All across America and around the world, this
is Veterans Radio. This is Veterans Radio. Good
day. I'm Jim Fosson. I'm the Officer of the Deck
today here on Veterans Radio and thanks for joining
us. We've got some interesting stories for you.
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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. And
finally, PuroClean. PuroClean is the paramedics
of property damage. It provides water damage
remediation, flood water removal, fire and smoke
damage remediation, mold removal, biohazard cleanup.
It also has a focus on veteran franchisees. You
can learn more about them by going to PuroClean
.com. Welcome, I am Jim Fossone and this is Veterans
Radio's spotlight on National Veteran Business
Development Council, better known as NVBDC .org.
Veterans Radio has a partnership with NVBDC.
It is the nation's leading third party authority
for certification of veteran owned businesses
of all size. It's a 501c3 nonprofit established
in 2013, so now a decade of certifying veteran
owned businesses to assist commercial and government
buyers to make sure that they're actually working
with legitimate. veteran -owned businesses. It's
a rigorous certification process designed to
withstand the scrutiny of governmental and corporate
entities seeking to utilize certified VOBs. And
we're really pleased to have today on Veterans
Radio Bill Elmore. I'm going to give you more
about Bill in a minute, but Bill, welcome to
Veterans Radio. Well, thank you, Jim. I appreciate
the opportunity. So Bill is sort of the godfather
of veteran -owned businesses. And he has been
supporting veteran -owned businesses for his
entire professional career. But let me back up
a little bit to put some context around that.
It starts as a simple kid who joins the United
States Air Force and spends a little time in
Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma. You go on after discharge
to work. at a couple of veteran -centric places,
including the VA National personnel record center
in St. Louis. Many of us know that from the so
-called great fire destroying records. You went
on into further work as the executive director
for the St. Louis Area Veterans Service Centers.
You took some of that experience and said, hey,
I'm gonna help people retrieve their records
from NPRC. and then found your way into the U
.S. Small Business Association, or administration,
I should say, SBA, and that's kind of where this
story really starts. How did you get so interested
in veteran -owned businesses? Well, that's a
good question. Yeah, the start was by accident.
I broke my leg playing rugby. Now wait a minute,
that's the first time I've ever had an interview
start there. Okay, you broke your leg playing
rugby and somehow that got you into it. Exactly,
and so it was literally that sort of an accident.
The reason that, I won't say the reason the accident
occurred, that was on me. But what happened was
I was going to school full -time on the inadequate
GI bill of the day back in 1973. uh... and i
was working full -time i'd just started working
at a hospital in the saint louis area because
i was in training to become a respiratory therapy
technician the last thing i ever intended to
be was a veteran it just happened uh... so anyway
uh... when i broke my leg i had to quit my job
at the hospital and suddenly i went from full
-time jobs and no job And then a friend of mine
that I played rugby with, another veteran, mentioned
VA work study. And I said, I don't have a clue
what the heck that is, but I need the income.
So I went to the veteran's office at the community
college I was attending, and I asked the gal
who ran the office, a wonderful lady named Doris
Lata. And Doris said, I don't have any work study
slots on campus, but there's this group of guys.
Doing something out of this old American Legion
post and it was in a metric It was in the St.
Louis metropolitan area just east of where I
was living So I said sure send me out there and
I went out to what was then the very startup
of a free self -help One -stop veteran service
center in st. Louis that we opened in a Legion
post. So for the first four years In that not
-for -profit, it became a not -for -profit. We
probably had maybe 600 veterans walk in the door
and whatever they ask us to help them with, we
helped them. And that led ultimately to ending
up creating the first proposal as a work. project
in my college education about how do we take
this basic concept of a self -help center for
veterans and turn them into a full -time deal
here and say, look, we did that. And about two
years later, our annual budget approached $400
,000 a year. And we had somewhere north of 1
,000 veterans a year walking through the door.
So that went on for almost 20 years. and I ended
up running the entire shop. But what was happening
was about maybe one out of every 20 veterans
that walked in the door was asking about self
-employment or small business or creating their
own shop. So I started contacting the SBA district
office in St. Louis, which in those days had
40 to 50 employees. And I started building relations
with people there. And any time a veteran had
any significant question about entrepreneurship,
I basically hand carried them over to the SBA
and we began to engage in a lot of different
kinds of stuff. Now, this is the very short version.
