Jason Zaideman — Beyond Battle

Can you tell me a little bit about your early life, and what led you to join the Military?

Mainly, it was because my Dad was a Vietnam vet in the Marine Corps. He was really quiet about it, but I still had that veteran feel from him; and then the way I was raised was really strict and military themed. Growing up we didn’t have a whole lot. My Mom and Dad both owned their own sign painting business; my Dad was an artist ever since he was a kid, and he did illustrations out on the beach in California. Then he joined the Marine Corps and went out to Vietnam, came back, and got reacquainted with life and was a stuntman for a while at Universal Studios. Then I was born and he opened up his own business, that way he could spend more time with me and the whole family. So I grew up basically in a sign painting shop.

Also, it wasn’t so much what I did hear from my dad, it was his interactions with other veterans. What really stuck with me was to watch him hug another Vietnam veteran and they both start crying and they don’t even speak any words. We did a lot of veteran themed events and work for other veterans, especially in the motorcycle space, so I grew up in that kind of hot-rod shop and it was very intermingled with veterans. And so I wanted to serve my country too, so I joined in late 1995 before I had graduated from High School. My dad wouldn’t let me be a Marine so I joined the Army and became an Engineer. I did my basic training in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, and then they stationed me in Fort Riley Kansas and I was there for four years.

I don’t know how deep you want me to go into my earlier life, but it was very structured. My Dad was OCD about us being in order. At the time I didn’t get it, but once I joined the military, I was like “Man, this is just like being at home.” So my earlier life helped my military career be so much easier. I don’t know how everyone else had it, I mean some people aren’t even allowed to be spanked anymore. I know I got my ass beat like a normal younger kid. So I had that structure, and I knew that there was a consequence for my actions. But that’s what I told Mike Rowe, and some of these other interviews that I’ve done, is that I’m really grateful that my past was kind of rough, because it made the rest of my life way easier.

As an Army engineer what kind of jobs were you usually tasked with?

So I was a combat engineer and our role has continually changed, and it keeps evolving with the different duties that you perform. What we did was set up obstacles, breach obstacles, build bridges, blow up bridges, cratering charges, depth charges, booby-trap stuff, dug in fighting positions for artillery and tanks- stuff like that. I was in a mechanized unit, so we had ground pounders and we had explosives training. There was a bunch of different stuff that we did.

I was also commander’s driver for a while too, so I got to see a lot of administration stuff. I’m still very good friends with my old commander; he’s a colonel now, and I’m actually working on going to visit him one of these days. As far as jobs being tasked, it was a lot of motor pool stuff and going out into the field, for training exercises. I never deployed and I got out in 2000, and then a year later all the 9/11 stuff happened, and I tried going back in and was told I had to go through Advanced Individual Training (AIT) again. I said “No way”, but later on I realized that technology had changed from my job, so I would have had to go through training again, and it made sense.

What was the most rewarding part of your job?

I would have to say that I’m thankful for the military, even though I know a lot of people say that they hated it or that it sucked. For me, the first piece is the comradery: the brotherhood of serving alongside your fellow soldiers. That I miss the most, probably. One of the other biggest things is structure and uniformity, and I run my organization almost the exact same way as how I served in the military. So there is a lot of that structure that I pulled from my military career. I try to remind the guys here in the shop that they are so lucky they served in the military because they’ve been given all these tools and have been trained on how to do all these things, you just have to use them in your civilian life too.

Do you benefit, productivity wise, by utilizing that military-like structure?

Photo Credit: Operation Combat Bikesaver

Yeah, as far as our infrastructure is concerned, we’re still developing and building our board, and standard operating procedures (SOPs), and everything. The hard part about running a non-profit is that none of us get paid, so there’s no incentive for people to keep going. It wasn’t there creation, so most of them could care less whether it succeeds or fails. This was my idea and for a lot of people, if it wasn’t their idea, they aren’t willing to put their whole heart in it. But my main guy, Andrew Hasty, he’s a Marine Corps combat veteran, and he’s probably my biggest asset, because he uses his military experience and college education at his disposal. He takes what he’s learned and really implements it into the organization to make everything easier.

So we’re getting there, I just want to get to the point where we have a little bit of funding to where we can hire people and to where it’s their actual job. Everyone is struggling to pay their own bills, and provide for and spend time with their families, so when they spend forty hours a week at their normal job, the non-profit has to come third. Luckily I have a very supportive wife, and she doesn’t care when I come home. She understands that I have to put in all this work, and it’s not permanent. At some point I’m not going to be doing hundred-and-thirty plus hour work weeks. The biggest obstacle then, is getting more volunteers and people to help out with the organization, and to keep the organization funded.

How do you go about motivating people to buy into what you do?

I have to tip-toe. I was raised by a Marine and I’m actually an abrasive person to work for, or work with, because I’m so focused on the task. One of my favorite sayings is “tick-tock”- I have it tattooed on my hands. I don’t have time for small talk. I get stuff done and I’m focused. So it’s difficult sometimes, to work with a lot of people who have no urgency.

