Join us for an insightful episode of Veteran Led, as John sits down with Army veteran and media master, Mike’l Severe. From his successful career in journalism to his impactful work with the Jet Award Foundation, Mike’l shares valuable insights on how leaders can improve their media skills. Tune in as we discuss stories of resilience, skill adaptation, and community support. Don’t miss out on this must-watch episode for anyone interested in mastering the art of media communication.
Mike’l Severe: You’ve got to get other people to help you, right? Not just looking in the mirror. Get Joe next to you to say, yeah, you’re squared away. You’re gig line looks good. You’re good. Go ahead. And I wasn’t doing that because I thought I was the perfect soldier. I didn’t need any help. Those two things taught me that you always need help. You need to be able to learn. You’re constantly learning. Um, another thing I took from the military is always learn and always ask for help, because the person next to you is going to be able to see you better than you can see yourself.
John Berry: Welcome to the Veteran Led podcast, where we talk with leaders who use their military experiences to develop great organizations and continue to serve their communities. Today we have special guest Mike’l Severe. Shoot, move and communicate. This guy knows communication for those veterans that want to get into the media field. Or more importantly, if you have a business and you’re front facing, you better learn how to do it. And the thing I love about Mike’l is, as Chris Voss would say, his FM late night DJ voice. Welcome to the show, Mike’l.
Mike’l Severe: Appreciate it John. Thanks, man.
John Berry: So we’ve known each other for a while, and I met you as a radio sportscaster personality. Yeah. Uh, who really understood sports, and I learned as we were. I was on your show, and we were talking about 50 Mile March, and you said, hey, yeah, yeah, I did that last year. And then I got punked into doing it because so many people were like, dude, you got to do it. So okay, fine, I’ll do it. Yeah. So I got I got to watch you suffer through that though, and the time that I did it. But what I want to talk to you about is making that transition. You go this transition in life where you realize things aren’t working out and you go in the military, and then that kind of opens the door for you for your entire career. So take us through that journey.
Mike’l Severe: Yeah, it’s really turned my life around. You know, I was a decent school kind of guy. I did okay on tests, but I didn’t really like going to school. Um, when I got out of high school, I was trying to say what I wanted to do next. I thought about going first into a regular college. Didn’t have the money for that. Um, didn’t know what to do. And then literally, I was working at Kroger, and I was also delivering pizzas, and I was kind of going to a community college a little bit. And a buddy of mine, Desmond, who just passed away a couple of years ago, uh, sent me, called me and said, hey, want to join the Army? And I was like, what? I had never really thought about it. My dad was in the Navy. My dad was born in 1910. My dad served in the Navy in the late 1920s. Okay. This is a guy who went through the Navy, learned how to become a chef, and was a chef for the next 50 years of his life. So I knew that there was something beneficial from joining the military, but I never thought about it. Um, and I said, okay. We went down to the MEPs in downtown Houston. Uh, we take that little test. What are you good for? Uh, they came out and said, aviation mechanic for me. It was a $20,000 bonus over the course of the years. Sounds pretty good to me. Um, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to go full time because it was a lot of things I still wanted to do at home. And so I joined the reserves, and I’ll tell you, going to basic training, best thing that ever happened to me, it focused me.
Mike’l Severe: It taught me how to prioritize things. It taught me how to just be more aggressive in what I needed. Um, it changed my life. It really did. I tell people all the time that that little book, that green book, the Smart Book, um, learning it, memorizing it, teaching the other guys in the unit and in our platoon and in the company, it really just taught me like, okay, well, there’s something I can do. I can do well. And after I finished that, I am going to AIT. I went to Fort Rucker, where I worked on helicopters and learned how to work on a Huey and then went through reserves and moved on to being an Apache mechanic. And everything that happened to me in the military really focused me for the rest of my life. I, I, I can’t thank the United States Army more than I do every time I go into someplace, every time I speak to kids, every time I go and speak in front of people, I tell them every time. There’s nothing like finding something that focuses you. And the United States military in the Army focused me. It just taught me how to be hard driving. Right? Everything I did after that, I did it as hard as I could, as fast as I could, as long as I could. That’s what it taught me. Um, whether it be dropping every time, doing pushups, or it being the 50 Mile March or it being anything, you know, working three, four jobs at a time, raising my kids, being a good husband. The military helped me with all those things.
John Berry: I mean, with a name like Severe, you got to be hardcore.
Mike’l Severe: Got to be hardcore. Yeah. No doubt about.
John Berry: That drill sergeant probably told you that day one. So, you know, you get through basic and you’re learning these skills. And now you go back to college, you have a little bit more focus. Uh, how do you get into media? Like I said, a lot of veterans, they want to get in and they don’t understand how hard it is. But then there are also veterans who are front facing for their companies that need to learn some skills. And I’ve done some media training, and it has done wonders for me. And look, it’s not the stuff for the veterans listening. You go overseas and they say, hey, this is your media training. Don’t say this, don’t say that. Don’t do anything. Just smile at the camera. Be nice to the reporter. But that’s not media training. So I you know, hopefully we get into some tips today about how to help some of our veterans when they get those opportunities. But man, if you’re going to lead a company, all eyes are on you. It’s just like being in the front of formation. So tell us how you decided to say, yeah, I want people to listen to me. I want them to see me.
Mike’l Severe: Yeah. Before I get how I got there. A quick story from basic training. You know, I was in fourth platoon. Uh, in second platoon, there was a guy named James Brown. Okay. Little white kid, probably 5’7”, little chubby James Brown. Every morning, the drill sergeant from that was over platoon two would yell out the window, James Brown, how do you feel? And he would come out of formation, get in front of his platoon and go, I feel good and sing the song. Every day that got us jacked up for the rest of the day. He knew that that was something that kind of could get us going, get that kid going. It was incredible. And so just like being in front of the platoon, being in front of the company and being a leader is so important for everybody that’s in there. But for me, um, I always knew I kind of wanted to do something involving sports, even when I was a little kid, when I was living in New Orleans, this would have been around 1980, 81. Our seats in the Superdome were right below the Monday Night Football booth. And so Howard Cosell and those guys up there above us, and we could I could stand as a kid up on the chair and look into their booth. And I was like, I want to be Howard Cosell. I want to be a guy reporting on sports. I want to be the guy standing in the boxing ring afterwards interviewing somebody. So I always wanted to do it.
Mike’l Severe: I just never had a path for it. I get out of the military, I go, I’m doing reserves, I go back to work at Kroger to work in the produce department. A kid that was there when I left to go to basic and AIT ended up going to Sam Houston State and joining the radio television film department, RTF. And he said, you should come up and visit one weekend. It’s fun. We have a good time. We do all this stuff. You might be you might like it. So I said, okay. I went up there one weekend, we hung out, met everybody, went and looked at the studios and all that stuff, and I go, okay, that’s what I want to do. So immediately I went to a community college, North Harris Community College, got all my basics out of the way. Did them. I was taking like 15, 16 hours of semester just trying to get to college. Um, and then after two, at about a year and a half, I ended up going to Sam Houston State in Huntsville, Texas, and I graduated in seven semesters. I was, like I said, hard driving, however many classes I could take at one time. And I did everything. I DJ’d FM radio, I did sports shows, I hosted TV shows, I did a sports reporters kind of show like they have on ESPN. When I graduated, my instructor, one of my instructors, gave me this book. It was a Vince Lombardi book with quotes in it, and he wrote in the on the outside, He said, I’ve never met anyone that wanted to do more than you did.
Mike’l Severe: I always wanted to be involved. Even when I was a senior, I was doing stuff the freshmen were doing, like hosting radio shows because I just want to be involved in everything. I loved it. Um, and that’s once you do that and you learn how to be the person in front of the camera or the person operating the camera or the person running the board, you can work anywhere. And so as soon as I graduated college, I applied for a job in Monroe, Louisiana. I applied for a lot of jobs. Um, and I applied for a job in Monroe, Louisiana, and it was exactly what I wanted. It was a part news, part sports guy. I did three days news, two day sports. Perfect for me. Learned about the news, learned about the language you use as a reporter when talking about crime or politics. And at the same time I was covering sports. I was covering Grambling University with the legendary Eddie Robinson, who was the coach at the time covering Louisiana Tech during one of the best stretches Louisiana Tech football’s ever had. They upset Alabama one year, um, in 1996 or 7. Um, so I was doing what I wanted to do, and but I still wasn’t great at my job. I was hardworking, I did my best, but I wasn’t great. And I sat down with a guy who was a regional general manager, meant he was over a bunch of TV stations, and he came in and looked at my tape to kind of give me an evaluation, and he told me something that I’ll never forget.
