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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Mike Slay is a military veteran and the founder and CEO of Shift.org, a company powering successful career shifts for military veterans. In this conversation, we discuss how Shift is disrupting the job market, why the VA and Department of Defense are so excited about this company, what trends Mike is seeing in job seekers, where the level of interest in cryptocurrency is for military veterans, and how veterans are uniquely positioned to be successful in a corporate environment. This conversation is really special to me, and I'm a huge fan of the work that Mike is doing. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

• 0:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Wanna know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal: motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at Crypto.com. Go help your boy out, tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to CoinMine.com, you buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity

• 1:38Anthony Pompliano?

  into Bitcoin. That's right, you purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi, five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide, and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kinda like how Tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software. Just your update in your coin mine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right, go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I am here with Mike. I'm super excited about this episode. It's a little bit different than anything I've done previously in that Mike is running a company focused on the military veteran space. As many of you know, I served in the US Army. Mike and I have known each other for a while. Jason and I actually invested in Mike's company, Shift. And so I wanted him to come on, talk a little bit about the company, what he's doing with military veterans, some of the benefits that they bring to workplaces, and then also talk about the overlap in interests that even military veterans have in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. So, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to come in and do this.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Thanks, Pomp. Great to be back together in person. It's been a long road for both of us for the last few years.

• 3:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I originally met Mike when I was working at Facebook, and I've seen kind of from everything from when he was in the military to today. And it's pretty cool to watch. But let's just start with your background and how you eventually got to building Shift.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Sure. So Shift's a career change company for military vets. Started this company after serving in the Navy for seven years. I was a bomb disposal officer, or an explosive ordnance disposal officer, somebody who's basically like a technical expert and helps small teams and big teams and even foreign countries.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Be safe around explosive devices.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Like basically pretty dangerous.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, you know, I guess, a pretty decent preparation for running an early-stage venture-backed startup.

• 4:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So when I was in Iraq, we, one of our jobs was to go and do something called route clearance, which is we would drive down the streets and we would look for roadside bombs and ambushes. And if we found a roadside bomb, we were told to not touch them and instead call something called EOD, or Explosive Ordnance Disposal, which was a team that Mike would be in. And they would come out with their bomb suits and their robots and all this stuff and try to either blow up the bomb or defuse the bomb. And I will tell you one funny story. At one point in Iraq, it would, the EOD was so stretched in terms of they had to go from one site to another site to another site.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I know, it's coming here.

• 5:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Two or three hours, right? And so literally, we would be told, "I'm not telling you to not call them, but what I'm telling you is that I bet if you run it over, if it doesn't explode, it's not a bomb."

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Not advisable.

• 5:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, definitely not a good advice. But that was, you know, a huge thing. So I always laugh about, like, how, how bad would it have sucked to sit in the sun, right, wait two or three hours for them to start telling us that?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:30Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but I definitely did not envy the folks who would go and poke the bombs and see what would happen.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  I mean, for me, it was like, you know, it was this incredible community of folks where problem-solving and critical thinking and being able to think through multiple situations in parallel was like of the utmost value.

• 5:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  And I was going through the Army's airborne school as a cadet, which is like lower on the rank than a private. But the, and I remember there's a Navy EOD team that was going through the Army jump school training at the same time. And that was, that was really the first time that I met folks from the community. And it was just, it just felt like family. It felt totally different. So on my side, you know, these were, you know, the, had an interest in technology, had an interest in building companies and working on, you know, side projects and apps and stuff like that. And like, For me, I was, these were like the exact type of people that you wanted on your side,

• 6:35Speaker 02

  solving problems, working through challenges. But for me specifically, you know, it was like when I was separated from the Navy, like everybody else, there's, it surprises people, there's 250,000 people who separate from military service every single year. So like everybody else, I just wanted to know what was possible. You want to know how like those specific and sometimes very unique experiences translate, which of your military skills are going to be of value to a future employer?

• 7:09Anthony Pompliano?

