The document discusses why veterans make exceptional entrepreneurs and find success in business ownership. It notes that the five-year success rate of veteran-owned businesses is almost twice that of non-veteran owned businesses. The military experience provides veterans with diverse life experiences and skills that translate well to entrepreneurship, such as being resourceful goal-setters accustomed to achieving objectives with limited resources, and able to build effective teams. Franchising in particular presents opportunities that leverage veterans' experience with large systems and training programs.

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As a professor of
entrepreneurship, I’ve
watched the vocation
of business ownership
change lives and
communities.
I’ve watched entrepreneurship give
freedom and a voice to countless numbers
of people – to the young mother who
maybe is denied opportunities by her
employee because of her gender; to the
retiree who is assumed to have nothing
left to offer simply because of their age;
to the young soldier who I met at Walter
Reed hospital, who lost both his legs in
Afghanistan, and who said to me that he
sees being an entrepreneur as a way to take
his life back from the government and the
doctors, and all those people who appear
to written him off – those who think that
the productive part of his life is over.
If entrepreneurship is “the most
democratic, most freedom creating
phenomenon in the history of the human
race,” as some have said, who better than
to pursue entrepreneurship than those of
us who know what it means to fight for
freedom and democracy?
Veterans make exceptional entrepreneurs.
In fact, there are about four million
veteran-owned businesses in the
U.S. today. The U.S. Small Business
Administration released a study which
indicated that prior military service is one
of the strongest predictors of who in this
country is likely to start a business – not
education or wealth, but prior military
service. The five-year success rate of
veteran-owned businesses is almost twice
as high as non-vet-owned businesses.
These are facts that hint at a story – but
don’t explain why. Why are military
veterans drawn in such large numbers to
entrepreneurship, and why do they find
such success?
One important fact is that successful
entrepreneurs often have very diverse life
experiences. The entrepreneurial process
begins with recognizing an opportunity,
and those individuals who have had
diverse life experiences are more likely
to draw from those experiences to see
possibilities that others don’t see. This
ability is the essence of entrepreneurship.
The very nature of military service confers
to our veterans this critical resource
because the military forces them out of
their comfort zone – it forces them into
life situations that they otherwise would
not experience.
Michael Haynie. PhD
VeteransinFranchising
A C h a n c e t o
L i v e t h e D r e a m
T h e y D e f e n d e d

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Successful entrepreneurs are also
resourceful goal setters, and demonstrate
a single-minded focus on achieving those
goals. By its very nature, entrepreneurship
– especially in the beginning – is about
doing more with less. Entrepreneurs have
to bootstrap, scratch and claw without
losing sight of their goal – or to put it in
military speak, their mission. Veterans
have this quality in spades. How often in
a military career have our veterans been
given a new project or responsibility, and
their commander said, “We’ll make sure
you have any and all of the resources you
need to make this happen – more people,
more money, whatever you need.” Never
in my 14 years of service did that happen.
Instead it was the opposite: “We need to
you to take on this new project, it needs to
get done in three months, and I’m sorry,
but we can’t give you any more people.
Mike Haynie
And oh, there is no money to fund this
either.” But we always got it done. That’s
entrepreneurship.
Successful entrepreneurs also need to be
able to recruit and build a team that will
weather the inevitable storms their venture
will encounter. As leaders of their own
small businesses, veterans are adept at
cultivating these high-performing teams.
Several studies have compared military
service-members and veterans to non-
veterans with regard to team-building
skills and efficacy. Findings from that
research illustrate that (as compared to
those that have not served in the military)
veterans are more adept with regard to 1)
organizing and defining team goals and
mission, 2) defining team member roles
and responsibilities, and 3) developing a
plan for action. Research also suggests
that those with prior military service have
a high level of efficacy for team-related
activities; that is, veterans exhibit an
inherent and enduring belief that they can
efficiently and effectively integrate and
contribute to a new or existing team. As it
relates to franchising, either as franchisor
or franchisee, this quality means that a
veteran will easily incorporate into the
broader corporate team, as well as build a
strong team of their own.
Franchising presents its own set of
opportunities for veterans, as compared
to other forms of entrepreneurship.
Veterans are used to being resourceful
and entrepreneurial within the context
of a large, system-driven organization,
and many franchises mirror this system
closely. Veterans are also used to
progressing through training provided
by the military to both advance their
existing skills and create new ones – and
they are adept at rapidly making use of
their training to move forward in a new
direction. As in the scenario described
above, veterans are rarely provided with
the resources they need to accomplish the
mission, but they often find themselves
executing missions outside of the realm of
their initial set of expertise as well. With
just a small amount of training on their
new set of tasks, veterans will immediately
leverage these skills with the confidence of
someone who has years of expertise. Put
together, the training and systems provided
by a franchisor allow a veteran to leverage
their skillset, navigate the hierarchy
of the broader corporation, and yet be
entrepreneurial throughout the process.
The momentum in this country today
around veteran’s entrepreneurship excites
me. It sounds audacious – almost arrogant
– to say, but I believe that in the past few
years, there have been many positive
and powerful steps to building what will
one day be a historic and exceedingly
powerful network of veteran entrepreneurs
across this country. Where I teach at
Syracuse University, our motto when we
talk about entrepreneurship is “Dream,
Believe, Pursue.” Today’s veterans have
an opportunity to live that motto through
entrepreneurship, and to live the American
Dream, which they fought so hard to
defend.
Dr. Mike Haynie is a 14-year veteran
of the United States Air Force. He is
the Founder and Executive Director of
the Institute for Veterans and Military
Families at Syracuse University and the
Barnes Professor of Entrepreneurship at
the Whitman School of Management.
For more information:
http://vets.syr.edu/
“The five-year success rate of veteran-owned
businesses is almost twice as high as non-vet-
owned businesses.”