Joe Lara (00:00)
Well, it's so great to be in another session here and I'm excited to introduce Ben. We've been talking Ben for maybe several months. I don't know, four or five months now going back and forth about veterans and transition and trying to figure out how to serve as many people as possible. I think that's where you and I immediately connected is the impact piece, right? So first of all, if you don't mind giving an introduction.
of you you where you're physically at on the planet, which is pretty cool. And then I want to get into your story. So say hi to the world.
Ben (00:38)
Yeah, thanks so much, Joe. It has, I think it's been three, four months, three, four months ish. We've been chatting. It's, we've had some really great conversations. I, as you can tell probably from my accent, I am from the UK.
Joe Lara (00:44)
Yeah.
Ben (00:53)
the north of the UK originally. I'm from near Manchester for people in the US who know the UK. I'm actually based now near London in England in a little tiny village about 45 minutes outside of London. I'm originally a British soldier. I was in the army, proud to be enlisted. So I was a non-commissioned officer.
Joe Lara (01:16)
Mm.
Ben (01:18)
I did that for 12 years. I come from a military family. My sister served for 24 years. My brother served for eight in different regiments, different areas within the British forces. And now we're in a tech company all focused around how can you have the biggest impact possible in terms of helping service members transition out of the military and into the civilian world.
Joe Lara (01:44)
That's awesome, Ben. Thanks for taking the time to join us on this conversation, really. That's what it is. It's a conversation, because I know our listeners are active duty veterans. Some of them are people that have already transitioned out. I'm sure you've had numerous conversations. And I guess maybe let's start there. When you transitioned out, and I want to get to your story, but first, let's just say where you're at right now in the space that you're in.
What are the themes of the conversations that you're having with people that are thinking about getting out, veterans that are, military members that are thinking about getting out? What are some of the themes that you consistently hear?
Ben (02:23)
Wow, that's quite a big question because we speak to so many. And to be honest with you, I was really surprised as I started to delve more into the US that it's just exactly the same challenges that people are facing. Just at scale, know, 10x the number of people leaving the forces in the US. I think there's just general, and I think this more like a system issue.
Joe Lara (02:36)
Yeah.
Ben (02:49)
tap in your case or CTP, whereas I don't think people are really going through the right process of understanding first and foremost who they are as an individual and where they want to go potentially in the future. Starting to focus more on skills than CV or resume. Everybody, think, meet like jump straight to resume, right? Like I need a resume. When actually to me, the resume should be way further down in the process.
Joe Lara (03:01)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ben (03:17)
I think there's a ton of value for a service member to write down and reflect on what they've done in their career and maybe format that in some way that is legible and is easy to read. But for me, that's all just about understanding where you've been to help you understand where you could potentially go in the future. So I see a real, just a real.
Joe Lara (03:35)
Yeah.
Ben (03:40)
want for a resume for some reason. I don't know if it's drilled into us when we're in there, but the first thing you should do is get out and get one. And then just unfortunately I see people who just don't have the full breadth of knowledge of what's out there in the market for them. In like a personalized way, it's quite a, know, Joe, you're a veteran, I'm a veteran, therefore we're the same people, which is just wildly, we're not, we're wildly different, right? You're from a different background, family background, you've had a completely different career, different rank.
Joe Lara (03:55)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben (04:09)
You've worked on different equipment, different operational tours. You've got different aspirations and ambitions, different skills. to me, the challenge just for the system is actually how do you serve someone on an individual level rather than just plastering everybody as a veteran, if that makes sense.
Joe Lara (04:26)
Yeah,
you bring up some really good points there. It is a system. And at least from our vantage point, the system exists. Is it bad? I really don't want to throw any dirt on anything that's trying to help veterans, but it's just maybe not meeting the full need of a veteran. To your point, there's this sort of checklist in our mind that a resume is on the top of that list. And then
It's just the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And there's nothing in there on the checklist about slowing down and figuring out what matters to you. It's a, it's a hurry up and get through this linear path. And it almost seems like it's linear, but I know my transition wasn't linear and I'm guessing yours wasn't a linear path. In fact, you have a really fascinating story of how you got into tech, right? If you don't mind, I'd love to hear that story again.
and share it with the audience, because it's a really cool story.
