Episode 459 Caleb Walker Strengthening Connections After Military Service Transcript

This transcript is from episode 459 with guest Caleb Walker.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back to Drive On. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio. And today my guest is Caleb Walker. Caleb has been hard at work building a tool that can help veterans improve their network, which is crucial to many veterans who recently transitioned out of the military. Even those who’ve been out for a little while, uh, having a strong network, uh, professional network and other, uh, networking is super important.

And so we’re going to Talk about the specifics of how this all works and how it can be, uh, used to, uh, assist the military, the veteran communities. So before we get into that, Caleb, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.

Caleb Walker: Hey, thanks, Scott.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Uh, you know, so we, we met a few weeks ago at the, uh, Military Influencer Conference.

Uh, awesome event. Met a lot of people there. Um, Great, great for networking. And that’s, that’s the reason why I bring that up because we, you know, so many people there. There’s, you know, thousands of people and you meet so many people and unfortunately sometimes you start to forget some of the names and spaces.

You might have a [00:01:00] business card or something from somebody, but you know, it gets a little tricky. So I’m sure, you know, what we’re going to talk about today might be able to help in, in situations just like that. So, um, I guess before we get into kind of the networking aspect of things, can you share a little bit about your, your background, the military background and kind of what got you into, um, entrepreneurship and getting into, you know, the, the work that you’re doing now.

Caleb Walker: Yeah, thanks. Uh, yeah, I did 20, uh, years in the army, uh, three tours to Afghanistan. One was a troop commander, one was like as a JTAC foo, uh, and then one was a task force commander, uh, of the close protection for the ambassador. Uh, it was about 20 people. We used to take care of, uh, that in 17. Um, and, yeah, I did, like, a variety of different jobs.

Uh, and then my last job was a part time gig, uh, with the Chief Initiatives Group for the um, the Army Commander. Uh, so like I did a little bit of this and a little bit of that all over it. And then [00:02:00] the reason why I got out, I mean there’s like, I would say there’s probably like four, two or three or four things.

Um, But, actually, uh, what, like, the, you know, as most people that have been in the Army know, um, the units are actually a whole lot of fun. Like, they’re actually pretty innovative, particularly when you’re overseas. Like, you can do, you can try stuff out, you can innovate, you can throw around ideas. Um, and, uh, it’s a real good test bed a lot of times, and I really enjoyed that, uh, but then when I went to, like, the headquarters, which is in Ottawa, uh, it’s just, there’s no, there’s no, it’s the bureaucracy, uh, kills all innovation, um, and so I worked on a bunch of projects, one of them I worked on was, like, the managed readiness system review, where I reviewed, like, why is, how’s the army structure, training, personnel, all these things, uh, back in 2019, and, uh, I worked on it for, like, 10 months with a team of, like, 20 people, And then when I, like, basically presented it to, like, you know, 14 different generals, um, they all kind of agreed individually, Yeah, that’s what needs to happen, we need to change that.

But then, [00:03:00] uh, in the meeting with everybody, it’s like nothing, nothing changed. And so I was like, okay, okay, okay, I get the, I get the point. You know, it’s like, is it me or is it the organization? I don’t think I’m the right person for this organization. Um, I just, so, you know, I didn’t have a pension or anything, but I had 20 years.

And I was like, I think I’m going to go try something different. Uh, cause I like to, I like to change stuff up and, and poke at things. Um, and I think I’m, which I’m probably kind of, I’m kind of annoying, uh, I guess if I was like in a large bureaucracy that has structure, process, you’re supposed to do this, you’re supposed to do this.

Um, I, you know, after a while, I think people would just get sick of me, uh, because I’d always be, I’d always be like, Hey, we should try this, we should try this, we should do this, we should do that, uh, and, um, which is great for the entrepreneurial world, uh, but in a bureaucratic structure, uh, they’d probably all want to kill me.

So, um, so, yeah, so, I guess I was lucky that, lucky that I could quickly just come to terms with the fact that, like, this is probably not the right spot for me. And if I was to be truly honest, it probably never [00:04:00] was, uh, the army was never the right spot for me. But because, uh, the Afghanistan war was going on, uh, it just allowed opportunities for training, workup training, deployments, that really were, like, exciting, different, uh, like, in the units.

Um, but then I’d only ever been posted to headquarters. Uh, for like nine months stints, uh, a couple times before I got to like my final part of my career. And every time I got posted to the headquarters, it was like the worst job in the world for Like I’d be like, trying out doing my L Stats, like maybe I should do an MBA, like maybe I should retire and do something.

So it was always like within Two months of being in the bureaucracy at the headquarters. Uh, I was like immediately having like an identity CRI crisis. And then like a few months later they’re pushing back to a unit and I’m like, oh, it’s actually pretty fun here. I, I have no real concern. So, um, yeah, so it’s a long story, but, uh.

Um, you know, for all those people that say that, uh, the military’s not very innovative, there is parts of the military that are very innovative, uh, I find particularly in some of the units [00:05:00] they can be, um, but, uh, in the headquarters, I mean, it’s just the way that it functions, it’s, it’s not so much.

Scott DeLuzio: Well, and yeah, like you said, when you’re deployed, you have a little more leeway with the types of innovation that you do. Like if, if it’s stupid, but it works, it’s not stupid and you can get away with it. Right. And it’s like, you come up with a crazy idea, you know, it, it’s cool, you know, because ultimately you’re there fighting a war and you want to win.

