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!
Veteran Transitions & Mental Health: A Conversation with Waco Hoover
In this powerful and eye-opening episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Waco Hoover to explore the challenges of transitioning from military to civilian life, the impact of military service on global communities, and the role of storytelling in reshaping perceptions of veterans.
The discussion dives deep into the personal sacrifices made by service members, the systemic challenges in veteran care, and the pressing need for more effective support systems. Waco and Deny highlight the importance of community engagement, entrepreneurship, and private sector involvement in addressing these issues.
A major focus of this episode is mental health and suicide prevention within the veteran community. Waco shares his personal experiences and insights on cultural change, advocating for a holistic wellness approach that prioritizes brain health, resilience, and emotional well-being. They explore the need for more open conversations about mental health, vulnerability, and the importance of seeking support.
This episode is a must-listen for veterans, entrepreneurs, mental health advocates, and anyone interested in making a difference in the lives of those who have served.
🎧 Tune in now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube! Don’t forget to follow, like, share, and subscribe to stay updated on veteran transitions, mental health advocacy, and community-driven solutions.
BE A BRO! Support the show!!
buymeacoffee.com/sechaltpodcast
https://buymeacoffee.com/sechaltpodcast
Looking for hand crafted, custom work, military memorabilia or need something laser engraved? Connect with my good friend Eric Gilgenast.
Instagram: haus_gilgenast_woodworks_main
https://www.instagram.com/haus_gilgenast_woodworks_main/
Chapters
00:00 Navigating Sleep and Daily Life Challenges
01:47 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
06:01 The Impact of Military Service on Global Communities
10:10 Reflections on Military Service and Personal Sacrifices
17:02 The Reality of Veteran Support and Systemic Challenges
24:34 Reimagining Solutions for Veteran Support
25:31 Addressing Veteran Suicide: A Call to Action
27:28 The Role of Private Sector in Veteran Care
29:39 Personal Journey: Connecting with the Military Community
32:32 Transforming Mental Health Perceptions
35:30 Cultural Change in Military Mental Health
38:51 Optimizing Mental Health: A Holistic Approach
47:55 Maintaining Mental Health: Personal Strategies
Instagram: @securityhalt
Tik Tok: @security.halt.pod
LinkedIn: Deny Caballero
Follow Waco on LinkedIn and on social media today!
LinkedIn: Waco Hoover
https://www.linkedin.com/in/waco-hoover-3928a014/
Produced by Security Halt Media
Security Odd Podcast. Let's go. The only podcast that's purpose-built from the ground up to support you Not just you, but the wider audience, everybody. Authentic, impactful and insightful conversations that serve a purpose to help you. And the quality has gone up. It's decent. It's hosted by me, Danny Caballero. One more thing you weren't expecting, and complete shutdown.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly right, you know it's funny you say that Like last night, like went to bed early expecting to sleep, great, and just like one of those nights of just like kid making noises, dogs fucking making noise, just like what the fuck can we just get? Like, can everyone just shut the fuck up please? Anyways.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel, you.
Speaker 1:I had all intentions to go to my normal bedtime and I've learned that I can't go to bed earlier than eight and usually if I have a really hard, rough workout, especially around two like, I'm ready to go to bed by six and sometimes I'm like fuck, there ain't nothing going on. I'll go to bed and I'll have a coma. But I was fighting the sleep monster and I get in bed and the moment I hit the bed I'm like I'm not tired anymore.
Speaker 1:It's like fuck yeah, and it's like 11 then midnight there's a sweet spot.
Speaker 2:There's a sweet spot you've got to hit for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fucking bootstrap you piece of shit, Constantly telling me I can't get enough rest. Exactly right.
Speaker 1:Waco man, you are somebody that I've been wanting to talk to, not only because of what you're doing now, but I feel like now more than ever, we need to grab entrepreneurs, people that have gone into the second chapter in their life and done incredible things, to show like sort of like what I like to say the PDSS for life after the military.
Speaker 1:I know when I was going through my pivot, I felt like I was going to be a failure. I wasn't going to be able to find a way to make it in the civilian world and I wanted to cling desperately to like the known path. But every time I went into the unknown, that felt a little better and it felt a little more unique and completely authentic to who I am and I'm thinking. The more we share these stories, the more we're able to highlight individuals that have gone the unconventional way, the more it gives our brothers and sisters confidence to pave a way of, like you know, pushing away from shore, being willing to try something new, because that's what we really need to celebrate and hold up to the spotlight, not the individuals that you know are constantly being negative in our veteran echo chambers filled with it.
Speaker 2:So today is all about you man.
Speaker 1:But before we dive into the success and the pivot.
Speaker 2:Tell me about your service man I, I always, I always joke that you know, my service is probably the the the least glamorous part of my, my career. Uh, and you know, and you gotta like you gotta, lean into that stuff and poke fun at yourself, you know. So, yeah, uh, I uh served in the marine corps. I was infantry marine 0351, and then I was also a combat water survival instructor and I was also an infantry scout. I did boot camp at Parris Island, joined right out of high school, so signed the papers at 17. And then shipped out July after I graduated from high school, and then I went out and I was stationed out of Kaneohe Bay and we do our deployments to okinawa. And then, while we're in okinawa, we're doing, um you know, run-ups to deployments. We would um go to mount fuji, australia. We did a um a couple we were on ship a few different times um just through southeast asia. So we do. You've heard of a ved dent metcap, or you ever heard of?
Speaker 2:that okay, yeah, so we did. We did a number of those, uh, in places like Malaysia, the Philippines, thailand, which you know as a. Well, there was no danger in anything like that. As the Marine, we were just the security element, while, you know, the, the Navy and the CVs and everybody else did kind of like the, the real things, things, the real work there.
Speaker 2:But, like as a young person, you know, being 19, 20 years old, like being exposed to that level of poverty was something that was real.
