Tales of Leadership
Tales of Leadership is a veteran-owned podcast designed to equip leaders with the knowledge required to inspire others through transformational leadership. If you want to grow your influence and become a purposeful leader, you have found your tribe. Become the leader your team deserves!
Tales of Leadership
Ep 79 with William Leahy
William "Bill" Leahy, founder of Renaissance Reliability (RR), is a visionary leader on a mission to elevate American manufacturing to global heights by championing innovation, reliability, and manufacturing effectiveness. In the aftermath of his brother's tragic suicide, a USMC Infantry officer, in December 2022, Bill turned personal grief into a commitment to combat veteran suicide. This led to the establishment of UNTURNING STEEL, aimed at bringing veterans and manufacturing together. The convergence of these missions has birthed a collective goal – "Reimagining what it means to be MADE IN AMERICA." Bill's dedication earned UNTURNING STEEL the prestigious 2024 “Best Cultural Innovation Award” from the University of Tennessee – Knoxville (UTK) and Everything Reliability. Bill has excelled in various roles in his manufacturing career, demonstrating expertise in Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), and other continuous improvement methodologies. A former US Army Captain, Bill's leadership journey began at the United States Military Academy, where he was an NCAA Division 1 Army West Point hockey player. His academic accomplishments include a BS from West Point, an MBA from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, and a Reliability & Maintainability Implementation Certification (RMIC) from the University of Tennessee. Bill, residing in Southeastern New England, is dedicated to his family and contributes to the community as a Thames Club member and volunteers as a hockey and soccer coach for local colleges and youth sports organizations.
Connect with William Leahy:
-Website: https://unturningsteel.com
-Website: Rtwo.info
-Linkedin: (25) UNTURNING STEEL: Overview | LinkedIn
-Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555229873741
✅ SHARE THIS PODCAST
✅ GIVE A 5-STAR REVIEW
✅ SUPPORT
-Leadership Resources: https://linktr.ee/McMillionLeadership
My Mission: I will end toxic leadership practices by equipping leaders with transformational leadership skills.
Together, we will impact 1 MILLION lives!!!
Every day is a gift, don't waste yours!
Joshua K. McMillion | Founder MLC
You're listening to the Tells the Leadership podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader what I like to call a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership.
Speaker 2:All right team. Welcome back to the Tells the Leadership podcast. I am your host, Josh McMillian. I'm an active duty Army officer, I am the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching and I am an Army leadership coach and I'm on a mission to create a better leader what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader or a pal and my vision is simple I want to impact one million lives in the next nine years because we've already been on one year of that journey by sharing transformational stories and skills. And on today's episode, I'm bringing you a transformational leader, william Bill Leahy. He's the founder of Renaissance Reliability.
Speaker 2:Rr is a visionary leader on a mission to elevate America's manufacturing to global heights by championing innovation, reliability and manufacturing efficiency. In the aftermath of his brother's tragic suicide, the United States Marine Corps infantry officer, in December of 2022, bill turned personal grief into a commitment to combating veteran suicide, which I absolutely love, and we're on that same mission. This led to establishing unturning steel, aiming to bringing veterans and manufacturing together. The convergence of these missions has birthed the collective goal of re-imaging what it means to be made in America. Bill's dedication earned untitled steel, a documentary, the prestigious 2024 Best Cultural Innovation Award from the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville, and everything reliability. In his manufacturing career, bill has excelled in various roles, demonstrating expertise in root cause analysis, rca, reliability, centered maintenance, rcm and other continuous improvement methodologies.
Speaker 2:He is a former US Army captain. Bill has a an incredible leadership journey, beginning within the United States Military Academy and being an NCAA Division I Army West Point Hockey Player. His academic accomplishments include a bachelor's in West Point, an MBA from the University of North Carolina, chapel Hill and a reliability and maintainability implementation certification from the University of Tennessee. Bill currently lives in Southeast New England and he is a purposeful account of the leader. This was one of my favorite episodes that I filmed. So, without any further ado, help me welcome William Bill. Welcome to the Tells the Leadership podcast, brother. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a good opportunity to start and I always like to kind of set the boundary of each episode is just take the time to describe who you are to our listeners.
Speaker 3:Oh man, who I am in the short amount of time. Yeah, maybe. That's maybe not the answer not popping directly into my mind either tells me that I need to think about it a little bit more or I'm really full of myself and can't can't bring it into 30 seconds. But who I am? Yeah, so I'm a manufacturer and a veteran graduated from West Point 2009. I got into manufacturing and really found an awesome home there, and advocacy for the manufacturer community and the veteran community have kind of become the central part of my life with this project that we're doing, called on Turning Steel.
Speaker 2:It's funny when I reach out to you. Originally, I'm part of an accountability group I dare to say mastermind. It's like a group of active duty veterans that are across different branches of DoD and one of my accountability partners, jason, he's getting ready to get out. I looked this dude up on LinkedIn and I really love what he's doing. I was like I got to reach out to him and I got to bring him onto the show. So thank you for taking the time, because if anyone's listening to this, it's 6.30 in the morning. I keep pretty crazy hours, so thank you for indulging me on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is much earlier than I've been awake in a while. I think the entrepreneurship route after I left the army and got into that, the idea of waking up whenever you want is such a privilege. I take advantage of it.
Speaker 2:Dude, I don't know if I'm ever going to get into that. I get up at like four in the morning now and it's like ingrained in who I am, yeah good for you.
Speaker 3:I did the 23 in me on the DNA study and it came back and told me that my natural wake up time is 8.30 and I said I knew it the whole time.
Speaker 2:I love that man, Before we kind of start digging into your leadership journey and what you've been doing, could you take the time to define how you see leadership in your own words?
Speaker 3:Yeah, leadership is such a beautiful thing. It's really an art To me. I think of it more as an art because it's the relationship piece of it and it's not compelling people to do things. But it's high. Well, they go with.
Speaker 2:sorry, I don't know my daughter is better than you are for the moment. It is no worries, my son comes in sometimes and he may or may not be wearing any clothes. So yeah, that's the privilege of having little kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah so I think leadership is either the natural or trained ability to kind of influence people around you to perform as best they possibly can. I think it's, and I say this this is one of the tag lines that I use all the time, but I say that the United States will never. It's not a resource issue with us, ever. It's about resourcefulness, and I find that that's really one of the key pillars of leadership for me is making the most of the resources that are all around you. It's not just about people, but it's all the resources that you have in. Leadership is leveraging those to the best of your ability to reach the end state that you desire.
Speaker 2:I love that, brother. The US isn't a resource issue, it's a resourcefulness issue, so we can basically solve any problem that we want, as long as we can fund. There's a book out there. It's called Dan Solve. And who, not how, and you don't have to understand the how necessarily to do something. You just got to find the right who to help you get through whatever obstacle or whatever operational environment that you're in right now.
Speaker 3:And I love that, and that's one of the cool things about leadership is it translates across all these different things. So, you mentioned that. And then in manufacturing there's a great guy named Ron Moore and he wrote a book. He's actually a former West Point guy and Army officer and all that stuff, but he wrote a book called what Tool Win?
Speaker 3:It's the same idea. You don't have to understand all the inner workings of a factory or any of that stuff, but if you understand the problem, understand the toolset that you have and can make that decision. That's about all it takes.
Speaker 2:So let's start pilling back down again on your leadership journey. Where do you think that started? And really one of the questions, too, that I would love to hear is what pushed you to go to the United States Military Academy, because I know that that's like a three or four year kind of pipeline from a lot of my friends. It's not something that you just decide to do. Your senior year I'm going to the West Point Academy. That's something that you have to like, mentally prepare for and start actively pursuing well within your youth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's an interesting thing. So I'd say the majority of people that serve as academies or legacies of some kind have a background in it, and I was no exception to it. So my father was a recon marine and went through the Naval Academy in the early 70s. He graduated 75. So that part of it has always been kind of in my mind. My dad had the ring I always admired as a kid and so that'd be great to get one of those.
Speaker 3:But to be completely honest, in my younger days I was not very much looking into the future and how things were going. So my journey to West Point I guess the seeds were planted. But I was playing hockey in the North American Hockey League in Montana and some of the scouts from the West Point hockey team. I got ahold of me and started watching my career a little bit, following along, and then offered me an appointment through the athletic department essentially. So I got recruited to play hockey. When they told me I could go to school for free, get an opportunity to get a great education and serve my country, it was a no brainer at that point.
