Waco Hoover is an entrepreneur and investor with over 20 years of experience in venture capital, M&A, entertainment, media and live events.
He served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1997-2001 as an infantry Marine, combat water survival instructor and infantry scout. He served several deployments across Southeast Asia.
After separation from the military, Hoover graduated from New York University, cum laude and completed Harvard Business School executive education programs. He then became an entrepreneur and investor who now has over 18 years of experience in venture capital, M&A, entertainment, media and live events.
He is currently Chair of the Be The One initiative for the American Legion. He is also a co-owner of Veteran Entertainment Television, advisor to Founders Factory, a London based venture capital firm, Managing Partner at Xperiential Group, and serves on the board of Irreverent Warriors, a non-profit preventing veteran suicide. He has advised global brands including MGM Resorts, Informa, Vivendi, and Las Vegas Sands Corp. He was a co-founder and investor in businesses sold to Informa, Emerald, Endeavor Business Media and Onstream Media.
Hoover speaks at industry events including VenuesNow, PTTOW!, CEMA, The American Legion, Military Influencer Conference, SXSW, Pollstar, TSE 100, Society for Independent Show Organizers, National Sports Forum and XLIVE.
He lives in Southern California with his wife, son and two yellow labs, Tucker and Winnie. In his spare time, he enjoys surfing, diving, and mountaineering as often as possible. He is a member of The American Legion and recently hosted the Be the One Symposium at the 104th American Legion National Convention in Charlotte.
COMPANY WEBSITE: https://mcon.live/
CEO LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waco-hoover-3928a014/
COMPANY FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092843674663
COMPANY INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mcon.live/
COMPANY LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waco-hoover-3928a014/
He served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1997-2001 as an infantry Marine, combat water survival instructor and infantry scout. He served several deployments across Southeast Asia.
After separation from the military, Hoover graduated from New York University, cum laude and completed Harvard Business School executive education programs. He then became an entrepreneur and investor who now has over 18 years of experience in venture capital, M&A, entertainment, media and live events.
He is currently Chair of the Be The One initiative for the American Legion. He is also a co-owner of Veteran Entertainment Television, advisor to Founders Factory, a London based venture capital firm, Managing Partner at Xperiential Group, and serves on the board of Irreverent Warriors, a non-profit preventing veteran suicide. He has advised global brands including MGM Resorts, Informa, Vivendi, and Las Vegas Sands Corp. He was a co-founder and investor in businesses sold to Informa, Emerald, Endeavor Business Media and Onstream Media.
Hoover speaks at industry events including VenuesNow, PTTOW!, CEMA, The American Legion, Military Influencer Conference, SXSW, Pollstar, TSE 100, Society for Independent Show Organizers, National Sports Forum and XLIVE.
He lives in Southern California with his wife, son and two yellow labs, Tucker and Winnie. In his spare time, he enjoys surfing, diving, and mountaineering as often as possible. He is a member of The American Legion and recently hosted the Be the One Symposium at the 104th American Legion National Convention in Charlotte.
COMPANY WEBSITE: https://mcon.live/
CEO LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waco-hoover-3928a014/
COMPANY FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092843674663
COMPANY INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mcon.live/
COMPANY LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waco-hoover-3928a014/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeartMedia of Orlando presents CEOs You Should Know, shining a
spotlight on decision makers throughout Central Florida, showcasing the leaders
and companies that drive our local economy.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This time around on CEOs You Should Know, Let's meet
Waco Hoover. He's an entrepreneur and investor with over twenty
years of experience in venture capital, M and A, entertainment,
media and live events. He served in the US Marine
Corps as an infantry marine combat, water survival instructor and
infantry scout. He then became an entrepreneur and investor who
(00:35):
now has over eighteen years of experience in venture capital,
M and A, entertainment, media, and live events. Let's find
out more about Waco Hoover.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So. I grew up in a small town called Erbach, Florida,
on East Coast, about two hours north of Miami. Grew
up in a military family that served a couple tours
of Vietnam a second or more, and grandparents serving World
War Two. So come from a multi generational military family
which has been which is definitely shaped you know how
(01:05):
I viewed the world And where'd you go to school?
I did my undergrad at NYU in New York City
and they did grad school at Florida State University up standing.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
And then of course you talked about military service, and
I know the apple doesn't fall for from the tree.
You did service, so we appreciate what you've done for
our country. Can you tell us a little bit about
why you joined and how many years you served?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah? So I served in the Marine Corps. Was the
infantry Marine. I served four years in the in the
infantry to point through Southeast Asia, and it was you know,
it's interesting. Why did I serve in the military. You know,
I want to say that. You know, I wasn't rebelling
for my father because he told me, he said, son,
I support you whatever you do, and enlisting in the
(01:47):
military and not going straight to college. He's like, but
just don't join the marine. And what did I do?
I joined the Marine Corps. I'm looking back on it
as a young person. I definitely I don't believe I
was intentionally doing that. Just the Marine Corps, the spree
As Corps, the high standards that spoke to me, and
so it was just a funny, you know, kind of
actual story, you know, of him telling me that. But yeah,
(02:10):
I will say that the military. My experience in the
Marine Corps I was described as some of the best
and worst times you know of my life. But I
wouldn't trade it for anything. And the experience, everything you learn,
the relationships, It set me up to be successful in
so many other things. I had no idea post service.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Well, I'm glad that you talked about that WEEKO and
just a little bit later on we talk about leadership
in the series and CEOs you should know. And I've
talked to so many people that have had outstanding military service,
like yourself, and taken that to the private sector, whether
it's for a nonprofit, And there are so many correlations.
And I'm a big sports guy, and as you know,
between sports, the business, rule and the military, there's a
(02:51):
lot of things that you can integrate when it comes
to structure and teamwork and honor and duty and all
those things of leadership. So I want to talk about
that in just a little bit, but we're obviously here
to talk about em CON that's coming up in Las
Vegas October twenty two through twenty six. Now there's a
lot to talk about. With all your speakers, You've got
a huge list of people and I know you put
(03:11):
this together, and I guess the first thing before we
talk about mission and vision, the speakers and all the
events that are happening during that event coming up very
soon this month, about the Ridin story, about starting it,
because I know you've got a lot of irons in
the fire that i'd like you to talk about today
that you do, whether it's right directly with the military indirectly.
But when you came up with this idea, what did
you want to do? What did you want to kind
(03:32):
of put together here?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, So MCN is this culmination of a couple decades
of like building communities, building event and media brands and
platforms with myself and our partners, and you know, and
then also like myself having lived, you know, the experience
and being very involved in it. But then also so
my partners who did not serve in the military, but
they're you know, they're patriots, they love our country. They
(03:57):
want to support service members in their families as much
as possible. It really was identifying this white space that
existed quite frankly, and you know, if you look at it,
virtually every other community in our country has a large
scale annual tent pole celebration, for lack of a better term,
celebrating those people or this thing or this theme. Two
examples are, you know, if you've ever ever heard of
(04:19):
Dragon Con, it's almost like twenty thousand people all celebrating
fantasy and dragons in that whole world, you know, which
is amazing, and that's their thing and they love and
they're passionate about it. Another example is the Essence Festival,
which is the largest celebration of Black culture in this country.
It takes place in New Orleans every year. I think
it's over fifty thousand people at this point. It's just
an amazing celebration of black culture. But for us the military,
(04:43):
as high visibility and as important as we are to
this country in our service, we don't have a large
scale celebration of what we did. And so we are
all about and we built MCON to create the largest
celebration of military culture at the end of the day,
celebrating things like culture and service and sacrifice and purpose
(05:05):
and community and really remembering and celebrating what that service is.
Because all too often there is this there's this perception
of the broken veteran that permeates many pockets of American society,
and the reality is that, yeah, there's a number of men,
there's a lot of men and women that we need
to help and support in the ways that to get
(05:25):
them through whatever they might be struggling with it's related
to their military experience. But the reality is the vast
majority of us that serve are out there doing amazing
things in their communities, building businesses, executives in the workplace,
and in their schools, churches, you know, whatever they're doing.
