August 20, 2025 • 50 mins
Welcome to the "Militarily Speaking" podcast with Tom McLean and Jodi Vickery.
In this episode of “Militarily Speaking,” Tom and Jodi sit down with Ross Dickman, CEO of the leading veteran and military spouse employment organization, to discuss leadership development, communication challenges, and the unique obstacles military families face when transitioning to civilian life.
“Militarily Speaking” is a podcast produced by Armed Forces Bank that is dedicated to the military lifestyle and all the things that makes the military community who they are.
Ep. 86 – The Best Resource Veterans & Military Spouses Need to Land Their Dream Job: Hire Heroes USA
Ross Dickman, a former Apache Helicopter Pilot with the U.S. Army, shares his transition from military service to civilian leadership – an experience shaped by mentors, education, and executive coaching principles. With degrees from West Point, Columbia University, and the University of Georgia, Ross applies his leadership training to guide Hire Heroes USA’s mission.
He emphasizes the organization’s focus on tailored support for veterans and military spouses, using one-on-one coaching to ensure career placements are meaningful and sustainable—an approach rooted in leadership training courses that translate military experience into professional success.
Overcoming Problems Transitioning to Civilian Life from the Military
Ross underscores that no two transitions from military to civilian life are the same, making personalized coaching essential. Hire Heroes USA’s transition specialists act as career and life coaches, helping clients translate military skills into competencies civilian employers value.
The discussion also highlights communication problems that arise when veterans attempt to explain their military background to civilian employers. Through targeted coaching, veterans and spouses learn how to articulate their value, bridging the language gap and boosting employment opportunities.
Support for Military Spouses
Military spouses often face unique career challenges—frequent relocations, job interruptions, and the need to reinvent themselves. Hire Heroes USA addresses this by fostering a supportive company culture where military spouses receive specialized career services. These programs provide professional development resources, interview preparation, and leadership development opportunities, empowering spouses to pursue stable, fulfilling careers despite geographic changes.
Impactful Partnerships with Companies
The conversation explores how partnerships with organizations like Walmart Foundation, Boeing, and LinkedIn expand Hire Heroes USA’s reach. These collaborations provide job opportunities, networking connections, and professional development resources for veterans.
Ross stresses that volunteers—both veterans and civilian professionals—play a vital role by offering mentorship, mock interviews, and career guidance, helping job seekers strengthen their leadership and communication skills.
Virtual Career Fairs: Modern Solutions for Career Growth
As the workforce evolves, Hire Heroes USA has embraced technology to connect veterans and employers through quarterly virtual career fairs. These events provide continuous professional development opportunities, eliminating geographic barriers and making it easier for veterans to engage with potential employers from anywhere in the country.
Leadership Lessons That Shaped Hire Heroes USA
Ross shares how his leadership style was influenced by former COO Nate Smith, emphasizing the importance of leading by example and maintaining transparency in communication. These leadership development lessons have shaped Hire Heroes USA’s company culture and guide how the organization empowers others to grow in their careers.
How to Support Hire Heroes USA’s Mission
Tom and Jodi highlight multiple ways individuals and companies can support Hire Heroes USA – through donations, volunteering, or creating employment opportunities. Ross encourages listeners to visit the Hire Heroes USA website to explore ongoing programs, professional development initiatives, and ways to get involved.
Military Minute
Jodi introduces the
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Militarily Speaking, episode86, hire Heroes, USA.
(00:05):
This episode we talk with RossDickman, CEO of Hire Heroes, USA.
Welcome to Militarily Speaking.
Brought to you by Armed Forces Bank.
(00:25):
This is Tmac.
Jody vi.
Is that what we're what we're doing now?
Yeah.
Episode 86.
I'm going with a nickname.
I could go with Looper,but I'm gonna go with Tmac.
I am the military retailexec for Armed Forces Bank.
And Jody coming up on her sixth,seventh month as Chief Digital Office.
I don't know, I really wannasteal that title for a day.
(00:47):
Okay.
I'll give you all of my inbox.
Good luck.
Delete, good luck.
Delete.
Again.
Welcome to our show.
We're excited to have youlistening and learning all
about our guest, Ross Stickman.
Ross, I wanna take just a few minutesand tell our audience all the things
about you that you know, hopefully fullwell unless Tom made them up, but, uh.
Just half.
We wanna give them, we wannagive them your story because
(01:07):
I think that's important.
Just foundationally.
So Ross currently serves as the ChiefExecutive Officer of Hire Heroes,
USA, the nation's leading veteran andmilitary spouse employment organization.
He joined Hire Heroes USA inDecember, 2015 after 12 years of
service in the United States Army.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for your service.
He led employment interventionresearch programs at Higher Heroes,
(01:28):
USA before serving as interimCEO during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Dickman was the COO fromOctober, 2020 until assuming
his current role in March of 24.
During his Army career, he servedin multiple leadership and staff
positions as an a h, is it?
Ah, 64 D. That's it.
Apache Helicopter Pilot.
That's a pretty cool gig.
(01:49):
I know
with the first cab divisionat Fort Hood, Texas.
I used to live at Fort Hood, Texas
and Fort Hood now is Fort Hood.
Yes, it's Fort Hood again.
That's right.
Yes, it's Full Circle World is right.
He deployed twice to Iraq insupport of Operation Iraqi Freedom
and the awards include Air Medal,bronze Star, meritorious Service,
medal, and the Combat Action Badge.
He later served as an aid DECAMPat the US Army Combat Readiness and
(02:12):
Safety Center, and as a tacticalofficer at the United States Military
Academy at West Point, New York.
His final Army assignment was theexecutive officer of the Simon Center
for the Professional military Ethics.
He has a Bachelor of Science degree incomparative politics from the United
States Military Academy, a masterof Arts degree in organizational
psychology and Leadership from TeachersCollege at Columbia University, and
(02:33):
a Master of Business Administrationfrom the Terry College of Business
at the University of Georgia.
Wait a minute where we say Go dogs.
Yeah, no, that, I was gonna say his eduHis education pales in comparison to mine.
Does it?
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, he's got a,
you really do have, I would say
make your case, but wedon't have that much time.
(02:53):
Your attitude today I know.
I know.
Is fantastic.
It's
lovely.
All right.
Uh, and I would just leave you withthe fact that he lives in Connecticut,
where he is a Philadelphia Eaglesfan with his wife and daughter.
What city in Connecticut, weare just outside Danbury in a
small town called New Fairfield.
Oh, that sounds wonderful.
It's, yeah, we're right in the woods.
We have bears and foxes.
(03:15):
Whoa.
That come through the yard.
It doesn't sound wonderful
at all.
I mean, this one's
frightening.
I like being near the woods.
The hardest part is you gotta putthose straps around your trash cans
'cause raccoons and stuff like thatget in there and then Oh, yeah.
And bears.
Yeah.
Oh wow.
Did you have a, did you have an incidentwith animals getting to your trash?
Oh
yeah.
Raccoons for sure.
(03:35):
And then there's a groundhog thatlives in the backyard and then there
was a, a fox in the front yard.
So, and then our neighborshave an area that.
A family of skunks live.
So yeah, we're mindful ofanimals, but we're pretty
close to civilization as well.
So you probably do yourown, what's it P fill?
I know was just say that on GroundhogDay, see if he sees this shadow.
(03:58):
Wait, she, she has a name and Yeah,my daughter around that does keep an
eye on her, towards the back shed.
And Is Lu Petia, what is her name?
Petya.
Nice.
Easier to say than p whatever.
That's a tough one.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
And, and even harder to spell.
And when you see the groundhog, youdon't, it doesn't happen the same
time over and over again, does it?
(04:19):
No.
No.
And we don't go in the area.
I'm, that was my.
That was a bad attempt.
Yes.
At the Groundhog Day.
Yes.
Yes.
We could spend all day.
I, I am actually quite confident wecan spend all day talking about this,
but this is not why you are here.
I just wanna say, Ross, it's an honor tohave you on our show talking about higher
Heroes, USA today, and I wanna thank youright now for being with us and let's
(04:41):
just start by, if you wanna give ouraudience kind of that a hundred thousand
foot view of your organization and thenas you have been warned, Tom and I have
all kinds of questions to pepper you with.
Well, thanks so much,Jody, and thanks Tom.
I, I did have to say though, when you,you brought up the Tmac nickname, all
I could think of was Tracy McGrady,so that's not bad company to be in.
He was a great basketball player
(05:03):
when he was with in Torontoor Houston or Orlando?
Houston.
I remember him in Houston.
Did I get 'em all?
Or was he, did he travelmore than just that?
Jody, you know, you're thebasketball connoisseur.
I don't know.
All right.
That's great.
Well, neither worry, asyou can tell, I don't run a
basketball trivia organization.
'cause you've companyme all it's tire heroes.
(05:23):
USA.
All right.
Yeah.
Talk about, talk aboutyour organization, Ross.
We're a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit,celebrating our 20th year in serving
veterans, transitioning militarymembers and and military spouses.
And really at its core, we'refocused on employment as the primary
vehicle for economic opportunityand success after service.
(05:45):
You know, most veterans when they'releaving the military are struggling
to figure out where their skills fitin, and most veterans don't have a
job lined up as they are leaving.
And yet, employment is the cornerstoneof how you live and operate in America.
It sets the foundation of who you areand it provides access and opportunity
(06:05):
and stability, and we really thinkmilitary skills and military spouse
skills are really not translated well.
So we focus on serving throughone-on-one, matching, one-on-one
coaching, and the highly personalizedsupport system that we serve.
Any veteran of any era, it doesn'tmatter when they served, what rank they
(06:27):
were, what their education level is.
We serve any and all, including homeless,veterans, justice connected, junior
enlisted, and then we have dedicatedprogramming around military spouses.
They have their own challengesas they're supporting their
partner's career in the military.
It affects their career trajectory andnot all support systems can be there
(06:48):
for the entire career life cycle, but weare, and we're really proud about that.
Good stuff.
You mentioned homeless veterans.
Of course.
What comes to mind since we've gota good relationship with a local
product out here, a Veterans Communityproject too, do you, do you look for
organizations like that to in litor offer the services or some do, do
some collaboration to help them as atransition outta temporary housing?
(07:13):
We do, we partner with a lotof organizations, about 700
different organizations thatserve in other areas than we do.
And so with homeless veterans oranyone going through transitional
housing, we love to partner withorganizations that are meeting those
kind of critical needs right there.
So the housing, the food insecurity,building financial readiness, and then
(07:36):
bringing our expertise into support with.
The employment coaching and theemployment connection system.
That way, we're all uplifting thecommunity together by delivering
what we're uniquely valuable at.
There's a wonderful housing group wework with called Operation Home Front.
They're wonderful.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
We're very
familiar with them.
Yep.
Yep.
(07:57):
They do good work.
A lot of backpack stuff that theydo for the kids every year too.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, they do.
Jody, I spent like three days preparingthese questions for Ross, but in, in
two minutes, Ross sent me an emailand said, can we talk about this?
So I'm gonna ask you thisnext question, right?
It's not really a question.
I just want you to talkabout two important things.
(08:20):
That you, you mentioned right offthe top are skills-based training
and personalized services, andmaybe those are differentiators,
competitive differentiation, but talkabout why you're so proud of those
two aspects of your organization.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'll start with personalized services.
Every veteran and spouse we're workingwith gets one-on-one, partnered with
(08:42):
what we call a transition specialist on.