Speaker 2:That's awesome man. I have a buddy of mine. I'll keep his name out Because I think he's doing great things for the country right now. But he was a football player for West Point. He was an offensive llama and I'll never forget the story of we were in Afghanistan and we had those giant gravel-sized pit rocks within our cop so it was really hard to run around but we needed them because of the strikers and stuff that we were driving around.
Speaker 2:David, which was already 270 pounds, like Lean 270 pounds decides he's going to go run on my treadmill Like the only functional one I have for my cop, left with a rucksack with like 75 pounds in this rucksack. So it's like 350 pounds of man on this treadmill. He just breaks it, doesn't tell anyone, and I go to work out that evening and I go to turn the treadmill once I dented in and like hey, like a meteor hit this thing. I'm like David, did you break my treadmill? Yeah, I just didn't want to tell you, I swear. So that's always interesting man like being able to play like college sports but also go to West Point from the football standpoint. He had to lose like 70 pounds when he commissioned and he had like six months to do it. What was that like for you? Playing NCAA like Division I hockey and being a cadet?
Speaker 3:It was, I don't know. It's one of those things. It's just kind of you wake up and do it. It's really a time warp like weird place to be. But yeah, you start at the end and it's like the longest thing you've ever done and it ends in a blink of an eye.
Speaker 3:But being on the, being a hockey player and having that actually makes the transition into something like this very easy, and actually a lot of the, a lot of the things we're applying today into our veteran program consisted of. This is like setting the conditions for an easy transition. Transitioning into West Point, like you said, that's a big decision, so people think about it their entire lives. Like my dad started writing letters to Naval Academy in eighth grade. It's he's much more focused than I was.
Speaker 3:But yeah, the transition piece the things we're always looking for is community, purpose and certainty in it, and so, coming in as a hockey player, I knew a lot of the guys on the team already. I knew we were all getting recruited for the same thing. You have a built in community within this little, even more intimate space. With the hockey team, you had the purpose. You've got a team that you're playing for, that has a mission and yeah, so hockey was a great way to easily transition into it and then, while we were in there, it kept us out of some of the bullshit that we had to deal with, because you'd go up to the hockey rink for four to five hours a day. So when your freshman year, when all your classmates are getting harassed, you're getting harassed in different ways which aren't as, which maybe are a little easier to stomach. So it was great, yeah.
Speaker 2:So completing that time and it's funny because I think you and I were at JPLM around the same time. Commission you do directly out to the JBLM. What was the first unit that you were assigned to? I'm curious. And did you guys deploy?
Speaker 3:So I went right after graduation, the Fort Benning and then out to Fort Lewis and I went to 49 Manchu, it's fourth brigade over there and I spent Two years there. I got there they were in Iraq. They had about three months left so I did not join them, hung out on rear detachment. So that was my intro into the army. Was Was that? So nothing, nothing very glamorous. So two years there, then at the career course back to Fort Lewis and then I got out shortly after that, but it's about six years.
Speaker 2:Hey you're. You're an infantry officer too, right yeah. So what did you? Did you choose that coming out of the yeah?
Speaker 3:yeah, so and that's that's kind of a cool. Just about the service academies that's kind of neat is that it changes what people's interests are over time or what the coveted MOS is are. And when I was in at this time so we were 2005 was when I started so 2005 your a couple years into the war at this point in time. So the the demographic of who's volunteering and who's who's pursuing these, these appointments at the academy, changed a little bit. So you got a bunch of people who are very, very I Wouldn't say like willing or anything like that, but yeah, I guess, willing to, willing to go over and fight, yeah, and as a result it changes. So in peacetime you get a lot of whiz kids and that kind of stuff there that aren't necessarily it's in for a fight. So there's there's focus more on like I guess you could call them their professional skills or it's more transferable skills, yeah. And then when I was there, it shit to completely.
Speaker 3:We have 230 infantry spots and that was one of. That was the first demo us to go out. So we actually had guys adding years to their contracts Before even getting started just to be an infantry officer. So it was, it was really cool, so all my buddies did infantry. That was the Decision I made and at that point in time, my older brother was. He was a Marine Corps infantry officer, my dad was a Marine Corps infantry officer and there's this huge long line of Marine Corps infantry officers. Except maybe, the naval Academy did not have a hockey team, so that was the other reason I ended up there. West Point has a division one team, so that was that was really the choice, and there's no way I was going to Air Force.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I I think you chose the right decision, right Like because you and I have the same path. I was an infantry officer for ten years until I transitioned out of into a functional area, but I almost joined the Marine Corps and I was in the delayed entry program until I found out that I could go be a cadet in college and I was like, oh well, maybe I should go enjoy my life. And I pulled out of that program to go join ROTC and in college. And then, they know, long story short, here here I am today. I'd love to hear, before we start the transition, of you getting out and what you're on right now, when you, when you were in, especially where you took over that rear detachment what were some of the, the leadership challenges that you had to face during that time?
Speaker 3:Oh, man, at that period in time, I guess the leadership challenge was really. It was really an internal struggle at that point. Yeah, because you know it was. Expectations were just getting getting blown up left and right. Because that's just, that's just how it is, like you and again, another transition period right out of. They call the the transition from a first-class cadet to a second lieutenant.
Speaker 3:The greatest demotion in the military. That's kind of it is because it's you're at a place where you can't spit without hitting a kernel. Everyone around you is just, you know, top-notch, super strong, and all of that, and that the picture is painted for you, whether you do it in turn or your for yourself or whatever. But you have these expectations for what the army is gonna look like when you step into it, what your platoon is gonna be, what all these experiences are and that was a hard thing for me to To grapple with Was that all of these? It was nothing like I was expecting. You know, particularly that the unit was, was overseas and to get there it's not your step. Again, it's not a platoon that I took over on day one, it was. It was a company of people getting med boarded and doing that sort of thing. Yeah, that's where the thing did.
Speaker 3:I say I was, yeah, that that was difficult for me. So the leadership piece of it and and I did, I struggle with this and I'll fully admit that I was, I could have and should have done a lot better, but, yeah, as a result of that, I kind of I kind of regressed. And so you're questioning a lot of, yeah, why I was there, what I was doing, what is leadership is kind of a existential crisis at that point in time and but, but this is, and that's why this I didn't get to do a lot of things that I wanted to do, yeah, when serving, and I carried a lot of guilt with me for a long time. So you have friends that you know my, my brother, yeah, my friends, all these guys that have gone over sacrifice, and you didn't get the opportunity to do that.
Speaker 3:It's uh, yeah, it's a difficult thing. So the but now with this, with this project that we have, which I'm sure we'll get to talk about in a second but the One of the things I love most about it is I see it as an opportunity for me to kind of make amends but the leadership faults that I had then, because I fully meant like I was not the leader that my soldiers deserved when I got him, whether we were, whether we were going to go through all the training and deploy together whatnot, or it was my responsibility to Lead the platoon up to the point as long as I could to get him Situated for the next guy to do that I could have done better.
Speaker 3:So this is this. I really see this as an opportunity for me to Kind of make things right and serve the soldiers the way I should have.
Speaker 2:It's funny. I really believe that our experience and the military is all luck, if that makes sense of how we show up to you the timelines that they're there, because it really is the first and a second lieutenant. You're so malleable and you could either go down a toxic path if you have Bad mentors and bad leaders and bad examples, or you can go down a more positive path. Then my experience, I think, was almost polar opposite. We were getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan a very kinetic firefight. There was, I called the dream team, some of the best officers some of them now are at the highest tiers of so-called that. I was with within, as platoon leaders, some of the best non-commissioned officers that I ever had the chance to work for. So I was in the the green grass, I guess, if that makes sense and I felt as if I Was in an environment of where everyone was a meat eater. So I was grown in that type of culture of where, hey, I did not use my brain, I was straight like a strong ranger. I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 2:As a young lieutenant and I had a very jaded view on what leadership was, because I thought we know when I Took over that I wanted to go lead soldiers in combat. I wasn't viewing people as people, if that makes sense. I would be in people as objects to go pursue my own selfishness. But I got a very large piece of humble pie served to me when I went to Afghanistan Very early on, before I was able to take over my platoon, and that kind of set me on the the path that we are today and I, I believe, the same as you like full transparency.
