#155: Veterans Don't Need Pity - University of Health & Performance Founder and CEO Matt Hesse

Transition back to civilian life is the biggest challenge our service men and women will face in their military careers. America invests millions in training our warfighters to be the most competent in the world. That investment shouldn’t end when the uniform comes off. The Jedburgh Podcast, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation are proud to announce our partnership with the University of Health and Performance https://university-hp.com/ outside of Bentonville, Arkansas. Matt Hesse https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-hesse/ is the Founder and CEO of University of Health and Performance. This Veterans Day, Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ sat down with Matt to share his vision to build a world-class development program to train our Veterans as certified personal trainers. In addition to the hard skills required to build health and fitness in others, UHP is also teaching the business skills needed to become successful entrepreneurs. Matt explains the process, the details behind each course, why UHP has chosen Arkansas to call home, how he’s building an ecosystem to support all aspects of Veteran transition, and how UHP is leading the way in showing private industry just how valuable our Veterans will be for the next generation of America. Watch, listen or read our conversation from the UHP gym. Don’t miss our full Veterans Day coverage from UHP. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/, the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ and UHP https://www.instagram.com/university_hp/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. HIGHLIGHTS 0:00 Introduction1:43 Welcome to the University of Health and Performance3:25 Creating UHP4:37 Why Health and Performance matters 7:46 UHP Programs12:04 Field of Dreams17:46 Preparing veterans for business29:30 Lack of a military transition process34:40 Future of UHP QUOTES “There’s nothing greater than serving democracy. Veterans created this country.” “The health and performance of your life or your company need to be in balance.”“You can take the four pieces of the blueprint: how to think intellectually, how to train physically, how to feel emotionally, and how to lead from a values perspective to build a strategy to get after whatever that purpose is.”“A lot of us carry a lot of shit around that we have not let out yet and a big part of this place is helping people do that.”“I believe that great visionary leaders are unencumbered by their own “I can’t do its.”“Failure is not possible if you don’t quit.”“Anybody can be an entrepreneur. I truly believe that.”“My personal huge goal right now is to give veterans the opportunity to get out and catch up with their peers as fast as possible.”“Most Veterans are highly competent, highly skilled, great leaders, who just want to do awesome purposeful work.” “The DOD’s responsibility is to build a lethal fighting force. Period. End of story.” “2025 we are going to launch Veterans Future Festival. It is going to be the largest veterans day event in the country, anywhere." The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-hesseGreen Beret Foundation https://greenberetfoundation.org/. The opinions presented on the The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of my guests and myself. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy, nor does Green Beret Foundation endorse any political candidate or any political party.

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

• 0:02Fran Racioppi?

  Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast. I'm the creator and host, Fran Racioppi. Each episode, I speak with transformative leaders, visionaries, drivers of change, and those dedicated to winning no matter the challenge. The Jedburgh Podcast is founded in the lineage of the special operations Jedburgh teams of the past and is an official program of the Green Beret Foundation, supporting our nation's US Army Special Forces and their families. Transition back to civilian life is the biggest challenge our servicemen and women will face in their military careers. America invests millions training our warfighters to be the most competent in the world. That investment shouldn't end when the uniform comes off. The Jedburgh Podcast, the Jedburgh Media Channel, and the Green Beret Foundation are proud to announce our partnership with the University of Health and Performance outside of Bentonville, Arkansas.

• 0:44Fran Racioppi?

  Matt Hesse is the founder and CEO of University of Health and Performance. This Veterans Day, I sat down with Matt to share his vision to build a world-class development program to train our veterans as certified personal trainers. In addition to the hard skills required to build health and fitness and others, UHP is also teaching the business skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur. Matt explains the process, the details behind each of the courses, why UHP has chosen Arkansas to call home, how he's building an ecosystem to support all aspects of veteran transition, and how UHP is leading the way in showing private industry just how valuable our veterans will be for the next generation of America. Watch, listen, or read our conversation from the UHP gym. Don't miss our full Veterans Day coverage from the UHP Veterans Day ceremonies.

• 1:27Fran Racioppi?

  Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

• 1:43Fran Racioppi?

  Matt, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:46Fran Racioppi?

  Thanks for hosting us here at the University of Health and Performance. You and I have been, I don't know, it's been two years plus since we first met. Board member for Green Beret Foundation Walt Cooper introduced us back at the first Sandlot Jacks, and since then, we have been trying to find the way. How are we going to come together? How are we going to partner? You're a visionary when it comes to partnership, and we're going to talk a bit about that. But I think before we get into it, we've got to say that this is the kickoff of the partnership between the Green Beret Foundation, the Jedburgh Media Channel, the Jedburgh Podcast, and the University of Health and Performance.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Right on, man. It's awesome. Glad to be doing it, finally.

