Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
For Veterans by Veterans. Discover and execute on the most important mission of your life. Join host, Mike Bledsoe, as he delves into transformative journeys, exploring the challenges and triumphs of transitioning from military to civilian life. Through compelling stories and expert insights, we uncover the keys to personal growth, resilience, and purposeful living.
Mike Bledsoe (00:00)
Welcome to the Mission After podcast, where we help veterans discover and execute on the most important mission of their lives. I'm your host, Mike Bledsoe, and our guest today is Gail Anders, a business continuity leader with over 20 years of experience currently managing business continuity for Netflix's global operations. Gail's innovative approach has been internationally recognized for its effectiveness and strong ROI. Before joining Netflix, Gail progressed through leadership roles in the United States Marine Corps.
focusing on global operations, crisis management, continuity of operations, and disaster recovery. The discipline, teamwork, and attention to detail from his Marine Corps experience continue to influence his ability to ensure the robustness of business continuity plans and foster resilient organizational structure and culture. By the end of this episode, you'll discover three major takeaways.
the importance of humility and continuous learning and navigating the corporate world. Two, the value of leveraging the diverse skill set and mindset cultivating the military in the civilian landscape. And three, the significance of adaptability, financial prudence, and maintaining a balance between work and family life for personal fulfillment and happiness. But before we dive in, I want to tell you about our new resource available at the missionafter .org. It's called the 10 Surprising Military Habits That Are Sabotaging Your Career.
and your life. This guide will help you identify and overcome those habits. So be sure to download it at the mission after .org. Now let's get into the conversation with Gail Anders.
Mike Bledsoe (01:36)
All right. We got a Gail Anders here and you've got to make a proclamation here at the beginning of the show. I think which might even just entice people from the get -go. yeah. No worries. No worries. Yeah. So it's great. Great to great to be on the show. Thank you for having me Mike. The little declaration I got to make is that anything we talked about today or my views and not a representation of Netflix, which is the company that I currently work for right on. I think everyone's heard of Netflix.
I think Netflix gets a bit of all of our paychecks every month. It's like the non -negotiable, you know, it's like Netflix took over. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Pretty cool. So yeah, I would love to hear, we can just start here, which is how do you, tell us a bit about where you came from. Cause you're, you're retired. You did a, you did a full run.
Yes. And in the Marine Corps and then you transition to Netflix. Can you tell us a little bit about, yeah, your experience in the military and how you were able to transfer that over into something that sounds really cool? Cause we did have a chat last week. Really cool at Netflix. Yeah, no, absolutely. So I spent 20 years in the Marine Corps. 18 years of that was as an infantryman. And then my last few years, I was the first sergeant, serving at Wounded Warrior Retired.
And I'll kind of start with the infantry part then, because I feel like both experiences were very impactful on who I was as an individual, as a man, as a husband, as a father, et cetera. As an infantryman, I was just always one of those dudes that was always in a position where my boss was either being fired or being injured or whatever the case would be. And for some reason they were like, hey, Anders, take it and run with it. I was always serving at least one of the two pay grades.
above my current pay grade. and so in that I had to mature very, very quickly and I had to be able to hold conversations with very senior individuals. one of the things that I would usually do is, you know, I recognize very early on that officers got a lot of, I don't know, kneecap to kneecap time with their, superior officers and they would have like book clubs and book reviews and, you know, they would read something about Lincoln or some general in the civil war. And then they would.
talk about it as like a tactical decision game. Like, Hey, if you had the same composition of, you know, this general, like what decisions would you have made? Or, you know, this, that kind of engagement found me, I got really curious about it. So anytime I saw one of my officers with a book, I'd go get the same book and I'd read it. And what that does is it allowed me to have better conversations with them because I could see where they were approaching certain things, from different times.
One of the most impactful, you know, so yeah, two combat deployments to Iraq, one combat deployment off the coast of Africa, chasing pirates. And then the other five deployments were all security partnerships with a number of different Asian and Middle Eastern countries. But were you in a, were you in Djibouti? Yes. Yes. I was in Djibouti. I've been to Djibouti. It's one of those. Limonair or something.
Yeah, it's like it's like, I remember my first was the second deployment. I'm like 23 years old. And it's like, all right, what are we going to go do? It's like pirates. I was like, I'm like 23 years old. I'm like, I'm like, there's fucking pirates out there. Like, all I knew was like Pirates of the Caribbean, you know? Yeah, yeah.
No, when I, when we got the mission brief, I was like, wait, what do you mean pirates? Like how are these little dingy boats taking down? Like what, what were they attacking? Like I was so caught off guard because the concept of pirates was, you know, wooden ships with sales and no, it's a bunch of dudes in the small boat with RPGs and AKs. And they're literally taking down container ships, you know, a thousand times bigger than a little dingy boats. Yeah. Yeah. That was wild to me. It was wild.
Yeah, and there's just nothing you can do during the day except for stay in the shade when you're actually in in your booty because it's just excessively hot. At least it was a night life is. Is. Poor. Yeah, I really can't do nothing except for workout, which is great for me, but yeah. Anyways, yeah, yeah, yeah, so those are like more or less the the the deployments that I did, but.
One of the most impactful positions or things that I had is I got to Okinawa, Japan for permanent duty station and I checked in and I relieved the corporal. So at this time I'm a staff sergeant. I show up to a company and I was to be the training chief for the company or whatever. I relieved the corporal and I asked the corporal like, hey man, like where's the dude that I'm relieved? And he goes, I'm the guy. I said, wait a minute, if a corporal can do this, I'm not doing this as a staff sergeant.
So without any knowledge or understanding of what a division is, because I was very much at the tactical level up to this point in my career, I walked up to third Marine division's operations chief, a master gunnery sergeant who was the senior 03 for the division, infantryman. I'm sorry for anybody who doesn't know what 03 is, but anyways, I walked into his office. He did not know who I was. And I said, hey, master guns, like check this out. Like, I'm not this dude. I'm not a status arm. I'm just going to relieve a corporal. Like I can do more for you.
and he just, at the time somebody at JWTC, a master sergeant had just gotten in trouble and was relieved. And he's like, Hey, are you good to go to a JWTC jungle war for training center and be the operations chief? I said, I have no idea what JWTC is, but sure. I'll go do that. so I went up there and it was 17 ,000 acres and I was a senior enlisted dude for the entire camp. I went by weight, my entire staff, my cadre.
we're all with the deployment. So every six months I was rotating six to 12 people on staff and I only had 35 people on staff. So it was basically rinse, recycle, repeat, but I thought we could do better. So we did, we revamped the curriculum, we incorporated new curriculum for leaders, for tactics, et cetera, et cetera. At the time it was the only jungle environment that the Marine Corps had to do jungle operations and tactics.
So I took that as like my ownership to basically say, okay, if this is going to be the thing, then let it be the thing where we all learn how to fight inside the tree line. That turned out to be somebody published something that I did in some article and the master guns happened to be reading the Okinawa Marine newspaper. And he was like, calls me up and say, Anders, come down to camp Courtney. I go to camp Courtney and say, listen, you're going to be the current operation chief for third Marine division. Now I was like, what the hell is that?
