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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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[00:00:02.780] - Waco Hoover
Oftentimes all we hear about in the media and the narrative is around, oh, the poor broken Veteran, woe is me. Well, no, no, no, let's, let's completely reframe that because most of us are out there doing amazing things in our communities— church, schools, launching businesses, corporate executives, pillars of our community, launching Veteran service organizations, whatever it might be. That's what we need to talk about.
[00:00:27.220] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. I'm your host, John Berry. Today's guest is Marine Corps Veteran Waco Hoover. Waco is the co-founder and partner of MCON, the CEO and founder of IMPCT Group, and has executive produced over 50 films, television shows, and documentaries telling stories focused on the military community. Welcome to the show, Waco.
[00:00:50.980] - Waco Hoover
Thanks, John. It's great to be here.
[00:00:53.740] - John S. Berry
You've done quite a bit. I understand you've also completed about 22 mergers and acquisitions. You've been involved in those transactions. So
[00:01:01.980] - Waco Hoover
that's right.
[00:01:01.980] - John S. Berry
Growing business. Businesses, from growing businesses to helping to move on. Uh, excited to hear about it. So, let's start with the beginning of your journey. Uh, you leave the Marine Corps, what happens?
[00:01:12.560] - Waco Hoover
Left the Marine Corps, moved to New York City to do my undergrad at NYU. Uh, after my, after my freshman year, uh, get this opportunity to go and, uh, to, to do an internship at the Cannes Film Festival. At this time, John, I couldn't tell you what the heck the Cannes Film Festival was. All I knew It was a free trip to France for 2.5 weeks. And, you know, I figured I'd go to school for economics, business, work on Wall Street or something, but it exposed me to media, technology, brand activations, the entertainment industry, this whole world that, you know, you just, unless you don't know what you don't know. And so, it exposed me to all that. Ended up meeting my business partner now of like 20+ years that we've been involved in, you know, a number of ventures in. And like ended up scaling those, exited as a founder 3 times, really worked across media, technology, healthcare information technology, the entertainment industry, and the military community and defense as well.
[00:02:14.570] - John S. Berry
And so, as you're developing these skills, are you thinking, okay, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to do all these other things, or was it— or did you just not know? You just kind of followed the path that was in front of you?
[00:02:24.190] - Waco Hoover
Yeah. So that internship was in 2002. I, I did, when I first started, when I started my first business, I didn't even know what an entrepreneur was. I'll be completely honest that it wasn't like, it wasn't a popular buzzy thing to talk about. There weren't countless incubators or venture studios or programs like that. And I was just; I was going to college. I was like, you know what, what do I have to lose? I'm doing NYU. And I'll launch some things. I didn't, I wasn't particularly connected with like the kids that were my same age coming in as a freshman, as you can imagine. You know, those of us who do college after the fact, and it was something exciting and different. And, you know, the first businesses were not great, as you can imagine. Fortunately, we got better and better as we cut our teeth over time. But yeah, it was very much an organic journey of kind of getting there. And there was a tremendous amount of imposter syndrome along the way, which a lot of us talk about because I had no experience. And I'll give you an example, like with the healthcare IT business that we, uh, that we built.
[00:03:27.650] - Waco Hoover
You know, you're working with like chief medical officers of some of the largest like healthcare facilities in this country. And what do I know? I'm an infantry grunt, you know, albeit the CEO of my business, but interacting with these people that just have countless letters behind their names of MD, MBA, PhD. Uh, but you know, at the end of the day, we were very convicted about what we were building. We identified a very clear gap for that particular business and we ended up being very successful because at the end of the day, we were building a great community that was helping them solve a huge problem. And that was around implementing electronic health records across, you know, doctors' offices and healthcare systems.