Speaker 2:I don't think that I was the best leader that I could be and that now some of the tools and what I understand about leadership and how to influence and inspire others, I wish I would have known when I was directly leading 40, a hundred, 250, yeah of our greatest nation, because I could have made a better choice. So I choose now to use my time, talents, treasures, exactly like you, to to make a difference. So don't don't feel bad, brother. I really think it's all about luck and we use what we have at the time. But walk me through that, that transition piece you getting out, you starting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So the transition, I started that yeah, really, I say from that captain's square course when I exited there. That was kind of the the conversation I had with the gentleman that you know shuffling you around afterwards, can't remember the exact title, but branch managers, dude. I made my branch man, there you go.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'll wait. I got a good one for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So here's here's my story with my, my branch manager, at the career course and we're sitting there talking and he's like it looks to me, just goes. Do you really want to be in the army anymore? Wow.
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 3:Said I'd be looking at it's like. It's like finish my time up and go, you know, start a family into all those there. Actually, at that point in time, we had already started the family. So I was, I had one kid in and it was, yeah, to have to move on, yeah, go ahead, share your story with me.
Speaker 2:No. So I was a branch, came there at MCC and there were doing all these different job listings. I was dead set that I wanted to go to 101st. I was dead set that I want to go to rock a psalts. Why? Because that's where everyone wanted to go and I still had that Meeter mentality that was ingrained in me as a young lieutenant of my my colonel, gregory Harkins, all of those people. So I go in there, last person thinking that, hey, he's gonna remember me, I'm the last person he's going to see. Total opposite go in there. There's no other things that are assigned, so I can either go be an eyeballer constructor, which offended me, or I could go be a CTC instructor, which was absolutely a no. So I was like, alright, I know x, y and z, these people are transitioning into a functional area. I just started listing out was like give them a slot that doesn't matter and then pull me to 101st.
Speaker 2:He'd look you know, yeah, he looked at me. It's like that's not how that works. So there's no other slots available and you need to, because you have combat experience. Go be a platoon leader or a CTC instructor. In my mind was like fine, put me in a CTC because I've already done lieutenant thing. I want to learn how to be a company commander. And. But I walk out of there Completely mad. I totally pissed off branch didn't get anything that I wanted and I didn't get my orders cut to me Until 10 days before graduation because I made branch in that meeting. So yeah.
Speaker 2:I was not good at soft skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's a yeah. That the branch managers yeah, I was. So you brought me back to that, a conversation I had with them and that was one of the things and maybe this was a great leadership decision on my point at the time. But you know, you leave the career course, you're looking at company command. That's where you're wanting to go next and Everyone was describing that as like that's the pinnacle of an infantry officers when you're a company commander and that's like that, the greatest time ever. Yeah, and yeah, I knew that it was. Again, thinking back, I was like I, I do not have this like this strong desire to do this, or, and I would not be the leader that these guys are, especially at the company level. That's, in my opinion, when you know Army, yeah, I think that maybe that is like the pinnacle when you, we have the, the greatest influence and responsibility at that point in time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but going back to your usual question, I remember what you had asked about that that transition. So it was like 2014 and I started the transition out Again. I felt like I had a ton of unfinished business in the military or whatever. But life goes on and you have to go about those things. So I'm looking at this transition, not thinking too too far ahead of it. Again, arrogance, thinking that I'm a West Point graduate and all this stuff. They're gonna roll out the red carpet and throw money at me because I'm this, that of the other, and that was like one of the first Expectations that needs to get shut. It's not no one's gonna hand you anything, but, yeah, looking out at it, in those things that I talked about a community certainty, admission or purpose, those are what you start instantly searching for. I think that's just a natural thing. So the first thing I was worried about was search, because I had a wife and a child at that point in time. Providing for them was, like that, the number one concern that I had. So I started out this, this job search, and I went through one of those companies that the headhunting services that reach out to us every time a Veteran starts talking about moving. So Bradley Morris or whatever those, is one of you. So you end up doing like 12 interviews in a day at a double tree outside of an airport, and I went and did that. I did 12 interviews, got you know 12 offers and you have to go about choosing one and I had not a whole lot of fourth time in this but I based it off of, really, salary and geography were the only two things that like that. So I'm making this huge decision for my family at this one, like the most vulnerable times in anyone's Career, that's a service members that transition out of service, and that's the kind of forethought that I'm putting into this as a, you know, a captain Do I, a very, I guess, ignorant but educated captain, didn't really take the time to think through all of these things. Yeah, so it was.
Speaker 3:The transition was was very loose for me, kind of all over the place, and I had I had a difficult transition because of it, because there was I did that the certainty yes, it was there and that I had Money coming in and that sort of thing. But that the certainty in that this is something that I could do for the rest of life and sustain my family. I was not there, I was. I was miserable a lot of the time For the, for these other reasons.
Speaker 3:One, that community piece I said transition into West Point. You have a hockey team built into it and when you, when you transition from West Point into the, the regular army, you, you're surrounded by your friends there too, like my first place, I went to Fort Benning, but there was 230 of my classmates with me from the Academy. I'll move there at the same time, so it's it's different. So when I, when I left service to move to my family to Oregon, we didn't have that and Again the expectation I have is those are all the environments I came from. You have built in friends that are all in the same situation around that stuff, and it wasn't it.
Speaker 3:I was at a sawmill. I was the youngest person on the leadership team, the only. There was several, several veterans in there, but no, no one really in my demographic right thing like that. People were commuting from an hour away in every direction. So there really wasn't that and I had to go about finding that community and building it myself on the outside. And there's something I hadn't done before, a skill I really hadn't developed.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it was a critically challenging and and these are a lot of the ideas, so that so the program we have I'm turning steel the the focus of it is helping veterans transition and integrating the manufacturing, but what is informed, the design of the program, the curriculum and everything that we do is the experience that I and the other developers had in our transitions that have service. So we asked ourselves, well, what are the conditions that we would have liked set for us, like, what are the things that we could have done? Because In reality, it's the conditions that dictate the actions that the people take and the things that happen. So what that? So, if you said the conditions for success, things are going to go really well. So we said, all right, what are the conditions? And it's Community, it's mission and it's certainty, so how can we provide all of those things?
Speaker 2:All right, team. Let's take a quick break from this podcast and I want to personally invite you to our private Facebook community that I call purposeful accountable leaders, or pals, and Pals is a community dedicated to inspiring and developing servant leaders by sharing Transformational stories and skills exactly what tells the leadership is all about. My goal is to build a community of like-minded Leaders that can share lessons, learn, ask questions and celebrate wins when it happens. And my mission in life is clear I will end toxic leadership by sharing transformational stories and skills, and you will find countless Transformational leaders in this group. Many of them I have had the honor to serve with in the military. If you want to find a community that can help you grow both personally and professionally, we would love to have you. You can simply search purposeful accountable leaders on Facebook or click the leadership Resources tab in the show notes to join. I am looking forward to seeing you guys and continuing to grow together on our leadership journey. Back to the podcast. I I love that format. Brother Me thinking about it now.
Speaker 2:Transition piece I was almost in the same boat as you. I think I can't remember the name of the head hunter company. It was right when I was on brigade staff and I was very jaded at that point because I thought that, hey, I should have had a company by now. You know, I've been doing very well in my career. I have combat deployment, I've trained the brigades to go deploy, all of these things. But they keep me on staff because I was good at that type of stuff and I remember sitting in my father's barn in West Virginia over a holiday break talking to all of these different head hunter companies that were trying to get me to go through their pipeline and I just didn't feel right about it. Okay, I can get out, but that just seemed like there was such a fog there that made me feel so uneasy and uncertain. I had a daughter at the point, you know, married. We were wanting to have a second child, but I felt that I have not accomplished what I wanted to do in the Army and I still wanted to be in the Army and serve. So I chose to stay in and I think that that was one of the best decisions that I ever have, because the second chapter in the Army, after transitioning from a lieutenant to a captain, was phenomenal. It was good, it was bad, the ugly like a Clint Eastwood movie.
