Ryan Hunt - Let's Talk 10th Mountain Recruiting

Awesome. Thank you very much, Donell. Thank you very much, Coach Robert. I am very excited to be here. This is a great way to start off 2025 because I know that both of you and me are gonna do some awesome stuff this year. I'm manifesting it for us brothers, so let's go.

Sure. And again, thank you for the invite to come here. It's definitely an honor. I've seen quite a few of the podcasts and I'm definitely lucky to be in this fellowship. So my Army journey really started after... not to start it off on a grim note, but my father passed away of liver cancer. I took care of him in his final months, and then my grandfather shortly after passed away. I was in college, I needed a way to pay for college. This was prior to 9/11. I enlisted in the Army. I became a 13 Fox, a fire support specialist, a red leg, and went off to do my enlisted time in April of 2001. Sergeant Hunt left the Army... I did a salute, it was probably actually a one-finger salute at that point, to Fort Drum, New York, where I was stationed at the 10th Mountain Division. I just left and went 66 miles down the road to Potsdam, New York. And then we all know what happened on September 11, horrible events there in New York City. So I had a very, very strong calling to return to service. Decided that really I wanted to lead soldiers into combat, a little naive thinking at that point. The only deployment I had been on was to JRTC and NTC and a peacekeeping operation to Bosnia, so I had no idea what a deployment would look like. But even so, that was my calling. Joined the ROTC, figured that that would be a great avenue to lead some soldiers. Expected to be in the uniform no longer than three years after graduating, and I made it a career and stayed for a total of 23 years and then retired as an Army officer. So that's really my journey in the military. Lots of deployments, lots of great stuff in between, as you both know. So that's really my Army story in a nutshell.

Sure. So my journey as an entrepreneur, I really believe it started as probably from a baby. My father was an entrepreneur, and so he always took me on every business trip. I even dressed in a suit on some of his business meetings, so little Ryan, little four-year-old Ryan, and that really gave me a taste of entrepreneurship. But my actual journey as an entrepreneur started during a TDY to Fort Lewis or JBLM in Washington state. I was sitting in my hotel room on a six-month temporary duty as a physical evaluation board adjudicator, adjudicating cases during the day and sitting in my room very bored at night. I was messing with my phone and I distorted the crest to the insignia of the 10th Mountain and decided that that might make an interesting sticker. So I put it into a close group that I admin of about 10,000 10th Mountain veterans. I said, 'What do you guys think? Would you buy this for five bucks?' And overnight I sold 5,000 stickers. So I took those stickers, started rolling them into other product that I thought might be cool, hats primarily, and the next thing I knew I had a warehouse, I had people underneath me. The warehouse was not a smart idea, but that could be a follow-on question. But then I just continued forth. I also had some other endeavors. I call them projects, some people call them shiny objects, but really they're passion projects. And then my main bread and butter really is my recruiting firm. And then I do some other great stuff like Veteran Social Summit, Veteran Lifestyle Magazine. And where I can, I'm always trying to get back to the veteran community as a whole.

I would say that my father was the primary, the physical embodiment of entrepreneurship. I would also say as a little kid, I grew up watching movies like 'The Secret of My Success' with Michael J. Fox, the 80s, which is the time period where I was growing up, was a time of entrepreneurship, of business, of Ronald Reagan, of these different endeavors. Coupled with my father inspiring me, these other things, these cultural things, also influenced my journey as an entrepreneur for sure. And then I think just who I am, my spirit, my creative spirit requires me to be an entrepreneur. Whether that was in the military, which I was very blessed to have leaders that understood that yes, I was a bulldog, but I could be a creative bulldog as well and go out and solve some dynamic problems or challenges when that needed to be solved.

Sure. So 10th Mountain LLC, my primary function with that is an executive recruiting firm called 10th Bound Recruiting. So in a nutshell, I'm trying to align great talent, great human beings, with great organizations. And we just do that through a very deliberate process of targeting people. That sounds awful, but of finding people and making sure that there really is a good vibe between people and organizations.