On our team, that's theircoach, their advisor, the person
that's gonna help guide them.
It's kinda like their utility knife tohelp them navigate the labor market.
Every transition's different.
And you can have two people whohave the same rank and we're both
infantry and are even leaving fromthe same duty station, but their
(09:04):
skills profile will look different.
Their capability set, their goalsand desires will look different,
and our transition specialists workwith that person to keep them at the
center of their employment journey.
One of the things that worries me oftenabout employment focused systems is,
and not to sound crude, but they'refocused on a butts in seats type
(09:26):
of model, X number of openings outthere, and they're just trying to plug
and play, get people into a thing.
That's how you make, like make abad fit, a bad match, bad cultural
alignment, maybe bad skills.
Alignment leads to underemploymentor low job satisfaction.
And then you see turnover,turnover, turnover.
We focus on that veteran beingthe center of their journey.
(09:49):
They own it and our team are resourcesand that's delivered through always having
that coaching advisor there sometimesto pump you up and get you excited
sometimes to tell you the truth youneed to hear, but don't necessarily want
to hear to connect you with resources.
And we've found that it makes ahuge difference in their levels of
(10:10):
confidence, their sense of empowerment.
They're really owning the journey.
And then.
Taking others with 'em afterthey have found that meaningful
and purposeful career.
So that's kind of why we're reallybig fans of personalized services.
It's extremely hard to scale that, butwe have a really rigorous data-driven
mindset and a lot of process basedtracking systems to make sure
(10:35):
every client gets that one-on-onetouch, that one-on-one touch point.
And also that we're makingsure we're meeting the demand
signals that we're seeing.
So that's.
Why that stands out for me asa critical part of our work.
The second is just military is such aunique environment and military spouses
live such a unique lifestyle compared towhat, you know, a standard career journey
(10:57):
might look like, that it's sometimesreally hard to make those skills fit.
And to what the labor market is doing.
Like I flew Apache Helicopters,it's a tank in the sky.
It has missiles and a 30millimeter camon and it can
shoot rockets and its job is to.
Yeah, be the offensive weapon ordefensive force for when service
(11:21):
members are on the ground.
It was built as a tank destroyer.
Well, bank of America is probably nothiring me to go blow up many tanks.
Maybe they are.
I think that'd be, I think that'dbe super cool to have on my team.
I know I would.
You guys should put a job
posting out there like that.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If one of you's hiring a bankdestroyer, I know tons of them.
Yeah, I think I can, I canhave multiple u uses for that.
(11:45):
La, la, la, la, la.
On surface though, you look at whatthose roles you did in the military are,
and it can be really hard to figure outwhere do these fit in our business model?
How do these help us?
Grow revenue, save costs, and it's,it's the stuff that's underneath the
presenting role identity that they had.
Like what was I doing from performancemanagement and material tracking
(12:10):
and maintenance tracking andrunning a, like a process-based
organization to keep eight helicoptersflying at one time while in Iraq.
With limited resources, whatmaintenance scheduling and personnel
management was happening, or whatflight crew management was going on.
And all of those skills lead tolike a specific competency areas
(12:30):
that businesses do gain from.
But it's asking too much to askany hiring company to go, let me
do the really hard work of figuringout where you one person fit here.
And the veteran, it's really hard forthem to navigate that on their own.
So we try to fill that gap as kindof like a middle out approach.
We work with employers to helpthem understand those skills that
(12:52):
veterans and military spouses bring.
We work with the veterans to helpthem articulate and validate and
present their skills to employersin ways that employers want to make
a hiring decision off of those.
And you know, if you enlist at age17, chances are 20 years later, or
it's gonna be your first civilian job.
So it's.
Oh yeah.
(13:13):
It's just brand new.
Yeah.
It's almost like you just startfrom square one with them.
Oh, yeah.
I bag groceries as a kid, and thenit was the Army and then leaving, and
I'm like, do I talk about how good Iwas at bagging groceries and caring
about the, that's a portable skill.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Depends on your goals.
Yeah.
I think that translationpiece is super important.
It made me think of a resumethat I got in the last general.
(13:35):
30 days, I think from somebodythat's retiring as a SAR major
and whoever helped him did a greatjob translating his military work,
took business into business speak.
Yeah.
Even from, he sent me, it wasinteresting, he sent me two resumes.
He sent me a military resume that read.
These were my military positionsin the military lingo, and then
(13:56):
he sent me the translated version.
And because I've got military background,it was cool to see it in the military way.
But then whoever, like I said, whoeverhelped him did a really bang up job
getting it to where somebody that didn'thave any military background that could
translate, okay, you held this position,that means you had this many soldiers
under your command and that kind of stuff.
So that, that's a really important piecethat, that y'all are doing there for sure.
(14:18):
I'm curious, Ross, what are youseeing in the market right now?
I mean, Tom and I have run acrossmultiple different kinds of
organizations along our podcast journeyand just in the work that we do.
And they offer a lot of similarthings, but they do it differently.
And you've, you've describedhow, how you do that.
We're involved with someof them here as, as a bank.
Not all of these, but you know,there's, there's ones out there.
(14:39):
Soldier for Life.
The the TAP program, pay Pay is
part of our DNA.
Yeah.
But Skill Bridge issomething we've always.
Danced around looking at that thing,
how do you view that landscape and howdo you compliment or even at times,
perhaps collaborate with those Yeah.
In the market, because I know my, mypremise here and my belief is that
everybody's trying to do generallythe same right thing at the end, which
(15:02):
is do right by service members andhelp them make a graceful transition.
So what's, what's yourview of that landscape?
Yeah, it's, there's a lot ofdiscussion around the, the veteran
marketplaces, like maybe crowded.
There's about 45,000veteran serving nonprofits.
I don't think it's necessarilycrowded, but I do think we have
opportunities to refine how we shareand collaborate and, and work together
(15:29):
unemployment focused organizations.
There's a a ton that do amazing work.
You mentioned Skill Bridge as a policyarea that the Department of Defense
runs basically an internship modeland veterans come and work in an
organization and while they're leavingactive duty companies can run it on
their own or they can partner withamazing organizations like the US Chamber
(15:50):
of Commerce Foundation, or 50 Strongor many others that do and help you.
Set up or execute yourskill Bridge programs.
There are cohort based training systemswhere individuals leave and they go
through eight to 12 weeks of grouplearning, either in person or virtual.
(16:12):
I think a four block is one of those.
There's some that are.
Super industry focused, others thatare broad focused, and then there are
a lot of groups that are aligned aroundlike segmentation of the audience.
So you have groups that focus onjust special forces service members
or just Navy Seals and really try toapproach more of a wraparound care
(16:34):
type of concept so they recognize.
Employment is part of that, butalso you have unique challenges
leaving, I'm assuming you have uniquechallenges leaving the Navy Seals.
I was in the army.
The Navy's my enemy, you know,
especially in a football field.
Yeah, exactly.
So as I think about.
The, the landscape, it's one,trying to collaborate in ways
(16:56):
where we're complimentary toeach other and not duplicative.
So there are some amazing cohort-basedsystems where individuals are learning
and maybe even getting a credentialor certificate at the end of that.
Can we be supportive in their employmentconnection On the other side, how can
we make sure that we're getting thattalent out to where they're leveraging
(17:17):
that credential or that new skilland knowledge in the labor market?
As you think about Skill Bridge, we'velearned through a lot of partnership over
the years that we're kind of an upstream.
Partnership with Skill Bridge.
If we have done one-on-one coachingwith a service member before they
compete for a Skill Bridge opportunity,they're more confident, they interview
(17:39):
better, they have a better identity ofthe role that they want to go after.
They're more likely to get it, andthen they're more likely to actually
get a full-time job offer after that.
'cause you only have onechance at Skill Bridge.
So if you get a Skill Bridge opportunityand the role is misaligned with
your skills, it's an internship.
But it didn't really move the needlefor you as much as it could have
(18:00):
towards sustainable employment.
So we really focus on our differentiation.
I'd say we're, we're super disciplinedin that one, we're not trying to
boil the ocean and we, we don'twork on health issues or housing.
We, we partner with groups thatdo that and deliver employment
intervention, either where they areor in partnership with 'em, and then
(18:22):
also being disciplined in terms of.
What, where does our programintervention fit as a coaching effort?
Anyone can leverage and use a coach atany point in their employment journey.
So we sometimes work with activeduty military members have, who
have more than five years beforethey're planning on leaving service.
But they're just really strugglingto see where those skills fit
(18:46):
and they, they need help on that.
They come to us.
They end up performing better in themilitary because they've got someone who's
looking out for them and helping them.
Kind of navigate their total career.
We also get people who've been out ofthe labor market for as much as 15 years
who come back and they have to startworking again because maybe the nest egg
(19:06):
didn't last as long as it needed to, orthey had a, a change in family condition.
And so they come back andthey're reentering the labor
market after a long gap.
And we're working with them toreintegrate into the labor force
and upskill as appropriate.
So I, I see us as that way askind of by being disciplined, but
also broad based of our audience.
(19:26):
We're able to partner with a lot ofthese other amazing organizations doing
a different methodology so that wecan all uplift this audience together.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
We take Pride, Ross, in the fact thatwe employ probably 80% of our retail
staff has a military connection too.
So it's, it's pretty cool.
They could be veterans that are typicallymilitary spouses, dependents, but we
(19:49):
want to make sure that we, we identifyand walk in the footsteps of our
clients or boots and our clients, sowe understand the military lifestyle.
And what we found too is 'cause wecan career path, career develop.
They might start as apersonal biker slash teller.
Then next thing you know, six monthslater they're a supervisor and then
a year later they're a manager.
(20:10):
And as long as they're she, she or he arehoused there or before they PCs, we can
give them a lot of skills in that time.
And banking has a lot of differentskills when you think about from
marketing to it to operations,compliance, you name it, lending.
It's huge.
They're transferable.
And we talked about portable skillsand how do you translate, if you
(20:32):
will, military experience intobusiness skills and experience.
And we, you kind of answeredthis already, Ross, but is there
anything else you want to add about.
You know, when they come to you after 20years and, and they do like an experience
of a job like you did, where you're atank in the sky that do you just start
from square one and figure out wheretheir passion is, where their heart is,
(20:54):
and then you, and then you go from thereBecause it's really in their court, right?
Yeah.
They have to decide what they wannado, maybe what's, might be a good
fit for them, but I gotta believeit's hard if you don't have that.
Real life experience in a civilian world?
Yeah.
It's, it's funny, you know,some folks show up and they have
a very clear coalesced idea.
(21:15):
I, I don't know where they got it, butI, I had no idea when I was leading
the army and I was floundering,and I feel like, I always thought
that seemed to be kind of natural.
But some people are leaving and theyreally, they know, they know themselves,
they know their skillset well, andthey just need someone to help 'em.
Apply that.
And so in those ones, it's sort ofa confirmation conversation and then
(21:39):
equipping them and putting them outthere, networking and interviewing.
But for those who don't have a senseof where they want to go, we really try
to focus first and foremost on havingthem, you know, being able to articulate
what were they really uniquely good at.
In the military, which of those, whetherit was a role or a responsibility or a
(22:01):
task area, and then kind of boiling thatdown a little bit to the underlying skills
and competencies that feed into that.
Then we kind of flip the question around,well, what did you really enjoy of those?
