Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're signing in from. This is Kumar Dattatreyan with Agile Meridian. And for the latest episode of Meridian Point, we are interviewing a really distinguished guest. I'm going to say a few words about him in the introduction, and then you'll all get to meet him and see all the greatness that he's been up to lately. So, Jon King is motivated by a vision for a better world where people support each other and pass on knowledge to the next generation. He wants to leave a positive impact on everyone he meets, helping them realize they're not alone. They have something valuable to offer and can always improve. Sounds like a person I'd like to meet. Jon, born in Benton, Arkansas, joined the Air Force at 18 as a secure communications operator aboard the E-4B. After a decade, he transitioned to the Army to pilot helicopters. He honed his skills on the Blackhawk at Fort Rucker before joining the esteemed medevac team at Fort Campbell. His expertise and valor on three combat deployments earned him numerous awards and accolades. Post-service, Jon accelerated through the MSSA course, which is the Microsoft Software and Systems Academy, gaining robust corporate skills. He was the 1st employee at a company supporting the Army before moving on to Microsoft. Last year, amidst adversity, Jon's entrepreneurial spirit led him to launch Veteran Reachback Group and Eagle Rising Foundation, redefining mentorship and community unity. With a tenet that "no" is but an obstacle, he persists, proving no mission is impossible. His recent endeavors include sponsoring race car teams and bringing a traveling veteran memorial wall to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega. So, without further ado, help me welcome Jon to the stage, and we're going to delve into what makes him tick. Hi, Jon. How are you doing?
Jon: Doing well. Thanks again for having me. Very honored and humbled.
Kumar: Of course. Yeah. You know, your story is an amazing one. I reached out to Jon on LinkedIn just to see if he'd be interested in this podcast and he responded. And in our conversation, I was just struck by the theme of these interviews, which is all about disruption and innovation. So I was struck by Jon and his ability to disrupt himself many times over throughout his career, and provide so much value and bring so much goodness to the people around him. So, Jon, I'm gonna start with, I don't know if it's a hard question. Just a question. We'll see where it goes. You mentioned in our talk significant personal loss over a short period of time last year, including the tragic helicopter crash and involvement in the medevac unit that you previously served in. How did those events spur you to innovate and start these new initiatives?
Jon: Basically, it just lit a fire under me, for lack of better words. You know, when you talk about tragedy, just to let the folks know kinda level setting with them. Earlier last year, I lost my father-in-law, who's been my mentor, my main mentor. I encourage others to get multiple mentors. But he was my go-to for all things. You know, when I had crazy ideas or needed help just navigating life, he was my individual to go to and losing him hurt. And then he was also my wife's person, right? Her number one, always will be, and I love her for that. But, you know, people look at me and say, "He's got it all figured out." No. I struggle every day. But at the end of the day, I always try to be better than I was the day before. And so that was one of the things that Rich helped me do. So fast forward to that, I don't know, about a couple of months later. My oldest brother had cancer and we ended up losing him. And then the next day, lost my uncle to suicide. And while we weren't close, it was still, you know, still family. It still hurts. I myself wouldn't be here if it weren't for my wife, but that's a whole other story for maybe another time. But the very next day is when, so in 3 days' succession, I lost my brother, lost my uncle, and then the two aircraft went down over Fort Campbell, where the 9 soldiers lost their lives doing something, hopefully, I know they loved. I loved it. Everybody in that unit always loved being there and wanted to be there because of the mission, what we were able to accomplish over the time being there. But out of all that tragedy, and as the former safety officer for that unit, one of the things I did, just kinda in my brain, was think and look at what would have caused that and what could we do better as a community, and as a better community, just a community in general, to be better, do better, and share that knowledge back that is being lost at an exponential rate. So when I looked at all that, you know, my father-in-law and how much knowledge he still had to share when he lost his battle with cancer, and then, you know, my uncle, you can say what you will about the man, but he was smart in his own right, very feisty. He never did anything anybody's way except for his own. And then my brother lived his life his way. So knowing that that knowledge is no longer there and will no longer be shared, how do we fix that? So for me, it sparked an idea of looking at the example idea of, and you've heard me say it before, but in the analogy is the military and aviation, we do this a lot. It's you'll get people that are fully trained and they're newly trained and they'll be paired up in an aircraft and they'll go on a training mission with another aircraft. Well, that other aircraft may have 2 other individuals that are training in the front seat and then a trainer in the back seat, you know, kinda giving knowledge and passing it on, making sure everybody's doing what they need to do. Well, in my analogy, I take 2 cars, put them on the interstate, single lane barriers on either side at night for a 10-mile stretch, curves along the way while it's raining, one headlight out. I want them to go ninety miles an hour, a foot to a foot and a half apart, and I don't want anything bad to happen. And then in the front car, we've got 2 licensed sixteen and say an eighteen-year-old. In the other car, we've got a fifteen-year-old with a permit, a sixteen-year-old with a license, then a twenty-one-year-old in the backseat telling the sixteen-year-old how to tell the fifteen-year-old how to drive.
