The Pomp Podcast - Mike Slagh, Navy Veteran and CEO of Shift.org: Military Veterans and the Economy

Episode Date: August 16, 2019

Mike Slagh is a military veteran and the CEO of Shift.org, a company powering successful career shifts for veterans. In this conversation, Mike and Anthony Pompliano discuss how Shift is disrupting the job market, why the VA and Department of Defense are so excited about this company, what trends Mike sees in job seekers, where the level of interest in cryptocurrency is for military veterans, and how veterans are uniquely positioned to be successful in a corporate environment. CRYPTO.COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine.  Visitcoinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Mike Slay is a military veteran and the founder and CEO of Shift.org, a company powering successful career shifts for military veterans. In this conversation, we discuss how Shift is disrupting the job market, why the VA and Department of Defense are so excited about this company, what trends Mike is seeing in job seekers, where the level of interest in cryptocurrency is for military veterans, and how veterans are uniquely positioned to be successful in a corporate environment.

This conversation is really special to me, and I'm a huge fan of the work that Mike is doing. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Scoot, scoot! Want to know who has the best URL? crypto.com. That's right, crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal, motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment.

Everything you could want at crypto.com. Go help your boy out. Tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and Wi-Fi. All you got to do is go to coinmine.com. You buy a CoinMine. It's like an Xbox or a PlayStation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin.

That's right. You purchase it. It shows up at your doorstep. You pull it out of the box. You plug it in, connect to your Wi-Fi. Five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide. And then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis.

Kind of like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just you're updating your CoinMine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management.

You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys, bang, bang. I am here with Mike. I'm super excited about this episode. It's a little bit different than anything I've done previously in that Mike is running a company focused on the military veteran space. As many of you know, I served in the U.S. Army. Mike and I have known each other for a while. Jason and I actually invested in Mike's company, Shift. And so I wanted him to come on, talk a little bit about the company, what he's doing with military veterans, some of

the benefits that they bring to workplaces, and then also talk about the overlap in interest that even military veterans have in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. So Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to come in and do this. Thanks, Pop. Great to be back together in person. It's been a long road for both of us for the last few years. I originally met Mike when I was working at Facebook, and I've seen kind of from everything from when he was in the military to today, and it's pretty cool to watch, but let's just start with your background and how you eventually got to building Shift. Sure. So Shift's a career change company for military vets. Started this company after serving in the Navy for seven years.

I was a bomb disposal officer, or an explosive ordnance disposal officer, somebody who's basically like a technical expert and help small teams and big teams and even foreign countries be safe around explosive devices. Like basically pretty dangerous. Yeah, that's, you know, I guess a pretty decent preparation for running an early stage venture backed startup. So when I was in Iraq, we one of our jobs was to go and do something called route clearance, which is we would drive down the streets and we would look for roadside bombs and ambushes. And if we found a roadside bomb, we were told to not touch them and instead call something called EOD or Explosive Ordnance Disposal, which was a team that Mike would be

in. And they would come out with their bomb suits and their robots and all this stuff and try to either blow up the bomb or defuse the bomb. And I will tell you one funny story. was at one point in Iraq, uh, it would, um, the EOD was so stretched in terms of they had to go from one site to another site, to another site, two or three hours. Right. And so literally we would be told, uh, I'm not telling you to, uh, not call them, but what I'm telling you is that I bet if you run it over, if it doesn't explode, it's not a bomb. Oh man. Not advisable. Yeah, definitely not a good advice but uh that was uh you know a huge thing so i always laugh about like how how bad would it have sucked to sit in the sun right wait two or three hours for them to

start telling us that right um but uh but but i i definitely did not envy the folks who would go and poke the bombs and see what would happen i mean for me it was like you know it was this incredible community of folks where um problem solving and critical thinking and being able to think through multiple situations in parallel was like of the utmost value yep and i was going through the army's airborne school uh as a cadet which is like lower on the rank than a private that the um and i remember there's a navy eod team that was going through the army jump school training at the same time and and that was that was really the first time that i met folks from the community and it was just it just felt like family it felt totally different um so on my side

