As another Veterans Day arrives, Arizona vets are getting more help to start or grow their own businesses.
In May, Cochise College was among six sites nationwide awarded grants by the Small Business Administration nationwide to set up new small-business assistance centers for veterans.
The Veterans Business Outreach Center opened at Cochise in August under the direction of Ed Molina, a retired Army intelligence officer and longtime businessman.
The mission of the centers, known as VBOCs, is to advance the growth and commercial competitiveness of veteran-owned small businesses through referrals and entrepreneurial education and training, including business training, counseling and mentoring. The free program is open to veterans or active-duty, Guard or Reserve military members and their families.
Though based in Sierra Vista with Fort Huachuca nearby, the new center serves the entire state of Arizona under the two-year, $250,000 federal grant, Molina said.
Molina and his business analyst, Air Force vet Ken Anderson, travel weekly to hold training events statewide, which translates to โlots of windshield time,โ Molina says, adding the center has helped more 60 veterans so far.
Next week, Molina said, the new center will launch its inaugural โVBOC on the Roadโ outreach session at the Small Business Development Center hosted by Northland Pioneer College in Show Low.
Beyond its home base in Southern Arizona, the center works to link up clients with resources such as their local Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs). Statewide, there are 10 SBDCs and related Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, which coach companies on winning government sales, across Arizona.
โHaving an outreach center to let veterans know how they can be supported is a great endorsement for us,โ said Ellen Kirton, director of the SDBC at Pima Community College.
Other resources include SCORE, an SBA-supported group of retired executives that provides one-on-one counseling and mentorship to entrepreneurs, and the Womenโs Business Development Centers.
โPeople are in various stages of starting a business,โ said Molina, who runs his own business in cyber operations and special operations exercise and training support. โWe try to figure out there they are in the process and point them in the right direction.โ
The center also refers clients to entrepreneurial training events and programs like โBoots to Business,โ a training track within the Department of Defenseโs Transition Assistance Program to help military members transitioning to civilian life.
The Boots to Business program includes two-day introduction to entrepreneurship and and eight-week online course covering basics like ownership, identifying promising business models, understanding markets, startup economics, legal issues, financing, business planning and resources such as the SBDCs and mentorship through SCORE, an SBA-supported group of retired executives.
The Boots to Business program and its impact was greatly expanded a couple of years ago when the SBA began offering โBoots to Business: Rebootโ for military veterans and their spouses, said Stephen Hart, SBA senior area manager for Southern Arizona.
Boots to Business recently marked its 50,000th participant since it began as a pilot program in 2012.
In Arizona, the program served more than 800 people in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, and nearly 5,000 have been served in Arizona since the programโs start, Hart said.
Hart said military skills and experience are invaluable to entrepreneurs.
โVeterans who go into business realize that the discipline and all that theyโre taught in the the military translates very well to business,โ he said.
Vets conference Dec. 2
Meanwhile, veterans can get some inspiration as well as insights on business Dec. 2 at the Seventh Annual Veterans Conference, hosted by the Small Business Development Center at Pima Community College.
The free event will feature a keynote speech by Eli Crane, a former Navy SEAL who founded Bottle Breacher, a Tucson company that makes bottle openers from .50-caliber ammunition cartridges and went on to win investment funding on TVโs Shark Tank.
Angela Cody-Rouget, a former Air Force major who started a professional organizing business called Major Mom, will lead a panel discussion, and an expo will feature business resources for vets.
Space is limited, but the SDBCโs Kirton said she expects up to 400 attendees at the conference, which includes a free lunch sponsored by Raytheon and Tucson Electric Power Co.
