57. Mastering the Military Transition with Mark Delaney

Brock Briggs  0:00  

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt, your destination for learning to think deeper, make better decisions and earn more money as someone who has served in the military. I'm your host, Brock Briggs. I was in the Navy from 2014 to 2018. And when I got out, I had no idea what I wanted to do. This show is the answer to what I needed. An open ended exploration of careers, resources, and ways to lead a more effective life by talking to some of the world's most interesting vets. Today, that veteran is Mark Delaney. 

Mark is a former Army officer and he’s hyper focused on veteran transition. He hosts the Veteran (Semi) Professional podcast, which recently crossed over 100,000 downloads. He's also building Vet Journey, a SaaS tool that will track vets transition process and assist in their transition outside the service starting from a year out. 

Mark has had a ton of experience in veteran hiring. And much of our conversation hinges around the barriers inherent there and the way he's trying to use that experience to tackle those huge problems. If you're looking to get more of this type of content, you can visit scuttlebutt.podcast.co to get a weekly newsletter, diving deeper into the topics discussed on the show, as well as transcripts and soon, video. Please enjoy this conversation with Mark Delaney.

Brock Briggs

You're just saying that you're a sucker for an origin story. Why is there a particular reason that you're a sucker for origin stories or just like the hero's journey of like the come up? 

Mark Delaney  1:49  

Yeah. I always like to know where people get started. Like in reading, I'm a big reader. And so like, whenever I'm reading books, like one of the first things I always do is like go to the dust jacket and like read the author's bio or like anytime there's, you know, some type of nonfiction that I'm reading at some point, there'll be something in there about, you know, how this person got started. I always dig that. And maybe it's just like, the human to human interaction with me, the like, the background of, you know, where you came from and then where you are now and everything. 

And then I think part of that, too, is you know, I definitely have like an entrepreneur's mind. Like, I'm always looking for, you know, businesses to think of or something. And it's always just kind of fun to me of like, you know, when I'm talking to entrepreneurs about how they started their business, I'm like, what, how did it get started, right? It didn't just appear out of nowhere. It was, you know, you and some friends sitting around, thinking of an idea or you're out, traveling and a problem presents itself and you're like, man, this widget or this service would be really useful right now. And I always just enjoy like people identifying, you know, this kind of like inefficiencies and then like wanting to do something about it. That's like something I've very much recognized with.

Brock Briggs  3:01  

We're definitely gonna talk a ton about startups. I'm like, because I think I also, we see eye to eye on that line of thinking. I have found myself also very interested in origin stories. And I think for me, a lot of what it comes back to is I'm always looking for how people started and like, what that, you know, what did you do in that first step? And it's kind of like

Mark Delaney

Yeah

Brock Briggs

I don't know, it's kind of like startup porn a little bit. Because it's like, how can I do that? And then it's kind of like an encouragement to you to be like, oh, yeah, you know, like, it kind of like fuels the fire. It's a dangerous one and I definitely have found myself like over indulging in this like, rather than just focusing on doing. You know, you're just like listening, like thinking that you'll get more information. But I agree with you, I think that knowing the starting point of where people are coming from helps set the stage. So

Mark Delaney  4:01  

Sorry, I'm gonna go down. I’m gonna take one more little tangent here of thinking about like the especially from this from like an entrepreneurial perspective. I think there's something in you know, founding a new company or new idea, when like you take that first step. And it's like that very first small step of like, maybe you're not actually you know, building a product or service yet, like, you're just gonna talk to potential customer. But like, you're starting to go down this like other path. Like you're starting, you're breaking off of like the normal, go get a regular job, just work there for the rest of your life kind of path. And there's, I mean, clearly, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's like diverging from the norm. That I kind of like when you start stepping away from the like, the easy path of what's laid in front of you. 

And there's something in that that I like hearing in entrepreneurs when they're like, oh, man, there's something here. I gotta start making like that first step to get into something. And I like always try and tease that out when I'm talking, when I'm interviewing people on my show because I wanna show other people how to just get that first step going, even if they're not necessarily thinking about startup or you know, create a new venture. Even it's just I wanna go, you know, pivot into a new career field or leave the military or apply to the school, whatever it is, but just showing people like, whatever your big crazy vision for, like success in your life is like, it has to start with a step somewhere. And like, I wanna show people like what that step looked like for other people so they can get a sense of how to do that step for themself.

Brock Briggs  5:31  

I think at a certain point, because I've experienced what you're talking about, that there's like almost a specific moment and a day almost where you chose to do something differently. And I think earlier on, I used to believe that everybody maybe needed to be an entrepreneur. And maybe that was just kind of like my foolish like, I was talking with interviewing somebody yesterday, and just talking about how I've changed my mind on almost everything I believe in since starting this podcast. So that's something that I have changed my mind on. 

But what I think it's actually reminiscent of or like an indication of is that you're choosing to pursue your higher calling, whatever that is. And it's not about, you know, some people, their higher calling is that just kind of like traditional job, but like that's okay. Like you said, there's nothing wrong with that. But there's a mindset shift that needs to happen. And like, being the ultimate you or I don't know what the words are. But it's like, you can either just float through life or you can like go this other way. And that what’s it's referring to.

Mark Delaney  6:42  

Or even in like the you know, traditional career field mindset here or something, if you really want to go get that real big job or something. And at some point that you kind of have to go outside the norm a little bit. Like you've got to reach out to that director who's 10 pay grades above you and say, can I get 15 minutes of your time to talk to you about this position? Because I'd eventually like to be you, right? If you just kind of follow like the script, if you follow the normal script, you're gonna get normal answers. And so I was like, trying to dig into people of like, how they went past the script to achieve, you know, things like to create their vision for life, whatever it is.

Brock Briggs  7:21  

What was that moment or that day in time when you had chosen to do that? And I kind of wanna like, step back here is like you did ROTC in college and kind of like that led to your eight years in the Army. Did that mental shift happened before you joined? Like, is that were you the, oh, I was slinging lemonade. Just the classic like early entrepreneurs story or did that come later?

Mark Delaney  7:50  

I mean, it's obviously in lemonade and mowing lawns and scooping up snow as a kid for sure. And that was mostly just a way of, you know, I got like a very, very small allowance like, five bucks a week or something like that from my parents. And that wasn't enough to, you know, cover going into the movies and buying all the candy and I wanted or, you know, buying paintball in high school, it was kind of my thing. And so I was like, okay, well, I need some extra money to do something. So, you know, I mean, I still roll around with like, a pretty fat stack of cash is like a 12 year old just because I wasn't mowing lawns all the time. And it was just like, I just wanted like that little bit of extra. 

And then for me personally, my kind of like, entrepreneurial mind paused while I was in the military. And there's the reason I did for like me personally, like, there are definitely like business ideas that popped in my head or like oh, I could go do XYZ or something. My thought for me that while I was in uniform was that, you know, I was 100% focused on the military as a profession. And I was concerned that if I started trying to build a business or something that I would personally lose focus on that. And I would end up like, not being as effective of a leader in the military. And I know people who've been able to do it and like they're still, you know, able to serve effectively and they have a side hustle or a small business they're working on or something. It just for me personally, that wasn't the path that I wanted to go down. 

And then, you know, when I was leaving the military and I was looking at what I wanted to do, there's definitely a part of me that just, you know, whenever it says go left, I'm just immediately like, I'm just gonna go right, right? I've probably pissed off plenty of you know, ex girlfriends along the way who were just mad because they want me to do something. And then I just like, no, I don't wanna do that. As soon as you told me to do it, I just don't wanna do it. Like that's just my mindset. And you know, if any of my ex commanders are listening to this right now too, they're probably also agreeing, like God dammit, Delaney. Like, I just wanted you to do this and you just didn't wanna do it. So definitely just have that like, ingrained in me a little bit like I just kind of wanna break the norm and do something else. 

And then, you know, when I was leaving the army, I was just super frustrated with the transition process. It was just, it was agonizing to me. Like this system is inefficient. And it was frustrating to me because I was seeing, you know, all this stuff out there in the world of all the companies that wanna hire veterans and like veterans are great in the workplace and provide value. And there's all kinds of, you know, great stories of veteran entrepreneurs and everything out there. And it just felt like this whole system was just designed to just push us into check the block kind of job thing. And I was like, I just feel like we have this massive amount of talent potential in the military. 

And the current system is not doing a great job of capturing it and putting it back into the United States, whether that be for you know, going into corporate America, going, you know, if you're leaving active duty, going to serve in the reserves somewhere, going to work or whatever it may be. I know there's great talent in the military. And the current system is just not designed well enough to be able to successfully transition those people and like really captured the potential of 100% of those folks. So we can get the most value out of you as an individual that can return back to our country, once you leave the uniform and once you're serving, you know, outside of the military.

Brock Briggs  11:13  

One of the podcasts that's in my ongoing rotation is called the Shit You Don't Learn in School by Steph Smith and Calvin Rosser. And one of the episodes that they had recently, they were talking about how to be a magnet as like a company or an individual. And they referenced a couple of companies that recently, the CEO or not the CEO, but the founder of Anduril, the defense like tech company. They talked about one of the perks that they have as a company is they actually allow and pay for tools for their employees to like build their side projects, like they're encouraging their employees to do things outside of work that make them happy and they're happy to fund that. They're like giving them the check to do it. 

One of the things that the military certainly struggles to do is it doesn't foster that at all. Like if you have an idea about how things ought to be better, the amount of red tape is just, it's tremendous. Like it's not designed to change to what's better. And I've said this on many episodes before, I don't know why. But I have never felt less creative in my entire life than just like baking it through my enlistment. And maybe that was just lack of time, lack of energy. Maybe it was my age, like all of those things, I don't know. But it literally felt like there was a light switch of creativity that flipped when I got out.

