An Army of Normal Folks - HIGHLIGHTS: More Veterans Die by Suicide Than in Combat, Here's Why

Episode Date: October 27, 2026

In this episode William Negley explains what we get wrong about mental health care for veterans and first responders, and why he built Sound Off, the first truly anonymous mental health platform for veterans and first responders. Listen to this episode to learn what it actually takes to support the veterans in our lives who often don't ask for help. ARMY ACTIONS Subscribe to the podcast and rate & review us! Signup to join the Army, visit NormalFolks.org Join or start an ANF local service club at https://normalfolks.org/service-clubs/ Take The 10 Level Challenge, “the hero’s journey for service” at 10LevelChallenge.org Get anonymous support or share Sound Off with someone who needs it: https://sound-off.com Record a testimonial or recommend a guest here - https://army.storytap.com/906/start/anf-listeners?epdescription Follow us on all socials:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/armyofnormalfolks/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@armyofnormalfolksFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArmyofNormalFolksX: https://x.com/armynormalfolksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/an-army-of-normal-folks/Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello? What's your favorite scary podcast? Radio presents the soundtrack to your October. From spooky podcasts and chilling playlists to non-stop Halloween radio and more. We have all the thrills and chills you're craving this season. Press play. I'm Melissa Jeltson, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week.

Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. side. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies.

She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. Never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to what happened to her on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, It's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race.

So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Amade, Alex Carr, Faye, Faye Leap, Homer Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us. But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley?

Is it me down here in New Orleans? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in? This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to the Builders on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Josie Duffy Rice. I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. And over my career, I've heard account after account of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice.

But I've never heard a story quite like this. The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. We'll hypnotize him to strengthen that memory. So he went into a good france. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Listen to Examine the Backfire Effect on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

They shared the same name, the same home, the same DNA. The same DNA, the same blood. But behind closed doors, blood isn't always thicker than water, and family loyalty can turn deadly. From shocking betrayals to carefully planned murders, the Black Effect's new original podcast series, Bloodline Crimes, hosted by me, Morgan Wood, explores the darkest and bizarre cases where family became

the most dangerous threat of all. Because sometimes the person you should fear most is not, a stranger, but rather someone sitting at the dinner table with you. Real cases, real families, real killers. This is bloodline crimes. Listen to the Black Effects bloodline crimes every Thursday, starting October 8th from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. William, if somebody really takes what you're going to,

to share with us today to heart, how could their life and our country's life be different? We're here to support veterans and service members, and so if they have loved ones in their life that are struggling that might otherwise be reluctant to engage, hey, we want them to know about SoundOff. William Negli is a former CIA officer and the founder of SoundOff, the first truly anonymous mental health platform for veterans and first responders. And the anonymous part you will find is really important. William, teach us your incredible life lesson that's relevant for the personal relationships and for the service work of everyone listening to us right now. And rather than asking, why won't someone get help, you think we should reframe it

to what would we have to remove to make that possible? I joined the Central Intelligence Agency 2009. I'm from San Antonio. My mother is a mental health professional, so I jokingly say I grew up on a couch, right? I was in therapy from like days of it. So I come into the agency 2009, and I had been around the intelligence, special operations community, but I had certainly never been inside it.

And I come into the agency, and it is just pretty clear as day, there's a lot of people already struggling here. And I say already, you know, that's eight years post 9-11. The agency had been at war certainly before that. but, you know, the people that had been in that building a while already and a lot of my colleagues that I was starting at the agency with, because maybe they hadn't been in the CIA, but maybe they had been in the military or, you know, in war zones and other capacities. I sort of enter this world and recognize a lot of people are struggling here, but simultaneously just this fundamental flaw in. in the system to support us, which is none of us are going to walk into CIA mental health services to talk about our drinking problems. Right?

Like, we've worked our whole lives to get to this pinnacle professional position. We're not going to then jeopardize that by saying, hey, can I tell you about how I'm struggling? Yeah, it's a CIA. I mean, who's going to give somebody top secret and top. if they don't trust that they're balanced. Or the promotion or the particular job they're looking for. Or maybe it's not even an official no, but it's like, hey, you know, no, we're not going to give him that particular thing or her, you know, that particular thing because this or that. And it's worth emphasizing whether any of that is actually true or not, the perception that,

that it's true is definitely there. And perception is reality. So truly, 2012-13, the idea to me was, well, wait a minute, if there's a whole bunch of people struggling, because I knew this extended,

whether you're a CIA officer or an F-18 pilot or, you know, a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL or-or, or, this general concern, you know, permeated across those communities. So if the fundamental issue is, I probably know I should talk to somebody, but I'm unwilling to do that because of concern of professional or personal blowback. And I'll talk about why I say it that way.