• 2:20Fran Racioppi?

  We're here in the gym. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to say that we're kind of in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas, but I can say that only because, as I told the governor yesterday, I'm from Boston and I live outside of New York now. And so coming out here in rural Arkansas, northwest Arkansas, outside of Bentonville, what an amazing place.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's a hidden gem that not everybody knows about and part of our goal is to help veterans understand how awesome Arkansas is because it's pretty sweet, pretty sweet setup.

• 2:47Fran Racioppi?

  So we're on a 500 acre farm. You had a vision five years ago that you wanted to create something that isn't being done when we talk about service to veterans and primarily working with transitioning veterans who have to find that purpose, that next phase of their life. We spent a lot of time yesterday, Veterans Day, talking about service. What does it mean to serve? Well, service continues for veterans when they take that uniform off and it's a defining moment for, I won't say so many of us, I'll say every one of us. And the longer you serve, the harder it is. Who are you? What do you want to be when you grow up, as we say? And you had a vision to provide something that doesn't exist.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you could probably liken it back to when you're sitting in the guidance counselor's office in high school and you're like, what are you going to do with your life? And you're like, I don't know. And maybe you're like, I'm gonna go to the military because I don't know. And you're kind of back in that same situation because it's such a big, profound like question, like what is the purpose of my life? And when you've had the ability to serve and the purpose that it gave you and you know, there's nothing greater than serving democracy. It really truly is. Veterans created this country and to go from protecting that with your team and the camaraderie and the tribe and the structure and all the things to it just being gone one day. And I know many people who have gone through the transition can relate to that, to it's debilitating. And we built

• 4:09Speaker 01

  this place to help veterans identify and find a new purpose so that service doesn't have to be over in their life.

• 4:16Fran Racioppi?

  This was a field in a lot of ways. If you build it, they will come and they're coming. I mean, we sit here now, we're talking about the programs, but we got two classes going on right behind us. And so the focus has been in this health and performance space. Why is health and performance the inject point for you and the University of Health and Performance and the veteran community?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  You can certainly say that health and performance is important from a literal perspective. And people might take it as, oh, they do health and wellness training. And we do do that. But the health of your life or the health of your culture within your life and your business and the performance of your life and the performance of your business, they have to be in alignment with each other. You can like it, look at the recent, we'll call it like the woke era we just came out of, companies and people started focusing on, well, I want this and I want that. And they started giving them all those things because they were demanding for it. And performance was not part of the factor. It was like, oh, well, we gotta make sure that they feel good and happy. And so the company's health from a culture perspective might've gone up. I'd argue it went down, but it might've gone up, but the performance went down.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  And so the health and performance of your life or your company need to be in balance. If you give people too much, the performance will go down. If you drive people too hard and you don't invest in them culturally, then you're, eventually you'll burn them out. And so I think life and business is about creating balance and the health and performance of your life is important.

• 5:40Fran Racioppi?

  Well, and fitness is such an important part of not only being a veteran, but just creating, as you talked about the balance, but how do you stay focused?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, mental wellness.

• 5:49Fran Racioppi?

  In every episode, we'll do it here, so you're gonna get the precursor. I finished the episode where I asked my guest, what are the three things that they do every day to be successful? And I'll say eight out of 10 times, one of those three is either balance between mental and physical health, or it's physical health. Because if they feel that if I'm physically fit, then everything else kind of comes into play. Everything comes into balance. John McThee was on yesterday as well. I can't wait for this episode to come out.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And this cracker.

• 6:20Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, because we did it back of a hum bee. And that was a first and I was.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  I bring that just so you could do that.

• 6:26Fran Racioppi?

  Podcasts in there. Well, we got the ROI on it yesterday. But John, he talks about how he's got to tire himself out because if he tires himself out, whether they're working out or jujitsu, that he's mentally more focused. Fitness is a critical component of being in the military. And it's something that is often driven upon you because you have regiment. You have a group of folks who you're working out with. You've created a community every day and it's part of your daily routine. But then you transition and when you transition, well, now it's on you. Like so many other factors in life and you've got to in a lot of ways, figure that out. How do I maintain that discipline? How do I do that? And we've all gone through our ebbs and flows since we get out.

• 7:07Fran Racioppi?