Ben (05:23)
I I just count myself as incredibly fortunate with the drive and the risk, gap attack to try something new. my brother was in the Royal Artillery. He transitioned out the forces way before I left the forces. He's older than me. And he started, he had no qualifications, no college education, anything like that. And got into car sales and then tool sales, like selling tools, selling...
all sorts of different things to then eventually get into the software sales world. He's a smart guy, right? Just didn't apply himself too much when he was younger. So I had my brother on one instance in my ear telling me about the software sales world. It was actually e-commerce sales. I had no clue. No clue what. Bearing in mind, I left at the end of 2017, moved into tech, and I'd never heard of Salesforce.
Joe Lara (05:54)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Ben (06:19)
Like that's, think that's like to paint a picture. So my brother was giving me, telling me about e-commerce sales and tech sales. So I always had this in my mind. And then a friend of mine was a sixth form, so a college PE teacher. So she was teaching sport in college and she transitioned into the world of tech as well from that role, selling tech and software.
So she was also in my head. So I just had these influences in my life who knew who I was, like knew what kind of individual I was, my personality, my drive. And they were giving me that guidance, like, know, like career coaches, right? I had my own personal career coaches in that instance. So I didn't want to be an engineer when I left. I fixed aircraft throughout my career, both rotary, so helicopters and fixed wing.
Joe Lara (06:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Okay.
Ben (07:09)
And that was never, for me, was never the role I wanted to do long term. It was a decision I made at 16 year old. You know, how could you, I couldn't tie my shoelaces at 16 year old. So like what, what makes me think I can make a long term career decision at 16 year old. So I was fortunate in a sense that I had that network and then it was just about trying to find a job in those industries, which was a challenge in itself, right? Cause I was an aircraft engineer and I wanted to move into sales. So.
Joe Lara (07:25)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you said something really cool. You mentioned two people that know you well. And that phrase is, man, that's so loaded because there's so much in there. Who is Ben? Like, who are you? Which is not an easy thing to answer in maybe one sentence. It's going to take some time to sort of unravel that. But when you're on that receiving end of
of where you need and you want a job and you're curious, you're not really thinking about who you are, but these people, to your point, you felt really in a good position that these people knew what you were made of, knew what you're capable of, knew the talents, the values that you hold, and you were also in tune to listen, because you could have been tuned off from that. So there's a lot of moving parts that connected you to where you're at today.
And I think to go back to your earlier statement of this reflection piece that veterans kind of clearly miss when they transition, they don't know their value. They don't know, they haven't done that work. And so they kind of skip all that. And if they don't have two voices on either side of them talking into their ear, guiding them along the way, they're kind of just throwing darts at a wall, hoping that something sticks. mean, that's kind of, I think what you and I have seen.
hundreds and hundreds of veterans just do just just wildly guess at a career. It's kind of scary when you think about it.
Ben (09:03)
or do things that their friends have done. Again, isn't necessarily the right thing for them. So I see that quite a bit. People telling me they want to get into cybersecurity or project management because other people have done that exact thing. And I don't think it's their fault. It's like, I always talk about it being like IKEA when you go and shop in IKEA. You've got all of this choice and it's really difficult to decide on what you're going for. You almost forget what you're...
Joe Lara (09:06)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ben (09:33)
going to buy in Ikea because it's just everything and it's overwhelming and I think that's it's exactly the case when you're leaving you're in this bubble in the military where you don't really deal with the outside world maybe defense organizations you know but actually you're not dealing with other areas of the world when you when you leave so just for that to then get thrown on you in events and you know webinars and
Joe Lara (09:55)
Right.
Ben (10:00)
It can be a little bit overwhelming and actually over choice then becomes a real problem for people because it's like where do you go and you've got to try and figure it out yourself of like speaking to people, narrowing industries down. It's just not, it's not an easy process for people.
