All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today a couple of gentlemen who have got a book
out coming in January 2025 called Warrior to Civilian, the Field Manual for the Hero's
Journey.
It's got a lot of interesting ideas in it and we're glad to have the authors with us.
We have Lieutenant Rob Sarver, US Naval Academy graduate in 2004.
He got out in 2013.
We'll talk a little bit about his career.
But Rob, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
And we have Alex Genzier.
He's a high-profile New York lawyer with ties to the military.
He didn't serve himself, but he's got a son who did and he's been involved in a number
of pro bono veteran groups.
Alex, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Jim, thank you.
Great to be with you.
Well, let's start with Rob.
How did a nice kid like you end up at the Naval Academy?
Through a lot of trials and errors.
I actually attended Virginia Military Institute for a year before transferring to the Naval
Academy.
I had to retake my SATs numerous times and then it was actually my GPA, my undergrad
studies that got me into the Naval Academy on the second attempt.
And you just couldn't find enough discipline at VMI.
You said, I need more.
I want to go to the Naval Academy.
I needed to do a second year of indoctrination and more pushups.
You're exactly right.
Okay.
And as I said at the outset, you did 10 years in service.
I think I read seven deployments, including three tours in support of Operation Iraqi
Freedom, two tours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Along the way, you said, this isn't enough.
I want to be a Navy SEAL.
And you went through that whole process and ended up on SEAL Team 3, I believe.
Yes, that's correct.
So you get done with all of this, 10 years into it, and you say to yourself, time to
go into the civilian world, you go on and earn an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's
Warren School of Business, and you're involved in the financial markets for a number of years
and also involved in nonprofits for a number of years.
Tell us a little bit about that transition as you moved from the rigor of military life
into academic life into civilian life.
Yes, getting out, I wasn't pushing or urging for my parents to go kind of get checked out
after so many combat deployments, so many friends being lost in combat, also friends
of dying in training accidents.
They really urged me to go speak to someone candidly.
And I think it was probably the first time I was honest with anyone who's going and sticking
down with psychiatrists inside Naval Special Warfare and really having that heart-to-heart
conversation and never, coming out of the conversation was I had never processed really
any of these deaths.
I just kind of packaged it, compartmentalized, moved on, said I was good, so I could continue
to operate, continue to deploy.
And everything kind of came to the surface.
So as I was getting out, I said, okay, Rob, you've been through a lot.
You're susceptible to developing or having PTSD.
Well, I did what everybody else does when they get out.
I took that paper, stuck it in my physical medical record that I made a copy of, and
I walked out the door and never looked at it again.
Until two years into my transition out, things started coming unraveling.
A lot of things started coming to a head.
I was looking at possible ones who were divorced.
Then I pulled that paperwork back out and I said, okay, I should have prepped.
I should have done more before I got out.
Maybe I wouldn't be having these problems right now.
And it's not unusual.
We talked to a lot of veterans as a transition out.
It takes a number of years, and I'm going to come back to that as how it relates to
the book, Warrior to Civilian.
But Alex, let's turn to your story a little bit about what motivated, you know, writing
a book is not easy.
Getting interviews with folks is not easy.
Give us a little bit of why this became a passion project for you, because it's not
like you didn't have enough to do as a big firm New York lawyer.
Yeah, I do appreciate it, and it's not obvious.
The story began, I've got two boys, and they're 20 and 24, and they are a center of my life.
And when the older one told me, and we had a long talk about it, about him joining the
military and he wanted to leave his undergraduate college in Virginia to go to the Naval Academy,
and his dream is to follow in Rob's footsteps.
It dawned on me that I had wanted to serve at a few points in my life, and I have not
had that honor.
And I felt that this was his calling.
The clarity with which he spoke, the motivation to serve things bigger than himself was inspiring,
and it was something that gave me great pause, because I had to figure out as a father how
to help him.
And the way I thought about it was, I think he's going to be hardcore.
He's very serious, he's very devoted.
I think he'll be in for a long time.
I think he'll do more than his 20.
And there's a pretty good chance that I won't be around.
You don't know.
And so I wanted him to have something on his way out that would help him, because it became
very clear to me that this transition, this major life transition, which we'll come back
to in a moment, is one of the most significant life transitions that happens to anyone in
our society.
And so this coincided with Rob and my working together.
We started having weekly calls for a bunch of reasons.
You start talking about life and your own life and comparing notes.
And we developed a friendship and a way of thinking about life that, despite having come
from very different backgrounds and life experiences, there was great commonality.
There was a shared humanity in it.
