Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here is another CEO you should know on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This is Waco Hoover, founder, partner and CEO of mcon So.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I grew up in a small town called Viera Beach, Florida,
on East Coast, about two hours north of Miami. I
grew up in a military family, served a couple of
tours of Vietnam. A second airborn grandparents served in World
War Two. So come from a multi generational military family
which has been which is definitely shaped you know how
(00:31):
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 standing.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
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 (00:51):
Yeah, so I served the Marine Corps. It was the Infantry Marine.
I served four years in the infantry, deployed through Southeast
Asia and it was you know, it's interesting. Why did
I serve in the military. You know, I want to
say that, you know, I wasn't rebelling from my father
because he told me, he said, son, I support you
whatever you do. And enlisting in the military and not
(01:13):
going straight to college. He's like, but just don't join
the Marine Corps. And what did I do? I joined
the Marine Corps. I'm looking back on it as a
young person. I definitely I don't believe I was intentionally
doing that. Just the Marine Corps, the spree is Corps,
the high standards. It spoke to me, and so it
was just a funny, you know, kind of anctical story,
(01:33):
you know, of him telling me that. But uh, yeah,
I will say that the military, my experience in the
Marine Corps I was described as some of the best
and worst times you know of my life. But I
wouldn't trade it for anything. And the experience, everything you learn,
the relationships. It set me up to be successful in
so many other things. I had no idea post service.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
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 world, and the military, there's a
(02:16):
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 m COON that's coming up in Las
Vegas October twenty three 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
(02:37):
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
(02:58):
of put together here?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, So m CON 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.
(03:22):
They want to support service members in their families as
much as possible. It really was identifying this white space
that existed quite frankly, and you know, if you look
at it, virtually every other community in our country has
a large scale, annual tent pole celebration, for lack of
a better term, celebrating those people or this thing or
this theme. Two examples are, you know, if you've ever
(03:44):
ever heard of Dragon Con, it's almost like twenty thousand
people all celebrating fantasy and dragons in that whole world,
you know, which is amazing, and that's their thing and
they love and they're passionate about it. Another example is
the Essence Festival, which is the largest celebration of black
culture in this 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
(04:07):
us the military, as high visibility and as important as
we are to this country and 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
(04:29):
sacrifice and purpose and community and really remembering and celebrating
what that service is, because all too often there is
this there's this there's this perception of the broken veteran
that permeates many pockets of American society. And the reality
is that, yeah, there's a number of men, there's a
lot of men and women that we need to help
and support in the ways that to get them through
(04:51):
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 in their
(05:13):
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 D and otherwise, and you know nonprofits that we
work with, but then also all the other groups that
may be more tangential but they are more peripherially or
(05:36):
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 we bolster that, how
do we celebrate that at scale? And that's what I'm
(05:57):
coms all about.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not standing well, a lot of talk about when it
comes to the guest lineup, which is absolutely extraordinary. I
know you've packed a lot in when it comes to
this event, but you know, one of the really cool
things that we love to talk about not only 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
(06:19):
exactly is in short form, what would you tell them?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
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
(06:44):
and the speakers and the culinary experiences. But most importantly,
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 cross country back
(07:04):
to where that is, or go back to their home
wherever that might be, and they're going to be better
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. Colin is we're
trying to improve outcomes and quality of life for service members,
(07:25):
veterans in their families.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know, Wiko. One of the things the resumeans to
me that you're talking about right there in any CEO
that I've talked to, any company about a product or
a service that they offer, the human condition is that
we want to be able to relate to each other.
And when you talked about that white area that you had,
that hole in the industry that wasn't there that you
and the other people put together when it comes to income,
we're talking about people that could be suffering from many
(07:48):
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 really is
all truly about, isn't It's.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That's exactly where I mean. We've got pro athletes sharing
their journey and how they've had mental health struggle struggles,
but they are now pro athletes post service, which is incredible.
We've got amazing entrepreneurs who have founded multi billion dollar
businesses sharing their struggles and their journeys. And you know,
all of our services, all of our journeys, and our
experiences are relative, and you might be you might come
(08:29):
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
that everyone's coming for a different purpose, and we want
(08:49):
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 as a huge part of it,
we'll try to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
You know, 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
(09:23):
that this guy had put together, and all the program
directors from 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 fellow person about my experiences, the good stuff, the
bad stuff, but also learn. And as I see and
I look at MCON with all the different things going
on and all the different speaker lists that I want
you to talk about this from mom once again, it's
(09:44):
that fellowship being brought together about all these people that
might have 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 (09:57):
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
(10:17):
accomplished war corresp correspondents of our generation. He's been a
guest speaker and an amazing support of MCON. And you know,
he has a book called Tribe and Finding your Tribe
is something that we talk about all the time. And
that's that's not the easiest thing to do when you
transition out the military. Transition from activity service to veteran
(10:41):
is very, very challenging. It can be very challenging for
the it's 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,
(11:01):
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
you know somebody who serve 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 best
(11:23):
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
(11:45):
category of individuals and service members and veterans who that's
never going to fill your comp It doesn't matter how
successful you are. You're just going to keep pouring liquid
into that cup and it's going to keep going out.