As somebody else went up to J -Dub, I came down to Camp Courtney. I sit down at this time, I'm still a Staff Sergeant, I'm 11 years in the service. I sit down next to my OIC, who's a Lieutenant Colonel who's been in the Marine Corps for 24 years. I'm like, what am I going to do here? What am I going to advise you on? He said, look, Staff Sergeant, I just need you to do what you're told. I said, check, I can do that. And as I sat there trying to figure out my place in this new world, keep in mind, now I'm holding a Master Sergeant's billet. So I'm...
two levels above my current pay grade again. And it was at that level where it was like operational, but bleeding into like strategic. So like looking at the strategic deployment plans for not just Marines, but Navy vessels, aircraft, like what is the capabilities of all these different entities? And we're also dealing with all the humanitarian events that are happening inside Paycom. So, Hurricane in the Philippines, earthquake in Nepal, like all those things were providing resources and I was responsible for...
making sure that those resources got to where they were supposed to be. The point to what I am saying is it was the first time I got to see the big blue arrow. And from an operational point of view, I absolutely fell in love with being able to move the big blue arrow from an operational standpoint. During those humanitarian events, I was sitting next to members of USAID, Department of State, a number of other different three letter agencies that deal with foreign assistance. And I got to see some of their playbooks and I was like,
damn, that looks just like what we do in the Marine Corps. What exactly do you do? And you're like, well, I'm the emergency management, whatever. And that triggered me to go like, okay, emergency management, it's a civilian thing. I can go and do that. I did that. I got my bachelor's degree in emergency management. I got my master's degree in emergency management. Fast forward a few years as I'm doing my thesis for my master's program, my professor at the time was like, Hey, have you ever heard of this thing called business continuity? And I was like, no, did I pass my thesis?
I thought it was like his soft way of like telling me that I wasn't, you know, whatever. So he said, no, no, your thesis is good, but I think you should look into business continuity. So I did that. I found out that there was really only two agencies that can credential you in business continuity in the United States. So I got one of a certified business continuity, professional certification, and I just started networking. I'll pause there and see if there's anything that you want to die. Yeah, there's, there's a lot to unpack there. I,
Look, we're only 10 minutes into the show and you already dropped like tons of wisdom. First off, I think this first 10 minutes should be shared with people who are new to the military like you like. So if someone's listening and they know someone who's currently in like send them this show because because it sounds like you always had the attitude of just give me more like yes, it was like.
looking for opportunities, the fact that you were paying attention to people who were officers, the books they were carrying, you were not necessarily satisfied with just being another grunt, right? Like, like a lot of guys there, they get in and they're just kind of like, I mean, this is my experience. I think we had some things in common here. It's like all finding my, I found myself in positions beyond where my experience.
Right. And it was like, wow, you're now in charge of this whole thing as an E five. And I'm like, I know one's everyone who's normally in charge of this is like E six or D seven, you know. And so it's like, yeah. So. You were always looking for something better going up another level, and you had the the insight to be paying attention to what might cross over as a civilian and then.
The last thing I think really stands out is that you were engaged in a, in a university program where the professor sounds like you were in communication with a professor who was like, you were in a relationship with this person where they knew you well enough to go, Hey, you should check this out. And so big picture is you were actively engaged.
along the whole way. Like that sounds like it's like built into who you are. And if someone's listening, you're like, wow, I really didn't do that. Or I have not been doing that. That's also like all skills are learnable. Right. So that's kind of a lot of times you'll think, well, that's just how he is. But how you are being is also a learned behavior. And so it doesn't mean it's always easy to do that, but.
Even if you're already out of the military, I think there's a lot of insights to this. Like if you're going to school, interact with the professors, see if they have suggestions on what you could be doing. Yeah, no, Mike, listen, I tell anybody who's providing instruction to me, I tell them two things. Hey, look, I'm going to be the best student you've ever had because I'm going to turn in all my homework on time. I'm also going to be the worst student you've ever had because I'm going to ask a lot of stupid questions.
because I'm really going to engage because you're the expert providing me the instruction. I want every ounce you got to give. I want to know what this is, what would this theory or what would this be look, what would it look like for a government entity? What would it look like for a private entity? What would it look like at the lower level of governments, the senior level of governments, et cetera? I want everything that you have knowledge wise so that, you know, I can add, you know, just, I'm just, I am a sponge. I just absorb information and I try to figure out.
How can I apply this to where I currently am and more importantly, where I want to be in the future? This is, this is what I call humility. And the humility is knowing that you don't know, or at least acting like you don't know. and, one thing that occurred to me a while back was you can either, choose humility or you will be humbled. And I think that most people are humbled.
because they didn't choose humility. And I love the, the like, I'm going to ask a lot of stupid questions and be the first one to raise their hand and, and be that guy. And I think a lot of times people are afraid to be that person because they don't want to look stupid. But if you get into the habit of doing that, then you end up appearing to be the, like the smartest person in the room and you end up becoming.
You end up becoming that because you're asking so many questions. So I, I know a lot of, like I was saying right before we got on this, on this podcast, I, what I do is, I subscribe to the veterans thread on Reddit and the amount I do it to keep a beat on what's happening for the average veteran. And the amount of guys that get out and go, wow, I just.
I got out and it's funny, you're also, you were in infantry. And so a lot of people associate that with what could I, how could I apply being an infantryman to the civilian world? That just doesn't make sense. Like that there would be a position. And so I really liked that, that even if you're already out and you're going, man, there's just nothing out here for me.
what you're saying right now is exactly what these men and women need to be hearing. If I can add to that really quickly, you know, you everything we do in infantry, we have the main effort, which is essentially the individuals who are supposed to be the the ones to do with the actions on the objective to kick the door down or to like engage the enemy on the objective, right?
But you also have supporting effort number one and supporting effort number two, which are two separate units that are supporting you as the main effort to accomplish your goal. And so everything I do in life, I look at like, what is the objective? What is my main effort? And then what are two things that can enable me or support me in accomplishing that objective? And if that fails, then maybe I, you know, supporting effort number one and supporting effort two, they might have to become the main effort. If...
my primary direction fails and I have to take an alternate approach or a path to get to the end state, to the objective, that's okay. But the relationship between those three entities, the biggest thing is condition set. So are the conditions set for me to do this next action? And then when they are set, how fast can I transition? So either I'm in a defensive position and I'm providing fire for a maneuvering entity. All right, so the entity is where they're supposed to be.
Now I had to transition to a different position. How fast can I get there to start doing my next job or my next task? So I always call it, I always do this with my kids, okay, like you're done. So like transition, go to the next thing until they accomplish whatever they're supposed to do. But condition set and like focusing on like when I achieve this, what's next? Cause I'd never want to lose momentum in anything I'm doing personally or professionally. I love that. Can you give an example?
of how that works in the civilian world professionally. I absolutely can. It's applying for jobs because I believe in accuracy by volume. Shout out to my machine gun brothers out there. Yeah, so when I apply for jobs, like for example, right, my initial plan coming out of the Marine Corps was I'm just going to do another 20 years in the federal government and retire twice before I'm the age of 60 years old.
And during my last two years, I was at Winnow -Warrior Retirement and I was supporting a lot of service members in their transition and setting them up with their resources. And I realized very quickly that government work is not what I wanted to do. However, it was one of the things that, because you go to the job fairs and it's like, every three -letter agency wants you in Sheriff's County and all this other stuff. And so my main effort at the time was Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA.
to go do emergency management for them. And then I was looking at project management. You'll call that supporting effort number one. And then business continuity, this thing I'm just learning about, we'll call that supporting effort number two. And so I focused on FEMA. I focused on emergency management and I applied, applied, applied. I had some interviews, I got some job offers, but I'm sorry, I'm not working in Oakland for $80 ,000 a year. It's just not gonna happen. Not with the family of four. So, okay, so that's not, so conditions set. Conditions, I now have,
target feedback, so to speak. I know this is not the objective for me and I'm going to shift to project management. Again, salaries are low. There's a lot of opportunities out there, but there's not a whole lot of room to grow in my opinion. So then I focus on business continuity. It's got the appropriate salary. I can work in all 50 states. I can go global. So there was, I'll say, okay, so now that becomes my main effort and I focus on it. And that could be like,
a violation of those terms, right? Of how I'm using those terms, but in Gail Anders' mind, that's how it made sense to me. You know, this is my primary principal direction of attack and as soon as it's no longer sustainable, then I'm gonna shift directions or change courses. I suck at gambling, but I'm pretty good at life, taking risk in life in regards to, you know, cause at any time, you know,
consequences are not just on me, they're on my wife, they're on my kids, they're on our house. Like there's there's severe consequences for failure, which is why I'm so focused on not failing. Yeah, it doesn't sound that risky to me is you're just so calculated. You're using all that a lot of that's the tools you picked up in the military and you were able to see how that works somewhere else. I think that's a lot of people have a hard time doing that where they go.
