🔒The next mission: Veteran business owners say more resources are needed for post-9/11 military vets

When Tim Nickerson got out of the military, his first job was working in maintenance at Banyan Systems, a now-defunct software firm once headquartered in Westborough.“I started out plunging toilets and sorting mail when I got out of the military in 1989 for $8 an hour,” Nickerson said. “I always tell people I am the true American dream, because you can't start any lower than that.” This would be just the beginning of his journey from serving in the military to being a business owner. More businesses are being started and bought by military veterans, particularly as the wave of post-9/11 service members hit the civilian workforce. Still, veterans in Central Massachusetts are calling for more help, particularly for the federal and state governments to fulfill promises made to veteran business owners. Nickerson eventually changed careers into property management and then construction. But when his first wife passed away in 2006, he was trying to raise two children in high school while navigating a commute and long days working in Greater Boston. He told his children something needed to change. He told his kids: “Guys, we got nothing better to do. Let's start a business,” he said. “I'll be around to see soccer games, and worst case, we lose everything and move in with grandma and grandpa, right?” Starting a new business as a single parent was no easy task, but the skills and values he learned during his time in the U.S. Air Force and Coast Guard helped. His company’s status as a veteran-owned business helped unlock some early opportunities. Today, his company N&T Mechanical Contractors provides commercial HVAC and plumbing services throughout Central Massachusetts and just opened its new headquarters in Sterling. Nickerson is now preparing to hand the company off to his sons, one of whom is also a veteran.

Business skills learned in the military

Nickerson owns one of the 445 certified veteran-owned businesses in Massachusetts, according to state data. Tony Fields, a fellow veteran business owner as president of Leominster-based IT firm Cleartech Group, said his time in the military allowed him to learn valuable skills, which eventually helped him along the path of starting his own business.

Joining the Air Force as a computer operator in 1992, he used the GI Bill to pay for college, gaining technical skills to help his career. Just like Nickerson, he found himself in a job after his time in the military where he struggled to make it to his kids' sporting events. Feeling that entrepreneurial itch, he eventually started ClearTech Group in 2017. Tony Fields, president of Leominster-based IT firm Cleartech GroupWhile he values the technical skills learned during his time in the Air Force, Fields said leadership lessons learned in the military were the most valuable. “The training in leadership was instrumental in becoming a leader of an organization,” he said. “There were so many opportunities to lead. They gave you the training, but they also gave you the opportunities to actually do that within your career field.” An increasing number of veterans are becoming entrepreneurs, said Peter Cifichiello, a partner at Worcester-based law firm Bowditch & Dewey, who specializes in corporate transactions and has assisted veterans who have started or bought a business. “There has been a big cultural push in the veteran community of being a veteran startup founder, and it was very appealing,” Cifichiello said. “Being your own boss, starting your own business, and building your company as you want to build it, and getting like-minded people into an organization that all share that vision, that’s all very appealing to a military person or that mindset.”

Calling for support

In the early days of N&T Mechanical Contractors, Nickerson’s choice to apply for designation as a veteran-owned business helped his new company land work at the Newport Navy Base and Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. More recently, Fields’ firm benefitted from a Small Business Administration 504 loan, coordinated by the Worcester Business Development Corp. and Oxford-based bankHometown, to help facilitate the purchase and improvement of commercial real estate, according to an Oct. 27 press release from the WBDC. This financing included a fee waiver through the National Association of Development Companies’ VetLoan Advantage program. The military could step up its efforts to prepare veterans for entrepreneurship opportunities as they prepare to leave service, Cifichiello said, even though it's not exactly in the military’s interest to make leaving the service more appealing. “I went to TAPs class,” he said of the Training Assistance Program, classes which prepare transitioning service members for civilian life. “They tell you about the VA. They tell you how to interview, how you should dress, but it's very-high level, cursory kind of stuff.” At the state level, Massachusetts has seemingly fallen short in support of veteran business owners. A 2025 GBH report found the state has yet to meet its promise to make sure more state contracts were being awarded to veteran-owned businesses. In 2015, the state announced an effort to have 3% of state agency discretionary budgets go to veteran businesses, but has yet to meet that goal in any year in the decade since.

“The big state jobs, that's where I think they could do something more to help veterans more there,” Nickerson said. “We have a lot of post-9/11 vets that are coming up. They could use the help I was givin in the 80s.” From Fields’ perspective, the Veterans Business Outreach Center, an effort by the SBA to provide resources to veterans, was an important boost to his transition into being a business owner. He stressed the importance of finding time to grab coffee with new faces and growing connections to the local business community, who he said has been eager to support veteran-owned businesses. “What I found is a lot of people just want to help,” Fields said. “I had a few great conversations with mentors and people that I respected, and the next thing you know, I'm connected to somebody that has a program with a bank that veterans can utilize.”

Veterans supporting veterans

Cifichiello’s advice to veteran business owners is to research the existing available support and to have all their paperwork in order, potentially to allow them to be certified as service-disabled veteran-owned. This designation allows for more access to federal contracting dollars. Buying an existing business is a promising way for veterans to get into ownership roles more quickly, he said. “There's over $10 trillion in business assets that are held by people who are retiring or need to transition their business,” Cifichiello said. “If you're a veteran, and the company that you're buying will be at least 51% owned by a veteran, your fees on the SBA are lower than a civilian.” Nickerson, whose company’s move to Sturbridge was supported by SBA funding facilitated by the WBDC and Rockland Trust, recommended prospective veteran business owners turn to that federal agency for support. As he prepares to hand over the keys of N&T Mechanical Contractors to the next generation of leadership, Nickerson said his next mission is doing more to support the next wave of veteran-owned businesses. “I have been trying for two years to get into the government to talk about this stuff,” Nickerson said. “Now that I’m turning this business over to my sons, this is my new passion.” Eric Casey is the managing editor at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the manufacturing and real estate industries.