Mike’l Severe: And I tell it to kids all the time. When it comes to doing live shots or being in front of the camera, he said, pick one thing about what happened and tell us that one thing, and then when you’re done, tell us the one thing. Tell us the one thing again, just rephrase it, make sure everybody knows and then close with more about that one thing. He said the problem people have when they’re trying to speak in front of a camera or to a group of people, they try to talk about too many things at one time, try to get to too many subjects. They want to do one and then A, B, C, then two, and then AB. No one thing. What is your point? Make your point and get out of it and it made me so much better of a live reporter. I end up getting the job here in Omaha. I went to Albuquerque. I worked in Albuquerque for a number of years, and then I got the job coming here to Omaha because of my wife. Um, but ever since then, since that guy told me that that’s what I that’s what I thought of whether I’m doing a radio show or I’m doing an interview. What’s my point? What am I trying to make? And that’s what I try to do.
John Berry: All right. And this is the goal in the show right here. And this is the pure gold. Because people told me that, hey, the reporters just want soundbites. I’d come out of a high profile trial, I’d be all fired up or exhausted, and all these microphones in my face, and I’d try to like, say, a bunch of stuff and, you know, because my brain’s going a million miles an hour. And had I just taken the time to focus on that one soundbite, that one thing, it would have made a difference. But instead I felt like I was an idiot. Now, that being said, I think the first time you’re on camera, you’re gonna look like an idiot and you don’t need to be on camera to practice. Practice in front of the mirror. Or, you know, now with your iPhone, you can record it. Yeah, but man, I looked so stupid. And it was so embarrassing. And I’m on the news. And actually a peer of mine came up and said, John, hey, you’re on the news. That’s great. I said, no, man, I was so stupid. I was all over the place. I was talking about ten different things, and they cut the sound, you know? And you know what? They. Yeah, sure. They spliced everything together where it was actually, like, inaccurate. That wasn’t what I said. They cut this and put that. And he’s and he’s like, but John, uh, did they get your name right? And I said, yeah, yeah. He said, that’s all that matters. Uh, and you know, that was a good that was a good lesson. But man. Yes. Know what you want to say? One thing, one clear message. Shoot, Move, and Communicate. Learn how to communicate. Okay. Well, that’s the first piece of gold we got out of this. So keep going. I love that, but I wanted to hit that point. I have screwed this up so many times. And people tell me again John, John, just a soundbite, just one thing. What’s the one most important thing that I want to tell somebody my whole life story. Yeah. Anyway.
Mike’l Severe: And then the other thing, always remember this, breathe. Yes. Too many times when people are speaking in front of a group or whatever else, they just don’t breathe. And we aren’t taught to breathe when we’re kids. You’re not taught how to do meditation. You’re not taught how to control your breathing as a kid most times, right. Maybe there’s some kids who go through tae kwon Do, or they go through something that specifies that. But we’re not taught that. Not until we get older, not until we realize that the most important thing for us is air oxygen. Right. You got to breathe if you breathe while you’re doing a live report, or you breathe while you’re speaking to somebody, oxygen is going to your brain and you’re thinking better. You’ve got to breathe. I talk to kids, I go to universities, I go to high schools all the time. And I ask them, what’s the most important thing you do every single day? And they’ll give me 100 things. I’m like, it’s breathe. You wouldn’t live without it. You also can’t talk without it. You can’t think without it. You can’t. You can’t do your job without it. And that’s what I always constantly tell people. Breathe. You have a way of speaking where you can get a lot of information out, right? But I can hear your breaths. I know you’re I know you’re breathing. The only way you can continue to talk, the way you do, with the way you, um, with the way your structure is, is to be able to breathe. If not at the end, you’ll be like, oh, so you have it in your method. There’s other people who speak slower that breathe correctly. There’s people who it’s just all about making sure that you get those breaths in. It’s by far the most important thing when you’re in front of a camera is breathing.
John Berry: How do you how about the pauses? Now I, I’m oh man with a jury I love I plan the pause. Yes, yes, I’m gonna stop. We’re gonna just because I want this to soak in. Right. But then all of a sudden, I’m staring in this camera and the pauses feel so awkward. So how do you use pauses?
Mike’l Severe: Let me. So there’s a couple things. Um, voice and diction was so my major was radio, television, film. I minored in promotions and public relations, but my favorite part was voice and diction. I love voice and diction. I grew up all over the country, so I’m one of those people that I’ve lived in, a place where you call a sandwich a po’boy. I’ve lived in a place where you call it a grinder. I’ve lived in a place where you call it a hoagie. It’s all about voice and diction, right? Depending on where you live, how you speak, what you say. So with that said, some people, mostly men, go to, um, that’s their bridge. They’ll talk. They feel they got to fill that void. They’ll say, um, or some people will say, you know what I’m talking about, or something like that. A clutch, a crutch phrase. Eliminate that crutch phrase and that’s the point where you breathe. That pause may feel long to you, but it’s not. It’s the same as if you were saying, um, and no one needs to cut the, um out.
Mike’l Severe: Because, by the way, sometimes we do in soundbites, especially in radio, if you’re saying, um, or you’re having a little a crutch, we’ll cut those out to shorten it, make you sound better. You can make yourself sound better by not eliminating those things that go in between your thoughts. Just breathe there. Just stop and start instead of throwing in, um, or you know what I’m talking about or whatever, whatever your crutch is. When people sometimes people say, um, obviously they’ll throw obviously in it, that’s their crutch. To get from one subject to the other. You don’t need those, just work on them. You have made a great point about the iPhone. When I was a kid, I had a brush and a mirror. That’s what I worked in front of. Now you can, you can record yourself and look at it and think to yourself, the next one I do, I’m going to avoid saying, um, I’m going to avoid saying whatever my crutch phrase is and then go and just breathe in those spots instead. That’s very important.
John Berry: Yeah. I had a, uh, my previous assistant was the captain of the Creighton women’s soccer team. And so they watched a lot of athletes watch film. I watched film in college. And so I was getting ready to do some videos and she’s okay, get my iPhone out. And she would record. Nice. Okay. Now we’re gonna do a couple rehearsals. Right. And so it’s like the military, you do the rehearsals. And that was just, you know, I’d see it and then she’d start to play back like, yeah, that’s terrible. But, you know, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. That’s how you get better. We all say things during pauses or periods where we’re uncomfortable. And you’ve talked about how to identify that, and you said, men say men. Yeah, women don’t.
Mike’l Severe: Women don’t. If you watch a woman speak, very rarely will they do the, um, stuff. They won’t do the filler. They are more patient in their delivery. Um, one of the stats right there. One of the best things you’ll see watch coaches. So watch Matt Rhule, men’s coach, watch Amy Williams, the women’s coach for Nebraska women’s basketball, and watch how they do press conferences. Matt Rhule will try to make sure he fills all of the void spots. Um’s a big part for his. Amy won’t. She’ll just speak, stop and speak. I don’t know why men and women do it differently. Maybe we’re in more of a hurry. Maybe we’re afraid because we grew up around other men who immediately jumped in in the conversation once we paused. Maybe that’s why I don’t know. And maybe women let each other talk more, but it’s distinctive. Again, in voice and diction class, they would show us video of the first main female anchors and opposed to the male anchor, and you could see the difference in how they transitioned from topics or how they speak. It’s a fascinating thing. We it takes a while to work on. Rehearsals are great. I will tell you this. Sometimes your first take is always your best take. It just is, you know, because everything’s fresh in your head. You’re not thinking about it. But rehearsals are great to get rid of those crutches, to get rid of things that just don’t need to be in there, you know? And you know, is a great one. I left that one out, you know. It’s a good one, too. Um, but I don’t know why there’s a difference, but there is a difference between the way men and women speak.
