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Veterans know how to lead. The lessons we learned in the military form the foundation for bigger successes in business, entrepreneurship and community.
Host John S Berry, CEO of Berry Law, served as an active-duty Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army, finishing his military career with two deployments and retiring as a Battalion Commander in the National Guard. Today, his veteran led team at Berry Law, helps their clients fight some of the most important battles of their lives. Leading successful teams in the courtroom, the boardroom, and beyond, veteran leadership drives the firm’s rapid growth and business excellence.
Whether building teams, synchronizing operations, or refining tactics, we share our experiences, good and bad, to help you survive, thrive and dominate.
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[00:00:01.050] - Travis Winfield
Most of my career in the military, they said that my mouth outranked me. Like most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that they were crappy in school, always went against the grain, doesn't accept the status quo. And that's kind of the way I was in the military, right? I just never— if I saw something that was wrong, I didn't exactly bite my tongue.
[00:00:22.520] - Freddie Kim
Welcome to Veteran Led. I'm your host, Freddie Kim, with Mil-Spec Talent. And I'm sitting here with Travis Winfield. He is a 24-year Navy Veteran. And you have a business you're CEO of called Military Operated Real Estate.
[00:00:38.010] - Travis Winfield
Correct.
[00:00:38.230] - Freddie Kim
M-O-R-E, MORE.
[00:00:39.370] - Travis Winfield
MORE, that's it.
[00:00:40.010] - Freddie Kim
Right?
[00:00:40.640] - Travis Winfield
Expect more from your agent, baby.
[00:00:42.240] - Freddie Kim
Yeah. What did you do in the military?
[00:00:44.100] - Travis Winfield
So, 24 years, I wasn't smart enough to get out too early but stuck around for a while. So I was a Master of Arms in the Navy, which is basically law enforcement. So, I did that most of my career and then retired as a Command Senior Chief off the USS Freedom and then got stung by the entrepreneur bug and the rest is history, right?
[00:00:59.650] - Freddie Kim
Did you go immediately from transition to—
[00:01:02.310] - Travis Winfield
I literally retired on a Friday and put on my suit and went into my office. But I was doing real estate for about 5 years prior, just part-time. And then, so I didn't even take a break, man. I just rolled right into it.
[00:01:13.910] - Freddie Kim
so, you were used to betting on yourself, kind of, you already knew the ropes. In real estate?
[00:01:20.350] - Travis Winfield
Yeah, I don't know if it was betting on, see, I think what it was is in the military, you know, you're, it's a, you're in a bubble, right? They protect you, don't they? Like you're, you're really operating in a bubble. So, and I learned a little statistic actually that, did you know that 70% of service members are introverts? I'm a bit of an extrovert. So needless to say, I didn't always, I wasn't always the model sailor that you see.
[00:01:44.090] - Travis Winfield
Yes. I was a little outspoken. As a matter of fact, most of my career in the military, they said that my mouth outranked me.
[00:01:49.920] - Freddie Kim
How did you, how did you still come in senior chief?
[00:01:53.610] - Travis Winfield
Yeah. So I mean, I think just performance still speaks for itself, right? So just because I was, you know, I was outspoken, it doesn't mean that you can't still get stuff done.
[00:02:02.610] - Freddie Kim
What were you outspoken about? Just the regs or?
[00:02:05.580] - Travis Winfield
Yeah,
[00:02:06.024] - Freddie Kim
taking care of the troops?
[00:02:06.240] - Travis Winfield
I think, I think, you know, if any good entrepreneur will tell you, like most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that they were crappy in school, you know, always went against the grain. Doesn't accept the status quo. And that's kind of the way I was in the military, right? I just never— if I saw something that was wrong, I didn't exactly bite my tongue. So, I think what it was is that once I got to a certain— like, when I got to a command, you know, level, that was a lot easier, right? Because now the only person I was really reporting to was the captain. And, uh, I, I was able to control— I learned how to control and know my audience at that point in my career. But I didn't always have that skill set. But then Transferring to the civilian sector and entrepreneurship, now there's nobody to blame but myself, right? So now the world is your oyster then, right? And then you realize when you get out, like, you can do anything you want. And so needless to say, I've had my ups and downs in business too. And, you know, they always say you never learn from getting it right.
