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How A Navy SEAL Turned Setbacks Into A Blueprint For Veteran Success · Your Thoughts Your Reality

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Your Thoughts, Your Reality with Michael Cole, the podcast that shines a compassionate light on the journey of veterans battling through life's challenges.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Michael is a dual elite certified neuroencoding specialist in coaching and keynote training presentations, dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post-deployment life.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Join him as we delve into the profound realm of neuroencoding science, empowering these brave individuals to conquer universal battles, procrastination, self-doubt, fear, and more.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Together, let's uncover the strength within you to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: So my guest just dropped off, so we're gonna hang out for just a second and be back as soon as I see him pop back on.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he's back.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Marty.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so um, so today I'm very, very, very uh honored to have uh Marty Strong on.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: He's a retired Navy SEAL who served um 20 years in the Navy as both an enlisted SEAL and an officer, including compact deployments.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's a CEO of Warriors Haven USA, and it's a game changer for Vets.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm super excited to really get into this and talk to him about that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a it is a uh vocational focused nonprofit helping veterans transition into meaningful civilian careers?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And man, it is needed, and I'm again super, super excited to be talking to you about that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he's also an author, I think, I think multiple authors as I recall, he's but multiple books.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's 13, I see down there, 13th book on his uh information.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and of course, he's a strategic thinker, translating lessons from special operations into leadership, resilience, and adaptability for life and after the military.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Marty is a veteran who's restarted multiple times.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I I promise most people in the world, when you think back, you have too.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I we're gonna talk about moving from the battlefield to the boardroom and proving that reinvention is possible at any age or stage.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, Marty is an advocate for veterans and their families as well.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So super to have you on, sir.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, tell us a little bit more about yourself.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad we I'm glad we uh got the tech stuff figured out.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Man, you cover a lot of ground there.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: I can't I can't dunk a basketball.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: You missed that one.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so I think the the interesting part of the story of my life or the journey of my life is that comment that you made in the intro about the restarting.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: I uh like most Americans, you know, we're when we're kids, we think that you have to get good grades, keep your nose clean, grab through the different school systems, get to the point where you can get into a college, get good grades, so you can progress and get a good job, and then you know, life life's your oyster and you kind of move forward.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: And my my my personal journey, my personal experience, both my life and watching other people's lives and talking to people kind of at different points along their their lives, it doesn't work like that at all.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: It you know, that's still kind of the quote unquote American dream, but that started in the 1940s and 50s with the focus on school and education, because the American dream before that was come to the United States, go west, find a chunk of land, build something.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right, that that used to be the American dream.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Be an entrepreneur, take chances and go for it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: So the um my story is kind of along those lines of the go for it side and not so much the linear the linear path.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: So so let's talk about that a little bit.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, well, so what was you know, of course, we talked a little bit about in the introduction your story.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So what what um if we can, what what made you um or what drew you to join the military?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: I was trying to escape Nebraska for a couple of reasons.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was uh I was born and raised in Nebraska up until I was 11 years old, and then I moved to Japan for four years.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: My parents got a divorce.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Me and my brother and sister went back to Nebraska to the same house we'd rented out while we were in Japan, and there was really nothing to do in those days in Nebraska, unless you were a football player, you know, good enough to get on the cornhuskers.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that was pretty much it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't know about Warren Buffett in those days, but I did know that Mutual of Omaha had uh the Wild Kingdom show.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: So that was it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: You've got I've just kind of lined up everything that you had going for you in two sentences.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Trying to get away from the family life was a was a huge motivation.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: And the second one was there really wasn't anything going on there.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: We were all getting in trouble all the time because we were so bored.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I joined the Navy to escape both those situations and uh and kind of stumbled forward into the into the thing that I ended up doing for 20 years.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um mutual Omaha, man, that brought back memories like instantly.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so with that setting, guys, just so you know, we do have a delay we're playing with right now, so we're doing the best art we can right now to to to pivot and move forward, and we're gonna do that successfully, I might add.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, so Marty, when after the military and and you know the unif uniform came off, what was the hardest part during that transition if you were of who you were to let go of, you know, what uh hold on, who you were and and what did you let go of to discover about yourself, the other side of that entity ship?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So where where did that kind of come from of who I am, who I was to who I am now?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know a lot of military veterans that I talk to, work with, et cetera, deal with that.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I focus on that reintegration period.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk to that?