To sort of leap ahead, Ultimately I ended up
creating back in the 1980s what was called the
Veterans Entrepreneurship Training Program here
in St. Louis and in two plus years we trained
almost 200 veterans and their spouses and their
survivors if they were widows in entrepreneurship
and the program was incredibly successful and
the other thing it did for me was it exposed
me to a whole community of already successful,
mostly Vietnam veterans that were in the business
world in St. Louis, who in those days knew each
other professionally, but none of them knew each
other as veterans. Let me jump in here because
this is, veteran radio listeners, this is the
start of what we see now 45 years later, where
there are entrepreneurial boot camps and universities
have specific programs to help veterans get into
business, and government programs exist at the
state, local, and federal levels. But in the
80s, in the late 70s and the early 80s, none
of this existed, and even the concept of what
a certified veteran owned business didn't really
exist, did it, Bill Gilmore? No, it did not exist,
and I'll give you Just to touch a history, the
original 1944 GI Bill included small business
lending for veterans. In December 1974, Congress
deauthorized small business lending to veterans
in the GI Bill. So for 30 years, we had a lot
of help coming out of the federal sector for
veteran entrepreneurs. In 74, when our generation
came home, and was coming home still, virtually
all the assistance that had been delivered to
previous generations of veterans disappeared.
So about the same time we were starting our Veterans
Service Center, boom, what was available from
VA at the time up until December 1974 just went
away. So it really was up to us. and then sort
of to finish the story about the vet program
that we put together in St. Louis in the 80s.
That happened and it so motivated me that by
1995 when I had run the not -for -profit for
20 years and I had run my small business as a
sideline very early in the morning, I had had
all I could take of managing the not -for -profit.
So I said, I'm going to move to my business full
time. That was in 1995, my military records business,
helping veterans get their records. So anyway,
when I did that, I said to myself, I am so enamored
with this entrepreneurship stuff. The one thing
I'm going to volunteer my time as an advocate
around is going to be veteran small business
ownership. And if you move a little earlier than
that, we actually had legislation introduced
in Congress in 1990, 1991, and 1992. But all
three of those efforts were blocked by people
who didn't want veterans at the table. And I
won't get into detail because I'm not trying
to cast aspersions, but there were significant
powers at the congressional level. and in the
rest of the small business community that didn't
want veterans fully at the table. So anyway,
97 comes along and I had gotten to know Congressman
Jim Tellen from Missouri not because of my veterans
work, but because a dioxin incinerator was located
in his district. And I knew the story of DOCS
and because of my not -for -profit work with
the Veterans Service Center and the whole Agent
Orange fiasco, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So after about four and a half years of volunteer
work with Congressman Jim Tallent and his staff
in his district, he asked one day in a meeting,
does anybody want to talk about something other
than the incinerator? And I said, Jim, I'd love
to talk to you about how veterans are left out
at the SBA. Boom. So that was the start of it.
And then by 1999, we had two different public
laws passed. I ended up drafting much of those
public laws as a volunteer. And I never intended
to go to DC. But once the 1999 statute passed,
which created the first service disabled veterans
procurement goal program and the veterans procurement
goal program, by 1999, the community was telling
me, Bill, we need you to go after the job. I
said, what? They said, we need you to go after
the job. So I did. I talked to my family. I talked
to my wife. I was in my early 50s. I was at that
point at the height of my abilities. I knew this
community and I knew the background better than
virtually anybody alive. I still do. And I went
after the job and 71 other people went after
the job and lo and behold, the SBA hired me.
Well, it's because of all that experience, right?
What you're bringing to the table. But talk to,
and this has been sort of a ping pong thing between
VA and SBA and back to SBA. Why is veteran owned
businesses, why was it seen as such a redheaded
stepchild inside the government like that? Well,
I think there was little focus. The only program
other than the Osdebu that the VA had at the
time, was the vocational rehabilitation and employment
services program. And they actually had authority
to help train disabled veterans in entrepreneurship.
But when you looked at the data, and I did, better
than 100 ,000 veterans each year were eligible
for help from the VA Voc Rehab program. And the
number of veterans that received small business
assistance in VA Volk Rehab numbered about 25.