Well, then why don't we just let these men and women engage without anybody knowing? Like, it was just truly that obvious to me. for 20 years, the way that we have tried to address that issue is essentially by convincing them that the concern that they have is wrong. Like, it's okay to get help, right? Or only 0.0001% of security clearances are impacted by seeking help. Well, the problem is, even if that latter point may be true, it's not representative of the entire potential risk of engaging with care. And when one person has their job pulled or,

you know, doesn't get that promotion or or, or that spreads like wildfire. And so now- That creates the baseline. So now the next hundred guys aren't going to walk in the door. So unfortunately, and I would submit the data has borne this out very clearly, these like, it's okay to seek help fight the Sigma campaigns. Don't move the needle for these men and women engaging. We're going to talk in generalities here, right? So for a meaningful portion of the population, it's not good enough. We have to change the structure of how we are providing care to them.

This work is personal for you. And the best service work is often personal. How did your brother-in-law's death both break your family and prove that everything you were trying to build was literally life or death. And I know that's a personal question. No, it's... But I think it's so germane to your journey that we have to understand it. The origin story of this organization is commonly misunderstood.

And I would submit the actual origin story is way more powerful than the more simple version. So I come back from Afghanistan 2013. What did you do in Afghanistan? So I was in the CIA 2009, 2016, all counterintelligence, counterterrorism, Afghanistan, Pakistan. So you're working as a CIA agent alongside our military embedded with them? No. We have a few people to do that. But at that point in Afghanistan, we are largely, meaning we, the CIA, are largely running our own,

operations. Got it. Especially with the, with the intelligence collection, you know, when, okay, we figured out, we think, I did not work this. I'm just using an example. Hey, we think we know where bin Laden is, you know, maybe there's some CIA guys that are saying, hey, we could do that, we could do that. But that's when we're going to call, you know, SEAL Team 6 and say, hey, what?

I got it. Why don't you guys handle that one? Come back from Afghanistan 2013. And this idea had sort of been rattling around in my head. I just couldn't let it go. I was wildly naive, in hindsight, crazily naive to what it was going to take, what it was going to be involved in building this,

took some leave without pay from the agency to start sound off, whatever that meant at the time. I leave August 2013, take some leave, hey, you know, I'm starting sound off. Let me take a step back and say, why are being nonprofit? There's a whole lot of a lot of for-profit telemedicine platforms. The reason that I started this, the differentiating, like, reason, I had no interest

in starting telemedicine platform. It was the anonymity, right? These men and women won't engage because they don't want anybody to know. If we can offer it anonymously, I'm confident, some will be willing to engage. That fundamentally breaks the economics of how health care in this works. I can't bill for truly anonymous mental health support. So. Yeah, how are you going to send a bill to something that is anonymous? I can't do 100,000 sessions of care last year. You know, go to the VA, say, at $250 a session, you owe me $25 million. Oh, but I can't tell you who they were, show you the medical records, et cetera, et cetera. Like that reasonably enough doesn't work. We say, okay, we're going to be a nonprofit. Well, we need to raise like a not insignificant

amount of money to go from zero to one because I've got to build this technology infrastructure that is actually the mechanism of how we are going to engage anonymously. There's a big story. There's a big veterans organization that signed up very early to give us $3 million over three years to build this whole thing. They collapsed, had a big scandal. It was, it was bad. But I'm out kind of shouting into the void at this point, not that age really matters, but I'm 29. I'm just like, hey, hey, like we need to do this. This is like an obvious answer. And then June 9, 2017, my brother-in-law, Bill Mulder, dies by suicide in Bernie, Texas, 10 minutes from our family ranch. Bill had retired.

127 days earlier after 20 years in the SEAL teams the first or sorry the last 15 years or so at DEV Group SEAL Team 6. Is this SEAL Team 6 guy? Yeah. Yeah.

