Joel Griffin | Riphean Group | Veterans Growing America

In this episode, Coach R.L. Simmons and Donnell Johns sit down with Marine Corps veteran and entrepreneur Joel Griffin, Founder & CEO of the Riphean Group.

Joel takes us through his journey from joining the Marines straight out of high school (including serving with the Silent Drill Platoon at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C.) to intelligence work in Quantico, to becoming a government contractor—and eventually taking the all-or-nothing leap into entrepreneurship.

This conversation goes beyond “business motivation.” Joel breaks down the real grind behind entrepreneurship, why freedom comes with a cost, and how relationships—more than capital—open doors. He also shares how Riphean Group invests in early-stage, mission-driven companies that support the warfighter, and how he became an “accidental restaurateur” with multiple hospitality ventures across Virginia.

Most importantly, Joel speaks candidly about purpose and impact: honoring his daughter’s legacy through Gwyneth’s Gift Foundation (free CPR training, AED deployments, and scholarships), and his work supporting the Virginia Department of Veterans Services—funding that directly strengthens veteran programs across the Commonwealth.

If you’re a veteran, founder, or future entrepreneur trying to figure out timing, risk, discipline, and legacy—this episode is for you.

Key topics in this episode:

• Marine Corps foundation: Silent Drill Platoon, intel work, and leadership lessons
• “All or nothing” entrepreneurship: the real risk/reward conversation
• The baby analogy: why there’s never a “perfect time” to start
• Riphean Group: investing seed capital + intellectual capital into warfighter-focused companies
• Hospitality growth: Rebellion (Fredericksburg/Leesburg), Castilla’s, Skybar, The Port, and more
• Giving back at scale: CPR training, AEDs, scholarships, and veteran support across Virginia
• Why entrepreneurship can restore purpose for veterans

Connect with Joel Griffin:

• LinkedIn: Joel Griffin
• Email: jgriffin@ripheangroup.com

Connect with the hosts:
Coach R.L. Simmons (YourMoneyGOAT)

• yourmoneygoat.com
• “Change your mind. Change your money. Change your life.”

Veterans Growing America (VGA)

• veteransgrowingamerica.com
• Follow on social: @VeteransGrowingAmerica
• Visit the marketplace in Woodbridge, VA—and… shop, baby.