So you had this huge disconnect between what
the VA Volk Rehab folks on paper could do and
what, in fact, they were doing. So when Jim Talent,
who was then the chairman of the House Small
Business Committee, asked that question, I saw
my opportunity not to try to fix the VA. but
to try to fix the SBA. Because SBA was small
business, the VA was veterans. What we were talking
about was entrepreneurship for veterans, not
veterans for entrepreneurship. So it made, to
me, a heck of a lot more sense. Plus, at the
same time, the chairman of the Senate Small Business
Committee at the time was Senator Bond from Missouri.
And I knew Senator Bond from back in his time
when he was governor, and so did Jim Talent because
Jim had served in the Missouri House when Bond
was governor of Missouri. So Jim already had
a very strong and insightful working relationship
with Senator Bond from the same state. So I remember
telling a friend of mine walking next to the
Library of Congress on a voluntary visit to D
.C. I said the moon's aligned. You know, suddenly
everything is available to us that we've been
working on for 25 years to finally get this done.
And by the time we got the law passed in 99,
there was probably 200 people involved. I do
not take credit for all of this. I initiated
it. It's very clear. I know that better than
anybody. But the community stepped up and filled
the gap and helped bring the pressure and bring
their expertise and bring their insights into
what should we do if we could engage at that
point the small business administration into
some serious effort and programs and policies
to support veterans because the point i kept
making to the hill and i did this in testimony
and that is congress you're giving veterans preference
to everybody at SBA but veterans. And arguably,
I could make a presentation that says the reason
you're not providing veterans preference to veterans
is because they are veterans. There's no other
visible reason. And as an aside to that, The
most diverse community of citizens in America
are our veterans. Absolutely. We're talking to
Bill Elmore, who's sort of the godfather of veteran
owned businesses. He's spent his professional
career really advancing the recognition of veteran
owned businesses, set asides for veteran owned
businesses. But Bill, I pulled a quote out somewhere
where you said, you know, veteran business owners
certainly are worthy But this is really a great
investment, and that concept that you viewed
this as a great investment, I wanted you to elaborate
on. Well, the reason I thought of that, after
running the, over the 20 years I ran our veteran
service centers, we had somewhere in the range
of 15 ,000 veterans come through the door. And
the longer I did that work, the more I began
to see the double -sided sword of advocacy. What
I saw was, homelessness, veterans with disabilities
being denied by VA, unemployed veterans, entrepreneurial
veterans who had no resources that they could
utilize to help them get their business going,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I saw a lot
of the work that we have done through our Veterans
Service Center. If you talked about it publicly,
it tended to have a negative connotation. So
what I was interested in was entrepreneurship
because the one best way for a veteran to make
their way in America, I would argue, and I still
believe this, is through self -employment. Veterans
hire more veterans than anybody else. Everybody
talks about how many veterans work in the federal
government, and I get that. You know, it's somewhere
in the range of 600 ,000, whatever the number
is, despite what's going on in DC. Self -employment
amongst veterans is more than double that. Veterans
create their own jobs. What we lack is access
to resources, access to programs and policies
that recognize our unique background and skills,
and also recognize that veterans, when we get
out of the service, come home and we are behind
the curve. The people we went to school with,
whether it was high school or college or whatever,
have a three, four, five, six, seven, ten year
head start on us operating in America's private
sector. So veterans are almost automatically
disadvantaged initially when they come home because
we've been disjoined from the mainstream American
economic system in our military service that
we proudly and gladly did. Yeah, we talk about
this on veterans radio a lot, that veteran, because
we talk to so many veteran owned businesses,
veterans come out and they're behind the curve
because they had a military network, they don't
have a business network. That's exactly right,
in fact. They have a checking account because
their government pay goes in that, but they don't
know how to do financing to cash flow of business.
So yeah, your point's well taken. They start
out behind the curve because of their time in
service. It's just a fact. Well, and there's
a few other things that I would add to that.