[00:04:08.380] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I think that conviction, you know, comes from that military service, right? Where you're an infantry guy on the ground and you know that no plan is going to survive first contact. You just have to have that, like, unreasonable belief. That it's going to work out, right? The plan— and I know the Marines, I was at Al Asad in 2005. So I know the planning is a little bit different in the Army. We get a little bit more detailed, but still any plan—
[00:04:32.250] - Waco Hoover
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:04:35.230] - John S. Berry
But still any plan does not survive first contact. And you have to just have that conviction, that belief that, hey, it's going to work out because what's the alternative, right? If you don't believe it's going to work out, you're right. It's not.
[00:04:48.170] - Waco Hoover
Yeah, the only way is through, quite frankly. I don't know if you're familiar with Ryan Holiday, New York Times bestselling author, but When I Became a Father, he's got some great books around that, but also he's got an amazing book called The Obstacle Is the Way. And I read that much later in my career, just a couple years ago. But that is actually it. And I'll tell you what I lacked in actual business acumen early in my career, and I went to do business school and done a bunch of executive programs at Harvard Business School and the Harvard School of Public Health.
[00:05:17.450] - John S. Berry
And those higher education's amazing.
[00:05:19.560] - Waco Hoover
It's played a key part in my success over the years. But an infantry Marine, the resilience, the I'm not giving up for anything, I'm going to suck it up and push through it. I always joke that as an 0351, I had arguably, as infantry Marine, had arguably some of the fewest skill sets that were transferable to the civilian sector. But that experience as an infantry Marine set me up to push through and persevere as an entrepreneur. Better than anything that I could have asked for.
[00:05:47.690] - John S. Berry
Well, in that skill, at least in the Army, it was as an infantry officer, it was your, your skill set is close with and destroy the enemy. And that may not sound translatable, but we're in a highly competitive market or industry. That's what you're doing. You're going in there, you're looking at competition, and sometimes the enemy is us, right? Is our own organization. But you have to solve problems. You have to eliminate problems and you have to be ruthless. And let's, let's talk about that. I mean, the standards, right, that you learned as that young infantry Marine. The standard's the standard. And I don't know how many times I've been tempted or I've heard great rationale for lowering standards, but how do you hold that line, right? Because the interesting thing is, as an entrepreneur, you got to let go of a lot of things. You got to be able to delegate a lot and let go of the day-to-day and the task, but you really have to hold the line tight on those standards. And I'm curious how you been able to manage that so successfully over the last 20 years?
[00:06:46.020] - Waco Hoover
You know, that's a, that's, it's such, it's such a fun topic that you bring up and it's one of those things that I don't know if you ever fully let go of that, but you, you have to train yourself to let other people come in and empower them to, again, them to delegate and you get farther and farther removed from the execution piece of it. But that's where building a really incredible culture within the organization becomes so important because that, that, that, that same, um, attention to detail, the, uh, that the thing that you— those standards that you don't want to, you know, push back on— you've got to instill that in other individuals across your team in order to maintain that. And culture is the most powerful way to do that, without a doubt. Processes are important, of course. Systems, technology, yes, those are important. But the the culture that you have in your organization where that is the standard and that's what everybody holds themselves to, that is something that's palpable. And that's something that, you know, whether you step away for 3 months from your business, you come back and that's still humming along and that's going.
[00:07:48.930] - Waco Hoover
So I think that's, you know, one of the most important things. And the other thing that I think a lot of people don't necessarily think nearly enough about is your, you know, the intentionality around key executives you bring into the organization, how you incentivize them to stay and have a reason to also continue to reinforce your vision for the business. Very, very important. And the other part of that is your partnerships. No one does anything alone in this life. And we all know there's different personalities, not just in the military community, but across the private sector and in military service. There are those of us that are much more I, I, I, and there are many of us who I prefer to be around who are we, we, we. And all of us, feel good about things that we know we contributed a lot to. But I'm the first to acknowledge and admit, and again, we're not all always perfect at this, but it is a team. It takes a village to build really special communities and businesses at scale. And the more that we go into it with that approach, I think also that just is a great lesson for individuals transitioning out of service as they think about what life looks like on the other side in the civilian sector.