And so we want to celebrate people doing extraordinary things
(05:47):
in their lives because of their military service, not in
spite of it. And one of the best ways to
do that is create these at scale tech poles where
you're bringing together huge brands, huge partners that are endemic
to the military community. VAD you do and otherwise, and
you know, nonprofits that we work with, but then also
all the other groups that may be more tangential but
(06:09):
they are more prepherily or loosely supporting the military, but
they don't know how to do it in the most
authentic and impactful way, and we want to help educate
them to do that because at the end of the day,
the military and men and women that serve make extraordinary
sacrifices that most people have no idea the true realities
and what those hardships look like. And so how do
(06:29):
we bolster that, how do we celebrate that at scale?
And that's what I'm comes all about.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Outstanding. Well, a lot of talk about when it comes
to the guest lineup, which is absolutely extraordinary. I know
you've packed a lot in when it comes to this event,
but you know, one of the really cool things that
we love to talk about not only mission and vision,
but I think more specifically. You know, if people in
our listenership are being introduced to m CON for the
first time, if you were to kind of give a
thirty thousand foot view Waco about what this exactly is
(06:54):
in short form, what would you tell them?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I would say that MCON brings together the military community
like no weather event in the country, and we are
building a program a platform to inspire, inform, and entertain
our community. So that for every man, woman, kid, family
member or the supporter that comes through that door, yes,
they're going to have a great time with all the
activities and the speakers and the culinary experiences, but most importantly,
(07:23):
they are going to leave their experience whether it's one
day or all four days, and they are going to
be exposed to a deep stack of resources that they
most likely have not been exposed to. And so they're
going to go back to the local military base in
Las Vegas, or they're going to fly across country back
to where that is, or go back to their home
wherever that might be, and they're going to be better
(07:44):
armed and more equipped with information and knowledge that can
help them live their life to the best of their
ability post service. And that is what that is what
we are trying to do with them, con is we're
trying to improve outcomes and quality of life for service members,
vetterans to their families.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
You know, Wiko. One of the things the resumeates to
me that you're talking about right there. In any CEO
that I've talked to, any company about a product or
a service that they offer, the human condition is that
we want to be able to relate to each other.
And when you talked about that white area that you had,
that hole in the industry that wasn't there that you
and the other people put together. When it comes to Encoon,
we're talking about people that could be suffering from many
(08:23):
different things or have different experiences or same experiences are
all coming together and saying, you know what, I'm not
the only person on the planet that's feeling this way.
And when you hear that speaker talk or you're sitting
next to that person saying, hey, you know what, we
had the same experience. Is this is what it really
is all truly about, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
That's that's exactly where were I mean, We've got pro
athletes sharing their journey and how they've had mental health
struggle struggles, but they are now pro athletes post service,
which is incredible. We've got amazing entrepreneurs who have founded
multi billion dollar businesses sharing their struggles and their journeys.
And you know, are all of our services, all of
our our journeys are experience as are relative. And you
(09:02):
might be you might come to the event and you
might be rock bottom looking for what's the way just
to reboot the trajectory of where I'm at right now,
Or you might be in the place where you're looking
to scale your business and you need to raise capital,
or you've already had successful exits and you want to
impart mentorship. The reality is everyone's coming for a different purpose,
(09:22):
and we want to we call it engineered serendipity. We
want to give people an opportunity to have connections with
individuals and organizations that can support them and help them
accomplish whatever the next chapter is. That is a huge
part of what we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
One of the other things I was thinking about as
I was hearing about MCON and the amazing things that
you have created here. I'll give you an example. So
I've been in sports radio and television for almost thirty years,
but a long time ago, I didn't know about other
program directors in sports radio in the country, never had
a chance to meet them talk with them, and finally
heard about this conference that was in Phoenix that this
guy had put together, and all the program directors from
(10:00):
around the country came together. We golfed, and we had seminars,
and what I had an opportunity to do is to
be able to once again relate to that fill of
person about my experiences, the good stuff, the bad stuff,
but also learn and as I see and I look
at AMCON with all the different things going on and
all the different speaker lists that I want you to
talk about this from on, once again it's that fellowship
being brought together about all these people that might have
(10:22):
shared or similar experiences. They get to be together for
three or four days and to talk about it and
live it, and it's got to be an extraordinary experience
for everybody.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
It is. And that's exactly right. And at the most
fundamental level, community facilitates social connections. Social connection saves lives
at the end of the day, and that is it
prevents isolation, It creates inspiration. There's learning opportunities or connectivity.
We talk about all the time. You know, Sebastian Young
are amazing, your time's bestselling author, one of the most
(10:52):
accomplished war correspondents of our generation. He's been a guest
speaker and an amazing support of I'm con and you know,
he has a book called Tribe and Finding your Tribe
is something that we talk about all the time. And
that's that's not the easiest thing to do when you
transition out the military. Transition from activity service to veteran
(11:15):
is very very challenging. It can be very challenging for
It is very challenging for the service member, challenging for
the spouse, the kids, you know, and so there is
a we want to bolster and support the existing programs
that are there, and then on the other side of that,
we want to we want to talk about a lot
of the nuance that's involved with this. You don't know
what you don't know at the end of the day,
(11:35):
and purpose is relative, and we tend to take a
bit of a rubber stamp approach with how we provide
resources to service members. And the reality is is what
a you know, somebody who served six years versus somebody
who served twenty four years officer and list and what
they need and where they're going is very, very different.
So we need to use a scalpel with how we
support our service members to ensure that there is the
(11:57):
best outcome and talking about things like the nuance of purpose.
Oftentimes we think that hey, I'm going to get a
good job, I'm going to make a decent living, cool,
I've got purpose. Well, there couldn't be anything farther from
the truth. Like some of us are going to fill
our cup with work, with owning a business or being
an executive or whatever you do. But there's a huge
(12:19):
category of individuals and service members and veterans who that's
never going to fill your coup. It doesn't matter how
successful you are, You're just going to keep pouring liquid
into that cup and it's going to keep going out.
So you've got to identify other things that are going
to get you at when you get out of bed
that day, put your feet on the ground, you're going
to be jacked up and pumped to go get after.
It could be something that you're doing in your local church.
(12:41):
It could be coaching at your kid's sports team, or
any sports team for that matter. It could be mentorship,
it could be big evolved in a veteran nonprofit. There
is an endless amount of things that you can lean
into and really identify purpose, what's going to fill you,
what's going to make you feel inspired to live the
best version of your life. And there's so much much
and nuance around that. That's such an important piece to
(13:03):
be able to dissect and share that with men and
women so they understand that, you know, I don't have
to reinvent the wheel here. There are millions of individuals
who have come before me. So let's build out a playbook.
Let's be data driven and outcome oriented to how we
can support people so that we don't have to make
the same mistakes as an entrepreneur and investor. Over the
(13:23):
past twenty years, I have screwed more things up than
I've had successes, but I've learned for that. That's you know,
as long as you're as long as you're like baseball,
as long as you're patting averages around three hundred, you're
doing well in business and investing in companies and building them,
and so that is something that you know, we know,
fail fast, fail forward, but it's it's only there's only
(13:44):
no value and failure if you learn if you don't
learn from it. As long as you learn from it
and you apply that and you improve upon it, and
you can share that knowledge with other people, your team,
your organization, yourself, there's tremendous value and failure. And all
too often we're letting our service members poke around in
the dark without giving them resources and playbooks that are
(14:06):
already there.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, that's all well said wayco and really resonating words
when it comes out, and you're not the first one,
and almost every leader in the series has talked about
the umpteen failures that they had and learning from that
and eventually getting went out there. And then my final
takeaway I think with this is for a lot of
people that are going to tend just to be seen
and heard at this conference is really important too, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Well, that's exactly right. Sometimes we don't feel like we
have a voice and also are There's around fifty thousand
betteran nonprofits. Some are huge national organizations that you've heard of,
like when Warrior Projects, the FW American Legion, and you know,
Blue Star Families and so on. Others are much smaller
regional groups. But that doesn't matter how big or small
(14:50):
you are. The impact of saving one life or the
impact of helping somebody get a job or get them
out of homelessness, whatever the scenario is that you're supporting
our employe in a military spouse, there's tremendous impact in that,
and so being able to understand, wait a minute, I
don't have to reinvent the wheel all over again if
I want to have my voice heard. There are other
(15:11):
organizations you've already done this, learn from them, leverage those
things and apply that to your community in a really
powerful and profound way, because you can also do it
and it's much more data driven. Is the other piece,
and that is a huge part of what we look at.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Your speaker lineup is huge, and I'm not it's incredible,
and I know you can go through all of them,
but I would love you to go symptoms that you're
excited about and also maybe some of the topics that
are going to be explored. Can you go through some
of them for us?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah? Absolutely, you know, this is a this is a
hard one. I intentionally didn't put a short list together
because there are so many great people and I don't
want anybody feel like I left them out in terrentional
because they're all incredible, you know, in their own right,
and so you know, I got to call out, you know,
a good friend, but also you know amazing executive. That's
doctor Tina Athol. She's the CEO of psych Armor. They
do incredible work across our entire military community with cultural
(16:03):
compency training and other types of things to ensure that
community care providers understand how to engage and work with
veterans and their families. There are so many preventable outcomes,
negative outcomes that we could help with if you simply
if the care provider simply identifies that somebody is a veteran,
(16:23):
so you can ask additional questions and she and her team.
