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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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[00:00:01.08] - Marlie Andersch
When you start a company and you start bringing on your friends and family, something's always going to go wrong. When it goes south, it goes south so fast, and you're never going to get that back.
[00:00:11.23] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today's guest is Marlie Andersch. She is the founder and CEO of Rocketdata and an Air Force veteran. Welcome to the show, Marlie.
[00:00:24.23] - Marlie Andersch
Thanks, John. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:27.13] - John S. Berry
Now, you started Rocketdata back in 2019, right before COVID. I want to dive into what happened. But first, tell the audience what Rocketdata does and who are your customers.
[00:00:37.09] - Marlie Andersch
Awesome. Rocketdata, we do AI development. As you look at our name, Rocketdata, I always wanted to have people understand what we did based on the name of our company. We are focused on IT services and data as it relates to AI and ML. Our ideal customer is really anyone that has any opportunity around building out AI models to be more efficient within their business.
[00:01:04.03] - John S. Berry
Right now, we're working on our ATM automated task management, and AI is such a huge part of that. But I want to go back to the beginning. I want to go back to 2019 because people ask me, all of the time. John, when is the best time to start a business? I usually say it's like planting a tree. Yesterday would have been a great time to start a business. But you actually probably chose one of the worst times, 2019. So take us through that. Why did How did you start your business in 2019, and how did you deal with COVID to overcome it?
[00:01:33.17] - Marlie Andersch
John, great question. Let me just tell you, when I got out of the Air Force, I started working for IBM, and I was working for some very large tech companies. I ended up going to one of the largest consulting firms in the world. I remember working with a customer, and the customer was like, We want to buy from you, Marlie. I went back to our organization, and the politics and processes that were put place in order for my customer to buy from us was so frustrating. That was the point that I had said, You know what? I am tired of the process, the politics, and I am ready to go off and start my own company. It was right at 2019, I was so very confident and so very arrogant in thinking that I could do this by myself and provide this really great service to my customer. Then, as you had said, COVID had taken off, and it shut the world down. It changed everything. But luckily for us, our largest customer was one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. What does that mean? It means that there was such a large opportunity for us because they were trying to get products to market faster, leveraging the finite data that they already had.
[00:02:55.16] - Marlie Andersch
That put us in a perfect position for us to scale our business. It was an amazing ride, and we just kept on going from there.
[00:03:04.17] - John S. Berry
You had to go remote, but that's okay because you're a remote company.
[00:03:07.09] - Marlie Andersch
Exactly. Yeah, we had to go remote. Everyone had to work from where they were. We started actually doing development in near-shore countries. I, at the time, was working with people out of Mexico to do our development. Then what happened was one day we were at a conference, and one of my customers came to me and said, Marlie, I have some feedback for you. I thought, Oh, gosh. When someone says feedback, John, you're like, Oh, gosh, what now? He said, Look, just so you know, you're this purple unicorn. You really know development. You're a female, you're a minority, and, Oh, by the way, you're a veteran. There's this thing within government contracting where they really want to encourage small businesses to be able to grow, and they leverage what is called a set aside. You should really think about jumping into government contracting. I thought at the time, Wow, how hard can that be? That's not hard at all. I literally did my first RFP, and I thought, WTF, how is it so hard to do work with the government where on the commercial side, you go and you say, what is the problem that you're trying to solve for?
[00:04:21.13] - Marlie Andersch
Here is the scope, here's the timeline, and here's the cost. Sign on the dotted line, we can get started tomorrow, and we'll be done in a few weeks. Depending on whatever that problem is that we're trying to solve for, the government is a completely different animal. There's just so many processes and systems to be put in place. Anyways, I went to the customer and I said, This is a lot harder than I thought. He introduced me to this guy who is a phenomenal guy. His name is Steve. Steve came to me and he goes, Look, I believe in what you're doing. I think what you're doing is great. You've got these commercial quals, you know technology. As they have reiterated, you've got these things called set asides. I'll help you. I'll help you grow and scale your business and teach you how to do work within the federal government. Within two years, we exploded. We were hundreds of employees. We were doing a lot of opportunities across the board, and it was an amazing ride. Then we've got other things that happened. Within the administration, there's a lot of changes that ended up happening. We had to make another pivot, which is great because there's a lot of things on both sides.
