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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Kurtis, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us here today.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you having me on. This is something I'm looking forward to.
Speaker 1:So, sir, Kurtis, I'm gonna send you way back into the past and ask you a difficult question. About twenty years ago, you made, I don't know, maybe a tough decision. What was going through your brain when you decided to join the air force?
Speaker 2:So I I decided to join the air force three years before I joined the air force. Actually, four years. So when I was a fresh man in high school, I was walking from the 2nd Floor down to the 1st Floor, I walked into my US history classroom and I looked on the TV and the second plane ran into the 2nd Tower. And it was not shortly after that that I was entertaining the idea very seriously of joining. I had other family members that had served as well.
Speaker 2:They were already in service or coming into service shortly after that. So it was a pretty easy decision for me. And, it also made it simple because I I grew up in a somewhat medium to large family going to college, unless I was gonna take out loans was definitely not a part of the equation, which just kinda made it easier. And also, wasn't really a big school studies kind of person at that point in time.
Speaker 1:What was the so you're you're on uniform. You're in boot camp. What's your first impression is like, this is great, or is it like, holy shit. What did I do to myself?
Speaker 2:So it's it's funny. It's I don't think I've told this story publicly. Day one of basic training, show up, tech sergeant gamble. Maybe in the small world we live in, he'll hear this and maybe remember this moment, but I used to sleep with my shirt off. I was just I grew up.
Speaker 2:I always slept with my shirt off. And so we were getting sort of yelled at. It's that first night. It's not quite you know, you're getting yelled at. You're still a rainbow flight because everybody's got their civilian clothes on.
Speaker 2:And I found myself in front of my bunk and tech sergeant Gamble walks up and he's like, get ready for bed. So I take my shirt off. And sergeant Gamble, without missing a beat and, like, he is this very strong, skinny, very angry looking gentleman. He jumps in my face and he's like, what's up, Superman? You fixing to go to bed?
Speaker 2:And I was like, I guess we put our shirt back on, but I I noticed that night that everybody was maybe not there was maybe nobody crying, but, like, people seem stressed out. And I I thought it was entertaining because it kind of just reminded me of dealing with my dad. So thank you, dad. You, prepped me for basic training. There were stressful points in time, but nothing that was beating working with and for my dad and my house growing up.
Speaker 1:Are you a parent now yet or not yet?
Speaker 2:I am a parent. Yeah. I've got two daughters, seven and nine years old, and I learned a lot from my dad, a lot of things to do and a few things not to do. Not to do.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this. Are there any techniques that you're using from your military training on your and I don't know, it feels kind of weird because I feel like with the daughters on my side, it's no, but my sons definitely get the rough treatment. So what have you borrowed and what haven't you borrowed?
Speaker 2:So, it's, it's all been adapted in a way. My my military career spanned a lot of things. For instance, I ran the EOD preliminary course at Sheppard Air Force Base, which is in effect, it's it's a selection course of sorts. Like, it's very stressful. I can turn it on pretty quick.
Speaker 2:I can go from zero to 10, and I've made 18 year old dudes cry on a regular basis. Like, it's not that hard to do. But when I'm dealing with my girls, what I found is using all those experiences and then just kind of morphing them just a little bit can be really effective. So I've had good commanders that don't yell at me, but tell me that they're disappointed in me. That's a really good route to go.
Speaker 2:There's also the knife hands still come out, and the knife hands are effective. They're not mean. They're super effective. They work really well, and there are the degrees of niceness. A lot of people don't know this, but you have the open palm.
Speaker 2:The open palm is the, hey. You're about to screw up. And then as the hand turns, things get more and more intense until you're fully palm down knife handing, and this is the aggressive knife hand. This is when you know you've messed up. This is usually where people start, but this is when you know you've messed up.
Speaker 2:And so knife hands are effective. I also do really weird things. I'm not OCD at all. Mostly don't care about certain things, but I helped coach my daughter's softball team. Something I got from my military experience was I don't care how it looks, but it all has to be the same when the girls go to take all their catcher's gear and masks and gloves and all that stuff off in between innings or at practice, I always tell them, I don't care how it looks, but it has to look the same and it has to look neat.
