All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
We've got some great programs for you.
I think you'll find very interesting.
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or at the web.
VeteransRadio.org is our new URL, VeteransRadio.org.
Where we're on the web 24-7, you can find a lot of our podcasts there as well.
We post new ones every Tuesday, so you can get a new story, a new interview, something
you didn't know before by going to VeteransRadio.org.
And before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors.
First up, we want to thank National Veteran Business Development Council, NVBDC.org.
It was established to certify both service disabled and veteran owned businesses.
You'll find out how they can help your business by going to NVBDC.org.
We want to thank Legal Help for Veterans.
Legal Help for Veterans fights for veterans disability rights all across the nation.
You can reach them at 800-693-4800 or on the web at LegalHelpForVeterans.com.
This is VeteransRadio's spotlight on PuroClean and its franchisees.
PuroClean's a leader in property emergency services, helping families and businesses
overcome the devastating setbacks caused by water, fire, mold and other conditions that
result in property damage.
It's independently owned by franchisees that do the real work in their communities.
PuroClean's known as the paramedics of property damage.
It provides water damage remediation, flood water removal, fire and smoke damage remediation,
biohazard cleanup on commercial and residential customers.
PuroClean.com is where you can check this out.
By the way, there's a veterans discount on the franchise.
But today we get to talk to two business owners, Jesse and Jennifer Wine.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you.
We're happy to be here.
Thank you.
Well, we're going to talk a little later about your time in the Wisconsin National Guard.
Jesse, you served, I think it was eight years, came out as a sergeant.
Jennifer, I think you had a 12-year career in the Army National Guard, and we want to
talk about those experiences.
But here we're talking to you specifically because you are business owners.
You have a franchise with PuroClean.
Why did you settle on a business with PuroClean?
Jennifer, I'm going to toss that one to you.
Sure.
So we decided to go and because we were looking for a franchise that's kind of exhibited
like all of our values.
And when we settled on PuroClean, we had gone to the Meet the Team day.
And when we walked into the front office for the first time, they had brought all of the
employees out to greet us.
So we got to meet everybody from the top down.
And we were accepted as if we were already family members.
And that experience is very similar to the experience you have as a military member,
no matter where you are, where you come from, if you're in the service, Marines, National
Guard, Army, Navy, it doesn't matter who you are.
You walk into a room with prior service veterans and you are instantly family.
And that is the connection that I felt the moment I walked into PuroClean.
And from that point, there was no other choice.
This was the only place for us.
Well, and I should mention that Steve White, the Chief Operating Officer of PuroClean,
is an Army vet, served in the US Army, was a captain.
So he probably had some of those same values and experiences that and wanted to make sure
that you felt them as well.
So it's good to hear that you did, Jennifer.
Yes, absolutely.
And that gets us to another question, and I'll toss this just your way, which is, what's
the best part of owning your own business?
That's a great question.
Obviously, running, being able to call the shots is important.
Being able to expand my business in the way I want to grow it, to how I want to grow it
is very important to us as new business owners.
And what's great about that is PuroClean corporate, they don't stand in our way.
They support us and encourage us.
And sure, you have some bumpers, some guide reels, but it's for your own good.
And so it's really great.
I enjoy helping people.
It's a very satisfying job to go in and help people with their homes.
Some of their biggest purchase they're ever going to make.
And we come in and when it's destroyed and we rebuild it, it's just a very fulfilling
job.
And it's just a great part of what I want to do in my life to help people.
Well, Jesse, you have a long history in construction.
We'll talk a little bit about that later.
But one of the things franchises have are sort of standard operating procedures.
And you're meeting people on the worst day of their life.
They've had a flood, they've had a water break, they've had a fire.
And you've got a process.
Explain how standard operating procedures, not unlike in the Army, kind of help you go
through and fix the worst day of somebody's life.
Sure.
Yeah.
You wear a lot of hats.
So your SOPs, we keep them in the trucks.
Like, hey, we're dealing with a situation.
You've got to follow the steps.
It's important because a lot of people don't do this every day.
We can look at a situation and know exactly how it's going to end two months from now.
But the homeowners have no idea.
And so we're there to educate, to help sometimes they're shorter to dry on.
And having guidelines in place for your SOPs, it just helps when you have employees.
It allows the experienced guys to have a resource.
It's like your dashed in and your humbies.
You got where do you go if you need something.
So yeah, I want to, before we're on time, I want to talk about one other thing is you
mentioned you like helping people.
