114: "Answering the question, 'What is my purpose?' is key to agile employment." Military Spouse's ToolKit for Agile and Purposeful Employment with Jen Amos and Scott R. Tucker

Artwork for podcast Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth

Episode 18 • 18th October 2021 • Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth • Jen Amos

Speaker 1 0:00

Awesome. We have just about a minute and then we'll go ahead and get started. thank everyone for joining us on today. Welcome for the military spouses toolkit for agile and purposeful employment. All right, we're right at the hour of 12 o'clock noon. Welcome to everyone. This is our military spouse economic empowerment zone. The webinar that will be presented today will be the military spouses toolkit for agile and purposeful employment, featuring none other than our two guests today that we're so excited to hear from which is Scott Tucker, and Jen Amos with us that wealth we're really excited about from the information that we will glean from on today from these experts. I'm Linda Isaac, I am the Director of Community Outreach and development with South University. I'm also joined with Lynn Ramirez military affairs with Norfolk, the City of Norfolk, and also one of our partners, the Hampton Roads, workforce Council, Nancy Stephen. So we are so glad that you all are here on today. Just to give you a little bit of insight. I am the co chair for the military spouses economic empowerment zone, Len Ramirez is our lead for our organization or our committee. We advocate for military spouses, we also address employment and the challenges of employment for military spouses and how they can overcome those barriers. We do quarterly webinars to equip spouses to inform them to educate and to empower them for the next level and next steps in their lives. And we also look at transitional resources for military members. So that's what we do with the military spouse economic empowerment zone, and we welcome you all here on today. You want to take it over Lynn.

Speaker 2 2:14

Linda, thanks for that introduction. I'll be up here shortly.

Speaker 1 2:19

here, but she was awarded in: 2020

Jen Amos 5:05

Linda, thank you so much for that warm and very enthusiastic introduction. So what's gonna happen is Scott's going to be sharing the slides today. And then I'm going to be manning the attendees in the chat. So if anyone has anything you want to add any comments, any questions, feel free to include that in the chat. But yeah, Scott, if you just want to take it away with the slides. So just like what Linda had shared, we're going to be talking about what we consider the military spouses toolkit for agile and purposeful employment.

Scott Tucker 5:37

Thank you so much for the introduction, as well, Linda, I really appreciate the opportunity here to share our story and our experience for what we want to talk about today. So thanks.

Jen Amos 5:47

So today, our presentation is really about helping and you know, providing knowledge and education and resources to spouses, seeking a fulfilling and purposeful career that is flexible and mobile to your lifestyle. So that is a tall order. And we actually have a suggestion a solution to be able to, you know, achieve all of these things.

Scott Tucker 6:09

when I graduate West Point in: 2002

Jen Amos 6:50

husband, but to, you know, in: 1998

Scott Tucker 8:16

And just for a little context, your father went missing at sea it didn't just disappears a little bit.

Jen Amos 8:22

Oh, yes. Thank you for elaborating on that, I guess. I never know like the lingo. But yeah, more on that story later as well. So today, what we want to do is give you a super simple formula to seek a fulfilling and purposeful career that is flexible and mobile to your military lifestyle. So here it is. Pretty simple. The formula is purpose plus execution equals agile employment. And we're going to go ahead and break down this formula today and kind of go from there so anything you want to add to this Scott,

Scott Tucker 8:52

the way I think about you know, how we came up with this based on you know, my experience and our experiences together is you know, notice that there's nothing here about goals you know, a lot of times you hear you know, have a goal set goals. What I've found is setting goals aren't useful in the sense that if you even if you accomplish them, there's always something else I mean, our human nature is that we're looking for increase. And it oftentimes you see people that have met their goals and yet you know, they look rich and wealthy, but maybe they're not as happy so you think about those people that you know, and that have maybe forgotten that life is a journey and just stagnate means you're not growing and so, you know, I implore you to do not let that be you always be growing. So the trick then, is to motivate yourself to improve your skills, constantly building skill sets, and instead of having goals, create systems, because systems you can implement, you know, as things change, especially as goals change. So the skills and systems can, you know, improve and they can involve and the key thing here is in these modern times where again, things are changing so rapidly, we must be ready to improve our skills and evolve our systems. And so that is the trick to not getting left behind as new innovations come, you know, those who don't learn, the new skills will get left behind. That's just the nature of human innovation. So I like to look at our sense of purpose is our duty to seek our duty, you know, basically the human desire to be useful to help others. And then the execution then becomes our responsibility to to figure it out, whatever that might be. And when I say figure it out, think of it this way, figure out who are those whom you are meant to serve? And how are you meant to serve them. And, you know, this is stuff that takes time, we'll get into that. But ultimately, when you figure out how you serve those you're meant to serve, and then you've incorporated in your core that it's a sense of duty, in these modern times, you can position yourself for agile employment. So we'll show you how we've done that, for at least our situation.

