Welcome to The Recalibrated. I'm your
host, Meade Kincke, and
I'm here to take us through
the journey of being in the service,
transitioning out, and
what today looks like.
Our guest, Dmitry Solominsky, served
over seven and a half years in the Army
National Guard from
infantryman to team leader.
He led an eight-man team on raids,
intelligence missions, and high-stakes
operations in Baghdad
during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Today, he is the founder of Measure Twice
Project Management, where he keeps
construction projects from
turning into circus acts.
Dmitry, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Meade, for having me. That
pretty much summarises me
in a nutshell. So now that
we've done that, we can turn it off. It's
been great. Thank you. Fantastic.
Shows wrapped, we're done. Everyone have
heard the story where
there's nothing left to hear
here. I mean, what else do you people
want? Come on now. So
let's begin with the why.
We can start there. So what drew you to
the Army National Guard?
So what drew me to the Army National
Guard? I was, to say that
I was a shit student would
be giving a compliment to shit. I
graduated in a class of
254. My GPA rank was 246. So
I was not a I was an enthusiastic student
in in the fact that I
would cut class, show
up for the exams, get high grades, anger
the professors by doing
that, and then continue
to rinse and repeat onward and forward
time and time again. And
then I you know, 9/11 happened
while I was in high school, I
happened to have the
displeasure of seeing the second
tower get hit. I also obviously had no
direction in high school as
to like college or any kind
of plans. And I was like, Oh, let me
think about joining the
Guard. And I what I what
Okay!
What I tell people is that I was the most
forward thinking, naive
17 year old ever
What I saw what college did to my
mom that was the
student debt that she took on
when she went back to school. And I
thought, hey, I'll, you
know, I'll do a weekend a month,
go away for two weeks a year as the you
know, as all the ads
say, and then, you know, get
to get to do something with my college
degree. And lo and
behold, that's, you know, kind
of not what happened. You know, I, the
unit I became a member
of was a unit in New York
City, the 69th infantry unit, very, very
historical, well
regarded unit, but that was
prior to 9/11. Not very, not very well
updated with current both
equipment and munitions,
kind of anything really that would
instill any sort, any sort
of semblance of confidence
in a military unit whatsoever.
Just imagining like, here, here's a sack
and a stick. And you boys
just pretend that you're
making a fort. You go
wild, have fun! You're great!
Basically, I mean, prior to my time
there, I heard stories of
like, guys, when they go
to drill would just take a keg with them,
you know, for the
weekend, and then just drink
all weekend. So this is the type of, you
know, but you know,
obviously, 9/11 had a massive
impact on Guard units in the US
everywhere. Sure. They became
kind of the structural backbone
for supplementation and in some cases
leading the fight while
being deployed. And then in,
you know, 2004, while going to drill, I,
you know, was reading
the paper on the way there
and found out that I was being deployed
to Iraq before I even
found out from my own unit.
So that's, that's always, yeah, that's
always a fun little.
When the post beat you, like, you know,
when you talk, oh,
drill sergeant, what are we
doing? You go like, oh,
yeah, you already know.
Basically, basically, yeah. Yeah. So it
was, it was one of these,
like, you know, aha moments.
We were, we thought we were being
deployed first to Bosnia,
then to Cape of Good Hope,
South Africa, then they
settled on the joy that is Iraq.
You know, those are three very different
locales, just to say, you
know, in case you were like
dice rolling and said, like, Oh, which
one of these? Those are
not even remotely close.
No, the way that I think that they chose
the locations was maybe
they got drunk, threw
darts at a map of the world, because
there's no real rhyme or
reason to why any three of
those places should be on
the same list for anything.
No, there's nowhere near the same
postcode. You go like,
mmm, hold on. So we have the
Boers in South Africa, maybe, okay, we
can we can... no, that...
How about the Balkans? The
Balkans will be nice this time of... No, hold
on a moment. Ah, the
desert! That's what we'll
do! The desert! That sounds way better!
I think that was it. I think that that
was kind of their, you
know, thought process when
they decided, you know, where to where to
send this unit that,
you know, still using
equipment from, you know, possibly the
Civil War in its day to
day, like, you know, weekend
drills, whatever. But, you know, they
they trained us up. We
spent about four months
in Texas. Our battalion commander was a
fun gentleman. He took
he took this deployment
personally, he had a landscaping business
that he completely
sold. And he's like, all
right, we're gonna go, we're gonna go,
we're gonna go do what we
have to do as an infantry
unit. And one of the one of the first
things he did was so we
get to Texas, and we're still
using this equipment that is probably
older than me and you
and possibly your parents
combined. And he's like, he goes to the,
you know, the one star
general of the unit we're
attached to. And he's like, hey, so if we
don't get the
equipment we need, I'll spend
the whole deployment here in Texas.
Because I'm not sending
my guys into that with, you
know, humvees that have two and a half
wheels and other things
that kind of the the joke
bit from the South Park film of like
Operation Human Shield.
And you go like, no, no, no,
that's real. Yeah. Good luck. It'll be
fine. Yeah. It's like,
what's the worst that can
happen? I mean, death. Yeah, you know,
summed up pretty quickly.
So, you know, he did that.
But you know, he also kind of let me back
up a little. So the unit we find out that
we're being deployed. And they they're
like, when we're a small
unit out of New York City.
And they kind of like, oh, well, you
know, what'd be funny is
for you guys to get attached
to a unit that you guys fought in the
Civil War. That'd be
real funny, wouldn't it? Ha ha, funny? So
we were attached to a unit that we still
have, you know, on on
the guide on banners from
our drill, we still have the names of the
battles we fought
them in. And then we and
then we were attached to them because
someone has someone has a
sense of humour somewhere.
And that's hilarious. Yeah. Let me feel
like they they needed to
get the most of it, you
know. So yeah. This just reads like, you
know, like, oh, yeah,
let's go to a Red Wings game.
There won't be any bad blood at all. No,
we'll be fine. No,
no, they completely. No
big deal. No, it's, you know, it's still
to this day, one of the
things that if you try
to envision yourself writing a script for
a show or a movie and
you try to write that
in the editors will be like, no, that's
too rich. Take that
out. No, no one are going
to believe this. Like, that's one of
those when you start
telling like ridiculous life
stories and you go, at what point did we
become like a human, like not a
caricature, but like
a real life soap opera where you go like,
oh, this is like an
episode of EastEnders.
You go, no, that's real. That's real.
That actually happened.
Yeah. I mean, at some point
you would think someone would jump in and
be like, all right, you jumped the shark
here. Let's let's let's
let's tone it down a bit.
Ever so slightly.
Yeah, let's just a little bit. Just a
tiny bit. That's fine.
Oh, I adore that.
Yeah. So we had a, you know, we managed
to find our way to Iraq.
We were in an area that
hadn't been that hadn't seen any
coalition forces in about
eight months. Okay. So when
we arrived, it was kind of just like a
free-for-all. There
were mortars flying in from
the sky, hitting the base. There was a
six months prior to us
getting there approximately
six months prior to us getting there. The
munitions factory for
the whole country was
basically across the street and that was
raided. Oh, wow. So like,
there, there at some point
there were like, you know, rows and rows
upon heavy munitions
upon like everything from
AK rounds to large bombs.
Yeah. You're like, oh, well, let's go
shopping, "where are the frag
grenades?", and you go like, it's
all gone.
Basically, yeah. Like the remnants of it
were there. Wow. And we had
a, you know, we had a as
we did what we could with the resources
we had, we made
connections, we, you know, tried
to imbue goodwill with the local populace
and we did a good
job. We became known as,
you know, when we were in Taji, which is
about 15 miles north ish
of Baghdad proper, very
farming-based community. So when we left,
our battalion
commander, you know, had from
the, the imams basically petitioned him
to stay because we had
made things so good in
the area so much more workable, both from
a financial
perspective for the locals, but
also from a safety perspective, things
reduce the number of
mortars flying in, were mitigated,
we kind of did things a little
differently in terms of our
how we did kind of our patrols
and things of that sort. Whereas most
units that are passed
through an area, if you get
shot at, you typically speed up to evade
the, you know, to not wind up in the kill
zone. Sure. Which is common sense, I
think for most. Common
sense is not common, though.
