It doesn’t take thinking about it too long before you realize that bringing your business to someone is much like buying a pig in a poke. Until a business proves itself to you, you simply never know what you will get when it comes time to deliver. Fortunately, there are ways to get a preview of a business, especially when you know that the owners, and to a great extent, even the employees, have certain qualifications. These owners and employees might be excellent craftsmen, but when it comes right down to it, there’s more to running a quality business than ability. It also takes attitude and the willingness to go above and beyond what is expected. That’s the primary difference between working with a veteran-owned business and virtually anyone else.
If you want to grow up quick and right, join the military. Everybody knows that. It’s why so many young people join the military right out of high school. There are certainly benefits to joining any respective service branch, but the military offers benefits unavailable practically anywhere else. For example, installations are actually just cities, with those who are responsible for running them and those who do the day to day work. They are all trained to do their work in the most efficient and economical manner possible. There are those who manage accounting, aircraft maintenance, and even cutting the lawns. Regardless of the specific job they do, those in the military learn to take as well as to give orders. Above all, however, they learn to complete a mission as directed.
Of course, this is all well and good when these men and women are serving their country, but when they retire or otherwise separate themselves from the service, they take the same can-do attitude with them in civilian circles. That’s why so often you can pick a veteran out of a group, even among equally qualified people. A veteran will begin a job by ensuring that he understands his objectives, makes sure he has what he needs to complete that objective, then makes sure that regardless of the mission, that is it carried out.
When you do business with a veteran or a veteran-owned business, you can rest assured that when they tell you a job will be completed at a certain time and to a certain standard, it will be. This goes for your first order all the way to your 101st order. You will get the same exacting standard in everything they do. It’s not only the way they were trained to work in the military, regardless of the branch, but it’s the level of maturity and mental toughness they learn to use in getting a job done right.
How can you be so sure that this is what a given veteran will give you? It’s because this is the way they were trained to perform in whatever task they were given. It doesn’t matter whether they were given the mission of advancing on a hill or a beachhead or performing a print job. They are driven to succeed and to give every effort their best, regardless of what that purpose is. Their standards are exacting, but they are high too. That’s the way a military member learns to keep his subordinates alive as well as vital to carrying out their purpose. This is why hiring a veteran is the closest thing you or any employer has to get the assurance that a job will be done right, on time, and under budget.
Probably most important of all, a veteran wants to prove themselves in whatever job they undertake. They might be wearing civilian clothing when they are working for you, but you will still get the same mission-oriented drive they learned and thrived on in the military. You can take advantage of that same drive to your benefit. All they need is the opportunity. Why not give a veteran a chance? there are no guarantees, but there aren’t with a civilian either, but well give you odds.
Several years ago there was a book written by two professors, Reis and Trout, called Marketing Warfare, which made the analogy of business being combat. Why not hire someone who is most fitting for fighting the war of business?
