Noob School - Jack Sterling on Business, Growth, and the SEAL-to-Entrepreneur Shift

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Jack Sterling is back, and this time, we’re getting straight into business—what works, what doesn’t, and what entrepreneurs need to know. We kick things off with an important discussion about the Rupert Huse Veterans Center and how they’re helping veterans successfully transition into new careers.Then, we dig into the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship. Jack shares insights on the biggest differences between structured environments (like the military) and the unpredictable world of running a business—drawing from his own experience transitioning from a Navy SEAL to an entrepreneur. We cover smart ways to fund a business, breaking down how SBA loans work and how they can fit into a broader funding strategy with investors. And of course, we talk sales: what it takes to actually close deals, why so many people overcomplicate the process, and what Jack has learned from his work at Cloudhound.Finally, we highlight another fantastic organization, Upstate Warrior Solution, and why supporting veterans is so important. If you want to get involved, check them out: Upstate Warrior Solution - Get Involved.This one’s packed with real-world business advice and a few laughs along the way—tune in!Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsLSubscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL#SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends#salestrends

How's your day going on so far? It's a good day. I interviewed or met with a guy from an insurance broker recently that I met through PNC. He was, we're just mutually trying to find ways to help each other. I've never really cracked the code on doing cyber stuff for insurance people. They've got kind of their pre-approved list of vendors and crack into that's been tough. So we had a good conversation about how we help each other. And then I sat down and interviewed a former Kiowa pilot,

a guy who flew Kiowa helicopters in the military. What's the Kiowa? It's a little one. Okay. Like not a little bird, but it's a smaller, not a big black hawk. And so we talked Echo Fui. It's our first live podcast. So give us some grace,

because she's a little shy of cameras. He's got a business doing laser assessments of commercial properties, measuring it down to the millimeter, how big the dimensions are, I don't like a surveyor for your house would be. So he's looking to start his business back up. We just had a good two-hour discussion about what he's trying to do and how he could do it. Then topped off the tank, grabbed him a bite to eat.

Pick me up. Picked you up, came down to the studio. You know, your brother has my car now. Oh, nice. Cruising around on the Sover Queen. That's all right. One of the things about not having a car, which is kind of nice every now. Since I live downtown, it's not that big of a deal.

But it just forces me to be more resourceful. Yeah. Get a ride. We're deliberate. Take an Uber, meet some new people. Interesting. So. You could be like me where you had a car and then you got a second car and then you wrecked the second car almost immediately.

And I was just sitting wrecked in your driveway. Go back down to one car. It's looking good. Yeah. Progress. So we're here today. Are we rolling, Chris? Okay.

I think it's podcast, I'm going to say 143. Sure. If it's not, put it on the screen, whatever it's supposed to be. We'll take care of that and post. We've had a few. And is this your third time here, Jack? Who's counting? I think you had one at the old place.

One at the old place. One here. This is three. Okay. So I think you're in the lead. Ooh. The podcast. So obviously, for those you don't know, my oldest son, Jack is here today.

And he's been working on a, I think, a very interesting project or job here in Greenville. Jack is a Navy Vell. veteran and an entrepreneur. And he got a job working for a great veteran center here in Greenville called Rupert Hughes, named after Rupert Hughes, Veterans Center. It's a beautiful place on Pelham Road. We call it the Rupp. We call it the Roof. That's easier.

Rupert Hughes Veteran Center, R-HVC, aka the Roope. The Roope's easier. I like the Roof. But tell us about the Roop. to begin with, Jack, all the different things it represents and kind of how it came together, who leads in all that stuff. Yeah. So the Rupert Hughes Veteran Center is the home and headquarters for Upstate Warriors solution. Okay. The local nonprofit started about 12 years ago, so it's not even that old by a Marine veteran who wanted to find a way to serve veterans locally, right? That

