Breaking Barriers & Launching Bold Careers

It's not only awareness of opportunities, but it's awareness about yourself. What are your goals and objectives? What are the filters? How do you stay focused? And once you understand that paradigm, then you're able to look at all these opportunities, because you're right. You're bombarded with opportunities every day, and you're then able to filter what is in line with my values, my values, my goals, my vision that will help elevate where I want to be to where I want to go.

Welcome to ReLaunch to a Rich Life. The podcast where breakthrough stories meet unstoppable success. I'm HilaryDeCesare, and each week, we explore how relaunches turn setbacks into setups for wealth, impact and true fulfillment, ready to flip your world and dive into your rich life. Today, we're joined by incredible Shelli Brunswick, a globally recognized keynote speaker, author and futurist. Shelli is the founder and CEO of SB Global LLC. She is a former US Air Force officer and the former COO of Space Foundation. She's revolutionizing leadership with space innovation, fostering global partnerships and inspiring others to think beyond limits. From receiving multiple lifetime achievement awards to collaborating with NASA Shelley is shaping the future of leadership, innovation and workforce development. She's here to share her journey and relaunch story that's surely going to inspire you so Shelli, welcome, welcome. I am so excited to have you on the show, and when I first talked to you, it was like sparks were flying the the rocket was taking off of the launch pad. You had so much to share, and I'm just wondering how we're going to be able to do this in such a short amount of time. But let's dive in. Okay, sounds great. So you've had such an incredible journey, and there's been a lot of relaunches along the way, why don't we start with the one that has been the most impactful to who you are today? Fantastic.

Well again, thank you so much for inviting me, and I'm looking forward to an out of this world experience for this discussion. I think one of the most important relaunch chapters in my journey. And as you said, military officer corporate industry has been my most recent one, and that was leaving that corporate world military structure behind and starting my own company, SB, Global LLC, being that entrepreneur, going out on my own, taking that brave step to see if I can really make it, and bet on myself, as they say,

so when you're talking about, you know, military, and you were in the military for how long?

29 years. 29 just a short time. I thought about making it a career, but I decided 29 was an

hour. That was that? Was it? Can you talk about what was it? You know, 29 years. And I remember, I was at Oracle, almost 10 years high tech, and I was, I was considered like the dinosaur in those because high tech changes over so quickly. As you said, a lot of times, you know, people go into the military and they stay there like it is a lifetime, but you first, as a female, and then secondly, were there for 29 years. What caused you, what was like that moment where you're like, you know what? I think I need to go do something different. I think I want to go start my own entrepreneurial venture. Well, I think

that's a great question, and what I'll share with your audience is I have two chapters in that military journey. The first one is I jumped into the Air Force and listed right out of high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't have a college idea, I didn't have college money, and I wanted to see the world, and the best way to do that was to join the military. So right out of high school, 18 years old, jumped into the military, was stationed in Turkey and Germany, was able to go to school at night, and I was a personnel specialist. So I was HR, so my space journey did start till later. So for those first 12 years in the Air Force, I was an enlisted airman, being in personnel, going to school at night, and when I completed my bachelor's and master's degree, that's when I applied to become an officer in the Air Force, and when I was selected, that's what started my space journey, because the Air Force made me a space acquisition or space procurement officer. So those two chapters had a lot of different living in Turkey and Germany and color. And DC and LA. And so that's a great thing that people don't think about the military, is you get all these different opportunities, different jobs, different schooling. And so I really loved it. I love being part of a team that made an impact and contributed to the greater good. And so when I retired from the Air Force, I knew that I had that same culture and thought process, and that's why I joined Space Foundation, a US nonprofit doing business internationally as their Chief Operating Officer, repositioning and relaunching my career from that military person into that space industry.

So I have to ask when you talk about space and you talk about NASA and what you were able to do, what is the craziest story that you had around space, around what you saw, around what you heard?