Jen Amos: 11:05

So we want to break down this formula for you starting with purpose. And really today, rather than kind of getting into very specifics, you know, I want you to use these slides, which you'll be able to have access to, after this webinar, to do some self reflection and asking yourself some of these really hard questions to truly figure out how to define your purpose. And just you know, I pulled these questions from an amazing book that I love. On the bottom here called Live your purpose, a step by step guide on how to live your best life, this book really helps you define your purpose, and just seven days, if not less, and so I have found it really useful. And it's something that I want to share with you today. So some questions to consider if you haven't really thought about your purpose, or you want to kind of update it are questions such as this? How do you want to be remembered at your funeral? What do you want to hear the speaker say about you? What are your strengths? And why do you consider them strengths? And how would your friends and family describe the best things about you? So other questions to consider? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What is worth living for in your life? Is there anything that the two questions I mentioned above here, prompt you to do to live life more purposefully? So other questions here, you know, even asking the harder questions of listing top regrets or failures in your life? You know, what did you learn from these experiences? What will you start or stop doing because of those experiences? You know, what are the happiest, most satisfying experiences of your life, describe your future best self, etc, etc. So again, I highly recommend the book live your purpose by Rick halen, because it really does a breakdown of how to define your purpose. But really, the message here is figure out what is your purpose? And we'll get into why that's extremely important for agile deployment a little later. So a little bit about my purpose, and how I was able to answer these questions. So at the beginning, we had mentioned that I am a gold star daughter, the first decade of my life, I was a military child, we had moved, you know, two to three years, just as many military families do. And then becoming a gold star daughter in 1998. I didn't realize like how much of my Military Child Life would impact my adult life. Because today, you know, in my young 20s, I was fired from for jobs, I couldn't hold down a job. And I found myself accidentally getting into entrepreneurship. And so pretty much the entirety of my adult life ever since I've been in business for myself, currently, on my third business venture that I'm willing to tell you about. That, you know, I'm fortunate to be working with my husband here, Scott. And because of my background, because of everything I went through, and because of witnessing what my mom had experienced in post military life, I found that, you know, Scott coming into my life didn't come on accident, him having a finance background, and focusing on our military veterans, I found that my purpose in the work that we do is to have a special interest in serving military families, because a lot of times, these military benefits and education are geared toward the service member and the veteran. And we have come to find that there is not enough literacy, financial literacy tailored toward the military spouse, even though a lot of these benefits actually benefit you, the spouse directly. And of course, through that, I've been able to get into podcasting because being you know, 20 plus years removed from the military, it was important for me to get a pulse of the community today. And so I do that through the work on holding down the fort podcast. Here's my purpose statement from the book I recommended in the last slide, just something I thought I'd share to kind of have you guys think about maybe what you want your purpose statement to be. I am intentional and purposeful with my time, my relationships and my pursuit of happiness. So that's my example and purpose. I'll have Scott share his example about his purpose.

Scott Tucker: 14:46

Yeah, so mine's a little bit different. I didn't know to go soul searching when I was getting out of the military. I mean, I wish I had of course but the bottom line is I looked at it, you know, as a job in the sense that they tell us Hey, when you get out of the military, you have all these qualifications, you should get a job. And one of the things that they always say is that, hey, if been a soldier, you're good at following orders, and you're good at leadership. And I at least was honest to myself at the time and said, No, I'm not. I don't like following orders. And actually, I know a lot of people that don't like falling orders. And quite honestly, I don't want to boss a bunch of people around. And I didn't have any plan other than I had read a couple books, you might have heard of them, Rich Dad, Poor Dad four hour workweek. And they explained this idea of self employment or entrepreneurship, or whatever they some version of controlling the source of your income. And I happened to be in Europe at the time didn't really have a whole lot of options. But I ran into a guy in financial services, and he's like, I hey, you can be your own boss, and create your own hours and get clients and make as much money as you want. So I did that for a number of years. And I'll go into the story of how we created us that wealth, a little bit about how I kind of lost a lot of faith in the financial services industry once I really understood what was really going on. But I learned a lot in the process of what is marketing, what is sales? What is branding? And at the end of the day, though, I still couldn't align my sense of purpose with that financial service career. It's like, yeah, you're helping people, you know, educate around money, or save for retirement. And that seems nice. But there's 1000s of people that do that same thing. What's the difference? What is that different about me, and I remember I told myself, in 2011, I was going through a big breakup at the time, and I was stuck in Germany, I didn't align, you know, my integrity with the financial services career. And I just remember telling myself, I don't know what it is I'm looking for, but I'm going to find it. And so my purpose literally became to figure it out whatever it was, and as I've alluded to, that was skill set in system development.

Jen Amos: 16:55

Yeah. So hopefully, that gives you some examples to start contemplating about your purpose, if you haven't already. And the reason why we're stressing this at the very beginning is if you want agile employment, you have to know your purpose, you have to live with intentionality, which I know for ourselves as you already do, I don't want to I definitely need to acknowledge that, like you will all people live your intentional this military life. So when it comes to agile appointment, it's not the type of employment where you can just clock in and clock out, you know, out of job. It's really this intentionality of like I am working this type of career because I want you and I have a sense of purpose, and I want to be able to make a difference. And so Scott, I wanted to see if there's anything you wanted to add to this slide.

Scott Tucker: 17:36

Yeah, I mean, for me, it gets down to the core. I mean, at West Point, I'm looking at the plaque here on the wall that my mother, I'm visiting my mother right now. And so I'm looking at a plaque my dad had, it says duty, honor country on it. That's our motto, West Point. And so I realized, hey, once you take the uniform off, at one point, whether you like it or not, we're going to be taking the uniform off. And we don't have to follow orders in a way. But we still have that sense of duty, we want to have that sense of honor of doing it with integrity. Again, that was my struggle in the financial services industry, I didn't see a whole lot of integrity there. And I wanted to still be of service to the country. So how do I do that? I said, is it not my duty to become 100% responsible for maximizing my ability to fulfill my life's purpose, but also to identify those who are meant to serve. And so, you know, for those of us that are struggling, and I don't know what to do, I hear this often with the veterans, and not so much the military spouse, but they often say, I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. And that's where I think, hey, it's our duty to figure out because we all want to serve as they had just I just want to serve but saying, I already had the best job by leading soldiers. It's like you're, you're still in our 30s and 40s. There's so much life ahead of us. It's our duty for our country, especially in these times to position ourselves to create more influence.