you know these were you know the you know had a interest in technology had a interest in building companies and working on you know side projects and apps and stuff like that and like for me i was these were like the exact type of people that you wanted on your side solving problems working through challenges. Um, but for me specifically, um, you know, it was like when I was separated from the Navy, like everybody else, there's surprises people, there's 250,000 people who separate from military service every single year. Um, and so like everybody else, I just want to know what was possible. You want to know how like those specific and sometimes very unique experiences translate? Which of your military skills are going to be of value

to a future employer? Well, I think part of what you're describing is, you know, I was lucky in that the service that I did was in the reserves, right? And then I did a active deployment. So I kind of had, I was building a civilian career while also serving in the military. Most military veterans don't have that benefit. So they're there 100% of the time. That's the only thing they know it's the only thing they're focused on. And so when they leave that service, they have nothing else other than their military skills to fall back on. And, you know, if you take an EOD member, you could take apart bombs, right? Frankly, you've got more courage than is advised for many people. And so you look around and you say, well, like where in the civilian sector can

I go ahead and take apart bombs, right? Like that's the natural reaction. And it's like, okay, I could go work at a police department. I could work at a defense contractor. Like that's where most of these people go. But what they don't realize is a lot of the soft skills, the team leading, the other skills that they've acquired, there's tons of value that can be translated into other jobs. That's, I think, what you guys are working on now. Totally. Maybe we'll go into this a little bit later, but it's like there's so many jobs in the workforce today that didn't even exist like 20 years ago, right?

Right. And so many of these jobs don't like there's the path to get into them is not through going to college and getting a specific degree in it. So whether it's account management or customer success, operations management, project management, sales, these types of roles required to be somebody who does what they say they're going to do, plays nicely with other people, are accountable both to themselves and to project timelines and budgets so there's just these big chunks of the workforce that are highly relevant to folks that have four to eight or more years of professional work experience they've been accountable to a boss they've had their own kpis which called something different in the military of course but that's that's a valuable thing and so like the real thing that's missing for the majority of vets when they separate from service isn't necessarily a bunch of you know hard skills they have to go and acquire unless

they've got you know want to go be a software engineer or something like that but it's just a little bit of domain expertise and a bunch a bunch of industry specific context like you have to be able to almost have be able to have this conversation amongst peers with the people in an industry that you want to break into and so how do you get that that's a little bit of what we're working on at Shift. And so describe what exactly you're doing at Shift. And for those that don't know, Mike runs a company that, you know, I would say, I'll say this, I don't think you'd say this, but it's a classic Silicon Valley company in that they have had an idea, started to show some traction to it, went out, raised capital, and from many names that you guys would

all know, including entries in Horowitz, et cetera. And they're now in kind of the scaling phase of, okay, we've got the model, we are seeing it work. How do we kind of hit the inflection point and go from a small company with interesting ideas and a little bit of traction to a very large company that's very, very valuable. But maybe describe kind of what you guys are doing exactly and then we can get into some of the nuances. Sure. So I guess picture this, you're trying to figure out what you're going to do next and you're trying to figure out what's possible um and like this is a story that i think a lot of folks with military backgrounds would resonate with or i guess maybe get like a shudder at the thought or flashbacks too but you

go into some big aircraft hangar on base and it's a job expo targeted at vets there's a bunch of companies very well intentioned sitting around tables and they're telling you what their company is like and they're they're they're saying this is what our culture feels like and this is how you can progress and this is what matters to our organization and i mean it sounds great right yeah like you don't actually think you're getting the full story right and this is probably like the most anxiety-ridden life decision you feel like you're ever going to make yep because it's not just where you're going to go work at work in terms of job but it's also you might be moving to new city you don't know anybody there the whole thing yep yeah and it's you know and