So if you find something that works, that’s not written in any handbook or manual or, you know, done by strict procedures or anything, but it works like, well. Then do it,

Caleb Walker: Yeah, it’s one, it’s one of the hilarious parts of the military, uh, that public servants like to make fun of the military, it’s like, you guys are all about mission command and, you know, Innovation and giving so much power to the front line. And in tours you did, like when I was a task force commander, I had only 20 people, but like essentially like my reporting was to Ottawa.

So like nobody else was telling me anything to do. We used to like hire airplanes to [00:06:00] go to different parts of Afghanistan, went to Bamiyan province, like rented like SUVs to drive the ambassador around all over the place. Like we pretty much did whatever we wanted. Like it would be to send like little reports back to, uh.

Canada say hey, just so you know, you know, we’re going to Canada airfield in 2017 to go check it out Which is it’s amazing but that same mission You know, like war fighting, operational context of like kind of just get it done is like the total opposite of what happens in the bureaucracy, uh, of any organization.

I’m sure Pentagon, everyone that’s ever been like a unit commander and like a really well performing great, uh, team, uh, then gets posted into some cubicle somewhere and wants to like end their life. It’s, it’s, it’s no different. It’s, it is what it is.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, exactly. Um, so, you know, what, what you, we talked about kind of in the intro, um, about networking and, The conference that we were at and [00:07:00] growing your, your own personal or professional network, um, I think that’s an important thing when you, when you’re transitioning out of the military, having those people that you, you can, uh, reach out to who are in your network, um, even after transitioning out of the military.

Um, you know, you, your career is, you know, is not just on autopilot. You know, you, you’re going to be, you know, probably making some moves or getting promotions and that types of thing. Um, maybe you’re starting your own business, um, and you know, having people in your network who you can, uh, reach out to and contact is, is super important.

So, um, I don’t think I mentioned the name of your, uh, your company and what you do, but, um, you know, it’s Collabowave and, um, So tell us how it addresses some of the challenges of, you know, kind of collaboration, communication, you know, that type of thing, uh, you know, in a networking type of environment.

Caleb Walker: Yeah, well, I’ll kind of, I’ll quickly speak to where it comes from first, and then I’ll show how, [00:08:00] why we started it. I mean, when I, so, you know, when I was in Kabul on Task Force Commander, like, you had to have relationships, like, you had to have, Like, I had to work with the NATO guys, the embassies, and, like, get cur like, the me the hospital, because nobody had enough stuff for themselves, like, so inevitably you have to rely on another partner.

So, it was, like, the Norwegian Special Forces for, like, internal security, and then there was, like, the, uh, NATO QRF for, like, in the city, and then you needed, if you wanted to fly around the place, you needed to talk to someone else. Um, but anyway, like, military people are just aren’t not that good at, like, uh, keeping relationships.

Like, they’re very mission focused, they’re very very orders focused, like, once they get the thing done, They kind of just move on to the next thing, and they might know and remember some of those stakeholders in the back of their head, but there’s no incentive for them to write that down or anything.

Like, you know, you have that one person that’s like the amazing handover where they have every single person they’ve ever talked to, and that’s captured, but typically it doesn’t happen. And it’s, you know, they’re just not like, like, salespeople don’t even do it. Like, if you’re looking outside the military, [00:09:00] salespeople are incentivized, like, they can get fired if they don’t fill out, A system of record probably with like all the conversations they’re having, all the things they’re doing.

So, you know, you can guarantee that a military or public servant aren’t doing it. So, um, so what we did for Collab Wave was like, okay, I want to improve that. I want to like capture a small piece of information. I don’t expect people to go type it into a system somewhere because that’s never going to happen.

Um, and so what we built was like a voice to text where you can just give small notes. It could be a 30 second note, it could be a 3 minute note, it could be even an hour long meeting. But it summarizes what you said, and then it feeds into your system based on information that you typically care about.

Uh, you know, I could show demos and stuff, but it’s on the website. So I could be saying, yeah, I’m talking to Scott, he has a podcast, Drive On, he talks to veterans and he helps them with the transition with great ideas and great points that he needs to consider. Um, You know, whatever it is that, like, would be important information from our discussion here, I basically just speak into my phone, uh, into [00:10:00] the app, and then it just breaks that down into very important aspects of that conversation, and it feeds it right into your system of record.

So, um, like, that’s kind of what we’re doing for, uh, the military. Uh, we’re doing the same thing, like, uh, it’s just the nature of the military and police forces and security. It’s like 75 percent of the stuff that they, um, Um, of all their communication is verbal, uh, they don’t sit behind computers all day most of the time and like read a bunch of emails and read a bunch of material.

It’s all through radio, phone, out on the battlefield, or on like a briefing room. It’s all verbal discussions, which creates a whole bunch of issues. Um, you know, first of all, basically there’s no analytics ever of what you’re capturing. Um, Because nobody’s record like nobody wants to record everything and so usually after action reviews or police reports or Anything that like even like in a training situation to give feedback to students You have to write it all afterwards, which is super [00:11:00] cumbersome.

Like, police officers, it’s like a third of their job is just to sit around writing police reports. Um, and it’s also, you know, because you don’t, because it’s all verbal too, it can be quite overwhelming. It’s where a lot of miscommunication and errors happen. I mean, I used to know this as a Ford Observer.

I’d have like three different radio nets going at once. I’d have like the battery, I’d have like the combat team, and I’d have like the aircraft. And I’d miss stuff all the time. And luckily, I didn’t. You know, hurt anyone by accident, but like, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s, uh, it can be super in a firefight. It can be pretty bad.

