Continuing to Serve: How Veterans Strengthen the Private Sector

>> H.R. McMaster: America and other free and open societies face crucial challenges and opportunities abroad that affect security and prosperity at home. This is a series of conversations with guests who bring deep understanding of today's battlegrounds and creative ideas about how to compete, overcome challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and secure a better Future.

I am HR McMaster, this is Battlegrounds.

>> Presenter: On today's special episode of Battlegrounds, our focus is on the rewards of military service and opportunities for veterans after service. Our guest is Bethany Coates, the founder and CEO of BreakLine, a social venture that helps outstanding veterans, women, people of color, and people with disabilities accelerate into their next careers.

Ms Coates was previously an Assistant dean at Stanford Graduate School of Business, leading social impact education. She also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Ms Coates earned her BA from Princeton and her MBA from Stanford. She has served on the advisory boards of a number of nonprofits and social ventures.

In 2018, Ms. Coates was honored to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service on behalf of the BreakLine team. Nearly 200,000 veterans transition from military to civilian life each year. Veterans bring exceptional technical skills to their careers in civilian employment. Perhaps most important, veterans are proven leaders who demonstrate excellence in teamwork, problem solving, collaboration, and dedication to mission.

However, civilian employers do not always recognize the benefit of hiring veterans or understand how to access this talented labor market. Mandatory government programs for transitioning service members provide assistance to veterans seeking work, but private organizations, including BreakLine, go further by matching veterans with employers seeking to hire veterans.

Veterans are succeeding in the civilian workforce, and demand for their talents and skills is growing. We welcome Bethany Coates this Veterans Day to discuss the rewards of service, transitions from military service, and the tremendous value veterans bring to American businesses and civil society.

>> H.R. McMaster: Bethany Coates, welcome to Battlegrounds.

Thank you for joining us today. And thanks especially for the great work you're doing with Breakline. It's great to have you here, General.

>> Bethany Coates: Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to join you. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

>> H.R. McMaster: So our viewers heard about your background.

They heard a little bit about what Breakline does. But can you tell me how you came up with the idea and why you decided to pursue what is today BreakLine, and maybe talk a little bit about what you're achieving there?

>> Bethany Coates: Well, you bet. So Breakline is an education company, and we think of what we do as education for employment.

And I started it actually, after about nine years as an assistant dean at Stanford because our entire country benefits when we create more pathways to socioeconomic mobility. So the largest engine fueling the American dream today is our higher education system. And lots of economists like Raj Chetty and others have sort of exhaustively shown that earning a degree is a really important predictor of financial security.

But it's also expensive in the US. it's time consuming, it's tough for millions of Americans to access for one reason or another. So the idea behind Breakline is to quickly achieve that goal of a satisfying career for folks who need or want to get to work as soon as possible.

And our paths crossed because BreakLine often works with transitioning service members who are frequently staring down the clock toward their last paycheck from the DoD. Many of them are breadwinners for their families, and their first choice is to continue earning a paycheck in a new field rather than pivoting into that next stage of their careers through a multi-year degree program.

So BreakLine admits these experienced professionals and among other things, we help them succeed with the primary gating mechanism for access to a compelling career in the private sector, which is the interview process. And we can talk a lot more about the education that we provide. But general, what we found is that when people are able to get up on that learning curve, the return on investment is really high.

And so, for example, many MBAs graduating from top business schools today will earn a base salary of about $145,000. And they often pay $250,000 in tuition, room and board, along with two years of their lives for that outcome. But the average salary for BreakLiners in their first year of post-military employment is also $145,000.

And at some companies, some, like the ones that you and I have chatted about in the past, it's 160 or $180,000. But they're able to achieve that outcome for free, since Breakline doesn't charge our job seekers and it typically takes about six weeks of work with our team.

So it's clearly a benefit to job seekers. But I said it was good for the entire country, and that's because employers are the primary beneficiaries of this incredible talent. And I know that doesn't surprise you after your career in the military, in a world in which average tenure is often about 18 months for employers, BreakLiners stay for three and a half years or more.

