Jan. 29, 2025
Empowering Rural Veterans: Michelle Lang's Mission to Bridge Support and Community
This episode features a powerful conversation with Michelle Lang from Operation Honorary Salute, discussing the challenges rural veterans face and how the organization connects them with necessary resources. Listeners learn about the importance of community support, awareness, and the unique needs of this often-overlooked population, as well as how they can get involved in helping these veterans thrive.
• Transitioning nonprofit focus to rural veterans
• Importance of authenticity in resources provided
• Creating online support communities
• Engaging events to build camaraderie
• Highlighting benefits and educational resources available
• Changing perceptions about rural veterans and their skills
• Plans for expanding outreach and impact nationally
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Episode Powered By Act Now Education
Chapters
00:56 - Rural Veterans Support and Resources
11:10 - Misconceptions and Support for Rural Veterans
18:45 - Supporting Rural Veterans Across the Nation
26:57 - Veteran Healthcare Gaps and Solutions
30:22 - Empowering Rural Veterans Through Community Support
36:13 - Nonprofit Expansion and Call to Action
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Warriors fall in.
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It's time for formation.
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Today, folks, I have a great friend of mine that I had the fortune to meet in person at the military influencer conference in Las Vegas just what two years ago, right.
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And we interviewed her when she was running her last non-profit and since then she's transitioned her non-profit, which still focuses generally on the same concept of helping our rural veterans that are living out away from the city, that may have a little bit more difficulty getting the resources that are necessary for them to get jobs, find homes and things like that.
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So today I have Michelle Lang on the Morning Formation podcast.
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Michelle, thank you for joining me today.
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How's it going?
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Thanks for having me back.
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It's an absolute honor, and it's an absolute honor to be in your circle, or at least I hope I'm in your circle.
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I just wanted to ask you.
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You know, last time we talked, the name of your nonprofit was different.
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Talk about the transition from the last to the one that you currently have right now.
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So we started as Veteran Help Point in 2021.
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And it's kind of the same understanding.
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We're still trying to get resources to people that weren't near a big city, that weren't aware of what was available to them, but we didn't focus specifically on rural areas.
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But last year in June I held an event specifically for rural veterans in my hometown of Pennsylvania and it was really overwhelming the amount of connection there was and having people shift their mindset to like, oh yes, I am a rural veteran.
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I can't believe there's help out there for me and just realizing this is a really, really big need in rural areas for people to get connected to these outside resources that they can use and take advantage of.
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So we totally switched a lot of things I don't want to say.
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Our game plan is still pretty much the same as far as connecting people to resources, but now we're only connecting them to certain resources.
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We're being very, very strategic about it as far as who we're connecting them with.
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There's a smaller pool, highly vetted, and then we're building an online community for rural veterans where they can talk to subject matter experts, check matter experts, and then we do our in-person events and our.
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Eventually, we want to move to helping rural veterans and their families get meaningful rural employment.
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That's huge.
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Finding genuine, authentic assistance is huge.
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I had a buddy of mine who is a veteran.
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He does real estate and he says that it absolutely angers him.
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You know, during Veterans Day, when you have all these non-military real estate agents out there waving the flag saying we support this, we support that and really what they're going after is the dollars, right, they're going after the money and there's really no sole purpose there for them to assist.
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And finding that authenticity can be really, really tough for veterans.
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And, matter of fact, I think yesterday on social media, um juan perez jp was on his stories on instagram and he was talking about how ai was used to change his his voice into saying basically advertising like some debt service or whatever wow yeah, that authenticity finding, like the genuine stuff is really hard, so it's great that you're out there helping sort through kind of being like a I don't know Yelp, I guess, of assistance for our veterans right.
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Yeah, we have.
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So the model we used before was we were going for like an interactive map where people could go to these physical resources, no matter where they were, or they could use virtual Sorry, I'm just getting over like the flu and it's hanging on.
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But now we have a much smaller pool of resources and I'm like I keep thinking they're like the Avengers of resources, right.
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So this like super elite group of resources that is still very holistic, where people can use them no matter where there are, or these resources will fly them out to go like boulder crest, they'll fly you out to go to virginia or arizona or camp southern ground.
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So like there's so many things people can take advantage of but they just don't know about it yeah, spreading awareness is really challenging.
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I it blows my mind when veterans ask me like, well, I need help filing for my my uh service connection and it's like that's that's anywhere.
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All you got to do is look it up and you know, your American American Legion does it, VFW does it.
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If you want to get started with doing it and putting in for it, beyond that, you do need to have some type of advice to find, like, authentic and genuine people that are actually there to help you, because it is full of folks that are just looking at the dollar signs when it comes to utilizing the service connection and the VA home loans.