[00:08:58.110] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I mean, the organization will outgrow a lot of your skills, right? And it's kind of different than the military because the military, you keep getting promoted and you develop new skills and you get promoted, you get promoted. But it's a little bit different when you're in the business world. You develop skills and you're the leader. And as your organization grows, you become less and less relevant, right? So you may be the best content creator on your team, but if that's— if you're going to own that forever, you've just stunted the growth of the business, right? You need to find somebody better than you to do that. And you just, it's just, it's that constant, constant replacing of yourself and really narrowing it down so that you can focus on the one or two things that you can be world-class at, right? So that you can be like that Olympic athlete, that you're just so focused on those things that you work on that it doesn't matter. And everybody else on the team is focused on what they do and it, it just grows. And you're right, if you have the right culture, It doesn't necessarily have to be barrel-chested, steely-eyed killers, but it can't be people who are sensitive and do not take feedback well.
[00:10:03.790] - John S. Berry
Feedback is a gift, and it's how we learn. I've seen that happen where some organizations are just soft and the leaders are soft and it's all soft gooey and it all sounds good. They got beanbags and ping pong tables and whatnot, but no work is getting done. And they're funded by somebody else. But when you're bootstrapping, that's your own money. It's a whole different game.
[00:10:26.820] - Waco Hoover
It is. I mean, and the, and the, the revenue generating revenue will solve a lot of your problems. You can figure it all out if you've got revenue coming in the door and you've got resources. And so, you know, conceptually you can talk about all these things. You could be obsessed with a lot of different stuff, but revenue is a key part of growing any business. And, you know, I think something that, you know, I, when I first, you know, started my professional career post-service, I had to sell. We had to sell, we had to drive revenue. It was not my favorite thing. I've come to, you know, as I learn more about the different styles of selling, at the end of the day, we're all selling, you know, ABC, you know, Glengarry Glen Ross, you know,
[00:11:06.230] - John S. Berry
always be closing.
[00:11:07.550] - Waco Hoover
That's right. That's exactly right. Phenomenal scene. But I think that's something that is, uh, is really important for individuals and organizations to understand, whether in the CEO role or another piece of it, is, um, the most remarkable leaders I've ever been around, and what I continue to aspire to be, is surround yourself with people that are infinitely smarter than you, that are better at the things that you think you're great at.
[00:11:31.430] - Waco Hoover
Because what's the saying that we all talk about, love in our community? Iron sharpens iron. It's, it's the same thing. I want to be in a room with people that are so much better than I am because they're going to push me to be better. And there's a tendency as a leader to think that you have to have all the answers. And I'm not going to say that I was perfect at that over the course of my career and different ventures. Absolutely not. We are all a work in progress growing over time. But that is something that I think is so important for individuals to understand about their organizations, whether you're running a small shop or you have aspirations to scale, you know, a business to hundreds and thousands of employees. Surround yourself with people that are a lot better than you at things. And the other piece of that is, you know, you're gonna wear a lot of hats as you're growing a business, but it's temporary. As you grow that, you're going to be able to shop that out and hire, replace that role that you don't want to do. The beautiful thing of being a business owner is you have the autonomy to build what you want in a way that you want.
[00:12:28.410] - Waco Hoover
And so if you don't want to do sales, hire somebody to own it. Hire a chief revenue officer or equivalent. If you don't love operations, hire somebody to do it. If you don't love accounting, hire somebody to do it. Uh, and that's something that you control your own destiny. And a lot of times it doesn't feel like you control your own destiny. You know, we always used to joke that the light has been temporarily turned off at the end of the tunnel because things are going so bad and sideways, and you just feel like, what, why can't we get past this hurdle? But if you, if again, the, if you just keep, uh, gutting it out and pushing through, it, it, it almost always turns back on in my experience. Uh, and so that's just a really important thing. I think that, uh, that individuals across the board, whether you're early days, mid-career, whatever you're growing, that you can take away.
[00:13:11.670] - John S. Berry
Now, you've been involved in 22 mergers and acquisitions. So we've talked about the front end of it. Let's talk about the back end. How did you get involved in that and walk us through the process? How will a Veteran business owner know when they're ready?
