News From the Cause
Program Helps Disabled Vets Become Entrepreneurs (Defense.gov)
August 16, 2011
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2011 – Retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Renee Floyd wasn’t about to let a disability stop her from realizing her dream of having her own business.
Applying 21 years of experience as an Army mechanic, she launched BRF Mobile Lube Service in Phenix City, Ala., in 2009 and began traveling to people’s homes and businesses to provide convenient oil changes and maintenance services.
But her big break came last month, she said, when she attended the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans With Disabilities at Florida State University. The nine-day EBV crash course is part of a program designed to help participants get their businesses off the ground or enhance ventures they have started.
Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management in New York was the first to offer the program for veterans disabled as a result of their military service since Sept. 11, 2001.
Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., launched its own program in 2008. Now, a consortium of seven universities around the United States participates, anxious to help disabled veterans make their dreams of entrepreneurship a reality.
Randy Blass, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who serves as director for the FSU program, said entrepreneurship offers the veterans something a regular job can’t.
Particularly for those struggling to deal with a separation from military service that they didn’t initiate and often didn’t want, Blass said entrepreneurship offers a new sense of identity.
“They are no longer that corporal or that sergeant or that captain. They are going through an identity transition, and to just get a job doesn’t always address that psychological identity need,” he said.
Entrepreneurship also holds allure to those who see it as a way to continue serving the country. “By being an entrepreneur, we are helping with the economic recovery,” Blass said. “You are creating jobs. … That message is not lost on someone who still wants to serve and is looking for some identity to latch onto.”
Participants begin online training before arriving on campus for an intensive boot camp that Blass said keeps them engaged from sunup to long after sundown. Through classes and workshop sessions, they learn the nuts and bolts of running a business: how to write a business plan, raise capital and build a customer base.
The cost of the boot camp, including food, lodging and transportation, is picked up by participating universities with gifts from alumni, entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders.
After the program, participants receive a full year of ongoing support and mentorship.
The training is demanding, and expectations of participants are high. “We don’t coddle,” Blass said. “We also don’t dwell. We don’t even really talk about their disabilities.”
Rather, the focus of the program is strictly on entrepreneurship. “We talk about business,” Blass said. “We are going forward. We are not looking backwards.”
Floyd had made good headway in building her mobile lube business. She had put her bachelor of science degree in business administration from American Military University to work, formulating a strong business plan and marketing motto: “We change lives, one car at a time.”
What she didn’t initially recognize was that a fear of approaching authority figures had kept her from fully marketing the business. “It was holding me back from going to the corporations and small businesses and offering my services to them,” she said.Click here to view more