 If you got value from this episode, please LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE it with a veteran or entrepreneur who needs to hear this message.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Veterans Growing America podcast. I am one of your co-hosts, Coach R.L. Simmons. I am here with my illustrious co-host, Donnell Johns, and we have another special guest for you today. We have Mr. Joel Griving. He is the founder and CEO of Riffin Group, and he is also a veteran Marine. Welcome to the show, sir. Thanks for having me, Jens.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Thank you. So I've met you, but my audience hasn't met you. Can you tell them a little bit about your military experience and background?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Sure, yeah. No, I uh joined the Marines right out of high school. You know, I uh had no idea what I was doing like a lot of young men. I knew I wasn't ready for college, knew I wasn't ready for uh a nine to five. So like some of my grandfathers and my granduncles who had been in the Marines, I joined the Marines. Growing up in North Carolina, I had one request of my recruiter, which was like, please just don't send me to North Carolina. So my first duty station was Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, uh, because Marines are going to do marine shit, you know. So they sent me where they needed me. But I was there for only a brief period of time. I was very fortunate. I was selected to go to the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., where I joined and volunteered for the Silent Drill Platoon. Uh I was on the team for several years, you know, really having the opportunity to represent the Marine Corps across the world. It was a great, great, great experience. I was able to get a security clearance through that. And so when my time at the barracks was up, I picked up a billet down in Quantico with the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity Command, doing some some Intel analysis. And from there went on to college, you know, after eight years uh and uh used the GI Bill to go to school, first generation go to college. And it was a great opportunity for me. And after college, I just became a government contractor, just like a lot of folks in the uh DC area.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Yeah. Let me ask you this though. You know, everybody has their their experiences, specifically in the military. How did your your time in the military influence your your journey into entrepreneurship?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I volunteered for the infantry. I figured if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it all the way, right? So volunteering for the infantry, one of the things that that I learned, and and I'm you know, I'm pretty vocal about this, is that, you know, I had the opportunity to serve with people of all races, colors, creeds, religions, backgrounds, and that was not something that I was exposed to growing up in rural North Carolina. And, you know, it was, you know, an eye-opening experience because all of those, all of those things that I had sort of been taught as a child and all those preconceived notions you have as a young man, those get stripped away. I mean, I think uh one of the things that I love about the Marine Corps is that uh you are, you know, universally and unilaterally sort of beaten down to your common, common principle and core, and then you're built back up to be, you know, something that is reflective of, you know, a a functional unit. And what that does is it teaches you that people are people, right? All I know is I want the man or woman in the hole next to me, right, shooting in the same direction, right? And they're not gonna, and they're not gonna run, and I'm not gonna run, you know, if they need me, right? So when you get down to that sort of level of human interaction, it just makes you sort of see the world a little bit different, have a l level of, you know, humility and and empathy for your your fellow man that, you know, I really just didn't have that experience prior to the military. And then the other thing was that, you know, some of the things that I saw and some of the things I experienced in the military gave me a greater awareness for really sort of how fortunate we are as Americans, where we live, the opportunities that we have, the freedoms that we have. And so I have just become a a big believer and proponent that, you know, yes, we are the greatest country in the world, but you know, it's because we all value the same core values, right? And and the same freedoms and the same understanding that, you know, everyone's trying to do the best that they can, but you don't need to step on anybody else along the way. So I just took a lot of that from my military experience. The men that I served with, I'm still, you know, very close with. I'm still considering them family. And so I I've just sort of continued that mantra as I've moved into this experience of being an entrepreneur, right? Um when you work with other entrepreneurs, you sort of relate to them on a different level, right? Because you gotta be a little, you got a little bit of crazy, right, mixed in there to be an entrepreneur. It is not for everyone. You know, it's not that uh it's a bad thing, but but it is it is a bold step to take. And it's not for everyone. But when I talk to a veteran or I talk to an entrepreneur, there's that instant connective tissue. There's that instant recognition in one another that, you know, wherever you come from or, you know, whatever level of success you've had, you know, you took that leap to either swear an oath to the Constitution and the military, or that leap to sort of like venture out on your own and and not worry about sleeping under someone else's shingle, but doing it for yourself. And I think in both instances, it just says a lot about the person.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Oh, I love that. And uh you said a lot of things that really identified me as a person. Crazy, not for everyone, but can relate to many. But uh, I do want to ask you about because you said those things about entrepreneurship, what inspired you to start your own business? What was that the main thing that you were like, you know what, I have to do this? What was that calling?

SPEAKER_00 5:47

You know, I think for me, it I had worked for so many different bosses who were either, you know, just old school, right? Yeah, just, you know, the the most important thing for them was what time I got in the office in the morning, not how productive I was. Or I worked for people that I kept pitching ideas of like, well, we could grow the business this way, or we could pursue the client this way, or we could expand the company into that direction. And it was always, you know, there wasn't a seat at the table for me. Yeah, I was either junior, I was the junior executive, or you know, they were more interested in me running the program than than trying to develop business, right? And so I just got to a point of frustration where, you know, why am I working so hard for a company that, you know, at the end of the day, they they'd replace me. If I left, they'd replace me, right? And if I wanted to really test myself, there's no greater way than to, you know, to that just like in the military, than to, you know, step out and be an entrepreneur. I mean, I had a wife and and kids and I had all those kinds of things, but it was at a point in my life where I just said, listen, if I don't do it now, I'm not gonna have enough runway to recover. That's how I viewed it, right? Because if it doesn't work, you put five years into something. If it doesn't work, great. You can always go back to middle management, right? You can always go back to to Home Depot and become the manager, right? Like that's not, it's not impossible, right? I would rather know, I would rather have tried and failed and at least know I tried than not to have tried at all.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

A follow-on question to that, you know, did you did you have a big safety net when you left, or it was all or nothing when you started your business?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