And the vast majority of them achieve high performance ratings. So these are really high performing people who dig in and add value over the long term. And that's the kind of story behind BreakLine and the value proposition that we're able to deliver today.

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, Bethany, we're talking just before Veterans day here in 2024.

And, and I think it's great that you work with so many veterans. And could you talk a little bit about what you've learned about what American employers gain by hiring veterans?

>> Bethany Coates: Yes, General, and I wanna make it clear that I'm providing this perspective from the point of view of a civilian.

I'm a civilian myself. I'm the daughter and granddaughter of veterans, but I never served myself. So I feel like I can translate between these two communities and what I would say to employers, particularly civilian employers who may not be as familiar with this community, is that hiring veterans delivers benefits for your business, your team and your culture.

And I just mentioned the longevity and performance ratings for veterans who transition through BreakLine. But things like that translate into measurable bottom line results. And in many companies there are two sources of value creation, and those are often the sales or go to market team and the product team.

And I wanna just give several examples on the sales side for BreakLiners. We have Gabe Sganga, who's the VP of commercial growth at Fortera, Matt Cornachio, who's senior director of business development at Anduril, Ben Stein, who's a VP of sales ops at Tanium, and Mia Stender, who's in the business development team at Palantir.

They are driving revenue for their companies. And from a product perspective, we have folks like Callan Snyder, who's leading the software engineering team at Rigetti Quantum Computing. He's been there for more than five years. Jacky Fang, who's a senior staff engineer at Palo Alto Networks, and Jeff Schultz, who's a senior site reliability engineer at Medallia.

He's been there for more than seven years. And there are tons of other high value roles in cyber. Data science, product management, operations, and other areas. And I would just ask our civilian employers, imagine having exceptional people in those roles, people who gut it out, particularly when it's hard.

That's what I mean by it is good for your business. These are quantitative, measurable gains that accrue to you as an employer when you hire veterans.

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, one of the things we talked about before in a previous episode of Battlegrounds with Sebastian Junger is how wrong popular culture gets veterans, right?

And they often portray veterans as traumatized, fragile human beings, when, in fact, these are people who emerge from sometimes the most harrowing experiences you can imagine, even more resilient. And as you were kind of alluding to, already have a sense of mission, a sense of loyalty to the organization.

Could you maybe describe the qualities that you see as somebody who helps veterans find these positions?

>> Bethany Coates: Yeah.

>> H.R. McMaster: What do you think the big advantages are for veterans? What do they bring to the private sector that they've learned in service to the country in uniform?

>> Bethany Coates: Of course, and I want to just point out here, General, that you have written about the value of service and I find that very poignant, and as part of my answer here.

But you said that one reward of service is being part of a community that sustains itself through an ethos based on honor, duty, courage, loyalty, and serving others. Man, what an incredible advantage to spend your time with teammates who care about that. And so I wanna just dive deeper into that perspective.

But I'll start with civilians often have a relatively positive but very generic view of veterans. And so we will often have employers point to things like patriotism, leadership, integrity as common advantages that they think of with respect to hiring veterans, and those are often true. But there's so many others that are less obvious to those of us who have not served.

And I wanna just point out four that I notice all the time, and those are problem solving, perspective, team building, and grit. And I'll share my perspective on this as a civilian. But on the problem-solving angle, many of the veterans that we've worked with, General, have shared the sentiment, no plan survives first contact.

And our service members tend to be experts at creative problem solving in fast-moving circumstances where they had to be incredibly resourceful and self-sufficient.

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, just Bethany, just a quick aside here. That quotation is from von Moltke the Elder, who was one of the founders of kind of the Prussian general staff and military staff who earned this great reputation during the Franco-Prussian War in the 1870s.

So just a quick aside there, in case our viewers wondered what the origin of that phrase, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

>> Bethany Coates: Well, it has become widely known among our military service members, and they reach for that quote fairly frequently. The second angle that I mentioned, General, is perspective.