For the last 20 years? So he was in the SEAL teams for 20 years. Sydney and I met Bill the same night August 2002 and he went to dev group like 2004, something like that. And he made it in the real world almost four and a half months.

That was it. Which is the suicide rate in the first 100 days post separation for veterans spikes dramatically. That's like consistent. It breaks my heart to hear. Yeah. This man gave so much to our freedoms and our freedom. safety in our country and he died by suicide four months after leaving and now a few messages from our generous sponsors but first thanks for tuning in to an army of normal folks where our mission

is this makes service easier for all of us and together change our country we're announcing something new today that i'd love to invite you to we've launched a place where you can record a short video to share guest recommendations, podcast recommendations, your feedback on how we can get better, but please be nice on that one. I know my shortcomings. I don't need a video to point them out. Just be nice. And testimonials. You can also report testimonials about our content, service clubs, that we'd love to consider featuring. Doing any of these things would help us a ton. And here's the Pay off. If you do this, you'll be automatically entered to win 500 bucks. If you're game to do it, visit an F video.org. That's anf video.org. We'll be right back.

Track to your October from spooky podcasts and chilling playlists to nonstop Halloween radio and more. We have all the thrills and chills you're craving this season. Press play. I'm Melissa Jeltson, and in my new podcast, what happened to her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights,

I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that.

And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to what happened to her on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence,

it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Amade, Alex Carr, Faye, Faye-Fei Lee, Palmer Locky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it.

Well, yeah, it's up to us. But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in? This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to the builders on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or every get-your-podcasts.

My name is Josie Duffy Rice. I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. And over my career, I've heard account after account of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice. But I've never heard a story quite. like this. The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over.

We'll hypnotize him to strengthen that memory. So he went into a good france. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Listen to examined the backfire effect on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. They shared the same name, the same home, the same DNA, the same blood.

But behind closed doors, blood isn't always thicker than water, and family loyalty can turn deadly. From shocking betrayals to carefully planned murders, the Black of X new original podcast series, Bloodline Crimes, hosted by me, Morgan Wood, explores the darkest and bizarre cases where family became the most dangerous threat of all. Because sometimes the person you should fear most is not a stranger, but rather someone sitting at the dinner table with you. Real cases.

Real families. Real killers. This is bloodline crimes. Listen to the Black Effects bloodline crimes every Thursday, starting October 8th from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever. wherever you get your podcast. At Dev Group, Bill had meaningfully unlimited access to mental health.

Right. And they're pouring millions and millions and millions of dollars on those guys. Getting a counseling appointment there is not the same thing as, you know, Texas National Guard. Like, hey, can I talk to somebody? Like, there's a lot of resources available. He was just not willing. in the early we can change the trajectory of this years to engage in a way that he felt would jeopardize his reputation or his career.

Sidney has told the story many times of having a conversation many times. Bill, you need to get help and him saying, I'll get your ch' hand from the command. Sidney. Sorry, Sydney, my sister. Yes. His wife. His wife, yes. Why I say I think the story is even more powerful than the more simple version,

two things are happening simultaneously and the left hand doesn't know about the right hand. I'm trying to get this organization off the ground to support these men and women that I know are struggling and won't engage. And the problem is so insidious. It's going on my own family, and I don't know it. He hadn't even told you. No. It's not only had he not. told me. And to be fair, not for any bad reasons. You know, I was CIA. Like, we were both busy.

We weren't having weekly dinners, you know, we were both busy. But it was definitely like, in our family, and I'm remembering one incident in particular. Kind of an unfortunate incident happened where Bill kind of lashed out. And my mother said, Well, Bill is like clearly PTSD. Like, like, what are we, this is obvious what's happening. And the sort of, it's like, no, we can't, we can't say that. And your mother is a health, yeah, as a middle health professional. But it was, I mean, we were essentially like playing into the very problem of, no, we can't, like, that can't.