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

• 7:53Anthony Pompliano?

  ahead and take apart bombs, right? Like, that's the natural reaction. And it's like, okay, I could go work at a police department, I could work at a defense contractor, like, that's where most of these people go. But what they don't realize is a lot of the soft skills, the team leading, the, you know, the other skills that they've acquired, there's tons of value that can be translated into other jobs. That's, I think, what you guys are working on now.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Totally. And so I'll, maybe we'll go into this a little bit later, but it's like, there's so many jobs in the workforce today that, they didn't even exist like 20 years ago, right? And so many of these jobs... I don't like, the path to get into them is not through going to college and getting a specific degree in it. So whether it's account management or customer success, operations management, project management, sales, these types of roles require to be somebody who does what they say they're going to do, plays nicely with other people, are accountable both to themselves and to project timelines and budgets.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  So there's just these big chunks of the workforce that are highly relevant to folks that have four to eight or more years of professional work experience, they've been accountable to a boss, they've had their own KPIs, which called something different in the military, of course, but that's a valuable thing. And so like the real thing that's missing for the majority of vets when they separate from service, isn't necessarily a bunch of, you know, hard skills they have to go and acquire unless they've got, you know, want to go be a software engineer or something like that. But it's just a little bit of domain expertise and a bunch, a bunch of industry-specific context. Like you have to be able to, almost have, be able to have this conversation amongst

• 9:39Speaker 02

  peers with the people in an industry that you want to break into. And so how do you get that? That's a little bit of what we're working on at Shift.

• 9:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And so describe what exactly you're doing at Shift. And for those that don't know, Mike runs a company that, you know, I would say, I'll say this, I don't think you'd say this, but it's a classic Silicon Valley company in that they have had an idea, started to show some traction to it, went out, raised capital, and from many names that you guys would all know, including entries in Horowitz, et cetera, and they're now in kind of the scaling phase of, okay, we've got the model, we are seeing it work, how do we kind of hit the inflection point and go from a small company with interesting ideas and a little bit of traction to a very large company that's, you know, very, very valuable.

• 10:32Anthony Pompliano?

  But maybe describe kind of what you guys are doing exactly, and then we can get into some of the nuances.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Sure, so I guess picture this, you're trying to figure out what you're gonna do next, and you're trying to figure out what's possible. And like, this is a story that I think a lot of folks with military backgrounds would resonate with, or I guess, maybe get like, shudder at the thought, or flashbacks too, but you go into some big aircraft hangar on base, and it's a job expo targeted at vets, and there's a bunch of companies, very well-intentioned, sitting around tables, and they're telling you what their company is like, and they're saying, "This is what our culture feels like, and this is how you can progress, and this is what matters to our organization." And, I mean-

• 11:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Sounds great.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, like, you don't actually think you're getting the full story, right? And, this is probably like, the most anxiety-ridden life decision you feel like you're ever gonna make.

• 11:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep, 'cause it's not just where you're gonna go, it work in terms of job, but it's also, you might be moving to a new city, you don't know anybody there, the whole thing.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah, and it's, you know, and, opportunities in the outside world, and probably very similarly to how people, you know, who don't have a ton of exposure to the military feel, and it just looks like a speeding train that's flying by. And, if you're gonna make the best decision for yourself, the best decision for your unique life circumstances, maybe for your family, like, the first thing that you wanna do is to get inside. You wanna, you know, everything, like, the important stuff, like, understanding what a culture inside of an organization actually is. Is it a fit? How does an organization function? Which types of people are successful? How does progression work? Then even like, you know, it may sound silly, but, you know, just getting inside and like,

• 12:20Speaker 02

  seeing how fast people are walking around. See, are they moving with a purpose? You know, what is the, what's the vibe? Some of those softest-

• 12:27Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like the water cooler talk.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  That's right, man!

• 12:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Are people showing up in the kitchen, and they're like, you know, Johnny just did this, and Mary just did, and they're all talking shit about each other?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 12:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Or, is it boring? Like- Or, even better, is it like, these people are pumped to be here, they feel like they're, you know, working on something that's gonna change the world, and it's something I wanna be a part of?

