Transcript
Speaker: And I wanted to know what was going on.
Speaker: And then I started becoming active in the veteran arena here in Maryland.
Speaker: And I learned about how veterans were still struggling like I had as they left the military.
Speaker: And I decided that I could do something about it.
Speaker: And I was at a personal development weekend for myself and challenged to create something that would make a difference in the world.
Speaker: Welcome back to another bonus episode of insightful inquiries.
Speaker: This week, Annie Brock joined the podcast.
Speaker: Annie is an army veteran and air force spouse and a teacher and coach of all things, mindset, communication, and leadership.
Speaker: She was one of the first 100 women assigned to the 82nd airborne division.
Speaker: where she was a battalion legal clerk and earned her senior jump wings.
Speaker: She received a direct commission to the Medical Service Corps, went to flight school, and became a medevac helicopter pilot flying Hueys and Blackhawks.
Speaker: As a military spouse, Annie homeschooled two daughters during moves across the U.S. and Europe.
Speaker: Along the way, she also grew herself and is a founding partner of the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team.
Speaker: Annie is the president and CEO of the Leader Transition Institute.
Speaker: The Leader Transition Institute prepares people who are making pivots in their lives with a special emphasis on service members, veterans, and their spouses who are transitioning from active military service to the civilian sector.
Speaker: We hope you enjoy this episode.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Welcome Annie Brock to the podcast.
Speaker: How are you doing, Annie?
Speaker: I'm doing great, Kervin.
Speaker: Thank you for having me on.
Speaker: This is going to be fun.
Speaker: We're going to h ave a great conversation.
Speaker: I think it's very important, the conversation we're about to have.
Speaker: You know, some of the times we're having conversations with veterans talking about military stories and things like that.
Speaker: And those are great.
Speaker: But you're actually doing something for the veterans.
Speaker: And I really want to get into that.
Speaker: But first, I want to give you a moment to just introduce yourself, who you are, your background a little bit before we get into it and what you're doing right now.
Speaker: Okay, thanks.
Speaker: So I am an Army veteran and Air Force spouse.
Speaker: I was a military child even.
Speaker: So I've in my, I'll be honest, I'm going to be 67 this year.
Speaker: And in my lifetime, I have not had a military ID for less than six months, probably.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: I have a DOD product.
Speaker: And so after my military career, I had married an Air Force guy right before I got off active duty.
Speaker: That's why I became an Air Force spouse.
Speaker: We raised two children, was a homeschool mom, Mary Kay sales director, community volunteer.
Speaker: And then I decided it was really time to grow myself.
Speaker: Somehow I missed that along the way.
Speaker: I was doing, doing, doing.
Speaker: for other people, but I found once I started learning about personal growth that I really hadn't worked on myself like I should and did that.
Speaker: And then in the process of doing that, I got into teaching leadership with John Maxwell.
Speaker: I'm a founding partner of the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team.
Speaker: That means I was one of the first thousand coaches and then we are over 50,000 strong now in nearly every country across the world.
Speaker: So as far as my military career, I would call myself often the original Private Benjamin.
Speaker: I had a college degree before I joined the Army and walked into a recruiting office because I couldn't find a job in the D.C.
Speaker: area, which is where I wanted to be.
Speaker: But I was walking by a recruiting office every day as I walked to the Metro to go do job interviews or knock on doors, really work.
Speaker: more knocking on doors than job interviews.
Speaker: And one day I was just like, you know, they're guys in uniform.
Speaker: It looked familiar.
Speaker: So I walked in and I said, tell me about being in the army.
Speaker: And boy, I was, um, I was right for their picking.
Speaker: Uh, that's then it was the time where you could go quickly.
Speaker: And so I went in that day.
Speaker: I took the test the next day.
Speaker: I took the physical the next day.
Speaker: And the third day I was on my way to basic choices.
Speaker: That is fast.
Speaker: That is real quick.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um, in my college career, I had learned to program computers.
Speaker: Not a lot, but I knew the basic computer language because that whole part of my story, my college thing is, is all different, um, a different thing.
Speaker: And, um, and so I, in the process of them, uh, asking me what I wanted to do, I asked if the army had anything to do with computers, uh,
Speaker: knowing that they were in a big air conditioned building.
Speaker: And I said, yes, we do computers.
Speaker: And when he, when he told me about it, somehow I missed the word combat.
Speaker: I thought I was signing up to be a telecommunication center operator.
Speaker: And I would work in one of those nice air conditioned buildings, but I was reciting the paperwork to be a combat telecommunication center operator.
Speaker: And that meant I was signing up to work in the back of trucks.
Speaker: That's a different experience.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in that conversation, too, I mentioned that as a kid, the last place my father had been assigned was teaching at the Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg.
Speaker: And we used to go out and watch him on weekends do fun jumps to stay current.
Speaker: And he said, well, the Army's recently opened up jump school to him.
Speaker: And I said, well, that sounds like fun.
Speaker: Can I do that?
Speaker: I said, of course, I've got my jump school too.
Speaker: And the Army's jump school is three weeks long.
Speaker: I don't know if your podcast listeners might know anything about that at all, but it's a three-week course.
Speaker: You do all the basics, learning how to start building your muscles and you learn how to exit an aircraft and to
Speaker: land, do a proper landing, and then in the first week, and then in the second week, and that's called ground week, and the second week is tower week, and I don't know how they do it now, but back then they used to lift us up by metal cords to a 250-foot tower and release us.
Speaker: We were still attached, but, you know, that was supposed to teach us how to actually land with the parachute attached, so they called that tower week.
Speaker: The third week was jump week, and you go
Speaker: in a perfectly good airplane and jump out of it five times and earn your jump wings.