[00:13:23.870] - Waco Hoover
Yeah. So I think there's a, there's a number of things on that. And some of those I've been the founder and then others I've just been an investor. And so the— there's a lot of different shades and color that you can see on that. And so I think a really important part of this is starting with the end in mind. And I wish I would've done that in certain ventures because, you know, the first business is like, let's build this thing, let's scale it, let's sell it. That's awesome. And that feels phenomenal. There is arguably no— it's one of the greatest feelings on this planet when you build something of scale that's driving great revenue and it's validated when another organization comes in and writes you a phenomenal check that says, we love this thing and we're gonna buy it from you. That feels awesome. But starting with the end in mind on that is, you know, you may not want to ever sell your business. So being very thoughtful from the front aspect of it and continuing to be introspective about it. You mentioned it earlier. If you can work yourself out of a, out of a job essentially, and you have a great team in place in this business, in a business you started is spinning off great cash flow, it becomes a lifestyle business.
[00:14:25.500] - Waco Hoover
So thinking about what the durability and longevity of that business is it is incredibly hard to launch and scale a business. But once you get it moving, you've got some sustainability and durability there and revenue and lifestyle. That's really incredible. That's why, you know, ETA, entrepreneurship through acquisition, is such a popular thing right now, particularly in the military community that's growing as well. And so I think that starting with the end in mind is a really important piece of that. Another key aspect of this is Sometimes these opportunities are going to pop up when you least expect them. So making sure that your, your, your house is in order from an accounting standpoint, from a team standpoint, you know, in early, early, one of my early transactions involved in that was not the case. And so it was a, it was a rat race to go through and clean a lot of things up to then present your books to the group that was acquiring the business. And that is not a fun feeling. And also it can completely torpedo a deal at the end of the day. If your house is out of order, they're just going to take a step back and be like, hey, this was great to talk with you, but like, we're going to move on.
[00:15:28.880] - Waco Hoover
This is not for us. And so it's very important for people to understand that that organization and being able to do that is great. A few other things that are really key for transactions, you know, seriously consider having an M&A advisor, investment banker, you know, as a part of that. Yes, it can seem pricey, But do the math, take the time to do the math on, you know, if they're going to— you are not— if this is your first or even second or third, you know, acquisition or transaction you're involved in, you're selling a business, you are not an expert in M&A. You know, I would argue that there are people that are infinitely more experienced than I am, and I still go look at— look for guidance in and around these transactions because there are subject matter experts in different aspects of this that are— that will make you tremendous amounts of money in terms of a multiple of EBITDA or revenue, whatever that valuation model is looking like. And then you can also hurt yourself significantly too. And so making sure you have the right guidance and expertise as it relates to that is really important.
[00:16:26.480] - Waco Hoover
And the math is pretty simple. If you're looking at what that, what that M&A, you know, advisor or investment banker is like going to charge you on that, you know, if they're able to identify aspects of your business that can be positioned more favorably, you know, it can be a no-brainer. And they also are going to have a network of, of, of organizations and buyers, whether it's, you know, a financial buyer, whether it's PE or whether it's strategic, they're going to have a network of buyers that are— that can move a lot more quickly than you kind of stumbling around in the dark and, you know, taking it through. The other piece is there is a very specific process when you think about going through, through the, the divestiture process. And it's really important to manage that. And a part of that process is having taking the emotion out of it. The acquiring group, again, whether they're working with an advisor or whether it's just a team, an in-house M&A team, they're going to beat your business up. It's going to feel like they're attacking you sometimes and you're going to be like, what, do you even want my business?
