The VetsConnection Podcast

Ep. 59 - From Marine to Law Enforcement to First Responder Nonprofit Founder: Jeremy Tindall's Operation Mayday 13

• Scott McLean • Episode 59

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Jeremy Tindall, Marine Corps veteran and former police officer, shares the inspiring story behind Operation Mayday 13, his emerging nonprofit dedicated to supporting injured first responders through custom t-shirt fundraising campaigns. After witnessing the financial struggles facing an injured local police officer, Tindall transformed his screen printing business into a powerful platform for community support, creating personalized designs that have raised thousands of dollars for first responders nationwide.

• Founded Operation Mayday 13 after helping an injured police officer through a successful t-shirt fundraiser
• Served in the Marine Corps from 2002-2006 before being recalled from inactive ready reserve for deployment to Iraq in 2007
• Completed 17.5 years in law enforcement before transitioning to entrepreneurship with Tyndall Design Studio
• Creates unique, personalized t-shirt designs for each injured first responder based on their interests, department, and circumstances
• Uses pre-sale model to maximize donations by eliminating excess inventory costs
• Plans to launch an Operation Mayday 13 podcast featuring stories from injured first responders
• Focuses specifically on supporting first responders during extended recovery periods - filling a gap left by other organizations
• Combined "Mayday" (firefighter/paramedic distress call) with "Signal 13" (Maryland police emergency code) to name the organization

If you know a first responder who might benefit from Operation Mayday 13's support, contact Jeremy at OperationMayday13@gmail.com or TyndalDesignStudio@gmail.com.


Scott McLean:

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Scott McLean, coming to you from the One man, one Mic Foundation studio in Boca Raton, florida. This is where we'll be doing the majority of the Vets Connection podcast interviews from this point on, since we will be moving up to the video. I keep saying that Hopefully, by the time you hear this, it's come to fruition. One man, one Mic Foundation is my foundation where I teach veterans how to podcast from concept to publication, and we also have a class on storytelling and the power of storytelling and how every veteran has a story and every veteran's story is their strength. Their voice is their strength and we try to really enhance that With the shameless plug out of the way.

Scott McLean:

My guest today is Jeremy Tindall. Jeremy is the founder and CEO of the soon-to-be non-profit. They are in the process of getting their 501c3 status Now. I don't usually do this, but meeting Jeremy and talking to him, this guy is going to get it done. So I have no worries that this is going to be a dead interview eventually and Operation Mayday 13 doesn't come to fruition, because Jeremy is a pretty driven guy. And so I said you know what? I'll go out on a limb and I'm going to interview him let's get this foundation. It's a veteran foundation. Let's give it a nice little jumpstart. So, with all that, how are you doing, jeremy?

Jeremy Tindall:

Doing great. How are you today?

Scott McLean:

I'm doing good, my friend Doing good. Jeremy and I met through a mutual friend and Jeremy was interested in the foundation, so we're actually working on a podcast with him, which is why I have that insight that this guy, just when he wants to do something, he gets it done. So, jeremy, where are you from?

Jeremy Tindall:

So I currently live in Hagerstown, maryland. It's a small part of Maryland. We call it the skinny part of the state because just a couple of miles north of us is Pennsylvania and just a couple of miles south of us is West Virginia, so we're in the absolute skinniest part of the state you can find if you're looking at it on the map.

Scott McLean:

All right. So what branch of the service were you in? Marine Corps. There you go. I get a lot of Marines on this podcast. I love it. I have. I'm an air force guy, but I always say the Marines seem to they, they seem to step up a lot more than the average veteran or military person.

Jeremy Tindall:

I don't know. Listen, this isn't a slam towards any branch by any means, but I feel like Marines are taught to be more self-starters and think outside the box and do things on their own, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Scott McLean:

And it probably does. It probably does. When did you go in?

Jeremy Tindall:

I went in in 2002.

Scott McLean:

Okay, what was your, what was your job when you went in?

Jeremy Tindall:

So I went in in 2002 only because I already knew that I wanted to be a police officer, and I went in straight out of high school because I didn't know what I was going to do until I was old enough to be a law enforcement. So I decided to go in to give me something to do and keep me, hopefully, out of trouble until I was old enough to be a police officer.