John Berry: Perhaps women have more practice.
Mike’l Severe: Maybe talking. I do believe, though, if you’ve been around guys, if you’re at a table and you’re all just talking, you’re constantly waiting to jump in, you know, and you’re waiting for that little space. And if I don’t give you the space, maybe I can keep talking. Maybe that’s it. Um, I have five sisters and a mom. I grew up in a house full of women, and I will admit, when they argue, it’s more of a concise argument or discussion than it is with men. Men just yell over each other. Women do take the time to stop and let the other person talk. I’ve noticed that over the years growing up in my house, I noticed that. And so maybe that’s part of it. Maybe they knew that they could stop and keep going if they want, opposed to men who if they stop, somebody else jumps in, I don’t know.
John Berry: Yeah, there are gender differences. And in fact, I was reading this article on gender intelligence, and I believe this woman was the first female salesperson at IBM. And she talked about I said this a little bit off topic here, but very important. She said, you know, if a man has an experience with a company or a product, he will tell maybe two men if it’s relevant. A woman on average will tell 27 people, even if it’s not relevant. So you start thinking about your client experience and what type of product you’re delivering and who’s talking. So it’s very interesting to figure out these studies that there are pretty big differences between men and women. And the dynamics are a lot. And it’s the same way I would tell you with attorneys. And I can tell you that. Yeah. Um, my wife’s cross-examinations are better than mine. And maybe because she prepares more. Yeah. Uh, but her brain. You’re absolutely right. It is very well planned, thought out, meticulous, uh, in order. And me, sometimes I’m just looking for the shot.
Mike’l Severe: The average man. I saw this on CBS Sunday Morning is my favorite television program. I watched it for 35 years. I love it, I love long form news. They did a story on it. The average male over the age of 40 has three good friends. Three. And that’s on the high side, remember, that’s the average. So a lot of them have none or one. Women have like ten. So maybe that’s what you’re saying. They do have a chance to be able to tell ten people who are their good friends, whereas we’ve only got a couple, so we don’t get as much information out. But it it’s something that we need to work on as men. And this is part of the story they did, is that we need to cultivate friendships because there is depression, there are problems you’re going to have. You need to reach out to somebody, and many times you need a friend to do it. And we need to do a better job of cultivating friends. Even though you’ve got a family, and you have work, and you have all these things, spend time sending a text to somebody or reaching out to them or giving them a phone call. God forbid, pick up the phone and call somebody so we can cultivate our friendships opposed to women who do it great already.
John Berry: They’re great. And I agree that the more talking it’s interesting because if my wife wants to reconnect with an old friend, she’ll they’ll talk for maybe hours. I have a buddy, uh, from the military, uh, served with me, and he recently had an issue with a TBI traumatic brain injury. And there was some testing and some other stuff done, and he said he reached out to me. So I called him, you know, a ten minute conversation. Yeah. You good? How’s the family? How’s everything else? Hey, a few jokes, right. All right, man, great talking to you. Yeah, I don’t need to hear his whole life story. I just, you know, because. And I think we all have friends like that where we could not talk to them for a decade, but that that and especially in the military, that bond is there. Um, but, you know, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have more conversations. But at the end of the day, which is probably another one that I use too often, at the end of the day, uh, we really it’s important to connect, but it’s about the quality of the connection, not about the quantity. But why is it, then, that I wonder that men have to feel like they have to jump in to get the stuff out? Yeah, but the women don’t. But they’re. But they generally are talking more. Yeah. How does that work?
Mike’l Severe: I think it is about the fact that we’re competitive. I’m not saying women aren’t competitive. I covered women’s sports for years. I, I covered a Louisiana Tech women’s basketball team that went to the Final Four. I know they’re competitive, but there is a different kind of competitiveness when it comes to men about everything. Um, whether it’s the way you dress or the way you handle something or the pretty girl you have on your arm or whatever, you’re always constantly competing. But when you’re a little kid, right, spinning in the playground all the way up to you’re an old man and the old folks home, um, maybe that’s part of it. But I will say this about that conversation you had with your friend. Um, and that’s great to talk, but you have to remember sometimes is you have to say maybe they need somebody. Maybe they have something going on. Um, Jay Miralles talks about this. He says you never know what someone’s going through. You never do. So give them a chance to tell you oppose to saying. And he loves to say this too. Instead of saying thank you for your service, say, hey, what can I do for you? How can I help you? And maybe that ten minute conversation was fine for your friend and for you too.
Mike’l Severe: But you never know when you say that thing. Maybe something that they have been worrying about or that’s been on their mind they’ve been trying to deal with, you just gave them the opening to talk to you about it, and maybe you’re the first person that they’ve had a chance to talk to about it. So I do believe that even though we can have a quick conversation as men and we do, it is also good also to say, hey, everything going alright? Do you need anything else? You need anything from me? Can I do anything for you just to make sure that that person is in a good spot? Because you never because. Because if that person ends up doing something to themselves and you were the last person to talk to him, or maybe you had a chance to talk to him and you didn’t imagine how you’d feel. So just, you know, spend a little time, a little extra time saying, what can I do for you?
John Berry: Yeah. No, that’s wonderful advice. So in terms of what we can do for people, what we can do for others, obviously you’ve been very involved in community service. Yeah. And using your gift, using your literally your voice and your connections in the community to help you’ve done you’ve done quite a bit of that with quite a bit of nonprofits, and you haven’t changed. I mean, you’re still a kid in college doing everything I try. Yeah, but how do you how do you decide? Right. In the end, we all have a finite amount of time. How do you decide what projects you’re going to do and what ones are you going to say no to?
Mike’l Severe: Well, I’ll tell you this. My wife will tell you I don’t say no to any of them. I do it all. Um, if somebody needs something emceed, they need me to be at an event and emcee it, or to host their auction or to in a couple of weeks. I’m going to do this event over at my kids school, where they do a fundraiser with a trivia night. They want me to be the trivia master guy, whatever it is, as long as I can fit it in the schedule, I’m going to do it. Uh, if somebody needs something from me and I can help other people, I’m going to do it as much as possible. This this goes back to Covid. Okay? And I was doing this before it but goes back to Covid. Covid happens and I’m doing a radio show from my basement every morning. Right. We were from 6 to 10. I’m sitting in my basement and by myself and the person I’m doing the radio show with is on the other side of town, and there’s a TV thing in front of us, and we’re watching each other and we’re talking on the radio. And there was no sports on, right? Nothing was happening. Sports were shut down. There was like a couple things happening over in Korea, the Korean baseball, nothing was going on. And I realized right then I said, you know what? As much as I love sports and I love my job, I don’t think I’m making a difference. I don’t think I’m doing anything to help other people. Maybe I’m giving them a laugh. Maybe I’m giving them some information about Husker football or something, but I don’t know if I’m really doing anything.
Mike’l Severe: And so at that moment, that’s when I realized I needed to do something else with my life. And I needed to give back more. I needed to do more than what I was doing then. And so from that moment, if you asked me to do something and you need help, I’m. I’m going to do it. Um, I’ll mess my move my schedule around if I have to. But Covid changed me in a way that it’s hard for me to. And at the same time, a good friend of mine passed and went to his funeral or his wake, and people were talking about him and what he meant to them. And I’m like, when I’m gone, will people think of me that way? Um, and it really struck me. And from again, Covid 19 through now I just want to help people. And that’s why I went from what I was doing. I was working in the city of Papillion. It’s a great city job, great insurance, great job, love the people there. But when the job came open to be the executive director at the Jet Award Foundation, and I realized I could help people get their education, and I could realize if we do a good enough job, we can help with generational poverty, that we can help people who have never thought about going to college, go to college, so their kids go to college, or their grandkids go to college. It was a no brainer. I immediately said I would do it because I got to that point in 2020 where I want to help more people, I want to make a difference, and that’s why I changed jobs.
