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Chapter 1: What inspired Jeremy Stalnecker to help veterans?
I figured it out because I had the right people in my life and walked this out as a faith journey. I had a responsibility now to take that to the men that I had served with specifically, but then more broadly since 2012.
welcome to mick unplugged the number one podcast for self-improvement leadership and relentless growth no fluff no filters just hard-hitting truths unstoppable strategies and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest ready to break limits let's go Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of Mic Unplugged.
And today, we have a distinguished Marine Corps veteran. He's a pastor and he's the CEO of the Mighty Oaks Foundation, dedicated to aiding America's military warriors and their families in overcoming unseen wounds of combat, such as PTSD. Please join me in welcoming the courageous, the compassionate, the transformative, My guy, Mr. Jeremy Saldana. Jeremy, how you doing today?
I'm doing good, man. Hey, your whole audience is going to be disappointed, though, after that introduction. So I appreciate it, man. It's good to be with you. Really appreciate it.
No, sir. No, sir. No, sir. We're not going to be disappointed because I know that you bring it, man. You're a journey from the core to being a pastor to all the amazing things that you do for our heroes. Is commendable, man. And I just wanted to tell you that personally, you know, those that know me know that Robert Irvine is not only a mentor of mine, but one of my closest friends in the world.
And his foundation does so much for our military, our service men and women and all that. And so over the last couple of years, I've gotten to see in action the things that you do and you should totally be applauded, brother.
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Yeah, Robert Irvine, man. So I was a part of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, and he has supported reunions and other events for us over the years. So he's definitely someone who shows appreciation. And, you know, a lot of people say things, but he actually does things. It's super cool.
Amen.
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Chapter 2: How does community play a role in healing unseen wounds?
If Robert's taught me anything and he's taught me a lot, but the one thing is about how to make an impact. Yeah. Right. And he tells me if what you're doing in your business and your personal life isn't making impact, then what are you doing it for? That's good. So that's changed my lens a lot, man. Yeah, that's good. People like you are people that I appreciate.
So, you know, I always start the show with asking questions. my guest about their because that thing that's deeper than their why right like that real root of why you do what you do the purpose behind it so if i were to say jeremy man today what's your because what's your because brother yeah
Man, that's an interesting way of putting that, and I could spend a lot of time talking about it. But, you know, when I came home from Iraq, as a Christian, a person of faith, with a good family, into a good church, I had this support network around me. So I had all of the pieces that we would tell...
men and women coming back from combat to have, I had them and the bottom still fell out of my life. I struggled in a lot of different ways and it was faith and it was the right people and it was all these components that got me to a place where I was functioning well again and healing and moving forward. And it was a long process, but I had the right people in my life.
But in the middle of that, this was 2003, I really believed I was either broken, there was something wrong with me, or I was one of the only people that struggled like this. Other people can't possibly struggle like this. And so as I started to move forward, I just said, I'm not going to look back. This is me. This is my journey. This is my thing, right?
Like I need to grow through this, which was true. But what wasn't true is that I was the only one who had dealt with that. It took me about 10 years. I got together 10 years after I'd served, you know, home from combat, home from Iraq. And a couple of the guys that we'd served with got together and we all sat down and talked, about 10 of us. And I hadn't talked to those guys in 10 years.
And what I started to hear was stories of suicide of some of the men that we had served with, combat deaths, those that had gone back to Iraq, and a lot of broken homes and people just struggling to get by. And what I realized in that moment, and that was in 2012, and what I realized then was that, A, man, I'm not the only one who struggled like this.
But B, this gets to your point or to your question, I figured it out because I had the right people in my life and walked this out as a faith journey. I had a responsibility now to take that to the men that I had served with specifically, but then more broadly since 2012, to the men and women who serve. There is an answer. There is a path forward.
And I have a responsibility to share with others what was shared with important to me.
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Chapter 3: What does effective leadership mean to Jeremy?
Trauma is not something that is reserved for those who served in the military. But one of the things that happens in combat is that acute trauma. You are pushed into environments and situations and circumstances that your entire life you're told to avoid, right? Taking a life, seeing friends who lose their lives and all the damage and things that happen on the battlefield.
