We were fortunate enough to sit down this week with an extraordinary duo, Gavin and Gabe Erickson. These brothers, hailing from the heartland of southeastern Minnesota before their own transition to Montana, are the founders of Warrior Transition Outdoors, an organization devoutly dedicated to serving those who have honorably served us all. In our conversation, they warmly shared their early experiences, how their love for the outdoors was sown, and how their faith in God guided their feet along an unexpected path.
The Erickson brothers took us through their personal journeys – Gavin’s decision to join the armed forces and his experiences on the ground in Iraq, and Gabe’s entrance into the University of Minnesota to study engineering, only to pivot to journalism. Gavin shared the tensions and trials he witnessed during his deployment in Iraq, and how it shaped his understanding of religion and conflict. Both Gabe and Gavin passionately narrated their spiritual awakenings, how they heard God’s voice, and the divine guiding force that led them to establish Warrior Transition Outdoors.
Navigating the nonprofit sector, particularly when it comes to organizing events for veterans, is not devoid of challenges. Yet, our conversation illuminated how the Erickson brothers' faith has shepherded them through these difficult moments. They've created Warrior Transition Outdoors to fill the gaps for veterans transitioning to civilian life – this is evident in the unique services they provide and the heartfelt stories they share. As you tune in, you’ll hear how they're reshaping the narrative around veterans, advocating for them, and showing us all the genuine humanity of our brave servicemen and women. Join us for an unforgettable, touching conversation with Gavin and Gabe Erickson.
We were fortunate enough to sit down this week with an extraordinary duo, Gavin and Gabe Erickson. These brothers, hailing from the heartland of southeastern Minnesota before their own transition to Montana, are the founders of Warrior Transition Outdoors, an organization devoutly dedicated to serving those who have honorably served us all. In our conversation, they warmly shared their early experiences, how their love for the outdoors was sown, and how their faith in God guided their feet along an unexpected path.
The Erickson brothers took us through their personal journeys – Gavin’s decision to join the armed forces and his experiences on the ground in Iraq, and Gabe’s entrance into the University of Minnesota to study engineering, only to pivot to journalism. Gavin shared the tensions and trials he witnessed during his deployment in Iraq, and how it shaped his understanding of religion and conflict. Both Gabe and Gavin passionately narrated their spiritual awakenings, how they heard God’s voice, and the divine guiding force that led them to establish Warrior Transition Outdoors.
Navigating the nonprofit sector, particularly when it comes to organizing events for veterans, is not devoid of challenges. Yet, our conversation illuminated how the Erickson brothers' faith has shepherded them through these difficult moments. They've created Warrior Transition Outdoors to fill the gaps for veterans transitioning to civilian life – this is evident in the unique services they provide and the heartfelt stories they share. As you tune in, you’ll hear how they're reshaping the narrative around veterans, advocating for them, and showing us all the genuine humanity of our brave servicemen and women. Join us for an unforgettable, touching conversation with Gavin and Gabe Erickson.
Welcome to Brentford's Perspective, a podcast dedicated to the stories of this place. On this episode of Brentford's Perspective, we visit with brothers Gavin and Gabe Erickson, founders of Warrior Transition Outdoors. Join us as we discuss early influences of nature, current influences of God and a deep mission to serve those who have served us all. We hope you enjoy. Gabe Gavin, thank you so much for coming on the porch. Great to have you guys this morning. Thanks for having us. So I'm at these two gentlemen. Oh man, what's been two months ago now?
Speaker 2:Oh, it has to be more than that. It feels longer than that It feels like we've known you for a lifetime.
Speaker 1:Does it. That's what my wife says, sometimes, not always, this wasn't a good way. Well, listen what we're going to talk about today is. You know this is a podcast typically about this place and the people who live in it, and you're fairly new to this place and the impact that you're making in this community. I thought was worthy of a conversation, so let everyone out there know, gavin and.
Speaker 1:Gavin, have started a nonprofit national nonprofit called Warrior Transition Outdoors And the work they're doing within this is really interesting And to the point that you know, i thought I'd have them on the show and talk a little bit about what's going on, and I've actually become involved in a portion of the deal, which I'm also very excited about. So let's just start with where you guys grew up, how you kind of came to the outdoors and what eventually brought you to Montana And you know, i don't know who you usually leads this. I have to tell you I'm sitting here with a set of twins that don't look at all like each other.
Speaker 1:They're not really twins, But if you if you, you'll probably get this by the end of the podcast you kind of get their twins in an odd way. So, anyway, whichever, whichever one of you gentlemen would like to lead in on that, let's get it. I'm the oldest, so I'll go first.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know. We grew up in southeastern Minnesota, 45 minutes from Wisconsin and then like eight minutes from the Iowa border, so kind of that southeast corner, and at a very early age we were just told to go outside and play That was the. Thing go outside and play And I can remember running around the yard with sticks for guns. You know playing army, you know chasing animals. Gave an ice to, i mean Minnesota's cold right.
Speaker 1:So we used to go out to we grew up on a pig farm.
Speaker 3:So we used to go out to the pig pastures and grab these pigs by the tail, smack them on the butt and try to ride like ice. I've done this, yeah. Yeah, we also used to ride sheep, you know, get them into the shoot, jump on them and then the other person would let them free and you just see how long you can hang on. So I think I think outdoor life started for us on the farm. Yeah, we lived next to a couple like plots of wooded acreage and we'd be running around there when we got older shooting BB guns and 22s at rabbits And then as we got a little bit older we would go across to across this gravel road.
Speaker 3:There was an even bigger wooded area. I was like I don't know 30 acres, and we'd camp out there by ourselves. We'd start fires, bring a tent, just kind of wander around the wood, look for stuff, observe animals, like we grew up loving that. So that's kind of what I think where the outdoors started for us, at least in my mind anyway.
Speaker 2:No, that summarizes it Just we're always together outside as well. Right, we're always sent out together And so we're pretty close as kids. I'm picking up a distinct lack of helicopter, parenting in your childhood.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there were other issues, i'm sure. Oh, there was a ton of other issues, like here's a gun.
Speaker 1:Go across the road and play.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, no, as it is now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i think I was. I probably wasn't the easiest thing. He was, more laid back as a kid was, but I think my mom just wanted us out of the house, you know. So she would just. And then we had a bell. We had this massive bell, and she'd be like when I ring this bell, you come in, no matter where you are. So we would hear that bell for miles away Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now were you the only two siblings.
Speaker 3:No, we have a sister that's five years younger than we are. Oh okay, mom liked her better. Yeah, she stayed in the house. She didn't really. we did a lot of the farm work and stuff with her.
Speaker 2:There was a legitimate rule that she could do whatever she wanted. To us, we couldn't tell you. That sounds about right. Yeah Yeah, a sister like that too, yeah Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she didn't torture me too bad. How about yours?
Speaker 3:I can think of a couple of times where you wouldn't be doing anything and she would just start yelling you know and then we come in and get spanked and you're like what the heck Yeah. I can think of other times where we would like pull the head off of her baby doll, and we used to squish their faces.
Speaker 2:Oh oh yeah, both harmless acts, because they would always like push back out. you know, we're talking to baby doll, not the sister. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so we would squish the face and she would be so maxed Like her. they were real, you know, but but then they would expand back out and we would get in trouble for such things. Now, did she grow up?
Speaker 3:okay, or did you wound her terribly in some way? I mean, that's a lot, that's another story, that's a whole podcast. That's a whole other podcast That's 120 minutes.
Speaker 1:We love her boat, we'll leave that for later. We'll leave that for later Now. So you guys have run across the road. You're camping on your own. How old are you?
Speaker 3:1213 in the early teens, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so across the gravel road, now in the woods, you're a mile from home, yeah, I actually about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right on, yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, yeah. And what what kind of things did you? as you look back now, And I had very similar background grew up on a ranch did all of the things that you're talking about. You know we used to love to go sleep in the haystack out in them.
Speaker 2:Oh, the Haymounds band. Yeah, we had good times Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now we bailed. Hey, the mounds are loose, hey right.
Speaker 2:So, we, we bailed hay, but like squares or the right. Yes, we did that by hand. Yeah, And then the elevator would put it up into the hang while we would stack it again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you call it and you call them a mound in Minnesota.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Yeah, there's tax. I'm getting PTSD just thinking about it. We would really cool forks and stuff Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like like legitimate tunnels and whole cities of forts with these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And you know dad had come in try and load up hay into the truck and he's like what in the name of God? Yeah, yeah, yeah, i understand all of that. You know, i think people are raised in the country, raised on a farm, kind of raised with that kind of a freedom Something. There are a few things that you carry. Gave talk a little bit about what you carry from that today that defines you.
Speaker 2:I think work, work ethic was something that came out of all that for sure. Maybe not the best work ethic, almost overcompensated that we're learning now, but but I think, just appreciating the world around you a little bit, you know, if there's a seed of that, you could do a lot with that as you grow into an adult, right, but we were with many seeds of just being able to appreciate nature and respected. I think that was the biggest thing.
Speaker 2:So, even though we're fairly new to Montana and this, this, nature out here is like next level than it was in Minnesota, but we respected enough that we're not doing. You know we're not falling into some of those you hear about, the tourists that do all the stupid stuff but carry the bison back to the forest ranger or the park ranger, so I don't know. I think for me, like I still remember just laying out under the trees in the summer with the breeze and you know all that like standard, like Americana stuff that's written about the outdoors on those farms and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:That's what I took with me, I think, just appreciating and respecting it.
Speaker 1:Do you think that? I guess there's something about a country background And you know we're talking a lot today about. Are we teaching our kids to not love America? all that? I don't really remember that any of that being part of the vernacular. Then You just kind of fell in love with the space you were in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i, i quated that space to America at a really early age, right, you know, patriotism back then was a lot more out. I don't really hear people talking much about it, about as it pertains to like the smaller things. You know, on holidays, like 4th of July, memorial Day, veterans Day, those sorts of things, people kind of come out of the woodwork and it's all veterans, patriotism, stuff like that. But just everyday life and how we experience it and how we get to experience it here in this country especially as someone who's been to different countries, where they don't get those experiences, it's a wild contrast, man, It's a wild contrast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure, so you guys stayed in this same town that your whole childhood.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we pretty much grew up. There's a little town called Harmony, minnesota, and we were what? three and a half miles away from town. We would ride our bikes into town on summer days and golf, play baseball, that type of stuff, and then, later in our teens, we moved to just across the valley to Preston, minnesota, which we were two miles outside of. But yeah, and then our grandparents had a small cabin that they kind of built essentially up on Lake Vermillion, which is in northern Minnesota.