So, um, so for all these reasons, like, that’s the initial problem we’re trying to solve is how do we get small snippets of voice to text and make them actionable into, uh, into, uh, into, like, a database of some sort. Um, But then I, yeah, so that’s what I was like focused on, uh, but then I started going to events, and I’d, yeah, I’d be walking around events, and I’d be like, people are talking all over time, but like nobody’s ever writing this down, or they’re, they’re captioning like a hundred business cards that are going into the garbage after this thing, and I ask everybody, like, how are you, like, [00:12:00] how are you taking notes?

And, uh, it’s all just paper, back of the head, you know, You forget most of it. You forget 80 percent of it, like, the next day. Um, and so we just use the same tool that we’re trying to do to make better warfighters or help out police officers to do the cool stuff and less of the paperwork stuff. Uh, it’s the same thing for events and for veterans to connect as well.

Um, so, you know, that’s kind of part of it, is like, Hey, how do you go to an event as a veteran? And every time that you meet someone that’s interesting, you can just take a quick note, get their email address, and then it just logs it away. Either an Excel spreadsheet if that’s all you use or into your client relationship management system.

So, that way you can follow up with the right people going forward. And so that’s how we do it individually but then for the whole community. What we’re doing is uh with permission, uh, we record like the whole like a whole meeting. So, say like 10 20 veterans get together and um, they talk about what they’re interested in.

What they’re [00:13:00] doing, what they want to do in the next month, uh, and by recording it and taking those insights out of it, we can then give recommendations and say, just because you met with 20 other veterans over here, you’re interested in starting your own business, like a fitness business? Well, in the other part of the country, there’s this other group of 20 veterans, and that there’s a person in that group, That actually wants to start a fitness business, or hiking, or whatever, military history, whatever the way, and so, that’s what we’re kind of rolling this thing out for now, um, because I think there’s a, everyone I talk to, doesn’t matter if it’s a general or if it’s a private, when they leave the military, they, they lose their network, and so they feel like they’re isolated, um, and they feel uncomfortable, like, building out relationships, but there’s enough relationships in the veteran community that should be able to vector you And so what I’m trying to do is like make it easy to put in who you meet and how, why they’re like, how they will help you.

But then also to recommend people in different communities across the country [00:14:00] to, uh, Hey, have you met, you know, have you met Scott? Uh, and that’s basically how we’re doing it. Does that make sense?

Scott DeLuzio: I think so, yeah. And I like that because, like I was saying before, at a conference like the Military Influencer Conference, I know there’s tons of other conferences, right, but you talk to so many people. And sometimes you’re like, that guy or that lady. That’s the person I really want to be talking to, uh, you know, after the conference, I want to follow up with them.

And when you get home, you get this stack of business cards that’s like, okay, which one was that person, right? And how do I remember all that from a stack of business cards? Or, you know, it’s not even consistent because sometimes there’s people who, they don’t have business cards. And so when you get home, it’s like, okay, who was that?

Like, maybe they just wanted to connect on LinkedIn and they show the little QR code on their phone or whatever. And you, and you connect, which is fine. Like that, that works because you get connected, [00:15:00] but then later on remembering who was that person and how did we connect and all that, um, it’s very cumbersome, especially after a multi day conference where it’s day after day talking to dozens of people and.

At the end of the, the, you know, three, four days, however long the conference is, you’re, you’re so overwhelmed with all this information. Um, even after one day, there’s a, it’s a lot of information to take in. Um, And, you know, what do you do with all that? So, yeah, it would be wonderful if like, right after, you know, let’s say you and I are talking and it’s like, Oh, you know, Caleb has this, this business.

I think it’s really cool. I might want to, uh, you know, connect with him because maybe I have this idea for something that I want to do and we can collaborate and all that kind of thing. Um, if I could just, you know, have a quick note. That feeds that into either a spreadsheet or a CRM or some follow up to do list somehow.

Um, [00:16:00] that would give me some actionable things. What, what is it that I need to do with this? Or maybe, you know, we talk to somebody and we’re like, you know what, that person, um, I don’t think we really have much going on together and, but that’s still important information because if they reach out, then I have to remember, okay, was I impressed by this person?

Do I not want to talk to this person? You know, that, that type of thing. And so having that information as well is, is super important. Um, but then I, I, you were also talking, I want to get a little more into this about, you know, connecting people from maybe different parts of the country, um, and potentially even different parts of the world, uh, you know, with each other.

If there’s some. Commonality, some connections. Um, I’d love to know like kind of how these, these groups come, come about and how you, uh, you know, organize all that.

Caleb Walker: so I’m working with one group in Canada, it’s called the Tribble Victor, um, and so they’re basically a community of just veterans that have left and they’re getting into business, it’s just a non profit, or starting their own [00:17:00] business, or what have you. Um, and so, what you do is you work out what is everyone interested in, just a quick survey, and then you put them into groups based on geography and, uh, interest.

So it’s how you match them together closely. Um, and then from there, you know, just if, based on interest, if they’re willing, um, either you record their whole online get together if they’re just chatting, or you use the note taker right after and you just kind of fill it in right after. Um, But, uh, then you’re able to capture like some of the insights of like, what’s people, what are people working on?

And so you kind of do like, uh, everyone kind of has a chance of like what they’re working on, a success, a failure, uh, a lesson, you know, what’s their goal is for next month. But then from all that, you can just kind of vector all those different interests and ideas and things. So you kind of get the strength from the group.

