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In this Veterans Day special, Raymond Hawkins, Chief Revenue Officer at Compass Datacenters, sits down with Kirk Offel, CEO and founder of Overwatch, to discuss how military experience builds unparalleled expertise for the data center industry.
The conversation dives deep into how veterans bring unmatched discipline and adaptability to civilian industries. 🇺🇸
Key Topics:
💼 Veteran-Driven Entrepreneurship: Kirk’s decision to leave a traditional career path to start Overwatch, a veteran-owned business.
⚙️ Tech Training & Transition: Discussion on how military tech training prepares veterans for cutting-edge civilian industries.
🤝 Building Supportive Communities: Insights into how community and networking support veterans in finding meaningful careers and thriving in civilian life.
🗣️ Founding DCAC: Kirk shares his vision for the Data Center Anti Conference (DCAC), a platform for veteran networking, tech innovation, and collaboration.
🌟 Leadership & Purpose-Driven Mission: Kirk talks about how his military background drives his mission to support and uplift fellow veterans.
Read the full transcript below:
Kirk Offel: Four kids on average graduate from college per minute in the United States with a degree that’s already been made outdated because of technology. In fact, two universities every minute began ripping out, replacing all the curriculum at their university just because the technology that you’d be exposed to as a freshman in college would already be outdated by the time you graduate as a senior. Whereas if you go into the military doing a job that you’re exposed to advanced weapons machinery technology, it’ll iterate with you throughout your career while you’re in the military, so when you come out you have a job of relevance being exposed to technology. You’ll probably don’t have student debt, and if you want to go to college, the military will pay for it.
Raymond Hawkins: All right. Welcome to another edition of Not Your Father’s Data Center. I am Raymond Hawkins, calling today from the west, or eastern annex of Compass Data Centers. I’m in our Auburn, Alabama Annex, joined by CEO and founder of Overwatch, Kirk Ofell. Kirk, thank you for jumping on with me.
Kirk Offel: Thanks for having me on, man. It’s good to see you.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. Welcome. And this will be super casual. Kirk and I both know each other, have been in the business for several years together, but Kirk, before we get rowing there, folks that listen that don’t know you really well, so we’re going to ask you to back up and go all the way back to, hey, where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? Why did you join the Navy? And then we’ll kind of weave through your career a little bit, get folks oriented on you, and then we’ll talk about some data center stuff. You okay with that?
Kirk Offel: Yeah. Should I talk about, like I did think about going Marine Corps, but I scored too high on my ASVAB, so I went Navy. Should I leave that part out?
Raymond Hawkins: So you do have a double-digit IQ, so that qualified you right away?
Kirk Offel: Yeah. You could sell anything. All right. Listen. So every man in my lineage is military. I’m the youngest of a bunch of boys. My father turned 18 loading bombs on F-4s in Southeast Asia, right? So he-
Raymond Hawkins: Love that.
Kirk Offel: … taught us to be selfless in what we do and that we’re a family with a bloodline that believes in someone’s got to serve. If not us, then who? Right?
Raymond Hawkins: Here, here.
Kirk Offel: I have a brother that went to every branch of service, and I was the youngest, so I kind of got to watch all the good and the bad of all those branches. I was born and raised on a military base my whole life. I went to Southern California for high school. My father left the cockpit, and that was really my first time living off base on a regular basis where I was kind of an [inaudible 00:02:17]-
Raymond Hawkins: Was he a naval aviator, Kirk?
Kirk Offel: Air Force.
Raymond Hawkins: Air Force, okay.
Kirk Offel: Yeah. He spent most of his time in a B-52 bomber. So he was E-1 to O-5 in the Air Force. Pretty amazing. So half of my family’s officer. I think growing up in a military family is an advantage. First, I was born and raised on a military basis, so I was learning firsthand on what discipline and consistency looks like every day. I mean, even as a kid, I would have to fold 45s on my bed Saturday morning before I watched cartoons and went outside and played, right?
Raymond Hawkins: [inaudible 00:02:54].
Kirk Offel: Hard work was just part of… It wasn’t anything unique. That was just a standard. And the attention to detail, I think most people that come from the military comes back to the way that our minds are conditioned or been trained to have a certain level of attention to detail. So for me, I always call it an advantage because I was raised around uncommon people my whole life. Most of my heroes, the people that I try to emulate, they’re not celebrities on TV. You’re not going to watch them on the movies and you’re not going to read their book, but you will read about them in a history book one day, about how they maybe transformed a military branch and how that military branch transformed the battlefield as an example. But the people that I was born and raised around, I was reading books about Chuck Yeager as a kid. I wasn’t trying to figure out who Tom Cruise was. Right?
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah.
Kirk Offel: But the real dude that wrote the sound barrier was my hero. So I would spend most of my time trying to understand how to acclimate into a world that wasn’t as intense. Right? So my father was adopted and he was basically adopted by a combat infantry Marine coming out of World War II, so he was baptized and raised by a military veteran himself and everything that we have in our DNA, even down to the way that I raised my children. I got three, two in university and one getting ready to go to University of Alabama, which is how I ran into you last week on the airplane. But I’m one of the Citadel, right, so it’s still in our family lineage. I have a nephew at West Point. My next older brother went to West Point. So serving is a part of our DNA and the military is our quote unquote family business.