opportunities in the outside world and probably very similarly to how people you know who don't have a ton of exposure to the military feel and it just looks like a speeding train that's flying by and if you're going to make the best decision for yourself the best decision for your unique life circumstances maybe for your family like what the first thing that you want to do is to get inside you want to you know everything like the the important stuff like understanding what a culture uh inside of an organization actually is is it a fit how does an organization function which types of people are successful how does progression work then even like you know it may sound silly but you know just getting inside and like seeing how fast people are walking around

say are they moving with a purpose you know what is the what's the vibe uh some of those softest skit it's like the water cooler talk that's right man are people showing up in the kitchen that are like you know johnny just did this and mary just did and they're all talking shit about each other or is it boring like is it boring or even better is it like these people are pumped to be here they feel like they're you know working on something that's going to change the world and it's something i want to be a part of exactly so can't get that from the brochure no or my favorite example about the job exposes those people are literally being paid by the company to stand there and say that right yeah like it is the most biased view of the company

possible and it's no secret either like we all we all know what's going on uh so what we did at the beginning of last year uh we started a fellowship program and it allows active duty service members to leave base travel to the city where they want to live after the military and start working in a corporate environment during their last three months of active duty service So I'm still in the military. I've got three months left and I get the opportunity to go do this. And I think the big kicker is in the military continues to pay my salary. Military still pays your full salary benefits. And we can get into more of the nuts and bolts later, but how we've been able to expand access to this program for everybody in the military, not just the folks who are making more money than others, but maybe folks who are earlier in their careers or they're still living in the barracks. Well, actually, when service members go to big, major metropolitan job markets like New York City, we'll reimburse them for some of the housing costs that might be extra. And so you'd be surprised that just like $600, $700, $800 a month can make all the difference in somebody being able to participate in something that might literally change the course of their career trajectory or not, having to stay home and sit it out.

Well, and it's crazy, too, that I think for most people who go what I'll call the quote unquote traditional route. So you kind of, you know, go to high school, go to college, get a degree, get a job. It's a very kind of straightforward path. And also there's much more infrastructure and advice and support along the way than you probably realize. And then on top of that, there's a group of other people who are doing it with you. Right. So it's kind of like, hey, I'm a senior in college. my entire grade is going to graduate. Everyone's thinking about the same challenges. Everyone is sharing the same things. When it comes to the military, you may be in a unit and you're the

only person who's about to leave. So you don't even have other people to talk to about it. And it's not like there's somebody who's sitting right next to you who has done it before either. Right. Right. Because they're not going to do it for another six months or two years or maybe, you know, 20 years. And so I think it's just the lack of information, the lack of support, And then, frankly, the lack of true advice. So I think of information just like, what are the facts? But then there's like, hey, you might want to live in this area versus that area. Or, hey, this type of company has certain future prospects versus this.

Or, hey, you're negotiating your salary. Here's some things to think about. They just don't know this stuff. They don't know this stuff. And I say this from the best place possible. the people to ask for advice and it is not, not necessarily the person who's been in the military for 20 years. Um, and you, you want to talk to that, that person who's, you know, one year ahead of you or two years ahead of you on that path that you want to take. But sometimes

it's like, you don't even know who those people are yet. And you definitely don't have access to them. If you're sitting on a big military installation in rural Georgia or, you know, rural Oklahoma, you know, how do you find your people and how do you find your path? Well, and so when you first told me about what you were going to do, the way that you pitched it to me was, look, we're going to help these military veterans essentially get an internship, right, to some degree. That's right. So it's like a three-month internship at major corporations, including – or companies that you want to share. Yeah, yeah. I'm working with Major League Baseball, WeWork, Palantir, media agencies like the Publicis Group and some of their subsidiaries.