Well, a lot of times people think about all the awesome stuff, and I did get to do those as well. Go to Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg and sea launches and meet astronauts. But one of the really neat experiences I had was when I was in the US Air Force. Now I was in the Air Force before Space Force, so I would have probably been more of a Space Force person had that existed. But while I was in the Air Force, I was running program upgrades to our various tracking stations around the world. So we have to track the satellites, and we download information from them, we upload information to them. And one of those tracking stations, tracking stations, is in Greenland. And so I was able to go to Greenland to watch this upgrade take place for this tracking station. Now, again, a lot of this upgrade is software upgrade, so doing the testing and verification to make sure everything ran smoothly, to test to make sure we could still connect with the satellite, pull data off the satellites. But it was also just wonderful being in Greenland experience amazing American contractors that were there supporting the US mission, but also meeting allies. The Danish people own the Danes, the Denmark owns Greenland. And so it's really a unique experience as a young captain in the US Air Force to have that opportunity to go actually see real world application of space technology, watch it in in action, as well as meet with our allies and partners. Okay,

that is so cool. And one of the things that I would like to ask you is, when you think about men versus women in the military, especially when you were going through all of this, what was the percentage of women at that point in the military. And I'd love to know, if you know what it is today, how have things have things shifted? Have they grown? What's happening in that capacity?

Well, let me talk about something the audience may really understand, and that's the Apollo era. So when you think back to the Apollo era, 60 years ago, we were two nations in a space race, primarily STEM professional science, technology, engineering and math, primarily male dominated. So now, as we fast forward 60 years to where we are today. Now, space is really commercialized. So diversity of opportunities, not only whether you want to be in the military, civil space, NASA, commercial or international, but we need every career field, whether it's media and communications like today stem we still need scientists. We still need astronauts, but we also need marketing and sales. So the opportunity to be in the space industry, whether you're a man or a woman, has never been better now in the military, yes, there were certainly times I may have been the only woman in the room or the only woman at the table, or the only woman that went to Greenland to watch these software upgrades. But when you're in the military, you really don't think about that. You're all wearing the same uniform. You're tied together by the same mission to accomplish the goals. So I really appreciate that, and I appreciate all the men that were mentors to me and champions and helped position me for the next opportunity and gave me great advice. So when we think about men and women, think about men, if you're a woman, that they're also your allies. They're there to help you. Seek them out, find their knowledge and insight. Many of them are wanting to offer help and assistance. They just might not know how. So you have an opportunity to reach out and ask for help.

So let's talk about you. You make this decision to leave the military and become an entrepreneur. What? What type of process did you go through in order to say, Yes, after 29 years, I'm going to do this.

So when I decided to leave the military, so I had had wonderful jobs, I was a test and verification officer. That's why I went to Greenland to watch the upgrades, because I did test and verification for Space Systems. I also was a professor at Defense Act. Acquisition University, teaching about space acquisition. And then I culminated my career in the Air Force, working on Capitol Hill as a legislative liaison. And so I kind of knew, as any business owner knows, I knew that was the exit strategy. The only way to go from that point would have been backwards, to go back to a program office, be a project manager. And I knew I wanted to jump on to the next thing. So whenever you're an entrepreneur or you're in your career, you know that at some point you have to exit and start the next chapter. And the next chapter was going over to the Space Foundation to be their chief operating officer. So I left the military and I went to an organization where you have to run a team, lead a team, empower a team, create products, programs and services, generate revenue, pay salaries, turn on the lights. And so it was a really great opportunity. One of the events they put on is the annual Space Symposium that takes place in Colorado Springs, bringing together the global space community. They also did kindergarten through 12th grade programs capacity building, and then I also launched their space Commerce program through partnership with the Minority Business Development Agency. So I had already started a lot of that entrepreneurial activity while I was at Space Foundation for nine years, and at nine years, I knew I'd done just about everything I could do at Space Foundation, and it was time to once again exit. What's your exit strategy? We

we call it a relaunch. Once again, we're going to relaunch into into the next phase of our life. I

love that, you know, being in the space industry, I love the analogy of we're launching into it. But for entrepreneurs, I always talk whenever I coach entrepreneurs, even if they're very in the very beginning, I always say, what is your exit strategy? Because every new beginning will eventually have an exit. So my relaunch out of space foundation after an amazing career, once again, I knew I'd culminated everything I could possibly do there, and I knew the next step I really wanted was to be an entrepreneur, to be that advocate for the space industry, and really be the bridge from the space industry to the general public, because there's so much that people don't know or understand that takes place in the space industry that benefits our everyday lives.