all these nonprofits and non-governmental organizations and governmental organizations like the VA. And so nothing was focused specifically at least. local. It's all national or regional. And so they started upstate warrior solutions to be, to serve whole person in one place for the seven counties of the upstate. So there's about 100,000 veterans more or less that live in those seven counties the upstate, which is a higher ratio than most places in the country. So a lot of veterans live in here and here. And what the whole person one place mantra means is that anyone in that umbrella, right, veterans, first responders, law enforcement, firefighters, and, and

their families, right? So like my wife and kids would be allowed to go in and get services here. Anything from health care, housing, education, job, training, anything like that, entrepreneurship, we can help you get sorted out, right? So we're not the VA. We're not going to be the direct provider of your health care, but we'll help you navigate the VA in prison. It's coming to your life, really. Right. So how do you get yourself squared away, right? And so there's no shortage of resources for veterans. The problem is connecting with the right resource at the right time and knowing how to navigate that ecosystem. So they started very small, very humble roots and have grown organically over the last 12

years to when I started three years ago, they asked me to start the entrepreneurship program from scratch. They had an employment team covering down on job seekers. But if a job seeker said, hey, I've got a side hustle that I want to grow, they really didn't have a whole lot of capacity to help them. They're on your own. So they said, hey, we want you to start an entrepreneur program for us and run it as you see fit. And so that's what I did within about three years ago, still doing it today,

and kind of balancing that with family life and the business that I run as well. So when I started, we were in about 3,000 square feet of a shared office place off Pelham Road. One little cramped conference room, always double-booked. You know, you go in there, it smells like the last group that just had lunch in there. It's just very, you know, not a place where you could do a lot, bring people in, not really giving tours. It was not something you would want to write home about. But about maybe six months into being there, They moved, upstate warriors moved locations, not far down the road on Pelham Road, right by the hospital, into a former bank headquarters, 30,000 square feet, but 10x the space we had.

And so we went from this little shop, kind of in a sticky little corner of a building to now we've got beautiful facility. The Rupert Hughes family was part of the funding that made that possible. That's why they got the name on the building. And so renovated to really feel like you're going into someone's home, right? So it's not some antiseptic VA building where you're kind of a number. You know, it's like you're coming into a home. You're your home when you get there. And you can, you know, kind of let your hair down a little bit.

Yeah. You're not as much of just a cog kind of going down the assembly line. You're actually somewhere where people care about you, know you. I want to see you thrive, not just as a line item on their agenda, but like as a person. We care about you because we are you, right? It's by us, for us kind of thing. So you can come in there and, you know, I've had clients that we're talking about how to start their business.

And then a couple months in, they tell me that their house, their apartment's been flooding and they got black mold everywhere. And the landlord won't do anything about it. Well, that's a problem, right? Your business is going to suffer if you've got that kind of distraction in your life, right? If your housing's unstable, if you're living in a car, if you're paycheck to paycheck, if you've got a bunch of debt that you're out of control, can't handle, those are all things that matter, right?

If your teeth are all jacked up, right? If you're social shut in and you don't network at all, right? It's going to be really, those are all big, big distractions or impediments to being successful in anything, let alone starting something new, learning the business. And so, you know, I'm really, we're pretty genuine when we sit down with someone and we say, listen, we care about you as the whole person. And if we're sitting down and talk about your business doing landscaping or whatever, but you tell me X, Y, or Z, we're going to take care of it, right? And I'm not a, I'm not going to be the person that's going to provide your medical care

or be your debt consolidation person, but like, we'll figure it out. One thing I love about that, I mean, your veterans are coming to that center to get an array of, of, of, of, you know, services that they can help them kind of get their civilian life together. That's right. And interestingly enough, when they come to you specifically because they want to start a business or entrepreneurship, you know, if they're depressed and they can't get out of bed the morning, the business idea is not relevant. You're not going to be raised.

Or your teeth are messed up, you're an alcoholic or whatever it is. You've got to get your whole life squared away. Yeah. The whole person matters, right? And so I think that's pretty rare. From what we would have gathered, being there for a little over three years, is that there's not much like this in the country. The hyper-local, whole-person focus, you know, a lot of times we feel like we're just kind of passed around, right?