[00:17:26.850] - Waco Hoover
But it's just a tactic. It's just part of the process. And to the extent you can remove yourself or have other people on your team support that process, it's really, really important and it makes a huge difference because at the end of the day, if that's a very— there's a lot of contention going into that sale and you do consummate the transaction, you've got to work with these people for, you know, uh, several years after that in most instances through an earnout. Or again, it varies based on the structure of that transaction. So it's really important to make sure you have a good working relationship with the people on the other side, uh, because that can impact what your, uh, upside is, you know, down the road. Another kind of key piece I'll mention is, you know, earnout structure, if you have an earnout as a part of a transaction, making sure you understand the nuance in and around how you're defining expenses and also the control you have over key levers that are going to ensure that you can attain those revenue targets, those EBITDA targets, whatever that looks like. And that earnout is built on— make sure you have the appropriate controls in place so that you can, you can get there.
[00:18:33.900] - Waco Hoover
If you need to hit the gas harder, if you need to spend a little bit more, If you need to hire around that, that's really important. I personally made the mistake where we didn't have, you know, enough control on that early on. And, you know, fortunately, you know, don't make those mistakes down downstream, but that can really, really hurt you if you just don't know what you know in many instances. So that's a key piece of it. And the last piece, I'll say something near and dear to your heart, which you'll understand, is make sure that you have legal counsel that is experienced in transactions. It can't be your sister's uncle who happens to be a generalist attorney. It's a very, very different thing. And that's not a knock on a particular type of attorney. But there are employment counsel, there is M&A attorneys there. It's a very specific piece of legal practice that can, that can, again, that can cost you money at the end of the day or blow up a deal if it's not done in the right way or come to find out that there wasn't a provision of the asset purchase agreement or whatever type of, you know, buying structure that's going to look like, what that's going to do, and it can hurt you downstream.
[00:19:37.260] - Waco Hoover
So those are some of the things that are really important, I think, for anybody who's thinking about a transaction or those who are, you know, much, much closer to it going into.
[00:19:48.160] - John S. Berry
Yeah. And for a lot of Veterans, I know it's— this is the biggest financial transaction in their life. And I always tell them, you know, there's nothing more expensive than a bad lawyer for something like this, because if something can go wrong, You need to make sure you're protected. But I also like when you talked about the beginning of the process. Unfortunately, as Veterans, we've been through after-action reviews. We have red-teamed a lot of our plans. I used to, as a young platoon leader, I would have my NCOs come and before I gave the op order to the platoon, I'd have them shoot it down. They tell me how stupid I was. You know, no, hey, sir, this is a bad plan. You're going to get everybody killed. This is not how we're going to do it. And in training exercises, that was That was key to get that feedback before I presented, but also not just the red teaming, but then the inspections too. And I'm not talking about the pre-combat inspections, pre-combat checks, but even like just going around and someone inspecting your paperwork and all these things they did in the military so that when you get to it right and someone's going through and doing their due diligence, you don't take it personally.
[00:20:49.640] - John S. Berry
Although we did always hate the inspectors, we hated the OCs when we were training, we're like these sharpshooters, you know what? But in the end, it's valuable and it's very incredible experience to have as a leader. Now, that being said, speaking of leaders, I want to talk about MCON. You are one of the founders of MCON, excited about this military conference this fall. I'm going this, this is my first time this year, so looking forward to it. So tell us about MCON.
[00:21:15.400] - Waco Hoover
Yeah, so we're really excited. So MCON, we launched 4 years ago, 2026, this will be the 4th edition. We do it, Military Times is one of our amazing partners that we do it with, along with a whole host of other organizations. And we launched MCON because we identified what we believe is a white space in the military community. Virtually every community across America has a large-scale tentpole event celebrating those people. I'll give you two examples. Have you ever heard of DragonCon, John?
[00:21:44.590] - John S. Berry
No.
[00:21:45.490] - Waco Hoover
DragonCon is 20,000 people every year coming together celebrating dragons and sci-fi. It's wild. It's like cosplay. It's, it. If that's your thing, it's super cool. It's not my bag, but it's a wild experience. So that community has 20,000 people coming together, celebrating dragon stuff. Another example is the Essence Festival. Essence Festival is the largest celebration of Black culture in this country. It's about 60,000 people that come together in New Orleans every year. Music, culture, food. It's incredible. Again, amazing celebration of Black culture. The military, we don't have anything like this at scale. You know, there's a lot of, you know, there's healthcare events, there's defense contracting events with tens of thousands attendees, and those are all great, but that's not what this is.
