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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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[00:00:00.11] - Malaysia Harrell
With all the surgeries, two full hip replacements, I experience so much pain. But what I realize is this, you need to make the new world work for you. Just imagine beginning a new life, because if you get in this point of, I have to get back to where I was before, it's going to be mentally and spiritually defeating. Do the things that you want to do now because you're not guaranteed that you're going to have the capability of doing it later.
[00:00:24.22] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today's guest is Malaysia Harrell. She is the CEO of Blissful Life Consulting. Welcome to Veteran Led, Malaysia.
[00:00:35.02] - Malaysia Harrell
Thank you for having me. I'm so honored to be here today.
[00:00:39.01] - John S. Berry
You're a speaker today here at the MIC, the Military Influencer Conference. You've got a great story. But before we dive into it, you were an Air Force Veteran.
[00:00:47.02] - Malaysia Harrell
Yes.
[00:00:48.03] - John S. Berry
That prepared you for the life you have now. Talk a little bit about your transition from the Air Force to civilian life.
[00:00:55.08] - Malaysia Harrell
Well, it's an interesting story. I was Air Force when I first started, so I did half of my time in the Air Force, half of the time in the United States Public Health Service. I actually retired out of there. It was an unfortunate situation, but I had a medical retirement after 20 years and eight months. I had a near-death experience after 2020 that led to a whole bunch of medical complications. Although I love to serve and I still want to be of service, it ended in a way that I wouldn't have wanted it, too. I wanted to do 20 years. I wanted to make admiral. But I will say that the transition ultimately was a good transition. I think everything happens the way it needs to happen to get us to align with the life that we're supposed to be doing.
[00:01:44.23] - John S. Berry
What I love about your story is it's where a lot of us Veterans are weak. We think someone's going to take care of us. There's a mental health provider, there's a physical health provider, there's everything I have an issue for someone's going to take care of me. That's not true.
[00:01:57.07] - Malaysia Harrell
It's not true.
[00:01:57.23] - John S. Berry
You are responsible for your health, and you I'm going to reach out and do things. I want to hear your story because here you were an officer, and you were knowledgeable in the healthcare space, and yet you still weren't getting the care you needed. Please take us to that point.
[00:02:10.05] - Malaysia Harrell
After the near-death experience, I came home from deployment, and I was having extreme pain. This was like unlivable pain. I've done marathons, bodybuilding, so I know pain. Ultimately, got hospitalized at Walter Reid Medical Center. After four days, they had all these people coming in the room. It's a training center. They had people with their notebooks, and they said, Captain Harrell, we can't find anything. We're sending you home today. I said, well, you can euthanize me because you wouldn't be able to deal with this pain. I was at the highest level of meds. I was still in extreme pain. Ultimately, I advocated, and I had sepsis. I had to talk as a provider because I knew that they were going to put me in the mental health side. I'm a mental health provider, so I understood what was going on. Like you said, we really have to take our lives in our own hands. Yes, you have your providers, but only you know your body, only you know your health. It was with me using complementary and alternative medicine, holistic services on top of the meds is what helped me. Because had I stayed on the meds, I was 254 pounds.
[00:03:24.21] - Malaysia Harrell
I had Bell's palsy, I developed sarcoidosis, my body just was going crazy because I was taking so many meds, and I think my body couldn't handle it at that time.
[00:03:35.14] - John S. Berry
I think it's important for a lot of our Veterans that are very health conscious.
[00:03:39.01] - Malaysia Harrell
Yes.
[00:03:39.23] - John S. Berry
That transformation. Somebody who's running marathons, doing bodybuilding competitions, and then all of a sudden, you just lose your body, your most valuable possession. Take us to that point. Was it defeating or were you like, I am going to figure this out?
[00:03:54.06] - Malaysia Harrell
Well, I'll tell you, being that I treated so many people over the years, Veterans, their family members, active-duty members, it was like I was in a fog because I couldn't understand. I still thought I was this person that could help everybody else. It was very challenging. I feel like you go through the valley because you go through a level of darkness that's very challenging, too. I think ultimately you have a better level of compassion because as a provider, you're treating so many people, and you think you know. I've been to school, I have this experience, but until you actually go through it. I was this person, I was listening to Eckhart Tolle in one ear, and I was listening to David Goggins in the other. It was challenging. But if you stick with it, the rain does end eventually, and the sun will shine again.