So you've got to identify other things that are going
to get you at when you get out of bed
that day, put you feet on the ground, you're going
to be jack up and pumped to go get after.
It could be something that you're doing in your local church.
(12:06):
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 nuance
around that. That's such an important piece to be able
(12:28):
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 past
(12:49):
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
(13:10):
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
(13:31):
already there.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
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 (13:53):
Well, that's that's exactly right. Sometimes we don't feel like
we have a voice. And also there are there's around
fifty thousand better and 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
(14:15):
how big or small you are. The impact of saving
one life or the impact of helping somebody get a
job or get them out of homelessness, whatever the scenario
is that you're supporting or employing a military spouse, there's
tremendous impact in that and so being able to understand,
wait a minute, I don't have to reinvent the wheel
all over again if I want to have my voice heard.
(14:36):
There are other organizations you've already done this, learn from them,
leverage those things, and apply that to your community in
a really powerful and profound way, because you can also
do it and it's much more data driven. Is the
other piece, and that is a huge part of what
we look at.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
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 (15:04):
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 terntional
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 an 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 competency
(15:29):
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 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 so you can ask additional questions, and she and
(15:51):
her team we partner with them on imcon health where
we're talking about human performance. We are talking about reinventing
the continued of care economics, of care delivery, community partnerships.
We've got six pillars that we built out and this
is all about how we drive different outcomes. Dennis, you're
probably feelamiliar with this, a lot of listeners are, but
(16:13):
for the past twenty years, we have not been able
to put a measurable dent in active duty in veteran suicide,
despite spending more money, and so this program it's very
intentional that it was in Washington, d C or in
part of the usual places. And I'm in DC all
the time. There are so many amazing men and women
who work very hard, you know d C at the
agency's nonprofits there. But we wanted to get outside of
(16:35):
the traditional forum that are there, the DC bubble, so
we can have different conversations. We're bringing in different amazing speakers.
One example is a Green Beret veteran, got a Mike Emkes,
the co founder of function Health. Function Health is the
fastest growing health tech company in history. They went from
they went from zero to i think almost four hundred
(16:56):
million dollars in three years. They just did a raise
is all public 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 preventive in nature with
how you look at your own personal health care. So
they're democratizing how we can do that, and the same
(17:17):
thing for everything we're doing around this. We're looking at
upstream oriented solutions so that you eliminate men and women
getting to point a crisis or dealing with issues before
it even happens. But one thing on the health piece
before we move on, that I'll talk about is a
term that we use is called brain health. Shifting away
from this notionure of mental health. Brain health, this great
(17:39):
organ up here floating around in our brain in our heads,
is the most important organ in the body because it
informs and influences everything else. But we think about it
in this very subjective terms traditionally around mental health. And
that's not to demonize you know, mental health professionals in
any way, shape or form, but we need to eliminate
the stigma association with how we think about mental pileth
(18:02):
F and brain health. You know, 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 you're dealing with something that's going
on with the chemistry up and the in your brain,
you've got to put in the work. But the science
is showing us that we can make cognitive measurable improvement
(18:24):
if we work at it, if we employ these different
therapies that are out there, And so it's really incredible
that we're able to showcase a lot of these different
modalities and transformative therapies to our community and executives and
professionals from different agencies to actually affect change and look
at how we can implement them and furthermore research. So
(18:45):
that's the health and wellness piece of it. And we've
got cold punch pools and UFC providers doing a combat
of expos so tons of cool stuff as it relates
to that. But you know, some of the other stuff
that we're doing, you know, I want to call it
a gentleman. Tyler Gray Tyler is a Green Beret Army
Ranger sniper. He was a Delta Force operator and you
know he got you know, got injured pretty pretty in
(19:07):
a pretty early way. He's come out since, had an
extraordinary story and a TV on CBS or TV show
on CBS. Now he's a best selling author for a
book he just dropped, and he's going to be talking
about his own personal journey and kind of what we
alluded to earlier. People were talking about, you know what,
I was in a really, really horrible spot. But here
is how I pulled myself out. Here's here the resources
(19:30):
that I tapped in to do that. You don't have
to go this alone. And look at him. He is
one of the most highly trained operators in the world
at that level, and he still struggled with things. So
everyone take a minute and pause and think about that
for a moment. You know, regardless of where you are
or you're the low the different types of training, if
(19:50):
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 lea cause that's the
one being professional athlete going to the All Star Game,
you know, every year, and those individuals are being vulnerable
and forth rine transparent about those journeys. So it's incredibly
inspiring to see people who are willing to put themselves
(20:11):
out there in service of others. And that's a that's
a theme that continues to permeate. And then we fostered
I'm calling is you know, service never stops at the
end of the day. You know, there's a number of
other you know, really incredible folks that I you know
that I want to call out as well. Gosh who
let's uh, let's so another person is a Charlotte Creech.