If you call the VA, oh, you're called the wrong number. We're going to put you on hold with somebody else for 45 minutes. And then they're going to tell you to call us back. Right. It's like, what am I doing? Just wasting time. So the VA has done a lot of good stuff for me. I don't want a bad mouth the VA, but we're not the VA, right?

VA's giant bureaucracy that spans millions and millions of veterans. Where's your VA? Which one do you go to? The one I'm technically part of is the Dorn and Columbia, but there's the one up here in Greenville that I can go to. I've been to Asheville as well. Ashville, yeah. Well, it's a great thing. I know, I mean, I've obviously been out there to see you and your brother.

You do walk in, and it is very welcoming. There's one or two people there going, hey, you know, whatever. They're nice. There's places to sit. And you go right to the back, and there's free water and coffee. The cool thing on top of that is. you never know what you're going to run into when you walk in those doors. When we had 3,000 square feet, there was no room for activities, right? We had all these community partners. We're very,

we model the upstate warriors idea around being a hub with a bunch of spokes kind of office. We can, or central, you know, crossing roads for all these different things. You've got health care, you got banking, you've got, you know, job, you know, employers and all this stuff. So all these community partners used to be out there, right? We're in here, those little stinky office, we're going to send you out there to go connect with somebody else on another day and another time. Now we've got up to, we've got more than 50 tenants in the building. 50. Wow.

Most of them are community resource partners, right? So there's a Prisma rep in the building. There's a Clemson University rep in the building. So instead of sending you across town another date and time, you've got to take time off from your job again. You'd walk you down the hall and let you talk to Fred and from Prisma or whatever. So the other benefit from having all those resource partners in that room for activities is that you get like yesterday we had a local radio host coming in he comes in like once a quarter and does spots for all the different people outside warriors that are doing stuff and just broadcast that talk about it they also ingle sponsors it so engel sponsored lunch for veterans and so you had probably a hundred plus most of them were older

veterans you know wearing their unit hats coming in having lunch talking and you get to know i mean i sat down with that go and talked to a navy vet for 30 minutes and so you never know what you're going to run into. One time I came in the door and it was the Royal Scottish Fusselaers, the Color Guard from Scotland, who is partnered with the Highlanders in Greenville in the upstate. And they make a pilgrimage here every year, do a tour in their kilt and their regalia and everything.

And they were doing a bagpipe concert in the lobby. Random Tuesday morning. You just bump into all kind of crazy stuff. That's correct. How many veterans do you think that you've coached so far in the last couple of years? So since we started, I've had at least 170 interviews with, you know, net new clients. A lot of them I've come back and talked to multiple times. They've come back for more stuff.

We're closing on 200, though. So we should clear 200, probably end of the year, easy. Yeah, that's cool. I imagine, you know, you've learned a lot in that time, you know, what to do, what not to do, good idea, bad idea. Can you pass on, you know, without giving them? out any details. Can you pass on any high-level things you've learned good and bad? Sure. So a couple of trends that I've seen is personal observation stuff that I've experienced on my own. I wouldn't necessarily have thought about it as being a trend until I see it in

dozens of other veterans. But number one is we don't know the first thing about how to get a business funded, right? If I'm going to Afghanistan and do a mission, there's zero part of my brain dedicated to figure out how to pay for that mission, right? Doesn't exist, right? So someone's thinking about it. It's not someone in the chain of command where I was. Second is marketing, right? So every business needs marketing so people know they exist, right? Why would I need this business? You know, again, most military people, unless you're the public affairs person, there's zero marketing in the job. It might even be anti-marketing, right? So in the SEAL teams, you don't talk about what you do. It's in our creed. You don't advertise

the nature of your work or seek recognition for what you do for a good reason, right? You don't want people scrutinizing what you're doing or, you know, operate in silence in the shadows kind of gives you more freedom of movement, lets you operate more successfully, whatever. When you come out and that's your default mindset is don't tell anybody what I'm doing, it makes it real hard to start a business that's going to get anywhere because nobody knows what you're doing, right? You're a nobody. And so those are the two things that I've seen people coming through our program, me included,

struggle with, right? Funding, marketing. Okay. The last kind of across-the-board observation is that when you come out of working for the Department of Defense, right, whatever branch in the military, highly structured, highly bureaucratic, there's some benefits to that, right? So if I had an admin issue, I can walk down in the hall tomorrow, admin shop, they got it all figured out. There's 20 admin pros working in the admin shop. That's all they do.

