During the height of the COVID pandemic 2 entrepreneurial veterans, Peter Liston and Matt Moseley, founded the Veteran Community Business Chamber to raise the profile of veteran-owned businesses across Australia.
Five years and a rebrand later, the Veteran Business Community (VBC) is as committed as ever to supporting veterans and their families on their journey to self-employment through entrepreneurship.
‘Our goal is to see veteran entrepreneurship become an established transition pathway from the military,’ Peter says.
Military service equips veterans with many skills and attributes that are directly transferrable to successful business ownership.
‘Veterans have strong skills in leadership, organisation and operations – being able to project manage, forecast and look at risk. When we are looking at soft skills, it’s the drive, determination, the problem-solving, the persistence and courage,’ Peter says. ‘However, there are some significant knowledge gaps, and those gaps are sales and marketing, cashflow and accounting.
‘VBC steps in to support those gaps, helping people to understand branding and marketing, lead capture and lead generation. How to actually sell. Then it will go back to their strengths of operational delivery.’
To support veteran entrepreneurs, VBC offers quarterly business bootcamps, mentorship and networking opportunities. Peter has also started up a podcast, Military Mind for Business, where he’s joined by other veterans to discuss what it takes to build a successful business.
VBC is working hard to promote ‘buying veteran’ by introducing veteran-owned businesses into major industry supply chains.
They’ve secured a new partnership with Gateway by ICN to spotlight veteran-owned businesses on its platform. The Gateway connects small-to-medium enterprises to major projects and will offer greater access to large-scale corporate and government contracts. When signing up with VBC, member businesses undergo a formal registration process to identify as ‘veteran owned.’
‘Supporting veteran-owned businesses and putting veteran-owned business in your supply chain is about the quality and character and commitment of the people behind the business,’ Peter emphasises.
‘We don’t believe in preferential treatment, but we believe a veteran’s service should be a point of difference.’
In just one of many success stories, VBC connected community member Frontline Australia with a large facility management company.
‘The facilities company said to us that they wanted to put a veteran-owned business into their supply chain,’ Peter explains. ‘We connected them with Frontline Australia, who secured a multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract for integrated facility management services.’
If you’re a veteran looking to take your business to the next level, or just curious about whether a career in business could be for you, VBC is helping to organise a veteran business exhibition in Brisbane on 9 September 2025. The event is a networking and professional development opportunity, and attendees will have the chance to meet and hear from a panel of industry experts. To learn more about VBC and the upcoming exhibition, visit www.veteranbc.com.
Peter Liston (left) and Ryan Hall (Veteran Business Community membership representative) attending Land Forces 2024