[00:05:30.10] - Marlie Andersch
We're trying to help the government become a lot more efficient. Through the use of technology and our commercial quals, we think that we're well positioned to continue to help grow within the industry.
[00:05:44.06] - John S. Berry
Yeah, and I think that's a great perspective. First of all, feedback is a gift, and you got some great feedback there. I appreciate that from Steve. But let's go to the next piece of this, which is, all of a sudden, the government's changing. We have DOGE now, and people are scared. But I've talked to a lot of people in the GovCon space who have said, No, this is actually a good thing. This is like, only the strong survive and the weak are killed and eaten. And so it is actually an opportunity for us to get even better. And yes, there's a lot of, as we used to say in the military, fraud, waste, and abuse out there, and it needs to be cleaned up. A lot of the people I talk to in the GovCon space that do really well are like, No, this is actually a really good thing because it is going to raise standards across the board. It's going to get us more respect, and in the end, we'll drive more business to the right companies. So I've heard people bemoaning it. And of course, the media blows it up. Oh, my God, there's accountability.
[00:06:38.20] - John S. Berry
We need to freak out because someone's holding people who are doing government contracts accountable because, hey, look, I was deployed, I know what the lack of accountability looks like. I saw what happened. So for those of us that are deployed, we know what that looks like. And so now we have the government has changed. You have a new administration that is more about accountability. And I I think some people get scared. But for the strong companies, they're like, Yeah, there are going to be some issues. We may lose some contracts here, but we're going to get it all back because we are strong performers and we've got a great team. So I love your attitude about how this is playing out. And so for you, I mean, I know you were about 200 people. Now you're down about 120. But sometimes that's a good thing.
[00:07:25.06] - Marlie Andersch
Yeah, it was a good thing because when we actually had to go through layoffs, John, we lost our largest contract, I was crushed. I was crying. I was crushed. I was upset that we had to let go of some really good people. But at the end of the day, when I had a moment to take a step back and look at what we actually did, we became more efficient internally. We looked at some of our systems and processes internally and said, Here's where we could actually do better. Quite frankly, I think it was a win-win for some of those employees that we had got through acquisition, where are Are we the right culture fit for who they were? Do we have the right type of leadership that they were used to? It just made us so much more efficient in a lot of different ways. At the time, it hurt. It sucked. But when you take a moment to look back, everything happened for a reason for me. And there were a lot of lessons that I've learned from that particular incident.
[00:08:23.22] - John S. Berry
Yes. And you are an entrepreneurial company, Inc. 5,000, Vet100, and don't forget, Department of Labor, Platinum Medallion 2022 for hiring veterans. So this is a veteran-forward entrepreneurial company. And what I've noticed, and I'm sure you have to, sometimes you hire people because they come from a bigger organization, and it turns out they are bureaucrats. And bureaucrats generally do not like the entrepreneurial world. They slow things down, and so they're just not a cultural fit. And it's interesting to me because you went from the commercial side to also including GovCon. And for those veterans new to the space and the commercial side, the smaller the company, the less red tape. Look, we are going to have our general counsel review every contract. We are going to red line contracts when you send them to us. We're going to send it back. But as long as we can agree, our process is not going to take that long, whereas a government contract could take a lot longer. So just for our audience, could you explain the difference in a little bit more detail? The difference between working with a commercial partner and a government contract?
[00:09:28.09] - Marlie Andersch
Yeah, it is It is a lot. On the commercial side, which is where I came from, it really is building trust within the customer and showing them what it is that you can deploy that helps them, whatever their initiative is, whatever their why, whatever a technology solution that we're trying to build. At the end of the day, it was such an easy and faster process for us. Within the federal government, there are contract vehicles you have to get. There's primes that you have to work with. There's set asides. There's hundreds of pages in an RFP. I mean, on the commercial side, when I was working in the technology firms, I might have done two RFPs in my entire 30-year career. On the government side, you're not doing anything unless it runs through an RFP process. It really wasn't about, can you do what you say you're going to do? Do you have the right technology skills? Do you have the right certifications? There was a lot of things that I really had to learn about doing work within the government. It is a completely different language that you have to learn. It just takes months, if not years, just to get an opportunity to go through.
