Return to Base: Military Transition Expert Natalie Oliverio

Hey everybody. Thank you for tuning into this installment of Return to Base. I am your host, Cliff. Today's guest is somebody who, if you are a Veteran, if you are thinking about becoming a Veteran, if you are a spouse of a Veteran, you just absolutely need to follow her on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, on wherever she's putting stuff out. If she has a Reddit, I don't know about it, but you need to go look it up. She's a tremendous resource when it comes to information for transitioning out of the military. She's a fantastic mentor. She's willing to talk to anybody and really go to bat and advocate for Veterans. Being a Veteran herself, she's been there. She's done that. She knows what drives people to serve. She also knows what drives companies to hire Veterans. So she's also the founder and CEO of Military Talent Partners, which is a company. It's a recruitment firm and that sells it a little bit short. She does so much more than that. So without further ado, thank you for coming to this podcast. Thank you for listening. Hit subscribe if you get a chance on whatever podcast service you're listening to us on and stay tuned for Natalie. Bravo Zulu, this is Victor Lima, we are RTB. This is Return to Base, a Veteran Life podcast. We are here with Natalie Oliverio from Military Talent Partners. She's a Navy Vet. We won't hold that against her, but thank you for joining us. Hey Cliff, thanks so much for having me. It is a privilege to have you because ever since that I started transitioning and paying attention to LinkedIn and things like that, your name has kind of been synonymous. You're almost like like a little conscience that's sitting on my shoulder, a little devil or angel, whichever one that is sitting on my shoulder and giving me nice transition tips since I've been out. So I appreciate that. Oh, you're so welcome. I would admit that I am most likely to be voted. I want to say 50-50 devil angel, but I feel like it might be 60-40 devil. I just want you to do what's best for you. So sometimes that means burning bridges and screwing everybody else figuratively, but it's all about what's best for you. So I'm happy to do it. Yeah, well, your advice, your wisdom that you put out on social media, on LinkedIn and stuff is obviously very needed, but it goes much further than that for you. Obviously, you're associated with some other groups that I'm also associated with, like Elite Meet, and we'll get to all that. So let's just slow down a little bit and let's talk about your life, Natalie. We want to know about you and kind of what brought you to where you are right now. How does that sound? That sounds great. Cool. So again, you were in the Navy. What brought you to do that? Now, you're in West Virginia, right? I'm in West Virginia. I'm from West Virginia, born and raised. Right. And I know they have a pretty good Navy there. No Navy here. The other Virginia has the, you know, Norfolk, they have the largest Navy base in the world. But, you know, I didn't have an ambition to go into the military. But I did have the ambition to go to college, but that ambition turned into just having a whole lot of fun and stuff. And long story short, it just wasn't the right move for me. And it kind of was my first taste of a failure. Yeah, yeah, I withdrew. I wasn't going to class. I went to WVU. I was having a really good time. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't really for me, because I just wasn't doing very well. And I needed to redesign what my future plan was. And my parents were all over me. And I was the oldest in my family as far as the children. And I had to do something big enough to shut everybody up. And something that would really challenge me because I was, I get bored so easily. And everything I had planned on, you know, my entire high school career just went down the tubes really fast. And I had a younger brother who the recruiters just kept calling and calling and calling. And one of them got me, totally got me on the phone. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like, nothing. Well, what were you in college for? And I'm like, journalism. He's like, you could be a journalist in the Navy. And I'm like, really? Wait, so I could travel the world. They made it sound like a five star resort first. Yeah, you sure you know how the rest of it went. So I go into the Navy, big goals, big dreams, all these things didn't get right in as a journalist ended up being a dental tech, then became undesignated and moved on to all kinds of other stuff. But then, eight months in, it was 911. Oh, and everything changed like it did for everybody who was around on 911. And everything changed. It was scary. It was different. And it just completely redesigned my future from that point on. And so I was actually it was September 10 2001 was my first day underway. Off the coast of the Atlantic of Virginia, we were doing workups for deployment. Wow. And so on the morning of 911, we raced up to Yorktown to onboard Tomahawk missiles as I was on a guided missile destroyer. And then we went