Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
Join us as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, proving that even after the mission changes, the call to serve and thrive never ends.
Security Halt!
#228: Breaking Down Barriers: Veteran Claims, Mental Health, and the Power of AI
Join us as Deny Caballero and Lukas Simianer dive into the critical challenges veterans face navigating the VA claims process. From mental health struggles to the complex transition from military to civilian life, this episode uncovers the inspiring story of Lukas, a former 82nd ABN Paratrooper turned tech entrepreneur, who founded VetClaims.AI and Clusiv. Discover how his mission to streamline the VA claims process through innovative AI solutions could change the lives of thousands. Don’t miss this powerful conversation on overcoming systemic hurdles, the resilience of veterans, and the future of data-driven solutions.
Follow, share, like, and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts to support veteran mental health awareness!
Chapters
00:00 The Importance of Storytelling in the Military Community
03:09 Navigating Identity and Purpose After Service
06:06 The Role of Vulnerability in Leadership
09:05 Understanding the Churn in Society
11:59 The Power of Connection and Common Humanity
19:12 The Journey of Transformation
24:14 Creativity and the Warrior Spirit
30:04 Overcoming Resistance and Fear
34:01 Community and Mentorship in Transition
36:18 Leading at Home and Future Challenges
Instagram: @securityhalt
Tik Tok: @security.halt.pod
LinkedIn: Deny Caballero
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Connect with Lukas today!
LinkedIn: Lukas Simianer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lsimianer/
Instagram:@luke_in_austin
https://www.instagram.com/luke_in_austin/
Instagram: @vetclaims.ai
https://www.instagram.com/vetclaims.ai/
Produced by Security Halt Media
security hot podcast. Let's go. You're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best with guns, with knives, with his bare hands, a man who's been trained to ignore, ignore weather to live off. The land job was disposed of enemy personnel to kill period with my attrition lucas seminar welcome security out podcast.
Speaker 1:See they work, they work, they work. That time you got it, love it. How's it going? Man, it is going awesome. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely dude. It's um. One of the hardest things we will all go through as we transition is doing your fucking claims.
Speaker 1:It is one of the most painful things, and I didn't understand it until I went through my process as to why guys had so much anxiety about it. And it almost cripples a lot of veterans when they're going through their process to the point where they put it off for years literally years before they connect with the VSO, sit down and go through it. And when I found you on social media and I saw that you had developed an AI to help this process, I was like holy fucking shit. And then when I saw that you were a paratrooper, I was like holy fucking shit. I got to talk to this guy. Uh, the TBI didn't rattle his brains enough that he was able to go after a big thing. So uh, lucas, thank you for being here today and uh, let's dive in man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, once again, thanks for having me. Uh, I've been a fan. The memes and the shit posting you know in the veteran community are unmatched. I think veterans are some of the funniest individuals and it's a joy working with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man.
Speaker 2:You know, it's also hard to relate when you're in the civilian world and you're like, you know, what they would call locker room talk is just like I haven't had my fucking coffee yet.
Speaker 1:So we're a special breed and our comedy is very different, and it's one of the things that I realized when I first started doing this thing is, the big thing is the podcast, the mental health advocacy, the putting out resources. But, just like anybody else, when you're going through it, sometimes you need to laugh first before you can start tackling the serious things. Because I realized that's what we were doing in a team room. All of us were struggling with something and the vulnerability didn't occur until three or four hours of solid bantering back and forth, to then you're like, hey, man, is anybody else dealing with this type of stuff? And then then you get the authentic, real conversations going. So yeah, it's. I like to say that the memes bring you in and then you stay for the hard hitting information and resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that is a you know it's a pretty genius lead capture model. Like you know, security you're not, you're not really selling anything. You're providing information, helping the community. But I think that that's also a model that myself and, like you know, I try to create some memes and now we're like shifting into a value as social media strategy. It's really interesting because this is my first b2c company, right?
Speaker 1:I'm selling to a consumer and I.
Speaker 2:It's a whole different world. I sold to the government prior to this and at my last startup, and that was a lot easier. You know, it's like each sale is a war. It's a campaign and piece by piece, you're knocking over these things and with individuals, it's how do I reach an audience? So I think what you've stumbled into and strategically created is pretty, pretty masterful man no, thank you, brother.
Speaker 1:It's definitely, um, something that I, uh, I banged my head against the wall because, uh, you don't really sell this face. It's. Uh, I can do a lot with the voice, but you can't sell this. But, dude, I, I, uh, let's take it back to the very beginnings of lucas, like what? What led you to join the military?
Speaker 2:Well, my grandpa did a career. My grandma was in the Women's Army Corps and she was a badass. I mean, my grandpa was too. He was all over the place. He was in the Navy at 17 in Panama and then he was a recruiter during NAM. He was in Korea. He was all over the place. They got married in Heidelberg, germany.
Speaker 2:And then my grandma, she was in the Women's Army Corps and I don't know her actual, like mos, if you will, um, someone in the hr world and s1 type stuff. But her job was in camp zama, japan, and her job was to be like, well, everybody else ran. If war broke out again or if there was an attack, her job was to stay and destroy all the files. So she had a cosmic security clearance and worked under I forget which general for the life of me, but one, that one that was pretty famous, and she was in that movie never waving a whack. So anyways, grandma story, blah, blah. My family had that military history. You know, I was a kid, I was like in fifth grade when 9-11 happened and I watched, watched. I remember watching the Bill O'Reilly show.
Speaker 1:Like every kid does, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what my parents watch, and so you know. The night vision cameras were like we're going to bomb the shit out of Iraq when Nobody knows. And then it happened. I was like whoa holy shit. And of course the news by no means captured what the invasion was actually like, but even the glimpses. I was like that's what I'm going to do one day. I'm going to fight for my country you know and uh.
Speaker 2:So the patriotism and adventure is what got me to join, and I joined. Mom had to sign the permission slip and emancipate me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was, that was why I went in hell yeah, that's a, that's a familiar call to action for so many of us in that that time period. Um, looking back at the same, I mean you see the first first plane hit while you're home getting ready for school and you're not quite sure what the fuck's going on. You get to school and you see the second one. It's like what the fuck's going on. Then you know that that was just like a moment in time, like core memory access point, like it's like okay, like that's. I don't know where I'm going, but it's, it's going to be a branch I'm going to serve and that, you know, ultimately gets you to re-enlist and going because, damn it, we're at war.