So how are you working with you say you know you from your coaching perspective and helping others with that. What? What's involved there?

It's a lot of great opportunities. I serve on some advisory boards for some startups, so it's really exciting to see those entrepreneurial ideas. Some of them are in AI. I will highlight the one team I'm working on in AI. They're a female led team. But I also work with teams that are all men. It's, you know, I don't have any forms of discrimination. I welcome all. I'm really excited about the team and the technology. I'm also out there doing a lot of motivational speaking now, doing workshops about what space got to do with it, 10 life lessons for personal growth, which is the book I wrote that incorporates some of the lessons I learned in the military, but I also interviewed 200 global thought leaders and included 30 of their stories in this first book to share that what I learned in the military from lessons learned and ideas applies to everyone. It's not these ideas, these lessons learned aren't just for people in the military or the space industry. They're for everyone. So I'm out there writing books, writing articles for Forbes.

There's that whole like, what space got to do, got to do with it, which is by far the greatest name that you could come up with for a book. And you kept going with, you know, the 10 things that you learned and all that. Okay, we need to know, give us a few of these that we can kind of like, you know, hear and sink our teeth into right now, because the that that's good, that you interviewed 250 people here, like, what? What were the key takeaways? What were like? Give us, give us a few of those. Well, let's

start with a little history. The first of all, I did a TEDx manatee springs and my TEDx coach, you know, I'm talking about space, and he's like, What are we going to call this? And he goes, I know what space got to do with it. He was not a space person, but just from my talk. He was like, so I pulled the theme for my book series from that TEDx talk, so your audience can go back and check that out from 2022 and then I was the commencement speaker for Colorado State University Pueblo, and when I interviewed with the President to be the commencement speaker, he said, I need you to keep it real. My students may not know what they're doing tomorrow, so talk about your lessons learned. Talked about your failures. So the first three chapters in the book are actually from that CSU Pueblo commencement address, which is also available on my YouTube. And those first three lessons learned are take advantage of every opportunity I highlighted when I was an enlisted airman. One of the opportunities I took advantage of was tuition assistance, and so I was able to go to school at night and on the weekends completing my bachelor's and master's degree. 90s that allowed me to be applied to become an officer. The second skill is, or second lesson is, try anyways, even when the odds are against you. Now my background, I'm a traditional space person in the sense I came in through the military. But I am a non traditional space person because I'm not a STEM professional. I have a business degree and an MBA. So I have, I'm a myriad of both of those traditional, non traditional space. So when I applied to become an officer in the Air Force, they were looking for STEM professionals. So it was only about a 12% chance I'd get picked up to become an officer. But I say to your audience, as well as myself, try anyways, and if you fail. The first time, which I did, I was not selected to be an officer the first time, which I call F, A, I, L, first attempt in learning, I reevaluated.

That is a good, a very good relaunch, flip of the word fail. I really like

that. Thank you. And so what I realized I redid my application to become an officer in the Air Force, and on the second try, I was selected, and then I was selected to be a space Acquisition Officer, which the third lesson is, don't fear the unknown. What the air force called it was space acquisition, which I'm not sure anybody, even in your audience, would know what that means. I have to convert that to like space procurement or space project management. So I didn't really want to do that. So I feared the unknown, because I didn't know what it was. Nobody I knew knew what it was, and I tried to get reassigned. And finally, someone from the Air Force personnel Center said, Sergeant Brunswick, the Air Force needs you to be a space Acquisition Officer. And I saluted smartly and said, Yes, sir, because you don't really have a choice. And I'm so grateful that that's what happened, because that started my 25 amazing year career in the space industry. So those are the first three lessons, and they were also the first three lessons from my commencement address.