'cause sometimes you're good at somethingand you didn't necessarily enjoy doing it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And we try to get this sort of coalescingpicture for them where there's an overlap.
(22:23):
I'm not just like being a platoon leader.
I loved it.
I think I was pretty good at it.
Those kind of jobs I woulddo, again, in a heartbeat.
I can't go to a bank and say,hire me to be a platoon leader.
You're gonna go, I'm not doingmany combat action drills here.
So by focusing on the skills and tasksand competencies of that, then we,
(22:47):
we can kinda start to illustrate thatoverlapping picture of like, these are
the task areas and skill areas where.
You both like it and you're good at it.
Then we overlap that with what will themarket actually pay you to do of those?
Because a good part of what I lovedbeing a platoon leader about was
like hanging around on the flightline as soldiers were working.
(23:07):
And learning what they were doing aboutthe aircraft, learning how to service
hydraulics and put the rotors back onand torque down the main rotor head.
Like I loved doing that.
I felt like I was good atbuilding teams in that way.
The market is not necessarily gonna payme to be hanging around, joking with
people while they're doing criticalmaintenance and getting in the way.
(23:30):
So you have to really try and figureout where those three areas align.
And then we get into the morelike tactical questions around
where do you wanna live?
Does that market thensupport these things?
But that's really our frameworkto approach it, is it starts
with what are you really goodat and what do you love to do?
How do we find alignment there?
(23:51):
Does compensation ever enter the equation?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
It's a critical part.
Early, early, later.
Yeah.
I, we, we ask about it when they register.
When any veteran or military spousesigns up on our website, one of the
first questions we ask them is, youknow, how much do they hope to make?
And that question is hinged on others.
(24:11):
Are they actively working right now?
Are they unemployed or underemployed?
But then it, it, uh, from there,it's part of the conversation with
their transition specialist is.
That's an expectation, is that expectationrooted in what the market will support,
and helping them understand how tonarrow that appropriately so they
aren't putting either something wherethey're significantly undervaluing
(24:34):
themselves, which happens a lot withservice members or over-inflating
what the market will support forthe role that they're going for.
Got it
sounds, a lot of this sounds likeconversations I'm having with my college
age child too right now, because he's,
that's another huge transition.
I mean, yeah.
So that when, when you got to thepart about what do you like to do, I
(24:55):
mean that's, you might be good at thissun, but do you, do you think you'd
love to do it for, if you love what
you do.
Do you know the end?
I do.
But you like to say it so good.
You ne you never work a day in your life.
Right?
That's what Ross toldme the other day too.
I'm here to support you and
say your favorite things, Tom.
Your attitude is getting better.
Yeah.
All my coffee's kicking in.
(25:19):
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(26:02):
to offering you flexible terms andcompetitive rates, making sure you
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Relationship required loanterms are based on loan amount.
(26:28):
So Rash, you've shared a littlebit about your military career.
Help us understand how you made theleap from Apache Pilot to now being
here with Hiro Hero, higher heroes.
That is, I've, I need to practicethat over and over in here.
I know.
Oh, we didn't hit the record button.
We're, we didn't start all over again.
Ross is Oh gosh.
No, you did promise me.
Tell can't hear Tom.
(26:48):
You.
I did two and a half.
He said, my connection's failing.
I'm about to lose you.
So, so how, how did you, you, you helped.
You're helping people make theleap to civilian life now, how
did you make the leap and howdid you end up at Higher Heroes?
Yeah, I was, when I was leavingthe Army, I was stationed at
West Point and I had no clue.
To be, to be blunt, I, I hadno clue what I wanted to do.
(27:11):
I had gone to a few career fairs andhoped that the answer might materialize
for me from there, and I went to allsorts of rounds of interviews while I
was at those career fairs, you know,interviewing in manufacturing firms
and microchip processor places witha couple of banking institutions and
consulting roles, and all of it felt like.
(27:36):
I was either giving off astrong sense of desperation.
It was a very off-putting toa recruiter in a career fair.
Or you could just tell I wasfumbling and trying to say yes,
to say yes to the dress, right?
I'm just saying yes to everything fair.
And they're like, you shouldprobably say no on this one.
'cause you're not.
It's not fitting.
And I remember distinctly I was meetingwith a partner at a consulting firm and he
(28:00):
kind of stops the conversation and says.
Really hard feedback.
That was hard to hear, but Ineeded to hear it and he said it.
It just really feels like you'redoing this because it's what you
think you need to be doing, but notnecessarily what you wanna be doing.
(28:20):
And if I'm wrong about that, then I'llhappily move you forward in this process.
But I'd like you to goback and think about that.
Think about are you really justtrying to fit yourself in here?
'cause you have an educationalbackground that could fit in here.
And the more I grappled with thatquestion, it's like looking at the
thing that you didn't wanna look at.
(28:41):
It was always sitting right therethat it felt like I was trying to
force fit myself into that interview,but nobody had called me on it.
It felt kind of like when I was incollege and a great professor kind
of held me after class and she waslike, I know you can do better than
this and you're slacking and you needto deliver what you're capable of.
(29:03):
And didn't love to hear that, but Right.
Neither deserved.
Yeah.
So
when I kind of worked from there,I started working backwards around
like what parts of being in themilitary did I really enjoy doing,
and what aspects of leaving soldierswere really appealing to me.
What aspects of that educationalbackground had I really enjoyed
doing and just trying to have moreconversations with people I trusted
(29:24):
around those and getting their feedbackabout how to talk about that and.
It was in one of those conversationswith an old boss of mine, and as I
was just just talking about the thingsI liked doing and need to figure out
where those fit, he actually said,Hey, have you heard of this group
Hire Heroes, USA, and I had not.
(29:45):
And he was like, I know someone there.
They're looking right now forsomeone to run a research project.
It's on disabled veterans,it's gonna run research.
It's similar to what you did whenyou were running like executive
coaching stuff as part of like whatyou were doing at West Point, but
also what you were doing when you weremanaging grants over at this part.
(30:07):
And you'd need to be entrepreneurial,but also be working in the organization.
So you'd have structure and support like.
Take a look at it.
'cause what you're saying tome sounds like what that person
told me he's looking for.
And sure enough, I looked throughit and I'm like, this is, this is
the one, I think at that day itwas probably the fastest I've ever
done the cover letter, you know?
(30:27):
'cause they're just, I got it in andI told 'em, I applied like, and he
said, look, I'm not hiring, I'm notthe person in charge, but I'll tell
them that I, I recommended that.
And that's a referral basically.
So that helps you move in the process and.
Sure enough, I had a couple rounds ofinterviews and the more interviews I
had, the more I realized like this iskind of what a role it felt like designed
(30:48):
for me after leaving the service.
Because to create from scratch an entirelynew program and almost an entire new
business identity under higher heroes,to manage a very restricted grant, to
do critical work addressing the laborforce participation rate of disabled
veterans, and why aren't we seeing itequitable with other veteran groups?
(31:09):
And how can we get better quality oflife, better physical, mental, emotional
health, better employment outcomesthrough structured interventions and
incentives to encourage upward mobility.
And when I finally got the chance tostep into that work, it was like, man,
all of the right types of challengesthat I felt like I was ready to take on.
(31:30):
Plus having an amazing team andthe leadership of Higher Heroes.
Then I worked for the.
Chief Operating Officer directly,a man named Nate Smith, and he was
one of the best leaders I ever had.
And it was just great.
You know, the lesson I got fromthat was like, I had been trying
to do things by myself a lot, andreally, it's your network that's
gonna get you to that next step.
(31:51):
And I wasn't leveraging it at at all.
I knew there was a good story in there.
I know,
yeah, for sure.
I'm gonna go a little tangential,but you know, speaking of leadership,
we have this military banking summitcoming up through the Association of
Military Banks of America in ColoradoSprings in a couple weeks, and one of
the topics is gonna be on leadership.
(32:13):
One of the thoughts was, maybe youshould be in attendance at that Ross.
'cause it's a, yeah, it'sa good summit with banks.
Banks and financial educatorsand nonprofits and all that.
So I'm putting a plug in Yes.
For that too, but, but you mentioned, youmentioned Nate Smith, COO as a leader,
and you said one of the best leaders.
So what qualifies him as a greatleader and then take that to the
(32:34):
next level and say, what's yourleadership style today in your role?
Yeah.
What stood out for me with Nate is.
He never asked more peoplethan he would do himself.
So if he was expecting people tokind of deliver at a high level of
quality in a certain area, he wa washolding himself to that same standard.
(32:55):
And, and I would even say a, a morerigorous standard than that, that
stood out to me right off the bat.
He had a great blend of beinghighly personal, but also a really
good understanding of like theprofessional lines and, and boundaries.
How do you be a good, professional,empathetic person to support
your team, but also keepingthe mission front and center?
(33:17):
What we're, what is themission of, of our work here?
He had a, a great sense of humorand understanding about himself.
He like loved to quote philosophyand stuff like that, and he
would start meetings with Nate.
Aphorisms and he'd pull some ancientports and some philosopher I'd
never heard of, and he would catcha lot of, you know, flack about it.
(33:38):
But, you know, he knew who he was and hewas super transparent and honest around
who he was as a leader and shared that.
And that was something that I felt likeI, I always thought was a strength of
mine as well, is just, I'm happy to,I want my team to know how I think
and how I operate and what's goingon with me, because the more they
understand me, the less they're gonna be.
(33:59):
Wondering how will Ross take this?
I'll be able to infer and, and I wantthem to take leadership in my absence.
I want them, I wanna work myself out ofa job, essentially as a leader, I think
the best thing I can do is equip myteam that they don't need me ever again.
And I think you can do that by beingshare, by sharing with them around
how you think and operate and why.
(34:20):
Decisions are made the way they are
and Ross not being, not being threatenedby them actually taking your job, but
you want to develop and surround yourselfwith people that are of like mind or
of like skill or even better than you.
Absolutely.
Like I.
The better you hire a team.
I think the, if that is a riskthat your team will supplant
(34:41):
you, then you've done your job.
It's good risk.
Yeah.
It's a risk worth taking
every time.
When you were describing Nate, I thoughtyou were describing me after for a
while with that, the sense of humor and.
I thought
a look and, and it wasjust like, oh, whoops.
Are we, I'm doing the wrong thing again.
Is this Tom mla or just Nate Smith?
And it's one and the same.
I interrupted you.
(35:01):
Go ahead.
I literally have no comment,
which is a shock, which is shocking.
All by itself.
You've left me speechless.
McLean Tmac,
uh, TMAC did it again.
Houston Rockets.
Houston Rockets leader.
Yep.
Oh
my gosh.
Hey, I wanna pivot back a littlebit to the organization and,
and visit about the partners.
(35:22):
You mentioned a while ago, partnersthat support the organization.
In what ways do they do that?
As we, as we look out there, there's,there's all sorts of big names out there.
There's Walmart Foundation,Boeing Advanced Auto Parts,
men's Warehouse, LinkedIn.
All by name and by what I know to betrue about what they do, make kind of
(35:42):
perfect sense that they would be partneredwith you, but in in what ways are they
supporting, supporting the organization?
Yeah.
There a lot of variety of ways.
One of the fundamental ways, obviouslywe're, we're, are a nonprofit.
We depend on donors to fund this mission.
So a lot of family foundationsand corporate philanthropy, you
(36:02):
know, dig into and understandthe impact that we're having.