Speaker 2:Yeah, by the time I joined in 2010, and so I was in. I joined during, I guess, what would be one of the final surges, if you will, that I deployed in. I guess you'd call it OEF 12 to 13, tarsi, south Afghanistan, and at that point it was the beginning of the mission. When we got there, it was powerful. We're going to take this back. There was land that had been given up, essentially because units had been rendered combat ineffective and taken a lot of casualties, and we're like, we're going in to fix it. 80 seconds here. We're going to make this happen, as the 80-second motto kind of goes. But at the end of that deployment, halfway through, obama switched it to a peacekeeping mission. So the ROE changed. Our tier one cats couldn't do night raids anymore, at least not supposedly.
Speaker 2:Allegedly At least the SEALs had to stop writing books about them for a few months. Regiment was still doing their shit for sure, but point being, uh, you know, and then we gave back land, uh, that we had lost dudes taking, and that's when it all went down for me I was like nope, this is some vietnam shit. This is a political conflict, and the farmers that were fighting and killing are no longer people that I wish to be engaged with yeah, dude, that's like that's a moment.
Speaker 1:It's funny because you know how old were you at the time period.
Speaker 1:I was 18, over there wounded when I was 19 damn, and you had that ability to reflect on that, and that's something that all of us at some point a vast majority of us happen to have. That you know, after your third, fourth deployment you finally realize like holy fucking shit, like being taliban is just like waking up and deciding you want to put on the blue shirt this morning. Like it's like one moment you're part of the afghan commandos and then, if you move back home, uh, you're gonna align with your uncle who's a taliban leader. So it's that awakening moment. It's like fuck dude, like what are we doing here?
Speaker 2:like yeah, yeah, I'm from nebraska and for me I was like the ne, like the Nebraska Taliban would be pretty damn terrifying if a bunch of whoever showed up in their MRAPs and said, hey, sorry, we killed half your cows, here's $25,000. Like nah, bro, like no, that shit ain't going to fly, not, homie. Like you're going to see a bunch of corn fed motherfuckers, dude, you ever seen a combine with 240s?
Speaker 1:mounted on it. You would, you just?
Speaker 2:painted an amazing picture in my head, dude and a bunch of dudes that look like me driving them like you don't want that, you don't want that smoke, you know. So I, you know. I put that together laying in my my hut one night and I was like fuck, I gotta get home, yeah yeah, dude, that's great that that.
Speaker 1:That is a a pivotal moment that many war fighters don't have till years later. It's like, dude, the uh. The reality is it was 20 years of hard-fought war and when you reflect on it you have to be able to, and there's. That's why the moral injury is such a huge thing right now. People are asking themselves what was it for? And the reality of it was like okay, like I'm doing it to keep the dude to my left, to my right, right or right, keep them safe, keep them. And maybe there's the ability to reflect back and say, okay, maybe we kept some civilians a little bit safer, but at the end of the day, when you dig deeper, you realize that the Taliban are going to continue to fucking Taliban bro over and over for years and years, unless you and things, unless people get really cool with a lot of violent shit real fast.
Speaker 2:Well, I also think it's an imperial mechanism of thought too. Not all cultures want to be governed the same way. Yes, in America, I value you, danny. You and I haven't really talked before, but I value you because you're a creator, you're a warrior, you're an individual with a unique set of talents to do the same Other cultures. It's not about that individualism. And religiously, culturally, they don't want a democracy. It's like when we depose Gaddafi. I don't want to get into that realm.
Speaker 1:Oh, bro, you know what I'm saying we can go round, for rounds like this is yeah like.
Speaker 1:This is the beauty of people, people always undersell our, our veterans and they say, oh, they're just stupid idiots and like dude we've been in this conversation for 10 minutes and we're barely touching the surface and like dude. Some of the smartest motherfuckers I've ever worked with were an 82nd E-4s that had gone to Brown or had an education. They're like fuck it, I don't want to miss out on this experience. If I'm going to be a well-rounded individual, I'm going to go do this. And same with SF, same in SF. You got guys that give up no-transcript in the service and and this is a proof of it right here, being able, five and ten minutes in, and we're deep diving these, these moments in in our own lived experience in afghanistan, where we realized like maybe we were sold on something that was completely different than what we're experiencing right now I thought a thousand.
Speaker 2:I think history repeats itself. I wouldn't say a greater good or a greater evil, but there's power In my head. I always refer to Afghanistan as the two-way range. What makes America, if for nothing else, what makes America the most lethal country outside of our nukes? It's the fact that we've got a pissed off E5 with two divorces, a DUI, a 600 credit score, that's soon to be a 420. And he's been deployed five times and he's ready to do some shit when unleashed. And at Fort Bragg, we always saw the Green Berets. We always saw them doing their cool shit, walking around, living life, you know, looking happy, driving a nice Tundra Because, dear God, those Toyota dealerships must have just had a fucking sponsorship with them.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll tell you what you drive a Hilux in combat that is. You'll never forget it. You'll never forget the feeling of a Land Cruiser of a Hilux. I'm still chasing that. Hilux. I'm still chasing it.
Speaker 2:I used to say that I was like these assholes drive a Hilux once, but but. But you know, you see that at brag and then you're like it's funny that people are like the most prestigious combat fighting like infantry unit that there is outside of, like range regiment, but like big global response battalions and battalions of soldiers right at that scale I would say most prestigious. And the truth is that they make life, the command climate, they make life at fort bragg so fucking miserable that when you go to war it's like a damn vacation dude. You're like my room's not getting inspected and I just gotta smoke this guy yo done. Where's that 320?
Speaker 1:you know like call that the yeet cannon oh you know, and the russians see that shit.
Speaker 2:They're like nah, well, yeah we're good.