Jen Amos: 18:54

So for us, you know, we had already hinted at this in our formula earlier, but for the point of this conversation, define this type of employment that's fulfilling, purposeful and flexible as agile employment.

Scott Tucker: 19:07

So we have self employment there. So what's the diff between agile employment and self employment, I like to say because it just gives you more flexibility again, in this day and age, as long as we stay flexible for opportunities, we don't have to limit ourselves to self employment because opportunities might pop up you're like oh, I can go here to build a new skill set. Maybe I get paid for a while also building a skill set and in Jen actually we've got a pretty good example with you Just this last year with the thoughtful entrepreneur as you got into podcasts he tell us a bit about that.

Jen Amos: 19:39

Yeah, so you know, just being able to find those opportunities to improve your skill set. So for me, you know, as a podcaster, I was fortunate to be contracted by a PR firm to host 200 plus episodes of interviewing all these entrepreneurs making six figures and up and you know, I could have sat there and said, Oh, this is what I want to do. You know, for the rest of my life is You know, interviewing people, but really what that experience gave me was, you know, how do I become a better connector? How do I, you know, be better at relationship building? How do I be better at getting to know people better in telling their stories and what have you. And so, you know, that is a skill set I can take with me, no matter where I go. And even in, you know, marketing and sales is just that relationship building aspect that I had the fortune to, you know, really practice in those interviews.

Scott Tucker: 20:24

And the cool thing is, I mean, just one example, there's lots of businesses out there that would happily pay somebody to host a podcast for most business owners don't want to be a podcast host, but they realize they need to do it. Again, that's just an example of a skill set, and applying it again, modern times.

Jen Amos: 20:41

So we want to go ahead and now if you look at the top right, we have the formula up there, just you can kind of follow along and see how we break down this formula will now get into the execution piece and what that really means. So the first part really, execution piece is breaking down the models, the two agile employment models to execute your purpose. So the first one is to have a personal brand. And what does that mean? Well, it really means executing your purpose as a self employed or small business owner. So this is really the only way we feel is most effective for you to be able to, you know, execute your own actual purpose. Now, if you are not ready for that, if you are not ready to, you know, kind of if you've never been self employed, or be a small business owner, we recommend that you be a brand ambassador, and a brand ambassadors essentially supporting someone who is self employed, or is a small business owner, that aligns with your purpose. So I know that, you know, this can involve and we'll get to more examples later. But it could be interning, it could be volunteering, it can be, you know, being contracted by another company to work for them. But we actually recommend that if you are new in this space, if you're new in, you know, agile employment, to work with this model first being a brand ambassador, Scott, yeah,

Scott Tucker: 21:55

and the one caveat here is notice that we say, focused on another self employed person, or a small business owner. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is a lot of the big corporations will attract brand ambassador can mean a lot of things. So we'll get into that. But the big corporations will recruit people to do this. And it's nothing wrong with it. But you can get really in close with the business owner, the closer you can get to the business owner, the closer you can identify and align your purpose, but also have a relationship, get to know who they know, and build their skill sets directly versus being in a system. You know, nothing wrong with that. But just consider the smaller business who needs your help more and need your expertise more than the bigger corporations. So I just want to throw that caveat out

Jen Amos: 22:41

there. Yeah, definitely. And the firsthand experience, you'll get in working closely with these business owner or decision makers.

Scott Tucker: 22:46

Corporations are making a lot of money these days, don't worry about them.

Jen Amos: 22:50

They're doing just fine. Yeah, so if we break down what we mean by personal brand, and how you put that into execution, there's two different things we'll explain. One that's being self employed, that could be freelancing, or sole proprietorship is really the, I guess, legal jargon. But that could be you know, being an individual, like you are an individual providing, you know, consulting, coaching, graphic design, digital marketing services, etc. This is really you like providing an individual service to, you know, your clients, a small business owner. On the other hand, the way that we like to define it is, you know, you are expanding as a self employed person, by having a dedicated team to scale the services that you may have been offering as a self employed person. So like, for example, prior to working with Scott, I ran a Social Media Marketing Agency. And at first I was a freelancer, I provided social media marketing services to small business owners. But then, you know, people said, Well, do you do graphic design? Do you do website development, and I was like, No, but I can rally a team to do that. And so that's how I was able to transition to being a small business owner. So that's a little, a couple examples of what we mean by a personal brand.

Scott Tucker: 23:58

Yeah, and so the thing to think about personal brand, because often you hear, hey, we're quiet professionals in the military, I don't want to become known, I just want to be self employed. And we got to put it this way, the highest paid people in any industry, any industry whatsoever, are those who are known. And so and especially in this day, and age, becoming known, again, for those whom you're meant to serve is the key to attracting business versus having to shove it down somebody's throat. So you want to try to avoid that. But the opportunity is, is better than ever. But the cool thing is, have to become famous, you just have to become well known within again, those whom you're meant to serve. And so that's what I did with writing my book, my main book, better, more secrets, I lay this all out the formula of how to build a personal brand, and then tie it into the benefits that we have been involved in the military and veteran community. So that became my personal brand. It happens to be I did it through the process of trying to find a better way to solve these financial problems. So anyways, we're sharing this books available on Amazon. But we're gonna give everybody a free PDF copy in the toolkit. Yeah,

Jen Amos: 25:07

so brand ambassador, there's a lot of terms, there's a lot of examples of what it means to be a brand ambassador, first and foremost, affiliate marketing. So you know, finding a company that is, I mean, we recommend like small business, obviously, mid to small to midsize businesses but you know, finding a company that you support, and they have an opportunity where you can refer out and then get a commission for that. So that is like a form of referral marketing. Brand ambassadorship. Also interning is obvious one, I don't think I need to explain what an internship is, apprenticeship. Scott, I know you like using this word a lot. So do you want to elaborate on what you mean by apprenticeship?