[00:03:00.320] - Travis Winfield
You learn from getting it wrong.
[00:03:01.280] - Freddie Kim
Yeah. And I mean, I commend you for your level of service, seniority. It's not easy to become an entrepreneur. There's the most senior levels in the military. They have a rigid rigidity, right? They're institutionalized. They really like to stick with what they know. But you're jumping in. Tell us what MORE is.
[00:03:22.230] - Travis Winfield
So MORE, it's my baby. It's— I've had this idea in my brain for over a decade and finally found the right strategic partners to help me bring the idea to life. And essentially it is the— it is a national real estate brand that is designed exclusively for military to an extent of every single one of our real estate agents has to be military affiliated. And then we developed a very, very robust certification curriculum that they are required to go through over 35 hours. And then afterwards, then they have to prove they have experience in the real estate space. And then that— then our job is to connect the service member military families to our more certified agents around the country. So, we're broker agnostic. So, we don't care what brokerage you're at, but we do care about the standards that you operate in because a lot of people don't realize in the real estate space, once you get your state license, there is no standardized training once you get your license. So, you really kind of just pick up to figure out— hopefully your brokerage gives you good training and stuff like that, but there's no standardization to it.
[00:04:21.090] - Travis Winfield
And that's the reason why our industry has a reputation second only to used car salesmen. So, although I'd love to help everybody, I am absolutely passionate about helping those, those who've served. So that's the reason why we are building, to your point, the special forces of real estate agents around the country who are absolutely passionate about serving those who've served.
[00:04:38.120] - Freddie Kim
So, this— you're hyper-exclusive with MORE to just serve Veteran homebuyers. Is that right?
[00:04:45.410] - Travis Winfield
No. So that's the beauty of it. So, we're hyper-exclusive to the agents that work for us, but our agents can help anybody. But I use this analogy, right? If you're a doctor and can— if you needed a doctor, right? Can any doctor prescribe you medication? Right? Yes, pretty much. But if you need heart surgery, are you going to hire a dermatologist?
[00:05:03.540] - Freddie Kim
No.
[00:05:03.970] - Travis Winfield
So, what it is like, our real estate agent can serve anybody, but they specialize with military. And actually, we go one step further. Our curriculum also includes the fact that our military member or our agents are trained on all aspects of real estate, but not just real estate. So let me give you an example. We teach them how to be benefits experts for all Veteran benefits because, you know, you're a Veteran, like there's so many benefits out there, but there's not a marketing budget to tell you they exist. So, I'll tell you a quick story on why this is so important to me. About a year and a half ago, I was with a— I was with a seller, and I was asking them like, why are you selling if you don't have to sell? I try to educate them to help build wealth through real estate. Like, well, we don't really want to sell, but our son just got accepted to UC Berkeley and it's a really expensive school and we can't refinance because interest rates just skyrocketed. So, like, we have to sell so we can access our capital. And I'm like, you're a disabled vet, right?
[00:06:00.890] - Travis Winfield
And he's like, well, yeah. I was like, you do realize in the state of California, you and your kids can go to any California state school for free. Credit, like, literally
[00:06:08.830] - Freddie Kim
blew their mind.
[00:06:09.810] - Travis Winfield
Like, they started crying right in front of me. Like, I get goosebumps telling the story every time because it's— it just goes to show you that just providing a little bit of information that you can't assume everybody knows this stuff. And so that's the reason why. And if you think about what the real estate agent role is, they are the kind of— they're a little bit of everything, right? We need to be therapists, marriage counselors, educators. Like, we're kind of a one-stop shop, and we guide them through the experience with helping this Veteran potentially with the most— the largest financial decision they'll make in their life.
[00:06:41.320] - Freddie Kim
Fair. Is having the SF real estate team right? Is that— is that— does it show like a market markedly difference, difference in performance?
[00:06:55.670] - Travis Winfield
Absolutely.
