Thomas Bohne of Kennel to Couch: Five Life and Leadership Lessons I Learned In The Military

Take care of your people and they will take care of you. Every single person in an organization is required for the success of the mission or they would not be there. No company, project or program hires random people they do not need. Value your teammates and know that as a leader, your role is to ensure that they have the tools that they need to succeed. The reason the military provides as much life support to its soldiers as it does is so that when they deploy, they will be focused on the mission and not on whether their families back home will have the resources they need to get by in their absence. If you take care of your employee’s personal needs, they will take care of your business.

As a part of our series about “Life and Leadership Lessons Learned In The Military”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas Bohne.

Thomas (Tom) Bohne is the founder and President of Kennel to Couch, a pit bull rescue organization founded in memory of his dog, Rocky, that teams with shelters, trainers, and local community partners to sponsor Pit Bulls who have been at their shelters for the longest period of time. With 10 years executive experience spanning SVP, EVP, and C-Suite positions, Tom is a dynamic business leader with an intimate understanding of the importance of relationships, external and internal to an organization. Tom is an Army Combat Veteran, a classically trained chef from Johnson & Wales, and holds a Masters Degree in Marketing from Johns Hopkins University.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a bit about your childhood “backstory”?

I was born in Chester, PA, outside of Philadelphia. My father was a single parent who did shift work for the railroadv , so I spent a lot of time being raised by other family members. As a painter and musician, my father instilled an appreciation for the arts which I still hold today, but it was a mix of my grandfather, uncle, and a steady dose of G.I. Joe that nudged me towards physical activities and time outdoors “playing soldier.”

My grandfather was a WWII veteran who fought in most of the major battles in the Pacific. His values, love of country, and military service helped shape my future.

As I got a little older, I became more and more responsible for taking care of myself which fostered a very strong independent streak. I started working at 14, and once I left for the Army, I never looked back.

And what are you doing today? Can you share a story that exemplifies the unique work that you are doing?

I currently serve in two roles. I am the Founder and CEO at Kennel to Couch (kenneltocouch.org), a 501(c)(3) dedicated to Pitbull Adoption Advocacy. I also serve as the Senior Vice President for Growth at BTS, a defense contractor.

As the founder and CEO of Kennel to Couch, I take a unique approach to the growing and scaling of non-profits. Leveraging technology and social media, Kennel to Couch helps shelters around the country solve their hardest problems. By providing shelters the resources necessary to get the Pitties adopted that have been in their shelter longest, we act as a force multiplier, bringing the skills and resources required to target potential adopters and drive traffic to their shelters at no cost.

As a defense executive, I have the privilege of serving in a role that allows me to offer high-paying jobs to our veteran community. The most satisfying part of my job is being able to see service members transition to the civilian sector successfully and being able to offer positions that allow them to stay in the fight while providing a quality life for themselves and their families.

What makes the veteran community so unique is the overwhelming drive to serve their country and community. Veterans do not stop serving just because they take off their uniforms. The veteran workforce tends to also be heavily involved in community service and non-profit work.

Can you tell us a bit about your military background?

I joined the Army as a Signals Intelligence Analyst in February 1999 and served on active duty until April 2010. I completed overseas assignments in Germany, Japan and Australia and served two deployments to Kosovo and Iraq.

In 2004 I was selected to join 17 others for a Proof-of-Concept mission in Iraq as the Army’s first Weapons Intelligence Team. We acted as a type of ‘crime scene investigation’ for Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) anytime a device was found or detonated. As first responders, we were constantly targeted with secondary devices and ambushes. I have been involved in the Counter Improvised Explosive Device mission since returning from this deployment, and still am to this day.

My last assignment was in Australia where I had two experiences that deeply impacted me. I was honored to be the first non-Australian to graduate from their Special Air Service (SAS) Environmental Survival course in Darwin Australia, an amazing, two-week immersive course run by some of the most knowledgeable bushcraft instructors in the world.

Second, while attending a barbecue, I was randomly selected to cater a dinner for the Australian Secretary of Defense during his visit to our site. I accepted the opportunity and after a successful meal was asked to cater much larger events at the facility. I had always loved cooking and this experience uncovered a passion I didn’t know I had.

When I left the Army, I attended Johnson & Wales, was awarded Apprenti Cuisiner, and won Best Italian Dish at an international culinary competition hosted by Marchesi de Frescobaldi, the largest wine producer in Tuscany. I was fortunate to have some great experiences and make some lifelong friends in the kitchen before life pulled me back to the defense industry.