Well, this is how it worked there. I don't know how that works over here. What was, what, what do you attribute that ability to, to go, you, it sounded like you started doing this while you were in the military, you started analyzing what's going on in the civilian world and, and touching the civilian world a bit. Cause I think a lot of times guys get out, guys and gals get out and they haven't, I was this way. I didn't think anything about the civilian world until like,
my day out. And I think that was, that was probably why it took me an extra little bit to find my own stride.
How do I say this? I feel like I realized that I had culminated in my Marine Corps career around the 11 to 12 year mark. Like I was just not going to do much more or be able to see much more because the war is winding down, Afghanistan is going on, but they're allocating units to different, like they're wanna focus on amphibious operations. The common, I forget who it was at the time, was shifting direction. And I said, okay, so we're just.
We're going to go back to like sailing around the seas and engaging with all these different countries, whatever. But I realized that this is not for life for me, right? Because it was just rinse, recycle, repeat, get home from an employment. You lose all your manpower. You get new manpower. You get new mission in your training, training, training, which I loved. Keep in mind, like I loved it, but I also realized that I cannot do this for like the entirety of my life. Right. I would love, I love the Australian defense force because.
When we did some training with the Australians, like there was a 55 year old Lance Corporal and I was like, dude, I want to be you. But in America, like they would have kicked me out after four years of I was still a Lance Corporal. I would have absolutely just done it. Just keep giving me like, you know, some pay raises to match inflation and I'll be your 55 year old Lance Corporal. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I realized that this is not for the rest of my life. So I started being curious, like what else can I do out there? And yes.
I would go to career fairs. Like I got three years left on contract, but some one of my Lance Corbis is going to a career for it because he's getting out. Say, man, I'll drive you. I'll take you because I'm curious. Like what are they offering to people at these? And it was all Riverside Sheriff's Office, Los Angeles, Orange County Sheriff's Office. It was all law enforcement. And I was like, dude, man, I got to have something better than this. You know, I applied to the FBI. I went through their initial screening with the FBI and. I know I'm sitting there and I'm watching this video and did out.
went back like 20 years to be in the land like a recruit or not even a pulley right into recruiters office watching the video. And I was like, Yeah, no, I don't want to be boot again. I've already done this once. Like just go out there and just experience new things like go to a job fair like see what the offer is, you know, a lot of my Marines when they would get out and I'd sit down and you know, give them their out brief, you know, like because
If I, you know, so anytime I got a marine, I'd sit him down. I counseled him like, Hey, here's my expectations. But as they make the decision to leave, I'd sit down with them and say, Hey, what are your goals? And dude, I'm telling you right now, like I had everything from, I want to be a professional video gamer. I'm going to go back and work on my dad's farm. I'm gonna get my pilots license and fly for United. And like when people would like give me their ideas, I'm like, no, man, I got the time to be a pilot. Like I don't have the, the, I don't have the savings to just go to school and like go through all this and like whatever, but.
I'd be curious enough to learn more about what they were doing. Law enforcement, that was another thing I thought about or considered. And when I sat down with the police agencies and I would sit there and talk to them about, hey, look, I see that base salary is like $70 ,000 a year, but why do you all brag about making $120 ,000 a year? And he's like, that's overtime. If you volunteer for special events and you work, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, so I'm gonna leave the Marine Corps.
And I don't like I don't have a personal life in the core because like a three o 'clock land school, but not Scott do I I'm driving out there to go get him out of jail or somebody's doing something stupid on a weekend like I lost my weekend because I'm the leader right. But I was like I'm not going to go from like working 120 hour weeks to working 120 hour weeks like it's just not like no I've I do what I do because I'm a Marine and those are the expectations of me but I don't want to go do long like mad respect for what they do every day they are they are on the front lines.
Now shout out to those dudes, but yeah, I'm just not, I'm not going to kill myself for another 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I went and looked at, of all, of all organizations, I looked at Capitol police. Okay. Yeah. My two, my two things when I got out, I was like, all right, I, I, I wanted to do like secret service, but like you had to go, like, because I was enlisted, it was like, go through the Capitol police route.
And then it was either that or take a Blackwater contract Kuwait. And I was just coming off a deployment. I'm like, I'm not going to just get home after six months and then do another six months. And yeah, thankfully I didn't do either one of those. The idea of living in DC was just that was kind of like, it was like, going to go live in this really expensive place and just be a, just be a cop out there. Just does not sound.
like a good time, not going to go do another deployment. I'll just go to school and figure that out. It is interesting that the options that are out there usually are contracting or, or, law enforcement. Well, I feel like that's comfortable. Those are also comfortable moves to make. Yeah. I feel like they're playing onto our comfort zone. Right. And I'm the very much of the individual that I'm like, no,
I, what we're doing in the military, like all the planning, like, you know, forget that thing is MCDP, five tack one. It's the Marine Corps planning process. You read the whole book cover to cover and everybody else's, every institution, every corporation, every company has a similar planning process. They just don't call it a, course of action war gaming or course action decision matrix. It's called something different. But what I would do is when I find people that I can build a relationship with.
sit down with him and like, hey, explain this to me. Like, here's how I'm going to explain it to you. What does that sound like in your world? So that would help me translate it for the next conversation I would have with a complete stranger. Nice. So you take, you take what you did and see and talk to people in the civilian world to see if they could translate that for you. Yeah. And listen, man, like have a thousand conversations. I'm maybe have 30 or 40 meaningful conversations. And out of those, maybe 10 or 15 turn into meaningful relationships that I still maintain.
To this day so, you know to our point about applying for jobs accuracy by volume. I approach the same thing when it comes to networking Because in the great thing is like there's so many veterans out here that are crushing it They're doing so much better than I am there. They're there at the executive level for whatever kind of corporation or institution they represent So I started there. I started with the leaders I start with people who are already doing the things that I think I want to do And try to get some feedback and some
context on how they got to where they got to. Yeah, I did some research last, I think it was last August, September. And I was wanting to do some fundraising for a veteran nonprofit that I'm involved with. And I was like, I'm going to go look at the numbers and see if veterans like I was going to like do a presentations where I was going to say, you know, veterans don't make as much money as the civilians.
their counterparts and I was going to make that as part of like, this is why you should donate to this program. And I came to find out as I was doing the research that veterans tend to make more money. Yes. And the civilian counterparts now it's a bell curve, because there's also more veterans that are homeless, like, but if we look at the absolute average, you as a veteran, we have some advantages and the
The other thing I've been an entrepreneur for over 16 years now when people go, you've never worked in corporate. And I go, I worked in the most the epitome of corporate. I was in the military. I was in the Navy. Like, yeah, I was as corporate as it gets. Like, I, I absolutely hate when a recruiter or anybody says to anybody, you don't have corporate experience because you will never find another individual with more.
stakeholder engagement experience is really what you mean when you say corporate experience. Like, do you know how to do with external teams? Do you know how to do cross -functional collaboration? Do you know how to present to senior leaders of a department or an organization to get you to present them with information to make informed decisions? Just exactly what we're doing in the military. Only guess what? When I tell somebody, when I tell an executive, hey, this is my recommendation to you, it's 99 % of the time has nothing to do with life or death.
Whereas in the military, everything we advise the commander on is absolutely treated to life or death. Hey, sir, when we hit the beach, we should go left or we should go right. Whatever the context is, those decisions result in like, if it's a bad decision, people will die. In corporate America, that's not the case. So when people say you don't have corporate experience, I'm like, no, I have something better than corporate experience. I know how to inform people to make decisions because, Lord help you, if you're the one who provided that recommendation and you lost half your platoon.
You know, yeah, you, you're, you're translating that and you're, you're positioning yourself right. And, your, we're, we're always selling ourselves all the time. Anyone who's like, I'm not in sales. Like, no, you are definitely in sales. Like if you're making money in any way, you're selling your, you're selling ideas, you're selling yourself, you're positioning yourself. So it sounds like you positioned yourself as somebody who has looked.