And that became not just the idea for a 10-page memo for my son, but the idea of what we
could do to serve others.
And frankly, this is a historic time in our country's history.
There have never been this many veterans and spouses alive.
There's 22 million vets alive today.
Half of them from the last 20 years wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And there's about 15 million spouses and family members.
This is not a niche group in our country, apart from their significance, apart from the fact
that they have stood on the wall for us and they do.
And I think that Rob and I began to think of this with some inputs from some very influential
people like General Petraeus and General McChrystal about doing something.
And once the aperture of our focus broadened and we started interviewing vets, which we're
happy to talk about, and there's spouses, I think the sense of mission and opportunity
to serve came into focus.
And I would say over the last five years, having Rob and I done research and interviews
of hundreds of people, I think for both of us, this has become the dominating passion
and commitment about which we want to make a contribution.
That's a heck of a long answer, Jim, but that's my answer.
No problem.
I mean, it really is an interesting approach because it's titled the Field Manual, and
we in the service all know that, you know, you go to the book, you find out what SOP is
supposed to be, but there really isn't an SOP for transition.
And transition takes a lot of time.
It's not a one week thing.
Talk a little bit about Rob, how, you know, you shouldn't begin your transition the day
you hang up your uniform.
You should start thinking about it earlier.
So tell us a little bit about what you're thinking there is.
So we wrote this looking at this as a 12 to 24 month process of getting out.
And the chapter one in the book is everything you would expect from the preparatory commands
you hear in the military.
It is the preparatory of the book.
Start thinking 12 to 24 months out.
But I think we had a wonderful opportunity and had thrown a great relationship with Tom
Satterley.
He was the command master sergeant of Delta Force.
He was a mother to issue, and he says it very eloquently that you do all this training
in the military.
Why would you not try to get out for one of the biggest life transitions you're going
to have?
And this is a very, very good point.
So that's something we'd like to pass on to folks is you have to train for this.
You have to prepare to get out.
Over 70% of that's come forward and say that they'd go with a major life stress in getting
out of the military.
So doing the full preparation to get out, finding the mentor, starting speaking to everybody.
We also give a great framework to think about is if you're at the very initial stage of
this, just ask yourself four questions.
What region do I want to live in?
What industry do I want to work in?
What function do I want to serve in that industry?
And what type of community do I want to be a part of?
So we give a lot of different frameworks to think about this as they're moving through.
But I would say as the field manual, yes, it is a preparatory for you to start thinking
about this 12 to 24 months out.
Well, I love the idea.
The phrase train to get out.
I've not heard that before, but it's so accurate.
People wait too long and then they flounder around for a while.
Could you address some of the issues that interrupt or delay transition, a successful
transition from loss and grieving, substance abuse, moral injury, physical injury, PTSD,
TBI?
Alex, can you talk about why talking about those problems, those situations impacted
your view on the model for transition?
You bet.
If you don't mind for 10 seconds, let me just supplement your last conversation.
So it's a field manual, most importantly, for what Rob said.
But in the grand scheme of things, we touch on every aspect and phase of the transition
for the veteran and unique to our book, if you don't mind my putting it that way, we
have an extensive chapter for spouses and family members.
It's unique because while there's some good articles and there's some very good folks
out there working on the issue of military spouses, ours is the only book that has a
full chapter dedicated to it that is a result of years of research.
Yeah, I'm going to come back around to that because I do think that's unique and important.
Yeah, for sure.
But let me answer your question.
There's an aspect of transition to civilian life and integration, for example, to companies
that is premised on, is based on one's ability to be functioning.
And if given the amount of wounds of war, whether visible or invisible, that exists in
our veteran population, and I'm saying that as a statistically or historically accurate
thing that has to be addressed, we do not treat veterans in our book.
We do not believe veterans are somehow troubled.
It's the opposite.
We believe they are a source of inspiration and leadership in our country that is not
fully appreciated.
However, in any aspect of healing, in our book covers both very important conventional
ones as well as innovative and alternative therapies, cutting edge therapies about PTSD
and TBI, an essential aspect of all those things, as well as the frameworks for reintegration.
There's an aspect of all of that that is premised on speaking and speaking in community, whether
it's two guys that go for a beer once a week, or it's 10 people that go on a hike to a nearby
mountain, and there's a ritual aspect of it, but there's a plain old speaking aspect of
it, and it's not just speaking.
It's listening, if you will, bearing witness to your brothers and sisters' stories.
It's having them respond and listen to yours.
This is an essential element of any reintegration of anyone, certainly of veterans and military
spouses.
There is an aspect of it.