John Berry: And you’ve continued to serve the community, but also you haven’t shied away from the spotlight either. You’re still you’re still out there. And I think it’s almost necessary if you look, if you want to promote something, yeah, you got to promote it. You can’t just be the guy behind the scenes raising funds. You got to really step up. You got to be the spotlight. Yeah.
Mike’l Severe: Like so I have a podcast that I do on Thursday nights, which is a sports related podcast. It’s really a lot about Creighton. It’s a let it fly. So I do a little bit of that. I still do a lot of Husker coverage, but on social media you have to be able to reach. Right. So with a lot of numbers, I was in TV all these years and you had a rating in, you had a share rating is how many people are watching television at a given time based on everybody that has a television. The share, more importantly, is the amount of people watching TV when their TV is on and watching you, which is more important now. The third thing is reach. How many people can you reach with a tweet? With a Facebook message? How many people can you reach with Instagram? How many people can you reach? It’s not just you standing there watching something on social media, but it’s your wife telling your wife about it and your wife telling the 23 people about it. Now that’s the reach that’s extending from what I was saying. So constantly, we’re getting our message out there.
Mike’l Severe: You guys do an amazing job. I mean, whether it’s the billboards, the commercials, the little clips on YouTube, the little bumps at the top that’s constantly getting the message out, and maybe you don’t hit 100% with those, but even if you hit 15%, that’s 15% of people who didn’t know about what you were talking about in the first place. And maybe they tell two other people and all of a sudden your percent, your percent goes up. It’s about reach nowadays. And so that’s why I’m always on social media, trying to make sure people know about the Jet Award Foundation or know about what we’re doing, or the Johnny Rodgers Scholarship, whatever. I’m always out there trying to make sure, and whenever somebody asks me to do a podcast, why wouldn’t I? It’s probably a different audience than I’m being able to reach. They’re going to learn about something that we’re doing. Maybe they can help. Maybe it helps them. Maybe they’re like me. They want to help. They don’t know how to do it. This pops up, they see this. So that’s why whatever somebody asked me to be there, do something I do it.
John Berry: It goes back to the military. How many times the drill sergeant or the first sergeant have to tell you something, and you do pushups, and you still screw it up or you forget. And the stickiness. There’s so much going on now to stay in someone’s brain, which. Yeah, pain is a teaching tool, man. You can do pushups and flutter kicks. They will remember, but you can’t make the audience do that. And so it has to be repetition. So you may say, well I talk about the Jet Foundation 50 times a day. Sure. But it may be the first time I’ve heard it or you’ve taught it running a company you’ve told me 50 times today, but this is. The first time I’ve heard it right. And that, I mean, that drives me crazy, but we don’t understand that. And the opposite of that is that people often just assume that if we you call somebody and they don’t call you back, oh, they’re blowing me off. We take it so personally. But I’ve got some friends that are highly successful that have said, you know, I, I used to be that way, but now if I call one of my buddies and they don’t return my call, I get it. We’re on the same journey. We’re climbing the same mountain. Here we are. You know, we’re on we’re an important mission. And when we’re on that mission, we got to be focused. And so if I call Mike’l, I text Mike’l. He doesn’t text me back. I don’t think, oh, he doesn’t like me. He doesn’t want to be on my podcast. Right, right, right, right. You know, I must have offended him. No, I’m just like, hey, he’s busy. He’s got a mission. I’ve got a mission. We’re doing great things. Uh, I’ll reach out to him later. And he’s like. And the some of the best people I know who have done the most for me. There have been times when I’ve reached out and they haven’t responded. And it’s not. It has nothing to do with me. I should never take that.
Mike’l Severe: Maybe they’re taking a nap.
John Berry: Yeah, maybe they’re taking a nap now. I will tell you one thing that was a little bit different than what you said. And I don’t want to name drop, but this person is fairly famous. And we were out in, uh, Colorado and we were skiing, and we were walking to dinner, and he says, uh, and he had an event coming up, and he’s like, I’m not going to do it. I’m saying, but you committed to it. He said, but I don’t want to do it. I said, but you committed to it. Like my whole life I’ve learned if you commit to it, you hell, that’s one of our core values, right? Are you committed to it? You have to do it. And he said, you know, I did that my whole life. And now that he’s in his 50s and he said, you know, I’m looking at life a little bit differently now. And I give a lot. I give all I can, but there’s only so much of me to give. And he says, and I, you know, I committed too soon on this, and I made a mistake, and I shouldn’t have done it. And I’m going to have to call and apologize or have my assistant do it.
John Berry: But, but, but he and I really thought about that. That totally changed my mind about things because I can think of areas where I over committed, and then I failed people because I committed everybody. And I’m running late for everything, you know, and it just it’s so disrespectful to be to be late, right, right. Or to or to not show up at all. And sometimes if you realize like, um, hey, I’m at the point and as you know, too, I mean, we all got to take a break. We all got to take a knee and drink water. Hey, I may have gone a little bit too far. Now, I have not done this yet because I don’t believe in backing out of my commitments. But I’m always evolving. You know, people ask me, well, how do you think about what do you think about this? And I may give a different answer. Listen to the podcast a year from now, and I may give you a different answer, because as leaders, we have to evolve in our thinking. But, uh, but I do think about that a lot.
Mike’l Severe: I never thought about that before. It’s I mean, it’s an incredible point. You know, I give you an analogy. When we were kids, we were forced to eat things that we didn’t want to eat. Right? Liver and onions for me. And I got older. I was like, I have to do that anymore. I’m a grown man. I’ll do it anymore. I kind of understand what you’re saying about that, but commitment means so much to me and oh, God, I just couldn’t imagine saying, I’m going to do something now. What he has to do, and probably what he’ll eventually do is when that offer comes, instead of just immediately saying, yes, take a day and go, okay, so what’s my schedule like around that time? And what am I going to be doing? And am I going to want to do that when it comes around and make the decision then to say no right ahead of time as opposed to waiting for later? A quick military story because you said something earlier about, uh, failure is the greatest teacher in the world. You’re talking about. Pain teaches failure is the greatest, right? This is a little tiny thing. I’m in AIT and we’re coming out for inspection. I have been, and this is not me patting myself on the back. The perfect soldier. Everything I was ever asked to do. I learned the book quickly. I learned everything they asked me to do. I was doing 70 on seven on seven week for drop. Every time whatever was asked, I did it. I get to AIT.
Mike’l Severe: First day there, a female drill sergeant walks up to me. I’ve never seen a female drill sergeant. I had no idea she had this little funky hat on. I didn’t know who she was. I called her ma’am. Of course, that was a problem with me calling her ma’am. So I made a mistake, so I cleaned that up. I can’t do that again. About three weeks later, we go out for inspection, and I didn’t notice. And I didn’t do like you’re supposed to have your buddy check. You and I had a little spot of toothpaste because I put my blouse on before I brushed my teeth, I had a little spot of toothpaste. So I’m standing there on formation. I’m all locked up; I’m feeling good about myself. And he walks up, and he points out that I had this toothpaste on me. And I thought to myself, oh my God, I’m a failure standing here in inspection. But it taught me, you’ve got to get other people to help you, right? Not just looking in the mirror. Get Joe next to you to say, yeah, you’re squared away. You’re gig line looks good, you’re good. Go ahead. And I wasn’t doing that because I thought I was the perfect soldier. I didn’t need any help. Those two things taught me that you always need help. You need to be able to learn. You’re constantly learning. Um, another thing I took from the military is always learn and always ask for help, because the person next to you is going to be able to see you better than you can see yourself.
John Berry: Absolutely. The buddy team system. Yes. You know, two sets of eyes are better than one. Hey, two rifles are better than one. And it’s just having somebody watching your six looking out for you, squaring you away. Because we all have, no matter how great we think we are. Yeah. We’re all soup sandwiches at some point. At some point we are all ate up and we don’t know it. Right.
