about MCON and the amazing things that
you have created here. No, I'll give you an exams. So
I've been in sports radio and television for almost thirty years,
but a long time ago, I didn't know about other
program directors in sports radio and the country, never had
a chance to meet them, talk with them and finally
heard about this conference that was in Phoenix that this
guy had put together, and all the program directors from

(09:15):
around the country came together. We golfed, and we had seminars,
and what it had an opportunity to do is to
be able to once again relate to that fellow person
about my experiences, the good stuff, the bad stuff, but
also learn. And as I see and I look at
MCON with all the different things going on and all
the different speaker lists, that I want you to talk
about this a moment once again, it's that fellowship being
brought together about all these people that might have shared

(09:38):
or similar experiences. They get to be together for three
or four days and to talk about it and live it,
and it's got to be an extraordinary experience for everybody.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
It is. And that's exactly right. And at the most
fundamental level, community facilitates social connections. Social connection saves lives
at the end of the day, and that is it
prevents isolation. It's inspiration. There's learning opportunities or connectivity we
talk about all the time. You know, Sebastian Young are amazing,
your time's bestselling author, one of the most accomplished war

(10:09):
correspond correspondents of our generation. He's been a guest speaker
and an amazing support of MCON And you know, he
has a book called Tribe and Finding your Tribe is
something that we talk about all the time. And that's
that's not the easiest thing to do when you transition
out the military. Transition from activity service to veteran is

(10:31):
is very very challenging. It can be very challenging for
It is very challenging for the service member, challenging for
the spouse, the kids, you know, and so there is
a we want to bolster and support the existing programs
that are there, and then on the other side of that,
we want to we want to talk about a lot
of the nuance that's involved with this. You don't know
what you don't know at the end of the day,
and purpose is relative, and we tend to take a

(10:54):
bit of a rubber stamp approach with how we provide
resources to service members. And the raal is is what
somebody who served six years versus somebody who served twenty
four years officer list and what they need and where
they're going is very very different. So we need to
use a scalpel with how we support our service members
to ensure that there is the best outcome and talking

(11:15):
about things like the nuance of purpose. Oftentimes we think that, hey,
I'm going to get a good job, I'm going to
make a decent living cool, I've got purpose. Well, there
couldn't be anything farther from the truth. Like some of
us are going to fill our cup with work, with
owning a business or being an executive or whatever you do.
But there's a huge category of individuals and service members

(11:37):
and veterans who that's never going to fill your comp
It doesn't matter how successful you are, You're just going
to keep pouring liquid into that cup and it's going
to keep going out. So you've got to identify other
things that are going to get you at when you
get out of bed that day, put your feet on
the ground, you're going to be jacked up and pumped
to go get after. It can be something that you're
doing in your local church. It could be coaching at

(11:58):
your kid's sports team, or for that matter, it could
be mentorship. It could be big involved in a veteran nonprofit.
There is an endless amount of things that you can
lean into and really identify purpose. What's going to fill
you what's going to make you feel inspired to live
the best version of your life. And there's so much
nuance around that. That's such an important piece to be

(12:19):
able to dissect and share that with men and women
so they understand that, you know, I don't have to
reinvent the wheel here. There are millions of individuals who
have come before me. So let's build out a playbook.
Let's be data driven and outcome oriented to how we
can support people so that we don't have to make
the same mistakes. As an entrepreneur and investor over the

(12:39):
past twenty years, I have screwed more things up that
I've had successes, but I've learned for that. That's you know,
as long as you're as long as you're like baseball,
as long as you're patting averages around three hundred, you're
doing well in business and investing in companies and building them,
and so that is something that you know, we know,
fail fast, fail forward, but it's only there's only no

(13:00):
value and failure you learn if you don't learn from it.
As long as you learn from it and you apply
that and you improve upon it, and you can share
that knowledge with other people, your team, your organization, yourself.
There's tremendous value and failure, and all too often we're
letting our service members poke around in the dark without
giving them resources and playbooks that are already there.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, that's all well said Waco and really resonating words
when it comes out, and you're not the first one,
and almost every leader in the series has talked about
the umpteen failures that they had and learning from that
and eventually getting went out there. And then my final
takeaway I think with this is for a lot of
people that are going to tend just to be seen
and heard at this conference is really important too, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Well, that's that's exactly right. Sometimes we don't feel like
we have a voice. Yeah. Also, there are there's around
fifty thousand veteran nonprofits. Some are huge national organizations that
you've heard of, like when Warrior Projects, FW, American Legion
and you know, Plue Star Families and on. Others are
much smaller regional groups. But it does like that doesn't

(14:05):
matter how big or small you are. The impact of
saving one life or the impact of helping somebody get
a job or get them out of homelessness, whatever the
scenario is, that you're supporting or employing a military spouse.
There's tremendous impact in that, and so being able to understand,
wait a minute, I don't have to reinvent the wheel
all over again if I want to have my voice heard.