Speaker 2:You know, you see, you see a lot of that on tv and growing up, um, and you know, I, I grew up, you know, I, I joined in 97 and so that was back when they were doing the like the poverty commercials in Africa, and that's still very much a thing. That's not. But you know, you see that, and you're like, we're so far and all the people who want to poke holes at you know, this big, great, uh, you know, amazing country that we have, we still hit the lottery, the, the, the, where we were born, lottery, or where you're able to immigrate to or where you're able to raise your family, lottery. Regardless of all the, the stuff that's wrong with this place, I think that's just something that, uh, you know, everybody has to just remember. You know, um, as we're, as we're sitting there bitching and and griping about you know what's wrong, you know, and focus a little bit more on the cup being half full and how we can make this, this place, better absolutely.
Speaker 1:And and our, our military is such a force for good that we forget about like we. We do so much wherever we go. We highlight about like we. We do so much wherever we go, we highlight. Look, I'm not saying we get it right all the time, but we travel around the world and we bring fresh water resources, humanitarian aid, schools. I have dude, we, I've met so many and the thing that's unique about being and those, those fleet missions, you guys do like. You guys travel everywhere and yeah, it's not. You're not running and gunning, which is a byproduct of the g-watt that everybody thinks, that wherever you go, you're just fucking kicking indoors, just murdering people, exactly right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not the truth man.
Speaker 1:We're forced for good man. You go to port and you go to these countries and you go there to build schools. We have amazing like take, for example, seabeast. People don't highlight what our Seabeast do. They don't understand the capacity of these individuals. Like they land, they build, and it's like what are they building? Oh, you know, more often than not they're helping build civil infrastructure that's utilized by nations that they don't have the capacity to build this themselves. That we never highlight it unless you're watching, you know, the TV downrange AFN.
Speaker 2:Right and you know, you know what's so funny about that is like to me that storytelling part of that, or highlighting that I mean there's a lot of people that that part of the military would appeal to. Yes, you know we think about. You know how we continue to reshape. You know that the notion of the broken veteran that exists in many aspects of American society, you know that piece of it, the connecting the dots between you know, on our phone we hit buy and that thing that you just bought on Amazon, how that shows up at your door later that day or tomorrow. Everyone forgets that naval sea power is one of the large reasons for over 100 years that our seas, our shipping lanes, have remained free and clear. And can you know there's still, obviously, you know piracy. That's out there, but it is not like it used to be at all. You know back in the day, and again, that storytelling piece. I think we just overlook that when we're trying to encourage young people about what they can be a part of.
Speaker 1:Like you said, it's just not.
Speaker 2:It's not just running, gunning and kicking down doors and trigger pulling. There's so much more to service that you can contribute to this country based on what your job might be or you know what period of time you happen to serve in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it needs to be celebrated. All of it needs to be celebrated. We couldn't do. Everybody focuses on the shiny individual whose mission and stories sometimes become highlighted in a book or in a Hollywood movie. But behind that individual is thousands of careers, thousands of careers that make it possible for that one person to go be highlighted in those action tv shows. And I like to say, like you don't get anywhere without the conventional troops, you don't get anywhere without the real infrastructure of our military, and those stories need to be told, those stories need to be highlighted because, yeah, you're right, not every kid wants to grow up to be stuck in a hide site pissing and shitting yourself. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Like that's not appealing to 90% of our population.
Speaker 2:It's hard to sell. It's hard to sell. You can see why the Marine Corps went with the dragon and the sword. You know yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you really highlighted a real recce mission is just like, just like close up some far away desolate place, mountaintop, two men sitting next to each other at night freezing. One of them, only one of them, brings a whoopee, because you know weight considerations. These two men look at each other, hardened fighters. They snuggle closely, drape one will be next to each other for warmth. Now they're cuddled and holding each other. Then it's like. Then it's like pans out and it's like join the marine corps yes, exactly right.
Speaker 2:Like how do you set up a qr code on the tv for the scratch and sith to be like this is what you that's gonna smell like, and it's, it's literally feces.
Speaker 1:It smells like you know, oh my gosh dude, like what was it like in those? Uh, because you said you joined in 97 97, yeah, yeah so that's like, that's before, like that's really and truly when you're making your bread and butter. On going places for doing good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right yeah, we, uh, I'm all, all of our instructors that you know, uh, at school, school of Infantry, weapons School, all that I mean, they were first goal, four guys you know by and large, and so we were just smack dab in the middle of that and so, yeah, it was a lot of dog and pony show, you know, at the end of the day, but, to your point, you know, being able to be out there and deploy the show of force, community engagement, whatever you want to call it, you know there were still a lot of really good things we did for that.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things when you were talking earlier that that really stood out to me a couple of years ago I was down in Orange County, in Newport, at the American Legion post there and they were doing this celebration of Korean War veterans and World War II veterans and the Korean government had a contingent there and they are giving actually American veterans who served in Korea the special award.
Speaker 2:Wow, because South Korea it's celebrated so widely, south Koreans are so appreciative, who lived around that era of american presence there, because their, their country, their lifestyle, their, you know everything that they, you know they have now would it all be the same, you know, and so it's little real life pockets of that of you know how, you know our men and women who were the uniform have, you know, made the ultimate sacrifice or, you know, um, you know, served our range. Uh, it's just an amazing Testament to like the left behind piece of that and you know it's, uh, you know he could say whatever we want about our presence in Afghanistan, uh, but there's a tremendous amount of people that are far better off or that were far better off, you know, because of our presence there for a very, very long time.
Speaker 1:It's one of the hardest things for a lot of us to move forward is obviously the withdrawal. But now, in the age of social media, you have influencers that are getting paid to promote travel into Afghanistan and it's shocking's shocking and it's like dude, do you not understand that this is very much a regime that's brutal against their women, that's brutal against anybody that doesn't toe the line right? We have young american kids traveling through afghanistan. Say yo, you gotta come here, bro right, what the fuck you know?