Speaker 1:It's so true, man, that the greatest moments in life how in the military, uh, if you're a paratrooper, infantry soft is when you deploy because the administrative shit will kill you. It just kills your spirit. It's 100 correct. And that you live for the friday night games, you live for deployment, like that's. And maybe they do it by design, maybe they do it on purpose oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a mechanism, but no, that claims thing. I don't know what direction you want to go, but the transition period after oh yeah, that's a perfect place to segue into that.
Speaker 1:You're a young man. You finally have this moment of great awakening and you realize, hey, there's something better. What was your transition like?
Speaker 2:Oh, it was horrendous it was. I mean, that's a long drawn out story, but I'll keep the short version of it. Like me and the Army didn't get along, especially after deployment. I'd gotten hurt and I gained some weight because I couldn't move my leg right.
Speaker 1:And I was what happened happened. This is what I don't like talking about it just like, just like.
Speaker 2:My personal brand is never like what happened to me. It's like the event occurred. But when I um moved past all that right right, I get back to the States Because I'd gained weight, the 82nd RCSM hated me, whatever he was. Like, well, we're not going to pin you. You're purple heart, you're unsightly, what? Yep, I didn't get my purple heart until the VA sent it to me like a year after I was out, and I didn't really care because we'd lost dudes. The medal didn't really care because we'd lost dudes. Like the metal didn't matter to me, but it was the principle of like, well, you don't look like a pretty paratrooper, okay, cool, that's great.
Speaker 2:Um, and then you know, I, I got out and the army stiffed me on my last paycheck, was essentially homeless, living in my ford mustang with all my duffel bags of stuff in there. Um, find a way to get that thing back to Nebraska, piece by piece, just pawning things off every time. I need gas, essentially. And I get home and I'm angry, super angry, like I'm yelling about the dumbest inconvenience, like my fuse is non-existent, you know, yeah, and we rescued this dog, this little pit bull. I still got him, he's still alive, Because I got out in 2013. He's like 16 or something now, but this pit bull, he was at the Omaha Animal Shelter He'd been seized by. They did a raid on like a fighting ring right, and so he's like a pit bull, basset type mix, squatty little dude with muscles, mean as shit. They got a sign on his thing. He says not adoptable. I'm like man, I relate to that and I start going in his kennel. The volunteer employee lady she's like no, no, you can't go in there. I go in there. Dude bites me on the backhand. Hey bro, if we both don't start acting right, we're probably both going to die. So how about you get shit straight? I'll get mine straight. We just sat there and that was like my first piece of hope and, I think, one of the big things I did want to share, because I've listened to your podcast a good bit and I think I know the demographic and the people that are listening to it. The biggest thing is survivor's guilt. That's what I faced. It wasn't necessarily PTSD, the loud noise, reactivity that went away after a while, but it was survivor's guilt.
Speaker 2:A year later, I found myself in this. I'd moved to a double-wide trailer in the middle of nowhere, because that's all I could afford with the dog. And I tried to figure myself out. And I was at that point, know, the pistol in hand. That moment I was like you either end it now or you live a life worth writing about, so that none of their sacrifices in vain. And like it was that choice, like either end it now and just stop bitching or your whole mentality going forward is live a life worth writing about, regardless of the cost. And that's that moment started this upward trajectory, from making $11 an hour as a cable guy through many different career paths to now fund building multiple venture backed companies. And like finding fulfillment in my next mission. And I hope that piece right there, that that idea helps somebody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bro, that that's you know I.
Speaker 1:I sit down with individuals and talk and discuss journeys and pathways out of those dark corners that we find ourselves in, and that's honestly one of the most powerful things, man.
Speaker 1:That's um, you know, um, when we sit down and we think that our suffering is just solely ours and we just continue to believe that idea that this is only about me, this is only about me, like we're missing the greatest thing ever and that's that connecting it to common humanity, understanding that we're not alone in our suffering, and it has to be of of, of purpose, of value for something greater. Like we just hold on to the suffering, it's's gonna do no one any good, it's gonna kill us. Eventually, we're gonna reject every bit of love that's around us family members, loved ones and we'll just die miserable. But if you turn that into into something powerful, force for good, and let it be your fuel, just like you said, like I'm gonna live to honor my guys, the people that aren't home, the dudes that didn't redeploy, like that's the most powerful thing we can do, man, um, yeah I want them to have something worth watching.
Speaker 2:You know, I think I've put myself in that shoe. If it had been me, what would I want to see my boys doing? It's not bitching and drinking and and living a life of complacency, of like, oh well, I'm here, let me go work the shit ass job and have the shit maker existence. It's no fuck. It's embody the entire rigid kipling poem of if right, bet it on a game of chance, right. And I think that's a superpower the veterans don't realize they have. And once they you worded it beautifully once they think that's a superpower that veterans don't realize they have. And once they you worded it beautifully once they turn that into a fuel, that's when you can start to realize like, oh, what threatens me? I've had nothing. I've seen horror. I've been through worse than anything. Anyone here or any situation is going to put me through right. So what do I have to lose? Let me go.
Speaker 2:And I went on the war path of I'm going to get straight A's in college. And I did. I dedicated my entire existence to getting straight A's in college. I you know there's a litany of things and it's not to sound braggadocious, it's in the sense of like here, here I am. What else you know what I mean? Like, why stop here, it keeps going. I got my nursing degree, worked as a nurse and I was, like you know, I don't like working in fluorescent lights anymore. So I got a military contracting job doing tactical medicine instruction, south america. Paid great money, but well, I might be personally responsible for the average height of the columbian male being two inches taller now, right, and so I had to get the hell out of dodge, right? You know who knew amex didn't do child support and I'm joking, you're fucking honorary seventh group.
Speaker 1:Lucas ominous dominus. Oh my god, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep yeah, yeah, the uh.
Speaker 2:That's an offline conversation, but, um, remember, just throw allegedly allegedly allegedly. If you see some curly hair and half blonde kid benching 500 at the age of 15, my b all right, don't at me, you know, or maybe do if he's going to play soccer or something but, oh my god, I'll come back with the milk. Um the uh, that's bad, that's dark. If I have a pr agent ever, they're just gonna yell at me in retrospect we'll splice this out.