We partner with them on imcon health where we're talking
about human performance. We are talking about reinventing the continue
of care, economics of care delivery, community partnerships. We've got
six pillars that we built out and this is all
about how we drive different outcomes. Dennis, you're probably feel
(16:44):
familiar with this. A lot of listeners are. But for
the past twenty years, we have not been able to
put a measurable dent in active duty and veteran suicide,
despite spending more money, and so this program, it's very
intentional that it was in Washington, d C. Or part
of the usual places, and I'm DC all the time.
There's so many amazing men and women who work very hard,
(17:05):
you know DC at the agency's nonprofits there. But we
wanted to get outside of the traditional forum that are there,
the DC bubble, so we can have different conversations. We're
bringing in different amazing speakers. One example is a Green
Beret veteran, got a Mike Emkes, the co founder of
Function Health. Function Health is the fastest growing health tech
(17:25):
company in history. They went from they went from zero
to I think almost four hundred million dollars in three years.
They just did a raise is all public. They did
a raise earlier this year to two point five billion
dollar valuation. And it's all about how you test and
you look at different a much broader array of biomarkers
so that you can be you can be preventive in
(17:46):
nature with how you look at your own personal healthcare.
So they're democratizing how we can do that, and the
same thing for everything we're doing around this. We're looking
at upstream oriented solutions so that you eliminate men and
women getting to a crisis or dealing with issues before
it even happens. But one thing on the health piece
before I move on, that i'll talk about is a
(18:07):
term that we use is called brain health. Shifting away
from this notionure of mental health. Brain health, this great
organ up here floating around in our brain in our heads,
is the most important organ in the body because it
informs and influences everything else. But we think about it
in this very subjective terms traditionally around mental health. And
(18:27):
that's not to demonize you mental health professionals in any way,
shape or form, but we need to eliminate the stigma
associated with how we think about mental health and brain
health therapy is no different than going to the gym.
You know, you want to improve, like how heavy the
spots that you can push or your bench press, You
got to put in the time in the gym. If
(18:48):
you're dealing with something that's going on with the chemistry
up and in your brain, you've got to put in
the work. But the science is showing us that we
can make cognitive measurable improvement if we work at it,
if we employed these different therapies that are out there.
And so it's really incredible that we're able to showcase
a lot of these different modalities and transformative therapies to
(19:10):
our community and executives and professionals from different agencies to
actually affect change and look at how we can implement
him and furthermore research. So that's the health and wellness
piece of it. And we've got cold punch pools and
UFC profiders doing a combat of xpos, so tons of
cool stuff as it relates to that. But you know,
some of the other stuff that we're doing. You know,
I want to call out a gentleman, Tyler. Gray Tyler
(19:32):
is a Green Beret, you know, Army ranger sniper. He
was a Delta Force operator and you know he got
you know, got injured pretty pretty in a pretty early way.
He's come out since, had an extraordinary story and a
TV on CBS or TV show on CBS. Now he's
a best selling author for a book he just dropped,
(19:52):
and he's going to be talking about his own personal
journey and kind of what we alluded to earlier. People
were talking about, you know what, I was in a really,
really horrible spot. But here is how I pulled myself out.
Here's here the resources that I tapped in to do that.
You don't have to go this alone. And look at him.
He is one of the most highly trained operators in
the world at that level, and he still struggled with things.
(20:16):
So everyone take a minute and pause and think about
that for a moment. You know, regardless of where you
are or you're the low the different types of training,
if you were an admin, or even if you're a
civilian and you're you know, you're not an All Star
athlete or anything. People at the highest leak because that's
one of being a professional athlete or going to the
All Star Game, you know, every year, and those individuals
(20:39):
are being vulnerable and forth rine transparent about those journeys.
So it's incredibly inspiring to see people who are willing
to put themselves out there in service of others. And
that's a that's a theme that continues to permeate and
then we foster and I'm calling his you know, service
never stops at the end of the day. You know.
There's a number of other you know, really incredible folks
(20:59):
that I you know, that I want to call out
as well. Gosh, who lets let's so. Another person is
Charlotte Creach. She's the chief program officer at Higher Heroes USA.
They do absolutely incredible work on the hiring side, the
transition piece. They have an incredibly data driven approach to
(21:20):
every dollar that goes into you know, supporting a veteran
and hiring, They've been able to push that number down
so that they're able to be as efficient as possible
with all of the brand partners that are putting resources
into that. They're just doing extraordinary work. You know. The
other uh, some of the other ones that I want
to call out is Blue Star Families and some of
the work they're doing with Starbucks target Shabani from a
(21:44):
brand partnership piece they are, They're what winning looks like
at the end of the day. Both partners are engaged,
believe in the mission. They're both taking a very data
driven approach to it. They're looking at how they build
out authentic and impactful programs, not one or the other.
And the corporate brand partners, they're not taking a check
(22:04):
the box. So we're just doing this because it feels nice.
They're doing it because they want to understand every dollar
that they contribute or every resource they contribute, it's not
just about money that is going to make a huge
difference in that. So we've got just an amazing group
of people there. And then the other piece of that
is the gentlemen. Rudi Reez, Marine recon veteran TV shows
(22:25):
on Fox and in in other places just on HBO,
just an amazing human. He just was always so vulnerable
and inspiring with the stories that he tells. So he's
going to be out a range Day with us doing
some incredible things and other pieces of that. But the
other thing I want to call out his own Range
Day that we're hosting on Friday. That's the big kind
of the consumer part of the event that kicks off
(22:46):
at Clark County Shooting Complex and we've got Yeah, we're
slinging arrows down range. We're having a blast. We are
you know, we have you know, we're working with the
National Shooting Sports Foundation, We working to the USCCA ARC
on firearms and a bunch of amazing groups. But one
of the things I'm really proud of is what we're
doing around the topic of secure storage, and it's about
(23:06):
cultural change. And Dennis, I don't know if you are,
if you're familiar with the Edelman Trust Barometer, but Edelman's
a huge global agency. Every year they do this survey
of over thirty three thousand consumers, and what that survey
tells us is that consistently consumers, the individual veterans, and
every wise all of us, you mean, we trust corporate
brands more than NGO's, more than media, and more than government.