(20:34):
She's the chief program officer at Higher Heroes USA. They
do absolutely incredible work on the hiring side, the transition piece.
They have an incredibly data driven approach to every dollar
that goes into you know, supporting a veteran and hiring,
they've been able to push that number down so that
they're able to be as efficient as possible. With all
(20:54):
of the brand partners that are putting resources into that,
they're just doing extraordinary work. You know. The other some
of the other ones that I want to call out
is Blue Star Families and some of the work they're
doing with Starbucks Target Shabani. From a brand partnership piece,
they are They're what winning looks like at the end
(21:15):
of the day. Both partners are engaged, believe in the mission.
They're both taking a very data driven approach to it.
They're looking at how they build out authentic and impactful programs,
not one or the other. And the corporate brand partners
they're not taking a check the box so we're just
doing this because it feels nice. They're doing it because
they want to understand every dollar that they contribute or
(21:37):
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 Generalen Rudi Reez,
marine recon veteran TV shows on Fox and in other places,
just on HBO. Just an amazing human. He just was
(21:57):
always so vulnerable and inspiring with the stories that he hell.
So he's going to be out of Range Day with
us doing some incredible things and other pieces of that.
The other thing I want to call out his own
Range Day that we're hosting on Friday. That's the big
kind of the consumer part of the event that kicks
off at Clark County Shooting Complex. And we've got, yeah,
we're slinging arrows down range. We're having a blast. We
(22:18):
are you know, we have you know, we're working with
the National Shooting Sports Foundation, We're working with the USCCA
ARC on firearms, and a bunch of amazing groups. But
one of the things I'm really proud of is what
we're doing around the topic of secure storage, and it's
about cultural change. And Dennis, I don't know if you
are if you're familiar with the Edelman Trust Barometer, but
Edelman's a huge global agency. Every year they do this
(22:41):
survey of over thirty three thousand consumers. And what that
survey tells us is that consistently consumers, the individual veterans,
and every wise all of us, you mean, we trust
corporate brands more than NGO's, more than media, and more
than government. And so corporate brands have a powerful, powerful
opportuny unity to step in and affect change and influence change.
(23:03):
And so we're really feeled 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 suicide use a firearm. And I want to
be very clear, I'm not picking on firearms when I
say that. It is just a statistic and quite frankly,
(23:25):
it represents an opportunity to dramatically reduce suicide if we're
able to create more time and distance if someone is
in crisis or if they're struggling. And so, you know,
the response we get all to oftens when individuals and
firearms owners aren't locking up with the weapons is you
know what, I need my weapon accessible if something goes
bumping the night you protection self defense, totally understand that.
(23:45):
But the reality is there are gun lock boxes now
today that you can have open and sub two seconds
and get access to that weapon, but you can still
keep it locked up and you can still protect your family,
members of the community who might be in your home
get access to that firearm or from theft. And so
we're reshaping that cultural narrative around training. And so we're
(24:07):
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, moving another position, open
the gun, block box loaded, taking a number of steps,
engage your target, clock stops. So we're going to demonstrate
in showcase and also have a lot of fun and
gamify it that hey guys, there's no excuse if self
defense is a priority. You can still keep your firearms
(24:30):
locked up and ready when you need them. So the
cultural change you see continues to be a permeating theme
for im CON and that's a big part of it.
And then some of the other things we're doing. On
Saturday Sunday, we've got musical performances for local artists who
are veterans, some which who are veterans. We've got amazing
authors and you know amazing authors. We've got amazing pro athletes.
(24:53):
I mentioned we're going to have UFC profile fighters doing
a combatives expo and Naval Special Warfare and 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, that's hundreds of organizations, hundreds of brand partners.
We're expecting you almost six thousand attendees this year. We're
(25:17):
just looking to have a great event for people to
come together and walk away with amazing resources and we
have a really great times.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Stanny, I appreciate you sharing all that WACAN. At the end,
I promise, well, we're going to give the website how
to get tickets, all of that, the dates where it
is at the expo in Vegas, and everything you need
to know if you already have in Google that I
did promise. I wanted to talk about leadership WACO, and
I think there's so many correlations, once again between military
and sports and the private sector. What you do, and
I know that not only am CON, you do so
(25:44):
many other things that I'd love for you to talk
about without embarrassing you, because I know you're very busy
with your different buckets that you work with when it
comes to the military and all these different projects you are.
But when you hear the word leadership with what you
grew up with and where you are today and how
you access it and how you use it, can you
talk a little bit about leadership for our listenership? Please?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
I think for me, leadership is something that's always evolving.
I look at when I was a young entrepreneur, a
young CEO, and some of the leadership traits that I
exhibited not the greatest, you know, but I'm completely honest
about that. But you're constantly evolving, You're growing as a person,
(26:27):
You're learning, you're reading. And I love Michaelangelo's quote. I
think it was in the sixties when he said it,
I am still learning. I won't even embarrass myself and
try to pronounce it in Italian, but I am still learning.