Speaker 2:Company Command was the best time that I had in my life. I had the honor of doing two companies and it was also some of the most challenging emotionally times of my life. Like questioned my leadership abilities. You know, when you lose a soldier in a completely preventable circumstance, it's really when you, as the leader who created that culture and I had like a yin yang moment. I got put in for the MacArthur Award. I didn't want to go to that because I didn't think I deserved it at all. I thought that I did a horrible job. But all the other leaders and soldiers that I had like, hey, no, you're doing a phenomenal job. But I always pushed myself to go as far as I possibly could and I had to make a decision too. When I was a company commander I remember doing a 12 mile rec march with my first company and my knee locked up on me when we were just training for EIB. And I'm sitting there thinking I can't have my soldiers or I can't ask my soldiers to do things physically that I no longer can do. And I had another transition point there. Do I get out? But I don't want to get out.
Speaker 2:I love the military, I love serving and I feel like this is where my passion and I love how you talk about certainty, purpose and community, or mission. I never thought it through that lens Certainty, purpose and community, I think is one of the biggest issues, and it's so simple that I love that people transitioning out and just check block it. Is there a community there that can engage my heart? Is there a purpose there, something that I can work towards every day? And I call it my Christmas morning. I get up every single morning. I have a smile on my face because I know what I'm gonna do is impactful and it brings me joy and certainty. Is it going to allow me to sleep better at night because my son and my daughter and my wife have a house, have a stable income and I can give them opportunities that I didn't have before. I love that unturning steel concept and how could you walk me through just yeah, yeah, so unturning steel.
Speaker 3:I'll just start to give the three minute version of it. So it is a program we've designed. It's a DOD scale bridge program, which are you familiar with? Dod scale bridge.
Speaker 2:Let's do a deep dive on that, because I have a lot of friends that are very interested in that.
Speaker 3:Well, feel free to share my number with them. I am now a DOD scale bridge expert. So this is. I found this program a couple of years ago through a group called Operation Uniform. So I started to think about this veteran program long before actually the real thing that thrust us into the mission. But this Operation Uniform and I went down to their graduation and checked it out and their whole thing was that they take service members through the scale bridge program and bring them in and prepare them for their career all the way up into hiring and placement. They bring them that far. But I learned about the program and I was amazed at the graduation and what they were doing. But the formatting is the coolest thing. So DOD scale bridge for me. I'm a company interested in transitioning veterans or getting them positions to somewhere, so I design an offering for them and I take it to the Chamber of Commerce Department of Defense, scale bridge they're all in the same thing and you present this to them and say, hey, this is worth the investment from the US military into these people that are transitioning out. So you get approved at that point in time and this is the magic is, you get access to service members up to six months before they transition out. So the veterans I get that come and train with us at our factories are active duty, so they remain on the payroll, they're getting their BAH, they're insured, they're all of these things and what that gives us an opportunity to do is take them and match them with a manufacturer that we believe there's great correlations between their mutual desires to make it really work. And they get those months. The employer gets the time to check out and verify the candidate and then our service member gets the opportunity to see if it's a cultural fit, if they wanna work there, if this is the place thing they wanna be doing. So they get an opportunity to kind of explore the civilian world, build a community there in that space, have certainty through our certification and, yeah, they get a brand new mission. It's really cool. That's how we're setting the conditions.
Speaker 3:So let me go back to the program here. I gotta make sure I get this out, stay focused. So the program we have is on Turning Steel, so that's our DOD program. So it is approved so we can bring veterans. We did this last summer and our program is partnered with the University of Tennessee, knoxville. There are accrediting source. So they accredited their certification that we get to put out, and it's in reliability engineering and maintainability engineering, but it's much easier to categorize it under continuous improvement.
Speaker 3:So all the different models that we're familiar with, like 5S and the Toyota model and world-class manufacturing, really the military decision-making process is actually very, very similar to all of these things, which is a great transition, and that one occurred to me after when I got into it. I'm like it's all the same stuff. You're conceptualizing things, you're organizing, you're mobilizing, you're prioritizing, you're just making decisions. It's all risk mitigation when it comes down to it. So it's a natural fit for these guys. But so that's the curriculum base, that we have the positions.
Speaker 3:So I'll go through the steps of it. The first step we do is we find the manufacturers, and this is something we learned the hard way. Originally it was we found the veterans first and we were then trying to find an opportunity to match, and it doesn't work that way. So we go to a manufacturer and they said they wanna participate in this program. We vet them, so they have to. We do a little bit of an audit, make sure that right the conditions are set, we're not gonna send people into a bad environment. So there is some background checking that we do on that side and then we work with them to get their search criteria customized search criteria for what are the positions that they have open currently? And there's about 600,000 in manufacturing right now open positions and that's gonna grow to like 1.5 million positions in manufacturing by 2030. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:I feel I agree with that, by the way, too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's nuts, so we're looking to fill these positions. So they give us the exact requirements that they need. So when we basically essentially it's a metal list, so we take their missing essential tasks, these are the competencies they need to try to. We create a custom curriculum for that, like in the right person that we're looking for, and at the same time we have a pool of veterans skill bridge veterans that have reached out to us kind of organically and they tell us where they wanna work, give us their search criteria and, based on these two pools, then we match folks together. So if you wanna live in my Knoxville area, we've got, you know, bush, beans, smith and Wesson, rubbermaid all of those are right there in that area and those are the companies we would go and say hey, we've got these veterans that you know want to live in this area, wanna work with you guys on all of these things. We'll train them up, certify them in every competency that you need specifically for your role. We give them the baseline, the manufacturing expertise. They get a university certification from the University of Tennessee which tells the entire world that they're top notch and ready to go.
Speaker 3:And the coolest thing about the certification is our program is intense. It's, like I said, three to six months and they're going through this entire thing and it's project-based. So they come and train with us for a week, do like a boot camp at the university, and then they actually go to these sites all over the country and they work with those manufacturers at their sites, with their coaches. We coach remotely and in-person. It's run like a distance learning master's program. At that point in time they go through it, but the project they do has to have tangible value. They have to produce a case study at the end which demonstrates, you know, their cost savings. Our expectation is really, I'd say on average it comes out about half a million, but you can. You have some projects that are hover around a million dollars and that's, in that short period of time, cost savings. With one person who's learning to do it for the first time, it's absolutely incredible. So you've got this win-win-win scenario. So we're just-.
Speaker 2:Oh, Michael Scott, I love it. Yep, it is.
Speaker 3:It's. We just got through the whole series of my kids. They love it. Dwight Shrewd is like a I don't know, he's like a demigod around here. He's pretty cool, him and Ron Swanson that's the other one for me, but it's yeah, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3:So what we've really done is created a take-in thing where there used to be a lot of organizations that were you could chart the same path. Right, there's I don't know, I hear I've heard crazy numbers but say it's 4,500 veteran and military nonprofits and there's someone that does every little bit thing you could possibly imagine. What we wanted to do again, this is about setting conditions is how can we create the easiest path forward, make it as vertical as possible, and that's what we've done. So we take everything from recruitment through the placement. So after they execute this project, they get certified and then there's that decision-making part where they're gonna have a relationship. So they'll sit down with these folks that they've been working with for three to six months and they make an informed decision about what they're gonna do and if they do not, if it doesn't work out for them. Together we have an entire network of other manufacturers that are looking higher. Like I said, there's 600,000 openings.
Speaker 3:It's something that the country needs and veterans are a great fit for it because of the military decision-making process and that's it my favorite reliability engineer of all time. He's the head coach on my staff as the Navy Nuke and those guys are. They're just incredibly smart, they're understanding of process and their technical training and this is a frustrating thing for me. This is actually I don't know if it's intentional or not or anything like that, but it's an interesting thing retention, talking about retention in the military, and you've got to go like that, and the training that Navy Nukes go through is, I would say, probably superior to like a four year undergraduate degree in nuclear engineering. That's the kind of thing.
Speaker 3:But when they step out maybe I'm incorrect about this, but they really do not have a certification or something that is tangible that they can go out and trade in, and I find that incredibly interesting. And the other one that really surprised me was one of our veterans this summer I worked with. She was in the medical fields and it's the same kind of thing. She was essentially a nurse for like 20 years and there was a lot. There's so many certifications I believe she could have had, but she didn't. It's really interesting. So setting the conditions, conditions, conditions, conditions. If we can control those, all the better.
