The Suit Magazine

Just after turning 18, a young man with a family history of military service enlisted in the U.S. Army. He started out in the military police corps, and then moved on to counterintelligence and officer candidate school. He went on to nine years in the 101st Airborne Division, and fought against the Iraqi invasion in Desert Storm.

And when he came back home after 23 years, John Chenery decided he still had more to give.

Upon his return to civilian life in 2004, Chenery took the reins of a small business and eventually turned it around to a veterans’ support company. Today, he’s the president of Veteran Solutions Inc., where he continues to serve his country by giving veterans the support they need.

In an exclusive interview with The Suit Magazine, Chenery explained how it all began.  “My nephew fought in the initial phase of Tora Bora and ended up in Walter Reed Army Medical center,” he said. “So three nights a week, I was driving down there doing volunteering, and I observed significant challenges—things they really needed some help with.”
Chenery knew he had the skills and the drive to lend a hand where it was needed most. “They really needed an outside entity to come in,” he explained, “because everyone was so entrenched in the bureaucracy. It stifled things. So we started providing some services. I’d volunteer and go down there to help out where needed, following my nephew through the system as he was transferring out of Walter Reed and into civilian life.”
Since those early days of volunteering and learning how to navigate around bureaucracies, Chenery has built his company to be efficient, flexible, and effective. “Suffice it to say that VSI has moved to the sound of the guns and supported our troopers wherever and however we could—all while operating under the radar and in conjunction with the established systems,” he said.

A major focus of VSI is to secure employment for veterans who might otherwise feel ill-equipped to enter the workforce as civilians. Résumé workshops are one way that VSI helps to facilitate the transition. Chenery explains, “Say you have a soldier who comes in saying, ‘All I’ve ever done is drive a tank.’ He might be getting down on himself, and we’re able to turn that around and say ‘Now look, how much is that tank worth? How many troops did you supervise?’ and so on. By the end of the session, the warrior leaves feeling very good about himself, and there’s great satisfaction in being able to help troops like that.”

It is that feeling of satisfaction, not financial gain, that drives business at VSI. “Our goal is service-oriented, not monetarily focused,” Chenery told The Suit. He devoted himself to serving others after a heart attack in 2000 forced him to rethink his mission in life. “I had time to reflect on my issues and my priorities,” he said.  “I let go of ego and greed, and embraced the realization that I am here to serve others.  That is how a man is measured – not by how much worldly stuff he is able to accumulate before he dies.”

Recently, VSI has expanded its mission to go beyond helping veterans. “With my Native American heritage, I qualified for the SBA’s Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) 8(a) program, which presents us with assistance in competing for contracts set aside for SDBs,” Chenery explained. “Most recently with the 8(a) mechanism, we’ve been presented with opportunities to benefit our Native American communities and to grow our not-for-profit services to them.  For example, we completed a three-day training exercise with the Fort Belknap Indian Community (FBIC) Police Department, training officers in active shooter responses within their community—very timely stuff that they needed, that we could provide. And we did it at no cost.”

Despite the goal to generate solutions rather than profits, VSI still needs income to maintain sustainability. And in the midst of a nationwide recession, the company had to make some changes. “As a government contractor, I wasn’t initially hit,” said Chenery. “The hit we took was more of a ripple effect; we lost contract positions in different locations. Fortunately, several of those were because our employees just rotated over to government positions, which I’m fully in support of, because I want our veterans to have stability in their jobs.”
To compensate these small setbacks, VSI responded creatively. “What we’re doing is splitting out our Community Initiatives Division, which is traditionally where we’ve done all our support. We’re splitting that out to the VSI Warrior Foundation, a 501c(3), and that’s going to take over all those services,” Chenery explains. This opens up the potential for new streams of revenue. “There’s a lot of things that need to happen out there to help our veterans and our tribal communities. I can’t do it all on my own; the company is too small. Basically, all my profits are going out to that right now. But if I make it a foundation, then the people who want to help can provide that direct support for funding and resources.”
Despite this growth, Chenery is in no rush to expand VSI into a big business; he knows that small companies are often better at accomplishing great things. With only 65 employees, VSI is streamlined and adaptable. “As a small business, there’s very little bureaucracy.  There’s a direct line between myself and my managers, and as we build the company over time, I hand more and more authority down to them,” he said. “Small businesses are the ones that come up with innovations. It’s really the backbone of the American economy; we employ more people than large businesses do, and I think a lot of people don’t understand that.”

Looking ahead, Chenery and his employees are anticipating more success this year. “We’re all very excited about 2011,” he told The Suit. “With the start-up of the VSI Warrior Foundation, we’ll be looking for a lot of volunteers and a lot of assistance to really help that take off. With the team we have on the ground now and the recent partnerships that we’ve established, I think this year will be great. We have been nominated and are now finalists for the Small Business Assiciation’s  2010 Small Business of the Year. We recently won a contract with Hitachi Consulting at the Bureau of Indian Affairs—that relationship is going strong, as is the relationship with other organizations like FBIC.”

Ultimately, Chenery attributes his success to his employees, who work hard because they believe in what they do. “Its having a real mission, and having great people around me,” he said. “We have motivated people. We’re really, truly trying to do things the right way, and we’re doing it for the right reasons. The guys that I have with me here could be with any other company, probably making a lot more money than they are with VSI. But the mission set and the way we operate are what’s attracting these high-level professionals.”

Although he’s not on the battlefields anymore, Chenery is thankful that he’s still surrounded by people who have risked their lives to defend their country. “As our Director of Operational Support Services, Retired Command Sergeant Major Brett Scantlin, recently expressed, ‘You can’t outsource veterans.’ These guys bring very unique skills sets—a unique outlook, work ethic, and overall demeanor that’s critical, particularly in a small business,” he said. “We’ll continue to actively seek out veterans first to fill these positions. The work ethic of military members and veterans is far superior; you just get better skill sets with military folks.”

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