You already know this. No, no, it's not.
And we, we kind of, we
really tried to find a
way to help the locals out, we would turn
into fire head-on,
figure out where it's coming
from, try to eliminate the threat, both
either directly or
indirectly by, you know, pinpointing
where it's coming from, and also just
trying to trace that up
the chain to higher sources
of financing as far as and as far as
like, where the weapons
are coming from, where all
this was being kind of torturing the
community, so to speak, that we were in.
Yeah, that's, I've said this a whole lot,
like where people go
like, Oh, you know, these
guys are dangerous, and this, that and
the other, and I go,
Listen, you don't know the
terror that a really, really aggressive
three-man mortar team
can unleash. Like that is
one of those things where, you know, it's
incoming, it hits, and
they're already gone.
Like, that's not you don't get to like,
Oh, where did it come?
Like, they're gone, they're
mobile. That's that's not, you don't get
to go round two on this.
Yeah, no, we you know, we, one of the
things we got to do was
we were there during the
their first elections, which was in 2000
in 2004, which was
amazing, an amazing experience
to see the onslaught of people coming out
to like, finally have some semblance of
representation. Sure. You know, we also
when Fallujah was going
on, to your point, we were
providing outer outer cordon, we were
like 15 miles, 15, 18
miles away from it. And we,
you know, I remember, we were just we
were facing Fallujah, and
I was on the .50 cal, and we
were realising that we were by this
canal. Realising that every
time that smoke would come
up, like, maybe eight to 10 miles away... Uh huh.
within, I want to say,
two minutes guaranteed,
mortars were stuck falling on our
position. Yep. And there
were a bunch of cows across the
canal. And we could tell... Oh no! we could tell
that, you know, day by
day, just how close the
mortars were getting. Because there were
no more cows. The number
of cows kept going down.
So you're going like, is it alien
abduction? You go like, no, just heavy
explosives, it's much the
other way around. But they're,
you know, the, they're
triangular. Thankfully,
thankfully, the, the
mathematics were not in their favor.
They're not, you know, you remember the
the old, like, early 1980s
game, Gorillas, where you have
the the two gorillas, and you throw the
banana and that apparently
they didn't play that game,
they would have been more more dangerous.
Had they, you know,
just video games to the
rescue. Absolutely. I mean, they would
have, you know, or, or was
maybe just a bunch of bunch of
people who were like myself didn't pay
much attention in high
school when they really should
have. And I'm thankful that they didn't,
right? I'm here today
speaking to you. Yeah,
no, it's true. Because of their
ineptitude. That's fine. So
we'll applaud them for that.
Yeah, well, we'll applaud them for that.
I do pity the cows though.
Yeah, a little bit.
You know, we, as a we were, so we were
there from '04 to '05. We were in Taji for
like, three, three to
four months, then we were in Baghdad
proper on between the green
zone and the airport patrolling
route route known as route Irish, which
was at that point, the
deadliest route in the whole
country. And, you know, we, once we
managed to kind of, you
know, do what we could along that
route, it was a, you know, it was a haven
for VBIEDs, it was a haven
for people, you know, anytime
there were VIPs, there was only one
travel speed for them in their up-armour
BMWs and SUVs, it was
like 80 miles an hour. They had kind of
run-flats, heavy, heavy
windows. Yeah, we know the story.
Yeah, run-flat. They had guys, guys like
out of doing like
cartoonish action figure action movie
things out the back of their Humvee at
the back of... Let's do a J-turn! You go like, no,
no, stop! It's not even
J-turn. They had, I remember one time
seeing a guy who had not one, but two 240
bravos at the back of
his up-armoured Humvee. I'm like, what are
you doing? Like, what are you
gonna shoot that at? What are
you gonna shoot that at? Like, you're not
Rambo. Right. But maybe they
just really, really want to
be, so that's good enough. Question mark?
Listen, you think about it,
these are the same people who,
you know, the PM private military
contractors at that point were really,
really popular. They were
paying, you know, 150, 180,000 dollars for
for a six month
contract. So people people who did
deploy the first time around in LIF one
and got out were jumping on those jobs
like, like hotcakes.
Because the first, you know, first 90 of
that was tax free. And then
you then you got to you got to
drive around like a like a one-man Rambo
and play with all the cool toys.
Literally defining soldier of fortune
where you go like,
yeah, no, it's a real thing.
Yeah, no, I mean, and you know, making
making a mockery of actual of
the actual military and then
cause giving us a lot of grief and
issues. And we do have stories now,
though. So we do. I'm gonna
trade it as you do. And so my unit, my unit
had a just an awful
deployment. We lost a lot of guys. We
Great! That sounds, that sounds excellent!
Yeah. It's it was it was a joyful time.
Okay, so let's let's back it up just just
a few degrees. So talk
about like humble beginnings as
an infantryman going from that to,
you know, team leader. Like
how how did it begin, begin for
you? You know, so I, you know, and it's
you have to go back to you have to go
back to basic when I
yeah, I, you know, I never held a gun
before in my life. I never didn't, you
know, when I joined,
I was like, what does this do? This do...
Oh, my goodness. And
this is why we have the
instructions printed on the side of
weapons and you go like, no, that's real.
Yeah, no, I listen. So I, you know, I in
basic I, you know, when I
went to go calibrate... zero my
weapon, and I wasn't hitting this, not
only was I not hitting the,
you know, the eight and a half by
11 target on the board, I wasn't hitting
the board itself, because
the I realized that I'm,
I was using the wrong eye. And the drill
sergeant basically told me to, hey,
dipshit, try using your
other eye, which... which at that point I
was like, huh, what do you mean?
They usually come in pairs. So there's
okay, like make make the
else. So this one's lefty.
Oh, shit. There we go. Now he's got it.
He's got it. He's good to go.
20 something years later.
Fuck, if I would have known.
Oh, as you do. So yeah,
like I learned how to shoot. I
you know, came into my unit, my unit,
like I said, was a, you know, go to I
would just at that point,
you know, still going to drill. I
finished high school because
I finished high school as in a
shitty, shitty way. Not really giving a
rat's ass much about it. And as I was a
week away from going
to basic, I was playing basketball, and I
came down on my ankle
twisted it. Thought nothing of it,
you know, I played I played sports in
high school. So went on the
sidelines, let my ankle rest a
little, retied nice and tight. Went...
went back in, first play of
the next game came down in the
same ankle, twisted it again. Go home. By
go I mean, waddle home.
Sure. Wake up the next day,
my ankle is the size of my head. And I go
to a doctor and he's
like, and he starts laughing
at me, which is always a great sign.
You're never going to believe this, but
his his foot exploded.
So he goes to me, I've been doing this
work for 25 years. I've never seen
someone come close... as close
as you to completely shattering and
breaking most of the bones in your ankle
without actually doing
so. Like, oh, like, what does that mean
for me goes? Well, that means
for you is just you're going
to be staying off your ankle for a while.
No surgery, no
surgery, but cast and kind of
kind of professionally waddling around
with crutches. So got,
you know, postponed my
entrance into basic by forget, like
maybe, maybe a couple of months
until I until I was able to, you know,
reduce the size of my
foot... ankle to, you know,
a real human size. Yeah, as it turns out,
being an infantryman,
you're kind of on your feet a
little bit, just a little bit. So just
the tad touch. So I, you know,
I went to basic, like I said,
I went to basic experienced all of that
experienced the joys of,
you know, running through the
gas chamber. I had, I had in basic, I had
glasses that were known
as birth control glasses.
