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Entrepreneurial Roots

Business ownership runs in my blood.

I am the product of several generations of enterprising entrepreneurs, starting with my great-grandfather on my father’s side. My grandfather was a World War II fighter pilot who, after completing his service, returned home to the state of North Dakota and began a legacy of business ownership.

It must have been an interesting predicament to come home from war and decide on a job. In fact, this is a tough decision that our exiting military men and women are still challenged with today. Let’s face it: there are not a whole lot of traditional jobs that provide the same challenge and adrenaline rush that comes with flying a P-38 Lightning, dogfighting, and dive-bombing the enemy over the Pacific. But I imagine that my grandfather found business ownership and the autonomy that comes with starting something of his own to be a pretty close second.

Upon his return from war, my grandfather partnered with another WWII veteran and used his GI Bill benefits to obtain financing to buy John Deere dealerships in both Turtle Lake and Dickinson, North Dakota. After more than ten years in farm equipment sales, he went on to open his own insurance company with the help of my grandmother. For my grandparents, their insurance company provided a fulfilling career and also gave them an outlet to give back to their community (their company was a bedrock of their small community of farmers, oil field workers, and university personnel). In the end, their post-service start-up provided over forty-five years of support for their family and the local economy, while inspiring several generations of entrepreneurism in the future.

From my grandparents’ success, three of their four children also went on to start successful businesses. My father was the oldest, and the first of the kids to venture into entrepreneurship. After struggling to find stability in his oil-related field of engineering, my Dad chose to start-up his own oil-related engineering business in the basement of our house in the small town of Laurel, Montana.

My bedroom was located adjacent to my parents’ basement office, so I had a front-row seat to the day-to-day toils and tribulations of their start-up experience. I saw it all. I saw the hard parts of their start-up experience, like the long hours and constant responsibilities. But I also saw the incredible benefits, like the flexibility it provided my parents to be able to attend my sports competitions, no matter when or where they were. I was a witness to their hard work, and it gave me great respect for my family’s legacy of entrepreneurship.

Unbeknownst to me, it would also teach me many lessons that would lend a hand in my success later in life.

The State of Military Spouses

Now, fast-forward thirty years. Once I transitioned from the active-duty Air Force to a more at-home role, I was able to engage in more activities with other military spouses. Suddenly, I was immersed in military life from a spouse’s perspective. This was a turning point, where I realized just how many of the spouses around me were not working.

At first I just chalked it up to the fact that most of the women were raising kids and had chosen to stay home. Or maybe it was because we military families moved so much that people stopped trying to find jobs? Maybe it was just that military spouses didn’t have the desire to work? But after three years of being home with my kids, trying to find the perfect job to fit around kids, military life, and moving, I realized that none of those statements were entirely true. It wasn’t as black and white as I originally thought.

The work equation for military spouses is not a simple binary decision. There are a myriad of variables that go into whether a woman works or not. What I knew from chatting with my fellow spouses was that nearly all of my friends had the desire to work; however, the available options were not always a good fit. At that point, my eyes were opened to the fact that not only do military spouses need more creative and flexible options that work around their demanding lives, but they possess the very skills and perseverance necessary to create these opportunities themselves.

My hunch was confirmed once I began doing my research and looked into the numbers. And in fact, the numbers were more sobering than I expected. According to the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey, 55% of spouses reported that they need to work and 90% reported that they want to work. Yet despite their desire and capability, the military spouse suffers from a 38% underemployment rate and three times the current civilian unemployment rate.

The rate of military spouse employment is something the Department of Defense has monitored closely over the last twenty-five years, since it directly affects service member retention. Consistent research dating back as far as 1981 confirms that civilian military spouses of active-duty personnel work less and earn less money than non-military spouses of the same demographics.

The most recent research was completed in 2015 through the DMDC (Defense Manpower Data Center) Survey of Active-Duty Spouses and the Blue Star Families Annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey in 2016. Both provided some healthy insight. First, these surveys concluded that the large majority of spouses are females under the age of forty. This isn’t shocking, but it does confirm that the large majority of military families are still quite traditional, with men in the role of the active-duty member and women as the spouse. Second, military spouses’ educational achievements exceed the level of their civilian peers during important career-developing years. It is interesting to note that spouses gain four-year degrees at a rate of 5% higher than their civilian counterparts, from the ages of 25-30. In that same age range, military spouses also obtain graduate degrees at double the frequency of similar civilians. This is important, because it shows that the military spouse population is ambitious and capable of obtaining higher education at a pace that makes them highly desirable as employees.