I have better than corporate experience. I'm going to come in, I'm going to dominate this." And they go, didn't think about that before. Because I think that for people who never served in the military, they don't know that you've got better than corporate experience. Yeah. A lot of them think we're just rank and file. We're trigger pullers. We just do what we're told or whatever the case is, not understanding that...
You know, at 19 years old, I was given three other lives to be responsible for as a fire team leader, right? And that's huge. Like, Hey, where are my three Marines at? Where are their every G's? Where are their batteries? Where's the water? Like what's the last time you hydrated? Did you take your medications today? It's, it's heavy on the engagement for a number of different reasons because you know, you're at the lowest level, but the consequences of not doing those pre -combat checks or pre -combat inspections will result in the loss of life or other team members. Right. So.
We take everything very seriously, but I think what kind of scares people in corporate America is they think we're gonna come in there and we're gonna be like this, this abrasive, unaccepting individual. And I'm like, no, man, listen, the military is a social experiment for American society. We have transgender individuals within the military. We have homosexuals. We have every orientation in the military. Race is not an issue. Economic status is not an issue. You're...
you're dealing with such a diverse group of demographics. I have never seen a better representation of diversity, equity and inclusion than I have seen in the Marine Corps in the military at large. You know, we got people from Kansas, we got people from Africa, you know, working on their citizenship, people from South America working on their citizenship to be U .S. citizens, serving their time in the military. So when you actually sit down with a recruiter and explain that to them, they're like, shit, like.
you are way ahead of the but it's about how you deliver that message, right? Mike, if you come in like you're coming off the third rope, WWE wrestling mats and yeah, the message is not gonna be well received. Gauge your audience like where you know, I appreciate the softer approach like hey, listen, I understand that that's your opinion. And I understand you've made a decision to choose a better applicant. But before you do, can I just provide some feedback on the corporate experiment?
corporate experience comment you just made so you can have a better engagement with your next applicant. That kind of shit. Why get the call back? Yeah. Yeah. The inclusion piece is huge. I think, you know, sometimes we can get out of the military and come across as like, you know, we're, we're, a certain way. Right. and, or, you know, me, me being a white guy, I've had this experience with people like,
Like you're a certain way. Like are you like really? inclusive and I'm like dude there was no space for if anyone who served in the military all that shit if you had an issue with race or you had a an issue with sexuality you had an issue whatever that goes out the window in in weeks within the first few weeks it goes out the window because it is It's a meritocracy like can you perform?
It doesn't and you end up respecting everybody no matter what what's going on or where they came from or you know how much melanin they have in their skin. It just doesn't matter. Right. Right. Yeah. So like all of those experiences make us the best teammates and make us the best leaders. Maybe not the best leaders but it absolutely is a force multiplier.
in the capabilities that we can provide to any company in a leadership position, whether it be manager, director, VP, whatever the context may be. Where the gap is, is the business acumen, right? Like, do you really understand payroll? Do you understand conflict resolution within the confines of human resources? Yeah, you can't, hey, hey, I didn't like the way you talked to Sarah during the meeting, so we're gonna go run three miles, you know? Like, you can't do that.
But you can't do that. So understanding that that's that's you have to have the experience, but you also have to have the emotional intelligence to be like, hey, check it out. So what you do is a little bit unprofessional and you're going to go see HR to to because that's whatever process you have within your company or your business. Yeah, just yeah, you got to have the big challenges. That's one of the big challenges I find with veterans is the communication. I had this.
And I see a lot of other people have this and get out and it feels like everyone's an idiot. It doesn't sound like you had this. It's like, it sounds like you came out with a lot of respect for everybody. But I know that that's not always the case. And it comes down to, it comes down to, well, respect other people, but.
The communication can be abrasive sometimes, but you get out and you're like, just do what I tell you to do because if you don't, you're in trouble. Yeah. Like it doesn't, that doesn't quite carry over. But I mean, I guess, I guess you're describing how it does carry over into the civilian world where like, can't have them go run three miles, but you can tell them, you know,
You're going to talk to H .R. now, which is probably just as terrifying for the if it was an egregious violation. Right. So like there is there is like a small buffer area, if you will. I misspoke or I should not have said that. Like there is a slap on the wrist type of thing. Right. But then further offenses, obviously, it escalates and escalates. So I kind of just went on went straight to like the end zone there with that whole example. But the point is, it's like you have to understand that.
There are certain things that are acceptable within the military. They're not going to be acceptable outside of the military. And you need to understand the culture of the organization that you're joining so you can leverage the appropriate approach for depending on what that context may be. Did you did you make any mistakes in that or what was that learning curve like?
I want to say for me, the learning curve was just, I had a huge technology gap. Like, what do you mean? The cloud's not in the cloud? It's like these big warehouses on earth. Like, what do you mean? Like, this is an object storage system, or this is a database, and this is like, whoa. So yeah, it was me and YouTube with a bunch of random people on YouTube trying to understand, like, hey, what is cloud tech?
What is an elastic cloud computing instance? What is a relational database? And just trying to like, for me, that was the hardest part because I didn't have anything in the military. Like it like, that's what this means. And I can point to that when it comes to planning. Yeah, absolutely. But when I'm trying to understand the business and how we deliver our product to the customers and how I can advise leaders on the appropriate continuity and resilience things to have in place, that's where the challenge was for me. That's what the knowledge gap.
This reminds me of learning a new language. 100 % 100 % because you have the structure. It's like you know the structure of language like, OK, I like I see the structure of English and then I'm looking at Spanish and like the structure is a little different. But. You know, there's there might be like 15 new rules I need to learn. Not really easy, but then the rest is vocabulary like the cloud.
like, what the hell does the cloud even mean? Like, okay, they're, they're servers somewhere underground. So the clouds underground to add to that, right? and business continuity, I support the entirety of the business. So, you know, one day I'm working with marketing, one day I'm working with legal, one day I'm working with engineers and I'm context shifting.
sometimes multiple times through the day and how I talk to engineers, I cannot talk to marketing. They don't use the same terms, the same things that have effect. You asked me like, Hey, what was that like? Have I failed that dude? Absolutely. I've had people get to walk out of meetings on me because I miss Mitch judged my approach or I didn't do my due diligence to understand like the, the risk tolerance for the specific team, whatever the context might be. And in each one of those things, it was like, you know, being in corporate America, like there is no,
I don't, I still don't understand like at what point is it unacceptable to fail? I think it really comes down to like maliciousness, right? To be honest with you, but, cause nobody gives you written counseling and says like, Hey, here's, here's what you need to do better next time. You have to go through like a self analysis and be like, where did I go wrong? More importantly, how do I follow up with that individual who just walked out on my presentation? Cause I need, I've got to fix this relationship, but I can't be too aggressive. I can't just go like, Hey Mike,
What'd I do wrong? What's your problem? You don't like my slideshow, you don't like my gifts, whatever the case is. And sometimes, dude, tactical patience. Sometimes you gotta rush to failure, but when it comes to people, do not rush to failure. Give them space, let them figure out whatever they have going on in a couple weeks. Hey, listen, I'm just looking for some feedback. I obviously failed in my delivery to you and your team, and I like to better understand why.
And so when I do fail, I always try to give that individual an opportunity to provide me some feedback so that I don't fail again, because I'm going to be working with other people and that individuals or and I don't like so maybe it's a culture thing that I misunderstood. I don't know. But so how do I? Yeah, did I fail? Absolutely. I you're looking at 41 years of failure. I fail all the time, but I try not to do the same failure twice. Hmm. It sounds like one of the differences between the military and the civilian world is.
