Today we’d like to introduce you to Jose Martinez.
Hi Jose, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
Sure! I am the CEO of VTS3, Corp., a service-disabled veteran-owned & minority-owned small business based in Orlando and with offices in New York City. VTS3 focuses on providing clients with tailored Project Management services, Technology Consulting, Software Development, Staffing & Recruiting, and other Business Solutions to help small and medium-sized businesses do more with less, including nonprofits.
A bit more about myself. I am a US Navy veteran passionate about transformational leadership, fostering high-performance teams, achieving success where others predict failure and Information Technology. Perhaps an odd combination of passions, but I believe these are core pillars that have helped me grow and contribute to –
• My family: earning a living as a business owner and setting a good example for my children.
• My community: helping other veterans transition into the civilian workforce and placing them into great-fit jobs when possible, plus as a meticulous business owner and project manager deploying solutions that help make the electric infrastructure more resilient.
• My country: previously helping to strengthen our military’s IT infrastructure and Intelligence capabilities, and most currently helping upgrade the electric infrastructure to fast-track the adoption and implementation of renewable energy resources while ensuring public funds are wisely spent.
I was born on an Air Force base during the Vietnam War to a newly married couple, and my father was often deployed. Soon after the war ended, as it happened in many military homes, my parents divorced. Although my parents didn’t come from wealth, they understood the importance of education and meaningful extracurricular activities. They sacrificed to ensure my brother and I could attend better private schools, and we were both enrolled in the Boy Scouts. I truly enjoyed participating in the Boy Scouts. To this date, I am incredibly grateful to the adults that dedicated their time to help me grow and reach Eagle Scout.
Right after high school, I joined the Navy under their Advanced Electronics Field Program and became an Electronics Warfare Technician & Operator; my job was to safeguard our ship from missile attacks, and I don’t believe anyone could have taken it more seriously than me. I was so determined and tenacious to be the best at my job and to quickly advance in the Navy that I earned the nickname “Joe Navy.” My shipmates didn’t socialize much with me outside of work because I was “no fun,” I was either studying or seeking mentorship from senior leaders.
Within a couple of years, I reached the rank of Petty Officer Second Class (E-5). In my third year, I was accepted into an officer training program. While in officer training and college, I was very fortunate to have another veteran give me the opportunity to work in his service-disabled veteran-owned & minority-owned small business providing technical services to the Department of the Navy. The experience and mentorship opened my eyes to a new world. I realized that an individual of my background (a minority veteran) could someday have an opportunity to own a business where I could still contribute to my country, and earn enough money to support my family, all while also being able to help other veterans.
I resigned from the officer training program, and for the next six years, I continued working as a Department of Defense consultant and growing as an Information Technology (IT) Project Manager. During the same time frame, I managed to obtain a bachelor’s degree in IT, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, and I acquired the Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification.
My passion for excellence, sustained performance, and work ethic helped me to be offered leading roles in very large and visible programs such as the Navy’s 10-Billion dollars program called Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). After my role at the NMCI program, I decided it was time to open my own business to continue providing the same project management services to the Navy under my own company. Since then, I have continued my professional development, became a certified Scrum Master, and owned two corporations, allowing me to make direct and indirect positive contributions to many people and my community.
Some highlights of my top three largest projects and some of my achievements include:
1. While continuing to lead a $750M (over 25 years) capital software and electrical grid modernization project for Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the largest energy companies in the US, I promoted project culture change using persuasive coaching, and fierce process improvement, which will save the client over $200M.
More specifically, I helped the client realize a 75% cost reduction by challenging the organization’s status quo, promoting Firm-Fixed-Price contracts, Just-in-Time delivery, and instituting the concept of a complete hardware kit, which ensures technicians have everything they need on their first visit to the job site – saving thousands of dollars in labor costs by preventing unnecessary installation visits.
2. I led the transformation of New York City’s Department of Transportation’s in-house software development by implementing Agile/Scrum, plus many other industry processes and tools hardly found in government agencies. The client required that I lead a team of 23 consultants (business analysts, software architects, software engineers, and Quality Assurance testers) to replace the agency’s 30+ years old mainframe construction permitting system. I delivered the $14M project $9M under budget.
