Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@PTSDLawyers/podcasts
Follow us on social media:
https://facebook.com/veteranled
https://twitter.com/veteranled
https://Instagram.com/veteranled
[00:00:01.07] - Alexa Bigwarfe
If you go out there and just badmouth the VA in general, what you are doing is you are scaring other Veterans who need that service from going in and getting the things that they need. And that hit me like a ton of bricks.
[00:00:13.21] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today's guest is Air Force Veteran, Alexa Bigwarfe. Now, Alexa is an author of over 15 books, a speaker, and an entrepreneur. Welcome to Veteran Led, Alexa.
[00:00:28.07] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:30.00] - John S. Berry
What I'm excited about is you can take veterans on the journey to write their story. I say this because when I wrote my book, it took about three years. There are some predatory companies out there that will say they'll help you. In the end, they may take some of your money, but what they really take is your time. You can get your money back, but you can't get that time back. I'm delighted to have you on the show. Alexa, tell us a little bit about you.
[00:00:54.06] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Okay. Well, I'm involved in a lot of things, so I'm going to try to break it down shortly. But Air Force Veteran, served as an intel officer, got out in 2007 when they were cutting back the officers by a major number. I just had my first child and decided to leave, went into Homeland Security for three years, and then decided to be a stay-at-home mom because that's easier than counterterrorism, apparently, but not. And eventually, we suffered a personal crisis. We lost a child, and I turned to blogging and writing, which led me to the world of self-publishing. It was at that point in time that I found my way because I love to write. I love self-publishing and publishing and all of those things, and really fell into that. Fast forward 12 years, I've built a really big community to help women get their word out there. I've got a podcast. I've got my company. More recently, I've started getting involved back with Veterans because I was at a conference for female Veterans, and I was listening to some of their stories, and I was thinking, my gosh, there are so many stories that just never get told.
[00:02:04.23] - Alexa Bigwarfe
But I know, as you mentioned, there's also so many companies out there that will just take your money, take your time, not give you a good product. And I want to make sure that when people have a good story to share, they know what resources are out there that they can trust.
[00:02:20.15] - John S. Berry
Yeah, absolutely. As we were discussing before the show, it's very easy now to have a manuscript created by ChatGPT or another AI tool, but the reality is that it hallucinates, that it may not be accurate. Sometimes it gets very verbose. There's too much talking. So, you can hire a company that can interview you and put it all through ChatGPT and create a story. But to make something great, or at least worth reading, you need real editing skills, real skills. Absolutely. So obviously, I know you published under a pen name, and you've published and you've co-authored books. But having done this now at least 15 times, what are the takeaways that you think that Veterans listening to this podcast that want to write a book, what do they need to know that they probably don't know?
[00:03:08.07] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Well, the big answer or the easy answer is it depends. Depending on what you're trying to do, are you trying to write a motivational memoir? Are you trying to get out there and impact the world in some way? Are you trying to have it as a lead into your business? Are you trying to get speaking events? Are you trying to entertain or educate? Really, as you'll hear over and over with almost anything, knowing your why is the critical first step. What are you trying to accomplish? Why are you getting there? And what are your goals to do with it? Based on that, then you start looking at the different options, the different routes to publishing. Do you want to try to find a traditional publisher? Do you want to self-publish? Do you want a traditional hybrid publish? There's so many options and opportunities. So, the important part is really taking a little bit of time to think about that. And with a lot of Veterans, we have big stories. I spoke with a guy who's now building a record company, and he was in Falluja in 2006. He has so many stories of things and trying to identify what are the important pieces, what needs to be in there as a baseline.
[00:04:17.07] - Alexa Bigwarfe
That's one of the things that I really like helping people do is figure out why they're writing a book. Do they need to write a book? That's also not everybody needs to write a book. Then what are they going to do with it? How are they going to make sure that the end product is something that they can use like your book and to really take it to the next step.