  And you know, I got out and you stay in shape for a while and then you wake up one day and you're like, man, I didn't get fat in a day, but I'm fat and I don't feel good about myself. And then all of a sudden, you know, you flip it back on and you turn it on. Six months later, you feel great. And then six months after that, you're like, damn, fat again. I don't feel good. Turn it back on. You need to come to UHP. I do need to come to UHP. And so you got to start thinking about, okay, well, what's that? What's the new thought process? Okay, what's my new life look like? And how am I going to build this routine around that? You guys do the classes that you have. I want to ask you about kind of the programs here. We got two classes going on right here, two different classes. And you're providing an opportunity for folks to come in and what are they focused on?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  So the program is broken into four pieces. Currently we have a licensed health coaching platform. So you can come here and become a health coach or you can come here and become a personal trainer. And both those programs are 17 days long. Within those two programs, the first call it five days are what we call purpose blueprinting. And the purpose blueprinting process is identification of the things you're passionate about, the things you're skilled at and the things you have experience in. Once you have an orientation of those things, then that should help you or help our coaches, help you find your path into what is my purpose? What's my why? What am I going to do in my future? And when you have that, you can take the four pieces of the blueprint,

• 8:27Speaker 01

  how to think intellectually, how to train physically, how to feel emotionally and how to lead from a values perspective to build a strategy to get after whatever that purpose is. And it's a pretty simplified system that really takes a complex question and breaks it down into pieces and helps you get to the answer pretty quick.

• 8:45Fran Racioppi?

  How do you go about developing that program?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  It's kind of the, I'd say my life is a Petri dish for what this program is. I was a kid that came from a background of trauma. I went in the military and found what I now say with hindsight, I didn't understand it then, found incredible discipline and it was such an important part of my journey. Wasn't a long part of my journey. I was only in for six years, but

• 9:07Fran Racioppi?

  Which is a good amount of time.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Well, the majority of that was in the reserves. So my mom got in a car accident. Thank you. I was probably the worst soldier of, to ever go into the military. I didn't like listening to stupid orders. I should have been in special operations with all you knuckleheads because you get to at least pretend to do the smart shit. Nothing, no offense to anybody out there that's in the conventional enlisted force, but I just, I had a really tough time taking orders from people that when I was like, why don't we do it like this? And they're like, because I told you to do it this way. I'm like, well, that's fucking stupid. I'm not doing that. And so I got busted ranked twice while I was in the military. Just truly, I was probably the worst soldier ever. But I've come to value it so much and I think that everybody that served, if they're being honest with themselves, they look back like,

• 9:49Speaker 01

  what an incredible opportunity to just do awesome shit with great people and to learn and grow and see great leadership and just, it's awesome.

• 9:56Fran Racioppi?

  You said your mom got in a car accident. What happened?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  She did. When I was, I just did the AIT, she got in a car wreck and, and broke her neck. And was probably 10 more years as a quadriplegic and I took care of her while I went to college using my GI Bill. Again, so thankful for that, that piece of legislation that put the GI Bill in place because it, it gave me an education, allowed me to take care of my mom while I was going to college. And when she finally passed, it was probably the tipping point for me to really understand who I was. A lot of times when an event happens where trauma was attached to that event, when there's a closure to the event, like my mom dying, a lot of memories from my childhood came back. And I just, stuff I had forgotten, you know, compartmentalization, we teach it in the military, right? And that moment, I would say is what created the inertia to start building this.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  I was 32 years old, living in New York City. I just sold a company that I built for a few years, about eight years. And by all rights was really, really successful, but it was pretty empty relative to like fulfillment and what I wanted out of my life. And it's what I started doing a lot of reflection. Work and you go back to the pillar of emotional awareness. A lot of us carry a lot of shit around we've not let out yet. And this place is a big part of this place is is helping people do that, helping people be vulnerable. So I went through that myself and then I took what I learned from that. And I, when I started running our first program, which is basically a retreat at a boy scout camp with little tiny beds and 35 vets that I either knew from service or that worked for me or that had heard about it. And we just lived there for a month and worked out and talked.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  You know, there wasn't a certification in that first class, but pretty quickly I saw that this holistic, theoretical and practical application of emotional work and intellectual education. All those things started to like gel and it was, I'll call it divine intervention, but something happened in that first. And I was like, this is a solve or at least a beginnings to something that I think could be really special. So trauma released something for me that that set this in emotion.

• 11:53Fran Racioppi?

  And you went home and you asked your wife and your family to move to Northwest Arkansas from New York City. I'm gonna fly back there tonight and there's a stark difference between the two, but it wasn't easy to build this place.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  No, my wife is Australian and her dreams, a child to live in New York City. And she was a very successful PR executive when I met her and she didn't agree immediately. There might've been some psyopsing going on, there's some sort of maneuvers to get her to see the perspective. There's cities, there are trade offs for sure. And there's, there's things here that she would say it's a much better place to raise kids. We have two kids for us, five and seven, and they absolutely love it here. I mean, it's where can you take off in a helicopter from downtown Bentonville, fly out to the campus, drive ATVs and excavators and talk to veterans about purpose and, uh, you know, it's just, it's awesome. It's a really great place to live.