Kumar: Mhmm.
Jon: And now as that scenario builds, see all the dynamic layers added into that. So at the end of the day, they're all fully qualified. They all know what to do, but because of the situations they're put in, it forces them to be at their very best every second of every day. And sadly, we ain't all that way, then and none of us will ever be, right? So the ones like me that made it 20 years across aviation and survived to tell my story, I just got lucky. You know, at the end of the day, I just didn't draw the straw. But at the end of it all, there's not that level of experience that was once there. So my goal was, how do you fix that? Well, in the military, you got a couple options, and this doesn't just stop with the military and the knowledge here. You know, when we look at generations past, the things that they were able to accomplish that we just sit and twiddle our thumbs and wonder how. But with the military, you take that thought and you look at it across and you stop loss. Well, that's not gonna end well because you're gonna have a bunch of mad people that don't wanna be there in the first place, and stop loss, for those that don't know, is basically what it sounds like. They stop people from exiting the military to secure our force is still able to survive. The other is a recall, you know, recalling prior service members. Well, that's not gonna be fun for anybody because people got out for a reason and went on to do better and greater things, hopefully. And then so now what? Well, if those 2 aren't options, but you still need to bring that knowledge back, my thought is do it in a mentorship way. So out of that, that sparked Veteran Reachback Group, which was originally started just as a thought and an idea of what can the 10-year, 15-year vision look like to bring that knowledge back? Because as we all know, nothing works fast in the government, or DOD, from that perspective. So when you look at that, that was meant for a long-term plan. But out of that, because my brain hasn't stopped since then, under VRBG, we've started CRC Consulting. So Combat Related Special Compensation Consulting to help veterans that are medically retired and retired better understand what that program is and demystify it, take the scary out of it, and help them get what they deserve from that aspect and not be fearful that they're actually losing something, based on the verbiage of how it's all written, and it is scary when you first look at it. It can be very daunting and overwhelming. So I basically put together a PowerPoint, 5 slides, Barney style, for those that remember the Barney cartoon, that allows veterans to take that information and feel comfortable doing it themselves. You know, I don't charge for that. That's just something I learned and taught myself over time, so I wanna share and make it easy for others. Now if they want additional hand-holding and all that, of course, you know, at a certain point, your time becomes very valuable as far as that goes. And I try to maximize what I can do when I can do it from that aspect. Then we went into P&P Design for the RAC, which is what you're seeing me wear now, which is just a way for me to outlet my creative side that I haven't been able to do for a while. I'll never tell you how to do that and we can get into that a little bit. But then I have P&P Design where I collaborate with small businesses, booster clubs, nonprofits, one-offs, and things like that to give them, for the boosters, the nonprofits, and the fundraiser types like that, it gives them a new way to fundraise without having to come out of pocket, without having to collect money from other parents and, you know, shirt orders and swag orders and all that. They also don't have to do your standard fundraising of, "I'm gonna sell a Boston butt over here," or "We need to collect money for shirts or whatever orders, right, where we have to have a minimum order of 50." The way I do it is I do the designs, or if they already have one, we go ahead and host it on our shop, and then we go on collections. And then from there, their parents go shop just like their own Amazon store. It dropships to them. They don't have any fuss, no muss. Coaches, directors don't have to handle money anymore. They'll have minimal orders. And then at the end of the month, based on their sales for that month, I write them a check for 90% profit minus any additional fees that I might have. So where normally they would buy all this stuff and then have to resell it to get their money back and do all that, that's all done up front, so they don't have to worry about it. They literally post their QR code and get a check for the month. And I let them set the profit margin too. So it allows them the freedom that if they wanna take and do a quarterly fundraiser, like, to go beyond their standard shirts that they would sell, they could do a special run of a design that we collaborate on and come up with and upsell just like they would any other fundraiser. So now they're