Rob and I have become students of history in doing of this work, both the roots of the
warrior class of our country in Native American societies, the ancient Greeks, the town hall
meetings that Sebastian Younger's group called Vets Town Hall Organizes, which is incredibly
powerful, where the fact of sitting down and speaking and listening is incredibly important.
On a personal level, and I say this because I think many folks in your audience, and certainly
it's true for Rob and me, given our life journeys, we don't always say what's on our
mind, what's on our hearts.
I will tell you personally, there's times when I keep stuff inside, and it's not healthy,
it's not productive.
When I find the right moment to speak, and I do so in a way I think that is careful for
the other people I'm speaking with, that is a very positive life affirming thing.
In some way, that is at the heart of all of this process, but I would tell you from a
society and individual standpoint, speaking and listening with your buddies in community
is an essential aspect, not just of healing, but reintegration in general.
Yeah, I think you're another way to say this maybe, that as veterans transition, they need
to get out and get assistance or help.
There's a lot of places they can get it, but if you keep it all inside, you don't reach
out, you don't get some of this off your shoulders, it's going to make your transition into civilian
life that much harder.
Bullseye.
Yes, we actually use, we talk about carrying around the 100 pound rucksack once you're
out.
Nobody does that for fun.
No.
Well, these are all really good ideas, and I wanted to come back to the spouse situation,
the family situation, because as we talk to veterans over time, and we've been doing this
now for 21 years or something, you really need that kind of family, maybe it's a spouse,
maybe it's mom and dad, maybe it's a cousin, you really need that assistance on a lot of
different fronts in transitioning, don't you, Rob?
You do.
And the way this came about, after each chapter we wrote, we'd go back and we'd seek more
validation within that every spoke with, and we happened to reach out to a good friend
of mine, serving the steel teams on his first operation in Afghanistan 2009 in a turnover
operation.
He stepped on an IED and lost both his legs.
He was EOD, saved his life that day, metaback, just a phenomenal, phenomenal guy, Dan Trunosen.
He's gone on, went to Harvard, I think he has six or seven medals in the Paralympics,
but Dan read this.
He's like, guys, you do nothing to address spouses or children.
I'm like, Dan, you're absolutely right.
So we went back and we probably spent another year in writing this and interviews.
And the common themes that we saw were spouses will lose their identity.
They are going to lose their community, just like the service member.
And that's where we dawned on us, like, again, these conversations, these decisions amongst
the family unit or whatever that is in the household, those conversations need to take
place as well because the stressors are going to affect both people or the entire family.
And Alex, anything you want to add onto that chapter?
Because I know that was a big chapter of research that we did.
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, you know, without sounding off on cliches.
The spouse, you know, and the family from one perspective is what allows the active
duty service member to go serve in whatever capacity on assignment, on deployment, whether
or not they're in combat.
They are the ones that are part of the team.
And I think any veteran with a family that has served in that capacity would say absolutely.
I think there's another aspect that we attempt to give a little bit of tough love about,
and that is in the preparatory phase that Rob described, if you have a spouse, and by
spouse we mean significant other, whether you're married or not, whatever, but if you
have a spouse, it would be silly not to do this planning together.
This is a team sport.
And so there's many aspects of the involvement of spouse and family that are critical, and
we're not sure folks out there, including our government, are sufficiently aware of
it.
Yeah, there's, you know, my spouse served 36 years, I understand that from that aspect
as well.
And I think you're right, you got to do this together.
Given some of the basic reflections, Rob, that you mentioned like what region, what
industry, what kind of business to, you know, what field do I want to be in, all of that
sort of a team sport, isn't it?
It is.
You know, what are the values I'm looking for in the community?
What is the culture that I'm looking for in the company?
Those are some of the biggest reasons that we see people struggle, not within, just within
the house when they move, but also within companies.
They pick the wrong company because they run into something to make the quick dollar.
And Alex and I both understand that because we've only been there with corporations that
either do layoffs or restructuring that, hey, sometimes you just have to maybe go eat crow
because you have to go food on the table.
Absolutely understand that.
But the statistics are so pronounced with veterans going into jobs that 44% of the first
year leave, up to 80% leave the second, that there's not enough time and diligence that's
been on the front, less of the event of them getting hired to maybe mitigate those statistics
because they're choosing the wrong culture.
And maybe they're finding the right place.
Let me blend that, transition that into, you have a couple of chapters on purpose.
And I think this is one of the really difficult things for those getting out of the military
when you're in, you know exactly what the purpose is, what gets you up every day.
But talk about what you found about purpose, Alex.
I'll steal a line.
The purpose of life is purpose.