Speaker 2:you know that's wild. I remember, uh. So my dad, my dad did two tours in vietnam. He's the 82nd airborne, wow and uh, and I will, he, we always talked about going back to a trip to vietnam yeah and obviously the, the speed at which I feel like people's memories are short these days.
Speaker 2:Or, to your point, oh, let's spin up some tourism now that there's not a large-scale conflict going on, is it's just everything's you, you know, truncated. You know, significantly, we never got to make the trip, you know, before he passed away. But I just you know exactly what you're talking about. He would not have, he would have been losing his mind if it was that soon, you know, after they were there, particularly how, you know, those guys came home and how they were treated. But uh, it's, uh, it's, it's just wild to think about. If someone's like, yeah, let's, let's just sell a whole immersive experience, let's, you know it's, yeah, it's, it's kind of like it's, it's very cringeworthy on many many levels, depending on what you're like, what your exposure to it is.
Speaker 1:Uh, and just generally speaking, yeah, it's definitely like a hard thing to see scrolling across your feet and you've seen a young, 20-something american hand in hand with a taliban handler going through right northern kundus like what? What world am I living in right now?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know it's. So I, I apparently now the uh, the afghan convention, convention and visitors bureau, which you know, we have them all major cities here and yeah, and states like visit florida now let's visit afghanistan, and so they're just transferring jobs, porting those over to, you know, tour guides, you know, yeah, apparently just what a time to be alive too.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, right, yeah, wow. So what made you decide, to you know, leave the military?
Speaker 2:so I, I, uh, I think I I was. So when I, when I joined the marine corps, um, I got into a bunch of like four or five really good colleges and I, just I, I didn't. I didn't feel like it was the right place at the right time for me to go into. It just didn't seem exciting or interesting. And virtually all my other friends that I grew up with they were going on to college and, quite frankly, when I told everybody that I was joining the Marine Corps, there's a giant what, what, what the hell are you doing? Like, why, why are you joining the military? You don't have to join the military.
Speaker 2:You know it was very much that, that aid, that that time, that period you know in american history, that that time frame that you know, if you didn't have to, if it wasn't, you didn't have some obligation or some reason that you're trying to get out of. Something like, at least you know, kind of where I was growing up florida everybody just had they were scratching their head. Even my grandmother, like she's like, uh, what, what are you doing? So, yeah, um, and my family was very supportive. You know my dad, he told me he has son. I support you, whatever you do, just don't join the goddamn Marine Corps. What did I do? I joined the Marine Corps. Uh, you know, classic move and uh, but, but you know it. Admittedly, I was not trying to rebel from him or anything like that. I think, out of all the services, the esprit de corps of the Marine Corps, you know, I just drank the Kool-Aid and I it was, it was, it was exceptional and I wouldn't trade my experience for anything.
Speaker 2:But, but back to your question. So I, I promise I was very close to my grandmother growing up. She's a huge inspiration in my life to go on and be an entrepreneur which we can talk about, you know, a little bit later, but it was I promised her after I did four years in the marine corps I would get out and I would go to college. And then, if I want to go back after I went to college, you know she came from a generation and even, like our parents, very much college, college, college. You know that was once you, once you do college, then you're set, which we know. There's a lot more to it than that, uh, but um, but that that was for me the big reason why I was like, okay, you got to get out, um, and I think one other piece of it I would say as well, and you know, you, you, you think you know this a little bit, but I do a lot of work around suicide prevention, mental health, military families and seeing the family dynamic.
Speaker 2:You know, as a young person and I didn't grow up in a great like a perfect family my parents were divorced a couple of times over, you know, had all the, all, the all the fixings, as they say. You know, spare, spare nothing. You know, and no, but I I had. I I very much enjoyed my childhood, but you know it comes with a lot of those things and anyway. So I just saw a lot of that, you know, and through our deployments and just you know, lots of the stuff that we talk about or took or see, or you know, jody, getting one of your buddies, girls or whatever it might be, and it just, uh, that part of it I was like wow, that's, that's really really challenging to deal with, and so that was another big consideration for me. Uh, but quite frankly, knowing what I know now, all the more reason, you know, to risk, like respect, what our service members go through.
Speaker 2:People have no idea. The average American, they can't, they can't fathom it. Even my wife Now we weren't together when I was in the Marine Corps, but you know she sees it firsthand she's like hell, I don't, I don't like it when you're gone for like five days, seven days, for work. And you know, with our you know, as you know, we've got a little kid at the house, a second one on the way.
Speaker 2:And I, she talks to my friends, she hears stories, she sees stories of, like, people who are on deployment and their kid was born, their daughter son was born, and that is the reality of military service. That's the sacrifice. It's not just being downrange, being deployed, it's all these other things that weigh on you for your family. And so, you know, I have just tremendous respect for, you know, men and women, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, who have lived that and breathe that, and that's been a part of it, because you give up so much in service of this country. And there's just nothing that the, the, the government, that americans can do to really, you know, show appreciation, demonstrate appreciation.
Speaker 2:yeah, not just the thank you for your service, which is is, admittedly, a bit obligatory at this point, but it's how do we actually support our men and women, you know, who wore the uniform, who are wearing the uniform, and military spouses and kids and all that, and there's just and, as you know, there's a number of things that I'm involved in, that we can talk about later, that are very much focused on how do we actually go beyond just saying thank you and how do we actually create programs and do things in our everyday lives and our local communities, wherever you live, that can actually walk the walk and talk, not just, yeah, actually walk the walk actually walk the walk and talk, not just uh, yeah, uh, just actually walk the walk, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's important to understand that we, whenever there's a crisis, whenever we are needed, everybody rallies around us. I mean, you remember, like right after 9-11, like it was the most patriotic time in this country that I've ever experienced and everybody loved their troops, everybody had yet the yellow, the stickers, the flags, and you flash forward to the withdrawal, afghanistan, and even years prior to that, there was the war fatigue. There's this idea of like whatever dude, every day, whatever, it's just a, a constant. I'll thank you in the airport, I'll give you a pat on the back and then, as soon as the war is over, slowly, the mentality is like man, these veterans, they really get a lot of money for their benefits, don't they? And I'm like dude.