Speaker 2:Dude, I love that whole process and I think six months, with the whole skill bridge thing, is like the perfect time, because when I, being in 16 years now, I've taken over like probably 16 different jobs at this point and six months is that decisive point, meaning that, hey, I'm either going to love this job or I'm not going to love this job, because I fully understand it. I understand the people, I understand the systems, I understand the processes and if I want to be all in or not all in, six months is that magic window. And it's like what we're talking about now, where I work in so-called acquisitions. I've been there for six months now, absolutely love it and I feel fully confident in what I'm doing, so it makes a better decision. I could see that with someone who's transitioning out that wants to go be a manufacturing engineer and I love the correlation that you make and I'm not an engineer by trade and I'll just state that but I do have a master's in systems engineering management from the Naval Postgraduate School. I have a lot of classes in manufacturing engineering and you're spot on one because you identified that need before that the US made in America.
Speaker 2:That prestige that we used to have is coming back one, because I think geographically, geopolitically, we're going to be just naturally divided over the next. Like 10 to 20 years, made in China is not going to necessarily be a thing. I think we're going to do more focused trading based on geographic and allied nations. I think. Just in my mind, I think that's where we're going. So one of the things that we have to bring back is that ability to manufacture and the skills that that takes in. What better pull than the veteran community? Because, at the end of the day, every single person now that I understand what it is project management, program management, manufacturing is is leading in the military. Every single job that that I've ever had Because you put me as an infantry bubble right and PEO aviation my first job is I ran aviation system mission architecture and AMSA, all the systems that go in helicopters to make them fly and do their jobs.
Speaker 2:I had no idea what they were, but I could correlate my skills that I was educated in and what I've done in the past in the infantry to excel. I don't need to understand this full system, in a way, I just need to understand the processes and figure out how to refine them to make them more efficient. And then I was able to go take another job in UAS and that's where it really got exciting Because, okay, I understand the use case, understand how the system works and I understand all the programatics behind it to make it exceptionally grow. And now, where I'm at, I think I manage. It's crazy, like some of the twin 60 programs it's it's insane, but I love it because now it's pushing me outside of my comfort zone.
Speaker 2:How can I manage all these different efforts and not be as detailed as I need it, but hit the wave tops to make sure that it's efficient and effective and then continue to move forward so that I'm turning still the framework and the pipeline that you've created. And also I got caught this to the mission essential task lists. So metal, which I love to like that's the acronym metal that you pull that from manufacturers or jobs and then you align that with people, what they're looking for, to connect them, and then you create the whole pipeline, like, hey, here's a job in the location that connects your passion, your mission, your purpose, the certainty that we talked about, and it's all there. Yes, beautiful, and could you walk me through the documentary that you feel?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I'll wait one more comment before I do that. There there's kind of an interesting thing that's happened with with some of this, and I love this setup. I'm just I'll take the picture for you. So for me it was when I bought bought a house or get married. That's a huge commitment that you're making at that point in time and you don't necessarily know how it's going to play out. So what we found was, if you get a really neat opportunity so this is like an internship and at the end of it, at that point in time, you're forced to have this real, real, intimate discussion about this relationship that you could be entering into and you actually get to set expectations with each other, with you know the information needed to make those decisions. Yeah, they're not only getting to know each other setting up, they're setting the conditions for a long term sustainable relationship that's going to be fruitful for everybody. So it's really cool. But, yeah, so that the film itself I said I've been thinking about the certification program and the thing with the veterans really happened with my wife.
Speaker 3:I had started the company, we had started to have a little bit of success and I had all this. You know, red, white and blue veteran owned business stuff on the, on the webpage and all the things. And my wife's like, hey, you've got all this stuff on here when you're going to do something about it. You can't just put this, you can't say you're this like military guy and not do anything. So that got the ball rolling in my head about how we could do. That's the idea, for the program started happening and then my brother began his transition out of the Marine Corps for the second time. So he was an infantry officer. He was at the ball there's a platoon commander at the Battle of Marsha, all kinds of incredible things and he got out and then went back in to go help with the refugee camp to Fort Dix and bringing those all of our camp friends back. So it was he was doing that.
Speaker 3:And then he led left service for the second time and he was going to this transition and it was the same thing searching for community and purpose and certainty and all that stuff. And I think certainty was the hardest thing for him at this point in time. He was born to be a Marine like that's. That's what he was. He's, you know, perfect, for it is that guy and I think he had so much of his value tied into that identity. When he got separated from that, it's kind of like you know who am I to think.
Speaker 3:So he was going through that process of figuring it out and we had begun talking, because he did. He finally took a job and it would happen to be in manufacturing and we had been talking for about him becoming a student of ours, for any of these things that happened like, oh, we've got this great program, we could use it for veterans, I'm certain I could take. I could take any kind of junior officer, senior, NCR, whatever, whoever, and I could turn them into a valuable member of the main in America community. So that was how that planted and we actually started developing the program together and this is such a cool thing. My brother and I were at the serial our entire lives. He was, he was four years older than me, was just just enough to wear my sister's older.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's competitive and whatnot, but it's from a distance. It's like I can compete with him and his. You know, physicality cannot overwhelm me because we're that far apart where I get to do that. I know it drove him absolutely crazy. But yeah, it was always the difficult things and competition was that always, always, always like yeah, yeah, again, look back, can't do anything about it now, but everything was Thanksgiving 2010,. We you know it was a fistfight in his yard in Camp Lejeune. We were in there, out there, fighting because, you know, they were making fun of the army and I got, I got hurt, whatever, and we ended up doing that and everyone's sister girls are crying and yeah, it was a mess. But so that when this, this came about, you know, 10 years later, and we're really started to work on something together, I was really excited and hopeful for it. But when he did get into the reality of that position and it just wasn't underemployed you know a whole lot of the things that we could list off and the statistics that go along with them it was, it was kind of, it was the same old same and the result was, you know, in a lot of ways, predictable and on December 1, 2022. He committed suicide and that was. That was really the thing that threw us into this whole heart. So the the name on turning steel.
Speaker 3:I was hanging out with one of his friends that I just met us a seal team guy and he was there. We were at the after the funeral, we were looking at pictures or whatever it was in the hotel lobby and we came across this one of an M wrap. My brother was in when it, when it blew up and it was just this gnarly massive piece of steel. I'll send it to you so you can have it for the show, so whatever you want. And we're there looking at that and he's telling me all these stories and he said was he was a. He was a seal team breachers. So when we would breach and you know, obstacle or start an assault, he would call turning steel into the radio. And so, hearing that and then looking at this, like the imagery of exactly that this just twisted steel he said, oh, that's good, exactly that, this just twisted steel. He said, oh, that's kind of like what we're undoing. It's difficult, it's returning, never quite be the same, but it's worth doing. So that was, that was un-turning steel. I've soon as I could.
Speaker 3:I got out to Green Bay, which is where Sean was, and we did the project this summer at the very factor he was working at. So it's kind of this getting the tie up loose ends. This is getting to the end and I need to complete the work I started with my brother and going through it. So we went in the whole hog last year. So in a year's time we've done everything from set up the program to now we're. We're knocking on the doors of Congress in a year and we made the decision that we needed to film at all.
Speaker 3:Does that?
Speaker 3:One of the difficult things we have in this country is it's so stratified now that the decision makers are about you know there's eight degrees of separation between you and where the dollar gets spent, and that's a that's a challenging thing.
Speaker 3:It's because then you have people far outside of the community unimpacted that do not understand the conditions that we're living in, drawing up solutions for us, and that's the resourceful versus resourcefulness.
Speaker 3:Idea again is, if you, if you empower the communities at the lowest level, like the veteran level, those folks are going to understand the problem and own the solution much better, and we wanted to recreate that within manufacturing, create that sense of accountability to something greater than self, and that's the main in America. Piece of the film brings this to the doorstep of academia, which is a big one I wanted to target, for the sake that they're not. They're not meeting their obligations when it comes to us manufacturing and what they're preparing their leaders for. Because when you, your big leaders, are going through business schools and doing all these things and I went through an MBA program, one of the best around at the UNC, chapel Hill, absolutely loved it, learned a ton, but I was disappointed that in those two years of study you know the cost of what I do every day that part of the business was brought up maybe twice in two years and it was thrown under the umbrella of manufacturing overhead.