right up off the coast of New York for just to stand watch. Oh, because no one knew what was going to happen later that day, or the next day or the next day. And so I remember we were in like, we had duty, do you have to stay in 24 hour watch duty every was like once every 71. I think it was like 10. We had a 10 day duty section, which meant every once every 10 days, you were on duty for 24 hours. And we went down to three days. That's how much they like upped the number of watches and the security points. And so it just completely changed for the entire world. Definitely the entire country, and everyone serving in the military. And so it really shaped the rest of my service. And I ended up meeting my husband while I was serving. Otherwise, I probably would have stayed in longer. But all I wanted to do was correct my my previous failure of leaving college with a two beers in my hand and set up a degree. So I did that. And then I got married. And then I began a career in HR, because it was people and helping people tell their story or helping connect people to something bigger than themselves. That really excited me. And the thing is, when I got out of the Navy, when I thought I knew what I was doing, I actually didn't. Right. So weird. What year was that? It was 2005. And I was going back to West Virginia. So when you're transitioning from the military, and you go back to your hometown or your home state, you get this like, sense of like a little bit of ego, a little bit of comfort and that like, you got this, like, you've been here before you've done these things, like, it'll be fun. Right? You're a world traveler. And like all these hits in West Virginia. He's not gonna want to work with you. Except for going through something so dynamic as a military service and living in a military lifestyle for however many years, it changes you. You're different. You're not the same person you were before on purpose. They purposely change you, right. And everybody else around you has changed too. And the way they act around you is different. The way they talk to you is different. The way you're thought about is different. And for me, when I look to my peers, and my friends and family, they had all kept going with their lives. It was like I was in a time capsule, right in the military. And they just kept going on with their lives. My friends had professional jobs, they already had their degrees, my family had no clue. I can't even tell you in a small town, people said, Oh, are you back now? I've been back for a minute. Oh, weren't you in the military? Are you back now people just they just don't get it. Right. But that they don't get it. spread is so much bigger in your transition. And it makes you feel like you don't belong. It makes you feel out of place. And you have no idea what your next mission is, or your next purpose, or how the hell you're going to get there. And so that never, and it's still today has not left me, I will never forget the way that felt. I think for anyone that you talk to that's gone through it, even anyone who's been displaced in their career, maybe they were fired or laid off or rift, or whatever the case and they're out of work, and you don't have a place to go in the morning when you wake up. That's that same feeling of like, you don't have a place to belong. You don't know what your purpose is. You don't know what your plan is. For a lot of veterans, especially high performing veterans, that can feel unraveling. Yeah, that's interesting. You say that I spoke with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk a while back, and he mentioned that that that was one of the causes, if you will, of unresolved trauma is this loss of identity, right? And it certainly isn't what caused the trauma, but it doesn't help when you also lose your identity. So you going back to West Virginia, you thought you were going to be this same old Natalie, but with world travel, world travel, with a degree of optimism and confidence, and it turned out that nobody knew who you were now, right? Exactly. It was like I've never had been here before. And I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. Wow. Walking around a place that I should have owned. Hmm. Right. Did you think about moving anywhere else? I didn't because my whole family was there. My husband's whole family was there. And it's like, when I was living in Hampton Roads, Virginia, I remember thinking to myself, you know what, like most places are the same to some degree, what really makes the difference, what really matters is who you're with. And so for a long time, I felt that way. And I still do now, although I think being a business owner and traveling so much, I'm more open to different experiences into living elsewhere. But because I felt so out of place, I couldn't even think that far, right, as like moving somewhere else, because I knew, moving to a new place, I'd feel just the same, like a stranger, like somebody who's never been here before. And it's done a little bit more because it was my home. But those feelings had to be resolved, or they would follow me forever. And, you know, years later, I