The new software system was built “from the ground up,” it employed the latest E-Commerce tools and responsive design technologies. At the time, the new system increased the agency’s efficiency by 63% and the annual revenue by an average of $27M. Under my leadership, the NYCStreets Permit Management System received four awards; two awards at the City and State level and two at the national level, where the application competed against NASA and the Department of Homeland Security.
3. As a Department of Defense consultant, with the role of Assistant Project Manager embedded with the Project Management Office (PMO) for the $10B Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) program, I helped revolutionize the delivery of IT services for the US Navy and Marine Corps. This international project was highly visible and required assertive leadership and many bold initiatives.
My primary responsibilities mandated that I help oversee the successful implementation of 40K “embarkable” laptops (laptops that move from a base to a ship’s network) around the world, thousands of Pier-side network connections to provide Navy ships with network connectivity and the failover design, and implementation of several Network Operations Centers (NOC’s) worldwide.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
In the military, we often used the motto “adapt,” “improvise,” and “overcome.” In the Boy Scouts, I learned to “be prepared.” I try to live by the words of both mottos, but that doesn’t inoculate you against frustration or the occasional sneaky thought of just giving up. It is even possible that the words of these mottos could even make you inflexible in business. Thus, I have adopted a dynamic approach that helps me stay in “forward motion,” even if, at first, I may have to take a couple of steps back.
A few short years after I opened my first business providing project management services to the US Navy, I was forced to close my doors because the Federal Government redirected funds to support the direct costs of the Second Iraq War – our business was providing project management to discretionary R&D, and IT projects. I took an entire year after the Federal Government pulled our project funding to close my business. During that year, I was doing my best to “adapt,” “improvise,” and “overcome,” and it nearly caused me to declare bankruptcy.
In retrospect, I should have shifted industries, even if that required physical relocation and re-establishment among my new industry peers. In 2012, that was precisely what I ended up doing, I moved to New York City, and I focused on local government agencies and utilities. It took five long years working as an independent consultant before I could recover, establish myself in the new industry, and open VTS3, Corp. With VTS3, I set out to help clients get the best project leaders by hiring veterans like myself.
I have come to understand that failure is necessary to learn and grow. Still, more importantly, vision and attitude are fundamental ingredients in our success. Life will always present us with challenges, but if we envision a successful outcome and keep a relentless “Can Do” attitude, we will eventually succeed and accomplish our goals.
As you know, we’re big fans of VTS3, Corp. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Most certainly! VTS3, Corp. is a service-disabled veteran-owned & minority-owned small business based in Lake Nona Orlando, with additional offices in Manhattan, New York City, and we provide services nationwide. Our most significant projects have been in the electric utility industry and local, state, and federal governments. We now hope to help clients in the Space industry here in Florida, and we continue to engage with growing small and mid-sized businesses to provide them with consulting services for their business systems requirements.
At VTS3, we aim to become an indispensable business partner to our clients. We achieve this goal by first taking the time to listen to our client’s goals, understanding their operations and capabilities, and then tailoring a solution unique to their goals and business operations – we don’t just want to sell a generic service, but rather a sustainable solution that adds significant value for our clients. That being said, it is impossible to provide everything a client might need, so we do focus on the following areas:
1. Staffing Augmentation Services
A. Program/Project Management
i. Provide experienced project management professionals to:
a. “Run” or “rescue” the client’s program or project.
b. Assess the status of the client’s program or project.
c. Establish a new Project Management Office.
d. Create or update Project Management processes.
e. Establish Agile/Scrum software development practices.
B. Business Analysis
i. Provide experienced Business Analysis professionals to:
a. Assess a system and “Reverse Engineer” system functionality requirements.
b. Create new system requirements, including software wire diagrams.
c. Establish a new Business Analysis group.
d. Create or update Business Analysis processes.
e. Help integrate Agile/Scrum software development practices as Product Owners.
