Discover the inspiring journey of Kord Basnight in this episode on The Renegade Lawyer Podcast. Dive into Kord's innovative strategies for enhancing veterans' mental wellness, where his unique blend of compassion and expertise shines a new light on behavioral health. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about supporting our heroes' mental well-being and seeking transformative insights into the challenges veterans face. Tune in to be part of a conversation that could change how we view and assist our veterans in their journey to recovery.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
Discover the inspiring journey of Kord Basnight in this episode on The Renegade Lawyer Podcast. Dive into Kord's innovative strategies for enhancing veterans' mental wellness, where his unique blend of compassion and expertise shines a new light on behavioral health. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about supporting our heroes' mental well-being and seeking transformative insights into the challenges veterans face. Tune in to be part of a conversation that could change how we view and assist our veterans in their journey to recovery.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
I think, either in the practice or the institution the government and insurance institution that would be a game changer and maybe something that the rest of us could help advocate for.
Speaker 2:That's a great question because I need division cast myself. Ideally I would be the division chief of 20 therapists at Active and Connected Family Therapy, pulling folks from Lima, mary, to help them through their residency, which is a huge, very hard for people to get good jobs. During your residency I'd be their supervisor and help them understand what it's like to serve this community. At the same time, I'd be on LaVamie Mary's veteran community board to try to you know, not to try and having convinced the school that this program in the ed school is perhaps the most unique program making an impact around the country and underserved population that are the heroes of our nation.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.
Speaker 1:Everyone. This is Ben. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where each episode I get to interview people inside and outside the legal world who are making a ding in the world Got a great guest today, my friend Cord Boussley, who happens to be a lawyer. I'm not going to talk too much about lawyer stuff today, but five or six years ago, when I joined CrossFit, cord was one of the first guys that came up to me. He said welcome to the tribe and I was totally bewildered by heavy weights, loud music, barbells hitting the ground and people jamming up in big boxes. I wondered am I in the right place at all? And he said absolutely. He came up and introduced myself himself and we've been great friends since then.
Speaker 1:Once we were doing a Steven Verstappen concert together a couple of years ago. We share a commonality in that we each have at least one child adopted from another country, and so it's great. And Cord is doing some really neat stuff in the world today in the space of behavioral health for military veterans in particular. So I wanted to catch up and play with him today. So how are you doing?
Speaker 2:my friend, I'm doing well. Thanks. It's a big day for us in the Bass Knightville family. Our first grandchild was born this morning.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. Yes, I know you were out this week as I saw you in the morning. I didn't get a class this morning because Sandy and I went. We did a one hour bug ride but I got a little bit warmer than it was at the seven o'clock. But congratulations. Did we know sex beforehand?
Speaker 2:Oh, we did. His name is Michael Dawson. Very good, and what?
Speaker 1:was the tree you're there in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mom and baby, you're good, granddaddy's good now.
Speaker 1:So is this number one for you? It's number one. Yeah, that's awesome. So you're old like me now. Now, congratulations, that's really cool. Well, let me start here, like, tell us a little bit of your backstory, because I know this is part of life. A little bit of reinvention, because I know in the last couple of years you went back to school at Wave and Mary, our alma mater. And now you're working in a group. But how did you get to where you are today?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So after I left our alma mater we were married, where we both, by the way, met amazing partners we did and then we became an attorney for, initially in the Army, called the JAG Judge Advocate General, where I didn't anticipate serving more than a couple of years, and then a couple more years, a couple more years, and it ended up being between activity and reserve time, a 30-year career that I wouldn't have traded for the world. I also bounced between federal agencies and less civilian careers, and attorney with justice, with Congress, with various other agencies around town. As part of that 30-year career, on a walk I had some of the money that I had earned on active duty for college tuition that my kids hadn't used left over. My wife said she didn't want to use it and Wave and Mary, our alma mater, had started a program for behavioral health counselors who were interested in serving military and veteran communities.