What does what I mean by admin? What do you think I mean by admin? processing, taxes, paperwork. Everything could do with paperwork and admin in your entire life, right? They got it all. They got your file. They got know what you need to do.

Here, you type it up and spit it out in this printer and you sign it and we're done. You go back to doing your job making doors go away and dropping bombs on stuff. So you've got your career on rails, the progression. I joke to people, that becoming a seal is easy because you know the steps, right? It's hard steps to do. But like from me sitting in the floor office, you know, wanting to do something. something radically different to checking into Steel Team One, every step of the way was published online, freely available to anybody.

You know what was coming. There was no ambiguity about what it took to get there, right? So, hardest thing they do in the world, but the steps are painted for you, right? Versus entrepreneurship, really anything in the civilian world, but entrepreneurship in particular, nobody's telling you what to do. There is no paint by numbers to become an entrepreneur in a million different ways to do it, right? Every business is its own kind of snowflake. And so, you know, that ambiguity of what do I?

I do, you know, very tight shot group when you're in the military. I know what to do. I know what not to do. My performance e-val tells me where I am in that measure and I can kind of use that to navigate my career. When you get out where there is a civilian job or you're starting your own business or whatever, there is none of that, right, especially in entrepreneurship. There is no roadmap to success. You kind of have to make it up as you go. And so a lot of people kind of falter because they're just part of their brains expecting some sort of top-down dictation of what to do and it's not coming. For years, I thought I was going to get a phone call to tell me to pack my bags and go somewhere.

No real reason to think that other than I've just habituated thinking that way. Well, I think it's interesting because it's, you know, veterans getting out of the service come out. And whether they were in two years or 20 years, they know about as much about starting a business as we would getting out of college. Nothing. But that's a different way? I don't want to interrupt you. Put it a different way, you know as much about, we know as much about starting a business

as the random Joe on the street knows about the SEAL teams, right? Yeah. You know, you know what you see on TV and movies. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, I guess what I mean is when someone gets out,

they know about as much as they would have known when they were getting out of school, which is hardly anything. Right. And so it just means they push that knowledge capture back by whatever. In your case, It'll be about nine years. But the way to catch up on that, particularly these days with information so available,

is with some mentoring, right? Like that's what you provide these folks is the good mentoring. And, man, I was the same way getting out of college. I wanted to do some things, but had no idea how to do it. I'll just go to the bank, I guess, and borrow some money. You're like, sure, be happy to. What's your collateral? I'm not sure what that means, sir.

Yes. I'll get back to you. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get right back to you. So, I mean, yeah, someone can tell you how to do it. I think like in the case of, I always wondered about this, but think about a Mark Zuckerberg. He's 19 years old.

Just dropped out of Harvard. He's got this little, you know, Facebook, you know, face imaging thing for colleges. The Facebook? The Facebook that he's developed. I always think, well, I understand he's a good programmer and a good idea. How did he know about cash flow and P&Ls and how? hiring people and going public and borrowing money. Yeah.

You know, and I think that's what happens. I think when you get like a, let's just call a big VC, big venture capital company, said, we're going to make a bet on this thing. Right. And they get, you know, 30% of the company and give the guy a bunch of money. But they also have a board seat and they also provide some help. Yeah. Like, what do we have to do here?

We got a guy who can show you how to build the building. We got a guy who can show you how to hire people. we're going to help this employee over here. We know real. And then they just kind of set the table for them. Yeah. You think? I think that's fair.

