#202: Earned Never Given - 20th Sergeant Major Of The Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz

The title United States Marine is earned…never given. For over 250 years the Marine Corps has been front and center in the defense of America and our allies. But as technology and the battlefield have changed, the character and standard that define a Marine have never wavered. From the National Museum of the Marine Corp https://www.usmcmuseum.com/s in Quantico, VA, Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/?skipRedirect=true sat down with Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos A. Ruiz https://www.marines.mil/CM/Biographies/Bio-Display/Article/3489219/sergeant-major-carlos-a-ruiz/, the 20th senior enlisted leader of the United States Marine Corps https://www.marines.mil/, to discuss what it takes to serve in one of the world's most respected fighting forces. Drawing on decades of service, SMMC Ruiz explains why the Marine Corps' greatest weapon system has never been its aircraft, landing craft or tanks, but the individual Marine. We explore how the Corps develops leaders by instilling discipline, accountability, resilience, and a deep understanding of the history and traditions that connect today's Marines to generations who came before them. Our conversation also examines how the Marine Corps is preparing for today’s battlefield from large-scale combat operations and force modernization to their role in littoral defense. The SMMC also shares his top priorities; improving quality of life for every Marine, investing in the physical and mental readiness of the Corps and preparing Marines for civilian life when the uniform comes off. From strengthening partnerships with industry, to building programs to train Marines in the trades, SMMC Ruiz remains as dedicated to the Marines whose service is ending as those who are getting off the bus. America has changed a lot in 250 years, but the unabashed mission of the United States Marine Corps to fight and win our nation’s wars has not. A special thanks to the National Museum of the Marine Corps for hosting our conversation and reminding every American that for Marines “Uncommon Valor Is A Common Virtue.” HIGHLIGHTS 0:00 Introduction2:18 Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast2:54 What It Means To Be A US Marine7:04 Marine Corps Standard10:04 Combat Readiness15:41 Shifting from GWOT20:00 Marine Corps Culture26:24 Replacing the ASVAB30:11 Recruiting Marines34:38 Retaining Marines38:02 Transitioning Marines1:00:44 Barracks 20301:05:53 Daily Habits QUOTES “What makes the Marines great is your brother or sister next to you will pick you up and you’ll keep moving forward.”“The promise is that we will make you better.”“You’ll get an 80% solution that you can pivot anywhere.”“What are we going to put in the Marines’ hands?”“They’re not pieces of furniture.”“Why not invest in the human in the beginning?”“The Marine Corps will decide.”“What kind of Marine are you building that is going to be talented and capable enough to arrive at the same moment that the technology is coming?”“You can’t sell the Marine Corps. It’s too big.”“Reinlisting Marines two years at a time is how we’re gaining retention.”“We can help transition Marines better.”“We’re good enough to keep what we want. We should be good enough to take care of the other ones as well.”“That’s how you grow. Doing hard things.”“We’re done trying to defend why the conditions are the way they are.”“You can’t have beautiful, fancy, state-of-the-art gear and a crappy place to sleep.”“If you can attempt to every day get to know somebody a little better, you can only move your platoon standard to higher levels because people trust you.” The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by OneBrief https://www.onebrief.com/; enabling military leaders to make innovative, informed and deliberate decisions faster than ever before. Superhuman command wins wars. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ 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.

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

• 0:01Fran Racioppi?

  The title "United States Marine" is earned, never given. For over 250 years, the Marine Corps has been front and center in the defense of America and our allies. But as technology in the battlefield have changed, the character and standard that define the Marine have never wavered. From the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia, I sat down with Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz, the 20th Senior Enlisted Leader of the United States Marine Corps, to discuss what it takes to serve in one of the world's most respected fighting forces. Drawing on decades of service, he explains why the Marine Corps' greatest weapon system has never been its aircraft, landing craft, or tanks, but the individual Marine.

• 0:42Fran Racioppi?

  We explore how the Corps develops leaders by instilling discipline, accountability, resilience, and a deep understanding of the history and traditions that connect today's Marines to the generations who came before them. Our conversation also examines how the Marine Corps is preparing for today's battlefield, from large-scale combat operations and force modernization to their role in littoral defense. The SMMC also shares its top priorities: improving quality of life for every Marine, investing in the physical and mental readiness of the Corps, and preparing Marines for civilian life when the uniform comes off. He's strengthening partnerships with industry, building programs to train Marines in the trades, and remains as dedicated to the Marines whose service is ended as those who are just

• 1:27Fran Racioppi?

  getting off the bus. America's changed a lot in 250 years, but the unabashed mission of the United States Marine Corps, to fight and win our nation's wars, has not. A special thanks to the National Museum of the Marine Corps for hosting our conversation and reminding every American that for Marines, uncommon valor is a common virtue. The Jedberg Podcast is brought to you by Wondr, enabling military leaders to make innovative, informed, and deliberate decisions faster than ever before. Superhuman Command wins wars. Follow the Jedberg Podcast and the Green Bay Foundation on social media, listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version

• 2:09Fran Racioppi?

  on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

• 2:17Fran Racioppi?

  Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Ruiz, thank you so much. For joining the Deadberg Podcast.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Hey, you're in our house.

• 2:24Fran Racioppi?

  I am, I am. I was a little nervous walking in. There's a couple of Marines sitting at the door, but the National Museum of the Marine Corps, we're here in Quantico outside of Washington DC. What a setting and what a place.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is an incredible place. You probably can't see it, but maybe in your walkthroughs, you you'll be able to record it, but reenlistments, promotions, retirements happen right here. As and we allow the Marines to come in this uniform as well. So it's lunch break or whatever it is that they want to come over and walk from across the base. They can't do that in utilities.

• 2:57Fran Racioppi?

  There were a few standing at the door when it opened.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:00Fran Racioppi?

  Uh, and it's, and it's what? It's a Tuesday morning.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:03Fran Racioppi?

  Uh, in June, you know, and they're over here. Um, there's so much history in this place and the exhibits, everything here is top notch. Uh, and when you walk in, you think we're going to talk a lot about it. But, you know, you think about what does it mean to be a Marine?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:19Fran Racioppi?

  And I get actually excited about what it means to be a Marine, even though my Army background, you know, would may, others may think differently, but there's such a culture behind the Marines. And when you think about land, sea, air, you know, and all the mechanisms that the Marines have to take the fight to the enemy and the history behind what they've done over the 250 years of this country as we approach the anniversary, I gotta ask you, because you're the one setting the tone for the entire Marine Corps. What does it mean to be a United States Marine?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just to rewind, you know, it doesn't start here. What I mean by that is just because you landed in Quantico or you come on a TED trip here, you get to visit the museum, you start learning your history. For us, when they set foot on the yellow footprints, you know, what some of the very first classes that they're getting shoved down their throat in their soul are history classes, you know, to the point, I'm going to think to myself that I remember the history instructors would come in in the period dressed costume, uniform, whatever it was of that period that they're teaching. So you got seventeen and eighteen year olds, for the most part, inside of recruit training, seeing this, you know, sergeant or staff sergeant coming dressed in the period and talking about

