InFocus featuring Lisa Ducharme on 250+ Years of Veteran Innovators

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host Patrick Berry. We're here in the 22 News Plus Studios. As our country celebrates 250 years, take a moment to think back. 250 years ago was 1776. A hundred years before that, pretty much our country was founded in the mid 1600s. But if you think about from that time, the 1600s, 1700s, right up through today, this country has produced so many veterans. So we're taking some time today to recognize some important veterans and the impact they've played on our economy. Joining me today across the desk, oops, there it is, is Lisa Ducharme. She is a U.S. veteran. She's also the executive director of the Massachusetts Veterans Chamber of Commerce. So Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. As always, fun to have you here to talk veterans issues and veteran stories. So thanks for joining me. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. You know I love my projects. Absolutely. This conversation was your suggestion and I applaud you for that, for feeding me this, because it's an interesting conversation. You're a veteran. You run the Veterans Chamber of Commerce. You wanted to talk about those men and women who served our country in some way, shape or form, and how their military service created economic opportunities after their service. Yes. We'll talk about some famous ones. We'll talk about some not so famous ones. We'll talk about the importance of it and so forth. So I'm glad you're joining us today, folks. So let's go back in time 250 plus years ago. How important over those 250 years have veterans been to our economy? They've been really important. One of the things that a lot of people know, and a lot don't, is that when our World War II veterans got out of the military, they actually, 49.7 percent, actually started businesses. But even if we go before that, George Washington was a veteran. His business is still around. They have Mount Vernon. You have Paul Revere, who was the first one to create the copper, and all of the stuff in Paul Revere's company is still here. So you can go back over those 250 years. One of the things that I believe there's an architecture of success that is there. And one thing that I see in our veteran innovators is they always put community first. And I say this in a lens that says because we're trained that country comes first. You come last, but country comes first. And that's ingrained in a veteran's mind. Exactly. And so their businesses were generally founded off of a need or off of even if it was something that they were trying to help with. So if you look at Roy Disney, he is the brother of Walt Disney and the co-founder of Disney Brothers, which then later became Walt Disney Company and such. And the veterans stayed behind the scenes. Then you look at Sam Walton, who both Sam and his brother Bud were both veterans. They brought in what he learned in the military, and also what he grew up with, which is people are first. But the military is very ingrained in you take care of your community. You take care of the person that's behind you, in front of you, to your left and to your right. And that's how Walmart was set up. It was to take care of the community. But most people don't know that Bud, who's also a veteran, was part of that building and then part of his company. He owned But as we look back through some of the things that we have, we have them because of veterans. And we bring a uniqueness and our voice is so important. And today, less than 5% of our veterans, less 5% of our military when they get out are actually starting businesses. Where in World War II, we had 49.7%. So big differentiator and the difference throughout history, every error, we can show the difference that a veteran made. In each of those eras, the veterans contribute immensely to our local communities, our local economic societies. I think back, there's so many thoughts swirling through my head, but you bring up Paul Revere, because he was copper or silver? Copper. Copper. And so 250 years later, what he created is still in existence. It is still the ripple effect. Yes. How? Because we use his copper. They still have their company that the Paul Revere company still does stuff. In 2023, they built another house in New Hampshire. So there's the resources of coppers and the tools that he created are still brought through and used today. And those employ people, it adds money to local economies, adds money to the national and global economy. Right. And without the copper and the process that he established, it would have taken us longer or not at all to get where we are today in the use of copper and every aspect we use for copper. So you're working on a project that looks at veterans, business owners, and how veterans have contributed to business over the years. What's the project you're working on and what have you found so far? So it's the America 250 celebrating our veteran inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses. And what I'm trying to do is find our shared architecture of success and figure out why veterans are not starting businesses today. And I started this project when my dad passed away in 2024. And I realized the most scary thing in the world. I am now institutional knowledge. I now have knowledge that I have to share with others, but it's what do you do and how do you do it? And so I started thinking to myself, why don't I just start looking, go back 250 years and start looking at all the different veteran businesses from my veteran business expert lens. There aren't very many lenses like mine that focus on a veteran, the era they serve, what they did, whether they were active guard or reserve and all of that good stuff. So I started to look at them and I thought, this is really interesting. There was so much that I never thought of Paul Revere as a business owner. I never thought of general Washington and never thought of Washington as a business