Not only do they have a checking account, they
don't know the bankers. They don't have equity
in homes. So the thing is the secure financing
if you're going to go to a bank one is generally
you need to have some kind of a relationship
and there is no network of veteran bankers in
America that I'm aware of although I'm talking
with my friends in the American Legion about
how do we begin to build one? There is there's
a lack of equity or collateral in fact one of
the little pilot programs that I was able to
get started before I couldn't I couldn't stand
being a federal employee any longer and left
DC after 12 years, was a pilot program in the
state of Maryland. And I don't know the outcomes,
so don't ask me that. But the pilot program basically
said to SBA lenders, let the veteran use their
experience in the military as collateral. An
important point, because everybody can't figure
out what that experience, how that translates
to the civilian world. But one of the things
I also saw you quoted as saying, and confirm
for me if this is true, that about 15 % of small
businesses are owned by veterans. Is that about
right? Well, historically it's been in that range.
About 15 % of reserve and National Guard members
are self -employed or small business owners or
perhaps on a farm, that kind of thing. So it
kind of depends on what technical definition
you use of small business owners, but I tend
to refer to it as self -employed or small business
owners. About 80 % of small businesses in America
have no employee but the owner. About 20 % of
small businesses in America are referred to as
employer small businesses and they have other
people who work for them. So 80 % of veterans,
approximately, it's actually closer to 81 I think,
about 80 % of veterans have nobody working in
their business but themselves. And that was actually
the case in my small business. I had four or
five people I could call who would come work
for me temporarily, other veterans, if I had
a job big enough through the National Personnel
Records Center that I needed that kind of help
or some more manpower. It's always easy to find
people that would come work for you temporarily
if you've got an opportunity and you can pay
them. Oh, yeah. Well, and that first employee
you get's the hardest one to get because you've
gone from being just yourself, paying yourself.
to having to be responsible for somebody else.
So that's an amazing statistic. I want to go
to this idea because so much has changed over
the last 45 years or so that you've been at the
forefront of. At one point, veteran... Business
owners didn't even self -identify as veterans.
They just were business owners. And then as it
evolved over the time, people would raise their
hand and say, well, I'm a veteran -owned business.
Self -certify, if you will. And we went through
that for a decade or more. How have you seen
just even the business owner's mentality about
identifying and then maybe even certifying? Hey,
I should get certified as a veteran owned business
change that because I think there has been a
change. Oh, there's absolutely been a change.
I think what's happened and this is and this
was the approach I took because remember, I was
not a bureaucrat by training. I was an advocate
and an entrepreneur. So when I went to SBA, I
said to myself, how do I engage? SBA in veteran
entrepreneurship. How do we find these men and
women? How do we reach them and how do we design
programs and policies that actually can be helpful
and supportive? So what I did was I knew how
to do outreach because I had dealt with thousands
of veterans and I knew the basic issues that
many of them presented to us in our not -for
-profit years. So I began to engage in how do
I bring veterans into touch with SBA programs,
policies, and partners, which was really important.
The thing to understand about SBA in those days,
and I think it's likely still true today, when
I worked at SBA, there were in the range of 2
,100 employees in the entire agency across the
entire country. 2 ,100. That was two -thirds
the size of my high school. Now what SBA does
though and does incredibly well is they have
lots of third -party partners. So you had in
those days in excess of a thousand small business
development centers. You had between 50 and 100
women's business centers. We had hundreds of
score chapters. with thousands of veterans who
were score volunteers and mentors and guides
and advisors. And then I began to create the
Veterans Business Outreach Center program and
a lot of the stuff that is now spilled across
so many campuses and states and local governments.
But when you go back and you look at the data,
The Census Bureau used to do what was used to
do every five years called the survey of business
ownership where they would inventory and ask
questions of millions of small business owners
across America. Not hundreds, not thousands,
but literally like three or four million would
get questionnaires. And that's where that 15
% number came from. When I started this work,
there were in excess of four million veteran
-owned small businesses in America. And they
made up about 15 % of the small businesses in
America. Now we're somewhere in the range of
four or five percent, and we're below two million.
But the latest data that came out of, oh, what
the heck is it called, GEM, G -E -M, which comes
out of Babson College, which I think is in Massachusetts,
don't hold me to that. where they are tracking
that upwards of fifty percent of active service
members and reserve and national guard members
are thinking about our may have spired entrepreneurship
post -service. The number of veterans themselves,
and our numbers of veterans have greatly diminished
as you know over these last couple of decades,
the number of veterans themselves that are already
self -employed Two -thirds of them when I was
at SBA were over the age of 45. So that was my
generation of veterans who, despite the lack
of any support or assistance or engagement from
government, went on to entrepreneurship anyway.