Your entire life is spent avoiding those things and now you're dropped in the middle of them. And you have other people around you to support you, others who are going through the same thing, but it's not dealt with.
And when you then separate out of that environment, that military environment, you're all alone with your thoughts, your feelings, the emotions, the traumas, the hurt, the brokenness that you've never dealt with. And you have a decision to make. And again, it is very important for me to say, you know, I talk about this even in our program. You talk to young people who are sexually abused and, you
you know, spouse, spouses who deal with abuse and there's so much trauma, so much brokenness and so much hurt in our world. This is not reserved for veterans. Um, however, the cause of particularly combat veterans coming home and dealing with these things and trying to move beyond them. Um, I mean, we see it, we see it in the numbers, more than 22 veterans a day take their lives.
More than four active duty service members a day take their lives. These are real numbers that speak to the consequence of life experience undealt with.
Yeah. Man, you know, again, it's stories that sometimes we who did not serve will never understand. It's more than just that one human being that these experiences touch, right, or impact. You know, there's family members, there's friends, there's confidants that also go through this. How does your foundation, the Mighty Oaks Foundation, help those other individuals as well too?
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, it starts by giving hope. I think one of the challenges for a family member or a friend is, who's watching someone that they care about deal with this is just that there's no hope. What do I do? I don't know what to do or how to help them or where to send them.
And the fact that we have a program that is designed to help those who are hurting, a program that doesn't cost anything. We cover the cost of travel in the program and we raise the money to do that. So it's free to that person. It's run by other people who have been students in our program who are combat veterans, who know exactly where they're coming from.
So I think the first thing it does is it gives hope. There is a place that my friend, family member, loved one can go to and get the help that they need. The second thing is just kind of foundationally, when we talk to the folks who attend our program, somewhere throughout that week, we'll have a conversation about why it is you need to get better. Why do you need to heal?
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Chapter 4: How can leaders navigate uncertainty in a changing world?
Your family's close to you. They love you. And they're trying to support you. And they're the ones that bear the brunt of you not making the decision to get up and move forward. And so the family dynamic, man, is huge, huge. And we continue to look for ways to support that. Yeah.
I want to unplug something you talked about a little bit when you talked about the servant leader. And I know leadership is something that you're very passionate about. We actually have a lot in common in our leadership philosophies. You know, in your book, Leadership by Design, you talk about leadership is about being, not just doing, right?
And one of my pillars, like in my book, I talk about, you know, some of the common traits that all good leaders or great leaders have. And one of them is every great leader I've studied is always present.
And so when you talk about leadership is about being, I correlated that to being present, but I'd love for you to talk a little bit about your philosophy and how that shapes effective leadership for you.
Yeah. I came out of the Marine Corps. I was an infantry officer. And so I went to what I would consider to be the best leadership schools in the world, learning how to lead in combat environments. And so I learned that. And what I took away from that was this hyper-aggressive type A leadership. You're standing up on the table, you're screaming, you're the guy who's saying, we're going over there.
Well, then you're in charge, right? That's that kind of leadership. There's a place for that. Also in the military, you learn what are called tactics, techniques, and procedures. These are the very specific ways that you accomplish the goals. So everything that you do as a military leader has a list associated with it. You do these things in this order. If this happens, here's a contingency.
So it's all very planned out and very structured. And so I took from this leadership is being super aggressive and it's knowing how to do a thing, right? It's about that one thing. Then I came out of the military. I went into ministry and I started to hear words like servant leadership and some of these words.
But what I observed was that a lot of people outside of the military, they didn't have that hyper-aggressive thing, but they had what we would call now a passive-aggressive thing, right? And so it was this leadership that is almost manipulative. Like, I'm going to get you to do what I want you to do.
And it won't sound the same as you'd find in the military, but the goal is the same, to get you to do what I want you to do. And what I came to understand, and through a lot of study, writing that book was really just a process for me to try to define this and understand it.
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Chapter 5: What are the unseen wounds that veterans face?
