Build Your A-Team

What does effective leadership actually look like — and how can organizations develop leaders who build trust, accountability, and performance? In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry and co-host Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ( ‪@FreddieJKim‬ )  speak with Stephen Hartz, founder of H&H Leadership Solutions, about leadership development, accountability, and building strong organizational...

Freddie Kim sits down with friend and mentor Bill Watkins (USMA '77) — Army Veteran, former corporate executive, and entrepreneur who built and sold his own company after 20 years. Today, Bill leads The Lions Pride and Alpha Forge, helping Veteran Founder-CEOs reach their highest potential.  Bill has spent years coaching Veteran Founder-CEOs from the top 1% to the elite 0.01%, and he shares the ba...

How do organizations build teams that actually perform — and why do so many leaders struggle to hire effectively? In this episode of Veteran Led, Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ‪@FreddieJKim‬ speaks with Veteran and HumCap founder & CEO Tad McIntosh about leadership, hiring, talent development, and building strong organizational cultures. Tad shares practical insights on hiring strategy, accoun...

What does leadership look like after the uniform — and how do you continue to serve your community? In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry and co-host Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ‪@FreddieJKim‬ speak with Ron Moore about leadership, service, and building lasting impact beyond military life. Ron shares insights on how Veterans can continue to lead in their communities, emphasizing the impo...

What separates leaders who scale from those who stall — and how do you build teams that consistently perform? In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry and co-host Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ‪@FreddieJKim‬   speak with James Suh about leadership, growth, and building high-performance teams. James breaks down the key elements of effective leadership, including accountability, clarity, and ex...

How do Veterans move from service into ownership — and why does that path matter? In this episode of Veteran Led, Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ( ‪@FreddieJKim‬ ) speaks with Patrick Flood, Army Special Forces Veteran and founder of Owners in Honor, about Veteran leadership, entrepreneurship, and building purpose through ownership. Patrick shares the vision behind Owners in Honor, an initiative fo...

What does it take for Veterans to succeed after service — and how do you build the right team to get there? In this episode of Veteran Led, Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ( ‪@FreddieJKim‬ )  hosts a conversation with Jary Jackson, CEO of TCS & Thurion and former U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret), focused on Veteran career transitions, leadership, and building high-performance teams. Jary s...

What separates Veterans who successfully build businesses from those who stay stuck? In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry and co-host Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ( ‪@FreddieJKim‬ ) speak with Nick Ripplinger about Veteran entrepreneurship, leadership, and the mindset required to build a business after service. Nick shares insights on transitioning from the military into entrepreneurship...

Why do so many organizations struggle to recognize the value Veterans bring to the workforce? In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry and co-host Freddie Kim of MilSpec Talent ( ‪@FreddieJKim‬ ) speak with Ryan Kuo about Veteran talent, leadership, and building high-performance teams. Ryan breaks down how military leadership experience translates into the civilian workforce — and why that tr...

What happens when two sisters turn resilience, service, and a simple product into a national business? In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry and co-host ‪@FreddieJKim‬ of MilSpec Talent speak with Barbara Kent and Joanna Serra, the founders of Fundraiser Blankets, about entrepreneurship, Shark Tank, and the power of saying yes to opportunity. Barbara, an Army Veteran and West Point graduat...

What happens when a Navy intel specialist fails BUD/S – twice – and decides to run toward the next hard thing anyway? In this Operator Series episode of Build Your A-Team, Freddie and Charlsey sit down with Nathan Sable, Market Area President at Apex Service Partners, where he oversees multiple HVAC brands across Central and Southern Virginia. Nathan’s path to leadership wasn’t conventional — from...

In this episode, Freddie Kim and Charlsey Mahle sit down with Tasha Smith, a retired Army Sergeant First Class and former Drill Sergeant, now General Manager at Victors Home Solutions, overseeing two branch locations (Cincinnati + Columbus) across a massive regional footprint. With zero prior roofing industry experience, Tasha shares how she translated military leadership into civilian execution –...

In this episode of Bring Your A-Team, Freddie Kim sits down with two Veteran founders running recruiting businesses from totally different angles — Stephen Hrutka (HRUCKUS) and Ryan Hogan (Talent Harbor). They break down what actually works in hiring, what’s total nonsense, and how founders can build teams that scale without getting trapped by bad process, bad JDs, or bad assumptions. Ryan Hogan i...