• 12:43Fran Racioppi?

  Talk about the process of building this place because we were here yesterday and we got to go around. We're gonna go on a quick tour after this and, and have you talk about some of the various locations that are being built. But we are, it is a bit remote, but everything that's out here is top notch, top notch design, construction. How do you actually fund bringing everything to here?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  It wasn't easy, but I really, that phrase you used a minute ago, if you build it, they will come. Um, it really truly plays in here. I believe that great visionary leaders are unencumbered by their own, I can't do it. And they remove all the roadblocks of where most people think linearly like, okay, I want to do this. So how am I going to do that? Oh, I can't do that because that's too hard. I can't, there's no way I could do that. I have the blessing and curse of being able to see where I want to go. And I don't look at anything other than, is it possible? So here's the vision, like I want to build this amazing place and I checked down on like, you know, is it possible? And what I don't do, what I do do is oversimplify it.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  And what I don't do is recognize how hard, even though it's possible, the steps in between are. That's what allows, I think, visionaries to say, simply, is it possible? And like, yep, okay, let's do it. And when you pair that with unrelenting determination and grit, like I'm not fucking quitting ever. Like I will not quit and failure is not possible if you don't quit. And I think that if you look at it like I'm going to pivot until I win, I'm going to find a way. Then you never quit and you never fail because you just unrelentingly. So you ask the question, how hard is it to build? We have nearly $20 million of infrastructure here. And the majority of that infrastructure was funded by my wife and I. But a good significant amount of it was funded by partnerships, brands like C4. You're drinking some of my partnership there.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  They incredible organization, big company, nearly a billion dollar business. Dr. Pepper owns a piece of it, but the founder owns the majority of it still. And he's highly involved in things that he is passionate and cares about. And because he's got the scale of influence, he can put his thumb on the scale and tip it. And he did that here. We have a significant partnership with them. We have a clinical research lab here.

• 14:50Fran Racioppi?

  Just left there.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Every university has clinical research work. We are doing it in the human performance space and we'll eventually bring it into the tactical space. You know, doing research work on performance and you know, tactical could be how to improve performance in these special operations community, relative cognitive performance or physical performance. Uh, it could also be PTSD work and looking at, you know, neuro cognitive function after impacts and brain blasts. And, and I think there's, we're scratching the surface on so many different things here because this place is a canvas. It can really do anything here. And it's why, and we're going to talk about partnerships in a little bit, but one of the reasons I wanted to partner with the Green Beret Foundation so much is because of the population of leaders that are within it. I think Green Berets are unique in community special

• 15:33Speaker 01

  operations for a bunch of different reasons, but they're the intellectuals, I think, of our special operations community. They're dynamic thinkers. And I want innovation and dynamic thinkers here because you get innovation out of dynamic thinkers. So we'll talk about that a bit more.

• 15:47Fran Racioppi?

  Well, I think when you talk about this relentless attitude, I call it the relentless pursuit. You know, we use the term relentless pursuit in the military, especially as it pertained to the global war on terror. And the common phrase that you always heard was that we were in a relentless pursuit of our adversaries all over the world, wherever they were, eventually we're going to get them. And I think when we look at leadership lessons that we take out of the military, that one's always stuck with me. And I think very much like you do that there's a solution. I tell my team in FR6, my day job outside of this is that we don't do everything, but we can do anything. Give us 48 hours, we'll come back to you with a solution. And it might be

• 16:31Fran Racioppi?

  way out there. But if we think like that, you can really build massive opportunities if you're creative and if you go and find experts, because the staff here, as you talked a lot about yesterday, is pretty impressive.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're world-class in any right. We have, and I think that that the place, like as I said last night, this place is so much bigger than I am, that inertia, the momentum that started to build here, those leaders aren't here because of me. They're here because of the way this place feels, the energy that it's producing and the outcomes that it's producing. I get to be the steward of it. And I'm absolutely like every day, just so appreciative that I am in the position I am. It's a heavy position at times, but I truly believe that this thing's so much bigger than one person, that it is for everyone. And everybody that comes here, when I say it's yours too, I truly mean it. I want everybody to feel that way.

• 17:25Fran Racioppi?

