Mike Tyson said it well, you always have a plan until you get punched in the face. And that's kind of like entrepreneurship. We always have a plan and then things go haywire. So how you operate in that haywire environment should tell you pretty quickly if you're meant to be an entrepreneur or not.
[00:00:19.280] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today's guest is Andrew Vose from Andrew Vose LLC. Let's talk about your origin story.
[00:00:25.030] - Andrew Vose
At a young age, Dad was a cop, mom was a social worker. I was kind of— had a lot of behavioral issues. So, I found myself in kind of a sketchy realm of business, right? Like drugs and stuff. And somehow, I got linked up with this community out in Canada and we were drug trafficking. I was fighting and it caused me to go to juvie, but a ton of lessons learned at a very young age, right? Like resilience, patterns in people. And yeah, it was very interesting. And then I joined the Army at 19.
[00:00:55.590] - John S. Berry
And what'd you do in the Army?
[00:00:57.070] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, so I was a chemical guy. Everybody knows chemical guys don't do anything, especially when you get into the special operations realm.
[00:01:02.990] - John S. Berry
NBC stands for nobody cares.
[00:01:05.050] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:05.130] - Andrew Vose
And they just cross-train you in everything else. So where in Ranger Battalion, I did a lot of LNO stuff, right? So I would be the task force commander's basically driver, right? Which is really cool because everybody thought I was like an NGO guy or something because I was always in—
[00:01:21.910] - Freddie Kim
Or PSD or something.
[00:01:22.510] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, I was always like bearded out and stuff. So it was very cool, but I got to see how these executive officers on this highest level, right? Like, Petraeus ran operations out of our office, right? I got to see how these people were moving through at a different strategic level, and I was only a corporal, right? And then when I got to group, they trained me in SSE, so SELEX, MEDEX, DOCEX, all that stuff on the ground. So I was attached to the teams. So very different from being in the 82nd chemical guy, Through Ranger Battalion, then through Group. Yeah.
[00:01:56.420] - John S. Berry
And so how did you become an entrepreneur?
[00:01:59.470] - Andrew Vose
Yeah. Well, at a young age, I knew I really liked business. I really liked money, but it wasn't really that. It was that people, right? I just liked interacting with people and seeing how we can be resourceful and just go through life together and just solve problems. And I've always just been a good recruiter and that's just, Recruiting is just solving somebody's problem, right? They want to switch a job. You found them. How do you solve their problem? Is it a money problem? Is it a leadership problem? Is it a family problem? Like, how do you solve a problem? So that's how we've gone from 0 agents to 1,000 with our brokerage. So.
[00:02:38.260] - Freddie Kim
Yeah, tell us what you do there.
[00:02:39.920] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, so I don't own the brokerage. So the brokerage currently has about 21,000 agents. I have about 1,030 of them under me. So how it works is We have a pretty unique model that most don't. We give agent choice and it's real estate first, where most recruiting real estate companies, they put the revenue share first and they just go after volume and they're not trying to help agents grow their business. Where here we put 'em in an ecosystem and they have unlimited tools and opportunity to grow their true real estate business.
[00:03:14.140] - John S. Berry
And so how do you manage that as a leader?
[00:03:16.930] - Andrew Vose
So I like the business models that I'm always in, 'cause I don't have to manage them. I'm an intrapreneur, right? Like the government space that we're building is a little bit different. That requires leadership and management and different things. But as far as like the recruiting and the network marketing side, I don't have to manage it. They build a system and I just operate within their left and right limits, trying to push the left and right limits out as far as possible. But, you know, And they do all the legal, they do all the contract stuff. All I have to do is solve that person's initial problem at their current brokerage that they're not getting.
[00:03:55.240] - Freddie Kim
Lots of, I think, service members are interested in entrepreneurship and running their own business and they want to get down that path. And most people don't know whether they're entrepreneurial. Soft guys can be more entrepreneurial, I guess. But how would you, How would you suggest somebody to be reflective and, hey, is entrepreneurship or business ownership for you? What, what do you think?