And here, I have a story that might crack you up. We helped a special operations veteran join a well-known tech company. This was an incredible American hero, although he would never let you know it. And on day one, he arrived at this fancy office with imposter syndrome. He was so worried about how he would fit in, how he would add value.

And he went into the kitchenette, which was, you've been in these Silicon Valley kitchenettes.

>> H.R. McMaster: Lots of snacks, lots of snacks.

>> Bethany Coates: So many snacks, so many treat. It was marveling. And then he turned and saw another employee in the area who was melting down because an obscure brand of green tea was out of stock.

And he realized something in that moment. He realized he brought perspective, maturity, and focus on day one, and that is just so crucial for employers. The third angle here is team building. And civilians often don't realize that our service members typically don't choose who they report to or who reports to them, and they are still responsible for achieving the objective.

I just wanna say to my civilian peers, can you imagine finding yourself as part of a team where you have no control over who is on that team and yet you're told you have to go take that hill and you have to figure it out? Imagine what it takes to do that.

So our service members are experts at team building, both in the sense of esprit de corps and also in the sense of developing their teammates as professionals. And then the final one that I wanted to mention, and there are obviously so many more, but the fourth one that I would offer up here is that, I mentioned previously, many companies have an average tenure of 18 months.

Employees cycle in and out before they can truly add value. One COO was just lamenting to me that she needed to find people who would stick with the company through the famines as well as through the green shoot times. The veterans we work with are so gritty. They are tough, they are loyal, they stay through thick and thin.

And I mentioned our average tenure is three and a half years. They are seeing more than 2x what their civilian peers are doing. So those are four massive advantages that I would call out to hiring veterans.

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, that's great. And I really think it's important these days to kinda explain those, the tremendous rewards of service and the benefits of service and how so many veterans come out of service in the military and go on to make extraordinary contributions in other walks of life.

And I think kind of the misunderstanding of the military experience itself and what veterans bring is one of the reasons why we're having kind of a recruiting problem these days, because of that misunderstanding of the nature of service. And you mentioned this upfront already, but could you mention just maybe not even by name, but some examples of those who you've worked with who went on to then exceed expectations in the jobs in which you've placed them?

>> Bethany Coates: General, I'm, I'm laughing only because that's just about every veteran who comes through BreakLine. I just received an email from a CEO, and I'll say the name, telling me that another veteran named John Reynolds is the best hire he has ever made. And I hear that over and over and over again, and it's because of these attributes that we're describing.

And I think that it's just so important for civilian employers to realize that they have a talent arbitrage opportunity standing right in front of them. And they should think of military service as a massively positive signal. You're at Hoover, the same way that they would think of a Stanford degree as a massively positive signal.

It is a shortcut to finding outstanding talent, talent that can punch above their weight in terms of outsized positive impact on your organization. So I could give you thousands of examples. We've worked with 6,000 veterans at this point, but truly, that is a common thread with employers. The reason why employers like the ones I've previously mentioned come to BreakLine is because they realize hiring one veteran accrues a tremendous amount of value to their businesses.

>> H.R. McMaster: Bethany, oftentimes I'll talk with young people here at Stanford, and there are a whole bunch of military People here at Stanford, as you know, but they're a good number, and many of them just hadn't really considered military service. And so I'll explain military service to them and the rewards of it.

And many of them have then gone into the, into the military. And I think a lot of times some, some will think, hey, well, I really need a technical skill like I should go to. And this is good. I mean, there's, there's all goodness associated with this to either have cyber skills or skills involving space or communications or logistics.

But oftentimes people think of different aspects of the military, the infantry, or cavalry or being a deck officer on a destroyer or whatever, or a fighter pilot, and they think, wow, what skills is that gonna give me? Cuz I really need to go into a specialty of some kind.

And I often tell them, hey, the skill you're getting is leadership. And what you're describing in terms of the capabilities these veterans bring to their companies. And, and I think in the military, you get more responsibility at a younger age, right, than any than I think in any other walk of life or profession.