Scott McLean:

Okay, all right, so you went in, did you? Did you go over to the desert, did you? What was your experience?

Jeremy Tindall:

Actually, I had a unique experience as far as my military career goes. I got sent to a tiny little base that a lot of people don't even know exists here in the United States. It's called Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow. There's nothing in Barstow at all. It's the halfway point between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and that's all it's famous for. So the entire time I was on active duty, I did not get deployed. I actually had to get out of the Marine Corps to get deployed because after I'd been out for a short amount of time, I got recalled from the inactive ready reserve.

Scott McLean:

So I was stationed in Southern California around March Air Force Base in Riverside. It was Moreno Valley Moreno Valley but it's Riverside, and so I was security police and our security police softball team was was pretty good and we went a couple years in a row to bosto to play in the the marine tournament. They would have one up there. There's like this, softball fields and then there's just a motel, six yep, it's really all it was right and on there, except for the famous mcdonald's that shaped like a caboose.

Jeremy Tindall:

If you remember that, that's the only thing there.

Scott McLean:

You're right, and I I have to say, though, we went up there and those two years in a row, the the the first year we lost in the finals. In the second year we beat the marine the marines on their home field to take the tournament. So, uh, that's my experience at bosto. It was motel six yeah, that mcdonald's probably in softball and it was a dust storm. It was like a dust bowl every day. It was crazy, yeah, but it left a good memory and said I never want to come here again.

Jeremy Tindall:

I never want to go there again. It's one of the one of the fast and furious movies I think the second one where the the one guy's on an ankle monitor and he's there driving in a demolition Derby but he gets away with it because his house is his mobile home and so they took them out and that was supposed to be Barstow. And I know at one point they threatened. They're like if you don't do this, we're going to send you back to Barstow. And he's like hell, no, I'm never going back to Barstow and I think that's a good consensus for most people to leave there.

Scott McLean:

Yes, yes, yes. So you said you had to get out to get deployed. Tell us about that.

Jeremy Tindall:

Yeah, so I got out in 2006. I think I had six days off between when I ended my active duty time and started the police academy. And while I was in the police academy they kept messing with us because that's when it was in the news that they were recalling a bunch of Marines and stuff like that. And so they were like, oh, you're going to get called, like the day before you graduate, you're going to have to start the whole academy over again. And so they like to pick on us with that threat. But I actually finished the academy and I was working for about a year and a half and then I got recalled. I actually got attached to a unit out of Camp Pendleton. I'm sorry, I got attached. I got sent to Camp Pendleton for a couple of weeks for the in-processing and then I got attached to a unit out of Miramar and we deployed with that unit.

Scott McLean:

Okay, and where did you?

Jeremy Tindall:

go. So I went to a little place called Habania, iraq. This was 2007, though, so it was a little bit later, and they were kind of winding a lot of stuff down. We actually closed the base Habanilla down while I was there. It was along MSR Michigan, directly across the street from TQ basically. So part of the time I was on Habanilla and part of the time I was on TQ, All right for the non-military people that don't understand acronyms.

Scott McLean:

What's TQ?

Jeremy Tindall:

I'm probably going to mess this up. Somebody's giving me a hard time because we all just call it TQ. I think it's Alta. Cotum was the name of the base.

Scott McLean:

But we all just call it TQ. Okay, I got you now so it was.

Jeremy Tindall:

It was a, it was an installation, it was a base. It was like so Havana was basically a rundown tiny little area that was mostly just for housing grunts and stuff like that from the army. So we actually that first part of it, while Havana was still open, we were basically just doing base security for the army grunts. Habanilla was still open, we were basically just doing base security for the army grunts. And then once they shut that down, they moved us over to TQ and TQ is like a real military base pretty much. When I was there Like it, it had everything, it had amazing chow, it had a store, a little commissary and all that stuff there and they had, you know, real bunks. It was night and day difference from being a Habanero. But once we were done with Habanero we went over to TQ. Then from that point we did external security and we did EOD security.

Scott McLean:

If you were at an Air Force base, they had their own condos, evidently no matter where they went.

Jeremy Tindall:

Yeah, we didn't have that good, that good of a life in the chair force.