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So can't get that from the brochure.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 12:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Or my favorite example about the job expose is those people are literally being paid by the company to stand there and say that.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it is the most biased view of the company possible.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  And it's no secret either. Like, we all, we all know what's going on. So what we did at the beginning of last year, started a fellowship program and it allows active duty service members to leave base, travel to the city where they want to live after the military, start working in the corporate environment during their last three months of active duty service.

• 13:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So I'm still in the military. I've got three months left and I get the opportunity to go do this. And I think the big kicker is, and the military continues to pay my salary?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Military still pays your full salary and benefits.

• 13:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  And we can get into some more of the nothing bolts later, but how we've been able to expand access to this program for everybody in the military, you know, not just the folks who are, you know, making more money than others, but maybe folks who are earlier in their careers or they're still living in the barracks. Well, actually, when service members go to big, major metropolitan job markets like New York City, we'll reimburse them for some of the housing costs that might be extra. And so you'd be surprised that, you know, just like six, seven, eight hundred bucks a month can make all the difference in somebody being able to participate in something that might literally change the course of their career trajectory or not being able and, you know, having to stay home and sit it out.

• 14:19Anthony Pompliano?

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

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:58Anthony Pompliano?

  So you don't even have other people to talk to about it. And it's not like there's somebody who's sitting right next to you who has done it before either.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Because they're not going to do it for another six months or two years or maybe, you know, 20 years. And so I think it's just the lack of information, the lack of support, and then frankly, the lack of. Like true advice, right? So I think of information just like, what are the facts?

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But then there's like, hey, you might want to live in this area versus that area. Or hey, this type of company has certain, you know, future prospects versus this. Or hey, you're negotiating your salary. Like, here's some things to think about.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:31Anthony Pompliano?

  They just don't know this stuff.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  They don't know the stuff and, you know, I, I, I say this from the best place possible. The people to ask for advice is not, not necessarily the person who's been in the military for 20 years.

• 15:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Um, and you, you want to talk to that, that person who's, you know, one year ahead of you or two years ahead of you on that path that you want to take. But sometimes it's like, you don't even know who those people are yet.

• 15:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  And you definitely don't have access to them if you're sitting on a big military installation in rural Georgia or, you know, rural Oklahoma. You know, how do you find your people?

• 16:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  And how do you find your path?

• 16:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and so when you first told me about what you were going to do, the, the way that you pitched it to me was, look, we're going to help these military veterans essentially get an internship, right? To some degree.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 16:17Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's like a three, three month internship at major corporations, including or companies that you want to share.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Working with Major League Baseball, WeWork, Palantir, uh, media agencies like the Publicis Group and some of their subsidiaries. So these are, uh, these are, a lot of these companies are not like the typical companies that...

• 16:36Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not a bakery shop on the street corner.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's when necessarily think like, oh, I'm not qualified to go do that.

• 16:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Or, you know, you know, working at a tech company, I don't code.

• 16:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Right? So that, you know, how, you know, there's no place for me. There's, there's that information gap with understanding that like big chunks of these companies, you need people that can manage projects and get things done on time and under budget.

• 16:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So basically for this three month internship, for all intensive purposes, they get to go to companies that a lot of people would like jobs at, right? They're super successful, well-known companies. Uh, and while they're there, the military is paying their salary. So the company has no, uh, exposure to have to pay their salaries. And the veteran is getting exposure to this is what this company is like, right? It's not off a brochure. It's like, I'm actually there every day. I get to see what the company is like, what the job is like. I get to meet people. I get to, uh, really indoctrinate myself into this culture. Uh, and then from the company's perspective, they're trying before they buy.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 17:31Anthony Pompliano?

  They get three months kind of quote unquote, risk free.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 17:35Anthony Pompliano?

