Teach Me to Fish "Helping Leaders better understand what drives People" · Matt Leclair

#23 Using Your Superpower for Good – Gaining Trust in a world of complexity from the Army and Wall Street to mental health and helping veterans. w/ Brian Kinsella

·1 hr 24 min·5 clips

Brian Kinsella shares how his failures taught him to be a more resilient leader and entrepreneur.

This episode features host Rob Dube interviewing Brian Kinsella, co-founder of the nonprofit Stop Soldier Suicide. Kinsella's background includes growing up modestly, leading in Johns Hopkins ROTC post-9/11, and deploying with the Army. He later transitioned to Wall Street before co-founding his organization. Kinsella frames his insights into two major buckets: lessons learned from past experiences and applying business finance concepts to a nonprofit. He emphasizes knowing "a lot of what not to do" from his personal and professional journey. The episode details his struggles while transitioning from military service to the financial and entrepreneurship sectors. Kinsella explains how Stop Soldier Suicide operates like a for-profit business to deliver services more effectively. The organization's mission is to help veterans and anyone who believes in service with their mental health. Its audacious goal is to reduce service member and veteran suicide. A key insight is that Kinsella's identified superpower is his ability to immediately gain people's trust. He developed this skill through his range of life experiences, including being stationed overseas multiple times. The conversation suggests that resilient leadership and entrepreneurship stem from understanding past mistakes. Kinsella applies rigorous business and finance principles to the nonprofit's operations to ensure impact. The episode promotes the idea that progress is built from small daily victories and stacked habits. These habits include getting up early, continuous learning, and surrounding oneself with phenomenal people. The tone is inspirational and conversational, focusing on personal growth and applied leadership lessons. The style is educational, drawing direct lines from personal narrative to practical business and nonprofit strategy. Leaders interested in veteran issues, nonprofit management, and personal development stories would find this episode valuable. Listeners seeking highly tactical business advice or debate-driven content might find it less aligned with their interests.

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