Mark Delaney  12:53  

I'm having just like flashback to this moment. I was a brand new second lieutenant. And I went to this, it actually wasn't a training course. It was actually a study being done by a unit, which has now been closed down called Asymmetric Warfare Group. And so what they were doing was they were trying to gather data and assess, like the viability of train marksmanship with live rounds versus simulated rounds. Or like computer simulation, alright? So essentially what happened was like, my battalion got selected to do this and a group of us got sent up and we spent so like, the first day was like, baseline day, alright? So you do like qualification course and some basic shooting. And then, you know, my group got went and we spent three days doing like hands on training with like, former tier one operators. And it was awesome, especially, I mean it was like a couple months and it's a brand new. lt is fantastic. And I've never been a good shot, I'll be the first to admit that, okay. 

But to kind of give you an idea. At the end of like, three days of instruction, I remember sitting in Indian style, which is not necessarily the best shooting platform in full kit. And I was just like, dropping targets at 400 meters, like it was nothing. All right. And like that was crazy. Okay. And then like, you know, while our group is doing this, there's another group out there doing computerized training. All right. And so basically, then, like, you know, they bring the data back and they’re trying to assess, you know, the basic intuition is that, you know, shoot live rounds, you're gonna be a better shot. But is it maybe can we get like a good enough with the computer simulations. Where we can kind of offset, you know, the cost and the time of going to a range or something. Anyway, I'm not gonna go down the whole rabbit hole of that study because that's not the point here. 

So I took some of these techniques back to my unit. And I took my company to the range and employed what we did there and it was all very, very basic stuff. This was not any, like crazy was you stuff. I mean, really, all we did was we zeroed out to 100 meters and then we were grouping it 300 meters like that's all we did. This was like basic fundamentals of marksmanship. The next time we went to the qualification range, you know, I captured all the data. And I showed that, you know, after my training, got entered into the system, we improved our marksmanship as a company by 15%. Like, that's pretty significant. And we're taking that to 

Brock Briggs 

Forgive me, like, how many people are in a company? Like I have 

Mark Delaney  

120 

Brock Briggs 

Okay, so that's a big number, then. 

Mark Delaney  

Yeah, that's pretty significant, like a 15%. And this is from one session, alright? Like we'd had a qualification course prior to this, like a basic qualification marksmanship. And then, you know, I got by off my commander to do this kind of one off training thing. And then next time, we went to a range and also say, during that one off training thing, we didn't even have the full company there. It was maybe only like, 75% of the company. But then the next time we went qualified scores went up 15%, across the company, right? So then I go back to my commander and I show this data, and they're like, no, that's cool. 

That's not really how we do things, though. Like, there's like an order on how we train marksmanship. And part of this is a failure myself, like I didn't, I was still kind of too young and dumb to be able to understand like, how to sell this to my boss. But it was like, I have clear evidence showing that I know this training strategy is like a little bit different than like what the FM says, but the results are here. And it was just kind of like, oh, that's cool, man. Wonderful. And so it was like that little bit of like creativity, my mind just kind of died that day.

Brock Briggs  16:26  

Yeah, just like that suppression. Just 

Mark Delaney

Yeah, yeah. 

Brock Briggs 

We're just gonna stifle that like

Mark Delaney  16:31  

Yeah, so totally feel what you're talking about

Brock Briggs  16:33  

That's such a bummer, too. And it's not, I'm gonna go back to what I was saying before the system is not designed to allow for that type of thing. It's designed to adhere to the SOPs and say, this is the way that we do things. And you know, if you really like pressed on somebody, they would probably say something to the effect of like, oh, you know, the people who are signing off on these SOPs are. Well, admirals in the Navy like, you know, the stars are signing off on this, you know. We don't have the authority to make that change even if there we can see a direct improvement. And that's a problem, in my opinion.

Mark Delaney  17:20  

Yeah, I generally, I'm like, 90% with you, okay? The other side of this is like the military is designed to be, like, we're dealing with the ultimate risk and that is people dying. Okay. So like the inherent, you know, the inherent catastrophic risk that you're trying to manage as a leader is putting people in harm's way in such a way that like they're gonna die. So like, that's the risk you're trying to manage across the organization. And that inherently, I think, then just makes like the entire organization more risk averse. Now, there's also like tons of layers to this on, like, how we manage personnel and promote people and identify people for the right types of jobs and everything too but I think like that overarching thing, just puts a damper on taking initiative because of that inherent risk.

Whereas like in a business, for example, you know, okay, maybe I make this small investment on this small bet, but I can mitigate it because you know it's smaller, you know. I'm only putting in 1% of our budget on this thing. And I'm putting some really good people in this project. But if it does well, then boom. We get like a 10x return for the company. I can't quite measure it in the exact same way in the military. And so there's like that dynamic going on. And it makes the military such a risk averse organization. And I think like the other big layer here is like, there's zero incentive as a leader to take risks because it doesn't really do anything for your promotions. 

You know, if you just kind of follow the steps and follow the method and it's laid out in front of you, then like, you're gonna move up the chain, right? And if you'd like get put your ass on the line for something new or crazy or creative, then there's a greater likelihood that it's gonna get, it's not gonna work or it's gonna get shut down or whatever than it is that thing will work. And so we have this system that's just designed to kind of dampen that creativity and on efforts to mitigate risk.

Brock Briggs  19:17  

My background is in finance. And there's this term that I took away from all of my reading and learning of the space and they call it and it can be applied anywhere, but they call it career risk. And it applies to, let's say that you have a portfolio manager or somebody who is owning a portfolio of stocks for a mutual fund or an ETF or something like that. And when there is a very real concept to those people called career risk and it's about what you own in the portfolio. A portfolio manager would never be fired for owning like a blue chip company like IBM. They have no career risk for like well, IBM is a great company. So, you know, it could have happened to anybody. There's no career risk in that. There is career risk in investing in companies that are risky, they're small, they're unproven, they have no track record, all these things. You can get fired for that. 

And I think that the military is a very similar way, you know, you have a commanding officer on the line for people's lives, literally. And this is much bigger than just money, it's lives. And there's career risk, you know, you're gonna get canned if you, the CO of your unit says, oh, yeah, let's go. Let's go try out all these new shooting techniques. And then something bad happens, you know, you lose somebody of your unit. And they say, well, what was different about this time? Well, we implemented Delaney's training. And you know, we might have shot at but we lost somebody because of it, like that career risk. 

Mark Delaney  20:57  

Yeah. Yeah.

Brock Briggs  21:00  

You said earlier that you were coming into the army with like a career focus. And when I look at people's time in the service and they get out at anything more than four but less than 20. I instantly, I'm like, okay, this person's got a story. Like, they were able to overcome the peer pressure, the oh, well, you know, you did four, you may as well do 20 conversations. Like you overcame that. So there must have been a reason why something switched there.

Mark Delaney  21:38  

Part of it was timing in life. And it was, you know, when I got out, I was 30 years old and I didn't have a wife, didn't have kids. You know, I had a mortgage. I think someone was running that house at a time. So like, that was kind of covered. There weren't any, like, significant things, significant responsibilities that I had other than to myself. I was really in a place where like, all I needed was a couch to sleep on and a suitcase and like, I was good. All right. That was not how I wanted to live. But I was like, realistically, like that's all I need at this point in life, okay? And what I kind of saw happening was, I was like, okay, if I take this next assignment, then that's gonna probably push me to like, 12 years or so. This was like, the path that I was looking at. I was at this juncture was like, okay, I'm gonna go now or most likely, I'm gonna go to grad school and the Army's done. 

And I'm gonna go to probably like some, you know, great college and a fun town somewhere. And let's say I meet someone there. And you know, she's a very high performing professional and we get along great. I'm like, hey, let's get married, wonderful. And like, awesome. Do you wanna move back to Fayetteville, North Carolina? And basically like, put your career on hold while we live in the middle of North Carolina. So I can continue on my Army career and it was probably gonna be like, no dog. That's not quite what I'm looking for right now. And then I was okay, well, if you think I'm gonna go back to North Carolina and then be like a single major working as an XO right now. And I'd like no time to do anything else. Oh, gosh, that sucks. And I was like, next thing I know, I'm gonna be forty years old and like, never started a family. And I was just like this is like the path that I wanna go on right now. And

Brock Briggs  23:19  

So, family was high on the priority list?

Mark Delaney  23:22  

Family was definitely high up there, okay? That was definitely I was just like, the timing feels right where like, I can take this risk. And the only person that impacts is me. If I wait a couple more years, and you know, I have a family, then this decision to get out becomes a lot more challenging because like, I've got a family to support and everything. So I'd rather take this risk now and go do something else, okay? And then additionally too, I was feeling that creative urge, like, I wanna go do other things. And I felt that the army was kind of just holding me back from, you know, what else I wanted to do in life. 

And then additionally too I mean, you know, I was looking at my next couple assignments and just wasn't really excited by them. And so it was like kind of the right crew time, it was the right time in my personal life. And you know, it was de risked enough through, you know, was getting out of point were like I had the GI Bill. You know, nothing, no family that I had to be responsible for and everything was okay, this feels at the right time. Let's just go ahead and pull the plug and make it happen.

Brock Briggs  24:24  

It's amazing what you're able to do when your life circumstances are mitigated. And like the risk of that is taken off the table. You're like, able to do just unbelievable things that you wouldn't consider otherwise. 

Mark Delaney  

Right

Brock Briggs

I have friends with kids now and stuff and that's finite. But I would love to hear your opinion on kids that will probably be not for this podcast. We'll get into that another time. But

Mark Delaney  24:52  

Love kids. I don't have any yet but coming soon, probably. 