Can you share the most interesting story that you experienced during your military career? What “take away” did you learn from that story?

I will share two lessons from two very different experiences. I believe there is a lesson in everything in life, positive or negative. I do not look at something that does not work as a failure but as a learning experience that teaches us what not to do. Likewise, we can learn what to do from good leaders and learn what not to do from bad ones.

The first, but not last, time a person died in my arms, was in Kosovo. This was very impactful for me because it was my first real experience with death. The death was not combat-related, and I did not see this person as an enemy. He was rushed to our base for medical attention while I was guarding the gate. I pulled him out of the car and saw that he was badly wounded. While I was holding him, waiting for medics to arrive, he passed.

While deployed to Iraq, I was exposed to death on a mass scale almost daily. I have responded to countless casualty scenes of U.S. soldiers, and I have pulled up to city blocks and crowded marketplaces destroyed by Vehicle Borne IEDs (VBIEDs).

These experiences taught me to value life, value the time we have, and value the people in my life. In business, this translates to relationships. Leaders need to value people while they are with them, not when they are gone. My number one objective when working with others is to ensure they know they are valued and valuable.

Another life lesson the military taught me was to travel as much as you can and say yes to almost everything. This is about opening yourself up to opportunities to experience things that you otherwise wouldn’t.

I recall getting my shoulder operated on in Sydney. I was staying alone at the Four Seasons and I had two days to waste before the procedure. While having dinner at the hotel restaurant, I befriended the waiter, and he asked if I would like to meet the executive chef. After a brief conversation about my interest in the culinary world, he asked if I would like to return the following day and work in the kitchen for a shift, and I said yes. The next evening, I arrived and helped them cater a million-dollar wedding. It was chaos in the best way, and I loved it. I worked until midnight then went out for drinks with the line cooks. It was an amazing experience that helped shape my future, and it started with saying “yes.”

I have countless stories about amazing experiences I stumbled onto in my travels because I said “yes” to trying something new.

We are interested in fleshing out what a hero is. Did you experience or hear about a story of heroism, during your military experience? Can you share that story with us? Feel free to be as elaborate as you’d like.

The military is full of stories about people who rose to an occasion. We are regaled with accounts of Medal of Honor recipients performing heroic feats, but most of them will tell you that they were just doing their job and that the ones who gave all are the real heroes.

Based on that story, how would you define what a “hero” is? Can you explain?

I do not see people themselves as heroes, but people can do heroic things. The underlying commonality in all acts of heroism is selfless service. I believe heroism requires an act or acts that go against someone’s self-interest. Heroism can last for a mere moment in time or comprise a lifetime of sacrifice.

Many people have lived ordinary, risk-free, otherwise unremarkable lives, yet in a single moment risk everything to save another and are forever defined by that moment. Others never face these types of decisions, but work incredibly hard for very little money and sacrifice the little they do have to ensure their children live a different life than they did.

Does a person need to be facing a life and death situation to do something heroic or to be called a hero?

Not at all. The world needs people who are willing to take on hard jobs. They are often very underappreciated but are critical to our way of life. These jobs entail hard labor and long hours. There is a TV show called “Dirty Jobs” with Mike Rowe. I see what these people do as a form of heroism because they make sacrifices that allow the rest of us to have a better quality of life. Appreciate these people.

Ultimately heroism involves an action that dramatically impacts someone else’s life; it’s never about the “hero” themselves. Everyone has the capacity to be someone’s hero if they approach life with a servant’s heart.

Based on your military experience, can you share with our readers 5 Leadership or Life Lessons that you learned from your experience”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

I could probably write a top 1000 life and leadership lessons from the military but will just share five that immediately come to mind. It is by no means an exhaustive list.

Lead from the front. Don’t ask anyone to do anything that you aren’t willing to do yourself. It is important for your team or organization to know that when things are hard, you will be in the trenches with them. If you are the leader of a small team or a large organization, you should be the last to eat, the first to arrive and the last to go home. As a leader, you should never expect members of your team to be more invested in the success of your organization than you are because they do not benefit the same way. Leaders must have empathy for that dynamic. If you think your employees should care about the success of your company as much as you do, you should ask yourself what you are doing to create a culture that incentivizes them to sacrifice their time and effort on par with yours. Making sure that every employee feels valued and valuable will create a cohesive unit that ensures everyone is vested in reaching organizational goals.