Speaker: So I got hurt or sick every single week.
Speaker: And so it took me nine weeks to graduate.
Speaker: Uh, but I showed up every day that they allowed me to train.
Speaker: And that's why I graduated.
Speaker: And I always say that, uh, people who aren't persistent lose out because there were, um, men, uh, my age.
Speaker: who were in much better physical shape than I, who quit on the first day in the push-up pits.
Speaker: And I, you know, I just stuck it out.
Speaker: I just kept showing up and doing my best all the time.
Speaker: I never failed anything, which made me feel good.
Speaker: I just got hurt.
Speaker: I got sick.
Speaker: There were a couple of cycle breaks in there.
Speaker: And I hid my head so hard I dented my helmet on my first jump.
Speaker: I didn't do a very good TLF.
Speaker: But after I got my wings, at the very end, I went back.
Speaker: I was an enlisted soldier.
Speaker: I went back to the barracks area.
Speaker: Some of those guys who I'd quit on the first day were still there picking up cigarettes and that kind of thing.
Speaker: If they had just stuck it out, they'd already have been on to the assignments that they had chosen.
Speaker: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker: Yeah, that's that is incredible.
Speaker: That's an incredible story, first of all, because it's it's this determination of, no, I said I'm going to do this and I did it.
Speaker: And you've had other people it just to let everyone know, don't don't quit.
Speaker: You never give up.
Speaker: That's one of the statements from Jimmy Valvano's former college basketball coach at North Carolina State.
Speaker: And he died of cancer.
Speaker: But he always said that was his one big quote was never give up, never, ever give up.
Speaker: And so no matter what you're going through, that's what I kind of try to tell people is it may look like what you're going through as hell.
Speaker: But if you just keep going and you can make it through.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I'm on my, in my office, you can see it behind me because we're, we're on video as recording this, but there's a replica helmet.
Speaker: I picked it up at an RV Navy store because I wore the old steel pot.
Speaker: I didn't have a Kevlar helmet like they have now.
Speaker: I was allergic to bee stings, or I still actually am allergic to bee stings.
Speaker: And so every time I got recycled, they added, I started out as a whiskey seven because that indicated that I was a woman and I was number seven among the women.
Speaker: So after I recycled in Ground Week, I became Gulf Whiskey 7.
Speaker: Then I became Tango Gulf Whiskey 7.
Speaker: Then I became Juliet Gulf Whiskey 7.
Speaker: And they put your numbers on the front and back of your helmet because that's what they call you as you're going through.
Speaker: But with my allergy to bee stings, they put the big letters BS.
Speaker: I'll put this up.
Speaker: I don't think I meant someone that actually went around the drop zone.
Speaker: They would check to make sure I hadn't gotten stung by a bee because it was spring and summer and there were bees out there.
Speaker: So when I finished jump school, there were numbers and letters literally all around my own.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: And then it's BS on the side of it.
Speaker: So there are some jokes in there as well.
Speaker: Maybe I could make it.
Speaker: But I put up a lot with a lot of that during those weeks.
Speaker: But it got me what I wanted and it taught me a lot.
Speaker: So that was important.
Speaker: And you were enlisted at that time, but you finished out your career as an officer, correct?
Speaker: I could have, I didn't have enough self-confidence to, uh, to go to OCS.
Speaker: Uh, and, and that's a result of what had happened.
Speaker: I'm, uh, I'm sometimes a little hesitant to say, but I guess I'm not the dumbest bear in the world.
Speaker: And, uh, I skipped first grade and did high school in three years and ended up at Dartmouth college in the second coed class, uh, in, um,
Speaker: And then, that was a month after I turned 16, when I went there.
Speaker: And then two months after, before I turned 18, they kicked me out.
Speaker: because my GPA was a 1.42 because apparently I had done really well at sampling most everything that Dartmouth had to offer, but just not much in the way of education.
Speaker: I lived in a fraternity house.
Speaker: I've been down a flood of stairs in a grocery cart.
Speaker: If you've seen the animal house, that's kind of the life I lived.
Speaker: And so I, my
Speaker: I didn't even, even though my father was a professor in the university system for the state of New Hampshire, he couldn't beg my way into the University of New Hampshire to finish up.
Speaker: I had to go for a test summer and take some courses and prove that I was a worthy student.
Speaker: And then before they would take me on as a member of their student body.
Speaker: And so by the time I finally graduated,
Speaker: My self-esteem had not recovered from getting kicked out of Dartmouth.
Speaker: And so I just needed a job.
Speaker: My parents were traveling around the world.
Speaker: My dad was on a sabbatical.
Speaker: They had rented out their house.
Speaker: I had literally no place to go.
Speaker: And I needed a job so I could have a roof over my head and food on the table.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that was probably going to be my story if I did not go Army or sign up for the Army, go into the military to begin with.
Speaker: I look back on what I wanted to do before, before I signed up and look at myself now and I know I would have probably been worse, even worse than that, just at some state college, just not even going to classes anymore.
Speaker: It really was the army that instilled, you know, the sense of purpose, first of all, in my life, but also like that grit and determination of whenever you say you're going to do something like we just talked about, you do it.
Speaker: You have the integrity to actually go out and do that.
Speaker: So that's you were a trailblazer, honestly, you know.
Speaker: You know, I was at the 82nd before General Dunwoody, and I talked to her one time, and she told me, thank you, because I wasn't the only one there.
Speaker: I was one of the first 100 women assigned to the 82nd, so there were officers there.
Speaker: There were other enlisted women there.
Speaker: But yeah, we were, you know, when you consider that we were 100 among 18,000, I'm sorry.