And then like most veterans, after World War II was an example. 75% of every new business was started by a veteran. Today, less than 5% of our fellow veterans create new companies, but we’re trying to get those numbers up. So people like me, people that serve with me, my brothers who served, and the guys that serve with them as well, we’re all out trying to repopulate society and the communities we live in with brand new companies that are purpose-built, meaning we could contribute back to a workforce, but we could still do something in service of a greater purpose bigger than ourselves, and usually that’s helping the veteran community. So that’s a lot, but that’s where I came from. Does that make sense?
Raymond Hawkins: No, that’s a great background. So I’m going to pile on only because we’re going to release this episode over Veterans Day. So you’ll see my older brother, Colonel Hawkins, 38 years in the U.S. Army.
Kirk Offel: Wow.
Raymond Hawkins: Posts on Veterans Day every year and a picture of everyone. So we got a nephew that joined the Coast Guard so that we could complete the five branch sweep. I say that. Now we don’t. Space force is a new one, so we’re going to have to get that one. But for me, every adult male in my family is career military.
Kirk Offel: Nice.
Raymond Hawkins: So I’m the black sheep of the family I only spent four years in, but everybody else is retired military as far back as we can track, so same very foundational thought.
Kirk Offel: Mad respect for your family bloodline. Mad respect.
Raymond Hawkins: It’s your duty to serve.
Kirk Offel: Less than one half of 1% of the U.S. population at any one time is in that uniform. Our families made the call. But it’s interesting right now because 15 to 17% of the U.S. population are veterans now. So we may represent on active a very small fraction of society, but in the workforce today, we represent almost one out of five people that are contributing to the workforce.
Raymond Hawkins: And I see both of my brothers, both retired and transitioned into civilian life. My father, 21 years in the Air Force, retired, moved into civilian life at Boeing working for the Space Station Freedom. So veterans, my whole life has been of how being raised in a military household, seeing those veterans serve, seeing them transition into civilian life, seeing my younger brother, six deployments as a member of the 101st Airborne,
Kirk Offel: Dang.
Raymond Hawkins: No human being is meant to deploy six times. It’s just, it’s tough.
Kirk Offel: Pretty savage.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. And you talk about what percentage of our workforce is veterans today. I mean, those guys have done, the 20 year war on terror, not only have they served, but they’ve served at stretch pretty thin.
Kirk Offel: Yeah. I mean, stretched pretty thin is an understatement, right? The amount of pressure testing the stress inoculation that a typical veteran goes through is 10 times or exponentially or even unmeasurable compared to what their civilian counterparts are doing at the same age. I’ll say this, I came out of the military in 2000, and you try to imagine what this industry was like in 2000, but I got involved with it right off the gate. I got lucky. The right place at the right time. This is still an emergency industry that’s not the mainstream yet, but it does lend itself to people like you and I. Crayon eater, U.S. Marines to ground pounders in the Army, to the Air Force or the MPs and the SPs in the Navy. I mean, some of the best employees I have on my team were Coast Guard, [inaudible 00:07:30], Aviation, boatswain mates in the Navy, they were launching airplanes.
But the thing that tied us all together that made us all the same, you as a Marine, me as a submariner, we already were dealing with the mission critical environment from the day that we took an oath. The only difference was we never measured our mission critical environment in downtime while you’re in active duty in the military. We measured our own mortality. And I bet you the people in your bloodline, just like the people in my bloodline, all know too well what it’s like to have people that you’ve served with that never made it home. So I think that the people that we served with, everybody in the military has been exposed to some of the most advanced weapons, machinery and technologies that the world’s ever built. And they could come out of the military, which is an incubator for leadership, and now work for a group like yours or mine, which is a technology incubator for labor that allows them to still continue to do things that are significant and operate around high speed mode drag technology to where they feel like they could do something in service of a greater purpose.
So the people that joined the military didn’t do it to make money, they did it to make a difference, and I think that they could serve this industry with the same level of dignity and honor than they did when they were in a uniform.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. Even though mission critical means something different depending on if we’re in uniform or not, that training and that preparation and that focus and that discipline and that drive and that attention to detail serves this industry really well because it’s a 365 space, just like being on active duty is a 365 space. And I liked your comment about the disproportionate amount of responsibility we push on young service members. What we ask of them and what they say grace over is so much different than what happens in civilian life. You mentioned my family. I’ll just say the same. How great your dad was adopted by a combat veteran Marine, right, who wanted to make a difference on the young man’s life and raise him up and train him and teach him. I’m amazed at how values get transmitted from generation to generation and how important it is.
Kirk Offel: And listen, my father’s biological mother served in the Royal Army as a nurse and his biological father flew for the Royal Air Force.
Raymond Hawkins: Awesome.
Kirk Offel: So going all the way back, that generation, that time. I mean, it’s interesting and it’s almost awkwardly sad that my dad is a member of the baby boomer generation. I have kids in college that are Gen Y, Gen Z, and Gen Z will outnumber the baby boomers in the workforce before the end of this year. Right? And that workforce, there’s a lot of things that are good with that because those Gen X, Y, Zers, specifically the Zers are digital pioneers that were born with the Internet of Things and the World Wide Web not only in their hands, but they had access to smartphones, which was the platform for the application-based society we live in today, and they had those from the day they were born. So that workforce, which is massively exposed to technology, it will be replacing the baby boomers in population before the end of this year that were those that were here during the… I mean, many of them were born in between the second and the third industrial revolution and they spent most of their careers in the early stage of the third industrial revolution trying to advance emerging technologies.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah.
