From High-OpSec to High-Visibility: How Veteran Entrepreneurs Win at Branding and PR

You can have the best product in the world and still lose if nobody knows you exist. That’s the tension we dig into with Austin Holmes, a Navy EOD veteran who now leads the Nashville-based PR firm Publicity for Good. We talk candidly about the mindset shift veteran entrepreneurs have to make when they leave a high-opsec culture and step into a marketplace that rewards clear, consistent communication. If you’ve ever built the LLC, opened the bank account, and then wondered why growth feels slow, this conversation is for you.

We get practical about branding and veteran-owned business marketing, starting with a definition that changes everything: your brand is what people say about you. From there, we unpack how to be intentional with your story, how quality and values protect your reputation, and why crisis communications is such a big part of the PR world. We also discuss social media strategy for entrepreneurs, including how to choose primary platforms, why consistency beats chasing viral moments, and how to create content that actually has context and meaning.

Then we go into AI for small business owners and founders: using large language models like ChatGPT and Claude for research, better questions, and repetitive-task automation. Austin shares how “agentic AI” can function like an assistant if you train it like one, and why that can free you up for the work that matters most: relationships, sales, and serving customers well.

If you’re building a veteran-owned brand or supporting one, subscribe, share this with a founder who needs it, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. What part of your business would you most like to simplify first?

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

Larry Zilliox 0:00

Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run. This week, my guest is Austin Holmes. He is a Navy EOD veteran and the president of a PR firm out of Nashville called Publicity for Good. And I'm excited that he's joining us because I really want to dive into some of the techniques and resources and really the thought process behind some veteran entrepreneurs who are just starting out and need to try and get a handle on how important their brand is, communicating social media, um, how AI can help them. So we'll we'll definitely get into all of that. Austin, welcome to the podcast.

Austin Holmes 0:52

I'm super glad to be here. Uh we actually just flew through uh Washington, uh Dulles, and got to see all of the Virginia area from the sky.

Larry Zilliox 1:03

Oh, well, it it all pretty much looks the same from the sky. It's pretty green.

Speaker 2 1:09

Yeah, yeah.

Larry Zilliox 1:11

Well, so tell us a little bit about your service,

Why Austin Chose Navy EOD

Larry Zilliox 1:15

your Navy uh service. When did you when did you enlist?

Austin Holmes 1:19

I started looking at stuff my senior year of college. Uh I had been part of a great team in high school and wanted that experience again, uh along with serving the special operations program, looked through all of them, uh, wound up going the Navy route. And I actually started in the diver pathway, and I was talking to one of the air rescue chiefs, physical exams, and he's like, based on what you're telling me, you should probably go EOD. And I was like, I don't want to get blown up, but uh after diving into it more, that is the decided on got a contract and went through the pipeline, wound up in San Diego for five years and did a couple deployments out of mobile unit three.

Larry Zilliox 2:04

Wow. And what year did you enlist?

Austin Holmes 2:07

Uh that was 2012. So it it was about a year from the time I graduated until I ended up boot and you know spent that year pretty much working out and uh had a little side job, but that was 2012 when I actually uh joined and then uh went through 2019.

Larry Zilliox 2:26

So I got out right before all what made you decide it's not a career for you?

Austin Holmes 2:31

I I never really went in uh with the career. Um, I was starting to look at okay, do I stay in or go out and do other things? My my degree is in entrepreneurship, so that was always on my mind um going back to college. And I actually ended up meeting my wife, Heather, about a year and a half before I uh separated and already had a small company going. And at that point, it was like three or four team members and her, and she had the background in PR, but shortly after meeting her, I started trying to help where I could, and that kind of solidified the decision of oh, I I have this incredible opportunity and the ability to step right into it uh after the military. So I was already leaning towards exiting, but I had no idea what I was gonna do. I had started doing some real estate stuff, and then when I did finally exit a year later, ended up working with Heather in at that time Heather DeSantis Public Relations. Uh, and then even while I while I was still in, uh, we rebranded to publicity for good.

Larry Zilliox 3:42

Thinking about when you got out, what what was your transition like for you? I mean, this is a high demand field you were in. I mean, it's pretty adrenaline driven.