  Outside of the human performance piece and the vision that you have of building these programs in human performance and personal training and the health coach aspect, you're also looking at vocational schools and entrepreneurism because one of the goals of these programs is to get veterans out there to build business.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, back to the Green Bay Foundation specifically, you've got a collection, a large amount of transitioning leaders who have the ability and the relentless pursuit for success in their DNA. And anybody can be an entrepreneur, I truly believe that, if you have that inside of you. The reason businesses fail predominantly is people quit. It's not because there's not a solution, not a path. They just, maybe it's linear thinking, like, okay, well, I can't do that, so I can't do it. Well, what if you do it like this? Like, oh, yeah, all right. And, but I think a lot of people fail because they get to that point and they're just like, oh, I'm done. I can't do this. And I've seen awesome businesses succeed with shitty leaders, far less than I've seen awesome, the shitty ideas with great leaders succeed. And I think that's why partnering with, with organizations that

• 18:31Speaker 01

  have those type of leaders coming out is important. Because if you could give those leaders the resources from an education and capital perspective to go into their communities, they will start solving big challenges in our community and the blast radius, blast radius of this place will get much bigger. My personal huge goal right now is to catch up, one of my personal goals, is to give veterans the opportunity to get out and catch up with their peers as fast as possible they went to high school with. Is the reality is, if you're, let's say you served as a Green Bay for 10 years and you're getting out and you're starting your career. I don't care what the military tells you, you're starting backwards from everybody else. Now, you might have some extreme experience

• 19:14Speaker 01

  as a leader in, in military, you know, command and structure and whatever, and that, that is transferable, for sure. I fully believe that military veterans offer companies awesome leadership skills. But the reality is your network is small comparative to the other people that have been out for 10 years, were in the workforce. Your experience in those specific jobs is far less. And there's is going to be a steep learning curve in addition to the transition itself. And what I'm most excited about is building entrepreneurship school here where veterans who want to get, who are getting out of the military could identify like, hey, I want to study human performance. I want to open my own gym and I want to use that gym as a catalyst in my community to create health and wellness for veterans and everybody else.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  I want that person to be able to get out of the military, go through four, three or four modules of education and graduate our entrepreneurship school and then get a hundred thousand dollars of funding to open that business. So they have no debt and then they will pay back a royalty to the foundation. So that as we put more and more of those people out in the world, opening these facilities, the inertia that started here in this simple concept of transition will just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And now what you, what you've done is created a self endowing system that built by veterans that can solve veteran challenges. And I think if we can get this built in the next five years, we can actually see a reduction in the, the thing we all hear a lot about, which is veteran suicide, which is absolutely terrible. But the veteran suicide, in my opinion,

• 20:42Speaker 01

  is caused more by a loss of purpose and meaning and transition in identity of who you think you are when you get out of the military than it is from PTSD or brain injuries or any of the things that we, what we are treating as symptoms. I think the symptom is loss of the love of life and the purpose of your life.

• 21:02Fran Racioppi?

  Transitioning out of the military is about more than polishing a resume or attending a LinkedIn workshop. It's about rediscovering your purpose and forging a new path that's worthy of your service. At the University of Health and Performance, veterans are offered transformative GI Bill approved programming designed to help take them to the next level with confidence. Nestled in the heart of the Ozarks, their 800 acre, all-inclusive campus features world-class training facilities, modern living spaces and miles of trails for reflection and growth. Here, veterans find a structured immersive environment where they can explore their strengths, develop new skills and build a life that not only honors their past, but prepares the future.

• 21:43Fran Racioppi?

  There's a couple of areas here. When going to a little deeper, you talk about the gap when you get out.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Fran Racioppi?

  The gap's real. I mean, I went to, when I got out of the army, I went to NYU. I went to the executive MBA program there. And so by definition, who's in the, who's in the class? It's people who have been in the workforce for somewhere between 10 and 15, some, some, some people in 25 years.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:10Fran Racioppi?

  And you're coming together and you have an opportunity to learn from these folks who've been in the industry while you get your education. But unlike a traditional MBA program where you have younger folks who might be in it, all these people have experience. And what I continuously told myself was I had this set of experiences, which may or may not translate, as you said, but I lacked some very hard skills.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  That's unique that you've actually had the perspective and the consciousness to say that, though.

• 22:35Fran Racioppi?

  I knew.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Most don't.

• 22:36Fran Racioppi?

  I knew it. I knew it quickly that I didn't know anybody outside of the people in the military.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:42Fran Racioppi?

  I had no network. I had no experiences, you know, outside of the fact that when I graduated undergrad, I went to basic training and then spent a decade at war. And then now I'm in, after 13 years, I'm out in New York City.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:58Fran Racioppi?

  Trying to figure out who I am and what I want to be, realizing that these people who are sitting with me, although great people, are no smarter. They're no less experienced. They have different experiences.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:11Fran Racioppi?