(14:27):
There are other organizations you've already done this, learn from them,
leverage those things, and apply that to your community in
a really powerful and profound way because you can also
do it and it's much more data driven. Is the
other piece, and that is a huge part of what
we look at.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Your speaker lineup is huge, and I'm not it's incredible,
and I know you can go through all of them,
but I would love you to go symptoms that you're
excited about and also maybe some of the topics that
are going to be explored. Can you go through some
of them for us?

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah? Absolutely, you know, this is a this is a
hard one. I intentionally didn't put a short list together
because there are so many great people and I don't
want anybody feel like I left them out in terestionally
because they're all incredible in their own right. And so
you know, I got to call out, you know, a
good friend but also an amazing executive that's doctor Tina Athrol.
She's the CEO of psych Armor. They do incredible work

(15:15):
across our entire military community with cultural compency training and
other types of things to ensure that community care providers
understand how to engage and work with veterans and their families.
There are so many preventable outcomes, negative outcomes that we
could help with if you simply if the care provider

(15:37):
simply identifies that somebody is a veteran so you can
ask additional questions, and she and her team we partner
with them on i'm con Health, where we're talking about
human performance. We are talking about reinventing the continued of
care economics, of care delivery, community partnerships. We've got six
pillars that we built out and this is all about
how we drive different outcomes. Dennis, you're probably feelamiliar with this,

(16:01):
a lot of listeners are. But you know, for the
past twenty years, we have not been able to put
a measurable dent in active duty and veteran suicide, despite
spending more money, and so this program, it's very intentional
that it was in Washington, d C. Or in part
of the usual places and i'm DC all the time.
There are so many amazing men and women who work
very hard, you know DC at the agency's nonprofits there,

(16:23):
But we wanted to get outside of the traditional forum
that are there, the DC bubble, so we can have
different conversations. We're bringing in different amazing speakers. One example
is a Green Beret veteran, got a Mike Emkes, the
co founder of Function Health. Function Health is the fastest
growing health tech company in history. They went from they

(16:44):
went from zero to I think almost four hundred million
dollars in three years. They just did a raise is
all public. They did a raise earlier this year to
two point five billion dollar valuation. And it's all about
how you test and you look at different a much
broader array of biomarkers so that you can be you
can be preventive in nature with how you look at
your own personal health care. So they're democratizing how we

(17:06):
can do that, and the same thing for everything we're
doing around this. We're looking at upstream oriented solutions so
that you eliminate men and women getting to point a
crisis or dealing with issues before it even happens. But
one thing on the health piece before I move on
that I'll talk about is a term that we use
is called brain health. Shifting away from this notionure of

(17:27):
mental health. Brain health, this great organ up here floating
around in our brain, in our heads, is the most
important organ in the body because it informs and influences
everything else. But we think about it in this very
subjective terms traditionally around mental health. And that's not to
demonize you know, mental health professionals in any way, shape
or form, but we need to eliminate the stigma associated

(17:50):
with how we think about mental health and brain health
therapy is no different than going to the gym. You know,
you want to improve, like how heavy this loots that
you can push or your bench press. You got to
put in the time in the gym. If you're dealing
with something that's going on with the chemistry up and
the in your brain, you've got to put in the work.
But the science is showing us that we can make

(18:12):
cognitive measurable improvement if we work at it, if we
employ these different therapies that are out there. And so
it's really incredible that we're able to showcase a lot
of these different modalities and transformative therapies to our community
and executives and professionals from different agencies to actually affect
change and look at how we can implement them and

(18:33):
furthermore research. So that's the health and wellness piece of it.
And we've got cold punch pools and UFC providers do
a combative expos so tons of cool stuff as it
relates to that. But you know, some of the other
stuff that we're doing, you know, I want to call
out a gentleman, Tyler Gray. Tyler is a Green Beret,
you know, Army ranger Stiper. He was a Delta Force
operator and you know he got you know, got injured

