Pitbull 214 Podcast | Ep. 7, Cassie Barlow, Vets Moving Forward

One thing I've noticed after talking to veterans for years...

Most aren't asking for special treatment.

They're just trying to figure out what's available to them.

The frustrating part is that there are a lot of good programs, benefits, and organizations out there. The problem is many veterans never hear about them until someone points them in the right direction.

That's why I wanted to have Dr. Cassie Barlow back on the podcast.

We talked about some of the work being done to connect veterans with resources, jobs, support networks, and opportunities that can make a real difference after military service.

What I appreciate about Cassie is that she doesn't just talk about helping veterans. She's spent years building programs that actually do it.

The uniform eventually comes off for all of us.

The question becomes: what's next?

I think this conversation offers some good answers for veterans, military families, and anyone who wants to see veterans succeed long after their service ends.

Thank you for listening to the Pitbull214 Podcast, where veterans, service, resilience, and real conversations come first.

If this episode helped you, inspired you, or made you think differently, please share it with another veteran, friend, or family member.

Follow, rate, and review the podcast to help us reach more people who need these stories and resources.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Well, welcome back to Pitbull 214 Podcasts, a podcast for veterans, their family members, friends, neighbors, and anyone who cares and would like to support our vets. I am Rick Perales, an Air Force veteran, and I'm pleased to be your host for this program. This will be the seventh episode of Pitbull 214 Podcast, and it is picking up steam, and I thank all of you out there who are supporting it. I'd like to do my introduction before we get to our main guests in the interview, and I'd like to start it off, at least now, with thanking our troops, supporting our troops, their families, especially the ones that we've lost or that has have been injured in this conflict war with Iran. This is not a political program and it never will be. This is to help our vets. So it doesn't matter where you land on the political spectrum. Our troops are out there serving us the best they can, and we really do need to keep them in our thoughts and our prayers. And like I've said many times, uh keep them in your thoughts, keep them in your prayers, and hope and pray that they uh finish their mission, they they accomplish their mission, and they come home safely to their families. We thank you all. God bless you all. Now, as I mentioned, we are not a political program here. We are solely for the benefit and support of our veterans. Um with that, the episode prior to this one with Larry Drawn, our double amputee uh Marine, was a big hit. Um we had over two million hits on the um social media. 95% of the folks out there saw what I saw in Larry, a true hero who nearly died and was eager to get home to his loved ones like any of us would have been. Uh there were some others um uh in the but for sure in a minority who uh called him out, thought he was lying. Uh I will tell you this: if you knew Larry like I know Larry, uh you wouldn't have brought that up. And uh again, this podcast, we're not gonna argue, we're not gonna debate. I will tell you to to be as respectful as you can. I will keep all the comments on there unless they get too negative. Um you have a right to say what you want to say, but I will tell you that this guy is a true hero, and he came back a different man, but he's making the best of it, as I'm hoping many other vets that came back different will see, and maybe either email him or just see that as a model for where they can go next. Uh, Larry, thank you for being honest. Thank you for uh your program, and um uh we only wish you the best with your family. And again, I look forward to golfing with you here here soon. With that, today's program uh is from someone who has been with us before, Colonel slash Dr. Cassie Barlow. Um she talked about transitioning from military to civilian before. She is a subject matter expert on that, and we're gonna have her back to talk more about that because you can't cover that subject in a half hour. But that's not what she's talking about today. Today she's gonna talk about a uh program, Veterans Moving Forward, that is open to all veterans to come. It's uh I call it a one-stop shop where there will be rows and rows and rows of contractors, uh, educators, healthcare, finances, um, anything that a veteran in their family may need will be there. And you can talk to them, get their number, get their information, make appointments, um, whatever you need. One-stop shopping for veterans and their families. It's huge. I think this is the seventh or eighth year. When I was at the General Assembly, she and I partnered on this, uh, and she's carried it on, done a wonderful job. We get more and more people there every year. Uh we have public transportation given free rides there. It's held at Wright State University in a student union. They fill it up in other rooms adjacent to it. It's amazing. Um, of course, that is here local to Dayton, but if anyone is in the fringes of Dayton and they could come, you're more than welcome. As I say, a veteran is a veteran is a veteran. I don't care where you are or who you are, please come. But for others that are just too far away, um, I welcome you to talk to Cassie and find out how we got this thing started because it is a real winner. It's a win-win-win. Everybody wins on this thing, and the veterans look forward to it. And maybe it's something that you could initiate in your area with Cassie's help. So um we're gonna come right back to Cassie after this break, and I think that you will really enjoy what she has to share. Pitbull out. Well, welcome back to Pitbull 214 Podcast, a podcast for veterans, their family members, friends, neighbors, and really anyone who cares about our veterans. I'm Rick Perales, uh Air Force veteran, and I'm pleased to be your host for this program. We have a wonderful guest on, and you might it might be her name might be familiar to you because she uh has been here before. I'm thinking this kind of like Saturday Night Live guest host, you know, where we'll start counting who's been here the most. But Colonel slash Dr. Cassie Barlow is a dear friend of Becca's and mine, and she is involved in a lot of stuff. She was a wing commander here at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for two years, and she chose to settle down here with her husband Tim. And she is in Sochi right now. She's the director, I think it's director, right, Cassie? Director of Sochi. And she'll tell you a little bit more about that. I don't want to steal her thunder. But she's got her hands in a lot of stuff, from military members at the base to veterans to intern students. She's involved in all kinds of stuff, and she's uh got awards for all she's very modest, so but sh if you look at her resume and look up So she, which I'll put the information here for you, you'll see that she has a many, many awards and honors, and it's just our honor to have her on with us today. Welcome, Cassie.