So these are – a lot of these companies are not like the typical companies that – It's not a bakery shop on the street. Yeah. And that's when you necessarily think like, oh, I'm not qualified to go do that. Or, you know, you know, working at a tech company, I don't code. Yep. Right. So, you know, how, you know, there's no place for me. There's that information gap with understanding that like big chunks of these companies, you need people that can manage projects and get things done on time and under budget. Yeah. So basically for this three month internship, for all intents and purposes, they get to go to companies that a lot of people would like jobs at. Right. They're super successful, well-known companies.

And while they're there, the military is paying their salaries. So the company has no exposure to pay their salaries. And the veteran is getting exposure to this is what this company is like. It's not off a brochure. It's like I'm actually there every day. I get to see what the company is like, what the job is like. I get to meet people. I get to really indoctrinate myself into this culture.

And then from the company's perspective, they're trying before they buy. They get three months kind of, quote, unquote, risk-free to see, is this person actually good at this job? Is this someone who can help our team? All these things. And at the end of the three months, basically the company makes a decision. We're either going to hire them or we're not. It's important because the person is transitioning out of the military at that point. So it's either they've got a job or they got to go find a job. And then the part that I love about it is Shift, the company, gets paid by the new employer when they hire somebody. So if you guys do your job, put the right veteran into these companies and the company likes them,

You get paid on, like, a recruiting-type basis, but the veteran just found a job without having to go through all the traditional channels, and they are sure that that's the job they want because they just worked there for three months kind of risk-free. Yeah, I mean, retention is something that I think is certainly part of the conversation now with companies that have been making this really strong commitment to military hiring that's really important to them, where they see a lot of the untapped potential of the talent that everybody else is missing out on. But one of the challenges that these companies are facing now that are relatively further along on their veteran hiring initiatives or journey is just that it's kind of hard to retain vets if that fit isn't perfect or if they did land in the wrong culture fit. And so if you get somebody who arrives, understands what the road ahead looks like, they've already worked in teams and on the same projects, the exact same stuff that they're going to be doing when they convert and be a full-time teammate, that's a person that's going to stick around. That's a person that already knows what they're getting into. And I think that's, you know, for anybody out there who's executed a career change in the past, you know, this is like, you know, you would love to have something like this and make sure that the decision you're making is correct. Why is the military like this? Like, to me, it's very obvious why the veteran would like it, right?

You're going to help me find a job. Okay, no-brainer. It's great from the company perspective in that I get to basically try before I buy, right? So I get somebody that I really know is going to do a good job. But why the military? What's their kind of incentive? Yeah, well, let me I got to say one more thing about the best. I mean, imagine like you you get to leave base, travel to the city where you want to live, start to build a network, find your people, understand exactly which part of an organization you're going to be best suited to thrive in. get all of that sort of like first few months awkwardness on the job thing that everybody

goes through out of the way while you're still on this intern active duty status uh and then you really start getting traction you start being you know feeling like you're a full-time contributor and you're moving the ball downfield and then you start your first day on the job that's that's that is like that's like almost too good to be true um and it's absolutely like the situation that I wanted to find myself in when I was separating from military service. But for the military, for the DOD, you know, this is a thing where a big chunk of vets, when they separate from service, you know, they want to land in a big city. They want to land in a major metropolitan job market. And a lot of these markets like New York or San Francisco and other huge cities in America don't

have a huge military presence nearby and so no matter who you are like you know veteran not veteran you know preconceived notions about what you can do or not do like if you want to live in New York City it's pretty hard to get a job if you're sitting on base in Oklahoma like and and you've got all of these folks that like as a country we've invested tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars each in their leadership development, professional development, communication skills, ability to work in teams. And a lot of these big markets with huge employers are missing out because they don't have a strong exposure to military communities. And so if you look at some of the studies that the USC Marshall School did around vets who land in big cities,