Speaker 2:Some of my favorite outdoor memories are from that cabin and that lake, because that, yeah, the farm life kind of felt like life and going up into that felt like nature in a lot of ways even though we were living up in nature in our everyday life.
Speaker 2:But being on the lake just getting to a certain point in Minnesota, it's almost like a tree line on the mountain but on the state you get north enough and it's only pine trees and you open the door from the first time and just wafts over. You know that. Yeah, i definitely agree with that The lack of electricity.
Speaker 3:So you'd be out on the dock at night and it would be pitch black right And you'd be sitting on the dock and you know the water tends to be calmer at night anyway, and you could see the sky in the lake, and so it's like you were in the litter, literally in the sky. Yeah, it was wild, yeah, and I remember having those thoughts as a kid, like I love this And I think I've been chasing that my whole life. Like those types of experiences, right?
Speaker 1:right, right, right. So you left high school. What year?
Speaker 3:2004 is when I graduated.
Speaker 1:2004, you graduated and you went right into the.
Speaker 3:Army Actually joined the Army as a junior high school? Yeah, so I did. I was in the National Guard the Minnesota National Guard for two years And then I switched to active duty when my girlfriend broke up with me on Valentine's.
Speaker 1:Day over the text message. I need to know how many servicemen and women are there because of a breakup. Oh, so many. Thank you for your service. I hope you get better. So many.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So yeah, i don't know, i never saw myself go into college.
Speaker 1:What made you join the Army As a junior?
Speaker 3:Yeah, i got back from football practice one day And this was kind of when the war in Iraq had first started, 2003. And they were doing a well. At first I grabbed my mom this is after we moved houses from the farmhouse to the Valley House that we just talked about But my mom kept her pantry just stocked. She liked to bake, cook all those things, homemade meals because that's how she grew up, and so the pantry was stocked all the time. And they liked pop. In Minnesota we call it pop.
Speaker 1:So they had two liters of everything.
Speaker 3:They would go to Sam's Club and just get two liters of everything.
Speaker 2:There would always be like a stack of 10, like 24 packs of Diet Coke, because they're just that, drink that Coke. And then because sometimes that was his for sure, but we like also, and so there was like Dr Pepper, seven ups, you know all the two liters like lying the wall. So I grabbed a two liter Dr.
Speaker 3:Pepper and a bag of Funyuns And I sat down on the couch, just exhausted, and I started watching. I don't know if it was seen in Fox News, whatever it was back then, but they were doing a night interview over in Iraq And it was a night vision And to me it was just this like world. I didn't. I'm like what is happening right now, Right Like you can kind of see some flashes of light in the background, some tracer fire, some stuff like that I think it was like during the bombing of Baghdad or something.
Speaker 3:It was something, something was going on And you knew it was war And I'm watching it and I'm like so intrigued. And then the guy's feed cut And I'm thinking to myself in my 17 year old brain like why did that guy's feed just cut it? They're like did something happen to him? And even further I was like man, people are fighting over there, like fighting and dying over there for me to live the way that I live.
Speaker 3:And I looked at myself with my two liter in my bag of onions and I was disgusted. And I had, with some friends, previously talked to a couple of recruiters at the high school but I wasn't like in a decision making mode. But that like solidified to me that I needed to join. So the next day I called the army recruiter. He was like Hey, man, you're too young. So I joined the National Guard because I wasn't too young to join the National Guard and I wanted to do something then.
Speaker 1:So did you go to boot camp the summer of your between your junior and senior year? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's young. Yeah, I was. I was one of the youngest people there.
Speaker 1:Did you get special treatment for that?
Speaker 3:No, I know, because a lot of the people I went to basic with were in the guard. So it was, it was a few of us 17 year olds But I had. you know that that was in like March or February or something. So I had a bit of time to like get physically ready to go. So I was physically ready to go and a lot of people didn't take that time to get this thing, so they got the special treatment You shut up and push. I just stayed the great man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, smart, okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna flip over to Gabe. It just kind of gives some context and differences of path here. Oh yeah, now you're, i guess at this time he's a, he's a junior, so you've got to be what? freshman, sophomore year, you're a year behind. Okay, what were you doing? Not going into the army, my sophomore, year After high school Your, your, your, your, your, your path after that I mean yeah.
Speaker 2:I would say I mean that him going to basic was kind of the beginning. Remember I mentioned we're closest kids And that was his first time like away. And as far as our brotherhood goes, i attribute that basic as kind of like where we started diverging as brothers without even really knowing, because I then went to the University of Minnesota for engineering at first And then I switched to journalism.
Speaker 2:Once I realized like C's get degrees but I was getting like D's. math is hard. You know, i took a small town. they had to create a calculus course for me in my high school because me and a couple other kids were like just excelling at that. Then I got to college calculus at the university level And I didn't even know what some of the symbols were.
Speaker 3:And it was like day one. I'm like Oh gosh this is gonna be your raw.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, but then I joined the rowing team. I was doing. I was doing like engineering And I hated that. I thought about going into the military at one point not for any reason, like his mind was like money.
Speaker 2:I was like man, i'm really like I could get my college paid for all of that. Then I realized totally wrong reasons for me. I know some people do it for that, But I could feel it wasn't. I was, that was not the right choice. Went into journalism, had a kid when I was 20, i found out I was having a kid And just kind of that was my path And before I knew it, like I just took for granted that we have what we had as kids. But we were slowly, i would say, growing apart. We had he got deployed to Iraq, afghanistan. I was growing apart would be more fair because he was doing his life, i mean being deployed, and I had no empathy or understanding of that at the time. So that was kind of my focus. I wasn't thinking about what's he going through?
Speaker 2:I didn't even send him a letter when he was in Iraq or Afghanistan. That's kind of the piece of this in your podcast. But the shitty brother I was, So that was my path of journalism got into news, did the news thing for a bit, Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, gavin, you're deployed after high school, right? Yeah, obviously.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i went to Korea for two years first. Oh, i loved it, man, did you? Oh, we grew up in like small town white USA, white Catholic USA, right. And then you get to Korea And it's just this. Oh, it was amazing, man, i their culture is really unique, especially coming from a place that you only experienced one culture.
Speaker 3:So I soaked that in man. I tried all the foods. I went and did as much of the Korean life that you can think of. I went and I tried it. We would get out of work on a Friday. We would go to the bus the train station, which was right outside the base We were stationed kind of up by the DMZ like by North.
Speaker 3:Korea And so there's a train station right outside our base. We would go on the train station blindfold one of our friends, you know, one weekend. If you need another weekend, be somebody else, spin them around and have them point to a spot on the train stop kit like the map, and that's where we would spend the weekend, so you might get out. One time we got out of the soccer stadium and we're like this is amazing, we went to a soccer match there. That was crazy. Yeah, one time you get on to be just like rural, you're like where do we stay? So we just talk to the local people. We had a buddy who was married to a Korean girl.
Speaker 3:He spoke Korean and they attach Korean soldiers to the American Army units Oh so you had one of these soldiers go with you, Oh all the time Yeah, Oh were they down. Oh, they were so down. Yeah, they thought we were hilarious because we just didn't know. Imagine someone coming and being like hey, do all the American things you want to do with me, just take me Yeah how much fun would you have Right. It was so much fun.
Speaker 1:Right Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it was a great time.
Speaker 1:Wow, and you learned a bit about permitted foods, i'm assuming.
Speaker 3:I did. I can't eat kimchi Like to this day.
Speaker 1:Can't do it.
Speaker 3:No, it's worse. I tried it, right, i was like man, it's not for me. And then my Korean compadres, they would eat that stuff like all the like, all day, every day, yeah, and then you'd be out doing PT with them and they'd sweat and it'd be just, oh, I just couldn't do it. People ask me like, do you have PTSD? I'm like yep, but not from war, from kimchi, from healing, hey, from kimchi.
Speaker 1:Got you, got you. So he's eating kimchi and living, living his best life, and you're you're struggling with advanced calculus.
Speaker 2:That's right, i was not doing well at school And I realized the reason I went to journalism was because I liked what engineers did. I just didn't want to do it And I could talk about it as a journalist.
Speaker 1:So that's why I made that switch. Yeah, yeah, well, this explains this podcast. There are a lot of things I'm interested in that damn few of them Invest the time into doing Yeah, yeah, so it's interesting to talk to people about that. You left the university when 2000, december 2009. So I did four and a half years, right, right, and it came out with a journalism degree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and found a TV station was an amazing anchor and the rest is history.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:I got lucky. I actually got a news job before that last semester that started. So I was working in the news the summer ahead of my last semester, where everyone else was like looking for jobs in the news industry, which was, you know, awesome for me. It was a local, it was local, semi local to me, it was a couple hours away. But then I stayed in the news for four years. After that there's two year contracts.
Speaker 2:I left the news and was unemployed for like six months, actually crashing on a buddy's couch Which not you know applying, thinking that would have been a very transferable skill set but it wasn't. And eventually I got a job. It was interesting. The director of communications at a nonprofit took the job as the news director at the station I had left And then I took her job as director of communications at this nonprofit back in Iowa. So that was kind of. My next step was in communications, you know, director of communications for a nonprofit, which is kind of relevant to our story because that's when he started his initial concept of a nonprofit. He reached out to me and we did some press releases and things like that.
Speaker 1:So now the Kim Chi fund ends in Korea, yep And 2007.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you're off to Pretty much right to Iraq. So I re-enlisted to go to Fort Canyon, kentucky, to be a part of the 101st Airborne. I wanted to be a part of a unit that I knew would deploy, because that's why, I joined, i wanted to fight the enemy, i wanted to make a difference. And careful what you wish for, because I got back to the States and a month later I was in Iraq.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Probably not taking field trips to the country to see how the locals look.
Speaker 3:Oh no, there's no field trips.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so where were you stationed? So I was in Yusufia, iraq, and it's where the Tigris and Euphrates meet. Oh, that area was actually called the Triangle of Death.
Speaker 1:Yeah For a place where life and civilization started, started That's ironic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, There was an American rape of an Iraqi girl there. Some soldiers did some stupid stuff And then because of that it just turned into this war in its nest.