So I do want to go back to the first one, and I think that there's a lot of people out there when you said, take advantage of every opportunity. As an entrepreneur, let's just focus there. You're a leadership coach. You do a lot of amazing things, but as as a coach, and you've got people that are trying to stay focused on what their goals are of scaling their businesses, and when you say, take advantage of every opportunity, how Does one incorporate that into success when we should focus we should, you know, have you know you can't do everything. You know you can't boil the ocean. What do you say to people now today, in regards to Hey, take advantage of every opportunity.

So when you pick up the book, go to chapter nine first, because chapter nine is about awareness, and it's not only awareness of opportunities, but it's awareness about yourself. What are your goals and objective? What are the filters? How do you stay focused? And once you understand that paradigm, then you're able to look at all these opportunities, because you're right. You're bombarded with opportunities every day, and you're then able to filter what is in line with my values, my values, my goals, my vision, that will help elevate where I want to be to where I want to go. So that's one of the things I'll share, is each chapter is not individual. They actually help you, help tie in. So the chapter on awareness, one of the amazing individuals I interviewed for that is a female samurai warrior from Japan. She's from a 400 year lineage of female samurai warriors. Her name is Machiko gozen, and she talks about the importance of awareness and being focused. And now let's go back to chapter one. Take advantage of opportunities. You know, sometimes opportunities are work. They might be volunteering for organizations that can help fill you. Maybe you got some gaps in your resume or CV, or maybe you can volunteer for an organization. One of the organizations I love is the world business angels, investment forum. If you're an entrepreneur and you want to network with high quality individuals that are investors and entrepreneurs, might be a good way to build that network and do some volunteer work that helps elevate so really finding those opportunities that also tie in, like I said, with chapter nine, the awareness now I will highlight I talked about. Machi CO goes in in chapter nine on awareness, but in chapter one, one of the the first interview is with Her Excellency, Rosalia Ortega, who was the first female president of Ecuador, who was deposed by a military coup, and now she's well respected in Ecuador and a leader in education and capacity building and well beloved in her country. So it just highlights how op. Opportunities come along, and sometimes you may have setbacks, but then how you rebound as well. And so the book goes into some great stories like Dr Ortega's, as well as many others.

I cannot believe you had the opportunity to talk to these individual women and then put it all together in this book, I am so impressed. I'm interviewing 100 impact millionaires right now, iconic impact millionaires. And you know, it's interesting when you interviewed how many, how many of the people you interviewed were men versus women. So

my goal for the book, because I do have men in here. Was every chapter has two women and one man. So three role models are included, but each of the stories are unique and insightful. They tie in with the chapter. You know, I was just thinking about one of the men I interviewed in chapter 10. Chapter 10 is about passion, perseverance and patience, and the person I interviewed was Klaus von Storch. He was a Chilean astronaut candidate. Amazing leader was in the Chilean Air Force was selected both by the Russians to be a cosmonaut as well as the US to be an astronaut. And then that dream didn't come to fruition. But instead, you know, he met some of the individuals from the Apollo era and his vision and how he's creating space awareness and opportunities in Chile now, and how he overcame a mid air collision where his aircraft was hit by another military aircraft all the crew perished, except for himself, how he was able to come back from a tragedy like that and continue to be an inspiration. The person he met, by the way, was Neil Armstrong, and having the opportunity to talk to Neil Armstrong about his loss and tragedy in the Chilean Air Force and coming back, as well as Neil Armstrong sharing, you know, tragedy and loss as well as you know, because there were some losses and setbacks during the Apollo era. And so they really bonded, and how Klaus is helping create space programs and capacity building for young kids in Chile to come into the space industry. So every story in there, I could probably write a book on each and every person in there. Unfortunately, I kept it kind of brief, so it gives you some insight. But what I do in the book is I list where you can find out more information about each individual. You can find more podcasts and webinars, other books you could read how you can take the next step in your personal and professional development.

