Episode 213 Brendan Duebner Life Skills For Soldiers Transcript
This transcript is from episode 213 with guest Brendan Duebner.
[00:00:00] Scott DeLuzio: Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community, whether you’re a veteran active duty guard reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host Scott DeLuzio and now let’s get on with the show.
[00:00:21] Scott DeLuzio: Welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today, my guest is Brendan Duebner. Brendan is an army veteran and the founder of Life Skills For Soldiers, a nonprofit organization with the mission of improving financial literacy among us service members. So welcome to the show. Brendan. I’m glad to have you
[00:00:40] Brendan Duebner: here.
[00:00:41] Brendan Duebner: Thanks, Scott. It’s
[00:00:42] Scott DeLuzio: great to be here.
[00:00:43] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. And. For the listeners who aren’t familiar with you and what you do, why don’t you tell us a little bit about.
[00:00:52] Brendan Duebner: Sure. Yeah. So, my name’s Brendan, I was a army field artillery officer for a little over four years currently still in the [00:01:00] reserves and part of the Army’s 75th innovation command.
[00:01:02] Brendan Duebner: But right after going off of active GA, I went to Wharton to get my MBA and started Life Skills For Soldiers in 2019. So we’ve been at it for about three years now, really passion project something I saw. Very in depth during my time in the military, sadly. So do that. And then I also have something called a search fund.
[00:01:24] Scott DeLuzio: So. Life Skills For Soldiers. You’re focused on like financial literacy, the things that we joke about so much in the military with, you know, just how poor people are with their money and saving, investing, doing smart things with their money. And so I’d like to talk about Life Skills For Soldiers the nonprofit, and tell us more about what it does and where the idea for it came.
[00:01:51] Brendan Duebner: Yeah, so really what we do at Life Skills For Soldiers is we are our true believers in the train, the trainer methodology. We really think that, [00:02:00] you know, we could come and teach soldiers, but that’s ineffective. The soldiers don’t know who we are. They’re never gonna see us again. It’s what the DOD is now.
[00:02:09] Brendan Duebner: And it just doesn’t work. So instead, our model is we create courses that are tailored to junior, military audiences, you know, things. Basic investing how to use the TSP, how to make a budget, very kind of simple topics like that. But we do it in a way that’s aimed at training the trainer. So we take that Lieutenant, that Sergeant, we get them trained up.
[00:02:31] Brendan Duebner: We give them everything, they need presentation, notes, hand handouts for them to turn around and teach their troops. And by doing it that. Soldiers are much more likely to listen and pay attention because they’re being taught by someone they know and respect. And now that leader has gotten an opportunity to build.
[00:02:49] Brendan Duebner: Leadership capital with their people. And now that they know their people’s goals, they can help them stay accountable to them, which is really the hardest part of any kind of financial literacy thing. You know, none of this isn’t rocket science. It’s [00:03:00] not that hard. It’s just about being disciplined and just doing it, frankly.
[00:03:03] Brendan Duebner: And so we, we truly believe that by bringing the leader in the loop and getting them trained up and having them teach we, we produced much better results.
[00:03:12] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, and you’re right. It’s not rocket science to do this. It is a very disciplined thing that you need to do though in your life. It, and this goes for anyone it’s not just for military or veterans or whatever.
[00:03:26] Scott DeLuzio: Everyone should be disciplined in their finances in their life. And it’s pretty simple. If you think about. , if you have a certain amount of money coming in, you have a certain amount of money going out. If the amount of money going out is more than the money coming in, you’re gonna probably be in a bad situation.
[00:03:42] Scott DeLuzio: And so you need to and obviously that’s a very simplistic view of what it is, but but if you think about it like that, it’s basic math. If you know that you’re having X amount of dollars coming in every month, you can’t spend. More than that, whatever that X number is. And so, and you have other things that you need to [00:04:00] maybe put some money aside for maybe you have kids and you wanna save for college and or you wanna put some money away for a rainy day or for unforeseen medical expenses or that type of thing.
[00:04:09] Scott DeLuzio: So you have to plan for that. And that’s where that scary word budget comes in and all that kind of stuff. So when you start thinking about it, that way you break it down into small little pieces, it. It doesn’t seem quite so scary anymore. But I like the approach that train the trainer approach because you’re absolutely right with the ability to keep people accountable.
[00:04:31] Scott DeLuzio: To, you know, whatever their goals are and things like that. If you came in and you talked to a group of 50, a hundred people or whatever the case may be, and you talked to them for an afternoon about their finances, they’re gonna forget about it by the time they walk out the door not to say anything against your training or anything like that.
