PreVeteran works to change and improve the narrative of military members transferring to the private sector when they have completed their service. Jason Anderson is our guest. ~ Long COVID is discussed in an excerpt from the Conversations on Health Care Podcast
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson Transcript
Main Street
As Veterans Day approaches,Main Street poses the question: are American servicemen and women ready for their transition to the private sector when they leave the armed forces? Should they be better prepared? Today my guest on Main Street is Jason Anderson. Jason retired in 2014 as a United States Air Force lieutenant colonel after 20 years of service. Jason, thank you for your service and welcome to Main Street.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Really appreciate it. Craig. Great to be here.
Main Street
Jason, you have created a program called prevention to directly address the question that we just posed a moment ago, and I want to learn a lot more about that. But before we start, tell me about your service.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Yeah, appreciate that. So as you had mentioned, it was a 20 year career. It was a wonderful career. So it began when I went to the Air Force Academy in 1990, did actually five years there, which is a little abnormal because my test scores were not phenomenal coming out of high school. So I ended up going to prep school for a year and then being accepted into the cadet wing graduated in 1995, and then I tend to break up my career in two halves. My first half was a C-130 pilot where I ended up. My first assignment was to go to Germany in 1998, which of course was right around Bosnia. It was happening, so I was able to fly in those combat missions, which was highly interesting for a very young copilot like myself. And then I finished that and went right to little Rock Air Force Base, which I got there right before September 11th. So as you can imagine, my next couple of years were in the Middle East. I was also there for Iraq. So I was a little bit unique.
But I'm sure a lot of colleagues in the same boat that my first five years were exclusively war time flying, which is interesting. A lot of good stories in there. We could probably do it another time, but once I was there and doing those five years, my last half was very different. At that time, I was actually in Pakistan and found out about another interesting job that I could do, and I ended up becoming an exchange pilot to the Japanese Air Force. So I was actually in a Japanese squadron for five years and then finished out my career at the Pentagon. I'm selling a bunch of defense hardware and training to Japan to finish up my career in 2014.
Main Street
So you came to the point, then, that your career was ending. Did you face some challenges in your transition to the private sector? Is that what was really the seed for pre veteran Jason?
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Definitely as most cases or most times these are, it's a personal story there. So in my personal story 2014 is when I actually left the military. But as we know now having done pre veteran for a couple of years but not knowing then transition is actually a physiological event. So what I mean by that is it's really unique that in the military you know exactly when your career is going to end, I mean to the day to the month. So that makes it kind of unique. So it was actually two years prior to that when I started kind of waking up in the middle of the night, my brain was kind of flush with, what should I do? Stress started once that started impacting personal relationships, relationship with my wife. Just because it became incredibly stressful. Because for the first time I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I didn't have the tools to go figure out what I wanted to do. And then on top of that, it becomes an overwhelming type of stress because you're going to completely unfamiliar territory.
Main Street
So you talk about this military transition 1.0, and now you come to believe that it just is inadequate, first of all. Further explain what military transition 1.0 is in your vernacular, and then we'll go on from there.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Absolutely. And I think this is what really makes pre veteran different out there. So there is just a huge program of record called the Transition Assistance Program.
Main Street
And it is the military today.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Correct. Today. Yes it is a program record. It's been there since 1991. It's actually congressionally mandated. Believe it or not, the program consists of pretty much a week of activity that gets you ready, and you're supposed to do it within 12 months of you leaving the military. And it really covers, as you can imagine, a wide variety of topics. It is the government, so it has to cover everything per its fiduciary duty. One of the so in that regard actually have quite a bit of leeway to give them, because they're taking 160,000 people per year in the military, out of the military. And there's no organization on the planet that has to deal with that type of volume. So I do definitely give them a bit of a pass where I think they missed the boat a lot, though. Is there's going to be different parts of people's lives that have to be taken care of once they leave the military.
For example, you got disability claim, you've got life insurance, you've got these different things that are tend to be more topical, and they tend to be more simple transfer of knowledge. Hey, you're leaving the military. You have to do this. We suggest you do that. The one that's really, really, really complicated and doesn't get enough time or attention is the career piece of that. And this is where we talk about transition 1.0 and this is where we're different. So we come pre veteran takes the stance. It's actually we think very obvious. But the military ecosystem and the private sector could not be more different when it comes to careers. So our approach to this is that they're absolutely completely different. And the 1.0 model I told you about is is really two things. First, at a top level, it really does assume that you can flow from the military into the private sector career wise and have an easy kind of transfer, and we just categorically think that that's false.
