Latest / Winning With Winans! / From Service to Startup: How Veterans Built a Thriving Business Community in Las Vegas
Transcript
- Speaker 2: You have a family and yet you started this really great effort with Veterans Chamber of Commerce. What made you decide to do this? So really, you know, when we came here, especially of our family situation, when we came here to Las Vegas, I needed to have a high level of flexibility with what I was doing because, you know, we have four children. At the time, they were very young. The need for flexibility kind of made me lean toward looking at entrepreneurship and at different ways that I could use my ideas to become involved in those ideas into businesses, basically. But when ⁓ it time for me to look for resources to support those ideas and some of that business development, I had some ⁓ difficulties to find ⁓ whatever resources there were in our community. There were, there were some great resources that I was able to connect to, but then as far as, know, I'm a big believer in the value of relationships, you know, and, and I just couldn't really see how I was going to be able to navigate the community by just starting from scratch in that way. Right. So then I started to look, look for something that resembled a veteran's chamber of commerce. They didn't really have much luck finding anything that I could connect with. So. Because of that, I was like, okay, well, why don't we just create one? You know, like, that's literally how that came about. You know, was like, why not me? You know, kind of thing, you so. And it grew. How many, 400 members I think now? We're right around 275, 300. Okay. Yeah. But it was definitely very well received, still is, you know, in the community. You know, when it came to engagement and community involvement and just how people saw ⁓ how it was filling a gap, you know, that, that was, that was there. didn't realize how well received it was going to be until these relationships started to get, started to become, you know, more and more ⁓ relevant than the community. And, people just really gravitated toward what was happening. And a lot of people were telling me that, you know, they've, ⁓ kind of wished that something like that had came about sooner, but it just took somebody to take the time to do it. ⁓ I was, I was grateful to be, you know, involved in helping to put that together and helping it to grow. You know, we're about four and a half years in now and you know, it's really been, in my opinion, I'm very thankful for this, but it's been an part of bringing a lot of ⁓ organizations together and helping to promote more collaboration and cohesiveness in the community. ⁓ I would say people. You know, it seems sad. mean, you know, the... camaraderie that you brought back with your organization. I I've met a lot of friends from it, and you want to do business with people who you know. Yeah, exactly. And veterans were a special group, and one of the things we're going to talk about is the veterans' transition into business life. As you said, you did not find a lot of resources. It's kind of sad in a way. We hear often about VA issues, But Lester, I to say too, and I think again, what makes Vegas so special, ⁓ I get asked all the time the differences I've seen between here and other parts of the country and most notably California. There's so many vets here. and so many vets who go to church, know, that they're, you know, and nobody is from here. So you can't say who did what to whom or no, no, none of that matters. It's a true community here.