Because if a woman saw you, she stayed
away. Standard issue.
Yeah, yeah, standard issue. Which at that point,
I was like, Oh, great. They're only
the glasses are only like this thick.
Like Coke bottles would have been very
lightweight in contrast.
Yeah, I had a really strong neck after
basic from holding them up. See, the
thing about it is they
they just recognise your, your charisma
and say, prowess with women.
And they just thought, No,
we need to equalise that we can't have
and he will snatch up
everyone we can't do this. So we
need to like, you know, make him look
less like George Clooney and more and
more like, you know,
Steve Bannon. Like that, or Quasimodo, take your pick,
however you like it. So I so
you know, I kind of did that.
And then, you know, I said the glasses
point drill sergeants would be like, Hey,
we start like a 21 mile road march, is it
gonna rain on this march?
So can you tell us, you know,
can you always be always classic joke of
like, Oh, you're tall.
How's the weather up there? You
know, like that kind of thing. Basically,
like, they would I would I
would get jokes along the
lines of like, Hey, what are the lottery
numbers for next week? Huh?
Okay, that you must admit that
one's witty. Like, it is. Give credit where
where it's due. Oh, no, it's a
level up from the usual kind of
one, usual mundane like, Hey, you're
blind as a fucking bat humor.
Yeah, that was that one's
that one was highfalutin. Yes.
Yes. You know, made it through made it
through basic in one show in one piece.
Got assigned to my unit, kind of got
there. And was like, What the
fuck are we doing? You know,
because I at that point, that was my
first entry into
adulthood. Right? So like,
this is the organised chaos.
Welcome. Hello. How are you?
Yeah, welcome. Hello. How are you? Here's
your equipment that's, you
know, significantly older
than you are. Here's your, you know,
here's what we do this, here's where you
do that. And my unit
was based out of Manhattan. So like the,
they had responded to their
one of the units to respond to
9/11 at that time. And they have a, like I
said, a long storied
history of, you know,
going back to the Revolutionary War of
being on the forefront of
both just historical events,
whether they want to... Involved, shall we say
involved, I think we can
use that word to sum it up.
So I'll ask this, you went from that. And
obviously, everyone
very disappointed that
you didn't get to continue your career
being the new Larry Bird.
But with that being put aside,
sadly so, how did the growth from, you
know, infantrymen to team
leader, how was that something
that you sought out? Or was that
something that you were kind of pushed
to, or maybe a mixture of
both? Kind of more so that I was pushed
into, I never really
thought of myself as a, at that
point in my life, I never really thought
of myself as a leader of, of
anything in any way, shape or
form, like the word when looked up in a
dictionary, definitely did
not have my face, my name,
not even not even my zip code, maybe like
I just like very far
away from what I wanted.
What I sure, because I, I was a, you
know, your, you sign up for
the military at that age, you're
in a case of a guardsman, probably some
and in the case of probably
some active duty personnel,
you're, you're 18. You don't know
your ass from your elbow.
You have no, you have no clue
how the world functions. You're just, you
know, put into a unit
and told to follow orders,
told... Grown toddler is the way I would
describe it. Yes. Great. Hold
on. What's this do? And you're
like, okay, so that's, we'll just call it
the pointy pointy. That's
what's called a knife to
normal humans. You go run. Okay!
Basically, yes. It, to some extent, like
my unit and also just
my experience as like, as I grew as a, as
a person during my time, like, it's like,
it really seems like a somewhere along
the line. Someone was
like, Hey, you know,
it'd be really funny if we film a bunch
of 18, 19, 20, 21
year-olds from the inner,
from, from New York city and have them
pretend they're soldiers.
And, and it's like the stupidest
version of Candid Camera ever. Like if it
was candid camera, it
would be like the hijinks,
the stupidity, the absolute just abject,
like insanity that we went
through, that we did, things
we did, while in a Guard unit too, 'cause
it's only, you only drill
one weekend a month, right?
The rest of the time you're off doing
whatever it is that, you
know... Life things. Most young adults do,
but it kind of, it, it, it, Oh my
goodness. I'll ask this now
you've stepped on a point.
So you've joined us for Mission:
Recalibration before, and I'll
ask it here. Now that we have a
point, what are you absolutely delighted
that like smartphones
were not around to record?
Oh, I mean, um, everything.
Now that's a broad sword to swing.
Like, you know, I think that if, if
smartphones were around
during my deployment, during
kind of even the stuff that we did during
drill, I think that,
you know, there would be
not just our drill, but like just writ
large, infantrymen, I think
are, you know, one of the,
they probably be one of the reasons why
smartphones would be banned.
Right?
Oh my goodness. Oh, I have so many like
sketches and films playing
in my head and you go, and
they're all painfully
accurate. We're all watching it.
Yeah. It's, it's really, really funny how
just, you know, the
timing of it all worked out
because we recorded videos when we were
deployed on our phones that,
you know, obviously no one,
I don't, I don't, we didn't share them.
We kept them for
ourselves, but like the, you know,
we would make comments about other units.
We make comments about
people, people's driving habits.
We would, I, I, I have photos and I think
video of me under a really large overpass
just without my, without my, without my
helmet, just hanging out,
pretending I'm a pretending
I'm like a superhero being like this.
It's... Like Heisman trophy kind of thing!
Yeah. Oh my goodness!
We had, we had incidents where we had,
there was one time where
we were there in that same
kind of overpass with an area we kind of
went to occasionally to
kind of get a quick breather.
It's very, very common for other units to
use the thing. There was an
incident one time where we,
where we were, we were under there and,
and Abrams tank was rolling was, you
know, part of a convoy
of other Abrams tanks. Yeah. But it's
barrel apparently
malfunctioned and it was kind,
it was pointed directly at us. And I was
just like... Oh wow! I was like, um, I'm like,
Is that looking at me funny or is it just
me? I know. I go to my, I
go to my, my squad leader.
I'm like, Hey, uh, can we get in contact
with, uh, them? That feels ever so aggressive.
I don't like that. I don't think anyone
would. You go like, what's
that? And you go like, um,
that's a Howitzer. And you're like,
should it, should it be
pointed this direct...? No,
actually let's, let's ring them up. Let's
see. Um, did you, did
someone steal your breakfast?
Okay. Well, so like, well, what's, what's
funny, what's "funny", is like
they are, they're, they're
trained to as, as are we, like when they,
you know, when they're, when you're
traveling on a curve to
have the barrel facing the way that it
can have most, most coverage.
Sure. And it's just that the
barrel of that is significantly larger
than the barrel of the .50
cal, which I was, you know,
just by a little bit. Just a touch. Yeah.
Just a touch. And I was just like, um,
I was thinking, I'm like, think I can get
their attention. If I
start firing at them, like,
like, hello, hello. There's something
about the cycle rate of a
.50 cal because it's not,
it doesn't have a fast cycle rate. It's
a, it's very much a, dut dut dut dut dut dut
you know, like that kind of thing.
And you go, Oh, I know that
rhythm. Someone are upset!
And you think, on a, especially on
the armor, on the
armour plating of an Abrams,
like, wait, someone sneezing. Yeah, no,
that's not, that's not,
you're not doing much with... no.
Yeah. So we had like, you know, incidents
like that. And then, you know, we had,
you know, to your point about like
leadership. I learned a lot
about kind of growing into roles
by observing, observing the leaders that
I had during my deployment,
by observing other leaders,
by observing what people did and what
they didn't do. And not only
just in the military context,
but how they acted as human beings
towards the people that
they, um, that fell under their
kind of guidance. And yeah, it was a, um,
kind of a, uh, a very, very
whole, uh, wholesome learning
experience, albeit under, albeit under,
you know, interesting
scenarios of being in Iraq.