Speaker 3:And I look at it and it says you know, last year us manufacturing was estimated to lose $1.5 trillion 11% of gross revenue to unscheduled production downtime. And that's exactly what our students go and fixes unscheduled production downtime. That is what we're eliminating. That is the risk. So we've got, we've got the guys for it, we've got just what they need. And again, and I think you'll like this one the, what makes our people so special, or makes our military people so special, and just just the remedy to a lot of manufacturing's woes is their implementers. And what I mean when I say that is like in the state of Connecticut. Here we have a innovation fund. It's like $75 million. That's a huge investment and it's all earmarked for manufacturing itself. And I've worked around the country everything from, you know pharmaceutical, the aerospace, little Debbie snack cakes, everything in between, and what you. What you really find is how was I going with that one? I was about to make a killer point and I can't remember what it is anymore.
Speaker 2:So when you're in the middle of a journey, you're going to start to learn your passion and the purpose from walking through that journey, kind of with your brother, and then seeing how that impacted him and going to the name of I'm turning still specifically from like that type of like breach your mindset and what happened was in the that EI, probably IED, they hit that MRAT vehicle and what I'm going to right now I think is is absolutely beautiful and you hit the nail on the head of resourcefulness versus resources. And what better people than what I genuinely believe, wholeheartedly believe, that our greatest resource in this nation is the people who volunteer and serve. One it's a full volunteer force and everyone who volunteers, regardless of the reasons, they are making the cognitive decision to serve in the time of turmoil. I mean, make no doubt about it. Like what keeps me up at night is all the different geopolitical tensions that we have right now, like this world is absolutely chaos, but what inspires me every single night is the men and women who continue to serve. And then they're problem solvers and I remember going back into me being in Afghanistan. They gave me a mission to go clear five kilometers worth of, basically, ied fields and build a police station and recruit Afghan local police. So what do I have to do? I had to figure out how to be an engineer to create a road and build a police station, basically do what Special Forces does of creating an internal type of community and law enforcement local to that area and then govern that area until we could connect other areas within the larger Afghan pool. And what did I do?
Speaker 2:I went to my men and women, and I remember this one dude, wetlake. I'll give him a shout out, jack of all trades. I went to who, not how, right, like how are we going to do this? Okay, who can help me do this? Wetlake could run basically every type of equipment that we needed. He could build the police station and I had all these other types of soldiers who had unique skills that we could leverage at the time. So I took the resources that I had and that wasn't the issue. I was resourceful enough to figure out how to solve those types of problems. And it's the same as true now is that you can take a veteran I'll just use the hat of like an infantryman and put them in any type of scenario or field and if you give them the resources to be successful. They will inspire you. I guarantee it. They will figure out a way to create something better than what you even thought, because they're problem solvers and, at the end of the day, that's what all veterans are they're problem solvers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's all the resources I needed. You know, distance, direction and motivation. That's really all they need to figure out the rest and I didn't remember you were talking. It became back to me so it's that it was the implementation piece that I was talking about. So, $75 million, there's billions and billions every year that they're throwing at stuff, and it's it's usually for digital transformation or some other buzzword at the time, but the return on investment for change initiatives in North America is less than 50%. So it's like I think it's actually 75% of change initiatives in North America fail, meaning they realize less than 50% of their anticipated ROI.
Speaker 3:But that's reality and that is because we have these great ideas. We have all these things, but we do not have the skills and the people to implement them, and what you just described is that infantry officer or it is those, that those are implementers. So give them a direction to say go. And when you think you were talking about your example, it's the same situation that these young reliability engineers run into is you have typically leadership that doesn't understand your profession because it's fairly new and all these things they have not, had not done that before. So instead of getting like detailed instruction on how you go about doing this thing. It's like, hey, here's a factory, make sure it runs, and that's about the level of instruction that you get. That is what it's.
Speaker 3:I mean, you got to work yourself through it. So the military decision making process is a great way to do it. Yep, you know you start, you know chipping away at it bit by bit, by bit by bit, until you have a really good understanding.
Speaker 2:All right team. Let's take a quick break from this episode and I want to share a leadership resource with you, and that is the resiliency based leadership program. Rblp's vision is to create a worldwide community of practice committed to building and leading resilient teams. So why do you need to build and lead a resilient team? Resilient teams are the key to individual and organizational growth, regardless of being in the military or in the civilian workforce. Building collective teams allows for exponential growth and the team's ability to overcome adversity, adapt and, most importantly, grow. And in bottom line, up front, resilient teams are just stronger together.
Speaker 2:And here's the fact 99% of the people who take that course recommended to others, and I'm one of them. I would just completed my certification and I highly recommend this. And the great news is it's most likely free to you. And if you're in the military, it is a 100% free to you. And if you want to learn more, you can look in the show notes for this episode and find the link and use the discount code J-M-C-M-I-L-L-I-O-N, and that is also in the show notes. Back to the episode. I used to. I used to. I'm looking it up right now. I used to understand the MDMP process intimately because I used to go through that at the brigade level as a lead planner, but I want to look that up because now I forgot that skill and it's eating at me Do they still use it.
Speaker 3:I didn't know if they had a new, if a new doctrine came out or not.
Speaker 2:So, 100%.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, yeah, I thought it was it is. It's very deliberate, it's very good, and a whole lot of the things that I've built into my curriculum and it's things that I've taken with me from service is a lot of that stuff. I'm a very I'm an abstract thinker. I'm kind of all over the place, and it comes to that. Being in the military really gave me a lot of tools that could really help me be more resourceful with my, my mental capacity. Otherwise, you know, I'm a space cadet.
Speaker 2:I always kind of go through. So MDMP for me, when I'm working through a problem, is almost too formal in a way, and there's a new kind of and I'm probably going to miss it because this is like four years ago but I think it's the rapid decision making process of where it takes MDMP but it pushes it through a more accelerated filter where you don't have to have as much like big picture war gaming and filtering. I think that that is that is the pivot, and the key is that you give people who, with a task, give me a task, give me a purpose and your desired end state, and I'm going to hit that desired end state and it may not be what you think in order to get to there, but I'm going to get there and then I guarantee, at the end of the day, I'm going to provide more value than what you thought. So, mdmp, all right.
Speaker 2:Lesson one you've received a mission, so tell me what you want. Then we go into fact finding, mission analysis, course of action, development, building out COAS, war gaming, those COAS of like. All right, will these work? Are they smart, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time based? And then we compare those COAS together cost benefit analysis, bang for your buck type thing. And then we approve that together as a team, or the commander approves that, and then we issue out the orders to actually make it happen.
Speaker 3:Man, I can't believe how much I ripped them off, Dude you did.
Speaker 2:That's the beauty about people like you that you can make connections. Here's the thing. The military is an untapped resource, not even with their people, but some of the like. The TLP is troop leading procedures at a more tactical level. All of these things exist and they should be in the broader community because it helps at the end of the day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I really think. I believe that the thing that separates our military from every other one in the world is our doctrine. Yeah, less so than technology or anything else. Is just we are.
Speaker 2:we are skilled in practice that what we do, the thing that I believe that separates our country from others, especially within the military, is the level of mission command that we can give. So think about this is that you know an E5 someone or a brand new lieutenant like you, like me? In Afghanistan, I was in charge, and it blows me away. I was in charge with doing combat operations, two to three a day, with over a hundred million dollars worth of equipment, with over 40 people that I had directly assigned to me, and I was making life and death decisions every single day and I had maybe eight months of work experience. But my leaders entrusted me to give me the authority to make those levels of decisions, and there's certain things that we have to go up to leadership to get approval on, like if I wanted to drop a J-dan or something crazy like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, understandable, we have rules of engagement, but that that's the beauty about, I think, our military is that we give our junior leaders as much risk as they can tolerate and stretch them without breaking them. But it also stretches senior leaders, and I had a great commander tell me this one time and it still resonates to me and I think I bring it up in almost every episode. But we have to delegate to the point that we feel uncomfortable, and when we feel uncomfortable, that is the point that you have succeeded in giving enough authority and resources to your team to be successful.
Speaker 3:I'm taking that one forever, I know it's powerful man.