You know, we put.
Over 110,000 veterans and militaryspouses into new jobs doing this work.
And so they look through that andrecognize it's serving a critical need
that meets their philanthropic goals.
And so they support either programmingor capacity building efforts or
(36:22):
business continuity efforts throughstructured gifts in that way.
Also through engaging in veteran talent.
And hiring.
So if they're wanting to get talent intotheir own system, and also recognizing
that by equipping military talent, evenif they go to a different firm that's
elevating the marketplace, that'simproving communities, that's improving.
(36:44):
Then they're.
Customer base.
And so like recognizing by helping ouremployment focused systems and hiring
military talent, that they're able tokind of move the needle in that way.
One of the kind of areas I think peopledon't notice a lot is, is volunteering
and it's such a difference maker.
We have over 6,000 volunteers who aremembers of industry, mostly not veterans.
(37:08):
Wow.
And they are.
Like just such a, a, a fundamentaldifference in our personalized coaching
system because our, our transitionspecialist is the utility knife.
They're kind of guiding that journey.
But if you're interested in a specificrole in a specific industry, you get
one-on-one mentoring, sys mentoringwith a volunteer in our system who
(37:31):
works in that type of role or is hiringtype people for that type of role.
And we have that for everything fromcareer coaching, diving deep into that to.
Mock interviews and evenemergency mock interviews.
If a client finds out that they have ainterview coming up and it's a Friday
right now, and the interview's onMonday, we can turn around a volunteer.
(37:53):
Of that industry to do an emergency mockinterview with them Monday morning before
they have their actual interview later.
So they get, uh, some practice in, get ridof some of the nerves and more confident
in their, their interviewing abilityto, to broader things like LinkedIn.
LinkedIn supports us through avariety of, of tools on their
technology platform as well as.
(38:14):
Philanthropic gifts and then collaboratingon data sharing and analysis of that data
in terms of what's happening with veteranemployment, to really illustrate the the
landscape for other organizations andreally equip everyone to do a better job
of hiring veterans and military spouses.
I mean, it's just been awesome.
Like Service Master Brands runs agolf event fundraiser for us, but also
(38:38):
encourages and has built a unique pipelineeffort for their franchise owners to
hire veterans, which has been phenomenal.
And that's a, I mean, a great wayveterans and military spouses can
give, be active in their communities isrunning like a Service Master Clean or
Service Master Restore franchise where.
They're helping people who are in anothercritical moment or businesses that need
(39:02):
support, and it's just, we see thatbeing like a flywheel effect of, of
uplifting communities through the socialimpact of them funding our mission.
Yeah.
No, I love that.
And, and what I hear there too is, I mean,I, I listed off several large companies
that everybody's heard of, but based onthe ways that you're saying those partners
(39:23):
engage, there are really opportunitiesfor organizations or companies of all,
all shapes and sizes and all Yeah.
Down to even an individual, anarmy of one, kind of a, yeah.
Even a sole prop, kind of a companythat's willing to volunteer their time.
And so I'm glad you brought up volunteers.
I was gonna ask about that later, butjust to, to close that loop, if people
are interested in that or learning moreabout partnering as an organization,
(39:45):
they would find information on thatat higher, higher heroes usa.org.
That's right.
Or on LinkedIn orInstagram or any of those?
We're at Higher Heroes, USA.
Yep.
Perfect.
I
think we're winding down, but I dohave another question about the virtual
career fairs and yeah, I noticed thaton your website, what's the frequency?
(40:06):
What do, what can people expect ifthey were to attend one of those?
And just talk to thatand we will wrap it up.
Yeah.
We started these a few years ago,actually, even before COVID, just in
terms of traditional hiring fairs.
Really geographically re restrictedin a lot of ways can be costly.
You takes a lot of staff time to manand, and operate a booth at those.
(40:30):
But we, we figured out that virtualcareer fairs, we can kind of connect
more veterans with more employers.
And so we run one a quarter.
We get well over 500 veterans everytime registering to take part in those.
And then the companies that signup to take part, essentially you've
got like a. Kind of a, a virtualnetworking space that's happening.
(40:52):
But then also you can set upinterviews, screening discussions,
deep dives into resumes as part ofit, recruiter, one-on-one chatting
and things like that through theplatform that we're leveraging for it.
And it's phenomenal.
Like we get a chance to not only bringin other organizations broadly across
(41:13):
the nation that maybe wouldn't be ableto attend an in-person career fair.
I know like a region that they're notbased, but also all types of clients
who are job seeking can now learn alot more and meet with more recruiters.
We've just definitely seen a muchhigher conversion on that than
running traditional career fairs.
(41:34):
Wait, three quick
things.
Ready?
Okay.
Is this like speed questions?
Wait, see if you can hear.
If I play this, will it?
Will it be heard?
I apologize in advance.
Ross
gonna hear that.
So weird.
(41:55):
Well, he mentioned it.
You know what that is?
No, I don't.
That's a theme song tosay yes to the dress.
Oh, do you?
Do you feel bad for
me at
Ross?
Alright.
The second thing is second thing.
Second thing is, I sure you just
broke some copyright law.
I probably did, but we'llhave to edit it out.
We're going to trademark only 10 seconds.
I think it's fine.
(42:17):
Somebody told me you're like.
Training
for a marathon?
What is that?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, I am.
So we have sponsored runners this yearfor the Marine Corps marathon where we
are kind of paying their registration feesand then they're fundraising on our behalf
to, and they're gonna run the marathon.
And I, I guess I'm a gluttonfor punishment or my still like
(42:44):
too much of an ego from whenI was a young, a young person.
Yeah.
I used to run a lot.
In my like teens and twenties andnot anymore, but I was guilted into
being a sponsored runner this year.
So I'll be running the Marine Corpsmarathon and trying to fundraise as
part of that and mostly trying tosurvive and like live through it.
(43:04):
You do know how many
miles that is, right?
26.2. My wife has done two.
She did it in four hours and 27 minutes.
So you have to beat that.
No, I'm,
that's an awesome time.
I would be thrilled to do that time.
Are you kidding me?
All right.
I'm thinking I might be six hours.
Yes.
Well, as long as you finish.
Yeah.
I would pay somebody to run it for me.
(43:27):
Need to, can you do that?
Maybe just use AI or something.
Can I be a sponsored sponsor?
Yeah.
Dial it in.
I mean, my team is taking it to, to town.
They're trying to find, they're tryingto put me in all sorts of outfits and
Oh boy.
Yeah.
It's gonna be fun.
There's something to be said for that.
Yeah, that's thinking.
The third thing
was, you know, he, I know he's listenedto our podcast because he mentioned 45,000
(43:48):
nonprofits serving the military community.
You think our podcast is the onlyplace that stat lives on planet
Earth?
Well, we're fact checking a little bit.
So whenever I've said that on likenine other episodes, I'm right.
Oh.
So you just feel validated andyou're thanking Ross for that.
I'm gonna play another song for you.
Yeah.
Yes.
Do it.
And that, and then one, I guessthe fourth thing, military
(44:09):
spouse employment partnership.
Yes.
They're more of a, they're more ofa job posting board, but I have to
believe there's something where I.
Maybe you integrate, maybe you insertyourself or maybe you work with them to
make sure that you sort of tie them outor be a lead source for you too, right?
Yeah.
It's a DOD Run program, the MilitarySpouse Employment Partnership, and we
(44:31):
are one of their certified partners.
It's combination of groups likeus that are working with spouses
and hiring organizations thatwanna bring in spouse talent.
We collaborate with them in a lot ofways, both from kind of contributing to
the different seminars and events, butalso yeah, kind of back and forth, like
boosting what events they have going onor items and then saying social media
(44:53):
stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
Yep.
It's a great, great component ofthe DOD and we're really proud
to, to participate in that.
You know what would be a greattagline for your company?
It would be our mission is your next one.
Right.
I think ours is, it's,
it is our good.
Did you take that off their website, Tom?
(45:14):
I took it off.
I took it off their website.
Yeah.
That's a pretty solid one.
Oh my gosh.
All right, well you're welcome.
Yeah.
Nice thought I
just came up with that.
Yeah.
I think I'm gonna haveto save you from Tom.
Let's, let's just play game at this point.
Yeah.
So
you wanna play a game?
We,
we, we.
Promise we're about to let you go.
Ross, we have, if you bearwith us one, one minute.
(45:35):
We haven't, we haven't been able toplay Military Minute for a minute,
huh?
See what I did there?
Sense of humor.
So our first question is from ourlast podcast and our last guest.
So if you know the answer tothis, you can totally answer.
Let's see here.
In what year was militaryappreciation month made official?
(45:57):
It's a two part question.
And what US Senator championedthat formal designation?
Any guesses?
Senator Dahl, maybe, and nowwe'll call it Merkel on war.
It rhymes with McBrainor McClain or McClain.
Kind of David wearing McCain.
Yes.
Ding, ding, ding.
(46:18):
Yes.
Most part Mick, who flew on the yearthough, it's like, it's like 1999
McGrady.
Yeah.
Wow.
If you are
in our audience and you guessed or justknew, and so you were super smart and put
Senator John McCain, 1999 as your answer.
Watch for your name to be dropped asthe lucky recipient of $50 for you
and $50 to a charity of your choice.
(46:40):
And now I'm gonna fast forward toour question for today's episode.
And you can't answer this one.
You might know it.
Do you think you know it?
You can't answer.
I think
he knows the answer.
Well,
I don't know.
He, he could like raise his hands.
Is it a,
is it a three part question And it's
weirdly a three part question.
'cause Tom.
Brevity is not Tom's strength.
So this week's military is levity maybe?
Yeah.
This week's military minute and
longevity.
Stop talking and divine gravity.
(47:01):
Stop talking.
I
need to get this question out.
It's about the US MilitaryAcademy at West Point.
A three part question.
Part one, what year wasWest Point established?
What is the motto for West Point and whichtwo US presidents went to West Point?
Don't answer.
Look, he's writing him down.
I know he, because it's a lot.
And he's, he's Googling at the same time.
(47:22):
It's, it's, he probably knows,'cause Pete probably does know.
He's smart.
And we already talked about
his
education.
Put your thumb up or nod if you knowthe answer to one, two, or three.
All three of 'em.
Okay.
Oh, very good, very good.
So if you're as smart as Ross, Iwant you to enter all three answers.
And as funny as Jody and funny,
as funny as Tom is looking, put youranswer in the con comments and then
(47:44):
you too, if you're right on all threeparts, could be selected as the lucky
recipient of $50 for yourself and$50 for a charity of your choice.
How do you, how do you keepa straight face when you, the
coffee has fully kicked in.
And I'm gonna, we have, I'm saveRoss from us and I'm just gonna say
thank you, one for tolerating Tom,and two for being here to tell our
(48:04):
audience all about hire heroes today.
It was, it was great tohear about the organization.
Y'all are doing great work.
Excellent.
Well, I appreciate it.
Thank you both for the chance tojoin you and thanks for all that
you're doing to tell military storiesand uplift military members Yeah.
At at the bank.
I mean, your work is really makinga big impact on the community, but
then you're also celebrating andsharing that through the podcast.
(48:25):
So I had a lovely time and definitelyopen for more guest the song
competitions, whatever you want to do,and would love to see you in Colorado.
Tom will be coming for a visitto go to a concert with you soon.
That's right.
Enter Sandman and go.