SPEAKER_04 7:17

Thank you so much, Rick. It's great to be back. This is exciting.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah. It's been a while. Cassie was my second guest, and we talked about transition military life into civilian, and it was a great discussion, but unfortunately, you can't cover that in 25 minutes. And so we've committed that we're going to go back and talk about more details associated with that because if there's one thing our our veterans need is more knowledge on how they can have a smooth transition and take what they've learned and trained and become experts in the military and adapt that to civilian life. And there's probably no one better than uh Cassie Barlow to help us with that. So she'll be on more. Uh, but today we're gonna talk a little bit about the organizations that she's involved in and an event that's coming up that I think is a super event. So, Cassie, that's uh that's your lead-in. Let's talk a little bit about what you do. First, let's talk uh uh let's remind him a little bit about your background for me.

SPEAKER_04 8:18

Absolutely. So as Rick mentioned, I'm an Air Force vet of 26 years. Finished my career at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as the installation commander, and was was lucky enough and blessed to be given the opportunity to lead multiple different times in the Air Force, and those were definitely my most favorite and best assignments. Um, finished my career here at Wright-Patterson and decided to stay in Ohio and just love the community and love what I get to do every day. So my background is Air Force sent me to get my PhD many years ago in organizational psychology. So my background is a perfect fit for what I do right now in SOSHI, which is the Strategic Ohio Council for Higher Education. So SOSHI is a nonprofit celebrating our 59th anniversary this year. And we are basically a consortium of higher education institutions. So we have 32 colleges and universities across Ohio in northern Kentucky. And we do two primary things within SOSHI. One is work with faculty and staff across our institutions on professional development. So anything that you can imagine, like a conference, a lunch and learn, a webinar, our job is to help faculty and staff put more tools into their toolkit. So that's one pillar, and our second pillar is workforce development. And as Rick mentioned, that's a really big bucket. So we spend a lot of time working with high school through postdoctorate level students on what we call work-based learning and trying to connect students with opportunities that give them a chance to discern what's right for them and what's the right career choice for them. So we work with employers to make those connections. We also at the same time have several other workforce development initiatives. One of them is the Aerospace Professional Development Center, which has a focus of connecting job seekers to the aerospace industry across Ohio, which is quite large in our state. We also have another workforce program called Work Ohio that once again is focused on connecting people to work and getting more people into the labor market. So we have a broad range of ways to help people along their path, along their workforce development path. And several years ago, as a result of our workforce development efforts, we received an outreach from the Dayton VA Medical Center director who called and said that they received a call from the VA secretary who wanted to start up something called Community Veteran Engagement Boards across the country. And he was reaching out to specific cities to get this kicked off. And Dayton happened to be one of those initial cities, and this was back in 2015, and initial cities to start the community veteran engagement boards. So in that telephone call, we decided together that Sochi would be the lead of our community veteran engagement board, which we from that day called the My Veteran Community and started to invite people to the table to figure out what were the things that we needed to focus on in our area. And as you might imagine, every community veteran engagement board is a little bit different because it depends on what the needs of the community are. So the first thing we did was we went out to the community and talked to as many veterans as we could, and we talked to literally hundreds of veterans to find out what they needed. We talked to the 95-year-old veteran and to the 20-year-old veteran. And amazingly, a trend that we found was that our veterans really needed to understand all of their great resources that were available in our community. And I'm sure there are many communities like ours where there are wonderful resources available, but there's no, there's no organization of those resources, and there's no way for the veterans to know what all of those are. So we started based on that feedback from our veterans, we started several different initiatives to really connect veterans with the resources across the community and with the resources that they earned and they deserve as veterans. So the first thing we did was we started something called VetsLink. And Vetslink is an extension of the United Way 211 helpline. And the idea would be that veterans can call in any time of day or night and ask for assistance on just about anything you can possibly imagine, whether it was needing help paying an electric bill or needing food or wanting help finding a job. And the Vetslink counselor, who actually is a veteran, would work with that person to connect them to the right resources and not just work with them to connect them to the right resources, but then they would follow up and make sure that the veteran was connected and received the assistance that they needed. So that was our first initiative. And Vetslink is still going strong in our region of the state and is growing every year.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Cassie, let me interrupt you there. Do other cities, other communities have that? No, they do not. So now I'm gonna go back what Cassie said about resources, opportunity, services. That's what this is about. 80% of what Pitbull 214 podcast is about is trying to make our veterans and their families aware of all those things that are out there, opportunities I'll call them, but they're not aware of them, unfortunately. And there's no clearinghouse. I'm trying to do that, but of course I can only hit so many. So that's what she's talking about here. But I've talked about before, this is for everyone, all the vets throughout our country, throughout services. So you're hearing this, and she's gonna continue talking about this in another program we started. One of the things I want to do is if you don't have it, it's a good idea. I'm gonna have Cassie's name throughout this and her contact information. Call and find out about it, see what it takes, see how much it costs, see where the money comes from, at least in Ohio. Because, you know, this call, if a veteran's lost and can't figure out how to do something, or or you know, their heater went out and they don't know what to do about it, it's a great starting point, right? And it's gonna be a vet on the other end that talks to this vet. It's exactly what we need to do more of, is and helping our vets. So this and she's gonna talk about another program, but go ahead, Cassie. I just want to tie that together.

