It’s nothing new for Ricardo Garcia to tackle a mission that has a clear objective.
The U.S. Air Force veteran had plenty of those while he served. However, his latest mission might be his most important yet.
While not discounting health and other struggles veterans face, Garcia says it’s just as important to understand that many veterans return from service and build businesses.
“There’s a whole different side that we don’t speak enough about, which is veteran innovators,” said Garcia, who earlier this month hosted a two-day veterans business summit in Lake Nona. “They’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible to make our communities much better.”
The two-day summit included one day devoted to recognizing the entrepreneurs in the VEI’s first-ever SPEAR Accelerator program.
These business owners spent several months learning about entrepreneurship from seasoned experts.
Though some had been through accelerators before, having mentors, experts, leaders and other figures who appreciated their service or shared their veteran status made it seem a little different.
Finding purpose beyond service
“When I got out of the military, there wasn’t anything like SPEAR and I struggled,” said Sean Freitag, one of the entrepreneurs onstage during the summit. “The transition after military experience, especially after you’ve been in combat, it’s not appreciated how difficult that can be. I felt like I was floundering.”
Freitag, who joined the U.S. Navy right out of high school in 2000, said working alongside other veterans brought back some of the emotions he had while in the military.
He had initially started his biosensor technology business, Signum Technologies, as a way to step outside of corporate America, which is where he had been lost.
“Not having something (as impactful as the military) left me with a hole that I didn’t know how to fill,” he said. “(Signum) scratched that itch and fulfilled something I was missing since I left the service.”
Each veteran on stage, of course, had their own reasons for jumping into the world of entrepreneurship.
But one underlying benefit from the program was knowing advice both given and received had a pure intent.
“In this cohort, I knew I could be valuable at this stage,” said Crystal Turman, who runs Wellspring Counseling Services in Satellite Beach. At the same time, she said, “I knew I could trust my cohort.”
“It’s a level of trust through shared experiences,” said Adam Brochetti, cofounder of Be in Health AI. “Coming into VEI, the trust comes with this community.”
Fueling passion through shared solutions
For Garcia, hearing those messages on stage brought him around to when the VEI first thought up the idea of a veteran-owned business accelerator.
As soon as it was made public, response was overwhelmingly positive.
During the accelerator, Garcia checked in on the cohort regularly. During one particular meeting, he said the vision of the program was crystallized.
He recalled a particularly powerful moment when a founder, struggling with interactions with a major global company, found immediate solutions from peers in the room who had faced similar challenges.
“That’s what fuels the fire,” Garcia said. “That’s what fuels the passion to continue doing this.”