Speaker 3:Oh Yeah, and you'd get all these different fighters from all these different countries. A lot of people thought, like the war in Iraq was fought with Iraqis, initially during the invasion it was, but the longer we were there, the more other entities would come in and fight us on Iraqi soil. So we were fighting Al Qaeda over there. We were fighting the Syrians, cheshniyans, all these different types of people. But General Petraeus kind of stepped in and switched how we were going about warfare there And it really worked. We were because of the fall of Saddam.
Speaker 3:The Iraqi people were left not knowing what to do. They didn't have trash service. They didn't have like normal stuff that we take for granted People come and pick your trash up. They didn't have that type of stuff, so we had to get back to like normal living over there, and so, instead of Al Qaeda coming and paying locals to plan IEDs or to shoot at us, we started project managing in local villages. I carried around $50,000 of Iraqi money And I just went from village to village as a squad leader. I had an interpreter and we would talk with the locals and say, hey, what do you need here? Schools that Al Qaeda had blown up because they were educating young women, aqueduct systems to bring water from place to place, those types of things, and so I would hire somebody, to hire people, and I would oversee that project and I would pay them.
Speaker 3:It was really actually like a unique experience. So we were there for 15 months. So the first three months were there. It was pretty hot, but after that we started getting smart like work smarter, not harder, and paying locals And then you get to a point where they wouldn't need any. They wouldn't have any basic needs because those were all being met. So then you were able to pay them to pull guard on their own cities.
Speaker 3:So instead of you getting in fights with Al Qaeda. They would get in fights with Al Qaeda Kind of take ownership of your city, take ownership of your community And they really got on board with that.
Speaker 1:So many questions about all of that, And I think anybody who hears these stories is what drew the line? What drew the line between the people who wanted to send their daughters to a school or wanted their daughters to be educated and those that thought that was a heinous sin against God And now that they're willing to shoot you over it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, definitely religion plays a big role over in those countries. beliefs The Taliban and Al Qaeda beliefs are very extremist And I remember one time we were. this is gonna be a deep, dark story, but if we're having real talk, right, Yeah, please.
Speaker 3:One time we were just kind of like walking around and that's what we would do. We would do patrols and we would go through cities, kind of just keep our presence there. It helped the people that we were paying to protect their cities know that we were out there with them, you know, in case something did happen. And so we were talking to a local elder and we were in his courtyard and they had the cinder blocks, cinder block walls plastered over One of them must have been flipped because one of my soldiers, the buttstock of his gun, ended up.
Speaker 3:he was leaning on it, lazy leaning on it, and it broke open one of the holes, it broke the plaster. He was like, oh, what's this?
Speaker 3:Reach inside there and there's thumb drives, cds, inside this cinder block square And he's pulling all this stuff out and he's like, so I'm gonna check this out, and it's like leaflets with al-Qaeda propaganda on it all inside this thing. So we take it to the Iraqi army post that's near there And we're sitting with their little commander in the same room and he puts in that thumb drive and it's a girl getting stoned to death in that courtyard for reading the Quran. Crazy, wow, yeah, wow, stoned to death. They wanted to watch it over and over. I watched it one time and I can't watch this anymore.
Speaker 1:Wow, what was the interest in watching it more than once? Maybe to find?
Speaker 3:who was taking part in that activity? Did they indicate it was locals or, oh, it was 100% Like? probably locals, pushed by?
Speaker 1:whatever extreme group was in there. So in the community you have people that were open to education and that type of stuff and others that were just not. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, just like America, you have the left and the right Sure And you get further left you go on. The further right you go, the more extreme it gets Right. So it's just a lot more extreme over there, because death is like an everyday thing over there, Whereas here you get seriously in trouble for that. But at the time there was nobody holding anybody accountable in Iraq, so you could just find someone guilty in a local municipality and stone them to death.
Speaker 3:They do yeah, their justice system at the time was what they wanted to do. Wow, much like ours was early on in our history. Yeah, yeah, well, it had to be at the local level because they're really back.
Speaker 1:Then, washington DC was a long, long way away, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they're much further behind as far as progress goes than this country is obviously.
Speaker 2:All right, well, we'll come back over to Gabe, who is having a lighter time. Yeah, I can't say.
Speaker 1:So you left and you started to hone your skills as a marketer, a fundraiser, getting a word out on I'm assuming events or issues. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a diversity nonprofit which my boss was like this six by 300 pound black guy, Awesome guy, still to this day, one of my favorite leaders and mentors in my life. But I thought it was interesting as a white Christian male to enter that sphere, especially in that I know in that city but it kind of across the country. But it's a very sensitive conversation at times, if that makes sense, right. So I joined as a communications director and I remember there was like a fellowship program for writers, so there was like an African American fellow and a Latino fellow and someone from each of these communities to represent that voice. And my boss said to me we don't have a white male fellow. Would you want to be the fellow for this? And I was like, i'm sure, absolutely. So. I joined this like core people but I was also managing as a communications director And, yeah, we did a lot of like partnership with other entities in town to put events on, whether it was like a Black owned business summit or just different things like that.
Speaker 2:So I learned how to run events, which I'm thankful for now doing this, because I remember he said at the time you need to learn how to do this, like you want to learn how to change your oils so you don't have to change your own. But you know, if you're ever being like messed with, that's someone else does it right. So he's like I don't care that you don't like these jobs because I don't. I don't like doing events. There's events, people often that love doing events. But I learned a lot about I mean, running events, setting up email distribution lists all the things that you don't learn as a journalist because you're just telling stories all day.
Speaker 2:right, come in and by the time you're done with the day, your day's work is done, your story was on air. There's no long-term projects in the news, And so that was a whole shift for me as well.
Speaker 2:But I learned a lot about myself and just blogging. It was interesting, like I remember blogging about as part of the fellowship program of being a white male and saying like hey, everyone has a friend to this. Like that's just acknowledge that and before it becomes something worse, you know, right, i have to prejudge this chair that I sat on before I sit down and it's just kind of normal. It's not out of hate, i mean that blog still today some people like Google my name and be like oh my God, what did you do?
Speaker 3:And I'm like oh what, He didn't get hired at a job here because they found that blog.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they said your social media tested hot. I'm like I haven't had social media in five years. What are you talking about? Well, there was a blog about prejudice and that's hate speech. I'm like, did you read it? They didn't read it. Yeah, typical, but it's interesting because the people that had an issue with it were white people. Typical again, yep, and all of the people that because I was around a very diverse crowd in that nonprofit.
Speaker 2:So I mean I had all sorts of people that were not white. Say me that blog was on point. That was great.
Speaker 2:And it was an interesting time And I definitely, looking back, died on a lot of hills and I just wouldn't die on them out. I just don't care about a lot of those things to the degree that I used to Used to be pretty heavily religious and pushing that, and I'm still faith-based, but I was almost too heavenly minded to be an earthly give back then. So that makes a lot of sense, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's kind of go down that path, because both of you carry a very strong faith, and I think one of the things that I appreciate it about it is you both seem to own it singularly. You talk about it in a very natural, personal way, but I've never really heard you push it or prophesize or do any of that with the people around you. It's not a put it for you guys, it's like wearing a pair of socks or a shirt. It just is Yeah. That's a great way to put it. That is yeah.
Speaker 3:I've never heard about it, but, yeah, we just believe that God means people where they're at In any circumstance. I mean, look at the Bible. It's not these high, lofty people that Jesus went after. It was the people that were tax collectors, people that were unassuming. And that's because God means people where they're at. And God told us very early on in this journey which started for us in 2018, that you know it's not our job to go out and talk to people about God, that God doesn't want us talking to. But you'll get a lot of those people that I would consider.
Speaker 3:I mean, i used to call Gabe like a Bible thumper when he was growing up in his past, because if you did anything that was outside of like a Christian realm, religious Christian culture, a religious Christian culture, he would be right there to thump you with that Bible. Yeah, yeah, like that, our family knew that, like that was a thing in our family. And since 2018, it's obviously shifted quite a bit because, like God doesn't do that Like we're, it's just different for us. We have our personal relationships with God, obviously, but yeah, it's not our job. There are people there have been people in our since our journey in 2018 that God was like hey, go talk to that person. This is their name, this is what they're struggling with, this is what they need to hear today, that type of thing. But never, hey, go talk to that person and tell them how messed up they are Right that they need Jesus, yeah, that they need.
Speaker 2:Jesus. We've never talked like that, like trying to evangelize to people, because that's just. And now I'm reflecting on, like, what does Jesus say in the Bible? And I can't recall, like, because it's in the Bible we think it's all scripture, but at the time it was just his words That we're about to be written down to make it scripture. But he just kind of said like hey, come on, come on. Like you know what I mean. And when he preached that I mean maybe he pulled from the Old Testament, but it seems like a lot of it was like just from his heart, speaking to people. Yeah, not, hey, don't you know that in the Old Testament actually, people would come to him to test him. Well, the Old Testament says this and so he would have to address it. But I feel like that wasn't anything he was doing.
Speaker 1:He wasn't thumping people with scripture. He related to people. He was referred to as rabbi, way more than savior.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so he was a teacher.
Speaker 1:He was a teacher. Yeah, he was a teacher. Gabe, at what point did you kind of fall along the line of I'm going to assume a kind of a fundamentalist Christian Southern Baptist Four Square kind of background Is that? When did that happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was in college. So we were raised Catholic, so pretty heavy like religious upbringing in that regard. And then when I got to college, my freshman year, i remember meeting a bunch of people that then in my sophomore year because they were there at the dorms like trying to bring in all these new freshmen into the fold of the church stuff that was going on campus, and that's when my sophomore year I remember like there was legit, i mean in my own personal journey God definitely used that time even the religious aspect of it to save me, cause I was like drunk a lot in college and womanizing as best as I possibly could for what I knew how to do.
Speaker 2:And I remember just feeling very empty And the first night I was invited to a campus ministry event. I tried one outlet on campus for a campus ministry that I was invited to.
Speaker 2:And they were like praying for all sorts of things. I was like that was like the house, i just didn't connect And I went to this other one And to this day it was a very powerful moment. Like John Piper is a pretty renowned pastor across the country, even the world, but he, his church, is in Minneapolis And so that campus outreach event that night was at his church And in all my time at the rest of that in that organization at college it was never held at that church again. So that first night happened to be the night it was at his church And he happened to be preaching, which again never happened all the rest of the time that I was involved in that organization. And so here's this like world renowned pastor who?