[00:22:31.550] - Waco Hoover
This is about— our goal is to build a platform, platform that brings our community together in a really profound way, celebrating military culture, debunking this narrative, the bro— of the broken Veteran that permeates many pockets of American society, because Statistically, the vast majority of us are out there doing amazing things in our community at different levels. And that's just the truth. But oftentimes all we hear about in the media, the narrative is around, oh, the poor, broken Veteran, woe is me. Well, no, no, no. Let's, let's completely reframe that because most of us are out there doing amazing things in our communities— church, schools, launching businesses, corporate executives, pillars of our community, launching Veteran service organizations, whatever it might be. That's what we need to talk about. Those are the stories we need to celebrate. And we've built all these really intentional pillars around this where we've got these B2B components where we have a whole MCON Health Day that's all about transforming the continuum of care. So that is VA, hospitals, health systems, brain health, TBI, PTSD, the clinical and economics of health care delivery. How do we make that better and more efficient with better outcomes and better accessibility for our community?
[00:23:45.220] - Waco Hoover
That's all that. Then we have a whole military impact summit day that's all focused on— excuse me— that's all focused on how at the other end of that, how do community partners, how do all the VSOs, how do corporate brands, how do all these state and federal agency programs, how do we intersect at that confluence to have the most authentic and outcome-driven programs get pushed out to the community? So, it's all that B2B piece. And then the most exciting piece of it is the consumer-facing— consumer in quotes— facing piece of it that's open to any Veteran, active-duty service member, family member, or supporter of the military community who wants to have a blast and have a great time. We've got a massive health and wellness pavilion this year. We have a, a whole Veteran Farmacy with an F, Seed to Table, talking about amazing food that you put in your body. We've got cold plunge pools, we have archery, we've got a whole— an incredible range day where we've got Tier 1 operators up on the, up in the shooting bay with you, with a Barrett sniper rifle, handguns, ARs, whatever you want to do.
[00:24:46.240] - Waco Hoover
But this is all about fostering and facilitating community and building a platform with a broad range of things that all of us like to do. And there's a lot of other things that I didn't get a chance to talk about, but there's stuff for your kids. You know, we've got pumpkin carving because it's around, you know, Halloween, that time of year. We have remote control cars and So, this is designed to bring together our community in a new way. We've got the business piece of this, but then we also have our community and service members celebrating what they did and also being able to showcase that to young people who are interested in serving. This year, we're doing this incredible program that's all-around jiu-jitsu. And, you know this as well as anybody, there is a myriad of modalities that our community likes to get involved in. And so, we want to equip those organizations that are doing, you know, psychedelic-assisted therapy or equestrian, uh, things, or fishing or hunting or surfing, whatever it is that's building community, that's helping folks get through whatever they might be struggling with. We want to equip them with the best scientific evidence-based practices to, to validate that.
[00:25:52.490] - Waco Hoover
And then we also want to showcase people doing incredible things in their community so that our community realizes time and time again that military service sets you up to do incredible, profound things in America and beyond. And that's what we need to recognize, and that's what we're doing. And our goal, this year we're expecting 5,000+ participants, but our goal, fast forward the next 4 or 5 years, we want to grow this into a 20,000+ person platform, bring together the right stakeholders from government, private sector, nonprofit, and otherwise to continue transforming our community and the way that we serve and supporting the all-volunteer force.
[00:26:31.390] - John S. Berry
So, it sounds like not only are you providing all the services and all the opportunities, but it is also a celebration. So, you can also have a good time. This isn't just a conference to go to and learn and connect, and those are all important things. But I think, you know, let's face it, the best bonds are always made after the presentations.
[00:26:46.850] - Waco Hoover
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Inspire, inform, and entertain.
[00:26:52.880] - John S. Berry
Awesome. Well, we're going to get to where Veterans can learn more. But first, the after-action review. Waco, tell us your example or examples of phenomenal leadership and terrible leadership. We'll start with the good. You don't have to name names.