was in a role that was eliminated due to a company crisis, and my entire team was broken up and let go. And that was the kind of job I thought I would be at forever. And I felt exactly like I did years before post Navy, but lost. I didn't know where I belonged. I didn't know what my purpose was. And outside of that, I had a very good life, loving spouse, amazing little baby, great friends, support system, it didn't matter. Because I didn't know what I was doing the next day or the day after that, the next week, next month, I got to a really dark place, just like post transition. And it was very, very hard to get out of. But once I did, I bounced back really hard. And I remembered that what brought me out of this transition rabbit hole was sitting down with myself, and just figuring out what the hell I wanted to do. Because no matter how badly I wanted someone to give me the answers or help me out of it, nobody could do that for me, I had to do it for myself. And until I was ready to put in that work, and have that difficult conversation for and with myself, there was no getting out of it. And it was the same way years later, when I was unemployed, and uninspired and unengaged with anything. So getting out of the military, going back to West Virginia, did you pop right back into school use your GI Bill? Is that the plan? Is that what happened? And how was it different? How'd you how'd you grow in that time you were away? And I mean, did you ever get your degree? Did you drop out again? No, I got my degree. I did get my degree. I drank a lot less. It was, you know, after time in the Navy drinking just didn't have the same, you know, allure to it. Right? Sure, that you can understand. Versus being, you know, 18. Oh, I remember my first beer. No, me too. I was 18. And I was in college. And I wasn't even legal yet. And so on and so forth. But man, I missed that GI Bill money. That was so great. Like, that was amazing. Anybody who doesn't take advantage of their GI Bill needs to seriously rethink that or give it to someone who can use it in your family. Because it's like free money. It was like free money in my checking account every month. And I had so much left over after tuition. It was like, continuing to be paid to learn and I'm like, this is amazing. This is really cool. Nobody else is doing this. Like this is this is dope. And there are definitely really dark, dark days on active duty. And I was like, why didn't I just go to class? This is not for me. I can't do this. What am I what was I thinking? Like, I should have just stayed in class, just gone to class, shouldn't have drank so much beer would have been so much better. But how the Navy changed me is it, it grew me in ways that I didn't know, or anyone who knew me would know was possible. And I am the woman I am today because of those experiences. I don't know that I could have been challenged as brutally or authentically as I was in the Navy and in the time that I served post 9-11. I don't think that there's any any parallel experience that could have given me the balls that I have now. And the self awareness, the survivability that I have, and I know that no matter what, I am resilient enough to figure it out and to make it happen with little to nothing in my corner. And I've done it. I've done it several times. And I, I wasn't raised that way. I was raised in a traditional gender female, female gender role. I was raised to grow up and get married. I wasn't taught about business or economics or money or things that typical males were, were raised with, you know, back in the 90s. Or as the young people call today, they call it the late 1900s. Do they say that? They do, which I'm not condoning, but so, you know, everything I did and was doing and wanted to do is always pushing the norm, always pushing what other people said I could or couldn't do. If you say I can't do something, there's nothing to stop me from going just all out to do it, just because like you're wrong, whatever it is, I'll do it. And I'll probably do it better than you. Right. You had an experience in the Navy, I'm sure where, I mean, I'm not gonna say everybody, but most of us wrestle sometimes in basic training or whatever, with a little bit of self-loathing, a little bit of that gout monster creeps in, you know, I don't know if I could do this, but then you do. The first few weeks, I felt like that. I would be so scared of everything that was to come the next day. And then the next day would come and I'd crush it. And I'd be just scared for the next day. And the next day would come and I'd crush it too. Took me a solid two weeks before that fear backed up a little bit, but it's like every week that you get through in bootcamp, you feel like, oh God, that was the hardest week. The hardest week is definitely coming next week. I don't know if I can do it. And so you hear everybody else having those fears too. And it just feeds that fear monster. But then when you get through it and you get through, you know, the various trainings and exercises and things you do throughout your career, you realize, okay. I got this. I got this. Yeah, totally. Now