  But they know how to operate.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 23:13Fran Racioppi?

  In the real world.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:15Fran Racioppi?

  And I don't.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:16Fran Racioppi?

  And what I constantly told myself, because I would look at it, we had investment bankers who were like throwing cash around and I'm like on the GI bill, like, uh, you know, can I pay rent this month? Yeah. And they're going to the club throwing down credit cards, right? And it's like, man, and I started realizing like, okay. Well, they have 15 years on me.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:35Fran Racioppi?

  That's it. They got, they got 15 years on me. So what's my goal? My goal was, can I get there in 10? If it took them 15 to get here, I had to accept that I don't get to be on parity after 13 years of army.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  That's.

• 23:51Fran Racioppi?

  But can I get there in 10?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  That's such incredible clarity and perspective.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  And it's uncommon. I wasn't in long enough to be indoctrinated the way that you were. Indoctrinated me like how you felt.

• 24:04Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  I never felt that way.

• 24:05Fran Racioppi?

  It is what.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  And when I started building this, you know, I was, I was in the, at the height of my rank in E4. Yeah. Like, you know.

• 24:12Fran Racioppi?

  So the second or the third.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  I did six years and I, at the height of my rank, I was at E4. I'll tell you something. I was the E4 mafia queen. And so I, I started building this. I was like, oh, I gotta get generals here. I gotta like get, because I was like, they're the smartest people in the world. And in certain areas, they are. But in the same way that you recognize that you weren't knowledgeable and had experience in the right areas, I think often most special operations guys and general officers that get to that whatever, two, three star level, whatever, and colonels, honestly, all of them, their egos are so wrapped up in their rank and what they accomplished within the military, they can't see that perspective.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  And by the way, most of them have MBAs. They got either an MBA while they were, while they were in service or they got it right after. And so now you've got a highly educated, I'll say large ego, not because it's a bad thing, but because, listen, you were successful in the service and, and it's something to be proud of. But if it becomes a defining factor of your civilian life, you're fucked. Because it's, it doesn't translate. Every single person I've ever met that translated out of a high impact military career into the civilian space has struggled unless they found deep purpose in the new mission quickly. And even then, your ego and the identity of who you were in the military is always on your shoulder and it's always like, no, you're fucking smarter than them.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  And the reality is you might be smarter intellectually, but the experience that you lack compared to them will make you lose every time.

• 25:45Fran Racioppi?

  Well, the other thing you talked about is this idea of the pity that people have for veterans.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:53Fran Racioppi?

  And this perspective that, well, they're veterans, so they're, they're obviously crazy and they're

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Broken or.

• 26:00Fran Racioppi?

  And broken and they can't do anything. And that was another thing that I consciously told myself too was. As I looked around that that classroom and I'm glad, I mean, doing that program was it did exactly what I needed it to do. And that was to jumpstart me into the civilian world and give me the exposure where I could look around and say, okay, well, this is my peer group.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:22Fran Racioppi?

  You know, in the world and I'm just as smart. I'm more physically fit despite, you know, a stroke in my eye and two back injuries, but there's nothing to feel bad about here.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:32Fran Racioppi?

  And there's no reason for me to have an issue and have any limitations to what I can and can't do. And I think that the sooner you tell that to yourself as a veteran, and even if it takes other people showing and telling you that, that's got to be done.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  100%. Yeah. I think that the the faster we get out of this pity narrative that we're in, because it's also now morphing your brain. Like you had, it sounded like you had some great mentors or you had some just incredible consciousness. Unfortunately, free thinkers, probably more likely in special operations community than than in the conventional force. But let's say free thinkers who are doing an assessment of themselves. If all the rhetoric out there is, and the 45,000 nonprofits in the veteran space are like, you're fucked, you're broken, you're, and it's not, they're all well intended. They're all raising money, I think, for mostly for well intended purposes, but they are causing so many problems. They're

• 27:30Speaker 01

  using broken veterans, which are a small percent of the population, as spokespeople for all the rest of us. And the reality is, most veterans are highly competent, highly skilled, great leaders who just want to do awesome, purposeful work. That's the truth. But this is, society would have you believe that they're all broken, have PTSD, have incredible combat trauma, and need our pity, and need our dollars, and oh my God, you're so messed up. And It makes sense psychologically. You look at how they might raise money for puppies that are in adoption puppies and kennels and they play a sad song and the puppy's shaking in the cage and people are like, oh, fuck, here's my money. I'll give it to you. And the same thing for veterans. Unfortunately, I think they're doing more damage than they're doing good because they're raising

• 28:15Speaker 01

  money. Our own people, mostly run by veterans, by the way, are going to companies like Jockey and they're putting missing-limbed veterans on their ads. And then they're basically saying, like, oh, give us, buy our products because there's a, we give money to missing-limbed veterans. And that makes kids like, I don't want to serve in the military. It makes our parents like, I don't want my kid to go to the army. It's a national security issue now. So you're doing two things. You're victimizing the entire veteran population and you're making kids not want to serve. And I think it's a huge problem. And so back to partnership strategy, we at UHP won't give money to any nonprofit in the veteran space that uses pity to raise money, ever.

