From the Art of War to Entrepreneurship: All That Glitters Is Not Gold

By Shelton Rhodes, PhD

The transition from war to peace and the necessity to reduce the nation’s defense budget has resulted in the downsizing of thousands of service members. Many of these vets will seek new careers or to start businesses.

In From the Art of War to Entrepreneurship, author Dr. Shelton Rhodes provides practical information and resources to potential and existing veteran entrepreneurs on how to achieve success in four business niches, and he describes the competitive advantage provided by military service to veteran entrepreneurs.

Including lists of resources, books, organizations, and web sites related to the business niches, From the Art of War to Entrepreneurship offers a realistic preview of entrepreneurship opportunities. Success in entrepreneurship is the American dream, but failure to understand the pitfalls can be the American nightmare. While the focus of this book is veteran entrepreneurship, the information in this book is relevant to current and potential entrepreneurs in general.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483453620

Book preview

From the

Art of War

to

Entrepreneurship

All that Glitters is Not Gold

Shelton Rhodes, PhD

Copyright © 2016 Shelton Rhodes, PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5363-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5361-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5362-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016909610

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 6/30/2016

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Entrepreneurship and Veterans’ competitive advantage, from

The Art of War Entrepreneurship

Chapter 2 Traditional Entrepreneur Profile: Sailing to New Horizons

David Prescott, CEO of IntegraOptics

Chapter 3 Franchising

Shelton Rhodes, Ph.D.

Chapter 4 Government Contracting

Lieutenant Colonel Louisa Jaffe, CEO and President, TAPE, LLC

Chapter 5 Demystifying GSA Contracts

Ilene Giles, GSA Proposal-Maven

Chapter 6 Leveraging Corporate Supplier Diversity Programs:

Business to Business Marketing

Epilogue

COL (Retired) James T. George, Founder and Chairman, MSTI

Dedication

I wrote this book to honor entrepreneurs world-wide -- past, present and future --who took or will take the risky road of entrepreneurship. An important focus of this book is veterans; because of military downsizing, entrepreneurship remains a viable option for veterans. However, the content of this book is useful to any potential entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial success results in enormous personal rewards. Most importantly, however, entrepreneurial success can offer economic opportunity for many people. This success solves a critical problem since it potentially impacts human health and safety, while adding more satisfaction to life. Through innovation and entrepreneurship, the world of today would be unimaginable to those who lived a century ago. Indeed, the world a century from now is just as unimaginable.

It is important to begin, first, by acknowledging those who have tried and failed at entrepreneurship. Without the failures, in most cases, no road to success would exit for others to follow. Think about the early western settlers who opened up the West by making their difficult and dangerous journeys. Although many died, their sacrifice opened a path for others. The journey of the early settlers is a good analogy for the entrepreneurship journey. This book is dedicated to entrepreneurs who took, and who will take, the road not taken.

The Road Not Taken

–Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

INTRODUCTION

The transition from war to peace and the necessity to reduce the nation’s defense budget has resulted the downsizing of thousands of service members. However, ongoing national security threats, and a change in US national leadership, may reverse these defense budget reductions. On July 2015, the Army officially announced its plans to cut 40,000 soldiers from its ranks over the next two years. In addition to this transition to peace time, the Pentagon’s budget challenge is a result of the Budget Control Act of 2014. This legislation includes a plan to trim $487 billion over 10 years. It is predicted that by 2016 more than one million service members will be discharged or retire from the military.

Many of these vets will seek new careers or to start businesses. Unlike previous military downsizings in Vietnam, and in the 1990s, the 2015 labor market is among the worst in this country’s history. The budget cuts negatively impact defense contractors and federal employment. These two sectors employ a large number of military personnel. Therefore, the entrepreneurship option for transitioning service member is a necessary option, and many of these will be involuntary entrepreneurs. Even if the military downsizing is halted, this book will be a valuable tool for all military personnel and other entrepreneurs. Some veterans will leave the military voluntarily; those who stay until retirement will have a pension that can make the entrepreneurship option appealing.

Involuntary entrepreneurs would not normally pursue this kind of career, but after losing a job, and failing to find employment after an exhausting job search, they might move toward some form of self-employment. Indeed, many veterans will join the growing ranks of involuntary entrepreneurs – those who have been downsized from lucrative and stable careers, and who have suffered frustrating, exhaustive job searches.