Because they’re all in the same location. They’re kind of all interested in the same thing. And so you’re just like really just talking as a as a mentorship team as a group of like 10 [00:18:00] people. But then you know the added insight is that you can start to vector other people. Yeah, I’m looking at like getting my business sold into This kind of industry.

Well, then you’d get like the three or four other people from across the country that are also in that industry. And they can give, like, you know, they just recommend out advice that they could do, uh, through an automated email and say, Hey, this person actually works in this industry. Um, you know, and so it’s just through a vector database.

Um, I don’t want to get too technical, but like, it just, basically it just makes that relationship, uh, and then it just makes it, it just automates an email out and says, Hey, you two should get together. You two should get together. Uh, and so that’s kind of working. A lot of people. Um, I found a lot of veterans don’t really want to be on LinkedIn because they’re kind of worried about, they’re kind of worried about the security issues of that, or they just don’t want to be out there that much just because of their personality or just like the the mottos of the military, and so this is just be email based in the background like you don’t have to um, You don’t have to really [00:19:00] put yourself out there and it just recommends people through email once a month like hey You should talk to this person.

You should talk to this person. So that’s kind of what we’re building out right now. Does that make sense?

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, it does. And I, I like it too, because it’s, it’s kind of that icebreaker that you might need because I might go on LinkedIn. I might even be on LinkedIn and I might go around and I’ll be searching for somebody who is in a particular industry or geographic area or whatever it is that, uh, that I’m looking for.

I might find somebody, um, but I might feel awkward just cold reaching out to And, and even sometimes when people do cold reach out to you, you. You might just tend to ignore it, right? Because it’s kind of, Oh, what is this guy going to sell me? What is it? You know, it’s some spammy nonsense, right? And so I don’t want to have to deal with that.

So I’m just going to ignore it, block it, whatever. Um, But if you get some, some sort of feedback, like, why is this person a good person to [00:20:00] connect with, right? And then, so this, this automated message comes through and say, Hey, you know, these X, X number of people, uh, would be good to connect with because of, you know, XYZ reasons.

And then it’s like, okay, well, yeah, I mean, you know, let’s, let’s connect. And. See, even if it’s just a quick Zoom call or something just to see where each other’s at and what we can do together. Um, I think that’s a pretty cool feature as well, uh, with this because, um, when you, uh, when you don’t know the people, it’s just super awkward sometimes to make that initial contact.

Uh, contact’s made, you’re golden, you’re good to go, right?

Caleb Walker: Yeah, well, I’m trying out a few things too. Like maybe it’s like it’s a double Buy in, so you like you you’d actually you wouldn’t just email the email directly you’d email like hey There’s someone that wants to talk to you about their business About this industry [00:21:00] Uh, would you be okay with that introduction?

And then, then you send the other email to the other person and say, Hey, there might be someone that’s actually in an industry that might be interested in you. And it’s like, they first, they both agree. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then they kind of go and they get connected together, uh, from there. So you can kind of de risk it a little bit.

Like if people, you know, they, but, uh, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s something I’m working on because, uh, I find that people go, like we have these like, uh, veteran events, um, that everyone’s. invited to and as you think of it you go there and it usually takes like Like the whole event to work out, like that one person you probably should have been talking to.

And it’s like five minutes before the end of the event, you’re like, Oh man, I, uh, I should have been talking to you the whole time. Like, this is a ridiculous, which is, you know, that’s, that is part of nature. Like you are just going to fumble around and like finally find that snippet, but I want to hoping to try and do is like front load it.

So like, if you, if you record enough of these conversations and you get enough of this information about like the person’s background, you should be able to go to the meeting. [00:22:00] If you’ve never met some of these people before and go yeah well last six months ago this person was working on this and this person likes hiking and blah blah blah blah and it gives you a bit of a background on them.

What their interest is and how, you know, you could, what you could collaborate together because it would just be reading your profile and comparing it to that person’s profile and it’d be making a vector of like what’s useful and what’s not useful. They have three kids, you have three, I don’t know, whatever it is.

But, um, uh, yeah, that’s kind of, so that way you should be arriving and you’re looking for those three people that are actually going to really drive your conversation forward instead of, uh, just fumbling around. I at MIC, for example, you could fumble around there for two days until you finally meet that one person.

You’re like, oh wow, I wish I had talked to you a lot earlier.

Scott DeLuzio: And you might not even meet that person because there’s so many, right? And, and I know I, I tried doing that on my own before even going to the conference, because I went through the, uh, list of attendees that they had on, on the app or website or whatever they had. And I just went through and I was, it was really hard because [00:23:00] I’m, I’m looking at, you know, in the list, it’s, it’s names.

And I think their title was all that, I was given. And so it’s like, okay, well, that doesn’t give me a ton of information. Um, and maybe the company they work for or, you know, whatever they were representing, I think that’s like the limit of the information that I had. Uh, and, and not to fault them or anything, it was great, uh, you know, set up and everything, but there’s, you know, close to 2000 people who are there.

And so going through that list of all those people, that takes some time. And so likely I, I miss some people that I probably would have wanted to talk to. Um, There’s just so many and maybe they didn’t have a really good description as of what their title was or something And so maybe I just skipped over them But if they had, you know, a decent amount of information in there about who they are, what they did, all that kind of stuff and Maybe I got a Recommended list based on my interests and what I’m looking to get out of a conference.

And all these people are [00:24:00] looking for something similar. Give me a list of five people, 10 people, whatever it is. And I’ll just go talk to those people and, you know, have a really highly focused event. And I think that would be way better. Right?

