Veterans-turned-entrepreneurs offer advice
After 13 years in the Marine Corps, Brian Iglesias was ready to embark on a dream career in filmmaking. Prepared to pay his dues, he worked the phones, sent e-mails, and paid visits. But all he ran into were dead ends. “Not too long ago I was leading over 225 Marines in landslide relief operations in the Philippines,” he says. But “I had to beg people to let me intern. Only my friends were willing to give me work.”
Frustrated, Iglesias decided to start his own company and turned to one of a growing number of programs that help soldiers become entrepreneurs. He enrolled in the intensive 14-month Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (Iglesias has a metal plate fused in his neck), offered for free to service-disabled veterans at Syracuse, Florida State, UCLA, Texas A&M, and Purdue. Started by James M. Haynie, an Air Force vet turned business school professor …more at What I Learned in the Trenches – BusinessWeek (http://www NULL.businessweek NULL.com/smallbiz/content/feb2009/sb20090210_236725 NULL.htm), published on 10 February 2009.
Flickr photo credit: stroopwafels
(http://www NULL.flickr NULL.com/photos/santioliveri/2617930440/)
Tags: Entrepreneurship