• 4:42Speaker 01

  the Battle of Bellewood, or you name it, and they are in it, and they are submerged in all things history and names who have gone before us, and it makes it so that everything that you do, from the moment that you step foot, you have a reputation, right? You have to earn your place. The commandant, you know, never given, you have to earn it, you have to earn your title Marine, you have to earn to fight for your country, like, that's crazy, right? You have to earn your way into this Marine Corps to fight for your country, and that's pretty awesome, right? And then you get here, and then you see, um, you know, the building is beautiful and the

• 5:21Speaker 01

  things inside of it are beautiful, but the dozens, right, those figures, those probably retired colonels or master gunnery sergeant, sergeant's majors, who are still in it, right? And all they want to do is just answer the questions that the young high school kid may have, but for me, more importantly, we have the professional military education headquarters here. So the sergeant's course, the staff and senior leadership school, like, these courses, they bring the Marines here, and yeah, they get to walk around it, get to hear the different things, but they get to listen to these gentlemen who have gone before them and did it, right? And so for me, it's, uh, being a Marine means embodying all of that.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  It creates this thing inside your soul that makes you want to get better every day, so you never, ever let down those who came before you. You'll slip, you'll fall, you'll fall on your face, but it's, what makes the Marines great is that your brother or sister next to you will pick you up and you'll keep moving forward, right? So it's, uh, it's thirty-two years of being a Marine, and, uh, it's flown by, and I wouldn't want to have done it any other way.

• 6:33Fran Racioppi?

  You know, the word standards comes to my mind as you you talk through that. And there's been a lot of, there's always conversation about standards. I won't even say in the last couple of years, we've always talked about standards. You know, whether you go back thirty two years, I could go back to, you know, two thousand and three, when I went into the army and everyone's always talking about standards. And, you know, at every level of command, whether that be at the platoon level, the company level, battalion and so on, all the way up to, you know, the entire component, right? You're, you, you always have in the back of your mind the standard. When you look at incoming Marines today, those aspiring to earn the title Marine, what is that standard that you look for?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, the Marine Corps is a unique place in that, um, it attracts certain kinds of individuals into the service, right? We are very upfront with you. We are very transparent. There's nothing blocking social media. There's no hidden agenda. We will show you what a Marine Corps drill instructor will generate inside of you and what the standards will be. And that life will be hard. Like you would literally turn over your cell phone, right? And your whole life for this, maybe this generation, right?

• 7:47Fran Racioppi?

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• 8:18Speaker 01

  Turn over your, your baby, right? Like you are turning it over and you're not going to see that thing until it's over. And, and you are watching this young people commit. You're watching this people, they understand the, what's going to happen in the next three months. Still, they give in, right? And they give it, all of it. They give every bit of their being. To us with a promise that we will make you better. Right? If you give over your soul to us, the contract is that we will make you better. And so the generation of today who's coming into a Marine Corps that has very high standards and is unapologetic about it.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  I think that's why we've never missed, well, not never, but it's been decades since we've missed our recruiting mission. And or our retention mission, because it's a way of life. It's a live in your days, insurance that you are doing enough to elevate each other. So you never have to fail, right? And when you do fail, again, you pick each other up and you move forward. I love it. It's pressure, right? But pressure creates certain things, right? Beautiful things. And so it's a, an interesting and awesome organization. That is built by humans for humans to do very hard things.

• 9:38Fran Racioppi?

  When you look at the mission of the Marine Corps, and we have, we, we mentioned this land, sea, air. There's a lot that goes into being proficient at each one of those tasks. You know, it's, none of those are simple. I mean, we have entire service branches that focus on only one. The Air Force.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  I love the Air Force.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 10:04Fran Racioppi?

  But so do I. We could, we could have do it without them. They're, they're, these last couple of months have really, really shown what the power of the US Air Force can bring to it, to it, to the, to the combat formation. But it's very difficult to look across the formation and think, okay, how are we going to be the world's best in land, sea and air functionality? So from your perspective, when you start looking at readiness levels and training priorities, how do you balance between being combat ready in land, sea and air? But also in multiple areas of operation?

• 10:46Fran Racioppi?

  Because the Marines are not like we were in as Green Berets where, you know, I was in 10th Corps, we focused on Europe. And everyone's want to went to the Middle East. You know, you, you have to be prepared as a Marine to go anywhere in the world.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, proof is very recently, the thirty first Marine Expeditionary Unit, you know, in the Indo-Pacific, uh, the Marines who are in that formation, thinking that they were gonna do all things Indo-Pacific things, training exercises, uh, end up into Central, you know, CENTCOM. And so, uh, very quickly had the world change, but you know, it is, uh, how we were built. We're small enough, right, and the training pipeline is, uh, flexible enough to create a certain kind of Marine that is, I'm gonna use the phrase, but, uh, really in the basics, right?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  And so, it is, it is sometimes, uh, difficult for us not to create a type of Marine that we want everything. An example would be, uh, a drill instructor who, before they go and step into recruit training and train recruits, we want them to be martial arts instructors, so belt them all the way to black belts. We want them to be swim instructors, so get them all the way to the top tier of swim qualifications, uh, and on and on and on, and then they can go see and train recruits, right? But what we found is when we try to over-specialize and create this perfect version of likely takes fifteen years to make, it's like, no, just, you know, what is good enough? What is the standard? What are we looking to create?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  How can we get the Marine to be flexible, adaptable? Do that, do it quickly, do it with quality, do it with proper training and equipment, proper instruction, and then what you'll get as a result is an eighty percent solution that you can pivot anywhere, right? And I've seen, I think you've seen it again and again throughout the world, that you can be, you know, from the cold to the desert to, it doesn't matter for us, cuz that's the, that's the mentality of the Marine Corps. Mortar T operator, supply guy, um, it won't matter. You have to perform, uh, the basics of a basic rifleman in order to belong. And if you can't, right, then...

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Someone may say, well, your skill set as a cyber operator will will overcome all the other deficiencies. Well, you know, tomorrow that cyber operator is going to be injected into a Marsoc team who now needs to get deployed and move on to this other thing. You better have been training and you better have been having all the other things that make a Marine lethal, right? So it is it is our belief that a basically trained Marine is is better than a a sme on a specific thing. I don't think we're going to change that anytime soon. We did get squirrely for a little bit when we brought in a reserve Marine and when he graduated recruit training, we promoted him to gunnerie sergeant.

• 13:46Fran Racioppi?

  Uh huh.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Right? So to the Marine Corps, that's like, not a thing, right?

• 13:51Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  What are you talking about? Like, he should be a private or a private first class. Well, this gentleman brought in this incredible expertise from the civilian sector after having served in the Air Force for a contract, created this incredible career, subject matter expert in this one thing that we wanted and that he was looking to return to service and give more to the service. He chose the Marine Corps, but we're not just going to put a uniform on you.

• 14:17Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  You gotta earn it, right? So he had to go to boot camp, even though he had been to Air Force.

• 14:22Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Right? Got to go to boot camp.

• 14:24Fran Racioppi?

  There's a difference between those two boot camps, I think.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  And so he did, he's a gunnerie sergeant, you know, and then of course, we got a lot of like, what are we doing, right? Everyone relaxed. It was just, we've done it before, we'll likely do it again, but it is handfuls of this special folks that can speed the development of our expertise by 15 years by putting them in our formation, right? So cut off his beautiful blonde hair, he's probably losing money by serving with us, but it is this kind of humans that exist in our formations that just want to serve. It's pretty awesome.