Joe Lara (10:15)
Yeah, you made me think about my transition time where I had a resume. I dressed well, you know, I wasn't in uniform. was dressing, you know, ready for an interview if you visualize that at a job fair. And I don't know, I don't know, in the UK, are there job fairs for veterans? Yeah, yeah. Have you done, did you ever do one of those or no?
Ben (10:34)
Yeah, yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah.
When I was leaving, I didn't, I did nothing. I didn't do, I didn't take any of our funding for courses. I didn't go to any events. I didn't do any, I did nothing through my transition, which.
Joe Lara (10:40)
Okay, yeah, yeah.
wow.
Yeah.
Wow. Yeah. So I went through the Honor Foundation. Thank goodness I went through that. I still did all the things that you're supposed to do, right? Which is they say go to job fairs, military job fairs, and they have them all over the country in the US. And they're great, right? But I can't tell you how many desks there were with smiling faces and polo shirts that said, you know,
government contracting jobs, know, name the big names in the industry of government contracting and they were all there. And so to your point, is it really anything outside of the unknown? And now it was only what I knew. And like you, at the time I thought I had to do something that was related to my career in the military.
But at that point, and I want to say in the job fair, was starting to get that kind of sick feeling of, don't think this is for me. I wanted a clean break. And there's got to be something more. And luckily I had the Honor Foundation under my, as a resource to do that self discovery and realize, man, I can do more. So if anything, those job fairs were kind of like maybe an awakening of, don't go down that path.
try something different and so I did, luckily. I kind of want to get over to the whole tech thing because what's neat is that you had a couple of people that care for you that know you well say, hey, check this out. When did you discover that this is for me or this is the path? Like when was that turning point for you? Because it could have been a guess as well, right? I mean, what was that for you?
Ben (12:37)
I look at what my drivers were at that point in my life. I was a sergeant, I wasn't on a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. So financial freedom was my driver at that point in my life. I was 28 when I left, joined at 16. And I knew that the money you could earn in this industry, I didn't fully know at the time, the money you could earn if you were good at this job was...
significantly higher than a sergeant's wage. And I live in the south of England, it's expensive. Think like New York prices down here, it's not cheap to live around London. So I mean, I jumped in and you said like, could you, like, how would you come, like, how would you describe me? Or how would people describe me? I'd say like competitive. I've played sports all my life. I am a competitive individual. I know that my family is a competitive family. So that's kind of like
Joe Lara (13:13)
Yeah, yeah.
Ben (13:33)
That's something that's ingrained in me. love that, the aspect of winning and going, I don't know why. But then when I got into this industry, within six weeks, seven weeks, I've seen leaderboards, sales leaderboards for the team. It was just a completely different environment. actually, was a really, it was a top, my first role, the environment was quite toxic.
Joe Lara (14:01)
Mm.
Ben (14:01)
It was
aggressive. It was an aggressive sales environment, which didn't faze me because I think of being in the military. But what I learned in that first role is like, well, you can be super competitive in this industry and you can also earn a lot of money, which was a big driver for me. And subsequently that drive for money enabled me to start my own business down the line, right? Cause I saved a lot of the money that I earned and use that as runway for actually going it alone.
Joe Lara (14:14)
Mm-hmm.
Smart.
Ben (14:28)
Yeah, was just a perfect setup, right? But I think once I got in there and I started seeing leaderboards and I always tell the story, there was a guy on my team that showed me a paycheck. And bear in mind, I'm nowhere near as money driven now. You don't start to be money driven, right? But he showed me a paycheck and the paycheck was something like, for one month was like 16,000 pounds.
Joe Lara (14:32)
Mm-hmm.
sure.
Ben (14:58)
more than my entire salary as a sergeant in a year, in a year. And I just could not believe it. I just couldn't believe it. I was like, how has this person earned this much money in a month from a whole year of graft in the military? It's wild. So I I settled into it quite well. And I was quite naive, I would say, when I left.