Scott McLean:

We always had that good life and I enjoyed that good life. I don't care what anybody says, absolutely so, anything happen. While you were over there Was it pretty quiet.

Jeremy Tindall:

There were a couple things. At one point, when we were closing down Habanya, there was an attack on one of our gates. There was actually we worked very closely, although we didn't, at the time, very much trust the Iraqi army and so there was an Iraqi general that tried to get on one time, and he tried to bypass security, but he wasn't in a military vehicle or uniform or anything, and there was a bit of a tussle I'll call it over incident with that, and that became a big blow-up thing, where he tried to get a bunch of Marines in trouble, but they did what they were supposed to. So we had that incident with the general. We did get one of our bases attacked overnight or one of our gates, I should say and then we also had one of our units MRAPs get blown up. The also had one of our units MRAPs get blown up.

Jeremy Tindall:

The good thing about that, though, is when I say it got blown up, I mean it drove over where an IED was, and the IED went off, but at that point, the MRAPs were so beefed up that, you know, we ran up and flung the doors open on the back of the thing, expecting to see carnage, and they were pretty much inside laughing because they knew what had happened. They all had time, excuse me, to check themselves and realize nobody was injured and it was just, I think, uh, adrenaline making them laugh. Excuse me one moment.

Scott McLean:

Oh, sorry about that that's all right, that's that happens. Happens to me too. So okay, you do your time over there. You come back to the States. When did you get out?

Jeremy Tindall:

So I got out the second time in 09.

Scott McLean:

In 09. All right, and you went. Did you get right into your job in law enforcement?

Jeremy Tindall:

It went right back to the police at that point.

Scott McLean:

And how long did you do that? For how long were you a police officer?

Jeremy Tindall:

So technically I only did that for 17 and a half years.

Scott McLean:

That's all that's all Only 17 and a half years.

Jeremy Tindall:

I only say that because we had a 22-year retirement. But the nice thing about where I worked is they give you your military time after 10 years. You don't have to buy it or anything, right? So pretty much the day I hit 10 years, I hit 15 years and I was able to retire with, uh, some sick leave and all that. I got 23 years credit for my retirement.

Scott McLean:

Okay, so then you finished that service. Were you in the reserves at all, or did you just? You were done.

Jeremy Tindall:

I did my active duty time. I got recalled for the irr and that was it all right.

Scott McLean:

All right, so you get done with that career, which I'm sure was very interesting, and then you have to transition out of that and I, I trust me, I understand both, just like you. One is a little easier to transition out of because you're already home, you're already like. You know, like the police job is. When you transition out of law enforcement, some people take it one way, some people take it another way, some people have a hard time with it, some people just move on. Yeah, and I'm sure you've seen both. What was your experience?

Jeremy Tindall:

So my experience was a little different. I loved my job as a police officer. If I could go back to doing that, or if I could go back and do it again, I would have done it the exact same way. The only thing I might've changed is what I did my last couple of years of my career. But at the same time I think those last few years helped gear me towards transitioning out, because the last several years I was basically in a more administrative role and not in uniform, not handling the types of calls that normally handle. It was kind of more like a nine to five type job. So I think that helped me transition and the only reason I left what I did, cause I thought I was going to work for another 10 years but something happened where they wanted to change the schedules around and basically this Monday through Friday nine to five job I had was going to get moved to still office job but it was going to be permanent evening shift and I've never had to work a permanent evening shift when I was in uniform and doing the patrol thing.

Jeremy Tindall:

You know we always worked rotating shifts. That way you could get a little bit of everything. It's kind of hard to get used to the hours. But at the same time you at least knew I don't get to see my family this week because I'm on evening shift, but next week on day shift and I'll get to see him all the time. So when they wanted me to go to a permanent evening shift, I'm like I've got an eight-year-old son at home. If I do that, I'll never get to see him again, so I'm just going to retire instead. So we had to figure out a way to shift gears really quick, looked at some of the skills I had acquired doing different hobbies and stuff over the years and decided we were going to start our own t-shirt and embroidery company.

Scott McLean:

So we do screen printing embroidery, we do hats, polos, t-shirts, briefcases, all that kind of stuff all right, my friend, I'm going to give you I don't usually do this, but there's a couple of firsts on this, this episode what's the name of your business?