Caleb Walker: yeah, and so, first of all, most people didn’t even use the app in MIC.

Scott DeLuzio: Right.

Caleb Walker: that I got, so you could have reached out to them all you wanted, but they’re not going to answer. Um, what I would have done for MIC, as a perfect example, like it’s a conference of 2, 000 people, what I would have done, because you can just automate this, right, like you don’t actually have to be at every conversation, but what I would have just, I would have sent out a survey to everybody, like, Hey, if you’re coming to MIC, just answer like these five questions, like, What are you interested?

What are you not interested in? Which is just as important of a question and like a couple other questions as well of like, uh, to kind of understand like where they’re coming from. Um, and then I would have just automated out an email to all 2, 000 people with like, you know, here’s like two timings, pick one of these two.

And then I would have set them all up into groups of like 10 before the conference and just allow people to kind of say what are [00:25:00] they trying to get out of that conference. So it’s really just them talking to 10 other people. They might never ever talk to those people ever again. Hopefully they do, but it’s just like, what are you trying to get out of that conference?

What are you trying to, what are you interested in? What are you not interested in? Uh, and what would good look like for you? You record all those conversations, transcribe, and then you would just, before everyone shows up, the week before, you’re like, okay, here’s the 2, 000 peoples, what they are interested in, what they’re not interested in, what their goals are, uh, what they’re looking for.

And then you would just give them, like, 10 recommendations. Because it, you It’s not only is it like the ten things, like the people, ten people that are interested in the same thing you’re in, but they might also be not interested in something. Like, they might just be like, don’t pitch me this. Like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to see anything of that.

And then that saves you time bugging them with an idea, uh, and that awkwardness. Um, and so it really just vectors in, like, these are the ten people you should connect and here’s the reason for it. So that’s kind of like, at a, like a larger scale, that’s kind of what I’m hoping to do for events going forward.

[00:26:00] Um, yeah, and so I’m just working off the whole Collab Wave solution, uh, and, and it’s just, it’s building off of that.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And going back to, to what you’re talking about, as far as like the military and first responders and people like that who could use a tool like this, um, a lot of times, you’re right, people rely on just their, their own personal knowledge of, Oh, I, I know this guy is good at X or, you know, whatever that thing is.

Uh, and that’s a really good person to call in when, when I need that type of support. And so, Mm hmm. That person knows that, and that’s wonderful that that person knows it. But what happens when that person’s not there and somebody else is working that shift and, uh, you know, they need that type of support.

If they don’t have that data available, um, you know, in, in some centralized location, then it just makes their job a whole lot harder because now they have to, not only do they have a problem to solve, but now they have to go. Find the person to help with [00:27:00] solving that problem. Um, they may not be equipped to do it well themselves.

So, um, that just adds more complexity to it. And it, and it doesn’t make sense. You shouldn’t have to rely on that. Like the best thing you could do is document all this stuff in one way or another, um, you know, whether you have a, a notebook with names and phone numbers and information, or you have it digitally, which probably is better because it’s easier to update, uh, you know, a digital version of it.

Right. Um, I, I think that’s, that’s a, a, a great, uh, tool to have,

Caleb Walker: That’s, that’s literally, yeah, Scott, that’s literally what I’m trying to solve. Cause like, the guy before me, On my last Task Force tour, he didn’t keep any, he didn’t really care about the relationships, so it just wasn’t his, like, he didn’t have them. And so I was like, oh, but then even my handover, if I really think about it, it wasn’t a great handover, there was things that I missed.

Um, and so what you want to have is just a central system where you can see kind of all the conversations you’re having and who you should be talking to, etc, etc. And, uh, that’s what I’m doing for the Canadian Navy, [00:28:00] uh, actually. Uh, one of the solutions we’re building out is like, they have a new Destroyers coming in.

Um, and they want to know, not only do they want to know who’s the right person to talk to, because there’s like five different teams, and there’s like 20 different stakeholders, and who’s saying what to who, but when they’re writing their documents, they want to know why, what a decision is referenced to.

And so, they could have like a 20 page document, and you’d be able to say, okay, like That is written that way, because this person said this, and this person said that, and this is the order that says that, and so that’s, that’s kind of part of where we’re trying to go to as well, and in more of like, uh, in a military sense, is like, is like, why, why is that the thing?

Why, why do they say it? Instead of just a bunch of notes in the side of like the, uh, Word document, you can kind of see, okay, that conversation happened, and this person said it, and so that way you can kind of, like, when the, when the, More importantly, when you hand over the document to the next person, because there’s always that year long posting cycle, they can look at all the why, and who, and where, all as part [00:29:00] of that handover, and they don’t have to do it all in that two day handover, and they have to try and read the whole document, and all the things all at once, because that’s never going to happen.

They can then refer to it and go, yeah, the reason why that decision was made is because then they can just follow where the threads are. Um, because, yeah, that used to just grab my gears all the time, particularly as like the chief initiatives group. But I’d be working on stuff, and then, uh I’d find out someone else has already been doing it for like six months.

And I’m like, why are we not working together? Like, I don’t understand. Why are we not collaborating? So it’s like, how do you pick up all those different pieces of information, uh, and help that? So that’s, you know, that’s kind of how Collaborate is looking to, uh, like really make, like get, help the frontline leaders and the frontline, uh, workers and all the different, uh, people that are out there that are typically, their hands are busy cause they’re holding a weapon or they’re holding a hammer or whatever.

