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From Military Service to Mission-Driven Business: How Jordie Kern Built 7 Eagle Group · Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast

• Aisha Massengill: love like before I got on with you somebody sent me a note he goes I just want to thank you so much for coming into my life and helping me and it was just a guy in our Academy and but it's a stressful stressful time you know for when you're transitioning out of something where you know what you're doing every second of the day and being told go here go here right and now you're coming into the unknown to the civilian world and you've got to most of them have families they have the house they have bills and what our team does in their corner with them and hey we got you let's go come on we're gonna do this it's super rewarding and I love that aspect of it money is you know I love I just love that. I feel good when I go to sleep at night. Welcome to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss, where we explore the real stories, hard earned lessons, and game changing strategies of entrepreneurs who've moved beyond the side hustle and built businesses that scale with confidence. This show is proudly sponsored by Project Icon. I'm your host, Aisha Jorge Massengill, your Small Business Legal Guide. Let's dive in. Hey, bosses, welcome to the latest episode of Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. Today, our guest is Jordy Kern, founder of Seven Eagle Group based out of Amherst, Mass. Seven Eagle Group's mission is to connect military veterans and transitioning service members with lucrative and rewarding careers. Welcome, Jordy. Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me. I am fantastic. I'm really excited for you to be here. Thank you for agreeing to be on the pod. Of course. What an honor. You have really interesting background and as I understand it, grew up the son of a World War II Army veteran. Is that right? That is right. Yeah. My dad served, served right after Pearl Harbor and I never, never had that opportunity to do it. Never, you know, wish I did as I look back, but I never signed up myself. And as I got older, I said, man, I really want to do something to help this. these incredible men and women who do raise their hands for us. So, yeah, I actually, many decades ago have been to Pearl Harbor and it is a, a sobering but beautiful experience to go through the tour and to visit the site and all of that stuff. But ⁓ one question I have for you is, was there a time that you realized that that was a pretty big deal that your dad was a World War II veteran? Oh yeah, not when I was young. mean, I thought it was cool. He would tell stories every now and then, but it wasn't until I got older and then really understood what that, especially that generation did. mean, he left, he grew up very poor in South Boston and left for the war at age 17. Like I think he had, you know, was like a couple of days out of high school or something and just scared and nervous and never had left Boston before. He told me his story. He, put him on the ship to go to the South Pacific and him and his, one of his buddies from the neighborhood were so scared. They were just so young little boys, you know, they slept in the cot together and because they were so nervous and, but yeah, so nothing but respect for all those people who did have certain wars over the years. So. Well, I certainly appreciate the service. We chatted a little bit beforehand and talked about the fact that. I've got a couple of service members in my life and I always honor and appreciate folks who actually volunteer to go. And I remember having a conversation with my co-parent after he had done a tour in Iraq and my nerves were wrecked and I was like, I'm done with the army, like enough, enough with the army. And he would always give me all these explanations about TRICARE, health insurance and everything. And I'd like, I can get healthcare anywhere. And he, one time he actually brought his captain to like talk to me, talk me off the ledge. And I said, listen, what you got to tell me is I love my guys and I love what I do. Because that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Right. When you choose this, if you've, sometimes I get frustrated that, you know, if you've gone to an army base, the facilities are not the finest. I've been to Fort Sill, Fort Bliss. I've been to a lot of these bases and they're not always the finest. So it really. takes a beautiful soul to actually like volunteer. That's Regardless of whatever they do in the service. And the mill spouses, the men and women whose partner is over serving. mean, you know, as a military mom, it can take a toll on a whole family. So. It really can. So, okay. I always pay attention to sports stories and I'm afraid you said your dad grew up in South Boston. I'm a New Yorker. I don't want to fight with you on the Pogs. Well, we're New Yorkers too. Okay, okay. that's right. But I always pay attention to sports stories. And one thing that caught my attention was some of the work that you did with the Clemente family. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I didn't serve like I mentioned, but right after college, I just knew I wanted to have my own business. I never really wanted to work for anyone else. And I was just thinking of an idea of what I could do, something different. And I always liked baseball, played it growing up. So I just reached out to the Clemente's family who was a died, tried, tried, at a young age, but a real hero in Puerto Rico. These first hall of Famer, I believe from the Island told them I wanted to bring baseball teams, youth baseball teams, high school and little younger to Puerto Rico for like week long trips. And so I did that in my twenties and that was a lot of fun. Did that for eight years or something, and then worked with the New York Rangers too. brought hockey teams up to Canada and I saw you, you've worked at Under Armour so you know the, you know, the world of sports and, but that was fun. That was, that was a good time. Yes, yes, yes. you saw when I bought equal, they, the, so I'm very well versed. fact, I was, Oh, you're from your, your parents are from here. My grandparents and I grew up in the Bronx and I grew up going to Roberto Clemente State Park to swim every summer. my gosh. day. So I was. What's that? You and JLo. Yes, me and JLo. Well, she was on the six. was on the four line. So I'll forgive her that. But ⁓ but I also lived in Pittsburgh for a number of years where obviously he played and and I think he may have passed away on my birthday and I don't take that as a bad omen. But he did. He did. ⁓ Magnificent, magnificent work. And it seems to be a theme for you, Jordy, because you also, I think, served with Project Rubicon for some time. Tell me about I did a volunteer trip with them. That was amazing. They're a military organization that follows disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes. And they bring veterans and civilians who just go on site and help with the cleanup. And that was an amazing experience. went down to the... can you walk me through that moment? where you decided to start Seven Eagle Group. Sure. So I was, I'd run a few businesses, the baseball and hockey ones and a few others. And then I would, this was in my late forties and I was in between jobs. One of the businesses had failed and I was ready to start the next one and wanted to do something a little simpler, you know, where I can do it Didn't have to have an office and the overhead that some of the other ones did. And Just always enjoyed helping people connect with employers and presenting themselves to get hired. And I said, I want to combine that with something. And it came across like the idea of placing military vets. And that would be the niche of the business. you know, I, in one of my previous businesses, I had hired a, an army vet to work in sales on the team and he did the work of like five people and was just like an unbelievable talent. And. that stuck with me and I'm like, man, why these, these men and women have been taught the grit, the toughness, the leadership, the persistence, the mission focus, you know, that most civilians never get that training. I certainly didn't. And ⁓ I said, there's a need there, man. Let's help see if we see if I could help more of them connect with great companies, great opportunities so they can get the lives that they deserve, the high paying jobs, the ⁓ the leadership opportunities, you know, because as you know, there are too many vets are, you know, they're under, underemployed, they're unemployed. They're not happy with their work and with what they get to do every day. you know, like civilians, that's when problems can occur when people are not, you know, they don't get joy out of their daily life and they get, you know, upset when the alarm clock goes off because they got to go do it all again. And I felt it doesn't have to be that way. So. ⁓ yeah, so that was the idea behind seven Eagle and I launched that that was 12 years ago. And we've grown, we have about 30 people now we're still remote, which I love and reaching a lot more people in the community. And I just love the work. I wish I came across it in my twenties because I like what I'm better than, ⁓ I think I had seven other businesses over the years. Wow. So you had the heart for it and the passion for it, but what did this. early days look like when you're starting your agency from day to day? Yeah, it's, you know, it's a, it's a grind, man. You first of all, you gotta, you gotta really buy into the idea of, I'm going to be, I'm going to be my own boss and everything that that entails the good and the bad. Cause it is, it's tough, you know, it's not an easy path. It's not for the faint of heart. You gotta be willing to, you know, work, you know, 60, 80 hour weeks to get Get it going. Money is tight. You know, you have to be creative. You have to be willing to do everything from sales to marketing to admin, you know, cause you don't have the budget. You don't have the funds to usually bring on a big crew. But if you could find something that you love, something you're passionate about, you know, in my case, it was the idea of, let me, I want to give back to this group of people who I have nothing but respect for and did so much for us and they served and I didn't serve and I felt like that was a good way for me to contribute and do my part. And ⁓ that helps that gets you through, that gets you through the tough times, right? You know, I say to