Speaker 2:I was simply proud of what our school was doing and wanted to see what it was about. And because I cannot stay out of school, I asked London what do you think? She said sure, so I was at the time. I was in the Army Reserves. I was actually maybe I had just finished the Army Reserves, so I had to sell all that extra time. I'm up, but I was still working full time and this master's program was offered online. I just anticipated taking a couple classes, actually really falling in love with it, and it's my better half.
Speaker 2:I let me retire a couple years earlier than we anticipated, with the hope of becoming a behavioral health therapist once I finished my master's. That happened last May, and as part of that work I was fortunate to sort of get my wings beneath me at something called the Alexandria Vet Center, which I didn't know anything about, but it is where, in all parts of the country, vets can go for behavioral health work, not directly to the VA. They were started after Vietnam because the guys coming home from Vietnam didn't want to let people know that they were going to the VA because it wasn't popular service member at that point, and they created these things that were away from the veteran the VA facilities in small parts of town and they still exist today and are really providing a service that I didn't know anything about. Neither did any of my buddies on active duty, so that's the first reason that I started this.
Speaker 2:The second is, as you mentioned, we both have adopted daughters from foreign countries who were institutionalized, and mine was in an orphanage in Thiberia, for my name is Maria. She was for about 15 months and came to us fully equipped with something called reactive attachment disorder, which no one knew about at the time. She's now 28. She's actually just moved out of her home and is doing beautifully. She's got a great job In Arlington where she's teaching special needs kids and she loves her job, and that phrase or that description is frankly miraculous. If you knew where we've come.
Speaker 1:Of course, yeah, and I do know a little bit of the story to have known Maria for I think as long as I've known you and she also is a rock star at the gym as well Well known, very popular, strong, dedicated, but like someone like you that was, you know, had struggles, you know it's you, and I have learned so much about brain science just by having the experience, and how much wiring and diswiring maybe goes on to that first 18 months of life when you're not in a place where you feel safe and you feel loved and you actually are at 18 months you're on your own survival mode and that just rewires things and it takes, it seems like a long time to rewire as best we can. And we know also that it's not just about giving a child a loving household with everything they could want, right that is, does not begin to scratch their surface. So hats off to you.
Speaker 2:And Linda is a former school teacher and also worked in the school system with special needs children as well, so we probably knew what we were doing when we did Moe Carter, but it changed our life, like you just mentioned that and what really had the biggest impact on us and other than the complete havoc she brought up to the home? A happy havoc, but absolute havoc, because we just did not parent her. We thought we did but we did not. But we learned slowly but surely and one of the things we did was be forced to our knees and have to go. We went to our church to find a behavioral health specialist, because this was sort of voodoo science to us at the time and we were sure this might not be the best idea for us Because, as with many people, especially in the military, there's a certain stigma to behavioral health care that I was fully steeped in because I thought you know, you just had to put your backbone into it, you just needed to believe and have faith and, you know, be a good parent.
Speaker 2:Well, I was taken to my knees with that particular belief and we found a through our church, an incredible therapist who had never worked with anybody but Rad but suggested that might be what Maria had. It was new to something called the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, which is where the insurance companies were able to go and say, yeah, we'll pay for you to be seen by therapists if you have one of these things. Yes, that's the real cynical way of putting it, but it actually is true. Maria was diagnosed with Rad and we started seeing a therapist two or three times a week and her life changed. And as I watched her life change, I figured out I have a lot of the same issues.
Speaker 2:So I started in my own therapeutic journey. I come from a pretty dysfunctional background and my life has improved dramatically as well through that, which is also what piqued my interest when this GI bill, money was still left over for me to give a shot at taking classes at William Mary. So that's how I ended up here. And after graduating, having worked a full year in the internship at the Vet Center, I was pretty convinced that I wanted to work with military and veteran communities, and that is what I'm doing. So I'll let you ask me questions before I just go on with my monologue.