Unfortunately, there is undeniable research demonstrating that despite their great qualifications, military spouses face higher unemployment than the rest of the country. The results will vary depending on which agency is measuring; however, all studies lead to the same conclusion. In 2010, a RAND Corporation study found that 12% of military spouses were unemployed. Five years later, that gap rose. In 2015, the unemployment rate of military spouses hovered around 18%. That is more than three times the civilian unemployment rate for women over twenty!

And it gets worse.

Let’s move away from unemployment, and consider the underemployment of military spouses. Based on the most robust evaluation of underemployment completed in a RAND study in 2011, a whopping 38% of military spouses were underemployed (compared to 6% of civilian spouses based on educational level). This means that 38% of military spouses are employed in jobs not commensurate with their levels of experience or education. And to rub a little salt in the wound, they earn anywhere from 20-38% less than the average wage of their non-military peers in the same area of occupation.

If it wasn’t obvious before, this research highlights that there is a distinct problem. Military spouses want to work. Military spouses are capable and willing to work. However, military life creates numerous challenges to working in the traditional employment system. We know all this to be true. But questions remain: What can we do about this situation? And, why should the average American care about fixing this problem?

The Costs are Real

The reality is this bleak employment outlook for military spouses creates a culture of underemployment that costs the Department of Defense and the country dearly. A 2010 RAND study showed 42% of military spouses were not in the labor force. Add the previously mentioned 38% underemployment rate to an 18% unemployment rate, and it creates a problem where a large majority of spouses aren’t contributing to the country through earnings and income tax. That lost opportunity is actually a burden to the US economy and should create a sense of urgency regarding a need to remedy the problem.

When you break down the total lost income tax, unemployment benefits, and total health costs associated with unemployment, the unrealized bill it creates is absolutely astonishing. Experts estimate that the total estimated cost of military spouse underemployment is somewhere between $710,344,000 and $1,068,508,000. A little alarming, right?!

This may be a shocking price tag, but the costs don’t stop there.

The other costs of military spouse underemployment may be less easily measured on a survey, but anyone in the military community knows they are real. One of them is the correlation between overall life satisfaction for military spouses (and family members) and service member retention rates. As a spouse, I can tell you for a fact that the statement, “a happy wife equals a happy life” rings true when it comes to longevity of service.

In the 2016 Military Family Lifestyle Survey by Blue Star Families, the top three concerns reported by spouses, active-duty members and veterans alike were “military pay/benefits,” “change in retirement benefits,” and “military spouse employment.” The study went on to mention that the three most common reasons people left the military were military retirement (inevitable), completion of service obligation (also inevitable), and family reasons. Retirements and fulfilled commitments are inevitable and hard to control. But “family reasons” are very much within our control.

When spouses are satisfied with their work/life situation, they are much more likely to encourage and help their service member to continue their career in the military. In a blog post titled “Reflections in the Rearview Mirror,” milpreneur and writer Angela Uebelacker describes being a military spouse and the challenges it brings to raising a family. She perfectly describes it as being “simply not that simple.”

In fact, studies done on the civilian population show there is a direct correlation between employment and individual well-being. As the size of the overall military continues to dwindle and the operations tempo of deployments continues to remain intense, military spouse employment and its effect on retention will only increase in importance.

The other hidden cost is that of mental health. A life filled with military rigors inevitably gives way to things like depression, loneliness, addictions, and sometimes even suicide. Statistics tell us that twenty-two veterans commit suicide every day. Unfortunately, the statistics for spouses and family members are not as closely tracked. But based on the frequency of other indicators, like calls to helplines and medical data, we know that mental health issues and suicides in family members have also increased as the operations tempo of the military has remained high through more than a decade of war.

Unfortunately, openness and honesty about suffering from mental illness is not highly looked upon within the military community. In fact, 41% of active-duty respondents in the 2016 Blue Star Families Survey said that they were uncomfortable seeking out mental health care from a provider in the military system. Additionally, 40% of survey participants felt that if they sought out mental health care programs or services, it could potentially harm their career.

Finally, we have to recognize that under- and unemployment rates are not just gee-whiz facts for many military families. They are a matter of survival. According to Blue Star Families, 47% of military families had two income-earning parents, which is significantly lower than the general US population, among whom 66% of households have two incomes. As the cost of living rises, more and more military families need the extra income to survive. A 2014 article by ABC News indicated that over five thousand active-duty military families are eligible for food stamps. Low-ranking enlisted families are the most at risk of falling prey to financial burdens without a reliable second income; however, even as the family of a mid-level officer, we had our own struggles in surviving on a single income.