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But, overall, what are some of the resources that you connect veterans with?
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Because I know you just said that it's specific right.
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Yeah, so before we had certain categories of help and we basically are sticking to that, so we have benefits.
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We want people to be able to get good information about their benefits.
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We want them to be able to have solid answers and a good resource to go talk to somebody about that, which is big if you're in a rural area, how to grow food where you're at, take care of yourself, va loans and real estate, which somebody just told me yesterday that 87% of veterans do not use their home loan, which is wild to me.
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That's so much higher than I thought I'm guilty.
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Housing is the number one issue.
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Number two two issue whenever I pulled people to rural areas of what they couldn't access because there's no rentals in rural areas it's super hard.
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You have to buy.
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I mean, I don't know.
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It's just, I'm really into helping people thrive where they're at, and this is what I want to do, and I think the VA home loan is an excellent way to do that.
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You can invest in real estate, you can invest in yourself and start building wealth, so I'm excited to share that with people.
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What other resources do we have?
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We have education.
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Act NOW.
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Entrepreneurship.
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I'm familiar with ACT NOW.
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I'm trying to think what, like?
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my mind is blank right now, which is terrible, but Well, definitely, I know it's all listed on your website so we're gonna put put all it on there.
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I need to link you up with my last interview that I had with robert tolan.
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He is a.
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He lives up in ventura county here in california, which I guess is kind of rural outside of los angeles area.
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There's a little.
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I guess you get up to the upper parts of that county and there's a little more country.
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But I need to connect with him because he is a great asset of resources and just advice, especially for the Southern California area.
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So, overall, can you share some of the most impactful programs or events that you've organized so far?
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Our first big multi-day event was in June this past year in 2024.
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Multi-day event was in June this past year in 2024.
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We took it was like a third iteration of what we've been doing, but we took it and spread it over two days.
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So we had today, we had our golf tournament and date nights.
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So we brought in speakers from across the country.
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They came in and did a Freedom First speaker panel and then turned like our little theater into a 1940s post-World War II celebration lounge.
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It was really really cool.
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Had them talk about what freedom means to them and things like that, and that really got the community engaged and that got other veterans that aren't used to engaging in forums like that talking and feeling some camaraderie.
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So that was really really cool.
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And then we had a flag ceremony.
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So we had one flag in the ground for every veteran that had served in that county since the Revolutionary War.
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So there's about 3,000 flags.
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That was also very cool.
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And then the next day was like the big event.
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We had veteran resources, craft vendors, food trucks, music.
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Tristan Trick came up.
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We had some cool music there for the town.
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It was just really a celebration of rural veterans and their families and the goal with these events is to have communities that love to support veterans, but they don't know how to support them.
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Beyond saying like thank you for your service and hanging a banner on Main Street, how do you support them in an actionable way?
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And, as a result of that event, people learn how to support them, and so after that I would have people texting me, emailing me, like, Michelle, I know this person is struggling.
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Do you have any resources for them?
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Whereas before they didn't know who to go to, and we have a legion in town up there and they're really, really great resources.
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I want to help revitalize American legions in small towns, but if you're a civilian, it kind of feels like you're on the outside between.
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These resources allowed people to ask and just get curious, and so I thought that was a really really cool thing.
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Yeah, it can be really almost scary or unnerving for a civilian to walk up into a military environment and not understand the language, the lingo or not feel like they're a part.
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I was dealing with military spouses.
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A lot of times they don't feel like they're part of the whole military experience.
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A lot of times they have sort of imposter syndrome and I know that you're a military spouse and still going strong after all these years right With dealing with the military life, the moving and things like that.
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How do you think that has, overall, inspired you so far with this whole nonprofit that you're doing, geared towards the specific target audience that you're seeking to help?
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In a lot of ways.
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I mean here we're at Fort Bragg, liberty and the community here is so is so cool.
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I mean, the military spouse community, specifically at Fort Liberty, is just unreal.
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There's fantastic ladies and men doing awesome things and that in itself is really inspiring.
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We chose to live in the country outside of the noise of brag and it just it reminds me why I'm doing what I'm doing because I chose to live out here, because I wanted this lifestyle of rural peace and quiet.
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I wanted to raise my kids, you know where they could get dirty and be part of cultivating the land and things like that.
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But you do feel isolated out here and there's not.
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I mean, we live in a development but like we're all still pretty spread out so you have to make an effort to go meet your neighbors and know your neighbors and a lot of people who move to rural areas are not doing that.
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If you're an outsider moving to a rural area, it's pretty intimidating because you have like your groups, you have your cliques.
