Dennis Kwak chose to stay in Hawaii to help small businesses, a job that became more difficult within the last year when business owners and entrepreneurs faced uncertainty due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“[The business community] can rely on us – and if we can’t help you, we’ll find somebody who can,” said Kwak, director of the Veterans Business Outreach Center of the Pacific, or VBOC.
VBOC, now in its third year, is funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration through a five-year grant to provide services such as training, counseling, and mentoring for transitional veterans considering starting a small business in the state, Guam and American Samoa.
Kwak, who was formerly a small business consultant in China, told Pacific Business News that despite slowing down its business training in March of 2020, the entrepreneurial development program out of the University of Hawaii at Hilo ramped up by the end of June to offer its services online. It has since kept its metrics and attendees on par with previous years, he said.
“We had to change our delivery of services to virtual, but mostly kept busy by assisting the district office this past year with the new assistance programs and distributing the correct information to business owners,” Kwak added.
A few bright spots came out of Covid for VBOC, such as broadening its customer base across the Pacific and creating new, relevant curriculum such as a course on starting an e-commerce business.
Kwak said that sectors of greatest interest to veterans have been in consulting, security and technology, among others – areas where they can best leverage their existing expertise.
“Many saw an opportunity in crisis, but 2021 is still a big question mark depending on how the pandemic will play out,” he said. “[VBOC] expanded its target markets to deliver products and services important to these small business owners [woman-, minority-, and veteran-owned] and if all goes well, we’re hoping to be open and return to face-to-face [training].”
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