But you get to do it in your community in Wisconsin.
Talk a little bit about how that's the most certainly a satisfying part of the business.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Jim, I'll take it.
Well, I mean, you know, why'd we join the Army?
We wanted to help.
We wanted to serve.
You know, we joined the National Guard.
You know, we helped people in our own communities through disasters.
And I've been deployed on multiple scenarios and fields of operation, but you know, nothing
beats helping your neighbors.
You know, it's a very satisfying feeling.
Well, let's let's point people to if they're interested, you can go to purelclean.com, read
more about what this business opportunity looks like.
As I mentioned earlier, they have a veterans discount on being able to get in.
So it's purelclean.com.
But I now want to go back to a little bit more about your military experiences, Jennifer
and Jesse, because I think a lot of folks maybe don't understand what the Wisconsin
Army National Guard does or the National Guard in general does.
And you've been overseas.
Tell us a little bit about your military career, Jesse.
So I joined 2002.
So I was very close to 9-11 geared, you know.
And so I went, I was in 11 Bravo, did my basic training down in Fort Benning, Georgia.
And then I came back and was deployed right to Bosnian.
And then it did that for about a year, year, a few months and then came home.
And shortly after that, we had Katrina hit and we went down there as a Wisconsin National
Guard unit.
It's been a few months down there, handing out water, doing a lot of different things.
And then we did, in 2008, a couple years after that, we were having a border wall crisis.
I went down to Arizona for a couple of months doing that.
Reservant report, helping with detainees to type situations.
And just alleviated some of the border patrol crisis down there.
So and then after that, it's a couple years.
So you do your weekends and you do your once a month drill.
But in 2009, I was deployed to Iraq.
And then shortly after that, I came back to ETS from 2010.
You know, it's sort of interesting because sprinkled in the, if you will, hardcore military
stuff in Bosnia and Iraq, there's a lot of humanitarian work that the National Guard
does.
As you mentioned, Katrina is a good example of it.
And I don't think the general population understands that the National Guard is helping
both in their home state.
But when called upon and federally mobilized, they are also doing humanitarian missions
elsewhere.
So thanks for sharing a little bit of that.
Jennifer, how did a nice girl like you end up in 12 years with a military career?
Well, so it was right around the time that I was actually getting ready to head off
to college.
I had just graduated and I had a friend of mine who was joining the service and I was
really interested in joining the service.
My parents actually talked to me out of it and they said, hey, go to your first year
of college, see if that's what you, you know, experience college first before you make such
a life-changing decision.
So I did.
I took their advice and I went off to college.
And it was actually the, I believe it was in April of 2001 that I decided that I was
indeed going to join the service.
It offered me the lure of excitement that I wanted, the ability to help people.
And actually I want to say that the initial draw to the service, you know, they say marketing
is everything and a picture has a thousand words.
There was an advertisement that they, that an Army National Guard had stuck in magazines
that I had grown up seeing and it was an image of a soldier repelling from a helicopter over
a body of water and they were rescuing a little girl.
And when I saw that photo, it was like, that is what I want to do.
Wow.
That's, that has stuck with you all these years, hasn't it?
It has, it has.
And if, and if I might say, I do with restoration industry that we're in today, I see that image
as what we do today as well, because we are still going in rescuing people from damage
and from catastrophes that they don't know how they're going to get out of.
But Jesse and I and our crew, we go in and we're rescuing them on a daily basis.
So you know, it's still, it's still the heart of who I am.
And I'm just grateful that I get to continue doing that even after my service.
Well, one of the things you often find is that what folks do in the military is public
service then continues to wring through or ripple through the rest of their life.
Jesse saw the worst of it in Katrina, right?
So what you're doing today is, is attacking some of that worst of it that you saw in Katrina.
And Jennifer, that image that you have and drew you to, I want to be a service.
I want to help rescue people is part of what you're doing today.
But tell us what you did in the military.
Yep.
So I, so I joined, as I said, I joined the National Guard in 2001 as a medic.
I was going to college as a pre-med student.
So I thought, well, I'll join as a medic because that was kind of the career path that I was
on at the time.
I joined a military police unit in Indianapolis.
And shortly after I got back from my training, September 11th happened.
We were not called up during that time period, but we were just, you know, high alert.
And then in 2004, they were getting ready to mobilize to the media and they were only
going to take their military police staff.
They were not going to take their specialty staff.