So I'm over overwhelmed by what you've just done, because I know what I'm doing and it's but it's also one of the most rewarding things I've done is talking to these people and really understanding what what got them to where they are. And as you said, you know, there's a lot of relaunches that have kind of set them back, and I want to talk to you a little bit more about there have been a lot of relaunches along the way. But how were you able to really lean into your own mindset, your own, you know, hey, I've got to get through this. I don't, you know there's, there's not a lot of in the military, you know, you just keep going down that path. What? What tips or strategies did you use to kind of keep going down the path when hard times and hard relaunches were happening?

Well, I kind of share a number of that in the book as well, but I think it's really important to build your network. It starts with your family. You know, I'm fortunate. I have a wonderful husband who's super supportive and has always been supportive, but also building that network. How do you find like minded individuals? So if you're in the space industry, there are wonderful organizations to join, like Space Generation Advisory Council, Women in Aerospace, Women Tech Network, the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, and they have a number of groups, whether it's space for women, space for youth, space for lawyers. So find those organizations where you can find individuals that you can share ideas with, that those individuals also give you great opportunity insights. They can help you find mentoring opportunities as well as training events. The other thing is, you don't have to accomplish it all overnight. Can you take one small step towards where you want to be? And some days you might take a lot more steps, and some days you take smaller steps, but it's really important to celebrate every step, because eventually you'll get there and don't get don't get discouraged, just keep going.

You know why I love that so much? Because I, what I really put out there into the world is pop the champagne. You gotta pop the champagne too many times. We say, we'll keep that for later. We'll we don't. We have to accomplish this before we actually recognize and say, yes, I've done a good job. And especially as women, I want to ask you this, do. You know, there's a lot of times we feel that we have to do more, do more, do more, do, do, do, do and how did you recognize that? I mean, you've got all these different awards, and NASA recognized you and numerous awards. And how did you stop and actually celebrate yourself. Or was that something that you know? How did you learn to do that? I'm learning

that now, because I'm sure as you and your audience have caught on, you and I are both type A personalities really driven about impact and making it happen and making a difference. And I've been that way my whole career. I've I'm really driven, whether it's academics or sports or helping others, but I've made a pivot over the last year as I started this entrepreneurship. You know, what is the real focus? And my real focus is about legacy and knowledge transfer. For years, I've been a mentor, or I've given speeches, and people have said, Do you have a book? Do you have this written down? And you know, when you keep it in your brain, you're not really doing the knowledge transfer. Yes, you may give a speech, or you may mentor one person, but when you write it down and you give the tools that somebody can follow, even if you're not there, then you're really knowledge transferring. And so I'm at that point in my career where it's really not about me and it's about how can I give to those who are coming behind me? I don't even want to say the next generation, because there are a lot of people mid career who are realizing they can come into the space industry. Maybe they were in sales in the medical device industry, or they were in oil and gas, and now they want to come into the space industry, because now there's opportunities for them. So the book is for anyone similar to what you said, looking to relaunch, looking to create those opportunities, looking to find out how they can pivot and grow. And so that's what I'm really focused on. And that type of focus, knowledge transfer, thought leadership, really requires you to not be a doer and to be a thinker.

Okay? Knowledge Transfer, I think, is critical in where we are today. And as you said, it's not just that we are, you know, in a commencement speech, sharing with the younger generation, it's our generation like we are so hungry for all that, if we talk about relaunch in your health and your wealth and your relationships, and you know, there's so much great information that's out there, and there's so much bogus information out there, and so to really have somebody like you helping, guiding, leading is more impactful than anything right now, because there are people that are sitting out there listening right now that are trying to relaunch into something brand new. I spoke to a couple this weekend that are willing to leave corporate, and they want to they want to know, how do you really do that when you talk about someone who is looking to relaunch their career and push beyond their limits, what suggestions do you give them right now as kind of that, as you said, these small steps, this first step in making the decision, because there's so much fear around making a wrong decision.

