Amina Buric with Aeolus Group

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio Beyond the Uniform series. I am stoked about the guest that I have on today. I met her through the Houston Regional Veterans Chamber of Commerce. She actually was at our strategic planning for this year, and I had to have her on the show. She’s doing so many amazing things. Amina Buric, who is the founder of Aeolus Group, and she’s also got something else she’s working on that I want to talk about. But first let’s jump in. Amina, welcome to the show.

Amina Buric: Thanks for having me, Trisha. Really appreciate the opportunity.

Trisha Stetzel: I’m so excited. And fellow Navy veteran.

Amina Buric: Yes, that is that is true. There is not many of us that were strong.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Amina, uh, tell me a little bit more about you. I know you are almost freshly coming out of the military and started your own business and also working on a, on a new mission that we’re going to talk about as well. So, uh, tell us a little bit more about you.

Amina Buric: So, uh, my military kind of service started since I was born. My dad was in the military. He is a proud Air Force veteran. He was a pilot. So for the first 20 years of my life, I was a military child. I went to college, ended up getting married to a service member. So for about two years of my quote unquote civilian life, my dad was still in, but my spouse was in the military. And then, right as Covid hit, I enlisted in the Navy as well. So now I’m a veteran, so I’ve hit all four categories that you could be in the military community. I was a military child, spouse, active duty, and now I’m a veteran myself. So this is the first time in my life that I have zero military influence in my life. I got out about a year and a half ago, so that’s fantastic.

Trisha Stetzel: And oh, by the way, you still have definitely military influence because you’re still participating in in both of those spaces, right? Between the Houston Regional Veterans Chamber of Commerce and also this new mission that you’re working on here over the next couple of weeks. So, Amina, tell me more about Alice Group.

Amina Buric: So, uh, act upon transitioning out. So during my time in the Navy, I ended up actually getting injured. So they my job went from being a boatswain mate to actually working in an admiral’s cabinet with his staff. So I got to learn a ton of strategy, a ton of planning, and I was part of Red Hill Water crisis, which was one of the major crises with our drinking water, actually. Us Congress was involved. So I was 20 years old working with these main strategic giants and masterminds. So I soaked up all the knowledge that I could and assisted as much as I could at at that age and upon my transition. I’m an engineer by college degree, but I didn’t want to be an engineer in the civilian world. So I started my own consulting company doing strategic advising and operational advising. So whether it’s development, implementation and integration or just kind of consulting and telling you like, hey, this is the plan of action. And I pull heavily from my military experience on how to advise these companies in the civilian sector.

Trisha Stetzel: You’re doing such important work. And that really leads me to you know, how did and I get that the education is there. You just described how the experience of being in the admiral’s office and being around these, um, strategic giants. Right. And learning that craft. But what else in your military experience prepared you to be a business owner?

Amina Buric: I think people underestimate. So I’ll kind of give you an attitude. So for us in the military, we’re on duty 24 over seven and we truly are. And once I transitioned, and still a year and a half later, I still struggle with it. I struggle on the weekends because there is no motion from Friday, about noon until Monday, about nine in the morning, there’s no motion, nothing happening. And I’m still so ingrained that I work seven days a week. And maybe it’s not client relations, but I’m drafting emails, creating content, uh, creating, you know, like projects that are due for my clients, and I will schedule them for Monday morning. So I’m not kind of overstepping my boundaries, but that is one thing I’ve learned in the military is consistency and discipline, and I have seen it time and time again that it has paid dividends for me in my progress.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow, that, you know, as you were describing that, I’m like, maybe that’s what’s missing for me. I it’s, you know, my story, which is interesting. I didn’t actually tell people that I was a military veteran for years, and it wasn’t because I was embarrassed or didn’t want to share that. It just wasn’t part of who I was. After I left the military and went to work for corporate and then opened my first business. Um, so I appreciate that you’re able to hold on to that and also get out there and tell people about it. People need to know your story, and they need to know our story so that we can attract more veterans who have businesses, and they’re contributing to this amazing ecosystem in Houston. Um, all right, I know you’re doing something really, really important. We talked about it right before the show. I’d like you to tell me about this new project that you have going going on mission DeFi.

Amina Buric: So part of and I’ll give credit to variety, they’re a platform that’s shut down. But they were a mentorship platform that I discovered. Actually, nobody told me in the Navy about it, but I was looking for mentors. I ran businesses while I was in the Navy, so I did dog training business, and I actually did a consumer goods business while I was still active duty. And I was looking for people to tell me how to run a business. And usually when people are on active duty, they don’t often start their own businesses. They’re just kind of focused on their military career. So I went through USO transitions. They said, hey, check out this platform. It’s free mentorship. So I signed up and at that point they were going for five years or so. And I’ve received countless mentorship hours and made countless actually friends from mentors that have taught me how to run a business and not just business, but how to transition out successfully because it is a it’s such an important part of our life, and I think a lot of veterans get dropped in the process, for lack of better words that, uh, like, they don’t know what to do. They’re kind of lost. And I still, year and a half later, I still kind of struggle. There are still days where I’m like, hey, like, did I make a mistake getting out, you know? And I tap into my mentors to kind of reassure me and tell me, like, hey, everything’s going to be okay, everything is fine.

Amina Buric: So, uh, when they abruptly shut down, actually, at that, at this point of my life, I was actually a mentor myself. So I was still a mentee, but I was also a mentor myself. And we try to kind of reach out to the founders. But we didn’t get any response. And I said, well, there’s a gap and I don’t know exactly if I’m equipped to fill it by myself, but I will reach out to other mentors and see if I technologically supported it. Would they come onto the platform? So that’s where mission DeFi came from. My big philosophy is that there are a lot of odds, as veterans, that we have to defy and we defy expectations, but we also need to get better at forging those connections. So what a better way than to kind of give back to the community that has given to me my entire life. But to create a platform where people can tap into anybody in the United States, veteran spouse or active duty military member and ask for advice, there’s no shame in asking for help. And I think that’s a stigma that we need to, as veterans and active duty, just military in general, break that. We can just handle everything on our own. We have a strong village, one of the strongest fraternities in the world that we can tap into and learn and take care of each other. Yeah, I absolutely agree.