Speaker 2:You can keep it I think you know it's important to be real about shit, um, but the uh, you know I did that and then I was like I'm gonna go be a doctor, I'm gonna be a dnp, get my nurse practitioner thing going. So I move up to michigan with a homie that I went to basic with and it's funny I'm to tell you how much I've just kind of like thrown it all out a time and time again. It's chased what I thought would like bring me to the next level of fulfillment and being me. I was going to this Saginaw Valley state university up in Saginaw, michigan, to get my NP degree right, and Saginaw is heavy. There's Bay City, which is a cute little Polish town, and then there's Saginaw, which is the ghetto of ghettos. If your car is the wrong color, you might not want to drive down that block type of situation. I'm sitting outside a gas station. This cube song comes on. It's like fuck school, I'm gonna be a dope dealer. And I was like, hmm, I really don't want to be in school anymore. And that literally set me on a path. I'd met a girl in california who'd moved to austin texas. I wanted to be in texas and I don't want to go to school. I want to be with this girl. I don't know what the hell I want to do, but I know it ain't this.
Speaker 2:So I dropped out of school and I went to the animal shelter there and it was. It was funny. They thought I was crazy because I walked in and I was like I want to walk dogs, you know, and they're like, okay, how many days a week you're gonna be in. So how many days we open? Like six, they're okay. How, how many hours a day? I was like how many dogs you got? They're like like 30. I was like probably six hours, you know, and they're like what? I was like yeah, like when are you gonna start? I said tomorrow. This guy just like flippantly, like whatever dude, he probably thought I was there to do like some, like court appointed community service or something, yeah. But I had a mentor, um, who had passed just prior to that and he'd always told me when you're stuck or you're lost, help someone else, go, look for someone to help. And the most immediate thing I could think of is I can help these dogs. Yep, and so for about 30 days straight I went and I walked every dog in that shelter and it was really funny.
Speaker 2:I was in the drinking bros austin thing and I was looking for a way to get to austin but I didn't have the money to buy a house. I didn't do anything. I was looking for someone to split rep with because it was expensive here even back then and it was literally on day 29 or day 30, this dude posted on the Drinking Bros Austin group. He's like hey, I'm a Marine vet, I got a house down here in Buda, just south of Austin, and I'm looking for someone to rent a room out to and I'm looking for someone to like rent a room out to, preferably, another vet, and I was like, boom, fuck yeah.
Speaker 2:And then it happened rescued one of the dogs that I've been walking. We loaded up my everything.
Speaker 2:I owned my little f-150, drove 24 hours to austin the next day hell yeah, dude and that in austin I taught myself how to code blah, blah, blah, and that's how I got into this realm. I don't want to ramble, but yeah, that's, that's how that. That's how that. Just like don't, don't. That's a lesson I want to like pass to people. It's like don't be scared, but like what you got in your gut. You've been in combat. Yeah, what you've got your gut is 10 times stronger than what anybody else hasn't got.
Speaker 1:Dude, it's that limbic system we don't know what it is that part of the brain doesn't translate into the words, hence why you get that. It's a gut feeling. It's telling you oh, this is what I should do. We don't listen to it when we transition. I talk to guys all the time and they're just like I just want a contract, just need all the money in the world, I'm just going to do the easiest thing.
Speaker 1:It's like six, seven months later they're fucking miserable, or they're drinking and maybe they're doing drugs and maybe their marriage is falling apart.
Speaker 1:It's like you're making money, yeah, but you're more stressed than when you before you were out of uniform yeah, now you're drinking nonstop, even more than when you were in uniform, yeah, so it's worse. Well, I mean I'm making more money, like, but you're miserable yeah, I am miserable. And then they go through that process of like finally sitting down and listening to what their guts telling them to do and for a lot of guys it's it's being of service again or going back to school or doing something like being an entrepreneur one of the scariest fucking things. It's like I have this little idea that I really like and it's a lot more enjoyable than working at don's fucking cheese stick factory and maybe I won't be able to make money right off the bat. But damn it, if I put all my effort into this, maybe I can make it into something. But guys are too scared to follow that limbic, to follow their gut. Man, what was the thing that told you like I'll start coding? What was the original project behind that?
Speaker 2:so it was primarily location-based. I'd moved to austin this is 2018 and, uh, it was the tech gold rush. You know, genuinely it was like the if I had to imagine what the boom in San Francisco was like. It was comparable in a modern sense of if you could write a line of code, you could make 80K. Really. Yeah, if you had a pulse and you could write code in any capacity, even super junior companies were bringing you in, mentoring you, because this AI stuff wasn't on the horizon where one engineer could act as 10 because they're multiplied by, essentially, this force multiplier of AI, and that wasn't on the horizon at all. And so they thought the only way to secure our future was to get these ambitious junior engineers in, pay them well enough to stay here and be loyal and give them the tutelage and mentorship to grow within the engineering field.
Speaker 2:And so I like shit, all right, so I didn't work. I, I like, did little side jobs. I lived off the little va rating I had at that point and I um, I was still tangling with them at that point and, uh, I taught myself how to code online and then I used what was left of my gi bill to go to this coding boot camp, which was useless, but I was. I was one of two people to get hired out of it and they I felt horrible. They were charging people like 30k right to go to this thing, and I was one of two people hired. And I got hired because I was a vet. And then I pulled in my friend who was a former Marine embassy guard and he was in that camp with me and we were the only two that got anything. So it was do your research before you spend your GI bill on any of that stuff, and feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn if you want me to like help you vet something, cause like you don't want to waste your time and work on that.
Speaker 2:Some of them are really good, though, but anyways, um, the that was what drove me to get into coding, and it's funny, the that first company was an insurance company. They got sued for an accessibility issue, right, and my mom had married this guy who happened to be blind, and so when the company got sued for an accessibility issue and it was a big, like potentially crippling lawsuit for a medium sized company I was like how do I keep the job that I've got from going out of business Right Cause they're paying me good and and I am loyal as part of a team you know, um, I called up my, my stepdad, if you will, and uh, we kind of knew each other and I was like, hey, man, if I get you paid to sit here and where I implement a fix, you tell me if it works, would you do it so I get paid?
