GA 512 | Unturning Steel with Bill Leahy

Onboarding, mentorship, and coaching, I feel in most organizations is a lost art. So if you really, I mean, to answer your question, I should say, yep, it's not just about military. It's. If we need to learn anything, it's. It's. We need to figure out how to care for each other again.

Today I'm excited to welcome Bill Leahy to the show. Now, Bill is involved in a project called Unturning Steel. And so Bill's background is he grew up in manufacturing, and then he was in the military for a time, and then he found that when he transitioned out of the military, there was a lot of difficulties facing him with respect to finding work and just general purpose and so forth. And come to find out, this is an issue that many veterans are experiencing. And so Bill's current mission and really goal in life right now is to help these veterans come out and to help manufacturing. So it's sort of a win. And so there's a film that Bill has been working on called Unturning Steel where they tell this story, but during today's podcast, we sort of just talk about what is this all about and what does this company do and, and how can these veterans find these, find. Find this new purpose really in life. And it's a pretty, pretty amazing program that they're. That they're working on, so I think you're going to really enjoy. This is not your typical talking about Lean, although Lean does come up towards the. It's just a very powerful story, and Bill really shares some deeply, deeply personal stories. So I really appreciated that as well. Show notes and all the links, and there's going to be a lot of important links here can be found over@gembapodcast.com, look for episode 512. And even easier, just scroll down on your app because all the links, including the links to this Unturning Steel website where you can watch a trailer and all this kind of stuff, they're all going to be on there. So be sure and please go out and connect with Bill as well on LinkedIn. Unturning steel has all kinds of social media channels, so connect to those. But for sure, connect to Bill and reach out to him and, and let him know that that Arlean community is. Is supporting them. Okay. All right, that's all I got. Let's get to the show. Bill, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going great. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, man, it's good to have you on. I'm excited to talk about this project that you' to be a little bit different type of episode than we normally do. But that's exciting. So as you know, Bill, we like to get started right out of the gate with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, thank you. I have a quote from Barack Obama and I just love it because it speaks to the true spirit of unturning steel. And it's change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. And what I love about it is it's just this, it's a powerful statement, like really emboldening us to take control over the change. So we have this manufacturing and better communities which is our focus of unturning steel. And it's saying that we do not have to ask permission, we do not have to wait. We can step up and meet our own needs with our own resources in our own way. I just think it's a fantastic sentence, sentiment.

Yeah. No, I love it. I love it. All right. Yeah. So unturning steel. So I wanna, I wanna dive into that here in a second, but maybe before we do that to set the stage a little bit, tell us about, about you, Bill, about your background and, and you know, how you, how you sort of gotten involved to your, your present day, where you're at now.

Oh, man. Now that's a long, long and twisted tale. But yeah, so I grew up in manufacturing. So my love for US manufacturing started as a child. My dad was in pulp and paper. He was a chemical salesman. And every once in a while, if one of the customers had a son my age, I would get to tag along on the sales trips and go to Packer games and fishing trips and all that stuff. So my first exposure to manufacturing as a business was very young. I did not realize it at the time of how important manufacturing was to the communities I lived in and my family. So it's kind of miraculous that I found my way back into it because really every life choice I made was not pointing in that direction. So I was a hockey player. I got recruited to play hockey at West Point. So that's when I started my secondary education at the United States Military Academy. And I got. My focus was environmental engineering. And I had no intention of using it. My thoughts was I was going to be a general in the US army and do all those wonderful things and save the world that way. And what I found was I'm not that great of a soldier when it Comes down to it physically, everything like that. But I'm not a rule follower by any means that it kind of really. But things took off for me once I found my way into manufacturing. The transition out of service was incredibly difficult. And that was really, you know, the. The seeds that were planted at that time because I left service, went into manufacturing, and what I found was there was really no job description for what I was being asked to do. And it was within this realm of reliability engineering, and no one at the facility had done it before. There was one guy who's absolutely fantastic, Pat Akins, who's still a close, and we work together to this day, and he became kind of my mentor. But the structure within the. It wasn't there yet. So I decided to take it and pursue this knowledge. So I went out, found some more education and went into the consulting world in manufacturing and did that for multiple years and then had the opportunity to jump out on my own. And Unturning steel was born in the last two years. During that time. Yeah. Sorry to wrap up on myself. Yeah. So first, education, West Point. And then I went to the University of Tennessee into their reliability master's program. And it was great, but it wasn't going to serve me in manufacturing, which this is. Another interesting one is because they're now, you know, our critical partner. They accredit the program and they understand the need there. Like, they're not afraid to take a hard look in the mirror and say, you know, maybe we are not meeting the needs of manufacturing in this business particular way. So we're working closely together. And that's. That's just absolutely awesome. But so the short story, I did not finish that program. I on. I am on academic probation with the University of Tennessee, which is really kind of cool that I get to work with them still. Okay. And then I took. I took the remainder of my GI Bill to UNC Chapel Hill and got an mba, and that was the best education I've ever had. Wow. And then there's a whole lot of other stuff that I'm sure we'll get into in this discussion, so I'll stop there. Yeah, that's kind of my background.