it's like 80 of people who want to live in a big city and uh arrive in that city without a full-time job offer in hand what sort of decision are you going to make for yourself if your personal runway is going down to zero uh you're in a expensive city because you know either this is where your family wants to live or this is where you want to live um and you almost like have to take what you can get in early days. So this, uh, for service members, you know, this, this is a way that, you know, for those first few months of the military and the VA, the federal government avoids a ton of unemployment expense. If people land in their, in their first post-military career prior to separating from service. And I guess like just, just philosophically, like there are,

there's this there's this almost like this groundswell happening in the military and maybe like folks from from your generation might might be like yeah that that's i don't know if that's true but um you know there's this thought that senior folks in the military are starting to have that if people successfully transition from military life that makes us as an organization so much stronger because we're keeping our promise to service members who sign up and we're going to be able to recruit you know the best and brightest young people in america to serve in the military because there is something good waiting for you at the end of that journey want to know who has the best url crypto.com that's right crypto.com they're a crypto platform with one goal

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Pomp's got you. Always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry. Your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and Wi-Fi. all you got to do is go to coinmine.com you buy a coin mine it's like an xbox or a playstation that helps you turn your electricity into bitcoin that's right you purchase it it shows up at your

doorstep you pull it out of the box you plug it in connect to your wi-fi five minutes or less you're mining bitcoin all you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kind of like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just you're updating your CoinMine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. The part to me that always seemed to be the miscommunication between employers and veterans is all the things that usually make talented yet bad employees bad, right? They show up late. They're not disciplined. Uh, they don't know how to

communicate. Like all, all of the, it's like all the soft skills, right? If you're really strong at the one technical thing or the one thing that your job requires, but you're bad at everything else, you're usually labeled as a bad employee, right? No doubt. But if you're actually really, really good at everything else and you're not the best technical person, you're not the best at this one skill everything all the soft skills can make up for it and military veterans uh bring all those soft skills in a way that i think a lot of people either don't or they have to work to get there and it's because the veteran did work to get that they got put through very specific rigid training that kind of produced this thing out of that process right yeah you're you consider like

these two candidate profiles and it's probably no surprise to you like some of the roles that we're seeing like the fastest growth are, you know, junior BDR, business development type of roles, junior sales development roles. You know, somebody, you know, who, you know, doesn't have a college degree from the military, somebody who's had three to four years of active duty service, but that's somebody who's been in a professional work environment for three to four years. And they've had to show up on time. And six months after they got to their first unit, they were in charge of that person who just got to their unit six days ago and make sure that that person shows up to formation on time. So that sounds like, you know, that's not a ton of responsibility,

but that's, you know, being accountable for somebody else. You don't really get that from folks who are graduated from college in many cases. And so it's just a different profile of a candidate. Yeah. And look, I just think you don't even have to go to the lowest level ranks right like just started like a sergeant in the army it's somebody who most likely has been in the military four to six years you know give or take uh they are in charge of anywhere between three to twelve people depending on you know how big their unit is etc uh meaning that they are the team leader or the the squad leader for three to three to twelve people that but just think about how crazy that is like like you and

I don't think that's that crazy at all, but somebody who's 23 years old, 22, 23 years old, in charge of 12 other people's wellbeing, their professional development, their career goals. It's not just at work. It's what a lot of people don't realize in the military is that it's not just, Hey, uh, I need you to do that project. You are responsible for every single thing that that person does and their life. So if they have problems with their girlfriend, they call you. If they have problems with I don't have a good way to budget and I don't have money for food, you as the sergeant are in charge of that. And so you are not only managing these people in a professional setting, you're managing their lives, all of the craziness that can happen. They may be with you for two months, then they leave and go somewhere else.