Speaker 3:I have no idea who he is right.
Speaker 2:And I get brought to the front row with my buddy, like my best friend at the time like brought me to the front row because that's where they sat And I'm like I wanna be like right in the back door, like waiting on the threshold And he just talked about there's a verse about broken sisters and how God says like stop turning to broken sisters that don't produce water If anything, they're producing mud water because they're broken and it's mud And turn to you know. It says my people have to commit it too soon. It's like turn to broken sisters and turn away from God. And I remember that just like resonated with me, like I felt like I've been turning to something else, like this doesn't everything I drink seem like seeking joy from, seems to like fall right through.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like very temporary joy And so that did click for me, you know, and I think God probably saw me overcompensate from that point on, but I think that was a genuine moment of like getting in, you know. Yeah, and I remember John Peck looked right in my eyes as he was talking about that. I'm like geez, how did you know I was here?
Speaker 2:So, but after that you know became a lot about. And no discredit to the people doing the thing, but you know we don't ever like people are out with rats. So that organization and what they're doing now, like it is what it is, you know, like I'm not here to like talk poorly about them at all, but there was just a lot of pressure Once you got to a certain phase of being new. Now they became a lot of pressure to like evangelize and do that kind of stuff. You know, versus, early on, when you're brand new, they didn't care about that stuff. It was just about helping you. So that's, i think, why it felt like legitimate. But before you knew it, now you're being taught about evangelism and going on beaches and just we went to Merrill Beach for a summer and we're expected, like expected, to go to the beach and learn how to evangelize, cause what do you have to lose?
Speaker 2:You're never going to see these people again and not no care about their day. right, they were just on the beach but and so the culture was thick with you know, almost like that, that evangelism, evangelical churches a lot of times will look at Catholics and be like, oh, that's very like workspace, like too much about what you do versus what it had become was kind of the same thing. I had, like this group of guy friends and people don't believe me when I tell them this, but like my guy friends were so intense, like they'd be like like the cult, not just the guy friends in college, but in every church I seem to be in a part of after that, like guys would literally ask you like, hey, did you masturbate? Wow, yeah, i know your face right now, always like bewilderment, right, like that. I've had people be like what. I didn't have that experience in church. I don't know what it was. Every church I went to that would lose this heavy like are you doing this, are you doing that? And it was all about sexual sin.
Speaker 3:Well, didn't you date a girl and she brought you to church and then you went to that church for a little while. Then they kicked you out of the church for dating the girl because they called him a wolf in sheep's clothing. So I was going, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So, I weren't wrong, i know.
Speaker 3:Well, you're not allowed to date.
Speaker 2:It loves someone I was going to this church and invited her then Oh, that's right. And her being not a Christian, i mean at the time like we had sex and I remember they first looked at me and said, wait, you had sex with her.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, and it was that, this cheerful thing. It was like, yeah, i had sex. Like I'm just infinitely sorry, you know what I mean? It was just like this, like whoa heavy thing. And the pastor looked at me and said you need to marry this girl. I was like what the hell? What's the hell do you do? And so when I called it off with her, that's when they were like you're a wolf, i was like dude, you guys have no recollection of what it's like to be a man, do you? Because you tucked yourself away so deep into this like American picket vent pastor life. You're so disconnected from the people you're serving. You know that now I understand sexual is in a whole lot different than I did back then. Like to us, like yeah, this is getting real, i guess. But you know when, god, when we ask we have Christians, will be like whoa, you're doing X, y and Z. And I'm like, okay, well, let's look at what God says about sex. Show me in the Bible where it says you cannot have sex before marriage.
Speaker 3:What says?
Speaker 2:in there about being sexually immoral. I said no. Where does it say do not have sex before marriage?
Speaker 3:Can't show it, it's not in there.
Speaker 2:So these are things that we've kind of come up with, like we've just listened to pastors passing that down from their own opinions about how things should go versus what the Bible actually says, and then inevitably what they point to is this verse about sexual immorality And we just say like, well, what is immorality?
Speaker 1:What you say immoral is immoral Is immoral, pope Benedict when he laid a lot of groundwork when he was reshuffling the Bible on that and anything that involved women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, There you go. So to us like immoral sexual or not is if God is asking you to do something and you don't do it, or if God doesn't want you to do something and you go ahead and do it Like that, to us, immoral is doing opposite of what God wants for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Let's shift, because I'm kind of liking the way this is going back and forth, the way you look at it With a different perspective. Yeah, i'm not like this. Gavin, your awakening, i guess, did not come this way. No, not at all.
Speaker 3:I think I was probably the furthest I've ever been from God.
Speaker 1:At the point where Gabe's talking about in his life And you're in war when most people get pretty close.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i remember saying the same prayer every time we went out on patrol, right Just for myself and my buddies. But that to me was like nothing. I had no relationship with God at that point. What brought that around?
Speaker 3:One day I was in the shower and just heard God's voice man 2018. I heard a voice that I'd never heard before, and not this audible in the room voice, but kind of like a soft little whisper right Like from my heart, which is weird, but I heard it nonetheless And it was about this guy that I worked with. I never really. I actually like we worked in the same building So I knew of him and I've gotten emails from him before, but I never had a personal interaction with him And I just heard that I needed to talk to this dude. So I was like, okay, that's kind of weird.
Speaker 3:Just kind of went about my day right With showering, cleaning up, got in the car, went to work. On the way to work I heard pull over And you know, we have things to tell you about Cody. I was like that's weird, okay. So I got my notebook out and I wrote three pages about this kid, went to work and I knocked on his door and I'm like, hey, man this is going to sound really weird, but I think God wants me to talk to you today.
Speaker 3:He's like all right man, cool, and I didn't know at the time he was an atheist and he would believe me. He's like all right, cool, let's do it When you want to do it. So I met him after work and he got into the car and I'm like again, this is going to sound really weird, i'm going to give this stuff to you and then we'll I guess we'll talk about it after maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3:So I read it just straight. I didn't. He didn't interrupt Nothing. I read it all three pages and I look over and he's bawling. Whoa, Yeah, Grown man bawling. And you know how man cry. It's really quiet, but the tears are just coming.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:So that's how, that's how it was. And I'm like, dude, are you okay? And he's like, how did like? did you talk to my wife? And I didn't even know he was married? And I'm like, no, i didn't talk to your wife, dude, i don't, I don't know you.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you're going to talk to your wife Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he's like well, how did you hear that stuff? And I said, dude, god told me this stuff in the car this morning. He's like there's no way you could have known that stuff. And I'm like I know, but that's why I thought it was weird Yeah. And he was like I want to hear that voice, like you did, and I was like, shoot, okay, yeah, and this is the guy who was. He didn't even believe in God. So we had actually parked, we were next to a track and it was a drizzling rain And we just got out.
Speaker 3:We just got out and walked around the track and after about an hour he was. He was hearing God's voice, like I had heard it. It's wild. So then he's like you got to, you got to come talk to my wife. Man, like he's all bugged. I just got to come talk to my wife and I'm like all right. So I go home and I'm expecting a call from him when him and his family are ready, because they just had a new baby, and I'm like all right, god, you want me to talk to this woman. Let's get the download, like you did before. You know, yeah, he calls, yeah, crickets, he calls. I get in the car, i'm driving, i'm like all right, this is where it happened last time. You had me pull over, write some stuff down, crickets. I get to the parking lot and I get out of the car, like this is going to be an awkward conversation because I have zero information on this moment And I'm about to shut my car door and I hear get back in the car.
Speaker 3:We have things to tell you about Paige. So now, yeah, exactly, could we have done this?
Speaker 1:Exactly At the Winkle parking lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know, i know, right, yeah. So I get back in the car and they had me write about Paige and it wasn't as long as Cody's, but it was like way more depth, like stuff about her being a mom. They didn't, she didn't even want to be a mom because she, her mom was such a bad role model. She felt like she didn't want to pass that on to a kid Super personal stuff.
Speaker 3:And while I'm writing it, I'm just like, oh my gosh, i have to say this to this woman, you know like kind of scared. So I get up to their apartment and I'm like Paige, this is going to sound really weird, but just bear with me, i'll read this stuff. I started reading it. She was crying immediately. Cody was crying with her. I could tell like some of the stuff he didn't even know Right Like he as a married couple. She had not even told him some of this stuff.
Speaker 3:So I got done and she was like God told you that stuff. And I was like, yeah, she's like I want to hear, i want to hear that voice, like you heard it. So we just went down to her parking lot, went for a walk and after about an hour she was here in God's voice too. So I call him Gabe because I'm, like my brother's, a Bible thumper. He'll appreciate this, you know. And I call him and I'm like, Hey, man, you'll never believe the day that I had today. He's like you'll never believe the day I had today. So I'll let him share his side from the same day.
Speaker 2:Same day, halfway across the country, he's in DC, i'm in Iowa and I had my business at the time, i was a random marketing company that I had started, and I remember sitting there and just hearing like Hey, we need to, we need to leave work.
Speaker 2:And at the time I didn't know that was God's voice. It just felt like that intuitive voice that a lot of people attribute that to. But I knew it wasn't just my everyday thought like, oh, i should leave work, you know. So I left and went to this lake and then I could hear, like I could hear God talking to me as I was driving and I just knew like this is, this is God I can. I've heard this before, like one offs here and there. Like I remember, three months prior to that hearing, you won't be in Iowa much longer. And I remember just knowing that that was God and believing like I guess I'm not gonna be in Iowa much longer, you know, um and so I got to this lake that was in Cedar Rapids.
Speaker 2:It's still is actually in Cedar Rapids. It's still there And um. I had two books in the car and God's like Hey, grab the book. And I grabbed the Bible and God goes, put it out. Grab the other book, Wrong book, And that's just that example of like what I thought God was all about, Like grab the Bible right And the other book was about imagination and how God gave us that.
Speaker 2:And so I grabbed that and I start this walk and God's like all right, well, let's sit on this bench right here. And I sit on the bench and God's like read this part. And I remember it just had. It was like God gave us our imaginations And a lot of times like how people even talk about it Well, that's just their imagination. But actually the imagination is a gift and oftentimes it's like a portal that we like if we can access God through that, if we just like that's a whole child, like fate is having an imagination And trusting that God.