• 15:02Fran Racioppi?

  When you walk around this museum and there's pictures behind us on the wall here, you know, there's a lot in the, on the floor here. The Marines historically have had this littoral focus. You know, how do we come out? And you mentioned the Mew, you know, how do we take a couple of thousand Marines? You know, we load them up on, on a number of different ships. And, you know, we put them off the coast of somewhere and kind of, we have that stick that says, you know, hey, look, if you want to keep messing around over here, we're going to put these guys on a bunch of amphibious assault vehicles and we're going to launch them on your beach. A lot of that changed in the global war on terror. And we saw, just like the army, you know, we saw ground operations, we saw inland operations,

• 15:46Fran Racioppi?

  we saw the, you know, I'm here for six months, nine months, 12 months. I've done, you know, five deployments in eight or 10 years. But the mission for all of us, not just the Marines, kind of skewed a bit. And as we've come out of the global war on terror, we now are in this world of this Lisko, large scale combat operations. We're seeing that a bit with the, with Iran. How are you in the Marine Corps transitioning the mindset out? Cause your senior leaders now are all global war on terror guys. You know, we know counterterrorism, you know, we, we kick indoors and, you know, we raid houses and then we go back to our, our chew and eat, you know, eat KBR and go to the gym for two hours.

• 16:30Fran Racioppi?

  Well, that's not what littoral combat operations and large scale combat operations look like. So how are you getting the force refocused on that very critical component of what we need Marines to do is as the global war on terror is in the rearview mirror?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, um, it's significant in that, like you remember, you know, we were given our own op box, you know, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Marines own this and stay out of it. And Marines will take care of business here. Meanwhile, we, you know, as the commandant says, we neglected our, our Navy brothers and we stopped putting Marines in the same numbers that we used to on ships. And so when Marines were not on ships during that time of year after year, deployment after deployment into the sandbox, uh, you know,

• 17:21Speaker 01

  As the Navy is looking at its resources, well, maybe I don't need, you know, this many amphibes. Maybe I don't need, you know, these kind of platforms because the Marines are no longer on them because they're on the ground. And now, as things have shifted, you hear the Commandant, you hear every general officer, you hear every Marine from private on up, that it is the Ark Mew, right? The golden goose of the Marine Corps, that this is how we project power and this is a purpose-built formations. We can do anything inside of that Mew. And it is vital to us and to the nation, as you have seen in the last few months, when you have a Mew in Southcom AOR, it gives that combat commander lots of options, right?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  So with the legislative side of things, the Commandant has become the requirement officer, to lack of better words. Like, he tells Congress what the number of ships, the floor is going to be, that the Marine Corps needs to get after all things, right? And then he works hand in hand with the CNO to try to figure out what that number of amphibes is going to be, right? And so, how do we, how does the CNO and the Commandant, with two different budgets, with the Secretary of the Navy ensuring that, you know, stop poking each other, like, work.

• 18:42Fran Racioppi?

  The referee.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, the referee amongst... But what I've found in the last three years, that the Secretary of the Navy gets it. And, you know, we have Mr. Cow now, the Honorable Mr. Cow now, who is just, you know, moving 100 miles an hour, as he should. He understands the environment and is ensuring that the Marine Corps has what it needs with the help of Congress to help us fund the next phase of amphibes. We understand the environment. We're making a Marine Corps that can compete and win in large scale. And if we can build that, then all these other things, we can, I don't want to say lower, but we can maneuver in that other space with the flexibility that's needed from the skill sets that we've given those

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Marines. The way that we build them before they deploy, they are being built, as you remember, right? They're being built, they move, and someone's coming back. And Marines are leaving, new Marines are coming in, and then here we are, we're building them again. But it is that Mew that makes the Marine Corps very, very unique and wanted across the globe.

• 19:49Fran Racioppi?

  We could explore in depth the technology requirements that are needed to field a combat-ready Marine Corps.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:58Fran Racioppi?

  But before I ask you about that, no technology matters more than the person.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 20:04Fran Racioppi?

  The Marine, in your case, and Special Forces and Special, you know, SOCOM has soft truth, number one.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:10Fran Racioppi?

  Humans are more important than hardware. We can throw everything at the person if the person's trash.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:16Fran Racioppi?

  There's nothing we can do, right? But great people even take subpar equipment and make it great. So you've had a focus of really driving the culture of the Marine Corps to put the Marine at the center and say that the Marine is the most critical and important weapon system in the Marine Corps. Why is that so important to you?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Because they're not pieces of furniture. So, um, you know, for millennia, uh, an officer was standing in front of a formation and say, we're going that way. And a lot of bad things are going to happen to a lot of you. And we're going to win, but this is why we're doing it. And no one would ever question you. No one would ever, you had the information, right? And now we're at a time where you don't have all the information. There's a Lance Corporal in that formation that is eye-watering good and talented and probably knows more about the subject than you or has more influence than you. So you must be so good as an officer today.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  You must be so good as a staff non-commissioned officer today to lead this generation of Marines. Because when the AI model says, you know, 4% chance of mission success here, you better have built a force that says that's pretty good, right? You better have built that human to say, 4%, that's really good. Where if we depend on that, well, we're not going to do anything until we at least get to 30% chance of survivability. That's not us. That's not what we do. And so for me is, if I'm getting 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds from the streets of America.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  And if the American family or Department of Education or whatever it is, it's not delivering the kind of quality of person that we want in this service. But their desire is to be a better human being and be part of this group. Then we will build you here, right? So if that means that you've been locked up in the last four years playing video games and that's your skill set and you haven't ran a mile in four years in all your high school career, you never ran a mile because that's just not a thing anymore. You're not an athlete, then we gotta build you here. And so before I start throwing things at you with gear and making you do difficult things and then breaking you, this costs me more.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Once you're medically retired and you got a VA disability of 40% or more, a combatant's paying that bill for the rest of that young person's life. So why not invest in the human from the beginning with the right individual combat equipment? Teaching them about their body, teaching them how to baseline in them like a division one athlete. The food must be adjusted, the way that they sleep, where they sleep, how they're being, the strength and conditioning coaches, what are they teaching? What are we providing for the families so they ensure that the Marine is focused? So when they step into the field from the barracks onto the field, that they are ready to go and they're not worried about where's my, I gotta pick out my kid

• 23:22Speaker 01

  or all the other things that are distracting to a human being. So for me is, and this is, I think, what's different, is that the Marine Corps will decide in the same way that it decided what it wants for the F-35 program. So think of, this is an institution, this is a program of record that we know exactly how many F-35 Charlies will be delivered by this year. And then Board of Governors, the executives sit at the table, you know, every few months and then they check on it and they make sure that the software is good, the weapon systems are good, they're on time, on and on, the pilots. I want that same program for the human.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  So I want the Marine of 2040, I want to decide what that Marine used to look like, what they must be able to do, how fast, how strong, how resilient, on and on and on. What do we want to build? And then all the Marine Corps resources that we get from Congress, taxpayer money, align everything to get me that, right? Because if I can do that, that I'm not spinning my wheels in silos, right? Getting after one thing here, one thing there. I have high suicides, I have high whatever, then let's drop 300 million on this. That's not gonna drop down anything. It's how we receive the Marine and then how we develop them is all those other things

