Gold Star Families & The Mission That Never Ends

🚨 In this episode, we sit down with Token Squid, Executive Director of the Gold Star Ride Foundation, to talk about the reality of Gold Star Families—the loved ones left behind when a military service member is lost. He shares his mission of honoring and supporting these families, riding over 141,000 miles on his motorcycle to ensure fallen heroes are never forgotten.

🏍️ We also discuss delegation in business—why so many small business owners struggle with letting go of tasks, how it leads to burnout, and the mindset shift needed to grow successfully.

💡 If you've ever felt overwhelmed in your business or wanted to understand the true cost of military sacrifice, this episode is for you.

🔗 Learn more about the Gold Star Ride Foundation: GoldStarRide.org

🎧 Subscribe, like, and comment below—especially if this conversation resonated with you!

[00:00:00] 

Speaker 2: Hey folks, how you doing? I'm Anthony Price, 

Speaker 3: otherwise known as Token Squid. However, I'm pretty sure Nikki's going to call me Tony off and on. I'm the Executive Director of the Gold Star Ride Foundation, a non profit organization that rides motorcycles all over the country, honoring and supporting the immediate family members of people who are killed in the military.

Speaker 3: Gold star family.

Speaker: Tell me more about the gold star families because I'm quite sure that A lot of people don't know too much about what that means. 

Speaker 3: Gold Star Families, in case you were unaware or thought you knew but maybe you don't really know or something, a Gold Star Family is a designation that nobody wants.

Speaker 3: Nobody asked for it. And it's a designation that you get because somebody in your family was killed in the military. Your mom, your dad, your son, your daughter, your brother, or your sister. [00:01:00] And this is also true for in laws and steps. So if your step brother is killed, you're part of a Gold Star family also.

Speaker 3: And these are the families that we have made it our mission, Gold Star Ride Foundation has made it our mission, To pay attention to the number one thing on our list of things to do. is to remember. We're going to remember the fallen hero. If your audience, if your audiences, if you guys out there listening are like normal normal people being, people in the United States, 94 percent of you did not ever put on a military uniform.

Speaker 3: Only 6 percent did. That includes Korea, Vietnam Beirut, Grenada, Desert Storm, 1st Gulf War, 2nd Gulf War, all the stuff all of it added up together is only 6 percent of the total population of the United States. That means 94 percent of you are civilians and [00:02:00] 94 percent of you might want to have it explained to why somebody like me, where, let's take me because I'm me I'm going to be I'm 62 years old and why am I, at 62 years old, a disabled U.

Speaker 3: S. Navy veteran, why am I killing myself riding a motorcycle so far 140, more than over, more than 141, 000 miles in six years? Why would I do that? It's one thing to say that riding a motorcycle is a lot of fun. You get a great deal of joy from riding a motorcycle. But, riding a motorcycle is also extremely dangerous, or can be extremely dangerous.

Speaker 3: It's also very challenging. If I'm in the mountains and it starts to snow, for example. Nobody likes to ride on two wheels in the snow. A lot of people don't like to ride in four wheels in the snow. But these are challenges that I go through every day and I make the decision, okay, am I going to do this challenge?

Speaker 3: Why would I do this? My wife does not understand why [00:03:00] I'm willing to wake up with an alarm at six o'clock in the morning and swing my leg over a motorcycle seat and get on it and ride down the road for seven hours to visit a family that I've never met before. And I'm going to do it in the rain, and it's 45 degrees out in the morning when I leave, and I get to the place, and I'm soaking wet, and it's 65 degrees outside, assuming that, we have some sort of warm weather when we're arriving.

Speaker 3: But still, if you're all wet and it's 65 degrees out, you're bloody cold. It's very cold. Why would I do that? Because there's nobody. That tells me that I'm in trouble. If I don't, there's nobody that in my wife and she's my wife, right? We've been married for 15 years. She even comes to me and says, why do you do it?

Speaker 3: You don't have to. There's nothing forcing you to. Why do you do it? I do it because I used to be a sailor. Once upon a time, I had short [00:04:00] haircut, little white Dixie cup, looked like the guy from Cracker Jack, and I served in the Navy and I had a guy over here on my left and a guy over here on my right.

Speaker 3: And these two guys, we did everything together. We slept together, in some cases we slept together, and we ate together, and we worked together, and we defended our country together. We did everything together, we became best friends. And this is true almost universally throughout all of the military forces of the United States.

Speaker 3: That guy and that guy, or that guy and that guy, they're best friends, okay? And I'm gonna do everything in my power to keep them alive. When we go into a firefight, when a firefight ensues, when there's a bad guy trying to kill us, I'm going to do everything I can to keep those guys alive. That's part and parcel of why we do it.

Speaker 3: And, It has almost become cliche and I think it is cliche. You've probably seen movies where [00:05:00] there's a battlefield situation and the guy is dying on the battlefield and he reaches in his pocket he pulls out this bloody piece of paper and he's shaking as he's handing it to his best friend and it says and said and he says give this to my wife okay because he wants to make sure his wife gets the last words that he had to say okay and another thing that's very common along with that is The guy dying asked the guy who's living to take care of his family, take care of my family, take care of my kids, make sure my kids are okay, make sure my wife is okay.

Speaker 3: This is very common. And it's very common in our country. We actually have veterans who are secretly taking care of families because It's the family of their best friend that get killed on the battlefield. Now, you're not going to hear about that. It's not going to make the news. They're going to do their best to keep it hidden.

Speaker 3: They're going to hide it from everybody else. But that's what they're doing. They're taking care of their best friend on the battlefield who lost his life, who [00:06:00] left his life on the battlefield. Okay. And sometimes they take it a little farther. Sometimes the guy will come back and he'll be doing his best to take care of his buddy's wife and they'll end up getting married.

Speaker 3: Living happily ever after. Sometimes it happens. I've known families like that. I've seen it happen. But civilians have a tendency to not quite understand what it means to take care of that guy, take care of that guy, or take care of his family. So what do I do? What I do is just an extension of that same cliche.