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, pitched it to the CEO and the CTO. The next morning they had me on a flight back home the next day. In seven working days, we mitigate this lawsuit just to the power of a rapid feedback loop, and I learned how to write code that made that enabled blind individuals to navigate the website but also form a mental map while doing so. Right, and so it's kind of like writing code that was visually appealing to the sighted user, but also the hidden stuff behind it was layered instruction in a way that it made complete sense to them. Um, and that inspired me to create my first company, which was Clusive. I built the world's first e-learning platform for people who are blind and taught them job skills to get into the modern workforce. Get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no reason blind people can't use digital meeting platforms and email. But the problem is 20 years ago your entry-level job didn't need technology. Nowadays, the most entry-level job needs probably five to six tech tools at minimum between an email suite, a CRM, whatever. But no one thought about blind people. No one thought how do we keep the training for them to onboard this up to date? And so that's what I built. I built a platform that was hyper-accessible. We built content that was for them to onboard this up to date, and so that's what I built. I built a platform that was hyper accessible. We built content that was for them. I built a company where 50% of my employees were blind and then I sold into state vocational rehab agencies around the country and I raised a little over $4 million in venture capital in doing so, and it was an absolute blast and an adventure and insane I love how you speak about this so nonchalantly.
Speaker 1:Just, yeah, you know, just, you know, revolutionized the way that you know, blind people have access to the internet and you know, dude, this is amazing. Man like I do my best you know, you know, denny, I'm just like any other you know young veteran out there changing lives for millions of americans. Except when I wake up I just jump into my pants, holy shit man.
Speaker 2:but and this might be biased to me but the thing that I want to tell people is like like I'm special, hey, sure you know I'm dyslexic, sure? Whatever you are too, like you've got. Maybe it's not building a tech company, maybe it's building a pressure washer company, but as a veteran, you know how to fucking lead. There's two things that led to me being good with inclusive. One was skill and opportunity. I worked on making myself more valuable and that's how I ended up getting more value out of life. That is an inherent thing, no matter what you're doing. But the other part of it is that the leadership skills.
Speaker 2:In the military and just from what you've been through, I had zero turnover In a startup. That's a game changer. In any company that's a game changer. If you can avoid having people turn over because of toxic leadership or because they don't feel taken care of or cared about it. They feel like they're just a number right. If you can avoid that, you can outperform anybody in any vertical anywhere Window washing, power washing, tiling, roofing, I don't care. And I wish more veterans would like dig deep and be like bro, let me go out and execute somebody.
Speaker 1:Dude, we will outwork you. I always say that, yeah, 100%. Look, this is something that's unique to us. And I tell guys, if you're going into an endeavor and it seems scary, it seems like you don't have a team look, I'm right there with you. But you have to look at all the tools and the most important tool you have is you will outwork your competition. When they go to sleep, you're going to be writing down everything you need to do to execute for the next day. You're going to be doing all the editing, all the audio production, everything you need to do for that entire next week's rollout.
Speaker 1:Like don't discount how powerful that is when everybody's like oh, I'll do one episode, fucker, I'll do three. Like I'll sit down. Like I don't give a fuck who I, I will sit down and I will send out millions of emails and I will get in front of people where you'll be satisfied with five. Like that's a thing that every veteran has. Like I don't care if and people shit on our admin guys and I make fun of our s1 too. But, dude, soldiers and soldier, marines and marine like you have that dog in you. You have the tenacity. Like be willing to bet on yourself and then, hey, embrace the hard fucking work, because you've done it before.
Speaker 2:Well, one of my favorite things. I said some real John Wayne shit to a guy who was a competitor and we were in a meeting and he was trying to flex on me because they were ahead of me at this point and they had bigger backing, more resources, a fully built out tech team. And I was just me at that point and he was talking about well, we're going to exit for $30 million and we're going to do this. And I was like you know, it's funny. I leaned in. I was like you know, it's funny, you really look forward to that exit, don't you? And he's like well, yeah, it's going to be huge. I said that's the difference. I like this, I this, I like the fight. You won't win. I was damn damn. Six months later, six months later, six months later, I was mopping the floor with him. I was like oh, that's the thing, dude, you're thinking about the lamborghini. You know what I'll do I'll go rent the lamborghini, text your girlfriend and outperform you. That's how we win.
Speaker 1:You see, that's the thing about me, John. I actually like to fight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the thing, God. Veterans have such a superpower in them, innately, especially. I don't want to ever denigrate veterans who didn't go to combat. You are still a veteran, you served, you signed the check. But I will say too if you've been to combat in any capacity, you know how to win the day right, like you know what it means to be mission-focused, laser vision, no distractions left and right of you. That's it. Like. That is a superpower. And if you can channel that into any sort of business, and even if you don't want to start a business, that risk appetite isn't yours. You got kids whatever, I don't care in your job, right, how do you become an entrepreneur? How do you innovate and make things better and exceed and grow? And I don't know. I don't want to pontificate on that, but it is. I just have so much conviction that veterans are super enabled if they can turn it into fuel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, where did this businessman come out of you? Was it always something that was a part of you that you were naturally able to just tap into, or did it come through those you know trial and error situations? Because sitting here and talking with you, I'm like I've talked to a lot of individuals that are like oh, I created a business from scratch, I created this. But, like man, it just seems like when you were in the barracks, you were the guy that had the barrack store. You had the ability to sell somebody and you were always creating something. Like how did you develop this part of your life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude that is, and that's one of the funniest things they thought. I was clinically retarded in high school like yo homeboy he's a little special, well, well, he doesn't quite get the hit, does he?
Speaker 1:you see, this line, this seminar, this is luke's you know, I was a badass kid.