They're replaced by somebody. It's a very, very kind of chaotic management structure that frankly is much harder than the professional world is, right? Oh, yes. And it's just when you just see, hey, this person, you know, led a team of 12 people, all you think is like, oh, they did a project together, right? Like on a resume. It's just the understanding, I think, from the recruiters, there's a big miscommunication of what that actually entails. Yeah, I think and then just, you know, take the flip side and maybe speak to some of the vets who are listening as well. I think that there's this immense amount of leadership and responsibility that they're given at a very early age in life.

and one of the things that you know helps you kind of scale as a leader and to be able to manage 12 people 24 people when you're 23 24 years old is like the military has this framework for leadership and they you know you sort of guide you at every point as to you know these are all the situations that could happen and this is what you're responsible to do in those situations and And so if you don't have some industry context, it's really easy to, you know, to not necessarily believe, but, you know, to get tripped up when you're managing a bunch of civilian employees if you don't have that very industry specific context. So that's the thing that's so important to acquire and to, you know, it'd be really hard to jump into a leadership role or a management role if you haven't, one, done the job yourself just for a little bit. or acquire just a deep amount of industry context and how things actually work in a new part of the workforce. Like, uh, if you had like a new platoon leader come in and, you know, you'd been working

at Goldman Sachs or something like that for, for four years, he's like, yes, I am the, you know, I'm, I'm your boss now, Sergeant. Uh, you'd be like, all right. Like, so there's, there's a little bit of that there, but it's like, there's, there, there's, there's no doubt that there's just this incredible amount of untapped potential exists if you can get people to this place where they have a ton of conviction around this is who i am this is my story this is where i want to go this is what i can do for you today and that's how it maps back to my career aspirations so that if we get people to that place uh they're they're they're powerful people for sure what um any interest that you're seeing from vets as they come out in terms of industries and then obviously i

got to ask about bitcoin and crypto oh yeah uh what are you seeing as you kind of have these conversations with people in their early days of exploring leaving the military well i definitely see and it's you know it's partially a small part of it's from shift and but it's also just vets who are thriving out in the ecosystem at big technology companies at startups vets who have been entrepreneurs and started their own business there's this increasing amount of openness to going off the beaten path and, you know, thinking that, you know, you have to go into something that really has strong, you know, historical veteran recruiting efforts in place. So you do see this openness to, to live in bigger cities, you know, many companies, you know, no matter what you are

starting to reimagine themselves as technology companies. And so certainly seeing like an increased interest around, you know, understanding that, you know, which roles on the job board might be a great fit to break in. You know, maybe you're not going to be able to jump directly into product management after the military. Some of us, you did a few things, but being on a product team, like in a product operations role or a project manager on a product team, you know, you can get that thing that you want in a really short period of time. So I think that we're seeing much better comprehension around what a pathway could look like and less thinking around the next thing that I do, I've got to commit to for the next 15, 20 years of my life. And it's hard to break yourself from that thinking when you just came from one of the biggest enterprises on the planet that tells you at every single point of your career what you need to do to progress and what you need to do to advance.

And so I'm very optimistic with what we're seeing around. That's understanding that a career can be pieced together and you can make these exponential gains 18 to 24 months at a time. But in terms of, like, locations and cities, like, vets and the military population, like, it looks like America. Like, it's, like, by far, like, one of the most diverse workforces on the planet. And so it's people from every city and state, from every walk of life. And when they leave the military, a lot of people want to go home. And so we're really focused in major job markets right now that don't have a military presence nearby to expand access to employers and companies there. But we get tons of great people who want to go back into all of these up-and-coming towns in middle America and all parts of America.

If we can figure this out, I'm going to get a little philosophical around the soapbox for a second. If we can figure this out, this is a huge opportunity for our country. For all of these cities, I look at what's the work that's being done in Washington, D.C. with the Rise of the Rest Fund, investing in towns like Detroit and Cleveland and Des Moines. If there's a pathway for vets to be successful in these cities, they'll go back in and bring these skills back and help be a small part of revitalizing some of these economies. Well, and the thing is that most of their extended family never left, right? So they joined the military from, you know, Ohio, Iowa, you know, they're like the classic overgeneralized examples. But when that happens, their families are still in the same cities that they grew up in. They'd love to go back, but there's no jobs, right?