[00:04:48] Scott DeLuzio: It’s just kind of human nature that who is this guy? What does he mean to me? Whatever, you know, like the. They’re probably just gonna start forgetting about things. And when you are being taught some of this stuff by someone that [00:05:00] you see every day that you’re training with, that you’re going to work with, and now you can follow up with them and say, okay we talked about this.
[00:05:10] Scott DeLuzio: What is it that your goals are and how can we help keep you accountable towards those goals? And that’s the thing I love about the military is how we. Do help each other out with these things that are outside of our typical job in the military.
[00:05:23] Brendan Duebner: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the financial problem is a problem for the entire us population.
[00:05:29] Brendan Duebner: If you look at the numbers, you know, we’re not very good at it. And for a lot of reasons it actually makes sense. You know, the according to pew research report, the real average wage in 2019 had the same purchasing power as it did in 1964. Meaning that wages hadn’t gone up as much as inflation, which means it’s just harder to buy the same amount of things.
[00:05:48] Brendan Duebner: Right. The only problem is in the military wages have actually beaten inflation consistently. So military members, their purchasing car has actually gone up, but this issue has not gotten [00:06:00] better. It has gotten better in the last few years, but it’s still, it’s just abysmal, frankly. And so there’s really, you know, I think anybody who’s been in the military for a day I think can kind of intuitively tell why this is, you know, you have a lot of service members joining at a very young age, often from, you know, poor public school systems.
[00:06:19] Brendan Duebner: They probably didn’t talk about money with their family, you know? And you’re cooped up. You go to basic training, you go to AIT and then all of a sudden you get a little bit of freedom. You’ve got a few thousand dollars in your bank account and you think you’re rich and you go out there. Not only do you spend.
[00:06:34] Brendan Duebner: But oftentimes you spend it on a car and you get into debt and you get into high interest debt and you don’t know what that is. And you know, it just compounds so quickly and it gets these service members in these holes that it could take a decade to get out of. And it doesn’t just affect the service member.
[00:06:48] Brendan Duebner: It affects their families. You know, military divorce rates are really high. For a lot of reasons I would argue financial problems is one of the top ones. It affects units. I mean, when I had soldiers who were [00:07:00] going through money problems, you know, their PT was not nearly as good. They, there was lost work to it.
[00:07:06] Brendan Duebner: It was just bad. And it affects the military as a whole. So it’s a really holistic problem. That, you know, I think that the military is especially well geared to solve because we have that leadership structure there is that camaraderie and that, you know, that sense of generally respect for the, your superiors, your Sergeant, your Lieutenant your first Sergeant who it is.
[00:07:30] Brendan Duebner: So I, I really think that the military can be a case study of how to solve this problem. And everybody would benefit from.
[00:07:38] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And I think you touched on something a little bit earlier, is that a lot of this stuff, while it is pretty straightforward, it’s not being taught in public schools.
[00:07:49] Scott DeLuzio: A lot of times they don’t teach things like having a budget or balancing a checkbook or planning for future expenses or any of that kind of stuff. why? I don’t know. I’m not [00:08:00] an educator. I that’s not my background, but but it seems like that is definitely something that in the American.
[00:08:05] Scott DeLuzio: Public. It should be in our best interest to be teaching these things. And so when you have an institution as large as the American military with so many people, you can you can start to address this problem and help make help these service members not make the bad decisions that they.
[00:08:23] Scott DeLuzio: Are historically prone to making right there. There’s that common joke in the military that you’ll eventually have a private that goes out and buys a brand new Mustang at 29% interest or something stupid like that. And and it’s true. It happens all the time and you hear about it and these people don’t know just how much 29% interest is and how ridiculous it is to have to pay something like that over the lifetime of the vehicle.
[00:08:47] Scott DeLuzio: Right.
[00:08:48] Brendan Duebner: Yeah, no, I it’s. It’s a pervasive problem. And fortunately, I will say legislation is getting better. I know when, so I wrote a white paper on this topic and at that time, I think only 15 states had [00:09:00] any kind of personal finance curriculum in the required education in high school.
[00:09:05] Brendan Duebner: And I know, I think Michigan is the most recent state to, to pass it. So it’s going in the right direction on. On the school side, but this is gonna take years to get in place. And then it’s gonna take years to figure out how to do it correctly. And even then, I mean, you’re teaching high school kids. So, you know, let’s see what the sticking rate is.