Joe Lara (15:03)
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Ben (15:21)
I work hard and I just felt like, you know, if I want to get to the top of these leaderboards, I just need to graft because I'm behind everybody else who's been doing this for the last 10 years.
Joe Lara (15:31)
That's a normal feeling, that feeling of feeling behind. know as I was, I was in my forties when I finished my 24 year career and I felt so far behind everybody else as far as, you know, the competition, like where were 40 year olds, my peer group, but civilians, where were they at in their careers? And they're earning way much more money than I was. And I remember talking to, I had a coach when I went through the Honor Foundation, was this other person that kind of helps you transition. now I feel kind of stupid now, but.
At the time was like, man, I don't even own my own house. I was still renting at the time and cause I couldn't afford to own a house. and, but that was like where my mindset was it was locked in on money. And I want to be very clear because I think you, brought up something there to money. First of all, it's a, it's a, in, it's a chapter, it's a module inside vector accelerator where we asked veterans, we'll ask you if you're listening, a veteran, what are your priorities and money's one of those don't apologize.
Don't say sorry if money is one of those top priorities. It's 100 % okay. And in fact, if we want anybody to get paid, we want you to get paid. Like go get whatever it is you think you wanna earn. But there's a really cool exercise there to help you prioritize that and other things. But for me at the time, and just like you, there's motivators to get paid and rightly so, especially...
If you're getting out and you realize the people to your left and right are earning much more and you're just kind of stepping into that environment, you feel like you need to catch up. And that is an of itself its own daunting thing because then you're like looking, well, what are my skillsets? How do I qualify? If you're in sales and you've never sold, you have to learn how to do that. That's a skillset. That's a thing you have to learn and, or it or anything else, you know, you have to learn. so there's the upskilling piece.
How do I upskill my resume? How do I upskill myself to be competitive? What's that runway look like? All those things are going on in your brain and you're just, sometimes it could be so very self-defeating. Other times it can be motivating. I don't know.
Ben (17:35)
It's all on an individual basis, isn't it? There's absolutely no... It's not a bad thing to want to earn more cash, more money. That financial freedom is something that a lot of people want, right? if you don't join service to become a millionaire, and I'm not even saying you need to become a millionaire, but you definitely don't join service to become a millionaire. So to give yourself that extra...
Joe Lara (17:39)
Mm.
not yeah yeah
You definitely don't.
Ben (18:04)
two, three thousand dollars a month, right, is just an absolute game changer for you, for your family, for the future. So I don't think people should apologize. But again, it's not it doesn't need to be the driver either. Some people just want to get out and get into a stable job, right, where they're clocking in at nine, they're going home at five and they're happy. Right. That's fine as well. But yeah, I agree. You should not apologize for wanting to earn more money.
Joe Lara (18:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ben, what's really cool is you've, since you've gone in an attack, now you're doing something really cool. And that's kind of another thing that I wanted to talk about is, is redeployable. when I met you and we started talking, not only are we veterans and I was able to work in the UK for three years as part of my Naval service. So I loved, loved every minute of it, working with the British army, Royal Navy, Air Force, all those. my gosh.
Ben (18:57)
The crazy, crazy British. Crazy British.
Joe Lara (19:00)
Good times. missed
the breakfast, the full Monte, like fried toast and I love a full English. man.
Ben (19:05)
Do you like a full English? Do you like a full English? I had an American
telling me they hate a full English, were saying it's the most boring breakfast. I think it's amazing. They are stupid, right? Yeah, I agree. I agree.
Joe Lara (19:11)
They're.
They're stupid. It is amazing. Yeah, they're completely stupid. So working
there was amazing. But when we connected, it was the sense of service that I sensed in you and redeployable is all about serving others. So if you don't mind, connect the dots from where you left off of getting into tech and then into this idea and concept that's taken off called redeployable.