Main Street
It seems to me that's how things are marketed, especially to young people. Get a career. And then you'll be prepared for life, is what I think you're saying isn't working.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
That is absolutely correct. And I can kind of understand the intent, right. Because military people, we are the biggest proponents of military people, think they're very capable, very educated, and have a lot of grit. But what they are told in the military 1.0 model is that those skills will transfer over one for one into the private sector, and the data just simply does not support that. In fact, the data actually show that, you know, the first two years following transition are extremely problematic in pretty much every domain on the domains we've researched are employment, higher education, wellness and entrepreneurship.
And all are very much down in the first two years. So because we know that there is that huge gap and it is in all the data, the VA data, the DoD data, the whole idea of preventative is to completely get rid of that gap and do a lot of preparation up front before they leave the military, so that they avoid that gap and take off. Because in the current system right now, as you can imagine. Because there is such a big disparity between the two systems that two year gap problem, problematic things can happen. So let's say, you know, you're not made aware that the military and the private sector are different, significantly different. So you kind of adopt that mindset of I'm good to go and I'll plug and play in organizations outside the military. And then you go out there, you leave the military and you kind of hit an obstacle. You hit two obstacles. Three obstacles. You're like, wait, why? Why am I having problems here? I was told I was going to be good to go. And then you can kind of see things start kind of spiraling a bit. So the good news is a majority of military folks who are not veterans within that first two years go through a lot of struggle, but they do regain their footing, and then they actually begin outperforming the general public, which is great. But I think we're losing the thread a bit when we say, you need to go through this to your struggle. We just don't believe that when you talk about gaps in business, knowledge, etcetera, you expand on that just a little bit. From your perspective when you came out of the service.
Main Street
Now it's time for my rubber to hit the road for the rest of my life. Yet you experience some gaps and being able to do that, even though, Jason, you're a well educated person.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Yeah. Know I appreciate that's a that's a great question. So going back to my transition, no one told me that the systems were different. Again, our position at pre veterans systems are almost diametrically opposed to actually. So said another way. Military folks are optimized for military which by definition means they're not optimized for the private sector. If you look at them being completely different system. So what's interesting about this. And we're a cognitive neuroscience based company, which means we really do care about the thoughts that are in your head because they drive behaviors behaviors drive actions, and actions drive outcomes.
So what you're thinking delivers you an outcome, good or bad. So as I went through, I was not aware of these. It's part of the reason I created pre veteran. But I intuitively knew that something was different. And this is how the brain works. You're like, there's an unknown out there. I'm really struggling to figure it out, but no one's really given me the tools to kind of figure out how to do this. So when I left the military, I actually had a very successful outcome. A lot of that was because I had done a lot of entrepreneurship work on the front end of that. It made me a little bit more comfortable in the private sector. But like, for example, in 2014 we moved back to Wyoming, which is where we are now. I was hired in as an entry level business development remote employee for Rockwell Collins Great Company out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Within a year, I was promoted to the head of business for Japan, Korea, Taiwan. And that was a meteoric rise. But I can tell you without a doubt, even though I didn't trip any of those statistics of unemployed, underemployed, or under salaried, I did very well in those.
I was fundamentally not prepared for those roles at all. From a business standpoint. To circle around your question, the things I was missing and now we teach it pre veteran is you've got a communication gap, you've got a thinking and decision making gap. And then you just have a general gap. That's a misalignment with the private sector. So let me talk very quickly about each one of those. So the communication gap refers to military folks. Again, very smart educated. They've never had to go get a job right. They've always been kind of directed into a job or placed in the job. So they have to go find what they'd like to do. And that requires technology integration, which is something we teach for the specific purpose of reaching out to subject matter experts to gain information about an industry company's role and level, because that's what they have to do when they get out of the military.
The next one is a thinking, decision making gap. So, like we had discussed before, when you're optimized for the military and not the private sector and don't understand how fundamentally different they are, you're thinking and decision making based on your memories that you have. Military will not apply to the private sector. There's a lot of depth in that one. So I'll keep it at a top level. And then finally, the differences between the military and the private sector. So the military, there's three things we teach, right, that have huge differences between the two. And it's important because it's an environment. And environments force you to think a certain way.