Speaker 1:Yeah and so, and now you're an entrepreneur, because I know that, even though you're working inside a company or a firm or a practice area, a practice group, you are really helping them build out.
Speaker 1:This special space and it's something that we talk a lot about at Great Legal Marketing and on this podcast is like there's seasons for everything and we are continually asking ourselves what am I good at, what do I like doing, what does the universe need, what does the world need from me? So let me talk to you a little bit about veterans needs, because many of us who have not served and maybe don't have someone who's been through this directly, a family member, we can imagine, I think, and tell ourselves stories about what it's like and how the need develops and how people like you are helping that. But give us some sense of the. I mean, the population you're serving is military veterans, but I think many of us would be lying if we said we actually know what the issues are. So can you give us, in a general way, cord what's common to you and then we'll talk about some of your own learning and what you're doing in that community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for asking. It's a good start. Maybe I can use something that happened yesterday to sort of illustrate this. You and I both have a good buddy called. His name is Nate Clark. He's also a crossfader with us. We'll continue to insert this new religion that we have and have spice it throughout the conversation, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:But Nate is a quiet national hero and, as I was hired at Active and Connected Family Therapy, where I'm working now as a resident and counseling, where I need to work for about 3,000 direct hours with clients before I become a licensed professional counselor in Virginia, I was hired to build out the practice for this active and connected group with respect to their military and veteran community footprint. About community, I mean not just people on active duty, who are on active duty and those who have retired, but also their family members, because their family members are impacted almost as much as they are. So how are they impacted? A bit of a backstory about Nate to show he's typical of all of us, including me. We all come from a spicy backgrounds. Well, not all. A majority of us come from spicy backgrounds, dysfunctional, spicy, whatever you want to call it. There's a lot of disruption, many times the family systems from where we originate can be pretty messy and the military has given us a structure or at least we think it gives us a structure to be safe, similar to the law did for me, and in fact that's what happened with Nate, and the reason I know this about him is more than we're friends. But yesterday he came to talk. I've been asked to put on a month long hour, an hour a week, learning session for this group and I thought maybe the first way to highlight it was for somebody to tell a story. So for an hour yesterday Nate told a story, the first, which was I grew up in Johnstown, pennsylvania. It was a tough space. I faced not only poverty but racial tension and I was ready to get the heck out of Dodge. So Nate and I both joined the service to provide structure.
Speaker 2:He went in on the I think that maybe 9-11 or maybe 9-10 or 9-20, maybe like the week after 9-11. But he had originally been recruited to do this way before any of that happened, thinking he would just pay for college, similar to me. And then everything changed on 9-11. For Jags not as much as for guys like Nate, who spent the balance of the next 10 years in Afghanistan or Iraq, and I had him just describe a little bit about what that was like. He happened to be part of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is the most elite division around, but he's typical of everyone who went through this, including the reservists who were activated over and over again over the last 20 years, disrupting their civilian careers, moving them into the military, trying to figure out how their families were going to be completely restructured. We went normally for nine months to a year, and sometimes even longer than a year at a time, and we did this multiple times. So it was the instability of family life was especially disruptive for the past 20 years.
Speaker 2:What most folks face down range is a little known, but I'll give you a picture of a typical day If you were in your fort or your encampment it's called being inside the wire, but all day long mortars are coming in, we're throwing grenades over the wire and that is where you were supposed to be safe, but your nervous system was on high alert at all times. Nate also reminded me that we were working with foreign nationals who happened to be Afghanis, who were interested in democracy, but many times the bad guys infiltrated those people who we were hiring and turned on us the last minute. So, even though we were working with these amazing Afghanis or Iraqis, we always had to be on guard regarding that, so our nervous systems were up. Then, if you went outside the wire, what you've heard about in the news horrible death and destruction outside the wire of anybody at any minute was just a constant threat for everybody Then I can stop there, that's the hyperactive exhausted amygdala and the cortisol levels that stay really high.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting is it's physiologically and I'm no scientist it's not much different from living in an orphanage your first 18 months.