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to me about that for yourself.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot more out there for veterans.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: The the internal programs before you leave the service are much better than they were when I when I uh retired.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the the problem was everybody in the SEAL teams, anyway, you had one or two jobs you could possibly do.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: You might be able to come an emergency medical tech, you might be able to become a law enforcement professional.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's about it, because that's all we knew how to do.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: We knew how to you know be gunslingers and parachute out of planes and lock out of submarines, and there's not a whole lot of uh need for that in the in the commercial in the commercial market.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: So, and I knew that, and I knew that because I talked to people that had gotten out and came back and said, wow, you know, it's really tough out here, I can't find anything.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: It they would say it's just like being at uh about three months before you graduate from high school or three months before you graduate from college, and you don't know what you want to do yet.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: So you have some basic understanding and skills, you have some idea of how you're of how you uh operate in the academic environment.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And in the military sense, you have an idea of how you operate in the military environment, the military context.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I stepped out and I even had an under undergraduate degree in business and a in an MBA.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: The first thing I found out when I went into this uh financial services industry was in none of that education, never talked about or touched on selling.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Selling was not a part of it, and everything outside was about selling.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Even if you were going to manage money, you had to go out and find clients, you had to convince them to hand you their life savings or a portion of their life savings, you had to be able to explain to them the logic of what you were going to do with their money, and so that was the first the first hurdle.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know how to sell, and I had nothing to really fall back on.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: The prospecting part of that, and that was all unknown to me.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was not surrounded by millionaires in the SEAL teams, so I had I had no experience or direct understanding of the emotions that people have around money.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: I had never met anybody that had worked their way up, say, from a high school graduate to become a multimillionaire and being bankrupt multiple times.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: It was a whole different kind of quote unquote warrior.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: That as I progressed in that in that um profession, I kept meeting these people.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: They were incredible, I mean incredible stories, failing, standing up, failing, getting back up, failing, and then succeeding and succeeding.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: And they had all the scar tissue, and they were usually willing to explain and tell you that story, which to me was something that seemed to be missing in anything I'd ever read going through the business education.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there wasn't uh this is more like reading the um the journals of people in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, about what was happening on the battlefield, you know, the friends lost and all that.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that the so that the entrepreneur, the the battle scarred entrepreneur became something that I really respected.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was kind of on the on the on the downside.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: My my inability to sell, I had to sell, I had to learn that from scratch.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, I didn't know anything about the money world, not the world of money.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: I knew how to kind of invest it, but I didn't know anything about the people and the dynamics behind that.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: What I had going for me was I was disciplined, which is you know, that's kind of a normal trait for people that come out of the military.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was trainable.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Everything in the military revolves around training and preparing and training, preparing.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: And when things change, you train to the new standard.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: When equipment changes, you change to the new equipment.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: When enough people come in, or you get put into a new unit, the new unit trains to a new team standard, and it never ends, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: And you you train everybody around you, you train yourself to be better than even they were training you to be, especially in the elite forces.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had that going for me, except the outside environment, nobody was wanted to train you, nobody really cared that much about you being that much better.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: It basically said, Go out there and just do it.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Which for a while it felt like I was just kind of floating.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, how am I gonna learn this?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I started calling people.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know anybody that's a salesman?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is the truth.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know anybody that's a salesman?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know anybody that knows how to do this thing called prospecting that I'm hearing about?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and bit by bit I started create this little network of people, a couple of relatives.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they had a glossy uh monthly magazine that had all the success cases in it from around the country.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, oh what the hell?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just start calling the people up in these stories.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: They're probably gonna hang up on me because they're all really doing well.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, making a million plus a year, right?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: And every single one of them was willing to tell me exactly what they were doing.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, they're willing to tell me their whole kind of you know, first, second act of their their life play as a professional, where they screwed up, where they they took the wrong, you know, the wrong path, how they corrected, and then how they figured out what they were good at, and then focused on it.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it took me seven, eight months for what I just described before I started to go out and actually start landing new clients on a regular basis.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that you know, not a fear of failure, being open-minded, being willing to be uh trained or train yourself at least, um, understanding the gap analysis.