Um, how, how do they help them? Get their insights into the rest of the organization. So there’s like a wave of collaboration kind of going behind them. That’s what I’m working on.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, because when [00:30:00] we deployed to Afghanistan, I remember we got to our base, there was a unit there that we were replacing. And for like the first week or so, they would go out with us on patrols and stuff. And they would go and introduce us to those people, those You know, local leaders, you know, the, the Afghan police and, and the, you know, other people who were in that area.

So we knew who we could collaborate with when we, when we needed some help from the locals or the, you know, things like that, uh, something was going wrong. We knew who to contact and who to call and all that, that type of stuff. Um, super useful, uh, information to have, but. You know, God forbid something happened to those people before, like, we got there, or as we were getting there, and we never got that information, um, that, that would be pretty, pretty awful, because now we have to go figure out, okay, where are these people?

Where are they located? How do I get in touch with them? Why did we do [00:31:00] certain things, uh, you know, six months before we even got there, or, or so? Um, why, why were those things done, and all that? And so having, you know, Documentation. So we can go back and follow the thought process. Um, because sometimes the thought process or the end result of whatever the decision was, doesn’t seem logical.

To you, if you’re sitting there without all the information, but if you can go back and kind of almost dig into the mind of the person who’s, uh, making those decisions, then it makes a little bit more sense. You may not agree with the decision that was made, you know, six months ago or whatever. Um, but at least you understand where they’re coming from.

So it’s not like, oh, this guy’s an idiot because he did this. You know, it’s like, oh, well he made that decision because he had this information, right?

Caleb Walker: yeah, well, I mean, the running joke of any deployment is like, however long the deployment is, say it’s nine months, it’s like the first three months, work out what your job is supposed to be. Next three months, work out why you do the job the way [00:32:00] that you’re doing the job. And then the last three months is like, oh, this is how we could really work out how we could fix, you know, The situation, but then you’re like leaving the next week and you’re like, oh man, there’s so much, so much I wish I could have gotten to, but like it took you like the, like two thirds or so of the deployment to really do the knowledge

Scott DeLuzio: Mhm,

Caleb Walker: of like what has happened, who is actually useful to talk to.

Um, and then you’ll go meet up with the deployment before for a beer when you get back to the stateside and. And they’re like, oh yeah, we knew that too. Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, it just never, like, came as part of the, uh, handover. It’s just because the handover is like What do you can’t make it like a year long handover.

Like there’s only so much time you can make the handover. And so how do you transfer that knowledge so that it’s better to come across? And, you know, that’s kind of like the problem that essentially the cloud wave was like that was supposed to build in to fix it. Like we, I have one client. They have two CEOs of like a startup incubator, and the CEOs talk to like 150 advisors all the time, like they’re just like [00:33:00] talking, talking, talking, but they don’t write anything down because they’re busy, which, you know, most senior executives, I mean, if you went around the Pentagon, most of them don’t have, they just don’t have time to write down and like, really like put all the information out because they’re just going meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting.

And so they used to have like their mid level people. We’d go reach out to these advisors and say, Hey, can we meet up next week? And they’re like, Hey, just talk to your CEO yesterday. Like, go talk to them. And so they use the tool to that way. The CEOs are just like, yeah, just talk to this advisor. His wife just had a kid.

They’re going to get us into Walmart next week. Make sure we follow up next week. And so it’s, it’s great because it automates that information for them. So that way the CEO can track it. But actually the most important part of it is for everyone else to be tracking that knowledge transfer about like.

Before they go do anything, they go, oh, okay, now I understand the situation. And so just making those insights super easy to go into the system, um, is, uh, is key. Because, yeah, if you’re asking, like, I, I hate writing stuff down. And, [00:34:00] um, if, if you ask me to, like, put, like, I’ve always been probably the worst person on my handovers because, um, It’ll be like, Oh God, I gotta go write out this like handover document for like, you know, like 10, 10 page handover document.

And I’m like, I don’t want to do this, but you know, you’d kind of like, you know, is try and work out is like how little work you could possibly do to do it. Cause you’re just tired, you’re lazy, or, uh, you just, you don’t even know what information you’re supposed to have. A better way to do it is it just becomes like a relatively easy behavior change.

And it’s just to like out loud. Just document what you’re, what you’re doing. Um, and so that’s what I’m hoping for like police officers as well. Like they see something on their body cam, they just say, Hey, 10 minutes ago, uh, I just saw this on my body cam. Uh, it was, the incident was the who, what, when, how, why, when, I mean, when’s timestamped on the thing anyway, but like, yeah, you know, it’s like all the information you need to do.

And then, so they don’t have to like change their behaviors to then have to go [00:35:00] in and like fill out a, a police report in their cruiser for, uh, 15 minutes. Instead they can. I would assume do something that they prefer to do, which is to drive around and, um, you know, like, go kick around, uh, and find, find out issues and stuff and report it, so.

So, yeah, that’s, uh, yeah, that’s the problem with the knowledge transfer, is that, like, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s, people don’t, it’s just, it’s not, you would think about it personality wise, too, like, most, anyway, I, I have a feeling that most, uh, army, uh, People just don’t have the personality to want to sit behind a computer for hours and hours and hours and like write this amazing report and write like this really great handover document like just personality wise.

That’s just not something. And it’s the same thing kind of for salespeople. If you ever see salespeople. Working around an event. Like that’s why there’s memes making fun of the fact that salespeople don’t fill out CRMs, like Client Relationship Management Systems, because they don’t care. They just want to go around talking to people.