Speaker 3: If I can be so bold as to use that kind of language, why do I get on the motorcycle? Because I'm going to go take care of that guy's family. Did I serve with him on the battlefield? No, I didn't. Did I even know that guy? I can't think of any that I knew whose families I'm taking care of. Eventually, maybe I'll go take care of a family where I knew the guy, [00:07:00] but so far I haven't actually known the fallen hero of the families that I'm going to go take care of, but I'm just going to go take care of that family anyway.

Speaker 3: And I'm making sure first thing I got to do, make sure that everybody remembers the fallen hero on the battlefield. And to take that a step further for the civilian in case you forgot. If it weren't for the military, you'd be speaking German, or Arabic, or Farsi, or some other language that's different from the one that we're actually speaking.

Speaker 3: And we wouldn't have the freedom that we have to even have this podcast. I wouldn't have the freedom to ride a motorcycle around the country. So I'm doing my little teeny tiny piece. My little part in this madness to take care of that guy and that guy, okay? And it's all those guys. Anybody who served in the military is, if they're no longer with us, they paid

Speaker 3: [00:08:00] huge

Speaker 3: price because they're not here for Thanksgiving dinner anymore, and I use Christmas and Easter as holidays that I use as examples because those are the ones I'm familiar with, but there's all kinds of holidays and things that. They just don't get to be a part of. They don't get to go to the football game or the baseball game, right? Spring training next week, right?

Speaker 3: Is it spring training next week? I think it is. They don't get to go to those baseball games anymore. They don't get to experience the birth of their children. They don't get to experience one more picnic with their mom and dad. They don't get any of that. It's gone. It's just gone. So I do my best to go take care of those families and I do it on a motorcycle.

Speaker 3: I do it on a motorcycle because motorcycles have a tendency to attract attention. So when I ride out of I'm in Minneapolis today and when I ride out of Minneapolis and I had for eastern Kentucky, for example. By the time I get to Eastern [00:09:00] Kentucky, I'm hoping that a whole bunch of other motorcycles come along with me.

Speaker 3: So that when we actually get in front of the Gold Star Family's home, or restaurant, or wherever we're going to meet them, there's a group there. And a group of motorcycles makes an important an impressive storytelling. It's, it has an impact. It has an impact. And that's why we do it on motorcycles.

Speaker 3: Because we want to have the biggest impact that we can possibly have. Because in my mind, okay, my mind, which is held together with this nice little red bandana, and we wear red bandanas, why? Because we want to remember everyone deployed. R. E. D.

Speaker 3: Sorry, I digress. I fell off the fell off my train of thought there, but we want to take care of those families. That's what we do. And we do it. And people come out of the woodwork to help us all the time. There's story after story. There's so many stories. We wrote a book. I wrote a book.

Speaker 3: See, it's got my name right there. And if you look at the pictures in it, [00:10:00] there's pictures in it. I'm in almost all those pictures. Yes, I can prove that I wrote the book. And we have stories from all over the country in the book, stories of gold star families, stories of motorcycles breaking down. We've got a whole chapter on bad hotels.

Speaker 3: I like to just refer to him as the roach motels. We've got a whole chapter of roach motels. And you can pick up that book at gold star ride dot org. I know you're hoping for an opportunity to splash a website up here. 

Speaker 3: We're GoldStarRide. org and from there you can, you click the donate button and you can get a copy of the book.

Speaker 3: All the money from the book goes to the foundation. And I am working on a sequel. This book is called Yours Very Sincerely and Respectfully. The sequel will be called Yours 2, a little play on words there, is it'll be Yours 2, T W O. Anyway, that's a working title. Maybe I'll change that when I get it done.

Speaker 3: But the truth of the matter is, I wrote that book after visiting with 64 [00:11:00] Gold Star families all over the country. Just 64. 64 is a pretty good number. That's all it was 64. I've now met with 540 Gold Star families in six years. If I got a book out of the stories that I collected from meeting 64 families, imagine whether or not I can come up with a book.

Speaker 3: Out of meeting 540. 

Speaker: So how do you meet these families? How do you find out? They find a way to reach 

Speaker 3: out to me. I do stuff like this podcast. And somebody hears that somebody does listens to the podcast. And they say, Oh, you know what? I'm not a gold star family, but I know a gold star family. And they live right down the road.

Speaker 3: So they, the listener will then go over there and knock on doors. Hey, you're gold star family. Gold star ride foundation. They're going to take care of you. Whatever. Whatever. Our rule of thumb for helping the families, and everybody wants to know what we're doing to help the families, but our rule of thumb is that we will do [00:12:00] whatever the fallen hero would have done, whatever the fallen hero 

Speaker 3: would have done.

Speaker 3: To date we've fixed cars, we've paid electric bills, we've paid water bills, we've paid rent, we've paid mortgage payments, insurance payments. In one case we got a, we helped an elderly gentleman get a PCA because he couldn't get out of his own bed. He needed some help with that, so we got him a personal care attendant that would help him get to the bathroom.

Speaker 3: Of all weird things. His son was killed in Iraq some years ago so we fixed him up with his PCA. In another case the family said, no, we don't want anything. Come to find out that they didn't have any food in their fridge and they weren't going to get paid for two more days. So we took them to the grocery store and they didn't want anything, but we filled up a grocery cart with groceries for them and made sure that they could eat for a while.

Speaker 3: Is we don't want to do anything. We don't want to do anything to embarrass it. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we remember the families properly and probably there's a large [00:13:00] number. If you go to the website, for example, you can see video after video of different things that we're doing with gold star family, but a large number of families, I'd probably say about six out of 10 of them tell me we'll take a, we'll pose for a picture for you, but we don't want to be.

Speaker 3: We don't want to be seen in public. We don't want the video to show up anywhere and, stuff like that. So they want to have their privacy respected. And we do our best to honor that. But you can go to the website, you can see video after video of places we've been and families we've met and stories we have to tell.

Speaker 3: There's a lot of that kind of stuff. And hopefully that helped answer your question. I don't remember what the question originally was. 