Well, maybe we. Maybe this will launch us in, maybe it won't. I don't know. But I picked up on a couple of things there. You mentioned just as a young boy, you said going to packers game. So are you from Wisconsin originally?

No. So my. I come from a military family, so moving around, it was. Was just a, you know, intrinsic part of life. I am From New England. Oh, this is. I was, I was born in Texas, but got brought up in New England till about 6th grade. Moved to Wisconsin then because dad was in pulp and paper and spent only like five years there and then just been on the move up until about seven years ago when we came back to Connecticut. And yeah, this is our forever home, ancestral home. Generations of ladies have lived here and it's, it's, you know, really nice to start planning roots for. For my kids.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Now. Okay, so the other thing I want, I picked up on you mentioned, well, how long were you in the military?

Four years at the academy and then just about six years out in the regular army.

Oh, okay. Well, a good amount of time. So I thought you were like some troublemaker. Got kicked out in three months.

No, when I say that it's not. Self deprecation is one of my things, though. My military career was just not. It wasn't to the, the standard that, you know, I would have. I hold for myself, I guess, looking, looking back on the young, the young man I was when I was a platoon leader. And just, you know, when you, when you measure yourself by today's standards, it's always, it's never a good look. That's kind of it. And one of the things I love about this project too, is this is an opportunity for me to kind of make amends for those deficiencies that I feel I had, though I know my, my soldiers deserved a lot better than, than the leadership that I gave them. I could have done better, but at that point in my life, yeah, this program allows me to give back to these soldiers again and, you know, help maybe the next generation. So it's really cool.

Okay. All right, well, okay, well, let's just jump right in then. So you've mentioned unturning steel a few times now. So what are we talking about? I know already because we've talked, but what is it? What is unturning steel?

So unturning steel is the crashing of the manufacturing and veteran world together. To meet each other's needs is the best way to say it. And it came about from that struggle out of service that I talked about for myself. And I think any veteran listening to this can relate to it. And I also want for the rest of the audience that's listening, compare. Just think about those major transitions in your life. College is a great example. When you leave college, you're there, you're basically institutionalized. There's a routine, there's a culture that you're Inculcated in. And then overnight, you go to bed one thing, you wake up, something completely different the next day, and you have to redefine yourself and figure out who you are. And my brother went through that. So he was born to be a Marine opposite of me, like I was. I was not born to be a soldier. He was born to be a Marine. And it is what he. You know, it was everything to him for, you know, nearly 20 years. And when he transitioned out of the service, it was devastating. And he was looking for his place in the world like we all were. And he got into manufacturing the same as I did. And we were actually talking last fall 2022, about how we can use my company and the program we were developing to help transition service. So it really started with my brother, and he was going to be the first test case. He was working at the Metalcraft Mint in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the maker of all these challenge coins and a massive part of this program. And he committed suicide, regrettably, December 1st, 2020.

Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry.

Yeah. And that's when the urgency kicked in for all of this, and that's when we said, all right. And this is the, you know, back to the quote. This is. We do not have to ask permission to act right now. And really, to be honest, we couldn't wait. And that's what this has been a big, hairy, messy project because we've done it so fast. We went from that day, you know, the idea of the concept of Sean and I talking that, you know, in fall, over a year ago, that was when it was born, and we took it to delivery in about six months. And that was one thing we wanted to show to the world, is that you could do this. And we did it. It was me, and, you know, I'm the only actual member of the company, and we've got other folks helping, but it was a huge lift by a small group of people. And now the community's grown and grown and grown, and I think the world's gonna see what can be accomplished just by pursuing something, not having all the answers, and just getting up and going after it.

Okay, so obviously, Unturning Steel is a film that's gonna be coming out, but now you mentioned you have a company, so I'm just trying to make sense of everything. So, like, what is the name of your company?

Sorry, yeah. The company is Renaissance Reliability. We're a manufacturing consultancy. So what we do is manufacturers that want to increase capacity, quality, relia, safety, environmental health, any measurement of Manufacturing that they want to improve, they call on us and we can do a variety of different things. The thing I love the most, that I think is most impactful is creating manufacturing experts that understand implementation more than anything else. So we're in this interesting time in the US where we are dumping millions and millions and millions of dollars into manufacturing. You know, innovation funds, corporate giving funds, grants, all of this stuff is here and we really want to bring this thing to life. But none of that investment is going to happen without the implementers there. So right now In North America, 70 or 70% of implementations in US manufacturing fail. And that doesn't mean they don't get any return on investment, but it means they, they realize less than 50% of what their expectations were. And that's, that's a real stat. And that, that is the issue there. We dump money into it, but we don't have the people to implement it. And it's the same thing on the man or on the, on the veteran side. We're dumping billions and billions of dollars into this thing. But the suicide rate, 6,000 a year, has continued for the last 20 years. So we're not really making a dentist, but I saw a great article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that was talking about just these things. Yeah, let me try to wrap this up really quick. Yeah, there's desperate needs on all sides for this, but the company really is, the focus is enhancing Made in America prestige, protecting and advancing this Made in America idea and what it means to all of us and securing our national future.

Okay, and so Unturning Steel then is a film like what's It About?

Just perfect. Okay. So my brother, we were going to use the manufacturing company and like I said, we serve US manufacturing any capacity we possibly can and we need those implementers. So Sean was going to be the first one that we trained and brought into U.S. manufacturing to help. Because veterans have just some great skills as far as project management, accountability, process improvement, process adherence, all of that stuff he could do. And we know this, and this is a proven fact in our industry because some of the best reliability engineers out there, people that work in our exact function, you find a lot of Navy nukes, a lot of technical trades from the military, and these guys don't necessarily have four year degrees. So it's really kind of a cool field because we can take high quality service members that don't necessarily have the educational background. And it doesn't matter, we can jump over that because it's not out there. Given our program is really, you know, the, the best fit or this certification from the University of Tennessee acts as this four year degree right now. So it's a huge opportunity for these guys so they can come out, you know, without a four year degree and step into work as a realized engineer. It's. It's really kind of cool. So it's. We're giving high quality, high paying jobs to these guys based on their merit. Not necessarily. You know, the, the boxes they checked along the way. That's. That's the justification for the program.

Okay, so now is your. Is your brother in the mov. The film or. Or not?