Speaker 2:I was not in a good way, I was doing dumb shit. I was racking up felonies at the age of like I don't know 12 and like just dumb shit, right? And uh, the teachers kept handing every parent teacher commerce. My mom would come home with three different military school brochures, like that used to be the metric for how shitty I was. I was like I got four this time and you know, and in the army, admittedly I was not a good soldier. You know, some dudes that I served with are gonna listen to this like yeah, he was a turd like yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't like listening. I wanted to know why we're cleaning out a Connex when it's 120 fucking degrees and broad sun instead of hey, let's do those magical flexible hours, because you own us 24 hours a day. Why don't we come back at 1600? You know it's for brag, let's not die.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, we need it now. And then for asking the question, you know, go smoke yourself to death like roger. That cool, glad you're taking care of me, chief. But, um, thanks, I was not. Yeah, I was, I was not. Admittedly, I have no claim to fame in my service. I, I was a dude that that barely scraped through it. But, um, the business thing came. I don't know how to say that like eloquently, but I was dumb and it was through pure brute force, right, I? You know my co-founder from the last company. His name's Tom Jackson. I always give that man a lot of credit. Um, you know, with Clusive, when I was starting it this brute force I was talking to these VCs and I had no idea what a VC wanted or what that deck should look like, and they all would just say, well, you're too early, I'm like that doesn't help me get better or closer, and they're like yeah, that's not really our job.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, well, tom is working for a prominent VC fund. I pitch him and he's just like the way he says, he's like I knew something was different, because this dude comes in looking like an NFL linebacker and he's also like empathetic and talking about helping blind people and he like knows the market, but he doesn't know how to talk about the business. And me and him build a friendship over the course of a year and I had to. When it comes to resilience and to show you how much brute force it really took, I pitched 185 investors before I got my first yes.
Speaker 2:And so, to put that in perspective for somebody who's never talked to an investor before, that's not just me saying, hey, danny, here's my idea, would you like to invest in it. It's me saying, hey, danny, here's my entire life story, here's why I've dedicated the past year of my life to this thing. And then my entire life story here's why I've dedicated the past year of my life to this thing. And then you in return saying, well, that's dumb and you're too early. 100, 185 times, get the fuck out. Yeah, yeah, leave the donut right. Can you put that coffee back?
Speaker 2:like you fuck stop eating my sesame cake and get the fuck out yeah, yeah, seriously, the amount of upper deckers I've taken in austin bc offices is innumerable say, before I go where's your bathroom? Oh, dude, by number 160, I stopped taking the lid off the top. Oh, dude, by number 160, I stopped taking the lid off the top. You know we call that the condo, that's right, I made an iteration of the upper deck.
Speaker 1:Just say yes, we don't want to deal with the cleanup, it's expending lawsuits. But allegedly Learning six pending, six pending lawsuits.
Speaker 2:But, um, allegedly um, learning 185. Right, and it's so funny. The world gifts you. God, whatever you want to call it, gifts you when you prove that you will not quit. David goggins has that that thing. Nobody wants to fight something that keeps coming back. You know I will destroy whatever is in front of me and I'm probably misquoting it, but whatever, and you know, someone's got to carry the boat to meet me. That's all not my cup, not my cup of tea, but, um, you know, the uh 185 happens and uh, all in in a matter. Literally, I can't. It should be a movie in 12 hours.
Speaker 2:Tom's like, hey, man, let's, let's meet up. So we meet up at the, the we work that I was at, and he's like we essentially asked each other out at the same time. He's like I want to build this with you. Know, I was like dude, that's funny. I was gonna's like I want to build this with you and I was like dude, that's funny. I was going to say I want you to come build this with me. Yeah, it was very romantic. We kept our socks on and you know. So, literally, me and him handshake a deal.
Speaker 2:An hour later I get a call from this VC that I'd met in Virginia at a program. He's like we're in for a hundred K. I was like oh shit. And then the next day, literally the next day, I get a call from the managing director of Techstars, which is like the number one accelerator in America. It's more selective than like Harvard, dartmouth and Yale combined, I think is the statistic. It's like 10,000 companies apply for each session. They let 10 in. So 10,000 hyper-driven, highly motivated, tier one cats are coming at this and you get picked as part of the 10 that get to go, and that level of validation opens the floodgates. People like, oh shit, tech stars is in, I want in, and that's what happened. So a year of nothing, a year of your stupid, a year of your wrong, a year of what the fuck are you doing, kid? And in 24 hours I've got $100,000. Well, at that point, $220,000 between the two programs, meetings lined up that would end up with me closing $860,000 within three months. And that is how Clusive started.
Speaker 2:And so be resilient. You're going to feel insane and you're not going to feel normal, and if you feel normal, you're fucking wrong. Stop it. If you feel normal, you ain't trying hard enough. Yeah, like you know and that like I hope that I hope that helps somebody. I've never really framed it like that on a on a podcast before, but for for the vets listening, I hope they realize like it's okay to feel a little crazy, that you're running at. I feel crazy with vet claims right now. You know it's it's. Do veterans really want this? Do they really? Is this really a big enough issue? I see everybody complaining about the VA process but at the same time, oh man, that's a whole nother topic. I don't know if you want to get into it.
Speaker 1:Oh fuck, yeah, hell yeah, let's dive into that. Man, how did you pivot from Clusive into this new endeavor?
Speaker 2:So the ego part of me wants to brush it off, but I'll be very, very authentic here because I think it is a critical point. I had the worst thing happen to me that can happen to a startup founder. I built the team. We had success. We did the unthinkable. We sold into 37 state agencies in a matter of a year's time. Right, we helped thousands and thousands of people get meaningful jobs, changed their life paths, find fulfillment, feel like they're a part of society. We released an impact report showing hey, we're seven times more effective than what the state governments have been doing. We're costing you almost 70% less money, right, and you know? Here's the output.
