Beyond The Uniform

Why Listen: Ken is an absolute Rockstar. His career includes working at some of the most iconic brands in Silicon Valley; Siebel Systems, McAfee, AVAST Software, FireEye, and now founding and running his own investment firm, NightDragon. Here are six different things to keep an ear out for in this episode. First of all, why veterans should consider a career in cybersecurity and what the characteristics of this industry are. Second, what life is like as a mid to late-stage investor. Third, the one thing everyone overlooks when it comes to networking. Fourth, using the lens of fun learning and money to evaluate career shifts. Fifth, why you should always take a job interview even if you're happy at your current job. And sixth, an overview of the corporate development role, something we've never talked about on the show. As always at beyondtheuniform.org you'll find the show notes for this episode with links to everything we discussed, as well as 408 other episodes just like this all provided for free. About Ken

Why Listen: I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation with Alex. I reached out to him via LinkedIn because I saw he was in Denver, and he was a Marine who has done incredible things as an entrepreneur and basically treated this interview as part two of a conversation with him. Here's a couple of things that stood out to me that I hope you benefit from this interview. At one point, Alex says, I don't know anything, pay me and teach me. I think that's such a great thought as he was taking different jobs as he was starting his company; such a great way to approach anything, which is find something that can make money and teach you a skill set. I really appreciate his lessons on patience. You'll hear that in his 15-year journey of building up a real estate company that spans so many different functional areas now, but it wasn't an overnight success. He also talks about pounding the rock. It's not a single pound that cracks the rock. But it's the repeated relentless intention of showing up ever

Why Listen: I enjoyed this conversation; Abe's honesty, his directness in revealing the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, as well as the many pivots that he's experienced in his own life. He started True Made Foods seven years ago when he was 38. He had four kids. It was not necessarily in line with what he did in his background. They are growing rapidly. They were named one of the top 10 most innovative food companies of 2021. In this interview, I appreciated how he talked about how most people get jobs through their network, not the front door. And when you leave the military, you're almost starting with an empty network. He talks about how big-name degrees at big schools don't solve everything. He talks about going to Bulgaria and taking over a plastics company to do turnaround work. He also talks about how his four kids were eating ketchup and he couldn't get them to stop. So he wanted to address a problem around his table. I love what he shares about saying no to growth and being honest about when you'r

Why Listen: Normally on the show, I have a military veteran as my guest. We talk about what they do, how they got there, and advice to others seeking to do the same. Today I am doing that, but with three guests, two Army and West Point grads, one Naval Academy and fellow Submariner, who joined forces to found Imperium Capital. There's a lot that I love about this interview. It is a blend of talking about financial planning and tips that anyone listening can apply to their career to get themselves more financial freedom and stability, as well as a lot about entrepreneurship and building up the skill sets. Here are a couple of things that stood out to me. First of all, I love the story of how they met and decided to start this company. And you're going to get three different perspectives on what drew these people to the finance industry and also to entrepreneurship. They are three different versions with some overlap, which was cool to see. What I love, as well, is that they each had clarity and what they were

Janell Hanf sent me an email yesterday morning asking about my experience at the Naval Academy on September 11th. Here is a quick episode sharing more about that experience and my hope this day to honor those who lost their lives that day, those who served that day, and those drawn to service thereafter.

Why Listen: As an entrepreneur focused on marketing, it was an extreme honor to interview today's guest, Bruce Cleveland. Bruce is an absolute Silicon Valley legend, having worked in operational roles at companies including Oracle, Apple, and Siebel Systems. In addition to that, he has worked in venture capital for 15 years, where he has personally generated over a billion dollars in returns. This includes his work at InterWest Partners, one of the most respected VCs in the world, but also as the founder of Wildcat Venture Partners where he worked for five years. He is now the Chief Marketing Officer of a company called C3.ai. He just took that company public. It was founded by Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems, who has now created three different billion-dollar ventures. We talk about marketing, the CMO role, artificial intelligence, venture capital, and more.  As always, at beyondtheuniform.org you'll find show notes with links to everything we discuss, as well as a lot of books and great resources that Bruce re

Why Listen: It is always intimidating speaking with a flag officer. And that all said General Caslen made that so easy. He's such a gracious man. He served for over 43 years in the military, including being Superintendent at West Point. He was at the Pentagon on 911. He snuck back in to assist with fighting fires and ensuring that his colleagues were safe. He has no shortage of unbelievable experiences in the military. After the military, he went on to become the president at the University of South Carolina, so continued leading at the highest level in a civilian capacity. We cover a lot of ground. We talked about mistakes he made in his transition out of the army. You've heard them before, but it's reassuring to hear them from someone at his level. We talk about the differences and similarities between military leadership, academic leadership. We talked about what it was like leading the University of South Carolina through COVID-19, and I appreciate the General's candor. We talked about his recent resignat

Why Listen: My guest today is an entrepreneur, but not the type that you usually think about. We've had a couple of guests on the show who have done what is called a search fund, which is what I thought I was doing most of my time at Business School. Rather than coming up with an idea, which many people struggle to do and starting your own company, a search fund enables you to raise money, to go out and find a company, usually a mom and pop type shops, something that's doing well that could use a new owner, new management, you purchase that company, and then grow it from there, which is what my guest today did. He purchased a company with 20 employees, and he's grown it to many more than that 20 employees. We talk a lot about that, his advice on search funds and advice on entrepreneurship, what it's like managing outside of the military versus inside of the military. Just really a lot of great advice for those of you considering entrepreneurship.    About Nic: Daniel Reese is the CEO of IntellaTriage, the num