Ben (19:41)
Yeah, I mean, when I, the reason I started the business is because I had this amazing career and to put it into context, I started in a big business when I left, then I moved into a mid-sized Canadian, actually global software business. Then I moved into a startup in London and I had that experience of going big business to small business and being like, oh my God, not everybody's like Mark Zuckerberg who starts a company, right?
So I had to go through that personal journey myself and also have the capital to be able to then go and start my own thing. That's, think always, I sometimes hear people say, you know, everybody should start their own business or veterans should leave military service and start their own business. And I just think the first one is terrible advice because this is not a work, you know, when you want kind of job, it's an all in kind of job.
Joe Lara (20:37)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (20:38)
requires some, in my opinion, some commercial experience. Definitely if you're working outside of what you did in the military before, for me I needed that experience. I started the business because I had this amazing career because of the support I had and the hard work. I always come back to hard work and I could see my friends who were not unemployed, under-employed. They were
either not financially rewarded for the work that they're doing. They were underutilized. They weren't leveraging their skills. So I could see that happening with people who were as capable, if not more capable than me. And I was in this amazing career. And I gave myself the first year to figure out what it is we're trying to solve. I love tech. I love AI. I love what's possible right now from a tech perspective, but I didn't understand the problem acutely.
In that first year, we really understood what's the process for an individual leaving service, you know, at personal level, and then how are organizations assessing this talent and hiring this talent, specifically for the military community. Then what we did is we started to build technology to say, well, what can we do from a veteran perspective to completely personalize this process for them, to help them understand what skills they have as an individual based on their entire career.
Joe Lara (22:00)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (22:00)
and start to tell them with the data, what could you potentially go and do and why. So we go really deep from a veteran perspective on helping them to understand those skills, understand what's possible, and then we create them a plan to get there. On the flip side, we did a lot of work with big organizations to say, how can you hire people from the minutes community without a resume involved in the process whatsoever? So this is kind of a little bit different, right? In the way of thinking, but.
Joe Lara (22:24)
Hmm.
Very.
Ben (22:28)
It's all based on skill based hiring and assessments. So we did that with people like Honeywell, Schneider Electric, really forward thinking organizations who actually brought a ton of veterans into their organization without the CV or resume being involved in the process, up until the point where you've actually got to go through the administrative process to land the role.
Joe Lara (22:45)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (22:52)
So we did all that and in tandem then built technology to support that process. So how can we use AI to skill match? How can we use AI to inject content into these veterans' plans so you can learn from the company's 10 months before you're ever going to apply? And how can you show these organizations where this veteran starts on one of their pathways and where they end before they apply for a job? Because to me, that's more powerful looking at a veteran's engagement with that organization over 10 months.
Joe Lara (23:11)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (23:18)
looking at the skills that that person's obtained over the 10 months to make themselves the best fit for that specific role. So we go really deep on both sides of the coin. And what we're trying to do is achieve scale. Like how can we do this for hundreds of thousands of people a year to ensure that they don't end up underemployed and they're connected to the right organization where they stay. And I think that's the big one. They stay. think retention is such an important factor for organizations who are hiring from the community.
is extremely expensive for them to churn out a veteran who maybe didn't go into the right role and leaves after six months. both sides, everything we do though is very, very much focused on the experience for the service member who's transitioning.
Joe Lara (24:03)
That's amazing. And I want to get into my experience. So I actually went through redeployable and I want to talk about that. But before I do, the companies that are hiring veterans, and you said the key word is retention. That's probably the one unknown for, and maybe what gives pause for many organizations to start a veteran.
at a higher pay. And so that whole underemployment piece is a safety net for them to, let's get them in the door, which for the veteran is like, man, it's not what I need right now financially, but hey, I got a job, so let me just take it, right? That's from the veteran side. From the company side, it's an unknown thing. They know they're getting a veteran, but they don't know what you're capable of, so they just kind of get you in and then...
Somewhere in between there, either the veteran likes the environment and hopefully they hockey stick their learning, they kind of quickly elevate themselves within the company, them great ROI. Company rewards them with more pay and those things. That's the dream scenario, but it doesn't always pan out. And because the data shows that veterans leave within the first year or two because of dissatisfaction.