Kirk Offel: Now you have Gen Z that’s been adopting them and using them since birth and now the whole thing’s coming full circle. I think the big difference is we’re not at war right now, and as two veterans talking, now is the safest time to send people into the military so they could be trained on advanced weapons machinery technology without the threat fear of being at war. Right? I think after we get through an election cycle, there should be some de-escalation of tensions throughout the world that will leave us to be less likely to be a war and more likely to be able to iterate in advance the technologies that have been exposed to us throughout the military because we could send our kids to college today to go get into debt earning a four-year degree where they could come out and graduate from college, and the obsolescence of college today is that four kids on average graduate from college per minute in the United States with a degree that’s already been made outdated because of technology.
In fact, two universities every minute began ripping out and replacing all the curriculum at their university just because the technology that you’d be exposed to as a freshman in college would already be outdated by the time you graduate as a senior. Whereas if you go into the military and you’re doing a job that you’re exposed to advanced weapons machinery technology, it’ll iterate with you throughout your career while you’re in the military, so when you come out, you have a job of relevance being exposed to technology. You’ll probably don’t have student debt, and if you want to go to college, the military will pay for it. But we should be using this industry and our veteran community to recruit more people to leave active duty, which is on north of 40,000 people per month and try to guide as many of them as we can closer towards what we do in this vertical.
Because again, this is a technology vertical. If they’re in the military, they’ve already been exposed to some level of technology and the stuff that they’re doing is relevant, meaning they’ve probably been in high speed, low drag pressure testing environments where mortality was at risk, where the risk of others was at risk and they’d probably come out of the military with a higher or wider emotional range. I’m sure if you go back and talk to your brothers and your bloodline and all that, I don’t know if you have women in your bloodline that served as well, but if you go and you talk to your brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles about what the military taught them, it’s not the same military as it is when you and I started. Do you agree?
Raymond Hawkins: I absolutely agree. So I’m going to shout out Lieutenant Abby Hawkins, my niece, University of Alabama graduate.
Kirk Offel: Nice.
Raymond Hawkins: When your daughter enrolls there next year and does flyovers, my niece is done the last three flyovers.
Kirk Offel: Nice.
Raymond Hawkins: She’s a CH-46 or CH-56 helicopter pilot-
Kirk Offel: Nice.
Raymond Hawkins: … for the Army, and so it’s great. I get these videos sent to me of her flying over Bryant-Denny Stadium on the flyovers on game day. So yeah.
Kirk Offel: That’s pretty cool, man.
Raymond Hawkins: She was commissioned just last year, so excited to get to see her carry on the service and seeing a family member, a female family member in a combat and pilot role is pretty cool. It’s pretty cool stuff.
Kirk Offel: That is awesome.
Raymond Hawkins: Your daughter will get to see her flying overhead on a football Saturday next year, which will be kind of cool.
Kirk Offel: Hopefully I’ll be standing right there next to her and get to see both.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. You’ll be there [inaudible 00:13:37]. Yeah. Yeah, that’ll be awesome. So we both agree our space, well suited to help veterans transition. Boy, that 40,000 number a month, I had no idea the number was that high. I think our industry is well suited to provide places where those guys can, men and women can contribute. I want to go back. I’m going to force you back a little bit more. Submarines. How’d you end up a submariner? What went down that route? Your father was flying overhead in a B-52. How did you end up in a submarine? And I say that with all due respect. I’m going to give a point of reference. So when I joined the Marine Corps, I joined as an E-1. I went through boot camp, became a Marine Corps tanker. The Marine Corps fairly quickly pushed me to go to college and get commissioned.
And as part of that program, I went through what was called the FMF Scholarship Program. They exposed us. They said, « Hey, we’re going to expose you to the four disciplines. So you’re going to go visit Naval aviators, you’re going to go visit Naval Service wherever officers, you’re going to go visit Naval submariners and you’re going to go visit the Marine Corps because we want you to go do commission and we want you to have been exposed to all your options. » It was very much when I left the fleet and went to school, which the Marine Corps sent me to Auburn, we got attached to the ROTC unit here. So it was part of an ROTC program to expose you to all four disciplines, and I spent one night on a submarine and that was enough.
Kirk Offel: Sure.
Raymond Hawkins: So I got to understand, how’d you end up there? And you probably more than anyone can appreciate my story. When we started descending, hearing that boat creak and whine, I’m like, « Hey, all y’all are used to this. I’m not used to this. What are we doing? » So how’d you end up with submarining?
Kirk Offel: Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s not normal. It’s not natural. It’s not healthy to take a 360 foot tube with a nuclear reactor in it and try to sink it on purpose.
Raymond Hawkins: I hear the pressure goes up as you go underwater. Again, I went to an ag school and I’m a Marine, but I hear that’s a thing.
Kirk Offel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just a little. You know, the beauty about sitting front row into the military your whole life is you kind of get to see not only the things that you like, but you get to see some of the things you don’t like. And I had older brothers. By then, I had a brother in almost every service, and I think at that time I was the runt of my family. The other thing that my family has in common is we’re all wrestlers. That’s why you’re the one that turned me onto these really cool Mickey Mouse headsets a few years ago when I ran into you on an airplane, and now you wear those little Barbie doll ones that fit perfectly in your little ear.
Raymond Hawkins: I actually have some earrings that hang off of them, but that’s only on the weekends.