Upon leaving the military, what were some of the things that made transition difficult?

My transition was a little bit different, because even before I joined I was raised a little bit different than the average human being. My transition into civilian life from the military was actually easy. I already knew what I was going to do, I had had a plan since I was seven years old, and I was sticking to that plan then and I’m still sticking to it. It hasn’t varied really.

There were actually a few years after I became a civilian that I totally forgot that I was even a veteran. I didn’t think of it like that and it never came up in conversation. I did community things here and there, but to me, it wasn’t that big of a deal because I already had a plan before I got out.

I did a few construction jobs, but probably about a year after I got out of the Army I opened up my own business. And I’ve failed a lot in business and I struggle sometimes even with the business I have now, but in my transition, I didn’t have any expectations out of the military. I did it to serve my country; I never expected them to take care of me after I got out. Now I don’t feel that I was wounded, whether that be mentally or physically. I don’t feel that I’m that deserving of help because there are a lot people who are worse off than me. I didn’t expect a helping hand and I knew that I could do it on my own. I’d been through a lot harder times while I had been in the military, struggling, overcoming obstacles, and finding solutions to problems. So to me, the problem of finding a job, or going on with the rest of my life was fairly easy, because I already knew what I was going to do. So I didn’t have that hard of a time.

And I see other guys having issues because they didn’t really have a direction before they went into the military. And maybe they did it for college money or they didn’t have other options, or they did it to serve their country- everybody’s got their own reason to why they serve in the military. They have to answer that for themselves. I really think it’s the nature versus nurture. Say that before they join the military they didn’t have a structured life, maybe Dad wasn’t in the picture, they just worked at Burger King in high school, and didn’t really know what they wanted to be when they grew up. They joined the military so they could pay for college, and once they go through all this stuff, they get damaged; mentally, physically, or both. And then they are made to get out. The government says “You can no longer work for us. You are injured, and there’s no fixing you.” Because it’s not like you just broke your knee, you are actually screwed up for the rest of your life; you are now disabled. So now, here’s some money, here’s some pills, here’s the VA- you’re off on your own, and we are going to go back to fighting our wars with people that can.

So now you’ve been cast aside, you don’t have that comradery anymore, you’re told that you’re broken now and can no longer serve, you either miss it, or you hate it, you still don’t know what you want to do with your life, so you go to college and don’t know what you want to do there. So you’re lost. If you didn’t know where you were going before the military, and you didn’t figure it out while you were in the military, then it’s kind of on you.

So everyone has different circumstances, and everyone goes through different things in their lives, so it all depends. But there are just some things in the military that you can’t unsee. I didn’t go into combat, but say I did. Even if I did have a plan, and grew up knowing what I was going to do, and got shipped off to war, and I see some stuff that I cannot unsee and my mind can’t fix it, and mentally I’m at a point where I don’t care what the rest of my life is like. That happens to a lot of guys where you’ve seen so much a death, and you’ve lost so many people close to you, and all the “what if’s” and the guilt, that it doesn’t matter what your plans are, because your mind won’t let you go on with it. So that’s why staying busy kind of work to keep your hands and mind moving and operating is something that I think helps with a lot of that stuff. So my transition wasn’t difficult, but I could see where it would be difficult to many people.

Do you think the government could do better in helping veterans?

Yeah, of course. And number one, to start off, is to hire these veterans. The VA and so many of these other programs are run by civilians, whereas they should be run by vets. And I get the conflict of interest, but you should have a very high percentage of veterans working at these places because they are already comfortable with each other, they understand each other’s problems, and they may have gone through a lot of the same things. Whereas now, you have some guy that has never served his country, has a master’s degree and may be a doctor that is in charge, but has never seen combat, and has no idea where any of these veterans are coming from. If you’ve never been there, how can you relate? It’s like trying to describe to someone what the ocean is like, who has never seen the ocean before.

There are a ton of things that should be fixed, but with the way the military and the government looks at it is the eighty-twenty rule. If you handle the eighty-percent, then the twenty percent doesn’t matter. And that percentage of veterans that are leaving the military are so low down there, but they don’t care because the wheels on the bus need to keep turning. And I get it, national security and all that stuff, but that’s like a corporation that doesn’t take care of its employees. Yes, you will have a huge turnaround, and your company is going to make tons of money, and you can sell your products for way cheaper, but if people would just spend a little more money so the company could pay their employees more, it would be a win-win-win situation. I try to implement that in everything I do; I pay my employees twenty dollars an hour, just starting. A lot of it is part-time because I’m small, but if you treat people the way you want to be treated, this entire planet would be so much better. It’s a residual thing. And our government doesn’t do that because they don’t care; they just want more tax-payers. So there’s definitely a lot they can do.

Photo Credit: Operation Combat Bikesaver

Can you take me through what inspired you to start Operation Combat Bikesaver?