were your classmates enamored by you? Like, oh, look, there's, I mean, this is right. Just a few years after 9-11, right? So things had to been a little bit different. Fast forward 10 years later, because you're coming out of the military. Iraq invasion just happened. We'd been in Afghanistan for a time period. People were still pretty proud. Plus, I mean, you're from West Virginia, West by God, Virginia, where, you know, there's a good amount of patriotism there where people like, wow, Natalie's a veteran. Let's ask Natalie what she thinks about this. Or was it a mixture of that and the opposite? I feel like it was more of the opposite. Um, so much as every time I set foot inside the VA, people be like, are you here with your husband? Oh, oh, yeah, I didn't expect it from that angle. Right? Like I was at Target one time checking out. Sorry, Target. I love you. But I'm telling the story. And I had a military ID in my wallet, and you couldn't see anything except for the top of it. And the person ringing me up, saw it was I was getting ready to get my credit card out to pay. And they're like, Oh, tell your husband, thank you for a service. And so I mean, I'm not that sensitive about it. I feel like men and women are equal veterans. I don't think anyone is better than anybody else. And but it definitely is a thing that when people outside of the military or with very little or limited exposure to the military community and the diversity that lives within it. When you hear the word veteran, you typically think of a man. And so that was very much West Virginia, they were behind the curve, for sure. Even though this was like, this was like, right around the Jessica Lynch era to you know what I mean? Yeah, right, exactly. So it was just like a novelty almost because it was so not the norm. And so it really, really was just another layer of why people are uncomfortable talking to me or like how to approach me or what to say to me or what not to say to me. And it just made me more of an outsider than anything else. And you know, WVU at the time didn't even have a veterans organization. And I was one of the first people to help start that up at WVU. And there was like no enclave or like support system for veterans. And I'm like, this is a major university, what is happening? But you know, a lot has happened since then, thankfully. But people don't realize how diverse the military is. There are over 3,000 jobs in our military. It runs like its own massive global organization, because it is. Yes, it is. People from all backgrounds, people, people say, you know, about special operators, oh, they're all white males. Yeah, there are a lot fewer minority males, and even fewer females. But you can't say that all special forces are just white males with great hair, if you're a SEAL. But, you know, there's just so many stereotypes that live within and outside of the military that there's such a barrier to real understanding that creates multiple streams of bias, both conscious and unconscious bias. And the more that people share their story, the more education and awareness we can help spread. Yeah, so that's a good segue into kind of what you do now, right? But I kind of want to get the connective tissue between coming out of college, having that job, getting laid off. At what point did you start realizing that there was a delta in the military talents out in the workforce? At what point did you see that there needed to be something to fix those deficits? So when I was working as an executive recruiter, it was really frustrating that I couldn't just tell people, people in general, veterans or otherwise, what they could do differently so that they wouldn't continue to be rejected for the jobs that they were going after. Or if they performed poorly in an interview and it cost them the opportunity, I wish just so badly that I could say, do this next time or answer this question like this, because it allows you to really play on your strengths. And it's not as confusing to understand, right? But you can't say that when you work for a big company or any company, because all you can say is, you know, we're considering other candidates or think you will consider you again in the future, some kind of bullshit canned response that's, you know, legal for all the HR reasons, right? So I volunteered as a mentor, and I fell in love with it, it wasn't attached to the company, it was my private, my volunteer effort. And I could say anything, I could use all the knowledge that I had from HR and talent acquisition. And I can help drive people to their goals for their career. And it was like, lighting me up inside like the fourth of July, like every call was so good. And I couldn't get enough of giving this to people. And it's all that's so gracious of you to give your time, and you're such a great volunteer. But truthfully, this gave me so much joy, so much satisfaction, it was the missing link to happiness for me professionally, and personally, I took so much joy in it. And so in these conversations, I realized like, gosh, there's such a link between mentorship and recruiting. And I wish that when I left