(Credit: Steve Thurston 2022)
Amie Gonzales of Hunt Construction Cos., Amy Amoroso director of the Veteran Business Outreach Center, Juan Gonzales also of the Hunt Cos., and Fred Elbert of Elbert Field Equipment Solutions, pose for a photo after a recent Veteran Business Network meeting in February 2022.
When Fred Elbert left the Army after four years in the 1980s, the transition from military life to civilian life was little like what he is seeing now. He said this after an Adirondack Regional Chamber of Commerce Veteran Business Network meeting earlier this month.
Elbert entered the Army with an engineering degree and as a commissioned officer, he said, and that background helped lead him into his work now in project management. His education and additional Army training helped him.
The transitional training, the programs offered by the military for those re-entering civilian life back then, was aimed more at the soldiers who were leaving and maybe had a high school degree or no degree at all, he said. He felt the training then was only trying to soldiers ready for foundational jobs; it was not meant for officers like him, he said. After his four years of active duty, he stayed on as a reservist for 21 more. He’s a retired Colonel.
For that reason, he was impressed with the presentation Amy Amoroso gave at the VBN meeting to just a small handful of the group’s members. Amoroso is the director of the Veterans Business Outreach Center. She is married to a Marine, she said, and has been an entrepreneur.
She is based at the McNulty Veteran Business Center in Watervliet, but her region covers multiple states.
She spoke on a number of topics, but the theme was one that veterans at all levels have the option to become entrepreneurs when leaving the service, and they have help, free help.
“People want to buy [from] veteran-owned” companies, she said. “People want to buy American made.”
The way that companies do this is to hire veterans or to contract with veteran-owned businesses, she said. Therefore, it is a good time to be a veteran entrepreneur and capitalize on that. If a veteran has a dream, she can help them find resources to make the plan.
Boots to Business, one program she highlighted, is administered through the federal Small Business Administration and is aimed at helping the transitional veteran. The Boots to Business Reboot program is open to others. Those are two of many veteran-aimed programs.
She listed programs at various colleges and universities throughout the country that offer free business coursework and certifications, often online.
The presentation gave Elbert other ideas, he said. Amoroso talked about the certification process—it can be arduous—to become a certified veteran-owned business. But the reward for the hard work is access to contracts only open to those businesses.
Amoroso mentioned contracts offered by the federal government and military facilities in New York State or nearby.
Elbert is a principal owner in Elbert Field Equipment Solutions, LLC, a certified Veteran Owned Small Business that coordinates construction projects especially the installation of industrial equipment. He’s been in business since 2013.
The mention of the bases got him thinking: Building inspection or construction management at a place like Fort Drum, near where his son lives, in Saratoga County or even West Point in the Hudson Valley, might offer opportunities he had not thought too much of before, he said.
For more see the McNulty Veteran Business Center.