maximizing their profits that way as well. So for the small businesses, boosters, and nonprofits, it's a great way to raise money that way. And then the other side is your small businesses and one-offs that want to have swag but don't wanna buy shirts and try and hustle out of the back of their car while they're out doing their primary sales, right? You know, my example is a gentleman out of Vegas that does Blazing Star Barbecue. He gets out there and grinds every day to get his spice and sauce stuff out and just grinds out in Home Depot, Lowe's, and a couple of others. But he's also got swag. So for him, he's now sitting on shirts that he's trying to get rid of while he's doing his primary thing. He's not selling shirts. That's not what he wants to do. So for this, it allows him the freedom to come up with the creations, come up with what he wants, set a price for it, and then he Ron Popeil's it, for those that remember that reference, but allows them to go focus on what they primarily wanna do and allows them that passive income to then get their brand out there as well as make a little bit on the backside from that perspective for the P&P Design piece. And then we get into Eagle Rising Foundation. And that one truly is where the mentorship showed more recently. I told you the 10, 15-year plan for the mentorship programs and what I see in my head and visualize. Would I love to see it faster for the military? Absolutely. But in this case, with Eagle Rising, there's a few things that I'm doing. One is events like we did in Talladega, just one-off events that are community events, bringing veterans and anybody else that wants to come celebrate with us out together. We do a haunted trail on my property for the baseball team to do fundraisers every year. So I wanna continue to do that sort of community involvement, likely once a quarter is my goal. Right now, I'm planning it all twice a year. And then the other is my mentorship programs, and that's really where my passion lies and the fun of this whole thing comes in, because taking and building out programs like has never been done before, and in my brain, I love to learn. I'm not good at it. I'm not fast at it, but I love it. And I like to be challenged. I like to get into different things. And again, my brain never stops. So with that, taking and allowing mentors to come in and say, I'll give 2 quick examples, but I'll, if you'll oblige me, I'll list off the different ones that I have: Pitmaster Proteges, which is the barbecue realm, as you might imagine, and all things that revolve around that in general, love of that because I live with barbecue and been around it quite a while; The Startup Sherpas, and I'll elaborate on that one here in a minute as well, but continuing on; We have the Tech Elders, which is essentially, in my brain, combining business owners, business professionals, and elements like that that are further in their career, mid to senior in their career, and pairing them up with those junior folks that are very smart in the IT world and that leverage the AI and the other capabilities that are out there, and help them better achieve their business goals by also giving that junior person a senior mentor that they can learn and grow from in that aspect. So it's a dual win there.
Kumar: Yeah.
Jon: Then you have Green Thumbs United, which is just what it sounds like. I love growing and gardening and getting in there. I don't do it near as much as I'd like, just because of time and life, right? But the thought is being able to take in people, learn how to garden again, you know, whether just a small garden in your house to a huge one out in your yard, doesn't matter. That's knowledge and something that we should never lose as humans. Artisan Apprenticeship, so taking and pairing up craftsmen from every artwork, how I messed that word up all the time, but the point of being taking the folks that still have these skills and pairing them up; and then Financial Gurus. We, as the, I would say our generation specifically, my generation specifically, as I've seen, does a piss poor job of financial planning and teaching others, mainly our children, our next generation, about building financial wealth and how to do it and really getting them involved in understanding what that looks like and what time can do for you when you have a small amount and let it grow over time. And, you know, I'm no expert. I've learned every day. Culinary Crossroads is another one. I love to cook, so one of my best memories is growing up in the kitchen with my mom or my grandmother, and my other grandmother owned a Mexican restaurant for 35 years. So running around in the kitchen there has always been something that has brought me home. Wordsmith Workshops, so when you think about writing and just public speaking and character development and things like that, and just the mind and letting it free roam on writing, you know, sitting down and writing a story with somebody and coming up and creating, basically.
Kumar: Mhmm.