It’s only hard work if you are the one that has to do it. This is not about being lazy; this is about understanding the power of trusting in your team and delegating. As a leader, your job is to surround yourself with people smarter than you, who are mission-focused and motivated to succeed. Once you have done this, get out of their way. When someone comes to you with a difficult task or a large project, you can have the confidence to say “yes” and turn it over to a team that does not need to be micromanaged.

Culture starts with you (regardless of your position). To every soldier you lead, you are “the army.” This applies to anyone in any management or leadership position. To any person you lead or manage at any level, their feeling about your organization will almost certainly be based on how you treat them, because to them, you set the values and culture of that organization. As the CEO/leader of an organization, the culture and values will be determined by the worst behavior you are willing to accept. This is a small world and a competitive workforce. It is as important, if not more important, how a person feels about an organization with they leave it as it is when they join it.

Take care of your people and they will take care of you. Every single person in an organization is required for the success of the mission or they would not be there. No company, project or program hires random people they do not need. Value your teammates and know that as a leader, your role is to ensure that they have the tools that they need to succeed. The reason the military provides as much life support to its soldiers as it does is so that when they deploy, they will be focused on the mission and not on whether their families back home will have the resources they need to get by in their absence. If you take care of your employee’s personal needs, they will take care of your business.

Semper Gumby (“Always Flexible”). No plan survives contact or, as Mike Tyson famously said, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Your plans will inevitably change and when they do, your organization needs to be able to change with them. The ability to stay calm under pressure, communicate, shift fire or move in a different direction is a skill that develops with practice. Be a calming presence when things are not going as planned and demonstrate to your team that when there is change, you can change your focus without a meltdown. It is important to be flexible with your thoughts. Do not be locked into ideas just because they are your own. Trust that you hired the people you did because they are qualified. Listen to their input and don’t be afraid to change your mind.

Do you think your experience in the military helped prepare you for business? Can you explain?

The military prepares you for adulting. I can’t think of another role that gives such great responsibility to people so young — the responsibility over multi-million-dollar equipment and systems, the responsibility of taking care of others, and the responsibility to make life and death decisions.

The Army gave me the tools to remain calm under fire, literally and figuratively. Through it, I learned to operate under almost unimaginable pressure and stress. Today, that experience helps me manage constant change and stressors when they arise.

Years of leading soldiers in combat and small teams also helped me understand that there is no good or bad leadership style. Transformational, delegative, authoritative, transactional, and participative styles are all just tools. Leaders get into trouble when they do not have the emotional intelligence to know how to blend these styles according to the person or circumstance. A good leader can change his style to meet people or situations where they need to be met.

As you know, some people are scarred for life by their experience in the military. Did you struggle after your deployment was over? What have you done to adjust and thrive in civilian life that others may want to emulate?

I struggled for many years after my tour in Iraq and didn’t understand why. There are certainly degrees of severity to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), so this will not apply to everyone, but I think two things that help people overcome the potentially traumatic effects of combat are staying productive and getting help when it’s needed. Talking helps people understand they are not alone.

Idle hands are the devil’s toil for someone suffering from PTSD. Exercise, engage in a hobby and do something to stay productive while you take the steps to work through your issues with someone, preferably a professional who understands trauma recovery. There are many free resources and organizations available for veterans.

One way that I stay productive is through my non-profit work. Soldiers need a mission, and when they leave the service, many feel like they are lost in the wilderness with no direction. Their purpose and mission are no longer right in front of them. That’s why it helps to find a new mission that is fundamentally good. Kennel to Couch is that mission for me. My dogs have been instrumental to me since leaving the service, so this is how I give back to them.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We have big plans to grow Kennel to Couch to all 50 states in a way that ensures our efforts and partner shelters are funded in perpetuity. Once we reach our ultimate endowment funding goals, we will reimagine what shelter life and the adoption process could look like with our own brick-and-mortar FURever Ranch. We encourage anyone interested to take a look at our roadmap and see our strategic vision here: https://kenneltocouch.org/furever-fund/.

What advice would you give to other leaders to help their team to thrive?

Hire for team fit. Cohesion is everything. While it is certainly important to have the foundation skills required for a role, it is more important that the person fits the company’s culture and shares its core values. Skill can be taught and enhanced, but a strong work ethic and a ‘team-first’ mentality are ingrained.

Hire fast, fire fast. Do not have an overly cumbersome, abusive 19-round hiring process that treats every job as if you must find the perfect purple unicorn that requires zero training. Hire fast, asses, and fire fast if it is not going to work.