Speaker 2:When God is speaking, it's not your imagination in the way that we understand it, but it's coming from this place of like childlike pain. And so I remember reading that and it just was awesome. And then I remember God was just like we're about to blow your mind, yeah, but not in a booming like oh, you know angels and beams of light voice, but it was just like almost playful. And I was like, yeah, and I've been talking on that bench for 30 minutes and God's like what you're doing right now you can continue to do. That's not a one time thing. This is accessible all the time, so that's crazy.
Speaker 1:And one of the first things after that God said was we need to tell you something? I was like what?
Speaker 2:And he said you're being too fucking religious. Word for word you're being too fucking religious. And that to me it was just like a wake up call God tells you you're being fucking religious because our mom man, if you swore on our mom, she would just lose her mind, It's just a word that people make it into something.
Speaker 3:So you know, yeah, as if God didn't create words, right, Right.
Speaker 2:And so I remember then going back into town and I was like walking along the sidewalk and I was like mind blown by this new thing that's happening. And there's just a casually saw from me to you like walking across each other, right Like past her, this woman was wearing like this pink shirt And I was like oh cool, pink shirt And I kept walking and God goes her name's Janice.
Speaker 2:You need to go tell her she doesn't need to be scared of falling into alcoholism again. And I was like, oh yeah, i just heard that super clearly And now I'm like passing her and God's like, yep, that's the one. And I get like five feet beyond her and God's like, excuse me, i could feel it in my body, like trying like the voice was so loud in my body that it like stopped me. It was like hello, like, after everything you've experienced so far, you're going to doubt us. Now We say us and we because of the Trinity. Okay, like, in case you're wondering, like Christians are like it's not a day I thought you believed in the Trinity.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of calling people on the road like police, right, but oh right. And so I turned around like hey, this is kind of weird. Is your name Janice? She's like how did you know that? Just listen, you don't need to be scared to fall into your alcoholism again. And she starts bawling. She's like how did you know that? I'm like I just got them to come tell you that. So I gave her a hug, went on my way, and that happened that day and those days on so many times. We started keeping a list of names of people we talked to, like, okay, janice and Cody and Paige.
Speaker 3:After 300 people we were like we can't keep up, Couldn't keep up, we can't keep up 13 pastors. I remember that I used to go to a church in Virginia and the pastor there I love that guy Like he would get up and he would just kill it, right, people would just get so amped And I used to get so amped And then one day I was sitting at home and God was like we got things we're going to tell you about this guy.
Speaker 3:I was like, oh God, started writing And they wouldn't let me flip the page. God wouldn't let me flip the page. I wrote all the way down to the bottom on the margins And then they're like keep writing. And I went to flip the page like nope, they were angry And it was as I was reading. I'm like I could tell why they're angry. I wrote in a circle up the side margin, up to the top margin.
Speaker 3:Every bit of that page was filled with stuff about this guy. So I call him and I'm like, hey, can we grab coffee sometime, because God told me to tell you some stuff. And he was like, yeah, sure, yeah. So we met at a Panera bread sat across from him And his name was Joshua. I'm like Josh man, this is going to sound again really weird, but a lot of this stuff is going to be hard for you to hear And with my human brain, that's what he but I mean he knew it all already And it was stuff about porn, addiction, things he'd been hiding from his wife, a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3:I read it all to him got done and his eyes were just locked on mine And he was like can I have that? And I was like yeah, you can have it. I ripped it out of the book form. He went back, told his wife everything, confessed everything, texted me. Later He was like thank you for doing that for me. He said I've had a feeling that this year of my life was a turnaround year And that just solidified it for me. Crazy. But 300 people like that, people we didn't know their names, not in God. That's Jennifer. Go say hi. I mean he'd be like is your name Jennifer? And she'd be like do I know you? So weird.
Speaker 2:I remember being in line at the pool with our kids in the summer and hearing that woman's name is Stacy. I'm just like. OK, nothing about her not trying to preach to her, say anything to her about all the things that are wrong. Just her name is Stacy And then I was like is your name Stacy? She goes yeah, how did you know that?
Speaker 3:I wanted to pull the name Stacy, so yeah.
Speaker 1:And with that.
Speaker 2:I got nothing more to say to you two.
Speaker 3:No, but God. I think we had so little, we knew so little about God that they, god, needed us to go through those experiences to build our faith, and not just build our faith but develop an actual relationship with God, which neither one of us had to the extremes, like this super religious dude to this dude who had no relationship with God kind of pulled us into the middle ground of just having an everyday, always relationship with God. And what you said about it just seems like it's a socks on your feet, because that's what it is to us. Like I wake up and I don't get out of bed without saying like, hey, god, i love you, what do you want me to do today? And they'll tell me exactly what they want me to do. They'll tell me what they want me to wear, what to eat, and it's just perfect for every situation that I'm in And I know that. So that's just how I live my life. I ask literally about everything.
Speaker 2:We had a couple pastors back in Minnesota, the church we were going to in Minnesota. Of all the 13 pastors we talked to, like only a couple from that church were like you can't talk to God And I think it threatened their positions? Yeah, yeah, you know, and you can't talk to God. Wait, you asked God what shirt to wear today. I'm like, oh yeah, well, that's just silly. I'm like how is that silly? I can think of like God has infinite reasons for the clothes we might wear today.
Speaker 2:Right, maybe your bird's about to shit on it and that shirt needs to be out of my wardrobe, like, who knows, you know, and if I chose my favorite shirt, that should be my wardrobe and it got shit on, well, that's my bad. You know, or maybe you know, the lady I work with doesn't like the color red, but I wore red And now, for whatever reason, she's having a cranky day And I'm thinking, man, she's being kind of cranky, what's her problem? And I'm the problem.
Speaker 3:You know, there's actually a lot of studies, psychological studies, about color and how it affects human behavior.
Speaker 2:So by asking God hey, what church should I wear? And God says hey, we're blue. And then that same co-worker's like man, my grandma. I loved her, she loved blue, and now she's happy And without any evangelism at all. You're loving people, god's way, just by showing up.
Speaker 3:And those things have actually happened to us.
Speaker 3:Or like I'll put on a shirt and someone would be like I just felt like so comfortable to talk to you today from the street. You know you'd be like they'd be like saying hey, and you'd be like, hey, how's your day going? You know that type of thing. And then you'd get into this super deep conversation about them losing someone. And then they'd be like, wow, i don't even know why. I just like wanted to talk to you. I don't know, i just felt like your energy was whatever And you'd be like I know why because I'm wearing the things, i'm saying the things, i'm like, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 1:That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a whole other pocket. Yeah, i'm sitting here thinking about this Like we've got so much more to cover And I'm not. I'm not sure how you top of infinity, but we're going to try.
Speaker 2:We're going to try. Well, i think that lays the context, you know, because when you look at our lives, if you see anything special about our lives, it's because we're just doing what God is telling us to do. So they're actually seeing the output of what God is telling us to do. It's not us Like us, without that would mean that?
Speaker 1:Well, out of these, i'm looking up on my library, and are you guys familiar with Neil? No, no, no, no, i've wrote a whole series of books called conversations with God. Okay, awesome, it suggests you read them. You're probably going to find a lot of there's communication with God, friendship with God, and this is a guy who was homeless and spent a summer in a tent in a campground, i think, in Oregon.
Speaker 3:I could be wrong about that, but not qualified.
Speaker 1:Not qualified, yeah, and worked at a radio station Awesome And just started writing down stuff That's awesome. And, yeah, they're amazing. They're amazing books. I've read them all. So this is a little mind blowing for me. But one of those voices talked about helping veterans or helping people, and I guess in those scenarios, when you decide to help people in the veterans community you know I'm kind of doing the math in my head That's about 25 to 30%, because the other 60 to 75% is spouses, kids, parents that aren't veterans, and you guys have come up with a method that I hate to overuse the word holistic, but it really is very holistic in all of the framework that I've seen in veterans affairs issues that.
Speaker 1:I've been involved in. So I think, gavin, this was your idea. Yeah, originally. I'm guessing you heard it first, so let's start with you.
Speaker 3:How did this come about? Yeah, so when I was deployed to Afghanistan I had very early on in the tour some of my buddies left service. their time came up. When you're not deployed and you have an end of tour right and you're four years in the Army's done or your second contract's done, you're given a year to transition out.
Speaker 3:They do that to help, try to help teach you skills right resume writing skills, interview skills, try to get you connected to a job prior to leaving, those types of things. But if you're deployed you don't get that year, And so we watched those individuals kind of struggle through that transition for the duration of our deployment and they were really struggling.
Speaker 3:I mean, these are guys who I say it all the time because I think it helps put it into no-transcript In that transition for them they went from getting in gunfights five to six days a week driving down a road having their truck blown into a thousand pieces like them being fine but still kind of a traumatic experience to standing in Walmart like wondering salted or unsalted butter?
Speaker 3:you know like it's a totally different world, right. And they were struggling so much that towards the end of their deployment, a handful of us got together and were like, how do we help veterans in the future deal with some of these things? And what we were really passionate about then, and still are, is the outdoors, that kind of healing component that comes with just being out in nature. The five of us that started that all had outdoor. Like, we grew up in the outdoors so we knew, like, what the benefits were. So we got back to Fort Campbell, kentucky, and we started a nonprofit, got our 501C3, we were all set to take veterans on awesome trips and we all got orders to go to different places across the country, like a couple weeks after getting that 501C3. So to me that was God just saying like that it's not time yet, right. And I'm glad because I didn't know then what I know now. I don't. I didn't know the breath of it And my orders took me to recruiting, which was a transition in and of itself for me.
Speaker 3:I'd lost a really good friend of mine in Afghanistan in a firefight right in front of my face And I didn't start dealing with that till I was in recruiting and I was not dealing with it in a good way. I was drinking, just. I think I was just trying to numb myself with alcohol. But I was making dumb decisions, drinking and driving. Every night I would go to bed case of beer. You know I couldn't sleep without a case of beer. All gone, i fell asleep on my couch.
Speaker 3:Wake up on my couch in the morning like it was stupid, and a friend of mine that actually gave and I graduated high school with, reached out to me on Facebook because she had just finished a clinical psychology program with the Navy. I didn't even know she had joined the Navy. So that was what our initial conversation was about. Like she knew I had joined, i knew I didn't. She just wanted to tell me she finished this program and she was serving And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. And so we started talking about life And I'm a pretty open guy. I'll tell you my story. So I was telling her my story And she was like dude, what do you do? You're killing yourself. You're lucky you haven't killed anybody else with the drinking and driving, but you're definitely killing yourself.