[00:10:46.12] - Marlie Andersch
But I mean, to be fair, there are also larger opportunities, right? We're talking tens of millions versus hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[00:10:57.00] - John S. Berry
Yeah. Just for our audience, those that are not familiar, what does RFP stand for?
[00:11:01.20] - Marlie Andersch
Request for proposal. Usually before an RFP, there is called an RFI, which is Request for Information. If you're sending out an RFI, and then the government's like, Yeah, this looks good. We're going to now go to an RFP. Then, Oh, by the way, do you have systems and processes put in place? Are you DCA compliant? Do you have ISO 9000? Do you have your CMMI and CMMC? All these acronyms. Again, when you're coming from commercial and you're going to government, it is a completely different language. One of my employees sent something out the other day about an opportunity, and I could not stop laughing because it was, How many times can you go in and throw in an acronym in a sentence and everybody really understand what you're saying? For example, the RFI to the RFP into the MRDC. It was so funny because if you weren't already there, you wouldn't have understood what any of that meant.
[00:12:00.06] - John S. Berry
Yeah, and we can all... Those of us have done joint operations. You go to a new army, Air Force, and we're talking, and of course, we may talk about MRE, right? Meal ready to eat. That's our food. No, it's Mission Readiness Exercise in the Air Force or whatever. So the acronyms mean different things. You have to learn that language. But I think also you have to learn that the bureaucratic system is just much different. And so it does move at a slower pace, and you have to account for the amount of work you're going to have to do. And the time that you're doing that work, you're not getting paid. And so it's a lot of work, but you have done an amazing job with it and developed a highly successful company and team. What do you attribute that success to?
[00:12:41.19] - Marlie Andersch
Getting the right people on the bus, on the team. And as you mentioned before, I'm a very competitive person. I love winning to a fault. And one thing that I have realized, when you start a company, sometimes as a founder, CEO, you bring in people that you can afford versus the right talent that can help you grow and scale. One of the biggest lessons that I've learned is that in order for you to continue to be successful at the pace that you want to go at, you've got to have the A players. You've got to have the right team with the right culture in place. Any type of toxicity, and you continue to hold on to that, the only thing it's going to do is it's going to delay your success. Once you get the right the right leadership, the right people that are working and represent your brand, you are going to be able to go far. If there's only one lesson that I could learn or one thing that I could do over is just make sure that when you know that that person is not the right fit within your organization, you do both of yourself justice when you decide to part way sooner than later.
[00:13:55.18] - John S. Berry
Yes, absolutely. The people you see on the way up, you're going to see on the way down. And there is nothing, nothing more expensive than a cheap employee. Now, that being said, I have also hired some very expensive team members who were either not a good fit or were worthless. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but they may have done amazing things in the past, but they were not a good fit for the organization. They were not a cultural fit. They were not motivated. And they were horrible leaders. And you say, how is it that you were so successful over here and you can't do the work over here? And we assume that because they had some level of success at a higher level organization that they could get us there. But what I learned is it's like, well, there's a big difference between someone who builds a company from $10 million to $100 million, then someone who becomes employed by the company at $100 million. And so the skills that it takes to build, to scale an eight-figure company to a nine-figure company are not the same skills to operate at that level.
[00:14:51.06] - John S. Berry
And I didn't completely understand that. And so that's where I have failed quite a bit. Now, you, on the other hand, have said, yes, I know in That hiring the A players is the most important thing that I do to my success. How do you make sure that they are A players when you hire them?
[00:15:07.21] - Marlie Andersch
You know what? I don't know. Because to your point, someone could have been successful in the past, and you Bring them on board, and it is just a completely different grind. It's a completely different resource that you've brought on. Sometimes it's just a matter of time. Their true colors, their true capabilities, their true grind actually comes out in time. As a small business, sometimes we don't have that time. I would just say a lot of times you just have to trust your gut. If something is telling you it's not the right fit, it's not the right fit, one more day or one more week or one more month isn't going to change it. Especially if you're a small organization, you've got to move, you've got to move quickly. I don't know. I think sometimes you just don't know until you actually get into it.