Brock Briggs  

Yeah

Mark Delaney 

Not like next couple of months but soon, but like you know, in the next couple years

Brock Briggs  24:59  

Right, at some point in the future 

Mark Delaney 

Yeah

Brock Briggs 

I look at people in that circumstance. And I'm like, man, I certainly am not in a place where I could do something crazy. Like, if I lost my job tomorrow, I would be in a really, really bad place. I'm not going to lose my job tomorrow. But thinking about that as a whole nother level and, you know, that you can perform. And I think that that's something like innate to a man, just like taking care of your family and that kind of like, looking out. Like, you're gonna make it work, but it's like you know, are you ready to make it work if you have to? And like, do you wat to do that just yet.

Mark Delaney 

Right 

Brock Briggs

I think that there's something to be said there for like, being able to take risks off the table and like being able to make the decisions that you want to even if there is some, like, you can crash and burn still okay, though.

Mark Delaney  26:01  

Yeah, absolutely. It was just like, when I looked like my personal risk assessment, I was like, okay, if I stay in, then higher probability of like poor life satisfaction. If I get out higher probability of, you know, good life satisfaction. There's like the risk of the unknown of like, when I decided to get out, honestly, didn't really know what I wanted to do. But I was like, okay, I can mitigate that with time. And there's also like, the mitigation like the risk mitigation of kind like the burn the ships mentality. Like okay, if I get out of the military, I gotta figure something out here. So like, it's put you into that pressure pot of, I've got to figure it out.

Brock Briggs  26:42  

I always think it's interesting hearing from people that maybe are like putting their thumb on you about staying in the military. And kind of appealing to the fact that like, somehow staying in the military is gonna be harder than getting out. Like as if getting out of this service and like giving up this safe paycheck every two weeks, is not difficult. Like it's tremendously difficult. It's the not safe option. Getting out of the service, in general, is not safe.

Mark Delaney  27:16  

Yeah, I mean, this is totally something I know I've like written about and probably talked about a couple of times. And I think one of the challenges in leaving the military is just the safety net that's around you. You know, you get that two week paycheck. You have you know, free health care, dental, vision, everything. If you wanna get your, when it's tax season, you can go on base and there's a free tax and you can get them done. If you have any, you know, family problems, there's a family counselor you can go talk to for free. There's healthcare on base, you know, if you need mental health services, you can go talk to someone, it's all like free and provided. 

It's just like such this safety net. And it's like, I need XYZ, cool. You go to this building, right? And it's can be some random number building on base, which you're gonna struggle to find like three hours anyway. But nonetheless, like it's there, okay. And then you get onto a while the civilian world and it's like, you kind of have to navigate all these decisions yourself. Now, they're not really that hard. But it's like that specter in front of you of like, I have to figure this stuff out. And I'm leaving like this safety net, can be an impediment to people just making that leap.

Brock Briggs  28:25  

One of the things that stood out to me about your background and experience, you got involved with this startup, like your last year that you're in the army. I'm gonna butcher the name of this modulok.

Mark Delaney  28:38  

Yeah, I think that's how you pronounce it.

Brock Briggs  28:41  

Okay. Tell me about that because it sounded interesting. And it seemed like non coincidental to like the things that you're saying now about being interested in like starting a business and then also how that has maybe like laid the groundwork a little bit for like, what you do for work and life now.

Mark Delaney  29:00  

Yeah, so that was actually my SkillBridge internship. So, you know, I was stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina and about an hour and a half away is, you know, the Raleigh Durham area, which is, you know, a lot of startups, a lot of good businesses and everything going on there. And there was a guy who was working on a startup and he found out about the SkillBridge program. It was actually it was an organization called veteran capital. I think they've now done a rebrand and I think maybe the guys I originally worked with sold it to someone else. 

But essentially, what veteran capital did was place people into startup companies via the SkillBridge program. So my last three months in the army, I was like working in a startup co working space, you know, growing a beard, wearing jeans, you know, freakin’ Bucha and slide in the office kind of thing, right? And 

Brock Briggs 

It was like living a dream, basically. 

Mark Delaney

It was awesome. It was awesome. And it was a great opportunity because I kind of got to learn. I guess I learned a little bit about startups, I got to learn a little bit about just business life and got to kind of like shed out my military identity in a sense. Yeah, it was an awesome opportunity.

Brock Briggs  30:14  

So you joined that and then you also like, you also start the podcast. I'm sure we're gonna talk about that at some point here. But you also start a podcast like your, I think, within your last year of service. What gets you the motivation to do something like that?

Mark Delaney  30:31  

Well, so first, actually, I think, you know, when people think of like my brand or something, I kind of like, throw up a little bit my mouth and I call it my brand too a little bit. But nonetheless, people just think the podcasts are really actually first started. It was a blog and the blog still out there, theveteranpro.com. And I was frustrated with the transition process. And I like one, it's trying to do something about it. And I was like, okay, I think I made it just like document some of the things that I'm going through. And as I'm covering your good resources and programs out there, just write about it. So I first started publishing on medium, which is a good platform to get started on as a writer. And then after, like, you know, wrote a couple articles. I think I have enough here to start a blog. And they basically just turned it into a website. And really, you know, because I was an English major in undergrad. I like to read and write.

I didn't expect. You know, I think people joke all the time like, what do you do with an English degree? Like, I communicate a lot all the time. It's super helpful, actually. All right. Yeah, I wrote a shit ton of reports, especially my last job as a civil affairs officer, you know, a ton of reports that had to go out all the time. And like, my writing got definitely gotten better through the army, surprisingly, just because I was writing so much. And so when I wanted to, you know, first tried to do something about this problem, like the problem about the military transition, I first started writing about it. And so then, after I kind of built up a decent enough body of work, I had like, you know, 100 articles or something on the site. And then it was April 2020. And it was quarantine. I was living with my sister, my niece and nephew and my brother in law at the time. That's a whole other story of how I got into that place. 

But as I was like, bored. It's like I wanted something to do. And I think like, a gazillion podcasts were launched during COVID times. And I was like, let's just start a podcast, that seems like a thing to do. And I just kind of started doing it. And then it was fun. And I was getting good feedback that people liked it. They were enjoying it. And I felt that I was like, pretty good at it. And then I was also finding that I can just like, reach out to people who are pretty cool that I wanna talk to and say, hey, do you wanna talk about yourself for 45 minutes on my show and help out veterans? And like, nobody says no to that. Okay? So I was able to start, like having really cool conversations with people that I respected and liked. 

And then eventually, I was able to have cool conversations with people like, it probably would have been hard for me to get five minutes with some of the people I've had on my show. But I've been able to do it because am like, do you wanna help out veterans and you know, give you a platform to talk about, you know, yourself and your business and what you're working on. And again, like nobody says no to that.

Brock Briggs  33:14  

There is something about that, the value prop to somebody that's coming on, especially if they have something going on that they are trying to get more awareness to like the value is there for them to and even if they don't have something to, you know, push, I guess I'm not really sure what the other word for that is. But people like talking about themselves. They really do.

Mark Delaney  33:37  

Yeah. And it's like I interviewed the CEO of Arc’teryx the other day, super cool. And so he was a former Army cab officer. And like, in his day to day life, he's not involved in you know, he's not like a board of veteran nonprofits or anything. And like in his day to day life in Arc’teryx, he's probably not really doing much with veterans or anything, but like, it's still part of his identity. And so like, when I presented the opportunity to him to come on my show and talk about his career, he was like, yeah, that sounds awesome. Because this isn't like a like, that's not a part of him that I think he probably gets to think about a lot. But it was a chance to him to kind of dig into, like, you know, go back to his army days and kind of talk about how that's kind of shaped him as a leader in corporate America. And like it was fun for him. And then I got to sit down with the CEO of a pretty cool company for a while, which is also fun for me.

Brock Briggs  34:28  

One of the things that I find so interesting about being in the podcasting space and both of our podcasts like have a ton of overlap and like look to probably very similar types of guests in the hunt for interesting people. Approaching with the angle of talking about specifically military, especially for older people of like maybe CEOs of companies or otherwise, it's a really, really interesting value prop for them because you know, there's so many like famous leaders of even publicly traded very, very, very large companies that served in the military at one point. And when you go and read their biography, whoever's writing it, it's like their time in the service is like barely a footnote. 

Mark Delaney

Right. Right 

Brock Briggs

Recently, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Founders podcast, David Senra, does a really, really fantastic job. Basically, he just like reads every bit of information about like the world's greatest entrepreneurs and like, does a deep dive on them and then does this huge podcast like several hours long on the individual. He did one on Sam Walton recently. The fact that Sam Walton was in the I believe was the army wasn't even mentioned in this, like monstrous like hours long conversation, it wasn't even talked about. And I was like, man, what a bummer. Like, that's and I know that even after like, even if you only serve for a short time, that pride is still there. And it makes me interested to like ask some of the like people, one of the people I was thinking of recently, so Sam Walton is obviously no longer with us. But Fred Smith, the former CEO of FedEx, like was also a surf like, just people like that, where that was a part of their lives at one point.

Mark Delaney  36:26  

Yeah. And I'm sure like, you know, when someone like that goes into a podcast, everyone wants to talk to them about business decisions And, you know, what was your last board meeting like? And how do you hire people and think strategically and all this stuff. And there's a part of them that wants to talk about, you know, shooting shit with the boys, you know, back in a training camp somewhere or like that dumb day on the submarine when I don’t know, the nut busted open and water is pouring in, and they all to fix it or something like, everyone has those memories. They're like, they don't get to access a lot and talk about and so like, there's a kind of part of being like kind of go back to their past that I think, is attractive to some people.