C. Software Development
i. Provide any software developer consultant (Architect, Back-end, Front-end, UI, database, etc.) to assist the client’s existing
software team.
ii. Create a software development team to be led by the client.
D. Software Quality Assurance (QA)
i. Provide experienced software QA professionals to assist the client’s existing software team.
ii. Create a team of experienced software QA professionals to be led by the client.
E. Electrical Engineering associated with Renewable Energy
i. Provide experienced electrical engineers that would help (among many other things):
a. Design and program Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA).
b. Assist in assessing a site’s capacity for Distributed Generation (DG) installation (i.e., solar panels and an inverter
interconnecting to a utility).
c. Perform electric system studies and simulations.
2. Recruiting Services
A. Work closely with clients to understand their talent needs, and perform the end-to-end recruiting process to find the best candidate, and help the client hire them.
B. We focus our recruitment efforts on the roles listed under “Staffing,” senior company leadership positions, and C-level professionals.
3. Software Development & Independent QA
A. Develop and deliver software solutions customized to meet the client’s requirements (“Turn Key” software)
B. Independently test software provided by the client
4. Small & Medium-sized Business Systems Solutions
A. Help businesses grow and be more efficient by assessing their goals and needs and recommending technologies
tailored to them to allow them to “do more with less.”
i. Cloud-based productivity tools (Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc.)
ii. Cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM)
iii. Cloud-based communication and collaboration services
iv. Cloud-based work management tools
v. Marketing automation tools
Although we work with all qualified professionals, at VTS3 we help clients get the best leaders and professionals for their projects by emphasizing hiring qualified veterans like me. We also work very hard to ensure we only provide talented, experienced professionals with a proven performance record – we don’t train on the job; we get the job done on the first visit.
We also help many of our veteran applicants by providing them free help to re-write their resumes in ways that help the hiring managers truly see their intrinsic value, not just for their primary skills but also for their so-called “soft skills” like leadership, teamwork, problem-solving, etc.
I don’t believe there is anything “soft” about the skills I just listed; on the contrary, these skills are fundamental for a person to succeed and constantly deliver high-end results, and we veterans have these skills engrained in us; in other words, whether is in battle or business we veterans bring the attitude to adapt, improvise, and overcome.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Life is inherently risky, and we can’t truly experience life to its fullest potential without taking some risks. The key is to employ a balanced, well-informed approach to minimize negative consequences. I apply this same approach in business, and it has been an evolving methodology.
Nonetheless, there have been times when I took business risks with less information than I would have preferred. I found myself against a deadline, and I could not conduct additional research, so I made decisions with the information I had. I relied on my training and experience to make up the difference – some may call this using your “gut feeling.”
At times the decision proved successful, other times, I was incorrect, and I had to deal with the consequences. Either way, a business owner should expect some degree of failure; that is how we evolve and gain experience; we need to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
It is also important to distinguish risk management from luck. I don’t believe in luck, especially in business. I like that backronym that says LUCK stands for Laboring Under Correct Knowledge. In my experience, every business owner must have at least three things to succeed and be resilient:
1) A passion or significant reason for pursuing their business.
2) A strong family or community support structure.
3) Some access to formal or informal training or business education.
My business reason was to attain financial independence to support my family. When I was younger, it meant my grandmother and mother; now, it includes my wife, children, and mother. My reason has forged my tenacious attitude to keep going. The generosity of many people who saw potential in me and took the time to mentor me became my family and community support structure.
I am eternally grateful for the formal educational opportunities I received, which have aided my business success. However, many successful business owners have only received informal training and have sought continuous growth using no-cost education alternatives provided by many organizations that help businesses (i.e., SBA).
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my secret talent, my wife; you could say I got lucky there! My wife and I share a lot in common. She has an extensive business background, so naturally, we help each other grow our businesses and mitigate our business risks. Working with a team is always best, and what could be better than when your teammate is also your significant other?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.VTS3.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/vts3_us/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/vts3corp/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/vts3—veterans-in-technology-consulting-software-and-staffing-solutions
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/vts3_corp
- Other: www.linkedin.com/in/martinezjlmba