Mike’l Severe: No doubt about that. Yeah I, I I’ve over the years you know older you get the more you learn more experience and everything. But the thing I’ve learned the most about is and it took me a long time to get here, is that I don’t know everything. My sister, when I was 16 years old, gave me that book, um, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Great book, because she knew me and knew I would have problems with this because I was a person that had very strong beliefs about things and believed I knew everything. And because of that, I didn’t necessarily always make great friends. I wasn’t the best person. Sometimes in a team effort, I was better off by myself. It. Now that I’m 54 years old, it took me this long to be able to listen to somebody and go, that’s a good point. That makes sense. Let me rethink what I am doing. For years, I immediately took the other side and how can I argue the other side of it? That was just my personality and that at times pushed other people away. That at times made me not a fun person to be around. Um, but it took me all these years to get to that point to say, hey, maybe I’m not right. Maybe that person’s got a really good point. The best people in my life that I’ve known have been people that were willing to accept criticism and be able to change what they were doing because of it. I want to be that person. I hope I’m getting closer to being that person. Not perfect, obviously, but man, it took a while to get here. It really did.
John Berry: Yeah, feedback is a gift, and it took me to buy. I was about age 40 when I finally could start really accepting feedback. And recently I’ve noticed too, that when someone says something and it gets an emotional reaction from me, then I have to say, well, why? Why yeah, why? What about this is really and I find out, you know, this has nothing. I’m this is me. I’m just taking this, like, personally. Yeah. You know, this person probably didn’t mean to direct it at me. And it’s just like when someone says something rude and you take offense to it, it’s like, yeah, but that was about them. That’s, you know, it’s what they’re going through at the time that they’re saying these things. It’s not about you. Yeah. And it’s very difficult when we raise kids. We have to be very cognizant of that big time. You know when we’re going through having a rough day, we’re still leading by example. Those kids don’t care what we say. They care about what we do, and they’re going to emulate what we do. And it’s weird because I sometimes still find myself emulating some of my father’s behaviors. Oh yeah. And it’s like my dad used to do this. And I’m thinking.
Mike’l Severe: Especially in traffic, I do my dad’s behaviors in traffic a lot. Yeah, lot of cursing that people. But, you know, we had a I worked at the City of Papillion and the mayor there, David Black, and I watched Mayor Black interact with people and what I was never good at. And I had a good friend of mine from college. Mike’l’s not good with ignorance. I wasn’t very good when someone was said something to me that was either wrong or ignorant. I watched David Black listen to someone and I knew what they were saying was completely wrong. And he would go, you know, let me think more about that and consider it. I see what you’re saying there but let us consider it. We’ll get together as a group. We’ll think about it. I never knew how to do that. Mine was always like, that’s just dumb. Yes, because of this, this, this and this, that’s not right, but not the way he handled it. And because of that, there are city council meetings run really well. His interactions with the city run really well. And I’ve noticed now more people who do that. I think it really is a leadership training. People get sent to these leadership training classes. And, you know, a lot of times when you’re an employee, you poo poo them. You’re like, oh, I got boss is sending me to this. That’s one of the things they teach you how to listen, how to interpret what that person is saying and how to make sure that you make that person feel valued, even if maybe in the back of your head you don’t think they’re valued. That’s something that I, I’ve been watching more and more people do that, and I really admire how people handle that.
John Berry: Yeah, I saw that happen on military staffs, especially with the field grade officer. And, you know, whether it was the S-3 or the XO working for the battalion commander and the battalion commander kind of come in and say, okay, here’s what we’re doing. And then there’d be staff meetings and all the officers sit around and argue and debate stuff. And it was that senior officer in the room that ran. The great teams would always ask for people’s opinions and talk them through and maybe even say, okay, well, let’s talk about that. Sometimes. It was in front of the group. Sometimes they would make sure that everybody got an individual time just to feet like they were heard. Right. And I think in a lot of organizations, you have to decide who that person is going to be. You know, uh, for from my vantage point, I’m not good at that. I’m great at coaching when it’s time to coach, but it’s like when you are making the day to day decisions. There’s live rounds. This isn’t training anymore, right? And so it’s great to have the coach sometimes can’t be the person who is who’s making the big decisions. Sometimes that coach the best coach is the second in command who can say, Roger, sir? Yes, sir. Got that mission? And then work through the staff to get to the right answer. You know I hate the word buy in, but to get the buy in, to get the cohesiveness of the team, because when you have really intelligent people that are driven, they’re going to butt heads, right? And there’s going to be things they don’t agree with. And it’s really the job of the leader to get everybody on the same page and look in a bigger organization.
John Berry: I’ve learned this the hard way, the most important team, and they say this in EOS, uh, Gino Wickman, uh, the book, “Traction”, the most important team is the leadership team. And if the leadership team fractures and everything else fractures. And I’ve been in those meetings, especially, uh, as a, as an officer, a company commander, or even a lieutenant, and you don’t agree with the commander, right? And you have it out in those meetings get bloody and we’re going back and forth. But when we leave that meeting, we are one team. And I don’t care that I don’t agree with the plan. I’m going back to my team and hey, this is the plan. This is a great opportunity for us and support it. Yeah. And but that only works if you have a really strong team with great leaders that know how to talk together, not just talk at each other, but really have that conversation together. And like you said to, uh, like the mayor. Yeah. I understand what you’re saying and tell me more about it. And I think that’s just a really good way to diffuse the situation, but also to make people feel heard. Because in the end, as much as we hate to say it, it’s all about feelings. We make decisions based on feelings. We think we’re logical, rational. No no no no no. You know you’re human. Yeah, yeah. You look at the way people vote. You look at the way they, you know, they make the decision and then it’s a post hoc rationalization. Oh, afterwards. Oh yeah. This is why then you make the argument, but you’re making the emotion, the decision emotionally.
Mike’l Severe: A good local example for what you’re talking about in the military. And anybody who’s a Husker fan understands this. You know, Tom Osborne takes over for Bob Devaney, 1973. He’s taken over for a guy who won two championships in the last three years. Right. So what can he do to follow up on greatness? And so what he had to do was he had to figure out what kind of coach he was, who he needed to hire. And it took him five years, five years of bumping his head up against the wall, losing Oklahoma, not being able to get it done. But then he found the perfect team. He found the right offensive line coach. He found the right offensive coordinator. He found the right defensive coordinator. Tom Osborne was not a screamer. His offensive coordinator was. His offensive line coach was. He could tell them the mistakes and they could go and do the punishment part of it, the yelling part of it. Once he put a team together, then after that it was pretty much either they were playing for national championships or eventually winning national championships. But you have to find that right team together and who you are. It took one of the greatest coaches, 255 wins over the course of 25 years. That’s ten a year to get it right. So don’t think that you’re going to get it right automatically. You’re not. It takes a while. Build the right team. Make sure you give good instruction and then do your job.
John Berry: And after those ten years when Tom Osborne was successful, let me take you back to being in the early 80s. Yeah. And the Saints Stadium, the worst team ever. The Saints. I remember people wearing brown back. Yeah, we did to go to the Superdome. Back then they were so bad. I think Archie Manning was the quarterback. Yeah, yeah. But look his sons have certainly uh, yeah, I.
Mike’l Severe: Made money off of that. So my father passed in 1979. I moved back to New Orleans. Uh, actually, I’m adopted. So my first cousin, his niece, adopted me, um, and brought me in with her family, with her, her daughters. And we would go down there before my. We go to my grandmother’s house, and we get Schwegmann’s. It was a grocery there. Grocery chain was Schwegmann’s making groceries Schwegmann style. We say making groceries instead of shopping in New Orleans. Anyway, we’d go get the bags from our house and we would make the bags. We’d decorate them, we put sparkles on them, we cut holes, we put sayings on them. And then before the game, we’d ride the bus down there in front of the Superdome, and we would have these bags and we’d sell them for a dollar, $1.50, depending on how creative they were. And I’d walk away with some good cash because people would get there. They weren’t going to bring a bag. You’ve already made a bag. They buy the bag from you. So those couple of years, ‘80, ‘81, I made some good money off of that. Now it was miserable watching the Saints play. It was wonderful. They finally got the win in week 50 against the Jets in the snow up there in the Meadowlands. But it was a miserable time. But I was making a little money off of it. Wasn’t that bad.