[00:15:58.17] - John S. Berry
Yeah. It's always tough because you bring someone on, you may get to know them well. They have a family, they have goals, they have aspirations. You've brought them onto your team. They are giving part of their life to serve your mission, and then they're not going to get you there. And your loyalty can't be to them. It has to be to the mission and to the A players. And I have messed this up-time and time again. And yeah, you're right, you never really know. And I know our good friend Freddie Kim and Mill spec talent. We've hired people, and I've had to say, Freddie, this person sucks. And he'll be like, What do you mean? But he will take the time to sit down with me and say, Well, what didn't work? And then we'll work through it because it may be like, I gave him 10 criteria, and this person checks every single block, and Freddie's like, I got him. And then I'll be like, Yeah, no, there's something missing. And I realized it's not on Freddie, it's on me. It turns out there's 15 things, and five of the things I gave them I didn't need or were wrong.
[00:16:49.19] - John S. Berry
And so it's just refining your process, figure out what you need. But I think it's like anything else in life. There's no rehearsals. Most people don't want a try-out period, although you should know that the work to hire is a great concept if you can do it. But most of the time, the stars don't want to try out. They're not going to say, Oh, yeah, I'd love to try out for three months. They're going to say, No, pay me a bunch of money and I'll come do it. I think sometimes we get way in over our head because we assume that because they hit all these criteria, they're going to be a great team player. We figure the onboarding process is going to be a lot faster, and then it isn't, and then it falls apart. When that happens, how do you solve it? How do you have those difficult conversations? How do you fix this problem? Because I've created it, and I know you have.
[00:17:35.20] - Marlie Andersch
I know. I used to have this. I used to think I was this thoughtful person that could wait a while, that could see if this person would change. And John, right now, they're not a fit. Get out. You got to go. You got to go. It's just we don't have the time. You don't have the time. We're not a culture fit. You got to go. And I got to tell you, I'll tell you this process that I go through in my interview process when I'm hiring someone. I take them through an exercise, and it's a self-awareness exercise. We have this dialog. I ask them some questions, they answer the questions, and then I give them an assignment. The assignment is to have them go back, and then when they come back with the assignment is, did he understand it? Did he comply with the time? And did it match the answers that they gave me? I actually had someone that came in who I thought was a pretty decent interview. I mean, I try to do my homework on people before I go in and actually interview them. I remember going through and looking at trying to find socials, and I couldn't find anything on this person.
[00:18:43.11] - Marlie Andersch
I'm like, This is really interesting. I get out in front of this person and we're talking, and it was an okay conversation, but my team really loved him because he was super technical. I gave him the assignment. He was getting a little bit choked up the assignment because it's about self-awareness. The next thing you know, he sends me an email. He says, I found that very rude. I am not going to do this assignment. I'm going to withdraw from interviewing with your team. Good luck moving forward. I was thinking, my gut told me that this guy wasn't going to be the right fit. It absolutely told me he wasn't going to be the right fit. Now, on the flip side, I can tell you a quick AI story that we've been seeing, and it was really, really awkward. We had a guy come through, and he had interviewed with six people on our team, and he was great. I got in front of him, and I started talking to him, and I thought, Wow, this guy's really sharp, but he would do this. If you're looking at me right now, and I've got two monitors up, and I would say, John, tell me about whatever.
[00:19:52.04] - Marlie Andersch
He would go, pause, pause, pause, look, look, look, come back and go, Marlie, this is what I can tell you about ABC One One, two, three. I take him through the assignment, and then when he brings me back the assignment, I'm like, This person, his answers don't match who this person is. My team came back to me. They said, Marlie, you want to move forward with the offer. I'm like, You can move forward with the offer, but there's something told me that his assignment came back. It doesn't match. We couldn't find him. We couldn't find him anywhere to do an offer. We looked on socials, we tried to find everything that we could about this one particular person. Then long story short, we found out that it was actually an AI bot model. There were some crazy lessons that we learned from that. Now, when we're doing an interview with someone, John, if I'm looking at you, I could go like this, Hey, John, give me a high five. High five. Give it to me. Now I know that by doing that, you don't have a filter behind you that you can actually see movement of someone behind you.