It it was all or nothing. The, you know, uh it was tough on the family because, you know, when you get in that regular paycheck and the mortgage is paid and the kids are, you know, lunch is bought every every Saturday, you know what I mean? Like life is good, right? There's a why, why do that? But it was just a it was just something that I had to to try. So no, there was no safety net, but it was also the reverse is also true. There was also no getting out of that paycheck to paycheck drudgery if you don't try. I mean, we were like a lot of people, you know, we were living within our means, but we weren't skipping out on movies or the new car or a trip, you know what I mean? So, you know, we were one, two paychecks away at most from, you know, having to go get a loan or having to go get a second job, right? So I just figured there's financial risk either way. And if I do this and it works, then we'll have a level of financial freedom, you know, not you know, not that I'll never have to work again, but at least some level of financial freedom where it's made it worthwhile. And so for me, the the risk versus reward was, you know, it wasn't insurmountable for me. So it's really just taking the leap. And I always tell entrepreneurs who ask, like, well, when's the right time to start a business? My answer is always like, when's the right time to have a baby? You know what I mean? Like you just do, like you just, you just, and then someone hands you this little thing and you take it home and you're like, what am I supposed to do with this? Like, once you have your second and third one, you're good, you got it, right? You know, but that first baby, like you don't know like what's going on. And there's nine months of of terror uh of becoming a new father, right? That's what it's like being an entrepreneur, like every day. It's like that, the you know, but but there's no good time. It's just you just start, man. No, that's it.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

So if you had to tell yourself, if you had to go back knowing what you know now, would you do it all over again? 100%.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

100%. Absolutely. And that's not because I've had some level of success, but that's because I know my personality. I would rather have done it and tried than than to be eighty years old and you know, and and and wonder, right? And and for me, it's it's just you know, that was more important.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Yeah, the biggest, the biggest thing is uh most people they live with all of that regret, and that's one of the hardest things to live with is that regret instead of that that ability to try.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, that shoulda, woulda, coulda. That's tough, man.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah. I mean, it's it's easier to live with failure than it is with regret, in my opinion. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

100% agree. Tell us a little bit about the business. What's your business um unique proposition? Uh tell tell give us Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Well, you know, listen, I I was a government contractor for several years. I didn't just, you know, decide to do it. I I paid attention, right? I learned from from bosses, I learned the process, I learned the business development strategies, the the corporate management, contract management, all those things in the government contracting space. So, you know, I think it's good to sort of pay your dues and learn, which I did. But in 2011, I partnered with a guy that I was in the Pentagon with during 9-11, and and we had a sort of a shared bonding experience through that, that we partnered and starting a security company. We did all kinds of security, government, you know, we did risk assessments, risk mitigation, intel, counter intel, cyber, risk management. We just did a little bit of everything. But in 2018, we sold that business. 2018 to 2020, I worked for um the one for a year, the company that acquired us as a transition. And then the second year, I worked for a mergers and acquisitions company. And I thought, well, you know, now that I've run a business, let's see what else is out there. So I dabbled in the MA market to just sort of see what that was like. And I and I didn't like the idea of being a used car salesman, right? Like running around and like saying, Hey, do you want to sell your business? Okay, I'll call you in six months. Hey, you want to sell your business? Right. I didn't I didn't like doing that. So I struggled for a little bit, honestly. Like I did a little bit of soul searching and in uh I started Riffian Group. Riffian groups really sort of built around the core tenant of as someone who has, you know, a high net worth, I would be able to invest in companies that are either early stage or need some seed capital to get off the ground. And we primarily focus initially in the private equity market. And so we focus Riffian investments funds through our first fund, a national security fund that supports companies, veteran-owned and minority-owned businesses that are servicing areas for the warfighter. So if you have a business that is addressing a very particular need for the warfighter, not necessarily the larger national security market, but just for the warfighter, then we are looking to make investments in your business. So we've got companies that solve training initiatives. We have a company that using Skillbridge and the GI Bill allows veterans who are getting out to use those funds to take a multi-week cybersecurity course, and then they're able to then go on and get entry-level positions in the cyber arena. Um, we have about a 98% attrition rate for people who grab program. But we also have, you know, we have um drone-adjacent technologies uh supporting the warfighter. We've uh we've invested in a a company that provides, puts solar panels on a UAV and can sustain flight for up to 90 days in austere environments. So we've got investments in a in in eight different companies right now. So that private equity business was the first sort of venture I did into investing. And then the second one, the splinter off from that, was I'm I consider myself an accidental restaurant tour. I have uh started a hospitality group, and the restaurant a lot of people know us by is Rebellion, Rebellion Fredericksburg and Rebellion Leesburg, American Fair Bourbon Bar. We also own Castillas, which is an Italian restaurant, Skybar, which is a rooftop lounge in Fredericksburg. And our most recent venture is the Port, which is a seafood restaurant here in Fredericksburg that really pays an homage to the fact that prior to the American Civil War, Fredericksburg was one of the larger ports on the East Coast. It was rivaling uh Baltimore and Alexandria for the amount of commerce that was coming up the river, uh the Rappahannock River. So we are very busy. We've got a couple of other ventures. We have a development arm and we have uh Griffian Athletics as well, which is we're gonna be launching um a semi-pro soccer team in the Fredericksburg region, hopefully in 2027. So we've got a lot of irons in the fire, but all of it's really based around the idea of investing seed capital into early stage companies, but we also invest a lot of our time and energy. So being an entrepreneur is a struggle. If we can help people avoid some of the more common pitfalls that helps them navigate a little bit easier through the entrepreneurial landscape, then we want to be able to do that. So we provide financial capital as well as intellectual capital to to businesses.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

