About 2.5 million small businesses are majority-owned by military veterans, according to the Small Business Administration.
It took two years to get my license to operate. Meanwhile, I had to cover expenses like insurance and the note on the plane, without any revenue coming in. When I finally got the license to operate, the business was about two weeks away from running out of cash. What prepared me to succeed when I started my business was my experience flying over Iraq with my wingman. The Navy trained us to operate in a fast-moving environment where we often had to think through problems without any time to ask for direction. Although we learned to follow standard operating procedure to solve whatever challenges arose, often we had to take calculated risks. If we made the wrong call, we had to be willing to change direction rapidly.
The way I see it, if you fail, you're not a failure; if you succeed, you're not a success. You're an entrepreneur, which means that no matter what happened today, tomorrow is a new day, and you have to get up and keep grinding. It's almost the same mindset as in the military.