Or there's not the jobs that they want. So they go to some major metro and then they end up traveling back two to four times a year. And it's the classic, you know, draw of the Metropole. And then what about Bitcoin and crypto specifically? yeah this is this is one area where we're trying to figure it out because we we do see you know i won't call it like a like it's mainstream now it's not it's not a closet community at all like uh there's so many aspects around cryptocurrency and bitcoin um and some of the underlying principles uh really it's like freedom and and and the ability to uh build something from

scratch that are super appealing to vets now there's there's not really a clear path and and there's not you know with the decentralized nature i think of the ecosystem like there's not necessarily one company that person someone can point to and say like oh if i want to get into crypto i go there yeah so bitcoin's not hiring yeah but um from just like some of the interest and preference data that we see i think some of the big themes are uh very much an interest in decentralized systems and bitcoin and crypto a huge interest in remote work because if you've been sort of told where to live and where to go for 10 years you're like it's time for me to like chart my own course here for a little bit uh a large interest in um overseas opportunities or

at least, uh, working, uh, for, for American companies that have overseas presences. These are people that, you know, this is no big deal to go and like do a two month deployment to Hong Kong. It's fun. Yeah. It's like, like that's a perk. That's not like the job description says 80% travel and they're like, bingo. Sounds good. And so I guess those are sort of like the three themes that like, we're definitely trying to figure out. So I would turn it around to you and say like, if somebody is, does have a military background, what are some of the ways that they can get more involved in crypto? What are some of the great entry points into the ecosystem right now? Yeah, it's weird because there's probably two or three, but they're all hard. One is go

directly to the companies. There's probably not nearly as many companies that are growing fast and going to get big as in some other industries, but the ones that do kind of survive and get big will be very, very big. So I think that's an attractive draw, but it's just a smaller number of companies so you got to kind of focus on on those ones um two is uh find people like bitcoin and crypto uh i've never seen an industry where people are so collaborative and so open to talking like get on twitter and literally you can dm almost anybody in the community right and they will respond and say yeah no problem i'd love to you know here's my email address here call me right you know whatever um and so i think that that's like a very unique advantage when you're

looking for a job definitely right so it's kind of touch on that in a second don't be shy to reach out to people uh and then the the last thing i would say is um i think that uh there's a number of veterans that are uh either in venture capital um or even in technology companies that uh it's kind of like when a vet reached out to you and just says hey i'm a vet i'm looking to do hacks it's not your brother who reached out to you right but it's pretty damn close right so you're just like, look, whatever I need to do to help you, I will. Right. Um, because, uh, there was people who helped you and, and you kind of just, it's just like pass it along thing. Um, and so I think that understanding who those people are, and there's a lot of people actually who don't talk

a lot about their military service, um, but they were veterans, uh, and they still have a affinity to help those people, I think is, uh, is another kind of third path worth, uh, worth pursuing. Yeah, with the third path, I think it's so important to come into somebody like you or to somebody in crypto with like – You're going to get me like 2,000 emails now. No, no, no, yeah. Someone in the community who's – come to them with like a specific request though, right? It's not just like, hey – It's not like, hey, I want a job.

It's like basically it's, hey, I'm interested in this industry. Here are the things I'm interested in. And here's the things – the work that I've done so far that shows I've looked at these five companies. There's two roles at each company that I think are interesting. What do you think about these? And are there other companies I should be looking at that also have similar types of roles? That's right. Like that type of outreach, I'm 10,000 percent more likely to help that person.