Scott Tucker: 25:43

Well, just think about how America was founded before the Industrial Revolution, the whole system wasn't go to school, and then get a job and then try to climb the corporate ladder, the system was go find somebody knows what the heck they're doing, and basically, do whatever you have to hopefully make some money, but usually they take care of your livelihood and something but your focus is learning skills, learn skills, learn how to do this skill set that you align with in some capacity. And again, in the modern age, there's so many more opportunities for apprenticing and you can do it in your free time from home. And you can do it quicker than ever. And a lot of times, you don't even have to necessarily find someone, if they've got a YouTube channel or a podcast or a book you can read, that's a form of apprenticeship. As long as you have something that you can implement the same day that you're learning. That's the trick,

Jen Amos: 26:39

fantastic learn while you earn. Also referral marketing, I mentioned it's a little bit like affiliate marketing where you know, you support this brand, and you want to refer clients over to them and earning a commission, or a percentage, because of doing that licensed salesperson, you know, biggest examples could be, you know, working for a realtor team or working for a financial firm. Scott, any other examples for licensed salesperson you wanted to mention,

Scott Tucker: 27:02

you know, in our community, those are the ones that come up, obviously mortgage professionals as well, but anything where the government requires you to have a license to get paid. So there's different ways to get get paid from selling a regulated product, or regulated service. That's the difference between having a license and referring if somebody else has the license, and you're just saying, Hey, you know, I like what you do, how do I bring you more business and they help you tell their story, then you don't necessarily have to have a license, it just typically, if you want to get a higher compensation, you're going to need to be licensed, and you're going to need to develop a little bit more skill cells and how to process whatever business is there, you're gonna need to learn the paperwork process, you need to learn the back end, you're obviously gonna need to learn a little bit more about how the widget, whatever that is, works, do you have to be the creator of the widget? No, that's the difference.

Jen Amos: 27:57

Cool. And then contract work is really, let's say, temporarily working with another company, let's say that a financial firm needs help with their branding, and you happen to be a graphic designer, you can work with them temporarily, to, you know, provide that service to help them with their branding. So those are a couple of examples. Obviously, if you have any questions, you can always reach out to us, which will include in the contact information at the end of the slides. So overall, you know, the benefit of brand ambassadorship is it's a low barrier to entry, you know, you're not having to reinvent the wheel, you're supporting someone else who has created the wheel. And that's an opportunity to network, you know, with the decision maker and with the team that you are supporting. And like I mentioned, we highly encourage you to look into small to midsize businesses, we can actually work closely with the business owner or decision maker, because you'll gain more skills that way. And hopefully, and not everyone does this, but hopefully you might want to eventually branch off and, you know, create your own personal brand. So this could be like, you know, Junior attorney working for a big law firm. And eventually they gained all the skills that they wanted to be able to branch out and start their own law firm.

Scott Tucker: 29:01

Yeah, actually, a great example is this, think about any time you're about to buy some electronics, you go on YouTube, and you listen to somebody doing review. So somebody is doing review of maybe a new camera you want to buy. So they know that new cameras coming out the low hanging fruit is people are going to be researching that camera like crazy. Well, that person has already done the work and networking amongst all the other experts. So they all talk amongst themselves. And then they become known and maybe they're the camera guy amongst all the electronic people. And so everybody knows, hey, if new camera comes out, you know, this is the guy to talk to you. That's what we mean by being a no just be the guy. He knows everybody. You know, it's easier to do than ever with LinkedIn. And then of course, you know, that's an opportunity to affiliate with the people promoting the thing. So you can actually affiliate with the people selling the camera and refer them business through the YouTube video and get compensated for that. And then if you do that long enough, and people are always coming to you every time a new camera comes out, boom. There's your personal No brand. Next thing you know, you're coaching people how to do the same thing. That's what all these YouTubers are doing when they're doing reviews of stuff. So there's one example of low hanging fruit.

Jen Amos: 30:10

All right, so now what we're going to do is take our formula or plug in our business into the formula, so you can get an idea of how this plays