  To see, is this person actually good at this job? Is this someone who can help our team? All those things. And at the end of the three months, basically the company makes a decision. We're either going to hire them or we're not. It's important because the person is transitioning out of the military at that point, so it's either they've got a job or they gotta go find a job. And then the part that I love about it is Shift, the company, gets paid by the new employer when they hire somebody. So if you guys do your job, put the right veteran into these companies and the company likes them, you get paid on like a recruiting type basis. But the veteran just found a job without having to go through all the traditional channels and they are sure that that's the job they want because they just worked there for three months, kind of risk-free.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, retention is something that I think is certainly part of the conversation now with companies that have been making this really strong commitment to military hiring. It's really important to them, where they see a lot of the untapped potential of the talent that everybody else is missing out on. But, you know, one of the challenges that these companies are facing now that are relatively further along on their veteran hiring initiatives or journey is just that it's kind of hard to retain vets if that fit isn't perfect or if they did land in the wrong culture fit. So if you get somebody who arrives, understands what the road ahead looks like, they've already

• 19:00Speaker 02

  worked in teams and on the same projects, the exact same stuff that they're gonna be doing when they convert and be a full-time teammate, that's a person that's gonna stick around. That's a person that already knows what they're getting into. And I think that's, for anybody out there who's executed a career change in the past, this is like, you would love to have something like this and make sure that the decision you're making is correct.

• 19:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Why does the military like this? Like, to me, it's very obvious why the veteran would like, you're gonna help me find a job. Okay, no-brainer. It's great from the company perspective in that I get to basically try before I buy, right? So I get somebody that I really know is gonna do a good job. But why the military? What's their kind of incentive?

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, let me, I gotta say one more thing about the vets. I mean, imagine like you get to leave base, travel to the city where you wanna live, start to build a network, find your people. Understand exactly which part of an organization you're going to be best suited to thrive in. Get all of that sort of like first few months awkwardness on the job thing that everybody goes through out of the way while you're still on this intern active duty status. And then you really start getting traction. You start being, you know, feeling like you're a full time contributor and you're moving the ball downfield. And then you start your first day on the job. That is like, that's like almost too good to be true.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  And it is absolutely like the situation that I wanted to find myself in when I was separating from military service. But for the military, for the DOD, you know, this is a thing where a big chunk of vets, when they separate from service, you know, they want to land in a big city. They want to land in a major metropolitan job market. A lot of these markets like New York or San Francisco and other huge cities in America don't have a huge military presence nearby. And so no matter who you are, like you're a veteran, not veteran, you know, preconceived notions about what you can do or not do.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Like if you want to live in New York City, it's pretty hard to get a job if you're sitting on base. In Oklahoma. In Oklahoma. And you've got all of these folks that like as a country, we've invested tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars each in their leadership development, professional development, communication skills, ability to work in teams. And a lot of these big markets with huge employers are missing out because they don't have a strong exposure to military communities. And so if you look at some of the studies that the USC Marshall School did around vets who land in big cities, it's like 80% of people who want to live in a big city

• 21:50Speaker 02

  and arrive in that city without a full time job offer in hand. What sort of decision are you going to make for yourself if your personal runway is going down to zero? You're in an expensive city because you know, either this is where your family wants to live or this is where you want to live. And you almost like have to take what you can get in early days. Yep. So this for service members.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  You know, this is a way that for those first few months of the military, the VA, the federal government avoids a ton of unemployment expense if people land in their first post military career prior to separating from service. And I guess, like, just philosophically, like, there are, there's this, there's this almost like this ground swell happening in the military. And maybe like, folks from your generation might be like, yeah, that's, I don't know if that's true, but, you know, there's this thought that senior folks in the military are starting to have that if people successfully transition from military life, that makes

• 22:59Speaker 02

  us as an organization so much stronger because we're keeping our promise to service members who sign up and we're going to be able to recruit, you know, the best and brightest young people in America to serve in the military because there is something good waiting for you at the end of that journey.

• 23:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Want to know who has the best URL? Crypto.com. That's right, Crypto.com. They're a crypto platform with one goal, motherf***ing mass adoption. That's why we're all here. We're trying to get crypto in every wallet. Crypto.com is helping people do that through buying, earning, lending, and card payment. Everything you could want at Crypto.com. Go help your boy out, tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and wifi. All you gotta do is go to CoinMine.com, you buy a coin mine. It's like an Xbox or a Playstation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right.