Speaker: Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker: And the fact that you had to cycle through and you just did not give up.
Speaker: So you had so many things working against you, definitely in a time frame where women in the military were not as much...
Speaker: as active as they are now or allowed to be as active as they as they are now you sort of blazed this trail into the 82nd airborne um and and did not let yourself give up you so many times you could have said well this is difficult and everybody's telling me i shouldn't be here or that i can't make it through so it's time to give up but you didn't do that
Speaker: Well, I will tell you honestly, I never had anybody suggest that to me.
Speaker: Um, in my home military career, nobody ever said, you know, you should quit.
Speaker: I think they looked at me like I, like I should, but nobody ever said those words.
Speaker: And I, and so I, I'm, I'm grateful for that.
Speaker: And, you know, I, and I, it's by, um, by God's grace that I ended up in, in a good place because part of what was screwed up about when I joined the military was that
Speaker: Not only did I choose my MOS, I chose to go to jump school.
Speaker: I also chose to go to the 82nd.
Speaker: My contract said I was going to the 82nd.
Speaker: But when I got there to the replacement detachment, they said I couldn't work in my field as what was then a 72 Echo in the 82nd because it meant I would go to the signal battalion.
Speaker: and being assigned to one of their detachments.
Speaker: And back then women couldn't deploy with the brigades as each detachment deployed with the brigade.
Speaker: So they gave me an opportunity to make a choice and I could stay and work as a 72 Echo if I went to 18th Airborne Corps and worked there, but I wasn't going to be in the 82nd or I could learn to be an admin clerk
Speaker: And they would put me in what was then the 407th Supply and Service Battalion.
Speaker: And I was smart enough to make a couple of phone calls before I made my decision.
Speaker: And I found out that the people who worked in my MOS spent a lot of time in the motor pool fixing the vehicles that they were going to sit in the backup.
Speaker: And that was not my idea of a good time.
Speaker: I didn't know about it.
Speaker: And still to this day, you know, my husband says, does the car need this or whatever?
Speaker: I said, I don't know.
Speaker: I think, well, I put the kit in the house and drive it.
Speaker: That's all I know about my vehicles.
Speaker: And I don't care to know anything more.
Speaker: So I was fortunate in staying in the 82nd and learned on the job.
Speaker: And then when they needed a new battalion legal clerk, they put me into that position and
Speaker: I OJ teamed into that and had some really good experiences, was fortunate to be mentored and guided by some amazing senior NCOs and officers.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: That's incredible.
Speaker: And so then where does that take you through your career after that?
Speaker: So as I was approaching my ETS, I got scared.
Speaker: I didn't have a plan.
Speaker: You know, back then there wasn't a transition plan.
Speaker: I honestly don't know what happened to people who just got out.
Speaker: They just disappeared, whatever.
Speaker: Everybody else just stayed in or they PCS'd.
Speaker: And about 30 days before I was supposed to ETS, I had no plan and I was scared.
Speaker: And I went to my PAC-NCO, Sergeant First Class, who was then Sergeant First Class Sitnik.
Speaker: He retired as a CW-5.
Speaker: um and and our um pac nco our pack officer and i said is there any chance i can stay on active duty and of course they said yes uh but they said you can't stay enlisted if you stay in we're going to guide you um through the officer path you've got to do that and so i was um fortunate i we're in of course it was quartermaster battalion so they suggested i put in for a direct commission into the quartermaster corps and i the quartermaster corps was smart enough to say
Speaker: This sander is a legal clerk.
Speaker: She doesn't know anything about the Quartermaster Corps.
Speaker: What do, why does she belong here?
Speaker: And they turned me down.
Speaker: But in the process of that, uh, and so then we send my paperwork, um, to go to, um, officer candidates.
Speaker: Back then it was just a matter of somebody walking paperwork down a hallway in DC.
Speaker: And, um, and so my battalion commander, uh, was bound to determine, uh, to, that I would not leave the 82nd just with regular jump wings.
Speaker: He said, officers in the 82nd are jump masters and they achieve their senior jump wings.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: He, while they were waiting for me to go to OCS, he sent me to Jumpmaster School, which was great.
Speaker: And I did, I flourished there, graduated at two weeks time.
Speaker: I did it in two weeks.
Speaker: But one day I went home and I, well, I went home every day.
Speaker: But one day when I went home, there was a letter in the mail and I opened it up and it said, congratulations, you've been selected for a commission in the Army's Medical Service Corps.
Speaker: And I'm like, this is life different.
Speaker: So on my way back to training, the next morning, I stopped by the battalion, I saw the commander and I said, sir, I got this ladder in the mail.
Speaker: I think I don't have to go to RCS anymore.
Speaker: And so it turned out that the commander of the medical battalion knew what was going on.
Speaker: And somehow he had gotten the copy of my direct commission packet and brought it to the medical service corps and they processed it.
Speaker: So I left the second with my senior jump wings and as a brand new second lieutenant in the medical service corps.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So I went to Fort Sam Houston for my officer basic course.
Speaker: And one day they brought in a bunch of people to give us different options.
Speaker: And they said, you know, this is all about jump school.
Speaker: Well, I didn't need that.
Speaker: They talked to us about air assault school and running around with logs on my shelter was not something that sounded particularly fun.
Speaker: So I didn't express any interest in that.
Speaker: And then they talked about flight school.
Speaker: And I thought, you know,
Speaker: I can drive a car.
Speaker: Certainly somebody can teach me how to fly an airplane or a helicopter.
Speaker: And it sounds like fun, so I raised my hand.
Speaker: And there were five of us who raised our hands.
Speaker: I was the only one who passed the test, the physical, and the interview.