Scott Tucker: 30:16

out. Alright, so we've hit on this a little bit, and I want to make sure we have time for questions. So I'm just going to go through this. And obviously, again, in our content or books, you can get here the grander story. But again, I become the licensed professional. What I found out, I was representing a firm like I wasn't allowed to do anything, unless it was approved, I couldn't start a YouTube channel, I would have had to been approved by somebody else, I couldn't even send an email for that matter, without getting approved. So that eventually told me, I'm not self employed. I'm really an affiliate or salesperson. Now I say that was lost years of skills. Because had I at least realize that during those years, I would have focused on building those skills. Instead, I thought I wasn't doing financial planning good enough if I wasn't bringing enough business, so I needed to find mentorship where there was a guy at our firm who was the top guy who was making a ton of money. And it was really confident in his ability to do financial planning. So I talked to him all the time. So I went to learn with him and he said, Hey, Hey, bring in business. And I'll mentor you, we'll work the clients together. So I was focused on learning the financial planning the mentorship. And so by accident, I started sponsoring events and doing something I was very uncomfortable doing. I'm an introvert, I don't like being out there and schmoozing and stuff. But I had to do it because I wanted to learn from this guy so much, I was bringing him a ton of business. And then I found out later as I go, I was just a brand ambassador for him. Like, again, had I known what I was doing at the time, at least would have done it with intention, instead of being disappointed at the end that five years later, I really wasn't anything other than the guy bringing him business and doing the paperwork for him. So you know, that's where I started to really kind of lose integrity. I didn't see you know, how I was really, you know, uniquely helping. But when we found the Rosie network in San Diego, again, it's an organization focused on helping military spouse, entrepreneurs, they also focus on active duty and veterans as well. It just got started with the entrepreneur with a military spouse problem. And that's Stephanie Brown is the founder. And she's got a great story about why she started the Rosie network. But when I got to talk to her when I was going through her and learning entrepreneurship through the Rosie network, I was explaining all right, well, we have these various financial things I know how to do there's this thing around survivor benefit plan. She was like, Yeah, I don't understand that at all. And she went into this whole story of their problem with this. And I was like, Oh, I know how to fix it. And I talked to her about it. She's like, Man, I wish somebody would have told us and I was like, wait a minute, you were married to an admiral? Like the admirals don't know this. And then I started talking to more senior career people. And I realized, the vast majority of our people just they've never heard of this problem. Don't understand the impacts of it. There is a lot of info out there. There's a lot of bloggers and even financial companies that talk about it. But quite frankly, they're just regurgitating the, how it works. They're just regurgitating what it is. They don't really explain the impact, and then the potential solutions, because there wasn't any until I created one, but but then after meeting Jen and learning her story, I realized, well, gosh, you know, obviously the military pension and survivor benefit plan came into her mother's situation, and I had known about her mother's struggles financially. And so I was like, This all ties together. And I had forgotten my mom was a military child. And of course, it ties in, I was like, wow, this impacts a lot more people than I realized. But it all came down to the spouse because that particular situation, that particular problem was about the spouse, and they were the least informed about, I mean, they weren't being made aware of the information about it. So it's nobody's fault, other than the people that are supposed to be sharing the information. So I realized there was a problem. And even though there's lots of great financial education for the military, nobody was solving this specific problem, nobody in the entire ecosystem. And I thought, well, I know how to solve it. That is my purpose. And so I'll show you a little bit more on kind of how we did that. But so that was the purpose side of my equation. Now the execution side was okay. You know, I've been in the firm and everybody said, you know, here's how you sell life insurance, you know, tell people they might get die one day and their family is going to be destitute, in what are you going to do about it? Well buy a bunch of life insurance. And yes, that's true. And unfortunately, that is the case for some people. And it's I mentioned the case for everybody, for being honest. You know, it's all happens one day, we're not going to be here. And so one of the financial impacts of that, unfortunately, it's often sold to people through fear and manipulation. And I realized, you know, but that's not good community. communicating to people as to tell them the information and allowing them to make their own decisions with all the knowledge available. And unfortunately, way advertising and marketing works will tell you a problem and the solution only in one siloed area. So that's why I realized, okay, I can't do this, if I'm tied to a firm, if I'm tied to a mentor, you know, if they're so great, why aren't they already solving this problem. So it's like, Okay, I gotta go figure out this out myself. So I quit firm, dropped all sources of income, and realized I had to invest in myself. So rather than going into college and using the GI Bill, or getting a master's degree, or working for another Corporation, this is where I know I had to focus on the personal brand, I had to learn the skills for that. And I had to develop the system that would help people solve this problem. That would be basically my system was my widget, my version, I didn't create life insurance, I didn't create financial vehicles. But I did see the innovations happening in this system that most people were ignoring. And I adopted them. So my system was to adopt what the innovators were doing, right. So and this happens with any innovation product, the very first versions of any product or service, I mean, look at our cell phones, the very first ones weren't so good. But over the years, as more adopters came along, eventually, everybody started doing it. So we're in the still the early stages of adoption of the new innovations. When it comes to solving this problem. I just happened to notice it first. But you know, again, I had to learn how to effectively communicate that knowledge. And the only way to do that was to provide education that wasn't otherwise being provided, whether it's through military briefings on base, or all the other online resources that have been put out there before, it won't get what they weren't solving the problem. So here's the version of my system and just taking some snapshots on my website, I got the web page down there, again, you'll get the slides, you can go through it. But just to kind of show you what I did, you know, my system is four steps, nice and simple. All you have to do is, you know, check out these first videos. And so the first video was to understand the value of the pension. It's what I realized one of the problems was people looked at the pension as we're getting that, you know, it's coming on my LPs, it's my monthly stipend. But it's like, how much would you have to have in the bank to get that amount of money, whatever it is, based on your rank and time of service, to get that for the rest of your life? Well, if you're just saying oh five with 23 years of service, liquid Army Lieutenant Colonel, for example, we see up here, that pension is the equivalent, it's around 50 $60,000 a year. But you know, that's worth the present value of that is worth like a million dollars. And that's how we need to think about that's what the 23 years of service is, that's what the family sacrifice all these years is worth. That's what they've earned from the American taxpayer, but it has a value of a million dollars. So we want to understand that and realize that the survivor benefit plan only protects 55% that's the only option. What if you wanted to protect 100%? This does, of course, doesn't include your VA disability. Okay, so the next thing is, well, what would the cost of survivor benefit plan had been? Well, that's the sticker shock. Most people learn about when they get the retirement briefing, they realize all right, I'm gonna get my pension. And then there's a pension protection thing. And then for the first time, they say, Yeah, but there's a cost involved at six and a half percent. Oh, I didn't know there's a cost Well, since when did the benefit have a cost? So now are congruent, Cyrano is all screwed up, because we're like, wait a minute, this doesn't jive. But it seems like it's the only option. And then if you really do the math, again, for this same Lieutenant Colonel, you know, over the course of 30 years, you can see right here, that's about $150,000 they're committed. And if you do know how this reven benefit plan works, the only way that any of that money gets paid back is if the service member passes away first. Awesome in that situation, unfortunately, the probability states that you know, that's not going to play out and so that's another thing we look at, you know, what are the probabilities of the benefit? And then of course, what are the resources you have available to solve this problem if you want to again that's part of the knowledge you know, what you have and what the resources are available, doing an analysis of it, you know, all the information saying okay, you know, I like what that option is, but if I can do something on the private marketplace, you know, let's go see what that looks like. And if it's better, you know, for my situation Great. So there is no right or wrong here. That's the point survivor benefit plan is amazing. You know, again, if nothing else is available, thank goodness, that is there for all military families coming out of service. But if we are looking to and this is where I introduced my services, say alright, Tony, hey, here's my system, I'm doing it. And then the fourth step is okay, we understand the factors going in, we understand the analysis. Alright, how do we do this? design a customized private solution to solve the problem. So boom, there's my four steps. There's my widget, or there's my adaptation, adaptation. I don't know, forgive me, that's one

