Tactical Drone Pilot Course for Executive Protection, Bodyguard, and PSD Operations with Covered 6 Founder & CEO Chris Dunn

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It's actually about things like we're talking about today, leveraging technology and drones and being smarter. I think people need to understand that there are three things right now that they're like legs on a table that are affecting security. Those three need to be addressed. And there might even be a fourth there, but the three are: physical, technology, but the last would be cyber is cybersecurity. Those are the three legs of the the current table of a security platform for any government, any law enforcement, any agency even the military.

Warriors fall in, it's time for formation. Today, we're joined with a professional who has over 30 years of professional experience between the United States Army, law enforcement, and private sector security. He created the first private security specialist training standard for the US Department of Labor, and has trained 1000s of professionals in private security, executives, law enforcement, and foreign officials. And the list goes on and on what this man has accomplished. Today, we're joined with Mr. Chris Dunn. And he is currently the CEO and founder of Covered 6, which is a business that offers some of the best, cutting edge, security training, risk assessments and implementations out there. Over the span of his career, he's developed a lot of vital aspects regarding the safety and security for the general public. And today, we're going to talk about tactical drone pilots course for executive protection and dignitary protection. With today's evolving tech scene, drones have been engaged in helping the security front of this ever-changing, violent world. We're very fortunate today to be joined with Chris. I want to say thank you so much for joining us today, Mr. Dunn, on The Morning Formation.

Yeah, thank you, sir, falling in for duty, like the morning formation.

The honor is all mine, man. I really appreciate it. It was so great to reach out to you and get in touch with you because I went through your entire LinkedIn profile. And I was just absolutely impressed. Everything from being a US Army veteran to jumping into law enforcement to getting into the private security sector, and actually starting your own ...or your own company. You've done so much. And it's an honor to have you on the show today. And I just wanted to start out by asking you, if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself to the audience and telling us a little bit about yourself.

Cool! Like you said, I'm Chris Dunn, I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Covered 6. But more than that, yes, many years ago, I was a veteran in the Army, a military police. And then I went on to the LAPD. And I had a great law enforcement career and really enjoyed that and then got into the private sector now for about 10 years. And I can say honestly, after, it's more like 35 years, the private sector has been amazing. Because really, it's been an opportunity to start a business, which is next to impossible for me. I never went to business school, I didn't have a clue, and then go on this journey. And now have, you know, this opportunity to help a lot of different people, including majority of the people, we employ, train, and work with are veterans. And so giving back to that community and hearing the stories of the people that were helping transition and or active duty, we also train law enforcement and active duty military. We do medical programs for the military. So and we develop products. And so Covered 6 has been a real dream of mine because I'm a big gear nut. And then I got into the services and was able to translate all those years into something more meaningful, and effecting some changes and innovation on a large scale. And that's what we're doing at Covered 6. So I'm writing my final chapter now of this. And it's been like this Forrest Gump kind of journey from way back in the days of the, you know, my original K pot and A1 if anyone knows what that is. They know that's how long it was in the army.

Yeah, man, I went to basic training in 1999. And we were still wearing BT, BTUs and a lot of the stuff that, my dad retired in 91. We were still wearing the same stuff that he had. And it wasn't until like the early 2000s, the kickoff of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we started getting some of the newer, newer items. And so I was part of that too when I joined initially.

Yeah. They always kicked down the the war surplus to the to the trainees and so we had Vietnam era weapons that were still inside the boxes with lube but they were, they worked they still worked.

Yeah, I'll tell you what, it's yeah, just thinking about you know, because I started out enlisted in the National Guard so went through basic training and AIT it and then I eventually got commissioned as an officer, and went active duty. I saw that whole transition. And it's strange today to even see like what type of equipment the military is issuing out and how it's different. Even the uniforms are completely different. So let's get into it. And I want to ask you, since you started in security and law enforcement after leaving the military, what are some of the massive changes that you've seen so far?

You mean with the military or law enforcement?

Well, I mean, with with security and law enforcement, like what have you seen over...because I know you work directly with law enforcement now, what are some of the changes that yeah, what are some of the changes that you've seen over the years?

I think there's, you know, there's obviously been some major changes. And a lot of that has to do with using technology and kind of being more outside the box and less traditional in the way that that we fight crime. And I think the biggest change for all of us has been dealing with, kind of what's happening in the world right now. And then specifically in the United States, and how law enforcement has to have this massive, heavy lift. Including, you know, in these riots scenes where the military or the national guard comes in and working directly more often. You know, back in my day, a protest or a riot was something that would happen every once in a while, you know, years would pass. Now we've seen them almost seasonally. And when we add all the things that are happening to the threat state with crime. Just here in Los Angeles crime, murder's up 57%. Back when I was a crash officer, a gang officer for the LAPD, if crime went up, 5%, we put out a task force. So when you look at the things that law enforcement is dealing with, and many law enforcement are ex-veterans, it's a big pool for them, they recruit heavily for them. And if you're looking for that, they are hiring, more than they ever did. It's changed because what you have to be now is a lot more empathetic. And you have to have emotional intelligence. And, and you have to be careful what you say. And you guys, you know what I'm talking about with all this stuff, the military has started to implement that, that stuff. So I think you have to be more sophisticated, you got to be smarter. But the bottom line is the bad guys still have guns, they're still criminals. And the mission is more than ever dangerous and it's, and it's something that has to be approached with a lot of sophistication. And you're seeing a lot more officers, another big thing that I've seen, is seek out outside training, become better at everything. We have a lot of police officers that pay for their own medical training, take a life, save a life. We have officers that come in, they buy their own equipment, they're buying their own ballistic stuff, you know, and they're not waiting to get issued. Because, you know, we all know how issue is. But the investment that they're making is for themselves and their partners, and I see better training. But still, there's never enough. And that's that's the biggest thing is that in this day and age, I think the threats. It was bad when I was when I was a cop, obviously, we had to get the gang wars and the coke wars. Because I worked major narcotics undercover and swat and all those other things. It was rough. But now it seems like it's rough with a whole other layer of issues. And we're using a lot of technology on the good side to to fight crime, which I think changes the game where we don't even, you know, have to contact people. We can follow them around, like you said with a drone, use cameras and identify them and then hit him with a warrant. So things have changed for sure.

