During her nine years as a storekeeper in the Coast Guard, Brynn Simonetti gained invaluable experience in contracting, purchasing and accounting. And now that the Eatons Neck, Long Island-based officer is winding down her days in uniform, she has plans to put all these skills to work and open Bodhi Juice, her own organic juice bar, in nearby Huntington this spring.
“I’ll pretty much use everything I learned in the Coast Guard and will apply it to my business,” says Simonetti, 29, of turning her longtime home-juicing hobby into a career. “All of it translates.”
Call her the new breed of “vetrepreneur”: one of the growing ranks of female soldiers looking to join the longstanding tradition of veteran small business ownership. Although just 4 percent of the nation’s 3 million veteran-owned businesses are currently helmed by servicewomen, according to a 2012 US Small Business Administration report, a handful of specialized programs are hoping to give some of the nation’s 2.2 million — and counting — female veterans a better shot at business success.
For Simonetti, who plans to transition to reserve status next year, the first step on her “vetrepreneurial” journey was enrolling in Veterans as Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship, a training program funded by the Small Business Administration and administered by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management.
Launched in 2011, V-WISE offers female veterans and military spouses a 15-day online course in basics such as business structure and marketing, followed by an intensive three-day conference held in cities across the country. There, a bevy of successful female veteran entrepreneurs school the troops in everything from accounting and operations to work/life balance.
“The best thing about it was being around other veteran women who have the same desire as me of owning [their] own businesses,” says Simonetti, who completed the program in May.
According to Tina Kapral, the institute’s director of educational programs, almost 60 percent of the nearly 900 graduates to date have successfully launched or grown their own small businesses. The success rate, Kapral says, is largely due to the strong skills the women veterans bring into the program in the first place.
“They already have a built-in mentality for bootstrapping and key leadership characteristics,” she says. “They’re used to being in situations in which they take calculated risk and they know how to work out a contingency plan as backup. They have drive and determination.”
In the past year, female veteran unemployment has dropped from a staggering 19.9 percent in September 2012 to 7.7 percent in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s a sign of hope that female-targeted career programs such as V-WISE can continue to drive down the numbers.
Female veterans can differ from their male counterparts in a key way: Many of them are also raising families and must consider the demands of motherhood as they seek out a new career. According to the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, more than 40 percent of women on active duty have children.
For this reason, self-employment can be as attractive an option for female vets as it is for their civilian counterparts.
“Female veterans who I’ve spoken with tend to gravitate toward entrepreneurship because of the flexibility,” says Won Palisoul, a founder of Women Veterans and Families Network, a New York City organization that connects local servicewomen with support programs and resources. “They get to manage their lives — that’s a big attribute of small business ownership.”
Palisoul knows from experience: The Navy vet launched her own small electronics import outfit in 2009 and now works as a part-time IT consultant while raising her two small children in Manhattan.
“Having that flexibility is vital,” notes the 29-year-old Midtown resident.
Coast Guard officer-turned-entrepreneur Meghan Brunaugh agrees. “The ability to do something that I enjoy, and do it on my own time, has been invaluable,” she says.
Along with her business partner Charlotte Creech, the 32-year-old mother of two runs Combat2Career, an East Hartford, Conn.-based Web site that connects veterans with higher education programs and internships.
Brunaugh says her military experience — including a six-month deployment to the Arabian Gulf in support of Operation Enduring Freedom — gave her the focus and persistence to tackle each small challenge as it comes.
“You can run into the pitfall of wanting to get everything right, versus getting it done,” she explains.
Last year, the Manhattan-based women’s business nonprofit Count Me In partnered with Capital One to launch Women Veterans Entrepreneur Corps, a three-year initiative aiming to help enterprising servicewomen like Brunaugh take their ventures to the next level.
At the program’s inaugural conference in April in McLean, Va., more than 50 military women with established businesses — each with a minimum of $50,000 in annual revenue — participated in a pitch competition judged by a panel of seasoned entrepreneurs. The 24 winners — whose ventures range from an IT solutions firm to an organic skincare line — landed coveted spots in an intensive six-month Business Accelerator Program.
The participants all boast qualities of focus and discipline, says Count Me In president Nell Merlino. “Those are two key pillars of growing your business that I haven’t seen many civilians with, period.”