people, go go work for somebody else. It's not going to be easy either. You're going to work hard. If you want to get ahead, you're going to have to work hard and it's going to be tough days. You go work for yourself. It's the same, you know, you got to, you know, go full steam ahead and they're going to be tough days. And I just feel if you have a real passion behind that, you have a why, you feel like you're making a difference. I just feel it helps get through those tough days. So it sounds like one minor correction. You did not serve in a military capacity, but it sounds like based on all the things you've done with your life since then, you absolutely serve. I just wanted to call I guess you could say not at the same level, but. Yeah. Yeah, I do feel like I'm helping. just takes on a different form. They do a great job of preparing the men and women to be incredible workers on the civilian side, but they do a lousy job at helping them with their transition. They sort of give them a couple days of some classwork and they give them a pat on the back and say, go get them. And to a lot of people, it's really scary. And that might be somebody who served 20 years and retiring. They haven't had a civilian jobs, maybe since they were 16 years old, you know? And to give them that support, that community, that, you know, that confidence that they need to know that there are people out here who are in their corner and helping them. They don't have to do it alone. So. So I would imagine in the early days, because you talked about how hard it is. You talked about the grind that it can be when you're trying to build something from scratch. What did you anchor to when you had doubts or encountered kind of, you know, tough spots? What did you anchor to to kind of allow you to push forward 12 years later? Yeah, that's a great question. It's not just 12. In my case, it's 35 years later. I because I've been my own boss for 35 years, right? Amazing. And it is, there are days that it's so hard. It's tough. got like no one to blame but yourself. things go wrong. Right. But I, you know, there's just so many, so many moving parts to running a business, you know, and, especially if you want to really grow it fast and, ⁓ it's a lot of pressure in a lot of, gotta get good, do as good as possible in many different areas, but, ⁓ there's no steady paycheck, you know, it's flow of this, but. As hard as that is, don't think looking back I'd want to ever go do it the other way. I don't think, I was just not cut out to go work for somebody else. love, I love that when, when things go well, I love that, you know, I played a big part in that and it was, you know, at the same token, when, when things don't go well, I like taking responsibility. I don't like blaming someone else for, you know, where we are or whatever. So. I just, I really enjoy the being your own boss. You know, I have two kids, both out of the house now, but you know, like I never missed a game or whatever. I I love working at home. I love, you know, hey, and it's the middle of day. I want to take the dogs for a walk. I'll go do that for an hour. And I like that freedom, that flexibility to sort of chart my own course and, know, and I love it. It's, you know, but I'm still grinding every day and you know, this, this, you know, work sometimes I'll get up or not. Sometimes every, I get up early even on weekends and I put in five, six hours in the morning, but I don't look at it as work. You know, that's what I was saying. Like if you can find the business that you're passionate about, that it doesn't feel like a chore, you know, as much, feels like, like I get up early Sunday morning, Saturday morning. And I like want to do it. I'm like, yeah, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Like I want to do that. It doesn't, it's not like a prep. got to work. This sucks. It should be right. But anyway, that just made, doesn't always make it easy on, you know, relationship, you know, my spouse. Why work and again, Jesus. Right. So, but anyway, I wouldn't have it. how do you, what, what's your, what is your morning routine? Like, since you are an early riser, like how do you structure your day? I have a hard time staying up late at night. I, by like 9 30, I'm in bed. can't, I'm just falling asleep. I'm so wiped. But I get up at a little before five and I go to the gym during the week and I just go for half an hour or something to plan a fitness. And then I go exercise and come back. And I like to sort of sit and like on the couch or lie down and just do like deep breathing or just think about the day or whatever. I do that for like 15. minutes and then get showered and get after it, you know. But I like those, you know, so I'm at my desk from like, I don't know, whatever, 630 to nine before it gets crazy. Like those two and a half hours, I'm usually very productive during that time period because I'm not on calls or do an email, you know, so I can be productive then. And then, you know, my day winds down about six-ish or so. And yeah, so. Yeah, the, ⁓ those early morning hours I know for me are sacred because it is the time where it's your priority for the day. Once you start taking the calls and opening up the Pandora's box that is your email, can, it can get away from you. And I'm not at a