You know, I think that there's a myth of the idea of the self-made entrepreneur. Somebody did it all themselves. I don't believe that for a second. I've never seen someone who's like, yeah, I did everything. I did the accounting. I did the sales. I did the marketing. I did the product development.

I did the engineering. No, you didn't. No. Show me that person. Have yet to see him? So I really think that it takes a team. Again, but the military, that team is highly structured, right? Everyone's got their defined roles already.

You know, the mission is kind of passed down to you. You're not choosing your own missions. And so, you know, we like to think of where, you know, the SEALs and Special Forces are pretty entrepreneurial within the military, but we're completely captive and constrained and, like, don't know what to do when it comes out, comes to getting out in the world and having no direction or structure. One thing I've found with the SEALs in general, or specifically,

is putting them in a big company, probably not a good idea. No, no. Unless you're going to give them complete autonomy and, you know, some oversight, but a very wide latitude, we don't make good cogs. No. And you didn't make good cogs in the military either. No. Just kind of leave them alone.

We bristled. I mean, the friction between the big military, big Navy and the special forces world, it's universally, I mean, every branch that has special forces, the special forces are the red-headed step-child. of the big military because big military's got their doctrine and their haircuts and their structure and everything and we kind of issue a lot of that right so we thought of as well we're the entrepreneurial folks in the military and that's kind of true but it's also i think anyone that's worked for that level of bureaucracy it's almost like you talked about you know we're nine years

behind where i would have been had never joined it's almost more than that you're almost you've learned a different way of doing things and you have to unlearn that and then start from scratch learning the stuff you didn't learn by joining the military. So it is, we've got a lunch and learn coming up with one of, someone's going to come talk to some of our clients about the mental shift from working for big DOD to working for yourself, right? Going from the cog, you know, operator in the machine to, I run my own thing, right? And it's overwhelming.

And I like to use a lot of analogies to make sense of things. And the one that I use for this one is, you know, Lance Arnden's, Armstrong, doping aside, right? Let's just pretend that's, you know, just whatever. Allegedly. Allegedly, everyone's doping, whatever. Duke could get on a bike and go, right? That was his superpower.

He put Lance on a bike. He has elite level pain tolerance, elite level, V-O-2 max, cardiovascular endurance, whatever. He knows when to go. He doesn't put the hammer down. He could do it better than anybody, right? Take Lance off Team USPS. Put him in board shorts and flip-flops in the south of France. Say, Lance, go in the tour of France.

how well do you think Lance is going to do? Is he even going to place? Is he even going to make the start of the race? No. No, he didn't have a bike. He doesn't have the uniform. He doesn't have the shoes. He doesn't have the nutrition or the hotels,

the logistical planners, or the sport scientist or the people that are doing aerodynamic testing. All of this giant apparatus of pyramid that sits under Lance Armstrong that makes him able to just go pedal, it's gone now. And so he has to decide maybe I don't even want to compete the intuitive friends.

Maybe I want to go for the world record of Pogo sticking or something like that. But like, the routes and the race and the competition is all just gone now. And the support structure that made it possible to even compete is gone now. And you have this vague recollection of being really good at what you did.

And now you've got to go figure out how to apply that somewhere else. And me and dozens of people that I've talked to in the last two or three years are used to being elite doers of whatever they do, right? Kicking in doors, communicating on the radio, mission planning, whatever. And they get out.

And then they go find another thing to be really good at doing. And think they can build a business around it. And they're just elite doing their business forever. No management, no ownership mentality. It's all just do, do, do. And then they kind of get burnt out. You get hurt. You know, get cheated out of business like the guy I was talking to earlier.