Brock Briggs  37:06  

You talked about having struggled with the transition process and you have like gone headlong into this space, just like in multiple avenues. You started with the blog, you got the podcast, we're gonna get into a couple of like what you're doing today, like workwise to kind of like, fill that gap and solve that problem. What do you think that you've learned about the transition process that you'd say maybe isn't obvious?

Mark Delaney  37:38  

So I guess the way I think about like, my frustrations with the transition process, I put it into three big buckets, okay? The first is that there is a dizzying array of programs, resources, organizations, institutions out there that like and for those of you listening right now, like big air quotes, like wanna help veterans, okay. And it's overwhelming. Alright, I felt it. Everyone I talked to feels it, there's just like so much shit being thrown at us. All right. And some of these organizations are awesome, they're fantastic. They're phenomenal. Like they really do, you know, create value and like do good things. Then there are some that are maybe you know, pretty good. Or maybe they're like really good for kind of a niche purpose or something, you know, they're really good helping you with interviews, right? But they're still like, all these other stuff, you got to think about your transition. 

And then frankly, I think there's a lot of organizations out there, like, don't really do shit. And it just kind of pissed me off. And I was like, there's just all this like, you know, wrap yellow ribbon around a tree hug a vet support the troops buying the beer kind of thing. But there's not a whole like value actually being delivered, I think. And like, that was frustrating to me. My second big frustration was that, you know, a lot of people and this is like a little more niche, but a lot of people leave the military and are now prime candidates for graduate school, okay? So if you're an officer, by definition, like you've got a degree and now you could be thinking of grad school, but I had plenty of enlisted folks that I worked with, who you know, earned a degree along the way or came into the service with a degree or whatever. My last NCO that I worked with, was working on a second master's while we were deployed. 

And now like a prime candidate for grad school and there's pretty good stuff out there for you know, being a service member trying to go to undergrad, but not as much great stuff for graduate school. And again, that's just kind of like I think value left on the table, alright? And then my last big frustration was that I felt the whole system, everything was just designed to just put everybody into a JOB, job like just check the block, put something in there so we can make sure you have a paycheck when you leave. And everyone feels good. And we can turn that block on our Excel sheet from yellow to green and check it off and say, wonderful! Brock got a job. Fantastic. And I was like, that's bullshit, alright? Like we can do better. I know that there's a lot more value in potential and those that serve, then like just going to get that JOB job. And so that was my primary frustration. 

And then I wanted to make the process easier. And my thought process and like wanting to make the process easier is I think that there's so many inefficiencies in the system that we just dedicate so much brain space to just trying to navigate it just to like figure it out or to find like, you know, this helpful resource or somewhere. And I'm like, okay, if we can make this process more streamlined, then you can spend more time figuring out like who you really are and what it is you really wanna go do and less time just trying to like, navigate the bureaucracy of it all. And when people can start feeling more comfortable about that process, then I think we can start capturing more value to put out to them, like put out into the United States for all the veterans that are out there. And like the rest of the country that knows veterans have a strong potential. I just don't think we're doing a good job of delivering that to the American people.

Brock Briggs  40:56  

It's interesting hearing you say this and I've heard this from several other people as well, people who talk about when they're going to get out or they're starting their transition process and they're being bombarded by resources and whatnot because my experience was the exact opposite. Like I felt like I finished taps class and then I just was like a civilian. And then it was like, you know, just like the tumbleweed rolls by and like, the crickets are chirping. And I'm like, huh, like, I guess I'm like, this isn't me anymore. And that was a super weird feeling. 

Fast forward to today and now like spending a year talking to vets now I'm like, kind of almost the exact opposite, where it's like I almost feel like there's too many like, exactly like what you said and that awareness is really important for people in that thing. But then also, the awareness is a problem too because like, if there's just a lot of people throwing like money and resources that this weird thing and the impact is very difficult to measure. And I agree, I think that there are a lot of I might go out on a limb to say that there may be too many VSOs.

Mark Delaney  42:18  

I will firmly stand on that limb and say there's probably too much out there, okay? And I think the problem you just described is like, like you personally, when you were going through the system felt that there, like you, you weren't getting that a dizzying array, okay. And part of that is I also think that like, a lot of this system is just like, very poorly designed particularly for junior enlisted when they're getting out. And like just it tears me up that like there's, it's just not. It’s not as well designed for like the E-4, E-5 who's getting out after their first deployment or excuse me, like, you know, first enlistment and he's like 21, 22. 

You know, there's lots of great programs for officers, junior officers transitioning into careers or whatever or you know, a lot of like, the services out there are kind of focused on. There's more like corporate type roles or something that if you're ready, like, you know, senior NCO or officer you wanna go into, but I mean, from a volume perspective, like the junior enlisted folks are way more, right? And so that's absolutely something that I see that's also a flaw in the system. And I just like a little anecdote of kind of an example of kind of how I see us in some sense, is you know, all these veteran organizations and like, you know, military transition gurus and influencers and everything, they all live on LinkedIn, alright? And like LinkedIn is a good tool. Don't get me wrong, alright?

But like, you know, E-4 Joe Snuffy trigger puller is not living on LinkedIn, you know, nine months before he's getting out of the Marine Corps, alright? That's just like, not what they're doing. I wasn't like nobody just like no one is on it, we can really that far out. And so then I go on to and all of the data shows that, you know, most people in general and especially most like, you know, early 20 year olds, like they're spending their time on TikTok, on Instagram, on Snapchat, right? And so when you go look at like, some of these organizations like their pages on those social media platforms, there's zero presence. And I'm like you're not going to where your target market is like, you're not going to where the biggest need is and like that's huge frustration I have felt this whole thing.

Brock Briggs  44:32  

It’s interesting that you bring up the divide there between the junior enlisted and maybe officers getting out. I haven't publicly said this, but I have noticed a very wide disparity in the preparedness of servicemembers getting out and transitioning officer to enlisted and I've like mentally been wrestling with that. And probably over half of the people I've had on this show are former officers not enlisted. And a lot of them talk about it as if you know, kind of it's some of them is lip service. And just like hearing other like, it's an easier transition I think. It's difficult to describe why that differences there. And I'm not sure why. I mean, it's a very similar experience. I mean, like you manage people and maybe like, you're just a little bit older. You have the degree already. I'm not sure why that is. I appreciate you bringing that up. It's legitimately something I've been thinking about. And I'm not, I can't quite put my finger on why there is such a disparity there.

Mark Delaney  45:51  

Yeah, I think in some level, like we gotta call a spade to spade and there's going to be look like, someone who's getting out after four years as like an O-3 or something, who they can be put on the resume. Like I managed, you know, 40 people or something like they've got the college degree and everything like, that does make a difference in the job market, okay?  We've gotta be real about that. And at the same time, too, but I also think of like, going back to our conversation earlier about, you know, how we manage people and risk inside the military and everything like, especially like our junior enlisted folks. They're not giving like the free rein to like go be creative and like, go be proactive in a lot of ways. 

And so I think like that then presents a lot of like, missed opportunities for them to prepare themselves successfully, right? Like when I went to my battalion commander and said, hey, I'm getting out, I pretty much had free rein to like, go manage my transition on my own timeline. If you were an E-4 getting on my battalion at the same time, like you probably weren't going to have that. No one was just gonna be able to, you were just going to get like a blank check to say, hey, go spend your time doing what you need to go do to transition from the army successfully, right? So like, I definitely like had a leg up just because of like the system being able to prepare myself more than, you know, an E-4, E-5 who's getting out at the same time.

Brock Briggs  47:12  

Yeah, my wife is experiencing that right now. She's like back on an active carrier and now is like, you know, routing up paperwork to go to taps class because it conflicts with ships movement and it's like, I don't know that an officer would be in the same position. I like and that just as a little bit of the nature of it, that's like and I don't mean to sound like disparaging towards officers versus enlisted, just merely trying to highlight that there may be a difference in preparedness getting out. And just opening up the conversation about what we can do about that like, hey, if we know that, how do we better focus on the people who need help?

Mark Delaney  47:58  

Yeah, something I try and get across my podcasts all the time. Like, I recognize that my audience is probably very heavy on the I know, it's very heavy on the officer side. And so a lot of times, like message them delivery and I'm saying that listen to what I'm talking about in this moment or what I'm about to talk about the next moment, it may not apply directly to you, as you know, a transitioning O-3, O-4 or something like that. But I'm sure right now, you know, you're in charge of an organization or department or company, whatever. And you've got some junior folks who are getting out and it applies to them, okay?

And like, your job as a leader, even if like you're thinking that you're in transition, like you also need to think about, you know, the folks who come in who are around you that like you know, you're still in charge of and say, you know, being able to go to someone not with like that direct, like officer, NCO or officer like enlisted relationship, but to say, hey, in nine months, like, I'm gonna be like Mark and Brock, right? Like we don't need to, like let's just kind of, you know, escape that facade for a moment. 

And I just wanna give you some like real world advice. I'm like imagining like myself still be in uniform, like talking to you or something. And saying, like, hey, I heard this thing on this guy show and I wanna pass it down to you because I think it'd be super useful for you in your transition. It's like that's something I try and get across my podcast knowing that I probably have a density of military leaders who are then you know, looking over subordinates across you know, the fleet and force.