So can you talk a little bit to young people specifically. I mean, I was gonna maybe get out of the army after five years, my commitment at West Point, and I stayed for a bonus 29, but you don't have to stay for that long. I mean, what do you think veterans or prospective soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, guardians, coast guardsmen and women, what do you think they should see as what's attractive in the military?

>> Bethany Coates: Yes, well, there are a couple different things that I would say in terms of what's attractive in the military. And you've talked in very moving terms, you said of service as being part of a community that sustains itself through that ethos that binds warriors to one another.

And I think knowing that you are part of something that matters and waking up every day with purpose in your life, purpose with a capital P, is an enormous reward of service. But in terms of thinking about military service as a chapter in a longer career and what that could mean, one of the things that we think about all the time at Breakline, General, is this tenant sort of a court tenet of ours, that excellence is transferable, but you need to have the shot at proving that you are excellent, and the military provides you with that shot with the scale and scope of Responsibility that is simply not on par with what you would have in a civilian sector as a 21 year old or a 22 year old.

You really get shot out of a cannon in many respects in terms of leadership. All of a sudden as a very young adult, you can be leading teams in a, in a way that's extremely independent and self sufficient and it provides you with an opportunity to build a measurable track record in a way that would take you decades in some cases in the civilian world.

And so if you're interested in living a full life of impact, if you are interested in hitting the gas in accelerating the contribution that you can make in this world, I honestly would urge you to consider military service early in your career. It is just an extraordinary way to stand out, and to set yourself up for long term success and really, really deep impact over many, many years of your career.

>> H.R. McMaster: Bethany this has been a real area of emphasis for the military for a while, making sure that veterans understand employment opportunities and then employers also understand the opportunities to hire veterans. What you've done is you've kind of helped connect those two initiatives and that desire on both ends.

What did you identify as the biggest obstacles to making those connections between veterans and this very talented workforce and employers who have the opportunity to hire them?

>> Bethany Coates: Yeah, and I want to talk about this because I think most of the time the obstacles come back to stories that we civilians tell ourselves about military service.

And you've written about this General, you said fewer and fewer Americans are connected to the United States, all volunteer, professional military. And that separation is consequential. You said if civilians don't understand the military, they won't support the policies and investments necessary to secure the nation. But I also think that that's true where they won't support the policies and investments necessary to hire our veterans because they just don't understand.

And so some of the time those presumptions can be really unhelpful. We've talk, talked about some of the ones that, that tend to be ascribed to veterans in a positive way. Those things like leadership and patriotism, those trickle down and they, they tend to be ascribed in a positive way.

But we find six that are pushbacks that we hear most often. And I think it's helpful to hear these in specific terms because civilians can kind of take a look at them and say, hey, you're right, I might have been thinking or feeling that without examining where that came from.

So the first pushback that we get is that this person lacks the right background. And so the way that this tends to be phrased is something like, hey, he has a fascinating resume. I don't know what the heck I would do with him. We hear that a lot.

So does this person have the right background? Another one is they will not have the skill set to persuade or to influence in a flat organization. So thinking that the military is hyper hierarchical and that's how problem solving is done in all senses and in all terms, and they won't be able to translate into a flat organization.

A third one, which always makes me laugh because it's so ridiculous, is an inability to problem solve independently. I think if we said this to our special forces, officers or like

>> H.R. McMaster: any of them. Right,

>> Bethany Coates: any of them. Any of them. You know, a fourth concern is will this person be able to work with and lead women or, and, or diverse teams in general?

Again, a really undeveloped understanding of how diverse our military actually is. And a fifth is, will this person be culturally too formal for the private sector? And I wanna offer the most extreme concern that I've ever heard, which is if this person carried a gun in the military, they aren't welcome here.

And I wanna just say that's like saying if you breathed while serving in the military you aren't welcome here. And, and it can be hard.

