Return to Base: Army Veteran & Alumni Engagement Leader Share Transition Strategies

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Return to Base, we welcome Eric Horton, the Executive Director of Veteran Services for the state of Tennessee, and Michelle Olive, the Senior Director of Alumni Engagement for the Commit Foundation. Bravo Zulu, this is Victor Lima, we are RTB. This is Return to Base, a Veteran Life podcast. Welcome back to the Return to Base podcast. Today is a special episode, we have two guests instead of one, which is new for this podcast and something that we're going to try to do in the future. From Tennessee, we have Eric Horton, who's the Executive Director of Veteran Services, former Army guy, Army veteran, retired after 26 years and was lucky enough to ride around with me in a Humvee a couple months ago, and veterans in Humvees spilling coffee. Also from Virginia Beach, Virginia, we have Michelle Olive, that's Michelle 1L Olive spelled the traditional way, who is a member of, excuse me, she's the Senior Director of Alumni Engagement at the Commit Foundation. Welcome to the podcast guys, how you guys doing? Pretty good. Doing well. Awesome. Did I get all that right? Did I get your introduction right, Michelle 1L? That's going to be your nickname from now on. Michelle with 1L. You can call me Michael, if I don't realize it's Michelle. Michelle. Also, Michelle is coming to us from inside the space shuttle, I think. No, just kidding. In Virginia Beach, there's a huge Navy population there. There's a ton of fighter jets and stuff flying overhead all the time. If you hear that, she's not being abducted by aliens or anything. It's just part of the way of life in Virginia. How do you even get used to that? I don't even hear it anymore. You don't even hear it anymore. Okay, cool. Yeah. I visited Virginia Beach for school once, and I stayed kind of on the beach, and I was amazed just starting at like 5 a.m. every five minutes over the Atlantic Ocean, one plane after another. It was crazy, but it was a good time. They get it worse down there. Where we are is not quite as bad, and I say that I don't hear it. Obviously, I hear it. You just sort of tune it out, and you don't realize it. I had this. I would literally just pause my conversation and talk into somebody and wait for it to pass by and then resume the conversation subconsciously. Don't even realize what you're doing. When people aren't from here, they're just kind of like, what is going on? I grew up in Southern California in San Diego, and we used to go to these plays and things like that at Balboa Park. There's this amphitheater where they do Shakespeare, basically, and different plays. Anyways, it's right in path of Lindbergh Field, and when the planes start coming, it's like the people in the play literally press pause. Don't move until the plane goes away, and if you're not accustomed to it, you're like, what the heck is going on here? Welcome from Virginia Beach. Appreciate you being here, and of course, Eric, how are you doing today? Yeah, pretty good, man. Just enjoying some sunshine over to the left, but man, just living the dream. Good, good. So the topic of this conversation is kind of a heavy one to get through in the short amount of time that we have, but it's about building your brand, figuring out who you are, and then actually kind of the reverse, figuring out who you are and then building your brand, building your following on LinkedIn with recruiters, et cetera. But for veterans, it's a difficult thing to do because I know when I was coming out and from a conversation that I've had with other veterans, when I was getting out, I had no idea who I was. I know I couldn't go out and be a Green Beret for Facebook or Google or anything like that. So I had to ask myself, what am I? And that was something that was pretty difficult to do because I had no idea what was out there. I had no idea what I'd be good at. I just thought like everybody else in the Army, when you get put in a position, you'll learn it and then you'll try to find success. So Michelle, if you want to talk about a little bit what you do at the Commit Foundation and how that relates to finding who people are, finding people's self, if you will. Yeah. And I think probably like a lot of people in this space, my own journey was a little bit of a bumpy and somewhat funny one now that I look back at it to get in here. And I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I worked in mental health. And even getting to the part where I was in grad school was kind of hilarious all in itself. But nonetheless, this notion of like just wanting to help people, right. The plague of probably most social workers. And I ended up getting a job working at Little Creek Base because it was close to where I lived, probably more so than anything else. Right. This wasn't like I had this calling to go work with the military. This was probably initially started out as like a convenience thing. But what it ended up turning into was was that passion part. Like I really enjoyed this population. I really there's something special. Right. And it's hard to put your finger on it. But when I can see that as someone who's never had a military background of my own and I try to tell people like that's the part we're getting everyone else to realize and see it. This part of working. I