In the military, you're likely not going to get fired and replaced. You're kind of stuck with who you got. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like, we can just replace you tomorrow. There's a bunch of applicants waiting to get this job. So it requires more. So in the military, there's this constant feedback happening like, you screwed up and is exactly how you.
screwed up and now this is how you do it better. In the civilian world, it's like, they're not stuck with you. So it requires that self reflection. Like you have to give to yourself what the military was giving you previously. Yeah, absolutely. In the military pain retains. If I make a bad decision, either I burnt more calories or I
We went through my water faster or, you know, one of my Marines was a heat case because we were exposed to the elements a little bit too long and then we should have been, cause you know, whatever the case is, but, you, you learn very quickly when you make a bad decision and it's usually some type of either a physical thing that you feel more pain because of whatever, or you just lost eight hours of your work day because you didn't submit the appropriate requests and the seven tons didn't show up and now you're a day late in the civilian world. It's not like that.
Right? So you've, you've got to go out there and find a way to get that feedback so that you understand like, okay, where am I falling short? But you had to do it early enough before you actually get the boot. because they don't need you, right? There's dude, there's, there's a, there's a thousand people behind me. They're trying to hold the seat that I'm in right now. So that's, but here's the deal, Mike, for me, and listen, this, what's, what people have to understand is like, what do you want to do when you get out?
Do you want to be an individual contributor, which is what they call it out here, where you are just managing a program? Or do you want to be a leader? Do you want to be an executive? Each thing that you do that requires more scope, more accountability, more responsibility, is more stress, more engagement, more time away from the family. I don't care how seeded you are, now you're responsible for other human lives again. So you have to make that decision. I love the excitement of knowing that I may not be here tomorrow.
And maybe that's a sick twist on my PTSD or some other thing that some diagnosed me with. But I love the fact that every day I'm, I'm earning my place. I like to believe that I'm earning my place here. I think that's just being in touch with reality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I was, I've been an entrepreneur for 16 years, dude. what I, what I,
like to tell people when they get into entrepreneurship, because I've consulted a lot of people leaving corporate and, and, stepping into their own game is, the corporate. So like the military really shields you from reality. Have like in some ways, in some ways you're in greater touch. So the ways that you're in greater touches, when you go out on a deployment, you realize that there really aren't any rules. Like,
Like, man, people be misbehaving, right? Like it's like, wow. And then you come back to America and like, people really, everyone follows the rules here way more than these other places. Like we're more touched with reality because of that. But then when, but then all your food's provided for, shelter provided for, you got an ache, just go to medical. We'll handle everything for you. Like,
You don't have to worry about health insurance. You have to worry about any of these things. Like everything that's not your specialty is somebody else's responsibility. And then you get out and you get exposed to the reality of, I'm, I just took on way more responsibility when I got out. It's a broader responsibility, right? Like you may not, it may not be life and death all the time, but it's a broader responsibility. And when you're in a corporate environment, you're, you're shielded from that. There's like a buffer between what's happening out there.
and you inside the company. And then when you get into entrepreneurship, like you are, you're on the front lines of, you feel everything. there's a little blip in the market. You're going to feel it. Whereas if you're in corporate and you've got a salary, there's a blip in the market. You may not feel it, but the two things that are real is your, your job is always at risk.
Right? Whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you're a corporate, like you said, there's a thousand people online waiting to take your position and business. There's a thousand other businesses that are, that would be loved to have my clients. and you know, they're someone's one click away from going to somebody else. And so there's, there's just something that I think is good for people to be aware of, of like, it's not, it's not cushy.
It's not a no, it's a hustle. Life doesn't get cushy just because you got out of the military. Yeah, listen, I'm gonna tell you right now. This is I used to tell my wife, don't worry, baby. I know I'm just a sergeant. But when I pick up staff, sorry, don't worry about it because I always work for scumbag staff sergeants. We're like, they'd come to a show like nine o 'clock in the morning. They do. We don't PT clean guns and like we're already doing call for fire missions. You know, just.
And the dude would just show up. So I looked at them and be like, okay, so I guess that's our own song show up to like nine o 'clock in the morning. Cool. So I come home and talk to my wife. I'm like, don't worry, baby. I'm in zone. I'm being selected. Like when I pick up sassar, it's gonna be so much better. Absolutely not. It was worse. It was more right. Because instead of 12, now I'm dealing with 40 people and yada and so that hey, don't worry, baby. When I pick up Gunny like Gunny doesn't show up. It's like lunchtime. Soon as I pick up Gunny like life is so much easier. Like I pick up Gunny and it's like, no, I'm at work earlier. I'm at work longer.
A lot of that has to do with me as a human, because I refuse to fail. And I refuse, not even me, I refuse to let others down. And so I always did, I was always ahead of everything, right? So I'm doing roll call at 0530 to make sure that I got everybody. So if I'm missing somebody, I got time to fix it before I got to submit the reporting report at 730. Like that kind of like just leaning into it, because I know I got some shenanigans going on with my dudes.
For sure. I'm telling you right now, man, like, B station Hawaii, like, you just don't know who's going to show up to formation.
because it's so much temptation out there, right? So it's just like, yeah, well, they're not doing bad things. They're just, you know, they're with their girlfriends or whatever they're doing. And yeah, just have a good time. Yeah, just have a good time. Right. So, you know, you go through all of that and you realize that I'm just not I'm not gonna let the others down. So you get it. You translate that into civilian world. And guess what? I don't own anybody. Right. So like,
Finance has their own processes and workflows in place. So when I have a pay issue with one of my subordinates or one of my team members now, I can't just like barge in the door to finance and be like, Hey, why is this individual's paycheck up? No, there's a request. There's a submission. Now I will say that in corporate America, there's usually a time, time sensitivity thing with this. So like you're not just going to be like, it's been 30 days. My pay is still jacked up. No, your pay has been fixed in two hours because you're dealing with like, you know, you deal with some other,
compliance and regulatory things with employee health and workforce, et cetera. So the response is a lot better, but yeah, you still, you had to account for all those variables. Yeah. I love this conversation. So what can you walk me through getting out of the Marine Corps and engaging with, you know, did you engage with companies before you got out?
What was that like? What was that process of going? All right, I'm going to leave. I'm unsure exactly how that is going to work. And then I end up at Netflix. What sounds like the ideal job for you? It sounds like a dream job. Dude, it is. It's beautiful. It's decentralized. There's not a whole lot of gateways. I don't have to like ask permission to go talk to somebody. I just go talk to them. And if they're not interested, I stop talking and I go find somebody else to talk to.
So like whatever the case is, but when I made it so, I'll explain why I got out, okay? 18 years in infantry, I basically promoted myself out of the fun, went to Wounded Warrior Battalion, I was doing that thing as the company first sergeant. It was the first time, it's probably during those two years that I gained the most emotional intelligence because yeah, I got 200 Marines on the roster, but I only got 100 in formation because I got.
this person in Maine receiving cancer treatment. I got one person in South Dakota who's a paraplegic. I got one person. So I got Marines all over the world for a number of different things because that's where their care is, right? So I had to gain a little bit of emotional intelligence because I could not be the barbarian that I had been for 18 years. When I got to my, I think it was 14 or 16 months on station, I called my monitor and I asked, hey, look, man, like I'm sitting here advising like some pretty senior commanders and sergeants majors.
I got my reps in as a first sergeant, can I please go back to the infantry? The guy was like, no, I'm sending you to another non -infantry unit. And I said, is that your final decision? He's like, who the hell do you think you're talking to first sergeant? I said, no, I thought maybe I was just on your spec. I'm just asking like, is there anything I can do? Can I call a friend of a friend to maybe convince you or whatever? Because I see plenty of vacancies and I said, I'll go to 29 Palms. I don't care. I just want to go back to the infantry. They said no.
So I knew my dream was over as far as being infantry Marine. That being said, very next day I dropped my retirement papers. He calls me and he's like, Hey, what's it going to take for you to pull your papers? I said, look, Sergeant Major, I'm not playing this game with you. Now, the reason why I held my ground is because I know a previous Sergeant Major that was very, very close with. He reenlisted because he was, he was over 20 years. He had reenlisted because he was told he was going to go to a specific duty station.