Speaker 2:You're talking about the nonsense economist article. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys have such handsome benefits and it's like wait a minute, dog.
Speaker 2:Wait a minute.
Speaker 1:You were doing everything you could to get every 18-year-old young man, young woman, to sign up and sold it as the greatest calling of your life. And I'm not saying that it's not, but I'm saying that you pushed and you pushed and you were begging and pleading for bodies to sign up. And the moment that it's more feasible to have drones, it's more feasible to have tech, now you start thinking about, well, where can we cut, where can we trim this budget? It's like that shouldn't be the first place. A lot that should be the second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth night. It should be at the very, very. There's so many other things to include. Your paycheck, yes.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. There's always plenty, ample resources to send young men and women to war, never enough. Once they come back, exactly and I don't think it's limited to this country, it just seems to be like a tale as old as time, like across every civilization Once you go, do your duty, come back it's like thanks, peace, figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's sad too, because we expect it to come from people that don't serve. But then when you have representatives that are cut from the same cloth, that are part of your warrior tribe and they don't immediately chime up, it's like, hey, man, I need you to say something. That becomes a betrayal. That's exactly right, and we don't have to throw out names. But there are plenty of individuals that have served and have moved on to be representatives, and I'm sorry, but if you're from the warrior tribe and you're now representing us as a member of our government, you should be able to stand up and say something. And I get it. The economist is not the greatest person piece of journalistic propaganda out there, but anytime something comes out there that gets other people to start thinking and start questioning and the more you bring those things into light, the more you scrutinize things like that then it makes it easier for people to say well, you know, I read this piece in the Economist and that name does carry weight to some. It does.
Speaker 2:It plants a seed, yes, and then, and then others start to look at it and start to dig in and really think about it. But there was actually a Wall Street Journal article that came out a few days either before or after that that, quite frankly, it was dramatically different and it was actually talking about the tremendous waste that the government actually does, almost double paying insurers to take care of veterans. So you're paying an insurer in a particular area or state and then they're actually going to the VA, so they're not actually expending any money. It's like whoa, let's just peel this back for a minute. We shouldn't even be like you said. Let's just go put this, put the veterans way down the list, and actually let's look at the root cause of all this fat. That's there because we there's so much to chop on top of this. Anyways, check it out if you get a chance.
Speaker 2:But I was, I was, I circulated that to a bunch of folks who were, you know, just real, real fired. I was like, well, look at this, this is actually what we this is the attention to detail that journalism should be actually looking at If we're going to have a intelligent conversation around veteran benefits, how they can be better, how we can improve them, cause we know it is still very much a flawed process. There's a lot of uh, there's a lot of let's just call it inefficiency in terms of the process. The VA still a big waiting list. We need more resources in and around that, and so I'm all for conversations about how we do it smarter and better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, let's start with the VA. That's my first place, if you give me the power. That's the first place. The amount of redundancy and departments that shouldn't exist within the da a va, it's just, it's atrocious and it's uh, it's gotten so big and everybody always says like the um. The comparison I always hear is like well, we should all have free health care and the, the model for the health care system should be the va. And I'm like wait a second, dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah what is that? What do they call that?
Speaker 1:the dog catching the tire, you know right, chasing the cars up and down, not gonna be happy once you catch that thing it's like the biggest thing is like all right, well, I feel you and I agree, but that shouldn't be the standard, that shouldn't be the model of standard that you look at. Talk to any veteran and they'll tell you. And, of course, again, I've had, I've had success. People have shared success stories of their va. So it varies and there are a lot of individuals, uh, individual providers that I have met there really are great human beings. But it doesn't take away from the system being broken. That doesn't take away from the issues that so many of our veterans have experienced, and that's something that even I weighed on when I was making my pivot. I'm like, fuck, I'm going to have to rely on the VA for my health care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're absolutely right there's. There are so many men and women that I know personally and that just obviously work in the VA, who are incredibly hardworking, brilliant. They deeply care about serving veterans and their families, you know, but at the end of the day, as the system is so large and there's so much that's plugged into it, it's it needs to be fixed at a systemic level. You know, which is which is interesting when you start thinking about, you know, the incoming administration Doge. You know, with Musk and you know Ramaswamy and looking at like how potentially they're gonna think about fixing some of these or cutting some of that fat. You know, I think it sounds like they're very much going to take a hey, let's burn the forest and let you know new grow again. You know kind of thing. You know whether, whether that's good, whether that's bad. You know I'm not gonna be able to unpack that that in an intelligent way on this for the time that we have here today, but it's good to see that we're starting to look at that and think about how we can do it in a thoughtful way and we'll see ultimately where that lands. You know, I go back to, you know, the, the biggest indicator for me of how we are serving our veterans is veteran suicide and even suicide. And yet again, the suicide report just came out last week, at the end of last week, and it went up again year over year. So, despite spending more money than we've ever spent, you know, on this issue, we still continue to get it wrong.
Speaker 2:And, for me, most of the programs I operate in we focus on an upstream solution. So how do we take into account? It's not just point of crisis. Once you've gotten a point of crisis, you've missed all these other opportunities for design intervention to support you, me. You know our brothers and sisters that we serve with, and it's things like not just mental health and physical health, it's things like financial health, career relationship health, spiritual health, community health. There's others that get plugged in there, and so how do we make sure that we've got robust programs across those different wellness factors and we stack those with the right resources to support?