Speaker 3:And I hadn't thought about it like that And it really made me reflect on how I was feeling during that time And I did feel like dead inside. And so she like talked me through some of the things I was going through coping skills and mechanisms and stuff like that And in those conversations she would mention that her colleagues moonlit in the community helping veterans go through those tough times. And the more she talked about it, the more I was like that makes sense By dealing with the mental health side of things, because that's a long term solution to the actual problem. And so it really stuck And it made what I initially wanted to do with outdoor adventure peace feel very short term, very much like a bandaid over a bigger wound.
Speaker 3:And so this is back in 2011. I just committed to myself that when I retired I was going to start a nonprofit that took a holistic approach at the veteran and their family in transition over a long period of time, and Gabe had helped me start that initial nonprofit that I started because of his experience in the nonprofit world already, which he kind of talked about, and so him and I have been talking about this for 12 years 10, 12 years and conceptualizing it, and so I recruited all over the country, ended up here in Montana, like winning the lottery of assignments, like when I got assigned in.
Speaker 3:Montana. Someone literally came up to me and be like dude, you won the lottery of assignments, you're going to Montana. And I was like that is awesome. So I got here and fell in love with Montana immediately. Like Gabe was talking about nature, here is on steroids from nature in Minnesota. Like there's white, tells them, in Minnesota. They're big, but the Mildare out here are dinosaurs. And then you got to look at all the stuff that I, like in my heart, just need to do and pursue Right. And so I invited him out and he crossed the border and walked in the, walked in the door and was like hey, man, i don't know what it is. As soon as I crossed the Montana border, this felt like home, so I'm gonna stay. And he just moved into my spare bedroom And then he had his experience, which helped us start this.
Speaker 2:I mean, you've heard the background up to the nonprofit starting my own business after that. Then I got into. I left the business. When we started talking about it I was like you're leaving this business. You started this to build your empire And that's not what we want. And so I left that business, got into professional sales for a time And then when I got to Billings I was like, all right, i don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2:We're going to do this in a couple of years from now, like 2025, when we retire. So it's like I guess I'll try a sales job. That company treated their customers like garbage, so I quit, and then I got a job as the executive director for a veterans nonprofit here in Billings And this nonprofit been around for five years. Some of the people involved have very reputable names in town and was excited to get started.
Speaker 2:He was kind of Gavin, was kind of my veteran, i would say like consultant on that, Like I'm not a veteran, I want to make sure that I'm doing the best by veterans through this program. And I got in and day one as a storyteller, I said, hey, I want to talk to all the veterans you served, Because I'm not seeing anything, no testimonials or stories or anything about anyone that you've served. Now I want to talk to them and see what you know, what's the story? And they said you don't want to talk to any of them. Why? Because those people they had.
Speaker 1:Was it those people kind of them, or It was like whatever service they had provided didn't stick Like they hadn't done well by them.
Speaker 2:Now they probably projected that out to the veteran as being an issue, but they hadn't done a good job of serving them, so they didn't have any stories to tell after five years, and so that was kind of red flag number one that I was like all right, i'm going to pay attention to that kind of stuff. And it just got worse. I was supposed to be the only employee on payroll that I was aware of, and you can see where that's going. I went and I asked the accounting firm that they had used up until that point. I said, hey, i just get payroll reports like the last year, and first of all the accounting firm, right here, billy, said what's a payroll report? So well it's a report on payroll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and eventually she goes yeah, well, let me just ask you this for some reason, because God was like you just need to ask if someone is on payroll. Yeah, besides yourself, as you get yourself set up on payroll, and I was like is anyone else?
Speaker 3:on payroll And she goes yeah, there's another person.
Speaker 2:That's weird because I'm the only employee that I lay told me that it's my face, like you're it. You're the person And the board president's grandson was on payroll and he was being paid as a guide out in the month, was to guide hunts And also was being paid by this nonprofit because these people who were going hunting apparently had money. And so just by throwing out the name of this nonprofit now and then he was a fundraiser Once clarified was named an outdoor nonprofit.
Speaker 2:No, it's not out there. But he just they're saying these people hunting in these settings that he's working have money. So hey, now and then try to get money from these people. As if he was going to do that mid hunt. Hey, by the way, i'm a nonprofit involved in would you give us money, like I it's. So I called the guy. I said Hey man, i'm the new executive director here. How?
Speaker 1:long you've been up here.
Speaker 2:He's like, well, four months, i tallied up like 4500 bucks that had been paid to him And I was like, okay, well, what have you done? Nothing. I'm like, okay, i'm cutting you off. He goes, okay, cool, next day I'm talking with the board president and his wife, for some reason, and she was like I want to cut him off. I'm like, well, no, duh, like you know your grandson, you put him on.
Speaker 1:You're the enabler here, of course, you will be cutting off.
Speaker 2:And I'm like you hired me to be the executive director to make decisions in the best for the betterment of this nonprofit. So I cut him off And they were just like, well, we want to done that, i don't care, he's not doing anything as an employee is different than a contractor. You have to, you have to report somewhere daily, you have to, like, show certain things that are different than being a contractor. It'd be one thing if there's a contractor paid now and then to go do fundraising things, but even that would have been like unethical in my mind because it wasn't doing anything.
Speaker 1:So I that was like another thing.
Speaker 2:And then I get.
Speaker 3:I mean and we're just.
Speaker 2:I come home every day to talk with Gavin and we just what is going on here. Gavin would be like what did they even do? I'm like you know, i'm trying to figure that out, Right. And then I got in that role at a time where they were working on their 990 tax return from the year prior, and so I'm having to deal with stuff.
Speaker 2:I have no idea what they've done, you know, as far as like financing things, but I'm getting exposed to it through this process And I get the draft back from the tax people And I'm doing the math. This can't be right Where, first of all, nonprofits on the full 990 have to list out every event that they use to raise money And I'm not seeing like their major event was this cast and blast that they would not shut up about as this amazing fundraising event that they had.
Speaker 2:And so I'm like I don't see the cast and blast on here. And the lady's like, well, that was a good will event. I'm like no, it's a fundraising event. She goes no, they told me that it's a good will event And so it doesn't have to be listed there. So, okay, so was any money generated from this event? She said no. So I start calling around to the board president and other board members like hey, what, why is this being called a good will event? And they're like no, it's a fundraising, apparently not. And you told her it wasn't. So who was at this thing? Well, industry executives and like CEOs and higher ups, okay, so good will event for veterans would be throwing it. Event for veterans, how many veterans were there? I'm sure there were veterans there, so you hadn't invited. This was not an event to invite veterans and say we're having a big cast and blast for veterans. Come on now.
Speaker 2:And by the way, we want some industry executives there for you to meet, right like that. It wasn't like that. So we had a chance for these people to mean haunted fish And for that the people involved in nonprofit to basically kind of pat themselves on the back, the kill. We have a nonprofit And as long as they said it once or twice, it was a nonprofit event And a third of their budget was spent on that event and it raised $0. So a third of their six figure budget was spent on an event that didn't actually help veterans, And then even less of a percent.
Speaker 2:And then that. So, yeah, that work. I feel it because it's a podcast for my upload more time to talk about some of the issues here, because I wrote a three pays long letter when I eventually resigned. Three weeks into this thing They had a veteran going to a corporate sponsor They've never met before to ask for the check to pay for the service that that was going to help this veteran with what they did. They pay for private pilot licenses So they had to go to the sponsor to get the check to pay for their flight time so they can continue to fly The veteran. The veteran to the sponsor, walking into a sponsor office saying, hey, are you this person? not knowing anyone. I remember I talked to that veteran. I said, hey, what can I do to make this program better? He goes, um, not make me pick up the checks. I'm like, yeah, what, what? He's like, yeah, i've had to do this. This isn't like that's insane. That should not be how this is done.
Speaker 2:So then the kind of straw broke out like just all these red flags and we're looking at the 990 and you just you take all the revenue, all the expenses and look at all And I'm like Gavin, this can't be right And I'm nauseating. He does the math. He's like dude. That's right. 5% of that six-figure revenue was going toward the mission.
Speaker 1:I wish that that was an uncommon practice, but it's not.
Speaker 2:Sure, And you hear that stuff all the time. And no one surprised when I told them that. No, that's the reaction we get from everyone. You know that's pretty common, I know. But when it happens to you personally, as you're in it trying to make a change, Boy, is that frustrating. Yeah, When it is personal, like wow, I saw firsthand. So that's when I like I quit. I went to the board meeting, Their first board meeting. They held it forever. I told the board press. I said Hey, if you guys keep up this way like if you got out of it right now you'd be out, This is done, We would just start another one. Okay, So I'm gone and I read this three page letter got done. Said you can't say you serve veterans if you don't serve veterans, Right.
Speaker 3:And they had nothing to say to that?
Speaker 2:Then a couple of prideful things popped up. but we're not doing those. Like no, you are doing that. You aren't doing this the way you say. you are doing this even though you claim not to be. And you know I recommended in that letter said you aren't really doing anything And you're just taking donors money, throwing it away. You might as well just shut down.
Speaker 2:And we've seen them at other events and they kind of doubled down with new flyers and new bandits and all the new things, and so hopefully something's changed internally. I don't know, i can't speak to it anymore, but I can speak to what I experienced, and so that was when God told us you have to start this nonprofit now. You cannot wait until Gavin retires two years from now, because veterans are being served at this level, in this way being taken advantage of all the benefit other people's egos, pocketbooks. You need it. And so that's we hear God say very clearly you have to start this nonprofit now.
Speaker 1:I know a couple of years ago, when I was doing some research on this, Montana and Alaska boasted the most veterans per capita and still the highest recruitment Is that. am I correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it kind of teeters back and forth between Montana and Alaska. Years per capita. Billings Montana specifically as the highest rate of veterans per capita in the state of. Montana and probably arguably then the country. So it's not a surprise that you hear about all these different veterans, nonprofits here doing stuff like that. Well, and it's not all that surprising. you got called here. Yeah, 100%. She was thinking that that way. Yeah, well, let's talk about WTO.
Speaker 1:How was it founded?