Kirk Offel: Right. I love them. They accentuate your heels, probably. But my thing is, for me, I was the runt of a family of a bunch of wrestlers and they were all tough guys, and I was never going to be tough. I could wrestle hard, but I was never going to be able to take those guys, so I learned early that being a strongest fighter was not going to be the option in my family. So I’m Gen X. I was born and raised where Rambo was the man or Commando was the man, especially if you were born and raised on military bases. I lived in Fairchild in Spokane, Washington for five years, and that’s a lot of SERE training up there, right?
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah.
Kirk Offel: I didn’t know that I was around all these incredible human beings that are changing souls and changing lives. But I just watched all that stuff and I realized, look, I’m not going to be able to compete on strength against all these people. Look, I thought I’d want to go to a Naval Special Warfare Group and try the SEAL stuff, and turns out I don’t like cold water. Right?
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah.
Kirk Offel: And I’m sure there was a lot of other factors. But I wrestled my whole life. I felt strong physically and I felt I could get into… I felt the Navy offered a broader range of options. It has its own army. We call them the United States Marine Corps, as you know. You were Department of the Navy. And then you also have-
Raymond Hawkins: The men’s department.
Kirk Offel: … your Air Force. Yes. I knew that was coming.
Raymond Hawkins: You teed it up.
Kirk Offel: I walked right in that one. I know.
Raymond Hawkins: You teed it up.
Kirk Offel: I was like, as soon as I said it, I’m like, « Too easy. » But look, if we think about it, we have our own Air Force. Right? I mean, we can not only… We have our own Air Force that goes with us with our battleships and land on a ship. And then we have what I thought was some of the cool special warfare groups outside Green Berets and stuff. And when I started looking more into the Navy, I started understanding that there’s really two branches that are really there to get shot at, and that’s the Marine Corps and the Army, and I’m not about that. Turns out that’s not… Like I’ve watched those movies and I’d be like, « I’m not about getting shot at today. » But I started watching the Hunt for October or Crimson Tide and other movies like that, and you’re out of your mind if you don’t think that those movies-
Raymond Hawkins: One ping only, Vasily.
Kirk Offel: That’s right, and I was like, « I can do that. I can be on the Dallas. » Right?
Raymond Hawkins: That’s Burt Mancuso’s boat up there. Yeah. I know. I know the movie, and the book.
Kirk Offel: [inaudible 00:18:11]. Yeah,
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [inaudible 00:18:13].
Kirk Offel: He was running for president back in the day. So the deal is that movie, movies like that, I have no idea what the impact was on the number of applications to Annapolis after Top Gun was released, but I would imagine it wasn’t zero. It was probably significant.
Raymond Hawkins: Yes. Good promotional film. Yeah.
Kirk Offel: When they released movies about submarines, the more I learned about the submarine community is it was a highly intellectual community. The only other industry or branch of service I found that was competitive towards it would be the Air Force, specifically what they were doing with satellites and space, and I felt like being immersed in an environment on a fast attack submarine would put me in a position where I can’t imagine being more uncomfortable than I was then. Plus, I’m sure as you know, to go to those types of schools that we go to in the military, there’s a certain amount of allotted curriculum that they put out every day. Every week it’s testable. Guess what happens if you don’t pass? They take away your liberty. If they want to, they’ll take away some time or they can even take away some rank. So you’re highly motivated to learn how to learn and then you learn at an accelerated rate. And then you spend time with that.
Once you hit, I mean, you’re in school for a lot of time before you even hit the fleet, and then when you’re in the fleet, they’re like, « Look, you have one year to earn your warfare pin on a submarine, and if you don’t, guess what? You’re not on the submarine community anymore. You can go be on the aircraft carrier. » So it just seemed like the submarine was a little bit more advanced than the regular parts of the military, but they just didn’t get shot at as much, and that really appealed to me. And someone once told me that the best fed sailors in the Navy are the submarines, and I don’t know if that’s true, but I was going to take my chances and go that route. So it was the perfect place for me. I loved what I did. I went to some pretty tough schools and that pressure makes diamonds or it makes splat marks, right?
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah.
Kirk Offel: So one of the things the military does, it does a good job of stripping you down to the bare basics of who you are as a human, and then they recodify the constitution of you as a person as they help build you back up, and fortunately for me, I was immersed on a submarine where there was a lot of really amazing people that truly cared about me, so I was able to be redeveloped and re-sculptured in a way that not only taught me how to learn [inaudible 00:20:21]-
Raymond Hawkins: What boat were you on?
Kirk Offel: I was on the 691. It’s a 688 old school, not a 688 I class, so it’s the USS Memphis stationed down in New London, Connecticut. It was a great submarine. I love that boat. I love that crew. I did three deployments on that crew.
Raymond Hawkins: Oh, wow.
Kirk Offel: It was one of the reasons why I couldn’t imagine staying in. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to…
Raymond Hawkins: How long were your floats? You guys down six months?
Kirk Offel: So I think when you look back at my deployment tempo, I was at sea about 288 days a year on average for three and a half years.
Raymond Hawkins: Okay. Gotcha.
Kirk Offel: So you’re doing real deployments.
Raymond Hawkins: You’re out. Yeah.