Speaker 2:And it's it's interesting because at first, it seems silly, but then the girls start to realize that there is a method to the madness, and now I know where everybody's stuff is. They know where all their stuff is. They're also working as a team. You know, whoever gets their stuff down first is trying to put it down in a really easy fashion. So there's a lot of things that you can pick up in your service time that help you be a good parent, but nothing that you pick up in your service time is probably effective for just straight up doing.
Speaker 2:The amount of expletives that can come out of my mouth in sixty seconds when I'm lighting somebody up for a mistake they made is probably not appropriate with any miner.
Speaker 1:I have been there and done that, and I'm not sure I'm completely cured of those mistakes.
Speaker 2:I still have my moments.
Speaker 1:I still have my moments too. I most definitely in the last two years have have have, you know, soldier. And they're like, kind of done that to my son. But it's like, I'm not a soldier. So so you're fast forward, you're on your last day about to remove uniform for the last time.
Speaker 1:What's going through your mind? Are you afraid? Are you excited? What are you feeling?
Speaker 2:So fully excited. To be clear, I I did like my time in service, but I I knew it was time to transition to something else. And I was also I was an EOD tech while I was in. There's a certain amount of perceived danger that comes with that job. People see explosives or hear explosives and they're like, oh, that's dangerous.
Speaker 2:Now mind you, our risk meter is built different than yours. I tend to not really appreciate risks sometimes, but I was excited because I was getting to spend time with my girls, with my wife. I was also coming off of an election cycle. So EOD technicians across all four services do protection for every single candidate and president and their families. So we came off of a very, very busy cycle because we had a sitting president plus we had another democratic nominee plus Republican nominee and also the vice president.
Speaker 2:You know, they get the same protection with their family. So it was we were spread very, very thin, and it was just kind of a little sprint there right at the end that made me appreciate that last day. I will say the last day I took my uniform off though was the second Friday in May, and it was at my retirement ceremony and I weirdly emotional about a very strange part. So most of the ceremony was fine. Even like when I went up there and talk, I mostly just read my remarks, but I kept it short because I can't couldn't stand some retirement ceremonies that just never seem to end.
Speaker 2:But after you speak, they say, you know, ladies and gentlemen, I present Sergeant Kurtis Stadsvold retired. And then they read the order number that retires you. When they read the order number, that's when it hit me. And there was just this weird, wow. I've been doing this for twenty years.
Speaker 2:And then fast forward about four months, and I was doing my final days of leave, all that. And I had a really close friend look at me, he's like, so when you joined twenty years ago, did you plan on doing twenty years? And I said, yeah. Absolutely. And he's like, wow.
Speaker 2:My Jesus civilian, never served, doesn't understand. He's like, so you've been, like, working at something for twenty years, and then he, like, does the math. And he's like, and you're 99.9997% there. How do you feel? And I was like, well, when you put it that way, I feel kinda nervous.
Speaker 2:And he's like, well, I mean, if you plan for the first twenty, surely you have a plan for the second twenty. And I was like, no. Not at all. I've I've got zero plan. I'm just flying by the seat of my pants.
Speaker 1:And and I don't know if it's the weirdest thing that you could have done next or not, but but but what made you go into your next step? Like, how did that happen?
Speaker 2:So as far as the job was Yes. You know, good things happen to people. Sometimes they don't deserve them. I would say that that's one of those things with me. I in my last couple years, probably last three years in, I had embraced a a somewhat new piece of technology that has to do with command and control, situational awareness, all body borne systems, helping operators in the field.
Speaker 2:It had been around for years, but I just had never been exposed to it during my operational time. In that, I developed a lot of relationships, and, one of them was with a program manager on the base who dealt a lot with many companies, a lot of Bunker, the one that hired me was one of them. And when they couldn't hire me for government service because of a hiring freeze, and there's also like the one hundred and eighty day rule, all that stuff, instead of just saying, Hey, good luck. He sent an email out to everybody And Bunker Supply saw that email and saw, you know, there's an EOD guy retiring. He's I think he'd said he's a go getter, which that's an opinion.