Speaker 2:So that's exactly so. Therein lies the beauty of my daughter's life in saving my own, because I really didn't know it was unusual. I thought this was how everybody felt, but as I watched the herpher, his teacher helped it. He didn't have to think this way. It occurred to me I don't have to think this way and it could actually be a lot calmer, which I didn't even know. It was a call I had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. There is a norm. And the sad part, like so many people cord go through life with a norm that doesn't have to be the norm. So, whether they were in an orphanage, whether they served in a military or not, there is such a need out there for people like you to be able to say, okay, that's your norm. But let me just show you this alleyway over here, right and now, how can we get into that alleyway?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and I use a glass, Use this glass right here. Most people's glass is about a third full of tension to get them to do anything Wake up in the morning, make breakfast, do good things in the world. But people, and at times your glass, goes up to about two thirds full and on occasion it can be overfilled and overflowing. If you're unable to process your the emotions that have been pushed up to two thirds full, it stays there, and that hypervigilance is what my daughter experienced in the orphanage and it never came down. The whole time she was living with a, we thought got a therapist. The same is true of me as a result of my family abortion. I just didn't know. So it took very little tension before my daughter and I started to behave badly. But there are ways, through behavioral help, support, to push it back down, to push the level of water in your cup down to about a third full of tension, so that you can absorb a lot more tension and enjoy your life a lot more. That seemed to stick with a lot of my clients at the vet center and maybe it will help somebody who's listening today. However, I had hoped that that would be the end of the story when I went to the vet center. But it was not because when these heroes and I'm really not using hyperbole, they really did incredibly brave, incredibly selfless things for us Came home, none of them had been looking for behavioral health support. It was thought of as weak. It was thought of as not so that they needed Plus downrange. They really did need to be hyper-visionally to stay alive. When they came home they go through some and got if they were fortunate to get out, they went through something called the Benefits Disability Benefits Determination Process through the Veteran Benefits Association Agency a part of the VA. It's a pretty rigorous process but Nate was explaining. He is a storied purple heart recipient hero who was downrange for 10 years under fire the entire time doing incredibly dangerous things inside the enemy territory, collecting intelligence, doing really incredible stuff. His psych-a-bow at the VA was in a room with 10, and he's typical was in a room with 10 people where they were asking everybody in the room about their post-traumatic stress disorder, which is offensive to begin with, that you have to talk about behavioral health in front of other people. They were new people at the VA asking these questions and Nate was one of the lucky ones to actually get an appointment. Many of my buddies cannot get into the VA system to get these appointments completed, further pushing the water level of their hyper-vigilance in their glass until they just give up and start using other coping mechanisms to try to push the water level down, which further complicates their life and pushes it up even further.
Speaker 2:Exjective type behavior that's one of the reasons I love CrossFit. Healthy, addictive behavior and isolating themselves further and further from the world by pushing themselves into the internet, which is just a way to self-soothe and another form of addiction. That is why the statistics are true when it says 22 vets today are still committing suicide. As they left, they all stayed connected initially the first couple of years through the internet. They would have Facebook pages where they would just all ping each other and give each other hell because nobody else understood what they'd gone through.
Speaker 2:The rest of the country just thought Afghanistan was a mild annoyance. They saw occasionally for five minutes on the news that they even watched the news. They would ask silly questions of us when we got home, like did you kill anybody? Yeah, Did you really kill anybody? Did you shoot any children? Did you shoot any children? How about women? Did you have to shoot women? Yeah, how about the old people?
