FOX News Podcasts Presents Great Americans: Michele McManamon

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So you can be on yours. Uber. On our way. Fox News Podcasts presents Great Americans with Brian Kilmead. Hi, everyone.

I'm Brian Kilmead. Welcome to the Great American Series. It's my privilege to bring in the Chief Executive Officer, co-founder of Operation New Uniform, Michelle McManaman.

So, Michelle, First off, before we get into Operation New Uniform, What led you to helping out the military? What is your American background? Yeah, no, I appreciate that, Brian. I think a lot of people wonder how I can be a CEO of an organization and not have served myself. My connection, probably the closest one, is an uncle that has served in the military.

But this is purely because Northeast Florida, where ONU is based out of, serves I mean, we have over 150,000 military veterans just here in Northeast Florida that have decided to stay after they've served. And what happens is a lot of they stay or they go serve someplace else and they come back. Yes. It's not a bad place to be from. Right.

But a lot of people, and we see it a lot today, whether you're at war or not, have trouble transitioning to the real world. Think about it. If you're 18 years old, you come out of high school, you join, you spend, let's say, 10 years in, all you've known is that structure. Even if you went to school and have skills, it's a huge adjustment. How does Operation New Uniform get the men and women ready for that adjustment?

Yes. And that question is interesting because we do something a little unconventional than most organizations that say they're helping people transition. And we use a tool called Sandler. Sandler is a sales, sales management and leadership training organization, and it's worldwide. We use their curriculum to not teach our folks to sell a product or service, we teach them how to sell themselves.

So when they come in our place, we're teaching them three different things, attitude, behavior, and technique. Lastly is the technique. We have to get inside their heads first and help them figure out who they are minus that role or minus that uniform. And that's how Operation Uniform got its name. It's separating that identity, that role from your identity and teaching you to be confident and secure in your identity without that role or that uniform.

So you have to give people confidence in themselves and also identify their own skill sets. A lot of times they don't know what they bring to the table. You're an infantry, okay, make the adjustment. A lot of people say, well, I'll go be a cop. I'll get into security.

All right, maybe, but maybe you don't want to do that.

So where do you go from there? Yeah, 100% that's true.

So often they come in and the very first day is like, well, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I don't know what my next part of my life's journey is going to be. I don't know where I want to work. I don't understand the business community.

So we help them navigate that by having them think big, think outside of their comfort zone and think differently than what probably they've been taught, which is from the military. Yeah, you can be a cop. Yeah, you can do this. You know, the typical security guard. But a lot of our folks go, they have IT background.

They have project management background. And we have them work in banks. We have them work in big corporate companies that have multiple divisions that they can work in. And they typically thrive in those environments because there's structure and there's things that they're used to in those types of companies and organizations. And some become entrepreneurs.

They never even thought they wanted to be. And we teach them how they can do that and find the resources to be successful. I mean, is it necessarily to train them to stay in Jacksonville? Yeah. Ideally, no, but we're nationwide.

So we don't train them to be in anywhere particular. If they're looking to transfer to another place, we have connections just about anywhere in the world that we can help them get connected to, not just through the Sandler Network, but through people and partners that we work with, anywhere they want to be. But most people that are in Northeast Florida don't want to leave. I know. The climate, I've definitely a house there myself, so I definitely know what you're talking about.

So since 2014, how has it grown? Oh gosh, tenfold. We are not just in Northeast Florida. We also have a training in Tampa. We have a great sponsor that is helping us get to Memphis, Tennessee next year and for the next three years.

And again, being nationwide because we have a virtual platform.

So we have served in 24 different states. And in Europe, Bahrain, we have been all over because we help active duty as well that are looking to, well, as their terminal leave, their last part of their transition, they're allowed to go through programs like ours. Ours is with no cost. The veterans pay nothing, and the companies that hire our folks don't pay anything either.

So it's a pretty sweet deal for whoever's involved. What does it feel like for you to be able to make these relationships, to train, and be able to help these people? Veterans. Brian, you have to experience a graduation. You've come to a gala, you've seen some of them, you've talked to some of our folks.

It is life-changing. It will bring you to tears every single one of these graduations because they didn't know what they didn't know. You come in here and they don't know what they want to do. They don't know how to navigate a network of people. They don't have anybody that they can reach out to other than their military folks.