Maybe they didn't transition well because of some other things going on that were not discovered. Yeah, there's this huge disconnect right now. so you mentioned retention. And I think you're onto something with redeployable. So my experience, I logged in, uploaded my standard horribly written. I pulled my resume from 2016. So it's not my current resume because I had to think, OK, where was my mind at way back then when I got out?
Ben (25:44)
Listen.
Joe Lara (25:50)
So was actually my 2015 resume. So I uploaded that and it was very, very much full of military jargon. looking at it now, civilians would like cringe. I cringe. But it read that and did some questions. I even put in a salary range and I was trying to remember what my range of salary that I needed at the time. I basically try to mimic what I was, where I was at in 2015. And what it was awesome is that it sped out three job.
potential lanes or areas of industry. And I believe you can mix it up, right? You can sort of like reset and say, I don't want that one. Maybe do it again and see what else it spits out, right? Is that correct?
Ben (26:30)
Yeah, yeah. So I think the idea of all of this is you don't need a resume for this. You need to just give us a story of your career. It doesn't matter. You don't need to highlight any skills. And we built a whole skill taxonomy for the UK and the US. So what that does is then the AI will then start to identify key skills that you've developed throughout your career by using the wording that you've given it. Then we provide you with a few other questions, the recommendations.
Joe Lara (26:39)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Ben (26:58)
So the recommendations aren't set in stone, right? But the point where the recommendations is, hey Joe, we think you personally would be really good at this. Here are the skills that relate to this specific role. And here are the skills that you should start to think about acquiring in the time that you have to successfully transition into a role like that. to me, this is what we call at the moment, like story ready, if you will, where...
Joe Lara (27:01)
Right.
Ben (27:27)
You're in discovery. You might like five different types of roles at this point. That's perfectly fine. Like you don't know. So yeah, I think the idea is just to present it, but not present it where as Joe, you did this in the military, therefore you'd be good at this. It's Joe, it needs to be personalized. People are individuals, right?
Joe Lara (27:29)
Yeah.
Yeah.
It felt personal from, from at least from the user experience. so here's something, and I don't think Ben, I don't think I had a chance to kind of circle back with you and tell you what my experience was like, because in 2015, when I went through the honor foundation at the time, they were using an assessment called career leader. And I think there's like several tens of thousands of universities across the U S that use career leader assessment. Uh, you don't, there's nothing to upload. It's an actual assessments with questions and you sort of tell.
answer the questions with things that you like to do. Maybe it's creativity, maybe it's strategy, who knows. You just kind of put in those things and it spits out three potential lanes of approach for industry. Specifically, I remember these two. One of them was IT and the other one is nonprofit. At the time I was laughing because I thought nonprofit, ha ha ha, 24 years of service, so I'm not going to go nonprofit. I ended up working at the Honor Foundation for four years. And so there you go.
Ben (28:35)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joe Lara (28:40)
When I
took this assessment through redeployable two of the three IT and nonprofit. mean, so that was, that was pretty cool. I was like, okay, that's not a fluke. actually read me pretty well, but what this is, this is the part that I really loved and veterans. know. I don't mean to put you in a box, but I kind of know how you're wired. You love checklists. You love planning. You love schedules. If it helps you.
sort of see where you're going, especially in the unknown transition space where you don't know what's on the other side of that ridgeline. You never experienced it. Redeployable gave me almost like daily and weekly things to do if I picked one of those lanes. So let's just say I picked nonprofit. What it did is it actually gave me a dose of reality and humility to realize, hey, I want this salary.
But realistically in the first few years, you can kind of expect to be in this range. So it gave me kind of a salary range. And I think to your earlier point of talking to those industries, this is the feedback that you got from them, right? Does that make sense? Like the data to help support this whole pathway? I think you call it pathways, right?