Circumstances. Yeah, exactly. Um, so
let's ask it this way then,
like with all of that leading up
to what kind of drove your decision to
retire from the military?
Um, I just felt that, you know,
it was 2009. I was in from 2001 to 2009, I
deployed in '04 to '05.
Um, I just, uh, I don't know,
a part of me really wanted to be able to
experience civilian life
without the, um, kind of, uh,
the little part in the back of my brain
being like, Oh, you have
drill coming up in two weekend...
in next month. Ah, okay. Just
done, done. Like I'm just done.
You know, I, I deployed once. It took a
lot out of me. Uh, you
know, lessons that I'm still,
you know, dealing with today, both
physically as well as emotionally. Uh,
you also learn a lot about
yourself, how you deal with stress, how
you deal with, uh, well-being and how to,
how that manifests on a day-to-day basis
and how certain people
are more meant for that than
others. And I don't, you know, begrudge
anyone that stays in. I
just felt like I had, um,
kind of a lot to offer the regular
non-military world. Yeah. Not
everyone are built the same
and it's definitely one of those things
where you go, yeah, when you talk like
ex-operators and all that kind of
stuff, those are different animals and
like we get it. And I,
I'll say I'm glad you got out. Like
that's wonderful. You
know, it's always one of those
things where you go, I ask about this,
like whether it be in
medicine or otherwise, like if
someone go to A&E or like the emergency
room and you go like, Oh,
you've had this problem for so
long. Why now? And it's, it's a stack. I
always find where you go
like, ah, I'm just done. So
There you are. Yeah, it, it, it was that it
was kind of like, I was a, you know, my,
my schedule was like my day-to-day life
schedule was insane. I was doing
drill a weekend. I was also working
full-time, going to school
full-time. So I was just like, I,
I needed to just kind of turn it off if
you will. And I was like,
Hey, I did what I needed to do.
I am enjoying the fruits of that at that
point with my education.
And I felt like, you know,
there's, there's a lot more to the world
that I could still both see
and do and contribute in a
meaningful way. So what you kind of
touched on it, but what, when
you, when you got out, like,
what was the moment like you went, okay,
civilian life is going to
be a little bit different.
So, you know, I, I got back from my
deployment in '05 and I started working
for a law firm in the
facilities department. And I, you know, I
got to see kind of, I got to
see that a lot of that kind
of dual-track lifestyle, if you will,
because I was still going
to drill, but I was still
experiencing kind of this, this world and
working for corporate
America at that point. Sure. Um,
albeit not as a, you know, not in any
fancy or crazy way, I got to
see kind of the exploits of
what corporate America falls into. And
like that included, that
included like, you know, we would
have holiday parties around the round
this time of year that would be fully
catered affairs at like
steakhouses with, you know, open bars
and literally in the literal sense, open
bars, you want Johnny
Walker blue label, you get blue label,
like, so I realised that, you
know, not that I wanted to be
a professional alcoholic, but that, you
know, the civilian world has a lot of
these avenues that I
hadn't even considered that things that
can possibly do, fall into
and, you know, kind of become. So
I think, I think realising that while,
you know, those seeds were
planted while I was still working
at the law firm, kind of just the
understanding of, Hey, there's a whole
world out there that
you know, very little of, but every,
every day I would go to work every
weekend. When I would,
when I wasn't in drill, I would, you
know, go to, go to work OT
and I would have these kind of
realisations, whether it be with my boss
at the time, or just kind
of observations that there's
stuff out there that I can do. Gotcha. So
what did not translate well?
Uh, I have, I think, I think one of the
things, I think one
of the things that, uh,
was always difficult and continued to be
was that I had these experiences in my
early twenties where
I, you know, my, were life or death,
right? And I, how, you
know, I had responsibilities
for certain things, whether it be
weaponry, equipment,
personnel that allowed me to have
these, you know, albeit very small
positions of power so that the, when I
was at the law firm,
it became, so the law firm I worked at
was, um, became the largest
firm in American history to
go bankrupt. Oh, well, that's,
that's an achievement! Yes,
yes, it is. I did not cause it.
I'm not that important. Well, that's way
more boring. Okay.
Interview's over. We're done now.
All right. I set fire to, I set fire to a
45 story building. You
happy?!? Okay. That sounds
way cooler! Coming soon. Yes. So I spent,
uh, the law firm went
bankrupt and then like we would have,
you know, layoffs that were to kind of
happen. My boss, uh, came home from
burying his grandmother
in Puerto Rico on a Friday to them firing
him on that same Friday.
Um, and then I, I, I, I, like
my day-to-day for a year, I would go to
work not knowing if it
would be my last day. So to your
question, uh, to your question, like
what, what didn't translate
well is when I... Stability!
yeah, absolutely stability. But also when
I was interviewing for
positions in other places,
because I saw the writing on the wall.
Um, I was at that point in my late
twenties and the kind of,
um, the context of the interviews would
be like, Oh, you've done
this, this, and this. Great!
great. You've done this great. Fantastic.
This is great. Yeah.
Sorry. You're too young to lead
the department. And like, I'm like, I
have managed people. I've
managed equipment. I've,
I saw the, I basically assisted in the
merger of two historic law
firms and the consolidation
of their assets. Like you're saying I
can't run this team
because I'm too young. And see,
this is one of the things I talk about
constantly. And it's such a pain point
because when you talk
about, you know, the transition, when you
talk about, well, what
does that look like? It's,
people don't necessarily understand it
and being able to explain
who you are in a very bite size
and clear cut and understood manner. It's
not easy, you know, again,
to your point, you're like,
I've, I've overseen, you know, a hundred
men squadrons and this
and everything else. And you
go, I don't know what any of those words
mean. So it's technically speaking
English, but not exactly.
No, it's just a dialect and that... Well said! Very few
understand. And so
that part of it, you know,
was tough because I'm like, I can do the
job. It just, I happened
to be, you know, I, like,
and I've, when I was working, I was, you
know, people that I answer
to and people that answer to
me were old, you know, in some cases
older than me. And that's some cases
significantly older than
me. And that doesn't discredit my or
their abilities in any
way. It was just how the
cookie crumbled, so to speak, or it's
like, Hey, I was in the right place at
the right time. And I
made the right enough of an impression
that put me in a position
that let me get to where I was.
So yeah, I, I, you know, I, I'm thankful
for my time that I spent
at the law firm. I really,
really am. I learned a lot about
corporate structure, about,
uh, the, the joys of kissing
ass and not kissing ass. How to deal
with, uh, megalo-
maniacal partners... Politics.
Let's see. We can wrap it
up in a word. Politika. Yeah.
And, uh, I was, I was one of the last
like 30, 35 people there, uh, helped
oversee kind of the wind
down. I was let go eventually. And then,
um, you know, I really struggled. I
struggled for a while
figuring out, I applied to a bunch of
places. It wasn't getting
anything and I struggled. Um,
I, you know, I even gave some thought at
that point to maybe going
back to, maybe going back
into the military on an active duty
basis. Cause I had, at that point I had
graduated. So I could,
maybe it's thinking, maybe I'll go back
as an officer. Um, you
know, that thought crossed my
mind, but I was like, you know what, let
me, let me see what else is out there.
And I happen across,
you know, a website called Taskrabbit,
which allowed me to do
kind of the odds and ends for
other people as they moved into their
apartments, houses, office
spaces, et cetera, et cetera.
And I, you know, I gotta say it kind of
really changed my life in
many different ways. Um,
you know, cause at the law firm, I was
overseeing facilities, facilities,
projects, interior office
projects, moves, uh, et cetera. But this
allowed me to kind of create, uh, a
structure in which I
lived. I love that! Right. So I, I, I kind of used my,
um, the way that I, uh,
learn lessons in the military,
learn lessons about like, you know, being
the right place at the
right time, being on time,
knowing how to communicate with people.