owner. And it's like, he was a business owner before he was in the military. And then all the he bought afterwards based on what he learned while he was in the military. And so when you start looking at it from a veteran business lens, you can start to see a shared architecture of success. And then I thought, well, now what am I going to do with it? Because as I'm looking, I got to like 10 different businesses that I looked at. And I thought there's too much information here for me to be able to really identify something unless I can find a way to format it. So I put it in a impact and legacy phase from my lens, which means going back and looking at the newspapers, because I have to understand what was going on during that time. And it also means understanding what the military was like and what the guard, the reserve or the active, depending on which service they were in and a whole bunch of other things. And so then I create their impact and legacy off of that. And so whether they're alive or not, I can still create the impact and legacy based on the research that I've done. And by looking at that, I can find that shared architecture of success, which we do have, because if you think about it, most veterans have minimal resources. When you're in the military, you don't have the resources. You only have what's given you. Exactly. And you also, when you go out and deploy or you have a job to do and you got to do it, you generally don't have a whole lot of information. So you're working off of incomplete information. And so you have to run with that. Well, a lot of our veteran businesses through history and even today use those types. They're mission driven. They focus on community and country. Traditionally, most people were solving a problem before they started their business. And that's what got them to start the business was the problem they were solving. And so I found that what our problem is and the reason most veterans don't start businesses today is in part the way we have them leave the military. Now, for a decade, I've been saying we don't teach veterans. We don't teach military how to be veterans, which is 100 percent true. But what the part I missed, which I only identified when I looked at the founders of the Disabled American Veterans, the VFW and the American Legions, was that since 1991, we've been teaching veterans to be employees. We're giving you resumes. We're telling you how to go get a job. It was necessary at the time to do that because there was a rift in the military where they were getting rid of over 400,000 military members. So they had to make sure that the veterans weren't going to go and crash the economy. Right. Because that's what happens if can't help them. But over the years, people have been very proud to hire veterans. Right. But nobody's teaching our veterans that the military training they received in the military was some of the best training you can ever get from an entrepreneur. Right. Exactly. And so if I'm trained, which I was to be an employee, I went out, I tried to find a job. I was underemployed. I was still underemployed. And then my veteran service rep, when I was creating a project, because I got laid off and then I went into 3D animation and active media. And he said, you should consider starting a business. That was the first time. And by that point, I'd been retired from the military for seven years. That was the first time anybody even suggested that I become an entrepreneur. And so if we're not telling people they can, they'll never know. Right. And it doesn't surprise me when our veterans who do think about starting, they got imposter syndrome because I'm not telling you that you're a leader. Right. I'm telling you you're an employee. I'm not telling you you can sit head to head with a CEO. I can't tell you how many times I talked to veterans and I can see it in the research that it's it's something that does happen a lot is that the veteran doesn't often think about themselves equivalent to another CEO. And I'm like, no, your pants go on the same way mine. You can you can be a billionaire or you can just be starting off your business. Same title CEO. There you go. Very good. We are up on our first commercial break. We'll be back in just a moment. This is 22 News in focus with Patrick Berry. This is 22 News in focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone, to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Berry. Sitting across the desk from me today in the hot seat is Lisa Ducharme. She is the executive director of the Massachusetts Veterans Chamber of Commerce. She's also a veteran herself. So thank you for joining me today. We're talking about the importance of veterans, veteran business owners and the impact they have for our economy locally, nationally, globally. You mentioned earlier there was a cliff. So when you gave me some statistics, 50 percent of give or take 50 percent of World War Two veterans came out of World War Two, started businesses and did that for decades. But after 9-11, only 5 percent of veterans have become business owners. That's the cliff you talk about. Correct. Right. What happened? So what happened in based on what I'm seeing, what happened is when World War Two and the Korean War. So in the Korean War, 40 percent started. So we already started a little bit of decline in the percentage of businesses. But then we hit Vietnam and Vietnam. We had that big battle with the country loving us, hating us kind of thing. But then what happens? Why would anybody want to start a business? You know, the Vietnam veterans probably started businesses, but we don't have the numbers because nobody was tracking them because the benefit pertaining to businesses that your World War Two veterans and your Korean War veterans had on the V.A. side, they actually both were no longer valid for the Vietnam veterans because they changed the benefit strategy. So now your Vietnam veterans don't have the same. So they're not counting how many Vietnam