SPEAKER_04 15:24

Absolutely. No, I'm glad you did that. So that was a really important initiative, and we thought needed to be the first one, and we continue to build upon that, as I mentioned. When we started, it was just two counties, and now it's nine counties. So, and we continue to grow that. So that's what Vetslink, that's was our first initiative, Vetslink. Our second initiative is the big event that you mentioned that's coming up. So we're actually in our ninth year of running something called I said in in the teaser, I said six year.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

I couldn't.

SPEAKER_04 15:58

Ninth year.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Can you believe it? I know nine years.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

It's amazing when you think about it. So every year in around the last Wednesday of May, so this year it's the 20th of May, we host something called Vets Moving Forward. And it started as a resources fair many years ago, and we grew it into a resources and job fair. And it's the afternoon of the of May 20th. We always host it at Wright State University Student Union. They give us the entire union for that day, which is a large space where we can have a lot of resource agencies and employers come out and share what they have available with people. And it's just a fabulous opportunity for people who just are looking for resources or want to know what the resources are in our community. And it's also a great opportunity, obviously, for people who are looking for work to come out and you know connect with employers, pass the resume. So we do those two things. We also do a VA enrollment fair.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Let me add some color to this because you're not doing it justice. I'm sorry. This is spectacular. And I I throw it in that one-stop shopping category. So, and as a matter of fact, I co-sponsored with Cassie the first one or two when I was at the State House when we were just getting started. We're talking about rows of tables and rows and rows of of really any organization you could think of that would have anything. Of course, the VA will be there, educational institution, banks. Uh help me out, Cassie, hobby, uh uh suicide prevention. You name it, and they're there. And we're loaded in a local area. And these guys started it, and I've got some pictures, Cassie, and I'll make sure and put the flyer up. And they actually bust people in that can't get there. The VA puts a hot dog stand out front. Good hot dogs, free. They just make it a real nice event for veterans and their families to come and connect and look for that one thing they might be missing in their life. Service dogs. There'll be people there for so and service dogs. I mean, you go through it and they'll be there. It's an amazing opportunity. And again, I'm gonna say, if you don't have it in your community, all it takes is some rolling up your sleeves and getting going. Because the vets will come, and we know that. So again, I'm gonna have Cassie's number. She can tell you how we got this thing started, improvements along the way that we did to make it easier for vets. This is all about vets. And and like I said before, any vet, any color, purple, uh, anywhere, any age, officer enlisted, war and officer, it doesn't matter. A vet's a vet, and this program is is amazing on how it serves our vets and the good that it does after that. What kind of numbers do we end up getting, Cassie? Do you know?