Someone, he hired a civilian, taught him how to do everything he did, showed him all the stuff. And then the guy just took half of his customers and started his own business. Takes your knees out from under you, right? So no, go back to square one. It happened to him twice. shut the business down and sell all this stuff she's like I can't do this anymore

and so it's you know figuring out what you want to do where you want to do it like do you want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg I don't know many people that do that seems like a pretty

I mean aside from the mountain of money he lives on top of like that route does not seem like the route that I want to go yeah I think I think on that subject well first of all before we get away from the route

it was Charlie Hall is the guy who started that right Yep. And then his father-in-law... Yep. Maston. Maston.

It was a Marine General and started up to Special Forces. Marsock. Marsok. Yeah. And he's kind of on the board or a sponsor or something. So it was a Maston brandchild. It was 20th story. So I mean, Charlie was a young Marine lieutenant dating this girl for a few months and he's going to come meet the family.

And Charlie goes to meet the family. And guess what? her dad is the commandant of Marsock. It's just like... And Marsok is Marine Special Operations Command, yeah. And Charlie was in that? No, not exactly. So Charlie was in the Marine Corps.

Okay. And so he's a supply lieutenant. He goes to meet his girlfriend's dad and it's the commandant of Marsok. So it went well for Charlie. He now married Marsok, Khammeda's daughter. But Mason's the chairman of the board. Charlie's the president. and yeah they they have it's their vision that's come to life it's unbelievable yeah because

I knew them then too well one thing I'll just say on the subject you brought up it's like what people want with with starting business and things like that um I think it's easy to get carried away with Steve Jobs and Zuckerberg and Elon and some of the Elon she's some of the stuff that they're doing and kind of with the all or not mentality. It's like, well, I can't do what Zuckerberg did, so therefore it's not working for me or something. Yeah. Versus saying, you know, what can we do? Yeah.

And, you know, I'm starting to be more and more of the camp that, you know, what we all want is we want financial freedom. That's the first thing we want. Yep. And I don't mean jet money. Right. I mean, just life money. Yeah. Normal life money.

Right. So you can enjoy your kids more, your spouse money. more, your friends, your hobbies, whatever. And just see if you can get that checked off the list. And one way to do that is buying a business. And what do they call it, the silver tsunami or something. But there's just so many baby boomers that are aging out that own businesses that, you know, they're not big enough to go sell to a private equity company.

So a lot of are just kind of sitting there. They don't quite know what to do with them. So, you know, finding something you like to do, if somebody was really good at, landscaping or whatever it was to find someone in that business that's older, get that business, and then create that freedom. As a rung on the ladder, and if you want to get bigger after that and say, maybe we should take this regional. Maybe we should take this up to East Coast, you know, and then you could start thinking

maybe one day you are Zuckerberg. That's right. But don't try to be Zuckerberg or nothing. That's right. And Zuckerberg wasn't trying to be Zuckerberg when he started. He had a cool idea for how to keep track of all the hot girls. campus. I mean, that was the genesis of that idea. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, the opportunity to buy a business is twofold. One, is there's a bunch of businesses that are

available, right? There's also, you know, easier to fund, right? So how does it work with the veterans with the funding? So there's some, there's some set of size and some advantageous, you know, the 7A, whatever, if he's a SBA program. Seven A, SBA. Yeah. So just in general, I mean, if you're not a veteran, it's easier to get bank money to go buy a business that exists already than it is to fund a business that doesn't exist. So I'll give you an example, since I asked you the question. But, you know, the SBA will loan currently up to $5 million for a business that, you know, you have to show them the financials and get them to agree it's a good deal, right? And they'll fund up to 90% of the purchase price. So if it was going to cost $5 million, you know, for the company,

let's just say it was going to cost a million for the business. They do. They'll fund 90% of a million is $900,000. So you would be on the hook for $100,000 to buy a business that cost a million. And you could get that. If you had no money, I mean, zero, you could get part of that money, up 5% of the money from the owner. So we're going to do an owner financing for $5,000.

You get the last bit of it from an investor. Yep. And say, we're going to pay you a hefty return on that, you know, whatever. And you could get that business. And if you ran it well, you know, you could make your $200, $250 a year, grow it. And you'd be there. Yeah. And that's a lot easier to do than to say, I'm going to come up with an idea.