Kirk Offel: There’s times that we’re doing deployments that you’re tax free in the war zone for the whole month, tier one asset, communications. I remember pulling into Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico once, and someone from Clinton staff is on the pier with a box of cigars for people and stuff. So I felt like we got to do real movies type missions. I’m not saying it’s like a Tom Clancy novel, but I felt like I was doing something. I felt like I was driving around a multi-billion dollar warship, had almost a 26 megawatt nuclear reactor parked in the back of it, and we had real missions that made a difference. I did counter drug interdictions. I went under the northern ice pack and I did [inaudible 00:21:34]. So I got to kind of do a little bit of what submarines were designed to do. And then imagine that, leaving the military in my early 20s where I just went from driving a multi-billion dollar warship to now I’m trying to figure out how to find significance again in the civilian community. And by the way, I found that my approach to life was a little too robust or a little too zesty or a little too exciting, and I could find-
Raymond Hawkins: A little too intense.
Kirk Offel: I could find myself very easily being a little too abrasive for my civilian counterparts, but I could still sit at a table where there’s 10 strangers and if I whispered that the wrong thing, at least one person raised his hand and you could tell that was a veteran as well because their sets of humor knew what it was like to embrace the suck. You know what I’m talking about?
Raymond Hawkins: So hold on, Kirk. So you drive around this multi-billion dollar boat. Your captain, I just want to give some people some perspective. Your captain in your boat was an O-4, O-5? O-5, probably?
Kirk Offel: Yeah. O-5s. Yeah. My first captain was Commander Claude Barron. He was a Navy Academy grad, actually from Texas, and he was a shipyard skipper.
Raymond Hawkins: And I’m going to guess he’s 38, 39, probably? He’s O-5. How old old would he have been?
Kirk Offel: Yeah, he was probably early forties.
Raymond Hawkins: Okay.
Kirk Offel: And then my next one was Mark Barron, and he was a Citadel grad, and we had a lot of Notre Dame grads, a lot of Navy Academy grads. Not many Citadel grads on the submarine community, but they were prevalent and they’re out there. But I mean, I was around great leaders. Even the senior NCOs that I had. I mean, the submarine community, it’s like any other community. It doesn’t matter if, you could be in the Naval Seal community. They’re going to be dead weight that sneaks through the cracks, right? But the submarine community does a pretty good job of policing itself and holding itself accountable because every time that we pull the plug and go deep, we are putting our lives in the hands of everyone on that crew, and it only takes one person to press the wrong button one time and we have a catastrophic issue.
So we do a good job of building culture and we do it because the purpose behind that is life and death. So when you transition into the civilian world into a quote unquote mission critical environment, you’re looking to measure it on a sense of urgency that’s more aligned to mortality, and instead you’re hearing people talking about it at a million dollars per second of downtime. So it took time to wrap my mind around the connection between those two things, but over the course of time, like any transition, I was able to understand how to apply what we’ve learned in the military to what this community needs.
Raymond Hawkins: I did want to make that point. So you’re driving around a multi-billion dollar weapon of war, true weapon of mass destruction. To your point, a nuclear reactor and-
Kirk Offel: And weapons.
Raymond Hawkins: … and incredible ordinance on board, and it’s being driven around by a guy in his early forties who has the responsibility-
Kirk Offel: And the rest of the crew averages 20 years old. The rest of the crew-
Raymond Hawkins: I was going to say, it’s a bunch of college-aged kids. Yeah.
Kirk Offel: The college-aged kids, 18 to 22. If you join at 18, before you get on a submarine, I mean, you’re at school for a year before you even-
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. You’re 20 by the time you get on the boat. Yeah.
Kirk Offel: Yeah. By the time you hit the fleet, now you are a young person, and 20 to 21 is probably the average age of a submariner right now, and 85% of the crew is enlisted. So people don’t realize that the military, you’re 18 to 24 year olds, and thank God. Thank God we have that.
Raymond Hawkins: I’m drawing a blank. I’m going to forget his name. He was the governor of Minnesota, the wrestler that became-
Kirk Offel: Jesse Ventura.
Raymond Hawkins: Jesse.
Kirk Offel: He was a Navy SEAL.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. I saw a clip on him the other day talking about coming home from Vietnam after doing a deployment and recognizing that the country was comfortable sending children to war, but not letting them come back-
Kirk Offel: Win.
Raymond Hawkins: … and be a full member of society, right? He was like, « Hey, I came home, I was 19, I couldn’t vote, I couldn’t drink, » and he’s like, « I just wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to where the world thought I was a man instead of where the world thought I was a kid. » An intense guy, an interesting story. But I think emphasizing [inaudible 00:25:15]-
Kirk Offel: My dad has that same story. My dad came home. He was in Vietnam two tours, I think, and he came back one time and was at the bar to order and they’re like, « Dude, you’re not 21, » and his father-in-law, my grandfather, was sitting next to him. He’s like, « You’ll pour this man a beer. He just got back from Vietnam. If he can fight and die for his country, he can drink. »
Raymond Hawkins: He can drink, yeah.
Kirk Offel: So that was weird. It was weird.
Raymond Hawkins: And so this, we’re going to release this episode on Veterans Day, so I’m going to take the opportunity to tip the hat to your dad, to my dad who spent the entire year of ’67 and the first part of ’68 in Vietnam. Right?
Kirk Offel: Sure.
Raymond Hawkins: Those guys came home and they didn’t get treated like vets who come home today. Right?
Kirk Offel: Not at all.
Raymond Hawkins: And I’m not saying there aren’t problems in how we handle the veteran community today, but I mean, our country was outright ugly to the people who came over from the Vietnam War. And those guys raised the same hand, took the same oath you and I did and got shot at in another part of the world and didn’t get the same respect. And I just want to say to those guys, not that there are many of them listening to Data Center podcast, but we owe you guys a debt of gratitude. Right? That group that came up from Vietnam and got treated like shit, it was just not the way they should have been brought back, right?