Ben (29:49)
Yeah, so a job family is a pathway in our world. So yeah, what we want to do is, because it's so visible in the military what you're to learn over time, right? You know what you're going to learn. And you leave and you've got no idea what you could potentially earn. So what we wanted to do is, if you follow this IT pathway, what...
Joe Lara (29:53)
Okay.
It is, yeah.
Ben (30:10)
What could you earn in the next three, four, five years banding, you know, not setting stone. It ranges from working in IT in, you know, the energy sector to working in IT in defense. Like it's different, right? Industry to industry. But what could you potentially earn? And I think just giving that visibility to people gives them a better picture of like, you know, if I'm going to choose this, if I do really well, I could potentially earn this in the future.
Joe Lara (30:12)
Mm-hmm.
It's huge because it could also be a motivator to, okay, maybe let me go down this pathway and see where I could be if I upskill my resume and there were a very much like a checklist week by week, you should be here, moving me along my trajectory of getting to where I think I'm aiming for, of taking classes, getting credentials.
And it's guided and it's all recommended. It's not saying you have to do this. None of it is very, it didn't feel forceful at all, but it's all, it felt very tailored and thoughtful. And the fact that you're using AI to generate it all was really, really cool. Yeah. I know for a fact, you are definitely onto something and really excited to see how many more people you're going to be able to help in the future. It's a really neat tool.
Ben (31:32)
Well, I really appreciate the feedback. We're constantly iterating. I would love you to have a play in two weeks time because we're just introducing our core pilot. We're not calling it core pilot, but AI that you can have conversations with that understands what you've done in your career, understand the different areas you want to go. So think about creating your LinkedIn headline. Think about creating your LinkedIn about me. Think about interview practice. The AI is going to start to guide you through different stages.
Joe Lara (31:50)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (32:02)
where it's a bit more personable, a bit more, it's less like you're using tech and a bit more like the technology understands you, know, intuitively and it helps guide you through these processes. So I appreciate the feedback. There's a lot of hard work gone into it and a lot of back and forth for users to figure out, you know, what do people need right now. So it's good.
Joe Lara (32:04)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, that's awesome. Yeah. I'll definitely dive in when you're ready. I like to break things, so I'll test it, for sure. Yeah, no. And then, and then the conversations that we've had earlier too, which has been really good are some of our first conversations, were about this whole discovery piece, which vector is, is, is a space that I'm in. It's before the resume before, before all the exploration piece, who the hell are you as an individual?
Ben (32:29)
I would love you to break it. Yeah, I would love you to break it.
Joe Lara (32:52)
which is a question that we just skip. We don't even know it's a question we need to ask, first of all, veterans. We just don't, we just.
Ben (32:59)
It's weird.
It's a weird question, right? It's like people, you're a bit weirded out by it when you leave. Like, what are you talking about? What do mean? It is all right, it's alien. It's like selling yourself when you leave. You you never, what do you do if you try and sell yourself in the military? You just get shot down, right? It's just not like you don't do that in the military. It's like, it's alien question in my opinion.
Joe Lara (33:05)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
It is
an alien question, but you mentioned two people that know you well, that helped guide you. And so I kind of want to give a little sneak peek inside Vector. If you're a veteran listening to this, wondering what's inside Vector. Okay. There's these questions about money and whatnot on priorities. Got it. There's this also another chapter on values and, and strengths and what makes you you. And so there's an exercise in there where we guide you. Will you watch a short video?
You download the PDF and you answer these questions and you start journaling your strengths and talents over time with, you know, alone, right? But here's the cool part. We're going to ask you to connect just like how Ben had two voices. We're going to ask you to reach out to some of those voices in your life, people that know you well. And here's one of the questions that I love to challenge veterans to do. Let's just say you have, let's just say I did the work.
And in there are the strengths of creativity, solving problems, and loyalty. Let's just say those are top three. I write that down. sit there with it. think about maybe stories in my past that highlight those three. Then I call up two of my brothers and sisters that I worked with and deployed with that know me really well. And I call them and I say, Hey, Jake, dude, we've deployed numerous times. We've been in some crazy places in the world.