John Berry: Yeah. And you’ve been an entrepreneur with a lot of your ventures, and any time you go into media, you have to be you’ve got to take risks. Yeah. And you know, they’re not going to pan out and there’s going to be shows that are going to fall apart. Yeah. And they’re going to be shows that are hits. Before we get to the AAR, you’ve given some great tips and I’ll go through some of mine and I want you to, like I said, really give the veteran audience some of this because, yeah, uh, your opportunities to grow your organization are going to be on camera. I don’t care whether you’re a nonprofit, you’re a for profit business. Somewhere in your organization is going to have to be public facing. And so a couple of things that I learned were, don’t sit back like this because then the cameras on your gut, yeah, fat. What you do is you sit about a 15 degree angle. Yep. Uh, you know, don’t wear stuff like this. You know what? The patterns, the horrible pattern. Yeah. Don’t wear.
Mike’l Severe: That. No. Chroma key. Yeah, yeah.
John Berry: Wear something that looks good, but don’t wear complete black either, because the cameras don’t like black. You look like a black. Yeah. You got kind of. You got kind of a kind of a fat guy.
Mike’l Severe: I wear black. Yeah.
John Berry: But the black is also slimming. Yeah. Um, sound bites and know them ahead of time. And think of them as chapters. If you’ve got five things you want to say, do the five chapters. And the other thing I learned this preparing for oral arguments in cases. So like if we’re going to argue whether it’s the Supreme Court of Nebraska, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in D.C., uh, when we’re preparing our attorneys for this, they have to answer questions. And a lot of times, the judges may not get the issue. And you’ve got ten minutes, right, or in some cases, 20 minutes, but you don’t have a lot of time. And so when the question is asked, sometimes you have to reframe the question to get to the soundbite you want to get out there or the argument that you want to make, right? So if the media doesn’t ask the right question, it’s not their fault. It’s your fault for not framing it right. And you can answer the question the way you want to answer it. And a lot of times I’ve talked to reporters like, oh, they’ll say something. And I’m like, whoa, man. Like, I can’t say that. You know, they’ll ask me a question that maybe about an attorney client communication like, no.
John Berry: Yeah. You know, they’re like, no, no, no, I’m just trying to get you to talk. I’m not trying. Yeah, I just need you to talk on the camera. And look, I’ve went in there and I’ve. They’ve asked me about, like, could you please explain this statute? And it’s like, oh, yeah, that’s not going to be this is TV worthy, right? Right. Tedious. I gotta go step by step. It’d be better if I had a highlighter and a pen and could show you the words. Right? And so then I trip all over my words, and I sound stupid. But the point is, if I knew what I was doing back then, I would have had like five chapters. Here are the five main points of this statute. Let me explain it to you or whatever. You know, whatever I’m going to do, if it requires more than one, more than one message or more than one quick soundbite, write it out. Rehearse. Especially if it’s important, especially if you’re going to be on national television. Rehearse. You learn in the military, rehearsals, rehearsals, rehearsals. It’s the same way. So that’s all I got? Yeah. What can you add?
Mike’l Severe: I will say this and let me take the side of the reporter. One thing that I love to do is interview people, but I would never want to do it if I didn’t research the person first. So preparation. Right. The P’s, you know, uh, proper preparation prevents piss poor performance. You have to prepare. If you prepare for the person you’re interviewing and you learn things about them, and you get the things that maybe they don’t, they don’t expect it’s going to be a much better interview. The problem with the news right now, and I love the news business, is that you have a reporter going out there doing five and six stories. So by the time they roll up to do your interview, they’re third, fourth story. They haven’t had a chance to really learn about your case or know about it. And so the stuff they’re asking you is generic boilerplate stuff. If they had a chance, like we did when I was coming up, to have a chance to go interview one person, prep for it that day, get there and ask the question, it’d be much better.
Mike’l Severe: But you’re right, because that person, that young man or woman who’s probably 23, 24, 25 years old, right out of college, doesn’t know what to ask you. You have to ask the question for them. You have to spin it to the right information. You know the topic. They’re not coming there to ask you about physics. They’re asking you about the law. You know, the law. So because of that, you have to spin it and give the answer that they need. They need you now because it’s such a hard I wouldn’t call it a hard job. It’s such a difficult job to do because of the amount of pressure they put on you. You used to have 15 people in a newsroom. Now maybe you have ten. You used to have five people in the sports department. Now maybe you have two. So everybody’s doing more work and they’re not prepared to talk to you. They’re not prepared to interview you. So you have to be the person that’s willing to turn their question around and give them the right answer.
John Berry: Yeah. And even I mean, back in the day, my sister, she was an anchor in the news. But to get there, you start off as a reporter. Oh, sure. And in the beginning, she’s lugging her own camera around.
Mike’l Severe: One man band. One woman band.
John Berry: Yeah. And doing it all and then. Hey. And it’s not just like she has a ton of time to prepare. In fact, she gets the call. Hey, you need to cover this story. Get down there. Yes! Yeah. Throwing all the gear in the car and going.
Mike’l Severe: You gotta work on your instincts then. Yeah. There was a situation that happened a couple of about a month ago that became this big story. This news reporter gets sent to a press conference to interview the Tampa Bay head coach. Right. And she’s interviewing the Tampa Bay head coach. They’re playing Detroit at Detroit. Her mind is, I haven’t done any research on this, but I know Detroit’s cold. So I’m going to ask him, hey, how did your team prepare during the week to go play in the cold? The coach, Todd Bowles, is like trying to be nice. You know, they have a dome, right? We’re playing inside. We’ll be fine. We’re only gonna be walking from the bus into the place. But she, I’m guaranteeing you that she was not prepared to go to that. Something happened. They said, hey, can you swing by on the way and pick up a sound bite for us? Maybe ask a couple of questions, and she’s thinking, oh, Detroit got to be cold. I asked the question. She wouldn’t have done that if she’d had a chance to rehearse it and not rehearse it, research it, and a chance to be able to just be ready for it. Some people are good on their feet. You’ve seen I know, I know, you know, lawyers and attorneys that are good on some people just aren’t. And that’s why research comes in and it’s a big thing. And that became a national story because this woman, she’s stupid. She does know what she’s talking about. No she didn’t. She went to a place she wasn’t prepared for. And she asked a bad question because we’ve changed the business. We no longer have all the staff we had before. Now we only got a few people trying to do the same amount of work.
John Berry: Now, let me ask you for another piece of gold for our veterans out there that want to get press, want to get publicity, want to be on the news. For some of us, we don’t, you know, we don’t have a good way. Yeah, yeah, the good way, the good or the good. But how can they reach out to reporters? How can they develop relationships so they can be the go to person to get on the news? Yeah, because anybody can talk on social media. But when you show up on the news station, there’s a whole other level of credibility.
Mike’l Severe: There’s a couple things you need to do. One is that you need to know who the assignment editor is. Every station, most of them have a morning and an afternoon assignment editor. The person who in the morning puts together the day plan, the person who comes in at 2:30 and puts together the night plan. You need to know who they are. You need to be able to have their phone number, have their email, be able to get them information. When you do send them information, if you’re going to send them an email, make sure that the thing you’re trying to get them to understand or come out to cover is in the subject line and make it interesting, right? Just don’t say a topic. Put a line in there that says breaking ground on this or defending a undefendable client. Put something that catches their eye because this assignment editor gets 15, 20, 25 emails a day, right? If you’re going to be able to get through them on the phone, be able to make your point quickly and tell them exactly what you need and why it’s necessary for them to be there. Give them a reason they have a board when they come in in the morning, there’s 15 things on the board, and they’re basically based on time and the necessity of getting to it. If yours, if you can prove you have more necessity, if you have a better story, it moves up the board.