Promote Faster. Managers who purposely hold back rock star talent because they are insecure about their own role should be removed immediately. The leaders on your team should be charged with identifying talented people and empowering those people to do the most good with those strengths as they can for the organization. Many people are like crabs in a pot, as crabs try to escape the pot to freedom, the other crabs grab their legs and pull them back in, this is an unfortunate reality of many corporate cultures. When you identify talent that also hustles, promote that person, and let them be as successful for you as they can.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Take the time as an organization to develop the muscle memory to complete routine tasks perfectly. This takes time, training, and investment in your workforce and processes. When things are busy, or you are dealing with a lot of change, you want to be able to effortlessly get through your daily operations without them overburdening your ability to handle the challenge in front of you.

What advice would you give to other leaders about the best way to manage a large team?

Learn to trust, empower, and delegate. Hire for team fit, train skills to standard, and get out of people’s way. Trust in your team to execute the mission so you can focus on strategic planning and tasking.

Don’t micromanage. As a leader, ask yourself: if you do not trust someone to do the job you just hired them to do unsupervised, why did you hire them? If you find yourself asking this question about everyone, you are the problem.

Understand what motivates your people individually. Everyone is motivated differently, some are motivated strictly by compensation, some by the ability to work remotely and some by titles and promotion opportunities. None of these answers are wrong, so strive to understand each of your team members and to have an organization with the flexibility to meet people where they need to be met to motivate them correctly.

How people feel when they leave an organization is more important than when they join it. I know this has been a constant theme, but it is an important one. People leave their jobs for all sorts of reasons. When their friends ask them about their experience with your organization, is their response going to help you or hurt you?

Be genuine. As a leader, when you have a genuine concern for others’ well-being, it shows.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I have learned just as much about leadership from poor leaders as I have from good ones. If I had to credit a group of people who have taught me the most and shaped my thoughts on leadership, it would be the people that I have had the privilege of taking care of, mentoring, and watching move on. I often encounter the people that I have mentored in their new capacities at different companies and am amazed by what they have achieved. Maya Angelou said, “I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This is at the core of much of my life and leadership philosophy.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I have a master’s degree in marketing from Johns Hopkins and have served in leadership roles in two defense companies, from Senior Vice President to Executive Vice President to Chief Growth Officer and more.

The knowledge and experience I gained in leadership, business development, operations, and scaling are at the core of the organization that I started with $2,000 in 2018 to help cope with the loss of my dog Rocky who passed very young. Rocky was instrumental in changing so many hearts and minds about the misinformation and discrimination towards pit bulls. When he passed, I wanted to find a way to help give other people the opportunity to experience the same kind of love that our family did.

Kennel to Couch (kenneltocouch.org) is my passion project and my way of continuing to give back. I founded Kennel to Couch to help shelters get the Bully Breed dogs that have been in their shelters the longest adopted. We focus on the dogs that have typically been in the shelter for over a year and have unique qualities that can make them harder to adopt. Our unique approach to this problem leverages technology and digital marketing to become a force multiplier that compliments shelter operations instead of competing with them for resources. We are currently operating in four states and are on a march to support shelters in all fifty!

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Don’t be an asshole movement! Kindness is free, being unkind can cost you everything. Do your best to make people feel as much or more favorably when they leave your organization as when they joined. Remember, for most people their time with you is just a stepping stone in their life and career.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“More is lost by indecision than a bad decision.” When ambushed, you have two choices: fight through the ambush and try to make it through or lay down suppressive fire and attempt to break contact. Either choice may end up being right or wrong, but a third option — indecision — is always wrong. Life is full of ambushes. When things go wrong or circumstances are thrust on you, you must react. You either need to fight through the situation or find a way to tactically withdraw and regroup. Being held in a state of analysis paralysis will ensure that you never decide, never take accountability, never succeed, never learn and never grow. If you are in charge when life throws you or your business a curveball, take responsibility and accountability for the decision you make, and execute violently. This is a saying that I try to apply to every aspect of my life.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

As the founder of Kennel to Couch (kenneltocouch.org), I would be happy to have a meal with anyone interested in using their sphere of influence or resources to help us expand our mission to all 50 states and beyond. Combating the misinformation that drives breed-specific legislation and getting more pit bulls adopted is my passion project and how I continue to give back.

If anyone exemplifies the importance of culture and emotional intelligence in business leadership and how technology and social media impact influence and reach, it’s Gary Vaynerchuk. I think business leaders should listen carefully to his message.

Thank you so much for these amazing insights. This was truly uplifting.