do mental health there. I ended up doing some work embedded with some specific command groups and then went over to Damnack and was embedded within a naval special warfare command in the psychology department. Again, mental health was always the focus. When I met Emery Craig, who is the CEO or at the time was the CEO of the Commit Foundation. And when we had this conversation, I was really just kind of being nosy. A lot of the service members were going through and listening to her program and raving about it, talking about this really enlightened perspective that they were able to get on like who they are and what they wanted to do. And and within a matter of a few minutes of our conversation, she really was able to even pick me apart of this. Like you are not defined by what you do for your own job, even as a civilian. Right. Like, why is it that you enjoy this? And when I was able to boil down those ingredients of like what it is about this role and stuff like that, and she's like, that's what I do for people every day. I help them figure out like, you know, the what is the passion behind it? What you know, what are those core values? What are the what is their purpose? Because if you can figure that out, there's probably a lot of different roles and things to do on that in the civilian world that will scratch all those itches. But too many of them are just going for like the next challenge, the next horizon. None of these people that we have generally been serving are truly at risk of unemployment. So this is making sure that they find some place that they get reinvest themselves at the right level because they are satire performers, because they do so much to offer and helping them see that for themselves, helping them get that message across to the other side. And when you do like it's it's beautiful. And it's really hard to explain this to a transitioning service member. I think sometimes we have that first conversation and there's like a lot of fear and there's a lot of doubt and that humbleness that almost becomes like self-deprecating sometimes. And getting to move them from there to like someplace where they're like, I get it now and I and I can see it. And I know exactly what you were talking about back in our first conversation. Right. And I tell you what, as you said, clinical psychologist, correct? No, clinical social worker, clinical social worker. I was going to say, if you had to choose a population to start in clinical social work or clinical psychology, Little Creek's probably a good place to because those students are nuts. Let's face it. Just kidding. I got a lot of respect for the people out at Little Creek, but they could be a bit they could be a bit wild. Right. So, so, yeah. A lot of divers there. A lot of divers. A lot of divers. That's right. That's right. A lot of good guys. Very much fit. Very fit, at least physically. But, you know, that's interesting that you worked for worked with that high performing type A population and you see that those question marks or that hesitancy or even that self doubt creep in to to those people when it comes to transitioning. Right. Absolutely. I mean, and a lot of us, we have a segment, you know, we've often talked to folks through the difference between, I think, courage and confidence. And it and it really gets because, you know, you don't realize how much you rely on confidence in the military, but you train over and over and over for something before you execute on anything. So it's repeating something so many times that when it comes time to do it, you are confident. But in transition, there really isn't this like repeat training cycle that prepares you for this. So like this is, you know, there are pieces you can train for, but this is where you rely on the courage. Right. Right. Thousands of small moments and you have to take a step into an unknown and do things that you've never done before. And I think that's the part where I think the courage comes in. Well, and I think some of that, too, though, is is not just a courage piece. It's you don't even know what questions to ask. You don't even know what to train for. And in those like where you're at at Little Creek, you know, they're trained to hide weaknesses because they need to perform all the time. So they've been ingrained to perform at all costs because the mission is greater than the man. So you take that same drive and desire and that could be which is kind of a great piece that you've been able to solve, because if you took all of that away. Right. And now you put them at the doorstep to jump out into something. They don't know where they're going, what they're doing. There's no support network. There's no communication. There's no there's just an open, vast area. And so, you know, getting them to to be totally vulnerable enough to recognize, hey, I don't have to hide things. I have to be able to ask for things. And it's it's a courageous piece is powerful. It's an interesting thing. Right. So you go from a known that has a ton of built in unknowns. Right. So so being in the military, a lot of times you don't know where you're going to be in six months. You don't know what missions are going to do or what dangers you're going to face. But it's something that we acclimate to. And when we look at that duty to 14 day or, you know, should I should I stay or should I go? I