Ryan "Bacon" Nelson was a Marine Corps veteran, NBC specialist, combat deployment survivor, and by his own admission.... a guy who had no business walking into a veteran organization in his mid-30s.

Then a fellow Marine dragged him to a backyard fire pit in Tulsa. He broke a chiminea within the first ten minutes. And he never really left.

In this conversation with Eagle Ops founder Shep, Ryan walks through his full journey from joining the Marine Corps to change himself before 9/11 flipped everything upside down, to coming home without a clear direction, to finding his purpose through a mission that asks one simple question before every decision: Will it help veterans?

He talks about the stat that doesn't get enough airtime that over 6,000 veterans die by suicide every year in the U.S., more than 100 times the combat l ...