I love that because you uh I guess let me ask this question. So, how do you go from infantrymen to working for a company and then from working for a company and then 2020 you go, I see the light, and then you started your own investment group, which now has let me count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and more organizations under it. So how does all of that happen?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

You know, I I I would love to be able to give you like uh, well, I read a book or I did this or well, it just sort of happens, man. It's you know, if you what's that saying? If you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready. That that's always been my mindset is that, you know, I'm I'm not a big believer in luck, but I do believe that if you work hard and do the right things and make the right relationships, that when the opportunity hits, you're ready, right? It's not like oh shit, if I had been ready or if I had done this or if I had had that, I could have had that opportunity. No, I like to I like to be ready. So when an opportunity presents itself, you know, if I can, if I can put it together, then then then I do. But the other thing that I would say is, you know, more valuable than than financial capital, more valuable than than experience, more valuable than a good idea is relationships. You know, this this is a perfect example of how, you know, I met you last week, uh, we had a conversation, and then now we're doing a podcast that people I probably will never meet, listen to your podcast, and maybe get one nugget from this that then leads them down their path, right? And so those are the relationships, and and I think that's the most invaluable thing that you have, you know, is the relationships that you have. And then most of us in the military come with a level of integrity anyway, right? But, you know, do the right thing, right? When no one is looking, everyone sort of heard that one. But if you apply that just to your sort of business mindset, and then you're constantly presenting yourself as a as a partner or relationship that you want to do business with, then good things are bound to happen. And that's sort of that was sort of my path here. There was no, there was no strategy behind it. It was just, you know, I was approached by a good friend of mine about starting a business. I had been thinking about doing it anyway. So again, being in the right place at the right time, being ready. And then the same thing with this disinvestment thing. It was I wanted to stay in the game, I wanted to be involved, but I didn't want to be the CEO of one thing anymore. I didn't want to do that that grind. And so, but if I hadn't had the previous experience of being a CEO of a business and having been that, then I wouldn't have been ready for the next thing.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