After I left active duty, we were just barely able to cover the cost of our average California home mortgage. Given that at the time we bought our house in 2007, real estate prices had inflated to all-time highs, there was certainly no room in our budget for niceties like traveling, entertainment, or eating out. I remember I would panic at night thinking about any sort of catastrophe that would cost us more than a few hundred dollars, because we didn’t have any extra cash to scrounge up should that situation arise.

To pass the time with as little spending as possible, I made it a game every day to take my two young kids on outings each day that cost no more than five dollars total. We had to get creative, but we eventually found our fun at the public library, the cheapest bakery in town, and in free public parks. I’m proud of the way we mustered through, but the extra stress and tension surrounding our finances during that timeframe is not something I’d ever wish on anyone, much less on someone whose sole focus should be on protecting our country.

The Answer Is Outside the Box

Thank goodness I’m hard-headed when it comes to getting something I want. In the case of my employment, I was determined to find the right kind of employment that would help me avoid the mental health traps I saw around me and to find something that worked around my family’s needs, despite the fact that I had few examples of successfully employed spouses around me.

Once I realized that the answer was not in a traditional job, I became like a dog with a bone when it came to pursuing my business ideas. I didn’t listen to the naysayers who second-guessed my decision. I put my head down, got determined, and found a way to make progress happen each and every day. If I hadn’t been so hard-headed and determined, I may have ended up unemployed, unfulfilled, and bitter after years of frustrating attempts to find meaningful work.

When I began my hunt for the perfect, flexible job, I quickly realized that traditional jobs wanted traditional employees. The kind of employees that can be relied on for years. The kind who don’t move away. And the kind that don’t have lives filled with uncertainty like deployments, single parenthood, and extra stress. The traditional world of work sees our military “baggage” as something that makes us less desirable. After watching military spouses continue to unsuccessfully try to fit the mold of traditional jobs, I quickly came to the conclusion that our non-traditional lives will never fit the traditional mold. So why do we keep trying to fit our military square peg in the traditional round hole?

I began thinking. What if we took a step back and stopped feeling apologetic for the fact that we don’t fit into the traditional work world, and embraced the lessons and blessings we’ve learned through our non-traditional lives? Perhaps the answer to the underemployment problem was not in the traditional work world at all. What if we took a clue from our grandparents, and took our employment destinies into our own hands? Not as employees, but rather as employers—entrepreneurs!

From Boots to Business

The concept of connecting business ownership to the military community is not a new one. In fact, my grandfather’s story was just one of many from his era. According to the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University, after WWII, 49% of veterans started businesses with financial encouragement from the GI Bill. This carried through the Korean War where 40% of veterans continued the small business start-up tradition.

Yet since 9/11, only 4% of the 3.6 million veterans who have served in the US have attempted a post-service small business start-up. To put that in perspective, this 4% rate works out to 162,000 new veteran-owned businesses in 2016. In contrast, if veterans today were starting businesses at the same rate they did after WWII, that number would jump up to 1.4 million businesses. Additionally, since statistics show that veteran-owned companies employ an average of two additional veterans, we could logically estimate that in one year we could create another 2.8 million jobs for our country, simply from veteran business ownership.

The reason veteran entrepreneurship isn’t as widespread as during the post-WWII timeframe can be attributed to several possible factors. The first and most likely cause is that the post-9/11 GI Bill does not allow for low-interest loans like the version of the past provided. Another major factor is that after the economic crisis of 2007, it is much harder to obtain funding for small businesses. Since veteran-owned businesses are also 30% more likely to hire other vets, this lack of milpreneur start-ups has exacerbated the job creation problem over the last two decades. This is evidenced by a 7% decrease in vet-founded businesses from 1996 to 2014.

The Start-Up Nation

But we shouldn’t give up hope of seeing a new revival of military entrepreneurs. In fact, with the right mindset, we can create an environment that encourages the military community to capitalize on their strengths, to innovate, and to launch their own businesses. Imagine the positive ripple effect this could have right here at home!

Let’s look to the country of Israel to see a great example of how military service and the hardships of military life have provided the perfect foundation for great entrepreneurs there. Israel is a country that relies on conscription (mandatory military service) to maintain a robust military. All Jewish citizens in Israel, both men and women, over the age of eighteen are required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces for at least two years. The normal length of service is a minimum of two years and eight months for men and two years for women.

Authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer studied the success of Israeli entrepreneurs in their book, “Start-up Nation,” to uncover the secrets of how Israel, a war-ridden and relatively young country with a population of only 7.1 million people and no natural resources, could create more start-up companies than larger, more traditionally stable countries like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Their research discovered that when you combine the skills and resilience of military service, the persistence to succeed, a pay-it-forward attitude, and a spirit of “chutzpah,” you end up with unparalleled economic development.