[00:20:54.12] - Marlie Andersch
Because it was a bad actor that was actually using an AI bot to help him, one, answer the questions, and two, hide his face. From that, we said, Okay, now AI is coming in and it is so much more complicated. There are several things that we now have to impose. Because of COVID, doing all this online had become normal. But now, if you didn't come in as a reference, I have to have someone go meet you in person, show your ID so that we can verify that you are the actual person and that you're not just the a bot. But imagine if we actually hired you as an AI agent or a robot, and now you're doing work, but the work is actually going overseas somewhere and doing development, now they're capturing all of our data. You have to be very careful with the systems and processes. And when you meet someone or you're interviewing someone or something comes back and it doesn't feel right, trust your gut.
[00:21:54.23] - John S. Berry
Wow. Yeah, I thought the story was going to be that this was a bot and they for you and all your competitors. Essentially, think about it, I could have 10 bots, right? And I could be drawing 10 paychecks and not working. What a great concept. For them.
[00:22:11.17] - Marlie Andersch
But for us, it's like, oh, my gosh, we actually caught this, which is great that we actually caught it. Now we had to impose process behind that.
[00:22:21.13] - John S. Berry
Wow. Well, that... Yeah. So, Listen, I love it. Have somebody meet them in person before you extend that offer. That is brilliant. And I think even with right people. I can tell you, I met this. There's a former infantry soldier I met on the West Coast. I thought he would be a perfect match for one of our legal verticals. A great lawyer, great guy, and started talking to him, and he was fired up, and we onboard him. And then with In a week of our training, we've got a 90-day training program for our lawyers, he self-selected, and nobody really knew why. He said this very professional, corporate-speak emails, and I'm like, This guy was all in. What's going on? I I reached out to him on a cell phone and said, Hey, could you just give me... What did we do wrong? Could you tell me? We thought that there were certain skillset required that we thought, This is obvious. This is something he's going to know is going to be the main thing. He's like, I didn't realize that was the main skillset. That's not what I wanted to do. And so it was on us because we thought that because he had...
[00:23:21.19] - John S. Berry
There's five or six different skills that we need in this position that we're looking for, and he had all the skills. But what we didn't realize was one of the ones... That wasn't the skill that he wanted be doing. He wanted to work out. So he said, I didn't really understand that this was going to be so intensive in this area, and I don't want to do that. And I said, Cool. Thank you for letting me know, because I might figure it out. Oh, my gosh, this guy was a perfect fit. He was so pumped up. How did we fail? And it turns out he didn't really understand what the job required, and he figured it out. And look, it is always, always, always better that you figure that early rather than late. And so I'm with you, Marlie. Look, onboarding should be hard. Certification should be difficult because it's like I learned when I was the officer candidate school commander. Attrition is the mission in the beginning. The sooner you lose somebody who's not going to make it, the better it is for them, their family, and the better it is for you. And oh, by the way, if you're paying a recruiter, Usually, they'll guarantee them for 90 or 180 days, whatever it is.
[00:24:18.13] - John S. Berry
You want to make sure. And for us, it's like $35, $50,000 or more per attorney. We want to make sure that they're a good fit, cultural fit, but also they can do the work and do it to standard. And so If you want to be nice to them and give them more time and recycle them and give them more chances, you're going to pay more after a year. Number one, to fix all their mistakes. But number two, you're going to pay more in recruiting fees. So it's better if you Set the expectations. Set the tone when they come to the organization. This is going to be hard. This is not easy. We are elite. We expect you to be elite. And if you're not, you're gone. And a lot of times people don't like that. You're elitist. Yes, we serve America's heroes. We serve America's veterans. We have to be the best. We are serving the world's best fighting force in the history of the world. Of course, we need to be great because that's what they are, and that's what they expect from us. So how soon do you know? Let me ask you.
[00:25:13.12] - John S. Berry
If we don't know in 90 days, we assume it's either going to be a hell yes or a hell no in 90 days. Where do you fall on that spectrum?
[00:25:21.07] - Marlie Andersch
I don't know. Again, I think it just depends on the person. I could probably tell you another mistake that I've made, and it doesn't answer your question, but when you start a company and you start bringing on your friends and family, something's always going to go wrong. You never know. If you value your friends and you value your family. It was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I've ever made was, Hey, we work together and you're like one of my best friends. Why don't you come over and work with me as we continue to start? And then something's going to go away and then that relationship's done. If I had to do something over again about hiring people, I would probably stay away from my very close friends and my family members that I have brought on to help us grow and scale our business. But those are the people that you trust. But when it goes south, it goes south so fast, and you're never going to get that back, and it's so hard. From a timeline perspective, I don't know. I couldn't answer that, but I will tell you there's so many mistakes that I've made when it came to hiring.