[00:27:07.460] - Waco Hoover
You know, I think, you know, it's interesting. There's— I served a while ago, so a lot of mine that are front of mind are kind of from the private sector. And I think, I think great examples of leadership really revolve around those individuals that understand the importance of how they take an interest in the people that are around them, taking a personal and professional interest in them. If you look at, if you look at how important it is, and there's data around all this tremendous research around the importance of how your career can have an upward trajectory based on a manager or a mentor that you have, it's profound. And I think examples of great leadership are those individuals that take a really important, vested interest in other individuals. I had so many people in the Marine Corps do that, officers, platoon commander, company commander. I would say that I had, as an NCO, had a very unique relationship with a lot of those individuals because they took a liking to me, or I raised my hand and volunteered to do different things. And that worked out. That helped me a lot in my military career.
[00:28:22.570] - Waco Hoover
And that same thing, that same example helped me a lot in my civilian career too. And so, again, to me, that's one of the greatest examples of good leadership is individuals that take a personal interest. And some people might call that favoritism, But I think there's just relationships. There are all types of relationships that are out there that you can help everybody. And having that intentionality behind finding someone who you hit it off with, who has influence across your community, the workplace, military, that matters. And that can have a transformative effect on where you go in your career, personally and professionally.
[00:28:56.080] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. And now the bad.
[00:28:58.400] - Waco Hoover
The bad. Okay.
[00:28:59.580] - Waco Hoover
The bad. I think examples— actually, I know an example of the bad, you know, really revolves around the, the I, uh, the I person. The, the, you know, in business, you know, there's a lot of companies that like have the— there's the Grand Puba effect is what we call it. It's all about that one individual person. Everything revolves around them. And particularly like in the, the media event business, you know, we've seen brands built around people where it's specific to them. If they go away, they built their business to where that's a huge hit on the business. And, and that carries through on business. Like, at the end of the day, I don't care if anybody really knows my name or the amazing projects that we're involved in, like publicly. I want to build phenomenal things that have an impact for our customers, for our communities. I want to solve problems. And anonymity is a beautiful thing. So flipping that on its head a little bit, if nothing else, that you can get that gratification in so many different ways. And so again, the individual who's always about the I and not giving credit to the rest of the team that did a tremendous amount of the heavy lifting and the work to get there, to me, that's one of the most destructive and, you know, that really hurts culture in organizations and at scale.
[00:30:13.220] - John S. Berry
Yeah. And I find that a lot of founders and Veterans in business run into this paradox, right, where it's, it might be time to move on, but they have created this business where maybe they're the face of it, but they have also been able to let go enough so the business can run without them. And now they're in this paradox where, you know, nobody wants to buy my business if, if I need to be in it. And yet if I don't need to be in it and it's generating great revenue, why would I ever sell? Right? And so, it's, you get, it's interesting because then we have these conversations and Veterans are saying, well, why would I? They go with this mentality, they wanna, they're building it to sell it. Then they really, once they've built it, they're like, wait a minute, like this is pretty good. I have, I've built a team I want, I'm not as involved in the day-to-day and it's generating good revenue, you know, and I'm worried that if I sell it, I might destroy it. And so.
[00:31:06.280] - Waco Hoover
Well, and it's uncoupling yourself from that business and realizing that you now have, you're gonna have more mental space and bandwidth to think about other ventures you might want to be involved in. And then so that capital that's coming out of the business, you know, on an annual basis, you know, rather than taking one lump sum, take it out. There's so many tax benefits to that, investing in other businesses, acquiring other businesses. So it's just you have to reframe, you know, your thought process and your calculus around what you are actually doing as a business. And it may be that, you know, the business that you spent that years building and that you have a tremendous of your own self-identity wrapped up in, um, that is a phenomenal revenue stream for you. But what you move on to in the next chapter is something that, quite frankly, can be infinitely more fun, less stressful, and you can, quite frankly, if you make the right bets, you can make a hell of a lot of money doing it. So, I think that's something that is, uh, really interesting. And that's where peer support, having conversations with others who have been there before you, made some of those mistakes, emotionally gone through that journey.