You have one of the greatest, one of the greatest
artists in history, still in his sixties saying I am
still learning. And I think that is one of the
(26:47):
most important aspects of leadership is being vulnera and being
openness because I think that I actually know when you
leave with leadership in that capacity, 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
(27:09):
new things, we can innovate. And one of the things
that we see all too often across different pockets of
government agencies, I think, and you know some of them
which are directly you know, in charge with supporting veterans,
is there can be this complacency or we can get
we can trip over bureaucracy and red tape in a
which ultimately hurts the warfight or the service member and
(27:30):
their family. And I say that not picking on individuals
that work there because they're part of a bigger system,
but constantly learning and involving 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,
(27:53):
people are going to make mistakes, Your your contractors, your employees,
your partners, you know. I 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 forgive obviously, hopefully
those are obvious and there's new once step. But you know,
people are not perfect. I am not perfect. And being
(28:16):
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, goose without saying,
(28:37):
but like I said, the forgiveness piece and the continual
process improvent peace are such important aspects of leadership.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
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 pod. I guess all the amazing things that you're doing,
but I know you're very proud of some other things
(29:03):
that you're working on. Can just for a few moments
share what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah? Absolutely. There's a number of programs that we're involved
in that are absolutely incredible. You know. One of those
is similar 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 launched
it about a year and a half ago. In the
(29:27):
first ten months, we trained almost thirteen thousand of our
members in staff on suicide prevention. We worked with the
Columba University with the Columbia Protocol, and we built an
app called the Be the One app where you could
literally go through it and you know, Dennis, you me,
or the lay person, not a clinician, if you are
dealing with somebody who may be potentially in crisis, it
is a very easy series of checklists to go through
(29:50):
and figure out if somebody is at low moditor high
risk risk of suicide again using a scalpel, like I
talked about earlier. So we're incredibly proud of that work
we've done to educate men and 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
(30:11):
it was first you know, rolled out, you know, back
in the eighties and nineties. And we need to take
that approach with suicide prevention in this country so that
you me, other people are informed and equipped to identify
somebody who may be going through struggles because oftentimes he
signals are not obvious at all. And so very proud
of the work that the American Legion is dealing would
be the one and other things. Another great program that
(30:33):
we're dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs is two
years ago we stood up a program a venture studio
inside the VA and so we launched what's called the
Veterans Health Venture Studio with a good friend and colleague,
doctor Andresendahl. She's the brain child, she has the brain
child behind all this and the idea is to bring
in men and women from outside the walls of the
(30:53):
VA and also inside another partner organizations to tackle to
look at the biggest points of friction, the biggest challenges
to improving quality of care, and we're going to build tools,
technology and AI driven platforms that can help solve those
problems at scale. And so the Venture Studio is a
year long program where teams get selected and continue to
(31:14):
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
the VA, and the ones that demonstrate the most advocacy
are then scaled across the enterprise. So it's a very innovative,
fast moving program designed to improve care, improve access, and
(31:36):
prove quality of care for veterans in those two serfs.
That perm is amazing. And the other thing that I
do that really sits across all of these programs is,
you know, I co founded a brand strategy agency called
Impact Group, And what we do is we specialize in
working with large corporates, foundations, other organizations to build out
programs for organizations that are looking to support and create
(32:01):
impact programs for military service members veterans in their family.
So that could be you know, employee resource group inside
the corporation. It could be building out a robust impact
social social impact program working with nonprofits. But what's unique
about us is we align the corporate goals and objectives
(32:22):
with the organization of the n and we match that
up with the impact conditions they want to lean into
so that they're data driven and we ensure that they
get a creative impact not only on the organization employees
and customers, but they also are able to really in
a detail, in a data driven away, measure the outcomes
for those nonprofit partners they're serving to ensure that those
(32:44):
resources are having the most impact. So there's a number
of other groups that I'm invested in, but those are
at a high level some of the things that I'm
most proud of and really related to the great work
that myself, our partners, and our other stakeholders and team
members are doing to support veterans and their family.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well, I appreciate you sharing all that way. It never
sees it to amaze me. In this series when we
talked 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
(33:22):
it's located to the Expo in Vegas. So if you
could kind of give everybody just one last thing about
how they can be a part of this, let's let's
let's get them all set up absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
M coll On twenty twenty five is coming up 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 them to get more information, or you can
get your tickets right online at the website.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Outstanding, Well, Waco, 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 MCom just sounds like an amazing thing to
be a part of and help people at least take
a look at it. If they can't go, just get
online because the Speaker series is amazing. All the things
(34:13):
wrapped around in Vegas are just absolutely truly incredible. It
is hercule and what you and your team have done
to put this together. Thank you so much for your time,
and we really appreciate focusing and having you on CEOs.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
You should know, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Thank you guys, that's another CEO you should know. Thanks
for being a part of our community, and thank you
for listening to this. iHeart Omaha Radio Station.
