 We're here at DAV National Headquarters in Erlinger, Kentucky for day two of DAV Patriot Boot Camp. This is our winter 2024 cohort. Yesterday we spoke with a participant. Today I'm joined by a mentor and a very special guest. This is Tim Best. He is an Army veteran and CEO of Recruit Military. And as I mentioned, he's here today as a mentor. Tim, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Glad to be here, Elizabeth. Thanks for having us. Tell me why you wanted to be here today to serve as a mentor to these entrepreneurs. Well, when I learned about it, Dan Clare talked to me about this at the DAV annual convention last year. And I thought it was a great opportunity to come in and actually serve our purpose at Recruit Military, which is empowering the military community through meaningful career opportunities. And any opportunity to help veterans who are considering entrepreneurship learn, grow, and get some advice that could help impact their opportunity to grow their business is something I want to be a part of. And obviously you talk to a lot of service members and veterans who are kind of in this transition looking for their next purpose. Why do you think entrepreneurship is a good fit for this community? I love talking about this because I think that a lot of what compels someone to want to join the military demonstrates some traits that actually make them actually probably a really great entrepreneur. For example, the desire to serve. And I think that that sometimes isn't connected with entrepreneurship. But what I've noticed in veteran entrepreneurs is that desire to serve comes out in the way that they approach being in business. They look for problems that need solving. They think about their special skills and abilities that they think they can bring to the table to help solve those problems. And then they use their creativity and their approach to getting stuff done every day to create ways to create revenue and profitability out of those ventures. And let's back up for a second and talk about Recruit Military. What all do you do for veterans and service members? Absolutely. Well, I mentioned earlier that our purpose is empowering the military community through meaningful career opportunities. We act on that purpose every day by executing our mission, which is bringing those audiences together and connecting the military community with employers. We do that through a series of products and services, most notably with our partners at the DAV and our DAV in Recruit Military, CareerFairs, our database, our placement services, our MBA veterans event, and a large array of suite of products and services that help us connect those two audiences as much as possible. I also want to mention, not only do you serve service members and veterans, but military spouses as well, which I think is really key. Now, I also want to turn to National Employment Director, Ryan Burgos for DAV. Ryan, so you've been hanging out here at DAV Patriot Boot Camp. And to see Tim here from Recruit Military, a great partner of ours. What's it like to see employment entrepreneurs at these two worlds come together? It's such an awesome environment, simply because, one, you've got a veteran or a spouse who is the leaders in their industry. These entrepreneurs that are in here, they're trying to learn from the best. We've got individuals, CEOs just like Tim Best, who are here to educate them. Learn from my mistakes so you don't do the same thing. And another thing that really stood out to me is just the fact that when you are a veteran entrepreneur, you're that much more likely to hire another veteran, thus leading to underemployment ends and also ending unemployment as well. And can you tell us a little bit about the partnership between DAV and Recruit Military? We're working 10 years this year. What does that partnership look like? It's been an awesome experience. And I can tell you, so Recruit Military is the best at what they do. They are awesome at creating the databases for veterans and spouses so that way they can get the attention that they need to get the employment opportunities that they need. But then you factor in DAV's aspect as well. We are the best at what we do when it comes to filing claims for veterans, making sure that they have the correct legislation in place. But then we compliment each other because now we're in the same place that they are hooking veterans up with jobs and spouses as well. But we're also there to talk about claims work, see what we can do for our service members and spouses. We're the one-stop-shop. We want to continue to be that. Tim, when Ryan was talking about veterans who become entrepreneurs, oftentimes hire other veterans. I heard you agreeing over here. How do you think entrepreneurship and supporting entrepreneurship in this community fits into Recruit Military's larger mission? Well, I think first the way it fits is that it's a meaningful career opportunity. And supporting that and encouraging that is good for the veteran community, the military community as a whole. But it's also good for our society. And one of the reasons that I believe that our mission and purpose at Recruit Military is so important is it's not just about the military community, it's about America. And I believe that taking that veteran skillset, that military community skillset and leadership and expanding that more into our society is healthy for America and is honestly needed now more than ever. Right, that's something we talk a lot about is so many of these ventures that we see veterans found are very mission-driven and they support entire communities. So that's a really good point. What are you looking forward to most today? You're gonna be sitting down with some entrepreneurs one-on-one. What are you looking forward to? Well, I always approach these kinds of things. I'm also looking forward to learning. Entrepreneurs, they've got something special and I'm imagining that I'm gonna learn some things today too. But I am excited to help sit down and maybe there's one piece of wisdom, one experience of mine that I can pass onto one of these entrepreneurs that makes a difference. And besides that, I know one of the big efforts here at Patriot Boot Camp is also just to create connections. And I hope to create some connections here that will produce fruit for everybody involved. Great, well, Tim, we're so happy that you're here. Thank you for doing this. Ryan, thank you as well. Thank you for watching. To learn more about Patriot Boot Camp, visit www.patriotbootcamp.org and of course learn about our employment program at jobs.daV.