Jon: Because I write how I talk, right? I'm not a wordsmith. I leverage AI now and a lot of things that I do because I know that I recognize that as a weakness in me. So leveraging technology to benefit me there. Mentor Melodies is another one where it involves all things music. I grew up, went from 7th to 12th playing trumpet, learning from Mr. Taylor, our band director, and Ms. Leon, our assistant band director and art teacher. You know, those people, 26 years later, I'll never forget their names, and they will always be a part of me. I have my trumpet sitting right beside me that I pick up from time to time and still tinker with. So being able to provide that back to those next generations is amazing to me. And then the Wellness Warriors, and my thought
there is you can't have a piece of a human, you've got a holistic human. So this ties it all together and brings the mental and physical elements together on what it looks like to be a healthy human. So those being the programs, the thought is now a mentor comes along and says, "I know a lot about x," pick 1 of those categories and can come sign up, register. Then from there, they'll pick a date and time that works for them to do a virtual meet and greet. They'll also select a date and time that works for a follow-up actual mentor session. So at that point, they're done, right? Mentee comes along, says, "I wanna learn about barbecue." Well, they go in, they register, they see on the calendar at that point, here's all the virtual meet and greets that are available. They select a date and time that works for them that already has a mentor signed up. That then happens. They decide whether they're gonna buy in and move forward because what we don't wanna do is waste a bunch of time and energy from anybody - the mentors, mentees, or our team alike. But when they say, "Yep, we're gonna move forward," that then triggers us to send them a package, both the mentee and the mentor. In this example of barbecue, it might be a pork butt or rack of ribs, the spices, the barbecue sauce, the gloves, all the basic necessities that they would be able to do this mentorship session, all free of charge. The thought being that now neither one is burdened by the experience. They get to truly go in and enjoy a knowledge share the way it should be done. And all I ask out of that in return is that they record the session. I don't care if it's on a cell phone. I don't care if it's a fancy setup. Doesn't matter to me. What I want out of that is them to send it back so that we can then take the best of the best of those mentor sessions across each category, host it on our YouTube channel so that anybody can come along and watch these recordings and enjoy that mentorship session and learn from it if they're not necessarily ready to do it themselves or they just don't have the time. It gives them another avenue and approach. The other thing on the YouTube channel is start having conversations, open and candid, about things: depression, PTSD, loss of a parent, loss of a child, rainbow babies, postpartum depression, loss of a sibling, how to deal with your spouse. Whenever, in my case, you know, all the time, I want the best for my family and my wife, and I don't always know the answer. So still having that individual to look to, you know, whether it's somebody they know or not, they can see somebody that is in that situation, either they're currently in it or maybe going to be in it in the future, who knows? But the intent there is so they have somewhere to come and feel comfortable and feel like it's okay, you know, with me, forty-six-year-old white guy with a beard, I'm not somebody that people would look at and go, "There's things wrong with him." Well, there are. You just can't see them, and I do my best to hide them most days, but they come out from time to time, of course. You know, when you talk about passion and just, you know, my emotions get to me sometimes. So letting people see that and know that it's okay so they don't sit here at times like me going, man, I think it's stupid, like, we're all here together. Let's work together. Let's start in our own communities. Let's start building out from there and sharing with each other.
Kumar: And you have a really fantastic vision, Jon, and all of it, you know, before and out of your experiences, good and bad. And what I'm really impressed by is how many things you're involved with, from the real apparel company, the P&P Design collections, the mentorship program, all of these things sort of are springing from your head, right? And all these different ways that you are trying to give back to the community. I wanted to actually, you've spoken so much about these things, you've taken all my questions, but I'm gonna still ask you some questions about, you know, maybe more specifics around the mentorship program. So clearly, you had some mentors in your life and they impacted you greatly. And my assumption is that you're trying to provide that kind of experience for others in creating this program. I'm gonna get to the other initiatives that you've started. But keying in on the mentor-mentee program, is that up and running at this point?
Jon: So, no, it's not. My intent was to leverage the Talladega event and then leverage the connections and learning that I've achieved thus far, and then line up 10 mentors, one for each of the categories, and then we build them out and what they look like. Because what I don't wanna do is build this thing in a bubble. I really truly wanna sit down with the smart folks that are in these areas and build out these programs so they will be successful from the get-go. I would love to be able to tell you absolutely, but we started, I started, we founded this in August of last year, just got the programs to where they are at now as far as presence and whatnot, and then ideally within the next 6 months, I'll be able to roll out and truly have a good start on it. My goal was to do a third of them at a time, and that way we ensure that we roll them out correctly, accurately, effectively, and really try to do it right.
Kumar: Absolutely. And I think, you know, building some buzz, building some interest in the program, seeing what's out there, you know, who, what are people interested in becoming mentees for or mentors for? And then using that knowledge to build the rest of the program out is probably a good way to go. Is that what you're thinking as well?