Speaker: It was, I asked you to tell me about the Gold Star families and I think you did that. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And not for nothing but if you'll allow, if you'll allow, because you mentioned Gold Star families [00:14:00] and stories of Gold Star families I was on a motorcycle ride once.

Speaker 3: I've done, I've now done 60 rides across the country. The next ride I do will be number 61. I've met with 540 gold star families as I've mentioned already. I've been to every state in the Union. Did I show you this? I've been to every the red line is all the highways that I've ridden my motorcycle and that's the whole country So I've been all over the place.

Speaker 3: But anyway a couple years ago. I was doing this ride I had been riding for a month on that particular ride. I averaged 307 miles a day seven days a week And I was on week five and I checked into the Roach Motel and I was checking my email and I got an email from this woman who said, you need to come and meet my best friend.

Speaker 3: She's a gold star mom. And I said, okay, set it up. I'll be there in three days. I looked at the map to be there in three days. Set it up. I'll be more happy. I can't wait to meet. And I never found out how she became a gold star. [00:15:00] Only that I just took the word, the friend's word for it. In those days, we weren't doing a whole lot of vetting.

Speaker 3: Okay. Nowadays we get a little bit more into the making sure you are who you say you are thing is, believe it or not, there are people who lie and say, yes, my brother died or my son died and turns out they're, it's just not true anyway. So we're. We do a little bit more with that now anyway, so I met the family I met the gold star mom and the best friend was there and there was a handful of motorcycles that joined me So we had about a dozen people for lunch that day and during the lunch She looked at me and she stopped eating she looked at me She said I just don't understand why my son would take his own life And I looked at her and I said he didn't take his own life.

Speaker 3: That was a sniper's bullet from 7 000 miles away

Speaker 3: And everybody burst into tears everybody was crying just Unstoppable flowing of tears. And I wish I could say that I'm the first person who ever [00:16:00] said that a military suicide was a sniper from 7, 000 miles, but I'm not. I copied that from somebody else. Actually, he's a friend of mine, a country music singer.

Speaker 3: His name is Rocky Lynn. He's got a handful of, I don't know, he plays music for a living. That's what he does for he's not a superstar, but he's well known in the circles he travels. Anyway, we finished the meeting. We hugged our goodbyes. I swung my leg over the motorcycle and down the road.

Speaker 3: And seven days later, try to give you the truncated version of the story. Seven days later, I was 26, 27 hundred miles away. Which is quite a distance. The country is only 3, 300 miles wide. So I was a long ways away, seven days later. And I went into my Roach Motel, and I checked my email, and I got another email from the best friend.

Speaker 3: And it said your visit here was the greatest thing could have ever happened because [00:17:00] later that day, she went home and tore up her own suicide.

Speaker 3: So this is the kind of things, these are the kind of things that are very difficult, particularly for civilians to understand, but they're difficult to understand for anybody who has not had a death in their family. So young people, for example, not quite sure how to grab a hold of any of this information, but that story helps.

Speaker 3: And that gold star mom, that was several years ago. That was five years ago. And that gold star mom and I are still friends. I just talked to her three weeks ago. So this is what we do. This is what we're trying to continue to do for the families that we go see on our motorcycle, on the motorcycle, as we tool down the road.

Speaker: So [00:18:00] what makes you Get up and do 

Speaker 3: I dabbled with that question a little bit. I get that, you know Why there has to be a motivating factor, right? There has to be something 

Speaker 3: and the truth of the matter is that my work with gold star ride foundation really helps me jump out of bed And now i've got a whole new lease on life because I was going to go on a much needed vacation with me and my wife We're at the airport at 5 30 in the morning.

Speaker 3: We're getting on a plane. We're going to a Third world country that specializes in white, sandy beaches and beautiful relaxation. And they called our num, yeah, they called our number. We were going to stand up and go get on the plane. And I turned to my wife and I said, I just don't think I should go yet.

Speaker 3: Then she ran up to the counter and gave up our seats to somebody else. She came back with me. We went from the airport. We got on a train at the airport, took the train two stops down the road, down the railroad and got off at the VA hospital, which is, where I get my care because I'm a veteran.[00:19:00] 

Speaker 3: Went into the emergency room. They didn't know what was wrong with me. They couldn't, they said, where is it hurt? And I said, it doesn't, just something's not right. Okay. Anyway, 8. 5 hours later, doctor came in and said, okay, we're admitting you in. Now you get an emergency CT angiogram first thing tomorrow morning after laying in the emergency room for eight hours, they come in and tell me this when it was 7.

Speaker 3: 5 hours, they came in and they said, we're pretty sure it's Oh, you have to burp. I can't believe it. I should just write down the name of that 

Speaker 3: acid reflux, acid 

Speaker 3: reflux. Thank you very much. I got to write that down and put it right here because I keep forgetting that seven and a half hours into the emergency room visit, they said it was acid reflux eight hours into that.

Speaker 3: They said, Oh, we're admitting you emergency CT angiogram anyway. By the time it was done, there were two emergency CT angiograms done and four stints. installed right here in the middle, keeping me alive a little bit longer. And I looked at the before and after pictures. They were, [00:20:00] modern medicine is really something.

Speaker 3: So they were able to take pictures of my veins before they put the stents in, and they took pictures of my veins after they put the stents in. And I looked at them and I said, the likelihood that I would have survived that trip to that country is remote, because they were all plugged up. And, the interesting side note to that is, I did a kind of a personal inventory of my life, and I'm thinking, okay, I eat French fries maybe once a month, I smoke a cigarette maybe once a week.

Speaker 3: I didn't have the factors that said my lifestyle caused it. So the only place it could have come from is genetics. And that made sense. My father had a massive heart attack when he was 44. He, lived through it and he lived to be 91 years old. But he had a massive heart attack when he was 44.

Speaker 3: So the only place that I can see that it came from for me was genetics. So I called my brother. I have five brothers. And I called my younger [00:21:00] brothers one year younger than me. And this guy has been like this close to being a world class athlete his whole life. He plays basketball three times a week year round.