Here is another CEO you should know on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This is Waco Hoover, founder, partner and CEO of mcon So.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I grew up in a small town called Viera Beach, Florida,
on East Coast, about two hours north of Miami. I
grew up in a military family, served a couple of
tours of Vietnam. A second airborn grandparents served in World
War Two. So come from a multi generational military family
which has been which is definitely shaped you know how
(00:31):
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 standing.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
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 (00:51):
Yeah, so I served the Marine Corps. It was the Infantry Marine.
I served four years in the infantry, deployed through Southeast
Asia and it was you know, it's interesting. Why did
I serve in the military. You know, I want to
say that, you know, I wasn't rebelling from my father
because he told me, he said, son, I support you
whatever you do. And enlisting in the military and not
(01:13):
going straight to college. He's like, but just don't join
the Marine Corps. And what did I do? I joined
the Marine Corps. I'm looking back on it as a
young person. I definitely I don't believe I was intentionally
doing that. Just the Marine Corps, the spree is Corps,
the high standards. It spoke to me, and so it
was just a funny, you know, kind of anctical story,
(01:33):
you know, of him telling me that. But uh, yeah,
I will say that the military, my experience in the
Marine Corps I was described as some of the best
and worst times you know of my life. But I
wouldn't trade it for anything. And the experience, everything you learn,
the relationships. It set me up to be successful in
so many other things. I had no idea post service.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
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 world, and the military, there's a
(02:16):
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 m COON that's coming up in Las
Vegas October twenty three 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
(02:37):
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
(02:58):
of put together here?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, So m CON 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.
(03:22):
They want to support service members in their families as
much as possible. It really was identifying this white space
that existed quite frankly, and you know, if you look
at it, virtually every other community in our country has
a large scale, annual tent pole celebration, for lack of
a better term, celebrating those people or this thing or
this theme. Two examples are, you know, if you've ever
(03:44):
ever heard of Dragon Con, it's almost like twenty thousand
people all celebrating fantasy and dragons in that whole world,
you know, which is amazing, and that's their thing and
they love and they're passionate about it. Another example is
the Essence Festival, which is the largest celebration of black
culture in this 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
(04:07):
us the military, as high visibility and as important as
we are to this country and 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
(04:29):
sacrifice and purpose and community and really remembering and celebrating
what that service is, because all too often there is
this there's this there's this perception of the broken veteran
that permeates many pockets of American society. And the reality
is that, yeah, there's a number of men, there's a
lot of men and women that we need to help
and support in the ways that to get them through
(04:51):
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 in their
(05:13):
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 D and otherwise, and you know nonprofits that we
work with, but then also all the other groups that
may be more tangential but they are more peripherially or
(05:36):
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 we bolster that, how
do we celebrate that at scale? And that's what I'm
(05:57):
coms all about.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not standing well, a lot of talk about when it
comes to the guest lineup, which is absolutely extraordinary. I
know you've packed a lot in when it comes to
this event, but you know, one of the really cool
things that we love to talk about not only 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
(06:19):
exactly is in short form, what would you tell them?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
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
(06:44):
and the speakers and the culinary experiences. But most importantly,
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 cross country back
(07:04):
to where that is, or go back to their home
wherever that might be, and they're going to be better
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. Colin is we're
trying to improve outcomes and quality of life for service members,
(07:25):
veterans in their families.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know, Wiko. One of the things the resumeans to
me that you're talking about right there in any CEO
that I've talked to, any company about a product or
a service that they offer, the human condition is that
we want to be able to relate to each other.
And when you talked about that white area that you had,
that hole in the industry that wasn't there that you
and the other people put together when it comes to income,
we're talking about people that could be suffering from many
(07:48):
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 really is
all truly about, isn't It's.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That's exactly where I mean. We've got pro athletes sharing
their journey and how they've had mental health struggle struggles,
but they are now pro athletes post service, which is incredible.
We've got amazing entrepreneurs who have founded multi billion dollar
businesses sharing their struggles and their journeys. And you know,
all of our services, all of our journeys, and our
experiences are relative, and you might be you might come
(08:29):
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
that everyone's coming for a different purpose, and we want
(08:49):
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 as a huge part of it,
we'll try to accomplish.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
You know, 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
(09:23):
that this guy had put together, and all the program
directors from 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 fellow person about my experiences, the good stuff, the
bad stuff, but also learn. And as I see and
I look at MCON with all the different things going
on and all the different speaker lists that I want
you to talk about this from mom once again, it's
(09:44):
that fellowship being brought together about all these people that
might have 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 (09:57):
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
(10:17):
accomplished war corresp correspondents of our generation. He's been a
guest speaker and an amazing support of MCON. And you know,
he has a book called Tribe and Finding your Tribe
is something that we talk about all the time. And
that's that's not the easiest thing to do when you
transition out the military. Transition from activity service to veteran
(10:41):
is very, very challenging. It can be very challenging for
the it's 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,
(11:01):
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
you know somebody who serve 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 best
(11:23):
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
(11:45):
category of individuals and service members and veterans who that's
never going to fill your comp It doesn't matter how
successful you are. You're just going to keep pouring liquid
into that cup and it's going to keep going out.