So that makes a lot of sense. And so in the way that I just broke it down, it sounded like it was all easy. What are some of the challenges in transitioning from working to entrepreneurship and then you know, working through the businesses that you have right now?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah. I mean, I think the the first one is that, you know, it it's not easy, right? There's no overnight success. And and and people love to be able to point to, you know, well, you're the next next Jeff Bezos, or you're the next, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, or, you know, but that's fine. You could be, but you know, that means that you're, you know, thinning hair, sitting at your computer in your mom's garage at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, you know, or you're the the the the kid sitting in his dorm room by himself with no friends, you know, writing out code for a a program, right? Like that's what it takes to be successful, right? You know, the the Vikings, when they would land on shore, they would burn the ships behind them, right? I mean, yeah, well, that's a pretty clear indicator. There's only one way to go, right? And so there's no going back. Uh and and that's the mindset. Um it it it's a it's hard on families, right? I'm not gonna lie. I mean, you know, I I told my you know, my wife that um, you know, the first five years, I said, you know, I will be at the games and I will be there for the milestones, but like I'm out the rest of the time. Like, you know, I'm grinding. Um, you know, I'm I'm not coming home for dinner because I'm taking a client to dinner. I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna pick them up from practice because I'm gonna be writing code, right? Whatever your thing is, like that that becomes your number one priority. And, you know, if you're have that mindset and you communicate that to the the people in your life that like this is a priority, then you you you can do it. But the there's no there's no overnight. There's no like, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur so I can set my own schedule, you know. No, you you basically said I'm gonna go from a nine to five to a 20-hour day because I want to be an entrepreneur. And if you don't have that mindset, that's okay. Being an entrepreneur is not for everybody. Business is not for everyone. You know, the other common one that I hear is, well, I want to be my own boss. Okay. Well, that means you have to manage yourself, you have to be disciplined on yourself, you have to be harder on yourself, you have to skip paychecks because payrolls due and you don't have enough money for you, so you got to make sure your employees get paid, right? Like being your own boss sounds wonderful, right? But that's because everyone thinks, as you and I have talked about it, like they think about that success of like, well, you know, I'm off on the weekends and I can go to the beach whenever I want. And no, you can't. With what money? With what with what money? All that money's going back into your business. Yeah. With what time? Oh no, that client wants that work done on Monday. Yeah, they asked for it on Friday at four o'clock, but they still want it Monday morning at nine o'clock, right? And that's why you're there, right? Whatever that is, right? I mean, that doesn't matter if it's putting a roof on a house or digging a ditch or running a you know a retail store. I mean, it's it's the same thing. Like there's always more to do. And trust me, your competitors are working right now. So if you're not, then you know, and if you don't have that mindset, then it's it's just not it's just not gonna work. And it does not come easy. There are a few people out there, I'm sure it's you know falling into their laps, but for most of us, we gotta grind it out.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

I love that because you know, the Super Bowl was yesterday, and a lot of people were at a Super Bowl party, you know, and I and us entrepreneurs, we probably weren't at somebody's Super Bowl party somewhere. It's funny.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

A client meeting. I had a client meeting.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

So client meeting, or you go to the party because there's someone there that you want to talk to about a business opportunity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

Yeah. Absolutely. It's funny because I came to your I had to sacrifice something else in order to come to the event at your bar that night. And I was like, because I I had made a commitment and I I realized that the other stuff that I was supposed to do, I had made this commitment, you know, to Ted first, and I was like, I gotta be there, but I couldn't. I had to sacrifice a couple other things. And so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah, that's just part of the grind, man. And that's that's it. Joel, let me ask you this though, just kind of going back to your um military service, was there any like key lesson or advice that you um can remember that you end up applying to entrepreneurship during your time in the military?

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Yeah. Um, you know, this this is gonna sound sort of hokey, you know, you know, cleaning your kit um in in between battles, right? Um, in between training regimens, in between. Between, you know, when you get downtime, you know, it's not, you know, lean back on your gear and you know, smoking and joking, right? Like, no, it's it's you know, you gotta clean your rifle, you gotta make sure your gear's ready, you know, put your dry socks on, whatever it might be, right? Um and I think that is something that I've definitely applied to my business. Um, you know, a real example of that is in the hospitality arena or notoriously slow after after Christmas. You know, you get a little hit for New Year's and a little hit for Valentine's, and then St. Patrick's Day, things pick back up. You know, a lot of restaurants, you know, they close and everybody goes home. But I I use that as down that downtime for cleaning, prep, repainting, getting new equipment, training staff. I use that that downtime as a way to prepare for the for the oncoming season. And then, you know, on the the private equity side, you know, we do the same thing, right? We we update all of our, you know, our briefing materials, you know, we revisit all of our tools, make sure if there's any training that needs to get done. So we use downtime as a way to get ready for the next battle.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