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: I know what I know and I know what I don't know.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: I have to I have to fix the gap part of this.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then if no one is going to train me, then it's up to me.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta go do it.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: But I just created kind of a mastermind of all these different allies as if I was in the teams and I had a training, a training team that was responsible for treat for training me.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: I just recreated that and I stumbled into it.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't like I was super genius, and I sat there on day one and said, This is what I'm going to do.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I just stumbled and and attempted all kinds of things and failed.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: The last part is is kind of the positive part.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: I found out that I mentioned before the stress of money.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was pretty good at stress.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was pretty good at when everything's falling apart and going to hell in a handbasket, being poised and comfortable.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: So when something would happen in the market, and my clients would get on the phone and call in a panic, mostly because whatever they saw on TV that day was amping up the panic, amping up the emotional part, right?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: To get to get eyeballs on screens.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: I found that I was very good at kind of comforting them and settling them and reminding them of the plan that we'd put together and saying, why don't you come on in?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: And when something bad happened in the market, it was clear, I would invite people to come in and go through a review and everything.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Where I found out my peers later on were dodging the phone.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't have that emotional maturity, they didn't have that psychological resilience, they didn't have that thing that I got from the military.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so they would hide.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I ended up getting a lot of clients whenever there was a really bad event in the markets, because my clients would say, Well, that's not what Marty did.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Marty actually contacted me and brought me in.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: He engaged, and a friend of mine that I referred to, he engaged him too.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And he's not even a big, big, you know, big client.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: He talked to everybody to make sure they understood what was going on.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: That was directly from the military experience.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I I want to, you said so many good things.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've tried not to jump in.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I just want to go back 18 steps, all right.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Pay attention to everybody that's listening and uh, you know, on podcast forums, future, and of course now.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it it's about getting back up, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and listen, man, I've done the same thing.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I life has not been just this amazing, straight upward trajectory, right?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you when you fail, if you call it that, right?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're not failing.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's just your opportunity to learn.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just your opportunity to learn and move forward.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly the story of Marty Strong, right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the other thing I really want to, I really want to dive into just for a second is when everybody else was scared and hiding, Marty said, no, this is an opportunity to to grow for myself because I have these skills, but I also can comfort these people, make them feel better.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody, when the market drops, it's an opportunity.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Don't panic, it's not a panic moment, right, Marty?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's not a the world is ending moment.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's literally, it's it drops, and then there's a real opportunity to make money.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that Marty sat there and said, Yeah, that's okay.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk, we'll figure this out.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna calm you down, and then we're gonna benefit on the other side, I'm sure.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I there's so many more things you talked about, Marty, but I just had to touch base on those things that you know when when life seems dire, it's generally an opportunity to grow for yourself andor financially.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the last thing, I know Marty's time to be quiet right now, because we have that delay.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Marty.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing I want to say real quick on this is um the news, like like Marty said, it's there to create drama so you pay attention.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm gonna leave it at that.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not gonna get political or anything else on the news.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not that guy.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, Marty, you know, with that said, um, is there anything else you want to touch base on that before we jump into um Warriors Haven, USA?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: The only thing I would say is, and and I may mention it later because it's kind of a theme.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Most veterans think, like I mentioned earlier, like at the end of high school, the end of college, that you have to find the perfect path.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can't find the perfect path, you're a failure.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's something wrong with you.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody else seems to know exactly what they want to do.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's not the case.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: Most people don't know what they want to do.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they have influencers, whether it's family or friends trying directing them and patting them on the back for the decision they made.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then they get into whatever they're doing and they're miserable, or it just there's not a good fit.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And what I tell everybody is when I especially when I do lectures for veteran transition, that's okay.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's the way the real world works.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: The universe is constantly shaking things up.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: As you just mentioned, there's always opportunity because there's always change going on.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever you think is going on based on your past understanding, it may be completely different or it may be slightly different.