Speaker: And so I was fortunate and got selected for the Army's Flight School.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, becoming a pilot or just getting into flight school is super difficult.
Speaker: I know I was out in Monterey at DLI learning Arabic, and we were finishing up, and I wanted to become a warrant officer, and I put in a packet or started a packet to go to flight school and become a warrant officer.
Speaker: And it was so time-consuming, and I did.
Speaker: I quit that one.
Speaker: I said, I'm not even going to complete this.
Speaker: I'm going to stay with my intel career and just...
Speaker: Let that keep going on.
Speaker: I'm not worried about it, about being a pilot here.
Speaker: But yeah, so you're doing all of the difficult stuff.
Speaker: Not only are you trailblazing, you're picking some of the more difficult things that the army, like schools that the army allows you to go to.
Speaker: Yeah, somehow I wasn't, you know, I didn't realize that then, but I just figured, and if I do sometimes now, I am willing, you know, if it sounds like it's doable, I'm willing to stick my toe in the water and try.
Speaker: And very often I've found that when I do that, I can be successful.
Speaker: I may not be successful at first.
Speaker: I may struggle a lot, but if I persist, generally I can be successful.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's, I mean, that should be a message for everybody who's listening, especially if it's somebody like you, the person that you sound, which is, that sounds fun, I want to do it.
Speaker: Let's go ahead and do that, you know.
Speaker: It becomes very easy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So many people just overthink things and they, and unfortunately deadlines get passed, opportunities get filled.
Speaker: And so sometimes we have to go, um, without all the details.
Speaker: And I know as an Intel guy, that's probably terribly frightening to you to not.
Speaker: I'm an information guy.
Speaker: I have to have all the information before I can present something to the commander to make a decision.
Speaker: If I don't have all of that or know what I don't have, yeah, that's very scary.
Speaker: And so there you are, you're in flight school, get through flight school, and you're flying helicopters.
Speaker: So I started out flying in the unit, in the medevac unit at Fort Rucker Flatiron.
Speaker: I was there for almost a year.
Speaker: And then I went to the 63rd Medical Detachment with Launstall.
Speaker: It was then at Launstall.
Speaker: They had 13 Medinac units scattered around Germany.
Speaker: At that time, it significantly reduced in today's footprint.
Speaker: But yeah, so that's what I did.
Speaker: And we were flying Hueys there.
Speaker: And then and when I first got there, I was the only female pilot from any country's military service flying in that part of Germany.
Speaker: There was some other American pilots in other parts of Germany.
Speaker: But to have a female voice on the radio on a frequent basis was quite something for the ATC people to hear.
Speaker: And that still exists to this day.
Speaker: Let me I could tell you about.
Speaker: things that have happened where we've called a B2 or something overhead and it's a female pilot comes over and it's still for especially in the Special Forces community they hear it and it's not something where they go oh this is what's going on here it just kind of makes everybody stop and go oh that was unexpected so we're still we still have that problem I call it a problem of
Speaker: You know, we don't have enough females doing this kind of stuff.
Speaker: It's sad because, you know, the thing is, is that we tend to do what we see.
Speaker: And when we don't see women ahead of us, then there's not that picture for other people to follow, which is part of the reason why I try and get out and tell my story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, where's where's the book?
Speaker: Somebody should be writing your book.
Speaker: This is an incredible journey through your just through your military career.
Speaker: We haven't even gotten to, you know, what you've done in your civilian life, which which we'll get to very soon.
Speaker: So you're you're flying Hueys, you're flying Blackhawks.
Speaker: You're in Germany with the only female from any country's military.
Speaker: We're not just talking about the only one from the U.S.
Speaker: Um, what, what's the transition
Speaker: from that point?
Speaker: Where's your next stop?
Speaker: So, and happily, by the time I left my unit, there was another female pilot there, and there were more women, because when I got there, there was a female pilot in the medevac unit in Stuttgart, so, you know, I want to be really specific that I was not the only one in Germany, just in that part of Germany.
Speaker: And so, I did the transition to Blackhawks while I was there, so the last part of my flight time was in Blackhawks,
Speaker: And I spent the last 10 months, because when I was due to leave the Army, I didn't have a plan then either, so I asked to extend as an officer.
Speaker: And in the meantime, met a guy in the Air Force.
Speaker: And during the time of my extension, before I was theoretically going to get a regular commission or leave the Army, I was working on the staff at the Launstool Hospital.
Speaker: So I did that for my last 10 months.
Speaker: And so I actually turned down the regular commission because once I realized that my career wasn't going to match my husband's career because I was a captain the day we met and he was a first lieutenant the day we met.
Speaker: And because of my career, it just wasn't going to do well.
Speaker: I left active duty then and went into the inactive reserves and became an Air Force spouse.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so that's transitioning to an Air Force spouse.
Speaker: So what were the thoughts going through your head?
Speaker: Was that something that you struggled with because now this is a totally new thing?
Speaker: I will tell you it was awful.
Speaker: I...
Speaker: I don't want to say bad things about Air Force spouses, particularly the pilot spouses, but there was, and I will have to say, I'd be honest, there was an error that pilots are better than other people.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: And that included within their unit.
Speaker: And so my husband was a maintenance officer, which meant that I was, when we got together, the officer spouses, I was a unicorn.
Speaker: Not only because I was not a pilot's spouse, I was a maintenance officer spouse and I was a veteran.
Speaker: Today, there is a huge community of military spouses who have fire service, but back then, not, not so many.
Speaker: And so I was really out of my element.
Speaker: I, and it, and it was hard.
Speaker: They didn't, they didn't care that I was a pilot.
Speaker: And myself, that didn't matter.
