Why Veteran Businesses Fail (and How To Prevent It)

As a fellow Veteran and business owner I know first-hand that military service made some parts of my entrepreneurial journey a lot easier. After all, Veterans are trained to honor the mission, be powerfully resourceful, strike and pivot, build and lead.

And a lot of us Veterans forget these things when we become business owners. 

Instead of the above, we do three things:

• We fail to plan.
  When you’re serving in the military, you always have a mission plan, an OPORD, that specifically detailed and structured everything about the mission ahead—where you were going, why, what was needed, what a win looked like. Your business and your team can’t succeed without one either.If you don’t have a plan, you can’t scale—just ask Trevor Shirk (USMA ‘08). Read about how he uses his “War Map” to hire and hold his team accountable.

• We stop learning and using tools.
  In the military, we’re trained to use tools that increase our chances of success. As business owners, we tend to become “crappy lumberjacks”—a term I use for those who are running around doing all the things with half-ass tools, like a lumberjack furiously chopping wood with a dull blade. You’d never do this in the military—why are you intentionally making work harder?There are tools that sharpen your edge—and our One Page Business Plan is one of them. 

• We stop leading from the front.
  As leaders In the military, delegation was inherent—we had clear roles, jobs, and the almighty chain of command. When we become business leaders, that often goes out the window. We end up playing a game of whack-a-mole with every problem that crosses our desk—instead of taking the time to hire, train and empower our teams so everyone can do their jobs better. (Us included!)If you struggle here—and most business owners do—there are a lot of books that can accelerate you here. If you haven’t read Scaling Up by Verne Harnish and Traction by Gino Wickman, grab them and go.

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