Get's counsel from the right people, be a person that has made a decision to give what they have to others. It is being the right kind of person. And what happens if you are a leader instead of just do leadership is that If you're in the military, you can lead because you can learn the stuff. You can lead. When you lead the military, you can still lead. When you go home, you can still lead.
When you get another job, you can still lead. And the problem with positional leadership or organizational leadership is that I can do that over there. but now I'm completely confused. Why is it that I can't lead my home and lead my kids? I got a new job. Why am I falling on my face? Because you thought that was leadership. That was doing a job.
Leadership is saying, what do I have and how can I best use it for other people?
Amazing. I couldn't have said that better, man. I actually am going to take some notes on that too because You're exactly right. It's you, but it's more importantly the impact that you have on others. And to me, I like to define my success as a leader by how many other leaders I create. To me, that's my benchmark. I'll tell people there's two things that my team scores me on.
So just like I have performance reviews with them, I also require them to have a performance review with me. And I'm looking at two things. Regardless of your title, am I developing you as a leader? And the second thing is culture is my biggest accountability. Culture is me. That's how I get graded. Grade me on the culture of the organization.
And to me, that's the biggest accountability checkmark that you can have because we've all heard the saying attitude reflects leadership. Well, to me in business and even in your household, culture matters. is what reflects leadership. And so I love that that's something with you too. And transitioning to something that you also said about character.
You know, when I've studied you and I've seen your videos, I listened to your podcast, you talk a lot about the importance of character in leadership. and you highlight traits like virtue and knowledge and self-control. For the viewers and listeners today, how can they cultivate these qualities first in themselves and then also for others?
Yeah, wow, that's a great question. Again, there are probably a thousand different ways we can go with that, right? But I think high level, first of all, you have to make the decision to be a person of character. It does not happen... on accident, by osmosis, just because you are around the right people. You have to make a decision that you prioritize character above everything else.
And what is character? I mean, we have good character or bad character. Character is who you actually are. And so we make a decision to develop good character. And, and then, you know, from there we learn how to do that. And I think that is being around the right people.
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Chapter 6: How does the Mighty Oaks Foundation support veterans and their families?
I love that, brother. I love that, man. Like you are... You're the voice that I think most of I was going to say America, but I'm going to say the world needs to hear. And I genuinely mean that because the world is changing so fast. And, you know, I know we look back in history and we say that, you know, we always evolve and we do. We evolve as society. We evolve as humans. And we do.
But I would definitely say that the rate of that evolution is much faster now than it's ever been. One hundred percent. From a leadership perspective, what do you see as like the most pressing challenge or challenges for leaders today? And then more importantly, how can they adapt to meet those challenges?
Man, yeah. So for me personally, one of the biggest challenges is just how fast things change. And how much information is coming our way all the time. I was having a conversation about this earlier today, that it is becoming so difficult. It probably has been for a long time, but it's so difficult to know, is that right or is that wrong? Is that real or is that not real?
I mean, turn on the news right now. I can't even discern really what's happening because there's so much information coming from so many different places. And so exercising discernment, understanding what is real and what's not, what's true and what's not, but more than anything, understanding in the midst of this chaos and this confusion and this deluge of information, what should I do?
That's the challenge. And it's so easy to get pulled down a rabbit hole of, you know, information and whatever. And, and yeah, Allowing that, getting pulled down that rabbit hole to prevent you from doing what you've been placed on this earth to do. I have a podcast coming out. It's just a solo podcast. Me just talking, I think next week on developing a personal mission statement.
And if you don't know who you are or why you're here. then you will be dragged all over the place. The loudest voice, the most compelling argument is going to take you wherever they want you to go. And you can be sincere in that. I don't think it's because I'm trying to do anything wrong. It's just because I'm not grounded anywhere.
And for me, having a mission statement that defines my goals, it keeps me grounded. So I'm not trying to answer every question, understand all that's going on. I'm simply trying to navigate. How do I do what I feel like I was placed on this earth to do in the midst of an ever changing environment?