[00:04:48.03] - John S. Berry
That is a beautiful perspective. For Veterans going through this right now, I mean, obviously, you look like you're back in shape. You got your health back. I think as I've had some of my own health struggles, it's Am I ever going to get back there? And accepting that I may never be at the point I was. Absolutely. It looks like you probably still work out. You probably still eat right.
[00:05:10.08] - Malaysia Harrell
Not yet, because with all the surgeries, two full hip replacement like I experience so much pain. Again, I still have a lot of medical conditions. But what I realize is this, you need to make the new world work for you. Just imagine beginning a new life. So, I'm not able to do everything I did from morning all the way till night. If I need to take a break, I take that break. But the world doesn't need to know how I experience it. There's so many people with invisible disabilities that we don't see. I would just encourage people to do life on your own terms. Because if you get in this point of, I have to get back to where I was before, it's going to be mentally and spiritually defeating. If I imagine, oh, I can't do these races. I never did a bodybuilding competition, but I did bodybuilding, and I went to all the shows. That's the other thing, too, is do the things that you want to do now, because I always wanted to do a show, and I didn't. Do the things that you want to do now because you're not guaranteed that you're going to have the capability of doing it later.
[00:06:16.07] - John S. Berry
Yeah, run your own race. That's right. Everybody else can do things at their own pace, how they want to do it, and that's okay. It may not be for you. I've definitely learned that. Comparison is the thief of joy.
[00:06:26.22] - Malaysia Harrell
That's right.
[00:06:27.22] - John S. Berry
Obviously, you're highly successful It's all worked out for you. But what I like is coming from the medical background, people think, well, there's traditional medicine, and this is what I have to do. But there's holistic, there's functional, there's all these other things you can do. I love that as a health care provider, you embraced those. Was that difficult for you or how did you overcome that stigma that, oh, this is all quackery. This is nuts. How did you overcome that to start using it on your own?
[00:06:54.16] - Malaysia Harrell
Well, actually, originally, I was in my PhD for mind-body medicine because I realized I was treating patients for so many years and people just kept coming back every base. It was like, if we just look at things on the conscious level, then you don't have any change. You may have it temporarily. You look at people who lose 100 pounds and gain back 120. Why is that? Subconsciously, your body believes that you should be 120 pounds. Things are going to happen to get you back there. There is some spiritual component to that that needs to change. I started that already. After I got sick, of course, I wasn't doing it. But then I began again. I'm actually in my dissertation phase now. But yeah, it was something that I was embracing because I saw that there was this need to add something different, something higher, because if we just talk, you're going to have temporary change. You're not going to have permanent change.
[00:07:55.12] - John S. Berry
That's what we're seeing, permanent improvement.
[00:07:57.20] - Malaysia Harrell
That's right.
[00:07:58.22] - John S. Berry
People don't like to hear the word change anymore. So I'd like to say improve. We're not going to change you. We're going to improve you. We're not going to change the company. We're going to improve it.
[00:08:05.17] - Malaysia Harrell
I love that.
[00:08:07.10] - John S. Berry
Now as a business owner of Blissful Life Consulting, what challenges have you found there? Obviously, a little bit different than the military being.
[00:08:14.05] - Malaysia Harrell
It's a little bit different.
[00:08:15.10] - Malaysia Harrell
I think with transitioning to full-time entrepreneurship, because I started my business in 2017, when you come in the military, you have all these mentors that are there to bring you through the ranks. As an entrepreneur, you have to be the person to find your new mentors. Again, the military paid for everything when it came to what you had to do and the programs that you implemented. Now you're challenged with trying to find your own capital, building your own credibility in this new space because people only knew you in the military. Those are kind of challenging. But again, it's up to you to stay in the fight and to find your new tribe, find your new battle buddies or airmen, wingmen that you need to find.
[00:09:02.21] - John S. Berry
The brutal honesty here is you have to pay for your education. You got to pay, sometimes for your mentors. But it's not like someone's just going to hand it to you and tell you what the next step is. Oh, well, now you go to your Command General Staff College. It's like, no, you figure it out.
[00:09:15.19] - Malaysia Harrell
That's right. Absolutely.
[00:09:18.01] - John S. Berry
Tell us a little bit more about what Blissful Life Consulting does.
