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Beyond the Uniform

Beyond the Uniform is a show to help military veterans navigate their civilian career. Each week, I meet with different veterans to learn more about their civilian career, how they got there, and what advice they'd give to other military personnel. www.beyondtheuniform.org
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Now displaying: July, 2020
Jul 27, 2020

Why Listen:
Craig is a serial entrepreneur who’s current company - Veteran Tax Credits - is relevant to all of our listeners. First of all, if you are a Veteran seeking a job, Craig talks about how the government provides tax credits for any employer who hires you. This is a financial benefit to employers that could play a deciding role in your next job offer, so it is worthy of your attention. Second, if you’re an employer, Craig talks about a tax incentive surprisingly few businesses know about. He’ll walk you through what you need to do to take full advantage of this benefit. In addition, we talk about entrepreneurship, partnerships and more. Lastly, one thing I really appreciated in this interview is the sense that when Veterans raise awareness of this sort of tax incentive, not only are they helping themselves, but they’re helping other members of the military community who may benefit from these tax incentives in the future. Many thanks to Craig for the work he is doing to help our military community, and for his sponsorship of this episode to help Beyond the Uniform further our work.

About Craig
Craig Washburn is the Founder & CEO of VTC Veteran Tax Credits. VTC helps Veterans get pre-certified and find gainful employment through our partnerships. We help companies’ find outstanding Veteran talent and collect valuable tax credits for employing them. Craig started out in the Navy as an Administrative Supervisor, where he served for four years. His civilian career includes work at HealthCare Dimensions, PacifCare Health Systems, as well as Owner of the Pivot Management Group.

Jul 20, 2020

Why Listen:

I'm so honored to have had time with Christian today I want to give a little bit of backstory that I give at the start of the interview but I think it's worth recapping here. So, as many of you know we were fortunate to receive financial sponsorship from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. It allowed us to do a new series of interviews and so as Steve Bane and I were talking about who we wanted to interview, I realized that we haven't talked to anyone in the drone industry, and I think it's an industry that has a lot of interest for veterans - it's growing rapidly, it's cool, it's high tech. And so I did a little bit of searching and Steve sent me some articles and we looked for Veterans in this space. And I came across Christian. He was the only person I emailed and I just sent a cold email explaining what I do with Beyond the Uniform and asking if you'd be willing to be on the show. And I just want to bring that up first of all to say like, I was so energized and inspired by this conversation. And it all came about because of simply writing an email to another veteran. And I just want to bookmark that for all of you listening because I think great things come when you get out of your head when you get out of your comfort zone when you get out of your office or home and talk to people. And that's a major theme in today's interview and Kristen has a really brilliant man I think that will come across in his, his advice to listeners, but he in 1998 got out of the military went into tech, when tech was just or that you know that is software programming, and that was just becoming a thing. And I think that you'll learn a lot from his story, although it's, it's one of entrepreneurship it's one about the drone industry. It's really advice relevant to every career path, because his story demonstrates, time and time again, the value that comes from pursuing one's passion, the value that comes when you put aside money. At least temporarily to focus on adding value and learning, and also a story of how, when you get out of your comfort zone when you talk to people when you circulate ideas, great things come about. So we cover a lot of ground we talk about minimum viable product we talk about customer development. We talked about why you should never have an NDA that's a non disclosure agreement. We talk about leadership on it was just really exhilarating conversation and so I'm really honored to have had Christian on the show.

About Christian:

Christian Sanz is the CEO and Founder of Skycatch, the leading industrial aerial data collection and analytics company, focused on indexing and extracting critical information from the physical world. He served in the Navy for 4 years, and his civilian career includes work as a software engineer for The Walt Disney Company, a Senior Software Engineer at LoopNet, the Senior Director of Engineering at Break Media, the CTO at Kin Community, the Founding CTO of Storify (acquired by Adobe), and the Founder of DroneGames. Over the last 7 years, Christian has grown Skycatch to have over 50 employees and $46M in funding.

Jul 13, 2020
Why Listen
Welcome back to beyond the uniform, I'm Justin Nassiri and my goal is to help the military community thrive in their civilian career. Today's episode number 362. Hope unseen part two, with Tiffany smiley. Two weeks ago I interviewed Scottie smiley for Episode 359. As soon as the interview is over I emailed Scotty his wife Tiffany to set up an interview, because it was clear from Scotty story how big of a role she played in scotties recovery and success. I'm so glad I did. Tiffany is an incredible woman, and this interview is such a powerful reminder of how military spouses are often the unsung heroes in our country. I was moved to tears in our conversation and hope you appreciate Tiffany's story of strength resilience and optimism. I'm very grateful because this episode was made possible through a financial sponsorship through the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, and I want to share a little bit more about them, whether you're transitioning to a civilian career or continuing military service, an MBA from Carlson, at the University at the University of Minnesota prepares you for a high impact career in business. Carlson is committed to the veteran community and provides the benefits experiential learning and network to accelerate your career. In addition to a resident tuition waiver all admitted full time MBA military candidates receive generous scholarships and stipends to cover expenses that may not be eligible for the GI Bill. To learn more, you can visit the show notes at beyond uniform.org for this episode, or you can email MBA at UVM in.edu to learn more. That's MBA@mnu.edu. So with that, let's dive in to my conversation with Tiffany.
 