Yes, go to Colorado if you, if youcan map it out in the next two weeks.
'cause it'd be a, I think it'dbe great for you to be there.
(48:46):
So thanks for considering doing that.
If you enjoyed today's episode.
Really as much as Ross has.
'cause Ross, I think this is probably oneof the best cod pod cod podcasts he's had.
Like that's a phish, hesaid, he said three or four.
I guess you podcast would belike Phish fly fishing, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You could market that.
Alright, go out to af bank.comand subscribe to this show.
(49:09):
Make sure to rate us, leave us, leave us acomment on your favorite podcast platform
like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
You know, it's been two and a half months.
Speaking is hard.
Ross, thank you so much for being here.
Say
hire heroes five times.
Thank you for being here, Ross.
Thank you, Barbara.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you, Ross.
Take care.
Take care.
Thank you.
(49:34):
Copyright Armed Forces Bank Member,FDIC, equal Housing Lender, all
non Armed forces, bank owned apps,websites, company names, and product
names or trademarks or registeredtrademarks of their respective owners.
They're mentioned does not implyany affiliation with or endorsement
by Armed Forces Bank of Themor their products and services.
They're merely used as examples of themany available apps, companies, and
websites that offer similar services.
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(49:54):
or in application purchase features.
This information is general in natureand is not intended to be legal.
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Although Armed Forces Bank believesthis information to be accurate, it
cannot ensure that it could change.
Statements or opinions of individualsreferenced herein are their own
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Speaking logo are registered.
(50:15):
Trademarks of Armed Forces Bank.
Militarily Speaking, episode86, hire Heroes, USA.
(00:05):
This episode we talk with RossDickman, CEO of Hire Heroes, USA.
Welcome to Militarily Speaking.
Brought to you by Armed Forces Bank.
(00:25):
This is Tmac.
Jody vi.
Is that what we're what we're doing now?
Yeah.
Episode 86.
I'm going with a nickname.
I could go with Looper,but I'm gonna go with Tmac.
I am the military retailexec for Armed Forces Bank.
And Jody coming up on her sixth,seventh month as Chief Digital Office.
I don't know, I really wannasteal that title for a day.
(00:47):
Okay.
I'll give you all of my inbox.
Good luck.
Delete, good luck.
Delete.
Again.
Welcome to our show.
We're excited to have youlistening and learning all
about our guest, Ross Stickman.
Ross, I wanna take just a few minutesand tell our audience all the things
about you that you know, hopefully fullwell unless Tom made them up, but, uh.
Just half.
We wanna give them, we wannagive them your story because
(01:07):
I think that's important.
Just foundationally.
So Ross currently serves as the ChiefExecutive Officer of Hire Heroes,
USA, the nation's leading veteran andmilitary spouse employment organization.
He joined Hire Heroes USA inDecember, 2015 after 12 years of
service in the United States Army.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for your service.
He led employment interventionresearch programs at Higher Heroes,
(01:28):
USA before serving as interimCEO during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Dickman was the COO fromOctober, 2020 until assuming
his current role in March of 24.
During his Army career, he servedin multiple leadership and staff
positions as an a h, is it?
Ah, 64 D. That's it.
Apache Helicopter Pilot.
That's a pretty cool gig.
(01:49):
I know
with the first cab divisionat Fort Hood, Texas.
I used to live at Fort Hood, Texas
and Fort Hood now is Fort Hood.
Yes, it's Fort Hood again.
That's right.
Yes, it's Full Circle World is right.
He deployed twice to Iraq insupport of Operation Iraqi Freedom
and the awards include Air Medal,bronze Star, meritorious Service,
medal, and the Combat Action Badge.
He later served as an aid DECAMPat the US Army Combat Readiness and
(02:12):
Safety Center, and as a tacticalofficer at the United States Military
Academy at West Point, New York.
His final Army assignment was theexecutive officer of the Simon Center
for the Professional military Ethics.
He has a Bachelor of Science degree incomparative politics from the United
States Military Academy, a masterof Arts degree in organizational
psychology and Leadership from TeachersCollege at Columbia University, and
(02:33):
a Master of Business Administrationfrom the Terry College of Business
at the University of Georgia.
Wait a minute where we say Go dogs.
Yeah, no, that, I was gonna say his eduHis education pales in comparison to mine.
Does it?
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, he's got a,
you really do have, I would say
make your case, but wedon't have that much time.
(02:53):
Your attitude today I know.
I know.
Is fantastic.
It's
lovely.
All right.
Uh, and I would just leave you withthe fact that he lives in Connecticut,
where he is a Philadelphia Eaglesfan with his wife and daughter.
What city in Connecticut, weare just outside Danbury in a
small town called New Fairfield.
Oh, that sounds wonderful.
It's, yeah, we're right in the woods.
We have bears and foxes.
(03:15):
Whoa.
That come through the yard.
It doesn't sound wonderful
at all.
I mean, this one's
frightening.
I like being near the woods.
The hardest part is you gotta putthose straps around your trash cans
'cause raccoons and stuff like thatget in there and then Oh, yeah.
And bears.
Yeah.
Oh wow.
Did you have a, did you have an incidentwith animals getting to your trash?
Oh
yeah.
Raccoons for sure.
(03:35):
And then there's a groundhog thatlives in the backyard and then there
was a, a fox in the front yard.
So, and then our neighborshave an area that.
A family of skunks live.
So yeah, we're mindful ofanimals, but we're pretty
close to civilization as well.
So you probably do yourown, what's it P fill?
I know was just say that on GroundhogDay, see if he sees this shadow.
(03:58):
Wait, she, she has a name and Yeah,my daughter around that does keep an
eye on her, towards the back shed.
And Is Lu Petia, what is her name?
Petya.
Nice.
Easier to say than p whatever.
That's a tough one.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
And, and even harder to spell.
And when you see the groundhog, youdon't, it doesn't happen the same
time over and over again, does it?
(04:19):
No.
No.
And we don't go in the area.
I'm, that was my.
That was a bad attempt.
Yes.
At the Groundhog Day.
Yes.
Yes.
We could spend all day.
I, I am actually quite confident wecan spend all day talking about this,
but this is not why you are here.
I just wanna say, Ross, it's an honor tohave you on our show talking about higher
Heroes, USA today, and I wanna thank youright now for being with us and let's
(04:41):
just start by, if you wanna give ouraudience kind of that a hundred thousand
foot view of your organization and thenas you have been warned, Tom and I have
all kinds of questions to pepper you with.
Well, thanks so much,Jody, and thanks Tom.
I, I did have to say though, when you,you brought up the Tmac nickname, all
I could think of was Tracy McGrady,so that's not bad company to be in.
He was a great basketball player
(05:03):
when he was with in Torontoor Houston or Orlando?
Houston.
I remember him in Houston.
Did I get 'em all?
Or was he, did he travelmore than just that?
Jody, you know, you're thebasketball connoisseur.
I don't know.
All right.
That's great.
Well, neither worry, asyou can tell, I don't run a
basketball trivia organization.
'cause you've companyme all it's tire heroes.
(05:23):
USA.
All right.
Yeah.
Talk about, talk aboutyour organization, Ross.
We're a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit,celebrating our 20th year in serving
veterans, transitioning militarymembers and and military spouses.
And really at its core, we'refocused on employment as the primary
vehicle for economic opportunityand success after service.
(05:45):
You know, most veterans when they'releaving the military are struggling
to figure out where their skills fitin, and most veterans don't have a
job lined up as they are leaving.
And yet, employment is the cornerstoneof how you live and operate in America.
It sets the foundation of who you areand it provides access and opportunity
(06:05):
and stability, and we really thinkmilitary skills and military spouse
skills are really not translated well.
So we focus on serving throughone-on-one, matching, one-on-one
coaching, and the highly personalizedsupport system that we serve.
Any veteran of any era, it doesn'tmatter when they served, what rank they
(06:27):
were, what their education level is.
We serve any and all, including homeless,veterans, justice connected, junior
enlisted, and then we have dedicatedprogramming around military spouses.
They have their own challengesas they're supporting their
partner's career in the military.
It affects their career trajectory andnot all support systems can be there
(06:48):
for the entire career life cycle, but weare, and we're really proud about that.
Good stuff.
You mentioned homeless veterans.
Of course.
What comes to mind since we've gota good relationship with a local
product out here, a Veterans Communityproject too, do you, do you look for
organizations like that to in litor offer the services or some do, do
some collaboration to help them as atransition outta temporary housing?
(07:13):
We do, we partner with a lotof organizations, about 700
different organizations thatserve in other areas than we do.
And so with homeless veterans oranyone going through transitional
housing, we love to partner withorganizations that are meeting those
kind of critical needs right there.
So the housing, the food insecurity,building financial readiness, and then
(07:36):
bringing our expertise into support with.
The employment coaching and theemployment connection system.
That way, we're all uplifting thecommunity together by delivering
what we're uniquely valuable at.
There's a wonderful housing group wework with called Operation Home Front.
They're wonderful.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
We're very
familiar with them.
Yep.
Yep.
(07:57):
They do good work.
A lot of backpack stuff that theydo for the kids every year too.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, they do.
Jody, I spent like three days preparingthese questions for Ross, but in, in
two minutes, Ross sent me an emailand said, can we talk about this?
So I'm gonna ask you thisnext question, right?
It's not really a question.
I just want you to talkabout two important things.
(08:20):
That you, you mentioned right offthe top are skills-based training
and personalized services, andmaybe those are differentiators,
competitive differentiation, but talkabout why you're so proud of those
two aspects of your organization.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'll start with personalized services.
Every veteran and spouse we're workingwith gets one-on-one, partnered with
(08:42):
what we call a transition specialist on.
On our team, that's theircoach, their advisor, the person
that's gonna help guide them.
It's kinda like their utility knife tohelp them navigate the labor market.
Every transition's different.
And you can have two people whohave the same rank and we're both
infantry and are even leaving fromthe same duty station, but their
(09:04):
skills profile will look different.
Their capability set, their goalsand desires will look different,
and our transition specialists workwith that person to keep them at the
center of their employment journey.
One of the things that worries me oftenabout employment focused systems is,
and not to sound crude, but they'refocused on a butts in seats type
(09:26):
of model, X number of openings outthere, and they're just trying to plug
and play, get people into a thing.
That's how you make, like make abad fit, a bad match, bad cultural
alignment, maybe bad skills.
Alignment leads to underemploymentor low job satisfaction.
And then you see turnover,turnover, turnover.
We focus on that veteran beingthe center of their journey.
(09:49):
They own it and our team are resourcesand that's delivered through always having
that coaching advisor there sometimesto pump you up and get you excited
sometimes to tell you the truth youneed to hear, but don't necessarily want
to hear to connect you with resources.
And we've found that it makes ahuge difference in their levels of
(10:10):
confidence, their sense of empowerment.
They're really owning the journey.
And then.
Taking others with 'em afterthey have found that meaningful
and purposeful career.
So that's kind of why we're reallybig fans of personalized services.
It's extremely hard to scale that, butwe have a really rigorous data-driven
mindset and a lot of process basedtracking systems to make sure
(10:35):
every client gets that one-on-onetouch, that one-on-one touch point.
And also that we're makingsure we're meeting the demand
signals that we're seeing.
So that's.
Why that stands out for me asa critical part of our work.