stage of my career where I can just ignore the emails. You know, there's some people that they. I don't have to read it yet. No, I have clients. you're your own business, there's no, I'll read it tomorrow. No, it's like, you should not put it off. So you have to stay locked in. Morning hours. You can say, I'm not going to look at my phone for a couple hours when you wake up. And I try to do that, which is good. So, um, getting back to the business, you do something really unique with these one minute. veteran video introduction. You did your research. I love this. How did you come up with that? Well, I I you'll appreciate this because you were you were in HR too and stuff. It's like I hate resumes. I hate them. It's like the the resume it's like it had the system hasn't changed in like a hundred years. It's like you want a job and you fill out a one sheet of paper about yourself and then somebody looks at that piece of paper and says yes or no and I don't want anyone judging me on a sheet of paper. Like there's so much to more to each of us, right? And if you were not fortunate enough to go to a great school or have great connections and you know, maybe you didn't have internships for a number of reasons or your work experience was just average, you you get passed over today and ⁓ it's really hard for They're for both sides. The hiring manager, especially today with chat GPT, everybody now looks like a superstar, right? Cause chat GPT is only going to say you're perfect for the job, right? So it's so misleading. It's so easy to enter, to practice like interview answers, you know, and rehearse them. And you could sound so polished today, but especially with the chat GPT resume, it's hard. The hiring manager. You know, on an average company in America, they get 250 applicants for one job. So imagine being the hiring manager and getting a stack of 250. It's like, where do you begin? How do how do I begin sorting this out? Right. And often the person who has the best resume is not necessarily the best person for that job. There's so many factors and, and, ⁓ and then the, from the candidate standpoint, right. How do you stand out? You might have a. ⁓ mediocre resume at best, but you're just a superstar. Like you got magnetic, magnetic personality. You've got great energy or go-getter. You got toughness, right? All the great qualities that employers want, but they never get a chance to show those because they're being judged by a sheet of paper. So I said, let me, let's just see if we can record these vets and get them, even if they're just 10 seconds. Hey, my name is Jordy. Thank you for checking me out. I'm so excited. That's enough for a hiring manager to say, yeah, yeah, I think I like this guy. Let's look at his resume or let's invite him in or, ⁓ I don't know. It's not a good match with who else, right? But it's almost like a first interview. You don't need to meet with somebody for 20 minutes to see, we going to be a good match? You can listen to them introduce themselves for a minute. And you know, you're like, yeah, I think we're, we want to go further with this one. So I started that right when I, 12 years ago, the, video intro. ⁓ wow. The clients love them. They love the speed of being able to hire. They love that it's very revealing, you know. Especially if you have like a forward-facing position or a position that's interacting with other people. You want to know about their personality, how they communicate, how passionate they are. Are they smiling? Are they, they look likable, like you want to hang out with them all day. You can't tell any of that from a resume. Right? People who get hired are the ones who have the best resume. And because the ones who you're missing out on are not even getting to the interview stage. They're going right to the rejects. And one of my favorite hires was I was helping a woman out of the military who was interested in a job and she had just this horrible resume. was like, awful. I'm being who I am. like, I'll give her, I give everyone a shot. So I'm like, come on, let's meet on Zoom. So I meet her on Zoom. and was blown away. didn't even say a word. Like the Zoom camera, the starting up that while you're connecting and getting your audio, she's like, hey. She had a great smile and she was so friendly and welcoming and warm. chatted for 10 minutes and I said, what are you doing now? She goes, ⁓ I work at Burger King or Wendy's or one of those. I was like, what are you doing there? There's nothing wrong with those jobs, but not for you. You served in the military. Why are you there? ⁓ they pay me $18. It's the best job I can get. I was a mechanic or something. Who's going to hire? She's like, had no confidence in her worth in corporate America. And I said, I go, me 20 minutes. And I took her video and I sent it to a hiring manager I knew near her and they hired her on the spot, just by looking at the video and she got off to a career. was paying, I think like 60 K. So she like tripled or whatever she was making it. the fast food restaurant and now got on a path that can hopefully provide for her, for her family, where the other one would have been, he hit a wall, like how much you're to make in those places, you know? So that, like, love stories like that, and that was all because of using video