(23:30):
And so corporate brands have a powerful, powerful opportunity to
step in and affect change and influence change. And so
we're really frilled to be partnering with the firearms industry,
the outdoor industry to help to reshape culturally how we
think about secure storage. And why that's important to call
out is over seventy percent of veterans that die by
(23:51):
suicide use a firearm. And I want to be very clear,
I'm not picking up firearms when I say that. It
is just a statistic and quite frankly, represents an opportunity
to dramatically reduce suicide if we're able to create more
time and distance if someone is in crisis or if
they're struggling. And so, you know, the response we get
all to oftens when individuals and firearms owners aren't locking
(24:13):
up the weapons, is you know what, I need my
weapon accessible if something goes bump the night you protection,
self defense. Totally understand that, but the reality is there
are gunlock boxes now today that you can have open
and sub two seconds and get access to that weapon,
but you can still keep it locked up and you
can still protect your family, members of the community who
(24:34):
might be in your home get access to that firearm
or from theft. And so we're reshaping that cultural narrative
around training. And so we're going to have a number
of different training exercises out there, or we're actually gonna
be demonstrating putting people in the clock to start in
one position, move another position, open the gun block box,
load it, taking a number of steps, engage your target
clock stops. So we're going to demonstrate in showcase and
(24:56):
also have a lot of fun and gamify it that
Hey guys, there's no excuse if self defense is a priority.
You can still keep your firearms locked up and ready
when you need them. So the cultural change you see
continues to be a permeating theme for im Con, and
that's a big part of it. And then some of
the other things we're doing on Saturday Sunday, We've got
musical performances for local artists who are veterans, some which
(25:19):
who are veterans. We've got amazing authors and you know,
amazing authors. We've got amazing pro athletes. I mentioned we're
going to have UFC profile it Fighters doing a combatives
expo and Naval Special Warfare in Air Force Special Operations.
We're doing that with the WEE to five Foundation, which
is going to be really incredible. So the group of people, organizations,
(25:43):
that's hundreds of organizations, hundreds of brand partners. We're expecting,
you know, almost six thousand attendees this year. We're just
looking to have a great event for people to come
together and walk away with amazing resources and we have
a really great time.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
It's Stanley. I appreciate you sharing all that, Wakelan. At
the end, I promise, well, we're going to give the
website how to get tickets, all of that, the dates
where it is at the expo in Vegas, and everything
you need to know if you already have in Google
that I did promise. I wanted to talk about leadership Waco,
and I think there's so many correlations once again between
military and sports and the private sector what you do,
and I know that not only am Con, you do
(26:18):
so many other things that I'd love for you to
talk about without embarrassing you, because I know you're very
busy with your different buckets that you work with when
it comes to the military and all these different projects
you are. But when you hear the word leadership with
what you grew up with and where you are today
and how you access it and how you use it,
can you talk a little bit about leadership for our listenership?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Please?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
I think for me, leadership is something that's always evolving.
I look at when I was a young entrepreneur or
a young CEO, and some of the leadership traits that
I exhibited not the greatest, you know, and I'm completely
honest about that. But you're constantly evolving, your growling as
a person, You're learning, your you're reading. And I love
(27:04):
Michaelangelo's quote. I think it was in the sixties when
he said it, I am still learning. I won't even
embarrass myself and try to pronounce it in Italian, but
but I'm still learning. You have one of the greatest,
one of the greatest artists in history, still in his
sixties saying I am still learning. And I think that
is one of the most important aspects of leadership, is
(27:24):
being vulnerabing and being openness because I think that I
actually know when you when you lead with leadership in
that capacity, will we're always constantly evolving and learning. That
trickles down to the organization, from your your executives, your managers,
the individuals, because it informs that we can respectfully challenge
each other, we can try new things, we can innovate.
(27:44):
And one of the things that we see all too
often across different pockets of government agencies, I think, and
you know some of them which are directly you know,
in charge with supporting veterans, is there can be this complacency,
or we can get we can trip over bureaucracy and
red tape in which ultimately hurts the warfighter, the service
member and their family. And I say that not picking
(28:07):
on individuals that work there because they're part of a
bigger system, but constantly learning and evolving and trying new
things and measuring that measuring and adjusting. Measuring and adjusting
is incredibly important and so from a from a leadership standpoint,
we always try to instill that in folks. And then
the other piece I touched on earlier, the mistakes. You know,
(28:27):
people are going to make mistakes, your your contractors, your employees,
your partners. You know, I had to develop this over
time with my father, and forgiveness is a really important
aspect of And granted, there's certain things that you don't
come back from that you don't forget obviously hopefully those
are obvious and there's new once step, but you know,
people are not perfect. I am not perfect, and being
(28:50):
able to allow people to stub their toe and come
back from that, makeup for it and still be a
good contributing member of your team is something that's I
think a really important aspect of how you build a
good healthy culture. At some point, you know, if someone
goes too far, you know, or there's not performing to
the standards, you got to make a change. Obviously it
goes without saying, but like I said, the forgiveness piece
(29:13):
and the continual process and provent piece are such important
aspects of leadership.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Well, my takeaways from what you just talked about, and
it's very prophetic of what you had said, but there's
a lot of humility to being a leader and also
self awareness and it really takes those kind of things
and then counting on your team all the time. I
did mention a lot of the things that you're working on,
and I know we don't we can have our own
separate podcasts all the amazing things that you're doing, but
I know you're very proud of about some other things
(29:38):
that you're working on. Can just for a few moments
share what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah. Absolutely. There's a number of programs that we're involved
in that there are absolutely incredible. You know. One of
those is some of the work I do with the
American Legion. I chair the American Legion's national suicide prevention
program called Be the One for two point six million
members and it is in this extraordinary program where we
first let but a year and a half ago. In
the first ten months, we trained almost thirteen thousand of
(30:05):
our members and staff on suicide prevention. We worked with
the Columbia University with the Columbia Protocol, and we built
an app called to be the One app where you
could literally go through it and you know, dnnis you
me or the lay person, not a clinician, if you
are dealing with somebody who may be potentially in crisis.
It is a very easy series of checklists to go
through and figure out if somebody is at low monitor
(30:28):
high risk risk of suicide again using a scalpel like
I talked about earlier. So we're incredibly proud of that work,
you know that we've done to educate men, women, and
think of it as CPR for the brain. It is
a community health based approach. You know, CPR saves hundreds
of thousands of people's lives every year. It's millions of
lives since it was first you know, rolled out, you know,
back in the eighties and nineties, and we need to
(30:50):
take that approach with suicide prevention in this country so
that you me, other people are informed and equipped to
identify somebody who may be going through struggles because oftentimes
you signals are not obvious at all, and so very
proud of the work that the American Legion is doing
would be the one. In other things, another great program
that we're dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs is
two years ago we stood up a program a venture
(31:13):
studio inside the VA, and so we launched what's called
the Veterans Health Venture Studio with a good friend and colleague,
doctor Andresendahl. She's the brain child. She has the brain
child behind all this. And the idea is to bring
in men and women from outside the walls of the
VA and also inside another partner organizations to tackle to
look at the biggest points of friction, the biggest challenges
(31:36):
to improving quality of care, and we're going to build tools,
technology and AI driven platforms that can help solve those
problems at scale. And so the Venture Studio is a
year long program where teams get selected and continue to
go on through those different programs ultimately and at the
end of the year, certain teams are selected and will
ultimately be piloted in different organizations and hospital settings across
(32:00):
the VA and the ones that demonstrate the most adficacy
are then scale across the enterprise. So it's a very innovative,
fast moving program designed to improve care, improve access, and
proved quality care for for veterans in those two services.
That term is amazing. And the other thing you know
that I do that really sits across all of these
programs is, you know, I co founded a brand strategy
(32:20):
agency called Impact Group, and what we do is we
specialize in working with large corporates, foundations, other organizations to
build out programs for the for organizations that are looking
to UH support and create impact programs for military service
members veterans in their family. So that could be UH,
(32:42):
you know, employee resource group inside the corporation, it could
be building out a robust impact social UH social social
impact program working with nonprofits. But what's unique about us
is we align the corporate goals and objectives with the
organization of the NTY and we match that up with
the impact conditions they want to lean into so that
(33:03):
they're data driven and we ensure that they get a
creative impact not only on the organization employees and customers,
but they also are able to really in a detail
in a data driven away measure the outcomes for those
nonprofit partners they're serving to ensure that those resources are
having the most impact. So there's man a number of
other groups that I'm invested in, but those are at
(33:24):
a high level some of the things that I'm most
proud of and really related to the great work that myself,
our partners, and our other stakeholders and team members are
doing to support veterans and their families.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Well, I appreciate you sharing all that way. It never
sees it to amaze me in this series when we
talk to CEOs and leaders and entrepreneurs, they're involved in
so many things, they're just not that many hours in
the day. Yeah, you somehow make it because of all
the energy and passion that you have, and that comes
through tremendously as I talk to you. Well, let's we
promise to give the website and also the dates of
m CON twenty twenty five, how to get tickets where
(33:56):
it's located, the expo in Vegas. So if you could
kind of give everybody just one last thing about how
they can be a part of this, let's let's let's
get them all set up absolutely.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
M Colin twenty twenty five is coming off of October
twenty third through the twenty six in Las Vegas. It's
at the Expo at World Market. If you want to
get tickets learn more, just go to MCON dot Live
mcon dot l I ve. You can get all the
information you need. You can inquire to our team if
you want to get more information, or you can get
your tickets right online at the website.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Understanding well, Wake, I can't tell you how much I
appreciate your time. First of all, thank you for your
service to our country, but also the things that you've
done after service is just absolutely incredible, and we need
more people like you out there helping our military out there.