Yeah. And I can see that you actually worked in law enforcement from 1995 to 2009. And that was at the, right at the gang wars that you're talking about, '95, when all that was going on, and then it continued on through right. So you've seen quite a bit, especially in LA being LAPD as well. So you have quite a bit of experience, which is fantastic.

People know about "Crash" and the movie "Colors" back in the gang wars when gangs first started. And all gangs actually started here in Los Angeles, the ones that we know of today, the Crips and the Bloods and the Hispanic gangs. But what we have now, believe it or not, is we have people coming in from outside other countries, you know, when you're talking about the what we call the Chilean burglars that have hit it all up and down the coasts. And there's these existential threats that we're dealing with. And they're unprecedent. And I'm in these meetings with law enforcement. And they're like, "What do we do?" And you have to almost get, you have to get really creative. And there's actually a term that I think your listeners would like to hear. And this was a military term and some people know. Do you know what VUCA means? V.U.C.A. Have you heard that? So it's a term that came out of Afghanistan. And it was described fighting the Taliban. It's volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. And that's really something now. That came out of the military. Obviously, the military is a great source for how to, you know, solve challenges that are on a massive, unprecedented scale. But that came out and then Harvard Business School adopted it, and they're using it as a means to describe the business scape of the global economy and the things that were happening globally. And so now law enforcement uses it, and how are we going to fight crime because everything's ambiguous. And, you know, it's all convoluted and, and, you know, it's it's a lot different now. So I use that word VUCA a lot. I tried to get vuca.com, but it was taken. And this was years ago. And the first time I heard that term was from an FBI agent who had just been at the San Bernardino terrorist attack, and he didn't go to sleep that night. I was at a school Symposium on active shooter, which is a huge topic right now, and has been, you know, was the impetus for starting this company, but has been for a while. And he said, "Everything is VUCA now." And I was like, we're all like looking around. And this was like, six years ago, when this, that came out, I think, five years ago now. It was a long time ago. He said, "Everyone turn off your phones." And he said, "These problems like active shooter, and not our problems, meaning law enforcement, this is gonna be a first responder problem, meaning you." And he was meaning these school officials, and these people, and veterans who worked there as security. So I knew then that I was on the right track of why I started the company. And, and that's a good story. Because it came actually, a university had approached me about some training. I was thinking, you know, I could shoot, I do these things as in law enforcement, maybe I'll start a training company. And at the time, everybody had these training companies like Travis Haley, and Magpul, and they were doing a lot of shooting and range training. And then I realized in the military, we didn't shoot every day, during training. We did a lot of other training, we had to learn a lot of other stuff. And same with law enforcement, we didn't go to the range every day. So it's not all about shooting. It's actually about things like we're talking about today, leveraging technology and drones and being smarter. So I can tell you this. Long story longer, sorry, I digress and I get going, so you got to cut me off, man and keep me in check. But I think people need to understand that there are three things right now that, they're like legs on this on a table that are affecting security. And all you know, those three needs to be addressed. And there might even be a fourth there. But the three are physical. Obviously, the component we're talking about today is executive protection, which would be considered physical security. Technology, which is I'll talk, I'll break that down next. But the last would be cyber, is cybersecurity. Those are the three legs of the current table of a security platform for any government, any law enforcement, any agency, even the military. And that tech piece, if you were like, "Wait, but isn't that cyber?" No, it's actually not. It's its own category. And here's why. Because you have artificial intelligence, biometrics, access controls, you have camera systems that have analytics now that can detect firearms. And most importantly, what I think is emerging is you have drones. And you have these autonomous abilities to collect intelligence. What the military has been doing successfully for years, is now going to translate into the private sector, but the private sector still hasn't figured out how to implement it yet.

No, that makes a lot of sense. And I can tell you that, from my experience being in Iraq, the battle drills that we did, and some of the things that we saw, you know, I speak to a lot of law enforcement. And they always talk about these things, and how the things that they dealt with overseas, when it comes to just even the basic textbook things. When, when something when something negative happens or something, something usually kicks off, one of my buddies always would tell me that, you're always going to be behind the eight ball. Nothing ever works, how you train and nothing is ever textbook. But in general, if you train those battle drills, similar to what we train in tactics, it's almost like an orchestrated event when it comes to your team doing something that's generally the same in real life. So what I'm saying is, when the crap hits the fan, at the end of the day, if your team has been training tactics, your team will never see something that you would a scenario that you would run in, in training, it's always going to happen sideways. And adapting and being flexible to those things is something that he said that being in the military and specifically in combat, has honed his skills, now working as a law enforcement officer. So a lot of what you're talking about makes a lot of sense when it comes to the battlefield to what's happening here, and learning those TTPs and those tactics on how to overcome those unfortunate situations to make them at least a winning situation or the best outcome situation. So that makes a lot of sense. And just from your background in general, I could see why you would start this company. And since we're talking about your company, would you mind talking to us about Covered 6 and what the academy entails as well as the type of training available and your overall services? You guys cover so much.