SPEAKER_04 18:55

I really we have hundreds, Rick. So last year we had close to 300 vets who showed up. And from a resource and job fair table perspective, we have well over a hundred um tables that are set up focused on, like I said, getting resources to veterans in just about anything that you can possibly imagine, and then also offering opportunities for employment as well. There are employers who love hiring vets for all of the obvious reasons. Vets come with great experience.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

That's a whole nother show, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 19:26

It is. It it absolutely is.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

So well, and before you move along, let me throw a thank you out to Wright State University. You have seen Entrepreneur Bootcamp for Veterans. That program, I think, was the last one. Wright State University is a very, very military-friendly university. And this is just another example of what they do, giving us a student union to run this event. So thank you guys.

SPEAKER_04 19:53

Absolutely. Yeah, we have some incredible sponsors, and Wright State is right there at the top of the list coming through every year to really help us put this on. The Veteran Military Center is a huge help in making this happen. And then we get some volunteers from around the community that come to assist us on that day as well because it's just a lot of throughput. It's a lot of people. And we want to make sure that we welcome every veteran and every family member and every spouse and every caregiver that comes to join us for that day. So I think it's important, Rick, to the one-stop shop idea is really important to kind of highlight. It's not just resources and it's not just a job fair. It's, you know, VA enrollment, it's VA, it's ID cards from the local county here in our region. So anything you could possibly imagine, we have there for you that day. The piece that impresses me every single year is the connections that are made. So not just connections between the veterans, which is always wonderful to see. Everybody always loves to tell stories. And when veterans get together, there's lots of stories and they're great stories. But there's also the community resource connection as well. So different resource agencies, veteran service organizations connecting with other veteran serving organizations, which is just amazing to see. And that's one of the things that I really, really enjoy about this event is watching those connections happen and watching people say, hey, we ought to work together, we ought to collaborate more. I love that. We always also have all of our fraternal agencies there, right? So the DAV is there, and Am Vets is there, and Vietnam vets are there. And it's just really great to see everybody coming together to support our vets. And we also have military members who show up from Wright Patterson who may be getting ready to transition. And they're looking for resources and they want to know what's out in the community. So whoever's listening and is in our area here in the Dayton region, we'd love to have you. Come join us on the 20th of May from 3 to 7 at the Wright State University Student Union. As Rick mentioned, you can hop on the RTA, you can hop on Green Cats, and they'll bring you out to the student union for free that day. And it's just a fabulous gathering. It's really about bringing the community together to support veterans.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Again, I say if you don't have that and you're too far away, start it. That's that's a big part of this. And I will tag on to what Cassie said about everyone coming together, collaboration. The other thing you see is all these civilian companies, like I said, a bank maybe or a school, learning more about vets and learning what what they need and seeing what services are out there, then they share it with others. It just it it's a big circle and it is a win-win. So great event. You can tell I'm excited about it. It's always a great event. You had one more program you're going to talk about.

SPEAKER_04 22:55

Yeah, it really is. So we have we did have do we do have another program. So we've got the what we call the military task force, and it's focused on helping educate families and veterans about the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. And we do that by through working with working with the Alzheimer's Association to get out and just educate as much as we possibly can. Because unfortunately, with TBI, traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder, there's a higher likelihood of dementia in Alzheimer's. So we want to make sure that people are aware of the risk and that they know what to do. I mean, we have once again, we have wonderful resources in our community, and we want to make sure that people are aware of those resources and know how to reach out and know how to find them, especially if you're a caregiver or if you're a spouse or a family member. We want you to know what's available to you and tell you how you can reach out. So that's another initiative we have. We have one other initiative, I'll say, that is focused on faith and it's specifically built for faith leaders. And the idea there is to connect with faith leaders across our state, really, and help them understand the needs of veterans who may be sitting in the pews of their church every week and maybe they don't know it. Maybe they don't know that they have veterans in their country.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Maybe it's their uh dependence while the husband or wife is deployed.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