• 24:46Speaker 01

  like in your world, your previous world, helps us develop a young person into a man, into a woman that is more mature, more confident, and can handle the stress of a relationship breakup or a finance thing, right? Because we've given him the tools along the way. Instead of, okay, how many do I got? Forty-four in a platoon, whatever it is? Okay, we're going that way and don't care about anything that's happening here. They're human beings and you better build them right. You better build them right. I don't know if you saw that half marathon or marathon in China, but on the side, they had a, they had the robots running the half marathon?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  I think it was a half marathon, but it was robots running alongside humans, right? And some were, were made to run really, really fast and some were like little ones and like silly ones, right? So I see that and I'm like, huh. So imagine, you know, 10,000 of these with weapon systems on them, right? Now what? So what kind of Marine are you building that is gonna be talented and capable enough to arrive at the same moment that the technology is coming, right? So that also means, I know it's getting long, but how we recruit them. How we recruit them is gonna change in the Marine Corps. The ASVAT test that the person takes today, right?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Should not be the only measure that is taken to figure out if a Marine or a service member will succeed or not, right? Well, you have learned what you know now, doesn't mean that you're not gonna continue to grow.

• 26:28Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  And so for us is we want to know about personalities. What personalities are in the Marine Corps that are successful? What kind of personalities are coming in? And can we actually screen for that to get us a better version at the yellow footprints? And then therefore the momentum continues and we build them when we build them. Right? So I am passionate about the human. Make no apologies about it. I better be competing with the F-35.

• 26:55Fran Racioppi?

  So what replaces an ASVAB? I mean, and that's not actually, you're saying it, I'm thinking about it now. I mean, if you look at college acceptance.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:04Fran Racioppi?

  I mean, a lot of schools now are what they're calling test blind, no SAT. Uh, or, you know, test, um, optional. So students who are applying to college can decide to submit their scores or not. And you're right, yeah, we're still reliant as a military institution to rely on a standardization, standardized test, which a lot of people don't do well on.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think what's coming will be your ability to learn, right? Can we test out? Yes, the ASVAB is tested, but also this other version of an ASVAB can tell us that you have the ability to quickly learn more. That exists today in other places. So maybe you are English second language or whatever it is. And it's, you just need a little time to get after the language, but the, the, the ability for you to learn exists. So therefore maybe we should invest in you, right? You know, I, I like to make like this little like, you know, filter. You gotta be careful with filters, right?

• 28:06Speaker 01

  And that if you filter too much, then it puts away or puts a block on, on someone who's had a, maybe a harder life than most. But if they were to enter this environment are likely to rocket, but the filter kind of filtered them out.

• 28:21Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Right? So we're being super careful with that. And the zero defect mentality should not take hold in, in the Marine Corps. That you will make mistakes. You are young. You will do silly things. But we want to ensure that that there's a version of a human because we know your placement in your high school. We know what sports you played. We know that you came from a one-parent household or two parents, or you're homeless, or you came from drugs, or you came from a perfect world in a perfect neighborhood. You're in the state from Minnesota and all this data can help me create a path for you, even to the point where I can say you will

• 29:04Speaker 01

  be more successful going to recruit training in the month of November, right? Because of all of these things of how you've been raised as a as a young person, I can get you to boot camp in November and you are more likely to succeed by starting a path here, right? So it's exciting. It is the future as the demographics of, you know, the pool keeps shrinking and shrinking. I think it's, I read a study the other day that I think it's thirty-one, twenty thirty-one where deaths will be more than births. In this country, the population is, it's to be shrinking with eligible population to enlist. So we better get, if our service

• 29:46Speaker 01

  is to be and continue to be who we are, we better get the quality, the type of quality that we want because we will not lower the standard. We will just continue to elevate the standard. And we think that that will continue to bring out the folks that want to belong in this club.

• 30:00Fran Racioppi?

  You.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Crazy, huh?

• 30:02Fran Racioppi?

  It it is, and it also makes a lot of sense.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:07Fran Racioppi?

  And I think you're also in a competition.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:10Fran Racioppi?

  When we talk about recruiting, right? You're, as you've said, right, there's a, there's a limited pool of folks who are, number one, have the desire to serve and whether it be the Marines or anywhere in the military. So number one, you gotta have the desire. So of the, you know, population, eligible age-wise population, then you have to have the competency in in the evaluations. But you're also competing against those who are going into the Marine Corps recruiting office and walking next door and going into the Army and the Air Force. And so when you look at Your message to recruiters, what are you guiding and mentoring those young recruiters?

• 30:52Fran Racioppi?

  Cause you spent a good amount of time of your career, you leading recruiting command. What are you telling them and how are you advising them when you're sitting in front of a potential Marine who has to make a choice and want to go to the army, want to do some, how are you advising them to get somebody to come and be a Marine versus go somewhere else?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  I think most will agree, but we give our recruiters, first of all, we, we allow for them to volunteer, right? So you can volunteer and come to be a recruiter before the Marine Corps picks you, right?

• 31:31Fran Racioppi?

  Be voluntold at some point.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  But if you volunteer, then maybe you can say, I'm volunteering, but I want to be in Texas. I want to be in, in this place, right? Where I feel comfortable, I know the area. So we established this recruiter, recruit the recruiter program that has been incredible because we are sending folks where they not alone and afraid, but to places where they're comfortable in and they can operate and get off the ground a lot faster. The school is pretty dynamic and it is, it gets you out of your comfort zone. So we are not demarining you, we're not making you into a civilian as a recruiter, but we are showing them that you must be able to communicate generationally, you know, to

• 32:17Speaker 01

  this, this folks that are coming in. And in order to do that, you can't sell the Marine Corps. It's too big. They don't understand Chesty Puller or the, all of the legends of the Corps is just, it's just black and white photos to them, right? But what you can do is tell your story and the dreams and aspirations that you had, or what the Corps was going to change about you and what you were going to give to the Marine Corps, this contract that we had, that is still there for the taking. And you have gone from this person as a high school kid that was too skinny or too fat or whatever, you were too shy and the Marine Corps. And the people around it have gotten you to a point now where you can give speeches in

• 32:59Speaker 01

  front of students and like you have grown so much. Talk about that. Talk about how you have grown as a person that has changed the trajectory of your family and that you will ever never go back to where you if it's a bad place, you will never go back there because now you're moving this way. Your personal story, the standards of the Marine Corps will speak for themselves and it's that young person that will in will give their trust to that recruiter. I did both. I was a recruiter and I was a drill instructor. And although I always wanted to be a drill instructor, I don't remember my recruits. It's just faces that pass by through time and they're just blurred, right? They remember me, but I don't

• 33:39Speaker 01

  remember them, right? But as a recruiter, you get to invest in that human being and your prep time with him says a lot about you as a sergeant and the staff sergeant. So our advice to them, our mandate to them is that you can't send this young person to boot camp until you you say that they're ready, right? So they may join and do zero pull-ups and do unable to plank, unable to run the mile and a half. Don't send them, right? It is your responsibility to ensure that they are prepped and they are they can they are ready with the basics to endure the rigors of boot camp, right? And so it

• 34:18Speaker 01

  is tell your story first and foremost, and that will will attract the young person. Walk the walk, be the example Marine, right? And then three is prep the young kid, the young person for the rigors of recruit training and that that takes care of itself and it's this cycle that makes them the Marine Corps good because that recruiter is going to see that Marine.