No, no, that's the. So let me go to the purpose of the film. So this, this program that we have, it's unique, it's the first of its kind. It's really, it is a cultural innovation if you want to, you know, if I wanted to categorize it. And yeah, it's. Sean is not in the film, but he's the purpose for it. He's like the poetic presence throughout all of it. This is his legacy continuing on beyond him. So we do not dive into his personal story. I didn't want to do that for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to respect the privacy of his family. And, and also on top of it, we've been going, it's been, we've been going 100 miles an hour for the last year. I don't think any of us have really had time to process. Yeah, everything. And I can't affirmatively say how I feel about any of it. Yeah, I wake up one day and I'm, I'm just completely angry with them. And then the next day it could be, you know, just a completely different series of emotions. But so what we. So the film capturing this, the, the purpose of bringing the film crew there and watching us take it through was a couple reasons. One, we wanted to demonstrate the veterans that we are an option out there and we can help them. So we wanted to make them aware that Unturning Steel is a Skillbridge offering that they should adhere to. Do you know what Skillbridge is?

No.

Are you familiar with. This is. This is something. Let me come back to the Skillbridge piece of it. Okay. Remind me to do that. So with the veterans, we wanted to let manufacturers know that we are out there to help him. Our ultimate goal is to get this where it's zero cost to the veteran. That's no matter what that's going to happen. But we also want to make it zero cost to the manufacturer because US Manufacturing Is that important? And we've got some innovative ways to make that happen. We're really here to serve and Skillbridge is what gives us an opportunity to do that. So I said another thing. One of my quotes, I guess to say it's never about resources. US manufacturing does not have a resource issue. It has a resourcefulness problem. And that again is like we are training people to use these resources, implementation type folks. And yeah, it's going to be really, really key to get those guys in there. So we wanted to show that, we want to show manufacturers that were available to them. And the other thing we really wanted to do was make sure that decision makers out there, legislators and all those folks know that we are an option out there too. And reliability is essential to manufacturing and it needs to be, it needs to be enforced. So there was, I read another article recently and it was talking about how the west is in, has a great deficiency and missile production. Now we have two wars going on in, in the Ukraine and in the Middle east and you know, they are consuming munitions faster than we can replace them. And I'm not all about war, like, no thank you. If we could avoid it at all costs possible. But the fact is we have to be able to protect ourselves and manufacturing, it starts there.

Well, yeah, you just think back to Rosie the Riveter, you know, World War II, this is TWI and Arlene movement, right. I mean this is a huge, was a huge moment, if you will, in our, in our, in our industry, in our, in our lean continuous improvement movement. Without that twi, without that framework, you know, we, we couldn't have built the war machine and who knows would have happened, right?

Who knows? Right? Yeah. And you look at, I, I saw it's a recent, it was an old, you know, Nazi propaganda poster from World War II, but it was manufacturing based. It said every minute lost is a minute to the enemy or something like that. And I think that's perfect. DOWNT is critical.

Yeah.

And this in. So the, the true cost of Downtime report last year estimated that US manufacturing or Fortune 500 manufacturers were forfeiting $1.5 trillion in that year to unscheduled production downtime. 11% of gross revenue gets lost because we do not have the implementers. Yeah, that's if you want to say what is the, the problem summary for the manufacturing side, that is it. And on the veteran side it's the 6,000 a year. So we believe we came up with a solution and we want to put it in front of everybody and that Was the purpose of the film Unturning Seal is to just launch this thing. Okay, we did. Yeah.

I'm waiting. So I always try to interview like I'm a listener, you know, so I'm, you know, I'm driving in a car listening to this as well. So.

Yeah, so.

So the Skill Bridge. Now you mentioned University of Tennessee in this program that, that I believe you said that you went through, like is. So is the idea that Joey is coming out of the Marines next month and he doesn't know what he's going to do. Like, so he could he go to University of Tennessee and enter into this

program or is even better than that. Even better than that. So I'll just walk you through like the process of what happens and you know, it's Skillbridge, okay, is a brilliant program. It's been, I don't know how long it's been active for. It's, it's, you know, waned and come back and resurged and all that stuff. And it's on the uptick right now. But what it is is a program where you go and get a curriculum or some kind of offering.

Joey, come let's, let's become Joey. He's coming out of the military next month. What's he going to do next month?

It's not next month. So we get our everything accredited and whatnot. And once we are Skillbridge certified by, it's under the Department of Defense and the Chamber of Commerce. And we did. That took us four months. It's taken some people over a year.