You know me better than anybody. And once he gets past the laughter, because this question will cause him to laugh, dude, what is it about me that you love or appreciate about me? He's going to laugh. Guarantee he's going to laugh. But once he gets past that and you get serious, just stand by and start taking notes and listen to their version of how you show up, your strengths and talents. And that's the...
That's the essence of what I think happened for you, Ben, is the people that maybe know you well can guide you in an area of industry, in an area of purpose and meaning that matters because it's aligned with how you're wired, what makes you tick, this competitiveness in you. Like, man, you're made for this, go down this pathway. And when you start getting those voices, validating your contemplation and self-reflection, that's the beauty.
Now you're not wasting time. Now you're really zeroing in. And a word that we love to use in vector is being intentional. You're not just guessing. You're now being intentional with your research in job opportunities. You might even discover, I'm not ready for a job yet. I need to go, I need to go back to school or I want to go on a sabbatical for a few months. You know, it's, there's so much there, but you have the pressure of society or whatever it is, the system that we talked about earlier pushing you.
to take what you did in the past and go do that somewhere else in a similar linear path. And it's just so not how it should be.
Ben (36:23)
This is why I think one of the first things I let on was I was fortunate. I wasn't intentional. I was fortunate just to be in that situation because we didn't have that guidance, right? You go into a workshop, three-day workshop, and they get you to plumb some stuff in and tell you that you'd be a really good plumber, right? That was my experience. And there's nothing wrong with being a plumber, You can earn some good money being a plumber. But that was the experience. I wasn't intentional. I was fortunate. But I...
Joe Lara (36:44)
true.
Mm-hmm.
Ben (36:51)
everything you just said there, me saying it's weird, because it is a weird feeling to call up your friend and ask them that, right? But I think, my God, if I asked some of my army friends that, if I rang them up, like they would initially, I think they'd like give me, they'd probably say some bad things as well, right? Typical British, they'd probably say it, you know? But yeah, I think it's so important. I think everyone rushes for the jugular, right? Like what jobs can I do? What career is gonna do? But like, you just don't, if you don't just sit down and think about.
Joe Lara (36:58)
can laugh at you. Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben (37:21)
things, think about yourself, speak to people. You're starting off without the foundation, without the framework to then go and do the right actions and not waste time and not be a busy fool when you're out there speaking to organisations and people.
Joe Lara (37:36)
That's awesome. Ben, it's, it's been such a pleasure to connect with you and sort of hear the work that you're doing. the, already know you're going to help thousands and thousands of veterans. And so that's what's really neat is just. It's the future of, of where you're going and the impact you're going to have, which is really cool. And if I had to summarize the themes from this conversation, it's, no, I mean, it's, how do, how do we become more intentional? How do we help veterans be more intentional with career transition?
And even for those veterans that it may be have already transitioned out, whether you're in the UK or anywhere, if you're already in a job and you feel stuck, man, maybe you need to slow down and kind of reach out to the people that know you well and have more intentional conversations to get a sense of where you belong. And I think that's really what we want for all veterans is to choose well.
crush life, do amazing things in work and community, make lots of money if that's your thing, you know, go for it. But Ben, such a cool thing to connect with you again. How can people follow along with what you're doing, get in touch with you? How do people figure out more about Ben?
Ben (38:51)
Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So Ben Reed, R-E-A-D, redeployable.io. You can play around with the tool. I just said to you earlier on, there's some quite exciting developments happening in the next couple of weeks. So I'd rather play around now or I'd rather play around in a couple of weeks. But US-centric, UK-centric, it's for both sides of the Atlantic.
Yeah, mean, Jo, it's been great to speak to you and it's been great to speak to you over the past four months and hopefully we'll be speaking for another four years.
Joe Lara (39:22)
Yeah, that'd be great. All right, man. Take care. So good to see you.
Ben (39:25)
Cheers, Joe. Thank you. Bye.