>> H.R. McMaster: And hey, and hey, you know, I mean, we carry guns, so you don't have to, you know, I mean, that's another way to think of it, right?

I mean, if you don't like to carry a gun, well, it's a good thing that we do have some people who do carry guns.

>> Bethany Coates: That's exactly right. And, and what I would also offer, General, is that it's hard. I'm Italian American, General McMaster, I can get spicy and I do.

And it is hard to hear comments and questions like this. Actually always prefer for people to voice the hesitation because in doing so, they put the obstacle on the table in front of us and it allows us to navigate around it. It's an opportunity for our team to coach and influence on the employer side.

And we find that people are often really open to learning and gaining that new perspective and appreciation. But we also coach our veterans and our transitioning service members on, hey, if you happen to come across a comment like this, here's how you can navigate it as well. It's not an immovable obstacle.

It's something that we have an opportunity to educate and to coach and to move through to get more.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I was recently at a dinner, and I don't even know if I should tell the story but I was with my wife and, and somebody said, hey, well, what is it like for you to eat in a nice restaurant?

Because I guess you were just used to just eating, you know, MREs and dining. So my wife and I were both, I said, well, it's just some people have a really warped view of service and you've hit these. I'm so glad, this is such a great insight, Bethany.

I'm learning more about, I think how there's a misunderstanding, right, of the nature of military service. I mean, there is the sense, right, that they're automatons, or soldiers are. Or it's very hierarchical when in fact it's very collaborative. I mean, it has to be hierarchical for a reason, right?

Because when you're, you know, when you're in, you know, in close combat, for example, and, and you ask somebody to lay down a base of fire, that's really not the best time to, you know. Well, let's have a discussion about that. I mean, you want people to respond to orders, but the military is very collaborative and as you mentioned, we're often part of cross cultural or interagency and multinational teams.

And, and I mean, there's no place that's more diverse than the military. So one of our daughters, actually all of our daughters went to multiple high schools. And oftentimes that would entail going to a military high school overseas and then coming to, I mean, a private high school in Mountain View, California.

There was a heck of a lot more diversity, I should tell you, in the military high school. And it just equipped them so well, too, being in that environment. So I really appreciate this part of our conversation because it clarifies for me, too, the degree to which many Americans, because fewer of them are serving, right, really understand the military experience.

And then oftentimes some people who were in the military, even in a different era, during the period of the draft army, for example, in the post Vietnam period or during the Vietnam period and so forth, you just have kind of a skewed view of the military today.

>> Bethany Coates: That's right.

>> H.R. McMaster: So I've also loved that you're helping military spouses as well. And this is something that my wife has been involved with over many years is helping military spouses transition. And then being part of an organization that lobbies as well for making it easier for military spouses, especially those who require some kind of licensure, for example, to be able to move from state to state or country to country for that matter.

But, but can you tell us a little bit about that, how you've been helping military spouses as they seek employment?

>> Bethany Coates: Yes, absolutely. So when we started breakline now almost 10 years ago, we started with a single focus on veterans. But very quickly, with feedback and interest from the veterans, opened it up to military spouses.

So we were very quickly working with the military family unit. And I would say again, that comment that I made about this is a talent arbitrage opportunity that extends to our military spouses. This community is so unbelievably resourceful, pragmatic. They are the get it done part of the equation within military families.

And so I strongly, strongly encourage civilians to do what it takes to hire them. And there are a couple of really key success factors that make a huge difference there. But one initiative that we have, have just recently kicked off is actually with the state of Utah. And I am just so proud.

I'm a resident of Utah and I am so proud of the state coming to the table to support military spouses. They have funded Breakline to work with 300 military spouses in the state and help them either re enter the workforce and, or accelerate their careers. So General, you know that the unemployment rate among military spouses is often about 25% versus the unemployment rate in Utah overall, which is 2%.