Speaker 3:Delegate to the point you feel uncomfortable. Yeah, what a great performance measure. That's awesome, yeah. Yeah, I don't know what you're describing. Yeah, it's coaching and mentoring and that's so. That's one of the I say I would say, probably that framework and that structure from the military is one of the things I am most interested in bringing in, incorporating and manufacturing the coaching and mentorship that's. That's. That really is what will sustain people in those difficult times and those transition periods is having people they can count on and again, this is one of the things we want to set up.
Speaker 3:From my experience, I showed up like new role this is you kind of figure it out and it was very isolating and lonely and quite difficult at times. But having been in the environments that I've been, I understood the value of coaching and mentorship and I went about and found some, some great ones within the organization and the one this is. This is kind of cool. I love how things come full circle. So this is so the company that recruited me out of the army, the first one I went to work for I went there, had my experience with the transition, learned all that stuff, all these, you know, had hard times, great times, and I left there about after two years. I did consulting and started the business and everything. But now we've come back around. It's kind of making a mess of them because I wasn't the leader I needed to be when I was with them. But now I get to come back and I'm training I'm actually training their young manufacturing reliability engineers that are that are taking over the roles that I once filled there. So it's really cool and the mentor who really really helped me out, he's now helping me with this project with fun turning steel. So Pat Aikens is his name is just a fantastic guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's awesome and I did not mention this and I wanted to so that the factory my brother was working at when he, when he left us, was in Green Bay, wisconsin. It's a place called the metal craft meant and they make all the military challenge coins and customer recognition that we love so much. So there, green Bay Wisconsin, they make yeah, it's, it's an incredible amount. If you have a quality challenge coin, it's 100% made in Green Bay Wisconsin and I got to work in that process for you know, a couple months this summer and it's just as astonishing the amount of care and love and effort that goes into those coins and I think that you know that is translated into how valuable they are to us. But it's really cool, I'll send you. When I got with it we actually had a coin made for the film and I'm certainly steel coin that you see in production throughout the movie.
Speaker 3:So in the beginning of the movie it's getting die cut and oh, that's amazing going through the whole thing, and then this is the knee part. So those coins that we love, the enameling on them, the coloring in most instances that's all hand painted Really. Yeah, wow, and that was one of my favorite things about this manufacturing process was it starts with artwork, because it's graphic design and all that, and I love how that's incorporated into it. So you've got this. A really set of people that think completely different than the rest of the organization as far as you know what their competencies need to be. So it starts with them and then goes through the whole process and then ends with artwork on the back end to hand painting everything and just all the different steps and things that have to happen in between. I think it's.
Speaker 3:I'm very excited for the film to give a lot of people never been inside a factory or manufacturing facility and give them a peek at all the different things that have to happen.
Speaker 3:And then you can sit around and look around yourself and I do this with my kids all the time because they don't you know, they want to know what I'm doing and all that stuff, and it's always manufacturing and say if you look around you, like for driving that stop sign, there's a factory that makes that stop sign, factory that makes the red, the red paint that goes on it and the reflective tape and all that stuff there's. Everything has to be manufactured and that's how we create wealth in this country. It's just, yeah, it's just all worth doing, not kind of become a manufacturing nerd. Never thought that would happen, but I absolutely love it. It's just that's incredible thing. And as far as national security goes and giving back to that, like my biggest client is Lockheed Martin and the way they go about their business at the 35 facility in Fort Worth, is they really, really care about the product and they understand the consequences that they do their job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they make some of the most sensitive military technology. You know that we use so and I had an honor. So sorry, we're over an hour. I typically try to keep this in an hour, but we're both fired up so we're almost done, no problem.
Speaker 2:There was an opportunity that I had to talk to BAE, and this was over a transponder and in a military, and I remember John, which was my industry partner, was like hey, I want you to talk to some of the people. And this was right after COVID. So I was like one of the first military people that was able to go to that factory to talk to the workforce. It was like yeah, no worries, it's like yeah, it should be like maybe 15 to 20 people. Well, there's like 300 people in there. So John's like hey, sorry, there's a little bit more people than what we thought. So walk in there and I start talking to them about.
Speaker 2:Hey, this system that you're producing isn't just wiring, harnesses that you're putting together and circuit boards and all of those different things. You need to understand. The deeper purpose behind it is that this system goes in the air craft. So what does it do is it provides positive identification of friend or foe. So if an aircraft is flying, it needs to have an immediate decision if this is going to be an enemy or if this is a threat that I need to neutralize and detect, and we cannot allow aviation operators to hesitate because that costs a lot. So what you're doing is extremely impactful and I went into a deeper story of sharing one of my more vulnerable experiences. But it resonated so deeply because a lot of the times, leadership and those levels are all focused on output, like, hey, how many systems did you do today and what is the total profit of it?
Speaker 2:But what we forget is the people who actually do those things and connecting that Like what you do is important and you don't hear it enough, but I'm genuinely appreciative of you and everything that you do and the bigger picture. Yes, you are doing these small, tedious things, but this is what it's doing for our nation and then the greatest resource we have the men and women who volunteer. So one of the last questions before we get to the final show notes that I always love kind of wrapping up Yep.
Speaker 2:What would be the best advice that you could give someone who's getting ready to transition? I think this would be a beautiful question for this episode.
Speaker 3:I'll answer that. But then I have one last question for you before we move on, so that if I was going to tell anybody that's transitioning out of service, I would say find yourself a transition coach of some kind whether there's a service out there or someone who has done it before you, that has just gone through the process, understands all the pitfalls and the different things that can possibly happen, and that'll that'll alleviate 90% of your headaches. Because those people say, hey, I wish I would have taken advantage of skill bridge, I wish I would have done this, I wish I would have done this, this, this, the other, or you need to talk to this person, and so on, and I just got rely on your community to help you through it. That would be the biggest thing.
Speaker 3:But specifically, if you are interested in manufacturing, go through, check out our skill bridge offering under it's actually under the other company, Renaissance reliability, the company that started, but I'll put, we'll get links to all that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's it Coaching and mentoring. Find one Right Part of being a leader is knowing when you need to be, when you need to have be led, I guess to say, or when you need help and understanding. Yeah, but my question for you and this is one, this is like the standard question we ask everybody who's he's gotten interviewed for the movie for everything is what does made in America mean to you?
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's a good question. To me, when I was growing up, made in America, matt, reliability at Matt, something that was on more on tangible. I guess it wasn't just a product, it was something that you know was going to work when it needed to work. With its basic function, it was going to last extremely long period of time. That it was something that was unmatched compared to what the rest of the world made, because people American citizens were actually putting their hands to these things and building it, so the quality was just absolutely unmatched. So to me, when I you say American made, I think that it's something that you know is going to work and that it was made with love.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so great. Well said, that's no, that's fantastic. Yeah, it's an. It's an amazing thing, it is an ideal. I think it's. It's Surging back with the reshoring efforts and everything else that we have. Manufacturing is so critical to life and, yeah, there's a lot of interest in it. We're very excited going into an election year with the film and, yeah, some important things to talk about. That's very exciting.
Speaker 1:It's time for our final show segment that I like to call the killer bees. These are the same four questions that asked every guest on the tales of leadership podcast. Be brief, be brilliant, be present and be gone.
Speaker 2:Question one what do you believe separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader?
Speaker 3:Uh, self actualization. I think that's the biggest thing understanding, understanding where your flaws and where you need help and Really how you're coming across. I guess probably the most frustrating thing I see is when leaders don't have a clue what their people are really thinking, not having that, that insight and ability to look into that. So I think that's probably the biggest thing. It's like cleaning up your own house before you go and mess around with other things.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I love that question to what is one resource that someone who listens this episode can go get to help them on their leadership journey.
Speaker 3:On their leadership journey. Oh, one resource didn't get. Go get yourself a coach and mentor. 100%, that's what I would say. If you're looking for one single resource that could give you the most good as a coach or mentor, go find one, don't settle through one. They're like therapists you got to try them out until you find the right, one great fit, and then it'll change your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. Number three if you could go back in time, it gave your younger self a piece of advice. What would it be?
Speaker 3:Lord. This is funny because this is something I think about all the time, like, well, yeah, if I could go back and undo that.