Jon: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Kumar: I'm also curious, you know, you got so many things going on, right? So all of the different business ideas and nonprofit ideas, what's your process for ideating and iterating on these concepts?
Jon: So a few different things. I leverage a few different tools. I've started what I call micro projects. It's where instead of sitting here playing on my phone and doing video games and stuff like that in between meetings and things, I started leveraging AI, open platform AI, their assistants that are on there.
Kumar: Yep.
Jon: And taught myself a little bit about them so that I could better write, better, you just do better products for my general job while also learning about AI for my job. So then from that, doing these micro projects, I'll come up with an idea or a theme or element, say for a RAC design, and I'll jump over and throw just a few elements to the AI in the open platform playgrounds and say, "List me ten ideas around this," and let it do its thing. Well, while it's doing its thing, I'm back over here doing my other work. It took me half a second to let it do its thing. So now I'm back over doing something else. When that's done, I jump over. "Alright, cool. Out of these ten ideas," I write prompts in this, this, and this format that now, instead of me running a crappy prompt, I leverage the AI to write a better prompt that then will create an image. So now I've got the 10 ideas, then I've got the 10 prompts, and now I take those 10 prompts one at a time and I'll drop them over into Dall-E, let it create the image for me. It'll usually do about 2 at a time. So I'll take that image. If I like it, I'll save it. If I don't, I just move on. The thought being that I can process and do these smaller things a lot faster and not spend a lot of time on corrections of images and things like that.
Kumar: Yeah.
Jon: Now, if I run across one that I really like, but it's got a few errors in it, I'll throw it to the side and then I work with a graphic designer and/or my assistant to do the fine detailing of it. And then at that point, we're able to roll it out. And that way we're getting through them much faster, more efficiently, and coming out with a better design, better product without spending a lot of time and wheels turning on stuff that's just not gonna go anywhere in a fast manner, from that aspect.
Kumar: That's really interesting. I mean, most people can't do that. In fact, in my line of work, I like to say that multitasking is the enemy of productivity, of being able to, that having to sort of switch from, you know, different contexts, you lose productivity because you have to sort of reacquaint yourself with where you were in the project that you were on 10 minutes ago or an hour ago, whatever it was. And that time that you lose in reacquainting yourself adds up, right? You seem to be an exception to that rule. So what is it about your brain? Is it just you're wired differently, Jon?
Jon: I would definitely say that for sure. I've only met one individual so far in my whole adventures that has a brain similar to mine, and that's Lisa Kat Brown. I met her the other day, and it's just, I don't know. My best friend, even he'll look at me and go, "I don't, I don't get it." He's also the individual that if he doesn't know exactly how it goes together and all the pieces, all the steps, he can't move forward. He has to have all those pieces. Whereas me, if I know, and maybe it's from the medevac years or why I appeared so well with medevac, but if I know where I'm going, and I know where I'm at, as long as I know that first step in the direction I need to go, I have enough time to figure out everything else along the way because ultimately, if I plan it all out, now everything that I planned, as soon as I start, something's changed. So now I'm re-planning the entire way anyways. Now some people would go to the concept of, well, if you don't know the steps and you're gonna fail or you're gonna go the wrong way, I don't disagree. I'm not saying mine's the best method, and ideally paired, like me and my good friend, we work well together because I'll come over to the concept, he'll hear something and I'll take off running towards it and he's like, "What the...?" So by the time I get through the first step, he's already on step 2, 3, or 4. So now I'm able to keep chugging along, and he's staying ahead of me as far as the planning purposes because then he can chuck it out in smaller bits. I think it's, I think it just works different for different people and for you, you're able to get in, get deep into the work, and make progress, where for most people, having to switch tasks as often as you seem to do, it would just cause, it would cause them a lot of overwhelm, right?
Kumar: I was reading a book the other day, I actually have finished it, it's called "Deep Work." And the book states that the people that do their best work actually dedicate time so they can think deeply about something and turn out a quality product, you know, writing a book or coding or whatever it is. In fact, in coding, you're in the tech field now, at least, and you have been probably for a long time, there's a technique called the Pomodoro Method. I'm not sure if you are familiar with that.
Jon: No, I'm not.