It is ten times what the typical unemployment rate is. And the underemployment rate is often 90% self reported from military spouses. So both of those are major issues. Now, at the same time, in the state of Utah, with an unemployment rate of 2%, employers are having a real hard time recruiting people for their open roles.

The labor market is so tight. And so the state of Utah has said, hey, we can address both of these challenges by inserting BreakLine into the equation. So we're working with military spouses affiliated with Hill Air Force Base, but also with veteran spouses. So across the entire state, we have over 100 employers at the table right now working hard to hire our spouses.

And it's an amazing advantage for the spouse and also for their entire family. I don't know if you'd seen this report, but there was a recent report that said one in four military spouses reports feeling financial insecurity. That is completely unacceptable. For a country that's relying on our military for our democracy and our freedom, we need to be working much harder as employers to make sure that we are welcoming military spouses onto our team.

I'll just give one final point, which is Breakline has many military spouses on our team, and I just interviewed them and I said, what is it about your experience working at Breakline that has enabled you to continue to hang on to this role, to be promoted, to continue to contribute?

Like what is going well? How can we make this possible for more organizations? The first piece here, if you can do it as an employer, offer remote work. Military spouses do not have control over where and when they PCS, and they are going to choose their family.

>> H.R. McMaster: And PCS, by the way, is permanent change of station, which means moving.

>> Bethany Coates: Thank you. I'm sorry, I-

>> H.R. McMaster: You're picking it up, Bethany, you're talking like an insider. You're talking like an insider.

>> Bethany Coates: I am, I am.

>> Bethany Coates: So if a role can be remote, make it remote, and make this possible for our military spouses. The second thing is don't force them to use their vacation days for PCs.

Don't force them to do that. Our military spouses need vacation. They need time off just like everybody else. Provide time for them to make those moves with their families. And then the final thing is promote the way that you would any other employee and don't make it contingent upon whether somebody can be in the office or how many times they've had to move.

Our military spouses have all been promoted multiple times. I can tell you, having having worked with some of them for seven years, I am the one who benefits as the employer. I am the one who benefits most from the experience of working with military spouses. And I highly, highly recommend it for other employers as well.

>> H.R. McMaster: Right. Hey, Beth, you've already, you've already touched on these points, but just kind of the way to summarize. So, first of all, what should employers know about interviewing veterans, hiring veterans, retaining veterans? And then also what advice would you give our service members and veterans as they approach a career transition?

>> Bethany Coates: Yes, so. So I think just specifically on interviewing veterans, if you are interviewing a service member who's transitioning out of the military, the first thing I would say is keep in mind they have never interviewed for a job before. That is not how they advanced in their careers to date, so don't penalize them for not knowing the rules.

Our veterans grew up professionally in a culture that prioritizes others before Therefore, talking about oneself, literally using I statements in an interview can feel really foreign and awkward for them. So I'm calling this out in particular, general, because one of the, one of the pushbacks that we sometimes hear is they keep saying we.

And I'm really interested in what this particular person did.

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, there's no I in team, Bethany. No I in team.

>> Bethany Coates: That's it, that's it. So we're coaching our employers, like, hey, here's why you're hearing we. And we coach our veterans, too, to give themselves permission to talk about their individual experience.

But listen, employers for the rest of their careers. Once you hire this veteran, the fact that they think in terms of we and team is going to be an enormous asset to you. The second piece here is I urge people to be aware of the difference between semantics and substance and agree upfront to put things into plain English and to ask for translations.

And you just did this when I said PCs, General. But when I first started working with veterans, I was an assistant dean at Stanford still, and I was working with my. My students at Stanford, and one of them said dod, and I actually had to think for a moment before I understood the reference.

That's how basic this alphabet soup can get.

>> H.R. McMaster: And for our listeners, that's Department of Defense, exactly.

>> Bethany Coates: Department of Defense. And conversely, I said the acronym EBITDA to a veteran, and I got a completely blank stare in return. And essentially, that's a measure of profitability. So don't let Alphabet soup confuse you, no matter which direction it goes in.