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: So just apprentice yourself to the world when you walk out, as if you're you're brand new.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Learn everything you can.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: What's the status quo today, the reality today?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then look at all the things you'd like to do, do some research, and like I said, be an apprentice.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Set aside the fact that you maybe had high rank, you were fantastic, whatever you did, military, humble yourself a little bit.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: You want to own a restaurant and then apprentice yourself, learn it from the ground up.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you know every aspect of the operations of a successful restaurant, then go and buy a restaurant or go for a job that's managing a restaurant.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's how you that's how you kind of get ahead.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then you do that for two, three years, and you find out, you know, I don't really think I like the restaurant business.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: Start the whole process again.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing, there's nothing that says you have to be one thing for the rest of your life.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely love that you said that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I cannot tell you how that lands for me.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, I've been in the construction industry or or uh that similar niche most of my life.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And at 51 years old, I I said, you know, what I want to what do I do when I grow up?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So and literally use the same skill sets to do what I'm doing now.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I still have a construction company and all the different stuff, but um it's it's really cool that you said that.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um with that said, Mr.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Strong, um it's kind of a cool thing to it's kind of a cool thing, Mr.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Strong.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um with that said, let's really get into uh Warriors Haven USA.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've been super excited to have you on to really talk about this and how this is a game changer, everybody.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: So please listen up and and let everybody know about what Marty's doing here.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um talk to us about what it is, first of all, then we'll get into a lot more specifics.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've got about 10 minutes left, so well, first of all, I think Mr.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: Strong is a cool name.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like a Bond character.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll I'll see if I can leverage that a little bit.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: So Warriors Haven, USA.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: You just add dot com to that name and and you go right to our site.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's a vocational education foundation.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: What that means is everything under the sun.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: We aren't trying to find housing for veterans, we're not trying to find uh we're not, we don't, we don't have psychiatrists and psychologists on staff to deal with TST, traumatic brain injury, etc.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: We um we are trying to get scholarships for the kids of veterans or for the veterans themselves.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of things that people are doing out there in great organizations that, like say tunnels for towers or something, they're what they're doing, they're really, really good at.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: So the the founder and myself, I'm a co-founder, uh Pete Gary, who was a Force Recon Marine for eight years.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: We met in 1994 and been friends ever since.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: He originally conceived of finding the niche, the unserved niche in veteran services that is a gap of some sort.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll give you an example.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the the government grants, whether it's the federal government or state governments, are grants that'll hand you a check for tuition so that you can go and go into a school.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: And most veterans don't know how to get those grants, but that's they're they're personal, there's no intermediary.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a difficult thing for us to get involved in, other than just having the links to these things and maybe some guidance on how to fill out the grant paperwork.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: We wanted to be more hands-on.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: So we've actually created a training facility right now.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's 1,200 square feet, which is a wood and metal shop in um in Florida.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: We also have a um five-acre farm complex.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: We've got horses.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're building a 9,000 square foot, two-story vocational training center.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: We um we're doing virtual business academy right now.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got veterans that that come in um virtually, we link them up with people, and sometimes it's depending on it could be an early stage business that they're they're working on, or they could be actually somewhere where they're having problems with scaling.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't matter what the business is.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh oddly enough, I thought when we started doing that, we would get you know smaller scale businesses, you know, a food truck or you know, a restaurant or something like that.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the first person was a former Army enlisted guy who worked his way up through college after he got out and got a PhD in physics.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: And seven months ago he started a software company.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: He's developing software, and so he's doing patenting.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and why I happen to know lots and lots of people in technology, I've been on lots of technology boards.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: So my mentoring for him initially was connecting him with people that know how to get rounds of funding for his company, people that know the guy I connect him with has a hundred patents filed, very, very successful patent guy.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, other people that are kind of peripheral to what hit what he's doing with the software and the sensor systems and things, people that sell those things, so he can tell them about the market, who's buying, who's not buying, pros and cons of doing commercial only, government only, or combination.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just kind of in that case, I'm the facilitator.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now he has some mechanical stuff he wants to fix or understand.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've helped him a little bit about like hiring and firing.