So you've got to identify other things that are going
to get you at when you get out of bed
that day, put you feet on the ground, you're going
to be jack up and pumped to go get after.
It could be something that you're doing in your local church.
(12:06):
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 nuance
around that. That's such an important piece to be able
(12:28):
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 past
(12:49):
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
(13:10):
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
(13:31):
already there.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
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 (13:53):
Well, that's that's exactly right. Sometimes we don't feel like
we have a voice. And also there are there's around
fifty thousand better and 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
(14:15):
how big or small you are. The impact of saving
one life or the impact of helping somebody get a
job or get them out of homelessness, whatever the scenario
is that you're supporting or employing a military spouse, there's
tremendous impact in that and so being able to understand,
wait a minute, I don't have to reinvent the wheel
all over again if I want to have my voice heard.
(14:36):
There are other organizations you've already done this, learn from them,
leverage those things, and apply that to your community in
a really powerful and profound way, because you can also
do it and it's much more data driven. Is the
other piece, and that is a huge part of what
we look at.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
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 (15:04):
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 terntional
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 an 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 competency
(15:29):
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 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 so you can ask additional questions, and she and
(15:51):
her team we partner with them on imcon health where
we're talking about human performance. We are talking about reinventing
the continued of care economics, of care delivery, community partnerships.
We've got six pillars that we built out and this
is all about how we drive different outcomes. Dennis, you're
probably feelamiliar with this, a lot of listeners are, but
(16:13):
for the past twenty years, we have not been able
to put a measurable dent in active duty in veteran suicide,
despite spending more money, and so this program it's very
intentional that it was in Washington, d C or in
part of the usual places. And I'm in DC all
the time. There are so many amazing men and women
who work very hard, you know d C at the
agency's nonprofits there. But we wanted to get outside of
(16:35):
the traditional forum that are there, the DC bubble, so
we can have different conversations. We're bringing in different amazing speakers.
One example is a Green Beret veteran, got a Mike Emkes,
the co founder of function Health. Function Health is the
fastest growing health tech company in history. They went from
they went from zero to i think almost four hundred
(16:56):
million dollars in three years. They just did a raise
is all public 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 preventive in nature with
how you look at your own personal health care. So
they're democratizing how we can do that, and the same
(17:17):
thing for everything we're doing around this. We're looking at
upstream oriented solutions so that you eliminate men and women
getting to point a crisis or dealing with issues before
it even happens. But one thing on the health piece
before we move on, that I'll talk about is a
term that we use is called brain health. Shifting away
from this notionure of mental health. Brain health, this great
(17:39):
organ up here floating around in our brain in our heads,
is the most important organ in the body because it
informs and influences everything else. But we think about it
in this very subjective terms traditionally around mental health. And
that's not to demonize you know, mental health professionals in
any way, shape or form, but we need to eliminate
the stigma association with how we think about mental pileth
(18:02):
F and brain health. You know, 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 you're dealing with something that's going
on with the chemistry up and the in your brain,
you've got to put in the work. But the science
is showing us that we can make cognitive measurable improvement
(18:24):
if we work at it, if we employ these different
therapies that are out there, And so it's really incredible
that we're able to showcase a lot of these different
modalities and transformative therapies to our community and executives and
professionals from different agencies to actually affect change and look
at how we can implement them and furthermore research. So
(18:45):
that's the health and wellness piece of it. And we've
got cold punch pools and UFC providers doing a combat
of expos so tons of cool stuff as it relates
to that. But you know, some of the other stuff
that we're doing, you know, I want to call it
a gentleman. Tyler Gray Tyler is a Green Beret Army
Ranger sniper. He was a Delta Force operator and you
know he got you know, got injured pretty pretty in
(19:07):
a pretty early way. He's come out since, had an
extraordinary story and a TV on CBS or TV show
on CBS. Now he's a best selling author for a
book he just dropped, and he's going to be talking
about his own personal journey and kind of what we
alluded to earlier. People were talking about, you know what,
I was in a really, really horrible spot. But here
is how I pulled myself out. Here's here the resources
(19:30):
that I tapped in to do that. You don't have
to go this alone. And look at him. He is
one of the most highly trained operators in the world
at that level, and he still struggled with things. So
everyone take a minute and pause and think about that
for a moment. You know, regardless of where you are
or you're the low the different types of training, if
(19:50):
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 lea cause that's the
one being professional athlete going to the All Star Game,
you know, every year, and those individuals are being vulnerable
and forth rine transparent about those journeys. So it's incredibly
inspiring to see people who are willing to put themselves
(20:11):
out there in service of others. And that's a that's
a theme that continues to permeate. And then we fostered
I'm calling is you know, service never stops at the
end of the day. You know, there's a number of
other you know, really incredible folks that I you know
that I want to call out as well. Gosh who
let's uh, let's so another person is a Charlotte Creech.