(18:57):
pretty in a pretty early way. He's come out since,
had an extraordinary story and a TV on CBS or
TV show on CBS. Now he's a best selling author
for a book he just dropped, and he's going to
be talking about his own personal journey and kind of
what we alluded to earlier people were talking about, you
know what, I was in a really, really horrible spot.
But here is how I pulled myself out. Here's here

(19:20):
the resources that I tapped in to do that. You
don't have to go this alone. And look at him.
He is one of the most highly trained operators in
the world at that level and he still struggled with things.
So everyone take a minute and pause and think about
that for a moment. You know, regardless of where you
are or you're the different types of training, if you

(19:41):
were an admin, or even if you're a civilian and
you're you know, you're not an All Star athlete or anything.
People at the highest lea because that's one of being
a professional athlete or going to the All Star Game,
you know, every year, and those individuals are being vulnerable
and forth rine transparent about those journeys. So it's incredibly
inspired siring to see people who are willing to put

(20:01):
themselves out there in service of others. And that's a
that's a theme that continues to permeate. And then we
foster and I'm calling is you know, service never stops
at the end of the day. You know, there's a
number of other you know, really incredible folks that I
you know, that I want to call out as well. Gosh,
who let's uh, let's so another person is Charlotte Creech.

(20:24):
She's the chief program officer at Higher Heroes USA. They
do absolutely incredible work on the hiring side, the transition piece.
They have an incredibly data driven approach to every dollar
that goes into you know, supporting a veteran and hiring,
they've been able to push that number down so that
they're able to be as efficient as possible with all

(20:45):
of the brand partners that are putting resources into that,
they're just doing extraordinary work. You know. The other uh,
some of the other ones that I want to call
out is Blue Star Families and some of the work
they're doing with Starbucks target Shabani. From a brand partnership piece,
they are they're what winning looks like at the end

(21:05):
of the day. Both partners are engaged, believe in the mission.
They're both taking a very data driven approach to it.
They're looking at how they build out authentic and impactful programs,
not one or the other. And the corporate brand partners
they're not taking a check the box. So we're just
doing this because it feels nice. They're doing it because
they want to understand every dollar that they contribute or

(21:27):
every resource they contribute, it's not just about money that
is going to make a huge difference in that. So
we've got just an amazing group of people there. And
then the other piece of that is gentlemen. Rudi Reez
marine recon veteran TV shows on Fox and in other places,
just on HBO, just an amazing human. He just was

(21:47):
always so vulnerable and inspiring with the stories that he tells.
So he's going to be out of Range Day with
us doing some incredible things and other pieces of that.
The other thing I want to call out his own
Range Day that we're hosting on Friday. That's the big
kind of the consumer part of the event that kicks
off at Clark County Shooting Complex. And we've got Yeah,
we're slinging arrows down range. We're having a blast. We

(22:08):
are you know, we have you know, we're working with
the National Shooting Sports Foundation, We're working with the USCCA
ARC on firearms, and a bunch of amazing groups. But
one of the things I'm really proud of is what
we're doing around the topic of secure storage, and it's
about cultural change. And Dennis, I don't know if you
are if you're familiar with the Edelman Trust Barometer, but
Edelman's a huge global agency. Every year they do this

(22:31):
survey of over thirty three thousand consumers, and what that
survey tells us is that consistently consumers, the individual veterans
and every wise all of us. You mean, we trust
corporate brands more than NGO's, more than media, and more
than government. And so corporate brands have a powerful, powerful
opportunity to step in and effect change and influence change.

(22:53):
And so we're really thrilled to be partnering with the
firearms industry, the outdoor industry to help to reshape cold Truly,
how we think about secure storage and why that's important
to call out is over seventy percent of veterans that
die by suicide use a firearm. And I want to
be very clear, I'm not picking on firearms when I
say that. It is just a statistic and quite frankly,

(23:15):
it represents an opportunity to dramatically reduce suicide if we're
able to create more time and distance if someone is
in crisis or if they're struggling. And so, you know,
the response we get all to oftens when individuals and
firearms owners aren't locking up the weapons is you know what,
I need my weapon accessible if something goes bumping the night,
you know, protection, self defense, totally understand that, But the

(23:36):
reality is is there are gun lock boxes now today
that you can have open and sub two seconds and
get access to that weapon, but you can still keep
it locked up and you can still protect your family,
members of the community who might be in your home
get access to that firearm or from theft. And so
we're reshaping that cultural narrative around training, and so we're

(23:57):
going to have a number of different training exercises out there.
We're actually gonna be demonstrating putting people on the clock
to start in one position, moving numbers another position, open
the gun, block box, load it, taking a number of steps,
engage your target, clock stops. So we're going to demonstrate
and showcase and also have a lot of fun and
gamify it that hey guys, there's no excuse if self
defense is a priority. You can still keep your firearms

(24:20):
locked up and ready when you need them. So the
cultural change you see continues to be a permeating theme
for im CON and that's a big part of it.
And then some of the other things we're doing. On
Saturday Sunday, we've got musical performances for local artists who
are veterans, some which who are veterans. We've got amazing
authors and you know, amazing authors, We've got amazing pro athletes.

