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Endless hours, sleepless nights, the burdensome sense that your very livelihood depends on your success: Launching a business can sometimes feel like going into battle.
But for the thousands of servicemen and women returning to the civilian workforce, entrepreneurship can be an ideal fit for their unique talents — not to mention a solution to high unemployment rates among veterans. And a growing number of both government and nonprofit programs are offering encouragement and assistance to veterans who want to take a stab at their own start-ups.
“The military actually trains you to be entrepreneurial,” says Robert Piechota, a business advisor in the city’s Veterans Assistance Program, and himself an Army vet.
“Whether you’re in a squad, a platoon or a company, you trained to go out on your own in some capacity. You’ve got to figure out what to do with minimal resources.”
This correlation between skills honed in the military and those needed for entrepreneurial success is one vets have long capitalized on: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, veterans own 2.4 million American businesses, and are 45 percent more likely to be self employed than non-veterans.
Now, programs like the Veterans Assistance Program and the Veterans Business Outreach program — two New York programs run by the Small Business Association’s Small Business Development Centers — are attempting to help returning vets who want to follow suit.
At centers across the state, Piechota and his colleagues offer vets free one-on-one counseling on everything from business idea feasibility to funding sources.
Many, says Piechota, turn to entrepreneurship after either struggling to find a job elsewhere or realizing they’re overqualified for the positions they have landed.
“They recognize they’ve got skills that are probably better than [those of] the boss they work for,” says Piechota. “They realized, ‘You know what? I can get more bang for my buck if I can go into business for myself.’ ”
At the Entrepreneur Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), a pioneering program founded at Syracuse University in 2007, most of the 500 to-date graduates enrolled with a specific business idea already in mind, says Tina Kapral, the program’s director of education.
The competitive program — which now operates out of seven other business schools across the country — is designed especially for disabled soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We feel that so many of that leadership qualities that are already ingrained in military service — being able to take risks, make decisions quickly and the desire to achieve a goal — are ones that make you a successful entrepreneur,” Kapral says of the program’s founding principle. “Our goal is to take the roadblocks of small business ownership out of the way.”
To achieve this, the EBV takes students through a 30-day online course covering the nuts and bolts of opportunity recognition, funding, marketing and the like, then hosts them at a participating college for a nine-day residency. There, they meet with guest entrepreneurs, hear from motivational speakers and finesse their business ideas into a professional venture pitch.
“The EBV gave me the hard skills I needed to start my business,” says Brian Iglesias, a former Marine who launched a successful production company after graduating from the program in 2008. “It gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams. And they stood with me on my journey, providing support and guidance along the way.”
The program has been so successful — recent surveys show that up to 65 percent of graduates are successfully running their own businesses — that it has spawned a handful of similar programs specially designed to help female veterans and National Guard members and Reservists, as well as military families.
A key part of these programs, says Kapral, is exposing aspiring “vetrepreneurs” to the special funding opportunities available to them. The most popular loan program is the Small Business Association’s Patriot Express initiative, which expedites the loan process between banks and veteran business owners, and has led to $460 million in lending to veteran-owned small businesses since fiscal year 2009.
President Barack Obama, who in 2010 directed the SBA to chair a Task Force on Veterans Small Business Development, has extended the program through 2013.
New York state residents may also qualify for the New York Business Development Corporation’s Veterans Loan Program, which offers term loans of up to $150,000 at below-market fixed rates. The loans are far from a free handout, cautions John Narciso, regional coordinator for the state’s Veterans Business Outreach Program, noting that “it’s a challenge for anybody looking to get a loan nowadays.”
But, he says, “If they have the right tenacity, a good business plan and a good personal credit score, it’s a challenge that may be doable.”
For those veterans that do secure funding, one popular option is to pursue franchise ownership. An initiative called VetFran, launched by the International Franchise Association, offers veterans discounted franchise fees (and often free training) for over 400 popular chains.
Another popular option is the pursuit of state and federal contracting opportunities specially reserved for veterans, says Chris Hale, president of the National Veteran-Owned Business Association.
Since 1999, the federal government has required that at least three percent of these contracts to go to veteran-owned businesses, and Hale notes that states are “rapidly” enacting laws that offer vets the same advantage on a state level. (A bill to do so in New York has been introduced to the State Senate.)
One sure thing veteran entrepreneurs can count on if and when they decide to expand: Hiring fellow veterans and disabled vets can net them tax credits of up to $5,600 and $9,600 respectively, due to a law President Obama signed this past November.
It provides a boost for a practice that comes as second-nature to most veteran-business owners: that is, hiring fellow veterans whose pre-existing skill sets will help their ventures grow and prosper.
After all, says, Hale, “In a small business, there’s no guarantee for success, and you’re going to have to persevere through a lot of difficult situations. And that is exactly what you experience in the military.”