s. I mean, in the hundreds of: 1000

Jen Amos: 46:55

Yeah, and I think to summarize everything that Scott had shared, I hope that yes, we this is the solution we provide. But I hope that you can sort of see yourself in the situation where, you know, let's say you're working for an organization or business and, you know, as a brand ambassador, and you start to see what the problems are in that particular industry, eventually, it could be your goal to branch out, just like what Scott did, you know, stepping out of the financial firm that he worked at for some time to be able to create this, because if you're able to find that specific solution in the industry, you will become the thought leader, the expert in that particular solution. And you can take that wherever you go. And so for us, because we know that no one else is solving this in the way that we are solving it, like people come to us directly for this specific situation. And we have more agility in our own employment and being able to, you know, be in business for ourselves. And, you know, have a career that is flexible and purposeful. So let's go ahead and wrap up. So there's obviously more long term benefits to agile employment, I've already mentioned, you could even scale your employment, you're not just limited to, let's say, an hourly fee, you could actually expand or grow your income if you want to. And then of course, location mobility, especially if you're working virtually just like what Scott and I are doing. We're not even in the same time zone right now, by the way, in different states, on fact, at this time, and yeah, and really constant growth that gives you a sense of purpose that you're doing something that you're contributing to society and to a greater good. And of course, the relationships that come with it. We love working with the people that we work with and the clients that we get to serve, and all that good stuff. So in wrapping up, I just want to make sure we have a couple of minutes for questions if you have any. And feel free to ask in the chat now. But this is what you're going to get for being a part of our conversation. Today we're going to give you an email recap of a copy of these slides, a replay of this webinar, as well as a copy of Scott's book veteran Wealth Secrets as he had mentioned. And in addition to the website that Scott shared today about the survivor Liberty plan, we also are going to be giving you what I call the blue book, which is the modern guide to veteran and military life insurance planning, which really breaks down into detail how we are solving the survivor benefit plan, and providing an alternative for people that are seeking that and other stuff to come. We want to give you just like the framework that Scott had gone over today. Scott, if you want to mention just real briefly a couple of all these other resources that you've listed.

Scott Tucker: 49:16

Yeah, recommend I got the idea of building systems versus goals from Scott Adams. He's the creator of Dilbert, but he's got a great book out there of how to lose it almost everything and still win big and there's so many people that have learned a lot just from the tricks he shares in that book. If you're on LinkedIn yet or even if you are you know start using it as a personal branding tool even if you're still looking for jobs for recruiters, we got to stand out we got to be different we don't want to make we want to make the recruiters jobs easier so either way them get to know you more. So I talked about all sorts of stuff in the personal branding in there. And of course, you know, our other systems as well.

Jen Amos: 49:54

Yeah. So obviously there's only so much you can share within the hour that we have with you today. So we want For you to know that you are more than welcome to reach out to us. This is our contact information where you could find us on LinkedIn. Obviously our website us bet wealth.com. And if you want to learn about my podcast show, which focus specifically on the needs of military spouses and families, you can check out holding down the fort podcast calm. But that is it. That is our presentation. Len. Linda, we'll turn it back to you and wrap up from there.

Scott Tucker: 50:23

Yeah, and I'm free to stick around, you know, we've got the zoom link. So you know, even if Lynn and Linda need to jump off, if people want to stick around for questions, Jen, I don't know if you're available. Okay, I think we're available to stick around.