[00:04:38.07] - John S. Berry
Yeah, and I think that was the interesting part of my journey was that I thought I was writing it for one reason. Then I realized, no, this is the leadership manual for our law firm. There's a lot of great stories in here, but stories teach the lessons. I want to ask you this, when I tell the stories, like many storytellers, when it's my story, I add a bunch of unnecessary detail, and it gets long and drawn out. I always I love having someone edit my stuff, and they're going to say, No, this is unnecessary. Why do you have this in there? But tell us how you work through the process. Do you believe that you should always have someone else look at your paper and edit it for you, or do you think that you can develop those skills on your own?
[00:05:14.03] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Oh, no. Even Stephen King has an editor. Even the best writers have editors. You must work with editors. I think this is one of the things that surprises people. Like you said, it took three years to do your book. I thought it'd be easy. I wrote intelligence briefings and reports for 10 years. I thought, Oh, it'll be easy. It's not. You really have to make sure that it's developed well, that what you're talking about actually leads to something that it's having. There's got to be something that happens in the book that, like you said, yours is a leadership manual now. It's hard because I think being an author is one of the most vulnerable things in the world. We're sharing our insights, our personal stories. We're opening up the world, It's literally opening up the book to the inside. It's hard for people to take critique on that sometimes. You feel like this story is really important and I really need to tell it. But if it's not doing something for the book, that may not be its place. It's important to work with professionals because they can help you hone those, narrow it down, make sure it's only including what's really key for that.
[00:06:25.23] - Alexa Bigwarfe
The good news is if you've got a lot of other stuff to say, you can write another book.
[00:06:30.00] - John S. Berry
Yeah, every story that you put in your book has a job, and you got to figure out what is the job of this story? Because if it doesn't have a job, it doesn't have a purpose, and it's just out there, it doesn't make sense. But I found that, especially as a trial lawyer, stories are how we connect. They're the most powerful form of communication. And so you really have to get it right if you're going to put it in your book. And so I know when you're coaching other entrepreneurs or authors, would be authors who think they want to do it, and they think it's easy. I understand how hard it is. I was an English major in college. I got the Calee Award in advanced legal writing for the highest A. So I know how to write well. But there's a big difference between write well, write a good legal brief or write a good legal argument, then to write something that, as you said, is you. It's part of your soul. It's who you are. And you're trying to push it out there. And you realize correct grammar isn't your biggest problem.
[00:07:20.11] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Exactly. Well, and especially for entrepreneurs, it really has to be something that's going to move your business forward if that's why you're doing it. And if it's not, then you need to separate that out from your business and do your thing. For example, I was working with a photographer who wanted to write a book for other photographers to be able to use her systems or trainings. Books are often a great, literally a lead magnet into what you teach or what you do or other services that you have. But along the way, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. At some point in time, her journey shifted, and she wanted to tell the story about that more than her other book. That's great. She had to do that. That was what she was called to do at that time. But then she had to find a different audience because the photographers, I mean, yes, they're interested in her story, but that wasn't the right audience necessarily to buy that book. That's a very key thing is really making sure if you're writing it to grow your business, that you're utilizing the tools and elements in the book that are going to lead to the next step, that is It's an easy...
[00:08:30.23] - Alexa Bigwarfe
If you're familiar with Dave Ramsey and his... What's the school called?
[00:08:35.20] - John S. Berry
Entree Leadership.
[00:08:36.21] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Well, and his business, his money, financial university, that's what it is. He has the full program. He's got a book that he's written. He's got the full program that you can do, and he does stage speaking around it. The book is an easy way to get people in the door with this. It's almost verbatim. If you go through the program, it's almost verbatim, but it's a $19 product as opposed to $100 product. It's an additional revenue stream, and it's an additional way to get visibility on what you're doing. Also, the reality is that speakers who have books are still more likely to get the big speaking gigs than those without. Books can play such a tremendous role beyond the fact that they change people's lives. That in itself is a massive thing for sharing your story.
[00:09:26.16] - John S. Berry
I found that people generally don't throw away books. You think about this and you're speaking to other people that influence the military community and you're teaching them how to write to get their story out there. For a lot of us, we get into this. We think, I'm going to hand you a business card. Yes, what? I don't know where my business cards go. Actually, I have somebody creating a spreadsheet. I'm going to reach out early. But I used to not know. But if you hand somebody a book, most people don't throw away books. They stay in their house and they can see them and they'll think about you and they might even read it.