Speaker 2:When the part of the federal government that was supposed to help us ended up creating further behavioral health trauma, a lot of us just threw our hands up and said forget it. Nate's one of them. He did not give up completely, though. He met me at this gym and I'd ask all about this, because I know this is part of everybody's behavioral health journey. He trusted. He and I have been working together since then. Try to find end roads and healthy ways to work with organizations whose structure is designed around helping vets like us. None of us know where they are, though, or how to find them. That is one of my mission sets in this new entrepreneurial endeavor that I'm hoping to talk about with you.
Speaker 1:For the rest of the time, A mission no less than really being the organizer save the vets who have not only experienced hyperactive amygdala for a long time, but then come back here and don't find soothing within the current framework of how our government identifies and helps. I'll say this, too, for people that are listening One of the reasons I started going and switch my time to go to the seven o'clock class because there's no class behind the seven o'clock class at our gym and CORD has always been. You're mentoring not just Nate, but there's a whole bunch of youngins. I call them young because they're all younger than me and they are. They are. They have career issues, family challenges and you're the granddad, the stern but loving parent, who is helping them in so many different ways. That's part of why I think so many people like, in particular, gym that we go to right CrossFit 703 in Burke because it's mild on. I mean, it's just more than a gym.
Speaker 2:That's the reason why both of you and I like it. If you talk in a gym, you're considered to be weird, and crossFit, if you don't talk, somebody will seek you out and make you talk, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:I think that people that walk in there new are often surprised by that. Hey guys, this is Ben. If you like what you've been hearing on this podcast not just the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts you should know that my son, brian, and I have built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full-time practicing attorneys. Check us out at greatlabelmarketingcom. So yeah, so good for you. So this is a huge challenge. You are nearly in the career and occupation and the space. So what are some of the things that you and the practice group are doing? To say, hey, we're over here, like the door is open and we can help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going on Friends podcast. Yeah, yesterday was another example of what I'm talking about. Every week we have training once for an hour for all the therapists in the practice and we're spending the next month. That hour a week is being spent on teaching all the therapists what you're asking me questions about letting me get in front of them to familiarize them with the space of military and veteran communities and what might be needed from a trauma informed lens just what we all should be using with this part of the community and from a trauma informed lens. That means when you're trying to come up with a treatment plan which all therapists should be you do that in concert with the patient and the patient needs to know that's what you're doing. And if you're in therapy now and that hasn't been something that you've thought with your therapist about, I highly recommend Tom Court told you, but that you'd like to really be a part of the treatment plan where you headed what are your goals, what markers demonstrate your capacity to meet those goals? And if it's not working, what are you going to do next? How do you modify your treatment plan For therapists in my practice to be able to do that for a military or veteran community member. They need to know what it's like to have been in that community and it is really surprising to many people. Nate's story yesterday had a lot of people pretty spellbound. He spoke for an hour. I don't think you could have heard a pen drop and I was rushing him through the story I just told you Because with every detail it's really difficult to grasp what these amazing people have done for us and to let the practice understand that this is an underserved population from a behavioral health standpoint. That is why people are going themselves, because they can't get into the VA, and people in my practice need to understand that even though they may be billing 220 bucks or 180 for an hour to see a member of the military or veteran community, they may need to consider some social justice work, lowering their rates considerably for the vet to be able to afford it. So that's one of the things we're exploring all kinds of options, the first of which is to educate all of the 50 to 100. This practice is growing throughout Virginia and now extending into other states.
Speaker 2:I really admire the owner, who is a go-getter in Charlottesville, married to a psychiatrist who's part of the staff. We have psychologists, psychiatrists, we have social workers. We have the entire array of behavioral health specialists that anybody might need when they step into the space. That was what attracted me to this practice. What also attracted me was this really young entrepreneur who started her practice during COVID to try to help families who were really hurting, and she and her husband did this from Charlottesville and they've expanded to Northern Virginia and into Richmond and into Tidewater. Really incredible what they're doing and it has not been that many years and they're hiring residents like me and giving me the supervision I need to make it possible for me to become a licensed professional counselor in a couple of years.