But this m COON just sounds like an amazing thing
to be a part of and help people at least
take a look at it. If they can't go, just
get online because the speaker series is amazing. All the
(34:47):
things wrapped around in Vegas are just absolutely truly incredible.
It is hercule and what you and your team have
done to put this together. Thank you so much for
your time, and we really appreciate focusing and having one CEOs.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
You should know I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you, CEO's You Should Know is an exclusive presentation
of iHeartMedia Orlando. You can hear more interviews with other
Central Florida leaders by searching Orlando CEOs, under podcast and
the iHeartRadio app
iHeartMedia of Orlando presents CEOs You Should Know, shining a
spotlight on decision makers throughout Central Florida, showcasing the leaders
and companies that drive our local economy.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This time around on CEOs You Should Know, Let's meet
Waco Hoover. He's an entrepreneur and investor with over twenty
years of experience in venture capital, M and A, entertainment,
media and live events. He served in the US Marine
Corps as an infantry marine combat, water survival instructor and
infantry scout. He then became an entrepreneur and investor who
(00:35):
now has over eighteen years of experience in venture capital,
M and A, entertainment, media, and live events. Let's find
out more about Waco Hoover.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So. I grew up in a small town called Erbach, Florida,
on East Coast, about two hours north of Miami. Grew
up in a military family that served a couple tours
of Vietnam a second or more, and grandparents serving World
War Two. So come from a multi generational military family
which has been which is definitely shaped you know how
(01:05):
I viewed the world And where'd you go to school?
I did my undergrad at NYU in New York City
and they did grad school at Florida State University up standing.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
And then of course you talked about military service, and
I know the apple doesn't fall for from the tree.
You did service, so we appreciate what you've done for
our country. Can you tell us a little bit about
why you joined and how many years you served?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah? So I served in the Marine Corps. Was the
infantry Marine. I served four years in the in the
infantry to point through Southeast Asia, and it was you know,
it's interesting. Why did I serve in the military. You know,
I want to say that. You know, I wasn't rebelling
for my father because he told me, he said, son,
I support you whatever you do, and enlisting in the
(01:47):
military and not going straight to college. He's like, but
just don't join the marine. And what did I do?
I joined the Marine Corps. I'm looking back on it
as a young person. I definitely I don't believe I
was intentionally doing that. Just the Marine Corps, the spree
As Corps, the high standards that spoke to me, and
so it was just a funny, you know, kind of
actual story, you know, of him telling me that. But yeah,
(02:10):
I will say that the military. My experience in the
Marine Corps I was described as some of the best
and worst times you know of my life. But I
wouldn't trade it for anything. And the experience, everything you learn,
the relationships, It set me up to be successful in
so many other things. I had no idea post service.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Well, I'm glad that you talked about that WEEKO and
just a little bit later on we talk about leadership
in the series and CEOs you should know. And I've
talked to so many people that have had outstanding military service,
like yourself, and taken that to the private sector, whether
it's for a nonprofit, And there are so many correlations.
And I'm a big sports guy, and as you know,
between sports, the business, rule and the military, there's a
(02:51):
lot of things that you can integrate when it comes
to structure and teamwork and honor and duty and all
those things of leadership. So I want to talk about
that in just a little bit, but we're obviously here
to talk about em CON that's coming up in Las
Vegas October twenty two through twenty six. Now there's a
lot to talk about. With all your speakers, You've got
a huge list of people and I know you put
(03:11):
this together, and I guess the first thing before we
talk about mission and vision, the speakers and all the
events that are happening during that event coming up very
soon this month, about the Ridin story, about starting it,
because I know you've got a lot of irons in
the fire that i'd like you to talk about today
that you do, whether it's right directly with the military indirectly.
But when you came up with this idea, what did
you want to do? What did you want to kind
(03:32):
of put together here?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, So MCN is this culmination of a couple decades
of like building communities, building event and media brands and
platforms with myself and our partners, and you know, and
then also like myself having lived, you know, the experience
and being very involved in it. But then also so
my partners who did not serve in the military, but
they're you know, they're patriots, they love our country. They
(03:57):
want to support service members in their families as much
as possible. It really was identifying this white space that
existed quite frankly, and you know, if you look at it,
virtually every other community in our country has a large
scale annual tent pole celebration, for lack of a better term,
celebrating those people or this thing or this theme. Two
examples are, you know, if you've ever ever heard of
(04:19):
Dragon Con, it's almost like twenty thousand people all celebrating
fantasy and dragons in that whole world, you know, which
is amazing, and that's their thing and they love and
they're passionate about it. Another example is the Essence Festival,
which is the largest celebration of Black culture in this country.
It takes place in New Orleans every year. I think
it's over fifty thousand people at this point. It's just
an amazing celebration of black culture. But for us the military,
(04:43):
as high visibility and as important as we are to
this country in our service, we don't have a large
scale celebration of what we did. And so we are
all about and we built MCON to create the largest
celebration of military culture at the end of the day,
celebrating things like culture and service and sacrifice and purpose
(05:05):
and community and really remembering and celebrating what that service is.
Because all too often there is this there's this perception
of the broken veteran that permeates many pockets of American society,
and the reality is that, yeah, there's a number of men,
there's a lot of men and women that we need
to help and support in the ways that to get
(05:25):
them through whatever they might be struggling with it's related
to their military experience. But the reality is the vast
majority of us that serve are out there doing amazing
things in their communities, building businesses, executives in the workplace,
and in their schools, churches, you know, whatever they're doing.
And so we want to celebrate people doing extraordinary things
(05:47):
in their lives because of their military service, not in
spite of it. And one of the best ways to
do that is create these at scale tech poles where
you're bringing together huge brands, huge partners that are endemic
to the military community. VAD you do and otherwise, and
you know, nonprofits that we work with, but then also
all the other groups that may be more tangential but
(06:09):
they are more prepherily or loosely supporting the military, but
they don't know how to do it in the most
authentic and impactful way, and we want to help educate
them to do that because at the end of the day,
the military and men and women that serve make extraordinary
sacrifices that most people have no idea the true realities
and what those hardships look like. And so how do
(06:29):
we bolster that, how do we celebrate that at scale?
And that's what I'm comes all about.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Outstanding. Well, a lot of talk about when it comes
to the guest lineup, which is absolutely extraordinary. I know
you've packed a lot in when it comes to this event,
but you know, one of the really cool things that
we love to talk about not only mission and vision,
but I think more specifically. You know, if people in
our listenership are being introduced to m CON for the
first time, if you were to kind of give a
thirty thousand foot view Waco about what this exactly is
(06:54):
in short form, what would you tell them?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I would say that MCON brings together the military community
like no weather event in the country, and we are
building a program a platform to inspire, inform, and entertain
our community. So that for every man, woman, kid, family
member or the supporter that comes through that door, yes,
they're going to have a great time with all the
activities and the speakers and the culinary experiences, but most importantly,
(07:23):
they are going to leave their experience whether it's one
day or all four days, and they are going to
be exposed to a deep stack of resources that they
most likely have not been exposed to. And so they're
going to go back to the local military base in
Las Vegas, or they're going to fly across country back
to where that is, or go back to their home
wherever that might be, and they're going to be better
(07:44):
armed and more equipped with information and knowledge that can
help them live their life to the best of their
ability post service. And that is what that is what
we are trying to do with them, con is we're
trying to improve outcomes and quality of life for service members,
vetterans to their families.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
You know, Wiko. One of the things the resumeates to
me that you're talking about right there. In any CEO
that I've talked to, any company about a product or
a service that they offer, the human condition is that
we want to be able to relate to each other.