[00:09:55.12] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Right. Yeah. A lot of people talk about this. That is actually your business card. In fact, the next book that I'm writing is based on a personal thing that we'll talk about later in our leadership fails. But it's a book that I don't intend to necessarily sell. I intend to take it to conferences and either have it part of my speaking package or just give it to people because of the impact that I nearly died. Spoiler alert. I went in for a surgery. Something went wrong. Three weeks later, I went home from the hospital, 40 pounds heavier of fluid not able to walk and all kinds of crazy things happening to me. And I could not work in my business for three months before I was back to normal again. And so after that time frame, I realized my business was not prepared for if I had died and my family, my children were not prepared. I didn't have an updated will. I didn't have any of these things. Speaking of legal, I immediately went out and sought legal advice to get a trust, to get an updated will, to figure out things for my business, all of that stuff.
[00:10:58.12] - Alexa Bigwarfe
So I've taken that. I'm putting it into a book because I want to help other entrepreneurs who aren't thinking about the fact that they could get ill or have to step away from their business. It happens a lot. As I've been doing my research, it's a frightening number of small businesses to experience something like this and then fail because they didn't have the resources in place. So that's one of my... I told you, I'm involved in a lot of things. That's another one of my side projects to help people.
[00:11:27.21] - John S. Berry
I want to go back in time really quick and talk a little bit about how you leveraged your experience in the Air Force to build that bigger, better future now as an author, an entrepreneur. What was it that you gained in the Air Force that helped make this possible for you?
[00:11:42.00] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Many things. I would say one of the most important things was confidence and speaking. When I went into, I have no problem sitting here chatting with you now or even getting up on a stage and talking, but I remember very clearly when I was in Intel school, we had to give a three-minute briefing, and I stayed and you could not go over three minutes, but I was terrified. I stayed up all night long and memorized that sucker because I was so scared of three minutes. Fast forward six years, and my unit was giving a presentation to the four-star of EUCOM, so the four-star general in charge of all of the European command, and they selected me to give the presentation as a young captain. And so that, just that, that someone else saying, We believe in you to deliver this important message, to be our voice for that, and all the preparation and training, but also research. I was an intelligence analyst, so research and writing and technical writing and looking at the big picture and looking at the little details and figuring out how they all go together. That's actually helped me tremendously. I tell people all the time because I did counter-terrorism as well.
[00:13:00.13] - Alexa Bigwarfe
I tell people all the time that that was a giant enigma. You've been through the process, so you know as well that writing and publishing and selling a book is also a giant enigma with so many pieces that have to come together and you have to look at things across such a wide spectrum. My time in the military benefited me in ways I can't even comprehend. But I think those are some of the things that really... We have skills that other people just don't have because of that time and being downrange and being in places where we had to make quick decisions on our feet. It had an impact. It had a real impact. Nobody dies if I make a mistake in publishing, thank God. But it's still like it's important to get things right because you can tank somebody's launch, and that's not a good thing or tank your own launch.
[00:13:57.00] - John S. Berry
You brought up there are skills that nobody else in the military. But there's also stories. I want to ask you this. I know that your focus initially was helping female writers, helping women write their stories, and now it has transitioned into helping Veterans tell their stories. How did that transition happen?
[00:14:14.11] - Alexa Bigwarfe
It's interesting because I was trying to think about this, too, to see when it happened. I've always been a super proud Veteran. My dad was a fighter pilot. My grandfather was a fighter pilot. We go way back on the military side. I didn't necessarily want to the military, but that's a whole different interview we could spend hours on. But I went in a different direction after my daughter passed away, and it was more along those lines. Then recently, I was about a year ago or so, I shared in one of my presentations, my military, something that happened in the military, and a community member reached out to me and she said, I'm also a Veteran. And have you heard of the IVMF? I was IVMF? No. What's that? And she was like, Oh, you got to go to their website. So I went to... It's a program in Syracuse. And I just went down to massive... I was like, Oh, my gosh, I've won the lottery. They do all these things. So I went to their program for female Veterans, V-WISE, which if you are a female Veteran listening to this and you don't know about IVMF or V-WISE, go find it.