Jeremy Tindall:

so the business is called tyndall design studio.

Scott McLean:

Okay, and you have a website.

Jeremy Tindall:

We do. It's TyndallDesignStudiocom.

Scott McLean:

There you go, simple enough, and I actually have a reason for asking you about the name of your business, because it's relevant to this conversation. Okay, um, when did you decide to lose your mind and start looking at a nonprofit?

Jeremy Tindall:

I actually never decided to do that. It very organically fell in my lap. So a couple of months ago we had a local police officer where I live. He got shot while doing his job and I understand, coming from the law enforcement background, that when you get hurt on the job you lose out on a lot of income that your family becomes accustomed to. So if you are usually working overtime and you're working odd hours and making shift differential and all that stuff, that ends when you get injured.

Jeremy Tindall:

For most agencies, when you're injured, you don't get any of those benefits. If you're at home for an extended period of time and you're not even showing up for, like a modified type assignment or a late duty or something like that, a lot of times you're even not getting your full paycheck. Your full base pay you don't get, and that's different from agency to agency, but that definitely happens a good bit. So I didn't know this particular officer but I had friends in common with him and I reached out and I said hey man, I understand a little bit about what you're going through because I've kind of been in similar situations to you in the past and I've seen buddies that this has happened to. Let us do something to help you out while you're not getting your full income, while you're at home recuperating all that stuff. So we actually created a custom logo for him, put it on a t-shirt, sold it on our Tittle Design Studio website. And my only goal going into this was I, if we could have sold 250 shirts, we would have been able to cut him a check for $2,500. And I would have felt really good about that and been very content. But when we went live with it locally here, everybody kind of picked it up and started resharing it. We sold 250 shirts in about an hour, hour and a half, something like that. So at the end of it we were able to give him a check and I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was about $6,500.

Jeremy Tindall:

And I got yelled at for my accountant. He was like you can't just cut people checks like that. Like you need to have a business expense or you need to go through a nonprofit or something like that. So we had called a bunch of different nonprofits that are geared towards that type of stuff and just the way the bylaws are written, a lot of them can only help out families if a police officer is deceased. A lot of the big national ones. We couldn't get them to call us back or, like I just was trying to find a nonprofit that I could give a check to. They would give a check, you know, back to an officer in need of help and basically the way they were written, we couldn't find a single one. So we decided, well, if there's not one out there doing this kind of stuff, maybe we should do it one out there doing this kind of stuff.

Scott McLean:

Maybe we should do it. Yeah, I understand that non-profits are funny and you're right, the bylaws they. They rule everything in the board of directors. There's a lot more to it than people think. With the non-profit, I think a lot of people have the understanding that non-profits can do whatever we want and we can just give money to whoever we want to give money to if it's not in your bylaws that you are a funding nonprofit, where you actually you give money, it's. That's kind of it gets a little dicey because then it comes to the irs and the irs doesn't really like to see checks going out. When you're a nonprofit that is built to bring in money. There's a lot more to it, but I just want to give people a little background on that. Nonprofits would love to help those situations. They would love to, but they can't and I'm going to go off my script and my own. I'm going to break my own rule that I've been telling Jeremy about.

Scott McLean:

Recently a local artist had been looking for a, just like you. This is exactly like your story. They're looking for a nonprofit to help them receive donations. They're building this. Receive donations. They're building this. This like 20, 15 by 20 foot american flag and it's going to build for the 250th centennial and and it's going to be interactive and it's this whole art project. But it all the wooden stuff costs about 1500 bucks. And so he got put in touch with me and I was you know, can I receive a donation for wood and all that stuff through my foundation and then give it to him?

Scott McLean:

It got a little questionable as far as again bylaws and how that would work out, far as again bylaws and how that would work out, and so I decided that my wife and I decided that we're just going to help them out personally and use that. And now we have a there's a big art community up in west palm beach. It's this art collective and it's a really amazing movement that's going on up there, and so I thought we thought it would be an investment in our relationship with that community and the foundation. Personally, don't clutter it, don't clutter it up. So we were gracious enough to donate to him to get his project started. And well, now the foundation is going to be part of the documentary and so it's kind of you can work things out that way. But I understand exactly what you were saying. As far as nonprofits, I talk too much. The name of your soon to be nonprofit is operation made a 13.