Leaving The Military With A Plan

Austin Holmes 3:55

Um we're all a little crazy.

Larry Zilliox 3:58

Yeah. Well, let me ask you this because I don't want a ton of emails from listeners. Why didn't you ask them this question? So I'm just gonna ask you this question. What did you think of the movie The Hurt Locker?

Austin Holmes 4:10

Oh it's an interesting take. Uh, the four branches are very unique when it comes to EOD. Yeah, we all kind of have our specialty, and of course, there's the Hollywood like going off with a beretta into the middle of uh enemy territory, and so there's moments that we laugh about, but it's the risk is represented fairly well in that movie. Um, it it takes some balls, yeah. That's what it got right.

Larry Zilliox 4:38

All right, well, listeners, there you you have it. I asked that question, so no emails about that. Thank you. Um so um you got out. Uh, did you make a uh uh VA claim?

Austin Holmes 4:51

No, um we like I went through the whole process,

The Hurt Locker Reality Check

Austin Holmes 4:55

but I I didn't have a whole lot wrong with me. So I was fortunate in that regard. And just waiting, you know, just wait until you're older. That's fair. Um, but it we were also working with a law firm at that point, uh Veterans Law out of California. And I got to see behind the scenes, they do a lot of the VA appeals. And so we we saw a lot of that during that first couple years that I was getting out. And so I I looked, I truly looked deeply into the process and just chose not to go that route. But the the chaos around all of the VA claims stuff is um kind of saddening. And I it from my understanding, it has improved since around the 2020 mark. It's still got a long way to go um to really serve the service members who sacrificed a chunk of their lives. Yeah, there's a lot of issues to fix with that.

Larry Zilliox 5:49

Well, just just remember this. You can file a claim whenever you want.

Austin Holmes 5:53

You know, yeah, and I I have all my medical stuff. Yeah, um, I'm just fortunate to be relatively unbroken. That's good. Although that's good news. There was an incident. Uh I dropped,

VA Claims And The Long View

Austin Holmes 6:05

I think it was uh like a one five, uh it wasn't a one five five. I think it was like a one oh five or like a one twenty. Uh just the casing because we were training with it. I dropped it on my foot and uh definitely ended up breaking it because uh it that's the one thing that still is a little annoying, but you know, just kept kept going with the training exercise, tightened up the boot. But yeah.

Larry Zilliox 6:27

Yeah, that's there's your claim right there. It's gonna go that's gonna come back to haunt you. I'm telling you now, I you're a young man, but believe me, you'll be limping around before you know it. And uh, you know, there's your claim right there. That's it's the beginning of it. Well, um, I'm glad. I'm glad that you um you made that transition and you had a soft landing spot there with uh your wife's in business and able to rebrand and and come out with um with a focus on you know purpose-driven entrepreneurship and and you know, branding credibility and that kind of thing. And what is your number one thing that you see that veterans need the most help

The Biggest Mistake New Founders Make

Larry Zilliox 7:15

with when they're just starting out a business and don't have a clue? Um, haven't even given this a thought. They they've they've they've focused on getting a bank account, they've focused on a product, they focused on, oh, I gotta hire somebody to do that, I need a lawyer, I need this or that. And it seems like this is something that's just as important as the rest, or maybe more important, but they just they don't focus on it. What what what do you find is the number one thing they're missing about that?

Austin Holmes 7:46

Yeah, all the fundamentals of getting your bank account and LLC, people kind of overblow that and they don't focus on actually building the business. And early on, it really is just talking to people, it's building relationships, it's telling everybody about what you're doing, and that's something the military actually discourages of hey, let's keep this under wraps, let's keep opse, and let's not share anything on social. And with today's business environment, that's something you have to break in order to move forward um in the realm of business. Now, there's absolutely companies where it's manufacturing or back end, you're doing logistics, like you can be successful without the forward-facing brand in a lot of arenas. But a lot of businesses, you will have a huge advantage by just talking to more people. And, you know, we learn how to have good working relationships in the military, and you can use that same skill set of how to lead your team, how to talk to people, how to go do a requisition from logistics. All of those kind of asks are paralleled in the civilian world with business, but we have to learn how to promote ourselves. We have to learn that we have a backstory, we should share that, we have messaging behind our brand, be intentional with that. And authenticity is how a lot of people bring it up. But you need the intentionality with the authenticity. So, what purpose am I doing by this communications activity, whether it's a social post or going to an event, a networking event, a trade show, whatever it is that's relevant to your business? You have to get out there and share your brand because in the early days, no one knows who you are, and you have to treat it that way. And you you need to let people know who you are and what you're doing and why you're doing it and the story behind it.