Speaker 3: He lifts weights. He exercises. He's a distance runner. He does all this stuff and he's been doing it since he was 15. And he said, I told him, I said, it's genetic. It had to be genetic. And this is my brother, right? He's the athlete, pure and simple. He's an athlete. And he says, he called me a week later and he said, I took your advice, I went to the doctor and I told him they had to give me that test.

Speaker 3: The doctor said I didn't need the test, but give me, anyway, he had to argue with his doctor. And the doctor finally relented and gave him the test. And they found one of his arteries to be 95 percent blocked. He went into the emergency room, he complained of chest pains. They gave him an emergency CT angiogram too.

Speaker 3: And they opened up his blood vessels. He was on death's door and the doctors were telling him that nothing was wrong with him. [00:22:00] Anyway, so that's I have a lot of guardian angels and a lot of guardian angels. I don't care whether you believe in guardian angels or not, but I have a lot of guardian angels that take care of me.

Speaker 3: And this is just one example of how those guardian angels take care of me. They stop me from getting on that airplane and they put me in back in the hospital. And by all measure, I should have got on the airplane. I wasn't in any pain. I wasn't necessarily weak. I just felt something was just a little off.

Speaker 3: Just something was just a little off. Anyway, as long as we're talking about guardian angels, let me tell you this story real quick. Okay here it is. Two years ago, a little over two, two and a half years ago, two and a half years ago, I was visiting on a motorcycle and I was and I finished the visit, woke up the next day and had to ride home.

Speaker 3: I'm riding home 650 miles and I'm going to do it in a day. That's a long day, but it's certainly not the longest day for me on a motorcycle. Nope. That's like just a hair above the [00:23:00] average. 450, 500 miles a day is pretty average. Anyway, it got dark. I'm in Southwestern part of Minnesota. I'm on my way home to Minneapolis and it's dark and I should have known better because it was September and the farmers were in the fields combining, which means they're chasing the deer out.

Speaker 3: So I'm in a part of the, I'm in a part of, you could see every star in the sky. There was no artificial light anywhere. It was black as black gets. I come around a curve and I look ahead and I see about three miles up ahead. I see the lights of the city and I go, that's where I'm staying. There's a hotel in that town.

Speaker 3: That's as far as I'm going. It's only three more miles, right? So I crack open the throttle of bit and I push the speedometer up to 70. Now I'm going seven, and I'm on a two lane road, right? I'm on a, like a farm road two lane road, two, one lane going each direction. And I cracked it up to 70 and just as I hit 70 miles an hour, I go, all right, there's the town.

Speaker 3: I'm almost there. And all I [00:24:00] saw was a deer's rib cage smashed into the headlight. Pretty sure, I didn't stop to see what happened to the deer. I didn't stop for anything. I 

Speaker 3: didn't even stop. 

Speaker 3: But I'm pretty sure that deer just exploded in half and went in each direction on my motorcycle. I went from 70 to 15 miles an hour faster than you can believe.

Speaker 3: But I kept the motorcycle upright, and I regained control of it. I was shaking all over the place, but I was still up on two wheels, and I regained control of it, and I kept it going 15, and I said to myself, the first thing I said to myself was, holy fuck, I'm still alive.

Speaker 3: The second thought I had was I'm still rolling. I'm going to keep rolling. Not going to accelerate. Not going to go any faster. I don't know if the wheels are going to fall off this motorcycle.

Speaker 3: I have no idea, the lights route now, all the lights were gone on the motorcycle. Anyway, I limped it into town. I pulled it right up to the parking lot of the hotel. Parked it, grabbed my bag, went inside, and didn't look back. Till the next morning when the sun came out and I went [00:25:00] out and made movies and did all this stuff.

Speaker 3: And you can see the movies of the damaged motorcycle on the website if you look around at goldstarride. org Anyway, I called a buddy of mine, who I ride with periodically. And he lives in Indiana, and he goes by the road name Head Dog. Head Dog, cause he's always in front of the pack, right? He's always, he's leading everybody, so he's the Head Dog.

Speaker 3: And I'm talking to him and he says to me, he says, you hit a deer. I said, yeah. At 70? Yeah. And lived? Yeah. And he pauses for just a few seconds. And then out of nowhere he says to me, he says, 

Speaker 2: how many Gold Star families have you met with now? 

Speaker 3: I said, about 450. He says, I bet, I guess you've got about 450 guardian angels, don't you?

Speaker 3: That's a true story. I should have been killed. I have not, I've done, I've researched the internet. [00:26:00] Who lives on a motorcycle deer crash at 70 miles an hour? I can't find anybody. I'm sure there might be one or two out there. But I had a niece, her and her husband were on a motorcycle. They hit a deer at 40.

Speaker 3: He was in the hospital for three weeks. They barely lived and they gave up motorcycles. They don't ride motorcycles anymore. And I can tell you story after story of that guy hit a deer and that guy hit a deer, that guy hit a deer. And I have guardian angels taking care of me and the stories.

Speaker 3: There's a lot of stories. We could talk for another three hours just about gold guardian angels. 

Speaker: So I had another question You deal with a lot of going to a lot of funerals and stuff according to our conversation the other night And so how did you how do you deal with that? Because I went to one funeral and didn't handle it very well 

Speaker 3: Funerals are getting harder and harder because i'm getting closer and closer to it being mine but yeah, i've refer to the visits to the families that I go to visit You 

Speaker 3: When [00:27:00] I

Speaker 3: go visit a family, it's just like going to a funeral, because we have to relive the funeral that that's the purpose of the visit.

Speaker 3: We're going to do our best to remember the fallen hero, but in the course of doing that, it's very, the only thing we're missing is a casket. Otherwise it's just going to a funeral. And now I've met with 540 Gold Star families in six years, that's 90 families a year. That's two a week roughly two a week.

Speaker 3: Plus all the regular funerals I go to that don't have anything to do with the military. And there's been more than a few of those. Three years ago, we buried my father. 10 years ago, we buried my little brother. Last year I got to bury my mechanic. We've been in front of mine for 30 years. It's really easy to get really sad if that's all we're thinking about.