So Joey's doing this while he's in the military?

Yep, he is. I'm getting to the good part. Okay, so once you're Skillbridge certified, you have access to transitioning service members. Members and you can, they can join you up to six months prior to leaving service.

Okay.

This is the best part. This is the absolute best part. So they can come to us. So Joey, as you said, he's, he's looking at his ETS date. He's saying I need to find a career to future and all this. And that is a, a monumental task in front of him. When I was doing it, I, I went through one of the services. Bradley Moore's interviewed with 12 companies from all these different industries because you really do not have a clue. So you just. Shotgun splatter. Okay. And we need to be more deliberate and thoughtful in that. And Skillbridge allows them to do that. So all these Skillbridge companies get loaded into this massive database and service members have the ability to Go in there and look for these different offerings that are in there. And there's some great ones, there's some crummy ones. I think ours is the best. So Joey goes in there, he's getting ready for ets. He finds that contacts us or we look for him through our search criteria. We find each other in some way and we start communicating. We do a little bit of an interview. If we think he's a fit for one of our manufacturers, that's really key. We're not just taking people on because we think we can. There needs to be a plan for them before we ever commit. So we have these manufactured companies, we think they're a good cultural fit. They match. That's where Joey wants to live. It's what Joey wants to be doing. We link them up, send a letter of acceptance. Now it's up to Joey to take it through the process of Skillbridge. And it ends with his chain of command actually issuing orders. And up to six months prior those orders can kick in and they are released essentially and attached to my company for those six months. And what we do with them during that time is we take them to the University of Tennessee to start. We do a boot camp with them on everything that they're going to be learning from manufacturing. It's not about, it's about exposure, not about retention at this point in time. So we load them down with everything and then they go to a real world manufacturing site, the place that they're hopefully going to be working for at the end of this. So we, Matt, we work very diligently to match them with this. They go to this manufacturing site and they go through our curriculum, which is project based. So they have, you know, a period of time with constant coaching from us with online curriculum, asynchronous work, synchronous work, so on. So lots of touch points. And at the end of it, they have to produce a case study about their project. So it's a continuous approved project and that gets reviewed by the University of Tennessee and at the end they get their certification. That ends their training period. Now Joey goes back, exits the service and now there's a decision point to make. But he gets to make this decision knowing that if I enter manufacturing, I have the certainty, critical, the certainty that I can perform this job and I can be an impact player and contribute to this team. On day one, that was something I was missing greatly. I needed just to feel like a contributor, like I'm part of this team, like I was in the army. The other one is the community piece. So we. We integrate them into the system. And as an intern, people are looking out for them. They're getting to know them, they get to meet the enter the culture and everything like that. So they have this community already built. And the last thing is this great mission. And I think this is what unturning still can really fulfill for people is it is a national defense mission. Improving manufacturing capacity improves everything within the country. That is the mission, and I think we can share that. The three things that the VA recognizes as the leading contributors to veteran suicide are those things. A lack of community, a lack of certainty, and a lack of purpose. Those are what we're focusing on, those conditions. So creating those for Joey is really what we want to do. So that when he leaves service, he knows it's set for me. He has a path. He's got the training, the skills, everything. It's all the stuff that I was missing, the conditions that were missing for me and for my brother. And we are trying to recreate in a purposeful way, a repeatable way, Call it scientific, if you will, but we need to give these guys the best shot at life possible.

Yeah.

And we think we're capable of doing it.

Wow. So you have mentioned a few times, just hinted at some continuous improvement, some leans. Like, what is your background there? And, I mean, obviously University of Tennessee, they've got a good program there. So, like, is that, like, how much is lean playing a part in this?