Speaker 2:Appreciate the appreciate the referral. But, yeah, Bunker called. We had some initial talks, and a couple months later, I kinda hit them back up and I was like, hey. I just wanna push this back to the top of your inbox, and basically hired me shortly thereafter. And the reason I wanted to work with them is because they were a tech enabler in that space.
Speaker 2:They they develop a lot of things that allow people to effectively use the tools and solved a lot of the headaches that I had. And it wasn't until later that I learned about some of the other programs that they they have as well. But, yeah, kind of a long answer, but they just were doing the thing I liked. I was already kind of on my own doing the job I'm doing right now. I just wasn't getting paid for it.
Speaker 2:So it seemed like a no brainer to get paid for my nerd level that that I was currently at.
Speaker 1:And even before you were left service, you were into social media. What how did that happen?
Speaker 2:Oh, the so it if you're talking about the the the gym channel, so the the gym channel happened because back in the day, there was Coupe with garage gym reviews, and everybody watched Coupe. He was the only one on there. And Coupe was just building this phenomenal gym, and I was like, I could do that. I'm watching this content. I'm like, that's not that hard to do.
Speaker 2:So in 2017, I think I did my first video. It was a DIY video. It was terrible. It's still up, so people can go look at it, but it is terrible. The few videos after that weren't very good as well, but I put my nose down and kind of kept at it.
Speaker 2:It ebbed and flowed as I went and got my bachelor's degree. And then later on got my master's like it, it ebbed and flowed and went with that, but it was overall successful. I ended up building the gym that I wanted, and then I found that I just enjoyed having that platform to to help inform other people about what's good quality. Plus, felt like I had a you know, everybody all reviewers think that they have their own special take, but I I had certain concentrations that really nobody else was covering. So my master's degree was in exercise science.
Speaker 2:And as far as I know, I'm the only gym equipment reviewer that is making content with that degree. It doesn't affect me all that much, but it definitely changes the way that I think about equipment. So again, long answer, but I enjoy it. It works pretty well. It doesn't pay anything.
Speaker 2:Just to be clear with people. Fair enough. I usually comment that I make tens of dollars, but it's enough to basically keep building the gym and the gym is something that's just not going away for me.
Speaker 1:I think if one thing's coming across to me in the audience is just this level of grit, you know, to a task and just getting through it, which I think is absolutely brilliant. And you had the opportunity to really, you know, come back to the Air Force with what I think is an amazing program and actually got me on the hook when I met the rest of your team at a conference earlier last month. You guys are running two entrepreneurial programs to help airmen become entrepreneurs, business people. Tell me about that. How did that even how did that come to be, and what has come out of it?
Speaker 2:So Project War Cry is an effort that is led by bunker supply, which is bunker supply. To kind of give that background there, this amazing crew of professionals that for years, they have like over, 300 different products that they've touched and had an effect on ranging from popular brands that you probably heard of, like Smith, things that, you know, they're out there in the ether, things that when you see them, I remember when I got on board and I saw them and I was like, oh, wow. You you had your hand in the development of that in some piece. What they did is they started Bunker Supply. They they switched the name of the company, got a new LLC, switched it over, and started doing their own stuff.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that came out of was a innovation project that allows them to get funding to take Airmen ideas from the field and to turn them into products. And there's been a couple really good innovations that have come from the minds of Airmen and where they struggle is that they can't make it at scale. Right? So it's a captain. It's an Airman.
Speaker 2:It's someone that doesn't necessarily have the means to go to full production. They don't have the know how in manufacturing. They don't have those connections. One of those really very successful ones was what we call the acclimate and the acclimate is think of it as a body worn water bladder. So something that you would traditionally call like a Camelback or something along those lines.
Speaker 2:But instead of you just having a water bladder that you drink out of, there's also a little bit of heat transfer that occurs. So there's a small plate that sits behind the actual part that goes on your back on the backpack. And it has a recirculation pump and it just cycles cold water through. It touches your back, helps cool you off. And then you also can drink out of the drinking tube and you have your water on the go.
Speaker 2:It was developed by an. Really popular with people that work outside a lot. We've had a lot of really good success with aircraft maintainers that are working out on, you know, black flight lines. Flight lines are, you know, black asphalt, and then the sun's out there beating all day. And, for my first five years in the air force, I was an aircraft maintainer.