Speaker: It was, you know, just this thing, but the senior spouses took me in.
Speaker: I, my, my struggle mostly with the junior spouses, the senior, the spouses took me in and, um, and
Speaker: learned me the ways of being a military spouse.
Speaker: And that was really good.
Speaker: I became very active in the spouse community and taking care of the maintenance spouses because, you know, there were a lot of the maintenance part of any Air Force unit, just as in any Army flight unit, the maintenance part of it is significantly larger than the flying element.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a ton of moving parts, ton of people having to do specialized, you know, specialized jobs to fix certain things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so to get, you know, besides volunteering, you know, I had gone from being really high speed to really not being much of anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so that's tough.
Speaker: That cannot be an easy thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I tried to, and you know, at first we didn't have children.
Speaker: So I worked at army communities at the Air Force community services or whenever it was called.
Speaker: I can't remember what really what it was called back then.
Speaker: But I worked with the Red Cross there and that was a flop.
Speaker: That was my first leadership failure because I was working with volunteers and I didn't understand that volunteers just showed up when they wanted to.
Speaker: Didn't matter that they were scheduled for training or that they were required to do training for their volunteer job.
Speaker: And I didn't interact with them very well.
Speaker: So that was a big flop.
Speaker: And I quit that before they fired me.
Speaker: But I learned my lesson as I went forward.
Speaker: And then I started a dressmaking business because I really like to set.
Speaker: But then I got pregnant and put on bed rest.
Speaker: And it's really hard to be in bed at a sewing machine.
Speaker: And so I had to close that.
Speaker: And then after our first daughter was just over 18 months old, I had an opportunity to start selling Longaberger baskets.
Speaker: And I don't know if you know what they are.
Speaker: They're handmade.
Speaker: maple baskets from Ohio and they were popular in the military spouse community and I liked baskets so I sold them it's a multi-level marketing thing I sold them I did really well at it
Speaker: But I had a friend who was with Mary Kay Cosmetics and she said to me one day, she said, Annie, you know, you're always struggling to find new basket customers, but my customers, their bottoms empty out and they want more.
Speaker: And that made sense.
Speaker: And so I switched to Mary Kay Cosmetics and loved it, earned a free car.
Speaker: It wasn't a pink car, but it was a red car.
Speaker: Somebody else made the car payments and the insurance payments.
Speaker: So it was a really good car and became a Mary Kay sales director with a unit of, I think it was 45 women scattered around the country.
Speaker: So I did that until our two daughters just really needed me, more of me than I could give to them.
Speaker: And by that time, we were in North Carolina.
Speaker: And so I started my career as a stay-at-home mom.
Speaker: And then my husband's schedule was really crazy.
Speaker: And the girls didn't see much of him.
Speaker: And homeschooling was just becoming a thing.
Speaker: And I got to know a couple people who homeschooled.
Speaker: And so, um, pulled our older daughter out of, um, school in first grade.
Speaker: And that was when we started homeschooling.
Speaker: And so we homeschooled our way through the rest of my husband's career.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: When we were up at the Navy War College, he was in the junior class there as an Air Force officer.
Speaker: I started out as a Girl Scout leader.
Speaker: I had been a Girl Scout all the way through high school.
Speaker: And so I got active in Girl Scouts then and became a Girl Scout leader.
Speaker: We went on to Stuttgart from Newport.
Speaker: And I led the Girl Scout program in Stuttgart for our last year there.
Speaker: And that was the 9-11 year.
Speaker: And I was responsible for 21 Girl Scout trips on four military installations.
Speaker: And so that was a great experience.
Speaker: I was able to put my volunteer leadership lessons to work.
Speaker: And so we went from there to Utah eventually and then the Pentagon.
Speaker: And my husband retired out of the Pentagon.
Speaker: And we came here to, we're just near Aberdeen Proving Ground north of Baltimore.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So, yeah, I'm in the D.C.
Speaker: area as well.
Speaker: So I know that area very well.
Speaker: So you've gotten this whole story of, you know, fear of transition out of the military, mainly being forced out because of, you know, your husband's career path and
Speaker: And then you're having a very difficult time transitioning, finding your purpose, finding what you want to do, selling different things, being very successful in doing that, being a stay-at-home mom, which is a very important career.
Speaker: So that is a handful just to do that.
Speaker: So you've got all these different transitions.
Speaker: Did anyone... And what I'm trying to... I'm getting towards to what you're doing right now.
Speaker: But as you were getting out, did you have any...
Speaker: meetings about transitioning out?
Speaker: Not a one.
Speaker: Not a one.
Speaker: When did I have the army in Germany?
Speaker: Because that's I left the army from my assignment in Lundstuhl.
Speaker: I had used up all my leave for us to get married and go on a honeymoon in June and July.
Speaker: And so I literally worked up until my last day and, you know, put some pieces in between stuff.
Speaker: I went and did turn in my CIF.
Speaker: Did my CIF turn in, you know, and cleared through other places.
Speaker: I literally worked up until my last day and that was it.
Speaker: There was nothing and there was no support system when I got out.
Speaker: Nobody said, you know, go do this or go do that.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: It was hard.
Speaker: I really fell flat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let's get into what you're doing now, which is you are, and correct me if I'm wrong here, because I don't think I have the title here, but you're president, CEO of Leader Transition Institute.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: And so we, my husband retired in 2007.
Speaker: I did his resume.
Speaker: I started learning then more about how people struggled as they were leading the military still.
Speaker: The transition programs were just getting started.
Speaker: But there wasn't much of anything.
Speaker: And I went through all to all that the transition things with him because I, you know, nobody transitions from the military by themselves.