• 28:56Fran Racioppi?

  When faced with a challenge, Green Berets adapt, overcome, and keep moving forward. Now's your chance to stand with them. Join the 1952 Society with a monthly gift of just $19.52 to provide critical medical devices for wounded, ill, and injured Green Berets. Your support fuels their recovery, helping them return to duty or continue serving their communities. A Green Beret's mission never stops. Neither should our support. Join the 1952 Society today and stand with those who stand for us.

• 29:28Fran Racioppi?

  One of the biggest, I think, challenges of transition is that there's, there's really no process. I remember coming into the Army, went out of college. I had an OCS contract, but you gotta go to basic training before you do that. And so when did that process started? In like, April of 2003. And then you go to the recruiter, you go through the process, you go through the delayed entry program. And that whole time, you're meeting with the recruiter. They're starting to shape your thought process. I went in October of '03. You go to basic training for nine weeks. You go to 14 weeks at OCS. And then you go, I think I had four months at the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Ranger School, Airborne School. But I was in the Army a year and a half, you know, two years into this process before I even got to my unit.

• 30:14Fran Racioppi?

  Where they trained my thought process, they really, as you said, indoctrinated me

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Program.

• 30:20Fran Racioppi?

  To a mindset.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:21Fran Racioppi?

  Programmed me, right? And then I went and got out. I came back from being General Linder's aide at SOC Africa, said, I think this is it. Move on and go do something else. And it was, okay, check in, you know, once a week, let us know you're okay. And I got four months to figure out what I was gonna do, watching this clock every day.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:41Fran Racioppi?

  What am I gonna do today? To figure out.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Fear and uncertainty building up.

• 30:45Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, cuz January 16th, that was it.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:48Fran Racioppi?

  I was signing out. And I went in to sign out and you kind of have your, say your goodbyes to your unit and get that done in about an hour and walk out again. I went to out processing and some fine lady who I'd never met before and will never see again, asked me for my ID card and handed me a piece of paper and shook my hand, walked me to the door and said, thank you for your service. And I walked to my car and I got in the car and I started driving away cuz I was like, okay, you know, whatever.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  The loneliest walk.

• 31:22Fran Racioppi?

  You know?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:23Fran Racioppi?

  And I got out the gate and I looked in the rearview mirror and I started crying.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:29Fran Racioppi?

  Because I spent 13 years of my life doing this thing and this thing was now over. But the years that I spent programming myself came down to a woman I never knew shaking my hand in an exchange that lasted about two minutes.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 31:51Fran Racioppi?

  Taking my ID card away, and you talked a few minutes ago about your identity, you know, lived in that ID card for so long. And as someone else took it.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  That's so eloquently put. And I think when you combine that with, you seem to have a pretty low ego about your service, which is great, but let's take somebody that has a high ego about their service. They're pulling out the gate and that's it? I gave you all this and I'm, I'm this, you know, they need to have that because it's who they are. And the combination of that person saying, hey, thanks, see ya. A lot of people leave and start to resent. And they're like, I gave it so much, why? I would argue a time that you realize I gave you just as much as you gave it. But I think resentment can often build and it's.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  You know, it's sad, but at the same time, the DOD's responsibility is to build a lethal fighting force. Period. End of story. And if you are no longer part of that fighting force, just like any company, you're leaving like, hey, thanks. Appreciate your time. They're not. I would argue that there's a duty, but where does the DOD's duty stop and the VA's start? And that's that gap that we, I think, as veterans who have all felt the gap, need to fill because I don't think that there's ever going to be. Maybe a deindoctrination program happens. Eisenhower talked about it at one point. Never got built. And I would argue that's what this place is. We are taking veterans from far and wide, bringing them