[00:09:21.15] - Malaysia Harrell
Blissful Life Consulting, we provide mental health and complementary and alternative wellness services to individuals, groups, and corporations. We do corporate wellness as well. What allows us to be unique is that we specialize in Veteran resources. If you have Veterans who work for your organization, we are there to help them to transition into their new space.
[00:09:47.03] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Malaysia, one thing I want to ask you about is your book, God Has My Six. Please tell us about that.
[00:09:52.23] - Malaysia Harrell
While I was going through my own healing journey, I was inspired by David Goggins' book, Can't Hurt Me. I realized that while people are going through, they may be in darkness, they may be by themselves. God Has My Six means God has my back, of course, in military terms, everybody asks that. Your back is your six. When you have a voice, when you're in that dark space, you may not be able to talk with other people. People may not understand what you're going through. If you're this person who's been this great leader and have done everything for everybody else, and now you have people who are helping to wash you, you're looking at, you feel pretty defeated. There are times when we can use our voice to help guide someone else through the journey, a similar journey that you've been through. So, yes, I'm so excited for this book to launch. It has been such a passion project. And what I would say is if you're going to be writing a memoir, definitely have someone to support you through that because you're getting glimpses of going back into that dark space, which can be pretty challenging.
[00:11:04.18] - Malaysia Harrell
But I'm so excited about this project, and I'm launching my new protocol to help people in their own spaces. But again, you may not have the money, you may not have the resources, but you have access to a book, you have access to online resources. And so, yes.
[00:11:21.11] - John S. Berry
Yeah. I mean, you are responsible for your PME, your education. At this point, as they used to tell us, as officers, you're responsible for making sure you're signing up for the right schools and doing the things. But there's no right schools here. There's no right way. And so a lot of it really is intuition and tuning into whether it's prayer or whatever else. But you got to get away from the noise and figure out what it is you're supposed to do.
[00:11:44.23] - Malaysia Harrell
That's right.
[00:11:45.11] - John S. Berry
I'm looking forward to your book, and I got to ask you, it took me about three years to write my book. I decided it would be a leadership manual for our firm. But tell me, as far as the purpose of the book, why get it out there?
[00:11:57.11] - Malaysia Harrell
It's a teaching memoir, and Again, it's really important to use your voice so that people can see once you've overcome, that they have that opportunity to overcome as well. 10% of the proceeds of this book are going to be dedicated to suicide prevention. I also established the Malaysia Harrell Foundation, and we provide these holistic and mental health services to Veteran women and other underrepresented populations. Ultimately, the goal is suicide prevention. I'm launching the Align Success formula, which is included in the book that talks about some of the resources that you talked about that I use to get through and to overcome.
[00:12:43.12] - John S. Berry
I found that overcoming, a lot of times you can bounce back up. But sometimes it's the people who don't have anything to overcome that I find are suffering the most.
[00:12:52.08] - Malaysia Harrell
You're right.
[00:12:53.22] - Malaysia Harrell
It's funny that you said that because even with myself and on this journey, I realized because I grew up with a lot of trauma, I wore a mask. I wore the mask of success. So ultimately, I thought, well, I didn't get the love that I needed as a child by my mom. So, okay, I need to be ultra successful, right? I was top of my class. Everything. Worked for the surgeon general of the United States, was the director of Addiction Medicine for Department of Defense. I can run down every award that I have. I'm so highly decorated. People are like, Are you like Cole and Powell? I did everything, but ultimately, I was struggling inside because I didn't know who I was as an individual. I had to be this perfect person coming out and doing everything that I did, active duty, even my career before I went active duty. I decided to go active duty because of 9/11. That was the day I decided to go. I did Junior ROTC, but I could rattle off every single thing. But it meant nothing because when I was in that dark space and I felt like I lost everything and even had to retire, who was I?
[00:14:04.01] - Malaysia Harrell
I had to ask myself, who really was I? I think a lot of people are in that position, and that's why it's like, well, I lost my life. Well, it's a job. It's a calling, but it's a job. So, realizing who you are intrinsically is very, very important, no matter what job you have or what career field you have.