Larry Zilliox 9:44

Now, brand for listeners, brand is a lot of things. It's it's the name of your company, it's something you have to settle on. And I've always been a firm believer that you should look for a brand that tells people what you do when

Branding Is What People Say

Larry Zilliox 10:05

they hear it. Um, I mean, what what is your thoughts on helping a veteran kind of focus in on what their brand should be?

Austin Holmes 10:15

I I simplify it and I look at it a little differently. I look at branding as what people are saying about you. What are you known for? Who are you? That that's brands to me. All of the rest kind of falls in the marketing, and and you should craft that, and that's where you can start. Because when people come to your website or enter your business, is your branding in alignment with who you want people to perceive you as? But when they have that perception or when they talk about you, that's what your brand is, and that that's affected by so many things. It's you know, what are people posting about you on social if they're posting at all? That's why I'm saying like that first step is you have to get people talking about you, and the brand that comes out of that is more powerful than anything else in business. We we all know Nike because they built a brand and they spend a lot of money still maintaining and improving that brand, and they're constantly putting themselves out there and trying to interact with the community, sponsoring events or little baseball leagues. Um, these are all ways that you can get your brand in front of people, and then what they're saying about you is hey, this business is involved in the community, they're sponsoring this little league team, or hey, they did this charity work. There's so many ways to approach that. Or another thing that's key is is your product or service good? That's part of your brand. So you do want to make sure that you spend a lot of time on quality, on making sure that people want to talk about you in a positive light after they uh interact with your business. Um, because it's much easier to destroy your reputation by having a bad product or having a bad service, and it's very difficult to recover from that. In the PR industry, crisis communication and reputation repair is a massive part of the industry because it's so much harder to correct that if you don't live by values and treat people well. It's very easy to lose that reputation. So making sure you're doing things right from the beginning will help you avoid so many mistakes and so much work and money to repair that reputation.

Larry Zilliox 12:36

Social media, let's talk a little bit about this and where veterans should be with their business on social media. Um, I know we here at the Warrior Retreat, our communications director is

Reputation Starts With Product Quality

Larry Zilliox 12:50

on everything. Facebook, Instagram, X, uh, Blue Sky, uh you you name it, and stuff I've never heard of. But is there one particular focus from social media where they should concentrate, where you think the most they move get the most value for their time? And and and it is time sensitive in the sense that as an entrepreneur, you got a lot to do. And so, you know, you're gonna have to spend time doing social media. Where do you think the best effort is put forward if you want to post about, you know, successes in your your product or your sponsorship of something in the community, something like that. Where do you think that that lands?

Austin Holmes 13:35

Well, it I think the general philosophy principle is gonna be record what you're doing. Um it's very easy to go through your day and be attacking the tasks that you have and not keep a record of it. There are so many different approaches to can like taking what you're doing and putting it on social media. And as far as platforms go, that's going to be industry specific as far as what you might want to focus your time on. We look at everything with either primary or secondary platforms. And you need to be consistent in that. That's the most important thing we've seen from our data. And what gets talked about by a lot of people is consistency. And a lot of people shoot for the virality, and you should always frame your social so that it has the opportunity to go viral, but you really just want that authenticity to come through. You want the struggle to come through that creates rate relatability, that creates the relationship, and you can do that on social. Not everybody uses social, some people just call people, some people just interact with the community. And and for brick and mortar retail, that's definitely a more common approach, but you're gonna reach different

Social Media Focus And Consistency

Austin Holmes 14:50

people on different platforms because of the tools available now with AgentTech AI, you should be everywhere. It's very minimal in its cost for you to automatically create content, but you have to be thinking about creating content from the beginning. You have to make sure that you're remembering to record the moments that you want to be able to post. Um, and that does take conscious effort. Uh, it's just like building any other habit, though, once you start um and get become consistent in it, it's pretty easy to continue on from that. So, yes, you should be posting on every platform. Yes, you need to be creating content every day, absolutely, bare minimum, every every week. Uh, and you should be doing it in an intentional way that is transparent.