• 33:21Speaker 01

  here and slowing them down in a really rural, amazing piece of property with 300 bald eagles and trout in the river and time and space to think about who you are and what you want out of your life and to talk about what you went through. And so maybe the gate walk that you did doesn't have to be so long because you come here before that gate walk happens. And when you walk out it, you know where you're going and you also have better perspective on why you served and not just the, hey, thanks. And you're, you're going. So I think that getting left of the problem and getting into the transition offices and even skills bridge programs where you can come here first and build a strategy and we can give you awareness that's that gate walk's coming and you don't have to cry at the end of it.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Although crying is great. So you should do that. But sometimes you got no choice. That's gonna happen. It's the assimilation into the new world. Yeah. And that's the gap that has to be closed. Yeah. Providing that opportunity is what you're doing here. So what's next for the organization over the, I mean, because we had everybody here yesterday, Governor Huckabee was here. We got a chance to sit down with her. Super excited about that. Senator Bozeman was here as well, here from Arkansas. And everybody who came had the same thing to say. I was here last year and a lot of this was dirt, field. It's changed so much. Can't wait till next year. So what's now the focus? Cause we're going to be back in a couple of months when next Ridgeline comes in. So I need to know what I'm looking forward to. Well, we'll have, we'll have a skyscraper here by then. We'll saw a big ass water tank.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's that's the fire suppression system. So 2025, I'm putting it on the record now. My team's gonna hate me for it. But 2025, we're gonna launch Veterans Future Festival. And it is gonna be the largest Veterans Day event in the country, anywhere. As you mentioned, Governor Huckabee Sanders, amazing leader. Most people know her as Trump's press secretary, but anybody spends anybody time with her. Did you get to talk to her yesterday? We did. Yeah, she's amazing. She is, really think, a great leader with great perspective, loves veterans very much. She gave a really beautiful speech last night and is, as you heard, committed to this place because, not because of me, but because of the work that we're doing here. And next year, when we launch Veterans Future Festival, with the goal of becoming the biggest Veterans Day anywhere in the country,

• 35:30Speaker 01

  not just to have a big Veterans Day, but to have a big Veterans Day of influence and bringing leaders here to have the kind of conversation we're having about transition, about entrepreneurship, about fitness, and inviting brands to be a part of that, companies to be a part of that. We shoot a ton of content out here and we have a world-class media expert, who's also a Green Beret here, Luke Peelgrain, who architects these shoots and tries to help connect military content into commercial goods. And we've been doing this for partners of Walmart the last couple of years and it works really, really well. We want those brands to make that day here their kind of pinnacle day on campus together. So Veterans Future Festival will have seven to 10,000 Spartan racers racing on our obstacle courses. We're gonna replicate Nasty Nick Green Break Course obstacle course here this year

• 36:15Speaker 01

  in partnership with the Green Beret Foundation. And then we're gonna hold a race on Veterans Future Festival where we're gonna bring former operators, current operators, ultra athletes to compete and to try to create some sort of big competition. And then hopefully each year after replicating a different obstacle course across special operations, until we have them all, and then having one of the hardest races in the world, you know, maybe four or five years from now.

• 36:37Fran Racioppi?

  Small goal.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  That's one of the goals. There's a bunch of other stuff being built. As I said in the beginning, my personal mission now is to get the funding vehicle built so that veterans who want to become entrepreneurs could come here and start businesses with no debt. And it's, I believe that the pay it forward model where they come here, they get funded, they open a business, the business is successful, and they're paying royalties back into a new kind of ESO that's doing really important work that the veterans want done. Not lobby groups, not, I'm not going to talk about, about what I think is wrong with the veteran lobby space, but if our dollars as veterans are going into this and we're able to shape the policies we want, I know every one of the veterans I've interacted with would be shaping things very differently than they are now. So, you know,

• 37:23Speaker 01

  maybe a little bit like Trump's doing in the White House, we're gonna, we're gonna break them, break the system.

• 37:27Fran Racioppi?

  Well, I look forward to being a part of it.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, awesome, man.

• 37:29Fran Racioppi?

  Appreciate you having us here on this Veterans Day. Can't wait till next year. Look forward to being back here in a couple of months and kicking off the relationship with Green Beret Foundation and really making an impact.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I'm really excited to continue to invest and donate to you guys. I know we, we, I don't know if you've talked about it yet, but we are committing to a hundred thousand dollar grant now, and we're just gonna keep growing that and, and making sure that, that there is funding for Green Berets, pursue whatever they want to pursue when they get out because they're worth it.

• 37:54Fran Racioppi?

  We hire almost exclusively Green Berets in my company, NFR6, and we're gonna continue that trend.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 38:01Fran Racioppi?

  Can't wait.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 38:02Fran Racioppi?

  Thanks.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  You.

• 38:09Fran Racioppi?

  American Jed Burks went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jed Burke Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Rycho. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, extra threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel, and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of U.S. Army Special Forces and their families.

• 38:54Fran Racioppi?

  Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.