Speaker 3: So one of the things that I do first of all, I have a motorcycle. For me in the motorcycle, when I'm riding a motorcycle, it's a different, it's an esoteric experience, if I can use that kind of language. [00:28:00] I become somebody else. My wife loves to dance. She just, my wife, she just loves to dance.

Speaker 3: She's from the Caribbean. She does all the Caribbean dances. And when you watch, if you happen to be in a place where you can watch my wife dance. For about half of the first song, she looks like she's just somebody dancing. And after that, she looks like her feet are not touching the floor. She just becomes, you can tell she's having a very special experience.

Speaker 3: Her love of dancing is that great. For me, riding a motorcycle is that great. If I have to work, if I have to ride in the 45 degree rain, It's not so much like that. If I have to ride in the snow, it's not so much like that. And there are certain bad conditions that can make it not like that.

Speaker 3: But when it's, when we don't have the bad conditions, when it's 80 degrees and sunny, and I'm on a mountainous road like northwest Arkansas in the [00:29:00] Ozarks if that's what I'm riding in, the wheels of the motorcycle aren't on the ground anymore. I'm it's a whole different experience.

Speaker 3: And that wind therapy, that's what we, that's a real thing. That's what we really call it. That wind therapy helps me leave a lot of that depressing stuff out in the breeze. And, if if I was to die tomorrow and I couldn't do this anymore, I would still, it. Let me correct that because if I die, I don't have any consciousness and then my, and that, my little story doesn't work.

Speaker 3: But if I became incapacitated or an invalid tomorrow, and I couldn't ride a motorcycle anymore, I would have to be very grateful for all of the miles that I have ridden, all of the places that I have gone, and all of the families that I've made a difference for. And that difference is, when I'm with the family, it's palpable.

Speaker 3: We did our laugh ride last year. We do our laugh ride every [00:30:00] year. 

Speaker 2: Have I mentioned the laugh ride yet? 

Speaker 3: We call it laugh ride. It's the one and only fundraiser we do in Minnesota. We call it laugh ride because laugh is short for long ass fundraiser. And I'm a bit of a smart ass too, which is another part of my own personal therapy.

Speaker 3: The book I wrote, did I mention that I wrote a book? Yes, here's the book. It, there's a, I think it's in chapter three in the book when I start talking about how the Goldstar family start telling me about their loved one who's gone. And how they sent me emails and phone calls and all of this stuff came, started coming in.

Speaker 3: And at one point my wife came to me and she said, I don't know what you're doing, but you're going to stop. Because your hair is turning gray, you've got bags under your eyes, there's wrinkles where there shouldn't be wrinkles, and whatever you're doing, you need to stop. Because the depression is physical now.

Speaker 3: Then we started, then the next day I got on the motorcycle and went for a ride. And we started to pay attention. And that's it. [00:31:00] to what the mission was doing to me because at that when she had done that I had two weeks of consist, constant 10 people, 10 families a day. It seemed like we're calling me, telling me about how their son, daughter, mom, dad, mom, or dad, or brother, sister got killed.

Speaker 3: And every, there's a, there was a movie a few years ago called a thousand ways to die in the west. I never saw the movie, but if the title represents what the movie was about, There are a thousand different ways to die in the West. I heard at least a thousand different ways that somebody could get killed in the military.

Speaker 3: Very sad, very depressing. And I had to do something to pull myself out of it. First thing I did was turn off the phone. And I walked away from the computer. And I got on the motorcycle and I started going for rides. And I, the motorcycle to me is very therapeutic. It helps a lot. I, and I appreciate the question because so many people just lost right over that question.

Speaker 3: Like it's no big [00:32:00] deal. So you went to hang out with 540 families that had a funeral. What's the big deal? That can't be difficult. And I have met with families where the wounds were fresh. I met a gold star dad in June one year whose son had died the previous January. That wound was fresh.

Speaker 3: I met a gold star dad whose son died 20 years ago. But when I talked to him, I might as well have been the one who told him the news because there's no time limit on how long a family is going to grieve over the loss of somebody that's not with them anymore.

Speaker 3: I went to Loveland, Colorado, I remember very well, and I met with two women and a man. They were sisters and a brother, and they had, their older brother had been killed in Vietnam 55 years ago. And within two minutes of my showing up, I might as well have been the one who told them that their older brother [00:33:00] was dead.

Speaker 3: The tears were flowing like they got the news immediately. It was like an immediate reaction to, even though it was 55 years old. Everybody handles grief a little bit differently but the level of grief that, that we're talking about on a regular basis is it's pretty extreme. It's pretty extreme.

Speaker 3: So I've been pretty fortunate. That and the fact that I'm a smart ass. Every time I go visit a family, there's been one that this did not work with, I make it a point to stay there until I can say something that makes them laugh.

Speaker 3: It has to be spontaneous. It has to be shooting from the hip kind of thing ad lib, whatever, insert whatever word you want. I have to be a smart ass to the point where they. laugh. And there have been two families that I've met that I was unsuccessful with to a one of them. The second one that I was unsuccessful with.

Speaker 3: I went back to visit them a second time. A year later, [00:34:00] I happen to be in a similar neighborhood. I called him up and said, you want to go get a cup of coffee? I'm in town. And they did. And I made him laugh the second time. So I don't remember what I said. I also told you the story about the stints.

Speaker 3: And I told you, I bring my smart ass attitude everywhere I go. After the stints were implanted, after the procedure was done, the doctor who did the procedure came into my room and my wife was there. I had a couple of friends came to visit me, so there was a couple of friends hanging out there too. And the doctor comes in and he's doing this, that, A, B, and C, what doctors do after the procedure, whatever he's doing.

Speaker 3: And he said something that inspired me to make some smart ass comment. I don't remember what he said. I don't remember what I said, but I remember what he said next. He turned to my wife and he said the only way we could get him to shut up in the operating room was with anesthesia.

Speaker 3: So that's what I bring to the table. And I've had a lot of days [00:35:00] when, As a matter of fact, you can go to the website and you can, the first time I met the second family that I could not make smile, when I finished that, I turned on my telephone and I did a selfie video.