Oh, it plays a big part. So what we want to do. So going back to the University of dc, they are phenomenal. I think they're on the cutting edge of all this stuff. The reliability and maintainability center there is really our partner, and it's kind of. It's attached to the university, but it's in this own little. It was originally a research facility, and it slowly transitioned into a training facility. And since they're hanging out here, Dr. Klaus Block is in charge of it, and he has a lot of leeway to do some really creative things. It's a really cool thing, so I'm super proud to be a part of that. But really, the thing that's missing in all of this is there's no formalized, standardized, continuous improvement. Like I said, we have lean Six Sigma, we have the Toyota model. We've got all of these different things. Reliability engineering is another one of them. And all of them offer something fantastic. And when we've created this program, we leaned hard on lean on the operational side because it's so important to that root Cause analysis, we kind of took and borrowed from anything that worked and brought it into it. And I think they all belong under the same family. And maybe we call it asset management or operation or something new to distinguish it between reliability engineering, which is product reliability. And that's what I was learning at the University of Tennessee. It was how do we get past the warranty period? How do we make sure this thing never fails? It wasn't about the production equipment and manufacturing that, that we're so focused on. So I think this is the first step to standardizing really what continuous improvement is. And I think it should be an academic field you should be able to major in lean along with everything else. I absolutely want to believe that. I think the University of Tennessee is positioned to do it.

Yeah, well, I'll put it out there right now as well. Just right here. Public on a podcast, man. If there's any way Gemba Academy can support you guys, man, we're all about it because this is a fantastic endeavor. And golly, man, you should be so proud of what you've accomplished so far. Just imagine, though, I can't wait to interview you five years from now, you know, to hear what. How things have gone.

Well, if you think about it, when you get to everyone out there, when you get to your first career, what are the things they start talking about? Are the buzzwords that you could you start hearing right away?

Yeah. Where do you want to be?

And yeah, no, it's, It's. We need to 5s this, you know, let's do this, that or the other. And you're like, all right, this is a central part of what we're doing. Yeah, this is critical. Clearly it's on everybody's mind we're all talking about, but it's not important enough to.

Yeah.

To like formalize into education. It's. Come on, it's the backbone of what we do. This continuous improvement.

Yep.

It really. It kind of blows my mind and I love what you guys are doing too, so. Yeah, yeah.

Well, we can talk offline, man, but yeah, yeah. So golly, man. Hey, I miss might go a little bit longer than a normal podcast, but I'm good if you are.

Yeah.

I don't mean to probe or to touch into any, you know, super sensitive areas, so feel free to tell me to back off whenever, but I am always interested. I don't have a military background myself, so I can't speak from any personal experience. I've got many family members. My brother in law was, you know, Air Force retired and so forth. And. But. But like, these folks that are coming out and they're struggling. Right. Like I'm wondering. I mean, you mentioned earlier, they didn't have purpose, they didn't have a plan and so forth. But, like. Like, is there other things that we as a society can be doing? Aside from, obviously, what. All the things you're doing. Let's do that. Get them jobs and careers and all the rest of it. But are there other things missing? I mean, I don't know. Is there like, you know, is alcohol and drugs or anything, like, what's going on with all this?

Yeah, it comes down and, you know, I'm removed from it. So I don't want to talk too much on, you know, the current military culture out there, but alcohol was such a central part of what we. It was part of the military culture for sure. And I. And I will tell you, I'm in recovery myself. I don't drink anymore and. Really? Yeah. And it played a huge part in my brother's journey as well and so many others. I just. Just it. You know, we're all looking for ways to cope.

Yeah.

And survive and the conditions in the military for. For a long time. And like I said, I don't know what it's like now. Yeah, I have faith that it's better, but it was. You could not talk about these things that were bothering you. You could not show weakness or anything. So really one of the only options that you had that wasn't gonna, you know, show on a piss test or anything like that. Alcohol was. Was an acceptable solution. And I think really what's changing is it's not being seen as that anymore. But as far as general society and how they can help is really there's. The military population is so much smaller than it has been, you know, in recent history.

Yeah. Scary.

Yeah. So those of us that have served, it's a critical community, it's a vital community, but it's an often misunderstood one. So when we're saying that, you know, we are the solution, and that's entirely it. We're the only ones that really understand the problem and what we're going through. And I think that might be it.