No, that's good. It's funny enough, I have a story for that too. When I was young, Private Simmons, we were in Iraq, and you know, I was always told, hey, make sure your your your your weapon is clean, you know, in between. And I, you know, first time, knew, neglected it, went out on mission. We had to, we had to mouth out. Uh, I go to, my weapon was already loaded, so I go to push the magazine forward, all you hear is nothing but saying. And I'm like, oh no.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

This is not good. And from then, ever on in my entire life, cleanest weapon you to this day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Never again. But yeah, absolutely. You have to have to take the time to ensure that, like you said, if you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Yeah, for sure. So you haven't been to Veterans Growing America, but you heard a little bit about Veterans Growing America. I want to ask you, as a veteran, how do you grow America?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

You know, I I really do try to stay involved in the community. It's one of the the key principles. If you're an executive and and one of my businesses, there's an expectation that you get back to the community in some way. For me, obviously, it's it's um I'm pretty big on two two topics. One, you know, the veterans issue, obviously. But but secondly, is I co-founded uh an organization called Gwyneth's Gift Foundation. I lost my oldest daughter to uh cardiac arrest when she was 13 years old. And the short story is that she didn't receive CPR in time, and so she suffered from an unrecoverable anoxic brain injury, which effectively means that her brain didn't get enough oxygenated blood to survive the cardiac arrest. And that's subsequently what killed her. You know, what I've tried to do since is to focus that tragedy on, you know, the kind of person that our daughter was and and who she would have been had she had she lived. But what we do is we offer free CPR training uh to anyone across the Commonwealth of Virginia. We've trained over 28,000 private citizens. We've handed out free defibulators to over 150 locations across Virginia, uh, and that's civic organizations, religious institutions, schools, anywhere people will gather, we will deploy a defibulator too. And we have an application process for that. We also hand out every year scholarships to high school graduates in our region who are going on to uh do something of service, whether it's a nurse, whether it's a you know um student who's interested in serving their community or their country in some way. Uh, we love to give scholarships to them. So I spend a lot of time with that foundation. Uh and on the veteran side, I also spend uh a considerable amount of time supporting the military affairs community in the region. I'm the chairman of the Veteran Services Foundation of Virginia, which is raising money for the Department of Veteran Services. Every year we try to raise somewhere between one and two million dollars to give to the department so that they can do things like purchase new beds for the veterans clinics or assist with homelessness issues or create training programs for workforce transition for folks getting out of the military. So I'm fairly involved in the community in in a lot of different ways. And I just feel like, you know, I've I've been blessed in so many ways that it's just, you know, it's my responsibility to give back and make sure that the next person coming up the ladder gets a, you know, someone reaching down for them and saying, hey, let me show you the way.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Thank you. I don't know if you know this, but Veterans Growing America has a grant from DVS. Yeah, you had mentioned that, yeah. And so I didn't know that you had involvement in raising funds for that grant. So that really means a lot because the work that we do, I didn't realize it, but the work that we do um is suicide prevention through entrepreneurship. And uh the way that I found that out was through uh a good friend of mine who does suicide prevention. He's a suicide prevention coordinator for uh Fort Mead. And he volunteers at our store during events, and he and we had this big argument about what suicide prevention looks like. And he stopped and he was like, You're doing suicide prevention right now. And he said, Look, look at all of the people that are smiling at your events. Look at the people that are behind their tables selling their products, they're happy about that, they're supporting each other. And I was like, Guess this is suicide prevention. So I got to look at it a totally different than just you know, creating opportunities for our veterans, but providing purpose for them again. So I just want to thank you for doing what you do to support DVS because your grant funding supports Veterans Growing America. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah, man, that's we all do our part, right? I mean, you know, it's a brotherhood, so you know, everyone just does their part. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

That's amazing. Joel, so we're gonna go ahead and start closing out the show. But before we get out of here, just wanted to give you an opportunity to speak, give a platform. You probably have some listeners and viewers. They're they're aspiring entrepreneurs or they are entrepreneurs and they're in the grind. What are some um encouraging words that you can give to those folks today?