Scott McLean:

Now I'm always curious how did you come up with the name?

Jeremy Tindall:

So I wanted to do the Signal 13 Foundation. But Signal 13 in Maryland for police officers means something's really wrong. Drop whatever you're doing and come now. But there's a nonprofit already in existence for Baltimore City police officers to help them out. That already had that name. So I thought about it and I'm like well, if I did Signal 13, I'm excluding firefighters and paramedics and all that stuff anyways, and we want to help all first responders. So Mayday is the nationwide signal or the radio code for a firefighter or a paramedic. That's down. And Signal 13, like I said, is specific to Maryland, but when you combine them together we got Operation Mayday 13.

Scott McLean:

There you go Now. I know this is a veteran-centric podcast, but I have no problem talking to people that work with first responders too, because, as everyone listening probably knows, most of you know that's near and dear to my heart because it's what I did for a long time. With that said, do you have any any interaction with veterans?

Jeremy Tindall:

So the way we have organized it right now? No, and that's for a very distinct reason. I mean, you know, I've worked in the past and done some stuff with the Wounded Warrior Project and the point is there's already so many organizations that are geared towards veterans and there's already so many organizations that deal with deceased police officers and deceased firefighters and helping their family. The way this came about, naturally, is we found the void of helping injured first responders and that's why we've geared it that way. I'm a huge supporter of any veterans cause that I can, but that's a pretty saturated market already and that's why we stayed away from that for this.

Scott McLean:

Understood, understood and you know. The thing about nonprofits is you can always evolve. You can always evolve into something more than what your basic structure of your nonprofit is. You evolve and maybe you add on down the road. You never know. But I think what you did is you found that niche, that outside the box thinking, which I love non-profits that think outside the box. I think I'm of the opposite mindset where I think okay, in a sense you're right, there are a lot of veteran nonprofits. I think there should be more outside-the-box nonprofits. I think the more the merrier, the more outside-the-box nonprofits at this point for anything, the better it is for the people.

Jeremy Tindall:

So now you've got my wheels turning though, because I could see the way it's written right now is that we are there to help out any first responder who's been injured in the line of duty and will be out of work for an extended period of time, so I can easily see being able to envelop any national guardsmen that are deployed in conus I. I feel like they would easily qualify under what our bylaws are going to say, or do say. If they're deployed on some type of whether it be a law enforcement type mission, or they're humanitarian, for hurricane relief or something like that and they get hurt, I think they fit right into our bylaws. So I haven't considered it that way, but now that you're, you got my wheels turning and maybe that's another way we can do things.

Scott McLean:

And it doesn't have to happen immediately. You evolve it into that, you get your footing with what you're doing now and then you say, okay, we're solid on this front, let's see if we can expand this a little bit and move into this direction. And you know what? I don't think that there's anything that says you can't do that. Bylaws can be changed. It's the board of directors, the board of directors. Everything is up to the board of directors and everybody I won't even get into the board of directors talk, that's you and I will talk another day about the board of directors. I have an amazing one, for the record. I have an amazing board of directors. So, coming up with the idea of, of selling t-shirts right, how do you get the design? How do you get the design? So, all right, I'm a first responder and I get hurt. What makes these t-shirts different? What makes each t-shirt unique to that particular first responder?

Jeremy Tindall:

So I can send you some artwork if you want to be able to throw them up on the podcast for your listeners or viewers to check out.

Scott McLean:

While I'm describing them, I'm actually wearing one of them right this minute. Send them to me in my email. I'll put them on my website.

Jeremy Tindall:

Absolutely so the very first one to come up, the officer that we were trying to help out was a canine officer for one. So we basically took the badge for his agency. We changed the writing on the badge where it would say Hagerstown Police Department. We changed that to say support dean and then on the badge pretty big and prominent you can see that the year that the Hagerstown Police Department was established, we got rid of that year and we threw his ID number on there and on the back we used a quote directly from him. It says if you ever get a chance, pass, you know what I mean. And so that that was kind of a joke amongst his friends, because those are two. They took two sayings that he says often and I don't know if he actually said it. When somebody's like, well, what's it like getting shot? And he said well, if you ever get a chance, pass, you know what I mean, or if they're just attributing that to him because he uses those two phrases all the time. But we try to. We try to learn a little bit about them, figure out what we can incorporate in there from from the little bit of knowledge we have about the first responders.