And it’s the same thing for army people. [00:36:00] Like they just want to go around like talking to people, jumping at airplanes, kicking doors. Like they don’t want to go write like some big journal entry about like this one and whatever, like preferably for them, they’d rather just like talk out the AAR together and then hand over right after.

Scott DeLuzio: 100%. And I, I know when I was in Afghanistan, we had, uh, we had to do a report after every mission and submit that into wherever it went to and every, every mission. And we were infantry guys. So like computers were not the thing that we were trained on that we wanted to use all the time. We, we just wanted to, you know, Go kick the doors and shoot the bad guys and come back to base and do it again tomorrow and and that type of thing Right, but then sure you get done with that long mission You’re out for you know, 12 hours or whatever and then you got to come back and write a report about what happened It’s like a lot of it a lot of stuff happened, right?

Like I don’t remember everything that happened But [00:37:00] if I had a way to kind of record that as things were going That would be that would make it so much easier because I oh, yeah, that’s right Uh, at the beginning, you know, when we first got there, that this is what happened. And, you know, later on in the day, this is what happened.

Um, and it would just make it so much easier to, to have all that information. I got to imagine for, for police officers, it’s really the same thing. Uh, they, they respond to a call early in their shift. Um, by the end of their shift, if they hadn’t done all the paperwork and filed the reports, you know, in their cruiser or whatever, uh, while they’re, they’re working, um, Because it’s a real busy shift, at the end of their shift, they gotta come back and do all these reports for stuff that they probably forgot a lot of it, right?

But if they could talk about it, and I’m not saying fill the report out for them 100%, but at least document what happened, um, they, it makes it a lot easier, right?

Caleb Walker: initial one, and then you just review it. Because reviewing is like, way easier than starting from scratch. Like, instead of looking at a blank paper, [00:38:00] and you’re like, Oh, God, I gotta go write this report about our 12 hour operation. Oh, God. Um, yeah. But instead, it should be like, Okay, yeah, it’s got most of the information.

I’m gonna change this. Yeah, yeah, that’s, actually, to be honest, that’s pretty much, that’s what’s happening, that’s good. Um, yeah, you can already get more details, actually. Um, well, one of the clients we have is, uh, we’re working with the Canadian Army to do it for their, their training, their, their combat training center.

So when they do, uh, like when the instructor is, he’s like a sergeant, is giving feedback to three students, they, what they would usually happen is that they give feedback for the three students, they’d write a couple things on a piece of paper somewhere, but then, like, an hour later, they’d have to give three And then they would do that like seven times a day, and then they would do that the whole week.

And at the end of the week, they have to like write mid course reports, and they’d be like, Oh, God. Like, what did I say to that guy? Oh, man. This is gonna be the worst. So instead, uh, yeah, instead you just use the app, and then while you’re giving the [00:39:00] feedback, you just record and say, yeah, student A, strengths, weaknesses, uh, You know, things to think about.

Student B, Student C, automatically transcribes, parses it out, feeds it into the course reports for them, uh, for Student A, Student B, Student C. More importantly, automates an email to the student, where they can read it at the end of the week, where if like, okay, you’ve gotten feedback eight times this week, here’s the feedback, which is realistically, you’re headspace to digest feedback, really.

Like, a week later. Like, not actually at the time, like, did I pass, did I fail, did I pass, did I fail, uh, or you’re just, like, writing stuff down, you’re trying to write stuff down, cause you’re, you know, cause you’re told to take notes, um, so anyway, all these notes would just automatically go to you anyway, and then more importantly, the trends would be tracked, cause then you could see, like, okay, we’ve done 7 times 5, you know, we did 35, uh, pieces of feedback, what’s the common thread here, and instead of, kind of, like, what typically happens is people just off the top of their head go, like, ah, I told, so much for watching myself and I hope you enjoyed this video.

If you enjoyed this video, please hit the Like button, [00:40:00] leave me a comment down below and, um, if you want to see more of this content, please subscribe to this channel to watch more of my videos. Until next time, have a great day. It’s what we’re used to. And so like to think that military guys are going to get out of the military and then they’re all of a sudden going to be like, uh, like shy away from that.

Like that’s where most of them enjoy, like they, they, they verbally talk through what they’re doing. They speak out loud, they give orders. They, you know, they, and so, you know, you got to try and like lead into the behaviors that have already been set. Don’t try and change the behaviors. Uh, anyway, that’s, that’s my theory.

So

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. No, I love it. Um, because you’re right. You know, a lot of communication does take place, uh, verbally and, you know, uh, like over the radios, for example, like that there’s no other way, like on the radio, it’s just going to be verbal. Right. And so, uh, you get, get this information, communicate that way. Um, you know, and, and [00:41:00] so, yeah, we are used to that.

We’re used, very used to the, the verbal communication and, and being able to just record something real quick. Um, yeah. Sometimes it might only take 10 or 15 seconds to get out what you need to say and that’ll save you, you know, way more time later on. So, yeah, sure, you’re going to take a little bit of time now, but all that information feeds into a report, feeds into a database, or, you know, Wherever it needs to go and it just saves you so much time later So you don’t have to sit there and figure out okay?

You know at a conference who was this person from this business card or that business card or you know, where did I meet them? What were we talking about? You know to be perfectly honest. I’m looking at all these business cards These are some of the ones that I got from the The conference, um, I have not written a single thing on any of them.