Brock Briggs  49:25  

I really liked that. You mentioned something earlier talking about how like the adoption of like new practices and like new ways of doing things where with the shooting thing. One of the branches that I feel like is particularly strong at that is the Marines. Coming from the Navy perspective, like it's, we are like not, it's like the SOP is what we're doing. And I've like referenced this several times, but in like past episodes, but I had Sergeant Major Don Reynolds on the podcast and we have talked a bunch about cuz the way that he talks I'm like, I just want to understand the Marine Corps better and like, what is in the water? What are they drinking over there that is different than us because 

Mark Delaney  

It's some crazy shit, man. I don't know. Yeah. 

Brock Briggs 

The morale in the Navy is shit like and it's so so bad. And then I like I'm seeing all these Marines on like Instagram and like social that are using social as a, they're using as a fucking weapon in a good way though. They're like, they're empowering their junior troops, they're teaching them things, they’re passing on information. And there is a little bit of a difference in the nature of the job. One of the things that he described to me that I really really enjoy is hearing about is the nature of the Marines job is more, there's not like a clear book on how to do it. It's very much like its tactics, its strategy. It's like, evolving with the battlefield. It's all of these things. And like, Navy people, we just don't know that. We show up to work, we punch in, we punch out, we go home, like that's our, you know. If you're on the ship, you stay out there and you just hang out. That is a different life. 

And I think that one of the things that the Navy really, really needs and I don't know if you experienced this in the Army is we need to adopt that mentality of passing down information, learning from situations and like empowering the people under us. And I think that that's you highlighted a great opportunity about even if maybe your audience is, you know, primarily officers, they need to be talking to them, pass that down. One of the intros or like outros that I use sometimes on the podcast is, if you've learned something from hearing this, don't be greedy. Like, share it. Like there are other people that ought to hear it. And yeah, coming from the Navy perspective, the Navy has a very big opportunity to do better in that way.

Mark Delaney  52:04  

I have an old commander who I still like, if he called me up right now and was like, Mark, grab your kit, we're going into the gate to hell. I'd be like, I'm fucking already there, dude. Like, that kind of guy, okay? And he had this great quote that I steal all the time. And it's: share ideas selflessly, steal ideas selfishly, okay? And it's basically just like, if you see a good idea, like take it, okay? And in that context, often it was like, you know, putting together a plan for an operation or something. He's like listen, at some point, like, someone's probably playing something similar to this. Like you don't need to recreate the wheel and go find someone else who's already done it. And that's probably gonna be an 85% solution. 

And also, if you are the person who comes up with the plan for the first time operation, don't keep it to yourself and share it with other people. And if you find, you know, good tidbits of information, absolutely, share it and just like go put it out there and like that's an ethos like, I try and put out all the time of just like when I see someone asking a question, you know, on social media or something, I wanna try and respond. Or if I see someone, you know, looking for some type of helping, I wanna put something out there that provides provides value to you. I think that’s like a really good way to, you know, put out good information and like this is kind of my, you know, crazy view of the universe, but just like put out good vibes into the universe and like, it'll come back and pay you back in a good way.

Brock Briggs  53:32  

I think one of the things that that does too is it also tells you a lot about the type of people that you are dealing with, just speaking to the ethos that that commander kind of gave you or whatever is like, anybody that is holding stuff and like withholding information. Especially like, it's one thing is if it's critical, like if it's like, if they're purposefully withholding information that like is not a confidentiality issue. And like, you know, they know that it could make you better and they're like, purposefully doing that and you learn about that. That is not somebody you wanna be fucking with. Like in the military, you can't like you may not be able to control that. But once you get out, that is not the type of person that you wanna be affiliated with. If that's your boss, you need to go find a new job yesterday. 

Mark Delaney

Yeah

Brock Briggs

Because true, true, true people, they wanna share that. It just speaks something about like kind of your character. Really, it's like they know that it's not zero sum. You're not in competition. Like you think you are all the time.

Mark Delaney  54:45  

Absolutely. Absolutely. I continuously find like I get a lot of like, inbound good stuff to me and I have to believe in part that's just because like I put good outbound out into the world for people to see. And then people that come to me bring stuff to me. And I just happen to recognize, like, I have to recognize that like some somewhere like that was a flywheel that started because I just kicked it and said, okay, I'm gonna start putting out stuff for people. And then eventually, you know, good things will come back to me. And I have definitely started to see like, that is true.

Brock Briggs  55:20  

That's good. It's well deserved. You've been at the podcast game for a while and putting out really, really good information that it's very well deserved. I get to kind of like shift gears here a little bit. Otherwise, we're gonna like, we could be here all night very well. 

Mark Delaney

Having a good time, man. Yeah.

Brock Briggs

As long as the whiskey doesn't run out, well, we could make that happen. You currently work and you're a director at the military hiring accelerator. One of the things that is kind of teeing up earlier is that you have like really thrust yourself from the active duty space into just this, like pure veteran military serving space generally. You got the podcast here. Like what you're doing for work now completely revolves around serving vets. What do you think that you have learned? Maybe first, like start and talk a little bit about what your job is and then talk about maybe what you've learned about like the job market from being in this space and like, going through it yourself and then helping people along through the web.

Mark Delaney  56:33  

Yeah, so my, I'll back up here a little bit. And like, why I kind of wanted to go down this rabbit hole full tilt, okay? So you know, I just finished up business school a couple of months ago and like, most people when they go get an MBA, their typical thing is then I'm gonna go work for a big consulting firm and go work at an investment bank. Like you know, people think business school teaches you. It's designed to like, prepare you to go work in corporate America, okay? Like, that's what it's there to do, alright? And overwhelmingly, like when people leave business school like, that's what they go do. They go work for giant corporations, they go in like very kind of traditional paths, alright? And so I was looking at like, where my life was going, like what I wanted to do. 

And I said, okay, I feel like I'm at this inflection point where I have the opportunity to make a significant impact on something that I care a lot about. And that's the veteran transition piece, alright? You know, I've been doing the podcast and the blog for two years like, I've got a pretty decent audience and following. I know a lot about this space. I'm super connected with a ton of people in it. And I see a path to like actually doing something meaningful in the veteran transition process. So I'm like, okay, I could, you know, leave school and go get a consulting job or go work at a big investment bank, but I'm like that's just kicking the can down the road. And like, I have this point in time where I’m trying to do something big and meaningful for a group of people that I give a ton of shits about and a problem that I care about.

And I think that I can actually do something on, okay? So my current jobs, I work for a company called military hiring accelerator and we're a veteran recruiting and staffing firm and basically where that came from. So first, I'll tell a story of a company we've actually created. So my boss and I are actually, my co-founder on Vet Journey, which we'll get to in a little bit. So a guy by the name of Mark Bega and he's been in the recruiting space for about like 15 years. And a couple of years ago, he was living in Nashville and he was really good friends with a guy who had gotten out of Fort Campbell. And he was spending like a ton of time, you know, on his own free time trying to help out other service members the transition process, okay. He was doing a Tough Mudder or Spartan Race or something one weekend and just unexpectedly died of heart attack, like super fit dude and just just died, okay?

And so Mark was like at his funeral and was like I need to do something for this community. And like, he's got a, you know, he's not a veteran himself, but he's got, you know, a family history of service. And he said I wanna do stuff for this community. What do I know? I know the recruiting world. Okay, let me start a veteran focused recruiting firm, alright? So as he was, he had been running that for a couple years. And the problem he was starting to encounter was, okay, how do I like sort through these people. You know, this guy who's leaving Charleston, South Carolina, he was a Navy Nuke, but wants to move back to, you know, Odessa, Texas and work on an oil rig. It's like really hard to kind of sort through all those data points and like align that person with the right job and be able to, you know, sell their individual, you know, value proposition to a potential employer, okay?

So there's like, I need a technology that can kind of sort through these people and be able to plug and play them into the right role. So that's how we created Vet Journey, alright? So in fact, Vet Journey is a tool you can use to help guide you through your military transition and plan what you're gonna do afterwards, alright? And we'll dig into like the specifics on, I guess. But when it comes down to it, I was like, I don't want to go the normal path. I see an opportunity to do something meaningful and impactful about something that I care a lot about. And I wanna jump on that opportunity. And again, going back to this idea of like, risk, right? 

This definitely was a riskier option, like I could have taken like the normal corporate job and had a lot like safer route. But I was like, okay, the downside risk of me falling flat on my face here is mitigated by the fact that I just got a degree from a great institution. And I can definitely like rely on that,  if need be. I can step back into like, you know, that more kind of traditional route. But if I had the chance to swing for the fences right now, I'm gonna take a big swing and try and do it.

Brock Briggs  1:01:02  

We were talking about that a little bit earlier. But I think that that's going to be one of the key takeaways from this conversation is and something that like I personally adopt, not only in like my kind of personal financial life, but career wise as well as like, de risk yourself and just swing like, really, really big. And like, you know, you can sit there and swing all day when you've got no like, like you said, you've got an MBA and you've got this great backdrop to fall down on. And you know, you're gonna walk into, let's say you do two or three of these things and nothing works out. You're gonna walk into a job interview at corporate America, maybe not happy to be there. 

But you know, your shoulders are gonna be wide. Your head isn't gonna be held down because of that. And you're gonna be able to talk confidently about hey, yeah, I've got this backstory. Well, what happened in that last couple years? Well, let me tell you, this is what I went and did. This is what I learned. And that's gonna be so valuable. And I think people a lot of times get scared about like having failures on their resume, especially when it comes to like new companies or whatever. Like man, any decent employer is not gonna look down on that at all.