Yeah. And so it's a good question, because initially, all I wanted to do was a certain type of training. I wanted to do tactical training it was like, you know, I spent a lot of time on a team. And I thought I could bring something to the security industry with that because of active shooter. But then I realized very quickly, that we needed, we needed more, we needed almost like a college that could approach these things from a standardized way that we can offer these courses that were, they were compacted. And they were quick to get people into the job force, much like apprenticeships from the Department of Labor. And that's what we have, the apprenticeship program. Because, you know, take Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, we had veterans that had been deployed or in combat for, off and on for 10 years. Oh, it's still to this day. So for over a decade, longest war in history, I don't even know how long it is now. And if we're even still in it? We probably still have people doing something over there. You know. And so with those deployments, you literally, you know, World War Two was like four years. And you know, that was a quick, these are quick kind of theaters, you know, even Vietnam was quick. But we had the longest war in history, you have a kid that goes in, like, I went in at 18. If you spent 10 years, you're now 28, you have two kids, you drove a tank you come out. And the first thing they tell you is you got to go to college, to get ahead. So that's another four years. Now you're 32 years old. And you still don't have anything that equates, equates to what they would say is, you know, experience working at Amazon. And so I see a problem with that. I see a problem with, with guys that come out and gals that don't really have that direction. And they're like, "Hey, maybe I don't want to go to college. Maybe I need to get to work. And then I'll figure it out." Because I think college is a great thing. But I think you should go to college, when you know what you're trying to get and get specific training. You want a law degree, go to law school. So I knew early on that maybe we need some specific training. Now the security industry was a mess. When we looked at active shooter, we started doing assessments. When we started the company, we started, I had a university that was my first client. And they were like, "Hey, can you come in and bring your expertise and and look at what we're doing wrong?" They had to create their own SWAT team, because the local law enforcement base or what we call the it's kind of their outpost, they're there, they're away from the station, had shut down. And so there was going to be a 20 minute response time. Now we know it's five to seven minutes for an active shooter. So we had to create a company that provided better, easier, accessible training, less cost, not college, but get the college money. Well, initially, we didn't get it. So I just did it on my own. And we started training active shooter, we started training medical. But now Covered 6 has evolved into a full fledged...we're a vocational school, certified by the Bureau of Post Secondary Education, the DOL, the the Department of Rehab and the DOD. And now we're going for a full, advanced certification so that we can offer college credit in any state and we can move around. Because we have five programs now. We have physical security specialists, we have executive protection, we have cybersecurity one, two and three. So we have more than five actually. But those are three subsets. We have technology integration, and just got approved wildland firefighter. And so wildland firefighter, it's like "What? But what happened was, we were doing security during the Woosley Fire, everybody ran away and fire department left and said, "Hey, we're not, we don't got enough, we don't have enough resources." So I had security guys with hoses saving people's homes. And so I realized now this private public partnership model, privatization is going to be the future. So I started to create that with the training. Well, along the way people have been asked me this, like SpaceX said, "Hey, can you take over our security and provide veterans that are trained out of your schools?" And so I started to do that. And we started to get into services. And now we have everything from high end restaurants, hotels, universities, communities, cities, municipalities. And one of the most recent thing that I'm really proud of is our public private partnership with the Beverly Hills Police Department to deploy veterans on the street, armed supporting the police department and even answer radio calls. It's pretty incredible. And we're supporting them and even in riots, we provide medical rescue, you know, Riot Control, it's just been incredible. And then six new officers just went in to do what we call virtual patrol, which is to use drones and cameras to support and provide intelligence just like the military does with their drones you know, no attack capability obviously, but to use the intelligence gathering for the boots on the ground, so that we can literally track suspects and follow them in virtual pursuit. And it's incredible and so, so we are seeing the drone capabilities already being used by an actual city and there's there's about three of them around here that are doing it there. It's working well.

Wow, that's absolutely outstanding. And with that being said, you talked about the training, but what, does that also include the academy as well? Do you offer an academy for for folks to get into if they're looking to get into security, and do they continue on and provide services through Covered 6?

So the academy is out all five of those categories. So we have an academy for cyber, it's five weeks. We have a five week executive protection. And yes, they either work for us, but we want jobs all over the country. So we've partnered with major, you know, employers and people we think have higher standards and higher pay. For instance is who referred me to your podcast is Nick DuChene of Crisis 24. I'll give them a shout out because they're hiring and looking for veterans, and they have open jobs all over the country for executive protection. And people, you know, don't pigeonhole yourself in executive protection, because everyone thinks, "Oh, it's great, you know, we wear the suit, it's the high end celebrity thing." Private security is not the mall anymore. You know, they're being asked to, everything from military bases to now maybe potentially the border, using private security. And so, we already transport, I think even you know, the US Marshals uses private contractors to transport personnel. The private sector and private security is not the mall anymore. And that's, so those programs are in Academy. And we work really hard and we have a requirement in this company right now. And I think our placement rate is 80%. So we work really hard for that transition. We don't want to just give training. I'm not going to, you know, talk bad about college, but college nationally averages about 29% placement into a job. And my job is not to get the best job, it's to get the veteran started. So that they can get on their feet, build their resume, build experience, get promoted, and what we call that upward mobility track. And a lot of times, we get vets who come out and obviously, you know, been through combat had some bad times, and they're kind of down on their luck. They're living in their cars. I've encountered homeless vets that need just help. So I provide sometimes free housing. I donated over a million dollars of our own last year to helping veterans and giving them free educational opportunities. And then we get them a job. And you know, like we said, Ronald Reagan said the best cure for PTSD is a job. And I've seen it firsthand, I've seen guys come in my office crying, saying, you know, "My wife's leaving me, I was 10 year Marine." And next thing I know, they're running something at an aerospace company, you know, they're managing a team. And so really, we're really proud of that, that heritage and that track record of have Covered 6 now for over a decade of working directly with veterans as a resource.

