When Herb Thompson was getting ready to retire from the Army, he had no idea what he would do next in his career. However, the uncertainty is something he was trained to deal with, and he used those skills to start planning his next mission to the civilian world.

He didn’t know much about LinkedIn, but he got on it and just reached to people asking for advice. The effort led to an astounding 2,000 informational phone calls where he just asked a lot of questions about career options. People were just generally willing to help.

Those conversations led him to consider a career as a management consultant. He narrowed down his “targets” to a few management consulting firms and went to work trying to land a job.

Here’s the thing: He submitted some 1,000 job applications and less than 1% led to interviews and zero job offers. He landed his first corporate gig through networking and relationship building.

Today, he’s turned to helping other veterans. He’s penned about his experience called The Transition Mission: A Green Beret’s approach to transition from military service (100% of the profits goes to charity).

Links:

Herb on LinkedIn

Herb on Instagram

_Inc. Magazine: _This True Story of a Harrowing Special Forces Combat Mission Teaches 11 Brilliant Lessons in Leadership

Transcript:

Frank:

... and welcome everybody to episode number 17 of The Boots About Business podcast. I am your host Frank Strong, and here with us today is Herb Thompson. He is a former green beret and today serves as a management consultant with Accenture. Here's an interesting story on transitioning, which actually led him to write and publish a book on the topic, it's called The Transition Mission, and we're going to get into that later in the show. Welcome to the show, sir.

Herb:

Hey Frank, appreciate you having me on, man. I'm happy to be here and look forward to put out some good info and have a good discussion.

Frank:

Glad to have you. So the first question I always ask people is the question about the uniforms, the uniting theme in the show, why did you join the service? And then what inspired you to go SF, special forces?

Herb:

Growing up in upstate New York, there wasn't a whole lot of options where I came from, and ever since I was little kid I wanted to join the military. The army was the first recruiter I went to and had they not come through, I would have been out of the Marine Corps. So thankfully the army recruiter came through and then the rest is history, there was not a huge family connection, I found out later my grandpa was in the Korean war, but I found that after I joined. And then I had two goals, to be a drill sergeant and earn my green beret. I had saw an article in National Geographic in the school library about it when I was a younger kid and that just made me want to be a green beret even before I knew really what it was just from that article. And fortunately, I was able to accomplish both of my goals in the military I've done my 20 years.

Frank:

So there's a lot of myths and maybe misinformation and Hollywood effication, if you will, of what the special forces are, what the green berets do, and it's now an opportunity we have a chance to talk to somebody that actually served in that capacity every day, so let me ask you, what is it that green berets do?

Herb:

Green berets are expert in unconventional warfare. That is what we do now. There's other things we do, but we are one of the few, if only force, especially in America that goes over and works by, with, and through a government force or indigenous force, whether that's government or non-government. So we don't have to send in 500 Americans from an infantry battalion of Marines or army, but you could send in 12 green berets, we're self-sustaining, we do our own thing there, come back out, it's just a numbers game. So mass producing, build rapport, really assimilate and learn a culture while doing that through accomplishing strategic missions.

Herb:

It comes in all shapes and form. A lot of in Iraq, people got into it with the kind of the Rambo as part of it, of door kicking and running and gunning, but really how I've always looked at is as a green beret, if you're shooting your weapon, either something's gone really wrong or you messed up, because you should be getting all these indigenous forces or somebody else to shoot for you and it's really by using your brain over the brawn.

Frank:

This even reminds me of a term that we see pop up in the business world nowadays, the idea of force multiplication or force multiplier.

Herb:

Yeah, that's what it is, force multiplier. The best pie of the best modern example or semi-modern is right after 9/11, the few green berets that went in there was a few other people on the ground from people that don't exist. But then those green berets, in about six weeks had Northern Afghanistan secure and that was by working through the Northern Alliance. So that is a model of what a green beret is supposed to do.

Frank:

Great. And that was turned into a book, I believe it's called Ghost Soldiers.

Herb:

Horse Soldiers.

Frank:

Horse Soldiers, that's right, and then later a movie.

Herb:

The movie 12 Strong, which obviously they get into more of the shooting or the cool guy aspect of it. It's boring to go, "Oh wow, you went in there and you just talked to him, and he rode out a horse and then you called in some air strikes," it doesn't... it's not cool.

Frank:

That was amazing. So you personally, I imagine you've been to a lot of special places, is there one or two that stand out in your mind?

Herb:

Yeah. The current war zones where we've been, I spent all my time in Middle East. So just about every country in the Middle East, I've been to. I wouldn't say any of them stick out. The one that always sticks out is coming back to America and being happy when I hit boots on ground here, that's the one that sticks out to me, and why I did what I did. That was always this special moment, not that I didn't enjoy downrange and that's what I live for in a lot of ways, but getting back here is the special moment.

Frank:

I couldn't agree more, well said. This is a somber question, but I ask almost everybody that comes on the show, what was your worst day in uniform?

Herb:

Multiple ones. It's when you lose a buddy. When you lose a brother, a sister, however, pin on the listeners, that is the toughest days. When you sign up for combat arms, it's going to happen, or if you're in special operations, it's a threat, but a lot of times you don't believe it can happen to you or you accept it. But those are definitely the hardest days, those times, or even now that I'm out and I hear about something happening, even if I don't know him, I know of the person. So those are the tough days.

Frank:

For sure. And then the flip side of that question is what was your best day?

Herb:

I think of a couple of missions I had that were just awesome, doing what a green beret is supposed to do. Surrounded, fighting within ditch and no other care in the world and just happy. But I would actually say probably surprisingly, that was my last day. I didn't even have a uniform on, I left base, didn't look back in the rear view mirror and I was like, "All right, next chapter, the life let's go." So I will say that is what I look back now as the best day.

Frank:

Awesome. No doubt, a great day. Looking back, what do you think the service taught you that is applicable to your business world today?

Herb:

Everything, I use it every day. A little context, I joined straight out of high school at the age of 17. I had a little bit of job, but there was no... I was 17 years old when I joined, so everything I learned while I was in the army, I grew up, I became a man in the army and everything that has taught me I use it today. I will say, even now doing a graduate degree in Ivy League School, a lot, even what I'll move forward using is what I've learned in the military with just a little bit of tweaks and flares from what they added to my education.

Frank:

That's awesome. And since you mentioned it, where are you taking your graduate degree now?

Herb:

I'm doing an executive MBA at Cornell.

Frank:

Awesome.

Herb:

So again, will not go in there without my military experience, but more importantly, selling has shown the value of my military experience and what I would bring is same with the job.

Frank:

Do you think, this is an ad hoc question, but your experience in unconventional warfare is an asset as you pursue your graduate studies?

Herb:

It's huge, not just graduate studies and business, because it's all about people. How do you study a problem set? How do you study people? How do you get them to do what you want to do? How are you able to analyze problem sets and filter data? All that is the same for school, it's for business, so it definitely plays in big time.

Frank:

I don't want to dig into the transition part. And you mentioned one of your best days in uniforms really is leaving and never looking back, proud of a career but tur