So to me, I define entrepreneur as someone that fails forward a lot, and I believe that I qualified to wear that badge of entrepreneurship. I've had some very extreme highs. In 2016, my sticker endeavor made $600,000, mostly off of Facebook, you know, selling hats and stickers. So that was definitely a high. But at that point, I also believe one of the biggest issues that I had, even with all the military training I had, all the synergy that I enjoyed during my military career, I was close-minded and I wasn't receptive to feedback and taking advice, taking coaching. And that was definitely one of the biggest failures that I had early on as an entrepreneur. For example, and I don't know if you've interviewed him or maybe you should have a chance, I would recommend interviewing him, is an individual named Bennett Tatum. Actually, he was the first podcast that I ever went on. He doesn't have this podcast anymore, but went on and afterwards we became friends. He was also a 10th Mountain veteran. And he says, 'Ryan, you have to go to the Institute for Veterans and Military Families and do the EBF program, which is an entrepreneur boot camp.' And I felt like I knew it all, even though I really did not. And eight years later, I did go, and I realized that his advice to me could have opened up so many doors. I wasted a lot of time. And the point is, it's not about the program, which is an awesome program and I highly recommend it, but it's about not listening and not taking advice, not being open-minded. And there were a lot of people at that point that were trying to give me advice. And it's hard sometimes. Entrepreneurs fall into this trap, people that are starting businesses, I'm not even sure if they're entrepreneurs yet, but people fall, they want to own something so much and they believe it's their legacy, and so they hold on as tight as they can. And what we should have learned, what I should have known, is what had made me successful. As an Army guy, I'm looking at my guidon right up here on the wall, and there is no way I would have been able to hang up this guidon without the 203 people that were under my command. And so I didn't take the most simple lesson and thing that I knew, apply it to entrepreneurship. And that's where I had to learn some failing forwards for sure. And it didn't take too long, but because I am someone who loves to collaborate and synergize, but I hung on too tight that I didn't really understand the dynamics, especially of e-commerce at that time. And the military niche space was beginning to heat up. It was very competitive. You had companies like Grunt Style. I had the CEO, Dan, tell me once at a conference in 2017, he says, 'Boy, you've done a good job with Mountain Up, but here's my business card. Call my executive assistant and you can come down and sit behind me while I do business, and I'll show you how to really be an entrepreneur.' I was also not receptive to that either. I did thank him though. But it was very competitive, and I didn't really realize that. So I learned a lot over the course of the last decade, and there's been some moments that have been really, really high, really amazing, and some very low moments. But when I go into the valley, I realize I keep my mind very open and realize that I'm about to receive some lessons, and they might be tough. You know, I had a colonel that knew me most of my military career, and he says, 'Ryan, literally and figuratively, you are one of the only guys I know that can be blown up multiple times and walk away looking better and shining.' I just take those words into every situation that I encounter, and I just try to bring energy, I try to bring some good vibration, some love to the situation. And if I can give back and add value, those are important things to me.

First thing is mindset. Mindset is everything. And coupled with that, mindset includes having a vision and starting to plot out what the mission is. And with that, you have to plan, and you have to have a Plan A, a Plan B, Plan C, maybe a Plan D. It goes back to my time in the military, and much like yours, the MDMP process. I hate to say it, but it's very important. You want to know what the most probable course of action is, most dangerous, and you want to develop those different COAs so that you can be successful and of course operate with flexibility, adaptability, and some responsiveness. So planning is definitely very important. Look for all the resources that are available to you, the free resources. There's so many of them. Veterans Grown America, the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, huge one. I'm going to sing their praise all the time because I've been through various programs that they offer and free training that they offer. Warrior Rising is another great program that's out there. There's a program at University of Florida, the Veteran Entrepreneur Program at the University of Florida is a terrific program. I went last May. And there's just so many resources. So you want to make a plan, you want to find all those resources that you can, because more than likely you're a bootstrap entrepreneur, and bootstrap entrepreneurs need to find all the free stuff, the free 99, and leverage it against their businesses. And then you have a chance to move beyond just ideation and start moving into growth phase, which is critical. And I would also say, this is coupled with mindset: don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it. Don't let yourself. That's the primary thing. Don't let yourself go, 'Ah, I can't do this.' You can do it. You can find a way to do it. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you can make it happen. And there's a lot of people out here that are going to support you for sure.