We can't say that. We can't label that. We can't allow that to be, I guess, known. And that is, like, precisely why I was creating sound off at the same time. Wow. So the idea of this truly anonymous mental health care, the validity of the idea that changed, the circumstances do. And, you know, I think I would have had an easier time saying, I want to start a mental health facility. I want to buy a building. I want to hire 20 clinicians. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, this wasn't just like, I want to do a thing. It's, I want to do a thing that nobody had ever done before. Just to make it explicit, like, full-on anonymity. Yeah. We've had a guest on before who actually does something similar with firefighters in New York, but still, even in there, and it's an awesome service that they have. but it's in person with the human being who sees them. Yeah. And there still must be,

that's why I really appreciate diving into your stories. There's still a some level of concern with that. Yeah. That even though they're there for a noble purpose, it could still get back to other people. And the fact that you have no video, no name. I mean,

it's like anonymity to the extreme. It's safe. Well, so let's, it's safe for the person wanting the help that needs the help. They actually can be safe letting go of what's, what's afflicting them. The thing that needs to be said out loud is confidentiality and anonymity are not the same.

They are not. That's so true. And those words, in part because nobody has actually done anonymity, so people who are doing confidential just kind of say anonymous, it's just not the same thing. Every medical appointment, mental health appointment you've ever had was confidential. Everyone. HIPAA. Until it wasn't. That's right.

And so what we said was, well, no. We're going to say, we don't know who you are. We don't know your name. We don't know your email. We don't know your phone number. And we don't hold enough what we call demographic identifiers to like reasonably, you know, identify who you are. And we don't know your face. And we don't know your face.

And you're not walking in. This is why, look, I'm, you know, 13 years later looking back, I can understand why maybe some people would be skeptical about a 29-year-old wanting to build an app, right? Because it's like, okay, what? It's telemedicine. There's a lot of those. No. The app was just the mechanism by which I could allow you and me to talk over and over and over, and you don't know who I am. And you don't have to be worried about getting found out,

thusly going through all the problem. There's a spectrum here, right? Let's say 30 or 40% of those that are struggling are willing to go into DOD mental health resources, walk into the office, raise their hand, hey, I need to talk to something. And then let's say 30% in the middle, hey, I'm not going to do that,

but I'll go out in the private market or I'll go to a nonprofit and walk in and they'll pay for it and this or that. but the data is real clear. There is a tail end of that spectrum, and we can debate how big it is, but it's not small, but it's big.

And they're not willing to do this. So how do we make them feel comfortable engaging? How do we make them feel safe engaging? And it sure is shit isn't running a PSA saying, it's okay to see Co. One day I'm going to get beat up by the former commandant of the Marine Corps because I've told this story a thousand times. I'm in Kandahara, Afghanistan,

watching Armed Forces Network TV, and the commandant in the Marine Corps comes on in a little commercial and says, it's okay to get help. That, respectfully, is not going to do a goddamn thing to get this into the spectrum

to actually engage. And if 70% of them are not and are thinking, great, I can go get help, wonderful. But first of all, of all, I don't think it's that big, but more importantly, like, we're helping the people that are outside struggling and dying are not getting helped. So we just said, you know, our, like, guiding star light from day one was how do we structure this to address the barriers that both

intuition and a lot of research, due defunded research by the way. the way, says, are preventing these men and women from seeking health. So after Bill's death, you and Sydney go on the road show, take us through what happens? For the, for the organization. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do an event in San Antonio. We do an event in Houston. We do an event in Virginia Beach. I'm not going to get these numbers exactly right, but we have something like a half million dollars in six months. And it's like, okay, that's go. I jokingly say, the board fired me as chairman to hire me to execute on any of this shit because like there was no I mean it's just it's important to emphasize one thing and I'm not taking anything away from

organizations that do this but we were not raising money and writing checks we were raising money and building like a really complex like programmatic operational organization so it was going to be 100 hours a week, William doing this. And it was and has been. So we start building the technology and we go live in Texas with like the most basic MVP, ugly, you know, app you could build right before COVID. The important part to this is how you and I are going to engage. Who's answering the phone? Like, who's actually helping these people was a total afterthought? So, yeah, I mean, I mean, like, whoops? Yeah. February 18, 2020, we go in to ask a bunch of donors for a bunch of money to start recruiting volunteer clinicians and all this stuff in Texas.

COVID hits two weeks later. Okay, we're not raising a whole bunch of money right now. And this is when, we spent two years pivoting in a way that really became a superpower for us and why I led with the discussion of institutional change. We went from, we're going to rebuild the same wheel that people have built 10,000 times before. And by the way, is also a strapped resource, clinical capacity and counseling capacity in this country, to we're going to become a really thin technology nonprofit force multiplier for other organizations. So what does that look like?

