Michael J. Penney

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The Decision Hour: Michael Penney of Bunker Labs RDU (2016)

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.

The Decision Hour: Bunker Labs Raleigh-Durham – Mr. Michael Penney (August 2016)

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.

Listen on Podbean

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.

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Military Entrepreneur Show: Infantry Marine Turned Podcaster

On March 3, 2016, Dan Evans released “Michael Penney | Infantry Marine Turned Podcaster & Military Entrepreneur” on the Military Entrepreneur Show. The interview runs 49 minutes. Two days later Evans posted a short promo clip from it to YouTube.

Promo clip from the Military Entrepreneur Show, March 2016

About the show

Evans pitched the Military Entrepreneur Show to a specific listener:

a go-to inspiration resource for military veterans who are entrepreneurial, but don’t know where to begin.

Military Entrepreneur Show description

The format was stories from veterans who had made the transition and built something, along with practical tips on personal branding, education and networking.

What the episode covered

The show notes give the military background Michael brought into the conversation:

  • He started his service at Twentynine Palms, California, with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, Weapons Company.
  • He deployed twice to Ramadi, Iraq.
  • He re-enlisted in 2007 and was stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico.
  • At Quantico he qualified as a Combat Marksmanship Instructor, a Foreign Weapons Instructor, and a security-forces-trained Designated Marksman.

The episode title points to the second half of the story: going from infantry Marine and weapons instructor to podcaster and entrepreneur. The written notes stop at the military background. The full conversation is where he talks about the move into podcasting and business.

The promo clip above runs about a minute. Its YouTube description points viewers to more on the episode on Dan Evans’s site, danevansonline.com.

Why it mattered then

Early 2016 was a busy stretch for Michael. In about four weeks he appeared on SuccessVets, recorded two video conversations with fellow TEDxRaleigh presenter Doug Stewart, and gave his TEDxRaleigh talk on March 19. This episode belongs to that run.

It is also one of the more detailed public records of his instructor qualifications. Those years of teaching Marines to shoot, and to know foreign and threat weapons, are part of what he brought to the stage and the microphone.

Looking back

The Marine planning discipline from those years sits under his later work. The 5 Paragraph Business Plan builds on the same O-SMEAC order format every Marine learns.

The full-episode audio file at its original address no longer loads. The episode listing and the promo clip are still available.

Listen to the episode on Podcast.app

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.

Book Michael to Speak
Shop the MJP Store
Get the 5 Paragraph Business Plan
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SuccessVets Podcast: Sea Stories, 5P and Transition Tips (2016)

On February 25, 2016, the SuccessVets podcast released “Michael Penney: Sharing Sea Stories, Business Plans, And Transition Tips With A USMC Vet.” The interview runs just under an hour. It was published about three weeks before his TEDxRaleigh talk.

SuccessVets: Michael Penney interview (February 2016)

What the episode covered

The show notes open with the question that drove the conversation:

How can you use mission planning tools from the military to plan your business or transition?

SuccessVets show notes, February 2016

The notes summarize where Michael stood at the time:

  • Eight years as a Marine Corps infantryman, with three deployments: two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.
  • Out of the Corps in 2012 and working as an entrepreneur since.
  • Co-host of the Cigars & Sea Stories podcast and chief contributor at BloodStripes.com.
  • Building resources for veteran entrepreneurs, including what the notes call “the 5 paragraph business,” based on O-SMEAC.

O-SMEAC is the Marine Corps format for the five-paragraph order: Orientation, Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Logistics, and Command and Signal. Every Marine who has received a patrol order has heard it briefed in that sequence. The idea Michael was developing was to use the same structure to lay out a business. You state the situation and the mission, then work through how it gets done, what it needs, and who is in charge.

The show notes send listeners to SuccessVets.com for more from the interview and link to Cigars and Sea Stories. The full episode, about 59 minutes, is in the player above.

Why it mattered then

Most transition advice in 2016 focused on résumés and job searches. SuccessVets pointed listeners to the tools they already carried. A veteran who could write or follow an operations order already knew how to organize a plan. The episode covered the business side and the personal transition side, which are often the same problem for someone leaving the military.

The episode came at a busy stretch for Michael. In the same few weeks he was preparing for TEDxRaleigh, doing Doug Stewart’s video conversations, and appearing on the Military Entrepreneur Show.

Looking back

This episode is one of the earliest public references in this archive to the 5 Paragraph Business by name. The idea he was working on in early 2016 became the 5 Paragraph Business Plan, his O-SMEAC-based framework for planning a business.

Listen to the episode on SuccessVets

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.