Mike’l Severe: So sell it. You have to be able to sell your story, sell what you’re trying to do. And then the last thing is when you give them information, make sure the information right up top is the place, the time, how to get there, if necessary, the website; those four things because people don’t want to read through an entire press release or an entire email to get to where they’re supposed to be going. They should, but they don’t. So at the top, make sure you have the place, the time, why you’re going there, the email or the website. Make sure that’s doing there. But the best thing I can tell you is to make friends with the assignment editors. And if you do see a reporter and you’re chatting them up, they’ll let you know what they’re looking for. They will. And then when something fits, you have their card. You reach back out to them. Because all every day we’re looking for new news. Every day it’s an empty 30 minutes. Every day it’s an empty newspaper. They need stuff to fill it. You can be the person to fill it. Just make sure that you have those contacts and give them something they want to cover.
John Berry: That’s great advice. You know, one piece of advice my dad gave me when he would do big press releases after his trials was he’d have a bunch of sandwiches and drinks. He’s like, you know, these reporters are love food. Yeah, right. They come here and they can get some food. Uh, they’re more likely to show up. We do love food. Yeah, yeah. So they like food. So have the have the food ready. Uh. All right, now we’re on to the After Action Review where we talk about leadership, three examples of great leadership and three examples of poor leadership. So let’s start with the good leadership, Mike’l.
Mike’l Severe: And I’m going to start with David Black who I talked about earlier, the Papillion Mayor and the way he handled stuff. So it was a really tough time for every person in leadership during Covid. You’re trying to figure, should you have these meetings in person? Should you have people in the office? How are you going to handle it? You know, how are we going to make sure that we’re not getting people sick? How are we going to make sure we keep our area healthy? And the great thing about David Black, and there’s a couple people I know like this that are mayors, is that he not only made great decisions himself, he took advice from everybody, all of his department heads. What do you think? Why do you think it’s this way? And he managed to separate, and they did this for a full year, they moved their city council meeting to a different location because they were remodeling the city hall. So they had that going on. They moved each department to a different place, so they’d be smaller groups. All those ideas came from other people. He implemented them. And in the end, I’m not saying they had the best plan, but Papillion had one of the best plans for Covid and it was because of his leadership. So I want to give him credit for that. Um, the second one goes back to the military. Uh, I was stationed in Fort Rucker, Alabama. Anybody knows Alabama gets hot, right? And so, you know, we have category days, right? You have that cat three, cat four, cat five.
Mike’l Severe: When you’re in avionics or you’re in aviation, a cat five day means you’re in a hangar, probably with your blouse off. Uh, maybe even with your t-shirt off. You’re just trying to get by. We had a situation like that in Alabama where we’re in. We’re in this hangar, and it’s really hot, it’s a cat five day, and the guy who was in charge, the tac sergeant, said, you know what? We’re going to end work today. We’re not going to work anymore. This is too serious. We’re going to stop doing it. Uh, I made that decision and we’re like, oh, okay, we’re fine. We can keep doing it. But we stopped a week later. Exact same hangar guy has heatstroke, almost dies. I remember thinking back to myself, that guy knew he had the experience of being in a hangar before he knew what it looked like when we were struggling, and he made that decision. That’s great leadership, and it was based off of his history and what he had seen before. The other person was a young lieutenant, didn’t really know any better, probably from Delaware, didn’t know what the weather was like and made a and didn’t make the decision. So that’s one. And then the last one, um, more business wise, and I’ve told you this before, I had a lot of great leaders, um, and a lot of great bosses.
Mike’l Severe: I was working in Albuquerque, and there was the fire that happened in Los Alamos. Some of you heard about this. It was one of the largest wildfires in the country’s history. And it’s in Los Alamos. We have the labs and all this valuable merchandise. Um, the fire breaks out. It’s late at night. They call in the general manager, Mary Lynn Roper, famous one of the first females to be a general manager at a TV level, and our news director, Paul Shipley. They come in, they pull us all together, they figure out what we all do best. They know what we do best. So they start making assignments. They make a plan. You’re going to go live here, you’re going here, you’re going. This is around the clock coverage. They build this whole plan on the board. We had an anchor who had been around for 40 years who knew too, named Dick Knifing, we did all of that. They built this plan. In the end, when that fire ended, we won more Emmys than any station in the area. We got those Emmys because of, yes, hard work by reporters and anchors. But because of the plan, those two people, those three people stood in front of that room and put together a plan in a really tough situation and got it done. That was the one of the greatest examples of leadership I’ve ever seen.
John Berry: Awesome. Now the bad one. I know you said you don’t really have a whole lot, so.
Mike’l Severe: Yeah, well, so what I have is, um, I’m not going to put any names out there, but I think sometimes we get locked on to an idea and it can be based off a fact. It can be based off of trends. Right? Things you saw before. And you get so locked into that that you’re not willing to see right in front of you. And it was a situation where there was a radio show locally here in Omaha that was let’s say it was it’s skewed towards younger people. Right. And in your mind and in your numbers, you say to yourself, that’s great. I need between 25 and 54. That’s what I’m selling to. That’s where my numbers need to be. He didn’t see that. These two guys doing this radio show were at the beginning of a growth to get to that point, all he saw was, oh, you know, yeah, they’re funny, but they have a show that skews too young. I’m going to move them off. These two guys, 15 years after their show, are still doing a podcast together now because of how funny their show was. And you know who’s listening to them now? The target audience he was looking for back then, he just didn’t have the patience. Sometimes it can be right in front of you, but because of the numbers you think or the trends or sometimes even experience, you just say, well, that’s not going to work. You can’t be that way as a leader. You’ve got to be able to bend towards sometimes of saying, I’m going to take a chance, I’m gonna try it, maybe it’ll work, maybe I’m wrong, which is the hard thing for us all to say. Maybe I’m wrong. And that was an example where and I’m friends with this young, I’m friends with this guy.
Mike’l Severe: But that was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in terms of a leader in a radio or TV situation. I’m telling you, I thought about this for three days and I do what I do. I’m a note taker, right? So I get on my Gmail, and I get on an email and I just take notes and I put stuff down and I started like, no, that wasn’t bad. And I kept going, I kept going, I couldn’t get anything because I’m so blessed to have great bosses and great leaders. My two drill sergeants had basic training, Drill Sergeant Thayer and Drill Sergeant Yoder. They taught me so much. Again, they got me going in the right direction. My drill, my sergeants in AIT, the leaders that we had at our 7th to the 6th Cav is where I was in Conroe, Texas, working on helicopters. Great guys. They made sure that if you had a conflict that they helped you out and made sure they were great all the way through the business. My, um, program director and radio station, where I worked for 12 years or 14 years, this is a guy who was wise beyond his years, had been doing it since he was 16 years old. Brilliant man, survived five heart attacks and four divorces. This is a guy who knows everything and that was my boss. I was so lucky to have it. And so I’ve always been blessed. Man, I, I never really had anybody I could really say that was a bad boss or poor leader that made horrible decisions. It just didn’t. But I’ve thought about it.
John Berry: Well, and let’s talk about leadership because leadership is you never get there and you’re always giving back. And I really like, you know, Johnny the Jet Rodgers, for those of you who don’t know, the Heisman Trophy winner from Nebraska, probably the most famous one, but one of what, now three now three here locally. Yeah, but he’s the first one. Yup. Uh, and so The Jet Foundation Scholarship is, is important for a couple of reasons. Number one, it goes to veterans or veteran families. And here’s the thing. We think a lot of times about, well, you got the GI or the public thinks, oh, you got the GI Bill. There’s all this money for this, that and the other. But in the end, doesn’t matter. That’s who I invest in. I invest in people who take action and believe in things and believe and live their purpose. So I, you know, you want to give scholarships to veterans all day long. GI Bill is great, but it may not be enough, but I think I love it. It’s for a some of these technical skills. It is not these four year degrees. Somebody comes out. They don’t know Jack like most second lieutenants like I was, you know, butter bars. I know how to write. But you know, nobody cares about your political science degree. You know, you don’t have any skill, right? But a welder, you know, or somebody who can make a difference immediately at a trade school. That’s so important. So when we look at these community colleges now, they are so valuable.