According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “after the US, Israel is the best” place in the world for entrepreneurs. Tech start-up Waze, a mobile satellite navigation application, and something I use daily to cart kids to and from after-school activities, was founded in 2007. It was the first Israeli consumer-app company to be bought for over $1 billion, and it helped to set the tone for building large tech companies in Israel. Waze allows millions of drivers to share real-time traffic and road info that can save others time and gas money on their daily commute. If you Google “Israeli start-ups in the US,” you’ll come across numerous lists of companies to watch in the coming years.

This is proof that with a strong history of military service, combined with a head-strong passion to succeed, you can literally come out of nowhere and create your own economic stimulus movement! Every military business owner is helping in this movement. And with a tribe of milpreneurs, social influencers, and supporters with a shared vision, we can foster the right environment to change the world right here at home. In fact, the military community has the skills, network, and manpower to make the US an even better Start-Up Nation!

Why the Most Portable Job is a Business

The reasons business ownership works well with military life are numerous. With a shift in commerce from big corporations to smaller, more nimble business models, there has never been a better time in history to be an entrepreneur. With more and more brick-and-mortar stores trading their physical spaces for more agile virtual business models, the opportunities for the everyday entrepreneur are endless.

Could you have ever imagined that one of the biggest retailers in the country would get the large majority of their revenue from online sales?

Kudos to Amazon.

Could you have ever imagined that one of the most successful taxi companies wouldn’t own any cars?

Kudos to Uber.

Could you have ever imagined that one of the largest vacation rental companies wouldn’t own any hotels?

Kudos to Airbnb.

And could you have ever imagined that one of the most popular methods of watching movies wouldn’t include a theater or a DVD?

Kudos to Netflix.

These cutting-edge companies prove that business ownership is changing rapidly with the times. Hence, there is no time like the present to take advantage of this evolution and build a business that you can custom-design around your specific life needs.

Small business ownership provides unmatched flexibility and a variety of logistical options for how to set up your operations. For me, it provided the flexibility to work around the challenges of raising small children despite unpredictable deployments and frequent relocations. There was no other job out in the market that I could have obtained that would have allowed me the flexibility I needed to work around naps, babysitter availability, and my hubby’s flying schedule. Over the course of ten years in business we have relocated to three different states, my kids have migrated from preschool schedules to full-time school schedules, and my husband has been promoted in rank three different times. Through it all, my business allowed me to flex along with each and every phase.

Along with incredible flexibility, being a business owner also allowed me to maintain my job as “Mom” as my #1 priority. As much as I was driven to grow my business, I was also very sensitive to making sure I was always there for the little moments with my kids. I will never forget the pictures etched in my memory of bringing my kids with me to work when I was decorating homes. Most of those memories involve them sitting strapped in their car seats with big smiles on their faces, with faux foliage and other essential home staging décor packed all around them. Once we would arrive at a job, I could give them harmless tasks like moving plants and folding blankets as their way of helping to complete the work.

Not only was it handy to bring them with me on jobs to avoid daycare costs, but it allowed them to see their mom pursuing goals outside of the common homemaking tasks. I have always cherished that from a young age; my kids were able to see me not only as their Mom, but also as a smart, capable, and driven woman that they could look up to and be proud of.

Another major advantage to business ownership today is the fact that technology is something anyone can leverage. Amazingly, technology has evened the business playing field and is providing access to business opportunities for more and more everyday entrepreneurs. With each new passing day, I also recognize how incredibly capable the next generation is with all these new technological advances.

The Millennial generation has been raised in an era where video, internet, and Wi-Fi are all they have ever known, making them more connected and more capable than ever before. When I graduated college at the turn of the millennium, cell phones were just becoming popular, but they were large and had antennas and there was nothing smart about them, since the internet itself was just gaining traction. I giggle at memories of “chatting” with my husband on a blue DOS screen where we made our own version of an emoji face with the shift key and punctuation <grin>. It is absolutely incredible to think of the giant strides in technology that have occurred in the last seventeen years.

Today, a young entrepreneur can literally use the power of a smart phone to run a variety of convenient small businesses. And most likely, any business they choose will leverage the power of social media to do work for them at all hours of the day or night. There is also a strong possibly that his or her business will occur in multiple countries across the globe and in multiple languages. In today’s world, all this could happen from the palm of your hand, with you still in your PJs, sitting comfortably on the couch. The power of technology today is literally mind blowing. And it’s providing much needed empowerment to the milpreneurs who deserve it!