know when when I had those opportunities to get out of the military, I was I was scared, you know, early on. I was like, man, maybe I should just do this 20 years so I could get that pension. And I ultimately did to 20 years. I enjoyed my career in the military, which is which is why I stuck around. But I know that there are a lot of people out there who are just shell shocked, frightened and don't have any idea what they're going to do. What what are some of the common things that you hear? I imagine it's like, I don't even know what's out there. Right. Something similar to that. I mean, I think it usually starts with that. Like you try to get them to tell me a little bit about yourself. And that's usually that's the first trip wire. Ah, ah. I am a good diver. Yeah. Or, you know, and some like sometimes I don't know if people realize how candid tends to come across. But these general terms that people might use and they're like, I'm a dynamic leader of it. And it's like, what does that mean? I hate elevator pitches. They're they feel so fine. But but I know they're important. I'm not going to poo poo on on getting your 30 second elevator pitch, but it does end up coming across. So. Or so cliche and robotic. Yeah. It doesn't have to. Right. I think if you can get to some of the like truly authentic pieces like what I mean, Cliff, like what makes you you really you that you could have a genuine conversation then then that's where the goodness happens. But, you know, the the surface level and some of that probably requires being vulnerable. Right. It requires probably a lot of introspection to sit back and do some of that. You know, I don't know. I'd say like the value alignment work and like really like something beyond honor, courage and commitment. Right. But what really is going to get you out of bed every day with some fire in your belly? Right. I imagine in the community that you worked with, at least in my experience with folks from the community that you work with, a lot of them will say things like, I'm thinking about getting into venture capitalism or banking. And you're like, what does that mean to you? And that's really like we kind of have an idea of who we think we're going to be. But only at a surface level. And you start asking that question, like, why do you want to get into venture capital? Why do you want to get into banking? It always comes back to why. Right. And if you could have a really good answer to that, why? Great, because there's probably a lot of other industries where you could also find that why. But then you just have to make sure it's a good fit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And I think I was going to say about that, you know, why it comes in many different forms and fashions. You know, it's just what is what's the intrinsic thing that you hold valuable? Right. And and I've even heard a lot. And we had a great conversation with a good friend that's here. You know, July 3rd, we had a you know, there was a colleague that it actually was a part of the 22 statistic. Right. But we had just had conversations like a couple of days before that. And, you know, this guy said he had everything. He had a man cave that was just unbelievable. And when we were asked him, like, hey, man, what are you going to do? And he's like, I'm not going to do anything right now because I'm 100 percent, you know, from the VA. So I've got that income. I'm retired, you know, 28 years in the Army. So I got that income. I don't have a care in the world. I don't have a need in the world. Right. But at the end of the day, we kind of had this we had this debate over again, like, how do we miss that? What happened? I don't understand. And we we kind of came up to the conclusion that, you know, what if it was his why wasn't tied to the financial security is why it was who he was afterwards. Right. What you take the uniform off, what's left? What is your what is your intrinsic why it's going to bring value to you? And it can't be revolving around an economic or a job. It has to be something much deeper than that. And it you know, and so I cringe now when I hear guys say I'm not going to work or I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to stay at home and go fishing. And I'm like, that's going to be good enough for a little while. But what happens when it's not there anymore? You know what happens when you say it's too dang cold? I want to be out there. And you're so young. You know, if you come in the military at 20, you leave at 40 and you live to statistics as 80, that's halftime in your football game of life. Like you have a lot of fire left in you. If you don't know what that why is, the job's not going to give it to you. You know, and not working, it's not going to give it to you. But that why has to be watered down enough to where you're going to, you're going to be able to find a purpose to get up and do something. Yeah, that's, that's an important part of it for sure. And something that I think a lot of people struggle with. It's that why is why, why are you going to work? I want to make a ton of money. Well, that's, that's interesting. But you had mentioned that doesn't a lot of times bring self-satisfaction, right? Right. So you had something to add Michelle? I was just saying, I mean, yeah, that comes back to that life design. Right. So I can do this. I usually, if