Kirk Offel: I can’t agree with you more. Those people were doing the best they could for the best reasons, and they just didn’t have the opportunity to win.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah.
Kirk Offel: And I’ll tell you, that generation is what made us Gen Xers. I’m not sure what you are, but I do think that they came back and that changed the way, that changed the optics in how they viewed the entire world for sure.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah, yeah. I was born in ’94, Kirk. I’m going to turn 39 this year.
Kirk Offel: Nice. Well, listen, I’ll tell you this. No matter how bad your dad had coming back from Vietnam, no matter how I had it coming back from Vietnam, or my dad did it, they still supported the country and they still encouraged us to serve. Right?
Raymond Hawkins: Here, here.
Kirk Offel: You’re 37, 38, you said right now? I identify as a forty-year-old myself.
Raymond Hawkins: I identify as 39. I’ve celebrated my 39th birthday 18 years in a row, Kirk. I’m holding back.
Kirk Offel: Listen, we got to be proud of what’s happening with these veterans, though. Like I said, we are only 1%, less than one half of 1% of the population at any one time is on an active duty. But look at us now. 15 to 20%. I mean, when’s the last time that you could recall that we had a presidential election where the two vice presidents were two former enlisted people debating each other for vice president?
Raymond Hawkins: Here, here.
Kirk Offel: Veterans are going to be taking a bigger part in politics too because we have been in environments that involve life and death, and I could see a lot of us coming back now and saying, « I just don’t think that we want to be led by the week. » I could see more veterans taking more active roles in politics and government just like they are in corporate America, because we come from an incubator of leadership, and for some of us, we come from a lot of training and technology incubators as well.
Raymond Hawkins: I hope this episode on Veterans Day gets listened to a little and encourages guys to join our industry. You alluded a little bit to making that transition, and it’s not just a transition of, « Hey, I’m in a place where we measure mission critical by mortality, and today we measure mission critical by uptime. » Certainly the severity of both of those circumstances are different a little. But you commented about being in a meeting and what people say. I remember the first time I sat in a meeting and I said, « Hey, I need to understand your chain of command. » And the person said to me, « Chain of command? What are you talking about? » And I’m like, « Well, I just want to know-«
Kirk Offel: [inaudible 00:28:26].
Raymond Hawkins: « I want to know, when you don’t do your job, I want to know who I’m supposed to go talk to because I’m already suspicious of you. » And they’re like, « We don’t use those words. » And I’m like, « Well, you report to somebody. I’d like to know who. » And you got to learn to talk different and you got to learn to fit in and got to learn to communicate. Your skills and the way you’ve been developed are important and valuable, but you got to learn that, hey, we’re not in a mortality environment anymore and learn to communicate more effectively and learn to be softer and kinder and more tactful in how you communicate, and I would just say to the veterans that we’re celebrating with this episode. Hey, it’s worth figuring out how to fit in and to be in the private sector. The private sector desperately needs your skills. Desperately.
Kirk Offel: I would say, I try to tell veterans this when I talk to him. We are conditioned and trained in the military to have the highest level of attention to detail because life and death does matter, so everything that we try to say is very intentional and deliberate. Like you said, like asking about the chain of command or talking with your elbows sometimes, is how I call it, is being direct, because accountability is the greatest form of love, so to speak.
Raymond Hawkins: Here, here.
Kirk Offel: So the best way I could lead you and others is to be as direct and intentional as I can. Try to imagine if you’re on active duty and you’re listening this and you’re getting ready to transition to a veteran. Try to imagine the military gave you a set of binoculars and told you to look at all the challenges through that optics. When you become a civilian, I encourage you to take the binoculars and flip them the opposite direction and then try to approach it softer, with less elbows, less edge and left language. With more questions, right? You have to have almost more empathy as a civilian as you approach the challenges and you have to treat them more as opportunities instead of challenges that you have to overcome. Right?
And it takes time for you and I. I don’t know how long it took you, but I could tell you this. I didn’t last. I mean, my first job as a veteran, it’s just a stepping stone because I’m leaving a place. I mean, imagine your family’s mainly career, meaning I’m not saying they’ve been institutionalized, but some that have joined since 18 are getting out at 48, have spent the last 30 years being told what they’re doing every four to five years, and now it can be overwhelming and daunting even to try to imagine having to solve for those challenges yourself. Right? So the community is what you need, and we are both singers, and the chorus is what sings louder than the soloist, which is why we have to continue to grab people like us and join our forces to try to create a better collective or a greater light that others can find and reach this narrative.
I do agree. I hope that we have more veterans that listen to this because I want to get as many of them as we can to transition out of the military and find a career of meaningful significance doing something that’s greater than themselves again. And I think that it pencils out. If you’re the CEO of a company, you want to hire a veteran, because you have to remember these are purpose-driven people. They didn’t join the military to make money. They did it to make a difference. And if you could give them a purpose, a mission, a culture with a team that wants to win, because wanting to win is important. It pays to be a winner. Then you’re going to get a lot of people that are going to try to find their way into your company and contribute to this industry in ways that the rest of us veterans have been able to contribute as well.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. Here, here. So much goodness in that. Well, man, I’m going to ask you a couple data center questions and I knew we would not have any problem filling up the airtime. Let’s have a couple data center questions. I did not know you founded DCAC, so talk to me about that. What motivated that? How did you come up with that idea? I’d love to hear the background there and tell us when and why that came about.