(20:34):
She's the chief program officer at Higher Heroes USA. They
do absolutely incredible work on the hiring side, the transition piece.
They have an incredibly data driven approach to every dollar
that goes into you know, supporting a veteran and hiring,
they've been able to push that number down so that
they're able to be as efficient as possible. With all
(20:54):
of the brand partners that are putting resources into that,
they're just doing extraordinary work. You know. The other some
of the other ones that I want to call out
is Blue Star Families and some of the work they're
doing with Starbucks Target Shabani. From a brand partnership piece,
they are They're what winning looks like at the end
(21:15):
of the day. Both partners are engaged, believe in the mission.
They're both taking a very data driven approach to it.
They're looking at how they build out authentic and impactful programs,
not one or the other. And the corporate brand partners
they're not taking a check the box so we're just
doing this because it feels nice. They're doing it because
they want to understand every dollar that they contribute or
(21:37):
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 Generalen Rudi Reez,
marine recon veteran TV shows on Fox and in other places,
just on HBO. Just an amazing human. He just was
(21:57):
always so vulnerable and inspiring with the stories that he hell.
So he's going to be out of Range Day with
us doing some incredible things and other pieces of that.
The other thing I want to call out his own
Range Day that we're hosting on Friday. That's the big
kind of the consumer part of the event that kicks
off at Clark County Shooting Complex. And we've got, yeah,
we're slinging arrows down range. We're having a blast. We
(22:18):
are you know, we have you know, we're working with
the National Shooting Sports Foundation, We're working with the USCCA
ARC on firearms, and a bunch of amazing groups. But
one of the things I'm really proud of is what
we're doing around the topic of secure storage, and it's
about cultural change. And Dennis, I don't know if you
are if you're familiar with the Edelman Trust Barometer, but
Edelman's a huge global agency. Every year they do this
(22:41):
survey of over thirty three thousand consumers. And what that
survey tells us is that consistently consumers, the individual veterans,
and every wise all of us, you mean, we trust
corporate brands more than NGO's, more than media, and more
than government. And so corporate brands have a powerful, powerful
opportuny unity to step in and affect change and influence change.
(23:03):
And so we're really feeled 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 suicide use a firearm. And I want to
be very clear, I'm not picking on firearms when I
say that. It is just a statistic and quite frankly,
(23:25):
it represents an opportunity to dramatically reduce suicide if we're
able to create more time and distance if someone is
in crisis or if they're struggling. And so, you know,
the response we get all to oftens when individuals and
firearms owners aren't locking up with the weapons is you
know what, I need my weapon accessible if something goes
bumping the night you protection self defense, totally understand that.
(23:45):
But the reality is there are gun lock boxes now
today that you can have open and sub two seconds
and get access to that weapon, but you can still
keep it locked up and you can still protect your family,
members of the community who might be in your home
get access to that firearm or from theft. And so
we're reshaping that cultural narrative around training. And so we're
(24:07):
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, moving another position, open
the gun, block box loaded, taking a number of steps,
engage your target, clock stops. So we're going to demonstrate
in showcase and also have a lot of fun and
gamify it that hey guys, there's no excuse if self
defense is a priority. You can still keep your firearms
(24:30):
locked up and ready when you need them. So the
cultural change you see continues to be a permeating theme
for im CON and that's a big part of it.
And then some of the other things we're doing. On
Saturday Sunday, we've got musical performances for local artists who
are veterans, some which who are veterans. We've got amazing
authors and you know amazing authors. We've got amazing pro athletes.
(24:53):
I mentioned we're going to have UFC profile fighters doing
a combatives expo and Naval Special Warfare and 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, that's hundreds of organizations, hundreds of brand partners.
We're expecting you almost six thousand attendees this year. We're
(25:17):
just looking to have a great event for people to
come together and walk away with amazing resources and we
have a really great times.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Stanny, I appreciate you sharing all that WACAN. At the end,
I promise, well, we're going to give the website how
to get tickets, all of that, the dates where it
is at the expo in Vegas, and everything you need
to know if you already have in Google that I
did promise. I wanted to talk about leadership WACO, and
I think there's so many correlations, once again between military
and sports and the private sector. What you do, and
I know that not only am CON, you do so
(25:44):
many other things that I'd love for you to talk
about without embarrassing you, because I know you're very busy
with your different buckets that you work with when it
comes to the military and all these different projects you are.
But when you hear the word leadership with what you
grew up with and where you are today and how
you access it and how you use it, can you
talk a little bit about leadership for our listenership? Please?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
I think for me, leadership is something that's always evolving.
I look at when I was a young entrepreneur, a
young CEO, and some of the leadership traits that I
exhibited not the greatest, you know, but I'm completely honest
about that. But you're constantly evolving, You're growing as a person,
(26:27):
You're learning, you're reading. And I love Michaelangelo's quote. I
think it was in the sixties when he said it,
I am still learning. I won't even embarrass myself and
try to pronounce it in Italian, but I am still learning.