Jen Amos: 50:35

Yeah, we just want to make sure we respect your time and our time. But anyway, let

: 50:41

ya know. Thanks, Scott. And Janet, in particular, for those of us that were joining us today, and we had some folks both active duty and spouses and some people that joined in I am, where they sit in those positions can also help, you know, spread the word and help advocate for these kinds of issues. And I just appreciate you guys sharing your personal story and that narrative and given us some ideas to think, you know, I can certainly, you know, give you examples to in my own case, when it comes to a survivor benefit plan. And when I went through that tap, you know, one of the metrics was kind of a joke is like, hey, if you love your spouse, you'll take it, right. There's real, you know, real decision making that needs to be informed. And you could nuke this out. And I've had some friends that did that. But having you all out there there are various methods and just making people smart to make an informed decision about you know, what to do, and it's personal decision that the active service member with concurrence from the spouse has to make and then also just getting back to you know, the basics of you know, purpose and you know, identity, all those concerns that active duty transition service members that I talked to regularly, and in fact, assisting them with the skill bridge programs as they're transitioning out. It's one of the common themes, right? I mean, if you don't start with that basic, which is really hard and also for spouses, it's a challenge right? You can be unhappy and unsatisfied we all know that so thank you for spending that time to help us think through that and I hope you know the folks that are also dieting valid in here we'll reach out to you I know that Lynne she runs the veterans local government management fellowship program with like the host you and I and for Linda who had to leave early, just again, thank you for supporting our military spouse economic empowerment zone here in Hampton Roads and then we also have people dialed out in the outstations MCs is also the nationally there's I think 21 I know um, I saw Andrea she's that one of the senior managers for the program she was dialed in earlier so any other last questions from folks are still dialed in?

Jen Amos: 52:58

I'll make a comment and what you said line as people want to put questions in the chat you know, as someone who is a big advocate for military families and spouses specifically I always want to acknowledge how intentional spouses really live in this life having to you know establish a new normal every two to three years you know, not just for themselves but for their family you know for their kids. And so I just really what we want to do here is say it was really say that we see you we acknowledge you we appreciate you and we just want to be a resource for you to continue to you know live this military life with intentionality because it is a special community to be a part of I don't think there's as many people like our civilian counterparts who live as intentional as we do. And so I just want to you know, just acknowledge you all and thank you all for watching and we truly Scott and I truly want to be a resource for all of you to continue to live your life your military life with intention and purpose.

: 53:53

Great, thanks, Jen. Yeah, if you all want to still hang on Scott and Jen This is their zoom platform Feel free to read up to continue to you know, the conversation and just everybody wants to

Scott Tucker: 54:09

chat we don't have to do it through the chat there we can you unmute going but

Jen Amos: 54:15

yeah, so just like Keith had shared this is very inspiring I've been building my skills and brands slowly I'll begin to look for ways to use my skills and get clients Thank you so much. So thanks Keith. for joining us yeah, Scott we sorry I didn't mean to cut you off we're gonna say

Scott Tucker: 54:29

yeah, I was just say it's you know, it's one o'clock so people gonna jump off totally understand Molly's get a question if you're consulting you're starting your own business and want to work with the government as a way to apply for a secret clearance most have to be sponsored. And you might know but more about that, you know, it's like anything when it comes to government contracting, you know, that you know, my perspective on it is obviously great opportunity. If you can figure it out. Again, that's the key words figuring it out, because it ain't gonna be just straightforward. Anything with the government is Javad throop. So the question, then, because then if you even if you get the clearance, now you're so focused on that one avenue, what other markets might be out there that you could serve, you know, so you know, having somebody on your team or affiliate, this is an opportunity for what's called joint ventures or partnerships, instead of figured out yourself, figure it out, somebody else has already done it, and see how you can serve them and tie into them and learn for it along the way. I think a lot of people end up spending hours and hours trying to get all these I'm a service disabled veteran owned military spouse, you know, business and, and getting all the things behind their name. And they don't even know if anybody likes their widget. Yeah, I think seasoned lawyers, it's like, wait until you know if anybody likes your service. Sorry. And

Jen Amos: 55:49

this guy, yeah, I know for sure I cut you off. So you don't have to apologize. But you know, this goes back to what we're saying with brand ambassadorship. This is a way to, you know, find people like what Scott said, who have already done this and ally with them, essentially learn from them. And you know, network with them to see if you can get an in through them.

Scott Tucker: 56:07

No, go army.

Jen Amos: 56:10

I'm conflicted because I was a Navy family in Scotts army. So I can't, we've had this conversation offline with Glenn. I was like, I can't pick a

Scott Tucker: 56:16

side. thing in here. I don't know. Anyways.

Jen Amos: 56:20

But yeah, I mean, thank you all, again, so much that we are past the hour now. So if you have any other questions or comments, we'll hang on just a little bit longer. Feel free to unmute yourself and be a part of the conversation. But for everyone who have been with us, thank you. And we hope that you got a lot of value, and you'll be receiving an email recap from us soon. With all of these resources that we mentioned today.

Scott Tucker: 56:42

Then we'll follow up with you offline. Okay. Just make sure that email gets out.

: 56:49

Okay, yeah, that's good. And that's good. You recorded this, and we can, I'm sure, you know, you have a greater following following this. I know, there's some folks that want to reach out to you, individually, and you captured that in the chat, too, as well.

Scott Tucker: 57:04

Awesome. Okay.