From stalking astronauts as a kid to launching a large-format 3D printer on Kickstarter, Major Samantha Snabes has taken bold, thoughtful risks. She’s the Co-Founder & Catalyst at re:3D, the company behind Gigabot — a large-format industrial 3D printer that can run on polymers or shredded plastic waste. In this BYAT episode, Sam breaks down how she built a mission-driven team that will “run th...

Travis Bloomfield is an Air Force Veteran and the CEO & Managing Partner of Provisio, Salesforce’s largest consultancy dedicated to human services and social sector organizations. He shares his journey from air traffic controller to leading one of the nation’s most impactful mission-driven consultancies — built on grit, purpose, data expertise, and the emerging power of agentic AI. After six y...

Vulnerability as a leadership superpower? Brian Handley runs a 175-year-old, fifth-generation foodservice company — and says the quiet part out loud: you don’t need all the answers to build an elite team. We dig into right-seat/right-role moves, KPI cultures that actually help people grow, and a raw, hopeful conversation on veteran mental health, meditation, and daily discipline. Brian Handley is...

Veteran founder Yolanda Clarke — Army Reserve Major and CEO of Powder River Industries — joins BYAT to show how process becomes culture: ISO that actually runs the business, “workflow bosses” who map reality, and a hiring system with clear KPIs and no-compromise standards. We get candid on handling bad hires with grace and evidence, leading remote teams through values and templates, and making dec...

Former Marine Corps Captain James Han went from slinging wigs in Gary, Indiana to President & CEO of Triage Partners, a telecom services and supply-chain software platform that’s scaled from 120 → 400 employees across 20 states. In this episode, James breaks down how veterans can enter new industries fast, why recruiting was Job #1, and how to balance humility with confidence to win trust and...

From Gulf War Veteran to AI Tech, CEO Barbara Jones-Brown served in the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Storm. Now, she is just as fierce leading Freeing Returns™, an AI platform helping retailers recover millions in lost revenue. She shares how grit, optimism, and a mission-ready mindset fuel startup resilience, what she learned raising capital from Serena Williams and Morgan Stanley, and why a...

Rudy Cazares is a 15-year Marine Corps Veteran who led 400+ Marines and now leads high-performance delivery teams in New York. He founded Kazar Logistics in 2020 with 8 drivers; today his companies employ 200+, operate Amazon DSP routes, run Manhattan’s 24/7 same-day e-bike delivery, and manage FedEx routes through Joint Ops Logistics, earning FedEx’s Gold Contractor award twice. A Queens native a...

Nick Ripplinger went from Army MP to award-winning entrepreneur and founder of Battle Sight Technologies, the Dayton-based R&D team behind CrayTac® — the “lethal crayon” transforming night operations. Battle Sight is known for its innovation, including CrayTac®, a reusable infrared writing device for covert communication in low or no light. His journey from medical retirement to building safer...

Marine Corps veteran and cybersecurity entrepreneur Omar Dennis joins Freddie Kim to unpack the real story behind acquiring a business, scaling from 1 to 50 employees overnight, and leading with emotional intelligence. Omar is the CEO of Sedulous Consulting Services, a firm that now supports federal, healthcare, and commercial clients in high-stakes cyber missions. He shares how a single question...

Liseth J. Velez is a U.S. Army and Air Force veteran, founder, and CEO of LJV Development, a rapidly growing, 8A-certified, SDVOSB and women-owned construction firm. After immigrating from Colombia at age seven and growing up in Lowell, MA, she served in both the Army and Air National Guard – beginning as a truck driver – before launching her own firm. Liseth brings grit, heart, and tactical clari...

From Army Staff Sergeant to Inc. 500 CEO, Eric Styles is the co-founder of YourSix Inc., a cloud-native leader in the physical security industry. In this episode, Eric joins Freddie Kim to unpack the grind of building YourSix from the ground up, why culture and team chemistry are everything, and how Veterans can find a second mission in tech entrepreneurship. Eric shares battle-tested lessons on h...

From federal service ambitions to founder of three healing organizations, Dr. Jude Black didn’t plan on becoming a therapist – or a CEO. But love, leadership, and military life had other plans. After decades as a military spouse to Colonel Bill Black and holding space for Veterans, Jude turned burnout into boldness. She shares how broken systems, bad leadership, and deep empathy drove her to build...