It was going to propel his career as far as like the number of stars in the general that he was going to be serving with. As soon as his reenlistment went through, he got orders to a different unit. my, they screwed him. And I was like, and so when he called me and says, how can we make this right? I knew that regardless of whatever he said, the potential for me being getting screwed over was, was significant. So I just held my ground. Nope. I'm not receding. I'm not.
pulling back my papers, my decision, my decision. I want to retire in the next 12 months. So that's what happened with that piece. I doubled down my master's degree. I was double coursing, trying to get all this things done. I was dude. And at this time, please understand, like I was a horrible husband. I was an even worse, your father. Okay. I don't know. Worst is not a right word, but that's the only way I can communicate about my actions as the husband and as a father. Why? Because I had to commit so much time in the Marine Corps, so much time to.
my master's program and and by the way, now I'm trying to learn this world of business continuity. As I'm going through this process over 12 months, I'm also trying to reach out to people on LinkedIn to build my network and get an understanding of what this is. And I wasn't getting very much feedback or interaction with my outreach. So I go through the course, a certification course for business continuity. I get my certs, I put the four little letters behind my name and all of a sudden people start accepting my friend invites on LinkedIn and...
having 30 minute conversations with me and you know, I'm in uniform like during the work day at lunch, I would spend my lunch. I'd have four meetings teed up, you know, 30, 30, 30, 30. And then that's my two hour break, right? Or, you know, whatever the case, depending on time zones. I was trying to figure out what industry I wanted to be in because business continuity is across all businesses. You look at the fortune 500 list, there's a business continuity, a resilience team, a risk team, and every single one of those it's on the 10 Ks that are provided to publicly traded companies.
What I found out very quickly is I did not want to be in a regulated environment. Now this might be a over exaggeration, but essentially I'm not the checklist dude. I'm not going to show up to you and say, Hey Bob, if you don't do this, we're going to go to jail. The company is going to get fined. We're going to get a cease and desist by whatever entity. This is not who Gale Anders is. So entertainment industry is what cued me because we don't have to be here. Right.
They have other ways of accomplishing these things for the things that they have to do, i .e. consultants. So my value is demonstrated on a daily basis. So I met with people from Sony, Warner Brothers, Discovery, National Geographic. I was talking to all these individuals, trying to get an understanding. Some of them turned into meaningful relationships that still meant to me today. One of them was currently working for Netflix, which we built a relationship over about eight months.
and then I was eligible for the skill bridge program, which is essentially a corporate fellowship program where during your last three, six months of active service, you can go and work on site with the company of your choosing and basically figure out that that's really what you want to do with the rest of your life. So I doubled down on business continuity. I approached the dude at Netflix and I said, Hey, do you need free labor for 12 weeks? That's exactly how I presented to him. He goes, what? I said, look, so this is the internship because.
In corporate America, internships cost companies money. They have to provide you pay. They have to provide you benefits. Like there is no, I don't know. I've never seen an unpaid internship in any of the Fortune 100 companies. So it is a significant investment from the company when they bring on an intern. So when I told them about Scubrids, I said, look man, it's free labor. You don't have to pay me anything that I'm still getting active duty pay. I get all my benefits. I just need some exposure and some experience.
And so I, he said, yes, I did my, I teed up everything and we were mentoring. He's teaching me. I basically hit the ground running for my internship and he had zero expectations for me. But then when I showed him how fast I was able to grasp, one of my coworkers, like we would spend two hours every single Wednesday and we would talk about cloud computing. We would talk about the cloud environment. What all the, like, what does the ecosystem look like in the cloud? How's it architect some things you need to consider, et cetera.
So we would spend that and that really helped me like get the understanding because that was my safe space to add the stupidest questions. And so I still work with him, his name is TJ. We still laugh about the things I asked him because I was like, dude, that was a really stupid question. Thank you so much for your patience. You know, like what happens if the internet goes out? Well, we just don't have the cloud anymore. Anyways, I go through the 12 weeks.
And my boss at the time was very direct with me. He goes, Gail, do not ask for a job. I said, I'm not asking for a job. Maybe a letter of reference, if that's even a thing out here in corporate America, I don't know if that's a thing. So anyways, I go through that and every week I'm applying. He's helping me prepare for interviews, helping me do diligence on the companies I'm applying to. I'm getting job offers. I'm turning job offers down because I knew that to live in, I've made the decision to live in Los Angeles. Why? Because I want to make money.
So zip codes matter in corporate America. So I chose to live in Los Angeles. I'm targeting those companies in the area and where he prepared me for interviews, he'd help me with salary negotiations. It was like everything you're supposed to be doing as a skilled bridge intern. And then I got let go at the end of my 12 weeks, but I had a job offer with a bank and I was very happy with the salary that they offered me. I was in Pasadena, but I was not happy because I didn't want to be in a regulated space because
You know, to my point, you know, there's there's high turnover out here in corporate America. And when I got to the bank, like my boss is like, hey, I've been here for 16 years. And I was like, there's something weird about the way that he said it. And I was like, wait, wait, you've been in Pasadena for 16 years. You've been with the business for 16 years. He was no both. But this is also be my desk for 16 years. And I knew straight away I was going to do. I haven't had a boss for more than 18 months for 20 years of my life.
Every 18 months, like the commander or the senior or the officers are always rotating for more experience, more as they as they progress in their careers. So I knew I was going to have issues. This dude was not going to be receptive to any good ideas and I'm full of good ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, why would we do it any different? It's working, right? Yeah. Yeah. The regulation says this, we did that. We met that standard. We met that requirement and don't ask for more. Okay. Okay. Cool. Whatever. so.
That being said, on day three of orientation, my boss calls me back and he's like, hey, what's it gonna take for you to come back to Netflix? And I said, dude, I need a job offer. I need an offer letter. I need a sign. I need something. I can't do this on good wills and intentions anymore. And so I was also in a dilemma now, right? Because as much as I did not want to be where I was, that loyalty thing was so strong in me, right?
Netflix made it very clear there was no job opportunity at the end of my internship and I had accepted that and I started accounting for that and planning for that. But I had accepted a job offer. I was in person. I had met my boss. I had signed non -disclosure agreements and yada yada yada. And now I'm like, I go home and I'm like torn because I was like, I basically swore allegiance to this bank. As a continuity professional. And my wife was like.
Are you stupid? Like, what do you mean? You're having like, you're having doubts about like, accepting the offer. And I was like, not being I'm kind of torn inside because whatever so I got over there very quickly. I signed the papers I sent it in. And then I had basically go through the AI quit thing. So I showed up at 730 on Friday, I turned in my laptop and my badge told my boss that
was no longer interested in this opportunity, it wasn't the right fit, whatever, I forget what exactly I said, but I do remember, he says, hey Gail, it's 7 .30 in the morning, HR's not here yet, can you go wait in the cafeteria until they show up and then we'll figure out what we do for off -boarding, because I've never really had to off -board anybody. And I'm like, sure, I'll go wait.
So like, Mike, this is the deal, brother. I felt like a good Lance, like a bad Lance corporal sitting on first sergeant's bench outside his office. You know what I'm saying? So I'm sitting in the cafeteria, dude, I'm like, bro, what am I doing? I'm such an asshole right now. Like, why am I, this dude has no authority over me. Why am I listening to him? I just quit my job and I'm still taking orders from this individual. I got up and I left. Four hours later, he calls me and he says, hey, we're in a cafeteria looking for you.
I figured out what you need to do now. I said, dude, no, I'm gone. I'm out. Like I quit. I'm not, I'm not going to wait there like a good boy scout. All I had to do was send an email to HR saying that I was re -resignated or I forget that the word that they wanted me to put in there, but I resigned from the position. But it was just that moment too. I was just like, I've really got to break the habit of just doing what I'm told for the sake of doing what I'm told. And it was very, very hard for me as a, as a Marine. There's a lot of awareness there.