[00:32:11.740] - Waco Hoover
And that's one thing that I think that collectively we don't talk about enough is it is a very emotional process going through selling your business. You know, we have this tendency to be like, hurrah, you had this great exit, this great financial return. It's very emotional. The thought process going through it when it's getting beat up in terms of various aspects of your company, it's your baby. In many respects, it's your child. And it's being criticized on a whole host of different levels. And so that emotional piece is something really important to be prepared for as you think about what's next.
[00:32:41.700] - John S. Berry
And you've been through it and having gone through it, that has allowed you to co-found MCON, but also become the CEO and founder of IMPCT Group. Tell us a little bit about your current venture.
[00:32:54.000] - Waco Hoover
Yeah, IMPCT Group. So that was really born 3 years ago now out of a culmination of, you know, 2 decades of experience of seeing how organizations really treat military-related impact programs as this nice-to-have obligatory thing. You know, our entire thesis is that, you know, organizations can take these programs and they can actually be drivers of growth, durable growth for the business if they set them up properly. There's a lot of research behind this. We have countless examples of it. But, you know, Veteran hiring programs, customer acquisition programs— one of the best BD tools that people don't ever talk about publicly is philanthropy. It is actually getting out there and supporting the community in different ways in terms of how it positions your business yourself, how it arms your team with authentic, unique ways to engage with the end market, the customer that you're leaning into. And so, we do some amazing work with strategic advisory services, go-to-market programming, data-driven resources that we'll do in terms of data-rich surveys. We have a strategic advisory services part of the business that we do in terms of guidance, like I said, building out roadmaps, building Veteran hiring initiatives.
[00:34:08.440] - Waco Hoover
We also have a huge practice of experiential activations that we do. Actually, next year, one of our, one of our partners we work with is the Military World Games. It's going to be the largest sporting event that our community has never heard of in 2027, which is really exciting. It's 10,000 athletes competing from all over the world, 100+ countries over 10 days in Charlotte, North Carolina. We do some amazing work with Tom Hanks' company, Hanks for Troops. He's building this incredible commercial brand where all the proceeds go back to the military community. So, we're working with them to support their partner program and the Veteran service organizations that they, that they work with. So yeah, we have a lot of work that we do across entertainment, nonprofits and for-profit companies. Like I said, taking military-related impact programs and helping turn them into drivers of growth. Our, our BHAG, John, if you're familiar with the term, Big Hairy Audacious Goal, is to over the next, between now and 2035, unlock $1 billion of economic opportunity for the military community by equipping corporate brands. Our sweet spot is brands that have 100 employees to 5,000 employees and equipping them with the tools, resources, and strategies to take those military-related impact programs and turn them into drivers of growth for the business versus just a nice-to-have which oftentimes they're thought of.
[00:35:27.880] - John S. Berry
And there's so many programs out there. It's learning how to use them, how to leverage them. So, I'm excited to learn more. So, Waco Hoover, where can Veterans learn more about you? Learn more about MCON. I know it's coming up this fall, so now is the time to buy your tickets if you're going to do it. And finally, IMPCT Group, where can, where can we learn more about you, MCON, and your business?
[00:35:48.400] - Waco Hoover
No, thank you. So MCON is mcon.live. Mcon.live if you want to check it out. All the information is there. If anybody wants to reach out to me directly, it's whoover@mcon.live for that business. For IMPCT Group, it's IMPCT, no A. We've saved the A for action because all strategies sound great on paper, but unless you implement them with action intentionality, it doesn't matter. That's a big part of our culture. So it's IMPCT Group, www.thefrontlinegroup.com. Yeah, check out either of those websites. We'd love to have conversations with anybody. And at the end of the day, we're here to do great work supporting the military community. Our entire team, Veteran-founded business, we want to carry service forward and we want to help support organizations in our community to continue doing that in the decades to come.
[00:36:44.170] - 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.