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah, I mean, I I think what I always try to leave people with is that you know, it it it's hard. And and the reality is that if it if it w if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it, right? I mean, that's that's another takeaway from being a veteran, right? Everyone says, you know, my my favorite one has, well, I was going to join. And like, okay, right? Cool, great conversation. Next, right? So it's supposed to be hard, right? It's worth it because you you earned it the hard way, right? You had to put in the blood, sweat, and tears to earn it. You know, it it don't sort of look at it like there's a linear path, right? There's no start, there's no beginning, there's no end, there's no success. Because I assure you, if you achieve the goal that you set out for, you're gonna set another one, right? Because if you're that kind of person, you're not gonna be satisfied because then you're gonna be like, oh, well, if I can do that, then I'm gonna do this, right? So, you know, don't look at it as this linear path or or measure success in dollars, really measure success and and impact, right? You know, are my clients happy? You know, do I have a great relationship? Is you know, people look at us as as the the go-to sort of you know, people for this for this situation or for this answer, you know, are my at the end of the day, do did I do what I said I was gonna do? And if you look at it from that perspective, you know, the money will come, right? But it is definitely worth it. It's worth taking the risk. And if you're young enough and there's enough time to recover, then then definitely take the lead. You won't regret it.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

That's good. Um for anybody trying to find you, maybe looking for a mentor or looking to uh see what you got going on in your business, or maybe even looking for some funding, how do these folks get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Yeah, I'm super easy to find. I'm a very public guy, so you can find me on LinkedIn and uh you can find me there, hit me up on LinkedIn, uh, drop me a message, or just friend me on LinkedIn. Um, my email is jgriffin at riffiangroup.com, and I'm pretty accessible that way. Mentoring is something that I think just sort of comes naturally. It doesn't need to be a formal process. I'm not gonna hand you a book to read, but I could certainly give you a conversation and give you some tips or just give you my opinion of, you know, left, right, or center, right? So adjust your asthmoth, right? So, you know, that's that's all relatively easy. And then I'm always in the community. Um I'm based in the Fredericksburg region. Uh, I'm a member of uh the Military Affairs Committee. Like I said, there's a monthly meetings that they're always going on. I'm on all kinds of boards. So just hit me up on LinkedIn. It's probably the easiest way, or shoot me an email. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

I love it. Truly, truly appreciate your time and your expertise today. Donnell, how do folks get a hold of VJ and how do they continue to support?

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Well, before they do that, they need to get a hold of you so they can learn about your organization. Let's tell them a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Yeah, as always, I truly appreciate you sharing this platform with me. Um, I help families simplify finances. So a lot of times people have this big disdain about financing. They may not understand the jargon or they watch something on TikTok and they really just can't understand the lingo and the language. I like to break down finances super simple. And that's what we do. We are the translator for the middleman, or I say the middleman, the little man. If you need help making sense of your finances, whether it's budgeting, goal setting, whether it's life insurance, whether it's trust, bills, if you need help, your moneygoat.com. Yourmoneygoat.com. Um, and as we always say, change your mind, change your money, change your life. Truly appreciate you, Donnell.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

No problem, no problem. So let me tell y'all a little bit about Veterans Growing America. We provide a space, place, and opportunity for veterans to showcase and grow their business. Feel free to go to our website, veteransgrowingamerica.com, where we have our directory where you can find businesses like the Money Go. And then I also want Joe, I need you to get your businesses on there as well. And also come by our store in Woodbridge, Virginia, Veterans Growing America Marketplace, and shop, baby. Shop, baby.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Joe, thank you. Truly, truly appreciate you again. Man, your your time and expertise was truly invaluable, man. Truly appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Yeah, no, like I said, happy to play my part, man. You know, happy to support you guys. I look forward to seeing you at the store. And I may call you about getting my finances in order, too. So I got you.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

I got you. Stay lost. All right, we are over in out. Let's grow. Let's grow up.