Speaker 2:And so I I can tell you that when you're on Guam in the middle of the airfield, it gets hot, really hot. You know, I definitely wish we had something like that. Another popular product is a edge computing type network thing for medical. So the ability to take and ingest a whole bunch, like up to hundreds of different sensor data into a single, what we call edge computing capability, and to be able to process all that, categorize it, develop for patient care, but has applications outside of that, especially when you think of maybe SUAS, small unmanned aerial systems, and other technologies that, know, they have a whole bunch of sensors coming into a single suite, being able to interface sort, and then of course compute all those on the edge is something that's really important to do. The other thing that we're doing is we're doing it all at a price point that's rather affordable when you really compare it to maybe some of the other competition that's out there trying to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:And I'm curious, what's the experience with the airmen? How do you do you guys even come together and what's their journey look like? So they they have an idea. Have they already built something, a prototype, or they just have an idea and you guys partner?
Speaker 2:So it'll vary quite a bit. In most cases, they'll already have a general idea of what they want to make. And in some cases they'll actually have a prototype of sorts. We'll go back to the acclimate. It's a really good and easy example.
Speaker 2:Somebody had made a water bladder and they had built their own concoction and it had pumps and it was a little bit inefficient on power. And the routing of all the hoses was not ideal, but it worked and it showed a proof of concept. They then take that and they present it to different innovation offices across the air force. And to be clear, the air force has these. The navy has them.
Speaker 2:The army has these offices. They're all called different things, but they all do essentially the same thing. And it takes those ideas, and then it meets them with industry. And that's what War Cry does is it brings it to us and then our engineers, again, that have tons of experience and a lot of red dot awards, red dot are engineering awards and design awards, really coveted. And they'll take a look at this Airman's design and be like, Oh, we could do that and we can improve it here.
Speaker 2:One example of improving the product actually has to it's a really funny story. When we first made the acclimate, acclimate after our engineers got ahold of it, they found that it worked so efficiently that some people were almost becoming hypothermic. Like they were getting too cold. So we had to go in because the the motor was too efficient. It pumped too much cold water, and we actually had to go and we had to dial back the duty cycle on the pump.
Speaker 2:So they did the no no hardware changes, but basically went in and reflash the firmware that's on the pump itself. And now I think it runs for ten seconds of every minute, And it it works to a level that you really do have to try on to experience. We we do bring it to the trade shows. And, if someone isn't into the the cases or any of the other technology solutions that we have, we're always like, hey, do you go outside? Because everybody goes outside and, check this out and, you know, have them put their hand on it.
Speaker 2:And it always gets that look where it's, Oh, instant relief.
Speaker 1:What's the, you know, the the entrepreneurs that go through the program? What do they say at the end? What are their experiences? How does it change them?
Speaker 2:So they we actually keep them they we don't just take the idea and run away from them while we work with them, and they they earn a small amount of essentially like affiliate commission on the backside. I couldn't tell you what that is exactly, but it's it's enough that we appreciate the idea. We want to make sure that we keep them roped in. We're not one of those a company that wants to eliminate the inventor or the creator from the process, even though they didn't have access because we want to reward bringing those great ideas. If they want to get more involved, I'm sure that they could.
Speaker 2:But I think that most of them are just really happy to see that something that they wanted to create something that they wanted to solve was eventually solved. Now it's a commercial product that can be purchased either on the bunker website or oftentimes can be purchased through different contract vehicles. And basically just spread out throughout the air force, army, navy, law enforcement, anywhere that it's needed.
Speaker 1:Kurtis, we are almost at the end of our time. I have one question to ask you, which is the only scripted question that we have on this show. The reason it's a difficult one is because it's personal. If you kind of think of, you know, your entire career, whether it was, you know, two years ago or twenty years ago, thinking back to the most difficult point that you have experienced, what advice would you give to yourself?
