Scott DeLuzio:    00:00:03    Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast, where we talk about issues affecting Veterans after they get out of the military. Before we get started, I’d like to ask a favor if you haven’t done so already, please rate and review the show on Apple podcast. If you’ve already done that, thank you. These ratings help the show get discovered so it can reach a wider audience. And while you’re there, click the subscribe button so that you get notified of new episodes. As soon as they come out. If you don’t use Apple podcasts, you can visit DriveOnPodcast.com/subscribe to find other ways of subscribing, including our email list. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio. And now let’s get on with the show. Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us today. My guest is Laura Briggs. Laura teaches others how to build their own businesses from home and is the author of Lunch, your own freelance writing business. Laura also runs, Operation Freelance, which is a nonprofit focused on creating business opportunities for military spouses and Veterans. So, Laura, thank you for joining me. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Laura Briggs:    00:01:11    Sure. I had every plan in the world of becoming a professor. I’ve done everything for my PhD except my dissertation. Then I met and fell in love with a man in the Navy. So as is often the case with military spouses, our career gets a little bit turned upside down. Through many PCs I realized that I was going to have to have a career that was a little bit more flexible.  Tenure track professor at one university just wasn’t going to work with the Navy’s needs. And so, I started freelancing as a side hustle and grew that to a full-time business that followed me over the last eight years. And now on both the business and the nonprofit side, I teach other people, not just how to start, but also experienced freelancers, how to scale, how to decide what your business is going to look like for you and have it work for your life and not the other way around.

Scott DeLuzio:    00:02:01    Awesome. Yeah. And that sounds like a common thing with other military spouses, one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is because I live near an Air Force base. So, a lot of our neighbors and friends are in the Air Force and through talking with them, getting to know their families and everything, they find it difficult for the spouse. So the one who’s not in the Air Force whether it’s the husband or the wife and in whichever situation they have, they find it difficult for that spouse to find a good job because they end up moving every couple of years. Employers don’t tend to be too keen on hiring someone for a year, a year and a half or whatever the case may be for a professional job.

Scott DeLuzio:    00:02:45    Like in your case, you’re saying that that’s not exactly something that was in the cards for you with your career path. They want to know that this hire that they’re making is in it for the long haul, which totally makes sense. So, what I wanted to talk to you about was Operation Freelance and it seems like it’s a great way to help out some of these spouses start businesses that they can do from pretty much anywhere as long as they have a computer and an internet connection, they can probably do it from just about anywhere. So, could you tell us a little bit more about the Operation Freelance and what sparked that and what it is that you do?

Laura Briggs:     00:03:29    Yeah. I’ve come across so many spouses in this situation where they’re either unemployed or they’re severely underemployed because they’re very highly...