Speaker 2:You know everything that we're going through because it it when, when, when it happens, it happens fast, and if there, we we know that 72% of veterans that take that die by suicide do it with a firearm.
Speaker 2:A firearm is highly irreversible as, as we know, uh, in comparison to other methods of suicide.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I think it's something like 90 plus percent of people that attempt suicide don't do it again, uh, and so, if you can figure out ways to create a tactical pause, um, you know, uh, in and around that I didn't come up with that, a good buddy who served in the Navy did.
Speaker 2:But tactical pause, you know, and turning some of this nomenclature and the way that we perceive, you know, this whole issue of mental health into a strength and not a weakness, I think to me that's, that's a huge, huge opportunity, and you know the VA has tremendous resources and figuring out how we can, you know, work with the leaders in VA, who, some of them, I know, they care about this a lot, they want to make a difference, but they're, like they're, you know, shackled by, you know, government, you know programs and policies and a lot of things.
Speaker 2:You know, just like when we serve in the military, we are in many respects, and so, so that that change, you know is going to, is going to come from above, from from legislators, you know is going to, is going to come from above, from from from legislators, you know, ultimately, you know, hopefully influenced by taxpayers and uh, but there's, you know, there's just so much that we can do in the short term and I think that you know there needs to be so much more partnership in and around the private sector.
Speaker 2:What I mean by that is we, we've been relying on government and philanthropy to solve this problem. Yep, not, not, not going to work. We have all the longevity of data to to, to, to showcase that we need the private sector to come in in a big, big way. And, you know, part of that is, you know, we need the you know average corporate America to know this is an issue. We need to push this out in a way that people are willing to understand that it's a problem. And I think the other part of it that to me is really interesting is we couldn't deploy our forces like we do without the support of the private sector, without the KBRs, you know what I mean, or the Lockheeds, and who are the household names that are supporting veterans and their families.
Speaker 2:The reality is there's very few of them. You know there's some big ones you know around, you know financial services, you know USAA, but aside from that, again, there's not many if you really think about it. And so that's a big goal of mine is to how do we incentivize, how do we get brilliant men and women who want to be founders and who want to solve this problem to start businesses that can solve these problems at scale?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true. We, you know I focus a lot on the peer to peer support the grassroots movement, putting a face that's vulnerable and willing to share story and trying to combat the narrative of its weakness. Like it's not, but it's never going to grow if we don't have the backing from the private sector. We don't have more. You can bring lots more resources to bear when you have that as an ally and that's a reality, but it's going to take more individuals and it's going to take a whole lot of effort. How did you find yourself in this space and to try to combat this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I moved to San Diego in 2013. And so I had lived in New York City for almost eight years, then jumped back to Florida, then was in Denver and then denver made my way out west and just proximity, you know, to, you know the military, you know community there. One of, uh, one of my friends he had started something called irreverent warriors uh, if you're familiar with the reverent warriors, the silkies hikes uh, now, uh, reverent warriors, uh, is a part of grunt style foundation. So I sit on, you know, the board of grunt Style Foundation now with the amazing men and women that are a part of that. And so living in San Diego kind of got me much, much closer, kind of tied back into the military community, just with proximity. That's not to say I hadn't, like when I was in Denver, you know, supported a couple different nonprofits there and but again, like I said, just the density, you know you're like, oh yeah, this is my tribe, these are my people, you know, aside from saying you know your, your, your buddies, you know, once a year, every other year, you know it's easy to kind of, you know, lose touch when you're traveling and all over, and just not not close to him, and so it just it was something that I wanted to lean back into.
Speaker 2:At some point in your career. You know you've hustled a bunch and you're you know you're doing kind of well enough. You're like, wait a minute, I want to make a bigger impact. You know, above and beyond just the business I'm doing, or you want your business to make an impact. You know in different ways.
Speaker 2:So at that time I I had I owned a healthcare business, a big media company that was focused on healthcare information technology, and so you know the, the VA and the military, veteran families, tricare, all that kind of stuff was a part of some of those conversations and some of those programs that we were doing with our editorial team and event team, and so it just kind of bubbled back to the surface. I was like like man, like let's, let's lean into this and let's see. You know what's happening here. Let's think about how we can utilize data, how we can utilize technology to really focus on a lot of these issues, you know that are going on once men and women come home because they're clearly not being served. You know well enough at all and so, um, yeah, that that really started that journey. You know back then and then from that time I've just been involved in supporting I was on the board of Robert warriors, uh, you know, and so I've been involved in it since then.
Speaker 2:You know, and just the closer you get to it, the more you research, the more personal stories. And when you're, when you get closer to that, you hear more of those personal stories by by virtue of proximity.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so you just start to realize, holy shit, like, even if you don't see it, there are so many people suffering in silence and these aren't any things that we don't know now. But you know my, my dad. He passed away unexpectedly in 2012 and he struggled with PTSD. He struggled with his mental health forever. You know he was, uh, he ended up being I think it was 28 years sober. You know, when he passed away and it it was one of those things. Knowing what I know now, I, I believe I could have helped him tremendously, you know, but you, just you don't know what you don't know. I wasn't close enough to it. You know, to understand his personal journey that he was going through and and how, uh, you know again, hindsight is 2020. So you can't dwell on that. You can only focus on what can I do now? What, what's the positive impacts I can make now and today? And all of those things really kind of stack up. Why I give so many fucks about this issue. Uh, if I can drop the f-bomb for effect, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, good, good, whatever you want to say so swearing for effect is really important.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean it is to get some people going exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 2:So, uh, but yeah, so that that is, um, that that's a big piece of it. Now, uh, you know, I've been involved in that for a long time, um, been I I'm a chair for the american legion suicide prevention and brain health program called be the one, and so being able to look across their you know, 1.6 million members, uh, it's really, really amazing to be able to work on how we deploy all those different wellness factors and think about, well, we've got this population of 1.6 million. How do we take this as a microcosm, where there's posts, there's departments. The connectivity that you have there is a really, really powerful thing to be able to implement and do some really great work on. As an example, since February of last year excuse me, february of this year we've trained almost 12,000 men and women on suicide prevention training using the Columbia Protocol, and the training in and of itself is really important. It allows you to accomplish a couple things.