Speaker: If they have a family, it's a family transition.
Speaker: And I wanted to know what was going on.
Speaker: And then I started becoming active in the veteran arena here in Maryland.
Speaker: And I learned about how veterans were still struggling like I had as they left the military.
Speaker: And I decided that I could do something about it.
Speaker: And I was at a personal development weekend for myself.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: challenged to create something that would make a difference in the world.
Speaker: And so I sat down that weekend, wrote out the whole program, named it, figured out everything we would do.
Speaker: And then I sat on it for nearly four years because I got scared.
Speaker: I thought, who is going to listen to me?
Speaker: Everybody in my local community saw me only as a spouse.
Speaker: They didn't see me as a, as a veteran.
Speaker: Uh, and I thought, you know, this is a program for service members.
Speaker: What service members are going to listen to a spouse saying, Hey, you need to come through this and who's going to do it with me.
Speaker: Uh, and so at, and around that time period, I was, I, that's when I had joined Maxwell leadership and, uh, we were, um, I was actually a Maxwell, um, fellow Maxwell team member one day.
Speaker: He,
Speaker: We're at a, at an in-person event and he looked at me and he said, Annie, when are you going to start changing focus?
Speaker: And, um, and I said this summer, and he happened to be someone at that time that I really respected.
Speaker: And I, so I, I felt like I had to, you know, make true on my promise.
Speaker: And so that was on March of 2018.
Speaker: And we had our first cohort on in July of 2018.
Speaker: And so we did a cohort 50 last weekend.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So many years now you've been doing this.
Speaker: Can you kind of walk through what Leader Transition Institute does for veterans?
Speaker: Yep, sure.
Speaker: So we are a 500C3 nonprofit and we call ourselves the Leader Transition Institute because we've been told that people in other sectors outside the military go through some of these same issues.
Speaker: And so part of our strategy going forward is to create some similar programs
Speaker: for people in the healthcare field, the first responders.
Speaker: So that's why we call ourselves the Leader Transition Institute.
Speaker: But for service members and veterans from any area with any kind of discharge and for military spouses, we have changing focus moving from we to me.
Speaker: And we started out in person, but now we're virtual.
Speaker: We did, of course, during COVID and we stayed that way for very specific reasons.
Speaker: And so what we provide is a free program and we send people everything they need in a box.
Speaker: They get a whole box of supplies.
Speaker: I've been told that it's kind of like being deployed and getting a care package with things, the box that we can.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we always start on a Thursday evening.
Speaker: It's designed that way so that if somebody is working a traditional Monday through Friday work week, that they only have to take Friday off from work.
Speaker: So we always start on a Thursday evening.
Speaker: We talk for about two and a half hours about the neuroscience of change, how our brains process change and why that's important during a period of transition.
Speaker: And because we've, it's our belief that if people understand what they're thinking and why they're thinking,
Speaker: that they can deal with it better.
Speaker: And so we do that.
Speaker: And then we come back and we, at 8.30 on Friday morning, we spend all day Friday
Speaker: talking, helping them to develop and articulate a purpose statement for themselves as an individual, a vision statement for themselves as an individual for the next three to five years.
Speaker: And then they start to create a plan to put that vision into place and bring it to life.
Speaker: And then we come back on Saturday morning again at 8 30 in the morning and we paint because in their box of supplies, they get everything they need to paint.
Speaker: It turns out
Speaker: We've learned that painting is a very powerful metaphor for transition.
Speaker: So we paint for about 90 minutes.
Speaker: And then we talk about the dollars and cents of transition.
Speaker: And, you know, that's a really vast topic.
Speaker: And so we don't cover it in depth, but we cover all of the areas that they have to get smart in so that they don't miss anything as they go forward.
Speaker: And then in the afternoon, we talk about communications.
Speaker: My team and I are certified as Maxwell Leadership Disk Consultants, and we use the Maxwell Leadership Disk Assessment.
Speaker: And so everybody does that in the ramp up to their cohort.
Speaker: They get that back on Saturday.
Speaker: They learn how people perceive them when they communicate and how to recognize those similar kinds of cues in other people so they can communicate with them better, which helps them at home in their workplace and then also to communicate better during their job interviews.
Speaker: Then we come back on Sunday morning, again at 8.30 in the morning, and we spend about three hours talking about living an intentional life, living purposefully.
Speaker: So that's what we do.
Speaker: That's the main part of the program.
Speaker: We have additional sessions on other days where they can get training in LinkedIn and also in their resume.
Speaker: And so we do that.
Speaker: We do continuing education one Tuesday, Wednesday.
Speaker: Every month at noon time we stream a communication thing.
Speaker: We, the first Tuesday of every month, we have what we call Alumni Connect, where all our alums are welcome to come back into a Zoom room.
Speaker: They get to know each other and network.
Speaker: And if they need some help, we give it to them.
Speaker: And if they have.
Speaker: something to celebrate we celebrate it so that's what we do and as I said it's free and we have each of our board members is required to to donate a significant sum to the program every year and we have amazing donors that donate some small some large we love them all
Speaker: equally because we're really appreciative of it.
Speaker: And then we also go out and do corporate and government communication and leadership training.
Speaker: And that's how we create the bulk of the funds that allows us to provide the program.
Speaker: And so this is no small endeavor.
Speaker: This is not something you could just pack it in and get your stuff and go, I'll read through this some other day, but at least I check this block.
Speaker: Because as you well know, in the Army, it's a lot of check the box, check the box, check the box, and get out of here.
Speaker: And you guys are not doing that.
Speaker: What I'm very interested in, though, is you keep saying we found out about the
Speaker: the neuroscience of it.