veterans start businesses. And then after 9-11, they started counting the number of veterans and it started to be on the census reports. But the challenge is at one point we were at 11 percent. Now we're below five percent. And what happened is not only are we not telling our veterans that they can be leaders, that they can be entrepreneurs. That's part of it. But I think the other part is since 9-11, we've had a lot of really great organizations trying to help us be businesses, right? There's a bunch of training out there. It's great, but it's civilian training. And they're considering the veteran training because whether they do, they bring veterans together and that camaraderie is supposed to replace the veteran aspect of the of the training. The challenge is we're not teaching them how to embrace their veteran identity. Well, is it not only we're not teaching them, we're not giving them the resources either, right? It's more than just instruction. Right. Well, we're giving them resources. But what we're not doing is we're not saying you need to go find your own resources as well, because we have resources throughout the entire United States for everything for veterans, whether it's your business or whether it's a regular. But nobody knows how to go and search it. And they're so hard to find. You can't find the veteran business project just by Googling, hey, I want to buy or sell a business. And so you have all of these challenges that individuals have trying to find the resource, because unless you know what you're looking for, you don't know how to find it. These are I stumble across a new resource every single day. And there's no way that I can even put all the resources out because it's based on are you pre 9-11? Are you post 9-11? All the other things, active duty, federal VA, there's a whole array of different things. And if you're a veteran trying to find it, it can be very frustrating. And if you're not computer savvy, forget about it. Don't even try at that point. And so when they do these trainings, they're great, but they give you whatever resources they have. And most people don't use all those resources. I can tell you, I went through a program. I've gone through several programs, but one program I went through, there was literally over $80,000 worth of resources if you chose to use them. But when you get out of the program, you get back home and what happens? Life gets in the way. For individuals with PTSD, their PTSD gets in the way and it slows them down. Those are not considered in the training. You have to consider those type of things if you're working with veterans. And that's where there's needs to be a special section that just begins the training with veteran identity and showing you the lessons and skills. Because imposter syndrome comes down the way. I can't tell you how many veterans I've worked with who have serious imposter syndrome. And I'm sitting here thinking, I'm sorry, have you pulled your joint service transcript to see all of the training you have and how it is equivalent to civilian training? I mean, it's like- Sometimes it's more shocking. Yeah, exactly. And that's what we're trying to do with this. This project has given me a new insight that even I didn't know. And so my goal is to take this and to create that and to let people start seeing veteran businesses from the ripple effect that we have, because we have a serious ripple effect whenever we go into our community, even when our business is no longer there. The ripple effect still is because most of the time veterans give. Chuck Feeney is a really great example. So Chuck Feeney, so the duty stores that you have, duty-free stores that you have in the airports, it was created by a veteran and the co-founder. But what he did was once he created it and it was making so much money and he started to give his money away, well, you know, when you got money, everybody wants to come see you. So what he did was he established a trust or a fund that was only going to last as long as his money did. And then it was going to go away. And for 15 years, he gave away billions of dollars from his duty-free and his other business stuff that he had. And he gave it away and nobody knew. And then about 15 years in, it turned out his name turned out to be on a report, but he only gave one interview about it. That was it. And nothing more. And his foundation. It wasn't about him, it was about the others. Exactly. And most veterans do that. In fact, if you look at Warren Buffett, in fact, because of Chuck Feeney, Warren Buffett came in and said, let me help you out. And what I can do, Warren Buffett talked to Chuck Feeney and Warren Buffett created the Giving Pledge because of his conversation with Chuck Feeney. And both are veterans. Right, right. We are up on our next commercial break. When we come back, we're going to dive into some of the names you may know, some of the names you may not know, and their impact on our lives. Welcome back everyone to today's conversation here on InFocus. It's about veterans and veteran entrepreneurship dating back to revolutionary times. So for 250 years, veterans have played an important role in our economy due to their entrepreneurship. Joining me across the desk from the Massachusetts Veterans Chamber of Commerce is their Executive Director Lisa Ducharme, who is also a United States veteran. So thank you for your service. Thank you for all that you've done for our country. When I left before we went to commercial break, I teased and I said, you mentioned the Walton brothers, you mentioned the Disney brothers, you mentioned Warren Buffett, and some others. Those are some of the bigger names that we know. But there's one you were telling me during the break, and I want you to repeat that because, again, all these stories I had no idea about, you know. So let's talk cookies. There you go. So Wally Amos, an Air Force veteran, by the way, when he was, after he got out of the military, so when he went into the military, he