[00:09:21] Brendan Duebner: I, I think it’s a phenomenal thing. I think it’d just be every single state, but, you know, it’s not gonna be a perfect solution. Right. And so, you know, this is something that, again, like, I just truly fundamentally believe that with these skills, it’s. It is education, but it’s really more about habit building and discipline than anything else.
[00:09:40] Brendan Duebner: And the best way to do that is one to do it when you’re young, but two to have somebody kind of mentor you through it, just like anything else. that is really where I think the military would shine with this, especially because, you know, it’s in everyone’s best interest. It let’s say the platoon Sergeant is gonna be the one, teaching it in a platoon.
[00:09:59] Brendan Duebner: Well, when private [00:10:00] Snuffy has an issue because of money and therefore gets into all kinds of trouble, guess who’s dealing with it. It’s that squad leader. It’s that platoon Sergeant it’s that platoon leader. So it’s in their vested interest to teach these kinds of things to get ahead of problems, not to mention.
[00:10:15] Brendan Duebner: you know, who cares about their people more than that squad leader, platoon Sergeant, like than that leadership. Nobody, because they see ’em every day you build these very personal connections with people, especially when you’re in the field for weeks or you’re on deployment or you’re in combat you, you know, so I really think it’s, to me it’s just a no brainer and at Life Skills For Soldiers, we’re trying to be the example of that.
[00:10:34] Brendan Duebner: We’re trying to show, you know, right now through the nonprofit grassroots Space that this is very possible. If we could teach, if we could train up leaders quickly and effectively, then we can make a huge impact.
[00:10:51] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And that impact will ripple out throughout the military because when you train that platoon Sergeant to then [00:11:00] train his or her platoon and they get all of those.
[00:11:05] Scott DeLuzio: People trained up to par that, that now they have these skills, these financial skills to improve their lives. When they move up the ranks and they become squad leaders, platoon sergeants, first sergeants, whatever they’re going to be able to then train. They’re gonna be able to train their own troops as well.
[00:11:24] Scott DeLuzio: And so this will now ripple out and affect so many more people than just the handful of people in that, that one initial maybe training session that took place. And I think that’s the way a lot of like institutional knowledge gets passed on through the ranks in the military just overall.
[00:11:41] Scott DeLuzio: You hear stories about people. Served in maybe Vietnam and then passing on some of that information where our country wasn’t really in combat for a while after Vietnam. And then now all of a sudden we have we had desert storm and then they passed on some of that knowledge to tho those troops.
[00:11:57] Scott DeLuzio: And so, those guys who, who were in, they [00:12:00] may have. Lower enlisted people at that time during the war, but, you know, they are in a leadership position down the road and then they’re able to pass on that information. So I think it’s really great. The way you’re doing this in the train, the trainer approach I’ve always found that in the military, that type of approach had the biggest impact.
[00:12:19] Scott DeLuzio: Any kind of training, not just this type of training, but any kind of training that you’d have in the military when you would do the training, the trainer it, it had that exponential effect where that, that one person that you trained can now go out and train a group of 40 or 50 people. And then those 40 or 50 people can then go train other people.
[00:12:36] Scott DeLuzio: And it just made it so much more effective. I, I.
[00:12:41] Brendan Duebner: Yeah. You know, logistically it’s a lot easier, you know, DOD is not dumb that they know this is a problem. Actually in 2016, Congress passed legislation mandating that DOD teach service members about financial literacy. I can tell you I was in 2016 to, to 2020 on active duty.
[00:12:58] Brendan Duebner: I don’t think I ever got [00:13:00] a personal finance class other than maybe one mandatory training that probably, you know, half slept through. But DOD knows it’s a problem. And so they created the office of financial readiness in 2017, in 2019, that office kind of laid out, okay, this is what’s gonna be taught.
[00:13:14] Brendan Duebner: And when and I think. They’re trying to slowly have it ripple out throughout the force, but the, I think the main issue with it, it’s all well intentioned. I think it’s all great. I think the big issue is just the delivery method, you know, right now the delivery method is through. Mostly either DOD civilians or contractors that they come in, they teach these giant course 300 people whatever when you’re in processing a base or so, you know, it’s just like this huge training nobody’s paying attention.
[00:13:44] Brendan Duebner: Nobody wants to be there in the first place. Like, you know, it’s lumped in with 10 other trainings that day. So it’s not even, it doesn’t even get any kind of attention or anything, you know, I think that’s really the problem. And I think the beauty of the train, the trainer model is logistically it’s.