The second is just military is such aunique environment and military spouses
live such a unique lifestyle compared towhat, you know, a standard career journey
(10:57):
might look like, that it's sometimesreally hard to make those skills fit.
And to what the labor market is doing.
Like I flew Apache Helicopters,it's a tank in the sky.
It has missiles and a 30millimeter camon and it can
shoot rockets and its job is to.
Yeah, be the offensive weapon ordefensive force for when service
(11:21):
members are on the ground.
It was built as a tank destroyer.
Well, bank of America is probably nothiring me to go blow up many tanks.
Maybe they are.
I think that'd be, I think that'dbe super cool to have on my team.
I know I would.
You guys should put a job
posting out there like that.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If one of you's hiring a bankdestroyer, I know tons of them.
Yeah, I think I can, I canhave multiple u uses for that.
(11:45):
La, la, la, la, la.
On surface though, you look at whatthose roles you did in the military are,
and it can be really hard to figure outwhere do these fit in our business model?
How do these help us?
Grow revenue, save costs, and it's,it's the stuff that's underneath the
presenting role identity that they had.
Like what was I doing from performancemanagement and material tracking
(12:10):
and maintenance tracking andrunning a, like a process-based
organization to keep eight helicoptersflying at one time while in Iraq.
With limited resources, whatmaintenance scheduling and personnel
management was happening, or whatflight crew management was going on.
And all of those skills lead tolike a specific competency areas
(12:30):
that businesses do gain from.
But it's asking too much to askany hiring company to go, let me
do the really hard work of figuringout where you one person fit here.
And the veteran, it's really hard forthem to navigate that on their own.
So we try to fill that gap as kindof like a middle out approach.
We work with employers to helpthem understand those skills that
(12:52):
veterans and military spouses bring.
We work with the veterans to helpthem articulate and validate and
present their skills to employersin ways that employers want to make
a hiring decision off of those.
And you know, if you enlist at age17, chances are 20 years later, or
it's gonna be your first civilian job.
So it's.
Oh yeah.
(13:13):
It's just brand new.
Yeah.
It's almost like you just startfrom square one with them.
Oh, yeah.
I bag groceries as a kid, and thenit was the Army and then leaving, and
I'm like, do I talk about how good Iwas at bagging groceries and caring
about the, that's a portable skill.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Depends on your goals.
Yeah.
I think that translationpiece is super important.
It made me think of a resumethat I got in the last general.
(13:35):
30 days, I think from somebodythat's retiring as a SAR major
and whoever helped him did a greatjob translating his military work,
took business into business speak.
Yeah.
Even from, he sent me, it wasinteresting, he sent me two resumes.
He sent me a military resume that read.
These were my military positionsin the military lingo, and then
(13:56):
he sent me the translated version.
And because I've got military background,it was cool to see it in the military way.
But then whoever, like I said, whoeverhelped him did a really bang up job
getting it to where somebody that didn'thave any military background that could
translate, okay, you held this position,that means you had this many soldiers
under your command and that kind of stuff.
So that, that's a really important piecethat, that y'all are doing there for sure.
(14:18):
I'm curious, Ross, what are youseeing in the market right now?
I mean, Tom and I have run acrossmultiple different kinds of
organizations along our podcast journeyand just in the work that we do.
And they offer a lot of similarthings, but they do it differently.
And you've, you've describedhow, how you do that.
We're involved with someof them here as, as a bank.
Not all of these, but you know,there's, there's ones out there.
(14:39):
Soldier for Life.
The the TAP program, pay Pay is
part of our DNA.
Yeah.
But Skill Bridge issomething we've always.
Danced around looking at that thing,
how do you view that landscape and howdo you compliment or even at times,
perhaps collaborate with those Yeah.
In the market, because I know my, mypremise here and my belief is that
everybody's trying to do generallythe same right thing at the end, which
(15:02):
is do right by service members andhelp them make a graceful transition.
So what's, what's yourview of that landscape?
Yeah, it's, there's a lot ofdiscussion around the, the veteran
marketplaces, like maybe crowded.
There's about 45,000veteran serving nonprofits.
I don't think it's necessarilycrowded, but I do think we have
opportunities to refine how we shareand collaborate and, and work together
(15:29):
unemployment focused organizations.
There's a a ton that do amazing work.
You mentioned Skill Bridge as a policyarea that the Department of Defense
runs basically an internship modeland veterans come and work in an
organization and while they're leavingactive duty companies can run it on
their own or they can partner withamazing organizations like the US Chamber
(15:50):
of Commerce Foundation, or 50 Strongor many others that do and help you.
Set up or execute yourskill Bridge programs.
There are cohort based training systemswhere individuals leave and they go
through eight to 12 weeks of grouplearning, either in person or virtual.
(16:12):
I think a four block is one of those.
There's some that are.
Super industry focused, others thatare broad focused, and then there are
a lot of groups that are aligned aroundlike segmentation of the audience.
So you have groups that focus onjust special forces service members
or just Navy Seals and really try toapproach more of a wraparound care
(16:34):
type of concept so they recognize.
Employment is part of that, butalso you have unique challenges
leaving, I'm assuming you have uniquechallenges leaving the Navy Seals.
I was in the army.
The Navy's my enemy, you know,
especially in a football field.
Yeah, exactly.
So as I think about.
The, the landscape, it's one,trying to collaborate in ways
(16:56):
where we're complimentary toeach other and not duplicative.
So there are some amazing cohort-basedsystems where individuals are learning
and maybe even getting a credentialor certificate at the end of that.
Can we be supportive in their employmentconnection On the other side, how can
we make sure that we're getting thattalent out to where they're leveraging
(17:17):
that credential or that new skilland knowledge in the labor market?
As you think about Skill Bridge, we'velearned through a lot of partnership over
the years that we're kind of an upstream.
Partnership with Skill Bridge.
If we have done one-on-one coachingwith a service member before they
compete for a Skill Bridge opportunity,they're more confident, they interview
(17:39):
better, they have a better identity ofthe role that they want to go after.
They're more likely to get it, andthen they're more likely to actually
get a full-time job offer after that.
'cause you only have onechance at Skill Bridge.
So if you get a Skill Bridge opportunityand the role is misaligned with
your skills, it's an internship.
But it didn't really move the needlefor you as much as it could have
(18:00):
towards sustainable employment.
So we really focus on our differentiation.
I'd say we're, we're super disciplinedin that one, we're not trying to
boil the ocean and we, we don'twork on health issues or housing.
We, we partner with groups thatdo that and deliver employment
intervention, either where they areor in partnership with 'em, and then
(18:22):
also being disciplined in terms of.
What, where does our programintervention fit as a coaching effort?
Anyone can leverage and use a coach atany point in their employment journey.
So we sometimes work with activeduty military members have, who
have more than five years beforethey're planning on leaving service.
But they're just really strugglingto see where those skills fit
(18:46):
and they, they need help on that.
They come to us.
They end up performing better in themilitary because they've got someone who's
looking out for them and helping them.
Kind of navigate their total career.
We also get people who've been out ofthe labor market for as much as 15 years
who come back and they have to startworking again because maybe the nest egg
(19:06):
didn't last as long as it needed to, orthey had a, a change in family condition.
And so they come back andthey're reentering the labor
market after a long gap.
And we're working with them toreintegrate into the labor force
and upskill as appropriate.
So I, I see us as that way askind of by being disciplined, but
also broad based of our audience.
(19:26):
We're able to partner with a lot ofthese other amazing organizations doing
a different methodology so that wecan all uplift this audience together.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
We take Pride, Ross, in the fact thatwe employ probably 80% of our retail
staff has a military connection too.
So it's, it's pretty cool.
They could be veterans that are typicallymilitary spouses, dependents, but we
(19:49):
want to make sure that we, we identifyand walk in the footsteps of our
clients or boots and our clients, sowe understand the military lifestyle.
And what we found too is 'cause wecan career path, career develop.
They might start as apersonal biker slash teller.
Then next thing you know, six monthslater they're a supervisor and then
a year later they're a manager.
(20:10):
And as long as they're she, she or he arehoused there or before they PCs, we can
give them a lot of skills in that time.
And banking has a lot of differentskills when you think about from
marketing to it to operations,compliance, you name it, lending.
It's huge.
They're transferable.
And we talked about portable skillsand how do you translate, if you
(20:32):
will, military experience intobusiness skills and experience.
And we, you kind of answeredthis already, Ross, but is there
anything else you want to add about.
You know, when they come to you after 20years and, and they do like an experience
of a job like you did, where you're atank in the sky that do you just start
from square one and figure out wheretheir passion is, where their heart is,
(20:54):
and then you, and then you go from thereBecause it's really in their court, right?
Yeah.
They have to decide what they wannado, maybe what's, might be a good
fit for them, but I gotta believeit's hard if you don't have that.
Real life experience in a civilian world?
Yeah.
It's, it's funny, you know,some folks show up and they have
a very clear coalesced idea.
(21:15):
I, I don't know where they got it, butI, I had no idea when I was leading
the army and I was floundering,and I feel like, I always thought
that seemed to be kind of natural.
But some people are leaving and theyreally, they know, they know themselves,
they know their skillset well, andthey just need someone to help 'em.
Apply that.
And so in those ones, it's sort ofa confirmation conversation and then
(21:39):
equipping them and putting them outthere, networking and interviewing.
But for those who don't have a senseof where they want to go, we really try
to focus first and foremost on havingthem, you know, being able to articulate
what were they really uniquely good at.
In the military, which of those, whetherit was a role or a responsibility or a
(22:01):
task area, and then kind of boiling thatdown a little bit to the underlying skills
and competencies that feed into that.
Then we kind of flip the question around,well, what did you really enjoy of those?
'cause sometimes you're good at somethingand you didn't necessarily enjoy doing it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And we try to get this sort of coalescingpicture for them where there's an overlap.
(22:23):
I'm not just like being a platoon leader.
I loved it.
I think I was pretty good at it.
Those kind of jobs I woulddo, again, in a heartbeat.
I can't go to a bank and say,hire me to be a platoon leader.
You're gonna go, I'm not doingmany combat action drills here.
So by focusing on the skills and tasksand competencies of that, then we,
(22:47):
we can kinda start to illustrate thatoverlapping picture of like, these are
the task areas and skill areas where.
You both like it and you're good at it.
Then we overlap that with what will themarket actually pay you to do of those?
Because a good part of what I lovedbeing a platoon leader about was
like hanging around on the flightline as soldiers were working.
(23:07):
And learning what they were doing aboutthe aircraft, learning how to service
hydraulics and put the rotors back onand torque down the main rotor head.
Like I loved doing that.
I felt like I was good atbuilding teams in that way.
The market is not necessarily gonna payme to be hanging around, joking with
people while they're doing criticalmaintenance and getting in the way.
(23:30):
So you have to really try and figureout where those three areas align.
And then we get into the morelike tactical questions around
where do you wanna live?
Does that market thensupport these things?
But that's really our frameworkto approach it, is it starts
with what are you really goodat and what do you love to do?
How do we find alignment there?
(23:51):
Does compensation ever enter the equation?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
It's a critical part.
Early, early, later.
Yeah.
I, we, we ask about it when they register.
When any veteran or military spousesigns up on our website, one of the
first questions we ask them is, youknow, how much do they hope to make?
And that question is hinged on others.
(24:11):
Are they actively working right now?
Are they unemployed or underemployed?