I really appreciate what you said, man. Earlier about the career transition point, going back to you know, you broke it down by age and how our veteran, our veteran community gets out there at a certain age. Because I've ran into that before myself, where I had a great interview, was talking to a recruiter, I think it was in like maybe executive sales or something. And, and I had a great interview. Talked about my leadership, my my time in the military. And at the end of the day, they were looking to pay me as if I was an 18 year-old kid, you know, for a 20 year-old kid just applying for the first time, when I was almost 30 years-old. And I thought, you know, that's. Yeah, and it's just like, wel I don't have the experience for that. And what you just mentioned was, you know, veterans not being given an opportunity, as far as needing a job. And I always tell people this that, you know, to get the ideal salary, ideal location, ideal job, to all intersect together is very, very difficult to do in itself, just for the average person, not even in the military. Add the whole military thing into it, someone that's much older, has more responsibilities, maybe they have kids now, and then they come out here in the civilian world, that just doesn't quite understand the translation of experienced skills. And it makes it even more difficult. So I highly appreciate what you're doing as far as training our veterans to do what they already know. And that's, a lot of it is thinking on their feet, and a lot of the the tactics and things like that they've already employed. Even in the battlefield. I gotta say, it's not about just going bang, bang, bang, but it's all about the OP order before the mission. Planning, resources, understanding, like what your capabilities are. I'm sure it's the same when it comes to security as well. It's not just a big guy standing out in front of a door somewhere. But it's a lot more involved with that, than that when it comes to the assessments overall. And as far as drones, Chris, you know, you're involved in so many things, man. When I went to your website, I couldn't believe the amount of like dropdowns that I saw and the amount of training classes and courses and academies that you had going on there. But as far as drones, how are they being utilized right now within your own operations of Covered 6 and what are your plans in the future?

So drones 100% are going to play a large role in the future and why they haven't I actually don't know. I know some of the things I could say, you know, we were talking about pros and cons when we first started. And, you know, there's, they don't, I don't think they have negatives. I think they have pros and cons. And I think some of the cons, people just go, "I don't need another program, I don't understand." Because remember, it's just like anything. Even in law enforcement, when you have a trainer that does something that a certain way, "Oh, we don't need an ACOG, we've got open sights. I've been using it for 20 years, and I was in combat." It's the same type of mentality. Now here comes this piece of tech that needs support, training and implementation and management and policy. And it's just another job. But there's no doubt that they're going to play a role. They're going to play a role with Amazon deliveries. They've already, they're moving forward with their program, they've been testing them. They are going to play a role with everything from the weather, to fire spotting, which they're already doing to live interaction during civil unrest. So drones are being used. But there's no real opportunity, you have to become a police officer first and then get on a drone program there, and hope you don't, that program doesn't get disbanded or gets promoted by the chief. So there's really no drone training out there that has been specifically for getting a job. And so what I wanted to create was and I'll get to what, how we use them because you know, or I'll do that now. The reason I knew this would be important, it's kind of been the way that we've developed everything here is, you know, I'm not a business guy. I don't have an MBA, but I like supply and demand, if I see a need for it, and there's money behind it, I'm going to create the people that are going to do it. And veterans always fit that bill. They're willing to learn, they think outside the box, they're available in their lives. And one thing is they're motivated to work on a team. And their mindset has always been like, "I'm going to, I'm going to help somebody." Not necessarily for pay, because everybody knows you don't get rich in the military. So you know, same with law enforcement. You do the job because you love the job, and it happens to pay your bills. That's kind of the way we got into it. If you get into it for anything else, you're just driving for dollars, but the passion and the purpose is before the profit. So with the drones, we've used them successfully to actually catch. We had, I'll just give you a case with the Chilean burglars. We had these burglars coming in on Visas that would come here for three months. And they would commit these high end burglaries, they're getting millions of dollars. They almost got the Super Bowl playbook. And they're going up and down the coast, hitting high end neighborhoods. They're tracking people using eye trackers, those little pods that you can stick on something, they're falling them back with their Rolex and their Bentley. And they're watching them using drones. They're using drones. This is the crazy thing is that the bad guys are using them because you have these little commercial DGI drones that you can throw up or you can buy the disposable ones on your phone. And they're scouting the home so they can burglarize them. So that law enforcement has a really difficult time with these guys, because they're coming in, they do their their crimes, and then they head back to Chile. And this is a real thing. And this is something you can Google about this Chilean burglars. It's a crime wave. So the way we got them was, I told this, this particular city, I said "You got to turn us loose, you know, I've got veterans, this is what we do. We know how to like set up observation posts and choke points." And we got on the trails because they were using urban interface. So what we did was electric bikes to be quiet, thermal imaging on the ground with guys. And you know, they're ready to take care of business and drones at night. We caught them the first night. We were the first security company to actually catch a group of Chileans. Then we caught them the second night. And so eventually we had the city that was crime free. They had had 18 incidents in the month before. So we were able to prove this point. Now we've done it successfully in other places. But there's an example of using a military model, intelligence in technology and the sky, boots on the ground, you know, choke points and geographic advantages. And it's basically a military operations. In law enforcement, we did things like that in specialized units, but we really didn't do it in law, in traditional law force. Like the patrol guy, they get a radio call, they drive to the front of the house and go, "Hey, what happened?" Well, they ran out the back and they use their urban interface to expel. So you don't you know, how are you going to catch those people? They know what law enforcement does, they've patterned their enemy. So we just thought outside the box. And we weren't there to replace law enforcement because we actually, were getting so good at it that the sheriff's gave us a radio. And they said, "Hey, we're going to work together." And they would do the heavy lifting when they went in pursuit. And we just spotted and put them on target. And that's a classic military operation like a foreign observer type. And then eventually we'd run into them and I had some Marines you know, were so excited. They're on leave. And they were working for us. They're there in the guard. So they go back and forth. They tackle them. And I said good job and they got high fives. You know the city was so happy that they tackled these burglars. And they're like, "Man, I want to do this for a living." And I'm like "Well when you get out." And so one of them got out from Twentynine Palms and now he works for us and he's out there full-time. And, and that city went to zero burglaries. So drones, they also play a role. We're using it for fire. So part of our fire program has a drone certification as well. So our tech integration is drone operations, DJI Sach slash, what we call in civilian world is, fusion centers. And we're using drones with the 107 licensing and the way to use them in urban environments. And we're using them also in our fire for fire spotting and fire trajectories. So we have two applications that we're teaching.