And when you talked about that white area that you had,
that hole in the industry that wasn't there that you
and the other people put together. When it comes to Encoon,
we're talking about people that could be suffering from many
(08:23):
different things or have different experiences or same experiences are
all coming together and saying, you know what, I'm not
the only person on the planet that's feeling this way.
And when you hear that speaker talk or you're sitting
next to that person saying, hey, you know what, we
had the same experience. Is this is what it really
is all truly about, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
That's that's exactly where were I mean, We've got pro
athletes sharing their journey and how they've had mental health
struggle struggles, but they are now pro athletes post service,
which is incredible. We've got amazing entrepreneurs who have founded
multi billion dollar businesses sharing their struggles and their journeys.
And you know, are all of our services, all of
our our journeys are experience as are relative. And you
(09:02):
might be you might come to the event and you
might be rock bottom looking for what's the way just
to reboot the trajectory of where I'm at right now,
Or you might be in the place where you're looking
to scale your business and you need to raise capital,
or you've already had successful exits and you want to
impart mentorship. The reality is everyone's coming for a different purpose,
(09:22):
and we want to we call it engineered serendipity. We
want to give people an opportunity to have connections with
individuals and organizations that can support them and help them
accomplish whatever the next chapter is. That is a huge
part of what we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
One of the other things I was thinking about as
I was hearing about MCON and the amazing things that
you have created here. I'll give you an example. So
I've been in sports radio and television for almost thirty years,
but a long time ago, I didn't know about other
program directors in sports radio in the country, never had
a chance to meet them talk with them, and finally
heard about this conference that was in Phoenix that this
guy had put together, and all the program directors from
(10:00):
around the country came together. We golfed, and we had seminars,
and what I had an opportunity to do is to
be able to once again relate to that fill of
person about my experiences, the good stuff, the bad stuff,
but also learn and as I see and I look
at AMCON with all the different things going on and
all the different speaker lists that I want you to
talk about this from on, once again it's that fellowship
being brought together about all these people that might have
(10:22):
shared or similar experiences. They get to be together for
three or four days and to talk about it and
live it, and it's got to be an extraordinary experience
for everybody.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
It is. And that's exactly right. And at the most
fundamental level, community facilitates social connections. Social connection saves lives
at the end of the day, and that is it
prevents isolation, It creates inspiration. There's learning opportunities or connectivity.
We talk about all the time. You know, Sebastian Young
are amazing, your time's bestselling author, one of the most
(10:52):
accomplished war correspondents of our generation. He's been a guest
speaker and an amazing support of I'm con and you know,
he has a book called Tribe and Finding your Tribe
is something that we talk about all the time. And
that's that's not the easiest thing to do when you
transition out the military. Transition from activity service to veteran
(11:15):
is very very challenging. It can be very challenging for
It is very challenging for the service member, challenging for
the spouse, the kids, you know, and so there is
a we want to bolster and support the existing programs
that are there, and then on the other side of that,
we want to we want to talk about a lot
of the nuance that's involved with this. You don't know
what you don't know at the end of the day,
(11:35):
and purpose is relative, and we tend to take a
bit of a rubber stamp approach with how we provide
resources to service members. And the reality is is what
a you know, somebody who served six years versus somebody
who served twenty four years officer and list and what
they need and where they're going is very, very different.
So we need to use a scalpel with how we
support our service members to ensure that there is the
(11:57):
best outcome and talking about things like the nuance of purpose.
Oftentimes we think that hey, I'm going to get a
good job, I'm going to make a decent living, cool,
I've got purpose. Well, there couldn't be anything farther from
the truth. Like some of us are going to fill
our cup with work, with owning a business or being
an executive or whatever you do. But there's a huge
(12:19):
category of individuals and service members and veterans who that's
never going to fill your coup. It doesn't matter how
successful you are, You're just going to keep pouring liquid
into that cup and it's going to keep going out.
So you've got to identify other things that are going
to get you at when you get out of bed
that day, put your feet on the ground, you're going
to be jacked up and pumped to go get after.
It could be something that you're doing in your local church.
(12:41):
It could be coaching at your kid's sports team, or
any sports team for that matter. It could be mentorship,
it could be big evolved in a veteran nonprofit. There
is an endless amount of things that you can lean
into and really identify purpose, what's going to fill you,
what's going to make you feel inspired to live the
best version of your life. And there's so much much
and nuance around that. That's such an important piece to
(13:03):
be able to dissect and share that with men and
women so they understand that, you know, I don't have
to reinvent the wheel here. There are millions of individuals
who have come before me. So let's build out a playbook.
Let's be data driven and outcome oriented to how we
can support people so that we don't have to make
the same mistakes as an entrepreneur and investor. Over the
(13:23):
past twenty years, I have screwed more things up than
I've had successes, but I've learned for that. That's you know,
as long as you're as long as you're like baseball,
as long as you're patting averages around three hundred, you're
doing well in business and investing in companies and building them,
and so that is something that you know, we know,
fail fast, fail forward, but it's it's only there's only
(13:44):
no value and failure if you learn if you don't
learn from it. As long as you learn from it
and you apply that and you improve upon it, and
you can share that knowledge with other people, your team,
your organization, yourself, there's tremendous value and failure. And all
too often we're letting our service members poke around in
the dark without giving them resources and playbooks that are
(14:06):
already there.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, that's all well said wayco and really resonating words
when it comes out, and you're not the first one,
and almost every leader in the series has talked about
the umpteen failures that they had and learning from that
and eventually getting went out there. And then my final
takeaway I think with this is for a lot of
people that are going to tend just to be seen
and heard at this conference is really important too, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Well, that's exactly right. Sometimes we don't feel like we
have a voice and also are There's around fifty thousand
betteran nonprofits. Some are huge national organizations that you've heard of,
like when Warrior Projects, the FW American Legion, and you know,
Blue Star Families and so on. Others are much smaller
regional groups. But that doesn't matter how big or small
(14:50):
you are. The impact of saving one life or the
impact of helping somebody get a job or get them
out of homelessness, whatever the scenario is that you're supporting
our employe in a military spouse, there's tremendous impact in that,
and so being able to understand, wait a minute, I
don't have to reinvent the wheel all over again if
I want to have my voice heard. There are other
(15:11):
organizations you've already done this, learn from them, leverage those
things and apply that to your community in a really
powerful and profound way, because you can also do it
and it's much more data driven. Is the other piece,
and that is a huge part of what we look at.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Your speaker lineup is huge, and I'm not it's incredible,
and I know you can go through all of them,
but I would love you to go symptoms that you're
excited about and also maybe some of the topics that
are going to be explored. Can you go through some
of them for us?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah? Absolutely, you know, this is a this is a
hard one. I intentionally didn't put a short list together
because there are so many great people and I don't
want anybody feel like I left them out in terrentional
because they're all incredible, you know, in their own right,
and so you know, I got to call out, you know,
a good friend, but also you know amazing executive. That's
doctor Tina Athol. She's the CEO of psych Armor. They
do incredible work across our entire military community with cultural
(16:03):
compency training and other types of things to ensure that
community care providers understand how to engage and work with
veterans and their families. There are so many preventable outcomes,
negative outcomes that we could help with if you simply
if the care provider simply identifies that somebody is a veteran,
(16:23):
so you can ask additional questions and she and her team.
We partner with them on imcon health where we're talking
about human performance. We are talking about reinventing the continue
of care, economics of care delivery, community partnerships. We've got
six pillars that we built out and this is all
about how we drive different outcomes. Dennis, you're probably feel
(16:44):
familiar with this. A lot of listeners are. But for
the past twenty years, we have not been able to
put a measurable dent in active duty and veteran suicide,
despite spending more money, and so this program, it's very
intentional that it was in Washington, d C. Or part
of the usual places, and I'm DC all the time.