Jeremy Tindall:

So we actually just closed the sale out for a firefighter in North Carolina. He was injured in an explosion of a gas main that was damaged in a traffic accident. So firefighters are there trying to deal with everything going on. The gas main exploded and he got pretty badly burned. So that one was a little tricky, because I don't know if they've ever released it now, but at the time they did not want. The family just was trying to, you know, go through the healing process and deal with that privately. They didn't want the name out there in the media and all that stuff, so we didn't have a name to incorporate. All we really knew about this guy is that he's a firefighter, he loves the Philadelphia Eagles and the Philadelphia Flyers and he loves surfing. Well, automatically we know we can't use anything with the Philadelphia Eagles or Philadelphia Flyers because of intellectual property rights.

Jeremy Tindall:

Yeah, exactly, copyright and all that kind of stuff. So we also found out that the station that he was assigned to work has the nickname of the Foxtown Express. So, doing some brainstorming and playing around with some different ideas, I ended up taking a fox, a picture of the actual fox that they use on all their logos and their artwork. I gave him like a body and put him on a surfboard. So we came up with the surfing box of station surfing Fox of station three logo and it's very unique, it's very specific to him, without having a name or anything on there, and everybody that's in the know kind of knows who we're talking about and everybody else knows that it belongs to, you know, the Foxtown station. So we just have different ways. We're doing another one.

Jeremy Tindall:

Actually, right now, when we're recording this podcast, I got another one going on. It was a deputy that was shot in Chavez County, new Mexico, which is where Roswell, new Mexico is. Okay, so in in Roswell they really lean into the whole alien culture thing because they get a lot of tourism. So we did like a a very space looking tax for his and during his incident it was officers from Roswell, new Mexico, his sheriff's department and the state police all there, and he also is living with, and has a child with, an officer from one of those other agencies. So we kind of mesh their, their badges and their patches together and then we've come up with the slogan one team, one fight, one family for him. So I just try to tailor it specifically to whatever information I have about who this shirt is supposed to be for.

Scott McLean:

So you go obviously outside the state of Maryland. How do you find out about a first responder in North Carolina or New Mexico?

Jeremy Tindall:

Basically right now I just I have a Google alert system set up, so every time there's a news article about police officer injured, firefighter injured, paramedic injured, I get those articles that automatically email themselves to me every day and I go through and I read them and I try to figure out a little bit about what's going on. And if I see one where I feel like the public's really going to get behind it and the officer or firefighter or paramedic is going to be out of work for an extended period of time, I just cold call the agency. I usually try and start with a public affairs office or a union rep and sometimes they talk to me, sometimes they don't, but I allow myself about an hour every day to try and make these phone calls and offer to provide some assistance. And if, if I get a thousand no's and one yes, it's still worth it to me.

Scott McLean:

Yeah, so how do you determine a? Or how does it work? So if I wanted to buy a t-shirt, right, I would go to your website. Yes, so pick a size and then you make them like do you have? Do you make like a 25, extra large, 25, you know, double X? How does that process work?

Jeremy Tindall:

Yeah, it's a great question and we try to be. We try to put it in big bold letters so everybody sees it on our website. But when we do these we're always doing pre-sales. Pre-sales are nice because it allows us to give every single dime of profit. It allows us to give more directly to the first responder because we know exactly how many we need to make. We're not sitting on a bunch of inventory that now we got to figure out how to pay for them and all that kind of stuff, or dip into the first responders fund to help pay for leftovers.

Jeremy Tindall:

We do pre-sales only, so we usually we're still playing around with how long we're going to leave these open in the future, moving forward. But they're going to go up. They're going to be available for maybe 10 days at a time. If you purchase one during that 10-day period, then you got one, and if you don't, you're probably not going to get one, and then we go into production after the sale has ended. So you're looking at three weeks to a month from the beginning of when we go live with a sale to when our actual ship date is, and we try to put that in big bold letters at the top of every sale that we do. So people realize they're ordering a product that they're not going to get for several weeks, because we want to optimize the donations to the first responder by only making exactly what we need.