Speaker 2:The state government, the vocational rehab directors of about 13 different states, then collaborated and said we can't keep buying from Clusive because we were essentially endangering their jobs and we were going to lead to a budget decrease because we were doing what they've been. They would pay to send someone to a nonprofit. That would achieve nothing and the nonprofit would be cheaper on the front, like oh, it's only $350 a month as opposed to like us. We're like $7,000 a seat, but the thing is their term of service, the amount of time they would send a candidate through. That would be like 10 years. So the outcome we were so far so much more effective and efficient, but anyways, our revenue went. I won't state a number, but it went from up there to zero in a month after we released that impact report. We were too effective. We made the government look bad and I had a bunch of venture capitalists come at me. Now that's the worst feeling in the world Everybody's mad at you because their money's about to be gone. And it's terrifying and it sucks and there's no instruction manual and all you want to do about it is care about your team. All you want to do is make sure everybody that has put faith in you is okay, and you're almost powerless. And it sucked. That was one of the hardest in business. That's the hardest thing I've ever dealt with, baby, in my life, outside of the survivor's guilt. And I had to lay off most of my company about two weeks before Christmas, just the way it timed out, fuck. And I had a choice of raising more money and essentially wasting more investor cap because I knew it wasn't going to work, and I was like no, I'm not, like I can't, can't do that, but also my team. You know what's the lesser of two evils here, and I was just radically transparent. I was always radically transparent with my team, but especially then I was like hey guys, I'm sorry, and I will say this.
Speaker 2:What shortly followed was the most prideful moment of my life and I've got a lot of prideful moments. I got an award from the texas business hall of fame and just a lot of cool things have happened, but the thing in my life that I'm most proud of and I don't know that anything will ever top this is those employees. On christmas eve, I got a text, ah, and it was a. It was a gift card to a barbecue joint and I said thank you for creating the best work environment, the best team that we'd ever been a part of. It was not, and I was like dude, I just fucking derailed. People buying houses ah, I derailed money.
Speaker 2:I christmas yeah I felt like the biggest fuck. It wasn't in my control, but no less. I felt like the biggest fuck that could ever exist. And to know that, like those people saw molly through that but but were so grateful for the opportunity to have that experience, for working under me following me, I was like man, that was my exit. I didn't need millions of dollars that was worth more than any dollar amount ever and so, yeah, that took six months of my life after that to just figure myself out.
Speaker 2:And then, after figuring myself out a bit, I worked for the uh, I worked for the spooky boys in dc on contract, helping them identify ai solutions to solve problems, and I got to interview these really cool ai ceos. I was like asperger's, asperger's asperger's cool product, asperger's, asperger's cool product hire as much chinese interns. No, um, you know, like, yeah, like, oh, dude, that was the funniest thing. Like you know, I've got an agency email and I'm working with this ai company based out of california and for reason. Like the person they chose to put me in touch with is like make up a name here like Feng Li, right, and I'm like you know, whatever it's California, probably American, but no less. Let's go to LinkedIn. Let's do a little backtrack Like University of Kingdow, like I'm like fuck no dude.
Speaker 1:Like oh, you want in the program, of course you do asshole. Oh god, hopefully he doesn't get me banned, but they're. Oh hey, bro lucas, how wonderful you give me the access I would love to know what the cia is planning.
Speaker 2:You know like no. That literally happened multiple times and I was just like what? What are you thinking come?
Speaker 1:on man anyways.
Speaker 2:Bet your interns. Huh. A couple people lost some big deals because they didn't vet who they were letting intern at their companies. Um and uh, I did that. But with ai I realized like people are thinking about AI, all wrong, they're thinking about a replacement strategy and me, being a machine gunner in the army, I'm always looking for a force multiplier, because that's what I loved feeling like. I'm like, yeah right, ai is 240. Ai is a Mark 19. It's not replacing that soldier, it's turning one soldier into the fire effect of 10 or 20.
Speaker 2:Right and so, okay, how do I create an AI enabled service that simplifies the most painful thing a veteran deals with after service, and that's finding the next mission and getting the vehicle straight. And so that's what I built and I trained an AI model on every expensive part was every medical journal that's been published in the last 20 years, yeah, and then the entirety of the law 38 UCR that governs the VA, and then former case law of pretty much every time a veteran's taken the VA to court. And so when someone submits a claim through us, it's not or they don't submit it through us. They come to us to use our tool. I should say it's not, or they don't submit it to us. They come to us to use our tool, I should say, and in using our tool they essentially input what's going on with them and then we produce a almost irrefutable backing document that so far has a 100% success rate. I'm sure that won't last. You know, the VA is still going to say yes, no, some things yeah, but in general it's really hard when you put the VA in a position where them disagreeing with you would require them standing up in court and saying this guy we just brought out of med school disagrees with the Harvard Medical Review.
Speaker 2:Yep, oh, okay, best of luck, chief, god bless you know. Yeah, okay, best of luck, chief, god bless you know. Yeah, and um, it's not only that you're a suitable evidence, it's the, it's the service behind it. I went through vso's. Vso's are great. Not all of them are created equal, um, but the fact is, no matter the bso, no matter how good they are, they're one person. Typically they're in a courthouse somewhere or a city building and they are serving thousands of people. And you have to schedule a month out, you have to take time out of your day to go there, and then after you leave, they got 10 more people to see Versus with us. We're trying to be the turbo tax of va claims. You come, get it done. You can do it from the comfort of your own bed. Shit's ready to file in a week and we cover you if there's anything that you need to do wrong. Not, I don't want to be like salesy, no, that's just like, but that's the the product ideation behind how we built this up yeah, that that is amazing product.
Speaker 1:like fuck, having to meet and greet you know potentially two, three different vso's. Do you find somebody that you kind of jive with? Because that's the lived experience for many veterans they meet the first one kind of a dick or out of touch grumpy old dude and it's like I don't want to sit down with this asshole, like fuck. That Like you can do it online with something that's been developed to help you out using case studies and the law and everything. It's like, yeah, like you just said, turbo tax for claims, absolutely sold.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, and it is interesting, though, there's a lot of people who are very adamant, like you should never pay for a thing you know you should, but those same people will happily go on about how broken the system is, and it's the other thing they'll say is you know well, you should never use somebody who's not accredited.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I say, okay, well, the difference is right. Imagine if the fed said no one can get paid for helping you file your federal income taxes, TurboTax, TaxSlayer? None of those companies would exist right, they just wouldn't right. It costs money to build a company. It costs money to build tech and solve problems, and that's where we're at the VFW and the current law in place. The way the VA runs things is you can't be accredited and also be a for-profit company. So essentially what they've done is they've locked in the system to always beat the system, and the only way that that changes is through capitalism, and that's why america exists yep you know, and so it's is interesting.