[00:13:57] Brendan Duebner: So. Scalable, right. I mean, you have [00:14:00] to teach what let’s say. You train one person platoon you have to train one 30th of the people that you have to, that you have to train otherwise. Right. And I also think that if you do it correctly, you know, you could do it in kind of a hybrid format. What we do with Life Skills For Soldiers is we have our learning management software and all of our courses on there.
[00:14:21] Brendan Duebner: Leaders can access it at any time. It’s completely free. And they could just go in there and they get what they need. And I think, you know, if we had more funding and whatnot, we could even offer some kind, a hybrid option where if you’re a leader and you’re going through it, and let’s say, you’re stuck on a course concept, or you actually got through the course.
[00:14:37] Brendan Duebner: And now you’re just figuring out the logistics of teaching your people. You could schedule time with, let’s say a Life Skills For Soldiers, trainer, some kind of personal finance expert who could walk you through how to do that. I really think the linchpin of this whole thing. Is those junior military leaders.
[00:14:54] Brendan Duebner: I, I could tell you, I mean, I’m sure you saw it, Scott the most overburdened people in the military are [00:15:00] those first and second line leaders like that, everything somehow ends up on their shoulders. And so, you know, that is a real problem, especially when those are the people you want to use for a train, the trainer kind of thing.
[00:15:11] Brendan Duebner: But. I think the way you relieve this issue is one, like I said, like we, like, we’ve talked about, you know, these skills, aren’t that tough. It’s just about, you just need to create courses which we’ve done that teaches it quickly and effectively. And it’s focus. It’s hyper focused. It’s on one thing, you know, we’re not talking about the broad spectrum of investing here.
[00:15:33] Brendan Duebner: We’re talking about the Ts. Maybe next time we could talk about mutual funds and bonds and all that kind of stuff, but we’re just focused on the TSB right now. If we could, if you could just fix every service member’s TSB account, you would create billions of dollars of wealth for military and veterans easily.
[00:15:50] Brendan Duebner: You know? So, I really think it’s incredibly possible in that by having the very kind of structured and to the point courses like we have as well as. [00:16:00] Creating all the materials that leader needs. You know, I can’t tell you how many times I went and made a class from my platoon about how to make a budget or how to invest or how to buy a car, how to use a credit card, whatever it was.
[00:16:14] Brendan Duebner: And I’m sure there’s a million Lieutenant Dubner and Smith and whatever who have just recreated the wheel over and over and over. And instead we, that Life Skills For Soldiers, we wanna be that hub where you don’t need to. Do all this work, we’ve already done it. And guess what? After you use it, you send us your feedback and we’re gonna make it even better and better and better.
[00:16:35] Brendan Duebner: We’re consistently iterate. So I think by effectively equipping those leaders, you can get rid of that main barrier, which is that they are they’re currently the ones who are working pretty hard.
[00:16:48] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And they’re working hard. And they’re like you said, they. Doing a lot of other things.
[00:16:53] Scott DeLuzio: They’re trying to keep a lot of plates spinning at the same time. And this one, if it doesn’t [00:17:00] affect them personally, it may not be a high priority issue for them. They may have other fires to go put out. And so this might just be something that falls through the cracks. Oh, you know, they, if they don’t have their finances together, that’s their problem.
[00:17:13] Scott DeLuzio: That, that type of thing. And you know, that’s not the best approach or the best attitude to have about it. When you have all these other things on your plate and you’re trying to do more than you have time to do then something has to give at some point. And you’re absolutely right about it as far as like in processing goes or things like that when you’re sitting through class after class, after class, and it’s like drinking from a fire hose, when you’re not gonna get everything, it mostly it’s gonna end.
[00:17:40] Scott DeLuzio: Splatter on the sidewalk or whatever, you know, it’s not going to seep into your brain. So, you know, why not take this approach that you’re doing. And it makes sense that you would sit down with the soldiers that, you know, you care about and. Make sure that they’re doing okay as, as far as [00:18:00] their finances go.
[00:18:00] Scott DeLuzio: And I think this probably could be applied to a lot of other things in their lives, not just finances. It could be, you know, things in their marriage, things in their, you know, personal lives and things like that. Because when you have problems with money, You’re probably gonna have problems in your relationships.