[00:04:21.830] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, so Mike Tyson said it well, you always have a plan until you get punched in the face. And that's kind of like entrepreneurship. We always have a plan and then things go haywire. So how you operate in that haywire environment should tell you pretty quickly if you're meant to be an entrepreneur or not.
[00:04:37.810] - Freddie Kim
Give me an example.
[00:04:38.600] - Andrew Vose
All right, so Start a business, have this business plan, and you got it all filled out and you go to 10 banks, every bank denies you. Now your whole business plan. Okay. How do you pivot to that 11th option? Are you gonna go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and just keep going? Kind of related to you. I have a good buddy who's an attorney. He has 2 law firms in West Coast and he went to Washington, got his law degree from there. Really smart guy. But he like got, said he got turned down like 300 times or something. So what'd he do? Went out and built his business. Right. But what happens if he would've just kept settling and tried to go and just, you know, so like, I feel entrepreneurship's not for everybody, but you don't know until you fail a couple times. Right.
[00:05:29.460] - Freddie Kim
And how you react to it.
[00:05:30.610] - Andrew Vose
Yeah. And how you react to it. Right. Reacting during the chaos.
[00:05:33.640] - Freddie Kim
Yeah.
[00:05:33.730] - Andrew Vose
Yeah.
[00:05:34.570] - John S. Berry
So that takes us to the after-action review, your examples of great leadership and terrible leadership.
[00:05:39.470] - Andrew Vose
Let's start with the positive. So good leadership, they put you in situations where you can grow. They push you, they give you the initiative, they allow you to be creative. They correct you when you're wrong in a constructive way. Ken said it best yesterday. He said, you reward the winners and you hope that the losers will bring their, they'll level themselves up. You just got to put leaders, other leaders in positions to grow. And if they outgrow you, you cheer them on and you try to find another opportunity. You assist them out the door. You don't push them out the door like they're trash, right? So I think that's good leadership. Bad leadership, I was on my last deployment in Afghanistan, I was working with 19th Group. I was running the EAC lab. He was getting looked at for— he was trying to get to major. I was E-6 promotable, and I was working in E-7 billet, but I was working 2 jobs. So I was going out on missions outside of Bagram, which hadn't been running patrols out there for years. So enemy or whoever was very close to us. They weren't pushed out.
[00:06:51.610] - Andrew Vose
So we were getting in ticks every day. And so I'm working 20-hour days. I'm also reporting to the CUB. I'm doing the BUP. I'm doing his job for him. And he had And he has the nerve to downgrade my award so he could upgrade his. So that's a form of terrible behavior.
[00:07:09.560] - John S. Berry
So there's a quota for the awards?
[00:07:10.990] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was just very careerist. He couldn't see that majors were coming in the office and talking to me, not him, because he was so one-sided. How do I get to major? How do I get to the next level? Rather than how do I support this? Because that will come. With this, right? So.
[00:07:31.980] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I think it's a great lesson for entrepreneurs is you do something excellent, the money will follow.
[00:07:36.680] - Andrew Vose
Yeah.
[00:07:36.980] - John S. Berry
And I think unfortunately a lot of people, oh, I wanna, you know, have all these great things, but it sucks.
[00:07:41.140] - Andrew Vose
Yeah.
[00:07:41.440] - John S. Berry
You get punched in the mouth a lot.
[00:07:42.820] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:43.400] - John S. Berry
What's been your worst punch in the mouth so far?
[00:07:45.880] - Andrew Vose
I put like $200 and, like $200-some-odd thousand in this trading deal and I lost it all. That was probably my biggest punch in the mouth. That's just 'cause I'm a risk taker. I'm 38. I feel like I can always recover, but that was biggest punch in the mouth. I guess another one is I built that travel company and then I got outta the Army with the hopes that it was just gonna keep growing. I could pour more into it. And then it just like, they made bad decisions that I, outta my control. And that, but that led me into real estate. I don't know if there's been anything bad that I'm like, that sucks.
[00:08:25.510] - Freddie Kim
I mean, you've, the way we've talked about this in the past, you've built this where It's like self-sustaining now.
[00:08:31.350] - Andrew Vose
Yeah.
