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Veteran Founder Podcast
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118 episodes
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February 23, 2022
#118 Power to the Little Investor - Josh Emison, Sans Bank
A Veteran of the Marine Corps, Josh Emison is another Vet from a military family. With an Army Aircorps veteran grandfather and a Navy Veteran for a father, Josh grew up all over the world. In the mainland US, England, Puerto Rico…well, you get the idea. Josh knew early on he wanted to have a military career, and his father’s advice was, not surprisingly, go to the Naval Academy. Not really knowing what to expect, Josh applied and was accepted and met a bunch of terrific Marine officers. That directed him to the Marine Corps where he spent five years as an infantry officer. He had two non-combat deployments. First to Spain where he got to work with the Spanish military, then to Okinawa, where he trained with the Korean Marines. In Okinawa, he also got to do a lot of scuba diving, so not all work! He then went to Jordan for 13 months working at the embassy in charge of administration and logistics. Josh worked with the Jordanian military, but also got to interact with a lot of the civilians. The Jordanian culture and the people really appealed to Josh and remains one of his fondest memories. The biggest takeaway from all that travel? At the basic level, all people are the same. Yes, we may dress differently and eat different foods, but we are all going through the human experience together. And if you can embody that philosophy, you can be comfortable almost anywhere. As rich as his Marine experience was, Josh was wanting to do other things besides a military career. Interestingly enough, Josh also had a fascination with Jackie Chan Kung Fu movies, so spent 6 months in China once he got out of the Marine Corps so he could learn Mandarin and Kung Fu. After returning to the states, he still had 6 months before starting his teaching job so he decided he wanted to start a business. Not knowing what kind of business to start, he eventually landed as a franchise consultant, which meant if nobody bought a franchise, he didn't get paid. Despite starting the business during the period of strict Covid restrictions, he was able to make it work and successfully placed over a dozen people into franchise ownership. During this time, he began learning more and more about real estate investing and realized many of the best investment opportunities were reserved for non-accredited investors. He also was learning about block chain at the time and wondering how this world-changing technology could work. So how could he help the non-accredited investor world participate in building wealth? Josh came up with the idea to use blockchain to offer fractional real estate ownership and own real estate debt. This gave high, stable returns to “regular” people, and that was the beginning of Sansbank. For as little as $100, many people can participate in real estate investments. You can sign up for early access to the app at sansbank.io or follow them on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sansbank
January 26, 2022
#117 Don't Spend That Military Money. Invest - Sean Bonner, Guild
Navy Veteran Sean Bonner started his military career a little later than most. At 28 years of age, he was the “old man” as he began. Growing up in the Philadelphia area, he was an athlete through high school and college. He had a friend who had joined the Marines and Sean had an interest in the military, but it was the 90s, nothing much going on and he had an opportunity to join a stock exchange, so he went to work with them. With the financial markets taking off, Sean did well and started his own business in the financial markets in 1997. During those times, trading was done person to person and Sean saw the day coming when electronic trading would replace him. As with many of our military, 911 was a big turning point for Sean. When the planes hit, Sean was married, and their first child had been born. Wanting to serve and with a background in complex industries because of his financial experience, Sean found out that the Navy offered a commission path in the Intelligence Department. A program left over from World War II; the Navy was the only branch offering this opportunity. It was a very competitive program, tailor made for our competitive man. Sean was even turned down the first time, which made him even more determined to qualify, which he did on his second try. Commissioned in August of 2003, he was then sent to Direct Commissioning Officers School. Iraq had just been invaded by the US and instead of the more “country club” training, his group was thrown right into the OCS school along with the other candidates, so the D.I. hard core routine was the program of the day. After training, Sean went to a couple of other specialist intelligence schools. Although never placed in combat, Sean did experience operations in the Reserves and was part of the group always ready to be called up. Sean served 13 years in his Reserve status before leaving. A legacy neck injury had to be nursed along and in 2016 it was time for Sean to transition out. The entrepreneurial streak plus the financial experience made Sean look at the funds-to-broker-to-client relationship and he decided he could come up with a better model. Then, as with many entrepreneurs, it dawned on him he could help Veterans just getting out of their service to begin building their financial future right away by investing and not spending that money they had coming out of the military. The huge, unmet need for solid financial advice for these new private sector citizens made Sean realize there was a big business for doing good things for our Veterans. He founded Guild in 2018 to not only help individual Veterans but also to help find investment for Veteran-founded startups as well. Venture capital was a new area for Sean, and he interviewed many VCs who cautioned him that the consumer market was very expensive to crack, but Sean knew his market of Veterans was right in front of him and incredibly accessible because of his own service. Sean has found, to his surprise, how uneducated the young Veterans are as consumers. So, the basics of saving as well of investing are very important to Guild. Sean feels that the ease of moving money around and the method of digital management has diluted the appreciation of money to the younger generation and caused them to spend it unwisely. Therefore, besides allowing users to invest and bank on their platform, Guild also offers many videos that train their clients on handling their money responsibly.
