what your vision is for this company and where you plan on going?
Yeah, so the long term vision for the strategic veteran is to become a SkillBridge program.
SkillBridge is a six month kind of career path right now that they offer to military,
transitioning military people.
There's like 12 different tracks.
Some examples are UI, UX design, Salesforce, sales, all kinds of human resources,
project management.
They've got all kinds of tracks for that, but there's not one for entrepreneurship
and really kind of building your own thing that aligns with your core beliefs and values.
So the long term vision is to become a SkillBridge program that veterans can take the
opportunity their last six months in the military to go through a program and have a
really good idea and a really good start on a business of their own or achieve a bunch of
different skills to be better intrapreneurs as well.
Do you get an opportunity to go back to, you know, where your last, the people that you
were with, you know, in the military and talk to them?
Have you gotten an opportunity to tell them what you're doing?
I mean, I know a close knit people.
It's a funny story.
To answer your question, I have a pretty unique journey and I don't know how much time we
have.
I read the emails and know we're supposed to keep things short, but in the interest of
explaining the whole thing, I was challenged to start something on LinkedIn in November,
late October, early November of last year.
And I was just to post every day and engage with five people.
And through that process, I developed everything that I have now.
The strategic veteran was born through that.
So what really gave me my break was I got a chance through Thomas McKenzie, who is
Allegiant Vets.
He's one of the C-suite guys at Allegiant Vets and they have a SkillBridge program.
And he asked me to come present as a presenter on one of their Tuesdays because he liked
what I was doing.
From that, I had in a breakout room, I had like 400 people come.
I ended up with like 300 followers, booked several meetings and that really drove home
that I had a good idea and that this was needed and solving an actual problem.
And so everything has just evolved from that.
So yes, kind of, I've had a chance to get in front of veterans, but most of this has
been bootstrapped by me building my following.
You might find this interesting.
I started with 93 followers in LinkedIn in November.
I'm over 2,600 now.
So I know that's not like super impressive growth, but it's still just a testament that
if you put your head down, take massive action and follow your intuition, that you will actually
build something meaningful.
How do leaders lean into funding their vision?
So what's your idea and your thought process in being able to fund this vision?
And I learned yesterday from another podcastor, funding doesn't often just mean monetarily,
right?
It also means time and everything else.
So please share with me your answer to that question.
Yes.
So I'll just use my business as an example.
Everything is self-funded right now.
So that either includes money or time.
A lot of it is time.
I have structured my finances in such a way that allows me to do this as many hours a
day as I possibly can, seven days a week.
So that looks like not spending excessive money on stuff anymore.
It really means paying attention to your budget, really looking at the tools that you're going
to use to build your business.
I took it as far as we're a one vehicle household.
I don't need a car.
It's a liability.
It's a distraction.
I like to drive, so I'll find any excuse I can to go get in that car.
So my wife and I are kind of the outliers in this situation and getting out, we don't have
kids.
We just have two dogs.
So for those people who do have kids and do need to support their family, I tell them
it's okay to get a job, but understand that that job is going to fund building your business.
And you have to keep that in mind.
So it's really up to you.
And that's why I like entrepreneurs so much, because it just allows you to control every
aspect of your life.
Then you have nobody to blame for failure or success, but you have to be careful.
But yourself.
That is awesome.
So when you say for, I guess that would be a great connection and probably connections
you've already made, which is to, for those that you say, if you can get a job, because
that will fuel the funding for your vision and your entrepreneurship, have you linked
with some job searching companies or individuals that could help in that area, that could gather
that piece so you can take care of the other piece?
So I actually, I have, I've built a pretty solid network.
There is a veteran that I have in my network who has created a resume tool that takes your
military experience and uses the links from job postings to tailor a resume that will
make you more competitive in the job market.
So there's people out there that are building tools for military people.
There are plenty of people on LinkedIn where you can find a job as a military person.
So I don't, I'm very anti getting a job.
So for me, it's not something that I ever want to, I guess, encourage.
I'm not against it in the sense that if that's what you have to do to provide for your family,
then I understand that you need to do that.
But you also need to understand that a job will make you comfortable and it's really
easy to stay comfortable.
And in order to build a business and something that is yours, you have to be okay getting
uncomfortable.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.