And then I'm going to start it and try to find the first customer. Yeah. You know, that's so hard. So hard. And it's something that, you know, if I've talked to 200 people, maybe five, have even expressed any interest in looking to buy a business. You know, sometimes you're looking for a franchise, even if you're looking for a pure business for sale.

And so I try to work it in as at least a thought, right? If there's a business out there that's already doing what you're doing and the owner's getting old and doesn't have an air or a kid that won't pass it off to or a number two or something, it's like they're waiting for you to call them and say, hey, I'm already doing what you do. We're competitors, but I'd love to talk about making this, you know, equitable sale. So you get what you want. You see a trustworthy veteran take your business over, run it, be a good custodian of the thing you build, and you get your exit, right? It really seems like a win-win. It really is something that virtually nobody that I talk to, they all want to do the

pay the iron price of scott from scratch. My premise or my belief is they don't think about it because if they don't know much about it, their thought is, I don't have a million dollars. That's right. Yeah. How am I to pay for that? Yeah.

And it's easier, you know, I have to be, I really try not to be the dasher of dreams, you know, the rain on the parade kind of guy. I try and just ask questions that help them realize where they are. But, I mean,

sometimes the search for funding is comical. Hey, $10 million for the Ninja Plex and mixed martial arts dojo with a virtual reality center in the back for veteran therapy. I'm like, that's a fantastic, collection of ideas that you have.

But like, nobody on the planet's going to give you a dollar, let alone $10 million, right? I mean, that's just so... Well, you know, I would, again, another thing I would tell people you'd probably tell them is if they're not ready yet, okay, they don't have the money,

they don't have the experience, whatever, say, go work for someone in that field, and then when you come back for investors later, you can tell them. Like our friend, Mike Grozier, you know, who's opening up True Line, in Greenville. It's going to be kind of the next House of Blues.

Well, that guy, his whole career, he worked for, he built up House of Blues with a partner. He started House of Blues. Before that, what was it? Hard Rock. Hard Rock. He was a GM for Hard Rock for like 10 years. And he built up House of Blues.

And now he's going to investors saying, I want to do it again, call it True Island. And he was like, well, sure. I'll bet on this guy. So is there anything else you want to promote today, Jack? You want to talk about CloudHound? Yeah, I mean, CloudHound, you know, I'll give you the 10 seconds, shameless plug. Yeah, let's do it.

Cyber and Fiber broker, independent, 100% commission. So if you've got a need for Internet for your business and don't feel like calling the carriers, which I never met someone that likes calling their Internet provider, we can be your universal remote for that stuff. thing for cybersecurity. So I like to tell people it's way easier and cheaper to work on it before it becomes a big problem. Most of the time people don't listen and wait for it to become a problem and we can help them too. It's just typically cost more. I think one of the misconceptions about your business as a broker, I mean, you represent mainly scan source products, right?

They're a distributor, but yes. Distributor of cybersecurity and internet and all that stuff. He needs service we're selling, yeah. Most people think, well, I don't want to have to pay Jack extra. I think as a dealer, they're paying the same price. It's just whether or not you want someone like Jack representing you or whether you want to go direct or Verizon and Hagerwether. You're welcome to go out and buy a house direct from the owner without any agents or brokers in the middle. No one's stopping you.

Do you want to? Do you know the market well enough to do that successfully? It's going to be a big pain in your butt to go do that. You have to take a lot more time out of your day. Much easier. Most people will just go through. real estate agent, right? Somebody that knows the market, knows all the closing terms, and how to do all the stuff, I've only been than it once. I couldn't tell you how to do it,

right? Versus, you know, most people are buying internet once every three to five years, if that. Cybersecurity, even fewer, even rare, more rare. So we've helped, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of companies just turning on the internet, installing various systems to keep their business safe. And that's, you know, the more we do it, the more valuable we can be to help our clients. The thing that I want to plug before we split those. So Upstate Warrior Solutions, the number one thing we've gotten asked for from our veteran entrepreneurship clients has been help with funding, right? So we stood up starting about two years ago, and it's only now started to come online with money coming through the program,