[00:18:19] Scott DeLuzio: And when you have problems at home, in your relationships and with your finances, you’re probably gonna bring that some of that into work with you. And if your head’s not on straight in the military, that’s when people get hurt, people get killed people, bad things happen. Right. And so, so this, I think is one of the more important ways of.
[00:18:39] Scott DeLuzio: Addressing some of the problems that we have here and getting people on the right track so that they’re focused on on the right things.
[00:18:47] Brendan Duebner: Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, I think one of the thing that really differentiates our military versus others is that we empower and use our lower leaders.
[00:18:57] Brendan Duebner: Right? Like that’s something we could see with the Ukraine crisis [00:19:00] right now. Right. Why is Russia having a lot of problems against a technically. Inferior fo it’s cuz they, every decision has to be made at like the highest level. And when they had that 40 mile convoy that was running out of gas and running out of food, you know, that’s because they’re not empowering their, they don’t, first of all, they don’t use their NCOs at all and, and they don’t empower their lowest, their, the lowest level leaders.
[00:19:25] Brendan Duebner: And I think that’s something that, that we do and we. Do even better. And I think this is kind of the model for doing it, right? Like, like again, who has more of a vested interest, this nobody than the, than those first and second line leaders. And this is a way to, to help build your future commanders, help build your future first sergeants, you know, you, you get ’em.
[00:19:46] Brendan Duebner: You teach. ’em how to not only teach their soldiers, how to shoot at the range or do movement contact or whatever. But you also, you teach them how to take care of the whole person, how to lead the whole person, cuz in the military, unlike a lot of [00:20:00] civilian careers, you’re really in charge of the whole person.
[00:20:02] Brendan Duebner: It’s not just a, you put on the uniform, you go to work. You Le like you are military 24 7. So I think there’s just a lot. I think. I think personal finance is the best place to start. But like you said, I think it could be applied to a plethora of things. And the second and third order effects of this would be
[00:20:22] Scott DeLuzio: huge.
[00:20:23] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. And I saw a few interesting stats on your website. And one of which was that 29% of junior enlisted troops faced food insecurity in 2020. And to me, that was mind blowing because. It isn’t that they aren’t being paid enough to be able to get the food that they need. Although I certainly think that they could be paid more.
[00:20:42] Scott DeLuzio: Right. It’s largely, I think probably due to the mismanagement of their finances. .
[00:20:48] Brendan Duebner: Yeah I think there’s a lot of that, you know, obviously 2020 was a tough year with COVID, but this is not its own thing. You know, there’s a 2015 study done at a joint based San Antonio. And that one found that nearly [00:21:00] one in seven military households with children five years or younger faced food insecurity.
[00:21:05] Brendan Duebner: You know, this is like I said, military pay has actually been outpacing inflation for something like 40 to, to 50 years. So this should not be. As big of a problem as it is, you know, when, so the military family advisory network, phenomenal nonprofit does a lot of work in collecting the data on this stuff.
[00:21:24] Brendan Duebner: Their 2017 survey said that 60% of military families don’t have enough savings to cover three months of living expenses. What that tells you is, Hey, you get in a car accident. You know, some unforeseen circumstance happens. You’re kind of screwed, you know, you’re gonna, you’re probably gonna have to take out a personal loan, which could have super high interest rate, which is gonna hurt you for a long time.
[00:21:46] Brendan Duebner: You know what I mean? Like mm-hmm, these things compile very quickly, just like, but just like they can compound so negatively. If you just get on the right track early on, they can compound positively and say, I mean, how many times have [00:22:00] you heard some kind of financial expert telling you, you know, if you’re 18 years old, if you just save, I know $80 a month, you’ll be a millionaire.
[00:22:08] Brendan Duebner: Like that is true. That is a hundred percent true. It is just simply about, you know, getting people early and just getting them on the right track and It’s something that we could just do a lot better.
[00:22:20] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And could you imagine if the private coming right outta basic training, instead of going out and buying that Mustang at 29% interest or whatever it is, they took some of that money that they saved up while they’re in basic training, they really didn’t have anywhere to spend that money.
[00:22:36] Scott DeLuzio: They took some of that money and started invest. Going toward, towards retirement. And they were consistent about that. And they continued to do that throughout their career. Just investing small amounts. Like you said, that it’s not like we’re talking, you gotta put thousands and thousands of dollars away each month in order to build up that amount, but over the course of their career and throughout their lifetime as that money builds interest and it accumulates [00:23:00] more and more and more.