• 34:41Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  They're gonna see him. So you might as well have spent time with him. And right now, we're very lucky and grateful to the recruiters because we have in a lot of places four to five month wait times to go to recruit training, like

• 34:54Fran Racioppi?

  Wow.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Like you you have to wait.

• 34:56Fran Racioppi?

  How are you keeping people in the Marine Corps?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:00Fran Racioppi?

  Cause there's a lot of options. I mean, you said it, right? You can go on your cell phone now. You can find a million opportunities. And how are you keeping people in the Marine Corps?

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, a couple of years ago, I want to say three years ago, a general officer thought that, hey, why are we waiting until a certain timeline? Before we start pinging the Marine to reenlist. Sometimes the Marine strikes gold in getting the MUE, you know, in the first two years of their career. And they're hooked, right? Like they're all in. And so why do we have to wait? Right? If they're interested now, let's hit them, right? And put in quickly. So we have a combatance retention campaign. And then we have another program where we are Reinlisting Marines two years at a time. Right? So two fiscal years at a time is the way that we are good at getting after retention.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  So we are finding ourselves, you know, for the next fiscal year, already, you know, 40% complete with that mission. Because Marines are doing Marine things. They're in Southern Command, they're in Central Command, they're in the Indo-Pacific, they're in MUEs. And these are the high times of our retention. When they're the busiest, it is retention to the roof. And then it becomes a waiting list. And then they fight it out of what allocations we can allow those Marines to fight for.

• 36:27Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Because there's 50 left, right? And I got 200 in the queue. So now we have boards and we have to have a board to select those 50. Alright, so we're trying to figure out, how do we get the other ones to say, well, you can't be in O3 anymore, or you can't be this anymore. But we have lateral move opportunities and we will pay to retrain you. If you want to stay a Marine, then you can go this way, right? So we don't have to lose them. Cause once you got them, like the Commandant says, you gotta do everything in your power to keep them. Because otherwise, you gotta make a whole new one. And that recruiter's gonna go find a whole new one. So our retention has been really, really, really strong for several, several years. I worry about the other half, right?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  So if 25,000 come in every year and I only keep 10 every year, then what are we doing for the other 15,000? And that's what I worry about.

• 37:20Fran Racioppi?

  Who are getting out?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:22Fran Racioppi?

  So let's, let's talk about that because one of the initiatives that you have that and that you've been passionate about is how do we return a Marine back to civilian life? And that's something that we've talked about a lot about on the, on the show with your peers and other senior leaders because I truly do believe that the military has an obligation to get you back to civilian life. Now, DOD, and we've talked about this with Secretary Doug Collins from the VA, you know, is where does the Department of War end? You know, and, and where does their mission really end with a service member and where does the VA pick it up? And what does that handoff look like? And who ultimately is responsible?

• 38:07Fran Racioppi?

  Because, you know, does the Department of War responsibility really end the day that they're handed their DD 214? They turn in their ID card and they walk out? Maybe, maybe not, right? And, you know, and, and when is the VA getting involved? You know, it's probably much earlier than when that person's driving off base for the last time going, what do I do with the rest of my life? So from your perspective, what are you doing for transitioning Marines? And it will quantify that with once a Marine, always a Marine.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:40Fran Racioppi?

  So transitioning Marines who are going out and they've got to enter that next chapter of their life.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm super passionate about this. I'm passionate because we can do better. And what I mean by that is you're going to hear about this because it's, it's under the umbrella of the Patriot pipeline that the SecWar has, has come up with. But the Marine Corps will be the pilot for that Patriot Pipeline. It's called Project Mission Next. And this is Marine Corps unique. And what I mean by that is, is that a staff and CO, a senior officer today, has the ability to go to a skill bridge program. Go to the command and say, hey, 22 years in, 18 years in, skill bridge, please, 30, 90, whatever, how many days? And they disappear from the formations.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  And you've earned that and we've given, you know, we want to give that back to you, your time to go get yourself ready and your family ready. But I worry about the 22-year-old, about the 23-year-old, right? Who won't get a chance to go to skill bridge because they're needed in the Mew, right? So I challenge industry everywhere I go, first responders everywhere I go, that you need to bring, you need to bring your hiring practices to the 21st century, right? That the Marine on their last year of their contract is available to you, but you have to create the gates using 21st century technology to interview, to do the forms, to do the back to the... And then I go to Congress and I say, I should have reciprocity with the clearances of the Marines

• 40:12Speaker 01

  and some of the training that the Marines do. So they're not waiting 18 months for another type of clearance or the same clearance, different process, another school that the Marine already did, right? So help me, Congress, get this into the NDAA to give reciprocity for some of the already received training and clearances that a Marine has today. So the time is shortened from their EAS to the school date, right? Or to whatever. So Defense Industrial Base, you're building schools to learn how to, to teach young people how to create ships and subs and all these things. Defense Industrial Base, you gotta leave, you gotta leave your building. And you gotta travel to where the Marines are and the service members are and talk about

• 40:56Speaker 01

  it, right? You gotta bring your veterans who are in the industry today, making part of your recruiting effort, and bring them to the transitional readiness seminars of the Marines and the Army and everyone else, and talk about how you were a Marine, a corporal Marine, in 2018, and from there you became this, and now you're working here, and these are the benefits, and this is a very similar culture than the Marine Corps, and we think that you will fit well, right? If you're in industry, you need to know what kind of veterans are inside, what MOSs are inside your industry. So maybe you can come to me and say, "Star Major, can we go to the schoolhouse of the welders and the fabricators, and then talk to them about this,

• 41:38Speaker 01

  that this is waiting for them in their future, right? Can we do that?" So you need to know who's inside your formations as a civilian industry, defense industry, and then come out of your, my recommendation, come out of your holes and come recruit. I will give you access to the Marine, but if the Marine is in the Mew and they're on ship, and for, you know, for a little bit of two days while the ship refits, they get the Wi-Fi turned on, then that's your chance to teams, whatever it is, and do an interview, and do whatever it is that you need to do to move your hiring practices to the left. If it's 18 months for a school seat, and you're looking for quality service members to join your organization, it's too long.

• 42:22Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  If you're 12 months, it's too long. That young person should be walking into your job, you know, within 30 days of exiting their service. So, industry, first responder community, you need to move forward, and then get after getting our service members in their last year of their contract. We're good enough to keep what we want, and we should be good enough to take care of the other ones, right, as well. We can do both. People get nervous. It's like, "Why are you setting things up for Marines to exit the service?" I'm not. I can only keep so many. And what about the rest, to your point, right? And so if they get a job... They get insurance, they get health insurance, the paychecks don't stop, momentum continues,

• 43:07Speaker 01

  they become productive members of society, they become civil leaders, they become who we thought they could, and they don't enter a place of depression, no paycheck, broke, and they feel that they can't reach out because they were a Marine, right? And I'm too good to have a starting job for $12 an hour. No, it's okay to do that, right? But while you're waiting to the next chapter of your life. So project mission next is what we're doing in the Marine Corps to help that out.