did not have a high school diploma. When he got out of the military, he had an equivalent, a GED. But what happened was, is when he got out of the military, he went on to become a talent agent because that man could talk and he could sell. Those were his two things that he was really great at. He became a talent agent, and he was actually a talent agent for some of the biggest names to include Marvin Gaye. And what he decided to do was make his aunt's cookies for his clients. And eventually somebody suggested that he start a business for it with his cookies, and he did. And Marvin Gaye actually gave him $10,000 to help get him off the ground. Well, the challenge with Wally Amos is the same that's a lot of veterans. He only cared about the product and the service. He did not care about the numbers or all the behind the scenes work that you have to do in order to survive. And so he would, over time, start going out and getting investors to invest in the famous Amos cookies, which are still on shelves today. And at one point, when he got to the final point with the famous Amos, he had a couple of shares left and he still needed money. And he sold those shares to a company. They bought those shares. But what he didn't realize, or he did, but he didn't think twice about it, was he signed over his name as well. And his likeness. There you go. And all of that was no longer there. So when he started to redo another cookie company with a different recipe, he could not use his name. So he marked it as no name cookies, which then became an issue and he had to change it. And eventually he did Kohanas. But in the meantime, while he's going through all that, he's very big into literacy, children's literacy, because his mother couldn't read. And he's very so he starts going in and he creates a foundation for children's literacy. And one of the things that I love about this story, which you don't see very often, is the organization that purchased his cookies, the famous Amos Cookies, and kept his likeness. They today actually have a grant that they give out to businesses with the U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce. So they actually have a phenomenal scholarship that they give out every year. It's grant, but they give the money to businesses to help them out. And you don't see that often when somebody falls, which tells you that he still maintained a very professional relationship, even when everything was falling apart around them. And he actually is on he went in a couple of years ago to a Shark Tank episode, which I have on the Legacy Gallery so that people can if they want to click on his name and go to that, they can watch him in real life, talk about his business. And then Mark Cuban explained after he left because they didn't get the investment because he didn't know his numbers. Somebody wrote it on a piece of paper. Still, at that age, he didn't know his numbers. But his shirt and his hat, which he's very famous for, is actually in the Smithsonian. So he is one of my all time favorites. There's Dave Thomas from Wendy's. I'm going to throw my throw my my cheaters on here. Dave Thomas from Wendy's, Paul Newman, Newman's Own, the Walton Brothers we talk about. James Fort, did I pronounce that right? Yeah. A teenager, an African-American teenage powder boy on a Revolutionary War privateer. Yes. What's his story? So that's way back in 1776 timeframe. So what's fascinating about this young man is that when he was on the ship, he was actually captured. But because he was friends with the with one of the people who captured him, his kids, the guy offered him freedom in Britain. And he said, no, he's not changing his colors. And I'm like, oh, I love this man already. But once he got out of the military, he couldn't find a job. He was having issues. And he ended up creating a thing to help with the big sales that go on the ships back then. And a winch or something that raises something. I can't remember what it was, but it was a tool that was needed and he created it, which was phenomenal. But what I really love about him after he did that, he started a business and he trained both black and white individuals so that they all had a job and he paid them well. And he is he's one of those histories and figures that today they still have his you can go see his house. They still have the information. But that had to have been a legacy that even though we can't see his ripple effect by that tool, you can see his ripple effect in all of the family members that came after of all those 30 plus people that he actually did. And and the fact that he allowed black and whites to work together. Right. It's a phenomenal story. So if if people want to see more historical veterans business stories, they want to see more about your project. Where do they go? What do they have to do? Yeah. So it's a bitly email. And, you know, I should have it, but I don't have it in front of me, but we can put it on here afterwards. But it's going to be a bitly slash America 250. And it's the legacy gallery. And inside that bitly link, you'll be able to if you want to hear the songs, I created a song for each individual based on their impact and legacy, because not everybody wants to read the impact and legacy from my veteran business lens. But then I created a song for them. And then there's a podcast. It's only less than 10 minutes for each person. And I'm putting a new one out every week. But I want people to be able to appreciate the past, because you know what? This is our future. These are the peoples whose shoulders every single veteran stands on. These are the people I stand on their shoulders. And my hope is people are standing on my shoulders and moving forward. Very good. Lisa, our time is up. Thank you so very much for working on the project and sharing a little bit of insight with us today on celebrating our veterans as we celebrate our country. Good seeing you. Thank you. Nice seeing you. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry.