In business, even heroes need a little help
By Suchita Nayar
(Morristown, N.J.) Daily Record
They earned their stripes in the armed forces. They stood tall for their country and its people. Now, they're embarking on a new mission: entrepreneurship.
Gannett News Service
U.S. veterans are a community of 24 million — one in five of whom is chief executive officer of his own business.
Don Karpowich, an Air Force veteran from Morristown, N.J., combines his love of animals and entrepreneurship in his small business, PetAgree, which offers professional pet sitting and home-care services.
Take Don Karpowich, a 44-year-old Air Force veteran.
Near the end of the first Gulf War, Karpowich hurt his leg while jumping out of a plane during a special operations mission. During his lengthy rehabilitation, his Air Force buddies moved to a Saudi air base. Some of them asked him to watch over their pets and houses in their absence.
He did it as a favor; now he does it for a living. He provides professional pet sitting and home-care service through PetAgree in Morristown, N.J. Karpowich sees his small business as a marriage of his love for animals and entrepreneurship.
To get started, he attended seminars given by the Small Business Administration and worked with the Service Corps of Retired Executives, a nonprofit group that counsels would-be business owners face to face and over the Internet.
"There's a network of people that's absolutely necessary if you haven't done your own business before. The seminars are invaluable. As a result, I'm confident of what I'm doing," Karpowich said.
While some of these organizations have been around a while, their way of reaching out has improved.
"We're trying to get our message out that the SBA is here to help," said Martin McHenry, an SBA economic development specialist in New Jersey. "In the past, most people knew about the SBA, but they didn't know what we can do. Now, instead of sitting in our office, we're out there, meeting people including the county veterans and employment reps. We're definitely more aggressive and visible."
The SBA, in conjunction with the University of Central Florida and others, recently opened a National Entrepreneur Center in Orlando, the first of its kind on the East Coast. A sister center is in San Jose, Calif.
The centers, which serve as incubators for fledgling small businesses, recommend that entrepreneurs take five three-hour sessions aimed at teaching them the nuts and bolts of how to run a small business, said Al Polfer, director of the Orlando center.
"A lot of people get started without a plan and then end in failure," Polfer said. "We value planning as the most important part of the process."
Once the business plan and strategy are in place, funding is the next step.
The SBA is one of the most significant sources of funding for veteran entrepreneurs, according to a recent study by the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Clearinghouse on Entrepreneurial Education, better known as Celcee.
In 2001, the SBA served 72,000 such clients and the number is rising because of its micro-loan program, which offers loans with limits determined by each participating lender.
Still, running a business profitably is more than just doing something you like to do, experts caution.
If a person bakes yummy cookies, that doesn't mean he can run a bakery successfully, said Korean War veteran Claude Hagelberg of Madison, N.J., chairman of SCORE Chapter 24, a New Jersey-based small-business counseling and training group.
Small businesses pose challenges, and Hagelberg's advice is the same for all entrepreneurs: "If you want to go into business, be prepared to work very hard. Don't be discouraged if success is not imminent. Get some practical experience in the field you're trying to get into."