[00:06:55.690] - Freddie Kim
Like in culture and integration and—
[00:06:58.730] - Travis Winfield
Absolutely. So I'll give you an example. I'll just, you know, right before we said, you saw me talk to that gentleman. He's, he's actually came here. We talked. He actually just signed up for our certification here at this conference. And he asked me like, like, how do you control things? How do you maintain, you know, the level that you're talking about? It's like, well, if we, we actually have a quality control aspect. So if we connect a client to one of our agents, we reserve the right to check in with them, make sure their experience is what we expect of our more certified agents. And if it's not, we'll actually go so far as to do a peer review where other agents in the network will actually kind of give them a little counseling and make a decision whether he deserves to stay— they deserve to stay in our network. And if they don't, sorry.
[00:07:41.630] - Freddie Kim
So it's peer-enforced standards.
[00:07:42.980] - Travis Winfield
It truly is. It's not my decision, right? It's, it's a peer review. And what's the, the value of that is that we— if we can raise the standards, if you as a Veteran have a choice between finding some random random real estate agents on, you know, on here or coming to our website and knowing that every one of our agents has higher standards that they have to be enforced by, which one are you going to pick when it doesn't cost you a dime extra? Yeah, exactly right.
[00:08:07.690] - Freddie Kim
Yeah, exactly.
[00:08:08.410] - Travis Winfield
So that's how we're trying to change the game when it comes to real estate, especially with our military community.
[00:08:13.250] - Freddie Kim
Do you— and I assume you also work a lot then for PCS?
[00:08:18.050] - Travis Winfield
Oh, absolutely.
[00:08:19.010] - Freddie Kim
Yeah.
[00:08:19.410] - Travis Winfield
So we've, we've got— we're— what we've started is just the foundation of what we're doing. We're actually building an entire ecosystem for the military community when it comes to relocation. Education. You know, so we're going to be working on certifications for lenders, property managers. Our big one is financial literacy. So we're actually, you know, the book I showed you, we're actually turning that into a course where— so not only do we have the book that I wrote that helps solve the financial literacy crisis we have with our Veterans, we're also turning that into a courseware because I believe that communication needs to be distributed through— I call it the land, sea, and air approach. Right? Because some people like to talk, some people like to email, some people like to text, some people like to take courses to absorb their information, some people like to read when they get it. So we like to offer our education in different modalities. And I think that's what that does is really, it really sets a higher standard and give different options for people to choose from. And we believe this, like, so interesting statistic you may or not know, there's over 20 million service members and Veterans in our country right now, right?
[00:09:20.580] - Travis Winfield
Did you know only 12% have ever used their VA home loan benefit?
[00:09:23.740] - Freddie Kim
That blows my mind.
[00:09:24.560] - Travis Winfield
Yeah, it's a travesty too. But through my research, I discovered this, like 80% of our Veterans don't want— it's not they don't want to own a home, they're not financially stable to own a home. So, and there's so many people in our industry like, oh, well let me teach you about your VA home loan benefit. And, and I commend them, that's great, but they're really only talking to that 12%. What about the other 88%? What are we doing with them?
[00:09:45.220] - Travis Winfield
So we want to be
[00:09:46.840] - Freddie Kim
Are they qualified for their— to use their VA?
[00:09:49.520] - Travis Winfield
Well, believe it or not, only about 30% even know it exists. Right. So really it's about education.
[00:09:55.560] - Freddie Kim
30%.
[00:09:56.080] - Travis Winfield
Yeah.
[00:09:56.960] - Travis Winfield
Yeah.
[00:09:57.040] - Freddie Kim
Know, know that they can even use the VA home loan.
[00:10:00.340] - Travis Winfield
Yes.
[00:10:00.600] - Freddie Kim
Wow. Okay.
[00:10:01.280] - Travis Winfield
You got to think all the Vietnam Veterans, like, think about those guys. Those guys had such a crappy experience with the military. They don't want nothing to do with it, but yet they have all these amazing benefits they don't know about. So that's why we literally go door to door for education. And our mission with MORE is to take that 12% and make it 100%. And so, like the book, like this is basic stuff, like how do you build a budget? How do you get out of debt? How do you get and maintain good credit? How to invest? Like the power of compound interest. Albert Einstein said that it should be called the 8th wonder of the world, but people don't understand that. So, we actually teach like how to do it. It's not notional, it's a how-to book.
[00:10:40.040] - Freddie Kim
So as a 24-year experienced outspoken command senior chief, you must have a lot of examples of what good leaders look like and how— what bad leaders look like. Without naming names, would you like to share?