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Rural areas are very tight knit, very suspicious of outsiders and not everybody is like me.
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Where I go and knock on my doors and say hi, you know, I'm Michelle, we're the Langs.
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If you hear yelling, it's just me and my kids, like I don't call the cops, but not everybody's like that.
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So that's why I'm really excited about building this online community so people can have that and then they can be encouraged to create these in-person little meetups around the country, like that's what I see happening with our online community understand they're saying well, what's, what's the problem?
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like, you have the same benefits as everybody else.
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Like, why is there a problem with that bridge of of being in the military or getting out of the military?
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Understand that, even with from my personal experience.
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When I went in active duty as an officer, um, I commissioned and then months later I was OBC and then next thing you know, I'm in Iraq.
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Next thing you know, I'm like.
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At my first duty station I literally lost connection with everybody that I went to college with Everybody back from my hometown.
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It was almost like and especially back then there wasn't the internet like it is today we weren't following each other on Facebook and everything like that.
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But you just start a whole new chapter in your life and you know things change and people change.
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Paths literally split off into you know why intersections and people go different ways and when you come back you don't have those same roots anymore.
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They're gone.
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You know anyone that you knew the chances that you had to network.
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You know and I always tell folks that when you get out of the military to find the ideal salary, the ideal position, the ideal job location, all those three things in one basket is very difficult to do because you've spent the last like four plus years doing military stuff that 95 of the country would never understand what the hell it even means.
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They don't know.
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So I've sat across from recruits before having a conversation talking about what an army captain does, what I did when I was at war, and they're just looking at me like deer in the headlights.
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They have no idea.
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So that's what we're talking about when we're talking about you know needing the resources and the support because it takes time to get gelled back with the community and get gelled back with the civilian life.
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And you know it's great that you are so geared and I know you're a busy mom and you're a military spouse and you've got all these things going on in your life.
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Michelle, you know, over the next five to 10 years I mean you mentioned that you want to start these smaller rural communities all over the US and right now you're in Raleigh, right?
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Yeah, we're just south of it.
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So the event that you just did, what city was that in?
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That was in Pennsylvania.
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Pennsylvania.
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Very, very rural like, not even close to any city.
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My hometown, mccombsburg, pennsylvania, is where it was at.
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This year we're doing it again in Pennsylvania, but we're doing another one here close to Fort Liberty, because every year we want to add another event.
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My goal long term is to do one of these Operation Honorary events in every 50.
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I would love to do it all in the same weekend, like every year.
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I think that would be so cool.
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But that's a long term goal because people just felt so supported there and people don't do things for rural America and I really think and the people on my team, we just believe that rural America is like the next old new frontier, that's, that's where it's at.
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There's so much opportunity there.
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People, especially after being isolated for a couple of years, you know people want to go and they want to heal and people are moving to the country to do that.
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Yeah, I live in LA and there's just in the last couple of years there's been a mass exodus of people leaving the big city, moving out into Idaho, texas, nevada, utah, just getting out of here, you know, because it's just, I think it's more of a mental meditation more or less just to get out and be in nature and be around people and try to ground yourself with family.
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So, overall, what is one thing that people misunderstand about rural communities and their veterans?
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Probably the number one thing about rural communities.
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Growing up in a rural community, I know this for a fact.
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If you're not from rural America, people automatically assume that you're dumber than them always.
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I mean, we've been called all sorts of things, you know, hillbilly.
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Even the town next to us used to call my uh school stump humpers.
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I mean just like so I like to see that mascot I know, but they, just they.
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I mean people think that people live, that live in rural america, are are dumber than them, are less than, and that is so far from the truth.
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Farmers especially, they're engineers, they're innovative, they're hardworking, they're mechanics.
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A lot of common sense.
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So much and the way that they can.
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Just, it's almost intuitive how they can look at a machine and figure it out because they have to, because it costs too much to take it to a mechanic to repair a million dollar piece of equipment, and that's the reality.
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I think that's the biggest misconception of rural America.
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Number two veterans living in rural America are not identifying as rural veterans.
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That's not really a coined term, that's not something that people say, and there's definitely different needs that are associated with rural veterans, like the lack of healthcare options, and people don't understand community care or they've been told that they can't use community care when that's not true.
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Sometimes you have to fight the system a little bit and say, yeah, it is within my rights to use community care and this is in the community care network.
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That's the reality.
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That's happening too.
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Also, accessing telehealth, you have broadband issues.
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There are so many issues that rural veterans deal with that they may not even know that they're dealing with, because they don't one know it's an option to ask a question, because when you're in the military you don't ask questions, right, you just you do what you're supposed to do.