Larry Zilliox 15:43

Well, listeners too, I think it's important for you to look at the social media from your competitors or others in the industry or are making the same product that you are, and kind of see what works for them. And and it's also important that you're uh creating social media that has a message um so that if you if you have a great product and you could just record a 25 second snippet of the process of making that uh product and then say this is what makes our product great instead of 25 seconds of somebody in the office on the phone. It it just has no impact and doesn't mean anything. So you need to think about the context. I get this all the time. I look at shorts and I see this stuff on social media, and I've go, I I just said I don't understand it. I just don't understand what what am I watching? Why? Why was this posted? Just you know, it just drives me crazy. So let's t talk a little bit about AI and and I know that um it's it's new and it's sometimes hard to understand, and it has a whole new language to it, and it seems like there's a bunch of different types of AI from Claude and Perplexity, and you know, almost every program now has some sort of uh chat GTP built into it. Well how are you finding AI working into your business? Number one, how you do business, but then how it helps a a veteran entrepreneur do business.

Austin Holmes 17:28

Yeah, I want to go back real quickly to what you said before on the content. You you should be intentional.

Record The Work And Post With Intent

Austin Holmes 17:35

A good ratio is 20-25%. That is the lifestyle that's what's going on, that is just you know the raw content, and then the rest should be that intentional, message-driven content. That that's a good ratio to follow. And also good artists copy and great artists steal. What you said about looking at your competitors is dead on. Um, you don't have to recreate the wheel. Most businesses aren't recreating the wheel. You don't need to do it with social. Do what works. Um, and what works in AI for us is taking as many of the tasks that are repetitive that don't take brain power and automating them. There are so like you said, there's so many tools available now. Start with one of the LLMs, use it for research that and getting in that habit. Ask it and ask it questions too. A lot of people will prompt with um, give me this, ask what I should do for this instead, and you're gonna get a whole lot better result. It's gonna tell you more and get in the habit of asking it questions. If you're asking yourself a question or if your team member is asking you a question, ask AI at the same time. That is a wonderful use case for it.

AI For Research And Automation

Austin Holmes 18:55

As you start getting into the more advanced stuff, and we have our own software, uh, Signal Raptor, as well. And you know, we are integrating AI in that. So I have a very deep perspective on the back end of these programs. We do LLM audits for our clients to make sure that they're being seen in those places as well. So paying attention to all that is a valuable thing. I don't think it's necessarily a first step, but as you start improving your marketing and your messaging and your uh media outreach, it is an important thing to see how you're showing up. Uh it speaks to the brand, like how is our brand doing? But uh as far as the kind of next level stuff, the agentic world is what's newer. Kind of started with open claw, went really deep down that rabbit hole. Um, Claude is what I recommend to people. It works, it's pretty much out of the box. You don't have to do a whole lot systems-wise. And you start by asking it the question like, what can you help me with? Here's my business, here's my SOPs. Like, what can you do out of this SOP that you can automate? And that is a great question to ask it, and that can apply to so many things, and it can integrate with pretty much every other tool. Um, anything that has an API connection, anything that can be used in Chrome, uh, or I'm not sure what other browsers they uh have extensions for, but Chrome, it can literally do anything that you do in Chrome um itself. So there are endless applications that people are still coming up with. I follow a bunch of people on social media who talk about new things, new programs, new plugins, new tools. That's a great place to start, is just learning. And after you spend some time learning, take two, three days and do nothing but set up your agents. Uh it is pretty intense, it's a little technical, but it's absolutely doable for anybody who's running a business. Think of it as another uh assistant for you. Um, if you haven't already hired a team member, hired somebody to help you, it is it's more of a learning curve because it's very much like training a new team member. Um, but we've all done that to some extent in the military. When somebody new joins the department, hey, here's your tasks, here's what you need to learn. And you have to treat AI the same way when you're using the agentic stuff. Now, that being said, there's a lot of people who have done a lot of that work for specific applications. If you have a specific application that you know you want AI to do for you, say, I want the leads coming in, I want their data, and I want you to enrich this uh contact so that I can have a better conversation with them, be more prepared for a sales call, whatever it is. Or maybe you're talking to an investor, give me all the back relevant background details for this investor. There are dedicated programs for that kind of application in pretty much every case at this point.