So that I think being grounded in that, you know, it's taking time to really establish this is who I am. This is what I'm here to do here to accomplish. Yeah. And then it's just, you know, I guess pushing out the noise is not the probably the best phrase, but it's, it's pushing aside anything that doesn't allow you to do that. Um, it's, you know what they say? It's easy to curse the darkness.
Um, but man, it's always been hard. I'm sure it's been challenging at other times for other reasons. And right now what we're dealing with is
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of character in leadership?
Right. If my parents said this was the truth, then that was the truth. Right. And then I think when you got older, you realize, oh, wait, I was doing this because that's what my parents said. Not because it was real. And then there was also a time and I know that there are some viewers and listeners that are not going to understand this. There was a time when we would get today's news tomorrow.
Right. Or even this weekend, right? Right. Jeremy, can you imagine all the things like you live in California, all the things that are going on now, good, bad, and different. Could you imagine waiting till tomorrow night to find out what happened? Yeah.
Yeah, it's crazy. And what happens is we get sucked into that vortex, right? It's like, I want more, I want more. And I don't even have to go get a newspaper. I don't have to turn on the television. I just have to get on my phone and it's there. So yeah, it's tough.
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you brought up your podcast. You have a podcast. Talk to the viewers and listeners about your podcast. Let's plug that now.
Yeah, I appreciate it. It's called the March or Die podcast. The title comes from a story, a fight that we were in in Iraq. And the principle is this. In life, we're going to have traumas and trials and difficulties and obstacles and all the things that will pop up in front of us and seek to prevent us from moving forward. And in those moments, we have to make a decision.
Are we going to stay where we are and die? Because death is not always physical. People who aren't moving forward are functionally dead. You're relationally and spiritually and emotionally, you're dead. You're just kind of getting by. You're just surviving. That's death. That's no kind of life. But when those things pop up in front of us, we have to decide, am I going to stay where I am and die or
Am I going to march? Am I going to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward, get to a place where I can better deal with the enemy in front of me and experience victory? And so that's where that phrase comes from. And there's a story behind that, but I do my best in the podcast. And most of our episodes, I have a co-host who is a former police officer. He's a SWAT officer.
He's a professional mixed martial artist. And And what we attempt to do is to provide principles and perspectives for moving forward. So life is difficult. Life is challenging. What do you need to know to take the next step and keep taking those steps and keep moving forward? So it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
We're creating some new content on YouTube and, and really investing there, which we haven't done until this year, but it's been, it's been neat.
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Chapter 8: How can individuals develop their leadership skills?
It's called Leadership by Design. I wrote another book called March or Die. Same as the podcast that talks about our experience in Iraq. And some small books that we've written on post-traumatic stress, suicide, spiritual resiliency, a lot of content, a lot of resources that we put out. All of those can be found on our Mighty Oaks page. So mightyoaksprograms.org.
You can learn about Mighty Oaks, the work that we do. If you're a veteran, service member, first responder, you can sign up for a program there. Family member, friend, you can learn more. All of that is on that Mighty Oaks website.
Awesome. I will make sure that we have links to all of that in the show notes and the descriptions. Any other place where people can find or follow you and see some of the amazing things you have going on?
Yeah, if you're on social media, we just talked about how evil it is, right? But we all spend a lot of time there. And so if you're on social media, you can find me on all the social media platforms. I'm most active on Instagram. And even if you're just interested in Mighty Oaks or me, just look for my name, Jeremy Stalnicker. All of that is on that Instagram page.
So a lot of good, I think, daily content. We have a daily devotional that we put out if you're interested in that. But Instagram is the place to find most of that.
Good stuff. Well, Jeremy, man, I appreciate you blessing us with your time and your wisdom. I know how busy you are. So the fact that you could spend a few moments with us made my day, brother.
Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for the conversation and anytime. Love it.
Absolutely. And for all the viewers and listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go Unleash It. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mic Unplugged. If today hits you hard, then imagine what's next. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and share this with someone who needs it. And most of all, make a plan and take action because the next level is already waiting for you.
Have a question or insight to share? Send us an email to hello at micunplugged.com. Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.
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