Our guest today is Dan Kelly, a Marine Corps Cobra pilot, architect, entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Numanac, an ag tech company using artificial intelligence and voice-based data collection to help farmers make better decisions and spend less time head down inputting data.

But this conversation goes much deeper than technology.

As Dan puts it,

“There is purpose in the process of building for those who otherwise would not be built for or invested in in a meaningful capacity."

Dan shares how growing up around South Texas agriculture, losing a close friend at a young age, serving as a Marine officer, and studying architecture all shaped a personal mission that still drives him today: building for people who otherwise wouldn't be built for.

From the cockpit of an attack helicopter to the challenges of food security, farm management, and agricultural innovation, Dan's story is ultimately about purpose, service, and the responsibility we have to create opportunities for others.

Enjoy!

This was a really special episode for me.

If you’ve followed past episodes, you’ll remember Major Eric Czaja and his wife Angela, and the Regenerative Grazing Open Air Lab (R-GOAL) about Camp San Luis Obispo — a first-of-its-kind program letting transitioning veterans learn about regenerative agriculture through adaptive grazing aboard a military installation. Eric and Angela invited me out to Camp SLO for a two-day Ranching for Profit course hosted by Noble Research Institute, and while I was there, I got the chance to sit down with the R-GOAL interns themselves — in- person, for the first time in the show’s history.

This conversation includes Major Eric Czaja, plus six members of his team from across the services: Chelsey Chevez (Marine Corps, intelligence specialist), Jacob Isom (Army, 101st Airborne), Omar Huerta (Marine Corps, field artillery cannoneer), Matt Ammel (Army, Special Forces), Eric Morris (Air Force, aircraft mechanic), and Miles Hatch (Cal Poly student and the program’s first non-veteran team member).

As Eric Czaja put it, framing why this program exists at all,

“160,000 service members leave the service every year. Where do you get involved in agriculture? We want to be that opportunity for veterans — which is why we’re all here.”

In this episode, we talk about how the program is scaling from one base to three (Camp Roberts and Fort Hunter Liggett are next) and the leadership lessons each of these folks carries from their time in uniform, or their time in this program and before, into the day-to-day work at Camp SLO.

I also get the chance to have a conversation with a group of veterans about a topic that still doesn’t get enough attention — an honest discussion about suicide, loss of purpose, and how so many of these folks have found that purpose again through this program.

Again, this was a really special episode for me. Enjoy!

Today’s guest is Wes Mathews — a Louisiana native, former Army cavalry scout, Iraq veteran, former CrossFit coach, and now a veteran at DMR Drones, a company that’s quietly becoming one of the leading drone manufacturing companies in America.

Wes grew up in central Louisiana, surrounded by a multi-generational military family — his grandfather served Korea, stepfather in the National Guard, younger brother served in Iraq with Wes and would later become a Blackhawk pilot, and the list goes on. According to Wes, joining the Army wasn’t a decision so much as a foregone conclusion. What wasn’t planned was everything that came after: the years of mental health struggles between combat deployments, the near-miss in his personal life that only family and friends pulled him back from, and eventually, the unlikely path that led him to DMR Drones — an American-owned company building ag and defense drones out of Lafayette, Louisiana.

Wes said it best,

“[DMR] is more interested in what my skill sets can do for them rather than changing me to fit the company’s needs.”

In this episode, I want you to listen for a few key threads: first — what it actually looked like to come home from a National Guard deployment without the structure of a base to return to, and why this gap costs veterans more than most people realize; second — how Wes clawed his way back from these dark moments, and what made the ultimate the difference; and finally — how American-made ag drones are challenging the way sugarcane and row crops get treated, monitored, and managed, and why veterans are uniquely positioned to sit at that intersection of defense and agriculture.

This one covers a ton of ground — combat, mental health, and flying precision ag.

Enjoy!