Kumar: So it's 25 minutes of intense dedicated activity on a task, followed by a 5-minute break. And you're focused on the task and the task alone and you make a lot of progress. You take a break, you get up, walk, take a, you know, use the facilities, whatever you need to do, right, and then you're back another 25 minutes. It could be a different task, maybe not the same task, but you're exercising parts of your brain that are involved in focusing on something and getting it done. Now it sounds like you've figured this out on your own in smaller chunks of time to sort of get deep in something and make productive use of the time that you have, and not getting distracted by other things that may be on your plate. What do you say to that?
Jon: I'd definitely agree. And that is a lot of how I work, just in a much smaller, instead of the 20-minute scale, it's cut down even further, you know, when we talk about it, it really may be 1 or 2 minutes on a thing, but when I'm on that thing, that's exactly what I'm doing and what I'm focused on. And yeah, it's, I don't know how to explain it, but I do have a weird knack to just be able to compartmentalize those things and go, "Alright, that one's here, this one's here." Now, they may be all over to anybody else, but I'm that individual that walks in their garage most days and, yeah, it looks like chaos and a mess, but I walk in and I'll go, "Alright, that's generally where it's at," you know, so then you start 5, 10 feet from there. But, yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I see elements of that in myself. I can do many things. Although, as I get older, it's getting harder to keep everything straight.
Kumar: But maybe that's it. Maybe the multitasking is, you're not really multitasking. You're single-threaded. You're single-tasking minutes at a time on one thing and getting, making progress in that one thing and then moving on. That's really interesting. Sorry for the little side tangent. I wanted to circle back on your other businesses, right? So the design, swag, and the apparel. So that's what you're using AI for, is to generate the designs for these things. Is that right? Can you tell us more about that?
Jon: Yep. So, just leveraging it to create the different images using prompts. I don't know if I can, I'm gonna need my phone, but I'll kinda show you just the drawings.
Kumar: Yeah. That's nice.
Jon: You know, all sorts of different concepts that come to mind, some are aviation related, some are military related, some are just funny.
Kumar: That's great. I mean, so you're actually using AI to generate the prompts that you use to generate the images. So it's almost like the tail wagging the dog in a way, right?
Jon: Absolutely. And a lot of people think of AI as like, it's gonna replace this and the other. It's gotta start somewhere, right? There's gotta be a human involvement, a human thought involved in whatever that thing's creating or starting from. Now that's not to say that there aren't specific areas where it can just do automated stuff by itself, which is cool. Point being, like, right now where we're at with the technology, there's still human involvement. And a lot of it, right? They call it copilot for a reason. It's not flying it for you. It's not autopilot. It's there beside you, much like the open AI and the prompting and things like that. It just is there to make you more efficient and effective in the things that you do. So for me, again, going back to the micro projects, instead of me having to sit here and write out a thousand ideas, this thing can do it in seconds, you know, and I can give it enough information out of my own brain that, hate to say it, but we start thinking alike, right? And that's the intent of the thing, is when you build out the assistants in there, you give them an instruction. So one of mine's just specifically for post writing. So all my social media stuff, whether it's LinkedIn, Facebook, or all those things, I gave an instruction to be a bit of a witty smart aleck, you know, have an underlying tone that's motivating and inspirational. The thought being that while I can't articulate my words as well as others, I hope that this gets my intent and my emotion and passion across better than I get myself. And, you know, anybody that goes to my P&P site and looks at it will see the write-ups under all the different collections. And I do the same thing for my customers there. They don't provide the write-up as a general rule of thumb to me for their collection. What I do is I glean off their Facebook, their Instagram, any other social medias that I can get to, and I do a deep dive on them, and I pick out the majority things, and then I take that and I integrate it into the AI and say, "Hey, do me a write-up based on these elements," and then it does it and does it in the tone of which I want it. And then I send it over to the people and it's amazing how many responses I've gotten back of "Jon, that's amazing. Jon, that's written better than I could have written it." And, "Yeah, it's more in tune with me than I would have even thought of," kind of thing. So it's pretty cool to see.
Kumar: Yeah. AI is definitely, it is an accelerant, right? It can help you accelerate whatever it is you're doing as it augments your intelligence. It doesn't replace it. It amplifies it in some way, in many ways, right? I use it all the time, right, to at least get me started on blog posts or social media posts or whatever it might be, and I feed samples to it of my writing style so it can write like me. And it's amazing how close it comes to doing that, and it's getting better all the time, you know, the AI tools that are out there. I'm curious, you want it to write like you because I'm the total opposite. I would like to write nothing like me.