Speaker 3: And that selfie video you can find on the website. And I watched it recently, even though it was a couple years ago, I watched it recently and you can tell what I'm going through. From watching that video you can tell that they moved me to a place that I where I was uncomfortable and that's not uncommon.

Speaker 3: It's not the thanks. Thank you again for asking the question because it's It's usually one of those things that nobody cares to nobody thinks about it. Nobody thinks it's a real part. 

Speaker: You survived the va this time. 

Speaker 3: Apparently i've survived the va every time because i'm still here 

Speaker: As we discussed the other night, I'm a military brat.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not even going to hold that against you. 

Speaker: But if I'm not [00:36:00] mistaken, 

Speaker 2: wasn't it the chair force that you were a part of? 

Speaker: No, my dad. Oh, 

Speaker 2: he was Navy. 

Speaker: Yep. Both of them. But I'm 

Speaker 3: sorry, I'm just always looking for a way to sneak the word chair force in conversation. 

Speaker: Yeah, no, no chair force here.

Speaker: But when I was a baby and I was first starting to learn how to walk, I fell on my head a lot because, it's a big head, right? I didn't find out this until, they didn't find out until I was starting school. They do those tests when you start school for the hearing and the eyeballs.

Speaker 2: I've heard 

Speaker: they tested my eyes and obviously I flunked. 

Speaker 2: You probably didn't study for it. 

Speaker: I've been wearing these ever since, right? They're like, she can't start school until she can see what we're going to do. So they made my mom get me glasses. For a couple of years before that, I had [00:37:00] been regularly going to the, military doctors to try to figure out why when I tried to walk, I fell on my head.

Speaker: Turns out I have depth perception issues and astigmatism. Glasses help with 

Speaker 3: that? 

Speaker: Oh, the glasses help with that and now I don't, take a step and fall on my head anymore. But I had spinal taps and things with the military doctors that came up with nothing. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, I know what it's like to get tested by the VA 

Speaker: and have it be nothing.

Speaker: That does happen and I'm very, so I'm very glad that you got the care that you needed instead of that. 

Speaker 2: I'm pretty happy about it too. 

Speaker: Okay. Do you have any final thoughts about some of the things you've been speaking about? Do you have anything else you wanted to say? 

Speaker 2: I Did we mention this is the birthday present that you want to get for your father?

Speaker 2: I don't know. I think that's coming out backwards on my screen. Is it coming up forward on your screen? [00:38:00] 

Speaker: That's right. 

Speaker 3: Okay. Anyway, get these for 10 bucks at our website. The website is where again? GoldStarRide. org.

Speaker 4: You can also 

Speaker 3: get these there. If you don't, if you don't qualify for the DD 214, you can grab 

Speaker 2: one of these. These are 15 bucks. And if you want the DD 214, but you don't wear a vest like me There it is 

Speaker 3: Be right there. There it is. If you don't wear a vest like me, they come in a hat form and the hats are 20 bucks So those are oh and the book is 20 bucks also and if you get it from our website I'll sign it before I send it out to you.

Speaker 3: The website again is goldstarride. org 

Speaker 3: okay. In closing, I hope that if you had never had an idea of what a gold star family is, you'd now have an idea of what a gold [00:39:00] star family is.

Speaker 3: And I personally would think it I would take it very personally and very graciously if you would choose to find a way to help us with our mission at goldstarride. org. 

Speaker 6: Hey everyone, thanks for sticking with us. Before we dive into our next topic, I just want to take a quick moment to remind you to like this video, subscribe to our channel, and hit that notification bell. That way, you'll always be the first to know when a new episode drops. And we want to hear from you.

Speaker 6: What topics are you most excited about? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. Your feedback helps us create content that you love. We've got some exciting stuff coming your way, so don't miss out. Now, let's switch gears and jump into our next discussion. 

Speaker: But as I'm a small business person myself, because I am me and I am it, I have my resources, but I'm it and you have your [00:40:00] resources, but you're the head of it, right? 

Speaker 3: I do. I have resources. 

Speaker: Maybe. 

Speaker 3: Sure. Sure. I just thought I just did everything. 

Speaker: Oh, okay. Do you do everything?

Speaker 3: Pretty much. Pretty much everything. That's why I don't have my own podcast. Because there's no time for it. I'd love to have my own podcast. 

Speaker 4: But 

Speaker 3: there's just no time for it. Podcasting is a very time consuming endeavor. And I like podcasts. I've been on hundreds and hundreds of them. But yeah, I don't have time for my own podcast.

Speaker: Yeah, there's a lot of time with it, especially at the beginning when you don't have the money to be Hiring out other people to do the editing you have to do that all by yourself But 

Speaker 3: yeah, if I did do a podcast it would just it would all be live. I would do it live and There wouldn't be no editing.

Speaker 3: I would find a way to make it and if we had [00:41:00] one that bombed that would suck But I tried to do it a couple first year covet You which was what, 

Speaker 4: 2020? 

Speaker 3: When COVID was first announced I did a four hour podcast with, I don't know, 15 guests or something like that. And it was very compelling.

Speaker 3: And the, what we got out of it was pretty spectacular, in my mind, it was pretty spectacular. It was all military related, but yeah, it was yeah, it was more than I could do, even once a month I couldn't do it. 

Speaker: So I think what I want to discuss is delegating. 

Speaker 4: Okay, 

Speaker: not something I do very well at all.

Speaker: It doesn't sound like it's something you do very well at all. So this will be all I'm really good delegator. 

Speaker 3: I'm 

Speaker: really 

Speaker 3: good at it. The problem is. I don't have anybody to delegate to. See our organization, unfortunately, our organization is pretty [00:42:00] poor. 

Speaker 3: And a lot of times I'm really appreciative of the fact that it's really poor because that means that we can stay honest to the mission.

Speaker 3: But on the other hand, we can't get, it's very difficult to get people to do something for free. It's really difficult to do that part of it. For me, for example, to find somebody that can edit our website is a big challenge. 

Speaker 3: Someday we'll have money and then I'll delegate a lot more.

