(This article by Kathie Rowell, part of MOAA's 2025 Transition Guide, originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Military Officer, a magazine available to all MOAA Premium and Life members. Learn more about the magazine here; learn more about joining MOAA here.)

About 200,000 servicemembers leave the uniformed services every year, often with civilian career dreams of being their own boss. Many succeed — in 2020, veterans owned 1.6 million businesses, with almost $1 trillion in receipts, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

While each one of them charted their own unique path to business ownership, most needed help to develop plans and skills. Luckily, plenty of organizations and advisors are available to offer that assistance.

Among the best known are Boots to Business and Boots to Business: Reboot, geared to transitioning servicemembers and veterans, respectively. Sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration, the two-day in-person seminars offer instruction on creating a business plan and basic business concepts. Once completed, participants may attend the Mississippi State University Boots to Business Revenue Readiness course, a six-week virtual learning program that focuses on building a business model and plan with one-on-one feedback from instructors and specialists. All are free to eligible veterans and spouses.

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1st Sgt. Scottie Johnson, USA (Ret), took advantage of Boots to Business training and now answers to “Chef Scottie.”

“When I retired, I wanted to do something different, so I used my Post-9/11 GI Bill and went to culinary school,” he said. “From there, it just took off and became a passion.”

Now an award-winning chef and cookbook author, in 2016, Johnson
launched Blessed and Highly Flavored Cuisine, which offers personal chef services and cooking classes in Georgia.

Johnson said the Boots to Business course was invaluable.

“That helped me tremendously,” he said. “I had to figure out the demographics of my clientele. How much can I price? Boots to Business helped me figure out the demographics part and the management part.”

His advice to veterans with entrepreneurial dreams? Decide what you want to do and learn everything you can about it before leaving the military. Once out, take advantage of veterans’ business programs, such as Boots to Business, in your area.

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Learning From Others

Lt. Col. Joe Richardson, USAF (Ret), who owns a leadership training and development consulting business, teaches Boots to Business courses and counsels budding entrepreneurs through the Georgia Veterans Business Outreach Center (VBOC), which offers step-by-step business development assistance, training, counseling, mentoring, and resource referrals.

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“We introduce them to the entrepreneurial process, and we talk about how the things they bring to the table as veterans translate very well into entrepreneurship,” he said. “The resiliency and the problem-solving and team management and flexibility — all of those things are key to success in the military. They’re also the key to success in entrepreneurship.”

He stressed networking as a vital part of starting a new business, from his own experience.

“It created for me a reason to believe that I can actually do this as a business and, once you have reason to believe that what you’re offering is something that people want or need, that becomes the key to press forward even in the presence of difficult times.”

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Military spouse Amber Bittner, another VBOC instructor, started a dog-walking business when she was 10 years old and never slowed down. She’s had a series of entrepreneurial ventures as well as experience in retail management and commercial banking.

As an accredited small business consultant and a certified credit counselor, she’s using that lifetime of experience to advise servicemembers and veterans who hope to become business owners with planning, financial forecasting, marketing, and human resources questions.

Especially important to her is helping other uniformed services spouses — whose unemployment rate hovers around 21%, nearly four times the overall unemployment rate in 2021, according to DoD — start businesses. A key to their success is making the business portable so it can move along with the family.

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The biggest blunder she sees fledgling business owners make is not having a realistic financial plan, which can lead to costly mistakes.

“They don’t know how their money is coming in; they don’t know how their money is actually moving out,” she said. “They don’t know what their cash flow is.”

Franchises Offer a Blueprint

For some veterans, owning a business is the goal, but starting something from scratch isn’t. Franchises offer the opportunity to enter business with a framework for success already in place.

That’s what retired Cmdr. Sam Dowell did after a 30-year U.S. Navy career in logistics. Now he owns two Mosquito Joe pest control locations.

Franchisors value veterans — and often offer incentives to them — because servicemembers know how to follow protocols, he said.

“With a franchise, they provide you a recipe — if you’ll do this, you’re going to be successful. I think it bodes well for military personnel,” said Dowell, who has an MBA.

“I had the business acumen, as far as the logistics, the math. I was a steward of Uncle Sam’s money. Now, I’m a steward of my own money. It wasn’t easy. The money doesn’t flow initially like you would hope, but you just build it. You start small, you keep your expenses low, and then you build and grow. That’s what we’ve done.” 

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Veterans who want to explore a career as a franchisee can get assistance from VetFran, an initiative of the International Franchise Association and the IFA Foundation.

The goal is to match veterans and spouses with opportunities to become franchise owners through financial incentives, training, and mentoring.

To be on the VetFran list, franchisors must offer their most aggressive franchise fee discounts to veterans.

Former Marine Corps Capt. Sean Falk is VetFran chair and has been a franchise business owner for 26 years. He said the organization has three pillars to its mission: to obtain franchisor engagement and try to help them understand the value of adding a veteran to their team, to educate veterans about franchising, and to be an advocate for veterans.

Falk believes veterans make good franchisees because they have experience with one of the largest franchisors in the world — the U.S. military.

“If you follow the manual and you do what’s asked of you, and you perform at a high level, you’re going to be successful in the military,” he said. “It’s the exact same thing for a franchise brand. In franchising, we figured out the name, the product, the marketing, the real estate, and the operations. As a veteran, all you have to do is step into that and execute the operations just like you did in the military. And if you’ve followed the directions, if you perform at a high level, you’re going to be successful in owning your own business.”

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Business Resources for Entrepreneurs

• SCORE: Provides experienced mentors who will offer advice, consult on best practices, connect you to local and national resources, and recommend pertinent training.
  
  
• SBA Office of Veterans Business Development: In person and online courses designed to teach the basics of business ownership and provide access to SBA resources, including training programs and funding.
  
  
• SBA Women’s Business Centers: Helps women entrepreneurs launch new businesses and compete in the marketplace, including resources such as business training, counseling, federal contracts, and access to credit and capital.
  
  
• Syracuse University D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF)/Bunker Labs: IVMF acquired Bunker Labs in early 2024, and they share a mission to help veterans and military spouses start and grow their own businesses.
  
  
• The Rosie Network: A nonprofit whose mission is to build strong military families through entrepreneurial programs and support services. Its Service2CEO program offers a comprehensive curriculum to launch, scale, and grow a business successfully.
  
  
• VA Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization Veteran Entrepreneur Portal: Educates veterans about federal services and offers tools to connect entrepreneurs with relevant tools and resources. 
  
  
• Veterans Business Outreach Center: Part of the SBA, offers entrepreneurial development services, such as business training and resource partner referrals, to servicemembers, veterans, and family members interested in starting or growing a small business.
  
  
• Warrior Rising: A one-stop source for veterans’ education, coaching, mentorship, clients, funding, and community with the goal of transforming veterans into “vetrepreneurs.” 

Kathie Rowell is a writer based in Louisiana.