[00:14:23.20] - John S. Berry
Yeah, that is outstanding advice. What I've noticed is it's better just to embrace the adversity and the failures I was in a coaching group, and for many of us, entrepreneurs were in EO or Vistage or one of these. I was in one of these groups, and there was a man that was very successful. His dad was a blue collar, but hard working, very successful, built businesses. And then he was prep school kid, goes off to the Ivy Leagues, has a great career, and he doesn't fail for the first time until he's 49 years old. And it just crushes him. And today he's still not over it. 59, and ten years later, and he still can't get over the failures. For a lot of us, when we fail, it's like, okay, it's good. I failed. I can come back from this. But if you don't, and if you don't have that adversity, and it hits you much later in life, boy, look at it. It's tough to overcome because You develop that. That resilience is a skill. It's something you develop. We probably unintentionally build it when we get hit in the face too many times, but we come back from it.
[00:15:24.06] - John S. Berry
For Veterans that think that this is, Oh, my gosh, I'm in a position where I have more adversity I've ever felt. I feel so overwhelmed. I've overcome a lot of stuff, but I don't think I can overcome this. What's your advice?
[00:15:37.08] - Malaysia Harrell
Well, you talked about it earlier with getting silent. You have to hear from your higher power. If you're not connected to a higher power, that's a problem. We always have to feel connected. We were here for a reason. A lot of us are doing jobs and doing career fields that our families placed on us. My dad was in... My grandfather was in Vietnam. I mean, not mine, but people are saying that. You believe that I have to do it to carry on our family legacy to do what they're called. But how do you know what your true calling is? It is not failure if you decide to align with what you're put here to do because you're going to feel so much more alive. That's the thing. When you're doing what you're called to do, it's not work. I don't work. If I decide right now, I need to go to work, my health symptoms, the headache, everything comes right away because I'm not doing what I'm in alignment with. So, when I decide to be obedient and surrender, surrender is the first thing that I would say if you're in that place of darkness.
[00:16:44.20] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Before I get to the contact information, we're going to do the after-action review. I want to know your examples of great leadership and your examples of poor leadership.
[00:16:53.13] - Malaysia Harrell
We could be here all day for that one.
[00:16:55.16] - John S. Berry
Give me the best and the worst.
[00:16:57.12] - Malaysia Harrell
Okay, so the best leadership. I had a squadron commander when I was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base. You knew he was coming through on Friday, so number one, you weren't leaving early. He had a key to the mental health clinic he's coming through. But he knew something about you. So, the book by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I think he exuded that after I read the book years later. He knew something about you, and he asked that of you every single time. So, I had a dog. He asked me about my dog. He asked me about my family. He really was able to connect with you on an individual level, not just what's going on with the mission. I really, really appreciated that. You're like, how did you remember? He remembered things that you didn't even remember you told him. As far as leadership that could be improved, people that didn't accept you for who you were, people who tried to transform you into who they needed you to be. I think you need to have camaraderie, but what makes us unique is what makes us so powerful. You being from where you're from, me being from where I'm from.
[00:18:12.21] - Malaysia Harrell
Our experience is blended together. We don't need everybody to think one way. I think that could be an improvement.
[00:18:20.21] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I think we all struggle from that at times. We see people through our lens, and we want them to be what is convenient for us. Sometimes that's not even who they are.
[00:18:28.06] - Malaysia Harrell
It's not. They're not going to flourish. They're not going to flourish in that environment. They need to bring something to the table. We are creating these new leaders. They're going to be people that are going to replace us in this space. You want them to have that opportunity and just the freedom, not complete freedom, but the freedom to develop their leadership skills and become who they are meant to be.
[00:18:50.16] - John S. Berry
I love that you use the term flourish. It seems like the right term. People want to flourish.
[00:18:55.14] - Malaysia Harrell
That's right.
[00:18:55.23] - John S. Berry
They want to find you, Malaysia Harrell. Where can they find you and where can they learn more about Blissful Life Consulting?
[00:19:03.00] - Malaysia Harrell
They can find me at www. Blissfullifeconsulting. Com. Also, we're on most social media platforms. We're on LinkedIn, we're on Instagram, we're everywhere. Also, you can email us at malaysia@ blissfulLifeConsulting. Com.
[00:19:22.01] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Looking forward to your presentation today. Thank you for coming here to the Military Influencer Conference. By the way, it doesn't mean like Social Media Influencer. It means people who are influencing and making a difference in the military community. So thank you for all that you do, Malaysia.
[00:19:35.17] - Malaysia Harrell
Thank you for having me.
[00:19:42.10] - 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.