The author behind The Order Matters.
RA is a retired U.S. Air Force Air Traffic Controller, the founder of We Got You 1776, and the author of The Order Matters, a plain-language guide to VA education benefits for military families.
He did not set out to be a writer. Planning his own daughter’s college, he ran into the VA education-benefits maze, the Post-9/11 GI Bill, Chapter 35 DEA, the Fry Scholarship, and the Yellow Ribbon Program, all with their own rules and time limits, and he could not find anything that laid it out clearly. So he did what he had done for 21 years in the Air Force, took something hard to navigate and turned it into a process a person can follow. The book came first, then the app.
The way he writes is the whole point. No jargon, no marketing energy, plain sentences a family can act on. The benefits are complicated enough on their own. A guide to them should not be.
The body of work
The Order Matters
Available now
A plain-language guide to VA education benefits for military families, and the order to use them in. Free to read on this site, and on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.
The Underlying Code
Forthcoming · Fall 2026
His second book. A quieter one, about the method underneath the work: how one way of thinking built the college plan, the free guide, and the company. More on it when it is out.
This is the author’s side of the story. For the person and the mission, the Air Force career, the reason the company exists, and the promise it runs on, see Meet the Founder.