the military, I had something like this, I wish that I knew this existed, or had even thought to get a mentor. And I really fell in love with it. Who'd you go through to, to the mentoring opportunity? My very first was with Veterati and the Travis Mannion Foundation through their Character Does Matter program, is how I got involved with TMF, but then also Veterati, which is like virtual, on-demand mentorship in your pocket. It's pretty fantastic. In tandem at my corporate job, I was tasked with creating this huge veteran initiative company-wide. It was amazing. I was so lit up. I'm so excited. And long story short, it got killed at the last second. Because you know, even though I poured my heart and soul into this, I held focus groups and created a budget that was mainly sweat equity. And it just got killed. It got pulled overnight. Like it just didn't freaking matter. And it was devastating. And that actually happened again at my next job. And the company was owned outside of the US and they just didn't care enough to really put through the effort. So knowing how I felt about mentorship, knowing the gap that existed in military talent, and that talent marketplace around veterans and military spouses, it just really pissed me off to the point of feeling so unsettled and knowing in my gut that I could do more about it than what people were doing then. And I was scared. Yeah, I was not this like badass be, you know, fresh off, fresh off the boat, ready to just jump into entrepreneurship. I never thought I could do it. I'm like, I don't know anything about business. You'll want to work with me. And I mean, I'm great at what I do. And I definitely care the most, but I don't have a ton of money and I don't have an MBA. And I just, I was in the right place at the right time. And I took the opportunity and I got my first client and I just jumped off the cliff. Even though everyone, everybody was like, don't do it. Don't do it. Go get another job and just do it slow. Just like walk through it and take your time. Like, nope, I'm just doing it. So you're, so you're saying you were, was this in between being laid off and, and your next opportunity, this is when you decided. No, no. So I did take another corporate opportunity after that, after I had gotten out of that, you know, unemployment depression, being dark and feeling like I didn't belong anywhere. I did take another corporate role. And I was head of commercial talent for an aerospace company in North America. And so it was great, except for sorry to put anybody on blast, but like I could have slept through my job seven and a half of the eight hours and still crushed it. It was like, just go under the motion. It was like ridiculous. And if that, if all I cared about was a paycheck, I could have just kicked my feet up all day and collected it every two weeks, but it was killing me inside because all I was doing with my time, my free time was investing my energy and transitioning military veterans and veterans and their families and lighting them up about their own potential and recognizing what they can make happen. And here I was just squandering opportunity of my potential because I was using like maybe 20% of it. And I was like, this is bullshit. Like, this is not what I'm talking about. And I'm not living it when I'm talking about to other people. And I'm not living it because I'm afraid to go and grab it by the balls and take it for myself because I didn't think I was good enough. And it was scary. It's scary when you're used to getting a salary and paycheck, and then all of a sudden you're going to go carve out your own and earn every dollar for yourself. And if it was not for my mentor, who was a bad-ass army veteran, if it weren't for him, I probably would never have taken that. I don't know if never, but I wouldn't have taken it right then. And if I didn't have his wings to borrow, I don't know that I could have taken that flight. That's so interesting. Something that you just said struck me as super important is backing up, you were a mentor. And I think it's important to note that you had a mentor. Oh yeah, absolutely. Mentorship is a two-way street for sure. Yeah. And so I know that there's a lot of organizations out there who still provide mentorship or mentorship connection for military veterans, transition military. So encourage everybody to obviously look into that. If you haven't done it, you're missing out. I had a mentor from J&J as I was transitioning and yeah, it was definitely beneficial. So you're kind of one foot in corporate, one foot in entrepreneurship or how'd that happen? Or did you just jump right into the entrepreneurship and say, see you later, corporate? Even just thinking about it, it's kind of making me sweat a little bit. I'm not going to lie because I was so afraid. And I had gotten invited to speak at this event in New York city and the event had put out this poster. I didn't have a headshot. I'd literally cropped my face from a family Christmas photo for them to use, which is so embarrassing when I look back, but also time out. My mentor taught me that if you don't look back a year ago and