Why Listen: This is a quick short episode in between our normal format of Beyond the Uniform, which is me interviewing military veterans about their civilian career, what they did, how they got there, and advice for how you can do the same. So today’s guest is someone who is not a military veteran, but I love this story. It's something that I did for my company Captivate.ai., and I wanted to share it here as well. I put together a three-minute video that's worth checking out if you like Paul's story. So here's the backstory. I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, and my company Captivate.ai does a lot with marketing technology. Last week, when I was on LinkedIn, I saw a post by a man called Paul David, who had gotten 200,000 likes on his post, which roughly translates to at least 6 million people who saw this post. So immediately, it caught my eye, and I reached out to Paul. First, I did a little bit of digging to see what he had been doing on social media, and what led to this literally overnight success. He wil

Why Listen: This is one of the more energizing conversations I've had on the show. In addition to serving in the Air Force, working in the State Department, serving in the CIA, and now running two different companies - one of them designed to fight human trafficking - Nic is needless to say, an amazing human being. As a founder of two companies, his biggest advice to entrepreneurs is to not start a company. We talk about how success is opportunity meeting preparation, and how oftentimes we focus on motivation when we should be focused on preparedness and the reasons why we are doing things. We talk a lot about mission and some of the best tactical advice I've heard from a guest about how to specifically and tactically uncover your next mission. We talk about the choices that we make every single day and how we have limited opportunities and being precise in what we say yes to, and better and more important, what we say no to. We talk about not just having compassion and empathy lead the tears, but having that

Why Listen: For those of you who smoke cigars, and you know the phrase knuckle burner - this is a knuckle burner of an episode. I went in trying to keep this to 30 minutes, but we used 58 minutes for this conversation. It's because Trier has so many great points about so many different topics. You'll learn about her career. She's the co-founder and CEO of a company called Just Work. She has a tremendous amount of experience at Goldman Sachs, Twitter, other great organizations around people management, and she has so much great advice about taking care of your people, which is something our audience knows well. But doing that outside of the military blind spots, you may have to talk about empathy in very tactical ways and share stories that I found compelling. She talked about language-specific language to use to create openers within the civilian workforce of getting to know your team and making it an inclusive environment. We talk about entrepreneurship. Despite starting two different organizations, Trier ta

Why Listen: I think it's amazing this conversation I had with Josh because most of it is about adding value and - what he calls - leveraging generosity for marketing and sales. And what's crazy for me is that the way that I met Josh a couple of months ago was through a connection, and I even forget how I met him. I run a company Captivate.ai that works all in marketing, and Josh is such an expert in sales systems and marketing. I think that this is a little bit different from a typical episode. We don't talk a lot about career transition. But we talk about getting attention, using marketing and sales in a way that's authentic and genuine and doesn't feel icky, is probably the best word I can use. One thing you'll take away from this episode is just a lot of great ideas about an authentic way to get attention, to market, to do sales, to get your message across, whether that's personal or professional. Second of all, I think that Josh is an incredible entrepreneur, and I admire him. I've been doing podcasting f

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

Why Listen: I just wrapped up my conversation with Shawn, and it was so enjoyable. There were a couple of things that stood out to me. One was his great quote about always being ready for opportunities and embracing the right thing. His story is so incredible, from this perspective, starting with his unexpected medical discharge from the military, to a winding road through consulting and startups, and ultimately back to startups and starting his own company. It just really shows you the power of resilience, but also the power of being open to unexpected deviations in your career, which will inevitably happen. Second of all, we talk a lot about networking. He gives a couple of really poignant examples where 10 to 20 years after meeting someone, he and people in his network, reconnect in a way that alters their career. It really gets away from this transactional thought of networking and moves toward something that veterans excel at, which is genuinely meeting people, enjoying them, and being generous. To that

Why Listen: I just wrapped up recording this episode, and it will cost me about $60 in books, or maybe $5 in late fees from the library because there were so many great books that Joe recommended. Here are a couple things that stood out to me from this interview. And first of all, make sure you check out the show notes for this episode at BeyondTheUniform.org. In addition to a link to Joe's company, HigherEchelon, there are also links to all of the books he describes, as well as an interview we did with Taylor justice years ago, who you'll learn was one of the founding members of the HigherEchelon team and has gone on to found UniteUS, which has exploded, absolutely exploded as a company. So a couple of things that I really liked from this interview, the first one is that Joe has a great perspective on entrepreneurship. And he and his other two co-founders started by only investing $1,000 into this company, and they made the commitment that they would not join the company full time until it could pay their sa

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

Jason Van Camp is the author of the book, Deliberate Discomfort, which is both a Wall Street Journal and 2x #1 Amazon Best Selling book. For the last 10+ years, he has run the consulting firm, Mission Six Zero, which dramatically improve sales performance, reduces costs, and wins by providing their client's teams with a new way of solving organizational problems. He is also the Executive Director of the 501-3c organization, Warrior Rising. He is a graduate of West Point, as well as Brigham Young University's Business School, and is a 14-year Veteran of the US Army, where he served in the Green Beret. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-van-camp-076a5339/ https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Discomfort-Operations-Comfortable-Uncomfortable/dp/1733428011 https://missionsixzero.com/ https://www.warriorrising.org/