About Tiffany
Born and raised in Pasco, WA, Tiffany is married to her high school sweetheart, Scotty Smiley. The two met as teenagers and never looked back, even as Tiffany attended Whitworth University to become a nurse and Scotty attended the United States Military Academy.
In 2005, while Scotty was deployed in Iraq, he was injured by a suicide car bomb and lost his eyesight. Tiffany, who was working as a full time nurse at the time, left her job to care for him. Scotty and Tiffany founded Hope Unseen in 2010 in an effort to use their story to help and inspire others. They have appeared on Fox News, CBS, CNN, the Katie Couric show and multiple newspapers and magazines.
In 2016 Tiffany launched TiffanySmiley.com, a platform that she hoped would empower women to overcome whatever circumstances they were facing and to uncover true joy in their lives. Through her candid writings, the site reaches thousands of readers each month and has given Tiffany a platform to encourage women to be strong and join together for the good of those around them. She is in the process of planning Story by Faith, a conference dedicated to helping women share their journeys with confidence to impact and change their communities.
Jul 9, 2020

Why Listen: Purpose is one of the most cited things on this show. In 350 episodes, I cannot count the number of my guests who have talked about how they have struggled to find their next purpose once they leave the military. I experienced this... and I've experienced multiple times since I left the military over 10 years ago.

In this episode, I have Craig Filek back on the show to talk about his Purpose Mapping work. Craig and I just finished up a 10 week course with 5 veterans, and we share some of our takeaways from this work.

Be sure to sign up for our FREE 90-minute webinar, where you can start to uncover your purpose and mission in life @ https://beyondtheuniform.org/purpose-mapping-webinar

Jul 6, 2020

Why Listen:
Well, I just got done talking with Murph, and it's just such a great conversation and I wanted to just bookmark. A couple of things that we talked about in this interview because we cover quite a bit of ground. The first of all, I love Murphy's thinking around, expanding your thinking about what you're going to do in your career, and in his in his own story, and advice that he received along the way. He ended up doing things that he didn't initially plan when he got out of the military, out of the Marine Corps after 22 years of service, and it came from a conversation about expanding his thinking. He has great advice around never stopping your pursuit of your career, and there's stories, you'll hear about when he kind of backed off or thought he had a job and then it fell through, and I think is great advice for both career hiring, as well as sales. He works over at the University of Central Missouri and as their director of military and veteran services so he does have some great thoughts from his experience they're helping a lot of veterans. Talk about the value of education that keeps on coming up again and again and Murph story is the value that education has been to him to his Marines, his students, and whether that's after 20 years of service, or after three years of service, expanding one's horizons through education. We talked about the TV show that he's on called tough as nails and what it's like to be on a reality TV show and even though Murph is a giant of a man. He's a very you know gentle giant and very introverted and so he talks about what that experience was like being on the set, and what it was like and how that opportunity came about. And then I love He talks about a diploma being a certification of dedication I've never I've never heard that before but he talks about how rarely one's degree directly relates to what one does in their career, but it is beneficial for other reasons. We talked about Instagram and putting oneself out there, we talked about how his dream job was in the Marine Corps and a lot more. And so I think you'll really enjoy the show and check out the show notes, we've got a lot of links from today's episode, and check out CBS as tough as nails with him, it'll be launching. Shortly after this podcast goes live. I want to give a special thanks because the only reason we were able to record. Today's brand new episode is thanks to a sponsorship financial sponsorship from the Carlson School of Management and really can't express enough gratitude for how much I enjoy doing new episodes and how many people that benefits and this point were only really able to do that through financial sponsorship. So I wanted to share more about an organization that is putting your money where your mouth is and helping beyond uniform continue our operations. So whether you're transitioning to a civilian career or continuing military service, an MBA from Carlson at the University of Minnesota prepares you for a high impact career in business. Carlson is committed to the veteran community and provides the benefits experiential learning and network to accelerate your career. In addition to a resident tuition waiver all admitted full time MBA military candidates receive generous scholarships and a stipend to cover expenses that may not be eligible for the GI Bill. You can learn more in the show notes for this episode at beyond the uniform.org, or you can email, em, ba, actually, let's see if I can remember this, Mike Bravo alpha at uniform. Mike november.edu that's MBA at IU mn.edu to learn more. Thank you. And with that, lets dive into today's conversation with Murph .

About Murph:

Murph is the Director of Military and Veteran Services at the University of Central Missouri. He is also a competitor on CBS’s new show, Tough as Nails. TOUGH AS NAILS is a competition series that celebrates everyday Americans who roll up their sleeves and don’t think twice about working long hard hours and getting their hands dirty, in order to keep their country running. On the show, competitors compete in challenges that take place at real-world job sites. Murph served in the Marine Corps for 22 years. Since his military service, he has worked as an Adjunct Faculty member at Central Texas College and Columbia College and also worked at Lowe’s in their as a Human Resrouce and Training Manager.

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