You come into my application. You download Soundup. You don't tell me who you are, but you say I'm a Navy SEAL. Why in the world would I go raise money to pay for mental health support for SEALs, try and recruit peer supporters from within the SEAL community, try and share this resource with SEALs. When the Navy SEAL Foundation is doing that all day every day, but they're never going to build what we've built.

So you download my app, you tell me you're a SEAL, you select one of our contract counselors. I build the Navy SEAL Foundation. They pay me full pass-through. We paid that counselor. At a practical level, what that means is we took the most expensive, hardest part of this off of our books. I don't need to raise that. And said, we're going to let others do that.

And we're just going to have this technology piece that opens up all of these resources for a bunch of service members and veterans that would not engage with them. And allows you to have those resources completely anonymously. Exactly. We'll be right back. soundtrack to your October. From spooky podcasts and chilling playlists to nonstop Halloween radio and more. We have all the thrills and chills you're craving this season. Press play.

I'm Melissa Jeltson, and in my new podcast, what happened to her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared. for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead.

Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year.

You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to what happened to her on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Bill. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Amade, Alex Carr, Faye, Faye,

Faye Leap, All More Lucky, because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's all right. Yeah, it's up to us.

But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in? This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to the builders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Josie Duffy Rice.

I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. And over my career, I've heard account after account of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice. But I've never heard a story quite like this. The more I kept reading this stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. We'll hypnotize them to strengthen that memory. So he went into a good France. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me.

They're going to do their police job. Listen to Examine the Backfire Effect on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. They shared the same name, the same home, the same DNA, the same blood. But behind closed doors, blood isn't always thicker than one. water and family loyalty can turn deadly. From shocking betrayals to carefully planned murders, the Black of X new original podcast series, Bloodline Crimes, hosted by me, Morgan Wood, explores the darkest and bizarre cases where family became the most dangerous threat of all.

Because sometimes the person you should fear most is not a stranger, but rather someone sitting at the dinner table with you. Real cases. real families, real killers. This is bloodline crimes. Listen to the Black Effects bloodline crimes every Thursday, starting October 8th from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

So you had to go out and sell to organizations, hey, let us connect people to you anonymously. And then sell to service members who needed help. It really is anonymous. This is safe for you. The reason that we started within the special operations community, one, there's a outsized level of philanthropic support there, so they have the money to do this philanthropically. Navy Seal Foundation raises 40 million a year.

It's really successful. Wow. It's massively successful. They've done a great job. So they have the resources, but also because every single person and more relevant, foundation knows this is a problem, knows there is this tail into the spectrum that's not going to engage. So it, look, it's like any other business organization. It took a lot of, we needed our first customer, you know, customer, we needed our second partner, we needed our third,

and then it became easier and easier. But I wasn't having to convince anybody of this. Yeah, everybody knew the needs there. But it's just how does this work? You started there. I mean, where are you now in terms of numbers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so we've, we have supported just under about 3,000 service members, veterans seeking help. Although I say service members, veterans.

We are now supporting small communities within the FBI, within the Secret Service. We are supporting our first fire station in RICO County, Virginia. So first responders. Yeah, exactly. We're supporting a lot of these different kind of niche communities. And again, again, just to get into sort of like, how do you, I did not start this organization to help 2,000 special operations personnel or 500 Navy SEALs. I could help every Navy SEAL I ever wanted to help through my partnership with the foundation.

Now, I want to support every one of 3 million conventional service members who feels like they don't have somewhere else to turn or 20 million veterans who, for reasons, good, bad, or otherwise, don't feel like they can safely engage. We should have a path for them to engage. And I thought, hey, man, this like partnerships thing, this is a, working really well. Let's go find the big veteran nonprofits that can kind of Navy SEAL Foundation supporting Navy SEALs. This other organizations supporting 20 million conventional service members or veterans. It doesn't exist. There's a ton of organizations doing amazing work and I don't want to take anything away from it. It is absolutely the case. There's a lot of organizations doing great work. But it is such a large number and so expensive. They just, you can't philanthropically raise that much money. If there's, if there's a hundred thousand special operations, veterans and service members, there is probably $500 million of existing funding,

