On August 26, 2016, The Decision Hour released an episode titled “Bunker Labs Raleigh-Durham – Mr. Michael Penney.” The show was part of the Heroes Media Group podcast network, and the conversation runs just over an hour.
What the episode covered
The episode notes introduce Michael with three roles at once:
USMC Veteran, Program Director at Bunker Labs Raleigh-Durham, Podcast Co-Host at Cigars and Sea Stories and my friend Mr. Michael Penney.
The Decision Hour episode notes
According to the notes, the conversation moved through three parts of his life:
- The Marine Corps: some of his “Sea Stories” from his time as a Marine
- After the Corps: starting a business and going back to school
- The work in front of him: the Cigars and Sea Stories podcast, and what Bunker Labs was doing for veterans across the country
The notes close by pointing listeners to his Facebook page, the Cigars and Sea Stories page and bunkerlabs.org.
Why it mattered then
August 2016 was a busy month. Five months earlier he had given his TEDxRaleigh talk, “What’s Your IED?” On August 18 he was the billed guest speaker at a veteran entrepreneur event in Wilmington, North Carolina, for Bunker Labs RDU. By October another podcast would describe him as having recently taken over as director of the Bunker in Raleigh.
Bunker Labs is a national nonprofit built by veteran entrepreneurs to help other veterans start and grow businesses. For Michael, the program director job turned his own path, from the infantry to his first business, into something he could help other veterans with.
The episode also connects two parts of his podcast history. Cigars and Sea Stories was a member of the Heroes Media Group network. Here he was a guest on another show in that same network.
His service record: eight-plus years in Marine Corps infantry and three combat tours: two to Ramadi, Iraq, with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines (2005-06 and 2007), and one to Kajaki and Sangin, Afghanistan, with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines in 2011, where he led a section of advisors. Between those tours he served at Quantico as a weapons instructor. He left the Corps as a Sergeant with an honorable discharge.
Where to find it
The episode page is still online at Podbean, and the episode is also listed on Apple Podcasts. The player above streams the original audio file from the show’s feed.
This post is part of the From the Archive series, which collects Michael’s past media appearances in one place. See the full media archive.
Work with Michael
Marine veteran, TEDx speaker and author of the 5 Paragraph Business Plan. Bring him to your stage, wear the gear, or catch him live.