I had to tell somebody they only had one thing that they could do, I would say like that core value piece. Right. Because if you have a great awareness of what's important to you and then you deliberately lead and like in your conversations and whatever about what's important to you, I feel like that opens doors. And, you know, as long as you can, you can listen, you can assess, you can figure out a good fit. There's a lot of things you can learn from just doing that one part. And, you know, and if you do that one part, maybe you will realize that doing nothing is not going to be a good fit, you know what I mean? Or, or that you have other things that you want to focus on and how you want to spend your, you know, design your life and how you want to spend your time. I think if people do that, that piece around the value alignment, and as long as you can tell some good stories around it too, cause that's all, that's good. Right. Like to be able to wrap it up with like, give me an example of why you think that matters to you. But well, you know, what you find out really quickly is that I'm just going to be blunt is we find out that we're kind of full of shit. Right. And we, we, we think we have it together, but a lot of times we really don't. And I think that it's important that we recognize that as early as possible. And that's where organizations like the commit foundation and, and other, a lot of organizations are out there right now. It's, it's pretty crowded, but they're all, most of them are very well-meaning. And I know the commit foundation has been around for a bit and, and really is there to, to help, but somebody or excuse me, the veteran needs to go out a lot of times and ask for help, find the resources and, and get some of those questions not answered for them, but at least get on a trail that leads them to the answers to those questions. So tell us a little bit about more about the commit foundation. If you, if you don't mind. Yeah, we, you know, coming up on our 10th year actually now, which is amazing and in a pretty big state of a, I guess, scale, if you would, but the focus has always been on a business like quality over quantity. And so the notion of having an in-depth conversation, right. Someone who applies, talks to a director of veteran service, and we sit down and try to pull on those strings of like, which parts of this, have you figured out which parts are you still, like, do you still have gaps? And I know a lot of people come with this, I call it like bias to action, right. It was very tactical. I need a resume. I need to take some interview skills. And I'm like, dude, what do you even want to be like, like back up the bus a little bit and figure this out. Or even for the ones who say like, I want to go into venture capital. Great. Tell me a little bit more about that and why. And I think if you can even share and like normalize this notion of, I've had a lot of conversations with people who have the most impressive resumes. I mean, you look at like, I look at the piece of paper and I feel like I'm not even worthy of talking to them. And then you go and have a beer with them on a Friday night and find out that they're miserable. They're not okay. They're making lots of money. And they think they failed in transition. They can't figure out where they went wrong. And often I think it comes down to, they just didn't actually go after what was going to be a good fit. And it's sucking their souls. So a lot of this, we try to get people in this place of like, figure out what fills your cup, figure out what's going to be a good fit. We can help you figure out how to go out and get it or find it and figure out the gaps from there. But there isn't a template to this approach. So I can't say that if you apply to commit foundation, you're going to get A, B, and C. It really kind of depends. Where are you? Where are you trying to go? How do you need to get there? And we do that. And we're able to say that we'll provide you as much or as little as you need along the way. And from a human standpoint like that, it ends up being like relationships, right? I mean, Cliff, the people I'm talking to when they apply, like by the end of it, by the end of the journey, right? Like you're tight. And that's, and it's amazing because I know by the way, some amazing veterans. I recently moved into this alumni side with the commit foundation because the other part of this is taking care of them going forward. So a few years down the road, you know, if you decide you want to pivot, you can come back for those who still want to serve. And I see a lot of that, like they're, they miss their military family. I'm like, well, then come back and help us in this process where we're, you know, the next guy in line who's going from uniform to civilian. And, and, and really just bringing them back into the fold, which has been super exciting. Yeah. So when I spoke about that recently, I'm still designing some of the components. I can't wait to hear. I can't wait to hear more about it because I think it's, it's an important piece is, is the family, the veteran family. And I've never asked for a call or assistance from a veteran who didn't say, yeah, let's hop on a call. Let's let me provide you all the help you need. And it's, it's been pretty, pretty humbling because I've talked to people from all the different services, minus the Space Force, which is it real? No, I'm just kidding. I don't know if there's any Space Force veterans yet, but, but I've talked to people from all services. I'll just reach out to them on LinkedIn and say, Hey, do you have a minute to talk about this company? And, and everybody's always been, been very helpful. But Michelle, you mentioned that there's no template, right? But is there a mythology or excuse me, not mythology, a methodology or a kind of a path that you would recommend? And I know that probably step one is start fricking early. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes. And no, because I, I see those folks who apply way too early and, but they're not really like, it's not burning their brain. It's not keeping them up at night yet. And so there's things you can do early, right? The design your life book, right? I think it's a great example of going through some of those exercises, figuring that stuff out. You know, I think there are pieces you can certainly start early. A lot of the tools that we have with executive coaching, we have this online platform kind of building out a bit of a baseball card. That stuff I think is, is probably best when you're in that one year out. And, and this is really kind of, and I say one year, again, there's, there's no template for all this, but it also depends on what other variables are coming in. Is there a deployment in your last year? Gosh, I hope not. But I, I see a fair share of that. Is there, you know, are you going to do a skill bridge, you know, fellowship, and then like, that's going to back up the bus another six months and that type of stuff. And we've also recently we're, we're rolling out some additional services for spouses to be able, who are also going to be transitioning, you know, naturally as part of this as well and making sure that we support them. And, and I think the more we can mitigate all the stress that's involved in this process, you know, the better we can set people up for success. Yeah. And what do you think is the, the preferred outcome or, you know, like the day you sign out on terminal leave? What is, does, I'm not saying commit foundation wants you to be at X, but you as a service member should have at least an idea of where you're going. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Yeah. I know people who build in taking a, you know, a tactical time off, if you will, at the end of their journey. And if you think about it, like, there's not many opportunities in life to just say, I'm going to take a little time off. I have hard charged it for 20 plus years or whatever. And I'm going to take a little bit of a gap, get my batteries, a hundred percent, pay back some social capital to my family, whatever goes into that. And then come into that next chapter at a hundred, a hundred percent and be ready. I think that's fantastic. Yeah. And, and the beauty of us not having like rigid timelines of like, that's fine. And if there's pieces of this, however, they want to like attack this plan, that we'll be there to support it. If they want to be employed, if they want to be part-time employed, I laugh, like Amory used to talk about, if you want to be a ballerina, we'll get you dance lessons and a tutu. Like, I don't, I don't want to impose some artificial values that you need to do certain things. You need to make a certain amount of money. I think you need to find whatever's going to be fulfilling. Maybe that's just doing nothing but volunteer work and making no money. Hey, if that works for you, there's not many people who fall in that bucket. Some of them, some of them. Eric, let's, let's kind of segue into your transition. I know that you transitioned in 2016, is that right? Or? Yep. 2016. So from, from my experience, the, the amount of groups or individuals, organizations that are out there to help now, it's been year by year, it's been growing. There's, there's a lot of them out there now, but in 2016, there was a lot less probably. And, and I don't know your particular transition story, but what was out there for you when you transitioned and how did your transition go? And would you have, have benefited from, from a relationship like this? So there actually, well, believe it or not, there was a lot of things that were available. And that goes back into the, what Michelle had talked about with was, you know, when do you start earlier to start the better. Right. And I actually, so when I was going through recovery, cause I actually was medically retired and I did 26 years, but at the 24 year mark, I kind of knew right off the bat, I was going to have to retire. So I let the one year of recovery take place. And then I started the retirement paperwork exactly one year to the day of getting out. So I had two years to, to really already get the mindset wrapped around the process of retiring, not the impact emotionally of retiring, but the process. And it was, it was a seamless process. Like the only thing that I was really focused on was hiring our heroes was a DOD skill bridge that had just been, you know, kind of created a little bit before that. And so their first cohort at Fort Campbell, they, they started having conversations in May of 2015. And I had to apply for my packet in September of 2015 to start February of 2016. So I was well ahead of the game. I already knew it, you know.