Veterans are entrepreneurial. Historically, I
would argue you can make a case that grants of
land at the very creation of our nation really
represented self -employment opportunity to veterans
at the physical and economic frontiers of America.
That's true still today. That's an interesting
idea. There's a PhD thesis for somebody to pick
up on and develop. We are talking to Bill Elmore.
He was the founding associate administrator for
the Veterans Business Development. at the SBA
and the creator of the SBA Office of Veterans
Business Development and has seen this movement
grow and recently spoke at the NVBDC conference.
Now, NVBDC, talking about how much this has grown,
recently put out a report talking about the billion
dollar roundtable and looking at veteran owned,
NVBDC certified veteran owned businesses, and
the Business Roundtable reports something like
4 .3 billion spend directed specifically to NVBDC
certified businesses. I mean, this thing is massive
when you look at it from that front, Bill. Why
do you think something like NVBDC and veteran
certification is important? Well, it's important
back to the member the point that you and I agreed
on and that's the Arguably the most diverse community
of of American citizens are our veterans That
diversity does include excuse my French shit
bums and charlatans So Having been in the business
for better than 50 years. I know that there's
a slice of the veterans world that I would not
trust my family with. Now that doesn't make us
bad because actually I think on average we're
better than typical Americans when it comes to
people because the military service itself and
then being a veteran is an honor based system
and if you're not honorable in your engagement
either in your military service or post -service
if you get into the veterans community. If you
act dishonorably, people are going to disown
you and quit dealing with you. So, back to your
question, what we need is we need a system that
gives comfort to the billion -dollar roundtable
and the rest of America's private sector to focus
on, you don't need to worry about whether or
not this guy is gaming you. You only need to
worry about the fact that this man or woman is
a veteran, served, accomplished their missions
in the service, got out, caught up, and are now
doing so well in their small business ownership.
that they can be an asset and a resource to you
at Walmart or wherever it might be. They bring
skills, they bring worldly experience, they bring
the ability to engage with people of all backgrounds
and shades and hues and histories because that's
what you do in the military. The mission becomes
the mission. not your personal mission other
than perhaps your survival and your support for
your fellow service member. The mission is accomplished
the mission and they bring that ethos to business
ownership and I think they bring an integrity
and an honesty to business ownership generally
that America desperately needs back. in America's
corporate model, and who better to re -inoculate
the private sector than the men and women who
have defended that very private sector through
our military service. It's as simple as that.
Well, you got a chance to meet with the leadership
of NVBDC, and I'm sure many members who are at
the conference. I think you're right. One of
the things getting certified through a rigorous
program does is it lets the corporate buyer Not
even look at that. I don't have to sort out,
I don't have to verify veteran ownership and
operation of the business. That's been done.
Now let's focus on your qualifications. Can you
really do the job? Well, we certainly appreciate
the time that Bill Elmore gave to us on Veterans
Radio, really outlining the history of the...
veteran -owned business space, how it came about,
where it might be going, and why it's so important,
and we really appreciate his time. You can listen
to these veteran radio podcasts on a number of
platforms, all the major ones, such as the rss
.com feed, also iTunes, YouTube, Reese Across
America Radio, and many others, so we encourage
you to do that and appreciate all of your support.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to
Veterans Radio today. I am Jim Fossone. 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 -693 -4800 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. We would again want
to thank our national sponsors, the National
Veterans Business Development Council, nvbdc
.org. Legal Help for Veterans, a veterans disability
law firm with a national practice before the
VA. It can help you on your claims and your appeals.
It can be reached at legalhelpforveterans .com
or 1 -800 -693 -4800. And PuroClean, a leader
in property emergency services. It's the paramedics
of property damage, providing water damage remediation,
flood water removal, fire and smoke damage remediation,
mold and biohazard cleanups. you can reach them
at puroclean .com or 800 -775 -7876. We also
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You can be a sponsor by going to veteransradio
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