And I kind of parlayed
that into, you know, a pretty
incredible journey through Taskrabbit. I
did like, you know, I was
on it for three years or so.
I did through the site. I did about
8... 900 jobs off the side.
I did about another 800 jobs.
I was like the number seven ranked person
in New York city for a while. Um... Not
bragging or anything.
No, no, you know, as somebody, somebody
who's, you know, you know, the fact that
I tell people this a
lot is like, I, people are like, Oh,
what'd you do? Well, I freelance as a
carpenter in New York
city for three years and didn't have to,
you know, and continue to
live at the life that I lived.
Right. I didn't have to move back into my
mom. I, I didn't have to make any
sacrifices on what I
was doing with friends or wasn't doing. I
just made a name for
myself. Right. I kind of dug in on
the things I was good at, uh, through
discipline, through kind
of lessons learned. My time... Well
you got to take ownership of it. Plain and simple.
Yeah. And, you know, kind
of use that and, you know,
kind of ran, ran with it, so to speak,
kind of whatever it went. I, I would
literally, there were
days and weeks would go by where I would
just, I had a, I had my old
military backpack, like 50,
55 pounds full of tools, uh, no matter.
So I'm ready for whatever.
I'd have my laptop in there.
I'd go to a coffee shop in the morning
and I just, I would bid on jobs, like,
Hey, and I would just
bid on jobs. I, I have screen, you know,
I send someone back
and I seen like there's,
there are days when I had like five or
six jobs. There are days
when I had one or two, I got to
work and, you know, some fun
environments. I got to do some fun
things. I think one of my most
memorable jobs had nothing to do with,
um, um, like carpentry at all. I, someone
posted a, a job that
they were on their wedding day and they
didn't know how to tie a
bow tie. And I bid on the job,
but I won it. And I got to like
experience going into this person's like
hotel room right before
they get married and tying their bow tie
for them. Very intimate.
Very, very intimate. And,
you know, I get to experience things
like, you know, the, the,
the most fun jobs for me were,
where the clients are happy. But like I,
where I got to expert
or I got to hang out with
the people's pets and things of that
sort. I, I've had, had, you know, the,
one of the most memorable
moments I was finishing up a job that
took like two days for
someone. And they, they had a, a
three-year-old at the time,
three-year-old boy. And he walked up to
me to tip me and in each of his
hands was a $50 bill. Okay! So, and he
gave me the $50 bill. He goes, this is
for you. Wow! This is for
you. And like things like that. Like I,
I, you know, I, I made sure
I left each client, you know,
I tried to make sure that I left each
client in a better place than they were
when they started with
me, where my personality kind of shone
through and my skills. And
yeah, you know, I did that
for three years. I kind of, then I met a
girl, realised that I
needed something a little more
stable than freelancing in New York city.
Um, emailed, I saw kind of
a, like I was with my then
girlfriend, now wife, we're going to a
doctor's appointment, ever
saw a truck. I was like, oh,
millwork, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, Oh,
I can do that. You know,
blind emailed them. I was like,
Hey, I can do this. Hire me. Sure. And
wound up being a lead
installer for that company for
almost three years as well. And kind of
building on lessons that I
did lessons of things I learned
on my own. Um, you know, got to
experience working on some insane
projects where the closets cost,
you know, as much, if not more than some
houses that other people
buy. Um, and, you know, it, it,
it continued to kind of introduce me
into, uh, the accidental world I'm in.
Right. It was kind of
this accidental path. Yeah. I literally
going back to when I was in
the military, I had no idea what
I wanted to do. Even when I got out, I
had no clue. Um, so the whole thing about
it is all I can think
is like, what's your favorite arcade game
and yours is not like, Street Fighter,
It's not Double Dragon,
you're just the pinball machine.
That's all you are. Just like, Oh, just
go here. And this will
be that. And I met this guy. And have you
met James and James is
really nice. And his dog is
wonderful. Basically. Yeah. And, um, it
just kind of, you know, I, I
spent nearly three years there.
I realized that, you know, it was at that
point where I fell into more of a,
the realisation of like project
management, the ideation of like how that
could become what I do
full time. Because we were having a lot
of issues as far as just, uh,
as far as just with clients,
uh, the sites not being ready. Um,
measurements being wrong. And
I was like, Hey, I approached
my boss, the owner of the company. I was
like, Hey, how about this? I'm one of
your top installers,
pay me a little extra money. Right? I'll
go out to all the high dollar
value jobs a week beforehand,
make sure they're ready, check the
measurements, coordinate,
kind of do all these things that
no one's doing now. And, uh, I'll still
do my work, right? I am not
going to abstain from that,
but if there's a, you know, a 2 to
$300,000 job coming up,
that's going to take us, you know,
a month and a half to complete, uh, I,
you know, you want it to be
right, right? You want the client
to be happy with what they're getting.
And he bluntly replied,
no. And it was at that point,
I realized that I kind of needed to get
out and like, I, you know,
also at that point around that
time, I bought a house, moved a little
further north of the city with my wife.
Sure. And, you know,
I spent, uh, a very brief time working
for an architectural
hardware company that didn't work
out. The boss and I had kind of different
views on what work really
is. And, uh, I, you know, to
your point earlier, like a pinball
machine, I started looking for work. I
was let go from that
place, started looking for work and I
applied blind applied
again to a company that, uh,
oversaw the labour of the build out of
corporate office spaces.
So, um, you know, and jobs are
large and small, uh, you know, I wound
up, I wound up running one of their, you
know, I emailed them,
I was like, Hey, uh, and at that point I
was just happened to
come across the realisation,
Oh, here's what a project manager is.
Here's what, here's what they do. Um, and
here's how I fall into
kind of these things, these categories of
what they do. So I emailed
them and I was like, Hey,
um, I never done, I literally said, I
think I've never done
this work professionally,
but here's my background. Here's how I
can help you out and, uh,
managed to snag an interview and
the GM and the owner liked me. And you
know, that was my first
foray into kind of like project
management. How about that? Well, to
everyone listening in, if you
all are in loving what we're
doing, pardon, loving what you're hearing
as much as we are
loving what we're doing,
smash that subscribe button. And I'll ask
this at this point. Um,
you've already led into it as if
I'm just imaginarily leading you along,
but what, um, what's your
mission now? Um, so, you know,
I've spent, you know, four years at two
different companies, uh, basically
overseeing the labour
materials of large scale build-outs,
whether it be office spaces.
And then my last stop, I did,
uh, high end retail locations all over
North America. And the, the, the
construction process
is absolutely broken. It's butchered.
It's unrealistic. It's, uh,
astronomically stupid.
Everyone thinks they're the most
important person in the room. The egos
are out of hand. The
timelines are comically inept. The, um,
expectations from all parties, uh,
end-users, general contractors,
designers, uh, I just feel like they,
they all drank a lot.
And they're just in a constant state of
stupor because there's no, no, no
reasonable explanation
as to why some of these, some of these
jobs exist in today's
world. Like there's no, like,
it's just genuinely baffling like, well,
I mean, you've said
such kind words about the
construction industry. Uh, can we say
something negative instead?
Like, you know, maybe they
smell like cheese or, you know, you don't
like their shoes. Uh, I
mean, uh, the, the smells on
a job site on a construction job site
will in, in due course, if you're not
ready, might be a little
alarming. There were times there were
certain, there were certain
people. I was around on not
any of the guys I oversaw, but I was
like, holy shit, Iraq smelled better,
better than this. Like,
that's a rough cut. That is a rough cut.
Yeah. It's like, I, I, I, I
show up on job sites and I'd
have to talk to people. I'm like, Hey,
you do know that there's this wonderful
thing. It's a device.
It, it projects water out at you. It's
called the shower. It's called the
shower. And then there's
just stuff you put on, you put on your,
you know, it's even
spray. That rectangle stuff.