Wow, that's, that's incredible. And you're really thinking outside the box as far as the utilization of the drones. It sounds like Covered 6 is certainly a force multiplier when it comes to helping the first responders do their job. And that's something that we definitely need today is someone out there to do that. So you offer those two types of specific trainings. But you mentioned before the interview that you were starting up a type of training that was going to be the first of its type in in the United States. Was that was that one of them?

That's one of them. And believe it or not, you're not going to believe this, but I still can't believe. There is no program that we could find that was at any enterprise level to teach an individual how to use technology, like what we've been talking about, including the drones that DJI Sachs, putting in the in the cameras and monitoring networks. And so we had to create it. And believe it or not, like even camera schools don't exist. And cameras, from the military, to the private sector, to the corporate world. Everyone, in even the homes and even residential civilians are using some sort of cameras with analytics. Look at the ring camera system. It has like analytics that will notify you when bad guys are coming in. It has night vision on it, you know. These little things from Best Buy are kicking ass. Well, there's no school to actually know how to maintain them, install them, and, you know, fix, fix them, and use them. So that's what we've done with the tech integration and then now fire. But tech integration is, we're really excited to get that started. Because that will be the first school. The fire program, there's been other trainings, but nothing that will take transitioning vets and walk them right to agencies to support the fire mission on the fire line as Wildland to certified firefighters. And so that's another first. There's, we got the first standard from the Department of Labor for the physical security specialists. But people have been doing Guardian military bases under contract. You know, the nuclear agencies used ex-veterans and law enforcement, and then obviously, law enforcement. But I want these quick vocational models that provide max certifications, so that it builds your resume, gets you quickly to the job, and what we call on the job training. We've all heard of it. But actually like an apprenticeship level, you learn the job from your employer and get started. The first job for a veteran getting out of the military is to get a job. That's your first job. And like you said, if you're waiting for that golden job, or that you know, that high pay, you're doing yourself a disservice because what people are looking for is experience. And they're not looking for military experience. Military experience will play a role and will help you move quicker, faster and more efficient. Especially if you have like military leadership experience, you're gonna be able to leverage that in the private sector. But you have to learn the nuances. And what we have in our industry, in a lot of service industries and the, our clients is we get "Well, we hope they're not too militaristic." You know, because guys come out scary. They got tattoos on them. They're wearing the grunt style shirt, you know. What do you do for fun? "Yeah, I shoot my AR 15." You know, we were like, "Okay, hold up, we're, you know, you're working for the four seasons now." And they don't realize veterans are very adaptable. So what we do in our training, the first thing I tell them is, "Look, you need to tuck that away right now." Because you're gonna break that stuff out. Because when bad things happen, everybody calls the the son of a gun that can get it done. And that's the veteran. But you got to tuck that away and learn the civilian side and transition back. And then you're going to put those two things together on the job. And watch what happens. And the promotions are incredible to watch guys move very quickly, because of that mindset.

Yeah, I totally understand what you're saying when it comes to this civilian employer, being afraid of the military veteran. I mean, we all get out of the military. And we get that question. Oh, "Have you ever killed anyone?" And it's like,...It's just, it's just like, well, you know, "You've been watching too many movies." Or, you know, it just the veteran community, at times is a very misunderstood community. And a lot of, and that's what makes it so hard to explain to folks out there. Especially folks who are looking to hire you, you know, how is your training relevant to what we're doing here? And so what you just mentioned, kind of made me you know, chuckle a little bit because I understand completely what you're saying and, and I myself had been misunderstood by family, friends and potential employers. Well, as far as what I did in the military, so I 100% understand where you're coming from with that. For anyone out there, for our military veterans, service members that are currently in right now, and maybe leaving the military in the next few years, and they're thinking about becoming a drone pilot as a career, but maybe they've never done it before, what advice do you have for them, or even the seasoned folks out there who are looking to transition those skills into the civilian side?

So, when I had said that, the holistic approach for security footprints and secure private security management and law enforcement, it applies to yourself too. You know, you have to be multifaceted. And if you look at a lot of veterans, they didn't just have one identifier as a skill, a lot of times they, we all start at infantry. And then we started to move to AIT. And when our advanced training, and then we got even moved to other specialized units, and then they get specialized. And it's the same for the civilian world, you know. You're going to move into things that you never thought you're going to do. I originally thought, when I was in high school, that I was going to be an architect. And here I am the CEO of a company, that's literally, you know, doing things that I never thought I'd do with patented products and meeting international dignitaries and briefing people on a level that just is unprecedented. And for me to make that transition, and having then been in college, I literally took a class that said, you might want to go to the military and be a military police officer, if you want a career in law enforcement. I signed up at 17. I couldn't wait to get out of college. And then once I got the military, I loved the military. And then I when I was in the military, I was like, "Man, I love this job, I want to go the LAPD." So as always, I didn't know where I was going, I just knew that I had to keep keep proactive in that. And I think for people transitioning, they need to take every advantage of bettering themselves. If you can get a degree while you're in the military, do it, you know, do something. But if you can get training that will help you when you get out, do it. But always, learn a second language, do something because what you're doing is you're building this resume. And believe it or not, when I have people that we interview, let's say we did have an opening for someone to use drones, I wouldn't be necessarily looking for someone who had a Reaper in Afghanistan. I'm going to be looking for somebody who has very good social skills, who wants to work on a team, who literally has bettered themselves. "Hey, I actually speak a second language." Because I always ask veterans, you know, I know they can shoot. And most of them are warriors, because that's like, kind of the preconditioning and I get their resumes. You know, I can tell by resume, where you were stationed, were you Ranger Battalion, you know, or were you just tab? You know, we know all the things because I've got SEAL Team Six guys here. We know. We've all in our own ways have been in different specialized things. But the biggest question I ask them, "What do you do for fun?" You know, "What type of person are you? Are you a family man? What kind of sports do you like?" We like that because we're a training company. We can train anybody to do that. And so companies today are looking for what we call emotional intelligence. And this isn't just some silly little thing. This is that that layer, thinking man with a gun. Because if you asked a Marine, "What makes the grass grow?" We all know, blood makes the grass grow. Right. But that's not what you can say. So I tell people start thinking in terms of "What do I really want to do? What am I passionate about? What can I get behind?" And then get into it, get that job, even if it pays less, get into it. Don't you know talk so much about "Hey, I have a disability. Hey, I can't do this because I was this." And then I've got to, you know, the worst thing I had...and I won't say the worst thing, but it bothers me when people you know, put themselves down right away and say, "Well, there's reasons I'm not excelling in what I'm doing." I had a special forces colonel in here from Fort Benning. Not Benning but Louis. And he was, he said, "Chris, you know, I don't really believe in PTSD." Now, you know, that's arguable. But this was his perspective, from being a career military badass. He goes, "You know what, I think it's just a term for people. And it's used and it's misused a lot." And it probably exists, but he just didn't think of it as a crutch. You know, you can't use it as a crutch. And I've had people diagnosed with legit, PTSD, having been through some bad stuff, come out at the other end of it and realize all they needed was an opportunity to change their mindset and do something more meaningful, and use their military. And not actually have to, because the last thing you want people to tell you is, "Hey, you got to forget the military." No, we actually don't. We need to leverage the military. And this is what I tell military who want to be in law enforcement. Because I love somebody who's been in military and then law enforcement because they don't go "Well, you know, the military mattered more." They actually realized that the military is just the first part of their journey. And it helps them to start the second part, which is your new entirely different career. And I don't know why but a lot of special forces guys did in finance. I don't know why that is. I have a lot of hedge fund guys. I'm all "Well where were you?" "I was on the teams." And I'm like, geez, man, what do you guys, like recruit over there and, and get into banking? Yeah, but you should see those guys. They're smart, they're successful, tier one warriors, they get out and they're trying to, you know, they're trying to acquire my company, you know. And they're doing really well. And they're smart guys. But they've transitioned well, and they educated themselves, and they look for opportunities that were going to pay them, in something they enjoy. And most of them that are doing it, believe it or not actually enjoy that. I know, it's weird. Maybe they got all the adrenaline out. I don't know. But there's a lot of a lot of tier one guys that are doing finance,now. It's so funny, we joke about it.