Book Michael to Speak
Shop the MJP Store
Get the 5 Paragraph Business Plan
Watch Live

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Fuel For Warriors #19: Cigars & Sea Stories, BloodStripes (2016)

On January 4, 2016, Fuel For Warriors released episode #19, “Michael and Sebastian – Marines, Cigars & Sea Stories, BloodStripes.com.” The host was Timothy Lawson. His show featured “military veterans, athletes, and other warriors” talking about their challenges and what drives them. The episode runs about 38 minutes.

What the episode covered

Lawson brought on Michael and his Cigars and Sea Stories co-host, listed only as Sebastian. The two shows did a swap.

We did back-to-back interviews for both of our shows and had a great time talking about Marines Corps, business, and more.

Timothy Lawson, Fuel For Warriors #19 show notes

The episode title also names BloodStripes.com, the Marine professional-development site Michael wrote for. The show notes give more space to Cigars and Sea Stories, and they lay out its mission in the format of an operations order.

  • The show: a place for Marines and FMF corpsmen “to act out and speak their minds,” with relevant topics, interviews with prominent veterans, and war stories. Any Marine or FMF corpsman could be a guest.
  • Intent: “Our goal is to empower veterans to act as a whole.” The notes spell that out as creating positive change, voting on issues that matter, raising awareness for worthy causes, and speaking out against injustice.
  • Desired end state: “a network of veterans that can accomplish any task and, an America that can actually police itself.”

Listeners were asked to join in on Twitter with #FFW19. The show was sponsored by Lock-N-Load Java at the time.

Why it mattered then

In early 2016 veteran podcasting was a small world, and shows grew by trading guests. A back-to-back swap like this one put Cigars and Sea Stories in front of Fuel For Warriors listeners, and the other way around.

The notes also show how Michael and his team framed the project. They did not pitch it as entertainment. They wrote it the way Marines brief a mission, with an intent and a desired end state. The goal was a veteran network that could get things done.

Looking back

Writing a civilian project in operations-order terms became his signature. A few weeks after this episode, the SuccessVets podcast described him building “the 5 paragraph business” on the Marine O-SMEAC format. That framework grew into the 5 Paragraph Business Plan. The episode is also an early public record of Cigars and Sea Stories and BloodStripes.com together, the two projects he was known for before TEDxRaleigh.

The episode’s original audio file is no longer served from its first host. The listing remains on Apple Podcasts.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts

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.

Book Michael to Speak
Shop the MJP Store
Get the 5 Paragraph Business Plan
Watch Live

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Funniest Thing! on Unity Online Radio: Let Go, Let God (2015)

In August 2015 Michael Penney sat in as a guest on Funniest Thing! with Darrell & Ed, a weekly show on Unity Online Radio hosted by Darrell Fusaro and Ed Biagiotti. The episode was titled “Let Go, and Let God Do It.” The hosts’ show script was posted on August 23, 2015. The episode listing runs just over an hour.

What the episode covered

Funniest Thing! mixes humor with spiritual readings. This episode was built around one idea: trusting that God is working on your behalf, and the relief that comes from putting down worry. The hosts called that “the greatest freedom.”

The show script introduces Michael this way:

Michael Penney, United States Marine Corps combat veteran and a creator of the Cigars and Sea Stories podcast

Funniest Thing! show script, August 2015

His part of the hour was the Daily Word segment. He read and discussed that day’s Daily Word entry, “Let Go, Let God,” dated Wednesday, August 19, 2015. The reading’s affirmation was “I let go of expectations and trust God.”

The rest of the episode followed the show’s usual format. That included:

  • Opening quotes from Florence Scovel Shinn
  • A “God Box” segment on writing down a worry and handing it over
  • Readings from Doreen Virtue, Ernest Holmes and Abraham
  • Listener mail
  • A joke of the day

The script page does not tie Michael to any segment other than the Daily Word reading.

Why it mattered then

This was not a veterans show or a business show. It was a faith-and-humor program with a general audience. A Marine combat veteran reading a passage about letting go of expectations was a different kind of appearance for him. It also put Cigars and Sea Stories in front of listeners who would likely never have found a Marine podcast on their own. The show script linked to the Cigars and Sea Stories website.

For a veteran a few years out of the Corps, the message of the reading also fit the season of life many were in: plans changing, and learning to trust the process instead of forcing it.

Looking back

Fusaro and Biagiotti brought Michael back that November for the Veterans Day reading, “Honor.” Both appearances came before his TEDxRaleigh talk in March 2016, back when Cigars and Sea Stories was still the main thing people knew him for.

Listen to the episode on ListenNotes

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.

Book Michael to Speak
Shop the MJP Store
Get the 5 Paragraph Business Plan
Watch Live