Speaker 2:She hired me because her footprint had started to become infiltrated by, in a good way, with foreign service officers who face very similar issues. If they're, for instance, if their family members are considered to have some diagnosis that might create deployments for foreign service officer families difficult, that can create a real stigma and if they go into a category that makes it so that kids and family members who need this support are frequently not permitted to see therapists. She figured out how to get into this community and my not my supervisor, but my office manager, who is a brilliant therapist herself is a spouse of a foreign service officer and is really interested in figuring out how to reach this also difficult to reach population. When she interviewed me, I was as open as I am with you, was with you in the gym about who I wanted to serve and why, and I said this is a really difficult problem set. And she was like I'm on. This makes me happy. I'm all about the hard spaces where we can make an impact in the world. Can you come help me do that? I said, sure, I'll do it if I can work three days a week. And I was sure she was going to say, oh, because I'm supposed to be retired right now. I'm 61, but I'm going to retire because this is really passionate for me and it's really a lot of fun. I finished a day, normally seven o'clock, eight o'clock now, because clients need to see me in the after and I'm tired, but I it was doesn't feel like work. So I think don't even remember what.
Speaker 2:The initial question was what the practice is doing, the first of which was army start to build out the knowledge base within the practice itself, which is what I was describing yesterday and what Nate was a huge help with. And then finally we're starting to plug into there's something called the Virginia Department of Veteran Affairs. It is a state based organization, as in every state, that supports bets across the board and bet communities. One of the one of the subsets of that Virginia Department of Veteran Affairs handles behavioral health support for vets who are in need In need can be described pretty liberally and we have become a community provider since I got there for the department of the Virginia Department of Veteran Affairs, which is a really big deal. They're starting to refer bets to us. I think we're seeing 10 to 12 of them already and we've only been this community provider for the last three or four weeks.
Speaker 2:And now I've gone to the VA to say the federal VA to say listen, I know that Congress has passed laws that say you can't make a vet wait more than 30 days for behavioral health If they can't see a behavioral health therapist at the VA. And these are the lucky ones, by the way, who have made it through the gauntlet that I mentioned, that most of us kick off before we get in. So a small fraction of the vets who finally made it through that gauntlet and are entitled to medical services from the VA are also entitled to behavioral health services, but they can't be made to wait longer than maybe four I can't remember the law. So it's 30 to 45 days for an appointment. If that is the case, then they're referred to local providers. Active and connected family therapy is applying to become a local provider for the VA. All of this means, I think, brass tactics or things like this. To me it's great.
Speaker 2:Switching back to the state level, the Virginia Department of Veteran Affairs will pay therapists $120 to see somebody for an hour. I don't care about money because I'm retired, but that's really difficult for people living in DC to use as a living wage, because that 120 hours means three hours getting ready for the person, an hour writing the note, an hour. You know it's a lot of time, but the hope of this practice and stories like Nades yesterday really inspired people. I've heard from five or six people already and most of them have been in therapy and sessions conducting sessions ever since we finished yesterday. But they've taken the time to write me and say listen, that was pretty powerful stuff. What you just did. I want to help. What can I do so if I don't try to save the world in a day and I do it a little bit every day, like things like this. That is what the practice is doing, hiring me to help multiply the world's source.
Speaker 1:Well, look, it's great You're working for an entrepreneur who's not only taking you on to train you, but it's unleashed you. Actually Is that the hard one? Your biggest problem is going to be that the world has this huge need, and now your brain half of your brain is going to be figuring out how do I serve individual clients of the practice, and then the other half is going to be how do I build this? And I know that I think you mentioned to me a couple weeks ago you were back at Whitman Mary, like telling them you need to create more people like me and keep pushing them out, because you have started a flywheel court or you have pinned yourself into something that maybe was already moving, and I think that practice that you've just described is going to explode if managed appropriately, and one of the things you're going to need is more of you.