Yeah, a lot of people don't even they're not even aware that they're just, I'm following orders. But I don't actually have to follow. I'm sure you've heard this language before is like people being people pleasers. Yeah, absolutely. I think like as a man, the idea that I have people pleasing tendencies feels very like, like, yeah.
don't want to be a that doesn't feel very manly to me, you know. And then like, like, having been military, you're a Marine, like, for a Marine to have, like, people pleasing tendencies. It's almost like embarrassing, right? It's like, it's like, yeah, shit. But at the same time, your entire military career is people pleasing. Like you do with the toll, right? Because what he told me was not unjust, unethical or
You know, any egregious violation of any standing rules or anything like that. So I'm sitting on the bench in the cafeteria waiting for my turn to talk to the S1, right? To figure out what we do next. And yeah. Yeah. So that was emotionally, that was a very enlightening week for me. Cause I, cause to give you more context, I was so stressed out. I'm making the
perfect decision coming out of the Marine Corps as far as like, where are we going to live? What am I going to do for work? I really, and that's why I sucked as a father and I sucked as a husband during that period of time. But dude, when I, when I went through that whole week, right, I realized like, dude, what's so beautiful about being a civilian is even when you make a bad decision, when I'm saying like for you, for your life, I took a job I shouldn't have taken. I bought a house that shouldn't have bought. I bought a car I shouldn't have bought. The great thing is, is that,
you don't have to stick with that decision. You can quit and you can go find somebody else or find a different opportunity that's better, suiting to who you are as an individual. And that's why I absolutely love being a civilian because I can actually say no now. I'm not coming to work on Monday because I'm taking my daughter to her dental appointment. I'll be here and I'll be in late on Monday or I'll come in on Tuesday, whatever. The point is you can actually say no.
You have control. And that's, I feel like that that's what a lot of people don't actually realize coming out of civilian world. Nobody's going to tell me what I need to do for advancement, for promotion. How do I invest in my 401k? Should I even do that? How do I deal with like the benefits allocations for the business offers to me versus what I get from the, my pension and my VA disability. So like there's a lot of stuff out here, but you have freedom of choice. And that's something I've never.
outside of being in direct combat, I feel like you get a lot of choices. You have a lot of freedom in combat. And that sounds very, very weird to people. But hey, why did you move here? Nobody was shooting in this position. So I was like, this is the space place. That's why I moved from the exposed position. You know, they're like, hey, good decision. Keep moving. You know, it's like you get a lot of freedom in combat. And that kind of went away because my last 10 years or whatever. But the point is, it's like, I'm not worried about making the wrong decision anymore.
That's beautiful. And you can change your mind. Yeah, right. I don't want to do business kind of duty. I want to go be a fisherman. Go be a fisherman. Go like you can absolutely do that. Yeah, I see a lot of people work through that where they go. It's like you can set a goal like this is what I want to do. This is where I want to be in 10 years. And then you get one year into it. You're like, I don't know if that's people will like.
keep following through on whatever goal they set, even though it's not the goal they want anymore. I'm like, what are you doing? And they're like, well, I have to follow through. I'm like, not really. No, you don't. Right. Yeah. No, you don't. I've gotten really good at quitting things. I don't think I've ever heard it so beautifully put. Mike, that's amazing.
There was a time where I felt bad. I was like, I'm a quitter. It's like, nah, man, I'm a fucking quitter. This is great. Yeah. I changed my mind. I, I, there's when you set a goal and you go, I want to go do this thing. You may have in your mind that it's actually something different. And then as you get closer to it, you go, wow, this is not what I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Yeah. This isn't, this isn't what I wanted. I wanted something else.
but maybe there's something, you know, there's another route I can take. Yeah, no, there's always a business. So there's always an aspect of me where I want to have my own business one day. I want to do my own thing. You know, I'll say my, Hey, I'll open up a civilian survival camp for civilians because I knew like civilians nerd out on being being thrashed. Like they're actually in the military, right? And they paid thousands of dollars to go through these maybe tens of thousands, maybe even tens of thousands. I wouldn't invite me to stuff. They're like, you want to go do this hell week thing. I'm like, no,
I'm good. I don't know. I don't know who I would be proving that to, but you go for it. Like I got the free, like, so I was like, Hey, that's something I want to do. And I looked into it. I was like, well, I gotta find the land. I gotta have the space. I got it. Not only do I have to find a land, I have to find the appropriately labeled land for the, like the zoning codes and building codes and like whatever the case may be. And
Yeah, I looked into that. I was just like, not gonna have like business insurance. I'm doing high hazard activities. So like that's gonna be I was like, dude, no, I'm good. Yeah, I familiar. If you're familiar with seal fit. No, go go rock is the one that comes to mind. Okay, now seal fit is run by my Mark Devine. He he was a commander, Navy SEAL, and he ended up. So he started like this, like,
mental toughness. He runs his own like hell week and stuff like that. He was doing it down in Encinitas where I used to live. Okay. And it was everything was going great until like once every three or four months he'd run like a hell week in Encinitas and guys would be running through the town with logs on their shoulders and shit. And and the city finally just like this is this is getting obnoxious like so he got shut down and they had to move it and.
Yeah, there's that you're right. There's there's a there's a lot of things you as like I said before, like as a business owner, you have to you're exposed to all the decisions. Yes. Whereas when you have a job, you're exposed to a finite amount of decisions. And so it's a it's a different game. It's a different game. Yeah. But it's also it's also worth it. You know, I ever want to go that route. I'm here. Your brother's also.
Your brother's also a fantastic entrepreneur. Yeah, no, he is. He is. And I learned a lot of lessons from him. And he still teaches me every single day. But one day I will have it. I just haven't identified what I want it to be yet. Yeah. Yeah. No rush for real. No rush. Like make sure it's what you really want. I'm like, wait, I'm only 43 years old. Like I'll talk to like very senior people and they're like in their sixties and their seventies and they're still showing up to work every day. I'm like,
Bro, what about I got 30 years? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What was it like? I mean, you've referenced this a couple of times. Sounds like the last couple of years here in the Marine Corps, it was it was rough on the family. And I I'm aware that a lot of guys, you know, when they're in the military and women, too, they're they're gone a lot.
and their time is taken up, and then when you get out of the military and then you're home way more than you were before, what was, was that easy? Was that difficult? Or what was that like?
I knew that I was punishing my family and I don't, I don't like saying it like that, but that's the truest cause I wasn't, I wasn't being present. Right. So like by the time my kids woke up, I was already out of the house because I got to go get my PT in. So by the time I'd come home, they'd already eaten dinner and they were getting ready for bed or maybe they were even possibly already in bed because somebody did something at 1700 and which delayed me three hours from getting home. Right. It was pretty, pretty common.
And my wife, you know, she pulled me aside a couple of times and we have some hard conversations. And I was like, look, I wish I could show you something on the horizon here and say, look, all we gotta do is get to that piece of land. I see the seagulls. I know we're close. I can't see it's still foggy, right? but I know it's in that direction. And I tell her, look, I have no idea where I'm going. but just please trust the process. I refuse to fail. Like the consequences, the suffering that we are going through right now as a family because of my distraction with everything.
is short in comparison to once I'm out and I no longer am able to wear this uniform and the reality sets in that look, I cannot be a victim, not as a husband, not as a father. Like I've got to find success. I've got to find a way to like at least at least maintain the standard of living of which my family is accustomed to. Right. And she, she did. She, she's an amazing woman. 19 years. We just celebrated 19 years of marriage. Wow.
last week. You're an anomaly. Dude, I know, I know, I know. Cause yeah. Congratulations. It's been, it's been hard. It was hard, but she, she had the patience with me. Just like, okay, go, you know, and as soon as I, as soon as we get the job offer from Netflix, I was like, all right, baby, Hey, look, transition, right? Conditions, conditions have been set, you know, now you, cause she was preparing for her. Cause it was going to be a change for all of us. She was preparing to possibly have to go work.
possibly take a minimum wage job because you know, she's pursuing her goals and her dreams, but we might have to feed the family. So she's going through her own transition, but we're, but she's, she's basically like keeping the house together as far as the kids, their medical appointments, their, their, you know, Gail's failing at math, my son at in whatever grade he was in at the time. Okay. Get him a tutor, like figure it out. And I would literally tell her like, look, I need you to figure it out. Like you have free decision -making authority. I have now,
blessed you as a knight in the realm, go for it and do good things, you know? But it was just, yeah, it sucked. I'm not gonna lie, man, it was hard. It was hard for those 18, 24 months. But when I had the time and I had the space, when things are quiet at work, hey, let's go to the beach. Let's go, let's take a trip. Let's go, let's go do something that's within our budget, within our, our time space and just try to be present with each other. Yeah, that's huge.