But then it, it, uh, from there,it's part of the conversation with
their transition specialist is.
That's an expectation, is that expectationrooted in what the market will support,
and helping them understand how tonarrow that appropriately so they
aren't putting either something wherethey're significantly undervaluing
(24:34):
themselves, which happens a lot withservice members or over-inflating
what the market will support forthe role that they're going for.
Got it
sounds, a lot of this sounds likeconversations I'm having with my college
age child too right now, because he's,
that's another huge transition.
I mean, yeah.
So that when, when you got to thepart about what do you like to do, I
(24:55):
mean that's, you might be good at thissun, but do you, do you think you'd
love to do it for, if you love what
you do.
Do you know the end?
I do.
But you like to say it so good.
You ne you never work a day in your life.
Right?
That's what Ross toldme the other day too.
I'm here to support you and
say your favorite things, Tom.
Your attitude is getting better.
Yeah.
All my coffee's kicking in.
(25:19):
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(26:28):
So Rash, you've shared a littlebit about your military career.
Help us understand how you made theleap from Apache Pilot to now being
here with Hiro Hero, higher heroes.
That is, I've, I need to practicethat over and over in here.
I know.
Oh, we didn't hit the record button.
We're, we didn't start all over again.
Ross is Oh gosh.
No, you did promise me.
Tell can't hear Tom.
(26:48):
You.
I did two and a half.
He said, my connection's failing.
I'm about to lose you.
So, so how, how did you, you, you helped.
You're helping people make theleap to civilian life now, how
did you make the leap and howdid you end up at Higher Heroes?
Yeah, I was, when I was leavingthe Army, I was stationed at
West Point and I had no clue.
To be, to be blunt, I, I hadno clue what I wanted to do.
(27:11):
I had gone to a few career fairs andhoped that the answer might materialize
for me from there, and I went to allsorts of rounds of interviews while I
was at those career fairs, you know,interviewing in manufacturing firms
and microchip processor places witha couple of banking institutions and
consulting roles, and all of it felt like.
(27:36):
I was either giving off astrong sense of desperation.
It was a very off-putting toa recruiter in a career fair.
Or you could just tell I wasfumbling and trying to say yes,
to say yes to the dress, right?
I'm just saying yes to everything fair.
And they're like, you shouldprobably say no on this one.
'cause you're not.
It's not fitting.
And I remember distinctly I was meetingwith a partner at a consulting firm and he
(28:00):
kind of stops the conversation and says.
Really hard feedback.
That was hard to hear, but Ineeded to hear it and he said it.
It just really feels like you'redoing this because it's what you
think you need to be doing, but notnecessarily what you wanna be doing.
(28:20):
And if I'm wrong about that, then I'llhappily move you forward in this process.
But I'd like you to goback and think about that.
Think about are you really justtrying to fit yourself in here?
'cause you have an educationalbackground that could fit in here.
And the more I grappled with thatquestion, it's like looking at the
thing that you didn't wanna look at.
(28:41):
It was always sitting right therethat it felt like I was trying to
force fit myself into that interview,but nobody had called me on it.
It felt kind of like when I was incollege and a great professor kind
of held me after class and she waslike, I know you can do better than
this and you're slacking and you needto deliver what you're capable of.
(29:03):
And didn't love to hear that, but Right.
Neither deserved.
Yeah.
So
when I kind of worked from there,I started working backwards around
like what parts of being in themilitary did I really enjoy doing,
and what aspects of leaving soldierswere really appealing to me.
What aspects of that educationalbackground had I really enjoyed
doing and just trying to have moreconversations with people I trusted
(29:24):
around those and getting their feedbackabout how to talk about that and.
It was in one of those conversationswith an old boss of mine, and as I
was just just talking about the thingsI liked doing and need to figure out
where those fit, he actually said,Hey, have you heard of this group
Hire Heroes, USA, and I had not.
(29:45):
And he was like, I know someone there.
They're looking right now forsomeone to run a research project.
It's on disabled veterans,it's gonna run research.
It's similar to what you did whenyou were running like executive
coaching stuff as part of like whatyou were doing at West Point, but
also what you were doing when you weremanaging grants over at this part.
(30:07):
And you'd need to be entrepreneurial,but also be working in the organization.
So you'd have structure and support like.
Take a look at it.
'cause what you're saying tome sounds like what that person
told me he's looking for.
And sure enough, I looked throughit and I'm like, this is, this is
the one, I think at that day itwas probably the fastest I've ever
done the cover letter, you know?
(30:27):
'cause they're just, I got it in andI told 'em, I applied like, and he
said, look, I'm not hiring, I'm notthe person in charge, but I'll tell
them that I, I recommended that.
And that's a referral basically.
So that helps you move in the process and.
Sure enough, I had a couple rounds ofinterviews and the more interviews I
had, the more I realized like this iskind of what a role it felt like designed
(30:48):
for me after leaving the service.
Because to create from scratch an entirelynew program and almost an entire new
business identity under higher heroes,to manage a very restricted grant, to
do critical work addressing the laborforce participation rate of disabled
veterans, and why aren't we seeing itequitable with other veteran groups?
(31:09):
And how can we get better quality oflife, better physical, mental, emotional
health, better employment outcomesthrough structured interventions and
incentives to encourage upward mobility.
And when I finally got the chance tostep into that work, it was like, man,
all of the right types of challengesthat I felt like I was ready to take on.
(31:30):
Plus having an amazing team andthe leadership of Higher Heroes.
Then I worked for the.
Chief Operating Officer directly,a man named Nate Smith, and he was
one of the best leaders I ever had.
And it was just great.
You know, the lesson I got fromthat was like, I had been trying
to do things by myself a lot, andreally, it's your network that's
gonna get you to that next step.
(31:51):
And I wasn't leveraging it at at all.
I knew there was a good story in there.
I know,
yeah, for sure.
I'm gonna go a little tangential,but you know, speaking of leadership,
we have this military banking summitcoming up through the Association of
Military Banks of America in ColoradoSprings in a couple weeks, and one of
the topics is gonna be on leadership.
(32:13):
One of the thoughts was, maybe youshould be in attendance at that Ross.
'cause it's a, yeah, it'sa good summit with banks.
Banks and financial educatorsand nonprofits and all that.
So I'm putting a plug in Yes.
For that too, but, but you mentioned, youmentioned Nate Smith, COO as a leader,
and you said one of the best leaders.
So what qualifies him as a greatleader and then take that to the
(32:34):
next level and say, what's yourleadership style today in your role?
Yeah.
What stood out for me with Nate is.
He never asked more peoplethan he would do himself.
So if he was expecting people tokind of deliver at a high level of
quality in a certain area, he wa washolding himself to that same standard.
(32:55):
And, and I would even say a, a morerigorous standard than that, that
stood out to me right off the bat.
He had a great blend of beinghighly personal, but also a really
good understanding of like theprofessional lines and, and boundaries.
How do you be a good, professional,empathetic person to support
your team, but also keepingthe mission front and center?
(33:17):
What we're, what is themission of, of our work here?
He had a, a great sense of humorand understanding about himself.
He like loved to quote philosophyand stuff like that, and he
would start meetings with Nate.
Aphorisms and he'd pull some ancientports and some philosopher I'd
never heard of, and he would catcha lot of, you know, flack about it.
(33:38):
But, you know, he knew who he was and hewas super transparent and honest around
who he was as a leader and shared that.
And that was something that I felt likeI, I always thought was a strength of
mine as well, is just, I'm happy to,I want my team to know how I think
and how I operate and what's goingon with me, because the more they
understand me, the less they're gonna be.
(33:59):
Wondering how will Ross take this?
I'll be able to infer and, and I wantthem to take leadership in my absence.
I want them, I wanna work myself out ofa job, essentially as a leader, I think
the best thing I can do is equip myteam that they don't need me ever again.
And I think you can do that by beingshare, by sharing with them around
how you think and operate and why.
(34:20):
Decisions are made the way they are
and Ross not being, not being threatenedby them actually taking your job, but
you want to develop and surround yourselfwith people that are of like mind or
of like skill or even better than you.
Absolutely.
Like I.
The better you hire a team.
I think the, if that is a riskthat your team will supplant
(34:41):
you, then you've done your job.
It's good risk.
Yeah.
It's a risk worth taking
every time.
When you were describing Nate, I thoughtyou were describing me after for a
while with that, the sense of humor and.
I thought
a look and, and it wasjust like, oh, whoops.
Are we, I'm doing the wrong thing again.
Is this Tom mla or just Nate Smith?
And it's one and the same.
I interrupted you.
(35:01):
Go ahead.
I literally have no comment,
which is a shock, which is shocking.
All by itself.
You've left me speechless.
McLean Tmac,
uh, TMAC did it again.
Houston Rockets.
Houston Rockets leader.
Yep.
Oh
my gosh.
Hey, I wanna pivot back a littlebit to the organization and,
and visit about the partners.
(35:22):
You mentioned a while ago, partnersthat support the organization.
In what ways do they do that?
As we, as we look out there, there's,there's all sorts of big names out there.
There's Walmart Foundation,Boeing Advanced Auto Parts,
men's Warehouse, LinkedIn.
All by name and by what I know to betrue about what they do, make kind of
(35:42):
perfect sense that they would be partneredwith you, but in in what ways are they
supporting, supporting the organization?
Yeah.
There a lot of variety of ways.
One of the fundamental ways, obviouslywe're, we're, are a nonprofit.
We depend on donors to fund this mission.
So a lot of family foundationsand corporate philanthropy, you
(36:02):
know, dig into and understandthe impact that we're having.
You know, we put.
Over 110,000 veterans and militaryspouses into new jobs doing this work.
And so they look through that andrecognize it's serving a critical need
that meets their philanthropic goals.
And so they support either programmingor capacity building efforts or
(36:22):
business continuity efforts throughstructured gifts in that way.
Also through engaging in veteran talent.
And hiring.
So if they're wanting to get talent intotheir own system, and also recognizing
that by equipping military talent, evenif they go to a different firm that's
elevating the marketplace, that'simproving communities, that's improving.
(36:44):
Then they're.
Customer base.
And so like recognizing by helping ouremployment focused systems and hiring
military talent, that they're able tokind of move the needle in that way.
One of the kind of areas I think peopledon't notice a lot is, is volunteering
and it's such a difference maker.
We have over 6,000 volunteers who aremembers of industry, mostly not veterans.
(37:08):
Wow.
And they are.
Like just such a, a, a fundamentaldifference in our personalized coaching
system because our, our transitionspecialist is the utility knife.
They're kind of guiding that journey.
But if you're interested in a specificrole in a specific industry, you get
one-on-one mentoring, sys mentoringwith a volunteer in our system who
(37:31):
works in that type of role or is hiringtype people for that type of role.
And we have that for everything fromcareer coaching, diving deep into that to.
Mock interviews and evenemergency mock interviews.
If a client finds out that they have ainterview coming up and it's a Friday
right now, and the interview's onMonday, we can turn around a volunteer.
(37:53):
Of that industry to do an emergency mockinterview with them Monday morning before
they have their actual interview later.
So they get, uh, some practice in, get ridof some of the nerves and more confident
in their, their interviewing abilityto, to broader things like LinkedIn.
LinkedIn supports us through avariety of, of tools on their
technology platform as well as.