Larry Zilliox 21:59

Right. Listeners, to be clear, because I always like to explain uh acronyms, and LLM is large language model, which is what these all are based

Agentic AI And Training Your Tools

Larry Zilliox 22:10

on, different LLMs. Um, one thing that I do and I found that's been very useful is I tell the uh either Chat GTP or Claude, um, I tell it what I'm interested in, what I want to know, and then I have it create a prompt for me about that that sometimes is a page long. And then I copy that prompt that it makes and put that back in. And uh it's it's crazy what I get back. You know, you don't have to treat it like Google, you can ask it to create a prompt for you based on how you want your output, everything. So think about it in that way. Listeners, uh, the webpage is publicityforgood.com. So I want to reiterate that uh it's publicityforgood.com, not dock org. This is not a nonprofit. So you don't have to worry about me telling you to go up to the right-hand corner and banging on the donate button. This is a for-profit business. And check out the webpage, check out the services, you know, give them a call. Uh, talk to Austin about how he can help your business. And this goes back to a problem that a lot of veterans who retire, a hurdle that they have, is they want to start a business. They're not used to paying for things. You got a legal problem, you go down to legal, you give them a paper, they fix it. You got financial problems, they'll help you with that. You got to pay for this. This is a service you need to engage as services, and it will cost you, but I guarantee you you're gonna make that money back on the your return on investment because this is such an important topic for entrepreneurs and when you're getting started. And anytime you can take something as important as this and turn it over to a professional, you benefit from that. It's the same as why you get a lawyer, it's why you get an accountant. Because you can't do that, or you maybe can, but you're gonna spend what weeks trying to figure your taxes out.

Austin Holmes 24:24

So uh yeah, yeah, it's a lot of time investments.

Larry Zilliox 24:28

Yeah. So give Austin a call and think about you know, all the services that they have. The web page has a lot of information on it. One of my favorite things about the webpage, and I I I just noticed this, Austin. There's a picture of you on there, and then there are four women pictured. So I can really relate to this because I work with seven women. I'm the only guy. And I've just come to the realization that I need constant female supervision. But is is that sort of like what it is for you there?

Austin Holmes 25:01

Yeah, until we uh hired the development team, I think it was about 80, 20 uh females, and uh it's a little more balanced than that. Our our team is around 70 people now, and but the PR space is definitely dominated by ladies. Yeah. So awesome. It was a shift going from Navy EOD over to PR.

Larry Zilliox 25:26

Well, listen, I I can't thank you enough for coming on and and and talking to us about you know what what veteran entrepreneurs really need to think about. I don't need to do everything, but they certainly need to start thinking about it and getting their brand settled on that and getting the word out about it. So uh I can't thank you enough for joining us.

Austin Holmes 25:50

Absolutely. Uh it's my pleasure to serve. That's one of the huge reasons I joined the military. And I get to do that for a bunch of other companies now and serve them and help them grow. And uh, if any of your listeners have questions, I love talking about business all day long, and I will gladly help veterans with whatever free time I have. So my my I'll give them my email. It's just Austin at publicityforgood.com. And uh you guys can reach out and somebody will definitely respond to you.

Larry Zilliox 26:18

Well, we really appreciate that. And listeners, the webpage again is publicityforgood.com. And uh we will have another episode next Monday morning at 0500. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriors.org.

How To Reach Austin And The Show Close

Larry Zilliox 26:35

You can find us on all the major podcast platforms. We're on YouTube and Reese Across America Radio. So until then, thanks for listening.