[00:15:20.08] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Phenomenal three days with excellent leadership and conversation and bringing women, Veterans and family members, spouses of veterans, into the same room. And I was talking to different people. And when you tell people that you publish books, everyone's like, I want to write a book. I have this great idea for a book. I did this or that. But really, I was listening to some of their stories about things that happened to them, good and bad. I mean, there are some incredible freaking women who have done some amazing things, and there's just not enough light shown on them. So, when I came back from that in, I think it was in March. That's when I really started, the wheels started turning. And then I went to another IVMF program, Entrepreneur Boot Camp for Veterans, EBV at Texas A&M. Another incredible nine days. And this was mostly men. There were six of us women in that group. But I was talking to other people, and I was listening to their stories. And I was like; this is just wild. And people kept asking me, how do I write a book? How do I write a book? And I was I just feel my heart being pulled in that direction that this is where it's at.
[00:16:35.18] - Alexa Bigwarfe
This is where I feel like I can be of impact, especially with trauma and working through hard things. And then I reached out to another publisher and we decided to start the On the Other Side project because so much of what we go through, whether it's grief, loss, trauma, war stories, divorce, unfortunately, most Veterans who have served in war, go through all of those, and we want to help them get to the other side of what that next step is in life through their growth and through their sharing of their stories and all of that. It's incredibly important to me because I found so much healing in writing about what happened with my daughters and one of them passed away. And I just... The cathartic elements of writing your story and moving through that, whether you write a book or not, it's a powerful tool.
[00:17:38.15] - John S. Berry
Absolutely. And there is that therapeutic quality to it. But I've also noticed people talk about writer's block and what if I can't... But when I really get into writing, it's like I look forward to it. It's almost like I can't stop. It's almost like an addiction. It's okay, it's midnight, but I'm on a roll here. We're not going to stop this. And then I'm dreaming and I wake up the next day. It's okay, I got to do this. Then there's still things that they're daunting. Like, Okay, I got to go back and edit all this stuff.
[00:18:06.20] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Revisions.
[00:18:06.20] - John S. Berry
I can't remember. Someone said, write drunk, edit sober. Because the thing is, you can just...get it all Out there, that's the easy part. It's going back through and providing clarity, making it great. And that just takes time and effort. But there's something about when you get in the zone, it doesn't feel like work. It feels like you feel compelled to do it.
[00:18:29.15] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Yes.
[00:18:30.17] - John S. Berry
So for our Veterans out there that are writing and they're like, Oh, I have writer's block. What disciplines or techniques do you use to keep yourself focused? For me, it's like, when I want to write, I want to write. When I don't want to write, I don't want to write.
[00:18:44.11] - Alexa Bigwarfe
And this is such a great question because it is hard. You cannot just bring on creativity. Some people have routines. Some people are inspired by setting up a routine where they literally set aside an area where they, this is my writing space when I go here, I write or whatever. But for me, really, if I'm feeling really blocked, there's a couple of things that I really like to do, especially with non-fiction books. We go through an exercise of writing out the chapters, doing a vague outline of, okay, in this book, I want to talk about, let's say it's somebody who was in Falluja in Iraq. Why I joined the Marine Corps? What happened along the way? Big training things. When I got to Falluja, what happened, et cetera. You just map out very nondescriptly what you want to talk about. And then print it out with space in between it and cut them out and put them in a jar. This is so basic. It's so silly. It may work for women better than men. I don't know. Everybody has to find what works for them. But for me, if I'm like, okay, I have an hour.