Kirk Offel: It’s funny story. I just told it the other day and I was mentioning it to George Rocket, founder, CEO.
Raymond Hawkins: George is a great guy.
Kirk Offel: Yep. DCD. I think that he’s a pioneer. He’s a media pioneer. I credit my early stage development in this industry to floating around at the DCD conferences where it became… It created its own orbit and most people from the industry would kind of congregate around these things, and if it wasn’t to educate themselves, it was to build their networks. I was in a title once where I had a title called director of strategy and it was about 10 years ago when I applied for a DCD conference and I was rejected. If you don’t remember, DCD was probably the number one conference at the time, and they didn’t accept anybody that had roles like yours. You’re salesperson. I’m a salesperson-
Raymond Hawkins: Sales guy, yeah.
Kirk Offel: Anybody that was associated with revenue, they would try to not let come. So I was told that my ticket wouldn’t be honored and they’d give me a refund. And it was in Dallas. It was at a Hilton, and they had an exhibit hall, so I hijacked the other exhibit hall and I hosted my own party there, and I jacked all the VIPs at the conference, and I realized this industry doesn’t need more conferences, it just needs a better one and it needs a better one with a better purpose. I don’t know how many conferences I’ve attended to, but I could tell you most of them I’ve been to, I’ve never left inspired. I’m typically left with a hangover, a bunch of cards from people I don’t remember meeting, and nothing really other than that, and maybe a lead or two.
But I just decided that I was done going to conferences to where the only thing they want is your money. They don’t want to make a difference. They don’t want to advance the industry and they don’t want to help a community. And I said, « We’re going to do a conference that’s going to help veterans get jobs in this industry, and we’re going to do a conference called the Anti-Conference. » So the Data Center Anti-Conference was born literally on a napkin at a bar one night after I’ve had too many drinks, and then I was challenged to figure out if I could actually bring that thing to life. Here we are coming up, next year will be our 10th year anniversary, our ninth conference, and last year we had 1,340 people attend. So it’s building momentum as we grow because it has a greater purpose than the other conferences. We don’t do it to make money. We do it to make a difference, and we try to make sure that we put people on stage to talk about the people of the industry, to talk about the power of this industry, to talk about the capacity challenges of the industry, but there’s always someone that inspires you.
So the only promise we tried to make was we want to help others within the community, and we want help our own community, which is the veteran community, and we have to make sure that what we’re doing is inspiring them to be better versions of themselves, to be better professionals. And I felt that if I did it in a place like Austin City Limits and gave everyone enough booze early enough in the morning, I could create an environment that allowed for a better exchange of ideas and a lot of really hardcore networking to where real relationships would be informed and forged to where real changes in the industry should begin to take place. So the DCAC Conference is something I only did once a year. We took it for the first time to Dublin this year, so about three weeks ago we were in Dublin hosting it. We had just over 500 people with that one. And we’re getting ready to announce that we’re getting ready to do DCAC again.
Actually, if you want, I know this isn’t coming out the Veterans Day, but if you want me to give you a little bit of a narrative regarding the next one.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah.
Kirk Offel: We all have been to Cannes. I think I, maybe to PTC or Cannes. I probably ran into you on a plane coming back from one of those events once, and it’s an incredible venue for an event. A lot of amazing people show up to that one. I found a lot of value in it. Well, the same parent company that owns them has come to Austin. They’re called Datacloud USA and they try to stand up their conference two weeks before us to go head-to-head against us for the last three years. I just felt like, when I asked their CEO what the purpose of that conference was, he couldn’t answer the question. To that end, we’ll be making an announcement in the next five to 10 days that we will be launching DCAC Austin, our 10th year anniversary event on the same dates as Datacloud USA in Austin. They’re either going to go head-to-head against us or we’re going to chase them out of this market because I’m sick of going out and going to these conferences that have nothing to offer us other than a hangover and some business cards.
I need to go to these conferences to be inspired. I need to be educated, and I’m not getting that, and I’m definitely not getting into that conference. They could be a completely different show over in Cannes. But here, Austin, Texas, which is the new home of technology, is going to be the home of one of the strongest data center conferences that is designed to inspire future leaders of this industry. If we do this right, we’ll be the South by Southwest of the data center industry, and that’ll be where greater exchanges of ideas people come and recruit and find new jobs. But we could launch new businesses from our conference.
Raymond Hawkins: Coming out of a conference. Love that.
Kirk Offel: Yeah. I didn’t do it to make money. We did to make a difference, and I just got sick of standing around seeing the same old construct at every conference, and it was just me too, more of the same. And the prices are twice as much as what we offer, so we make it more inclusive so everyone in the industry could have a part and everybody in this industry could have a voice.
Raymond Hawkins: Love it. Yeah. A conference for our industry with a purpose. Love that. I’m going to ask you one more question. Tell me, so I appreciate hearing the background on DCAC. Give me the background on how you came up with Overwatch. What was the purpose, mission behind it? The name. Give me a little background there.
Kirk Offel: Last story, last question is probably the most important one, and this will tie right back into Veterans Day. I’ve had the pleasure of hiring veterans throughout my entire career. Every stage of my growth as a leader. I’ve been able to use Bradley Morris, Orion International, other, we’re recruiting firms that only specialize in military. Those companies are very diluted as they became more corporate, but not before I recruited some very strong talent from those outfits. I’ve had people that have worked for me and one day, I’m sure that you’ve heard of some of the parties I’ve hosted, Raymond, in this industry, and one day I had a veteran that’s worked for me for five years, make me aware that the night before he interviewed me or interviewed with me, he had his gun in his hand and was potential to harm himself, and he’s not the only member of my staff that has put himself in harm’s way.