• 24:03Anthony Pompliano?

  You purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep, you pull it out of the box, you plug it in, connect to your wifi, five minutes or less, you're mining Bitcoin. All you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide and then you receive over the air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis. Kind of like how Tesla does over the air updates and updates the car software. Just your update in your coin mine. Consumer mining made easy. That's right. Go to CoinMine.com, tell them Pomp sent you, and thank me later. The part to me that always seemed to be the miscommunication between employers and veterans

• 24:43Anthony Pompliano?

  is all the things that usually make talented yet bad employees bad, right? They show up late, they're not disciplined, they don't know how to communicate, like all of the, it's like all the soft skills, right?

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:57Anthony Pompliano?

  If you're really strong at the one technical thing or the one thing that your job requires, but you're bad at everything else, you're usually labeled as a bad employee.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  You're right. No doubt.

• 25:07Anthony Pompliano?

  But if you're actually really, really good at everything else, and you're not the best technical person, you're not the best at this one skill, everything, all the soft skills can make up for it. And military veterans bring all those soft skills in a way that I think a lot of people either don't, or they have to work to get there. And it's because the veteran did work to get there. They got put through very specific rigid training that kind of produced this thing out of that process.

• 25:33Speaker 02

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

• 26:17Speaker 02

  So that sounds like, you know, that's not a ton of responsibility, but that's, you know, being accountable for somebody else. You don't really get that from folks who are graduated from college in many cases. And so it's just a different profile of a candidate.

• 26:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and look, I just think, you don't even have to go to the lowest level ranks, right? Like just start like a sergeant in the Army. It's somebody who most likely has been in the military four to six years, you know, give or take. They are in charge of anywhere between three to 12 people, depending on, you know, how big their unit is, et cetera, meaning that they are the team leader or the squad leader for three to 12 people.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  But just think about how crazy that is. Like, you and I don't think that's that crazy at all, but somebody who's 23 years old.

• 27:06Anthony Pompliano?

  22, 23 years old, yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  In charge of 12 other people's wellbeing, their professional development.

• 27:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, so this was gonna be my thing.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Their career goals.

• 27:13Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not just at work.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:15Anthony Pompliano?

  It's what a lot of people don't realize in the military is that it's not just, hey, I need you to do that project. You are responsible for every single thing that that person does and their life. So if they have problems with their girlfriend, they call you. If they have problems with, I don't have a good way to budget and I don't have money for food, you as the sergeant are in charge of that. And so you are not only managing these people in a professional setting, you're managing their lives, all of the craziness that can happen. They may be with you for two months, then they leave and go somewhere else, they're replaced by somebody. It's a very, very kind of chaotic management structure that frankly is much harder than the professional world is, right?

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 27:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's just when you just see, hey, this person, you know, led a team of 12 people, all you think is like, oh, they did a project together, right? Like on a resume. It's just the understanding, I think, from the recruiters, there's a big miscommunication of what that actually entails.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, and then just, you know, take the flip side and maybe speak to the, some of the vets who are listening as well. I think that, you know, there's this like immense amount of leadership and responsibility that they're, that they're given at a very early age in life. And one of the things that, you know, helps you kind of scale as a leader and to be able to manage 12 people, 24 people, when you're 23, 24 years old, is like the military has this framework for leadership and they, you know, you've sort of guided you at every point as to, you know, these are all the situations that could happen and this is what you're responsible to do in those situations.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And so if you don't have some industry context, it's really easy to, you know, to, not necessarily believe, but to, you know, to get tripped up when you're managing a bunch of. Civilian employees if you don't have that very industry-specific context. So that's the thing that's so important to acquire and to, you know, it'd be really hard to jump into a leadership role or a management role if you haven't, one, done the job yourself just for a little bit, or acquired just a deep amount of industry context and how things actually work in a new part of the workforce. Like, if you had like a new platoon leader come in and, you know, you'd been working

• 29:38Speaker 02

  at Goldman Sachs or something like that for, for four years and he's like, "Yes, I am the, you know, I'm, I'm your boss now, Sergeant." You'd be like, "All right."