Next three years? Physically, I'm not sure where I'm going to be. I believe I'll be here in Chicago, which is where I'm based out of right now. But we'll see what happens. I know that's not what you're asking. What you're asking is what's the trajectory. I think what you're asking is what is the trajectory of 10th Mountain LLC. So on the recruiting front, let me go back actually. 10th Mountain LLC, much like many companies out there, is actually... I said our primary thing is recruiting, but in reality I think we're really a tech company. And a lot of people are going to say this, it's because 10th Mountain is doing so many different things. Yes, we're on the recruiting front, and I think we're going to continue to grow there. Our client base, our return clients are very high, and that set us up already for 2025. I've never in the last four years at least had clients come to me a week before Christmas and even as late as the third of January asking for us to help them with their searches, which is amazing. It gets us off to a strong start, which in the recruiting field can be difficult. On the e-commerce side, so growth there, I think we're going to continue to grow and we're going to become more and more relevant in the recruiting space. Whether that is recruiting civilians or helping military veterans transition into the civilian space, which we've done successfully in this last year. We've done a lot of military hires. It's not something you'll see on our website, it's not something that we're focused on on the website, but in reality we're always trying to place our brothers and sisters into meaningful employment. Actually, I would be failing if I didn't mention one of our candidates. Her name was Dara, and she was laid off on a Friday, and the following Monday, not the first Monday but the second Monday, she was employed. She took, and I gave her some advice to take a little bit lower of a position which was a recruiter. Imagine a company, a recruiting agency came to me to look for recruiters, which is just a blessing in itself and also a compliment of the highest. And so we brought her in, she was hired on her own accord, and within 90 days she was promoted to Director of Talent Acquisition, which is just amazing. She did it all on her own. But to say that that was a success story for the veteran community. We also have an endeavor, like I said, the e-commerce Mountain Up. It still exists to this date. We went through our 10th Christmas season, it was one of the most successful Christmases in the last five years. So I am very excited about some of the new products that will be dropping. We have something very special coming out that at least in the 10th Mountain community they've been asking to have. I can't let it out right now, but the pre-orders are going to be dropping here in the next few weeks, and I think it's going to be huge.

Okay, well I'll tell you. So there, over a decade ago, there was a 10th Mountain jersey. It's a football jersey. They don't sell these football jerseys anymore. And the prototype is actually shipping to my office here. I should have it in the next couple days, do an inspection, make sure the designs and the specs are correct. But we'll be dropping that as a new product in 2025, and a lot of people have been asking for this over the last few years. I'm excited to see how that kind of works out. It's going to be great, I think. And in terms of some of the other endeavors which are more givebacks, so the veteran space, I have a little summit called Veteran Social Summit. Had a thousand attendees in December, so very awesome. We had some really big players collaborating with us, and we were just very happy. On day one, well throughout the event, we had Parade Deck which streamed it via Apple TV, which was really cool. And we had a hiring fair which had over 50 attendees, that was powered by MilCruit, which is a social recruiting network, military recruiting network. We even had Wounded Warrior was one of the companies that came to the event. So just tremendous. We had I believe over 20 speakers and some real powerful veterans that just love to give back. The aim of that, of course, is to grow, unite, and elevate the veteran community. We do that through inspiring stories and trying to inspire them to be entrepreneurs, or as you already heard, the hiring fair, we try to help them also to find meaningful employment. So that's great. We have another endeavor which is Veteran Lifestyle Magazine, which actually started about a year ago. We'll just say it was started in 2024, January of 2024, to put a timestamp on it. And we've been doing it for a year. The viewership has increased dramatically. In December, we increased our viewership by four times, which is a lot. And I think that is coupled with our Veteran Social Summit because they're really tied to each other. And we're very excited. We are legit now, I feel like we're legit. We've done some festivals and stuff, but we just received our press badges for the presidential inauguration. So we will have the co-founder, editor-in-chief, Annette Wittenberger, standing tall in the freezing. She's like, 'I got to get my cold weather gear on.' She is going to be out there with her camera woman, and they're going to be streaming that. We plan on streaming that live on Veteran Lifestyle Magazine. And it's a big deal to us. It makes Veteran Lifestyle a very legitimate thing that we started a year ago. So that wouldn't have been possible without the huge network that really embraced it, primarily because she's just an awesome person and has an awesome book, has a really special story to tell. I would also recommend her for this podcast as well. But just tremendous. And then I have some other stuff. And I guess I should also mention that I just accepted to be the Chicago Bunker Labs Ambassador. Bunker Labs was recently absorbed by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, so I'm very excited about that. The main focus there is an ecosystem leadership project, and my goal for Chicago land is to really unite all the different agencies and organizations that are out there, not under the Bunker Labs guidon, but to make sure that we are all connected, that we are shona to shona, as they would say in Iraq, or shoulder to shoulder, and that we're leveraging the resources that the Institute for Veterans and Military Families has. Even if it's just the logo on some branding, these are important things that will elevate these different organizations and different groups of veterans that here in Chicago land they just feel so disconnected. Chicago is a very, and I call it Chicagoland that includes all the suburbs, it's a very, very big place. And I've been here seven years, and it's just now that I'm starting to meet all the veterans here locally and really establish the network here on a local basis. And there's some people out here that want to do some powerful things for the veteran community, whether that's local or on the national level, such as the Veterans Chamber of Commerce, which is founded by a great guy, another person I would recommend, I'm recommending everybody to this show, his name's Frank Gutierrez, and starting the Veterans Chamber of Commerce and really looking to change the veteran dialogue, especially as it applies in the legislative arena. So just a lot of great stuff going on here in Chicago. So come on down, visit us. We'll get you some Pequod's or Giordano's pizza. There's actually better pizza than the deep dish, but we'll leave it. I'm probably gonna get... you know, they call this shura, so I be careful. I'm from Detroit, so I'm very familiar with Chicago. My father and I still have some brothers that stayed down there in Chicago land, spread out some in Chicago, some up in the BBS.