Speaker 2:So I guess which is why I went back to Whitman Mary- what you're referring to is we go to homecoming every year and I know that there's a big veteran preference presence at Whitman Mary and one of the first things I did for the school was agree. Actually, this was two homecoming years ago, not this year, but last year. I agreed to be the poster boy for this program at Whitman Mary, this program at the Ed School that I've been mentioning for military and veteran communities, because there are many veteran programs at Whitman Mary but this one has not been highlighted yet and it was making me pretty frustrated because the other programs at Whitman Mary serve the vets at Whitman Mary. The one at the Ed School attracts vets to go out and serve the vets in the community all across the country. It produces 60 therapists trained in military and veteran counseling skills. In an online program where people are located all over the United States we could plug in to help meet the lack of supply in a really dramatic way. So I went back to Whitman Mary. So two years ago I spoke at the Army War College at the school's showcase of what we're doing for vets and I think it really surprised people what was happening at the Ed School. They thought it was really nice, what was happening to all the vets that were coming to Whitman Mary and it is nice, it's really important, but this program is. I mean the school should be campaigning us all over the country and using us as a pilot program to be used by every college to help fill this void.
Speaker 2:I almost got the president's here, but she's a very busy lady and I continued to try, which is what I did this week. This past homecoming I brought all my little cards and said listen, we're hiring. The practice owner told me I could do this and I said we're also doing these amazing things. Please let the veteran community at Whitman Mary know all over Virginia we have people who are being trained to help this community. When you're ready to stop doing whatever you're doing to calm your high-covidual and sound, come see us. And it was well received. Maybe they'll let me speak next homecoming, I don't know, but what we're trying to do is absorb some of those 60 therapists up into active and connected family therapy, one of whom we are in the process of hiring now as a result of my time at homecoming.
Speaker 1:So as we are recording this, in late 2023, mid-november. Dude, if you could wave a magic wand over 2024, like what's the one thing you would love to see happen, I think, either in the practice or the institution the government and insurance institution that would be a game changer and maybe something that the rest of us could help advocate for.
Speaker 2:That's a great question because I need to vision cast myself. Ideally, I would be the division chief of 20 therapists at Active and Connected Family Therapy, pulling folks from Layma Mary to help them through their residency, which is a huge it's very hard for people to get good jobs during your residency. I'd be their supervisor and help them understand what it's like to serve this community. At the same time, I'd be on Layma Mary's veteran community board to try to Not to try, and having convinced the school that this program in the Ed School is perhaps the most unique program making an impact around the country and underserved population that are the heroes of our nation, and that it too needs resourcing to make it so that not only can Layma Mary have the benefits it's demonstrating but be the pilot program for all of these public schools around the country who really want to help vets. And then that all comes with enough time to go see this new grandbaby of mine in Boston.
Speaker 1:Well, once we up you to five days a week, we'll give you three days every so often to take on. Yeah, exactly. Well, you're doing an amazing work and I tell you it is really. I always find it fascinating to talk to people who are I mean you and I can say this to each other older in life, who arewho something has happened and now you have a differentbut associated trajectory, but it's a different trajectory than anything you ever did, because you were working inside governmental institutions, like you said, a box and had a structure to it, and now youryou are Cord Bassite is unleashed to solve problems for the world. I know it's a cool place to be, and I will tell you that todayon some days, you want to bang your head against a wall and on other days you're going to be like I can't believe that we were just able to make this happen. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Most days we're like that, or they have been. So far it's been a real treat. I mean, you've got the equine therapists who I really enjoy talking to. I'm going to be taughtthere's an organization I can't remember the name of it, but they found out about me. They bring vets from across the country honor flights. It's calledthey manage the honor flights. They heard about what I was doing through someone of my speaking engagements and I've asked that I come and talk to them.
