'From the Battlefield to the Boardroom' with Robert Campbell

And one of those important topics is, I know that you do a lot of work with higher, like, you know, around the topic of hiring and employing veterans and retaining them.

And I know you talk about that a lot in your Battlefield to Boardroom book series, which there's three now, right? There is, yes.

So can you give us an overview of how you help companies become veteran-friendly? How did you get into that aspect of it?

Right, right.

Well, I wrote my first book on leadership, and I kind of stumbled into book writing, like many people do, and wrote that one.

I'm like, okay, when that's done, well, I've got that down now.

I know how to do it.

and at the same time i was kind of admiring a problem and that is the space of veteran hiring and what was happening with with service members as they transition into something very profound in their life into something very different i felt like i was plucked off the planet in 1990 and then placed back on in 2016 when i got out and i went through a few interviews and you know tipped my toe on a few places that maybe i could work here and do this and i discovered a problem um a problem with how veterans you know approach employment and what they choose to do when they transition and then also a problem of society really not understanding us and i'm not one to stand by and admire a problem so i kind of went to work on it and said okay what's what's going on here i stumbled across the term veteran ready someone else I don't know if I have original ideas but I stumbled across that term like oh yeah that made complete sense because we use ready or readiness in the military to describe a spirit of fight tonight anywhere in the world right now we're ready to do that well how does an employer be ready to hire a veteran right now right or their spouse into their organization but moreover retain them once they're there because there's a lot of failure points around that So it really started with admiring a problem.

Then I wrote my second book on military transition, which just kind of described the transition, the journey I took and just offer some perspectives that are for others to step into that space.

And so that's kind of how I wound up there and developed this program of how a veteran could be or an organization could be not just veteran friendly, but veteran ready.

And that's the really that's the goal they're trying to achieve.

Yeah, you've alluded to this, and we've talked about this subject before with other veteran support folks, including Phil Taub with Swim With a Mission, which is a an organization here that helps veterans.

Talk a little bit about the difficulty that veterans have going back into jobs.

I mean, I know some of it is wanting to have a mission, you know, and that sense of purpose that's different when you come back.

Yeah, you nailed it, Mike.

And that is, well, think of this.

I ask audiences this often when I'm speaking about Veteran Ready in my keynote.

Who do you know in your professional life who would take a bullet for you? And I suspect the answer is nobody.

I mean, really, it may be one or two, a loved one, certainly.

But in the military, you're surrounded by people like that.

It's intoxicating.

I mean, you're part of this band of brothers and sisters serving a cause greater than yourself.

It has a profound effect on service members.

Typically, they join at an early age when their brains are still developing as young adults.

So it stays with them the rest of their days.