to present. That's the difference between a job and a career. And I would say having been someone on both sides of the fence of trying to make it through the bots, right? reviewing your resume. of all, if you don't, even back in the day, if you didn't have the right keywords in your resume, you know, the HRIS system wasn't going to let you through. And that can be really frustrating. And I was telling someone today, I always say, listen, if I get in the room, I'm closing, but like, got to get past the That's part. That's the hardest part. So I love the fact that you've You know, on average, that's an average company. Somebody applies to Under Armour, put a couple zeros on the end. they post a job, I mean, they're going to have 2000 applicants, right? But an average job, 250. The average hiring managers may be going to interview five, 10 tops. Right. So you've got a couple percentage chance to get through all that, that mass. That's hard. It's hard today. And especially there are programs that let people today. apply to it, it'll apply for them to 200 jobs a day. It's like, yeah. So it's really hard. Okay. Let's pivot to growing your team because I think you have like 45 plus team members now. have about, yeah, we, think we're about 30 right now, I think about 15 of them, maybe 10 or 15 are, um, called like full timers with us, right? Employees and the others are all skill bridges. So I, I'm a customer too. Like I only want to hire somebody who gets a chance to kick the tires on what it's like to work here at Seven Eagles. So they spend like three months working here and, ⁓ and make sure we like each other both sides. And then if we do, we convert them over. That's amazing. Yeah. What has been the hardest part though, when you've had to scale, cause it came from you, you know, with a mission and now you've got 30 plus people. What was it like doing that? so many things that are hard, know, and tough and probably if I had to say the, first of all, you always, you always think you're going to find someone who's going to like work as hard as you as the owner. That never happened. It's not, and it's not their responsibility to, know, it's your company who own it. Right. So, um, that can be hard sometimes when they're like shutting down it. You know, four o'clock and you know, they're not going to think about it until the next day when they walk in where me it's like, ⁓ my God, this business never leaves my mind. know, but probably the biggest challenge is, and what the advice I'd give to anyone who's starting a business is you got to get good at sales and you got to hire, can sell. Cause if you can't bring in the revenue of by selling your product or service, the business, you know, it's so much more challenging. Money solves a lot of problems. When you have good revenue coming in, you can muscle your way through most problems that you're going to encounter. Most businesses fail because they run out of money. What do you think makes a good salesperson? What are the qualities of a good salesperson? Just the grit that just like, get out of my way. I'm to be successful. That belief in themselves that never stop. Like, need to sell one product a week, right? That's my goal. Like don't leave Friday until you sold that product and just have that desire to be the, in the top 1%, you know, make so much money. Cause life's better when you have money, right? And to have somebody who has that ambition for being a super earner, you know, cause they have big goals behind that. Not just to earn the money, but ⁓ I want to take my family to Disney World this Christmas or I want to sock away money or buy a house or whatever their goals are, they can attach those to their performance. that's the, you, if you can find revenue generators. and you put your foot on the gas, you'll make the rest of the business work. If you can find people who believe in it or willing to reach out and have conversations with whoever to put the revenue in the bank, if you can do that, man, everything gets so much easier. I find that there is a rare individual who says money doesn't matter, that they actually live their lives in a way that exemplifies that. They live very minimally and they don't have a lot of bells and whistles. But for the vast majority of us, It's not the money in and of itself. It's what it, as you said, what it allows us to do to take the trips, to carve out the time, to build a business the way you want to build it. Money does matter. to get back, like we all want to make life better for others, family members, people we love, causes that are important to us. You can have such a great impact if you can make some, make as much money as you can. Cause then you can do great things with it, right? I don't know, just sometimes I feel like a lot of times people use that as an excuse for their behavior, like they know they're not making money or doing well with their, oh, well, that's not important to me, you know. How did you approach funding and financing your business in the beginning or even now to help bridge that gap? Yeah, that's another Great question. also I wish I had a good answer for that other than you do everything and anything you can do. I'd never wanted to have investors out of the gate. By the way, it's extremely difficult to get investors when