(24:44):
I mentioned, we're gonna have UFC profile it fighters doing
a combatives expo and Naval Special Warfare in Air Force
Special Operations. We're doing that with the WEE to five Foundation,
which is going to be really incredible. So the group
of people, organization, that's hundreds of organizations, hundreds of brand partners.
We're expecting you almost six thousand attendees this year. We're

(25:07):
just looking to have a great event for people to
come together and walk away with amazing resources and have
a really great times standing.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
I appreciate you sharing all that, Waco, And at the end,
I promise, well, we're going to give the website how
to get tickets, all of that, the dates where it
is at the expo in Vegas, and everything you need
to know if you already have in Google that I
did promise. I wanted to talk about leadership Waco, and
I think there's so many correlations, once again between military
and sports and the private sector. What you do, and
I know that not only am CON, you do so

(25:34):
many other things that I'd love for you to talk
about without embarrassing you, because I know you're very busy
with your different buckets that you work with when it
comes to the military and all these different projects you are.
But when you hear the word leadership with what you
grew up with and where you are today and how
you access it and how you use it, can you
talk a little bit about leadership for our listenership? Please?

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah. I think for me, leadership is something that's always evolving.
I look at when I was a young entrepreneur, a
young CEO, and some of the leadership traits that I
exhibited not the greatest, you know, and I'm completely honest
about that, But you're constantly evolving, You're growing as a person,

(26:17):
You're learning, you're reading. And I love Michaelangelo's quote. I
think it was in the sixties when he said it,
I am still learning. I won't even embarrass myself and
try to pronounce it in Italian, but I'm still learning.
You have one of the greatest, one of the greatest
artists in history, still in his sixties saying I am
still learning. And I think that is one of the

(26:37):
most important aspects of leadership, is being vulnera and being openness,
because I think that I actually know when you leave
with leadership in that capacity where we're always constantly evolving
and learning. That trickles down to the organization, from your executives,
your managers, the individuals, because it informs that we can
respectfully challenge each other, we can try new things, we

(26:59):
can and innovate. And one of the things that we
see all too often across different pockets of government agencies.
I think, and you know some of them which are
directly you know, in charge with supporting veterans, is there
can be this complacency or we can get we can
trip over bureaucracy and red tape in which ultimately hurts
the warfighteror the service member and their family. And I

(27:22):
say that not picking on individuals that work there because
they're part of a bigger system, but constantly learning and
evolving and trying new things and measuring that measuring and adjusting.
Measuring and adjusting is incredibly important and so from a
from a leadership standpoint, we always try to instill that
in folks. And then the other piece I touched on earlier,

(27:42):
the mistakes. You know, people are going to make mistakes,
your your contractors, your employees, your partners. You know. I
had to develop this over time with my father and
forgiveness is a really important aspect of and granted there's
certain things that you don't come back from that you
don't forget obviously not hopefully those are obvious and there's
new once step. But you know, people are not perfect.

(28:04):
I am not perfect, and being able to allow people
to stub their toe and come back from that, makeup
for it and still be a good contributing member of
your team is something that's I think a really important
aspect of how you build a good, healthy culture. At
some point, you know, if someone goes too far, you know,
or there's not performing to the standards, you got to

(28:25):
make a change. Obviously those without saying, but like I said,
the forgiveness piece and the continual process and provent peace
are such important aspects of leadership.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Well, my takeaways from what you just talked about, and
it's very prophetic of what you had said, but there's
a lot of humility to being a leader and also
self awareness and it really takes those kind of things
and then counting on your team all the time. I
did mention a lot of the things that you're working on,
and I know don't We can have our own separate
podcasts all the amazing things that you're doing, but I
know you're very proud of about some other things that

(28:54):
you're working on. Can just for a few moments share
what you're doing?