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: And do you bring in full-time employees or do you use freelancers, you know, that kind of stuff?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Do you create an office or do you work out out of your garage?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: These are things that um may not seem important and but they're not instinctive.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: What most people do is they copy what they see in the culture.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if they've seen movies and everybody's got an office, everybody buys gets an office, at least an office, you know.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: So between myself and Pete and a lot of other business, business, um successful business people, we can answer those questions and connect them.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's kind of the academy piece, which is it's mentoring and coaching.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're getting into some virtual virtual courses.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got three very successful entrepreneurs, one in AI, one in uh cyber software, and one in business planning.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the business planning one has a very successful book, and they've all built online courses, and they've all told me they will let us have those courses set up and we can bring veterans in.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in those three particular categories, veterans can come in and uh learn about those three, those three different categories.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that's gonna explode faster because it's virtual.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have to build a building to do it, but we've already conducted um woodworking with with veterans, we've already got done canine and um equine therapy with veterans.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's three levels.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: First level is one day, it's essentially an experience.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: Main main point of it is either therapeutic or give them a little taste of of what what the what woodworking is and metalworking.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm talking we got high-end lasers and lathes and three big 3D printers and every kind of bell and whistle you can think of.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: So level two is anywhere from a week to a month in duration, and we teach them a skill.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now, that skill may be to know how to use a particular key machine that's that's in every single manufacturing plant, or how to how to use multiple machines if they want to start doing things on their own, whether for themselves or to sell them, sell objects that they make.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and the culinary side is the same thing.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: They want to do it for their own pleasure.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Then the level two is to learn specific capabilities, to learn to have knowledge and capabilities.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: So when they walk out, they can actually do something or build something or cook something they never could before.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Level three is a much longer program and it's an apprentice to onboarding program.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got um lots of different kinds of industries.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of people in corporate America have signed up.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not just huge companies, middle-sized companies.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: We have Michelin, Michelin uh level restaurants that have said, you know, you teach them how to use these particular tools in the kitchen, this particular um normal operating system in the kitchen, how the how the flow works, how the patterns work, how it's managed.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: Guess what we're gonna do?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna bring them into that kitchen.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: We'll bring them to our kitchen, we'll pay them, and we'll take them from that point forward.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that's great.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's the whole community, the whole, the whole uh kind of American uh kaleidoscope all pitching in when they can, where they can.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: So that's pretty much what Warriors Haven USA is.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's uh an attempt to address that niche.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we'll probably stay that way because the most successful of all all charities are this way, I think, and a lot of businesses are too.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: The more successful ones tend to find a lane and they get really, really good at it, and therefore they're delivering like a laser beam right to the beneficiaries that that they targeted.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely love it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's there's so much opportunity for vets with what you're doing, uh, because it is the gap, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so glad that you literally um, I'm sorry, you and and and who's the other person you're working with?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Pete Gehry.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: I just wanted to get the name out there again.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, absolutely just doing amazing, beautiful things with this.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it I've not heard when I talk to you and you wanted to be on the show, it's like there's I haven't heard about anybody else doing all the things you're doing.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's just I I truly believe it's a game changer.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: So grateful you're out there doing what you're doing, man.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, with with that said, we got uh about two and two minutes left.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how do people reach out to you, sir?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's two ways.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh martystrong.com, that's pretty simple.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh all my personal information, my speaking programs, uh, access to my books are on the homepage.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'll take you straight through to Amazon.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: The um for Warriors Haven USA, you just go to WarriorshavenUSA.com and it'll tell you everything about the programs, and uh, we have bios for all the people that are in the um in the board that kind of oversees us, including mine and Pete's.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'm gonna I'm gonna I know I told you this is how we we structure with three questions or three uh tips at the end.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna actually ask for a fourth one from you because because I you're a plethora of information and it's it's usable information, which is the fantastic part about this.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So let's I I just want to start off with um the three tips.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can give us three tips to get veterans and their families further, faster.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: So the first one is if if you listen to what I said earlier in the interview, lower your expectations to the reality of the environment as you're walking out of the service.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's okay.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: You started in the service as a brand new person that didn't know anything, and it took time, sometimes a couple of years before you were considered to be a professional.