you just have an idea, when you don't have a track record or something to show them. But I never wanted to give up ownership of the business because I owe everything I do. believe in it. I believe I can make it really successful. So I just grind it out and running up. credit cards to pay stuff, you know, taking line of credits, taking loans, you know, I just, you have to do, you do whatever you have to do if you believe in it to make it work. You know, that's why the stakes are high. You got to be a little bit of a, you know, cowboy or cowgirl to be in this business. Cause it's, you know, it's, it's not for the faint of heart, put it that, but you know, you know, as long as you're doing your best to make smart. decisions every day and keeping an eye on the debt of the business and paying it down when you can, you know, and if, you know, I know we're going to be successful. I know we're going to get to where we want to go. And when that happens, that'll be a good result because I want a hundred percent of the business and it'll be in a good, good spot. know? Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ in your day to day, Are there certain systems that you now rely on to kind of free you up to operate in your zone of genius? Yeah, good question. Another hard one to do, but, but it's super important to have those processes in place. have a really great team working with us. So I'm trying, especially now, cause I'm, I have like a three year plan for myself. I want to get this to a place in three years and then, and then. do other things with my career. So I have good people who, you know, somebody helps me with my email every day. One of the assistants, she'll go through and do 90 % of cleaning out all the emails. Someone else responds to the phone calls, someone else, you know. So I try to farm out as many of the tasks as possible that I don't need to be doing. Anyone, you know, with a little training can do them. That's really hard as a business owner, but it's so important. I wish I'd learned that that lesson earlier is, you know. For example, if I want to make $100,000 for myself in a year, that's roughly $100 an hour. So if I'm looking at a task I have to do, if I could hire somebody for less than $100,000 to do that task, you got to do it, right? Sometimes it's harder than, it's easier than, it's easier, sometimes it's harder to do. But for example, if I have to like build a list of prospective customers and it's just typing and admin type list, And that's going to take me an hour to do that. That hour should be spent on revenue generating activities for the business. could hire somebody for $10, $15 an hour to build that list for me. And the list is going to be 99 % of the same list I would have built, but I need to leverage my time so I can do more. I can bring in sales and drive revenue in that hour, which is going to pay more than a hundred dollars, not a $10 an hour task. But you sometimes you're like, I'll just do it. then, you realize it's not, it's a horrible, horrible use of time if you're the owner of the business. sounds like that the Dan Martell philosophy of letting, letting that go and knowing your value. But yeah, I mean, how do you deal with the control issue for me, my email, there are days where I feel like it's eating me alive, but the idea of letting someone. muck around in the email gives me anxiety. I know it's simple, you gotta let it go, but like, did you get to the point where you your admin get in there? You never do. mean, it's just like, because I'll even sit like her name is Mary, who helps me each morning with my email, but then I just get so stressed out because I'm looking at the email inbox during the day and it's like 40, 50, 60. And I'm like, oh crap, I can't wait till the morning for her to do, I'll just do it. And then I end up spending the... I shouldn't, but I get stuff that's the as you. Yeah. And I have multiple emails, multiple tabs, you know, then you got the personal email and it just, it's a little bit crazy. All right. Now, one of the things that's interesting to me is like you have cybersecurity and IT fields that are constantly evolving. How do you keep up with the skills that the companies need versus what the veterans are trained in? I we talk about skill bridge, but are there other things that you do to help bridge the gap for them? So yeah, I'm not an expert at any of the jobs that the companies need or like, you know, I don't know much about cybersecurity, but we don't really need, we just need to be good at evaluating, not about, but in preparing the talent for success and helping them present themselves in the best light to these companies. And then we step aside, we make it easy for the companies to meet the candidates and then they talk to one another. So we're more of like the middle man there and just making the matchmaker, I guess. Okay. Let me ask you this, is there a common mistake that you see other recruiting agencies make when they try to work with the veteran community? Or are you not paying attention to them because you're too busy killing? It's a tough recruiting is a tough business. You know, it's just, so we're a little unique in that we don't do the evaluating and presenting of the candidates anymore. used to, but we pivot. Now we have more of a