Speaker 2:There's like 500 of them that get on planes with vets and the World War II vets are dying off. But the Vietnam vets are in their prime and they're a mess and most of them have not sought any behavioral health care. So when they spend the day remembering what it was like, it really activates them. Anyway, the people who are responsible for bringing them across the country to the different memorials around DC on these honor flights are like what are we going to do? Would you agree to come talk? And I said yeah, if you'll, let me plug my program. So these opportunities are coming out of the woodwork for me to come and do things that I never. First of all, the government would never have allowed me to do that, but are Right in the sweet spot of how to generate this community we're trying to serve.
Speaker 1:So, so, as this podcast goes viral and someone perhaps in Virginia or the Northern Virginia area and is listening and saying, wow, you and this organization might be important either to me or someone I know dearly, what's the best way? There must be a website. Yeah, practice with them again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, practice name is active and connected family therapy. It's located all over Virginia. I happen to be working in the Arlington office, but they have a pretty active Instagram page and this part of the practice is being highlighted almost on a weekly basis, if not more. I heard there was a big hokey spread about me on Veterans Day and some silly thing that I said about you know, behavioral health. It wasn't silly, but you know, it's always interesting to see yourself in lights, I think. Wait, you look close to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amanda, the practice owner was. He's really insistent. She said I'm just going to keep putting her name out there. She said many people have been taking the. According to her stats, many behavioral health sites have been taking a hit for whatever reason the recession last year or the slow economy, or, but there wasn't one. I'm not really sure why, she said, but the phone is ringing off the hooks at active and connected family therapy. So what I want people to know is if they have things, if they have people who they think might be helped by somebody like me, please send them my way. The second thing is I want people to know if they want to figure out a way to start supporting us, otherwise, just call me.
Speaker 2:I'm really curious about what you think might work in this space, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that is. I've never been an entrepreneur before. I love entrepreneurial things. It's my motor going, as you can hear. And again, I don't want to save the world. I want my family to hear me say this again and again but darn it, this is not fun and making an impact, the solvers I'm serving their lives. I wish people could be in the room with me. I don't do anything but hold the space for these amazing humans and they're family members to do this work, and it's really something when they see oh, it can be better. Another of the things that I'm trying to do if anybody has any connection with Headstrong out there an organization that gives free veteran services to great therapists I'm trying to figure out how to make active and connected family therapy part of Headstrong. So if anybody from Headstrong hears this and is interested in talking to us, please be in touch, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And then when your owner found her, next time she's up in Northern Virginia. At some point you have to make an introduction. I would love to talk more. That'd be really great. We love entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:Now, the work you're doing is so important. Bless you for doing that, because you could have just wrote off into retirement Again. You found something that's interesting, we're really sure. As you said, you started the program to take some classes, really with this leftover funds and boom, you just get turned on and if you're listening to this, whether you're 18, I talked to so many people that they're in a career and I go how did you find that career? Like, wow, I was in college and I had some space on my calendar and I took a class just because it fit in the space and it just got really interesting for me and now I'm an expert. I met with someone a while ago who's like a rockstar lighting expert person, right On tour with big concert performers. So thank you so much for taking up the time. Thank you again so much for your friendship, of course, and for the work you've done. Really proud of Linda and the work she's done in the world. Really proud of Maria and now, hey, new grandad, you're going to love that stuff.
Speaker 2:Bro, you're the best man that's going to be, great. All right, I'm going to thank you for being here, for being here, for being a great event and for what you do. You're an equal inspiration. As you know, it means a lot to all of us, so thanks.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for saying that If you like what you just heard on the Renegade Lawyer podcast, you may be a perfect fit for the great legal marketing community. Law firm owners across the country are becoming heroes to their families and icons in their communities. They've gone Renegade by rejecting the status quo of the legal profession so they can deliver high quality legal services coupled with top notch customer service to clients who pay, stay and refer. Learn more at greatlegalmarketingcom. That's greatlegalmarketingcom.