Speaker 3:Let's talk about what it is. Yeah, so we started Warrior Transition Outdoors with that kind of 2011 mindset to take care of veterans and their families on a holistic kind of take that holistic approach, so, and we still do that outdoor adventure stuff. But you know the reason that we made it that and you said over, use the word holistic. I'm going to do that a bunch. The reason that we made it holistic was because I had been on fishing trips before and that's all it was like a one day fishing trip and I had buddies that have done like seven day Elkhons and they would come back from that Elkhon on a high, you know, and then crash right As high as they would get from that hunt. Mama didn't go on the hunt, kids didn't go on the hunt, you know. So you left something for that seven days that wasn't stable to begin with, and your maybe even your mental state wasn't stable, and so that's why we switched to this model, where we are now a family advocacy organization that has an outdoor adventure problem, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we every veteran and family that we have come in gets assigned a lifelong advocate. That person is called a civilian connection specialist and they it's their job to fill gaps that these families have, whether that's with resources that we have internally or external resources in the community, and not from like a reactive hey I have a problem, can you help me? But identified a problem through conversation or observation and said I know exactly how to fill that gap. Here's some resources for that, and so that's just a fiercely advocate for these veterans and their families while they're in transition. And I say transition, but we have veterans that we that are in our program now that transitioned eight years ago and still consider themselves transitioning. So there's to some of these people there's no end in sight. Right One of our veterans, 20 year Air Force he said he retired He was like I just feel like I've been floating for 10 years, like 10 years post transition, felt like he's just been floating through life.
Speaker 3:So the family advocacy piece is super important to us And we have kind of like our main hustle is that family advocacy piece And in that lifelong advocate and doing and taking care of the family and how we do that is. we have intervention specialists that are geared on like the effects of drugs, alcohol and sex addictions versus some of the traumas these people have experienced. We have behavioral specialists that are like super in tune with human behavior and how that looks in the home and you know, relationship between spouse, relationship between kids, all those things. We have an observation specialist that they have a social work background. I didn't know anything about social work before I started this organization. Social workers are crazy. They have like the most their minds are crazy, like they're just so resource oriented They can see a problem and say this is how decisions at Congress are affecting these individuals at home. So they're the levels of which they can see. Things are just insane.
Speaker 3:And so part of our process is, very early on we do a family visit and at that family visit and a minimum the lifelong advocate will go and the observation specialist will go and it's their job while they're there to use observation and conversation to determine if the veteran's perceived needs meets the family's actual needs. And they're looking at not just the veteran but the spouse, kids, dog, cat, goldfish, dish situation, toy situation. Are the baseboards clean? you know all those, all those to groceries, all those things. And then they have 24 hours to write a report on what they saw and talked about. That gets dropped onto a HIPAA compliant Google share drive in which we have 46 medical and mental health professionals across the country that review what to them reads as a case study And they're able to look at what's going on every one of our family's homes And then they're able to talk and collaborate back and forth on this share drive about what they're seeing in home, what they think some solutions would be resources nationally, locally, all those things.
Speaker 3:That all gets wrapped into a one page when they're done, how they have 48 hours to do that. That all gets wrapped into a one page document and given to an occupational therapy layer. The occupational therapy layer comes up with strategic, comprehensive plans for our veterans and their families, kind of triaging things most important to least over time, and then that's given to the lifelong advocate who then helps the family's resource and then act those plans. So it's a very personal approach, a hyper tailored approach to the transition problem. That's our main hustle. And then we have side hustles, kind of at every pinch point, that anyone would experience in transition, which would be finances. We have a finance counselor that talks to every single one of our families in the time that he and he himself is a veteran.
Speaker 3:In the time that he's been volunteering with us, he's helped some of our veterans structure their financial systems and their families in a way that they've been able to buy homes and get out from under their parents roof. That's a big deal for a family going into transition. Oh boy, yeah. So it's just crazy stories in these little side hustles We have an employment specialist that works for a for profit job placement company but he reviews resumes of our veterans and their family members. He helps them find jobs. He helps them deal with just like skills. As far as sitting in an interview and having a conversation, this dude probably puts in 10 to 20 hours a week volunteering, talking to veterans about their next thing. We have a VA counselor. Her name is Carol. She's amazing. She worked for the Tulsa and the Las Vegas VA systems. She can quote the regulation in her sleep If any one of our veterans has a problem. She's like fighting the VA for our veterans. She helped one of our veterans get 100% disability. He filed it. Three weeks later He had it.
Speaker 2:Wow, she's amazing, she helped another one get her 100% disability and that led to like almost a $20,000 back payout because she'd been underpaid.
Speaker 1:Wow Again unbelievably common story Yeah.
Speaker 3:The VA is a major pinch point. I mean, you know people going through the VA process. I do. That's a major pinch point for veterans and their families. No, i know people stalled in the VA process. No one's going through it. Our people are going through it, but that's only because Carol's amazing And she's again. We call her our VA Bulldog. She'll just get right in there. People just give her what she wants. I don't know what it is, she makes stuff happen.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, finances, va, employment and then education. We have a guy named Justin Rufa, super smart dude, amazing guy, 20 year Air Force veteran, retiree, and he just, like, helps people navigate that If they're coming out of the service and they want post secondary education. He helps them If they've got kids that are struggling in school or, you know, looking at IEPs or whatever the case, like we have, we have people on our team to help them in that education process. So it's not just the veteran going to college, post service, it's the veterans, kids in high school that are struggling with X, y or Z Again, that whole family picture. Because as side hustles and then our main hustle, we just, we just need to have veterans and their families get their feet planted somewhere. And once their feet are planted, then we take them on unique outdoor adventures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about some of these people that are serving in in this capacity. As far as I know, right now everybody's volunteering, they're time to do this And you've got some pretty heady professionals that are involved. How do you find these people? How do they find you? How do you kind of get them in to go? Yeah, i'm going to dedicate part of my very busy life to doing this.
Speaker 2:That you know we've. We've got lucky like our first family advocate. Civilian connection specialist is the title that we've given our family advocates, because I'm a family advocate, right, So her title is a civilian connection specialist. Happens to be my girlfriend, But she's incredible And when we were forming this, it just God was like. You know, she needs to. Tara needs to be asked her to be this, because we're hard for people But other than like when it comes to like our behavior specialist has two master's degrees in that and is incredibly smart, And we met her on LinkedIn. Our employment counselor met him on LinkedIn. Our finance counselor met him on LinkedIn. Our VA counselor wasn't LinkedIn, but that was just through one of our advisory board mental health professionals.
Speaker 3:Her husband is a veteran and was going through a VA process and Carol helped him, and so she ended up telling Carol about our organization, and Carol reached out to us.
Speaker 2:I was like I want to help you get, but that was through LinkedIn. So LinkedIn has been a really powerful tool for us. And what we do is it and people assume that you're nonprofit that we're going to come on a meeting and ask them for things, And what we end up doing is just sharing our story and ask first we always ask for them to share their story And then we'll share ours. And then they say, well, what do you offer me? And we'd say just got it, Just nothing. We just wanted to hear your story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And I think that just is disarming to people And usually kind of you can speak personally from the person willing to volunteer standpoint when you hear the story is something you said. I don't want to be involved in this with what you have to offer.
Speaker 2:And the reason we don't ask for things is because if I'm looking at the tip of an iceberg, because I approach it, hey, this person's got the skill set or money or time, talent or this kind of treasure, whatever it might be, and that's what we see on top of the water. There's this whole rich thing underneath. That is the entire person, and so we don't ask for the thing on top, because to us that's very short sighted and small minded And it's just using people. We want to love people And we know that God this is God told us to start this.
Speaker 2:We don't have any concerns that God's going to make it grow and take care of it and all the things and God will put on people's hearts. And that's why, when people buy in, when they have a heart decision that they heard God's voice or their intuition or whatever they want to call it. They hear that voice tell them I should be involved in this way. Then it the buy in is there And they approach us and say, hey, we want to do this with you, and it's an opener at that point, and so that's why that's kind of how we approach it.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about some of the people who have incredible stories of people that I'm not sure if you ever come through transition but there's some successful milestones that have been much pick.
Speaker 3:One of those And who's going to go on that one? Yeah, i mean I could talk about Chiara a little bit. One of our veterans. She, she, her song, not going to say anything, she wouldn't say, right, yeah? And she's been super open about her story with everybody. But I think because of how it happened and she knows how it can affect other people And I've heard her tell her story a few times But essentially she got out of the Navy, had some military sexual trauma, had some PTSD, just some stuff going on right, and attempted suicide in a vehicle actually, and woke up in the hospital And was like I'm not dead, what's going on? Shortly after that she met Gabe and I And we heard that And we're like Do you have to be like, let us help you.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Let us help you. And so she's a single mom. At that point in time she was not receiving 100% benefits and was kind of struggling financially, didn't really have like a direction in life either, just kind of. I mean working jobs that she didn't really know, i mean definitely not her full time thing that she wanted to be doing. But Tara, as our civilian connection specialist, as soon as she started talking to Tara, tara was like we need to get you talking to somebody in a healthy way And in the in their intake, which is online, just a quick online snapshot of their life, their transition, where they want to be, what their interests are outdoors, those types of things. Horseback riding was one of those. So Tara got her plugged in with horses spirits healing here in town, which is another nonprofit, and got her right away into equine therapy, like before we even did our family process that I talked about earlier, where we go home and sit in the home and talk to them and talk to the kids. Right away got her plugged into that And that changed your life.
Speaker 3:It started like it, obviously working around the animal. She loved that And we could see things start to turn around for her. And there was a little slip in there too, but I think anytime something good is happening in your life, the enemy tries to go after you real quick, right, but she caught herself got back on her feet and ended up moving back to Washington.
Speaker 3:She's she would say she's at a point in her life where she feels the most mentally healthy she's ever felt, the most full she's ever felt. She looks happy, She just even her, yeah, even her affect it's different, right, And she's just joyful She's going to school to become the thing she wants to be.