[00:26:28.23] - John S. Berry
Yes, I love that. The friends and family policy, don't do it. Now, I am the only exception. I'm a product of nepotism. My father was the founder of the firm. I'm the oldest son, so of course, it was my destiny to take over the firm. I'm his retirement plan. I work so he can be retired. That has worked. He's done that well. But I've hired a family member. And what I found is you tend to give them more slack, and sometimes, too, because you believe in them. And also, you know them better that they may have amazing credentials. This family member I had had amazing credentials, but in the end, just wasn't a good law. In the short term, did some amazing things, but then it was like, okay, and we've all had this happen. After two years, someone has built the garage you paid them to build. Now, if they can't build the deck, you don't need to pay someone a full-time salary to make sure the garage works. So it's like, okay, but if you don't have the skills to do the next project, we don't need you, but you want to convince yourself.
[00:27:25.05] - John S. Berry
So I've done that. And then, of course, I've had my wife, now ex-wife, was part of the... I brought her We were not working together. When we got married. We got married. She's an amazingly talented lawyer. And then the relationship didn't work out. And now it's like, yeah, and this work relationship isn't going to work out either because of some things that happened along the way. And you realize, yeah, you should not Bringing in friends and family, bad idea, just bad idea. And the thing is, a lot of times you have great, strong feelings and you believe in them. Even worse, you can't read the label from inside the jar. Once you have that emotional attachment, either because it's a spouse, a brother, sister, nephew, niece. Once you have that attachment, it affects your judgment. And if it affects your judgment, you, my friend, have a conflict of interest. You need to step out and let the team make the decision, not you. And if you're going to hire them anyway, then you cannot be the supervisor, you cannot be in the chain of command, and you have zero, zero authority over the future of that employee to give them a raise, a bonus, or a promotion.
[00:28:24.15] - John S. Berry
Would you agree?
[00:28:25.09] - Marlie Andersch
A 100 %. I think you just nailed it. If you are If you do bring on that friend or family, everything that you just said, they cannot come up under your chain of command. You cannot make any decision. Now, when I first started this company, it was me in my bedroom, literally. And my husband, I had asked him to come help. After 30 days, he looked at me and he goes, I don't know how you can sit behind a computer and do this all day long. I can't help you anymore because this is just not who I am. It was early enough where I didn't have so much invested in him helping me out. I think I managed my expectations for what we would be able to do together. Thank goodness, we still love and like each other most days. But yeah, I just I won't ever do that again. That's insane.
[00:29:14.01] - John S. Berry
Marlie, let's move on now to the after-action review. I want your three examples of great leadership and three examples of poor leadership. You do not have to name names. Tell us about the three great examples. Okay.
[00:29:25.22] - Marlie Andersch
I'm going to give you just a couple because for my very first Another example is I was scrolling through some social media and someone had made mention of one of my first commAndersch when I was in the Air Force, and I thought, Oh, my gosh, I loved that guy. I actually went out and found him, and I asked him if he would have lunch with me. He and I ended up getting together, and we were having a conversation, and I just said, There's no agenda behind this other than I wanted to let you know that you left an impact in my life. You were my very first Air Force You were also, I think he was a first or second lieutenant. I said, In the way you made me feel, you made me feel like I was not just an airman. You made me feel like I was actually contributing, and that meant the world to me. He told me this story. My very first base, I was stationed first Gulf War in Corkier base, and three major things ended up happening. When I first got to base, there was an assassination of two airmen.
[00:30:28.17] - Marlie Andersch
I was 18 years old. The second thing that happened, there was a huge earthquake and it collapsed all these buildings. It was the first time that I had jumped into a helicopter. Mind you, my job in the Air Force was to sit behind a computer. But I jumped into the helicopter and we actually went out to some of these buildings that had collapsed and were grabbing bodies that were out there. Then the third thing that happened when I was at Clarke, again, I was 18 years old, is a volcano had erupted and we had to get all the civilians off base. There were some officers and airmen that ended up staying back behind. When I got back to base after getting all the civilians off base, there wasn't a lot of people left. When I spoke to, his name was Lieutenant Chris, he had said that one day he was having dinner and his phone rang. When his phone rang, it was a former airman telling him, I remember when the earthquake happened, and I remember when the volcano blew up, and I remember that you pulled up in a vehicle and told me to get in or else I was going to die.