There's so many amazing men and women who work very hard,
(17:05):
you know DC at the agency's nonprofits there. But we
wanted to get outside of the traditional forum that are there,
the DC bubble, so we can have different conversations. We're
bringing in different amazing speakers. One example is a Green
Beret veteran, got a Mike Emkes, the co founder of
Function Health. Function Health is the fastest growing health tech
(17:25):
company in history. They went from they went from zero
to I think almost four hundred million dollars in three years.
They just did a raise is all public. They did
a raise earlier this year to two point five billion
dollar valuation. And it's all about how you test and
you look at different a much broader array of biomarkers
so that you can be you can be preventive in
(17:46):
nature with how you look at your own personal healthcare.
So they're democratizing how we can do that, and the
same thing for everything we're doing around this. We're looking
at upstream oriented solutions so that you eliminate men and
women getting to a crisis or dealing with issues before
it even happens. But one thing on the health piece
before I move on, that i'll talk about is a
(18:07):
term that we use is called brain health. Shifting away
from this notionure of mental health. Brain health, this great
organ up here floating around in our brain in our heads,
is the most important organ in the body because it
informs and influences everything else. But we think about it
in this very subjective terms traditionally around mental health. And
(18:27):
that's not to demonize you mental health professionals in any way,
shape or form, but we need to eliminate the stigma
associated with how we think about mental health and brain
health therapy is no different than going to the gym.
You know, you want to improve, like how heavy the
spots that you can push or your bench press, You
got to put in the time in the gym. If
(18:48):
you're dealing with something that's going on with the chemistry
up and in your brain, you've got to put in
the work. But the science is showing us that we
can make cognitive measurable improvement if we work at it,
if we employed these different therapies that are out there.
And so it's really incredible that we're able to showcase
a lot of these different modalities and transformative therapies to
(19:10):
our community and executives and professionals from different agencies to
actually affect change and look at how we can implement
him and furthermore research. So that's the health and wellness
piece of it. And we've got cold punch pools and
UFC profiders doing a combat of xpos, so tons of
cool stuff as it relates to that. But you know,
some of the other stuff that we're doing. You know,
I want to call out a gentleman, Tyler. Gray Tyler
(19:32):
is a Green Beret, you know, Army ranger sniper. He
was a Delta Force operator and you know he got
you know, got injured pretty pretty in a pretty early way.
He's come out since, had an extraordinary story and a
TV on CBS or TV show on CBS. Now he's
a best selling author for a book he just dropped,
(19:52):
and he's going to be talking about his own personal
journey and kind of what we alluded to earlier. People
were talking about, you know what, I was in a really,
really horrible spot. But here is how I pulled myself out.
Here's here the resources that I tapped in to do that.
You don't have to go this alone. And look at him.
He is one of the most highly trained operators in
the world at that level, and he still struggled with things.
(20:16):
So everyone take a minute and pause and think about
that for a moment. You know, regardless of where you
are or you're the low the different types of training,
if you were an admin, or even if you're a
civilian and you're you know, you're not an All Star
athlete or anything. People at the highest leak because that's
one of being a professional athlete or going to the
All Star Game, you know, every year, and those individuals
(20:39):
are being vulnerable and forth rine transparent about those journeys.
So it's incredibly inspiring to see people who are willing
to put themselves out there in service of others. And
that's a that's a theme that continues to permeate and
then we foster and I'm calling his you know, service
never stops at the end of the day. You know.
There's a number of other you know, really incredible folks
(20:59):
that I you know, that I want to call out
as well. Gosh, who lets let's so. Another person is
Charlotte Creach. She's the chief program officer at Higher Heroes USA.
They do absolutely incredible work on the hiring side, the
transition piece. They have an incredibly data driven approach to
(21:20):
every dollar that goes into you know, supporting a veteran
and hiring, They've been able to push that number down
so that they're able to be as efficient as possible
with all of the brand partners that are putting resources
into that. They're just doing extraordinary work. You know. The
other uh, some of the other ones that I want
to call out is Blue Star Families and some of
the work they're doing with Starbucks target Shabani from a
(21:44):
brand partnership piece they are, They're what winning looks like
at the end of the day. Both partners are engaged,
believe in the mission. They're both taking a very data
driven approach to it. They're looking at how they build
out authentic and impactful programs, not one or the other.
And the corporate brand partners, they're not taking a check
(22:04):
the box. So we're just doing this because it feels nice.
They're doing it because they want to understand every dollar
that they contribute or every resource they contribute, it's not
just about money that is going to make a huge
difference in that. So we've got just an amazing group
of people there. And then the other piece of that
is the gentlemen. Rudi Reez, Marine recon veteran TV shows
(22:25):
on Fox and in in other places just on HBO,
just an amazing human. He just was always so vulnerable
and inspiring with the stories that he tells. So he's
going to be out a range Day with us doing
some incredible things and other pieces of that. But the
other thing I want to call out his own Range
Day that we're hosting on Friday. That's the big kind
of the consumer part of the event that kicks off
(22:46):
at Clark County Shooting Complex and we've got Yeah, we're
slinging arrows down range. We're having a blast. We are
you know, we have you know, we're working with the
National Shooting Sports Foundation, We working to the USCCA ARC
on firearms and a bunch of amazing groups. But one
of the things I'm really proud of is what we're
doing around the topic of secure storage, and it's about
(23:06):
cultural change. And Dennis, I don't know if you are,
if you're familiar with the Edelman Trust Barometer, but Edelman's
a huge global agency. Every year they do this survey
of over thirty three thousand consumers, and what that survey
tells us is that consistently consumers, the individual veterans, and
every wise all of us, you mean, we trust corporate
brands more than NGO's, more than media, and more than government.
(23:30):
And so corporate brands have a powerful, powerful opportunity to
step in and affect change and influence change. And so
we're really frilled to be partnering with the firearms industry,
the outdoor industry to help to reshape culturally how we
think about secure storage. And why that's important to call
out is over seventy percent of veterans that die by
(23:51):
suicide use a firearm. And I want to be very clear,
I'm not picking up firearms when I say that. It
is just a statistic and quite frankly, represents an opportunity
to dramatically reduce suicide if we're able to create more
time and distance if someone is in crisis or if
they're struggling. And so, you know, the response we get
all to oftens when individuals and firearms owners aren't locking
(24:13):
up the weapons, is you know what, I need my
weapon accessible if something goes bump the night you protection,
self defense. Totally understand that, but the reality is there
are gunlock boxes now today that you can have open
and sub two seconds and get access to that weapon,
but you can still keep it locked up and you
can still protect your family, members of the community who
(24:34):
might be in your home get access to that firearm
or from theft. And so we're reshaping that cultural narrative
around training. And so we're going to have a number
of different training exercises out there, or we're actually gonna
be demonstrating putting people in the clock to start in
one position, move another position, open the gun block box,
load it, taking a number of steps, engage your target
clock stops. So we're going to demonstrate in showcase and
(24:56):
also have a lot of fun and gamify it that
Hey guys, there's no excuse if self defense is a priority.
You can still keep your firearms locked up and ready
when you need them. So the cultural change you see
continues to be a permeating theme for im Con, and
that's a big part of it. And then some of
the other things we're doing on Saturday Sunday, We've got
musical performances for local artists who are veterans, some which
(25:19):
who are veterans. We've got amazing authors and you know,
amazing authors. We've got amazing pro athletes. I mentioned we're
going to have UFC profile it Fighters doing a combatives
expo and Naval Special Warfare in Air Force Special Operations.