(38:14):
Philanthropic gifts and then collaboratingon data sharing and analysis of that data
in terms of what's happening with veteranemployment, to really illustrate the the
landscape for other organizations andreally equip everyone to do a better job
of hiring veterans and military spouses.
I mean, it's just been awesome.
Like Service Master Brands runs agolf event fundraiser for us, but also
(38:38):
encourages and has built a unique pipelineeffort for their franchise owners to
hire veterans, which has been phenomenal.
And that's a, I mean, a great wayveterans and military spouses can
give, be active in their communities isrunning like a Service Master Clean or
Service Master Restore franchise where.
They're helping people who are in anothercritical moment or businesses that need
(39:02):
support, and it's just, we see thatbeing like a flywheel effect of, of
uplifting communities through the socialimpact of them funding our mission.
Yeah.
No, I love that.
And, and what I hear there too is, I mean,I, I listed off several large companies
that everybody's heard of, but based onthe ways that you're saying those partners
(39:23):
engage, there are really opportunitiesfor organizations or companies of all,
all shapes and sizes and all Yeah.
Down to even an individual, anarmy of one, kind of a, yeah.
Even a sole prop, kind of a companythat's willing to volunteer their time.
And so I'm glad you brought up volunteers.
I was gonna ask about that later, butjust to, to close that loop, if people
are interested in that or learning moreabout partnering as an organization,
(39:45):
they would find information on thatat higher, higher heroes usa.org.
That's right.
Or on LinkedIn orInstagram or any of those?
We're at Higher Heroes, USA.
Yep.
Perfect.
I
think we're winding down, but I dohave another question about the virtual
career fairs and yeah, I noticed thaton your website, what's the frequency?
(40:06):
What do, what can people expect ifthey were to attend one of those?
And just talk to thatand we will wrap it up.
Yeah.
We started these a few years ago,actually, even before COVID, just in
terms of traditional hiring fairs.
Really geographically re restrictedin a lot of ways can be costly.
You takes a lot of staff time to manand, and operate a booth at those.
(40:30):
But we, we figured out that virtualcareer fairs, we can kind of connect
more veterans with more employers.
And so we run one a quarter.
We get well over 500 veterans everytime registering to take part in those.
And then the companies that signup to take part, essentially you've
got like a. Kind of a, a virtualnetworking space that's happening.
(40:52):
But then also you can set upinterviews, screening discussions,
deep dives into resumes as part ofit, recruiter, one-on-one chatting
and things like that through theplatform that we're leveraging for it.
And it's phenomenal.
Like we get a chance to not only bringin other organizations broadly across
(41:13):
the nation that maybe wouldn't be ableto attend an in-person career fair.
I know like a region that they're notbased, but also all types of clients
who are job seeking can now learn alot more and meet with more recruiters.
We've just definitely seen a muchhigher conversion on that than
running traditional career fairs.
(41:34):
Wait, three quick
things.
Ready?
Okay.
Is this like speed questions?
Wait, see if you can hear.
If I play this, will it?
Will it be heard?
I apologize in advance.
Ross
gonna hear that.
So weird.
(41:55):
Well, he mentioned it.
You know what that is?
No, I don't.
That's a theme song tosay yes to the dress.
Oh, do you?
Do you feel bad for
me at
Ross?
Alright.
The second thing is second thing.
Second thing is, I sure you just
broke some copyright law.
I probably did, but we'llhave to edit it out.
We're going to trademark only 10 seconds.
I think it's fine.
(42:17):
Somebody told me you're like.
Training
for a marathon?
What is that?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, I am.
So we have sponsored runners this yearfor the Marine Corps marathon where we
are kind of paying their registration feesand then they're fundraising on our behalf
to, and they're gonna run the marathon.
And I, I guess I'm a gluttonfor punishment or my still like
(42:44):
too much of an ego from whenI was a young, a young person.
Yeah.
I used to run a lot.
In my like teens and twenties andnot anymore, but I was guilted into
being a sponsored runner this year.
So I'll be running the Marine Corpsmarathon and trying to fundraise as
part of that and mostly trying tosurvive and like live through it.
(43:04):
You do know how many
miles that is, right?
26.2. My wife has done two.
She did it in four hours and 27 minutes.
So you have to beat that.
No, I'm,
that's an awesome time.
I would be thrilled to do that time.
Are you kidding me?
All right.
I'm thinking I might be six hours.
Yes.
Well, as long as you finish.
Yeah.
I would pay somebody to run it for me.
(43:27):
Need to, can you do that?
Maybe just use AI or something.
Can I be a sponsored sponsor?
Yeah.
Dial it in.
I mean, my team is taking it to, to town.
They're trying to find, they're tryingto put me in all sorts of outfits and
Oh boy.
Yeah.
It's gonna be fun.
There's something to be said for that.
Yeah, that's thinking.
The third thing
was, you know, he, I know he's listenedto our podcast because he mentioned 45,000
(43:48):
nonprofits serving the military community.
You think our podcast is the onlyplace that stat lives on planet
Earth?
Well, we're fact checking a little bit.
So whenever I've said that on likenine other episodes, I'm right.
Oh.
So you just feel validated andyou're thanking Ross for that.
I'm gonna play another song for you.
Yeah.
Yes.
Do it.
And that, and then one, I guessthe fourth thing, military
(44:09):
spouse employment partnership.
Yes.
They're more of a, they're more ofa job posting board, but I have to
believe there's something where I.
Maybe you integrate, maybe you insertyourself or maybe you work with them to
make sure that you sort of tie them outor be a lead source for you too, right?
Yeah.
It's a DOD Run program, the MilitarySpouse Employment Partnership, and we
(44:31):
are one of their certified partners.
It's combination of groups likeus that are working with spouses
and hiring organizations thatwanna bring in spouse talent.
We collaborate with them in a lot ofways, both from kind of contributing to
the different seminars and events, butalso yeah, kind of back and forth, like
boosting what events they have going onor items and then saying social media
(44:53):
stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
Yep.
It's a great, great component ofthe DOD and we're really proud
to, to participate in that.
You know what would be a greattagline for your company?
It would be our mission is your next one.
Right.
I think ours is, it's,
it is our good.
Did you take that off their website, Tom?
(45:14):
I took it off.
I took it off their website.
Yeah.
That's a pretty solid one.
Oh my gosh.
All right, well you're welcome.
Yeah.
Nice thought I
just came up with that.
Yeah.
I think I'm gonna haveto save you from Tom.
Let's, let's just play game at this point.
Yeah.
So
you wanna play a game?
We,
we, we.
Promise we're about to let you go.
Ross, we have, if you bearwith us one, one minute.
(45:35):
We haven't, we haven't been able toplay Military Minute for a minute,
huh?
See what I did there?
Sense of humor.
So our first question is from ourlast podcast and our last guest.
So if you know the answer tothis, you can totally answer.
Let's see here.
In what year was militaryappreciation month made official?
(45:57):
It's a two part question.
And what US Senator championedthat formal designation?
Any guesses?
Senator Dahl, maybe, and nowwe'll call it Merkel on war.
It rhymes with McBrainor McClain or McClain.
Kind of David wearing McCain.
Yes.
Ding, ding, ding.
(46:18):
Yes.
Most part Mick, who flew on the yearthough, it's like, it's like 1999
McGrady.
Yeah.
Wow.
If you are
in our audience and you guessed or justknew, and so you were super smart and put
Senator John McCain, 1999 as your answer.
Watch for your name to be dropped asthe lucky recipient of $50 for you
and $50 to a charity of your choice.
(46:40):
And now I'm gonna fast forward toour question for today's episode.
And you can't answer this one.
You might know it.
Do you think you know it?
You can't answer.
I think
he knows the answer.
Well,
I don't know.
He, he could like raise his hands.
Is it a,
is it a three part question And it's
weirdly a three part question.
'cause Tom.
Brevity is not Tom's strength.
So this week's military is levity maybe?
Yeah.
This week's military minute and
longevity.
Stop talking and divine gravity.
(47:01):
Stop talking.
I
need to get this question out.
It's about the US MilitaryAcademy at West Point.
A three part question.
Part one, what year wasWest Point established?
What is the motto for West Point and whichtwo US presidents went to West Point?
Don't answer.
Look, he's writing him down.
I know he, because it's a lot.
And he's, he's Googling at the same time.
(47:22):
It's, it's, he probably knows,'cause Pete probably does know.
He's smart.
And we already talked about
his
education.
Put your thumb up or nod if you knowthe answer to one, two, or three.
All three of 'em.
Okay.
Oh, very good, very good.
So if you're as smart as Ross, Iwant you to enter all three answers.
And as funny as Jody and funny,
as funny as Tom is looking, put youranswer in the con comments and then
(47:44):
you too, if you're right on all threeparts, could be selected as the lucky
recipient of $50 for yourself and$50 for a charity of your choice.
How do you, how do you keepa straight face when you, the
coffee has fully kicked in.
And I'm gonna, we have, I'm saveRoss from us and I'm just gonna say
thank you, one for tolerating Tom,and two for being here to tell our
(48:04):
audience all about hire heroes today.
It was, it was great tohear about the organization.
Y'all are doing great work.
Excellent.
Well, I appreciate it.
Thank you both for the chance tojoin you and thanks for all that
you're doing to tell military storiesand uplift military members Yeah.
At at the bank.
I mean, your work is really makinga big impact on the community, but
then you're also celebrating andsharing that through the podcast.
(48:25):
So I had a lovely time and definitelyopen for more guest the song
competitions, whatever you want to do,and would love to see you in Colorado.
Tom will be coming for a visitto go to a concert with you soon.
That's right.
Enter Sandman and go.
Yes, go to Colorado if you, if youcan map it out in the next two weeks.
'cause it'd be a, I think it'dbe great for you to be there.
(48:46):
So thanks for considering doing that.
If you enjoyed today's episode.
Really as much as Ross has.
'cause Ross, I think this is probably oneof the best cod pod cod podcasts he's had.
Like that's a phish, hesaid, he said three or four.
I guess you podcast would belike Phish fly fishing, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You could market that.
Alright, go out to af bank.comand subscribe to this show.
(49:09):
Make sure to rate us, leave us, leave us acomment on your favorite podcast platform
like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
You know, it's been two and a half months.
Speaking is hard.
Ross, thank you so much for being here.
Say
hire heroes five times.
Thank you for being here, Ross.
Thank you, Barbara.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you, Ross.
Take care.
Take care.
Thank you.
(49:34):
Copyright Armed Forces Bank Member,FDIC, equal Housing Lender, all
non Armed forces, bank owned apps,websites, company names, and product
names or trademarks or registeredtrademarks of their respective owners.
They're mentioned does not implyany affiliation with or endorsement
by Armed Forces Bank of Themor their products and services.
They're merely used as examples of themany available apps, companies, and
websites that offer similar services.
Before using any app or website, youshould carefully review the terms
of use data collection and privacypolicy apps may have an initial cost
(49:54):
or in application purchase features.
This information is general in natureand is not intended to be legal.
Tax or financial advice.
Although Armed Forces Bank believesthis information to be accurate, it
cannot ensure that it could change.
Statements or opinions of individualsreferenced herein are their own
not Armed Forces Bank consultant.
Appropriate professional concerningyour specific situation and respective
governing bodies for applicablelaws such as irs.gov for current tax
law, armed Forces Bank, the ArmedForces Bank logo and the Militarily
Speaking logo are registered.
(50:15):
Trademarks of Armed Forces Bank.
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