And I did.

I saw some other great news recently, and it was lawmakers basically saying, like, hey, we've been trying all of this for so long. It's time. We need to start pushing these resources out to these communities for them to try to figure it out. And it was specifically on veteran suicide. And I think that's it. Just an understanding of that. So one of the things we're offering is we're working with a couple different leadership groups, and we'll have this ready, you know, before we do the film premiere in March. But we want to start training employers on how to integrate veterans into their programs. It's a different population, and they don't need that kind of support continuously. But. But they are invaluable, like your return on your small investment of time and bringing them in in a meaningful way. And onboarding will pay dividends. And you know what? I shouldn't even say that. Just for military onboarding, mentorship, and coaching, I feel in most organizations is a lost art. Yeah, I agree 100%. So if you really. I mean, to answer your question, I should say, yep, it's not just about military. It's. If we need to learn anything, it's. It's. We need to figure out how to care for each other again.

Well, that's what. That's my question. It's like this society at large, it's like, you know, I'm just a dude down here in Texas raising my family and all the rest of it, but I love my country and. And I want to help, you know, folks as best I can. So, you know, maybe part of what we've got to do as a country is just more. I know there's a lot of programs, a lot of. Lot of different initiatives to try to help this, but I wouldn't say it's. It's penetrated the general population as much as it should have. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. No, and it has it. Because we've made it. It's very. It's been very easy to not see.

Yeah.

I guess life has not changed that much. We've been at war for decades, and it's. It's felt by, you know, a very small group. Small group of families.

Yeah. Wow, man. So maybe to wrap things up, Bill, tell us a little. So, I mean, we're recording this right now here in. In early January.

This.

This episode will come out in about a month or so. So we're talking February sometime. Like, what's the update on the film? And, like, what can we do to. To get the word out and all that kind of.

Yeah. So we've just really kicked off our social media campaigns. You can find us. We have a Facebook page on Turning Steel. That one. I'm putting out a lot more of the emotional, fun type, more raw type material on that. We have a LinkedIn account again, that'll be focused A little more on that demographic professionally. We have an Instagram thing that'll be following my story. We'll be starting that today and then the trailer coming out. We're trying to do lots of podcasts and that's. But if you want to stay up to date on everything, Unturning steel, the best thing to do, go to unturningsteel.com and register your email and stay up to date on all this stuff.

Yeah.

And we ask that anyone interested that comes in and checks all this stuff, share it with as many people as you can. The goal is to get the attention of legislators, academia, military leaders, everybody.

Yeah.

We need to make them aware that this is an option out there for them.

Yeah. Well, we got a decent low reach here again by Academy, so we're going to do the best we can to spread the word. So, man. And then if people want to connect with you, with you, just personally. Bill, are you. Are you also on the social media platforms?

Find me on LinkedIn is the best way to do it.

It. Is it Bill Lehi or William?

It'll be William. I'll send you the link to put in the show notes.

Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, send me that. So everybody just scroll down on your app and we'll have all the links there to go connect with, with Bill. And, man, what a. What an inspiring episode, man. I. I'm so thankful for you taking the time to. To come on and. But also thank you for your service and obviously thank you for what you're doing for these. For these veterans in our. In our country. Really, ultimately, it's. It's incredible work. So, I mean, you talk about purpose, man, if you haven't found it yet, man, you're never gonna find it, because I think you got it. So well done.

Yeah, we're just trying to do the. The next right thing every day.

Yeah, perfect, man. We'll keep at it. And hey, I want to for sure have you back on, you know, maybe later on in the year or whatever, just to get an update on. On how things are going and. And just see where you're at.

I would love that. This has been incredibly enjoyable, Ron. I just appreciate you giving me the opportunity to do this and your consideration for the program and, and all the. All the things we're trying to fix.

Yeah, man. All right. All right, thanks, Bill. You take care.

All right, bye.

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