Speaker 3: Yeah, there's room for me to delegate an awful lot if we had a an anonymous donor who gave us a million dollars For example and I know there are such people out there, but I haven't met them yet But if we had a million dollars in the bank, then I could hire people that I could delegate to.

Speaker 3: And that's much, much easier. If they're getting, a thousand dollars a week on a, as a salary, it's a lot easier for them to say, okay, I'll do that when I give them things to do. But we're in a society that's, it's [00:43:00] probably a greater truth today than it has ever been in the history of the United States where capitalism is.

Speaker 3: Almost at a dangerous level because inflation is so high right now because So many things cost money and and we have so many things at our disposal. So many things cost money. It's very difficult to get anybody to volunteer to do anything. I do it for nothing, but the truth of the matter is I'm a disabled vet and I live off my disability.

Speaker: I don't live very 

Speaker 3: well, but I live off my disability. 

Speaker: I have a small business. I work with a handful of clients. Maybe two handfuls at this point. I don't know. And I do different tasks. I am an office manager for one social media person for another. I do what needs to be done. If it can be done on a computer, I help different people with different things.

Speaker: They delegate to me and they sometimes do it well, [00:44:00] sometimes not, but I argue with them and we get through it. Because I will call somebody and be like, I haven't heard from you in a week. And they're like, oh I needed you to do this. I'm like, when? When did you tell me to do that? Because I didn't hear anything from you.

Speaker: So when it comes to having a business, when you get to a certain point, you either have to work smarter, or you have to delegate, and there's only so much IQ in a certain person's brain to be able to work smarter, right? You can't make mountains out of molehills if you don't have the resources for it.

Speaker: But If you're smart and you're trying to work smart and you've gotten to the point where you can do things Very economically or however, you're supposed to say that then you're gonna real You're gonna realize at a certain point that [00:45:00] okay I still want to be able to make more money doing what i'm doing But if I keep doing what i'm doing the way i'm doing it I can't bring on any more new clients because I have so much going on in the background and it's not helpful.

Speaker: So then you have to make the decision, what can I delegate? What can I put onto somebody else's plate that gives me more room while not giving my business away, to somebody else and lets me work with my clients and still have, time I need between to refresh my brain before I go into the next one.

Speaker: And then, once you get to that point, and you get smart about things, you find someone who can do more than one thing. Now, with all these AI bots out there, you can delegate some work into an AI bot, and it'll give you the answer. The only problem with that is, you still have to do half the [00:46:00] work to be able to tell the bot the information it needs to give you the output you need.

Speaker 4: Right. 

Speaker: And then if you have one I almost said positions assistant. My brain today is wonderful. 

Speaker 3: One PA? 

Speaker: Yeah, so if you have one PA and they're doing things for you even if that's plugging in information into an AI that gives you the information you need, then that's taking that whole thing off of your plate.

Speaker: Now that's on somebody else's plate. They give you the results and you take that to your client and you say, this is the results we saw last month for whatever you did, right? 

Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. 

Speaker: Usually, you don't want your assistant to be just doing one thing all the time. Maybe there are times when if you get to a certain point and you have that many clients, you're one person who does the automated stuff is going to be the one that does just that.

Speaker: But at the beginning. You're gonna [00:47:00] have more than just that one need. And so you want that one aid to be able to do multiple things to help you instead of going. Okay this one can do this with the A. I. But they can't create an image. Now I have to find another B. A. or B. A. And now I have to have three of them to get all the things I need done.

Speaker: So it's better to find one that can do a couple of tasks. Then to find three or four that can do one task a piece. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes it works in either direction on that. Sometimes you can get lucky and, but the big thing is to recall, keep it in mind as you're moving forward with all of this stuff.

Speaker 3: Okay, what is it that you're doing? What is it that I'm doing that needs my, the most of my attention? And what. Can I say that does not need my attention so I can delegate that to somebody [00:48:00] else? And that's where the biggest problem lies with delegation. A lot of people will, particularly in small business, it's very common for a small business owner to say, I can't delegate that.

Speaker 3: I have to do that myself. When in fact, they really could delegate and then they could concentrate on something else that needed their attention even more. 

Speaker: They turn into dragons. This is my horde. You cannot touch my horde.

Speaker: I have to We can 

Speaker 3: use that 

Speaker: I mean it's or it's my precious like you're not allowed to touch my ring, 

Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, I get that and that's a really common problem with small business and the end result of that ends up being You know one of a couple of different things one the business ends up folding because burnout the one person trying to do everything, can't do everything, and And it just fizzles out.

Speaker 3: And then they get burned out by it. They get destroyed. They're [00:49:00] personally another thing that could happen is they could sell the business to somebody else. And that person that they sell it to ends up growing it to be 10 times the size of the year. And they look back on it and they go, Oh, I should have kept it because look how big it is now.

Speaker 3: Not realizing the cliche that they're missing out on, which is, and the cliche that we're missing out on is. Why do you expect different results if you're still doing the same thing? And there are a thousand different ways to say that thousand different words, but they all mean the same thing If you're doing the same thing expecting different results that's the definition of insanity 

Speaker: exactly what I was about to say That's the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results because you can turn the water on and I guess if you're paying by the gallon eventually your water is going to run out, but Usually, you turn the faucet on, no matter how many times you do it, if everything's working right.

Speaker: Every single time, you're going to get the water to [00:50:00] turn on. You're not going to get Kool Aid to all of a sudden come out of the thing. Wouldn't 

Speaker 3: that be nice? My gosh, that would be so great. I want some, and then, instead of hot and cold, you'd have cherry or blueberry or watermelon flavored Kool Aid.

Speaker 3: That'd be so nice. Sorry, I just went off on my train went that way. 

Speaker: At least you knew what direction it went. But at the same time, if you're at a restaurant and you're asking for a beer they're going to pull from the tap or whatever. You're going to get your beer unless of course you're the unlucky one that gets there towards the end of that keg and it needs to be changed out.

Speaker: Now. And now you've got to wait an hour before 

Speaker 3: You've got to wait an hour, but that restaurant's got a few problems with employees, but 

Speaker: yeah It probably done faster, there's a wait time involved So you know [00:51:00] now you're stuck and that happens with your own brand happens with mine

Speaker 3: The stuckness can only be either a you're waiting for what you ordered or b you change your mind Yeah 

Speaker 4: And 

Speaker 3: changing, there's nothing wrong with changing your mind either.

