Starting a successful business is challenging no matter who you are or where you live, but it can be even more so for veterans.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only half of new businesses survive their first five years. Less than five percent of veterans transitioning from the military to the civilian job market start their own businesses.
The PenFed Veteran Entrepreneur Program is helping veterans like Ryan Johnson beat those odds.
Johnson, an Army veteran, co-founded Bugle, a startup that makes volunteering easier and more beneficial to companies and volunteers. Johnson is a former national boxing champion and West Point graduate who spent 10 years in the Army as an infantry officer and later as a Green Beret.
“I left the Army to change the world of volunteering,” he said.
Johnson said one in four Americans volunteers annually but there are limited software solutions that make that a simple process.
“Bugle is an enterprise volunteer management solution that allows nonprofits to organize volunteer events easily and seamlessly,” he said. “It makes setting up a volunteer event as easy as scheduling an interview.”
PenFed Foundation President Andrea McCarren said veterans like Johnson make great entrepreneurs who bring a number of attributes to the table.
“They are resilient, they are mission-focused, they are adaptable, they’re agile,” she said. “That combination makes for a successful business owner.”
The PenFed Veteran Entrepreneur Program, an accelerator program for veteran-owned businesses, helped Johnson to expand Bugle.
McCarren said the program looks for and recruits the nation’s best veteran business owners and brings them together at no cost to them.
“We give them seminars and classes and then follow up with virtual seminars,” she said. “We pair them one-on-one with a mentor that is specific to the industry they are in.”
Johnson said having a mentor as Bugle began was extremely important.
“There are so many things you aren’t aware of as a new entrepreneur,” he said. “One of the greatest things you can do is work with mentors who’ve gone before you so they can coach you through it.”
McCarren said the PenFed Foundation does an annual study to determine which cities in the United States veterans are most likely to succeed as they create their own businesses. Raleigh, North Carolina topped the list this year for the second year in a row. Raleigh was followed by Washington, DC and Seattle, Washington.
“This is one way we can give back to our military, by creating a veteran entrepreneur program,” she said.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.