Speaker: We found out that that painting does something for transition.
Speaker: How did that, how did you guys find that?
Speaker: What did you guys do studies?
Speaker: Was there anything involved?
Speaker: In the neuroscience, we did our research.
Speaker: We did our research and understand how the brain functions.
Speaker: And so we explain that in very simplified terms.
Speaker: We stick figures to explain it in the brain.
Speaker: Because, you know, when we are, when we're young,
Speaker: We don't have the ability to process things and everything that we are exposed to just dumps into our brain.
Speaker: And then we gain the ability to process and then we make decisions based on everything that we've learned already.
Speaker: Well, when we move into the military scenario,
Speaker: The military does a very scientific conscious process of replacing what's in our subconscious, all those things we learned before we were able to process what the military needs us to know, which is really important.
Speaker: That's the right thing for them to do it.
Speaker: That's how they create the service members that they need.
Speaker: The challenge is, is that you can't just shut that up.
Speaker: And so when we move...
Speaker: from the military back into the civilian sector, we need to start processing things from a civilian perspective, but all we have is a military mindset.
Speaker: And so that's what, that's what we explained to people.
Speaker: We explained that whole process so that they could understand that it's not them.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong with them, with how they're seeing things.
Speaker: Uh, but it's not there.
Speaker: The, the, the monetary DOD, somebody, whoever makes the decisions hasn't discovered the ROI, uh, spending significant time to reverse that for people when they leave the military.
Speaker: Well, and what I think a big issue is with that and something that I struggled with when getting out was purpose.
Speaker: And so when you started talking about that on the Sunday, the final day, really talking purpose and living a purpose life, I think a lot of people...
Speaker: Listen, when we're getting ready to get out of the military, even especially in retirement, but if you're doing four years or 15 years or 30 years, you are excited to get out.
Speaker: You might be scared, but you're still excited.
Speaker: But you don't understand that as soon as that uniform comes off, what's my purpose?
Speaker: And you do have a purpose.
Speaker: Everyone has a purpose.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Everyone has a purpose.
Speaker: We're not taught that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We're all born with a purpose.
Speaker: But the majority of people who join the military do it at 18 or 22.
Speaker: And they had never done anything besides being a kid or a student or working, you know, a fast food job.
Speaker: And then they live the military's purpose, whether that's, you know, four or five years, as you say, or 20 or 30.
Speaker: And so then we have, you know, we have no idea what our own purpose is.
Speaker: And because we're processing things through the lens of what was put into our brain up to the age of eight or 10, that has been replaced from the military, we don't even really know what it is we believe.
Speaker: We say we believe things, but that's all through the lens of what's been put into our mind.
Speaker: And so how does the program sort of shift that?
Speaker: Well, what we what we do is we explain that to people.
Speaker: And we tell them that it's going to take some time and, and, and that there really isn't any other way to do it, but just to live those years and understand that.
Speaker: And then when you are making decisions to take the time to think, why am I making this decision?
Speaker: What's behind it?
Speaker: And with the purpose statement to be able to say, does this decision help me further living in my purpose?
Speaker: We encourage them to use their purpose statement as a roadmap for making decisions in the rest of their lives.
Speaker: And so that's how we do it.
Speaker: And we don't, for us, this is not one and done.
Speaker: We stay connected to our alums because we understand that it's a process.
Speaker: And so we help walk them through some hard times in their lives when they reach back out to us.
Speaker: We're always available.
Speaker: Yeah, that was going to be my next question because it didn't sound like they finished the cohort and then that's it.
Speaker: Go off, do great things.
Speaker: And when you get in trouble, just go back to looking at what you did before.
Speaker: So you guys stay involved on a personal level if they need help.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: We give our personal cell phone numbers to everybody that comes through a cohort.
Speaker: They have our email addresses, our personal phone numbers, and they reach out.
Speaker: Wow, that's, I mean, it's incredible work.
Speaker: And I should not be surprised with your background of being, you know, a leader, being the first of a few to do things, you know, first of 100 women to get through 82nd, all of this stuff.
Speaker: And now you're spearheading this endeavor.
Speaker: So how do people get, well, first I should say, who's eligible?
Speaker: to be part of the leader, this Leader Transition Institute cohort?
Speaker: So we welcome every veteran from any era, regardless of discharge.
Speaker: We welcome all service members, all currently serving service members.
Speaker: We encourage people to participate when they are at the 24-month point before they're going to get out because that, in general, that sets us up as the first program they go through.
Speaker: And we have found
Speaker: funding the people that have been through the program that they do better when they come through us first.
Speaker: And so and then we welcome all military spouses.
Speaker: We welcome Gold Star parents and Gold Star spouses when they're ready to participate because they also are going through a transition from the military.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think that 24 month point is it's very important.
Speaker: You're you're almost there.
Speaker: You still have stuff to do.
Speaker: And there is a process to all of this.
Speaker: So very, very important on the 24 month.
Speaker: What if somebody is at that point?
Speaker: Who who should they be looking to get in contact with?
Speaker: Well, the best thing to do is to go to our website.
Speaker: It's leadertransitioninstitute.org.
Speaker: We have a page there for Changing Focus.
Speaker: It has videos.
Speaker: It has our whole schedule.
Speaker: It has an email address at the bottom where they can reach out to us.
Speaker: Oh, awesome.
Speaker: So then they're doing that.
Speaker: But what if somebody's listening?
Speaker: I'm not a veteran.
Speaker: Well, actually, first, let me let me go back because I did have a quick question here.
Speaker: How does the has the Department of Defense been supportive of this or the services or you guys just saying, I'm not going to worry about all of that and we're just going to go help transitioning soldiers, airmen, Marines, sea seamen?