December 15, 2021
#116 Where There's a Spark, There's a Fire - Zachary Green, Marine, Firefighter, Entrepreneur
Zachary Green is living the American dream. As a boy, he had three “sparks” as he calls them. First, to be a Marine. He had to wait until he was 18 to do that because his parents didn’t want him to join. Second, he wanted to be a firefighter. He did that. Third, to be an entrepreneur. He has done that one to the max, building a company that saves firefighters’ lives, and now inspiring others with speaking and his book. The military dream started early. Zachary was G.I. Joe every Halloween. While his friends were out riding their bikes, he was in the woods practicing his own maneuvers. When he was finally old enough to join, Zachary directed fire control first for artillery, then mortars in the European theatre. He then applied for Officer Candidate School but when it came time for graduation, he decided he did not want to serve any longer and resigned. It was the Clinton years, lots of attrition and no deployments, so he was frustrated his combat skills were unused. Two years after leaving, 911 happened and Zachary has regretted that his talents couldn’t be used to help his brother and sister warriors. He felt he absolutely had to give back and around 2002 he joined a volunteer firefighting group while still in sales and marketing for Eli Lilly. So that covers spark numbers one and two, but how did he get that far? Zachary credits the Marine Corps. As he says, you don’t join the Marines, you become a Marine. It’s a brotherhood, a family that one is a member of forever and it happens because everyone has to go through the crucible. The crucible, as defined by Zachary, is where you have faced challenge after challenge but come to a challenge for which you are not prepared and you must fight your way through. That is what you must face and defeat, but after that you are undefeatable. This is the crux of his book, but we are skipping ahead. Spark number three: Zachary has become a firefighter and gets lost during a fire. He eventually found his group, but the experience made him determined to invent a material that would make firefighters visible to each other and help firefighters keep their orientation under the worst conditions. He invented it and started selling to the fighters in his station. The word got out and he began selling to other locations out the back of his car (Phil Knight of Nike fame did the same thing). The first six months, Zachary had $5,000 in sales, not enough to quit his day job. After time, his fire chief sat down with Zachary and told him he was sitting on a gold mine and should make his business full time. After a heart-to-heart with his wife, Zachary went to the biggest firefighting trade show of the year. In three days, he sold over $100,000 worth of product. But how do you fill the orders? That’s where the can-do Marine came out; adapt, improvise. So the family mortgaged the house, maxed out the credit cards and began shipping. However, bravado doesn’t guarantee success, and the company was three days from running out of money and closing the doors at one point. This was Zachary’s crucible. And his transformation was to recognize he was a founder and an idea person, not the day-to-day operations person. They hired a CEO from the outside and sales last year were $30Million. And continuing with spark number three, Zachary has shared his experience and provided inspiration to many more with his speaking engagements and now his book, “Warrior Entrepreneur”.
118 total episodes available
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