[00:19:47.19] - Alexa Bigwarfe
I want to write, not sure where to start, I just grab one of the topics out of the jar and I sit there and I write for the hour or whatever time. The other thing that I've found very helpful is that a lot of writer's block comes from the fact that we're looking at the end game. We're looking at, I have to write this whole book. I have all this stuff, or I have to write a chapter today, or I need to get 5,000 words. Well, what if you just said, I have 15 minutes right now, I'm going to write 100 words, just 100. A hundred takes no time at all. I mean, it's so easy. And what often happens is just sitting down and being relaxed about just writing 100 words opens up your mind. And all of a sudden you've written 300, 400, 500. The other day I wrote 2000 on my 100-word journey. So it's about finding... It's like anything else. You want to train for a marathon, you don't go out on day one and try to run 20 miles. You build up for it. You do a little bit at a time.
[00:20:48.11] - Alexa Bigwarfe
You build that endurance. And the same thing comes for writing. And then I keep a notebook with me everywhere I go, and I jot down ideas as I get them. But I think the best tip that I have is, and it's funny and one of the keynotes said this yesterday, too, and it's how I really do mine, is using your voice recorder because a lot of times, inspiration comes when you least expect it. I'll be walking by a booth here and I'll be like, Oh, my gosh, I want to write about this or whatever. And so if you pull out your voice recorder and you're just talk about what those thoughts were that went through your mind. You don't even have to pay for transcription. If you use a Dropbox account, you can literally upload that document or that voice recording right into Dropbox. Dropbox will give you a transcription, put it into ChatGPT, this is one of the good ways, and just say, take this transcript and clean it up for me. And you can tell it. You're like, Don't change my words. Don't add to it. Don't do anything. Just take it from the garbled transcript and help me.
[00:21:45.05] - Alexa Bigwarfe
So I could go on and on and on because this is something that a lot of authors face is just that, I don't know where to start. I don't know. I can't get into it. I'm stuck. So we have a lot of ways to help people, and It's very personal based on what motivates you and what works for you.
[00:22:04.01] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. Now, before we get into how aspiring authors and Veterans can contact you, we're going to hit the after-action review. Teaser, right? We love this in writing. We want to get the audience interested. So your examples of great leadership and poor leadership.
[00:22:19.00] - Alexa Bigwarfe
I think that the proudest great leadership example I can have is when I was a young captain in the Air Force, and this was in 2006, and deployment rates were really, really high. We had a female enlisted woman who had just had a baby about five months before that. At the time, thank goodness they've changed this, but at the time, you could be deployed within four months of giving birth. We had a handful of deployment slots, and her number got chosen for it. I went to bat really, really, really hard for her because I did not think that... It was not good for anybody. No one wants to be downrange with the person whose mind is focused on their baby that they've just left. It's not good for the baby. It wasn't good for her. I was very proud of that. I didn't win the argument, which was quite disappointing, but I feel like the fact that when you go to fight for something like that, it helps with change eventually. Now that policy has changed. It's a year, as I understand, which is good. That's important. I think I'm very proud of that because I think when you have the opportunity to be someone's voice and to help them, that's what leadership is.
[00:23:42.00] - Alexa Bigwarfe
That's what I've been doing and what we are doing is we're helping give people their voice and use their voice to tell their stories, whether it's for their healing or for impacting others.
[00:23:54.05] - John S. Berry
And now the bad.
[00:23:56.16] - Alexa Bigwarfe
The bad? Well, the bad is a shame on me thing. I I'm sure I've done lots of bad things that I regret and wish I could take back. But last year, when I became ill, I realized how unprepared my team and my company was for me not being there. And it could have been detrimental If I had passed, if I had not been able to come back quickly. They were great at holding the fort down for the time that I was out. But if it had been longer, I would have just absolutely destroyed a company 10 years in the making and all the good things that we've done because there were no SOPs. Nobody knew all the stuff in my head. Nobody knew why I made decisions or who my key partners were, who I was having sidebar conversations with. Over the last year, I've spent a lot of time trying to fix that because it put the company in a bad place. It put my clients and our community in a bad place. Most importantly, it put the people who have been working for me for years in a bad place because they were trying to decisions that they just weren't equipped to make.
[00:25:02.15] - Alexa Bigwarfe
That's a lot of pressure on someone. We've been working really hard to fix that.