Speaker 2:It's CPR for the brain at the end of the day, and CPR saves 200,000 to 300,000 people a year. So I think all of us would be like, oh yeah, I'll spend an hour to learn something and maybe I could save somebody. You know it's a no brainer from a timepiece, but it's hard to get people to understand and connect the dots on that. Also, suicide is this really hard ugly issue that people quite frankly just want to stick their head in the sand on and not really pay attention to, particularly in corporate America. You say the lead with the word suicide and they're like, oh, that's scary, that sounds like liability.
Speaker 2:So the other piece I think is important and I'm really interested in your perspective on this is you know? I think you know, because this is as much about a cultural change across the military as it is any type of technology or evidence-based intervention. If people aren't willing to raise their hand and ask for help, it doesn't matter how many resources we have sitting there at the ready. You know we that that's not going to work, and so I think we need to reframe this whole notion of mental health and how we talk about it, which is why I love the term brain health.
Speaker 2:You know what. You know what I'm probably not going to talk about at the end of this podcast. I'm like, hey, denny got a jam man, I'm going to go see my personal trainer. They're going to smoke me. It's going to be great, I'll talk about that. But you know what I'm not going to talk about. I'm not going to be like, hey, I'm going to go see my shrink because I'm really whacked out here for whatever issue that I'm dealing with. Most people just won't do that because there's a negative association with that.
Speaker 2:So how do we flip that around? How do we treat brain health just like anything else, all of a sudden going to the therapist? Or brain optimization, brain health, whatever terminology and nomenclature, we want to stick on it. How do we turn that into a point of strength, to where, anytime we're doing that, we're optimizing our brain? Because it all starts with this yeah, you want to pull the trigger more quickly If you want to have more stamina.
Speaker 2:Every single thing that we do serving in the military and life husband, father, whatever it is it starts up here.
Speaker 2:So we've, we've for a very long time, we continue to separate this from this organ, from the rest of the body, exactly Necessarily. And so I think that if we start as far upstream as we can go, I would love nothing more than to see, when you come in, when you first come into bootcamp, when you first come into OCS, whatever your entry point is, we flip this, and it's not like this optional thing where you go see a therapist. It's this is your brain optimization session, or whatever terminology we put on it to actually make it authentic and interesting. And I mean hell, in the Marine Corps we harp on sipping water nonstop. Everybody does, you know, in any type of, you know, military infantry unit, and it's the funniest thing. If you showed Americans like a bunch of grown men yelling at each other to sip water, it's the dumbest thing you've ever heard of, if you really think about it. So why is it this far-fetched to reshape culture and how we do things in the military when it comes to this?
Speaker 1:yeah, because then yeah it's hardwired in our, our, and it's specifically for men. It's hardwired in our, our experiences and it's the the old timers mentality, that feelings and emotions, that's what makes you weak and it's like no, it's a fucking powerful strength. There's nothing more powerful than being a well-developed fucking man. Masculinity means you're emotionally intelligent. Masculinity means that I need to take a knee, I need to go to my tribe, I need to go to my therapist, and it's that understanding of vulnerability is not a weakness. We, we always think of vulnerability as I'm going to be vulnerable here. If the enemy moves this way, I'm like no, no, we're not playing chess, we're not playing, we're not playing war games.
Speaker 1:You're talking about vulnerability as a strength. We're talking about being able to sit down with somebody you trust, a trusted agent, somebody that can help you. I go to the gym. I have a trainer Shout out Terry Wilson, that's my trainer. Shameless plug, because this will be airing in the new year. And we have to optimize every part of our lives our mental, our mental wellbeing, our physical, our spiritual wellbeing. We have to optimize it. And when we speak about strength like yeah, you're right, like we don't talk about mental health as a strength, I'm like, dude, I want to be the best version of myself for my kid, for my wife, for the future kid for everybody. That depends on me to be a leader within my community, within my space, and I only, I'm only able to do that if I'm willing to be vulnerable, if I'm willing to say I need help. I walk this path. I walk on this journey because mental health is not something that you just take a magic wand like wow you're better, better.
Speaker 1:No, it's a fucking road. Yes, get on road and you're moving down the road and maybe you have a flat tire, maybe you have a bad week, shit pops up. I'm gonna get up on the phone, I'm gonna talk to my therapist, I'm gonna get back on track, I'm gonna patch that tire and get back on my journey like, and that's a reality, being comfortable with that. Like, if you need, if you need a trainer, are you willing to go get a trainer? Yeah, comes down to it when you're tired not making gains, when you're tired not having the energy, not tired not having the right meal plan, you'll go get a trainer. Same thing goes for mental health. When you're tired of fucking dealing with the same roadblocks, you're not making any pathways, you're feeling down, your anxiety is catching back up, reach back out, out, get back connected and realize that, like I know what it's like to be here at my optimum fitness level. Same thing for mental health. I know when I'm getting to the point where I'm like, fuck, I'm having anxiety attack. What's going?
Speaker 1:on none of my tools are working. All right time to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2:We can't self-assess this thing sometimes, right and to your point, like I don't know about you, but I certainly. When I came to marine corps, there was no mindfulness, no breath work, no resiliency skills or tools like basic things like that would go such a long way in giving people the opportunity to have a tactical pause like, yeah, your kid's screaming and he's a maniac. My kids running around the house like insane right now. But you know what their brains developing? They don't know or they don't understand it. You know someone at work is being a total pain in the ass, like we're going to deal with these things all the time.