Trisha Stetzel: And I didn’t even know you had a dog training business. Like the things we learn about each other when we’re having these great conversations. So you are an entrepreneur in the military. You came out of the military, started a business, and now you’re bootstrapping this mentorship program called Mission Defy. And it is so exciting. I can’t wait to see where this goes. So, Amina, how can people engage if they want to know more about Mission Defy or even about Eolis group? How can they find you?

Amina Buric: Uh, I’m most active on LinkedIn, so I treat my LinkedIn as essentially like a text. So if you shoot me a DM on LinkedIn, you will get a response. I’m not hard to find. I’m not hard to reach. I try to make myself Available at least several hours a week. And I tell people all the time, I’m in a human to human business. I’m not in a B2B or B2C or whatever. I’m an H to H. So I want to connect with everybody on a human level, get to know them, get to know how I can help them, because I truly believe that one thing that I did learn in the military is that service before self. So and in a Navy you you remember as ship shipmate self. So you save the ship, you save your shipmate, then you save yourself. So I still live to those values today. So if I’m very much of service. So I will always ask you how can I help you first?

Trisha Stetzel: I love that that’s why we connect. I you’re such an amazing person. I watched you in our strategy session at the Houston Regional Veterans Chamber of Commerce recently, and you have such a knack for looking at strategy from a high level, and then really drilling into the parts and the activity and the action that need to happen. And so I know that anybody that you work with is getting the best of the best of the best, and I appreciate you doing that work out there for the Houston business community. And this mission to Phi, I you gave me the tagline, which is Forge Connections Defy Expectations. And I love that. I love that you’re creating this space for mentorship with veterans. And you’re right, we shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help, but we’re not very good at it. And I think having a mentorship gives us a safe space to connect with each other without feeling like we’re defeated and have to ask for help. What are your thoughts on that?

Amina Buric: I think just being willing, that is kind of the season of life I’ve been in for the last year is being willing to ask for help, being willing to admit that I don’t know everything. And you would be surprised. Like, I actually people ask me all the time, well, what did you learn from being mentored? And it’s not that I learned a ton from being mentored, but I would encourage everybody to go and mentor somebody. You you just learn so much from other people’s experience, and you kind of get out of your own bubble, and it forces you to think outside of the box. So I would say while mentorship is important, being a mentee is important. The caveat to that is being a mentor to somebody. I would encourage everybody to just have one person to mentor, and it doesn’t matter if they’re older than you or younger, you can learn from somebody’s experience.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And I think in the, you know, in the face of, uh, not being fearful of knowing as a military veteran that we’re just going to go get stuff done because that’s what we do, right? We push ahead, we get things done. We don’t give up. We show up, we put our boots on, we put our pants on every day and we go to work. And being able to take that and share it through mentorship with others who are exactly like us, right? I love that you said we have the largest fraternity in the world or on the planet, and I think that’s so true. I’ve never thought about it that way. I really appreciate you being on with me today, Amina. For those of you who are listening and want to connect with Amina at any level, whether it’s through her strategic um services in her business, Eolis Group, or even for mission DeFi. I’m sure you’re looking for people to get engaged there. Go out on LinkedIn and DM her you can find her. It’s a m I n a b u r I c just do a search. You’ll find her. By the way, she’s connected to me, so you’re likely going to find her as a second connection. And it’ll be really easy to connect. Um, Amina, would you share, like, your just a favorite story or some story since you’ve been out of the military? Uh, about someone that you’ve connected with on a different level because you are h to h. I love that you said that. Human to human. So what’s your favorite connection story since you’ve been out of the military?

Amina Buric: So I don’t have a particular one, but I will tell you that I’m not a native Houstonian, and I’m somebody who I never thought I would live in a big city. When I. When I got out of the Navy, I said, I never want to see a soul. I want to live like on ten acres with in a town that has like 400 people. Like, I don’t want to be around a ton of people. I just want peace and not be around. And then, uh, just so happened that I ended up moving to Houston because, uh, my girlfriend said, hey, you would like it. It would benefit your business. And I fought her tooth and nail. But people in Houston have been so welcoming and so nice and are willing to help, and actually turned into one of my favorite places I’ve ever been. So I had to kind of put my pride and ego aside and say, hey, I don’t know anything about your city. Let me learn. And my network has actually exploded here because I don’t believe that I’m just in a business of age to age. But I think Houston is a city, is in a business of age to age. All you have to do is ask and, you know, people are willing to make the connection. And that’s one thing I’ve noticed about Houston nobody’s unreachable. You can just ask tap into. So my biggest advice, or I guess the biggest lesson I’ve learned is you just have to be willing to ask.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. That’s fantastic.

Trisha Stetzel: Well guess what? I live in a town of 400 people, so I found your town, Amina. I’m just saying I love it.

Amina Buric: Maybe we’re going to be neighbors next couple of years.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Trisha Stetzel: I appreciate you so much being on the show. You’re doing amazing work in your business. You’re doing amazing work in this new venture that you have going on. I know you’re bootstrapping this thing, so if anybody’s interested in helping or wants to be a part of mission DeFi, please reach out to Amina on LinkedIn. I know that she would love to have your help getting this amazing organization off the ground and starting this mentorship. Thank you again for being with me today.

Amina Buric: Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Trisha Stetzel: And that’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another exciting episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay focused, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.