Speaker 3: And a lot of times when we're using this as an analogy for small business, changing your mind can be a night and day difference. 

Speaker 4: And 

Speaker 3: you can find out that changing your mind. Is giving you everything that you were hoping for.

Speaker: So just yeah, when the rubber hits the road, you really figure out, where you are, what you're doing. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, rubber hitting the road is a good analogy for me as a biker, as a motorcycle enthusiast. 

Speaker: If you're not delegating and you're getting overwhelmed a lot and you're getting burnt out, you're starting to feel like you don't want to do this anymore. If you don't start delegating, if you don't start taking time away from work and doing something else that you like or love to [00:52:00] do, then you're going to hurt yourself.

Speaker: You're going to burn out. You're going to 

Speaker: crash and burn. There's no way that you can We humans, we're actually finite creatures. We're infinite with our thinking ability, and we're infinite with a lot of different things, but we're really more like finite creatures. There's only, we only get 24 hours in a day.

Speaker: We only get 60 minutes of time, and there's only so much we can do, and if we're not finding the way to get more done in a shorter period of time, and that means delegation. That's delegating responsibilities. That's all that is. If we're not doing that, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

Speaker: We're telling the world that we're happy because we've plateaued and that's all the farther we want to go

Speaker: Okay, you have any final thoughts for the whole thing? 

Speaker 3: We'll stay in touch. I got a few things. I got to figure out now that we've done This talk about delegating. I need to [00:53:00] I promised myself that 2025 was going to be the year that I make a movie And the movie that I make doesn't have anything to do with gold star rifle I've been promising myself for five years that I was going to make a documentary about the foundation and work that we do I've got hundreds and hundreds of hours of I recorded footage of meeting with families, riding down the road, doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

Speaker 3: But I wrote a movie script about a true story about an event that took place in 1985. It didn't be a long time ago. 

Speaker 2: That 

Speaker 3: was probably before you were even born, right? 

Speaker: I was born before 1985. 

Speaker 3: Really? In 1984? 

Speaker: I was born in 81, thank you very much.

Speaker 3: Anyway 1985 was a banner year and the thing about this movie that I wrote is that it was, it affected the world. The event [00:54:00] affected the world. However, it's been taken out of all the history books. And you know what they say, the people who win the war gets to write the history. And that's a perfect example of it.

Speaker 3: I wrote the history of the other side, and I want to make it into a movie, and I want to get it out so people know, can understand what really happened. The event in, that I'm talking about, was a meatpacker strike from the company called Hormel, and maybe you know it, maybe you don't, maybe you're familiar with Black Label Bacon, or Hormel Chili, or Dinty Moore Beef Stew, they're all made by 

Speaker 3: the same company

Speaker 3: They've got, They have far more products than, actually

Speaker 3: Jell O 

Speaker 3: powder that's made by them. Anyway there was a strike in 1985. My father had been working there for 37 years at the strike.

Speaker 3: And he, among, he was one of the 1800 people who completely lost their job. And the the result of it was that unions Worldwide, unions [00:55:00] don't have any power anymore. 

Speaker 4: Yep. 

Speaker 3: And I don't know if you've seen it, because you were born in 81, you didn't really have a consciousness until 91, probably, or, late 80s.

Speaker 3: Anyway, you certainly didn't have a consciousness about what unions were doing and what labor relations were for quite a while. And the thing is, you were grown right into it. You've grown right into it. So you didn't know anything about what it could have been like. And that's what they go by.

Speaker 3: The other thing is it's income taxes, the same exact thing. You don't know what it was like before. Neither do I. But there was a time when we didn't have income tax 110 years ago, we did not have incomes. And we shouldn't have income tax because most people think anyway, we're getting off, we can go on that.

Speaker 3: But anyhow unions had a powerful place in labor relations in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, and in the 80s, [00:56:00] Things changed. Reaganomics came along and a lot of people really loved Ronald Reagan as a president. However, he changed the rules. It started with their traffic controllers nationwide went on strike because they weren't being paid enough.

Speaker 3: And Ronald Reagan said, You've got one day to change your mind and go back to work. And anybody who did not go back to work the next day was fired and they hired all brand new air traffic to control that. Anyway, that was the first. nail in the coffin, so to speak. And the second one was the horrible meatpacker strike and what happened with that.

Speaker 3: And people died. It was, there was a lot of violence. The strike itself lasted seven months. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. And I did a lot of research on it. I wrote the movie. I want to turn it into a movie. That's one of my goals for 2025. In order for me to do that, I have [00:57:00] to stop doing WorldStarRide stuff.

Speaker 3: And I have to write the sequel to this book. Of course, this book This is a funny book. I was on the road for 56 days. I came home, I rested, I basically came home and rested for about two weeks, and then I started writing. I wrote this entire book 43 days. So I've got some, I've got some chops as a writer, and it took me a long time in my life to come to that conclusion, but I am at that place in now where I know I can write.

Speaker 3: I've written six books, five movies, a hundred short stories, and well over a hundred songs. I know I can write. So this is, I have to figure out a way to raise 5 million so I can, and that's something I want to get done in 2020. A lot of things happen. We're gonna, we're gonna look at that whole delegation thing.

Speaker 3: All new eyes for the next year, [00:58:00] for the next year. I'm, I'm still gonna be writing for Gold Star families. I'm still gonna be increasing those numbers, but it's gonna have a different, it's gonna look a little different. The families are still number one for me. But I have to make sure that I'm around so I can take care of that.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Okay. 

Speaker 3: Anyway, thank you very much It's been a delight to talk to you this afternoon 

Speaker: It has 

Speaker 3: I'm sure you'll do well. I'm sure you'll do well. Please send me a link when it's ready to go out. I appreciate you very much.

Speaker: You're welcome. And I'll talk to you soon. 

Speaker 3: Okay. Bye bye. Bye 

Speaker: bye.