So when they come out and we open up our network to them, we open up our board of directors and all of our contacts to them. It's a whole new world. I mean, the highest divorce rate are among veterans. I mean, I think that divorce and suicide are a direct correlation to not being happy where you are, to not being connected, not being loved. We show them that they're loved, they're cared for, they have a new family, and that we're never going to leave them.

And once they come through our program, they become ONU family for life. What about the business community? What do you have to do there to let people know these are some worthy recruits or to be able to be patient with people as they transition? Yeah. The business community is tricky because Some of them say they're veteran friendly.

I'm sure you've heard that expression before. But it's not necessarily how they're treating them. Veteran friendly means they hire veterans. But when they look at the big picture, they are different. If they're not going through a program like ours and being able to speak to a new resume, to be able to go beyond just the resume and make connections to get there, it's probably a more difficult hire.

So they don't last as long because they don't have the experience or really know how to navigate that transition. I think it's just more difficult. The business community needs to be educated. We try to help in that way as well. We meet with companies and talk to their HR departments and tell them this is what to look for.

If they're struggling, send them our way. We can help them get over that, and we'll send them back to you once they get over that hump.

So it's a two-fold prong on here, not three, maybe it is three, but two, to be able to help them help our veterans. And that's ultimately at the end of the day, we want them to be in a company and a career that they feel empowered by, not just a job. We don't look at JOBs, we look at careers. Average salary, 94,000 when they graduate our program with a 97% success rate of them getting careers. That's unbelievable.

So that must be a great feeling. And then you'll all be able to employ some of them at the operational uniform? Oh yeah. That's of course. That's my main goal, is to be able to hire whoever I can as we grow, keep bringing them on for sure.

Wow, and that's great. And how much bigger can you get now that we're not in two hot wars? Does that help or hurt your numbers or the need? I don't think the need will ever go away. Hot war or not, these folks are still going through things that you and I could probably never imagine.

And when they come back, there are things that have to be addressed, and there's resources that they need. We're just a part of those resources. There's so many other things that they could use, and some of them they don't even know about.

So we encourage every veteran military spouse To reach out to us and see how we can help connect them to other resources that they can definitely use that are free. And so, Michelle, what led you to this? What were you doing before this operation? I was doing sales training, believe it or not. I was doing this Sandler training and I was loving it and my husband and I just wanted to scholar one veteran through our program thinking that would help somebody get into sales.

We found out very quickly that most of our veterans don't like sales. They don't like the unknown. They don't like having a non-salary start. And we found out that there are so many other things that they struggle with. And one of them is just knowing how to go to a networking event, knowing how to be there around people that they don't know and how to speak about what they did in the military that makes sense to people that are not in the military.

So we really translate that for them and make them feel comfortable and confident in any situation. It's quite remarkable. Right. It's pretty amazing. And how many people with you right now who look in a place you're currently training?

So we have trained to date since twenty fourteen over seven hundred veterans and have made an impact on about 2400. veterans overall. You know, the other thing is, just your opinion. I just think the military should be doing more. And I think that before they leave, they should be for two months almost in a transition scenario where they meet with people personally.

They start brainstorming for that individual. And I think it would also help with recruiting, knowing that when the end comes close, we're going to work together. I'm not going to leave you on the doorstep. From your list of God's years, Brian, but that's not going to happen. The military doesn't have that type of budget to train or to help them afterwards.

Their money goes to training them while they're there, making them soldiers, making them whatever it is that they need to do in whatever branch of service they serve in. That's why we exist. We exist and other nonprofits that are absolutely amazing are here to help afterwards. If the VA tried to do it, if the government tried to do it, it's going to be a bunch of, you know. Military people try and teach military how to transition and they don't know.

So you need business people like myself and our partners and people around us to be able to help them understand this transition because it's different. All right. And if people want to help out, Michelle, where do they go? ONUVETS. org.

Operation New Uniformvets.org, O-Nuvets.org. All right, Michelle McMinimum, thanks so much. I appreciate it. You truly are a great American story. And I thank you so much for your time and what you do.

Brian, I'm honored to serve in this way. God tells us to do it when we do it.

So, thank you very much for having me on the show. You got it. For more interviews highlighting great Americans, go to FoxNewsPodcasts.com. It's Will Tain Country. Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through Thursday at FoxNews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel.

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