Speaker 3:I mean, she's our education counselor helped like work her through that process and get her into school to be the thing she wants to be. Our VA counselor helped her get her her 100% VA, which then she got that She was financially struggling right. And then here's $20,000 just in her lap back pay for for because the VA didn't do the right thing the first place.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, just just completely changed your life And now she has a financial counselor that's going to help her put that word should go to her goals. I mean, the momentum in this woman's life has been insane since the start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, So, you know, in my experience and kind of watching this personally in my life, it seems to me that the military does a very good job of command and control And everybody falls in line from a very early point in their time in the military And there's this balance between learning how to follow orders until it's your turn to give orders and then learning how to do that effectively, none of which really translate to what happens with me walking around in the world. You know, there's nothing on me that says I am, whatever rank I am, and I can walk up to somebody downtown who doesn't know me, that doesn't have that rank, and I can actually give them in order to do something. Civilian life doesn't work that way. Yeah, you got a bunch of people who are free And that's problematic. So I can. You know I've seen this as people come through, they're kind of wondering usually the resources are very clearly defined right here.
Speaker 1:If you do this, you go here here, here here in the military structure. That's what it is. There are people along the way to make that happen. If it doesn't happen, you talk to senior command and you know, somebody gets a butt showing and get you know things, things work that way Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it looks to me like what you guys have done is really just said okay, we have resources, So you have a playbook to go to And we have people all over, not just in one place, but they can reach out to you from wherever you're at. This is wildly different than anything I've heard of in the in any organization, much less a veteran's organization. So I don't really have a question there. I just commend that, I commend you from an observational standpoint, that this seems to be a need that I think people who are involved in the military they don't understand what they do understand is oh, there is so and so and they're wounded or they have PTSD or they're missing limbs.
Speaker 1:they understand that And, yes, we need to take care of those people and we need to make sure that they get medical care and all of that. But back to back to your point. that's just the tip of the iceberg. The real problems underneath the surface And it it it seems to come from not really understanding how to find resources, adopt resources and utilize resources.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i mean that that's true. I would say that the American narrative and this is we haven't really talked about this yet, but the American narrative around a veteran is very like PTSD, alcoholism, drugs. On the backside there's this like thank you for your service, but then underneath the thank you for your service is this vision of who that veteran is missing limbs, all that type of stuff. And so people are good. There are people doing amazing things in the nonprofit sector because outside of the DoD and outside of the VA, it's really heavily on veteran service organizations and local nonprofits to pick up kind of where the VA can't and where Congress hasn't like like directly appointed funds. So there are people doing some really great work, but a lot of that can, like you were talking about enabling earlier. it can enable people to into, it can shift people into like an enablement mindset of just well, i'm just going to get the next free thing.
Speaker 3:I'm going to I'm going to just nonprofit, hop and get all these different resources for free. And while we believe that sometimes someone just needs a fish, you also need to teach them how to fish. Yes, and so that that that narrative we are combating and I'll let you talk about it because right on our website is Simon Sinek's Golden Circles principle. That applies to our organization very directly in a way that you know, family advocacy is why we exist.
Speaker 3:And the secondary, the second circle for us is community 60 plus staff members across the country. All veterans were directly related to a veteran, so we all speak the same language. They have a family in a community that they're coming into and they come into WTO. And then that outer circle, because family advocacy is not sexy. Outdoor adventure is backcountry salmon trips, rocky Mountain elk hunting, you know, walleye fishing, you know up in Northeast Montana with the top Montana walleye guide, you know that's going to be an amazing experience for that veteran. But we need to make sure first their feet are planted right And then all of that stuff that we're doing, we're wrapping in a storytelling layer because we feel a deep sense of responsibility to help change that narrative, that national narrative.
Speaker 3:But the only way we're going to change that narrative is if we create a bigger one, a bigger one of like veterans aren't broken. And one of our veterans said it best like I'm broken but I'm not broken Right And and that really I'm like, yeah, i'm going to use, i'm going to plagiarize that all the time because he said it.
Speaker 3:I'm like, yes, that's exactly right. So do you want to talk about how we're doing as far as the storytelling and what we're doing?
Speaker 2:there. Yeah, there's a concept called story wars that we kind of are stealing from that as well.
Speaker 2:But you know, this is the story war, that when you know veteran is, or activity or whoever, if they're coming back when they're still in or if they're leaving, gavin can be as high, functioning as he possibly could be, and healthy and totally not any of the tropes and stigmas that we put on a veteran. But if that's how the community still sees him, then that's, that's a ceiling to his growth and development in this community. And so stories inform, educate, entertain, and they open people's minds to maybe a different possibility. Right, and so by telling stories of our veterans, the first thing we, their first reason we do that is for our veterans, for their sake, to, to lift them up, to help them see themselves in a light. Like, oh my gosh, i didn't know, you saw me this way.
Speaker 2:Like all of our stories are really cool when you see it from someone else's standpoint, right, and one of the things we're trying to do, like all of the tropes, the alcoholism, the PTSD, all of these things that people talk mostly about when they talk about veterans issues, suicide, suicide those are all symptoms.
Speaker 2:Typically, 95% of the time, those are going to be symptoms of a poor transition. So the root cause of the most of these things is just a poor transition, and so we want to make sure that part of the storytelling purpose is to help people see that the transition can be hopeful, but it could be not just it's not a problem, it's a challenge, and that it could be a hopeful thing to like to get through, into overcome. And so that's the like I said. The first reason is for the veteran themselves, so they feel honored by their story. And then for veterans watching that story to see while there's a veteran who is transitioning and doing it, well, i could do this, that's great. And then for civilians to see You know, the way we're telling the story isn't starting off with it.
Speaker 2:You just go look at veteran storytelling out there and they start with the guy on a veranda somewhere talking about being blown up in Afghanistan and there's plunky like piano music, like that's how most of these stories start, and that immediately to a civilian who can't relate to that, creates a divide because we can't relate to that, we don't understand. As he talks about the stories, i heard new stories today that I've never heard before but I can't relate to it because I've never. Like it sounds like a movie, like it doesn't even sound real, you know. I know it's real because he's saying it. So by showing the humanity of the veteran first, like if I'm going to do a story on a veteran, i'm showing them in their human life now, like showing them doing human things and looping in some of those things that they've experienced that made that they went through, but not in a way that defines the whole story.
Speaker 2:And we've had people I remember one of the most powerful reviews we've got on a video that we did was on this woman that is going to get her private pilot's license, because you kind of hijacked that And throughout the story you don't see anything military until like halfway through. First she's just giving her kid ready for the day, and so someone said I love the video you did on the mom getting her private pilot's license. I was like that's awesome, awesome. She's the veteran, you know she's acting, she's active duty still. But so that to us is like we want to reframe in people's minds, make making veterans accessible as humans. We've had how many people have been scared to help because they're civilians. They're scared.
Speaker 2:They're literally like I don't feel like I have a role here, Right And I I understand that feeling firsthand myself because I'm a civilian And it took me a while to figure out like I do have a role and a voice here And and storytelling is the way we're. We're doing like bridging that gap. So, hopefully, if you have a military side of the you know, military island here, when we hear that all the time, the floaty thing and people say I feel like I'm on an island, well how do we get them off that island to create a bridge across whatever that gap is, the transition to the civilian world, But that civilian world isn't willing to be a shore for them.
Speaker 2:So that's that bridge is storytelling and hopefully civilians that are able to see humanity in a veteran and not relegate them to this corner of their mind as like what a veteran who a veteran is. You know, we're very quick with the patriotic things. Thank you for your service. But like he said, beneath that it's kind of like Minnesota nights where we grew up.
Speaker 2:It's like beneath that niceness is a sense of like I don't know anything about you, i don't care to know, you know, or whatever. Right, and we're trying to eliminate that and say these are, these are human beings, and that's a big part of the for veterans. I speaking not as a veteran, but what I've heard over and over and over is I lose my identity when I get out. Yeah, and we're trying to remind people like you're not government property, you're a human being, and so that you know, hopefully the stories are accomplishing that as well as showing them like I'm a human. It's okay to have that veteran status but also pursue, like one of our guys, screenwriting, or you know he's a, he's a pulmonary, he's a screenwriter or songwriting or art or whatever else. Their humanity, you know, as gavons that are hunting, like their heart, is calling them to.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, there, there's so much to go into in this And we are kind of coming to the end of our time here, sadly. You have some events coming up. You want to talk about those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the big one coming up is the Revenant race. That is something that you are involved in. It is And that's something again the the full iceberg thing. We just told you about our organization and you're like, i want to do this with you guys, and so that is August 12. And if you're in Billings, we would love for you to come out. If you're across the country and want to come to Montana, we would love for you to be here.
Speaker 2:It's a start line only race. We're redefining what a finish looks like. Gavin even said earlier like there are some. For some people there is no finish line, right? So you know that is very aligned with what we stand for, that veterans have a starting line when they get out, and so you kind of choose your goal. If you make it or not, that's okay. We just want you to set a goal, try to make it, and everyone's going to get a starter t-shirt. They're going to get a dog tag with their goal, their time, the distance and whether you want to walk, run or cycle.
Speaker 2:That's an option as well. You can come out and do that. It's free to register. Yes, when we've had people say well, i've got this going on, this run going on this time? Well, it's actually. You have a virtual option as well, so you can register for free for the virtual and be someone who actually ran two races in one day. If you want, you know, just keep running through the finish line as far as you can go. But it's going to be a lot of fun. And first year is going to be what it is, but it's going to be a really big deal. You know, year after year after year, i just know that this thing's going to be a really big deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like in the future. I'm very, very honored and excited to be a part of this, and I've managed some races before This is this one makes me the most nervous.
Speaker 3:It's the anti-race race.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is the anti-race race. And explaining to some of my friends in the running and cycling community what do you mean there's not a finish line?
Speaker 1:Well, there's technically a finish line For you. If you do the thing, you can do the thing, but if you don't, never mind, just come and do it, okay, yeah, and you know they look at me like I'm a little nutty, but I'm used to that, so that's okay. So that's coming up August 12th. You've got, you know, the typical stuff golf tournament, that kind of stuff. For those who want to find out more information about your organization, where should, where can they find you? Website?
Speaker 2:warriortransitionoutdoorsorg.
Speaker 1:You can find out everything about the run, golf tournaments, the story, all that type of stuff. Yeah, all right. Okay, kevin, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:You know, listen, as a native Montana, I don't often thank people from other states. I'm glad you guys are here. I think you capture what it's like to be in this place And I'm honored that you are one of the stories of this place. So thank you very much for coming on the porch. For the rest of you, Until next time. Thank you for listening to Front porch perspective. Check out other episodes on front porch perspectiveco. Also find us on Spotify, Apple or wherever you find your podcasts.