And so, like, looking at them, like, if I was trying to remember, okay, who was this person, when did I meet them, what do we talk about? Um, they better have some good information on their business card, otherwise they’ve probably [00:42:00] forgotten, you know? Um, so,

Caleb Walker: On our tool you can actually take a picture of the business card and so it actually just pulls the information from the business card and feeds it into the CRM for you. But then yeah, you just feed a bit more information afterwards and say, yeah, yeah, this is what we talked about, this was useful. Uh, might be useful for this.

It’s even more important, like, right now, you’re kind of running and gunning by yourself there, Scott, but imagine if you had a team of, like, three people, I guess that’s the thing, like, for all those veteran businesses that are associations or non profits and you have, like, a team that are doing outreach engagement, like, uh, you know, in a perfect world, you want to have that pretty well aligned, and that way, if they’re going to reach out to a certain company, they’re Like they want to know that you’ve talked to that company and even if it’s just a quick chat at a conference And but like whatever insights you can have before you go out to that company or to that stakeholder or government agency based on previous engagements The better and you know [00:43:00] this usually it takes like a lot of work to do that And so we’re just hoping to do it as easy as possible So you don’t have to think about it that much

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, 100%. And I know from the company that I work for, we have a team of people, and on occasion we have more than one person who’s working with a particular client, and so in our CRM that we have, we, we, um, we keep track of email communications and phone calls and all that kind of stuff that we will just add a note to, you know, You know, whatever the lead or the contact, whoever it is that we’re talking to, uh, we’ll add that note in there so that way the other person who’s working on, uh, that same client doesn’t follow up on the same thing, um, that, uh, You know, that way we’re not tripping over each other and, and replying to the same email twice and, you know, calling the person twice or, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, having that, that information readily available is super important. Um,

Caleb Walker: does everyone fill it out?

Scott DeLuzio: We’ve gotten pretty good at it. Um, it’s [00:44:00] not a hundred percent, um, but we’ve got, we have gotten pretty good.

Caleb Walker: I asked the question because like, even if you’re incentivized and told, and there’s like part of your business, you have to fill it out. People don’t fill it out. So imagine if you’re a nonprofit with like four volunteers, like, you know, what’s the chances that they’re going to

Scott DeLuzio: It’s gonna be it’s gonna be a lot more difficult. Yeah, I’m actually I was actually pleasantly surprised because I was the one who kind of helped implement it and get everyone on board with it and everything and It wasn’t the easiest process, but but I think we’ve gotten on, you know, most people on board.

Most people are keeping it Relatively up to date. It’s pretty good. Um, you know, not a hundred percent, but, um, yeah, I’m sure there’s some work that could be done there. But you know, it’s, it’s definitely better than it was, uh, when before , before we, we were just using a spreadsheet that was not getting updated at all.

And, uh, and now, now we, now we have, you know, pretty, pretty good thorough, uh, detailed, uh, insights and, and everything like that. So, um, [00:45:00] so we’re, we’re doing a lot better with that. So, um, you know, anyways. For the veterans who are out there, uh, who, who are listening to this, and they, um, or even anybody, uh, you know, they, veteran or not, if, if you Are in that networking space and you want to connect with people, uh, you have a team of people, uh, maybe, maybe you have several people who are going to the same conference, and you both talk to the same person, and you both, uh, you know, want to follow up with that person, well, if it goes into that, that database, that centralized location, now you know, okay, well, we had two points of contact with this, and so, uh, then you can reference that in that communication with the person as well.

So, um, You know, and get the other person’s thoughts and feedback and ideas and, and all that on, on who this person is and what, you know, uh, you might want to follow up with. Um, so if there’s people out there who are interested in this and what it is that you have to offer, uh, where can people go to find out more information about it?[00:46:00]

Caleb Walker: Just collabowave. com, um, which I’m sure will be in the notes.

Scott DeLuzio: Sure. Yep.

Caleb Walker: to me, uh, on LinkedIn. Um, it’s just Caleb Walker, which I’m sure will be in the notes as well. Um, yeah, if anyone’s interested, I mean, I’m looking for other associations that have a huge community that want to try it out, uh, as well.

Um, yeah. You know, and, uh, so that’d be great. Uh, or if companies or people just want to use the tool, you can just buy it off online, but if you want to have a certain, like special, uh, metrics that you want to track or some kind of, uh, solution that matches what you’re looking for, uh, just reach out and we can kind of optimize it and customize it for you.

Scott DeLuzio: that’s awesome too. Uh, you know, for specific use cases, you can, you can kind of tweak it and optimize it to make sure it’s not just a generic, uh, general type thing that doesn’t necessarily fit what you’re doing, but, um, you know, it, it will now be kind of tailored to, to your needs. [00:47:00] To your use case. So I think that’s, uh, pretty cool too.

Um, yes, and absolutely, I’ll have the links, uh, to the website and to your profile on LinkedIn, uh, for folks, if they want to reach out and they want to get in touch or they want to learn more about CollaboWave. Um, I, I think, I think it’s a pretty cool tool. Uh, you know, when we talked about it, I, I was, I was pretty happy and, uh, you know, to hear about it.

And, um, you know, I, I think, uh, you know, just, you know, What you’re doing is certainly going to be beneficial for folks. I know I’m going to check it out and, you know, see how that might, you know, influence my network in a positive way. So, we’ll check it out and, you know, maybe we’ll have you back and we’ll do another kind of feedback type episode later on.

So, it’ll be kind of cool.

Caleb Walker: That’d be perfect.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, excellent. So thanks again for taking the time to come on the show, sharing the information about what you’re doing and how it might be able to help some folks out there in [00:48:00] their networking world.

Caleb Walker: Thanks, Scott.