It’s kind of a conglomeration of my entire life’s work and missing the comradery. I was refurbishing and customizing my bike, a KZ100C, that I brought for six-hundred-dollars on Craigslist, and I did a little quick fix on it and rode the piss out of it for two, three years. In September, 2015, I decided to do a full, custom job on the bike and get it exactly how I want it. So every night, after work for about a month and a half, I would go out in my garage and start tearing apart my bike, putting it back together, fabricating, welding, building, changing, wiring, doing all this stuff. And what I realized was that I was getting lost. I was lost in this project, I was in this other realm, in another world, and none of my problems in this world, whether they be missing my Dad, missing my daughter, being hungry, paying bills, knee or back pain, none of my ailments or anything on this freaking planet, nothing mattered to me other than where I was at in that moment building my bike and the image I had of the finished, completed project. I didn’t care about the pain I had to go through, the busted knuckles or greasy hands and missing dinner. So I realized that along the way of building my bike, because I was just in there with a radio cranked up and I’m lost in this world so I have this time to think and create.

So all of this stuff was getting cached in my head. At the end, I finished my bike and I was excited and I rode it for two or three weeks, and I was going to all these events and fundraisers and I started to get irritated and reckless because I needed something, but I didn’t know what. And my wife told me “You need to get back out in the garage…” And then it was just like a light-bulb went off, and I realized that I needed to do this once a week at least. And the program in my head formulated in an instant. It wasn’t just a lightbulb; it was a runway strip of lightbulbs that went off. I started piecing it all together, wrote the thing up, and believe me it was chicken scratch, but I had nine bullet points of exactly what the mission statement was going to be, what we were going to do, and how we were going to facilitate everything. And then my wife, who is an amazing writer, put it into very professional, college educated words, and within two weeks I had the name and I designed the artwork and filled for a corporation.

Where did you learn how to work with a bike to the point where you could put one together, fabricate and weld?

I learned how to not take no for an answer with myself from my Dad. And I learned how to pinstripe, paint from my Dad as well because he was a sign writer and he painted signs by hand before computers came out. So I grew up in that, but what I learned from my dad that was most important was the general idea of not allowing myself to think that I couldn’t do something. It doesn’t matter if it’s rocket science, which I’ve actually dabbled in a little bit with industrial vacuuming systems for NASA and Space X, or anything else, I’m a sucker for knowledge and that’s something my Dad instilled in me, because he was the same way. He knew how to do so many things-he could dry wall, he was a carpenter, carpet layer, roofer, framer, all that stuff. He was already that renaissance man, so it inspired me to be like him. So I took that same know-it-all, learn-it-all, do-it-all mentality and I just ran with it. I wanted to do tattoos so I brought a tattoo setup and a start doing it.

What has been your greatest struggle in this project? What has been the best reward?

The biggest struggle has been funding. Here’s the mixture: The organization’s mission is basically mentally health, but it’s also hot-rod themed. So I have a lot of working parts that I have to strategically move around all the time without pissing people off and still keeping them interested in the program. Also, people want to help so then I give them jobs, but I don’t want to overwhelm them with stuff or set them up for failure. So it’s a huge juggling act between my personal life and the organization itself. If I actually worked here, it would be so much easier, because there would be a lot of stuff I could just take off of people’s plates. So that is the biggest struggle; keeping the organization running. And that’s a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that people don’t see or understand: the hundred-and-thirty some hours a week that I work. Most people don’t understand or even believe that, but from six-thirty in the morning to about one in the morning working and answering emails, doing interviews, all these different things to make all these people happy. So there’s a big struggle there.

But the reason it keeps me going is because of the reward. And the reward is watching these guys and gals who come out to this program, and remembering who they were on day one, and then knowing them today. Some of them have been here for almost two-years now, and we are all close and on hug status. And I never forget the beginning. To watch them, as if they were my child, grow and start smiling again and start getting better sleep. To see them come from never having welded something before, never having dirt or calluses on their hands, not knowing how to operate a screw gun or a grinder or welder, or torch, and then watch them today and see that they are a man now. They are just picking up a grinder and going to town and building these cool things. They’ve become a different person, and that’s not to say I didn’t like the person they were the day they came in, but I think that if they thought about it they would be impressed by themselves. They feel like they’re worth something now, and that they aren’t afraid to tackle projects at home. So watching them implement this program into their everyday lives, and seeing them come in excited about what they are building. The change in the people is the biggest accomplishment in the program, and it has been my best reward.

How would you like to see Operation Combat Bikesaver develop in the next five years?

I’m hoping that in the next year, to two years, although I would like it to be in six-months, to get an operating budget to where I can get our board to hire me. And honestly, looking at myself from the organization’s point of view, I’m the best candidate for the job. So I’m hoping that in the next six-months I can actually be working here, even if it’s for less than minimum wage, so that I can close my business and donate all my screen printing equipment to the organization and create jobs for guys to come in. So I want to hire two or three veterans to actually print t-shirts for the organization. I want to be creating jobs too, and also save our organization money at the same time, because we’ll be printing our own stuff. So there’s a plan in place and I’m hoping that in the next year to five-years, I’ll be actually working here five, six, seven days a week.