We're doing that with the WEE to five Foundation, which
is going to be really incredible. So the group of people, organizations,
(25:43):
that's hundreds of organizations, hundreds of brand partners. We're expecting,
you know, almost six thousand attendees this year. We're just
looking to have a great event for people to come
together and walk away with amazing resources and we have
a really great time.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
It's Stanley. I appreciate you sharing all that, Wakelan. At
the end, I promise, well, we're going to give the
website how to get tickets, all of that, the dates
where it is at the expo in Vegas, and everything
you need to know if you already have in Google
that I did promise. I wanted to talk about leadership Waco,
and I think there's so many correlations once again between
military and sports and the private sector what you do,
and I know that not only am Con, you do
(26:18):
so many other things that I'd love for you to
talk about without embarrassing you, because I know you're very
busy with your different buckets that you work with when
it comes to the military and all these different projects
you are. But when you hear the word leadership with
what you grew up with and where you are today
and how you access it and how you use it,
can you talk a little bit about leadership for our listenership?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Please?
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
I think for me, leadership is something that's always evolving.
I look at when I was a young entrepreneur or
a young CEO, and some of the leadership traits that
I exhibited not the greatest, you know, and I'm completely
honest about that. But you're constantly evolving, your growling as
a person, You're learning, your you're reading. And I love
(27:04):
Michaelangelo's quote. I think it was in the sixties when
he said it, I am still learning. I won't even
embarrass myself and try to pronounce it in Italian, but
but I'm still learning. You have one of the greatest,
one of the greatest artists in history, still in his
sixties saying I am still learning. And I think that
is one of the most important aspects of leadership, is
(27:24):
being vulnerabing and being openness because I think that I
actually know when you when you lead with leadership in
that capacity, will we're always constantly evolving and learning. That
trickles down to the organization, from your your executives, your managers,
the individuals, because it informs that we can respectfully challenge
each other, we can try new things, we can innovate.
(27:44):
And one of the things that we see all too
often across different pockets of government agencies, I think, and
you know some of them which are directly you know,
in charge with supporting veterans, is there can be this complacency,
or we can get we can trip over bureaucracy and
red tape in which ultimately hurts the warfighter, the service
member and their family. And I say that not picking
(28:07):
on individuals that work there because they're part of a
bigger system, but constantly learning and evolving and trying new
things and measuring that measuring and adjusting. Measuring and adjusting
is incredibly important and so from a from a leadership standpoint,
we always try to instill that in folks. And then
the other piece I touched on earlier, the mistakes. You know,
(28:27):
people are going to make mistakes, your your contractors, your employees,
your partners. You know, I had to develop this over
time with my father, and forgiveness is a really important
aspect of And granted, there's certain things that you don't
come back from that you don't forget obviously hopefully those
are obvious and there's new once step, but you know,
people are not perfect. I am not perfect, and being
(28:50):
able to allow people to stub their toe and come
back from that, makeup for it and still be a
good contributing member of your team is something that's I
think a really important aspect of how you build a
good healthy culture. At some point, you know, if someone
goes too far, you know, or there's not performing to
the standards, you got to make a change. Obviously it
goes without saying, but like I said, the forgiveness piece
(29:13):
and the continual process and provent piece are such important
aspects of leadership.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Well, my takeaways from what you just talked about, and
it's very prophetic of what you had said, but there's
a lot of humility to being a leader and also
self awareness and it really takes those kind of things
and then counting on your team all the time. I
did mention a lot of the things that you're working on,
and I know we don't we can have our own
separate podcasts all the amazing things that you're doing, but
I know you're very proud of about some other things
(29:38):
that you're working on. Can just for a few moments
share what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah. Absolutely. There's a number of programs that we're involved
in that there are absolutely incredible. You know. One of
those is some of the work I do with the
American Legion. I chair the American Legion's national suicide prevention
program called Be the One for two point six million
members and it is in this extraordinary program where we
first let but a year and a half ago. In
the first ten months, we trained almost thirteen thousand of
(30:05):
our members and staff on suicide prevention. We worked with
the Columbia University with the Columbia Protocol, and we built
an app called to be the One app where you
could literally go through it and you know, dnnis you
me or the lay person, not a clinician, if you
are dealing with somebody who may be potentially in crisis.
It is a very easy series of checklists to go
through and figure out if somebody is at low monitor
(30:28):
high risk risk of suicide again using a scalpel like
I talked about earlier. So we're incredibly proud of that work,
you know that we've done to educate men, women, and
think of it as CPR for the brain. It is
a community health based approach. You know, CPR saves hundreds
of thousands of people's lives every year. It's millions of
lives since it was first you know, rolled out, you know,
back in the eighties and nineties, and we need to
(30:50):
take that approach with suicide prevention in this country so
that you me, other people are informed and equipped to
identify somebody who may be going through struggles because oftentimes
you signals are not obvious at all, and so very
proud of the work that the American Legion is doing
would be the one. In other things, another great program
that we're dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs is
two years ago we stood up a program a venture
(31:13):
studio inside the VA, and so we launched what's called
the Veterans Health Venture Studio with a good friend and colleague,
doctor Andresendahl. She's the brain child. She has the brain
child behind all this. And the idea is to bring
in men and women from outside the walls of the
VA and also inside another partner organizations to tackle to
look at the biggest points of friction, the biggest challenges
(31:36):
to improving quality of care, and we're going to build tools,
technology and AI driven platforms that can help solve those
problems at scale. And so the Venture Studio is a
year long program where teams get selected and continue to
go on through those different programs ultimately and at the
end of the year, certain teams are selected and will
ultimately be piloted in different organizations and hospital settings across
(32:00):
the VA and the ones that demonstrate the most adficacy
are then scale across the enterprise. So it's a very innovative,
fast moving program designed to improve care, improve access, and
proved quality care for for veterans in those two services.
That term is amazing. And the other thing you know
that I do that really sits across all of these
programs is, you know, I co founded a brand strategy
(32:20):
agency called Impact Group, and what we do is we
specialize in working with large corporates, foundations, other organizations to
build out programs for the for organizations that are looking
to UH support and create impact programs for military service
members veterans in their family. So that could be UH,
(32:42):
you know, employee resource group inside the corporation, it could
be building out a robust impact social UH social social
impact program working with nonprofits. But what's unique about us
is we align the corporate goals and objectives with the
organization of the NTY and we match that up with
the impact conditions they want to lean into so that
(33:03):
they're data driven and we ensure that they get a
creative impact not only on the organization employees and customers,
but they also are able to really in a detail
in a data driven away measure the outcomes for those
nonprofit partners they're serving to ensure that those resources are
having the most impact. So there's man a number of
other groups that I'm invested in, but those are at
(33:24):
a high level some of the things that I'm most
proud of and really related to the great work that myself,
our partners, and our other stakeholders and team members are
doing to support veterans and their families.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Well, I appreciate you sharing all that way. It never
sees it to amaze me in this series when we
talk to CEOs and leaders and entrepreneurs, they're involved in
so many things, they're just not that many hours in
the day. Yeah, you somehow make it because of all
the energy and passion that you have, and that comes
through tremendously as I talk to you. Well, let's we
promise to give the website and also the dates of
m CON twenty twenty five, how to get tickets where
(33:56):
it's located, the expo in Vegas. So if you could
kind of give everybody just one last thing about how
they can be a part of this, let's let's let's
get them all set up absolutely.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
M Colin twenty twenty five is coming off of October
twenty third through the twenty six in Las Vegas. It's
at the Expo at World Market. If you want to
get tickets learn more, just go to MCON dot Live
mcon dot l I ve. You can get all the
information you need. You can inquire to our team if
you want to get more information, or you can get
your tickets right online at the website.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Understanding well, Wake, I can't tell you how much I
appreciate your time. First of all, thank you for your
service to our country, but also the things that you've
done after service is just absolutely incredible, and we need
more people like you out there helping our military out there.
But this m COON just sounds like an amazing thing
to be a part of and help people at least
take a look at it. If they can't go, just
get online because the speaker series is amazing. All the
(34:47):
things wrapped around in Vegas are just absolutely truly incredible.
It is hercule and what you and your team have
done to put this together. Thank you so much for
your time, and we really appreciate focusing and having one CEOs.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
You should know I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you, CEO's You Should Know is an exclusive presentation
of iHeartMedia Orlando. You can hear more interviews with other
Central Florida leaders by searching Orlando CEOs, under podcast and
the iHeartRadio app
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.