[00:08:31.590] - Andrew Vose
So yeah, I get paid while I sleep. I have to do some business development if I want it to grow. If I want it to go from 1,000 agents to 2,000, I gotta get back in the trenches. But if I stop today and it's just growing without me, right? But there's a lack of purpose and fulfillment there. So that's like, I'm always about the 2 Ps, proximity and purpose, right? Put yourself in rooms around people that are gonna help you grow and purpose, find your purpose. So whether it's your family, your business, whatever, hitch your horse to it and just run with it. But that's why I'm excited about here because I've never had a traditional business where I had to build leadership teams and give quarterly reports and stuff like that. So that's why this room, this proximity is good.
[00:09:20.930] - John S. Berry
Veteran Edge.
[00:09:21.750] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:22.650] - John S. Berry
So that this room, just for our listeners so they understand, This is, we're at Veteran Edge right now in Dallas every year. And this is Veteran entrepreneurs.
[00:09:29.530] - Freddie Kim
Just now we were sitting in the AI session.
[00:09:33.280] - Andrew Vose
Oh yeah.
[00:09:33.930] - Freddie Kim
Right. Blew my mind with the level of just technical expertise.
[00:09:40.150] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, that's crazy.
[00:09:41.160] - Freddie Kim
Yeah. And what did you take out of, get out of this AI and ability to use agentic AI to streamline for,
[00:09:49.220] - Andrew Vose
yeah
[00:09:49.490] - Freddie Kim
what did you get out of that?
[00:09:50.020] - Andrew Vose
So I've done a little bit, not with the Agentic, with the model below it. So I did some, like, I just messed around with like ChatGPT building like thinking agents, like running like SAM.gov reports, stuff like that. And then I built like this CRM called, well, I didn't build the CRM, ClickUp. I got this CRM and they have a lot of AI features into it and you can build AI agents in there. So we're in the middle of doing our first acquisition of electrical GovCon company and I'm like, okay, how can I make these systems like flow? Because they don't have a residential commercial division. So in order, I want to exit it in 5 to 7 years. So I know we have to have significant recurring revenue with very low debt. Like it's the only 2 things I'm going to focus on, right? But while keeping the GovCon stuff. So I'm like, okay, how can I build out these systems and processes where I don't have to go and hire all this extra staff? I can use and leverage the current staff that they have because they're still in the electrical business. They know it.
[00:10:49.900] - Andrew Vose
And I just started building these AI agents, comptrollers, Ticket, 24/7 ticket, emergency number. But it's very like infant compared to what's there. I'm excited. I set up a call with him.
[00:11:02.970] - Freddie Kim
Good.
[00:11:03.370] - Andrew Vose
Yeah.
[00:11:04.090] - John S. Berry
Good.
[00:11:04.390] - Freddie Kim
That's cool.
[00:11:04.810] - Andrew Vose
So what I got from that is there's a problem to be solved. You just need to think about it and get out of your own way and put the pride aside and how can I solve this problem? Take myself out of it.
[00:11:18.500] - Freddie Kim
Yeah.
[00:11:18.680] - Andrew Vose
Right? So yeah.
[00:11:19.560] - John S. Berry
And as you solve these problems, you run into Veterans who have the same problems. So where can Veterans learn more about you and your company?
[00:11:26.510] - Andrew Vose
Yeah, they can call me, 315-651-1597. You can look me up online. I have a YouTube channel, but it's focused highly on if you're buying or selling homes in Pensacola, Florida, surrounding areas. My Instagram, my Facebook. Yeah, but just call me, text me.
[00:11:45.640] - John S. Berry
What's the handle?
[00:11:46.960] - Andrew Vose
The only Andrew Vose.
[00:11:49.300] - John S. Berry
The only Andrew Vose across all platforms.
[00:11:53.110] - Andrew Vose
That's for Instagram. And then it's just Andrew Vose and then Andrew Vose on LinkedIn. But my phone number's probably the easiest because I barely check my messages. So 315-651-1597.
[00:12:09.140] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we seek to help Veterans build an even bigger, better future after military service. Unfortunately, for some of our Veterans, the roadblock to a better future is that they are not receiving all of the benefits that they earned. If you need help appealing a VA disability decision, contact Berry Law.