Mark Delaney  1:02:18  

Yeah, yeah. And you know, actually, the way that I looked at failure, I had this thought maybe two, three months ago and I was just having this moment trepidation personally of like oh, my God! Like don't continue trying to like, go down this entrepreneurial path. Like what am I doing? And then I was like, you know what, Mark? If you're gonna fail like, fucking fail, man like fail big, you know, give it a shot. Like leave it all on the table. Like, just do it. Just do it and say, you know, what? I tried. And like I fucking tried and it didn't work. And I'd rather like say that and then say, well, you know, I half assed it and it didn't quite work out and like what have, could have, should have. I'd rather like go big. And if it does work, like all of my dreams are gonna come true. And if it doesn't work, then fuck it. I'll figure something out. So

Brock Briggs  1:03:11  

One of the things I really admire about you and what you're doing with Vet Journey is, as I've come to, this is kind of a result of the over the last year like doing this podcast and like getting more immersed in the post service veteran active space. I'm not sure what the right word for that is. But people who are actively having these conversations. A lot of the people who care about transition, one of the things that I've seen is it, it kind of ends up becoming like working at a talent management thing or something else. It's primarily a lot of like, hey, how can we help get other vets into different jobs and they know it's a problem.

But it almost has kind of seen like optically as that is the one path that it leads to. There's nothing wrong with that. And there are a lot of like people, I've had tons of people on this show that are like, individual like coaches, consultants that like kind of walk people through this process. There's absolutely a huge need for that. One of the things that I thought was interesting about Vet Journey is like it's kind of creating something that wasn't there before. So do you wanna talk about what Vet Journey is just kind of like it as a raw concept? Who is it for? What the offering is? And then we can kind of take it from there.

Mark Delaney  1:04:41  

Yeah, so it is a web based online platform that you can use to plan your transition from the military. Okay. And there are a few things that we've tried to like be into this that are foundational to what we do with Vet Journey, alright? The first is we think holistically about the veterans transition challenge, alright? There are a number of competitors out there or you know, other companies, other organizations. And I think a lot of them focus on like, what I call it, what I say is really just like the last three months worth of problems. How do I get my resume ready? How do I do network and you know, prepare for an interview and everything, like, that's all important stuff, too. And like, we've got, you know, stuff built into veteran to help you with that. 

But additionally, I know like, put together your personal financial plan is important. I know sometimes just like the simple question of what is like the first form that I need to actually submit to somewhere to actually start the process to get out of the military? That alone is a question I've gotten a lot of times, actually. And so like, I wanna just make the process easier for people, okay. And it kind of goes back to this idea of, if we can streamline this process, if we can put it online, if we can make it easy for you to use on your phone, whether you're on a ship, you're in, you know, Qatar, you're in the Philippines, you're you know, on staff duty somewhere and you can't go to a tap class, like, I want you to be able to have the ability to start thinking and planning about you know, your future life and start doing something meaningful on it in an easier way, okay? 

And I also want people to go through and not feel overwhelmed by the system and say, okay, there's a tool that I can use that keeps me on task, on track. And if I have a question about, you know, what my next step is, I can go here and try and figure it out. So like that's like, the big vision of what I want, right? The other part, you know, I talked about the holistic approach to veterans. The other big thing here is to focus on data, alright? I look at the current system and it's a lot of analog. Thanks, right. Like, we were literally just talking about this in our team meeting the other day. And I was like, you know, people still go to the office, they still go to like transition office and have to fill out paperwork to then like, you know, move along the process. And like, this is the fucking 21st century, okay? I can pull out my phone and order a fucking jet if I want to. 

And I have to like, fill out this paperwork to come on, like, we can move beyond this, right? And so there's a lot of interesting things we can start thinking about when everything's digital and we can focus on the data, alright? So one, I can track, you know, you, this is all kind of like Mark's big vision things like what I wanna do with Vet Journey, right? But I could track Brock, going through our system and identify, okay, this was your unique background. Let me come up with like a custom plan for you. Not like a generalized plan for everybody else, but like a custom plan for you. So you have, you know, the most personalized plans transition from military, okay? Then I can also start seeing, okay, other people, like you know, with your similar background, your skills in the military, maybe they went and can go do these other similar things outside of the military. 

And so maybe we can start like giving you information about, hey, here's what certain career fields look like, here's how you get started doing XYZ. The current system misses all this stuff because it's generalized and it's analog. But when you start putting in digitally, you can start making those recommendations to people start giving them, you know, nudges, you can start making, you know, more focused plans. So they have a personalized exit strategy for the military, okay? And then I think we would start get into like, really interesting things when we start talking about like negative outcomes after the military, alright? I had a number of friends take their life. 

And probably only one or two of them, I can think of right now. We're in the uniform. Overwhelmingly, they were post military and most of those were within the first two years of service. Okay. And I can't help but wonder if there weren't some places we could have caught them upstream and seen some behavior of, you know, how they are preparing for post military life,and be able to interject with the right piece of information. And I don't wanna be so you know, naive to think that like, you know, giving someone a blog post at the right time just gonna make them, you know, prevent them from taking their own life, you know, 18 months down the road. 

But there's also a part of me that thinks, you know, giving the right information at the right time can alter the trajectory of how you're thinking about life. And maybe we do avoid a couple of circumstances like that. And so I see an opportunity in doing things focused on data and focus on the digital platform that we can do that we can't do with the current analog system. And so that's like my big vision like big head idea about what I wanna do with Vet Journey.

Brock Briggs  1:09:49  

How do you think about tackling some of the nuances of like the different branches? You're talking about how want to kind of provide a custom tailor experience maybe based on background MOS, NEC and then maybe take into factor like, what the goals are post transition? Like, is it going to a job? Is it going to school or whatever? Are you thinking about you and your team, thinking about individually like you guys yourselves doing that? Is that something that's machine based? Because I know that there's like, you know, there's differences in the form numbers from the Navy to the army, you know, they're just even small nuances like that.

Mark Delaney  1:10:33  

Absolutely. Okay. So we absolutely want to be able to tailor you know, your transition timeline and like your planning process based on if you're near the Army, Marines, whatever your branch was, and then also like, whatever your whatever your MOS was too. And one of the exciting things that I think we can do with Vet Journey is what I call like, get beyond the MOS description. Okay. So for example, if you go into Google and type in your MOS or your reading or your AFSC, whatever it is, Google's gonna crap out a list of jobs. And all those jobs are related to keywords from your MOS description, okay? Or like your reading description, okay? Like there's a blurb somewhere that was written by someone in the military that describes, you know, what a 11 Alpha, that was my first job in the area, what 11 Alpha does, okay? 

So then basically, what Google is doing is it's scraping those keywords and aligning those keywords and job descriptions that are out there in the world. Okay? That's pretty good. But that's probably like a 30% solution, alright? Now, when I think about like what I did, you know, my MLS description captures maybe 20-30% of like what my actual job was. And there's a lot of like missed opportunities and what could potentially do outside the military for my skill sets that I gained. But we miss all that. Because we're reliant on these like, small systems, alright? So we can start doing Vet Journey started learning about you as an individual and trying to understand what you did within your MOS, within your rating. But also, we can start asking you questions about what were the other duties responsibilities? What were some you know, over the deployments you went on? What were the other agencies you worked with? What are the languages you speak? 

And then with all that information, now, we can start giving you like a really tailored approach to you know, what your transition looks like. You know, a couple weeks ago, I was talking with the head of town acquisition for Truist, it’s like a huge bank, okay? Massive bank. And I described to her like what my job did in the military as a civil affairs officer. And she's like, oh, you'd be a great fit for partnerships because a lot of my job was working with, you know, foreign partners. You know, nonprofits, foreign governments, state department, whoever else has a lot of people outside of the military. 

She's like, you'd be perfect for partnerships. I'm like, yeah, right. Exactly. But when you put my job into, like a Google MOS translator, all it tells you is that I should be an emergency management professional or like a humanitarian relief delivery coordinator, something like that. And like you miss all this extra stuff because it's not just captured in this like one paragraph. And like, the way to try and solve that and and get around it is by like having individual move through the veterinary system. We started learning about you as an individual and start changing like the data that we're pulling from to provide you tailored recommendations. 

Brock Briggs  1:13:28  

I think you hit on a couple key points that are that I think are really important to unpack. One that you're not your MOS like a lot of times there's much more to your like job, your personality, your skills, your ability than just like what a few letters and numbers say. The second thing is that you described veteran, he has this like, personalized 12 month separation timeline. And I think the value, there's a lot of value there to be had. But one of the big kickers is that you start this conversation early. Like this is not like, hey, I'm getting out in six months. I need to take tap and then, you know, hopefully, like figure something out from there. It's like, no, we're starting this at least a year out like and it honestly probably could be earlier. Your preparation for getting out should be starting when you join almost or at least having the thought process. But certainly at the 12 month mark, you wanna be very active about, you know, the LinkedIn profile. Like you know, all of those things like starting to have those conversations at least because it takes time. It's not something that you're just gonna like get out and roll right into a job.

Mark Delaney  1:14:49  

100%. What I envision is like the first kind of users, we're trying to get onto Vet Journey. It's not someone who's like in the transition, it says since program, like the mandatory training. It's the person who probably hasn't even told their chain of command that they're getting out of the military yet. They are maybe 18 months away from transition but like, you know, they and their family have talked and they say, you know what? I think that I'm starting to get ready for this thing. And I think this is the right move for us. You know, for me and for us as a family, for me to transition for the military. I can't quite like put it on the radar yet. I can't quite, you know, start doing the official steps that I'm going to have to eventually do. But nonetheless like, I want to start thinking about this and start being proactive. Okay, cool. 