• 29:49Speaker 02

  So there's, there's a little bit of that there, but it's like, there's, there's, there's no doubt that there's just this incredible amount of untapped potential exists. If you can get people to this place where they have a ton of conviction around, "This is who I am, this is my story, this is where I want to go, this is what I can do for you today, and that's how it maps back to my career aspirations." So that if we get people to that place, they're, they're, they're powerful people.

• 30:17Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. What, um, any interest that you're seeing from vets as they come out in terms of industries? And then obviously I got to ask about Bitcoin and crypto.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what are you seeing as you kind of have these conversations with people in, in their early days of exploring, leaving the military?

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Well, I definitely see, and it's, you know, it's partially, a small part of it's from shift and, but it's also just vets who are thriving out in the ecosystem at, at big technology companies, at startups, vets who have been entrepreneurs and started their own business. There's this increasing amount of openness to going off the beaten path and, you know, thinking that, you know, you have to go into something that really has strong, you know, historical veteran recruiting efforts in place. So you do see this openness to, to live in bigger cities. You know, many companies, you know, no matter what you are, are starting to reimagine themselves as technology companies.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  And so certainly seeing like an increased interest around, you know, understanding that, you know, which roles on the job board might be a great fit to break in. Uh, you know, maybe you're not going to, you know, be able to jump directly into product management. After the military, some of us, you did a few things, but the, but being on a product team, like in a product operations role, or a project manager on a product team, you can get that thing that you want in a really short period of time. So I think that you're seeing much better comprehension around what a pathway could look like, and less thinking around, you know, the next thing that I do, I've got to

• 31:58Speaker 02

  commit to, you know, for the next, you know, 15, 20 years of my life. And it's hard to break yourself from that thinking when you just came from one of the biggest enterprises on the planet, that, you know, tells you at every single point of your career, what you need to do to progress, and what you need to do to advance. And so, I'm, I'm very optimistic with what we're seeing around, that's understanding that a career can be pieced together, and you can make these exponential gains, 18 to 24 months at a time. But in terms of like, locations, and cities, like vets and the military population, like it looks like America.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Like, it's like, by far, like, one of the most diverse workforces on the planet. And so it's people from every city and state, from every walk of life, and when they leave the military, a lot of people want to go home. And so, we, you know, we're really focused in major job markets, right now, that don't have a military presence nearby, to expand access to employers and companies there. But, you know, we get, you know, tons of great people who want to go back into all of these up and coming towns in, in middle America, and all parts of America. If we can figure this out, I'm gonna get a little philosophical around the soapbox for a second, but like, if we can figure this out, this is a huge opportunity for our country.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  For all of these cities, I, you know, I look at like, what's the works that's being done in Washington DC with the Rise of the Rest Fund, investing in towns like Detroit, and Cleveland, and Des Moines. Like, if there's a pathway for vets to be successful in these cities... Like they'll go back in and bring these skills back and help be a small part of revitalizing some of these economies.

• 33:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and the thing is that most of their extended family never left, right? So they joined the military from Ohio, Iowa, you know, they're like the classic overgeneralized examples, but when that happens, their families are still in the same cities that they grew up in, they'd love to go back, but there's no jobs, right? There's not the jobs that they want, so they go to some major metro and then they end up traveling back two to four times a year and the classic, you know, draw of the metro. And then what about Bitcoin and crypto specifically?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, this is one area where we're trying to figure it out because we, we do see, you know, I won't call it like, like it's mainstream now, it's not, it's not a closet community at all, like there, there's so many aspects around cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and some of the underlying principles, really, it's like freedom and, and, and the ability to build something from scratch that are super appealing to vets. Now, there's, there's not really a clear path and there, and there's not, you know, with the decentralized nature, I think of the ecosystem, like there's not necessarily one company that person, someone can point to and say like, oh, if I want to get into crypto, I go there.