Just a couple other points I would encourage employers to think about in the interview. Sometimes civilians feel intimidated by our veterans, and they may worry about saying the wrong thing, they may worry about offending them, and they may miss chances to ask for clarification or to seek to understand.

And I'll just point out that that disadvantages our veterans relative to their peers in a competitive process. So this is one area where we unintentionally advantage people who have similar backgrounds to our own. We share a shorthand language with folks like that. You know, we have looks or smiles or inside jokes with folks who we may have met five minutes ago.

You and I, General, could have some about Stanford, for example. And so I'm saying push yourself to do that with our veterans, too. Our job in an interview is not to feel comfortable. It's to find the best person for the role. So really push for that. But then there's the converse of that, too, which is that civilians can sometimes inadvertently prioritize their own curiosity or their own entertainment value rather than using the time to understand how a veteran's skill set actually translates.

So we see this happen in very specific terms. When someone is looking for heroics, they might want to talk about their war stories. And one question that many of our veterans have actually gotten in an interview process is, have you ever killed anyone? And so I would just encourage our civilian employers, please stay focused on the questions and topics that are relevant for the role at hand.

The final thing that I would say is we tend to overcomplicate. Many roles and many positions boil down to achieving a goal on time and on budget together with a team. Our veterans have done that a thousand times. And so let's not overcomplicate what we're actually trying to accomplish here.

If we boil it down, if we distill it down, that's what a lot of these positions are about.

>> H.R. McMaster: And then also, Bethany, the part of the question of how about veterans advice for veterans as they approach the career transition.

>> Bethany Coates: Okay, so there are a couple different things here.

And I just, I care so much about this issue because I want our veterans to. I want them to succeed. And so with our veterans, if I had to give you one piece of advice, it is ask for help. Tap into your networks. One of my mentors always says that the best options come from choosing amongst attractive alternatives.

So put yourself in a position to generate alternatives. And I know that this is hard. We've worked with thousands of veterans, and the vast majority of them prioritize self sufficiency. It's in their DNA. It has seeped so deeply into their bones to always be the person to for help and never be the person to ask for help.

But there are few decisions in your life that matter as much as this moment of career transition. And so give yourself permission to ask for help. And if it really makes you uncomfortable, remember the last time that you did a favor for somebody else and how good that feels.

It feels so good to be able to just be there for another person in your life, enable someone else to have that feeling, enable them to do a favor, to pay it forward for you. And so that would be my. My top. My top piece of advice for our transitioning veterans.

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, that's tremendous advice, Bethany. And at a time when we see growing threats to our security and at home, we've had this kind of contentious, crazy political season. I just like to ask you one final question about anything else you would like to say to our viewers.

But also I want to ask you what makes you optimistic about our future.

>> Bethany Coates: Well, what makes me optimistic about our future is, I mean, just look at our economy. The IMF just came out with a forecast for the US economy. I think it's 2.8%. A year ago, they were forecasting a recession.

The United States continues to be the healthiest, fastest growing economy in the entire world. That was true last year as well. This is the land and of opportunity, and we are so lucky to live and contribute to this country. And one of the main reasons why we are in a position to do so is because of our military and our service members.

And everything that makes our service members successful in the military, everything that enables them to contribute in those high value ways through their duty, their sense of patriotism, their sense of service makes them extraordinary people to actually work alongside as members of your team. So I continue to be bullish about the United States.

I absolutely feel grateful every single day to be a citizen of this country. And I'm just delighted to have a chance to share a bit more about our journey with Breakline, about the enormous privilege of working with our veterans and military spouses. And thank you so much, General McMaster, for the opportunity to shine a bit of a light on it.

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, Bethany, thank you so much for everything you're doing for our veterans, everything you're doing to strengthen our nation. On behalf of the Hoover Institution, thank you for helping us learn more about maybe what we can all do to build a better future for generations to come.

Thank you so much.

>> Bethany Coates: I appreciate it. Thank you, General.

>> Presenter: Battlegrounds is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.