Veterinary is a tool I can go to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together for myself. So that, you know, when the giant system of the military transition process starts getting thrust at me, I'm a little more prepared for it. And you know, when I go to my mandatory transition class transition assistance classes and I’m not just received this information for the first time, right? And I also not just receive this information for the first time, but maybe also know how to counter some of the bad information that's out there as well. So we view it as it's complimentary to, you know, the existing DoD program, but very much I want something that you can start using even if you're like in the curiosity phase of like, what post military life looks like. And I wanna start thinking about what that is, like that's how they bet that's the person that I envisioned, like going into the veteran platform.

Brock Briggs  1:16:33  

Well, it also gives the service member an opportunity to start taking transition into their own hands on their timeline, you know. It's not, you can be starting down this process regardless of whether, you know, like you pointed out, maybe it's not the right time to bring it up to your command yet because there's like, kind of all of the feelings maybe not. I don't know, not gonna speak to the officer side. But on the enlisted side, like you were in danger when you bring that conversation up, so like, you're instantly like, welcome, you're gonna get like an average eval, you might get sent to TDY somewhere else just because, oh, they're getting out, so buck ‘em. Like, you're it's almost a it's a career killing move to say that and God forbid that you don't actually end up getting out or it's not the right time, like you have set yourself back meaningfully. This is a great opportunity to take that transition into your own hands earlier and at kind of a pace that suits you better. 

Mark Delaney  1:17:38  

Yeah, yeah. And I wanna be very clear, if you're listening right now, like I've talked about a lot of like, you know, big crazy ideas, like what I want to do with this thing. And you know, if you log on to vetjourney.com right now, you're not gonna see all this full functionality, okay? But we're building it and we want to build it. And a lot of like the, you know, what you'll see on like, the user side like the front end side, isn't as much quite there yet. But a lot of like the or back in architecture is already built to enable us to do this. So I just wanna put that disclaimer out there in case someone logs into Vet Journey. And it's like using this right now. And like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? The scene doesn't do the shit yet. We're working on it. Okay. Yeah.

Brock Briggs  1:18:20  

We're looking for those early adopters, you know, those ones that don't need that fancy UI interface yet.

Mark Delaney  1:18:26  

Well, you know, I mean, one of the things that's like, even annoying like, disgusting to me almost is like, I'll fully admit that like, where we are right now with Vet Journey is not where I wanna be, you know, eventually, okay? Like we're still in building mode on this thing. But even like our early users are hopping on this thing. Like, I'm getting responses from them saying, like, man, this is incredible. This is already good. Like, this is better than anything else that I've interacted with. And I think it's more a testament to just like, how poorly served like this, you know, this market is that like, what I am not even like, totally happy with yet is still better than like a lot of stuff that's already out there. And this is, you know, 1% of eventually, where I want this thing to be.

Brock Briggs  1:19:14  

Low threshold to be, that's a good place to be in. 

Mark Delaney 

Yeah

Brock Briggs 

One of the things that I have enjoyed, I got on your stakeholders email list and you're being very public about where you guys are at in the process and actively pulling the kind of community together to form around this thing or “building in public” whatever you wanna call it. Will you talk a little bit about what you see the business model of this looking like? Is this gonna be a venture idea that you're going to raise money for? Are you going to totally self fund it? Talk about maybe how you plan to make money where that kind of falls into place with this? 

Mark Delaney  1:19:58  

Yeah, sure. So we’re foreclosure right now, like we are a for profit company. Okay. So right now we're actually at an interesting place where there's potentially two different paths we could go down. Okay? The first would be, we go, we remain like a totally private company. Either way, we'd still be a private company, but we will become a software for the private sector, okay? There's also the potential this could potentially be adopted by the Department of Defense to use for the transition program, okay? So then essentially, we would be like a contractor for the US government to provide software for the Transition Assistance Program, okay? There's still like that potential lingering out in the air. I don't want to put too much stake in that quite yet. 

But you know, we're early enough where those two options are still possible for us. Okay. So, with the latter option, you know, we would become a contractor for the United States government,and basically being a software provider for this, you know, the military transition process, alright? If we get that option doesn't present itself as a, you know, viable possibility, then we go down the demonetisation route. So essentially, what this then becomes is a talent pipeline for companies that wanna onboard veteran talent, alright? And there's a couple of different sectors as this can go into. One, there's definitely possibility of, let's say, I'm a company and I know about the SkillBridge program, for example. I can find service members who are six months out. I can bring them into my company. They can work for me for free and I get a chance to kind of like, the way I describe it is test drive before you buy, kind of going back to this idea of risk. 

What I love at the SkillBridge Program is like for a company that's trying to hire veterans, it's a great way to de risk higher because I can bring them on. And you know, the military, still paying them benefits and everything. I get a chance to train and onboard them into my company. And if that was a regular employee, then I'm doing that while and like, they're probably not providing me value for those first couple months. Nonetheless, like I'm paying like their salary and benefits and everything and insurance and all that stuff. Whereas with SkillBridge, you can take a lot of that away. So companies can see this and say, okay, great. If people are logging on to this thing, you know, 12 plus months out is a fantastic way for us to find these SkillBridge folks, right? There's also definitely the possibility. 

And we've got some great feedback from defense contractors and in particular, for like, very technical or like highly clear, skilled talent. Let's say like, if you're a software developer with a TS SCI, oh man, like everyone in their mother has been drilling over trying to hire you, right? And like, you're gonna be very competitive on the market. And so like the big defense contractors, like they're willing to pay access to find you further upstream and not waiting to those last couple of months. But if they can identify you 12 months out, that's fantastic for them. And the other part about the contracting world is, so if I'm a government contractor, for example and I'm trying to put a proposal together for a government project and I know I'm going to need to fill it with people. 

And you know, maybe I know that the veteran population is a great place for me to go for these people, it’s gonna provide you a forecasting tool where I can see how many people are leaving the military? What are their skill sets? What are their backgrounds? Oh, great, I can then try to like hire these people, put them in my company and then fill this contract. And that kind of changes the game for them from a forecasting and analytics perspective. So there's a couple of the different ways and then there's some fun stuff we can do with like referral programs, for example. So let's say just earlier today, I was talking with a guy who is a franchise broker, alright? And so he makes his money when he finds you, you sign up for a franchise and then a franchise pays him for the brokerage, alright? Veterans are a great fit for franchise opportunities. Franchises love, love veterans because we're used to, you know, working within, you know, you talked about earlier, being in the Navy, like the checklist and the standard operating procedures and everything, like veterans are very good at operating inside those. 

But also like, you know, to be an effective franchisee you've still got to have some entrepreneurial mindset, the ability to kind of figure shit out to walk in from day one and be able to lead folks into all these factors coalesced to making veterans great fit for franchises. So for example, Sunday, we could do a venture and you start trying to identify people 12 months out. They say, yeah, I think I might wanna, you know, run a franchise when I get out of the military. Okay, we can start giving them information or educating them about what franchise opportunities look like. And then when they exit, we connect them with a broker, they make a deal happen. And so like we will collect referral fee or something like that. That's kind of how it works.

Brock Briggs  1:25:01  

I'm gonna need to be sure to put a link to your Twitter thread about why SkillBridge is such a powerful program in the show notes. You did a really great thread on that. I have talked about it on the show before about why SkillBridge is powerful for people in the service, but it's also a very powerful tool for employers who are looking to kind of hire, you know, very qualified, highly skilled talent. So, I will be sure to put a link to that in the show notes.

Mark Delaney  1:25:33  

I'll say some, a couple quick notes on SkillBridge. So one, from a company's perspective, there are some downsides to it, okay? One is the location piece, you know, for example, like I was working in Fort Bragg. And you know, I did my SkillBridge in Durham, North Carolina. What I ended up doing was, I rented like a very small room somewhere during the week and I commuted to Durham. Like I would drive up there Monday morning, go work Monday through Friday and then drive back Friday night back to my place in Fort Bragg, okay? And like, I pay for that out of pocket. And like that kind of sucks. So that location matchup can be a challenge. There's also in the day, like you've got your commander to sign off on this program. 

So you can have a great candidate who's a great fit for a role somewhere, but their boss is maybe just an asshole. And he's like, nah, dude, I'm gonna sign off on this and doesn't let them out. That sucks, too. Okay? But on the other hand, you know, if you can kind of, you know, get past some of that stuff you can like match the location or if it's a remote opportunity and then you can get the commander's buy off it. It's a fantastic opportunity for companies to find people. You know, I think in particular and talking to a number of organizations, sometimes they're looking for people who are. They're like generalists to like Jack of all trades, kind of like, we don't have a very, very specific skill set for you. But like, we need this person in like this part of our company who can just like do, they're just like our get shit done person, right? And like, veterans are great fit for that, okay?

So I mean, when I was working at Modulate from a SkillBridge internship, this angel investor come in. And there's actually there's me and another SkillBridge intern in there. Funny enough, he was also named Mark, who was also in civil affairs. How we both ended up there is weird enough, but we just found out that we had two veterans in the company. He was like, I tell every company I work with, at every startup that I like, invest in to go find veterans because they get shit done. And a lot of times, we're like SkillBridge, like someone's just looking for like a get shit done person. And that's a great fit for that.

Brock Briggs  1:27:44  

It's been so cool to hear at the beginning, we're talking about origin stories and you're talking about this kind of like entrepreneurial bug and it's so cool to like, hear you living that out right now. What do you think has been the biggest challenge that you have faced and have like overcome already or are like currently battling right now with building Vet Journey?

Mark Delaney  1:28:11  

I think the toughest thing is just it's the unknown. It's the we don't know exactly what the future looks like, you know. We don't, things that we thought might be an avenue for us to, you know, make a business out of this. We then have had other opportunities come to us that are also potential, you know, ways we can turn this into like a revenue driving business. Yet, the biggest challenge is the unknown. You just don't know what the future looks like. And that's hard from a building perspective. And it's also hard from just a personal perspective of like, what is my personal future going to look like? And like, how much longer like, what is my personal cut off, where I say, you know what, Mark? You gave it a good shot, but you failed and go try something else, right? 