• 35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Bitcoin's not hiring.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but from just like some of the interest and preference data that we see, I, I think some of the big themes are very much an interest in decentralized systems and Bitcoin and crypto, huge interest in remote work, because if you've been sort of told where to live and where to go for 10 years, you're like, it's time for me to like chart my own course here for a little bit, a, a large interest in.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Overseas opportunities, or at least working for American companies that have overseas presences, these are people that, you know, this is no big deal to go and like do a two-month deployment to Hong Kong.

• 35:46Anthony Pompliano?

  It's fun.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, that's a perk. That's not like the job description says 80% travel and they're like, bingo, sounds good. And so I guess those are sort of like the three themes that like, we're definitely trying to figure out. So I would turn around to you and say like, if somebody is, does have a military background, what are some of the ways that they can get more involved in crypto? What are some of the great entry points into the ecosystem right now?

• 36:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's weird because there's probably two or three, but they're all hard. One is go directly to the companies. There's probably not nearly as many companies that are growing fast and gonna get big as in some other industries, but the ones that do kind of survive and get big will be very, very big. So I think that's an attractive draw, but it's just a smaller number of companies. So you gotta kind of focus on those ones. Two is find people, like Bitcoin and crypto, I've never seen the industry where people are so collaborative and so open to talking, like get on Twitter and literally you can DM almost anybody in the community.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And they will respond and say, yeah, no problem. I'd love to, you know, here's my email address, here, call me, right? You know, whatever. And so I think that that's like a very unique advantage when you're looking for a job.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 37:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  I'll touch on that in a second.

• 37:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't be shy to reach out to people. And then the last thing I would say is, I think that there's a number of veterans that are either in venture capital, or even in technology companies that, it's kind of like when a vet reads out to you and just says, hey, I'm a vet, I'm looking to do X. It's not your brother who reached out to you, right? But it's pretty damn close.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:29Anthony Pompliano?

  So you're just like, look, whatever I need to do to help you, I will, right? Um, because, uh, there was people who helped you and, and you kind of just, it's just like pass it along thing. Um, and so I think that understanding who those people are, and there's a lot of people actually who don't talk a lot about their military service.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, but they were veterans, uh, and they still have a affinity to help those people, I think is, uh, is another kind of third path worth, uh, worth pursuing.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. With the third path, I think it's so important to come into somebody like you or to somebody in crypto with like,

• 38:02Anthony Pompliano?

  You're gonna get me like 2,000 emails now.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Uh, in, in someone in the community who's, you know, come to them with like a specific quest though, right? It's not just like, hey, like,

• 38:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not like, hey, I want a job. It's hey, like basically it's, hey, I'm interested in this industry. Here are the things I'm interested in. Here's the things, the work that I've done so far that shows I've looked at these five companies. There's two roles at each company that I think are interesting. What do you think about these? And are there other companies I should be looking at that also have similar types of roles?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 38:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Like that type of outreach, I'm 10,000% more likely to help that person.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 38:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Because it's just like, look, you're not one wasting my time and two, you've done a bunch of work to make this super efficient for me to be able to be like, Highly leveraged, yeah, help, right? So it's just, it, it, it's a much, much better way to do it.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  And then for the second point around Twitter specifically, I think that we are seeing this like revitalization around the usage of LinkedIn. It's still, you know, the vast majority of service members who are active duty, they're not on LinkedIn, but they're, they're using it in really effective ways right now to understand who's in what industry and who might be willing to help. Uh, and so like the level of collaboration that you see there and the, the level of paying it forward, uh, is not, not astounding, but it's, it's, it's inspiring. But I think Twitter is like the unfarmed, it's the unfarmed soil, but, but if you add, but it feels, you know, if you're new to it, um,

• 39:33Speaker 02

  and it's, you know, if you're, you know, joined July of 2019 or August 2019, like, like it feels like there's like a high bar and, and to, and to break into that and to start having meaningful conversations, but how do you just jump in and? Get into the mix.