Jon: Well, I mean, you know, it's, I've been sharing stuff online for a long time. And so suddenly, if I started sharing stuff under my profiles that sounds different than me, it could be pretty obvious that it wasn't me that wrote it, right? So for me, it's about having it amplify what I would say and, you know, speed up what, it would take me some time to write something like that. But if I give it sort of a short snippet of description and have the AI generate something that I wanna say, but in my voice, as much as I can, then I think that's a great start. It gives me a nice blog article, then I could use either verbatim. I generally don't do that. I generally go through it and change a few things here and there, but it greatly increases productivity.
Kumar: Well, yeah, because, I mean, at that point, you're going, instead of writing the whole thing and spending hours doing that and racking your brain to get it perfect, you've got a draft in seconds. And now you're reviewing that draft and then putting your fine touches in and rock and roll. And that's one of the reasons I love it. Yeah. You know, you've, in with the blend of the businesses that you have, right, you got for-profits, the P&P Design, I'm assuming that's a for-profit company, right?
Jon: Yeah. So, technically, there's only 2 companies. There's the nonprofit which is Eagle Rising Foundation. And then the other one is Veteran Reachback Group. So under Veteran Reachback Group are the different pillars of elements that we do, as far as the P&P Design, the RAC, and the CRC.
Kumar: I see. Got it. Got it. Okay. We also do resiliency training as well. Your partner in crime as well as the companies does that. Tell me more about that. What does resiliency training look like?
Jon: You're gonna get me in trouble and he's gonna give me a hard time again. That's his area of focus and his expertise. He is the master in all that, so I don't even try and delve into that.
Kumar: Okay. That's interesting because there's, I have to set up a call with him on that because he is...
Jon: Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to, it's the only reason I asked, that's why it piqued my interest. Again, I'm, I remember vaguely we talked about this before as, I use an assessment that's called the Adaptability, Adaptability Quotient Inventory. So adaptability quotient, and it has an AI there because everything's AI these days, right? But the premise of this assessment is it measures an individual's ability to adapt, and the central notion is that the more resilient you are, right, if you are able to withstand disruption, pain, job loss, you know, personal loss, whatever, it makes you, you can either respond to it in a way that you have throughout your life and your career, Jon, or it can affect you and make you less resilient to those types of changes. And so adaptability is an important thing to measure for individuals, for teams. Teams can be measured on a scale of adaptability. How well do they adapt as a team to changing conditions? And I'm sure in your military training in the Army, that's something that's very important, right, the team has to operate as a unit. It has to be resilient in the face of changes, and has to be able to make decisions on the ground without clear supervision. They have to be trained enough and empowered enough to make decisions when they're out in the field, which is why the whole concept of resiliency training really intrigues me.
Jon: So one of the things we do focus on and what people learn out of that training is something that is truly near and dear to most military folks' hearts that's ever been in any type of unit, is the morale, right? And company in life, anybody can relate to that. You've been in businesses and jobs where the morale was low and people didn't wanna be there, and you've been in other places where morale was high. So being able to raise morale in a workplace by creating a positive attitude and climate is huge for people and that's one of the things that we teach leaders to do in this program, as well as just boosting overall teamwork by developing the cohesion amongst their team, right? So helping them better understand that as a leader so that they can build those teams that they saw in the past that were phenomenal, while they may not be able to do it themselves yet. This allows them that next step to be able to do that. Or as a junior leader that's not been in that position to experience it yet, it gives them an opportunity to learn prior to being in that situation.
Kumar: That's fantastic. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. I'd love to meet your partner in that, and talk to him more about that as well. So we're getting up into the sort of the latter part of this interview. And I wanted to just, you know, circle back, and I know this may be a difficult question, losing your father-in-law must have been a huge disruption in your life, right? And losing his guidance. And you talked about this already, what are you trying to, is that what you're trying to replicate or trying to provide as part of your mentorship program that you're launching here?
Jon: That's definitely part of it. I want others to have that place. I want them to have that mentor or access to that mentor that they might not already have, or give them other options, right? You know, there's tons of people in America that don't have that option or have the ability to have a mentor at hand or be able to go out and do those things because they are costly, either working to just make the dollar and the ends meet or, you know, whatever the case may be. I want them to have that person, that place that they can come to and, I don't know the best way to put it other than just a place of comfort, a place that they can learn, a place that they can grow, a place that they can share experiences, a place that they can feel comfortable. And then they can give back as well, and ultimately just drive success for themselves and those around them in their own right. You know, because I don't think anybody dictates what your success looks like. You know, I still don't know what success looks like for me, and that's part of the reason I'm still driving, I think, is because I haven't found that thing yet. But, at the end of the day, I'll never get it back, but yeah.