Yes. Yes. What's that called? I believe that's
called Oh, soap! That's the, yeah. So
that's the one, soap. And then
there's also this thing you do afterwards
when you, before you exit
the house where you put on
deodorant, it's, it's, it's magical. Like
it's, it's life-changing.
Don't tell them about clean
clothing. Baby steps,
baby steps. Oh no. So I mean,
Oh my goodness. With this ridiculous,
ridiculous journey, uh,
again, you, you, I don't care if
it sounds derogatory. Yeah. I think we've
given you a nickname of
the pinball at this point.
Like what do you have as far as advice
for those, you know, in the
service planning to get out
soon or otherwise, like what, what do you
think would, would help
them to maybe, uh, not quite
have as much fun as you. Um, I think a
big thing, a big message I
would relay is to don't, don't
pigeonhole yourself. If you're an
infantryman, consider other things. If
you're a tanker, there's
really, you know, short of like going on
a shitty discovery show,
there's very few things you can
do as a tanker. Like if you follow that
path, but there's, there's amazing
opportunities. If you
just open your mind, like no matter what
MOS you are, no matter what
you do in the service, everything
from, you know, SF Delta guys to cooks,
right? And everything in
between, there are such amazing
opportunities, especially that are
afforded to veterans. The opportunities
that the VA and other
organisations provide as far as tuition
assistance, as far as tuition guidance,
as far as, and that's
what you're having like education
guidance, right? Like the, you know, I, I
jokingly said earlier,
I was like, Hey, you know, they paid off
my, they paid off 60% of
my undergrad based off of
what I did and how long I was deployed
for. But I also, you know,
after I was let go from my last
job, I came across something called
Chapter 31, which a lot of
veterans don't know about. It's an
opportunity to kind of pursue a higher
level of education to kind
of enhance your standing. So I
got, I went and got my MBA, like there
are... There you go! Yeah,
there are things out there that,
you know, whether it be, whether they're
gate-keeped, whether
they're not as well known about
whether the impetus from the veterans
themselves isn't there to go
out and seek these things out,
there's opportunities galore, right?
There's things you can, you know,
especially now, you know,
especially nowadays with how, where kind
of we're in the shift with
technology, construction,
and all kinds of things in between the
advent of, you know, ubiquitous data
centres, the need for
personnel who can take on large scale
jobs of that sort,
like, and don't be afraid to
take a chance on something. That's the
one thing I will add is
like, there's so many things
veterans are good at on a day to day
basis. So many things that
they can do, right? It's just
a matter of being able to translate your
skills to your point earlier
into like, into the English
language, the correct dialect of the
English language. And civilian is a
slight different dialect.
It is. And, you know, you know, putting,
you know, putting bullet
points such as, you know,
I, you know, you shouldn't be putting
bullet points like if you're, and, you
know, within the SF or kind
of high speed community, like, you're not
no one's no one cares how many kills you
have, no one, no one
gives a shit. Oh, wait
confirmed? Confirmed, though?
Confirmed. Come on. You know,
depends who you ask.
Exactly.
But also like, you know, if you're, you
know, being able to translate your
abilities from your time in service is an
art form in and of itself.
Oh, goodness, yes. And just the,
I would say take chances fall into, you
know, take a dumb job for
six months after you get out
genuinely, because they you've spent, you
know, 20, 25 years in
taking orders day in and day out,
living this rigid life of structure that
many people don't, you
know, many people envision them
just following that, that time that path.
And like, you know, many
of the guys I served with
became cops or firefighters or I've said
the same kind of thing of
like, when you talk about
especially infantry, you mentioned, you know,
Delta and otherwise, and you go, yeah,
more often than not,
they're going to have a sidearm, like, and
it's, it's not a
requirement, you know, it's one of those
things where like, I always ask, well,
what brings you joy? What
makes you happy? And they
always, always look at me and they go, no
one have ever asked me that.
I'm allowed to do what I want.
You're like, I think I just exploded. And
I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm here for.
Yeah, no, it's it. I just think that the
whole, the whole kind of
stigma that's attached to certain MOSs
that's attached to certain
specialties that they continue doing that
work. Yeah. It's, you
know, we've been, you know,
with a, with a couple of year break, but
a three or four year break,
you know, we've been at war
for 20 years, right? And this country has
seen so many people
sacrifice so much of themselves,
their families, their, their time, their
energy, their well
being, and not just in the,
not just in the cases of those that are
no longer here with us, but those that
are and are carrying
so much weight, so much burden of those
that their friends that
are now no longer here.
And it feels like the general consensus
for most of the public, for whatever
reason, is like, oh,
yeah, you did that in the service. Yeah.
You go in, you know, you go
and work, work at a sheriff's
office somewhere in Arizona. Now, you get
to be a, you know, a
contractor, you get to be a soldier
of fortune, like obviously that you're
just going to do the same thing with a
different flavour. And
you go, what if they don't want to? Just
a quick question. No,
it's, I would think, you know,
to your point, some advice, I would say
when you're getting ready to
ETS and you fill out all your
paperwork, do some deep soul searching.
Do some really deep soul searching.
Figure it out, you know,
take, take a month while you're still in
and you're, you know, you're
on the cusp of getting out,
make sure all your medical paperwork is
good to go. So you're, you
have fewer issues when you get
out claiming stuff, but do some soul
searching, like really,
really dive in on who you are as a
person, what you want to do, what you
don't want to do is just as
important, if not more so than
what you do want to do. And it's a matter
of, you know, have seek
out supportive groups, right?
Seek out veterans who have gotten out,
who have completely gotten out, not
people who are on the
cusp of, but we've been out 5, 10, 15
years. The dust has
settled. Like you go like, yeah. So
what's it actually like? Yeah, it's a
thing. Yeah. Seek out opinions. Seek out
opinions from people
who had your MOS seek out opinions who
didn't have your MOS kind of to get a
full breadth picture
of what it is that you could possibly do.
'Cause you know, your time
on this planet is relatively
limited as far as I know, unless anyone
has any hacks. It's, you
know, you want to do something
that you enjoy, right? And yeah,
definitely that. The, one of
the, one of the biggest kind of
struggles, I think that I've read about
consistently is just figuring
out a path for people as they
get out. That is enjoyable, that is less
stressful in whatever capacity that
they're used to their
stress level being. And that is, you
know, if it's meaningful, great. If you
want to go after you get
out, you know, you've been in for 22
years and you want to get
out and you want to be a,
you know, a professional crocheter, then
so be it. Go do
something enjoyable. Like it's,
it'll be the change of pace. It'll, you
don't have to take orders from people who
only have a one-track mind for the most
part. And as, and I
say this more even for
a junior enlisted, then I say this more
for senior enlisted and
officer corps, because they
feel like they locked into it. They feel
like they're a locked
into it, but it's also like,
they all want to do, you know, I, I'm a
member of like
organisations and I'm a member of like,
you know, you follow stuff on Reddit and
everyone's like, Oh
yeah, I'm an officer. I have
eight years of SOF experience. Here's,
here's what my MBA profile
is going to look like here.
So I'm going to go afterwards, who gives
a shit? Honestly, I
genuinely, like it's one of the
things. It's one of the things I don't
care about what you did in
the service. I genuinely don't
care. I was like, if you're a decent
human being, that to me is
more important than any accolades
you can possibly have while you were in.
I, you know, and that
includes Audie Murphy. Like I,
like I feel you need to be a decent
person first and foremost,
right? After that, we can talk,
right? If you're, if you know how to
treat people with respect up and down, up
and down the spectrum,
everyone from the guy that collects the
garbage to the person
that sits in the C-Suite.
I'll say this a thousand times over and
this, this bears repeating
maybe sadly, so. You know,
a firm handshake, a look a man in the eye
and a hello, how are you?
