Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
-Written by Scott Wiman, who is a former Green Beret, small business owner and founder of Call In The Cavalry nonprofit for military veterans.
Starting my own small business after serving in the military was an exciting pursuit that gave me the opportunity to acquire a whole new set of skills. Throughout the past 10 years as an entrepreneur and veteran small business owner, I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I’d like to pass on to any military veteran thinking about starting their own business. Although this is not meant to be a fully comprehensive list, I hope that at least a couple of these learned lessons helps any military veteran who is on their own entrepreneurial journey.
#1: Do your research and find out who gives the business or product referrals in your industry
Try to take the necessary amount of time to really think about who might be making recommendations for the services or products that you offer. When you end up discovering who this is and can eventually earn their trust, their referrals will really supercharge the speed at which your service or product gets recognition within your community.
In my field of work, I didn’t initially realize the fact that doctors were the ones who were giving out a large portion of business recommendations in my industry. I just happened to end up working for a couple of local doctors and was able to impress them enough that they started recommending me to all of their patients. Had I maybe done more research in the beginning, I might have figured this out and enjoyed years worth of free word of mouth advertising from these connections.
With that said, I still think that it is typically a good idea to pay for traditional advertising in the beginning of your business venture until you can eventually scale it back once your word of mouth advertising has really taken off.
#2: Make sure you choose your company or product name correctly.
Before you settle on a name, I recommend that you do a quick trademark search and find out whether your potential product or company name is already taken. Trademarking your name is important because it can offer you a lot of legal protection if a person later tries to infringe upon your company or product name that you’ve spent years developing.
If you have a name in mind, it’s easy to do a quick trademark search on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website (uspto.gov). You will be able to type in the name within the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) and get results back within a few seconds.
When considering a name, you should also try to come up with a name that is fairly unique. Made up or unique words seem to have a higher probability of being trademarked. I found out how important it was to choose a name carefully, because after years of building up my company name, I was denied a trademark because my company name was deemed too broad and descriptive in nature.
After this, I was much more careful in the future when choosing names for other business ventures, and had a lot of success when filing trademarks myself. I also found that the USPTO help center representatives were really helpful whenever I would call and ask them a question when filing.
#3: Encourage your happy customers to write online reviews for you, no matter if asking them is uncomfortable
Unfortunately, I spent the better part of the last 10 years avoiding the awkwardness of asking happy clients if they would be willing to write an online review for my company. I suppose I avoided doing this because I thought it might inconvenience them too much, and also because I thought my good business reputation would be enough to continue bringing in new clients. In retrospect, I likely lost out on a lot of business that would have been generated from having more online reviews. I eventually learned that almost all of my happy clients were willing to write an online review for me.
#4: Going above and beyond for your clients will protect you when mistakes are made
Mistakes will inevitably be made by either yourself or by one of your employees. If you always aim to go above and beyond for your clients, the fallout from these mistakes will be greatly diminished by all of the goodwill that you have already created with them from your great customer service.
#5: Hire a good tax accountant to help find as many tax deductions as possible
When I first started my company, I was surprised at how many business expenses I was able to legitimately write off as tax deductions. A good tax accountant will help you deduct as many of your expenses as possible, so that you can try to keep your tax burden low. Although it can often be very hard to physically keep track of all of your business receipts, I found that receipt scanning apps are really helpful in digitally storing and organizing all of the receipts for me.
#6: Consider making your own website
Due to the fact that most websites have occasional issues and need updates, I slowly realized that it was easier to just create and manage my websites myself. Additionally, on top of the money that I saved by building and managing the websites myself, I also enjoyed the increased flexibility and control when making quick changes whenever I wanted. You should also consider using a separate company to handle your business emails, instead of just using your website provider.
By keeping your website and email providers separate, you won’t have to try to export all your business emails when it comes time to change your website provider. It is also a good idea to back up all your important business documents in a separate hard drive. I think I lost all of my business documents at least twice in the past 10 years and was therefore forced to recreate all of my invoices, contracts, and important documents each time. This can be very time consuming and annoying.
#7: When appropriate, take photos before, during and after jobs
If possible, you might consider taking photos when any business is being conducted. These photos can not only help clear up any potential miscommunications you might have with your clients, but these photos can also be used on your online social media postings or on your website.
#8: Listen to your gut when deciding to work for a client or not.
One of the perks of owning a company is that you generally have a lot more power in choosing which clients you want to work with. Although you don’t typically have this option when selling an online product, service providing companies can give you a high degree of power in choosing your clients.
I’ve noticed over the past 10 years that you will occasionally have a client who is beyond your ability to please, no matter how great your customer service has been. It is important to recognize these clients BEFORE starting a business relationship with them, because they can really wreck havoc on your schedule and take a huge toll on your overall happiness.
For me, a red flag for these types of clients is if they relentlessly try to renegotiate the price of your services. These types of clients would tend to immediately ask for either a large discount or ask for multiple service quotes, which can take a lot of time to produce.
Another red flag for me was if I heard them badmouthing another service provider in front of me. I tried to avoid working for these clients because there was a decent chance that this was a well-established behavior of theirs and that they might end up saying similar things about my company if given the chance. Another red flag for me was
The last major red flag I saw was if a potential client was very untrusting of my abilities, and was eager to control every small detail of the job. I found that these types of clients would typically become the hardest part of the whole job, and that they could distract me or my employees enough to sometimes cause unnecessary mistakes to be made.
#9: Think about taking up photoshop as a new hobby
This isn’t always necessary if you have a friend or family member who is good at creating graphics, but you will undoubtedly find yourself in need of custom graphics throughout your entrepreneurial journey. For example, in the course of your business venture, there’s a really good chance you’ll need to create business cards, brochures, print ads, online ads, social media and website graphics.
Although you can hire someone to help build a lot of these graphics at the beginning, it will get progressively more cost prohibitive to continue hiring them for all of your future graphics. I found that as I slowly learned to use Photoshop proficiently, I was able to create all of my own graphics, which eventually became as good as any of the graphics I was paying people to produce.
Understanding how to use Photoshop has slowly become one of my more valuable acquired business skills, and has even allowed me to customize my own websites to a large degree.
#10: Put in the hours of conducting research to become an expert in your field
Although the old adage of “fake it until you make it” does have a lot of validity as an entrepreneur, you’ll make it a lot easier on yourself if you do as much research into your new field as you can. Your increased knowledge and understanding will not only help impress your clients, but it will give you a lot more overall confidence in going forward with your business.
You should also be willing to admit when you don’t have an answer to a client’s question. When this ever happened to me, I would tell them that I would immediately get back to them with an answer and would always follow through with it. Since people can generally tell if someone is bluffing when trying to answer a question that they don’t know the answer to, I found that by just being honest about your momentary lapse in knowledge will help you come across as more genuine and trustworthy to your clients.
Keep in mind that these moments will become less and less common as you go forward, and that it is just part of becoming an expert in your field.
I really hope that some of these learned lessons benefited any military veteran who read this article. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me at Call In The Cavalry nonprofit for military veterans (callthecavalry.org).
Additionally, Call In The Cavalry also offers veteran-led local and foreign charity events which may help you or a veteran that you know regain a sense of community and purpose that may have been lost in the transition back to a civilian.
P.S. Are you thinking of buying a business? I recommend taking a look at Acquira and its accelerator as a way to get started. They place you in a cohort with other business buyers, help you vet deals, and then help you put together the financing to close on a business. Take a look HERE and use the link to get 10% off.
Related Articles:
What I learned Working at a Startup
3 Paths to Entrepreneurship For Veterans