Yeah, 100 percent. Because it's just like, look, you're not, one, wasting my time, and two, you've done a bunch of work to make this super efficient for me to be able to be like highly leveraged. yeah help right so it's just it's a much much better way to do and then for the second point around twitter specifically i think that we are seeing this like revitalization around the usage of linkedin it's still you know the vast majority of service members who are active duty they're not on linkedin but they're they're using it in really effective ways right now to understand who's in what industry and who might be willing to help and so like the level of collaboration that you see there and the the level of paying it forward uh is not not astounding but it's it's

it's inspiring but i think twitter is like the on the new linkedin it's the unfarmed soil but but if you had but it feels you know if you're new to it um and it's you know if you're you know joined july of 2019 or august 2019 like like it feels like there's like a high bar and until like then to break into that and to start having meaningful conversations, but how do you just jump in and, you know, get into the mix? Like I said, I think you literally it's, uh, you've got to participate, right? That's the key is if you just sit there and read, no one knows that you're there and no one ever, um,

kind of gets involved, right. And it's just really hard to kind of quote unquote break in. But the second that you start replying to people, answering, tweeting, like, you know, actually creating and participating, I think that that's where the value accrues. And look, there's people who will DM me and they've got 20 followers, right? It's not like they're a big audience. And they just say, hey, my name is such and such.

Here's what I do, right? This is what I'm trying to do. Can you help me? Yep. And like, sure. Well, yeah. Right. Why not?

Exactly. All right. I'll give someone for the audience to give a shout out to somebody where you can send requests to. So Hector Rose Kranz. Okay. Who's that? So he's a guy, a fellow Navy vet who he was in banking for a while, and he was emailing me a couple of years ago around like, you know, I really want to get into crypto roles.

I'm super, super interested in this. Let's see. R-O-S-E-K-R-A-N-S. Sorry, Hector, but I got to give you a shout out. So one word there. We're looking them up online right now. I'm going to go stalk them. There he is.

There you go. It follows me nice. There you go. Bitcoin and freedom. Perfect. Hector, you're, you're, you're my boy already. You didn't even know it. Okay, cool. I, I, yeah. So that's, that's the guy, you know, you don't want to necessarily talk to pop. Who's like, you know, 10 steps ahead of you. You want to talk to Hector who just made this, this career shift and is like, you know, like a growing member of the community and he can give you his playbook. So I completely agree. And the other piece of this

too i think is um you know uh somebody asked me recently i was recording a podcast with them and they said what's your life motto right and uh for the long time i never told uh people this publicly but um i actually think that it's worth saying publicly because it uh it really i think balances the line between like a personal motto and then veterans really uh kind of i think um understand it, which is just no fucking fear. Like any situation, just no fucking fear, right? Like you literally can put me in any situation. I do not care. We're going to do it. Do it live here. And just, and just go right. And sure. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to say things you didn't need to say, whatever, but just no fucking fear. And I think that that is

the perfect model for somebody who like, I need to find a job. What do I do? I get onto this new platform twitter i have no clue how it works like just fucking let it rip that's right right be yourself you can always delete the tweets yeah just like be yourself right and and what's gonna happen is like the people who don't want to hear from you or who don't like agree with you or whatever they're gonna go away they're gonna self-filter out they're not gonna follow you they're not gonna participate no worries but the people who are agreeing with you are going to be you're gonna be like a magnet right they're gonna they're gonna be attracted to you yeah and so it's Just be yourself, right?

And I think that people are just so scared, but you don't need to be. Yeah, ultimately, I think you have to maintain sight of the goal is to find your people, right? And if you're authentic and you're yourself, your people are going to find you. That's a powerful thing. I completely agree. Where can people go find out more about Shift? We're at shift.org. Awesome URL.

So Mission Driven Org trying to reinvent the way that vets change careers and find traction in their first part of their post-military life. And then your Twitter account is what? Just Mike Slay, M-I-K-E-S-L-A-G-H. That's it. On Twitter there. So look, you're killing it. I'm a huge fan. Keep going.

Shift.org. Please go check them out. If you're an employer, go hire some veterans. if you're a veteran go uh go get signed up so that uh you can get a job and uh and move on with your life but i appreciate all the work you're doing and thanks so much for coming to do this good to go pomp appreciate the opportunity hey everyone pomp here if you like this episode of off the chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple spotify and other podcast charts please do us a favor and rate review and subscribe to review simply go to the off the

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