John Berry: You know, the intellectuals who are thought leaders. I don’t need someone to a thought leader. I need an action leader. I need someone who will take action and get results. And, you know, even now, uh, it’s amazing to me. I look on the internet and people talk about stuff. So stuff. I say, look, there’s a verse in the Bible that and it’s, you know, there’s nothing new under the sun. That’s very true. And nobody goes back to the primary. You know, as an English major, I kind of learned and I was a history minor. A lot of the stuff we hear now, uh, people have said it regurgitated, it changed, it made it their own. Yeah, but it’s been there for a long time. And being able to say something and learn facts and memorize them, that’s great. But when you have a real skill that can help your community, man, that is worth it. And that you know that that that feeds families. And look, some veterans struggle when they get out. Some veterans take the GI Bill. They don’t get all the way through. But to have something out there that can help our veterans, our heroes. Yeah. Uh, get to the next level, do something different. It’s it’s an awesome scholarship. And I know the founder. And actually, you’ve got an event coming up. Yeah, I hope we get the podcast knocked out, but go ahead. Uh, uh, tell us about that because I know you’re very passionate about.
Mike’l Severe: Let me tell you. So when I, when I took over as the Executive Director in July of last year, I had three main goals that I wanted to get started. One, I wanted to add the veteran component to the Johnny Rodgers Career and Technical Scholarship because I know maybe you get the GI Bill, but you don’t get Success Navigators. Metro has Success Navigators. They make sure that you’re going to class, you’re taking the right classes and you’re getting through. We have that specifically there. So for those soldiers that maybe aren’t ready necessarily to go to college and do well in it, they’ll be fine. Success Navigators will get them through it. So I wanted to make sure I added the veteran component. I wanted to make sure we helped the people over in Pottawatomie County. People understand there’s a lot of people over there that have financial need, and we weren’t serving them. So I added that, and I also wanted to add Iowa Western Community College as another option as well for students if they’re living over in Iowa. So now we’re going to be covering all these people, 50,000 students that go to Metro. If you have an opportunity to get the scholarship, we’re going to help you get the scholarship.
Mike’l Severe: If you’re a veteran, if you’re someone who has been to prison and you’re coming back into society, we want to help you. We want to get you a scholarship. So we’ve added all that to it. The gala is April 4th. It’s at Baxter Arena. It’s going to be a great event. Starts at 5:00 for the VIP stuff. And at 630 we go live on Nebraska News Channel. It goes from 6:30 to 8:30. We have a Jet award winner, which is the most outstanding return man in college football. That’s Zachariah Branch, USC. We’re giving a Legends Award every year. We give out an award to someone who would have won it if we would have had the award back then. So DeJuan Groce, who went to the University of Nebraska, who saved them multiple times from ‘99 through 2001, winning games for them. He’s going to be our Legends Award winner. We’re going to do a special tribute to the Nebraska volleyball team because of the year they had and the event they had down in Memorial Stadium. Uh, we’re going to do a special tribute for, but that’s a surprise. I can’t say that one. We’re going to do a bunch of different things all night long. It’s going to be a blast.
Mike’l Severe: Um, obviously the fundraiser for all the money we raised, the majority of the money. There’s only one employee in this whole Jet Award Foundation. It’s me. And my job is funded by a grant, so that money is not going to me. It’s all going to scholarships. Once we pay off having it at the Baxter Arena and the food, all that money goes to scholarships. Every year, at least $100,000 we’ve given to Metro for scholarships. We’ve got 105 current graduates since 2018, and we’re just constantly putting them through. We got 150 there right now that are going, and we’re hoping by the end of, you know, 2033 that we’ve raised $1.8 million, that we have put through 600 graduates, and we have major goals. We want to get people out of poverty and into jobs that not only have a living wage, that have a wage that can help them succeed, and then their children can follow them through. You get one person in school, and you show them that can work. Maybe the whole neighborhood follows them. Not maybe not just their kids. That’s our goal. We’re trying to make sure that people have great jobs and they’re taking themselves out of poverty and putting themselves in a wonderful living wage job.
John Berry: And I want to remove one stigma from that that I think is really, really important. You know, you talked about they have these success managers for your veterans navigators. Yeah. Success Navigators. So and what they do is they make sure that you’re successful. Now look, when I went to college at the College of William and Mary, I started I was on the football team, and they had a guy whose name was George Stork. Stork. And I believe he was a head coach for Army. Uh, so I believe he was a coach at West Point. He was then our basically our academics guy, and we had mandatory study hall, but we had this one guy dedicated to making sure that people on the team made it to study hall, got tutors if they needed them, if we were having trouble adjusting because as you know, if you don’t hit grades, you sure you’re not playing right? Yeah, but it was the same thing where, you know, just because you have somebody helping you through that doesn’t mean that you’re not smart. I mean, we had guys who got 4.0 GPA sure that. But because this guy was here and because, look, it’s tough to transition from high school. You know, I came from a high school all of a sudden now I’m in college in Virginia, right? Yeah. And, uh, yeah. So for veterans coming out. Hey, you know, drill sergeants, they’re no first sergeants there, right? There’s no formation in the morning. Hey, you don’t go to class. No one’s telling you. And there is a little bit of a transition. Yes. Having that success, you know, having someone looking out for you, having a buddy looking out for you is important. It’s key. And it’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s just that extra layer of I think, yeah, I don’t want to say supervision, but I want to say of care. It’s extra layer of care.
Mike’l Severe: It’s really direction. I’m going to direct you, whether it is by checking with you every week on email to make sure you’re doing what you want, calling you when maybe I haven’t heard from you when you sent me an email, having you come into my office three times a quarter to make sure that you’re in the right direction, all of that is necessary. You give a person the right direction because most people that go to school want to be there, but they don’t always know how to do it. You teach them how to do it. You give them the direction. There’s two stigmas that having a trade degree isn’t fancy. You’re not going to a four year school. The average trade degree makes about $18,000 more than if you’re in a high school, right? If you have a high school degree after 3 or 4 years and you’ve got out of your apprenticeship and you’ve got a job, many of these people are making six figure incomes. They’re making $100,000 a year. Don’t you want your kid to make $100,000 a year instead of having $100,000 in debt? My wife, who is 50, just paid off her last student debt two weeks ago from when she got her MSW at Tulane back in ‘98. It’s better to go to a place and not have debt or have very little debt than it is to have that carried around for the rest of your life. Go to Metro, go to Iowa Western, get your stuff done, get your job. And don’t think just because I’m a welder or just because I’m instruction, I’m not in a great job. You’re in a wonderful job. You’re building this country. You’re keeping this country together. We need you, and we need a lot of them because we’re short staffed right now.
John Berry: And if you’re going to build a business, you have to build on that base skill. I think what a lot of kids coming out of college understand you don’t know anything. You haven’t done anything. You can’t just go out and say, I’m an expert in this. No you’re not.
Mike’l Severe: By the way, we have, uh, legal, um, that is legal. That’s trades. Right. So you go to paralegal and also if you want to go pre-law, there are classes there you can take as part of the trade as part of the Johnny Rodgers Scholarship that you can take there at Metro. So don’t think you have to start at William and Mary or Nebraska. You can start right there at Metro five, six years later, you’re an attorney.
John Berry: It doesn’t matter where you start, it’s where you finish and it’s that you start. All right. So where can people find more about the Gala and the Jet Award Foundation?
Mike’l Severe: So it’s thejetaward.com it’s an easy website. If you have any questions for me, you can send me emails thejetawardfoundation@gmail.com. I answer all the emails people send me, but the Jet award.com is the website. Uh, again, the event is happening at Baxter Arena. It’s April 4th. It’s going to be fun, every year it’s a blast. Last year we had a bunch of surprises. This year we will as well. So if you want to have fun and go and this year just announced we have Larry the Cable Guy as our after party guest. So he’s going to after it’s all over, he’s going to get up on the stage and he’s going to do a set as well. So we’re selling seats up in the stands as well this year, we think we can sell about 2000 of them. And again, that’s extra money going to scholarships and putting kids through school.
John Berry: Awesome. Well thanks so much for what you do for our veterans and our community.
Mike’l Severe: I appreciate it, John. Thank you.
John Berry: Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community, and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching @veteranled on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments, we want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.
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