Speaker 2:And simple stuff. It's physiological. It is if you control your breath. It is a physiological response to reduce your blood pressure, your stress levels and we have so much more control over our bodies than we, than we understand. If you look at EKG up to your brain, throw it up on a screen, take a, take a lot of breath, do some breath work, even for a minute, it is wild how much control we have over the brain and we don't train that in, you know at the out front of how we perform.
Speaker 2:No, we don't talk about it or we don't talk about it.
Speaker 1:that's what we're doing because, like mindfulness certified mindfulness coach been teaching mindfulness now almost going on, shortly four years now. When I started understanding the concept of mindfulness, I'm like, holy, like breath work, vegas nerve. It's something that my sniper instructor at sniper school was teaching me this, but he didn't call it mindfulness. I was fucking missing nonstop. And he's like hey, back up off the glass, take some deep breaths, calm down, right, close your eyes, just breathe. And I'm sitting there, as you know, stressed out green beret at sniper school and I'm like, fuck, close my eyes, get back on glass. Flawless, yeah, calm down. It's like, fuck, reading into fucking my mindfulness training and finally making that connection. Same thing with Bob's fucking sucked in the pool. I fucking hate the water, but one time I felt confident. Same thing I had one guy, one guy that was willing to sit down with me and just get me to calm down and realize that, bobbing the breath, you're just relaxing, you're just exhaling. It's box, breathing in water.
Speaker 1:and I know, that was never taught to us, as if you were doing mindfulness. If we did that, we started teaching that as mindfulness dude. We'd be so much better. Then we realized oh, I'm getting up, regulated, I'm too stressed, I'm going through anxiety, I just need a moment to pause. Take a knee, do some seals, that's. That's another thing grounding exercise. Who knew that every time we're on patrol, we stop, take a knee and do seals?
Speaker 2:we're doing a grounding exercise, fucking, but the military still doesn't understand it the irony of this is, we've been trained on this our entire careers, from start to finish. When the military says there is a purpose for everything, I still haven't, uh, figured out what we call it a, an ink, stick or stick, or all the ridiculous nonsense that we give in terms but now that you know there. The point, though, is that it's exactly what you just said. This is already there.
Speaker 2:This is not a far leap to connect the dots, to help shift that culture to where people stop thinking of it as a weakness. You think of it as a strength. It already is a strength, and that we're already doing it. A strength, it already is a strength and that we're already doing it. We just need to kind of go that extra mile so that, when you come in from the get go, when you go off to see their wizard for your annual, you know, uh, you know, sasha, just like seeing the dentist against some people don't need, don't need to do it nearly as much, which is perfectly fine. We all have different stuff that we've got to work on more or less than others, but the point is, is that it becomes normal. No one gives a shit for going to the dentist, you know, or going to get you know, a physical, because it's just normal, it's part of the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it's. It's something that we have to understand like from the very beginning. Losing control of your emotions doesn't make you a man, and we idolized that. Control of your emotions doesn't make you a man and we idolized that. I know I did. I looked at the leaders that would lose their mind and have all these explosions of anger and be violent and like, oh, that's leadership, that's a man's. No, no, we idolize that and that's why cadre, when you go through like these soft courses, they're not.
Speaker 1:The guys are yelling at you. They're fucking blank. They're looking at you. They're fucking blank. They're looking at you. Hey, try it again, keep moving forward. Yep, that's a no-go. And it's like wait a second, like you don't have to have this whole thing where you're yelling at me and throwing shit like, no, okay, got it, I'll move forward, I'll do it the right way and the the. The one thing that sticks to me now it's like understanding that there's so many of us that grew up in those households where it's like somebody yells that's power. It's like, no, control your emotions, you're gonna be angry, it's gonna dissip. Control your emotions, you're going to be angry, it's going to dissipate. Let it go.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be that guy I know I was that guy for a long time. Do you get in front of a counselor until you get with a therapist and you understand? Anger is that secondary emotion that's often hiding and masking everything else that you're feeling. And then you're sitting inpatient treatment center and somebody hands you an emotions wheel and you're looking at this fucking wheel with emotions and you're like, oh, I know anger, I know happiness, I know sad. Oh shit, there's a whole bunch of other ones I never tap into. What the fuck am I doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, you know speaking of that. I know you're an expecting father. Yeah, yeah, you're speaking of that, I know you're a.
Speaker 1:You're a expecting father. Do you know, Ryan?
Speaker 2:holiday by chance. Yes, okay, very well, all of his books. Okay, great, great, great. Yeah, you know, it's, I just my, and actually, my, my brother turned me on to him and, like you know, stoicism just as a whole concept.
Speaker 2:I love that, that outlook on the world. And you know he's got this awesome newsletter called the daily dad. Yeah, and it is these and some other books too. But just you know, I think I think our generation, we have this intention to be the best version of our as a father, or mother, as you can.
Speaker 2:And I love the perspective and outlook that they take with it and his whole. You know the way he approaches exactly how you're talking about these things is there's so much nuance to this, or so much, you know, self reflection that you can have in this, and there's also so much understanding of hey, just take a time out, man Like this is a little growing being, you know, organism in the universe, figuring it's shit out, you know, stressed out because it wants to communicate something to you that might be very positive or good and can't do it because it doesn't have the words to do that. Okay, you know, it just hasn't developed that yet. So it, uh, I love that perspective on it because I think all of us, at different periods of our time, our life, as we are, as we're growing up, same thing, you know, uh, you've heard, probably I've heard a number of people talk about when they're thinking about needing help and they're just in a, in a murky pool of water, and they can't.