Scott McLean:

So not like the Super Bowl when they print out 20,000.

Scott McLean:

T-shirts, or even more, 50,000 T-shirts for both teams and the losing team. I know that the Patriots, new England Patriots I'm a Patriots fan. When they lost to the Giants their almost undefeated season, I think all the Patriots T-shirts went to. Like africa, yep. It's like they sent them as far away as possible. And you start seeing these t-shirt pictures pop up on the internet yeah, new england patriots undefeated. No, no, yeah, as far away as possible. And they give them all away. They send them all over there.

Jeremy Tindall:

Yeah, we're not making shirts that we do not plan on sending out to somebody.

Scott McLean:

I suppose you have a small collection of each shirt that you make. Do you have a wall that you put them on or is there any way like people can see them if they go into your shop or anything like that?

Jeremy Tindall:

So long term, as far as the wall goes, I want to have like little square frame things with the front of the shirt and the back of the shirt on each square. So eventually, once we do get our podcast studio up and running, in the background you'll see all those different shirt sales that we've done cut out and hanging up on the wall.

Scott McLean:

You're a good student. You're a good student, Jeremy. Look at you.

Jeremy Tindall:

Right now, I think, the only place that you can see our past sales. If you were to go to either the Tyndall Design Studio or the Operation Mayday 13 Facebook page, because both of those do have Facebook pages. Operation Mayday 13 doesn't have a website yet because we're waiting to get approval for the federal government before we spend money on a website and all that kind of stuff.

Scott McLean:

Sure, sure. I, on the other hand, I do stuff backwards, I get anxious. I'm not too different than you, my friend. I want to get it done now.

Jeremy Tindall:

I want it done now, now, now, so the only thing we are doing backwards is the podcast, the podcast. The podcast is going to be actually the only thing that solely belongs to operation made a 13. Okay, perfect, because when we do the shirt sales, the existing company is the one doing the sales. Operation Mayday 13 will only exist to help the shirt sales If we call, like the North Carolina firefighter that we helped out, for example, we called them and said, hey, we want to do this for you. I need you to have a nonprofit that we can give it to, that will turn around and give it to the firefighter. But in the future, basically, the main function of Operation Mayday 13 is, whenever we reach out to an agency, we'll say, hey, we want to do this for your guy or girl, whoever it may be. You can use your own nonprofit that we'll give it to. Or, if you don't have one, we'll use Operation Mayday 13. Sorry, that's okay.

Jeremy Tindall:

Or if you don't have one, we'll use Operation Mayday 13 to get that money back to your person. But the podcast is going to 100% belong to Operation Mayday 13, and that's where we want to interview first responders that have had to live through some of these things in the past and get really kind of in-depth on how their injuries affected them and all that kind of stuff it's the, it's the stuff that no one really thinks about.

Scott McLean:

I mean, the majority of us feel terrible when a first responder gets hurt should be everybody but it's not.

Scott McLean:

But that's that once that news is passed and the dust is settled, they and their family, they have some shit to deal with, like they got some shit to deal with, and everybody else's life moves forward and it's not anybody's fault. But finances is a huge part of it. I I've always said this. I've always said this huge part of it. I've always said this. I've always said this Nobody, nobody, circles the wagons for one of their own. Like the military, firefighters and police I mean paramedics I would put them in with the first responder unit. I'm sure I don't have any type of interactions with them, but I'm sure they're the same way. Nobody circles the wagons better. And and you're, you're a part of that Now you're circling wagons for for people outside of your, of your department, outside of where you worked, and I think that's that's. That's an amazing thing. And anybody that says no, I don't get it. I get why someone would say, no, we don't need your help. Have you had that yet?