Speaker 2:Think we all do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, younger self, mmm. Yeah, I don't know. I would probably go back and tell me, younger self to yeah, take a little more time to be a brother than a, than a competitor when it comes out to it, so Be it.
Speaker 2:I love that man. So the last one is how can our listeners find you and how can they add value to your mission?
Speaker 3:All right, this is an exciting time, so the time for this is great. So, coming up soon, on March 7th, we have our debut screening of unturning steel, and originally we were going to be doing it as it was just an in-person thing, but we've noticed that we have a very unique opportunity here to do some massive outreach, so we are going to live stream the event as well. So we're doing at an auditorium on the University of Tennessee campus, right in the shadow of the football stadium. There's an old Gothic revival auditorium, seats like 900, and we're doing it in conjunction with the University of Tennessee's maintainability and reliability conference. So there'll be a lot of industry folks there and we'll do the screening for them on Wednesday night, but Thursday night's the big one, so it'll be live stream and be all that stuff. There is an RSVP page which I'll send to you, where people can Either say they're gonna send in person or they can click on it and basically secure their spot with the live stream link. We'll get that to you and you can join us from afar. Yeah, that's that's.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing I do is that that's screening on the 7th. It's a very difficult project to explain in a short period of time, so you're getting actually some focus on it and what that's gonna look like is we've got this is. This has been. The best thing about this project is the when the resources come from. It's really kind of exciting. I get in the military. You've got certain channels for where you get the resources from, but entrepreneurship it's just kind of wide open if you just got to kind of figure out where they're coming from and through this we ended up with this, this killer acapella group to do the national anthem.
Speaker 3:That's how it started. You know, we'll, we'll present the colors and then I'll give like a 20 minute keynote speech Going through the whole, just how all this thing came together. We'll screen the film at that point of time and this is a 22 minute short. So this is actually gonna be a hockey series.
Speaker 3:So this was like the experimental Edition of it, of where we were messing around in Wisconsin and really kind of screwing things up and figuring out what works. And then the next one will be us taking a cohort Through the same work, but in the state of Connecticut. So hopefully with sub base Groton, and some of the manufacturers here will be doing that and that could be episode two. But yeah, so that's that's it. Get, get some mark on, check it out, hit us up for the the live stream link. Go the RSVP page. That is the absolute best thing you do. If you attend on Thursday, you will be a convert by the end of it. This stuff's undeniable. The value of it there's really nothing argue with. There's no downside to what we're doing. We're leveraging government resources that we're just gonna sit there and get wasted anyways we're putting under use. So it's something we're very proud of and we know people everyone's getting behind, because that's that's the kind of project that it is and the kind of passion we throw behind it.
Speaker 2:But I could just tell that you're deeply passionate about everything that you do, and I think it's. I'm inspired by the pain that you've turned into purpose and and I always go back to like this turn Purposeful, accountable, leader or a pal you are. You are a pal, and what that means is being able to make hard decisions when other people's won't, but other is Turned in pain into purpose and inspiring other people through that purpose, and it's exactly what you're doing, brother. So thank you for everything you do, especially towards like veteran suicide and and transitions, because that's something that's near and dear to my heart, and the format that you provided and what you're going to continue to do. I'm genuinely appreciative of this past hour and you know 20 minutes that we've had to talk, so if there's anything that you ever need for me to help you with your mission, and if I have the capacity to do it, I would love to do it and thank you again.
Speaker 3:So no, thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure. I love talking about this stuff. They're important conversations and and the cool thing about folks like us is we are not just talking about it Like we're out there, we're presenting a solution. It's not just dialogue for dialogue sake or action for action sake. It's meaningful action that's gonna result in real change.
Speaker 2:Bill, thank you so much for being a Gaston tells the leadership podcast brother.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah, and folks could check us out on turning steelcom. There is a Facebook page and a LinkedIn page. The easiest way to get in the contact with me if anybody wants direct contact is through LinkedIn, so go find me on there and I will respond.
Speaker 2:I'm a testament to that. He will respond. That's how we connect it.
Speaker 3:But thank you very much, appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Have a great weekend, brother.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:All right, team. It's time for our after action review. That was a phenomenal episode, with Bill in such a deep Connection that he was able to kind of go through to show how he was able to turn his pain and to purpose and make an Inspired impact on this world. And it's funny, I think we spent like an extra 30 minutes after we got off talking. I'm so deeply passionate about what he is doing with helping transitioning veterans. This is something that you need to go help and support and, if you can like financially, when he creates a nonprofit organization, go do it, because that is something that is Needed today. Again, our greatest resource that we have is our men and women, and Transitions are scary because if we don't have a direct task and the purpose of where we want to go, that void can often be filled by darkness, by fear, anger, depression, all of those things and I personally, that's the whole reason I do this it really is is that I'm trying to help build a better leader, what I call a purposeful, accountable leader, and if I can do that, it'll impact thousands of lives, potentially millions of lives, and that's my vision of pin impacting 1 million lives to save a life, because if we have better leaders, they'll be more engaged, they'll create better cultures, they'll create better workforces, they'll help, be there and be present and view people as people and not just Processes or a cog in the larger system to produce a thing or a widget. You have to be engaged, you have to be switched on, and what he's doing with transitioning service members is critical, and how he was able to do that and Share the connection with his brother and the legacy is trying to build, for that is is incredible and he's someone that you need to go follow and you need to support. So what was the first key takeaway that I have? And it's the transition. This probably, honestly, is the biggest takeaway that I've gotten from this episode.
Speaker 2:When you transition, there's three key characteristics or Criterias that need to be met and number one we always have to ask ourselves Is there a community there, really accountability team there, that can help me when I go transition? You have to have what I call an accountability tree, something that is deeply rooted but also has large branches that can provide shade. Why? Because Transitions are turbulent times. They're scary, they're uncertain, it's a storm, there's a lot of things that are going to come at you at a very rapid and quick pace. What you need to someone who is unwavering in their resolve and support but also can provide you resources and tools and Mentorship and coaching along the way, and you have to have a community.
Speaker 2:Number two out of that is purpose. That is the decisive point when you transition into a new job, let's say whatever it is. But specifically leaving the military, transitions and finding purpose, I believe, is what makes or breaks the success of that. Purpose is so deeply ingrained in us when we're in the military because we have a distinct purpose. We know when we're gonna get up in the morning's, we know what we're gonna be doing throughout the week, we know what we're training for. We have a deep level of purpose. But when we get out, we lose that and I understand that.
Speaker 2:Me transitioning out of the infantry and acquisitions, I lost my sense of purpose Because it was so focused on people and then now I wasn't leading people anymore and that's one of the reasons that I went into this is because I have to have that outlet of Bringing value to people and I understand that purpose is absolutely decisive. So you need to understand what the mission is Before you make that transition. And then the last one with that transition piece is certainty. You have to have the mental clarity that if I go do something, it's gonna provide me a stable paycheck, it's gonna provide me a house for my family, it's gonna be something that I can do for a very long period of time and I don't have to worry about that. Because when we can do those things, when we can connect the certainty of what we want to do, we can have a distinct purpose and understand the mission and we have a deep level of community or accountability, partners or pals, purposeful, accountable leaders that can embrace us in that journey, in that turbulent time. That is what allows us to win and In transitions, and that formula that Bill shared can be Universal to any transition you have, and I love it because it's so simple.
Speaker 2:It follows the kiss rule keep it simple, stupid, right. These are the three checks that you have to understand, the three blocks that you need to check. If you can do those, you will be successful in any transition that you do. All right, team, do me a favor. If you like the content that I'm pushing out, make sure you share my podcast, make sure you rate it on whatever platform you listen to go follow me on social media.
Speaker 2:All of these are live streams, so if you want to go watch this in real time, you can go to my youtube channel tells the leadership and see this full episode. It doesn't have the a are the opening comments. It's just the full beaten potatoes of the episode. But you also can go to Macmillan leadership coaching Dot com and get a full blog that summarizes the key points within this episode and find additional resources there. And the last thing, if you feel so inclined to do so, you can support or donate to the show, and everything that I make goes back to Producing better content. I do not do this for financial gain. I do this to seek purpose really within my life and try to make a bigger impact of creating more purposeful and and accountable leaders team. As always, I am your host, josh McMillian saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time you.
.png)