Speaker 2:They can't see up or down. The surface is right there, they just don't know how to get to it and sometimes you just need a hand to plunge down and pull you up and orient you in the right way so you can figure it out and anyways, all these things are interconnected and I think that there's just really, really amazing. You know you could call it a philosophy. Some people think that's a little too willy nilly, but outlook framework, whatever you want to call it, tactics, but that approach, you know that Stoics and holiday, how, how they employ that, there's just this whole, I think, cascade effect to your overall well-being in life that you can take. That's just really, really powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to ask you because this is along the same lines of what we're talking about Now in life. I have to imagine that you've got so many things that you're juggling. How do you keep yourself performing at optimum levels and staying healthy when it comes to your brain health, your mental health? What are some of the things that you're leaning on?
Speaker 2:Sleep is really, really important. Prioritizing sleep I know that's one of the things that I think. What is it? I think, like I don't know, 5% are people, or like those people that can actually get three or four hours of sleep every night and they're actually good to go. I am not one of those people. I really really wish that I was. When you think about all that productivity that you can get back. Sadly, I have to have one of those mere mortals that has to deal with it, like the rest of everybody else, but uh, but no, sleep's really important, um, exercise, sleep's really important, um exercise.
Speaker 2:And oftentimes, like I won't have time for a workout, kid businesses, you know all the things. Travel relationship I'll continue to have a healthy relationship with my wife, but just even if you're doing walk, going out on a walk we I live in california, we've got a lot of hills around even just getting the heart rate up, a little bit vitamin d, just that, having that right mix of that, is so important. I think for me it helps to clear the fog, clear, clear the head out so you can have that really great mental acuity. I think also, uh, a big, big thing is levity is really important.
Speaker 2:You're gonna fuck things up yeah I have fucked up more things in my career business, failures, issues and I've learned so much more from that than than you you possibly ever could. From the successes Interestingly enough, I don't think that's something that we talk about enough but the and and and being able to laugh at that because the I did a executive program at HBS years ago and a brilliant professor was talking about fail fast, fail forward and there's only no value in failure if you don't learn from it. And he had some way that he would delineate between mistakes and failures and mistakes I think he kind of framed up as not being there's no value in mistakes, but failure as long as you learn from it, there's tremendous value because you then evolve, you implement, you pivot, whatever you need to do for that particular process, individual thing you're doing or business rationale or thesis that you had. So those are three, I think, key, key things for me, for me. And then the other thing is you know, michelangelo had, I think, the best thing of all time, when he was like 60, or after, being the most accomplished artist you know on the planet or in history at that point in time and for his era and also now and today, I'm still learning, yeah, and I just always learn.
Speaker 2:I there's, I know a lot of how to experience a lot, a lot of success, a lot of failure, but there are so much more that I don't know that I ever will learn. And I think that that's just such an important outlook because that drives humility versus the other piece of that and sure have I been guilty of, you know hubris, being a little arrogant now and then. We all are, that's just the nature of humanity. But I think, the older that I get, really continuing to lean into that piece of it is really really important because that also drives the more you learn something new, you're developing new neural pathways and that keeps you know, at least for me the brain young. You're interesting, you know, you're engaged with your colleagues, friends, family, whatever I don't know. I think those four things, they really really help me in a big way.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man Waco. Thank you for being here today. Man um, being able to talk openly on these issues is so important and it allows others to see that, like dude, this is not an anomaly. Like after service in the military in the past 20 years and for some of you even more you cannot expect to walk out unscathed, with no issues. The reality is, like many of us, you're going to struggle, you're going to have issues, but that's okay, that's life. You're literally not able to experience all the calamity of warfare and walk out in a clean slate. You're going to have some issues. Maybe they're not as complex as a lot of us have suffered, but there are things that you will have to address and it's okay, it's understanding that.
Speaker 1:There's beauty in rebuilding and going and getting help Because, just like we talked about earlier, if you want to get fit, if you want to get jacked, if you want to have the physical PRs, if you want to be able to run those frigging endurance runs, you got to get a coach, you got to get a personal trainer and there's nothing wrong with walking into that P3 clinic on post or that mental health clinic on post or in your community finding a therapist, a clinical social worker to help you find those resources that are going to help you get better.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with it. Please, if you need help finding these resources, hit me up. I will literally sit down and I will point you in direction. In fact, that's what I did all last week and I love doing it because it's something that we can do. If you can hold space for somebody, if you can get a peer-to-peer support certification, do it. Be willing to be involved in your community. It takes all of us to help bring somebody out from the void Waco. If we want to hear more about you and what you're doing, where can we find you?
Speaker 2:You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me at emails whover at mconlive whover, H-H-O-V-E-R. At M-C-O-N dot. L-i-v-e. Hit me up anytime. I echo your same sentiments, Denny Always here for strangers or anybody or close friends, and I love what you just said about the peer support piece on that. We can solve this problem ourselves, through our communities and in really, really compelling ways.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man. Um, we started our peer peer program on security hall within like the first first three seasons of the show and, uh, it's always open. You, uh, you're welcome. Check us out on security hallcom. Go to peer support. Um, if we get enough people where they want to keep it private, we'll keep it a closed group, but more often than not, you'll jump in. You'll have uh different people jump in and share their stories and offer their support, because it's about sharing resources. What's worked for us can help somebody else and, uh, even if it didn't work for me, I still offer it up because it's a, it's a lived experience. It may not have worked for me, but it may work for you. To everybody tuning in, thank you for being here, thank you for supporting us. Waco, thank you for joining us and we'll see you all next time. Until then, take care, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like, follow, share, subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to support us, on over to buymeacoffeecom forward slash SecHawk podcast and buy us a coffee. Connect with us on Instagram X or TikTok and share your thoughts or questions about today's episode. You can also visit securityhawkcom for exclusive content, resources and updates. And remember we get through this together. If you're still listening the episode's over. Yeah, there's no more Tune in tomorrow or next week.