[00:23:01] Scott DeLuzio: Yes, they could retire with a million dollars or more even in their retirement account. And that’s just through being disciplined and not blowing your money on stupid things that you don’t need or spending it, spending more money than you have coming in. And things like that. It’s just really a matter of being disciplined and I.
[00:23:21] Scott DeLuzio: I just think about all these soldiers going through basic training, my own company going through basic training. I think about all those people. And I think how many of those people came out of basic training with even the slightest idea, what to do with all that money that they saved up over that time.
[00:23:37] Scott DeLuzio: And very few people, I think probably. Did anything smart with it? You know, not to say anything negative about those people. It’s just kind of a reality,
[00:23:46] Brendan Duebner: you know, I think if we could get those people to. Invest the money, put it towards retire, whatever that would be incredible, you know?
[00:23:54] Brendan Duebner: Yeah. That would be phenomenal. But you know, I was 18 once, you know, I think the odds that are, or maybe [00:24:00] slim, so, but you know, it’s not even that we need them to not buy the Mustang. Probably don’t buy the Mustang, but if you get like, don’t let be. More armed with information and no better than to chase the lowest monthly payment.
[00:24:19] Brendan Duebner: Understand what an interest rate is, understand, you know, how, what total cost of ownership is, how much is insurance on that car gonna cost? How much is the gas gonna like, you know, all those kinds of things. If soldiers just kind of knew that, and they had leaders who, who helped them understand that and helped them kind of stay true to that.
[00:24:38] Brendan Duebner: You. I think maybe they still buy the Mustang, but they finance it in a better way or they buy a couple years older or, you know, I’m not, I like skills for soldiers. We don’t wanna be the fun police here, you know, we’re just saying do what you’re gonna do, but like, let’s just, let’s be smart about it.
[00:24:56] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, exactly. So I know there’s probably [00:25:00] some people out there, some leaders in the military who are. Listening to this episode who want to know more about the services that you offer, the types of things that you do. Where can people go to find out more about all of this or how can they help out with things like donations or volunteers, if you need those and stuff like that.
[00:25:18] Brendan Duebner: Yeah, absolutely. No. So we’ve got our website Life Skills For Soldiers.org. There, you can see, you can get involved look into joining the team. You can donate, you can access our courses. Our courses are a hundred percent free for all us military. So you can access our courses, create an account on the, on our learning management software and get all that started immediately.
[00:25:40] Brendan Duebner: Right there on the website. You can also check us out on Instagram. We’ve got a good following there. Life Skills For Soldiers. You know, I will say we try to make it as easy as possible. And right now we’ve got a bunch, of course, we’ve got how to make a budget. We’ve got how to choose and user credit card, how to buy a car, basic investing.
[00:25:58] Brendan Duebner: We’ve got a TSP class. We’re working [00:26:00] on a debt class right now. So understanding different types of debt and how to know kind of what means, what in that world, you know, so we’ve got a bunch of classes available right now, again, completely free for all us military and we’re consistently expanding our course catalog.
[00:26:15] Brendan Duebner: So if you are a leader who, you know, has seen this problem in their formation, You can make a count right now, if you are somebody who is out of the military now, but still wants to be involved, wants to help us expand that course. Catalog wants to help us get the word out, wants to help us, you know, do a million different things.
[00:26:35] Brendan Duebner: Frankly, you can join the team. We love to, to expand the team. And then of course, you know, we’re a nonprofit, so donations always, always help.
[00:26:45] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. So I will have links to all that in the show notes for the listeners who want to get involved either the service members who want to take advantage of these courses or for the people who want to volunteer or donate can certainly do that through the website.
[00:26:59] Scott DeLuzio: [00:27:00] And I’ll have links to that in the show notes for you. Brendan, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. I know finances my, my background, I have an accounting degree, so I definitely have some background in finances, so I probably could have gone a whole lot deeper with this episode and talked about, about a whole lot of other things.
[00:27:14] Scott DeLuzio: But you know, I wanted to make sure that we touched on the big points and covered what it is that you guys do and how. How you’re out there making a difference in, in making things happen in the military community there. So thanks so much first off for taking the time to join me and also for sharing what Life Skills For Soldiers does with the audience.
[00:27:33] Brendan Duebner: Well, thanks for having me Scott. It’s been a, it’s been a pleasure.
[00:27:36] Scott DeLuzio: Thanks for listening to the drive on podcast. If you wanna check out more episodes or learn more about the show, you can visit our website driveonpodcast.com. We’re also on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube at drive on podcast.[00:28:00]