• 43:40Fran Racioppi?

  All right, I need electricians.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  You do.

• 43:42Fran Racioppi?

  I need electricians.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 43:43Fran Racioppi?

  So.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 43:44Fran Racioppi?

  My security company, we're low voltage electricians, we need line voltage electricians too, but CCTV access control, fire alarm, all across the Northeast. We're starting to do stuff in Florida, Colorado, but, and we've talked about this internally, and we've gone to a lot of the VSOs, you know, and we've said, but this, and I think this is actually important, I'm glad we thought about this here because we've gone to a lot of VSOs and we've said, hey, this is the skill set we need. And what you have in a lot of the veteran transition programs, and I won't name them,

• 44:23Fran Racioppi?

  but there's a bunch out there, they do great work, but they're transitioning the 20-year service member, the 22-year, the 28-year, oh six, you know, or the major, or the sergeant major, you know, every once in a while, there's an E8 in there, you know? And these guys are retiring, and even the ones who don't want the retirement job, who want the next career, they're older, they want to quote unquote, lead others, you know, they want to be managers, they want to be people leaders. But there's a big difference between those folks and what you're talking about.

• 45:08Fran Racioppi?

  The, the two-year Marine, the five-year soldier, the, the seven-year staff sergeant, you know, eight-year staff sergeant who's done one reenlistment, but now has, you know, family problems and says, look, I gotta get out or I'm gonna lose my kids. I'm gonna lose my wife, you know, whatever it is. Creating opportunities for those people, I think, is absolutely critical. And when I look at it as a business owner, those are the folks I need. Those are the folks I want to do all the things that you just said.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 45:38Fran Racioppi?

  Because they're still young, they're still motivated, they're super smart, they've, they're people of character, which, you know, to your point about building the Marines.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 45:47Fran Racioppi?

  I hear, we want people of character. We'll teach you the hard skills. And I've done that in our company. I said, look, I got a couple of senior electricians. We'll teach you how to

• 45:55Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 45:55Fran Racioppi?

  run cable and terminate wires and connect the stuff. Like, this isn't rocket science. And so if you're a good dude,

• 46:02Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:02Fran Racioppi?

  and you show up and you work hard, you're gonna learn it. But there are also times where I'm like, I just need people who know what's going on.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:10Fran Racioppi?

  And to get somebody who, it has been very, very hard for us to find. And I've even gone on LinkedIn and I've searched, you know, New York metro area, electrician, Navy, Marines, Army. There's like two people

• 46:26Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:27Fran Racioppi?

  come up. Because also, a lot of those folks, what's LinkedIn? It's a professional network for that, as we were retiring, joined to go be a consultant.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:36Fran Racioppi?

  You know, not somebody who's, who's been a, a CB in the Marines, you know, who is probably a trained carpenter

• 46:44Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:44Fran Racioppi?

  or plumber, you know, or, or, sorry, CBs in the Navy, but, you know, uh, or, or coming out of, out of these combat engineer roles who are certified in the trades.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  That's right. I think what makes this unique is that, uh, the gentleman that's, that helped me get this off the ground is Mr. De La Porte. He, he works for the secretary, uh, and the honorable Mr. Tata. And he's the creator of the, remember the, maybe you saw the Marine to Guard program? The Marine to Guard program was, an example is when we divested of tanks, right? So the tankers, like, Like where are they gonna go?

• 47:20Fran Racioppi?

  Gone.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Right? So we set up the guard to come to our bases and stations and interview this and screen this young men and women and say, okay, you're now gonna belong to the guard and we're gonna release you from active duty Marine Corps. Now you're gonna go to the guard and do tanks there as an example. But he's what's because he's he saw that and he built that for the guard. He's a he was a Marine his first contract, right? And he would spend the rest of his career in the guard, right? But he's a Marine, Marine true and true, right? And I love me Guardsman. I love him. But we gave them a lot of Marines over the years because he was a direct hire, right? To your point, right? I love the organizations that

• 48:03Speaker 01

  are coaching Marines. The Department of Labor has a project that has coaches inside of our bases where our Marines can go. They get coached into an interview. They get coached into. So it's a third party, you know, getting a Marine to the to the job. What this is is direct hire. So Mr. De La Porte was able to get the companies and you can name them, you know, maybe I won't here for this, but but the usual suspects of all things industry who says, yeah, I want to direct hire your talent. Marine to guard, Marine to whatever.

• 48:40Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  But I think what's next is Marine to FBI, Marine to first responders.

• 48:45Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Marine to FR6. That's my company.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  That's right. Marine to FRC.

• 48:49Fran Racioppi?

  Let's do it.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Direct hire the last year of the Marines. And what if, you know, this is a, I think what's next as well is because there are organizations today that are mentoring a young person who's just enlisting and they stay connected to that person for all of their contract, right? Because they if they could stay connected to them, they know that they're gonna gain this skill set and they're gonna be a hire.

• 49:13Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  In four years, right? So they are catching on that it's better to grab them when they're 17 or 18.

• 49:19Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Because the Marine Corps is gonna make them and they're gonna keep them a skill set and they're gonna have experience. And then we're gonna hire them on the backend. But if the Marine wants to reenlist. Then guess what? We're gonna negotiate, renegotiate the contract because now we're gonna have eight years of experience.

• 49:35Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Now you're gonna pay me more, right? Because now I'm this. So it's both ways that this company is able to attract their talent. And I think that's the, that's the future. If the Marine knows they're gonna transition to this great opportunity, not only are they gonna stay more focused in being a Marine, but also maybe not be as careless with their shenanigans because they know how much, how important that clearance is or that skill set is. And that company is waiting for them should they stay clean.

• 50:03Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  So we all win, right? And I think that's what's next. The first responder thing is, is difficult because every state, right? It's just different, right? And so we're trying to figure that out.

• 50:16Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. But that's also how we're gonna reduce suicide rates too.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 50:20Fran Racioppi?

  You know, I, I, I really do passionately believe that. You know, those numbers are too high. And I think it's because we think of this stuff after the fact.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 50:30Fran Racioppi?

  Okay, well, now they're done. Well, now what? Well, let's give them a program so that, you know, they're, they stay motivated and find their community. Well, it's, it's too late for a lot of folks by then. You know, they've already gone down that dark where they've already returned to their, you know, their small town in, you know, in middle America. You know, and, and they've lost their community and they don't know how to find their way out. And then, yeah, I, I'm never gonna find that guy.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:55Fran Racioppi?

  You know, who's sitting, who went, who went back from when you did a, a couple of years in the Mew and now they're in rural Idaho.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 51:03Fran Racioppi?

  You know, I'm never gonna find an accompaniment for my company.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 51:06Fran Racioppi?

  We gotta get them early.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Gotta get them early. And then they're also 22, right? So excited, you know, I see the transition readiness seminars and we make them get dressed, you know, and they get tucked in, you know?

• 51:22Fran Racioppi?

  This is a tie.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Put in your best pair of shoes, killer. Right? And they just. I asked this young man, a sergeant of Marines who's very popular with the Marine Corps. And I said, hey, tell me about your transition. And he said, Star Major, it felt like I was in a ninety six. And then the ninety six came and went, and then it felt like I was on leave. And then after a while, I felt like, oh, no, this is my new reality.