Speaker 2:We haven't had many haters, um, but to those that do come at us, it's always just like, well, what, what do you propose actually? Oh, you want to get a lobbyist? Okay, I've done interesting. But it's been very rewarding helping veterans, hearing these service stories and also just seeing the relief and like, oh, there is hope that I can just get this knocked out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's a ballpark? Number of veterans have chosen to go through and utilize your services.
Speaker 2:Well, we did 36 test cases before I went public with the company because I wanted to make sure that things worked. So that took for them to get through right A little over six months on average. So knocked all that out and once we had like pretty positive results, right, we hadn't lost any, nothing had gotten kicked back, there wasn't any glaring issues going on. That's when I opened it up and since we've opened it up, in the first month we've done over a hundred with no paid marketing, just me posting on LinkedIn, sharing memes on Instagram and the reviews. The reviews. We've shared a few of them on Instagram and LinkedIn, but they come in so much Like don't have a media person yet. We're looking for one. If you're a veteran that's good at social media editing content, hit me up. We're trying to make this a 100% veteran team.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, Dude that's awesome man. It's been fun. What's next, man? It's pretty fair to say that you've kind of figured this world of being an entrepreneur, so are you looking for a new endeavor or are you just focused on this?
Speaker 2:purely focused on vet claims it. It goes a lot bigger than just being a company. My, my game plan, my master plan, if you will, for this is that we actually can drive systemic change by owning the data. Right now, the VA gets away with a lot of things, the government gets away with a lot of things, because we have a splintered million VSOs across the country and they don't have a CRM, they're not using one sales force. If they're in Baxter County, texas, versus they're in Plano, texas, they don't see stats at all. They see numbers processed but they don't see effects of fire, right? No one's doing a BDA, if you will. And so by becoming the dominant company in this space, which we will be in the next two years, right, two years, right.
Speaker 2:In doing that, what's going to happen is I'm going to be able to go and say hey, congress, 80% of whatever 20,000 veterans filed for tinnitus right, you denied initially 30% of them, right? And of that, 30%, 100% were eventually approved. Of that 30%, 100% were eventually approved. So why don't we do this let's save everybody time and money and say, hey, if you've been to combat or if you're in one of these MOSs, you have tinnitus and if you claim it, you have it and it's assumed right. And by doing that we're saving how much in government spending in these stupid exams, right? We're spending how much in claims backlog timelines by people even having to think about it. Let's make this binary. And tinnitus is just the start. There's so many things where it should be an assumed, like. The VA told this guy he was a 13 Bravo gun bunny. Right On one five, fives. You don't have TBI, brother, have you been near a fire mission?
Speaker 1:Bro, this is one thing that I talk about and I will take a little bit of time to talk about this. The exposure to concussive and repetitive blasts is something that we, as veterans, service members, need to be aware of. It's not about the penetrative blast, it's not about getting hit in the head one time, having a rollover one time. Everything you're doing is cumulative. If you're an infantryman, if you're a mortarman, if you're an artilleryman, you have been exposed to so much blast. It's not just PTSD. Va, as you know, wants to say that it's all PTSD. No, no, we now know that it's TBI. You've been sitting behind on the gun line for how many years doing how many rounds, bro? You've taken some damage to your dome piece. We have to be willing to talk about it and, at the end of the day, have to fight for it, because ptsd, as we all know, you can recover from, you can get over tbi. Yes, you can get better, you can improve, but that's a whole lot fucking different than having ptsd. Yeah, yeah, it's and it's gonna.
Speaker 2:That's something that like just like the nfl is doing with cte and probably 10 times the funding and expertise focused on this. Right, they're still figuring out bit by bit, piece by piece, what it actually does five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road and um, but that that is the game plan with with that claims, is turning this into a force to actually modernize the process. You know, with my last company, I went to the government and I said look, we are the solution. We make this better, use us, use us, please use us, and ultimately, no, this time around I say, okay, how do I hold the cards? Because when I have the cards and I have the data and I go to Congress and I get on the news, you're not going to deny it and you're going to react quickly because whoever's president at that point, right, I don't care if I have to wait till next election cycle and you know it's October and I'm like, hey, look, what you're doing with the VA. That's when we will see things happen in an instant. Things that we've been trying to get done for a decade, for two decades, things the Legion, the BFW, have tried to do for many decades yeah and so that is
Speaker 1:uh, it's my soul focus if anybody's gonna be able to do it, it's definitely. I'm willing to put my money on you, brother, because, like we've like all of us are listening to this episode. Now. One thing we've realized about lucas is he doesn't fucking quit. So if anybody can get shit going, it's gonna be you, my man, lucas. If people want to get a hold of you or they want to um utilize your vet claims, ai, where can we go?
Speaker 2:so if you want to go to, if you want to check out vet claims ai, we do free claim strategy calls. Whether you use us or not, we make sure you're on the right track. We'll. If it's not us, we'll point you in the right resource. But you just go to vetclaimsai. That's our website, um, and there's a calendar literally right on the home page where you can just book a time.
Speaker 2:Uh, if you want to follow me, if you want to reach out to me personally, linkedin is honestly the best approach. I'm pretty vocal on there, also pretty entertaining at times, because people are like he won't talk shit. It it's a professional platform. I'm like, oh no, I'm my own boss, I will, I will, but so hit me up on. Linkedin is probably the most efficient way to get through to me. Yeah, and if it's a veteran entrepreneur thing, definitely hit me up. Check out Warrior Rising as well. They're the number one veteran entrepreneur resource in the space, so I'm also on the board of them. But you know it's a great. I went through them and, yeah, they were pivotal. So I'm rambling hell yeah man.
Speaker 2:Lucas, I can't thank you enough for being here.
Speaker 1:Your story honestly like fucking blew me away, man. I can't wait to have you back on that. Talk more shit about being paratroopers, entrepreneurial endeavors or infinite things that I could go on for hours. But uh, dude, just fucking a man, absolute pleasure dude. Dude, just fucking a man, absolute pleasure dude. Um, to all y'all listening, thank you for tuning in. If you like what we're doing and you enjoying the show, don't forget to share us, like us. Subscribe Bye.