Speaker: I thought that they would welcome us with open arms because we don't duplicate what they're doing and what, you know, they, but it doesn't exactly work that way.
Speaker: And so we are in contact with the transition people in the various services, but it's not a warm, fuzzy relationship.
Speaker: And so people come through our program in general by word of mouth.
Speaker: That being said, one of our alums during COVID was at Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, and they did pay during COVID for us to come in there twice and do the program for their service members.
Speaker: But they have some programs that are specialized for their service members as well.
Speaker: And in the Special Ops arena, there are some special programs.
Speaker: or them, but those programs for the most part don't take care of the spouses.
Speaker: And so that's one of the things that we do.
Speaker: We welcome service members from regardless of service, regardless of rank, regardless of the job that they performed, they are eligible.
Speaker: And most of the other programs that do similar things to us that focus on the non-job specific things are designed for people from special communities.
Speaker: And don't serve spouses.
Speaker: So it sounds to me like it's even more important for those donations and for people to get involved and and maybe get your hands dirty and help out.
Speaker: You know, if you you say we're here to support veterans, you are and you are supporting veterans.
Speaker: You as a veteran yourself now.
Speaker: Now you're doing.
Speaker: uh what people just pay lip service to a lot of times so if somebody wants to get involved with the leader in the um leader transition institute or they want to donate to is it the same go to the website which we will put in the show notes i'm gonna have all of that information we we aren't as in your face about donations as maybe we should be uh but at the bottom of that changing focus page there's a link
Speaker: to our PayPal donation thing because PayPal has a giving fund where people can donate and the money comes straight to us.
Speaker: And so the bulk of what we do for service members and veterans is all on that Changing Focus link tab on our web page.
Speaker: Well, that's very important too.
Speaker: And I'm glad you said that.
Speaker: So 100% of the money they give you through PayPal goes to the... Yeah, PayPal does not take a fee.
Speaker: That's why we use them for our donations.
Speaker: That is incredible.
Speaker: Andy, thank you.
Speaker: First of all, I want to say thank you for reaching out and coming on to the podcast and discussing something that is very important to me as somebody that transitioned out and was kind of a bonehead and just said, I don't care and I'm going to get out and I'm going to go do my own thing and struggled through that.
Speaker: I don't want to see other veterans do that same struggle.
Speaker: I have a network of quite a few people who are retiring, transitioning out right now.
Speaker: And they're going through some hardships trying to figure out what they want to do.
Speaker: So I think this is this is very important.
Speaker: But I also want to give you as much time as you want to just let everybody know how to get in touch with you, what to do, what you guys are looking for, especially if you're if you're looking for help, people that just want to come over and help you guys.
Speaker: Well, we love behind the scenes volunteers.
Speaker: There's a lot that it takes to make the program go.
Speaker: And so we love people who are willing to volunteer with us and participate in some of our programs because I think that it's important.
Speaker: for everybody to do the learning.
Speaker: We do a lot of communications and leadership and mindset training in our programs.
Speaker: We're starting two book studies right now.
Speaker: One on a book from John Maxwell on the laws of personal growth and then another one on the book Crucial Conversations.
Speaker: And so we also will be doing a book study later this summer on the book Leadership and Self-Deception, which is about outward and inward mindset.
Speaker: We provide all of that to our alums for free.
Speaker: So there's a reason to present through the program because then you get
Speaker: on training programs for free.
Speaker: We certainly have the opportunity for people who are not our alums to participate in the programs at a fee.
Speaker: And I always say that that's one way that you can help us is to grow yourself, but then the money that you pay for the program that you invest in growing yourself then will help the service members and veterans.
Speaker: And I also, I want to say that people who have already left the military and think,
Speaker: I don't need this, but then are quite sure, well, maybe I do.
Speaker: We have had people come through our program who have been off active duty for 10 years, 20 years.
Speaker: Last summer, we had somebody who had been off active duty for 33 years who was struggling, and he said we changed his life and got him refocused.
Speaker: And so it's never too late to come through the program.
Speaker: And we just want people to do that because
Speaker: You know, I'm a firm believer that when each individual in the world is the best person that they can be, we all win.
Speaker: And so that's the focus of me and my team is just to help to create a person.
Speaker: a way for everybody to be their best selves they've been they were best self as a young adult a kid and young adult they were awesome service members now they are going to live more in the rest of their lives than they ever did in the service we want them to enjoy that time and be their best self and so we think we're well positioned to help them do that
Speaker: I love that because I firmly believe that you can't fix this country until you fix your community.
Speaker: You can't fix your community until you fix yourself.
Speaker: So you guys are providing that to people and it's impressive.
Speaker: I'm blown away by how, first of all, how you guys can do this, you know, as a nonprofit and, and basically give this stuff away to veterans and people transitioning.
Speaker: It's super impressive.
Speaker: I love your story.
Speaker: Annie, thank you so much.
Speaker: Thank you, Kervin.
Speaker: I really appreciate the opportunity to come and share my story and hopefully reach more people.
Speaker: Thank you for what you do.
Speaker: I've listened to a couple of your conversations and they're really inspiring.
Speaker: It's a good way to learn about what's going on in our world.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: That's why I do this.
Speaker: I want voices like yours to be heard on a much bigger scale than maybe any, or even a very niche scale.
Speaker: You know, we're going to reach an audience that really needs what you are providing.
Speaker: So I appreciate your feedback and just have an excellent day and an excellent weekend.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: You too.
Speaker: This podcast is a production of Unfiltered Studios.
Speaker: If you would like to know more about joining Unfiltered Studios, please visit our website at unfpod.com for more information.