[00:31:35.02] - Marlie Andersch
I want you to know that I really appreciate your leadership in helping save me and my life. When he told me that story, I really empathized with the way he made me feel, which was it just made me feel like I was contributing, and it was awesome. I look at that as a great leader. That's one. The second leader that I thought was absolutely amazing was when I was working at IBM. I was working at IBM to make a paycheck. I was actually going to med school at night because I thought I wanted to be a doctor. But my boss at the time, lift it me and said, You have skills, and you should think about changing your career over because you're really good at tech. And listening to someone who actually believed in me and saw the potential in me changed my entire trajectory. So from a leadership perspective, if you're a leader and you see people out there, recognize them, recognize their skills, call them out and tell them what they're doing good because that leaves an impact. From a leader that probably wasn't great, I would say that there's definitely some that were out there.
[00:32:39.09] - Marlie Andersch
But I think there's always a lesson that you can learn from those leaders that are not good leaders, ones that don't make you feel like you're contributing, that don't make you want to get up and go to work that day to work for them, that don't want to make you understand and believe in that mission. There's a lesson learned in all that. Know what you will run to and what you will work hard for. Instead Stay away from those that don't encourage or love or make you feel like you're a valued part of the team.
[00:33:07.06] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Yeah, great advice. We've all been around those leaders that make us feel like we're not part of the team or not valued. To be transparent, sometimes I wasn't a valued member of the team. Sometimes you're the star, sometimes you're not even a role player, you're an anchor, and that's when it's time to go. And it's just that that's part of life. I can think about that when I was on... I played a little bit of football in college, meaning I rode the bench. But I played on a lot of flag football teams in the military and law school. And then I was on a lot of championship teams. But I went from being the quarterback of the flag team to being the center, where it's like, Hey, where can I contribute? Where can I be valued? Because I realized I wasn't fast anymore. I was getting old. But that being said, you are a great leader by example. You're part of a group that we're in. You're our cohort leader and some great leadership by example. Physical fitness in 2024, you worked out every single day except for four days. In 2025, you have worked out every single day.
[00:34:03.14] - John S. Berry
You have not missed a day yet in 2025, and we're almost halfway through 2025. And you have organized our group in the Rim to Rim Challenge, which, of course, is going from one side of the Grand Canyon to the other. 50 miles I've provided my shoulder and neck are good. I'm in. And so you've continued to lead and not only lead a great team, but also lead your peers who are other veteran CEOs. And we all look up to you. Your level of energy is contagious. Sometimes it's annoying, but it's very contagious. But it's one of those things where you get people to, I think you're great at motivating people. Now, that being said, I Look, in the veteran community, if you want to know a great, brilliant business leader, you got to know Marlie. So I want to know, first of all, where can people learn more about Rocketdata?
[00:34:56.02] - Marlie Andersch
Yeah, I think just go to our website, www. Rock. It. Com. It data. Com. All of our information's on there. Feel free to reach out or find me on LinkedIn. Happy to have a dialog, and especially if you're in the veteran community, we have a program through Skillbridge where we're helping veterans learn how to code and write out LLM models and get themselves into the AI space. So please reach out. Happy to help.
[00:35:21.23] - John S. Berry
Great. Now, I was going to ask for your LinkedIn second, but just and also to be clear, if you're listening and you're driving, it is Marlie Andrish, A-N-D E-R-S-C-H.
[00:35:33.05] - Marlie Andersch
Yes, John. Marlie Andersch. You got it.
[00:35:36.13] - John S. Berry
All right. Thanks so much, Marlie. Thank you for your leadership, and thank you for all you do for your peers and our veteran community.
[00:35:43.23] - Marlie Andersch
Thank you, John. I love you, man. I appreciate you.
[00:35:50.05] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the the veteran community and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching at Veteran Lead on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Lead..