If one has a purpose that is meaningful, that aligns with your insides, and robs in my way
of thinking about it, which many veterans, every veteran we spoke with shares, having
a sense of a higher duty and obligation to serve others, to serve higher things than
yourself causes transcendent.
I mean for us and veterans and spouses and these communities, it is each other, it's
the country, it's certainly the constitution, it's ideas and things bigger than oneself.
And not everyone has to share and have a purpose in the way I'm describing it.
There's lots of ways to slice that cap.
And we provide different frameworks and stories because everyone can form their own.
Having said that, if you have a purpose and you have to get through a difficult time,
because this is a fundamental life transition, this is a life transition that for some folks
lasts for decades and maybe doesn't end.
And that's not to say those folks are somehow disabled, it becomes a central aspect that
explains their life.
For Robin me personally, the phrase we came up with, it describes this, is from our greatest
wounds has come our greatest sense of purpose.
If you have a sense of purpose, it makes hanging on to that when you're dealing with difficult
things or you're feeling from physical or non physical injuries, when you're having
to get a new job, when you're having difficulties at home, when you're trying to figure out
your place in this world where things don't make sense, because you have seen service
and sacrifice and loss and rising to higher challenges for the sake of the folks to your
left and to your right, you come back to a society which is a bit alienating.
We're going to the shopping mall seems to be what's important for some segments of our
country than having a sense of purpose becomes an essential thing that forms part of a new
identity and how you hang on to really positive things and craft a new life.
Before we run out of time, I want to make sure that folks understand the audience for
this book as I've read it and gone through it.
It'd be simple to say well, it's for those folks 12 to 24 years from getting out of,
months from getting out of the military, but I think it's much broader than that.
I felt like, hey, there's stuff the family is going to learn in this.
There's stuff the guy who's been out for a year to six to 10 years who maybe is bounced
through two or three jobs and just can't get it feel like it's the right fit for him.
There's a lot for people to learn here beyond that person who's still wearing the uniform
looking to transition.
So was that your audience Rob, that larger audience rather than the more narrow audience?
Yes, you nailed it.
The larger intent here was not only look at the military, active duty military veterans
and their spouses, the family unit, but let's broaden this to first responders.
They deal with a lot of these things, PTSD, TBI, loss of identity, community, but more
broadly we've given this book to people going through divorces or have lost a loved one
and they've come back and said the frameworks that you wrote about are very powerful and
universal.
I was able to take that and reflect on my own life and find some way forward or find a
path forward through this hard time.
So yes, thank you for saying that.
We wrote with the intention of going well past the military.
Well we appreciate the time that Alex Genzir and Rob Server have been able to provide
for us today, they wrote a book called Warrior to Civilian, the Field Manual for the Heroes
Journey.
It's going to be on a, oh it's a hatchered imprint I believe, hatchered publishing coming
out in late January 2025.
Gentlemen, any parting words and we really do appreciate your time today.
I'll be real quick Rob and I'll pass it to you.
Real quick, for reasons Rob and I don't understand, our publisher which is a phenomenal one didn't
anticipate a big print run.
So the book is available for pre-order today and if folks in your audience want to buy
it, that's fantastic.
We don't make any money off of that by the way, but if you want it we would urge you
to go buy it on Amazon now, pre-order it because it's going to run out.
The other thing I would say to leave your audience members with is if you're having
a hard time with any of these topics, you're in really good company and there's parts
of our book that can be helpful to you but it's not really about our book.
It's the idea that there is inspiration and hope and the darkest of times.
Sunrise happens after the darkest time of the day and there's every reason for hope
and healing.
There's innovative therapies, there's things that your brothers and sisters and family
members can do.
We would urge you never to quit.
Rob, I'll pass it to you.
Amen.
I would say thank you Alex.
I would say for the veterans out there, anybody who wanted to pick up this book, that realize
that my analysis relationship is a microcosm of the relationships out there that everybody
experiences.
My stories of veterans is ones of hundreds of thousands, millions of folks out there.
But Alex and I also realize that we stand on the shoulders of giants and we've gone
out and collectively pulled veterans' voices together, success, failures, everything too.
Write this book to help people to reduce the stress in their lives and to make that transition
one of refinding purpose.
With that, I'll turn it back to you and say thank you again.
Well, we're glad to have you on.
I'm surprised you went the whole interview, Rob, without saying go Navy.
After the big win this week.
Yeah, I know.
Sorry.
But I think this is an important book adding to the way in which folks transition and transition
broadly defined.
So gentlemen, thanks for your time today.
Thank you Jim.
Awesome.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawcone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at
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