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah. Absolutely. There's a number of programs that involved in that.
They are absolutely incredible. You know. One of those is
sim of the work I do with the American Legion.
I chair the American Legion's national suicide prevention program called
Be the One for two point six million members and
it is in an extraordinary program where we first launched
it about a year and a half ago. In the

(29:17):
first ten months, we trained almost thirteen thousand of our
members in staff on suicide prevention. We worked with the
Columbe University with the Columbia Protocol, and we built an
app called the Be the One app where you could
literally go through it and you know, Dennis, you me
or the lay person, not a clinician, if you are
dealing with somebody who may be potentially in crisis, it
is a very easy series of checklists to go through

(29:40):
and figure out if somebody is at low monitor high
risk risk of suicide again using a scalpel like I
talked about earlier. So we're incredibly proud of that work
you know that we've done to educate men, women and
think of it as CPR for the brain. It is
a community health based approach. You know, CPR saves hundreds
of thousands of people's lives every year. It's millions of

(30:01):
lives since it was first rolled out back in the
eighties and nineties. And we need to take that approach
with suicide prevention in this country so that you me,
other people are informed and equipped to identify somebody who
may be going through struggles because oftentimes the signals are
not obvious at all. And so very proud of the
work that the American Legion is dealing would be the
one and other things. Another great program that we're dealing

(30:24):
with the Department of Veterans Affairs is two years ago
we stood up a program a venture studio inside the VA,
and so we launched what's called the Veterans Health Venture
Studio with a good friend and colleague, doctor Andresendahl. She's
the brain child, she's the brain child behind all this.
And the idea is to bring in men and women
from outside the walls of the VA and also inside

(30:45):
another partner organizations to tackle to look at the biggest
points of friction, the biggest challenges to improving quality of care,
and we're going to build tools, technology and AI driven
platforms that can help solve those problems at scale of
the Venture Studio is a year long program where teams
get selected and continue to go on through those different programs.

(31:05):
Ultimately and at the end of the year, certain teams
are selected and will ultimately be piloted in different organizations
and hospital settings across the VA, and the ones that
demonstrate the most advocacy are then scaled across the enterprise.
So it's a very innovative, fast moving program designed to
improve care, improve access, and prove quality care for veterans

(31:28):
in those who serves that perms amazing. And the other
thing you know that I do that really sits across
all of these programs is, you know, I co founded
a brand strategy agency called Impact Group, and what we
do is we specialize in working with large corporates, foundations,
other organizations to build out programs for the for organizations

(31:49):
that are looking to UH support and create impact programs
for military service members veterans in their family so that
can be uh you know, employee resource group inside the
coreption it could be building out a robust impact social
social impact program working with nonprofits. But what's unique about
us is we align the corporate goals and objectives with

(32:13):
the organization of the at and we match that up
with the impact conditions they want to lean into so
that they're data driven and we ensure that they get
a creative impact not only on the organization employees and customers,
but they also are able to really in a detail,
in a data driven away, measure the outcomes for those
nonprofit partners they're serving to ensure that those resources are

(32:35):
having the most impact. So there's a number of other
groups that I'm invested in, but those are at a
high level. Some of the things that I'm most proud
of and really related to the great work that myself,
our partners, and our other stakeholders and team members are
doing to support veterans and their families.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Well, I appreciate you sharing all that way. It never
sees it to amaze me in this series when we
talk to CEOs and leaders and entrepreneurs, they're involved in
so many things, they're just not that many hours in
the Yeah, you somehow make it because of all the
energy and passion that you have and that comes through
tremendously as I talk to you. Well, let's we promised
to give the website and also the dates of MCN
twenty twenty five how to get tickets where it's located

(33:13):
to the expo in Vegas. So if you could kind
of give everybody just one last thing about how they
can be a part of this, let's let's let's get
them all set up absolutely.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
M CON twenty twenty five is coming up October twenty
third through the twenty sixth in Las Vegas. It's at
the Expo at World Market. If you want to get tickets,
learn more, just go to MCON dot live. MCON dot live.
You can get all the information you need. You can
inquire to our team if you want to get more information,
or you can get your tickets right online at the website.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Understanding, well, Wake, I can't tell you how much I
appreciate your time. First of all, thank you for your
service to our country, but also the things that you've
done after service is just absolutely incredible, and we need
more people like you out there helping our military out there.
But this MCON just sounds like an amazing thing to
be a part of and help people at least take
a look at it. If they can't go, just get
online because the Speaker series is amazing. All the things

(34:04):
wrapped around in Vegas are just absolutely truly incredible. It
is hercule and what you and your team have done
to put this together. Thank you so much for your
time and we really appreciate focusing and having you on CEOs.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
You should know I really appreciate it. Thank you guys.