We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Phil Kendro. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Phil below.
Phil, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Please tell us about starting your own firm and if you’d do anything different knowing what you know now.
On April 14, 2016 at the University Club in downtown San Diego, the Veterans Beer Club (VBC) was created from the collaboration between VBC Founders Kevin Cortes, Brian Grana, and Phil Kendro. The concept of keeping in contact with fellow veterans and bringing veteran-friendly civilian workforce members together was a recurring topic of conversation between them. The first “official” VBC was held at Second Chance Brewing Company in Rancho Bernardo, with six ex officio members in June 2016.
The VBC vision is a monthly rotation of gatherings with fellow veterans and current transitioning veterans at different brewery location across San Diego County in a relaxed environment, we also maintain a Facebook page to disseminate important information. The VBC purpose is three-fold: one, to assist transitioning service members through networking, discussions of important events, introductions to all industries in the region, and ensuring the service members are personally introduced to leaders in aforementioned groups. Two, to translate our military service to community service, ensuring that we continue our leadership into non-profit, volunteer, and civil service organizations. Three, to continue our sense of camaraderie, thus safeguarding the bonds established during our military service, and ensuring there’s a safety net of resources for veterans. The VBC also believes by supporting, vetting, and assisting noteworthy organizations that legitimately help veterans; this will also help the entire San Diego community. We will continue to interface with senior veterans and business leaders in the community, and leverage their passion for assisting fellow veterans.
1. Our focus is always on collaboration over competition. There are approximately 10,000 – 14,000 non-profits in San Diego, and about 2,000 – 3,000 of those are focused on veterans and military families.
2. We started through a grass roots, no pay for membership, to quickly bring in people.
3. Get a group of at least (3) people to bounce off ideas and/or start a business/organization.
4. LISTEN, instead of just talking so much, to really showcase your focus on your members and clients.
5. When you do speak, be brief, be brilliant, be gone.
6. And PLEASE, read your audience. I can’t tell you how often I see speakers fail in reading the audience’s body language.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We have three tenets in the organization. One is helping that transition. It is about finding different network groups. We always talk about the crawl, walk and run. We are at the “crawl” stage of that networking to go out there to meet and greet people. We also help out with making sure people know about veteran events and job opportunities.
Two is translating that military service to community service. We try to get them on boards and volunteer organizations. We have a lot of energy as veterans, and we need to use that in the community.
Three is camaraderie. The fact is we need to have some type of bond. It was only months in with VBC San Diego with people coming in from out of San Diego and out of state. Veterans were telling us that, “I’ve got nothing like this in my organization I work for. I just want to hang out.” Many of them just needed to talk with someone. I travel a lot, usually 12 to 13 days a month, and if I can just catch up with everyone in one place, in VBC, to see what’s going on and help somebody else, that is so important.
The biggest impact we have seen is that this brings veterans hope after they get out of the service., “What do we do now?” One of the stats I heard was, “83% of service members do not do the same job when they are in the military as when they get out.” My job in the military was as a helicopter pilot and my first job out of service was in finance, so I was part of that 83%. Many veterans want to seek a community where they can be vulnerable and honest. They can say, “I don’t know what I want to do.” We need to let them know it is okay to say that and for us to help them up along this journey. For us, the real impact is understanding how big community is in everyone’s life, especially the military when they get out.
Who We Are
1. “We are beer aficionados and servant leaders with a networking problem”
2. The culture VBC seeks is a relaxed, informal veteran-networking environment
3. Provide a venue for honest dialogue, feedback, and endorsement of those organizations who truly follow through on their promise to “help or hire” veterans
4. Serve transitioning veterans by providing and endorsing quality upcoming events; and those to avoid
5. Each member will strive to bring in additional veterans and VBC will selectively invite influential community and corporate leaders to discuss what they need and what they know veterans need to do for a successful transition
6. Measure VBC success by individual transition successes (i.e. interviews)
Who We Are Not
1. A bunch of foulmouthed alcoholics who need an excuse to get “hammered”
2. A “look at me” networking organization
3. A forum for hiring agencies to elbow in and make it uncomfortable for transitioning veterans
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Leaving the Marine Corps, with a steady paycheck for 20+ years, I needed to find quick employment. I had met a Navy Veteran named Sean Park through a networking group called LifeLounge (which brings entrepreneurs together with heavy hitter guest speakers), but nothing had popped up. I had an amazing network, and had a chance to get into the biotech field but I wasn’t interested. However, when I was finally “retired” I had no job, and this was a very dark time for me as I had “failed” in gaining employment, this is something I had never encountered. About 2-3 months later Sean hooked me up with a job as a Business Development guy in IT. I was there for about 2.5 years, and had amazing bosses, but they knew I wasn’t really enjoying it. As a pilot, I didn’t have any currency/proficiency to go in the airlines (this one we could talk about how many military leaders this affects), but a friend, through networking got me an interview with the COO of JetBlue and I was hired. I transitioned to United Airlines, have been here for 5.5 years, and now I am a Captain on the Airbus fleet.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration, and don’t burn any bridges. Our Veterans Beer Club, with multiple chapters now around the US, has been all about getting those folks out who need jobs, whether it’s their first or fifteenth transition, and then when they are game fully employed they come back to help others find jobs. Many of us are leaders in MULTIPLE groups in the community and when they see how we balance family, time, energy, donations, etc. they see how much value we bring to our community. I recently was lining up floats/bands/dancers/etc. at our San Diego Veterans Day Parade and I got a little snippy with one of our folks trying to get them in line (I was herding cats). I knew it immediately and made sure to email her that next day, and when I saw her next we both had a big hug. We surround ourselves with people that know they make mistakes and they both acknowledge them and fix them. I didn’t prepare well financially leaving the Marine Corps, but have done a great job now. I talk with service members and veterans about what I did wrong, and lead them to close friends who do free financial advice to make sure they don’t repeat my mistakes. Be that example, and seek out how you can help others.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theveteransbeerclub.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philkendro/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phil.kendro
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philkendro/
- Twitter: https://x.com/philkendro
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PhilKendro
Image Credits
For any of the VBC or Mt Soledad photos, please give credit to Ellrod Images.
For KOGO Radio, no one necessary.