Jen Amos: 57:06

So real quick, Keith is asking, Is there a website with small business and medium sized businesses that we can look up online, my recommendation is start with your local Chamber of Commerce, and look up their directory of businesses. So I do believe in supporting local, so Chamber of Commerce is a good place to start Keith,

Scott Tucker: 57:23

there's also Rosie's list. So the whole Rosie network actually started, kind of make an Angie's List version for military spouses and in veteran owned businesses. So roses list is a place where anybody can get a profile on and you have a place to do it. But at the end of the day, but there's other directories as well. And quite honestly, like not many people search directories, the best website you can use, I mean, it's good to have that stuff out there and get links to your website for search engine optimization purposes. So you get in directories, especially if they're free, but you shouldn't have to pay forum, there's a lot of veteran ones where you have to, but you know, this is where LinkedIn comes in. It's always free. You know, you need to have a website to be professional to bring people to but you know, the easiest way to get people to find you is to meet them, you go where they're at, and maybe it's not LinkedIn, you know, where are your customers congregating online? No, maybe it's a Facebook group, I have an issue with Facebook groups, because I think they just they've just become nasty. But that might not be the case for all all services stuff. Reddit groups are another place to community, Cora isn't as another spot. So, you know, go and be invaluable in answering people's questions in those types of online communities is the thing that we have available that just didn't exist 20 years ago. I mean, 20 years ago, if you wanted to be known, you had to throw a ton of 1000s of dollars in advertising was the only way to become known. And that's not the case now. But you would want to be focused on being useful in the spaces online where your potential clients are accommodated.

Jen Amos: 59:04

Yes. And to answer Molly's question, there is a free premium subscription for I believe, both veterans and military spouses for LinkedIn. So I think I'll try to find that. And yeah, in the chat here,

Scott Tucker: 59:17

the thing with the premium thing, I mean, that's nice. I mean, it's nice to get the premium service. But that's geared towards the recruiting aspects in the job hunting aspects of LinkedIn. When you're using LinkedIn, for a business and a personal brand, he really sales situation. LinkedIn will catch that in their algorithm. And so I mean, if you're going to invest in something, there's a lot you can do with free versions, but at some point, you're probably going to get to the point where they're going to make you pay for it. And guess what, it's worth it. It's worth it. So just do as much as you can for free build the skill sets up, watch my course where I explain how to do it, but you know, the premium options are great when you learn that kind of bells. whistles about how LinkedIn works even after the years up, you know, it's gonna be worth it if you want to be serious about building a personal brand. Yeah, it's not cheap. It's not it's not crazy though, either. It's like, yeah, it's 90 100 bucks a month. Well, isn't our goal to make more than that? And the business, you know, we're always trying to save a nickel, we'll never make a buck.

Jen Amos: 1:00:20

Yeah, I think it's a good investment for definitely networking opportunities. I always say, you know,

Scott Tucker: 1:00:26

because everybody's there, the serious players are there already, you know, versus spending 1000s of dollars to create a perfect website. Well, how do people know about your website? Right? So my youtube channel is veteran well, secrets. And we got a link to the YouTube playlist. But I've got other playlist about the survivor benefit plan and other stuff as well. So veteran most secrets. I'll

Jen Amos: 1:00:47

just put in the chat right there. So it's easy to Google everything within a second. Awesome. Alright, everyone. I guess that's it. If you don't have any other questions, we want to thank you all again. Len. I don't know if any other closing thoughts to wrap us up here.

: 1:01:04

Thanks, again, appreciate it and look forward to partnering again, and it was just an outstanding presentation here from the group has a testament that a whole bunch of folks thought it was great. So thanks. Yeah.

Scott Tucker: 1:01:19

I'm very excited about the new military spouse empowerment zone. Hopefully that leads to a rosy network chapter in the Hampton Roads area. It's definitely one of the spots but if you aren't in Hampton Roads, recognize there are Rosie network chapters in lots of they're not just San Diego, I know they're in Fort Belvoir, I think Fort Bragg Sacramento, so there's a lot of other spots. So check it out. I think that's a good place to start. It's a different than a bunker labs, you know, bunker labs. Rosi network, I think is more for I want to be an entrepreneur, I don't know where to start. I don't have any ideas whatsoever. That's the support network you want. If you've got your idea and your widget, you're trying to look for funding and stuff. That's the bunker labs kind of next level stuff.

Jen Amos: 1:02:00

Okay. All right, I guess we're just going to jump off. So thanks, everyone. I'm going to go ahead and end this now. And of course, Len and Linda, thank you guys, again, for the opportunity to, you know, run this webinar today. bunker labs. Okay, one quick question. I just want to send this, send this to him. bunker labs,

Scott Tucker: 1:02:21

bunker Labs is like a networking organization that, you know, has some training and they do cohorts. I haven't gone through, it wasn't a fit for me. You know, so I'm not advocating for it. I'm just saying it's one of the well known ones. Yeah. Keith, are

: 1:02:38

you in the Hampton Roads area? What what? city or locality you're in?

Jen Amos: 1:02:48

Oh, Japan, Japan.

: 1:02:50

Okay, so it's probably like, a dark 30 there right now. Gosh,

Jen Amos: 1:02:53

thanks for joining us so late,

Scott Tucker: 1:02:56

early, early.

Jen Amos: 1:02:58

What day is it? It's like the next day I already there. Hey. My family's last duty station was Yokosuka Japan. And that's actually I was actually important because in Japan, so. Wow. So shout out to you and your dedication to be here today.

: 1:03:14

To 11 in the morning, so and spread the word Keith, we look forward to you coming back if you're coming back conus We're here to support you. So stay in touch. Awesome.

Scott Tucker: 1:03:28

Awesome. Well take ready. Thanks. All right.

Jen Amos: 1:03:30

Bye, everyone.

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