That's, that's how we operate.
That's, it's plain and simple. You know,
it's one of those, if
people give you a reason to,
to be off put, if they're disrespectful,
then fine. You can take it that way.
But everything starts flat, you know?
Yeah. It's, I just
think that there's so much,
um, you know, so much out there that is
left on the table because people, uh,
veterans specifically
are fearful to take that chance to do
something. Like, like, I,
if I wouldn't have taken the
chance, like the reason I got that, um,
job at the law firm going
back is I spent six months
after I got back from my deployment
partying like a fucking
rockstar every single night.
So you're just green room at a Whitesnake
concert. You're
like, let's get into it.
Basically. And then I think there was,
there was one morning, like
six months after I got back,
my, I got home at like 06:30 in the
morning. My mom's getting
ready for work and she was like,
all right, enough of this fucking shit.
Get a job. Oh my goodness, that's
funny. I'm done. I'm done.
I'm done. Yeah. So like, yeah. And I took
a one day temp job that,
and I, I think I would,
it would happen with that a one day temp
job to move the library
from one floor to another
of this firm. I wound up working at, it
was me and four the people.
And I had a date that night.
Right. And I was like, and I was like,
you know what? I gotta get
this shit done. And I kind of
took that discipline that I learned while
I was in the service and
kind of the coordination being
like, okay, here's what we're going to do
guys. Here's how we're
going to operate this.
Take this, you guys take this. We're
going to walk this down this way,
etc. I have, I have a girl waiting for
me. So we're getting this accomplished.
No, I think I literally said that I was
like, I have a date
tonight, guys. I don't give a shit
what you guys are doing. I need to, I
need, I need this done.
Cause I think it was an hourly,
hourly, hourly job. And the guys are
trying to milk it. And I
was like... Ah, that makes sense.
I was like, I, I'm going to fly. Not
today. I was like, so I, you know, and
you know, I fell into
this career path by complete accent. I
had my, my, my undergrad degree. If I
tell you the full title,
you might go and laugh yourself off
screen. My, my undergrad
degree is in deviant behavior.
And social control. Well, I mean that
kind of tracks though with
project management. Let's,
let's be fair. It does. It does. But it's
also tracks with being
in the construction trade.
True. But it's one of these things where
I would tell people that
all the time, it's like,
yeah, this is basically a psych major. So
yeah, I mean, that's kind
of, you know, take chances,
make mistakes. Also, like... How about
this? Let's, let's go from there and say,
on the civilian side,
on the, on the populace, on the people
side of things, what, what
do you want them to know now?
That, uh, veterans are not a monolith,
right? We're not, uh, we're we make
mistakes. There's a lot
of shitty people who are veterans, right?
I understand being
thankful for people's service,
right? But also I think it needs to be
more, uh, individualized than that,
right? You can't just
paint the whole veteran community as some
kind of, Oh, we're all
wonderful and lovely people,
right? As much, as much so in the
civilian side, right?
Sure. Um, but also like, we,
we've experienced things that so few
people have, um, the,
everything from, you know,
spending years away from our families,
uh, being, uh, being vigilant
beyond all vigilance about our
day to day lives, uh, as we, as we go out
on patrols, as we go out
on missions, as we do things
in the field. So give grace to veterans,
right? Give grace to, uh,
people that work for you who
are veterans because they, there are so
many people who are
suffering silently and don't have the
ability or community to allow that to be
projected in a meaningful
way that if accidents happen,
if mistakes happen, don't once again,
don't brush the whole veteran community
into don't lump them
into like, Oh, you know, these guys just
make mistakes. These gals
make mistakes. It's, you
know, it's, um, and, you know, be
inquisitive, but in a meaningful way
about service, right? Not,
not just like the typical, Oh, did you,
did you kill anyone?
I think you just, you defined the, uh,
the like ex-agency, ex-
military, uh, like you,
oh, you're a standup comedian. Tell me a
joke. And you go like,
please don't lead line with that.
That's a bad lead line. Yeah. Um, no,
absolutely. It's, you
know, it take, you know, take,
get to know them, get to know veterans,
get to know people in your community,
whether it be through
work, whether it be your neighbor,
whether it be, you know, through a
religious institution,
whatever the case may be, whether it be
the guy who, you know, shows
up to the bar every month and
leaves a drink on undrank because he's
doing it for his buddies,
like get to know these people,
because they have stories they have. And
through those
conversations, through those experiences,
you'll make bonds, you'll create
opportunities. Cause a lot of what
happens is one thing leads
to another in conversation before you
know it, you're figuring out how that
veteran can help you
grow your business. You're figuring out
how you can apply something
that you learned from that,
you know, in a, in a context, or you come
across an idea where that
veteran can thrive. So I think
being able to have those conversations to
genuinely inquire about what service,
what drove them to service stories,
stories are everything. It's,
it's, it's, it's the important
thing that'll help break down barriers
because I feel like
there's so many kind of fake,
quote unquote barriers between the
civilian and the veteran
population. It's like, no, we're,
we're both the same. We just, you know,
have, and to have an additional set of
stories that we did,
because we wanted to, whether we wanted
to continue our, you
know, our name heritage,
whether we wanted to try new things,
whether we wanted to go play
Rambo for a couple of years,
whether we wanted to get a sick payday,
like whether we want to
test ourselves for those that
go into like, you know, sure, SEAL, Delta,
Ranger, SF teams, right? Like
things or PJ teams, like the,
all these things. Yeah. Some, some
particular men have an affliction with
like, well, you know,
this circulation thing is too fun. How
about we try hypothermia and
you go like, I think SEALs is
for you. I think we have a boat for you.
Do you enjoy water? How
much do you enjoy water? Like,
I think you're going to regret those
words, but you know, we can leave it at that. So all
excellent. Now let's bring it
back a little bit more on the ridiculous
or accurate. What's a,
a telly show or a film or
anything in between that is either is so,
is so bad it's good or
painfully accurate or just hilarious.
Like what's something that stands out to
you as far as regarding military life?
I think Jarhead for me, just the one, you
know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, having, having, having
read the book and then having watched
the, the movie, which
was a fairly decent kind of
portrayal of, of that life, but also
seeing just the, just the, some of the,
the mundane situations
that they found themselves in, just being
like, yep, yep, this is,
this is fucking accurate. Like
you can, I can, I can think back to
opportunity scenarios where I
was like, you know, why is it
that, you know, formation is at, you
know, 0730. Why the fuck are we getting
ready at 0430? Like,
what, why? There's a three hour gap here.
And you go like, have you, have you
mopped a mess hall twice? And you go,
I... zmm, hmm. Okay. We
did it. So we, so it's funny,
we did something in, in Kuwait... Okay. Which I
think that like, it's, I,
we call that, so we cleaned
up the area where we were staying before
we, you know, drove north into Iraq.
Sure. But they, they
gave it the silliest name. They give it
the name. Oh, do tell. They gave it the
name, hands across Kuwait.
So we went full blown 1980s, but in the
desert. Okay, great.
So, so, so, so we lined up in a line
like, uh, and then we
policed trash in Kuwait in the area
where we lived. But like the name they
gave it is just like,
what, what is going on? Like,
like I thought it was at that point. It
was at that point where I was like,
yep, Jarhead was accurate. See, this is
one of those things where I
feel like if there was like
drone cameras, this would have been one
of those things where going
back to the smartphone thing
of like, there's no way that's real.
That's AI slop. I don't
believe that one, but you're like,
no, they really are. They're like holding
hands like children and
looking for rubbish in the
desert. And you go, did I, did I have a
stroke? Is this, no, no, I,
like while we were doing it,
while we were doing it, I was just, I, I
like me and my guys were
just like, like, like it,
we literally thought like we were being
Punk'd. Ashton Kutcher
was going to pop out like,
Like, gotcha! is this really what we're having an
infantry unit do in Iraq in Kuwait? Oh! Like,
like... Oh, that's so funny! Are you going to give us brooms
too? So that we could
brush sand like the dead,
like from one end of the, like, oh no.