Thankfully for me, someone else intervened and reminded him that he had an interview the next day, so he might as well wait and see how that goes before he makes a hard decision. That veteran inspired me that day to leave what I was doing where I worked at another data center operating company up headquartered in Dallas, and I ran their platform for delivery, for design construction engineering, and I left that day not knowing exactly what I was going to do, but knowing that I would never again take my career so cavalier in which I don’t make sure that I’m constantly at the ready to help another veteran. God forbid another veteran wants to have an interview with us, and he was waiting for that interview to happen tomorrow before they check out and put their gun in their hand the night before. So I am very purpose driven in helping stop the suicide in the veteran community. It’s hit close to home for me and those that work for me.
And one of the people that has worked for me for multiple companies throughout my career let me in on something in that level of confidence into that moment when they did it. It changed everything inside of me, and that was about five and a half years ago. And I remember going to two co-founders that are both combat infantry, Army, both disabled veterans, and they have plenty of medals. And I remember going to both of them and saying, « I’m going to leave what I’m doing and I’m going to go start something and I don’t know what it’s going to do, but I know it’s going to help other veterans. » And before I even finished my sentence, both of them said, « We’re in, ride or die. » And that’s what makes veterans special, I think, is that they’re willing to do things that make a difference.
That man took a job with me and had to go explain to his wife a few weeks later when the paycheck came from a different company. He didn’t even tell his wife what he was doing first because he knew that what we were doing was going to be to make a difference, and at the end of that, we had figured out a way to make money, too. So the term Overwatch, which is a military term as you know, comes from military doctrine, and if you were to look it up, it means when a smaller unit disrupts the dynamic in a battle while simultaneously helping support a much larger unit. The role that we assign for Overwatch typically assigned to a sniper. Those are the type of people that one guy, one person behind a weapon, could really suppress an entire unit or platoon, thus disrupting everything. Our unit of people are people that parachute in through staff augmentation. We’re a technology incubator of labor, and then the term itself reflects our culture, which is we are here to help our clients change the dynamic on whatever challenge or field that they’re operating. In this case, it means we’re building data centers. So we wanted something that reflected the boldness of our role, and that’s what we did, so that’s what Overwatch is.
Raymond Hawkins: Love it. Love the story of why the inspiration. I did not know that your early partners were also of that. That’s really, really cool stuff.
Kirk Offel: We’re a service to [inaudible 00:40:33] business. Yep. All of us are [inaudible 00:40:35] veterans.
Raymond Hawkins: All right. Awesome. I did not know that. Well, Kurt, man, I really appreciate the conversation. I look forward to seeing you at DCAC. Thank you for joining me on the podcast. I think I got to tip of the hat to you. You asked me about coming down and talking with you, and you offered that we do a workout session with Dakota Meyer when I get there, and I got to tell you, that scared me so bad. I’m like, « Dude, I got to get in shape. » I can’t go meet with the youngest Marine Medal of Honor winner and show up fat and out of shape, so I look forward to seeing you-
Kirk Offel: It doesn’t matter how in shape you’d show up when you see Dakota. He’ll still make you throw up. But I’ll tell you this. No, I mean, that’s his joy, right? But now I have Mike Cirelli. I think if you ever heard the announcement, you’ll see the press release soon. We bought the Talent Word Group, which is led by Mike Cirelli, former Marine Corps, Force Recon sniper turned Navy SEAL, SEAL Team 6 Commander.
Raymond Hawkins: Awesome.
Kirk Offel: So I have to work out with him now instead.
Raymond Hawkins: Good for you.
Kirk Offel: You’re welcome to join us.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah. I’ll be down. I love it. I’m on the journey to get back into my skinny jeans, and that doesn’t mean the ones that are tied around the ledge.
Kirk Offel: Yeah. Take a number, bro. We’re all in that. That’s what happens when you turn 40 like us.
Raymond Hawkins: That’s exactly right. Well, I’m not there yet. I’ve been 39 for a while, but I know it’s coming.
Kirk Offel: I got you. Hey, this has been an honor. Thanks for letting me have the opportunity to come talk with you. I really appreciate it, Raymond.
Raymond Hawkins: Yeah, man. I appreciate. I tip my hat to, A, your service, your family’s commitment to service. The notion, you nailed it. You said it earlier, right? Doing something that’s more important than you. Right? Our first core conviction at Compass is to try to act humbly. It’s our first core conviction because we struggle with it, right? All of us love me some me, and we’re trying to remind ourselves that I’m not nearly as important as everybody else, and how do I maintain an orientation of service? And you guys do that. You exemplify that. Your organization stands for it, and I hope that what we do here in our little conversation is we encourage veterans to find a place to serve even after they’ve put the uniform in the closet.
Kirk Offel: Even Marines. We’ll even find something to do with those people.
Raymond Hawkins: I mean, if you can figure out a way to make a Marine tanker employable, I mean, there’s hope for anybody.
Kirk Offel: Anything’s possible. Right.
Raymond Hawkins: Anything is possible. That’s right. That’s exactly right. Well, man.
Kirk Offel: Awesome, man.
Raymond Hawkins: Good to see you, Kirk. I appreciate it, bud.