platform. It's a web-based platform where it's almost like a LinkedIn where the hiring managers can come on and watch all these videos and read resumes and do searches and saying, Hey, I need a. someone who wants to be a lawyer in Los Angeles and they could see those candidates and then they can talk to one another. So we sort of step aside and let them recruit because for the first, well, the first 10 years of our career, we were that middleman. We were the recruiter and it's hard. It's like, you, if you said to me, Hey, I want to hire a paralegal, go out and present a shortlist to me. And I go out and talk to 50 people. And I present three of them to you. The people I like, what's the likelihood there would be the exact same people if you did that work? chances are they're going to be different. Cause I might look at someone and say, ⁓ my God, look at her. Her, her, her personality is awesome. You might look at the person and say, what kind of experience does she know? I don't need that. Who else you got? Right. And it just, there's so many variables. It's such a weird business. So, ⁓ you know, to answer your question, I just think it's a tough. It's a tough business. It's hard. And, unfortunately, most vets don't make it their first year. Half of them, they quit or get fired in their first year out of the service because I feel they just don't put the thought into what they want to do before they start out looking for jobs. Right. They don't do that searching and it's tough to figure out what do I want to do with my life? Right. What's my passion? And they just jump into a career or they get a recruiter says, Hey, I see you were a mechanic in the military. Hey, I got a mechanic job at a manufacturing company. And, ⁓ okay. And then before you know it, you're doing the mechanic job when you realize, no, I want to own a restaurant, man. That's what I want to do. Right. And we try to that person and say, you don't be a mechanic. Let's get you down the restaurant path. know, that's the problem, whether it's with the military or civilians. I think that's the general problem. recruiting the recruiters are just trying to make those placements as quickly as possible because that's when they get paid. So they might jam a candidate who's not necessarily want to do that job or not the right fit. might try to push him or her through. But. to your point, you know, that's the importance of having candidates that stand out. Cause I think what people don't appreciate is the internal pressure to hire fast. they may not necessarily go deep into an applicant pool. Cause they have pressure from that manager like I need someone now. Losing money. Right. So hurry up. All right. If someone is listening and they're thinking about doing a mission driven business, kind of like you, what's the one thing that you would tell them that you wish someone would have told you when you started, you know, marrying that mission and being in your heart led, but also being in a business to make money. Right. Yeah. You know because I started 23 I wish I Wish I it's cuz I'm crazy, but I wish I worked harder when I was younger I wish I like pound I just I work twice as hard as whatever I did because I you know 50 give 59 now and You want your life as you get older you want it to get easier not hard work and not feel like I'm like come on man I was supposed to be at the beach by now Are you know what's going on? I'm working hard now. I, and I focused on, I didn't focus enough on, want to make a lot of money and I should have, I wish I was more dialed in on like just more ambitious financial. I was doing, you know, like you said, I was out in Puerto Rico with the Roberto, with the Clemente's and out on hockey rinks. I was just like, ⁓ this is great. What a fun job, you know, and I got, it was a cool job to talk about, but it didn't make the money that I should have been making at that age. So I wish I had, I could do it again. I would have. ⁓ pick something I would have been a little bit more finance, more financially ambitious and said, man, come on, put your head down. Let's go. So when you're 40, you can do it, what you want to do with your time. So you're not in the grind as much, you know, cause I want, there's so many other goals I have for myself that I want to do. And so that's why I'm trying to go super fast right now. Yeah. We have a lot of parallels in that regard. Although I, I think when I hear you talk about all the wonderful things you've done, that there's a fulfillment there that you do get despite not having the money. Absolutely. That's what I think. love, I love like before I got on with you, somebody sent me note. He goes, I just want to thank you so much for coming into my life and helping me. it was just a guy in our Academy. And, but it's a stressful, stressful time, you know, for when you're transitioning out of something where you know what you're doing every second of the day and being told, go here, go here. Right. And now you're coming into the unknown of being thrown into this civilian world. And you got to, most of them have families, have the house, they have bills and to have somebody, have what our team does in their corner with them. And hey, we got you, let's go, come on, we're going to do this. It's super rewarding. And I love that aspect of