Sure. I think the most important thing that I hope comes out of this is, if you're a veteran and you're transitioning out, I would definitely take the transition process seriously. I've been through it twice. I did it the first time pre-9/11, and then I did it actually technically I did it three times, but every time the process has evolved and I've been able to take a lot more out of it. So definitely take that process serious. Educate yourself as much as you can. Look for the resources that you can. One of them, and I've got to say it, is VA.gov. You know, Veteran Affairs. Listen, this is very important. If the Army issued this phone to me, okay, I have to sign a hand receipt for it. If I decide to go throw this against the wall and break it, guess what's going to happen? The Army is going to come after me for that money. They want the money to pay for it. When you went down to the recruiting station and you sign your name and you put your social, you know, 561-11-1111, that was your serial number. Not to make it, not to be insensitive, but you are a GI, General Issue, General Issue Joe. So they are making a promise. They, being the United States of America, they're making a promise to you as the national treasure of our country, the soldier, right? If they break you, they got to try to fix you, and they got to compensate you for it. And I'm not saying game the system. I'm not saying be an entitled person for whatever that means. But you've made that commitment, they've made that commitment. It's a contractual obligation that they have to you. So make sure that you are going out there researching and advocating for yourself through that process. I've so many stories of people that didn't go out there and take the necessary steps to take care of themselves and to receive the benefits that they earned during service. And so do that. And that translates into entrepreneurship too. So many wonderful resources out there to help you go from ideation and move to the next step. I keep on mentioning, and I have to mention it again, Institute for Veterans and Military Families. They've got the EBF program, which is really an entry into the entrepreneurship world, and it's free. They're going to send you to a university for free for a week. They're going to put you in lodging, okay? They're gonna feed you. They're gonna make you so fat. I literally put on 15 pounds while I was there. I'm still trying to lose it. I call it baby weight, but it really, it's all their fault. And they have some wonderful conferences too and resources. They sent me to a sales course, a Sandler Sales course out of Tampa, Florida. $6,000 course for free. And that's because I went through the program. But the most important thing, all of that aside, and this applies to VGA, Institute for Veterans and Military Families, Warrior Rising, the most important thing that comes out of being a part of these organizations is the network. The network. You know, I could have a conversation with Donell and he could open my mind to something just by whispering sweet nothings into my ear about business and entrepreneurship. Same thing with Rob, Coach Robert. He can tell me something that could inspire me and take me to the next level. Or maybe he knows some piece of, I call it useless but useful information. He might have some useless but useful information that might elevate me to the next level. Or he passes that information on to me and I pay it forward by telling Donell about it, and then Donell becomes successful. I don't care if you make a million dollars and I make $10, as long as you're moving up and you're elevating. So that's at the end of the day, that's what I want you to take away. That's my soapbox, I'll get off of it now. But get out there, and it's mindset is everything. So if you want it, go get it.

Sure. So if you are in need of some recruiting help, you can always visit us at www.tnthrecruiting.com. My email is very easy. It's [email protected]. I should say that R, 10th is spelled out, T-N-T-H, not you know, 10th is in the numerals. And I'm very available on LinkedIn. Just put Ryan Patrick Hunt. I have a suspicion that I will populate. You could probably Google me as well. I think that'll populate there as well. If you're interested in buying some swag, we always love it if you buy swag from us. That's at pandocommando.com. P-A-N-D-O-commando.com. And Veteran Lifestyle Magazine, veteranlifestylemagazine.com. Veteran Social Summit, if you want to learn more, maybe be a speaker or partner with us or have a veteran shopping network, hint hint next year, that's at veteransocialsummit.com. So a lot of different ways to get a hold of me or to get a hold of my team. We definitely want to help the veteran community and elevate them. So hit us up. Coaching is free. It's free 99. So if you have a question, come hit us up. I'm more than happy to help you. I want to help you and I want to elevate you to the next level.

Thank you both. Really, it's a privilege to be here. I hope to do some collaborating with you both here in 2025 and beyond. And just exciting. Let's go. It's 2025. Let's take the city like we're Godzilla. The city, the nation, the world.