You have one of the greatest, one of the greatest
artists in history, still in his sixties saying I am
still learning. And I think that is one of the
(26:47):
most important aspects of leadership is being vulnera and being
openness because I think that I actually know when you
leave with leadership in that capacity, 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
(27:09):
new things, we can innovate. And one of the things
that we see all too often across different pockets of
government agencies, I think, and you know some of them
which are directly you know, in charge with supporting veterans,
is there can be this complacency or we can get
we can trip over bureaucracy and red tape in a
which ultimately hurts the warfight or the service member and
(27:30):
their family. And I say that not picking on individuals
that work there because they're part of a bigger system,
but constantly learning and involving 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,
(27:53):
people are going to make mistakes, Your your contractors, your employees,
your partners, you know. I 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 forgive obviously, hopefully
those are obvious and there's new once step. But you know,
people are not perfect. I am not perfect. And being
(28:16):
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, goose without saying,
(28:37):
but like I said, the forgiveness piece and the continual
process improvent peace are such important aspects of leadership.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
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 pod. I guess all the amazing things that you're doing,
but I know you're very proud of some other things
(29:03):
that you're working on. Can just for a few moments
share what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah? Absolutely. There's a number of programs that we're involved
in that are absolutely incredible. You know. One of those
is similar 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 launched
it about a year and a half ago. In the
(29:27):
first ten months, we trained almost thirteen thousand of our
members in staff on suicide prevention. We worked with the
Columba University with the Columbia Protocol, and we built an
app called the Be the One app where you could
literally go through it and you know, Dennis, you me,
or the lay person, not a clinician, if you are
dealing with somebody who may be potentially in crisis, it
is a very easy series of checklists to go through
(29:50):
and figure out if somebody is at low moditor high
risk risk of suicide again using a scalpel, like I
talked about earlier. So we're incredibly proud of that work
we've done to educate men and 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
(30:11):
it was first you know, rolled out, you know, back
in the eighties and nineties. And we need to take
that approach with suicide prevention in this country so that
you me, other people are informed and equipped to identify
somebody who may be going through struggles because oftentimes he
signals are not obvious at all. And so very proud
of the work that the American Legion is dealing would
be the one and other things. Another great program that
(30:33):
we're dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs is two
years ago we stood up a program a venture studio
inside the VA and so we launched what's called the
Veterans Health Venture Studio with a good friend and colleague,
doctor Andresendahl. She's the brain child, she has the brain
child behind all this and the idea is to bring
in men and women from outside the walls of the
(30:53):
VA and also inside another partner organizations to tackle to
look at the biggest points of friction, the biggest challenges
to improving quality of care, and we're going to build tools,
technology and AI driven platforms that can help solve those
problems at scale. And so the Venture Studio is a
year long program where teams get selected and continue to
(31:14):
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
the VA, and the ones that demonstrate the most advocacy
are then scaled across the enterprise. So it's a very innovative,
fast moving program designed to improve care, improve access, and
(31:36):
prove quality of care for veterans in those two serfs.
That perm is amazing. And the other thing that I
do that really sits across all of these programs is,
you know, I co founded a brand strategy agency called
Impact Group, And what we do is we specialize in
working with large corporates, foundations, other organizations to build out
programs for organizations that are looking to support and create
(32:01):
impact programs for military service members veterans in their family.
So that could be you know, employee resource group inside
the corporation. It could be building out a robust impact
social social impact program working with nonprofits. But what's unique
about us is we align the corporate goals and objectives
(32:22):
with the organization of the n and we match that
up with the impact conditions they want to lean into
so that they're data driven and we ensure that they
get a creative impact not only on the organization employees
and customers, but they also are able to really in
a detail, in a data driven away, measure the outcomes
for those nonprofit partners they're serving to ensure that those
(32:44):
resources are having the most impact. So there's a number
of other groups that I'm invested in, but those are
at a high level some of the things that I'm
most proud of and really related to the great work
that myself, our partners, and our other stakeholders and team
members are doing to support veterans and their family.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well, I appreciate you sharing all that way. It never
sees it to amaze me. In this series when we
talked 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
(33:22):
it's located to the Expo in Vegas. So if you
could kind of give everybody just one last thing about
how they can be a part of this, let's let's
let's get them all set up absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
M coll On twenty twenty five is coming up 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 them to get more information, or you can
get your tickets right online at the website.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Outstanding, Well, Waco, 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 MCom just sounds like an amazing thing to
be a part of and help people at least take
a look at it. If they can't go, just get
online because the Speaker series is amazing. All the things
(34:13):
wrapped around in Vegas are just absolutely truly incredible. It
is hercule and what you and your team have done
to put this together. Thank you so much for your time,
and we really appreciate focusing and having you on CEOs.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
You should know, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Thank you guys, that's another CEO you should know. Thanks
for being a part of our community, and thank you
for listening to this. iHeart Omaha Radio Station.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.