Kumar: It makes a lot of sense. I'll never get it back, but yeah. It makes a lot of sense and it's very inspiring, Jon. And I for one, would, I mean, I mentioned this before, I'd love to get involved in any way, shape, or form I can. I may even have a nonprofit that could take advantage of your design studios and, you know, sort of design some shirts for them and to help them raise money. They're a nonprofit.
Jon: So I will, I will introduce you to their director of development for that.
Kumar: It's a homeless shelter here locally. And I'm wondering, is there a question I didn't ask you that you'd like to let our viewers learn more about?
Jon: Not really a question, but I would challenge anybody that's paying attention to never accept the first no. And the reason I say that's because, like I tell my kids, there's a few reasons that I've learned a lot of people say no right out the gate. And it tends to be because they either don't know the answer, they're scared to go ask, or they're not the right person, right? Or they're lazy, that's in there too sometimes. But the thought being that if you tell yourself no, it's always gonna be a no. If you make somebody else do it, that's a 50/50 chance. So now if you go on beyond that and you go to that person and you don't accept their first no, well, now it drops to another 50% in my brain. So now we're at a 75% shot of getting a yes just by asking them the question twice. Well, that makes things way more achievable. So now when we're at that 25%, okay, what is their reasoning behind the no? Do they have a justifiable reason? And if so, how can I provide them what they need to get to that yes or to support them in their quest to get that yes for me and do that, right, and be the person that they're not having to come to and follow up with and things like that on stuff that I'm passionate about, now I wanna see done, right? So if we take our own responsibility and we take our own initiatives, it's unstoppable with what you can achieve. I also believe that, you mentioned it earlier, impossible isn't a word. It just hasn't been figured out yet.
Kumar: Yeah, right? Look, even yesterday, I guarantee you, if you look across the world yesterday, you'd probably find a million things that were impossible. Yet today, because of technology, somebody learning, something changing, whatever, it's no longer impossible.
Jon: So is there really an impossible or have we just not figured it out yet, right? So keeping that in mind has kept my drive and determination going on every no that I've received, you know, we talked about me transitioning from Air Force to Army. That declined the first time on my warrant package, it took me 6 months to put the package together. Got declined and got picked up the second time. If I had taken the first no, I would never have become a helicopter pilot. I never would have went through the MSSA course. I never would have went into where I am right now. So that's something I want people to take away from this, as well as everything else I've said today, is truly just never accept no. Never tell yourself no and get out there and be the person you wanna be. Don't let anybody else dictate who you are. Always make a positive influence everywhere you go. And don't be that cancer. And I mean that in the literal form as well as the figurative form in any environment, you know, nobody enjoys when there's negativity in the room. And I understand that that happens, right? I'm not naive to that. I know people have emotions and they get out of check from time to time. I am that person too. But as a general rule of thumb, if we get up every day and we strive to do slightly better, understanding we're gonna fail at times, we're gonna fall, we're gonna stumble, the point is get back up, keep moving. I saw a gentleman the other day walking down a flight of stairs at the hospital. And he apologized for moving slow in front of me, and I said there ain't no reason to apologize for moving slow. I said, you're still moving, sir. And he's like, every step forward is a step in the right direction.
Kumar: That's a great story. I love it. Yeah. You're a very inspiring guy, Jon. I'm inspired. And I, I hope that the people viewing this are also inspired. So don't take no. Don't take the first no. Don't take the second no. And it's a good adage to live by, right? It's something that myself and my colleagues and people that I work with, we say maybe in different words, but we try to learn by that as well, you know, not to take failure, learn from failure, really, even if there's a no or if there's a failure, to learn from it and to persevere, to build resilience, right, borrowing that term again, and being more adaptable to change. So love it. And I really appreciate you being on the show. We will publish in the show notes the various initiatives, Jon, that you are supporting, both the for-profit side and the nonprofit side. Okay. And as I mentioned, I'm here to support you. I'd love to be part of that mentorship program.
Jon: Definitely, I'd love to have you on board.
Kumar: Yeah. And we'll figure that out offline. So thanks again. Thanks for watching, and we will see you all next time. Bye bye.
Jon: Thanks.