Speaker 2:So like giving to myself in that moment. So, to be clear, the the hardest thing so I was a biotech for twenty years. I've dealt with devices that were designed to kill me. I've stared at people that wanted to shoot me in the face. I've literally had, like, recurring dreams of someone that when I walked past them, they just gave me this stare that I'll never forget for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:But the thing that sticks with me the most and the thing that I always speak about, because this is a good question, it is a question I get somewhat often, in 2019, a really close friend of mine. I was his first supervisor when he joined the air force. I taught him how to be a bomb tech. He deployed after I trained him, which is a big point of pride for us, came back safely, successful. Good a good airman, a good guy, mate, staff sergeant.
Speaker 2:And when I went down to run the EOD preliminary course, I had this opportunity because we had this weird assignments thing happen where we were supposed to get somebody, but something happened. And it was this weird moment where I was asked, do you have a name of somebody that you would like to come here? If you give me a name, we'll get them here, which that does not happen. On the enlisted side, just period, that doesn't happen. So I immediately called a buddy of mine, and I asked him.
Speaker 2:And he said, well, I'm content where I'm at. However, Brad, who was the guy that I trained, my I was his first supervisor. He was kind of in a bad position where a fresh start would have helped. Solid airman would have been a great instructor. And so I was like, alright, Brad.
Speaker 2:You wanna do this? This is what it involves. No deployments. No TDYs. You're teaching.
Speaker 2:It's somewhat Groundhog Day every day. And he said, yeah. Sign me up. So I gave him a name. A few months later, he showed up to the course.
Speaker 2:Single dad, brought his daughter, and, showed up. I still remember when he pulled up and got out. I was excited to see him again. Got him on podium, got him teaching, and I had in February 2019, I had this training mission I had to go to up in Dayton, Ohio. And while I was up there, just normal operations occurred.
Speaker 2:I get back in on my first day back. Because so keep in mind, I haven't seen this guy for, like, two weeks. So first day back, he calls in and he missed it or he doesn't call in. The office calls and they said, hey. This guy missed his promotion test.
Speaker 2:And, that's a big deal as well because if you miss your promotion test, you don't get to retest it. And, so we got it rescheduled. I don't know how, but didn't hear from him for the rest of the day. So the whole day goes by. Me and the senior at the end of the day are like, have you heard from Brad?
Speaker 2:I haven't heard from Brad. And we go home, and I get a phone call from the the, like, after school thing that his daughter went to. They And were like, hey, Brad never came and got his daughter. Can you please come pick him up? And so I go and I pick up Jenna.
Speaker 2:And when I picked up Jenna, it's just like everything felt really wrong. A couple of people had heard from Brad and it turns out that Brad had committed suicide that day and had had this amazing day with his daughter beforehand where he essentially told her goodbye. I didn't know any of this stuff. And that was probably the hardest thing for a couple reasons. One, it's very difficult to find your one of your best friends dead.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult to find that. Two, I had his daughter, and I didn't want his daughter's last sight of her dad to be that. So I didn't tell her and brought her to the house. Me, my commander, first sergeant, we all talked about it. Next to kin notifications had to come.
Speaker 2:And so family was coming. So Jenna spent a couple of days with me in my house and kind of oblivious to what was going on. And while that was happening, I'm I'm trying to like process this while also not trying to give away what just occurred to her dad. And I remember like the morning of the first day, she's like, oh, where's my dad? Did he end up going on a trip?
Speaker 2:Did he have to go do this, that? And I never lied to her, but I didn't tell her. And their family showed up. They did next to kin notification, but that really messed me up for a long time. And if people are watching this and they were there, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:It was very a very difficult time for me. But the advice I would give myself is no matter what you do, you will not stop somebody who commits to doing a thing, and it's not your fault. Because to this day, I I still take blame for that. Like, I still blame myself is what I mean by that. And I don't even know if that advice would do any good, but I can tell you that it's the most difficult thing that I've ever had to do.
Speaker 2:It's the thing I think about the most. It's not the deployments. It's not the missions. It's not the fun. It's not the funny stuff and it's not the serious stuff.
Speaker 2:When I think about the things that really changed my life the most, it was February fifth in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1:Kurtis, let me just say thank you for your openness and humility and candor. I appreciate you and I'm so sorry that, you know, this has happened. It's absolutely awful. I so wish that people didn't have to go through these experiences. I appreciate you and thank you for joining the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Appreciate you having me. Thank you very much.