I write this book to help veterans succeed as entrepreneurs, or have the foresight to know that they are not suited to the risks this career path entails.

This book’s objective is to provide readers with a realistic preview of the entrepreneurship option. Human resource professionals document the importance of providing a realistic job preview, in order to increase job satisfaction among employees. This, in turn, may reduce employee turnover. A realistic preview provides positive and negative information about a job. The military, at one time, experienced high turnover with new recruits because many joined with a misconception about the military. Some joined because they saw military service glamorized in movies and the media. Some joined the Army to be like John Wayne and Rambo. Others joined the Navy because of dreams of exotic travel and women. Some, after joining, found the rigors of military training and discipline unbearable and some received dishonorable discharges. For this reason, the military began trying to give recruits a realistic preview of military service. A good example of a preview is the once popular Army commercial with the tagline, We do more before 5 AM than most people do all day.

Considering the significant sacrifice made by veterans in service for their country, our national political leadership strongly commits itself to supporting their economic welfare. In addition to fostering employment opportunities for veterans, fostering veteran self-employment through business ownership is a key component of national and state policy. The U. S. Small Business Administration Office of Veterans Business Development is taking aggressive action to prepare veteran entrepreneurs. Subject to funding, the SBA will implement the Veteran Outreach Center Program:

In accordance with Public Law 110-186, the organizations will provide information on small business ownership to service members and military spouses by facilitating and instructing the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Introduction to Entrepreneurship known as Boots to Business which is a course offered within the Department of Defense Transition Assistance Program (TAP). Additionally, these organizations will provide counseling, training, technical and financial skill development, comprehensive business assessments and mentoring to veteran, service disabled veteran, active duty, Reserve, Guard, and military spouse/survivor entrepreneurs and small business owners interested in starting new or expanding/diversifying established small businesses.

The 2007 Census survey of veteran-owned businesses found:

In 2007, Veterans of the U.S military owned 2.4 million nonfarm businesses operating in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. These veteran-owned firms accounted for 9.0 percent of all nonfarm businesses in the United States, employed 5.8 million persons (4.9 percent of total U.S. employment) and generated $1.2 trillion in receipts (4.1 percent of total U.S. receipts). In addition, 1.2 million nonfarm U.S businesses (4.5 percent of all nonfarm businesses) were equally (50-percent/50-percent) owned by Veterans and nonveterans." (BLS 2007). The Small Business Administration has developed numerous initiatives to support veteran entrepreneurship which include: specialized financial assistance from the SBA, business development programs, and has supported efforts initiated by private-sector sponsors, universities and other nongovernmental organizations. The Office of Small Business Advocacy of the Small Business Administration has commissioned a number of studies related to veteran self-employment. Congress has also enacted legislation establishing government-wide goals for federal procurement dollars going to service-disabled veterans, as well as special contracting tools to help agencies meet these goals.

Military personnel possess unique training, experience, education, and traits that are essential for success in the military and which easily transfer to success in entrepreneurship. Corporations have long recognized education, experience, training, leadership, and management skills of military personnel are transferable to business success. Extensive material, online and in print, support my commitment that a skills obtained by vets in the military are those needed to succeed in business as well.

A veteran’s traits, training, education, and experience also provide a competitive advantage in entrepreneurship success. This book offers practical advice and resources to veterans about how to achieve entrepreneurial success as in four key areas; it describes the competitive advantage provided by their military experience and education. The lessons and advice will come from three post-military, veteran entrepreneurs – each who has achieved great success or limited success in three distinctly different business niches: First, traditional entrepreneurship (the creation of a new product or service, or redesigning an existing product or service); second, government contracting; and third, franchising. Corporate supplier diversity programs will also be discussed as a viable business opportunity for vets.

Veteran entrepreneurs need to be informed. Myths and perceptions about success in entrepreneurship pervade our society. This is why the subtitle of this book is All That Glitters is not Gold. To have a chance at success, it is necessary to leverage experience, to plan, and to develop relationships and, finally, to study the business environment continuously. A vet’s military experience, and the military industrial complex more generally, provide significant entrepreneurial opportunities. This is especially