• 39:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I think you literally, it's, you've got to participate. Right. That's the key is if you just sit there and read, no one knows that you're there and no one ever kind of gets involved, right? And it's just really hard to kind of quote unquote, break in. But the second that you start replying to people, answering, tweeting, like, you know, actually creating and participating. I think that that's where the, the value accrues. And look, there's people who will DM me and they've got 20 followers. Right. It's not like they're a big audience. And they just say, hey, my name is such and such, here's what I do, right? This is what I'm trying to do. Can you help me?

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, sure.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 40:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Why not?

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. All right. I'll give someone for the audience to, to give a shout out to somebody where you can send requests to. So Hector Rosecrans.

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Who's that? So he's a guy, a fellow Navy vet who, he was in banking for a while. And he was emailing me a couple of years ago around like, you know, I really want to get into crypto roles. I'm super, super interested in this. Uh, let's see, uh, R O S E K R A N S. Sorry Hector, uh, but I gotta give you a shout out. So, uh, one word there.

• 40:58Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. We're looking them up online right now. I'm gonna go stalk them.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  There he is.

• 41:01Anthony Pompliano?

  There you go. I'm gonna give him a follow. He follows me. Nice.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 41:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin and freedom. Perfect. Hector, you're, you're, you're my boy already. You didn't even know it.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Okay, cool. Well, I, I, yeah. So that's, that's the guy, you know, you don't want to necessarily talk to Pomp who's like, you know, 10 steps ahead of you. You want to talk to Hector who just made this, this career shift. And is like, you know, like a growing member of the community and he can give you his playbook. So.

• 41:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I completely agree. And the other piece of this too, I think is, um, you know, uh, somebody asked me recently, I was recording a podcast with them and they said, what's your life motto? Right? And, uh, for a long time I never told, uh, people this publicly, but, um, I actually think that it's worth saying publicly because it, uh, It really, I think balances the line between like a personal motto and then veterans really, uh, kind of, I think, um, understand it, which is just no fucking fear. Like, any situation, just no fucking fear, right? Like, you literally, in any situation, I do not care.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Yep, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it live here.

• 42:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and just, and just go, right? And sure, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna say things you didn't need to say, whatever, but just no fucking fear.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that that is the perfect motto for somebody who like, I need to find a job, what do I do? I get onto this new platform, Twitter, I have no clue how it works, like, just fucking let it rip.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 42:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Be yourself.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  You can always delete the tweets.

• 42:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, just like be yourself, right? And, and what's gonna happen is like, the people who don't want to hear from you, or who don't, like, agree with you, or whatever, they're gonna go away, they're gonna self-filter out, they're not gonna follow you, they're not gonna participate.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  No worries.

• 42:42Anthony Pompliano?

  But the people who are agreeing with you are going to be, you're gonna be like a magnet, right? They're gonna, they're gonna be attracted to you.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it's just, just be yourself, right? And, and I think that people are just so scared, but you don't need to be.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, ultimately, I think, you know, you have to maintain sight of the goal is to find your people, right? And if you're authentic, and you're yourself, your people are gonna find you, that's a powerful thing.

• 43:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I completely agree. Where, um, where can people go find out more about, uh, SHIFT?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Or SHIFT.org.

• 43:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome URL.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Mission-driven org, trying to, uh, reinvent the way that vets change careers and find traction in their first part of their post-military life.

• 43:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And then your Twitter account is what? Just Mike Slagh, M-I-K-E-S-L-A-G-H?

• 43:27Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 43:28Anthony Pompliano?

  On, uh, on Twitter there. So, uh, look, you, uh, you're killing it, I'm a huge fan, keep going. SHIFT.org, please go check them out. If you're an employer, go hire some veterans. If you're a veteran, go, uh, go get signed up so that, uh, you can get a job and, uh, and move on with your life. But I appreciate all the work you're doing, and thanks so much for coming to do this.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Good to go, Pop. Appreciate the opportunity.

• 43:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey everyone, Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.