Could be. And the idea there is to give them the tools and their toolkit as a faith leader that they need to support the veterans in that are in their congregations. Because veterans do have specific needs that are different from the rest of the congregation. So we work hand in hand with the VA, the national VA, on educating faith leaders and making sure that they are aware of all, once again, aware of all the resources and that they have the skill sets required so that if they do have a veteran in need, they know how to make the connection and they know where to get the assistance for that veteran. So those four programs, Rick, keep us pretty busy and we think are focused on the things that are most in need in our veteran community right now. That's our goal is to try to, at any one time, to try to figure out where's the biggest need. I'll go back to VetsLink just for a minute. Anybody in the country can go to the Dayton United Way website and look at the data that exists on who's calling that VetsLink line any on any one day. And the value of those data is that as a community, like our community veteran engagement board, right, on any one day, we can go into that site and we can see where the needs of our veterans are. So, you know, one month it may be food and it may be housing and it may be electric bills, and the next month it may be rent and it might be food. And so every month we can go in and take a look. And it's just something that really helps us. It's a piece of data that really helps us to direct our services across the entire community. So that can help us figure out where to put our, you know, food bank resources for that month, right? That maybe we need some the food bank needs to go out and do other engagements across the community. So it really helps us kind of direct what's next and how we can best help our veteran community.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

That's wonderful, Cassie. And we could go on and on and on. Yes, we can. This is a great area for vets. So I will say Cassie's talked about four pro specific programs. They will be in our takeaways. And you can contact her, I'll give you her email address, contact her on any of those, and she can elaborate, send you details. Again, we want a veteran, no matter if a veteran's in Arizona or in Ohio, a veteran's a veteran, and we want to treat them all as best we can. Well, uh Cassie, I think you covered a lot of stuff there, and I can't tell you how much we appreciate you. And I see it all the time. People you say Cassie Barlow, everyone knows who you are. She's in the middle of so much I couldn't even do it justice. And she does it because that's what she does. It's part of service. And I'm gonna ask you one question before we leave. Talk a little bit about service and vets that get out and hang up their uniform, because uh, my opinion is uh I think most vets underestimate their value to the world and the community when they get out. And I think they have a lot to offer. And for those vets just getting out, retiring, whether you're driving a bus or teaching soccer to kids, I w because you're you're volunteering uh probably in you're like my wife. You're on all kinds of boards. Talk a little bit about how you believe what you believe about service and volunteering.

SPEAKER_04 27:59

Yeah, I tell you there's no better group to really understand service than veterans, right? So when I talk with the folks who are getting ready to separate or retire, I they ask, you know, what what do you think I should do? And in terms of service. And I always give the same advice, and that is take some time and dig deep, right? Figure out what your real passion is, and that's that's where you want to be. That's where you want to donate your time and serve. And it doesn't take a lot of time to figure that out. I mean, most vets kind of already have a feel for that when they retire or separate. And the really cool thing is there's so much opportunity out there, there's so much need in terms of volunteerism that you're gonna be heartily welcomed wherever you go. But I think it's really important to figure out what it is that really drives you and what is your passion, and then figure out from that. So if you like to work with kids, right, you know, there's opportunities for coaching and there's opportunities for tutoring, and and I could go on. And, you know, if you want to work in underprivileged neighborhoods, there's opportunities for that. We can you can volunteer for the Boys and Girls Club, or I mean, there's just a plethora of opportunities out there. And I I think it's really important to just dig deep and not dive into the first thing that you see, figure out what it is that you're really passionate about. And you know, oftentimes when you're in the military, you either don't have time to commit to service outside of your normal job, or maybe you can't based on the the position that you're in while you're in the military. So the really cool thing is when you step, you take the uniform off and you step outside that fence line, you know, the really the world is your oyster, and you get to choose. You get to make choices about where you're going to spend your time and your energy and your treasure. And I think that's a real gift that is for us who are coming out of military service. And it's a gift to the community too, because veterans have so many skill sets that they bring to the table to whatever organization that they want to assist, whatever nonprofit they want to help, or school. So I I would say write down your your gifts, and then from that you can figure out where the best place is for you.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Think about it. And think about it. I like that. Don't jump. And you know, I would say on top of that, and you said it so well, Cassie, it doesn't have to be a big job. Mayor Stone, a good friend of yours, Cassie, and mine, Army vet, he's a mayor, or he was a mayor, now he's a uh a township trustee. He drives volunteers to drive the senior bus two days a week.