So I would have been like, and I didn't want that because they were, it was my first time
with my team.
I didn't want to be left behind.
So I went and I recertified as a military police officer.
That way I could be deployed with my units as a police officer, but then also still support
them medically as a medic.
So in 2004, I deployed to Bosnia as a military police officer.
It's actually where I met Jesse.
He, I joke that he followed me home, so I decided to keep him.
Yeah, there's a lot of these sort of stories in the military where this is where I met
my spouse, but for this particular, and again, if you hadn't retrained, this would never
have happened.
That's correct.
It wouldn't have never happened.
Yeah.
Well, and to answer the thoughts everyone's having that no, I would just, it was not arrested.
You may have almost went into a garbage can, though, you know, you know, we kind of mess
with the appease up in this infantry guy.
Yeah, especially little, little ones.
Yeah.
Well, and obviously it was a career that you enjoyed and time, you know, everybody gets
out at some point or another.
And what year did you get out?
So I got out in 2013.
Once I got back from Bosnia, I switched colleges to a Wisconsin college.
So I'm from Wisconsin initially.
And so I went to a local college and switched to the 135th medical company in Waukesha.
And that's where I, that's where I served out the rest of my time.
And, you know, a question I'm asking a lot of vets these days in today's tough recruiting
environment.
And your, your mom and dad said, no, no, don't join.
Let's try to talk you out of it for a year.
How do, how do you guys give advice if a niece or a nephew or a neighbor's friend or your
children come along and say, Hey, I'm thinking of joining up.
What would you tell them?
I say, don't tell your mom and dad get in the car with me.
Yeah.
We encourage them because it has been instrumental in shaping our life.
And it really does give you a lot of, a lot of great experience leadership ability.
You grow up, I mean, really fast and it helps you to focus your attention and your, the
direction of your life.
It helps to focus that direction of your life.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have a lot of nieces and nephews that I, you know, tell if you want to, you want
out of the small town, join the army, you know, or well, sometimes I say Air Force now.
Yeah.
You'll live your life.
Never the Marines.
I've got relatives in the Marines.
So and I think the army instills in you is particularly when you're younger folks sort
of a set of values.
I know from reading some materials, values were important to you both as a family and
as, as potential business owners.
So again, this kind of all ripples through life.
Your service kind of ripples through your values as well.
Yeah, definitely, you know, and this is a definitely, you know, owning a business like
this is an extension of selfless service.
You know, you're definitely putting, putting yourself last in a lot of the situations.
So, and that's, that should be.
Jesse, give us some further thoughts on pure clean.
Sure.
I mean, so currently one in seven owners are veterans and pure clean.
We currently have about 37 veteran owned businesses.
And our goal is to get up to 100 or more.
We were recently named top veterans franchise by entrepreneur magazine.
So you know, that's a lot of things moving, you know, in the right direction, you know,
we like to say pure cleans on the move.
And you know, we're 100% behind that.
We love, you know, pure clean, you know, they're just a great, great franchise that they really
get behind their owners.
And I can't say enough good things about the ownership.
Mark Davis, Frank Tory, Steve White, there's great down to earth owners and CEOs.
Well it's good to have that kind of validation from outside parties about how this is a veteran
centric franchise opportunity.
You've experienced it.
You know it to be true, but it's nice to have that validation as well.
Absolutely.
Yeah, we really appreciate your letting us talk with you today.
Yeah, happy to help anytime.
And then I would like to add for any veterans who are considering entrepreneurship, I just
want to, I just want to let you guys know don't be afraid to take the plunge because
you have the skills, the determination and the grit to succeed.
And owning a business is just a new way to serve.
And it's a very rewarding path.
Well, I think that you again, Jesse and Jennifer, wine for the time that you spent with us today
on Veterans Radio.
Thank you.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawcone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.
That's veteransradio.org.
And until next time, you are dismissed.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for
Veterans at 1-800-6934800.
There are experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-6934800.
We again want to thank our national sponsors, the National Veterans Business Development
Council, NVBDC.org, VA Ann Arbor Health Care System, the Vietnam Veterans of America,
Charles S. Kettles Chapter, Ann Arbor, Michigan, VFW Graf O'Hara Post 423 in Ann Arbor, and
the American Legion Press Corn Post 46 also in Ann Arbor.
We appreciate all your support.
You can go to veteransradio.net, click on the sponsor level, and continue to support keeping
Veterans Radio on the air.
And until next time, you are dismissed.