• 51:50Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Right? This is my new reality, and I'm not going back to my life. This is my life. So he was, he's like, you do a great job, Star Major, of like, you know, resume building and, you know, the classes and all the hard things. You do a good job with that. Maybe not so good with a, you know, eighty year old telling you to, you know, pull up your pants or something, right? Like, maybe get rid of that person. But for the most part, you do a great job of preparing us tactically. But what you can do better for us, Star Major, is it's how you're gonna feel. Like, that transition is, it's just difficult. And so, you know, and he gave me some great ideas that I'm gonna try to inject into our transition about that ninety six to leave to, oh, oh.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  And then we do such a great job of telling you that, hey, you know, pressure and hard work and it's living hard is what's gonna make you a better human. And that's how you grow, right? By doing hard things. And then you set yourself up very well for transition. And you end up being very smooth transition like process. All of a sudden, it's not hard and you're not suffering like we want you to, right? And you get kind of twisted, you know, and to the point where maybe you burn it all down because you want to do hard things, right? So it is this, I've never gone out. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

• 53:15Fran Racioppi?

  It sucks.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Sucks.

• 53:16Fran Racioppi?

  It sucks.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  So.

• 53:18Fran Racioppi?

  Sucks. Even when you have every opportunity in the world.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:20Fran Racioppi?

  It sucks.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  So what I can do when I'm in uniform for that young twenty three year old is at least, hey, there are people that are looking for you. And here is a direct route. You don't have to think very much. Just make a decision and they're gonna hire you. And then see if that's what you want to do. And then by that time, you have built some confidence. And little savings and you got yourself upright and then you can move to whatever you want to do. At least I can do that.

• 53:49Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I tell, I tell guys getting out of that all the time. Cause like you, you come into the, the military and you always think, whether you do two years or four years, a lot of people are like, well, this is my career. You know, I'm going to stay here for a long time. And then that mindset, and I, I had it too. When I got out was, well, my first job out of the military is going to be the next thirty two years of my life or twenty five years of my life. And the reality is that's not the reality.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:19Fran Racioppi?

  Is it's okay to go to a place and stay there for, my first job, I was, I worked at Merrill Lynch. I cried day one in the Starbucks.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:29Fran Racioppi?

  I left at two o'clock.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:31Fran Racioppi?

  I walked down, I almost punched a dude in the face in the office because he was swinging a putter on a headset. And, you know, looked at me like I was a dirtbag.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:42Fran Racioppi?

  And I had thirteen years in special forces and I'm like, yeah, two things are going to happen. I gotta leave or this guy's going to get beat up with that putter like.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:49Fran Racioppi?

  And, and I went to the Starbucks and I looked out the window and I, I made a mistake. I said, and then I told myself, I never quit anything in my life.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:59Fran Racioppi?

  Today's not going to be the day where I quit for the first time in my life.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:05Fran Racioppi?

  And I went back, but I knew at the same time, I'm also not going to be here that long. And I gotta find the next.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 55:11Fran Racioppi?

  And it's okay to go do that.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 55:13Fran Racioppi?

  And you don't have to get out and say, well, this first step is twenty more years. No, you don't have to be perfect, but you have to take the one step that then helps you. And I'll tell you to this day, this show exists, so much of the things I do in my company exists because of the relationships I made and the people I met in that first eighteen months were on day one, I wanted to walk out.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:36Fran Racioppi?

  And so I think getting guys to understand that is really, really important.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  There was a, a story time, but you know, when someone's going to bootcamp, right? When you're in the airport because they have the, the legal, you know, little thing, right? envelope and they have no backpack, no nothing. It's just what they're wearing and they have this little yellow thing, right?

• 55:57Fran Racioppi?

  And they're terrified to go there.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, it's like three of us, three or six of them, whatever it is. And so I'm in, I don't know, seat 28A or whatever, whatever airline. And I sit down and I'm watching and I hear they come, right? And I'm like, oh, I pray that one of them's right next to me, right? And the gods answer my prayer and one of them sits right next to me, right? And just in quiet, he's like, hey, how you doing? He's like, good, sir. Right? I said, where are you headed to? And he's like, oh, I'm going to Marine boot camp. He's all right. It's like, oh, congratulations. He's like, what are you gonna be? He's like, I'm gonna be a machine gunner. For how long? Four years? So how long you think you'll stay? No, I'm staying 20.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  So to your point, at that young age, in their mind, they're gonna, they're, this is it. I'm gonna do this for the next 20 to 30 years, it's gonna be my life. And then what happens along the way is life, right? And the seasons of life. I just want our Marines to give credit and homage and take a moment as the Marines make a very hard decision to exit, to get after a dream, that you give them an audience to say thank you, right? It's just a formation or a dinner or a lunch and maybe you give them a little gift or maybe you pin a medal on their chest and have them say something of their time, right?

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Cause I think that will, you know, when they start a new career and they finish that career and the family's done and the kids are gone and they look at the closet and they unzip that bag and it has their service alphas, right? And they're like, I remember that uniform. And you take it out real carefully and then you try to put it on, but the button's like over here, right? You're like, okay, let's not put it on, let's just admire it. And then you zip it back up and then you, you know, you Google where the Marine Corps League is at and you start finding your way back to our tribe, right? And you start wearing the red hats and you start going to the post and, or Travis Mannion or the new version of the Legion and the VFW.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  And you come back, right? And then you spend the next fifteen years of your life trying to figure out how to give back. I'm saying is you don't have to wait that long, right? You can exit the service at four, five, eight years and you can stay connected throughout.

• 58:19Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Right? Because we love you and we want you to stay connected because without you, we can't do it. Right? I need you to come back and tell my new eighteen year old what it's like to be broken up with, what it's like to have a horrible moment, how to deal with losing a parent, how to deal with on and on life things, right? I need you to come back and teach our young folks that, right? Because when they go forward, right? They're going to be focused and they're going to do the hard things, just like you did, right? But it is keeping them in the fight, keeping them focused in the formations, moving forward with each other, that's going to make the memories, you know, last a lifetime.

• 59:03Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was cleaning out a closet in my basement the other day and did the same thing with the uniform.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:10Fran Racioppi?

  Yes, pulled out the bag, opened it up, lifted it and then said, that thing will never fit. Never gonna fit. But you do, you look back in that.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:19Fran Racioppi?

  And so many memories come back and that's what you want. You know, you, and I think that's why it is what you're doing is so important. Because we tell people in private industry all the time, you have two impressions on, on an employee. Their first day and their last day.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 59:36Fran Racioppi?

  And they forget a lot about what happened, you know, in, in between.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 59:41Fran Racioppi?

  But how were they treated on their first day and how were they treated on their last day? And that will be the impression and what they tell people about that organization and how they're going to go down to that closet and open that bag up. And what are they going to think when they look at that uniform in two years, ten years, twenty years from now?

• 59:58Speaker 01

  That's right. And we own a lot of that in that, you know, when nine eleven happened, when COVID happened, like all of these things have, um, the environment, uh, we closed down the gates, right? And it's very hard for our veteran community to keep up with the new. Regulations, the new requirements to get on base. That's why this place is special because the Marines can come right across the street and come here and see the veterans here. But in other places, veterans must be allowed to enter our bases and be part of the daily routine, you know, once a week, once a month, and just school circle. Let me tell you about, you know, the drone of the day, which was the kamikaze.