[00:25:07.14] - John S. Berry
Well, and the good news is you're not alone. In fact, you mentioned IVMF earlier. I'm in the CEO Circle. And earlier this year, General Stam Chris will talk to us about his most recent book on character, but he talked about his consulting company and starting it and how this is a story you tell the bad leadership like we've all done. Even he had been like, hey, we knew we should have done it this way. But from the military side, you know how to structure things and how to do it and what you need and to have the plans and the SOPs. But then when you start the business for some reason, it's not second nature to us. Even the best leaders sometimes don't think that through. When you're put in a new environment and you're starting over, you don't think through all the stuff that you knew. That's one of the reasons why I wrote my book because I was like, we keep making the same mistakes and we know better.
[00:25:54.07] - John S. Berry
You knew that you needed an SOP.
[00:25:55.15] - John S. Berry
You knew that the members of your team, just like when you were an Air Force officer, depend on you for their future, and yet you didn't do it. But it's not like, Hey, shame on you. You're a bad person. It's like, Hey, when I say it, it's like, Oh, man, I did that, too.
[00:26:07.19] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Yeah, exactly. How do we do better? I love the motto that IVMF has. It's, Let's do more better together. How do we do better together?
[00:26:18.14] - John S. Berry
I'll say, and actually, I can think of a member in the program right now who's writing a book and is struggling. I'll give you the contact information after that. But please provide our Veterans with your contact information so they can get a hold of you. And not just Veterans, because also women authors. I know you have coaching groups; you run retreats, you help people write. And the only thing I'm really upset about is why didn't I know about you four years ago when I started my journey of writing my book?
[00:26:41.07] - Alexa Bigwarfe
I'm upset about that, too. Okay, so writepublishsell.com is my main website. Write a book, publish, sell, sell a book. You'd be surprised how many people get that wrong, but writepublishsell.com
[00:26:54.21] - John S. Berry
hey, if you don't know write, W-R-I-T-E, we got a problem already.
[00:26:58.23] - Alexa Bigwarfe
A book You might not be in your future. Then the Women in Publishing Summit for all women, we really want to see more Veterans in that group, female Veterans in there. That's womeninpublishingsummit.Com. But the Veterans who really want support in figuring out how to do their book, and I would encourage you to come check out the Other Side Project, where we're going to have cohorts and actually walk you through the process, help you pull out your story, help you learn the routes to publication and all of that. That can be found at ontheotherside.Com.
[00:27:34.06] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Are you on LinkedIn?
[00:27:35.10] - Alexa Bigwarfe
I am. It's Alexa Bigwarfe. Bigwarfe is spelled B as in boy, I-G-W-A-R-F as in Frank-E. I have to spell that a lot.
[00:27:44.01] - John S. Berry
Here's what I found. The gold is sometimes with something like LinkedIn, it's like, Okay, I know I want to write a book. Now is not the time, so I'm not going to reach out. But if you can at least reach out to Alexa on LinkedIn.
[00:27:56.18] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Yes, please.
[00:27:57.19] - John S. Berry
Then you will have that contact. And in the future, when you're ready, then you have it. And it's always... I've learned my lesson the hard way. I may not need the service now, but it's great to have those connections. And think about your entire military career and all the opportunities you lost by not saving those connections, not reaching out to fellow Veterans. And Alexa, you have a skill that most of us wish we had. You can help us. And so, it's so crucial that even if you don't want to write a book now, you know the who, the person who can help you get there. So, thank you for everything you do. And what's the most exciting thing that you've seen so far at MIC, or the most thing you're most excited to see or do?
[00:28:34.20] - Alexa Bigwarfe
Hearing Doug Collins, the Secretary of the VA, speak yesterday really inspired me. We're here to learn about influencing, but we The most powerful thing he said was, if you have a problem with the VA and you complain about it out loud, because not all VAs are the same, but if you go out there and just badmouth the VA in general, what you are doing is you are scaring other Veterans who need that service from going in and getting the things that they need. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, Yeah, that's not the way we do it. We need to go in different routes and make sure that the things that Veterans need are available to them and use our voices to help not hinder.
[00:29:23.19] - 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 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.