it. Money aside, you know, I love, I just love that. I feel good when I go to sleep at night. So. And that really matters. All right, Jordi, I'm going to get you out of here with this one. When you hear the phrase, do small business like a big boss, what does that mean to you? Do small business like a big, that to me, means business today. It's not like when I, when I started in like 1990, right? My first business, it was hard, but you, needed like, Oh, go out and buy business cards and then you're dropping a hundred dollars. Go start a webpage when they came around a few years later. it's like, I remember paying $15,000 for a webpage. know, today it's the barriers to enter are so much lower. You can run a business out of your house. You don't have to have big expenses. Do it like a boss, like just freaking find something you love, something that you can envision. growing into something substantial and everyone should go into business ownership with an exit in mind. Like I'm going to grow this because I want to exit. don't want to otherwise just go get a job, right? You don't want to get an expensive job for yourself. You want to get into it because you want to have a big outcome sometime in the future. Grow it like a boss, man. Just frigging go for it. You can do anything. I've seen people start businesses in the craziest, craziest things. I just saw it online. One guy did a business. All he did was got a jar filled it with water and put a cup at the bottom. And he'd go up to like convenience stores and say, Hey, can I put this jar with the water right next to the cash register? And when people get change back from buying a candy bar, give away a hundred dollars. If anyone gets it into the cup and just drop the coin and you know, it swivels down and he makes $200 a day. He splits that with the, with the, uh, store owner $200 a day for getting a jar, filling it with water and letting people play a game to win a hundred dollars. Wow. I'm like, man, why didn't I think of that? It's crazy. It's crazy. It's like, uh, whatever that is. 50 grand. That's definition of passive income. just gave it There's so many cool things you can do today, especially with the internet. makes it so easy to look like a superstar and there's so many great tools and ChatGPT can help you and to just frigging go for it and have big goals. I love when people have big goals for themselves and cause it's so easy to get caught up and say, I just want to run a small business and make a thousand a month. I'm like, no, don't do that. Make a thousand a day. Come on, go for it. And you can be creative, take chances, take risks. Don't be afraid to fail. I always tell people like, Your first business as you're getting going, pick businesses that when you fail, it's going to be fine, right? Maybe it's sweat equity, but it's not, don't, don't go buy a pizza shop and put your life savings into getting a lease and, ⁓ you know, don't do that because you're going to fail. The only way you're going to be successful in business ownership is getting through a lot of frigging failure. Every day there's something you got to, some hurdle you got to get over. Until you have those experiences, you're not going to get good. got it. You need to have them to learn those hard lessons. And I want you to learn those lessons when there's not a lot at stake. Don't put your, you know, don't take out a bank loan for a hundred thousand dollars on and you've never done a business before. Do a, know, one of the vets, when, ⁓ I'm Facebook marketplace. just go around the neighborhood and say, Hey, can I sell your old junk for you? And we'll split it 50 50 and making tons of money. go, Oh yeah, I have these old golf clubs or this old bed or diaper changer and just take everyone's junk and sell it. It's not his. just sold it. Made money every day. That like, that's a great first business, something like that, right? Started dog walking business. don't know. Just do something to get in the game and just you'll get better. each time and then maybe on your second business, your third, your fourth, that's when you, it can get really exciting. anyway. Awesome. Jordan, where, where can the people find you in 70 years? if you ⁓ are ⁓ a military veteran, a military spouse, we'd love to have you. Everything we do here is free for you at seven eagle.com. The number seven, word Eagle. If you are a business owner and you need talent, you need labor and whatever role, let us know, man. We can have this through this SkillBridge program. You can have some of our candidates, our vets can come work for you for two, three, four months and you don't even have to pay. There's no salary due. You get a chance to see them in action. It's a great way to grow your business. So let us know as well. You can reach out us. You reach out to me on email. It's jk at seven eagle.com or we just through this site, but we'd love to love to help you. Thank you so much for your time and sharing your stories today. It's been amazing. And hey, for my bosses, that's it for today. Build it messy, build it scared. Just don't build it small. I love it. If resonated with you in any way, please make sure to like and subscribe. It really helps us get our message out. That's all we got for you today. Thank you. Aisha. That was great. Thanks, Jordy.