You know, you know what I think about that specifically, is it, it's not their identity. A lot of them have been in it before. And I was talking to someone about this earlier. But when you have a job like that, and it becomes your identity and you're wearing tact gear and your time off and your and your it's part of who you think you are. Most of the guys that I known in special forces or SEAL teams and things like that, that job is not who they are. They are someone else, too, like they have a hobby or something else that they're really into. And it's really, it's really unique. And I think that's why those guys understand, like they get it. Like they get in the thick of it. But at the end of it all, when they take that uniform off there, there's someone else. I actually had a really, really interesting conversation a few months ago with a Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor recipient, Earl Plumlee. And he's just a very down to earth gentleman. And I was very fortunate to interview him for The Morning Formation Podcast. And I find a lot of the guys are just like that, where that job isn't necessarily who they are, it's just something that they do. But that's just my own perspective on that. But I want to go back to what you talked about earlier about having multiple MOS's and having multiple badges, like for example,

We call them Boy Scout badges.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's,...

MOS's work. That's exactly it.

Well, and I like that. I've never thought about that before. But while you're in the military, a lot of folks get multiple MOS's. A lot of folks are assigned to be the MBC, NCO or they're assigned to do a bunch of different tasks. And in reality, if you try to tie that to the civilian side, that would be like the equivalent of certifications. So you get certifications in project management. You get certifications in Scrum, but maybe you work in law enforcement. And you're getting a very, a very variety-driven type of skill set, where you understand how to run projects, which in law enforcement and insurance, executive security, you you do have projects as well. So you have that skill set. You're not just a narrow, skilled individual. And even in the military, they, they, they sort of force you to go to air assault, airborne, all those little special schools. Then they make you, you know, the NCO for MBC, the NCO for the, for the weapons, and it's sort of the same thing, man. You have to mix it up. And you have to get that, that that fanned out skill set of so many different things. You're not just an infantry man, or you're not just a transportation guy, or you're not just that, but you are like a number of different things. You wear a number of different hats. So it's the same in the civilian side as well. And I've never thought about that before. Until you just mentioned it. That's actually really, it's actually really clever. And it kind of changes your mindset when you think about that.

Yeah, we actually use the term here. We want Swiss Army knives. Yeah, we like guys that can, that can morph and you know, in modern terms of be a Leatherman. You know, you got, you got to have all those tools in there. And what a lot of people do is they get on that track. I'm going to be in law enforcement. I'm going to be a firefighter, I'm going to be these, you know, something else. And they get out and they realize that well, that's a two year process. You know, you got to do backgrounds, maybe you don't make it. Maybe you're in the Psych and you say something like, "Yeah, I was in combat, and I did have to kill people." They go, "How do you feel about that?" That old trap question. And so maybe you say the wrong thing, and maybe it's not has nothing to do with you, and you're fine. So I've seen that people get defeated, they're like, "Well, I've been trying to be a cop now for five years, Chris, I don't, I don't really know. You know, I'm working down at the tire shop." And I'm like, well then accept the fact that maybe that's not going to happen. The universe, you know, is happening around you. Life is what happens when you're making plans. Someone told me that long time ago. And so what we look for is that diversity. So I would say, yeah, there's drone, but get everything else that you can. Maybe, a lot of these guys that come through here, surprisingly, they're like, "I'm going to try cyber." Now, I should mention cyber is a great thing because we have you know, we've had amputees, we have disabled vets that are bound to sitting. And so the cyber keeps them in the game. You know, cyber warriors, there's a million open jobs for cyber. It's an incredible opportunity. Whether you're at Amazon, or you're still working for Raytheon, and you're you're fighting, you know, you're still working for the military, and you're in the fight. But right now cyber is wide open. And we we create a program that can literally take someone with no knowledge and get them to the Help Desk at Amazon, start earning good money. And even with the drone thing we're talking about, a lot of the guys will grab for that are cyber guys. Because it is technical, we were talking about this. If you think about the information, it's a camera in the sky. The drone doesn't do the work, the drone is just collecting information. It's taking a camera, you know, obviously we do have thermal, we have other, you know, technology on the drone, whatever the package is, but once that thing goes up, it's just an elevated information gatherer. It's the people that are gathering that information. If you're sitting in the talk, which what we call a fusion center in civilian world. And you have to have people. You don't have all the military people you have in those in those command centers, like you have a minimal staff, maybe three of you, or one of you or two of your with the guy in the field running the drone. Then who's going to process that information? Who's going to call the police and actually get them the right information to keep track of the suspect? Who's gathering other intelligence, if there's multiple suspects, there's things happening on the ground? The direction of the fire, resources that are in jeopardy, more resources needed. Those are command decisions that will be made by a drone operator. And if you don't need a command option to do. We have regular guys that we would consider you know, your entry level guys doing stuff like that, because they're trained to do it. But their mindset was, I'm smart. I was an infantry man. Now I'm a tech guy. Not "Oh, stay in your lane, man. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wear 511 for the rest of my life. And that's my, I'm gonna either get a job as a firearms instructor, or I don't know what I'm gonna do." And, you know, I always tell them, anything's good. But always give yourself a different track and look for something that has upward mobility. Where is the next job and the next job after that? And what are the odds of you getting it by what you're working on?