SPEAKER_04 30:44

I love that. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

I mean, it doesn't have to be a big deal because it makes a difference. Cassie, thank you so very much. You're wonderful, and like I said, we all appreciate you and your family so much, and we're so happy that you decide to stay here in the Miami Valley.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

Thank you very much, Rick. Thanks for having me on. God bless you. Pet Bull will be right back.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Well, welcome back to Pitbull 214 Podcast. Again, I am your host for this program, retired Air Force vet Rick Perales. Very pleased to be here. Very thankful for you and others. This has been my desire for many, many years uh to help the vets in in this particular way that I think I can I can share information stories that really make an impact. And people are starting to really listen and share what I have to say. As I said earlier in this program, we got more than two million hits in our last episode with Larry Drawn, the um U.S. Marine who uh lost both his legs and part of his arm, the use of part of his arm on an IED uh in Afghanistan. A great story, great guy, great American. Uh I love this man. Um and the follow-on uh episodes may not be as exciting and thrilling as his was, but they all have substance, substance that veterans can use. Uh so uh what you heard from Cassie uh will directly help hundreds of veterans, if not more, and their families, because if a veteran is doing well, their family is doing well. I will get some pictures from that event uh in May when it occurs, and I will make sure and share some of those with you. But as I said before, Cassie is more than willing to uh share what she does, how she does it with anyone out there that wants to get it started. Along those lines, I will tell you that I I welcome any suggestions of war stories, veterans that have gone and experienced something above and beyond that uh would be inspirational for my audience. Uh I will make the contact, make the arrangements if you bring that to my attention. Uh more so than that, uh, what the program is predominantly designed for are services, organizations, opportunities, people that are there for veterans, specifically for veterans and their families, but that people may not be aware of. Uh please coordinate that with me, and I will make sure and make that attempt to get a hold of them. I also want to share today, I have a great friend when I was working at the University of Dayton who was my IT guy. We just hooked up right away, and we've been long friends uh ever since. He now works for the University of Michigan, and um he has created a website for me. So the website is at pitbull214.com. It is live now. This website is designed to load up the resources that I cannot possibly do in a half hour. So, for instance, it'll have a section for mental health and it will have um layers of organizations that are out there to help mental health. It will have a section for uh ailments. Um go to it. We just we just had a meeting last night. He just went live today. We got more work to do on it, but if you have an organization that fits in any of these categories, I will load you up there once I confirm that you're legitimate, and you will just be another source, a resource for veterans looking for help. I think it's gonna give us that next level of of um of contracts, of resources that can really help vets more than a half-hour show. I will have a lot of those on my show, and that would be a good place for me to pull some, but uh it will be somewhere that you guys can go to right away. And again, I say not just the veterans, maybe more so the family members and their friends and the neighbors saying, you know, Uncle Joe has this ailment from from uh his time in the desert. Uh maybe this program would help him. Uh feel free to call me, contact me, uh, you'll see my email, my phone number. I'm there for our vet. So uh I'm excited about this new venture. I'm uh I thank Craig Johnson, the uh my good friend, who did this on his own. He saw that this could help after he talked to me and saw what I wanted to do. I love you, Craig. Thank you so much for helping me with this program. Now, um, as I usually do, let me talk a little bit about the next program. Elizabeth Harding. She runs a program at Wright State University here in the Dayton area, just really five miles from my house, eight miles. Uh it's called Entrepreneur Boot Camp for Veterans, E.B. It's an amazing program. And I've talked before about all these programs that no one knows about, but it's right there for veterans, only for veterans and their families. This is one of those. It was it's five or eight miles from my house. I never knew about it. About three years ago, Elizabeth contacted me, by the way. We go to the same church and said, Would you be a mentor for my program? Uh I went uh for dinner, and by the way, they feed you good, and we'll go over all that next when we do our program. But um the program is for any veteran in good standing, any service, any age that wants to start their own business. This program pays for your transportation, your housing, your subsistence. All you've got all you've got to invest is uh filling out an application and carving out that week or so for the boot camp. Um, it is amazing. And it's one of those great programs that very few people know about. And again, I say uh you may not have that desire, but you may know of another vet that has uh maybe he's a great cook or she's a great cook or a wood carver or IT that would like to start their own business. It would be a shame if they miss this opportunity because, like I said, it's free. You're gonna make great contacts, you're gonna learn everything. You don't need a business plan, they'll help you with that. I hope I'm not giving too much away, Elizabeth, but you can see I'm excited about this program. So uh please join us for our next one with Elizabeth Harding and the Entrepreneur Boot Camp for Veterans program. With that, I'm gonna close by saying, as I always do, God bless you, our troops, our families, uh, the families that have lost troops in the past. Uh God bless you all. Be with our troops, help them to get home safely to their families after they accomplish their mission. Um with that, I thank everybody again for uh helping this program to really pick up some steam, and I look forward to being with you next uh next time. Piple out.

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Dead I did all these boys for the rap and me and my man and my work winning.