So let me talk about three different things and talk about the two and how different they are. So the military will exist into perpetuity, so long as there's a need for collective self-defense, there is no such need for existence of a private sector company, big or small, it has to produce a product or service valuable enough. Customers will actually pay for it. The second is competition. The military has no competitor internally that's going to threaten its existence. On the other hand, the private sector, every company, the environment is built to be deliberately competitive in order to keep innovation high, prices low. Totally different environment.
And then finally the need to make revenue. So obviously the military in business speak is a cost center. It just spends its budget. But a private sector company has to make money before it spends it. That's why I say these are diametrically opposed, which means they require completely different thinking and decision making. And with military folks as capable, smart, competent as they are, they need training to get aligned with the private sector. But once they do, they become very successful through our programs.
Main Street
We are enjoying our conversation with Jason Anderson. He retired in 2014 as an Air Force lieutenant colonel after 20 years of service, and he has now started the company and is CEO of PreVeteran. It's a company that helps American servicemen and women as they transition from the armed forces to the private sector. Take us, Jason, to the beginning of pre veteran. Where were you. How did you start?
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Great question. So like I told you, I retired in 2014 and within two years I was then the head of business for Japan Korea, Taiwan for $6 Million Company. I did not feel comfortable in that role and roles. And I was scratching my head going why on earth are we not prepared for this? So that's why I started doing a lot of research on the transition space. And that's when I found out it took me two years to kind of dig in independently, go through 30 years worth of data, and find out that the two years following transition are problematic. I don't know why it's not explicitly stated like that, but the data is very clear on that. So after the two year development, I was, you know, I was I was not happy that there was a problem, but I was happy I found the problem.
And then I had to take on the OGs. What do I do now? I can't just say, there's a problem. We got to fix it. So that's why I started looking at different kind of modalities to try to fix this. And I ended up landing on cognitive neuroscience 1s for a couple of reasons. One is my father right? Meaning he always told me as a younger, younger man, if you want a better life, make better decisions. And that has always stuck with me throughout my life. And what I found out is cognitive neuroscience is actually the genesis for decision making.
So it became an intuitive kind of draw to me and where we want to take this. So I then hired a cognitive neuroscience PhD consultant, worked with her for two years, developed her own models, and now we have very strong, let's call it schemata, mental models for how military people think when we talk about optimization for the military, not the private sector, which is why we know those gaps very specifically. 1s We're all about empowerment and enable in any environment. The more you can understand your thinking and be self aware of it, and then understand how thoughts drive decision making, and then bring in training to deliberately take intentional activities to align yourself with a future environment. We're fighting to be very successful, so that's what we've been doing for the last couple of years.
Main Street
Jason, your program is available to anyone, officer or enlisted person. Is it different for either of those two groups?
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
You know, that's a great question because the conventional wisdom says yes, because I would say the conventional research space says there is a definite difference between the officer and enlisted. Underneath all of that. When we talk about a mindset, which is important because we talk about thinking and decision making, we find out that they are exactly the same. There is a bit of a distinction between the two, but it's not officer enlisted. It's not gender based. It's married with kids. We have a lot of folks that are married with kids coming to our programs because they can't crash on a friend's couch. They're very stressed out about being able to take care of their family, understand they got to put food on the table, want to have a career afterwards.
So those folks are kind of naturally drawing themselves to us. It is available to anybody. I'll also tell you we it is a fee for service program. There's a couple of reasons why we do this. First, when you talk about the fundamental differences. Between the military and private sector. It's a very normal model to do a fee for service model. It's a very normal conventional model for some reason, and there are definitely stakeholders out there that say everything for the military members should be provided free of charge. That's an opinion out there. That's not an opinion we hold, because that's kind of a behavior that is not aligned well with the private sector.
Let me kind of explain that a bit. So there will be folks out there that will say you should not charge the military person anything. And I totally understand that opinion. I think that actually hurts the military service member more than it helps them, because it's not helping them adapt to how the private sector works. And then when they go to the private sector and they say, hey, fee for service, which most people are very accustomed to out there, it becomes a bit of an obstacle to anything that they could move forward because, you know, you kind of get what you pay for. I will also say that in the last year, so we have a segment of folks that are paying for themselves, and then we have another segment of where we're getting associations, higher ed institutions, and other organizations that understand that we provide a lot of value and they're paying for their constituents to go through our programs now, and we're growing that pretty significantly.