Yeah, I mean, there are no one trick ponies. Now, I love, I love how you set up Covered 6 as far as being that that diverse skill set for many of your your folks out there. And just out of curiosity, approximately how many people do you have working right now for Covered 6, and how many of those are Veterans?

Right now, me personally, under our company in our banner with, even Cameron installers is 200. And we have 16 contracted, more like 20 contracted instructors that come from all over the country, all veterans that are all levels of, in all branches. And that's the one thing we are here, it's all branches. And in even some civilians. There's civilians that bring incredible amounts of of experience to the table. And they mix in with the veterans and they bring programs. I'm big on reversing the triangle that's normally, I'll use a, if people can see it, you think of a triangle, you think of an expert at the top of that triangle. And this is the way we did the Marine Corps. And this is what we do. I'm a gunny. And we teach you this way. Well, I've reversed that triangle to have all the experts at the top from every agency, law enforcement, military, civilian, corporate, four seasons, whoever, down with the veteran at the bottom. So that they can benefit by all that knowledge in that reverse funnel, that we're not teaching you doctor, we're just teaching you something that can maybe help you universally, principle-based learning. Even the way we approach our firearms programs and everything, we reverse that model, not because we did it this way, this is the way you should do it. This is the way most of the industry does it. And we're open to suggestions, always a white belt, you know. We're always learning, even when it comes to defensive tactics and executive protection, all the other things, we are pulling from everyone in the field constantly. And the reason I did the services and I continue to do them, as difficult they can be sometimes dealing with celebrities and corporations and liability, is how do you stay relevant? You know, as an instructor, and we're going to teach this if we don't have people in the field, I require all my instructors to go out and work in the field. Even if they've been with the State Department EP Special Forces guy that is Craig Ramsay, who's running our EP, he just went back to the field. He's taken an EP job to get back into it. He taught for three years at Covered 6, and he was going back, he's number one at state on the Anvo. And what a guy. And the reason that we hired him, he came through our course. This is a guy that worked number one, with Blackwater at the State Department, PJ and Special Forces guy. And he comes to a Covered 6 course because he wanted to see what the civilian side of training would be like because that's where he's at. Now, that's a real operator. He looks at his environment, "So I'm going to train for this environment." And so when he came through, I said, "Man, you need to work with us." And then he's been an advocate and instructor for three years. And just recently, he wants to get back in the game, he got an offer he couldn't refuse at a at an executive protection detail in Colorado, and he lives across country. And what they're doing now is they're shipping guys around. They'll actually pay you like a military style deployment or contractor model, where you go out for three weeks to three months, work jobs, high pay, and then head back. And this is happening in the United States. We're shipping people around. I'm looking to build right now, housing and barracks, so I can bring guys in to fight fires, work security, work protests from other states, and fly drones. whenever we need. With mobile, we want to build mobile drone units, so we can have mobile command posts and put them on, on problems. Like so the stuff going on here is just incredible. And the the biggest part of all of it, and then here's another story. I was in a symposium for cyber and technology in Beverly Hills two years ago, and a CIA guy was presenting. There was probably like 500 people in the audience. Tons of experience, from the agencies, everybody on down to the private sector, you know, Dell, every every company known to man. And the CIA guy goes, "Is anyone in here developing talent?" And nobody raised their hand, but Covered 6, there's only one company that thought. Because we all have the same resumes. Everyone, you know, goes on LinkedIn, and they have all these resumes. "I did this, I did that and this." But who, what companies are actually developing talent? And so the veteran that trains and invest in himself, when they get to sites, we've even seen this with our graduates, they'll get to the site, they get promoted in the interview. Now, how is that even possible? First, you were just trying to get the job. But they throw you a promotion, because what they had was the first veteran to walk through and go, "I did all this great stuff in the military." And half of them are from the military, they go, "Thank you for your service." Awesome. But the next part of the conversation is all the crap that I did outside the military and what I've done to better myself, prepare myself for this next leg of my journey, and how I'm going to benefit your organization because I did this. "You're hired, do you want to be a supervisor?" Because you know, they've got 100 guys that have the same resume. You know, it's got all those little acronyms on there from combat lifesaver on down. All those schools. But nobody has those civilian schools. And college is usually that replacement. "Well, I did go to college." Well, guess what. It still doesn't give you a specific degree to what we need you to do tomorrow. So that attitude of going into, "Hey, I'm willing to learn. Obviously, I have a lot to learn, but I can leverage my military, I can leverage my civilian training, I am ready to benefit this organization." That's the guy we want to hire. And they'll do all of it.