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So now you're in the civilian world where, like, something doesn't go your way, well, now you need to advocate for yourself.
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Whenever you've been, it's been beat into you not to advocate for yourself because somebody else is supposed to be taking care of you, taking care of the problem.
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So my goal is to really open up people's eyes to the possibility of growth and thriving where they're at, by just using the benefits that are available to them.
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Yeah, I think that's huge One of the things I think in my intro I talk about.
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You know, when the cadence you know fades out, who's going to tell you when to pivot and how to pivot?
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And nobody will, and really it's kind of a backstabbing world in a certain sense.
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My first job coming out of the military, there were other supervisors there that literally were all about sabotaging because I was 27.
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I was educated, had a master's degree, came back, had combat.
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I basically outclassed them on paper, so they thought that I was a threat and they treated me like so, and so it was almost sabotage sometimes, but fortunately I did have other veteran supervisors there that were willing to help me out.
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But it was still a really rough storm to ride out when you're that young and you're just're just trying to make it like at the end of the day.
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I'd really love to hear some of your memorable success stories that you've had so far.
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It's been what three years for you doing this right, yeah gosh there's.
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this is the tough part, because I I don't often get to see the final result of people's journey and their growth.
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Like last gosh was it.
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Last year I had somebody call me and she was very, very upset.
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It was very difficult for her to get out the words that she needed to say.
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She had been through a lot and she was alone in a new city and she needed support.
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She was very sick.
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Anyway, long story short, we were able to connect her with the resources that she needed to get her through that rough patch.
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Mentally she was not doing well.
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We could connect her with people.
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That's what she needed, and I did have people report back to me that she was doing well and, you know, standing on her own two feet again, and that's um.
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That was really good to hear, because a lot of times I just point people to resources, I do a warm handoff and get them in the system, Um, and then I don't get.
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I don't know what happens to them.
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I work so hard with so many people.
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I just had another veteran in Wisconsin who transportation is an issue.
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He couldn't get to appointments.
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He couldn't get to these other.
00:20:09.678 --> 00:20:19.663
He was battling some legal stuff too, and and I was the only person that wanted to talk to him about it and pointed him to resources and kept fighting for him.
00:20:19.750 --> 00:20:31.365
And what I've learned about people that ask for help is that they are some of the most resilient, strong people because they're out there willing to do the work and keep fighting for themselves.
00:20:31.365 --> 00:20:37.391
And I think that there's this misconception that if you ask for help, that you're weak and you're not a man.
00:20:37.391 --> 00:20:41.946
But the people that I talk to that are coming to me asking for resources.
00:20:41.946 --> 00:20:51.951
Whether it's I'm about to be homeless or I need help with the VA or I need an entrepreneurship resource, there's a whole gamut of people.
00:20:51.951 --> 00:20:54.358
The people that ask for help are the strongest people.
00:20:54.358 --> 00:21:03.320
They're the people that are willing to fight for their lives and fight for their future, and I think that's really, really important for people to remember If you're thinking about asking for help.
00:21:03.320 --> 00:21:05.595
It takes a lot of strength to do that.
00:21:06.336 --> 00:21:07.460
Yeah, it definitely does.
00:21:07.460 --> 00:21:11.144
I know, when I first got out of the military myself, I literally threw everything away.
00:21:11.144 --> 00:21:12.611
I wanted nothing to do with the military.
00:21:12.611 --> 00:21:13.673
I wanted to separate myself.
00:21:13.673 --> 00:21:15.135
I didn't want to be identified as a military.
00:21:15.135 --> 00:21:16.699
I would never talk about it really all that much.
00:21:16.699 --> 00:21:21.736
Other people would remind me about it, but I just wanted to move on with my life.
00:21:22.277 --> 00:21:37.144
And then here I am back at the table again, trying to help out the community with just awareness, spreading awareness and getting involved with nonprofits and speaking to absolutely fascinating folks like yourself who are so driven to run a non-profit like this.
00:21:37.403 --> 00:21:53.780
Um, and I and I totally see the need of it um, I grew up part of my life in the middle of cornfields in ohio, so, living in a rural community, um, I know that it's very limited access and folks out there sometimes, you know, just like everywhere else, for the most part you know they don't want the help.
00:21:53.780 --> 00:21:55.234
You know I got it like I'm gonna.
00:21:55.234 --> 00:22:03.278
I'm to shoulder this myself and I'm going to move on and drive on Like we're always taught in the military overall, like collaboration wise.
00:22:03.278 --> 00:22:09.036
Do you have any plans, um, to partner to maximize your impact?