First of all, there are no wrong decisions. It's only learning. Learn from it. So I started with the first book, and then the second book is called what space got to do with it, an interstellar Guide to Success. So some of the ideas in the second book are smaller in the first book, but I'm expanding on it, because a lot of times I'll talk about the space industry and the opportunities, and the next question is, well, how do I do it? So that's what the next book is all about, what space got to do with it, an interstellar Guide to Success. It starts with leadership, your leadership, self leadership, but also leadership of others that are in that industry that you want to join. How can you find those leaders. How can you find access points, interviews, learning from individuals? The next step is about creating awareness. That's why I love your show. It's sharing that awareness of relaunch opportunities, bringing on role models that can help create the awareness of what's available. So I'm usually out there talking about what's the awareness opportunities in the space industry or technology or entrepreneurship leadership, then it's about access points. How do you find the access points? Because if you know about it, but you don't know how to get into it, you got to find access points. So for the space industry, if you're an entrepreneur, obviously NASA tech transfer, office, incubators and accelerators, Women Tech Network finding mentors, lots of great access points, and then it's about action. And action is about training, networks and mentoring, and we talked about a few of those already, so that's that's what you got to do. And you can just do a little bit every day to do that relaunch.

And that's what we we are all about the fact that it's. Not just this gigantic step, because actually, the way the brain is wired, your brain does not do well with that big, massive step, because it's not thinking it's getting any closer to the end goal. It's starting to feel overwhelmed, whereas if you hit it with smaller ones, the endorphins, the dopamine, all the good things that release more of that into your brain happen. So that is incredibly like, spot on with what we are actually really pushing out there. One of the things that I do like to find out is you've been doing this, this most recent entrepreneurial venture, over the last year and a half, where do you see you going? What's next for you as you continue this, you know, adventure in life?

Well, I'm really excited. The more ideas I have. I shared with you, the thought leadership, the more I have. So the next book out of the an interstellar Guide to Success, is going to be followed by one on out of this world leadership. What type of leaders do we need for the future? And I'm starting to do workshops and speaking events, but also being that thought leader, that strategist that joins boards and teams to really think about, as you said, What is the strategy a visionary thought leader really has to think about not only the next mountain or the next mountain or the next mountain, but like half the planet away, or all the way to Mars or Jupiter or Saturn, and then that leader has to be able to take those ideas and break them down into those incremental steps so the rest of the team can jump on board. So that's what I'm really excited about, is being that thought leader, that person who can help invite people into change. It doesn't have to be changed for the space industry. It could be emerging technologies. I mean, one of the big ones now is AI. How will AI change things, disrupt things? How are people afraid of things? So talking about that and helping people feel more comfortable with the rate of change that's happening in the world, and what's their role in their place, and how can they continue to adapt and be resilient?

Oh, okay, Shelli, if people are out there saying, I need to hear more from her, where can they where can they go to find you wonderful

Well, I do have a website, Shelli brunswick.com so you can find out a lot of things on there. I also have a YouTube series that's about the book. So if you want to check out the YouTube series, I interviewed the global thought leaders that are in the book. We also did a little book launch webinar so you can get a preview about each of those leaders. And then, of course, one of the best tools, and I recommend this to everyone, whether you're junior high and you're starting your career anywhere you are LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn. I promote a lot of the activities, places. I'll be speaking, books, articles. I do my personal LinkedIn email. So if I don't get to you right away, I will get to you. I believe it's really important to touch base with individuals, and I'll do my best to answer your question on the fly. So those are some of the best places to find me.

Shelli. Thank you so much for being here today. And for everyone that is, like, intrigued by this and you're saying, you know, hey, I want to hear more of what she was talking about, not just the first three, but, you know, additionally, like the next and the next book, please go and check out the website. And also, we will have all of the show notes in our main area where we talk about this podcast, so your next level is waiting. And thanks for tuning in to relaunch to a rich life. If today's episode spark something in you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, Subscribe. Let's create Unstoppable Momentum together. So until next time, keep relaunching. Keep rising and remember it's go time you.