but we set up a venture fund, a philanthropic venture fund. So it's not traditional venture capital where you're looking to return your investment, make a profit. We take philanthropic donations. People give money to the fund, fully tax deductible. So they get it right off from making that charitable contribution. We pool it. And then we have a quarterly meeting with a review panel, mostly veterans, experienced venture capital people on there. And we take the clients that I vet, the ones they're looking for money,

get them all prepared, get them all prepared, get their business plan all squared away. And they pitch the panel. And the panel, not me, makes a decision on who gets the money. And so we just made our first investment, $40,000. in a company called Precision Anatomy, two veterans that have been incubating in our space of the upstate warriors since February of last year. And what is that product?

That's a doozy of an industry. So precision anatomy, echo sit down. Down. They do high-end medical training and consulting, primarily using human cadavers. Okay. So where do they do the training? Usually on site. So they'll go to a medical university or sometimes they do off-site or something, but they don't

have their own facilities yet. They have an office in the building, but they're not doing any cadaver-based stuff in our building. So you're never going to, like, open the fridge and see, you know, a foot or something in there. But the idea is that most of the time, current zeitgeist, surgeons, ER, doctors, trauma people, EMTs, you know, people in the back of the ambulance, the first time they put their hands on a person to do a procedure, it's a real person with a real medical emergency. Kind of nerve-wracking, if you think about it. Hey, the first time you fly this plane is going to be full of people, right? Like, not how you do it in aviation. So what precision anatomy is doing is they're taking, they stood up a willed body program.

So when you donate your body to science, you check that organ donor box, donate your organs, what do they do with the rest of the body, right? Typically it just gets cremated or buried. Willed body program allows you to take that human specimen and do training, professional, respectful, ethical training, getting the most out of that body, training as many people as you can on life-saving procedures. So that when you go under the knife, that doctor's actually done it. before on a human body, right?

So that's what they're doing. They're kind of establishing a high standard in that industry that's pretty much a, like, do you know anything about the cadaver industry? And I think about it. I think about like 1800s London where they're, you know, grave robbers and doing weird experiments and stuff. And so it's a weird industry. It's weird to talk about, you know, profit in human cadavers.

But they're doing a really cool service. Yeah. And they're taking an industry that's kind of all over the place and trying to establish a standard to set for everybody. else. Well, that's cool. So we'll put it on the screen, but if anybody wants to donate to that, it's a fund that Jack's helped organize that is for entrepreneurial vets. That's right. In Greenville. That's right. Yeah. Seven counties of the upstate vets and first responders, and they're fully vetted. They've come through, they don't jump through all of our hoops to get to that point.

And it's a loan. So it's not just a gift to them. They pay it back just like a normal loan. Terms are more favorable than they be with a bank or somebody else. And so we want to make it friendly loan, but we still want to make it a good investment so they can pay that money back with interest, and we can use that money to then deploy out for other businesses. Well, you're doing good. You seem to have adjusted from the, as a veteran, pretty darn well. It's an everyday thing. And I'm closing in on, I've been out as long as I was in almost.

Oh, wow. And it's still an adjustment, right? Like nine years? Close to it. Yeah. I think it was like two years. It's maybe like seven and a half. end of 2017 to now.

So yeah, you know, it's, you're never the same person you were when you went in. You're never going to go back to being that person, right? But you do grow and you learn to kind of navigate the world differently. Yeah. And really keeping your North Star, whatever that is out in front of you and just going toward it is all you can do. So for me, that's family, right? It's why I'm here, before I get out. Yeah.

Got these beautiful kids running around. Yeah. And father. Well, thanks. We're coming back for number three. I think Michael Pace is due in soon. He'll catch you, so we have to get you back for four. We'll be back.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yep. Echo, you're a good girl. Good job, Echo. Good job.

Harley a Yelp.