• 1:00:41Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  You know, like, I don't know, but it just, how did you deal with? How did you deal with that, right? And that's invaluable. That's human to human connection, the visuals that come from someone speaking that we have to do better in being more inviting for our veterans to come in and talk.

• 1:01:01Fran Racioppi?

  All right, I got two more quick questions for you and then they're gonna, they're gonna give you the hook because I know you got a full schedule on for the rest of the day. One of the initiatives that's, that's big out there for the Marine Corps is barracks 2030. So why is barracks 2030 so important to the Marine Corps? And how does that tie into your focus on quality of life?

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, three years ago, the common said enough. And, you know, he looked at a three star general and said,

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  we need to fix this and I know that the resources are limited. So give me the options of what I'm not going to do, what I'm not going to buy in order to make this right for the Marines. And it's, it's undefendable, right? It's so, don't, listen, we're done trying to defend that the, why these conditions are the way they are. In some places, the barracks are very, very good because the buildings are updated. But in a lot of places, it's not. So let's stop pretending here. It's what do we want? We want a Marine to have a place to sleep because this is their home. And if they're going to pivot from their home to the field, not home office field,

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  right, then this place needs to be a recharging station, right? With the right food and on and on. But now you fast forward three years, barracks 2030, all other things that we have going on, we find them to be in silos. But okay, it hit negative press that the Marine Corps has not very good barracks. Okay, we're going to put some money on it. Negative press that the Marine Corps is doing this, then we're going to put some money on it. So let's stop doing that. To my very original point, what do we want that Marine of 2040 to be able to do? So that means barracks, that means food, that means strength and conditioning, that means on and on and on. So let's align all of that to get us that, right?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Because it's going to be part of the development of that human being, marriage with the platform. Can I get the, all the sensors, right? Like me and Mike Weimer are always talking about, you know, the, the sensors. We can make a whole suit that can tell us your blood pressure, your respiration rates, your blinking cycles, you know, when stressful situations happen, you blink really, really fast, this is your pattern, this is how your body's adjusting, this is how your body starts with sweating and, and therefore this is your baseline and, and the technology is here to do all of that, right? How do we inject all of that technology into a human being? The human being needs to be right.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  So barracks 2030, you can't have beautiful fancy state of the art gear and the crappy place to sleep. Right. Like it's just not going to work. So it's all connected and we want to answer that question of a future Marine. And then all those things will align and will be flexible enough to adjust. More importantly, at the executive level, there will be a three star that follows the three star that handles combat arms, that handles aviation. And after they're done talking about all the ACVs and F-35s, the three star will speak about the programming of the human, which will be a game changer, right?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  So I think barracks 2030 is long overdue and every, there isn't a base that you go to that there isn't some kind of construction happening. And I think that's. It's healthy for the young Marine and the old Marine to see, okay, Kamala was serious. We got new furniture, we got new mattresses, every lock will have an ID card that unlocks the door. I'll be able to, the Marine will be able to control their temperature. And it's not babying them, you know, people roll their eyes when I say, I want Wi-Fi at the barracks, but not airport Wi-Fi. I want like the top tier Wi-Fi because I got the same Marines who are in the drone team or who are trying to get on the drone team or trying to understand drones that need that Wi-Fi

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  to get on their laptop to practice over and over and over again, how to actually fly a drone. Right? And there, I need that capability in the barracks. You know, 20 years ago, we used to have the computers, the computer room.

• 1:05:20Fran Racioppi?

  The computer room, yeah.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Remember that? And no one updated it, no printer paper, printers didn't work. And that was like the future, right?

• 1:05:27Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  And now is, is we are tasking Marines to be better, but unpopular opinion, put it in their pocket to do so.

• 1:05:36Fran Racioppi?

  Right.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Right? So we're asking them to do more, but you pay for it.

• 1:05:40Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  And to me, that's crazy, right? It's like, you want a certain type of Marine, then give them what they need and they'll run with it. And on their own, yes, they will always do the, go the extra mile to make things even better. But that shouldn't be the norm, right?

• 1:05:57Fran Racioppi?

  Right. Habits form the foundation for our standards. I think about the Jedbergs of World War II. They had to do three things every day that continue through any service member's life, but they had to be able to shoot, move and communicate. If they did those things with precision, then they could focus their effort and their attention on more complicated challenges that came their way. When you look out into the Marine Corps formation today, what are the three things that you want every Marine to do every day to become the most proficient Marine, land, sea and air that they could be?

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a journey for a young person to figure out who they are. Right? Cause you're just. You're young and you're trying to figure it out, what works? And so the same question that you just asked me, right? Is something that must be coached, something that must be pushed, right? For those leaders that stand in front of the formation today, who were in that box, the formation, a year ago, all of a sudden they're outside that box, leading Marines, is what got you out of that box, right? And I, you know, the commander and I, he allows me to speak with him at the basic school, right? And in that basic school, everyone's very worried about

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  the relationship between the senior enlisted and the officer, right? It's like, I get a lot of questions on that, right?

• 1:07:23Fran Racioppi?

  You can piss off the platoon, Sarge. I don't care how good of a lieutenant you think you are.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I usually challenge the lieutenants and like, hey, man, you have to share your life. So you can come in and pretend that you are a machine and that nothing gets to you and that's only gonna go so far. You won't endear yourself into your Marines. Your Marines won't respect you, right? If you don't share that you had three jobs, that you went into debt to get through college, like, how did you get here? So for me is, first of all, for me is, you gotta wake up early. You gotta get some PT in. You gotta be listening to something in your, in your ears. When you're either on a Concept 2 bike or you're running, maybe it's not music all the time, but it's a book, right?

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  And then more importantly, and I make people do this all the time in crowds, I make them face each other and I make them say their first name and the city and state that they were born, right? And then somehow the stress of who's who and blah, blah, blah is gone and they, they know just one more level of a human, right? If you can do that and every day attempt to get to know somebody a little better by asking questions and you allowing the environment for questions to be asked, then you can only move your platoon standard to higher and higher levels because people trust you. If you can earn that trust, they'll run for you

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  and the enlisted Marine will give the last measure of devotion off your order. You must be worthy of that, right? That's how good you must be.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Tell your story, staff and CO to NCO, especially a young Marine officer. So the Marines can connect, right? So that's one of the biggest things that I push for.

• 1:09:13Fran Racioppi?

  Awesome.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Fran Racioppi?

  Can't sum it up better than that.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Thanks for this.

• 1:09:17Fran Racioppi?

  So thank you. Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me, sharing your perspective on where the Marine Corps is, is your priorities and in this beautiful place.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  So it's an amazing building. So thanks for being here and I hope you have a chance to walk around.

• 1:09:33Fran Racioppi?

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:34Fran Racioppi?

  You ever find?

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Semper Fi.

• 1:09:37Fran Racioppi?

  American Jedbergs 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 Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Richo. 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, X, or Threads. Send your comments and inquiries to Fran at Jedburgh Podcast dot com. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode.

• 1:10:23Fran Racioppi?

  How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.