I mean, the fact that you were able to say I don't know where this is going. Please trust us and the fact that I cannot see. Dude. man. Yeah, I yeah, I think I've had similar conversations like that with with my fiance in the last couple years. She's like, where's this going? And I go, I don't know. I.
Yeah, I'm not not even being in the military. Like I'm just we're just doing life and I'm, you know, managing like two or three different businesses at a time. And she's like, she's like, this is like really, like, what's what's happening? I'm like, I don't know. I'd be like, I told you exactly. I knew exactly what was gonna be happening next. But trusting that process. And that's not always what our spouses want to hear. No, it's not.
people ask me today, like, Hey man, where do you want to be in 10 years? I'm like, bro, I'm just trying to enjoy the moment right now. Right. I punished them for two years. I've been out for two and a half years now. And Mike, it feels like, Hey, Julianna, my daughter's struggling with math. Okay. Hey, let's sit down and let's work on it together. Let's figure a way to make this all make sense or, you know, English or whatever, whatever the challenges that they're having, I can actually be, I feel like I'm being a father for the first time.
And they're almost there. You know, one's 12 and the other one's 10. You know what I'm saying? And I basically became a part of their lives when they were eight and six years old respectively. So I feel great. And then also on the marriage front, like it feels good to like, Hey baby, let's go grab some lunch. Let's go grab a coffee in the morning. The kids we just dropped off at school. Let's go grab a coffee. Like my first meeting is not for another hour. So those things, those things. And I still check in with my wife, right? I'm like, Hey, listen, are we good? We're.
Where with where we are, what do we need to change? What are we? What are you not getting? What like I was checking with her because I have my idea of like where stability is I want to make sure that it matches what her perception is right that it so we have to we have to communicate man because of what I put him through for the last years of my service. Yeah, man. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, you you you were calculated when you got out.
you were clear on where you wanted to live. You knew how much money you wanted to make. You put more importance on the family. I know so many people get out and they end up still not seeing their family, still finding a job that is so demanding that they don't even get that. And then I think that's a lot of times where families break down is they're waiting for things to change and then someone gets out of the military and then they choose something.
that's just as demanding. And it's, and it might be because someone's avoiding, like, I don't know how to be with my family. So I'm gonna do dude, it's easy to be us when we only see your wife for half a year. I've got that on on on the copy on the website for the mission after as like, it's easy to be in a relationship and have a family when you're on deployment half the time.
Try being at home, try coming home every night. That can be harder. And I wanna just give you some praise around that of being able to be so, not just adaptable in the career environment, but you're adaptable as a man and you're adapting to being a good husband and father. And so.
I just really commend you for that. That's not many, not many people can do that. Well, so no, thank you for that. And unfortunately, divorce has been a part of my, my military career everywhere I went. Right. And so I've like my first six years of service divorce was not really ever really spoken about or a thing. Cause we were always, we were in Hawaii. Literally if you're not on deployment, you're on a different Island.
Right? The only the spouse and the kids get to enjoy Hawaii, the husbands or, you know, whoever the active duty member is, they're the ones who are always traveling. But when I got to Camp Pendleton as a combat instructor for my, I don't know what you would call it. It was basically my special duty assignment. So non -deployable for three years, I'm going to go train Marines how to be infantrymen. And that's what I'm going to do for three years. The uptick in divorces was like excessive.
everybody all of a sudden was going through a divorce. I'm going through financial, not finance, we have financial and relationship issues because to your point, I actually have to, I get to come home every night. You know, like once a month or twice a month, whatever you end up with. But I actually have to deal with this human being I've been sharing space with for like the last six years. And sheep and the spouses,
whether their wives or husbands, the spouses aren't used to you being there. Right. They've got everything dialed in. And then you come in and like, I want to help out. And she may be like, get the fuck out of here. You know, I got I got this. You're messing up my flow, bro. So I saw that so much when I was in the Navy. It was just like guys switching to shore duty. You know, you go from sea duty where you're never home and it's shore duty and then it's just
total chaos at home. Right. Yeah. I think one of the things that worked in our favor is we didn't rush to have kids. For a lot of our relationship, it was just me and her. So she called me out like one time, you know, I came home like every American, every Marine, like I want babies. I want kids. I need to produce, right? She's like, wait a minute. We barely even know each other. So how about we like, how about we spend some time? We've been together at the time for like, you know, almost 10 years and she's like, how about we just like,
make sure that this is actually what we want. You know, like we need to spend time together first. And I was like, okay, I respect that. Cool. Why is you got a lot of wisdom. Your, your wife has a lot of wisdom. There's no, it's no mystery why you're experiencing success and happiness. So that's, that's super cool. Anything you want to leave the audience with before we, before we bounce, I would say whatever you think you want to do.
Whatever leads you to the end of your military career, whether it's a medical retirement or a deliberate decision or an actual retirement, whatever the case may be, do not worry about why you exited the military because nobody's going to care out here. Right? So I mentor a lot and lot of veterans who are currently in the transition. And I always see that they put their awards on their resumes. I'm like, bro, nobody knows what Allegiant of Merit is.
They're not going to take the time to look it up. They know what a letter of appreciation is more so than they would a Meritorious Service Medal. So like you need to gauge your audience. Like now if you're applying to federal or you're applying to a military friendly organization and they you're basically all working with vets, then yeah, sure. That stuff might mean something, but you really need to transition and you need to be a chameleon. You've got to be able to look at the new environment you're trying to be a part of. And then how can you mold yourself and prepare yourself for that?
for that experience with the understanding that I would recommend that you fail fast and don't make too many financial obligations. What I mean by that is don't come out of the military and rush to buy a house. Don't come out of the military and buy a brand new, you know, F -1500 truck or whatever the case is. Try to maintain your standard of living. Be financially smart because if you have to pivot, you don't want to be beholden to your next paycheck. You want to be able to pivot when you feel like you have
When you've culminated or you've come to that awareness that where you are is not where you want to be. Don't let financial, I don't know, handcuffs for lack of better terms, be the thing that forces you to keep hating your life. There's a lot of freedom out here. Awesome. Thank you for that. And a lot of times people I interview have like some type of social media following or whatever, but I don't think that's the case for you. Maybe LinkedIn.
I linked is the best place to find me. I'm not an Instagram influencer like I think I have on Instagram that I don't even know. But LinkedIn, LinkedIn is the best way to get hold of me. I'm the only Gail Anders with Netflix in my title. So right on. We'll be posting all that stuff in the show notes. So and yeah, I guess give you a follow. See what you do. I don't I don't know if you're active on there or whatever, but I really appreciate everything.
that you shared. There's a ton of good information here. I imagine people will want to go back and listen to this two or three times and take notes. So, excellent show. Yeah, I'm happy to talk about this. I love talking about this stuff and I love helping other people in my, their following in my footsteps or their own footsteps. Awesome. I guess we'll have to go grab a bite when I come to LA next. Yeah, man. Absolutely. All right.
Mike Bledsoe (1:21:52)
Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Mission After. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you about our free resource, the 10 surprising military habits that are sabotaging your career and your life. This guide is packed with valuable insights to help you overcome common challenges faced by veterans transitioning to civilian life. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take control of your career and life. Head over to the missionafter .org to download your copy now. It's completely free and could be the game changer you're looking for.
If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your fellow veterans and friends. Your support helps us reach more people and make a bigger impact. Until next time, stay curious, stay intentional and remember your mission after service is just beginning.