Oh, so what's it like being, you know,
MI5, MI6 and you go,
it's not this, it's not, this isn't
exactly James Bond. Like Q is
not giving me the watch with,
you know, the laser in it and you go
like, um, did you see that
leaf? Ah, it's hot out here.
Yeah, basically. That leaf, that leaf
wasn't here 20 minutes
ago. Please get rid of it.
Okay. It's very, very problematic. Quick
question. Where did the leaf in the
desert come from? You
like don't ask questions, boy. It's like,
it's one of these things
I just, you know, you take
the sum of all the experiences of, you
know, during my deployment
predominantly. And I'm just like,
and I'm sure many, many of vets in
different ways can
relate. It's just like,
sometimes the, the most like mundane
moments, right? The things
like that, things like I,
you know, I had, I had one of my squad
mates, you know, hide the
headspace and time engage for my
.50 cal in a little sand pit, which was
really fun to find. As you do. Yeah.
Don't worry. I may or may not have
taken his firing pin out of his M4. It's
dead trigger. What's
happening? And you get like,
it worked the last time I looked at it.
Have you cleaned it? Oh my
goodness. That's brilliant.
Like why would this work? I don't know.
Oh my goodness. No, so like,
it's all those experiences,
you know, they make you who you are. They
make the, from the
mundane to the stressful to the
times when you're like, Oh, am I going to
get blown up today? Who
knows? You know, but usual
conversation, usual conversation, but
it's being able to reflect on
those both, you know, depending
on when you got out or how long ago the
incident was in a
meaningful way and being like, Hey,
you know, this, this, this, this
incident, these incidents made me who I
am. They may have been
painful at the time, both physically,
emotionally, you know, mentally. I
remember I was one of the
things that I, you know, one of my, one
of the moments of my
deployment was we were in Taji,
driving along, I was the gunner's hatch.
We're driving along a road that's
notorious for having
IEDs planted in the ground. I figured
that's where you were going. And my
driver, I was a second
vehicle in the second vehicle. My driver,
you know, um, saw
something, I was in the lead vehicle
that day. I'm sorry. I saw something, saw
something was freshly
paved ground, avoided it.
So on a, on this road, you can only drive
60 miles an hour.
That's like, basically you're
bottoming out the accelerator on, on the
Humvee, on the Humvee. And
he went into a sandy area
oversteered and I went into a ditch, went
into a ditch going 60
miles an hour. And I had, um,
you know, my communications headphones on
and all I heard from the
guy behind me was like, yo,
Solo's dead. I literally like I hung onto
the .50 cal with my left arm.
So I didn't start spiraling
and shooting off all kinds of rounds into
those into, you know, who
knows where. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And I was just like, and then I get back
on and I'm like, nope, Solo's alive.
No, no, no, I'm going to continue
annoying you. Let's go get lunch.
Yeah. But like what made that particular
incident like so, like last
thing was my squad leader was
like, Hey, when you get, you know, we,
they called the wrecker in and
they got, they pulled us out.
Sure.
When he's like, Hey, when you get back,
go to the cash, get yourself checked out.
Yeah, definitely.
And I, um, I go back to the cash and as I
walk in, I hear, um, what
turned out to be like the,
the worst, the worst incident that we
experienced during my deployment... Oh, wow.
but a mile and a half away from where we
were was, um, a, so the unit we were
attached to had Bradleys
and the Bradley fighting vehicle went
over an IED that was ten
155 rounds and it went off.
Goodness. Um, and so all, all part, uh,
it was a 7K immediately. Um,
they found track wheels from the Bradley,
which is, uh, I want to say
roughly each track wheels,
about 400 pounds. Um, they found track
wheels half a mile away from that.
That's a lot of explosive. Wow. Yeah. So
it's one of these things like, yeah,
you have incidents like that where you're
like, you know, that
that's beyond fucked up beyond
shitty and any and all pain, any and all
pain that I was experiencing at that
point, you know what,
I'm still alive. We're good. Hush. Get
me, get me a sandwich. We're fine.
Like it went away and then like, it's one
of those things. It's one of
those things where it, those,
that kind of compartmentalisation, right?
Yeah. You know, I, I
recently just, you know,
literally I'm two years ago had surgery
on my left shoulder for something that
was wrong for 20 years.
Oh wow. So like it's, you know, that's
why I say that's why
include it, like, make sure, you know,
for vets, make sure your medical is
covered every time you, uh, every time
you sprained your fucking
ankle walking when you were deployed
anywhere, get it sorted,
get it sorted, make sure it's
documented because it, it, it eases the
process. Yeah. Um, yeah. I
mean, that's it, you know,
as someone who joined the service, not
knowing what, what the fuck I was doing,
not understanding what I was getting
myself into, not really
in any way, shape or form,
doing it for any like familial, you know,
my dad was in the Russian
military like 40, 50 years ago.
Sure. I didn't have any connections,
right? No legacy.
Yeah. No legacy. It's not
a heritage for me. Sure. I just did it
because I was like,
Hey, I could, I could,
I can come out of college without debt.
Look at me, ma! Um, uh,
it, you know, it's been such a
lasting experience. It's something I
reflect on a lot. It's
something I have this method of
connection with other vets, whether it be
when I'm on job sites, I can, you know,
you can kind of tell
who's, who's happy. It's that whole
thing. Like we smell our own.
Like I know what you look like.
Yeah. So like being able to have those
conversations, being
able to shoot the shit,
yeah, being able to do all of this is so
meaningful, but being able to
do it in a way that, you know,
that's why I want to, I want to give
back. I want to get back to the
community. I want to
get back to the veteran community in
whatever way I can, because it's, it's so
important that a last,
you know, 24 years with a little bit of a
gap are properly advised
by people who come out of it
that are mildly to moderately less scathed
than others, because
there's many people out there
that aren't. And that's sad. It's sad
that the, you know, the infrastructure,
the wheel of fortune
is, is not always pointed in the same
direction. No, the
infrastructure, the infrastructure for
taking care of vets, um, is often, you
know, misguided or not,
you know, clued in the right
way on the, on the civilian side as well.
Um, so it's, it's a matter
of just like, you know, make,
you know, if I were to leave like a
lasting thing, I was
like, make a name for yourself
in a positive way, right? Don't, you
know, find something to
give back to, whether it be
an animal shelter, a, um, a shelter of
humans, right? A, you
know, something with meaning,
something with meaning, like in any
capacity, and it doesn't
have to be your whole identity.
It could be something you do on the side
from whatever it is that
you do, you know, for work or
otherwise, but yeah, it's the community
is vibrant. There's so
many people who do so many,
so many wonderful things. Not everyone is
going to be like Johnny Kim, right?
You're not going to be
a SEAL astronaut scientist by the time
you're, you know, 42, like
you, that's not realistic,
right? So like, and don't, you know,
don't be afraid to fail. Sometimes you
fail into things that
wind up being amazing
opportunities. I love it. Well, Dmitry,
thank you so much for coming.
And you know, for people looking to
connect, where's best to
find you? I am on, you know,
LinkedIn is my social network of choice.
I'm not cool enough for
Instagram or anything like that.
Or TikTok. Yeah, LinkedIn, Dmitry
Solominsky. There we go. You
know, if you want to, if you
have any, you know, if you want to
connect me with business
ideas, you can email me at
dmitry@measuretwicepm.com. There we
go. That's where I will,
I'll be, or if you want to
just connect me, learn more about me,
happy to connect. I'm an
open book. Well, we'll have lots
of links for everyone to find you. And
thank you all for listening. And we have
plenty more episodes
to come soon. Cheers all.