That's the biggest challenge is just that sense of the unknown. But I think that's why I'm of the opinion that vets make great entrepreneurs because we're very comfortable with the unknown. I was kind of thinking about this lately, the basic idea of what so many of us go do as part of our job on the you know, the service end of defending the country, okay? Is just like venture out into the unknown and just look for shit to happen, right? If you're on a sub and you're going out to the South China, I don't even know if we have subs in the South China Sea. Sure, we probably do. Like going out to the South China Sea, like you don't know what's gonna happen. You don't know what's gonna happen. 

Like, there may be a Chinese carrier that pings a radar and hits you or something or you get a flash message that says like, prep the tubes nuclear launch gonna happen. Like you don't fucking know what's gonna happen. And like, you know, going on a patrol in Afghanistan, like you're walking out the door and you're like, I'm just gonna go walk into this valley of death because I need some shit happen. And just make it happen. And like that is like the ultimate unknown to encounter as a human being is like the unknown of violence and death. And if you can deal with like that idea, you’re from your military service, whether it be flying a plane or driving on a carrier or running a patrol somewhere. Dude, the fucking unknown of the business like, it's nothing dude.

Brock Briggs  1:30:59  

I agree with your earlier statement about that's making great entrepreneurs. And I think that there are a ton of parallels between the uncertainty of that and the desire to do something meaningful. And a lot of people set out to start their own business because they want change. They want to serve their higher calling, you know, serve their purpose, whatever that may be.

Mark Delaney  1:31:25  

You know, I was so it was a couple of weeks ago at an AUSA conference, so to The Association of the United States Army, it's like this big, like a lobbying like defense industry organization. Okay. So like, 30,000 people come to this thing, like all the major defense contractors or they're trying to sell stuff into the army, but then there's also like, you know, panels with generals talking about policy and everything. It is this mega event for the army, okay? And I happen to run into my old battalion Sergeant Major. And he had been my battalion CSM in Iraq, like 2015. I've seen this guy and like, since then, okay? So that was like, O-5 level command. 

And he's now Command Sergeant Major at a three star level command. Alright. And we like just happened to bump into each other. He was like, oh, shit it’s Lieutenant Delaney. And I was like, oh, shit, it’s. And we started talking about everything. And he was like, you know, he was like asked me about like, what about what I did after the military and everything. And there's a guy who's been in for like, 37 years, right? Like, Awards for Valor, Purple Hearts, all this stuff, right? And I remember him saying to me, he's like, have you enjoyed it? Like do you miss the army? And like, I don't. The army was great. It was awesome. 

But I like found a way to serve afterwards. And he's like, I tell people that all time. You know, it's a great way to serve in uniform. But there's absolutely a way to serve after the uniform. You know, the US military does not have a monopoly on service to the nation. Okay? We kind of do it in the most apparent visual way. And unlike the far in the spectrum of like, being ready to make the ultimate sacrifice and everything like the most, the highest level way, I would say, but that's definitely not the only way to serve your country. And so like, there's absolutely ways to find a way to do it post military life.

Brock Briggs  1:33:29  

What do you think that we can learn from your life and experience that we can implement today?

Mark Delaney  1:33:37  

Oh, that's a heavy question, man. The biggest thing I would want, you know, this audience to think about is two things: risk and fear. So the first, the aspect of risk and like taking a view of your life of, okay, there's like this dream that I want to go after, there's this thing that I want to do. There's this thing that I want to accomplish. What are the steps I can take to go after that? What are the risks that are there to make me do that? And how can I mitigate them? So for me, it was like I wanted to start a company and change the military transition. The downside risks were that I fell on my face and the business failed and it was never there, okay? I can mitigate that by the fact that, you know, one that creates a great story for me that I can then probably leverage into something else. Yeah, he's got a great business degree that can use for something else, like okay, that downside risk for me personally is mitigated. 

So let's go forth and conquer and drink or after it. And I think like when we want to kind of wrap that into this idea of like, what would you do if you like weren't afraid of failing? Like, what would you do if you weren't afraid of like trying to get after it. Like just go do it. Like we all just like want to get in our ways so many times. I want to be very, very clear with everyone listening like I get in my own way every fucking day. Alright? I absolutely like you're sitting here listening, like oh Mark’s got it all figured out. I absolutely do not, alright? I get in my own way, every day. I probably have done it on this podcast at some point. But I try and just like get over the fear of myself doing that and figure it out and think like, what can I do? What's my way I can just swing for the fences and just try and make something happen. And like, whatever it is for you like to think bigger and then think bigger again and then go do that. 

Brock Briggs  1:35:44  

It's funny, starting down the path of starting to kind of think bigger, like you said. A little ways down that it's very easy to realize that you didn't think big enough. And 

Mark Delaney

Yes

Brock Briggs 

Step, you get further and further and realize that you're like, oh, man, I should have been thinking way bigger. And I would imagine comes a point. I know that I'm certainly not there. But there probably is a point where you realize that there's maybe nothing that's too big. And I hope that you, me and the rest of any service members can get to that point as well.

Mark Delaney  1:36:22  

I'll tell you like a brief story that happened to me personally today, okay? So I got a phone call today from the office of a congressman, okay? FYI, that's not like a normal Friday for me, okay? I'm not like getting called by Congress people under normal basis or ever for that matter, okay? Why did I get called by Congressman? Because like three weeks ago, I went on to the like my congressional representatives website and I submitted a query saying that I wanted to talk to them about Vet Journey in changing the veteran transition. 

And guess what? Like, they bought off on it. And they reached out to me and said, hey, let's set up a meeting. I wanna talk with you. And that was just because I was like, fuck it. Let's dream big. And let's swing for the fences. And like, the worst thing that's gonna happen here is that they just don't answer this message that I inputted into this like generic form of their website. It's literally it. But then I did it. And now they reached out to me and like, I'm gonna be able to present this idea to someone and I don't think he's gonna come from it. But fuck it. I'm happy I tried.

Brock Briggs  1:37:28  

Coming back to that idea of like, removing your downside risk and start swinging.

Mark Delaney  1:37:32  

Yeah, absolutely.

Brock Briggs  1:37:36  

I have one final question for you. And this will be a much lighter question I promise. You said earlier being an English major, you're an avid reader and writer. What are you reading right now? And what is the best thing that you've read?

Mark Delaney  1:37:50  

Oh, great question. Okay. Give me one second. Actually, I have my bookstand literally right behind me. So I'm gonna grab them real quick for those of you on video, okay? 

Brock Briggs 

Okay

Mark Delaney 

Okay. So I'm usually reading two books at the same time. So I'm usually reading a nonfiction book and a fiction book. I see lots of people out there and like the personal development world and everything who say like, oh, I never read fiction. Like that's not Alpha enough. And like, I'm not gonna learn from that and everything. And I think that's complete and total bullshit. I've learned some amazing things about life and being a person from fiction.

Brock Briggs  1:38:26  

You're not just reading stoicism, like 24 hours a day so that you basically aren't shit.

Mark Delaney  1:38:32  

I wake up at 5am every day. I run 10 miles, I drink a gallon of water before 6am. And then journal for three hours and then visualize my goal for the next day before then go work 12 hour day, you don't do this?

Brock Briggs  

This is how you win. 

Mark Delaney

This is how you win. Okay, anyway, sorry. So for my nonfiction book and I'm holding it up for those of you who are watching my video. So I'm not a huge Tom Clancy fan. And I don't usually read books like this, but I've been reading The Sum of All Fears, which is a super fun movie. And it's actually been a really good book. There's been some Tom Clancy books that I've basically just wanted to like beat my head against. They've been so terrible, but I really am liking this one, okay?

And then for my nonfiction book, I'm reading The Dark Side of Camelot, which is basically about the like, the other less presentable side of JFK that most of us kind of don't know about or have heard like, very, you know, small rumors about like his family kind of, you know, getting their start bootlegging how he was like a total womanizer and everything. It's about the side of JFK you didn't know about, okay. And then a book I have just got that I haven't read yet. It's called Taming Your Gremlin. And it's just about basically removing barriers, getting past fear and getting over yourself a little bit. So I haven't started that one yet, but I'm excited to read it. And it's pretty short too. And it's even got pictures. So for those you Marines listening, you can enjoy it.

Brock Briggs  1:40:11  

I have not heard any of those books, so I'll need to put those on the list. Mark, this has been a super, super fun conversation. I appreciate you joining me today. Where can people go to find you, connect with you, listen to your podcasts, just plug it all.

Mark Delaney  1:40:28  

Sure. Originally the whole thing, alright? So I'm most active on Instagram. Okay, so that's @theveteranprofessional. It's definitely where I am really most active. You find my blog at, excuse me, theveteranpro.com. The podcast is the Veteran (Semi) Professional. And I'll do a quick little explanation of why I put the semi in there. So I created the veteran professional website first and then I started the podcast. I wanted to kind of open up the conversation to not just talk about like professional careers and inner quotes there. 

But I also wanted to explore topics like mental health, using psychedelics for PTSD and depression. I wanted to like open up and talk about more can like the soft stuff and not just like, how do I be a hard charger alpha type performer. Alright? You can follow me personally on @markbdelaney on Twitter. If you wanna reach out to me, Mark at theveteranpro.com And you can look me up on LinkedIn and we can chat there if you want.

Brock Briggs  1:41:32  

Awesome! Mark, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

Mark Delaney  1:41:35  

Yeah, for sure, man. This is a ton of fun. I had a blast.