00:22:09.036 --> 00:22:27.933
Like is the VFW or American Legion, uh, in the works to, I mean, cause I know they have a very massive outreach out there, but anything like that in the future we, we do, and I just brought somebody on our board who is gladly taking over strategic partnerships, which I'm very glad.
00:22:27.973 --> 00:22:34.238
That's his strong suit and that's something that we're going to focus on on 2025.
00:22:34.238 --> 00:22:46.584
Because they're, like, even here in north carolina north carolina is the second, uh, highest rural veteran population in the united states.
00:22:46.584 --> 00:22:50.759
Texas is number one, north carolina is number two, but we're not doing much.
00:22:50.759 --> 00:22:56.881
Like I and I think, like out of the 100 counties here in north carolina, like 90% of those counties are rural.
00:22:56.881 --> 00:22:58.973
So North Carolina is super, super rural.
00:22:58.973 --> 00:23:04.392
There's a Rural Economic Development Center here that's really active.
00:23:04.573 --> 00:23:09.567
We are a national brand, but we also need to look at what we can do locally.
00:23:09.567 --> 00:23:35.382
So, going into these different states, seeing who we can partner with Like in North Carolina, it's the Rural Economic Development Center, in Pennsylvania, it might be the PA Department of Veteran Affairs so we have to be very strategic about different states and their needs, because that's another reason that people are getting overlooked is it's not just a blanket fix for every state or every population.
00:23:35.382 --> 00:23:49.762
You know, every everybody has their own culture between these states, and so that's something that we're also keeping in mind, too is how can we serve them the best based on what they actually need, not what they what we think they need.
00:23:50.090 --> 00:23:56.915
Yeah, I think that that's that's being specific and being on target with the actual resource and the help is really important.
00:23:56.915 --> 00:23:59.980
The authenticity is also, you know, as equally important.
00:23:59.980 --> 00:24:08.565
So if somebody reaches out to you that lives in like Arkansas, are you able to provide them with assistance for resources out there?
00:24:09.670 --> 00:24:12.778
I thought I just helped somebody in Arkansas, but it was Alabama.
00:24:12.778 --> 00:24:15.857
Yeah, arkansas, I mean anywhere in the United States.
00:24:15.857 --> 00:24:16.692
That's what we do.
00:24:16.692 --> 00:24:18.336
Is we just connect people to resources?
00:24:18.336 --> 00:24:27.095
If you can't use what's on our website, which is growing, our goal is to have no more than a hundred resources on there, because I don't want it to be overwhelming.
00:24:27.095 --> 00:24:35.154
But if you can't use what's on there, I'm doing the work personally to connect you with the right people in your state or close to your hometown.
00:24:35.515 --> 00:24:40.220
Yeah, I think that's huge because sometimes folks can get kind of lost in the sauce.
00:24:40.220 --> 00:24:49.771
You know, when you're Googling you're just calling like numbers that don't work anymore, emailing emails that don't work anymore, trying to find that help right and things just aren't updated Overall.
00:24:49.771 --> 00:25:01.232
How does Operation Auto Rule Salute contribute to the broader policy or changes or awareness for our rule veterans overall?
00:25:02.875 --> 00:25:16.019
well, one of the things that I really want to work with the va on specifically is better access to community care, because that is that's huge.
00:25:16.019 --> 00:25:25.156
In my town, in my hometown in Pennsylvania, people have to drive at least an hour and a half to get to a VA.
00:25:25.156 --> 00:25:33.980
So I mean, some of them do that, but then some of them don't do that because that's eating up their entire day.
00:25:33.980 --> 00:25:37.195
People don't have the time off or they don't have a driver.
00:25:37.195 --> 00:25:46.709
Meanwhile there's a critical access hospital with a specialty service clinic right there that they could have a relationship with, but they don't know about community care.
00:25:46.709 --> 00:25:50.305
They don't know that they can go 45 minutes away to take care of these things.
00:25:50.305 --> 00:25:59.154
So people's health is suffering and health problems are not getting caught because they're just not going and utilizing care that they've earned.
00:25:59.316 --> 00:26:02.713
You know and for folks that don't know, what are you talking about when you mentioned community care.
00:26:03.015 --> 00:26:13.421
So the VA, in order to try and limit these health care gaps for people that either are too far from VA or if the VA is too overwhelmed, they have designated.
00:26:13.421 --> 00:26:24.984
They've basically built partnerships with local hospitals or local specialists where you can go to that specialist and you can be seen and it's still covered under your insurance through the VA.
00:26:24.984 --> 00:26:29.821
But unfortunately, a lot of people don't know that this program even exists.
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