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's no different when you come out, so there's no rush, there's no instant success.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: So give yourself a break, take a deep breath, and then kind of advance forward with that mindset.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: The second thing is that there's no such thing as linear success.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: I actually used to teach a class called nonlinear success, and I'd use people like Ulysses S.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: Grant and others that zigzagged all over the place and failed and succeeded, and all of a sudden this guy becomes president of the United States, right?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: So people just assume that there's a path that's linear, and that's the way winners go.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: They follow that path.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: There's no such thing as that.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Matter of fact, it's it's more of an anomaly if you find somebody who actually did that that way, you know.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then if you if you assume that that's not the case, then you're okay with changing course, you're okay, you're okay with trying something for a couple years and then moving on to something else.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can experiment with life, you can experiment with your vocation, and um, and that's okay.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that there's nothing wrong with that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the third one would be I think, you know, I wrote about this a lot in uh in Be Different, my last uh business leadership book.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's a stigma attached to people.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: Past you know, childhood that come up with crazy wild ideas, that that have an idea and have a sense of awe and wonder about the idea, that they have a big dream.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: The institutions have pounded that out of us.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: They've taught us to you know color in the in in between the lines and don't raise your hand and don't do something different because you you won't get the grade you're supposed to get.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: So you end up as a 20-year-old and you're really thinking like a 70-year-old, like the world's not hasn't changed, and I'm not going to change, and that's the way it is.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: You're stuck in your own rut.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you think that's okay because that's the way you've been conditioned.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Declied, obeyed all these things intellectually.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that is, I mean, I've done a lot of work on the science side.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: The beep of unless there's some biological medical problem, the brain of a 65-year-old is just as creative as the brain of a six-year-old.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the third thing.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: You can reinvent your mind, you can learn again, you can do all these things, you can come up with ideas, you just have to practice it so that part of your brain gets used to it.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you may not get rewarded by the world, the system, and all that right away, because they tend to reward conformity.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: But the capability, the ability to do that is in every one of us.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Mic drop, just mic drop right there.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely beautiful, man.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I love that you say that.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is it is so true.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is so true.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the last thing, and again, I'm drawing you under the bus here because we didn't talk about maybe doing this, but it just goes along with those three tips.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: If there was one thing you could tell a veteran coming out of service and reintegrating into civilian life coming home, um from you all of your experience, what would it be?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: Seek out a successful veteran and make them your friend and your mentor and maybe connect with more than just one, and listen, listen to their journey, listen to their their trials and tribulations and failures because they've arrived.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that gives you the light at the end of the tunnel, and also because it's another veteran, they can relate and you can relate, and uh it'll probably resonate.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely love that.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I just want to want to add to it when you when you like in your story, Marty, when you were talking to people and and trying to figure it out, right?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: People that are successful and are good people, grateful people and and and of what they've accomplished and not with an ego, most of them are gonna share their secrets.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people, mentors, whatever the case may be, and I'm like, oh no, they're not gonna, they're not this is a while ago, obviously.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned learned differently in the years, but oh yeah, I don't want to bother them, I don't this, I don't that.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then they just they just light up and they they I've got chills, they just light up and literally go through and and tell you they tell you a lot of the secrets or mentor or whatever the case may be.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a it's a beautiful thing to find those people in your life that get you further faster.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: So like Mr.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Marty Strong here.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Marty, with that said, um, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I really, really love what you're doing.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'd love to have you back on.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if that works for you at some point.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Love to.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mike.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: So with that said, time is the most precious resource we have as human beings.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Marty and everybody listening and listening on the podcast forums later on.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking the time out of your life uh to spend it and learn and grow and be part of the mission.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And with that, we're out of here.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us on another insightful journey of your thoughts, your reality podcast with your host, Michael Cole.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: We hope the conversation sparked some thoughts that resonate with you.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: To dive deeper into empowering your thoughts and enhancing your reality, visit EmpowerPerformance Strategies.com.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, your thoughts make your reality, so make them count.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay inspired and keep creating the reality you desire.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Catch you on the next episode.