Jeremy Tindall:

So the funny thing is is when I call a fire department, they're like man, that's great, we would love your help. And it goes really well. When I call my own people, the police departments cops, we tend to be skeptics. Man, I think some of them don't know us, therefore don't trust us. So it seems like it has been a little bit easier to get in with the fire departments than the police departments, and that's part of the reason we want to do the podcast. So we've got a face out there. People know if we can get some of the first responders that we've helped out on there to validate what we're really doing. And as we're growing, we're growing a list of people that have volunteered to say hey, you tell any agency that is kind of on the fence about it to call me directly and I'll verify that you are really doing what you're saying you're doing. But I think cops are just by nature, a little bit skeptic, so it's a little bit harder to get in with them, even though I'm from that cut.

Scott McLean:

Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about? Is there anything I missed? Before we cut this? No, I want to say thank you for letting me come on here and talk about it. Is there anything I missed?

Jeremy Tindall:

before we cut this no, I want to say thank you for letting me come on here and talk about this and thank you for helping guide me on trying to create this podcast. Hopefully we'll have it up and running soon.

Scott McLean:

According to Jeremy, I'm an excellent instructor. I'm just kidding. He didn't say. I'm just kidding, Jeremy, I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Jeremy Tindall:

I was going to go with it. I think you are. You've been great with me and our common friend that you talked about, yes. Mark Flynn, if you can teach Mark Flynn how to do this stuff. You've got to be a phenomenal friend.

Scott McLean:

Oh boy, yeah, Mark Flynn, my buddy, we met in 1988 in the Philippines. Mark Flynn, my buddy, we met in 1988 in the Philippines and he was from Massachusetts. I'm from Boston. We've been like brothers ever since and he's a pain in my ass but I love him and he actually. He finally went through the course and he started his podcast and he's doing mid-Maryland votes and he has a YouTube channel and whatever, and he's getting a lot of downloads, a lot of views, and I love seeing that, even though our competitive nature is, I have to push that aside because I love seeing that and you'll have the same success, my friend. You know the same success. So, with that, let's get the website, let's get the, the, the, the foundation. One more time is Operation Mayday 13.

Jeremy Tindall:

Correct, and the only place you can find that right now is on Facebook.

Scott McLean:

Okay, all right, and soon to be a podcast called the Operation Mayday 13 podcast. Correct, all right, all right, and I'm sure the paperwork's going to be fine, everything's going to go through and you'll be up and running, and a year from now we'll do a follow-up and see that you're lighting the country on fire, sending out t-shirts to all the first. I shouldn't say it like that, because they're sent out for an unfortunate reason Somebody got hurt. So to wish you a lot of success is kind of doesn't. Yeah, there's a lot of first responders get hurt out there.

Jeremy Tindall:

If you do go to jeremy, I don't yeah well, and that's that's the thing I struggle with too like, uh, we obviously hope that we never have the opportunity to try to do anything to help them, but the reality is that it's never going to stop, no matter if you're law enforcement, paramedic, firefighter, whatever, unfortunately, injuries are a part of that job.

Scott McLean:

So, knowing that it's nice to be able to give back to that community that gave me so much, so if somebody out there is listening and they know a first responder who might be able to use that assistance, how would they get in touch with you?

Jeremy Tindall:

first responder who might be able to use that assistance. How would they get in touch with you? They can get in touch with me either through OperationMayday13 at gmailcom or Tidal Design Studio at gmailcom Either one of those. I answer those all the time. They go right to my phone and I try to stop what I'm doing and answer those immediately.

Scott McLean:

And if you're looking for T-shirts in general for your nonprofit or your veteran organization or whatever you need, reach out to jeremy. I'm giving you a plug, buddy, this is a first. We'll be happy to do them. This is a first and I'm sure jeremy will take care of you guys. And yeah, that's it, buddy, stick around, let me do my, my outro, and then we'll talk a little more after sounds great good all right.

Scott McLean:

Well, we built another bridge today. This one is a is a, an interesting bridge. It's a t-shirt bridge. We'll call it the t-shirt bridge and I want to thank jeremy for coming on and I want to thank you guys for listening and, in the future, watching. You're the engine that runs this machine, this podcast, and I appreciate, I appreciate the emails and the. I get some text messages and positive reinforcement I get from the audience and, yeah, stick around. There's a nice public service announcement at the end and it talks about stuff for veterans and first responders and people in general. So with that, you will see me and you will hear me next week. All right, I'm going to cut this. We're still rolling, so hold on one second you.

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Scott McLean

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