So that's been very heartening to us because we put their leaders through the program. They instantly understand after they've been through it, the full scale support, the empowerment that we're inculcating to them. And then they become supportive and they want to grow it within their organization. So. 1s So,
Main Street
Jason, here I am. I'm in the service. And I know that a year and a half from now, I'm going to be out of the service a year from now. When should I want to take advantage of PreWeteran? How do they do it. Do they have time to do it with their responsibilities while they're still in the service. And what should they expect?
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Great question. Here's what I would say to any service member or family of a service member. The top line discussion topic we must start having at a national level is to let service members know that the military and the private sector are vastly different, and because of that, there needs to be change within the individual service member in order to be more successful once they leave the military. So that points back to when you should start. So we advocate strongly that you start 2 to 3 years before you get out of the military. And the reason is we need to align you from your military optimization to a private sector optimization. And that takes time, training and iterative activity. Meaning you have to go out there and do things that align you with the private sector, and that pulls in information to your thinking process. And the alignment is actually developing new habits over time. Now we also understand create.
Everyone's very busy, but it's also true that there's 100% chance you're leaving military. So you need to start doing these interventions earlier on. We like doing with 2 to 3 years out, because you can begin doing these very deliberate exercises through our training and within our community. We're constantly iterating this approach, and this is gradually changing you to align to the private sector. So what we do is we pull cohorts three times a year. We call this our military transition 2.0 system. Two years ago it used to be a quarter to. Now it's an entire system where entry into the system is a cohort based five week program called the Employment Prep Post. It's held in February, June, October or spring summer fall every year cohort based.
Because this is one of the initial kind of discussion things where we need to really intervene and go. Things are different. You can do this with the right training, support. We're going to get you on one better vector. Once you do that and you finish that five week program, you're now in our private alumni community where we talk about optimizing you individually, you and your family individually, and then optimizing your career. And with that, when we talk about optimization, this is financial security. This is mental health security. This is employment security. All these different things that we can do within that community. Because we've taken you from what I would call a typical level of a military member with the mindset leading the military. Push that out significantly, and then we can begin doing the second, third, fourth, fifth order magnitude. Things really begin to fine tune your success rate. What do you do?
Main Street
And Jason, I think it goes without saying any one, any American service man or woman in the world can participate in what it is that you offer.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
That is 100% correct. Absolutely. Yep. And if you have an organization, if you're listening and you're part of an organization that takes care of military members or military spouses, we're happy to talk to you as well, because again, we've partnered with quite a few now associations, institutions, higher ed and whatnot who see this as the program record because they want to take care of their constituents and they understand that individual empowerment is the answer, because if the service member, through training, can become autonomous and comfortable and confident and capable in the private sector before they leave the military, it just infinitely increases their chance of success.
Main Street
Jason, you've been at this for a couple of years now. What does your data tell you about whether you're being successful?
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
So it has been a couple of years, and I will tell you, if there's folks listening in that are used to the space we are doing things very differently. I'll just kind of do a juxtaposition here. So the existing system is all about providing you resources, right? This is the transition 1.0 model. And it's like anything, you know you know trying to make its way into your thinking process. If it's just a resource and you don't know what to do with it, it becomes un contextualized and you don't know how to use it.
This is where we do things differently with our system, where we empower you to understand the thinking that's going on in your head, and then how to understand if that existing thinking where you're optimized for the military is productive or unproductive for your use in the private sector. And then what makes our program really innovative is adults. We have a PhD at Texas A&M who's studying our methodology and understands that if you can get an adult to change the way they think, it becomes very transformative. And what's cool about our program is the adult of their own volition, of their own decision, decide that the thinking that they're doing now is unproductive to the private sector, and they begin kind of changing their own trajectory, which is incredibly empowering. But we are available to everyone globally for this program and excited to have it keep growing.
Main Street
You can learn more about PreVeteran PreVeteran,com. Jason Anderson's been my guest. He retired from the United States Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in 2014, and he is working to improve the transition of American servicemen and women from their service to the private sector. Jason, it's great to visit with you again.
PreVeteran, Jason Anderson
Thanks, Craig. Really appreciate it and look forward to the next opportunity.