philanthropic funding to support that 100,000 people. So say 5,000 to 1. Well, there's 20 million conventional veterans. There is not $100 billion worth of existing philanthropic funding. It doesn't know. The only entity that exists that can write the checks big enough to underwrite the care for this many people is the federal government. And so about two years ago, we said, okay,

if we're going to allow people at scale to engage with care truly anonymously, this now becomes a policy fight. Let's get some policy change so that your solution can work at scale. That's interesting. And, you know, we had some exciting early success in that. The VA put out something called the, the, the VA put out something called the, the, put out a mission daybreak, a grand challenge. It was $30 million to bring outside innovation into preventing veteran suicide, 1,500 applicants.

We were one of 30 to be awarded in that, which we were very proud of. But look, it's the easiest thing in the world to beat up on the big agencies, Congress, etc. And I would submit I've got as much cause and experience to do that as anybody. And I would give my colleagues and friends 51% of the credit in this. We have just fought that fight relentlessly. And I am pretty confident in saying that in the next six to 12 months, we will have federally paid existing DOD counselors on our platform. Anonymously.

Anonymously. And you will save lives. How does someone find Soundolph? Pull out your phone, go to the app store, assuming you have an Android and her iPhone, which is like 99.99% of people. and type in sound off and download her app. So if my buddy who was a seal is sitting there and I'm like, dude, you're drinking to excess every night,

your wife is afraid of you, your children don't know you. You're not the guy that left the United States and went and served our country valiantly. And you come back a different person, and I am worried for you. And he goes, brother, I love you, thank you for concern. I'm honored to have served on my country and served you, but I can't engage in this because of what's going to happen. Yeah.

All you got to do is say, here's an app. They don't know who you are. It's anonymous, dude. Here's an app. Yeah. And give them that app. I mean, the truth, the true answer to is if you've got somebody in this place you want to help, download the app and show it to them. Is that not right?

Yeah. Yeah, it's 100% right. It's a natural thing in this discussion sort of around suicide prevention to focus on the last five yards, right? That's not why I built sound. Do we know that people are going to come on and may go into crisis? Yes. But we did not create this to be a crisis. Rewind a decade.

They're 10 years into their military career. And I know for a fact, this happened with Bill. you've had your first panic attack. You've had your first nightmare. You're 10 years in. You're not done. You're sure as shit at that point not going to go in and raise your hand. You're active.

Yeah. Like you're in the middle of it. You're still trying to build your reputation in your career. Are you going to raise your hand then? The data is real clear a lot or not. What if we can catch that person at that moment? What if they got the app on their phone while they're serving? They're at that moment.

How does that change, just that release valve, how does that change the trajectory of the next 10, 20, 30 years through? William Nagley, everybody, founder and CEO of Soundoff, a guy who served our country, a former CIA officer who solved bigger problems and went to work fixing them and still is. Your passion is so evident, dude. Thank you for having. Thank you for everything that you do. And thanks for being here. Thank you very much. And thank you for joining us this week.

If William Negley has inspired you in general or better yet to take action by downloading his Sound Off app, sharing it with a service member or family of a service member who could benefit from it, rethinking our thought of, why won't someone get help to? What would we have to remove to make it possible? Or something else entirely. let me know about it. I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normalfolks.org.

And if you write me, I'll respond. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends, share it on social, just subscribe to the podcast, wherever you're watching or listening to it. Rate it, review it. Join the army at normalfolks.org. Join or start a local service club.

Take the 10-level challenge. Buy our merch. and share a testimonial, feedback, or content ideas at ANFVV Video.org. All of these things will help us grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can. I'm Melissa Jeltson, host of the What Happened to Her Podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story,

a case the police rode off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an I-Heart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to IHeart True Crime Plus subscribers.

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Police quickly found their suspect. Prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm re-examining this case. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to examined the backfire effect on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

From shocking betrayals to carefully planned murders, the Black Effect's new original podcast series, Bloodline Crimes, hosted by me, Morgan Wood, explores the darkest and bizarre cases where family became the most dangerous threat of all. Listen to the Black Effects Bloodline Crimes every Thursday, starting October 8th, from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get, Your podcast. We've all heard the phrase All Things in moderation, but that's clearly not us. That's why we're celebrating 300 episodes of That's messed up our Law & Order SVU podcast

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