Your 100% right. And it's not just about college anymore. It's more about the certifications, or the extra training that you're getting that actually describes what level you're at. And I was in an interview, once. I've mentioned this before. Were I think that day, we had six veterans, talking to a recruiter, and they requested our transcripts. And so during that interview, they specifically had gone through my transcripts, and they looked up specific classes that I took, and they asked me, "So it looks like that you took this class right here. And it looks like it has something to do with this position you're applying for. Can you talk to us about what you learned in that class?" So getting those, getting those certifications or getting the extra training like what you're talking about, especially the training that you're offering through Covered 6 is what is going to help you stand out from the pack when you are interviewing for those other positions out there. And I love how Covered 6 is a one stop shop. I got really lucky to get you on here today, Chris. I don't know how the moon, stars and sun align because you are the perfect person to interview for this specifically. And for any veteran out there or service member out there that's interested in contacting you or interested in checking out Coverd 6, what's the best place for them to go to to do a little bit of research?

Come straight to our website at www.covered6.com. And quickly you'll be sent off to portals for different various agencies. We've had cyber NICE, DOD. We're certified and kind of vetted. And we spent the last decade kind of being quiet. I didn't do you know, podcasts or anything and and now our job is that now that we've proven this model, and we have some real numbers that we can fall back on and some real results and some real jobs available and to relationships with these big employers. Now we're going out. And that's how I got to you was, you know, Crisis 24. Again, I mentioned that it's largely ran by veterans. It's largely staffing veterans. It's GardaWorld is the parent company. These people are all over the world. And everything I'm talking about from, even drones they're discussing right now and how they're going to implement this in their, their world of protective services. And they have massive amounts, thousands of jobs. They would love to have veterans. And they're, they're the types of relationships that we're big on. People like Nick DuChene, whose been on your show.

Yeah, I'm very fortunate to get connected with you through Nick. I was very fortunate to have him on the show as well, because he was a huge plethora of knowledge when it came to executive protection. Him being an executive back then, was with Gavin de Becker. And now he's with Crisis 24. So Chris, just to final out the show, man, you've had so many great points. And you've covered so much today that I didn't even, I didn't even know until speaking to you. What final advice do you have? Or what message would you like to send out there to our military community regarding, whether it be drones, executive protection, or just anything in general, what would you like to tell them?

Across the board, and there's one thing that we we get consistently with veterans, whether they either come to us for various reasons. Some of them have exhausted their GI Bill, and I still give them help, and figure out a way forward. As I tell him, "Don't listen to the noise." If you find, and this is like maybe a cheesy, contrived business motto, but you've got to take,be self accountable and be taking responsibility for your future. And what we find in the military is, we were given our clothing, we were given our orders, we were given our shelter, we did everything. And it went on for a long time. And a lot of that goes through your developmental years. And it becomes like, this is the world. And I might be here forever. And God bless, thank God for career military people. But if you're that person, it's like, well, I did five years, but now I gotta hit hometown. You got to start thinking that you're coming out, put it in check, get a job, get going, get some training, keep investing, put your head down, bootstrap it, all these terms that people say, and don't listen to the noise, because you are 100% in charge of your destiny. And once we get people on that track, and they start making money, and they're their family start feeling better, and they're feeling, we get this a lot. It's like, "Well, I wanted to join a team again, I miss the military. And I'm like, that's understandable. So look for careers that have that esprit de corps, they actually have a uniform. Law enforcement for me was just an extension of the military. I literally, I went from one uniform to the next. And we had our academies were, you know the same thing. We were calling cadence and marching around. So I didn't know the difference. You just get paid more. And so if I hadn't had that, I would have found something else that that I wanted to apply myself to. But you're 100% accountable. And you can't say, well, it's not because I didn't get this benefit, or I'm not getting this. We hear a lot of excuses. And I know maybe in this new world, that that's something that we do more is we complain. But if you put your head down, and you start working, the next thing, you know, you look up and you're successful. And that happened to me. I literally just put my head down and in a decade, looked up one day, and had reached a point of success that I never could have imagined when I was back in basic. And I've just always wanted to be in law enforcement. That's why I even joined the military to be an MP. And all I can say to people is, and you just, like Forrest Gump said you know, you don't know what you're gonna get. So you've got to diversify. But attitude, attitude and accountability are everything. 100%.

Well said, Chris, well said. And what you just mentioned about, you know, given a uniform, told where to go, told where to be and everything. That's exactly. I don't know if you've heard the intro for my podcast, but that's exactly what I say. In the military. Given a uniform, you're told what to do, you're told where to be. But what happens when that cadence fades and you're no longer wearing that uniform? And, yeah, so you're the perfect again, you're the perfect interviewee for the for the show, man.

You gotta call your own cadence. I like that. You gotta call your own cadence, man.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. Got to call your own cadence, you got to make it happen, when you're making that transition, Chris. And I love everything you're doing for our military community, man. And anyone out there who's looking to get into executive protection, understand that there's more to it than just being a bodyguard. There are a lot more developmental things that are involved, assessments, things that actually, long-view wise and wide-view range that you can get involved in. And the first step you got to do is contact Covered 6. Go to the website, check out the show notes on this episode, whether you're watching this on YouTube, or if you're watching someone or 18 different podcasting audio platforms, just scroll to the bottom and you'll see. I'll go ahead and post Chris's LinkedIn as well. So you can connect with him through LinkedIn and also put Covered 6 on there as well, the website so you can go directly there. Chris, I just want to thank you for joining us on The Morning Formation Podcast today. You've been a huge pool of knowledge and maybe in the future we can have you on the show again if there's any further developments with Covered 6.

Of course, man, new things are coming. It's a whole new world out there every day.

Covered 6 is embracing them too and so pay attention to this company, because they're up and coming. And for everyone else out there I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you learned something and I hope you reach out to Covered 6 for your future career needs. And for everyone else out there. I want you to stay tuned. Stay focused, and stay motivated. Warriors Fallout.