[00:10:55.160] - Travis Winfield
Well, I could. Yeah, of course. I mean, here's what I believe. Everyone knows something you don't. I don't care if it's the janitor sweeping the floor or, you know, the president of the United States. Everybody knows something you don't. And so, you can take good leadership and bad leadership. So, with bad leaders out there, you know, I'll give you an example. There was somebody I used to work for. And again, I won't name names. I don't even know where he's at anymore because I don't really care. But he just a toxic leader, right? But I'll always remember one thing he did say that I took from it. He said, you know, some people believe in rhino leadership, which means, you know, they'll, they'll talk a good talk and they'll charge at you like a rhino. And then they'll just stop right before hitting you. Yeah, I'm done. And they'll just walk away.
[00:11:39.790] - Freddie Kim
Rhino leadership, right?
[00:11:41.460] - Travis Winfield
And I took something from that, right? I may not have respected him as a leader, but you can still learn from them either sometimes what to do or most importantly, you'll learn what not to do.
[00:11:52.190] - Freddie Kim
Yeah. And that's exactly what we're aiming at here with identifying good and bad leaders because we're, we're all still learning from both of them.
[00:12:00.360] - Travis Winfield
Well, that's— I mean, I also— we haven't even talked about this. I'm also— one of my philanthropic endeavors is I'm the vice president of a nonprofit called the Enlisted Leadership Foundation. And we actually teach leadership and financial literacy to active-duty service members. And so, we have— and we're— and so we focus on the E-5s and the E-6s because that's kind of the middle management.
[00:12:20.210] - Freddie Kim
All branches?
[00:12:21.140] - Travis Winfield
All branches. All branches, all virtual courses. So, we literally have people come in from all over the world into our courses. And our goal is— what our unique value add with that is that not only will we bring in senior leaders like, you know, Sergeant Major of the Army or Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, But then we'll also bring in CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who can teach their aspect of leadership, because in the military, sometimes we get in that knife-hand groupthink mentality. You shall do this, you know, like, you know, the old saying. And when you're in the military, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it. And I was like, well, I'm in the military. That's BS, man. I'll shove their face in the water. They drink it or they drown. That's their choice. But when you get out into the civilian sector, you realize that that's not the case. And so, you need to arm our leaders with different tools, their toolbox, so they can recognize the how to better approach them. You know, Simon Sinek, for example, is one of my favorite people to follow because he, you know, he often says that, you know, a lot of times as leaders we go, you know, what's wrong with you if you're not performing?
[00:13:22.190] - Travis Winfield
Instead of asking, is there something going on that we should know about because you're not performing at the level you normally do? And if you approach it from that side aspect, you're going to get a lot more out of them than if you're coming at them from, from head on.
[00:13:34.770] - Freddie Kim
Exactly. The knife hand. It's been a while since I've seen that knife hand coming at you. How can our audience find you and why should they reach out to you?
[00:13:43.190] - Travis Winfield
Well, reach out to us because we are here to serve and help you in the real estate world. So, you can find us at militaryoperatedrealestate.com. You can find all my stuff at my own personal website, traviswinfield.com. So, it's not too hard to find us. And yeah, we're, you know, we're a one-stop shop. So, in the real estate space, you come to us, you can live— we have an integrated map that they can go to. And find a more certified agent. And right now, here's the exciting part for our growth aspect. We've only officially launched December 8th, 2025. So, 90 days ago, we already have over 80 agents that cover 30 states and over 120 installations. And we're just getting started.
[00:14:22.440] - Freddie Kim
Wow. That's amazing. A lot of progress in such a short period of time because this, this means something to them.
[00:14:29.000] - Travis Winfield
It's my passion project. I don't care. I don't— this is not— look, we're all about mission before commission. And I think that's an important aspect of any business that, you know, I'm a big believer if you chase the money, you're never going to catch it. But if you're just righteous about taking care of others, the money will follow.
[00:14:47.040] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we seek to help Veterans build an even bigger, better future after military service. Unfortunately for some of our Veterans, the roadblock to a better future is that they are not receiving all of the benefits that they earned. If you need help appealing a VA disability decision, Contact Berry Law.