Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today I wanna talk about how veterans can find purpose through entrepreneurship after the military. A lot of us lack a sense of purpose after leaving the military. Uh, a lot of veterans are self-starters, highly motivated type individuals. Sometimes we even prefer to work alone, which we can pretty easily do if we’re running our own business.

And there’s nothing wrong with that type of thing, right? If you prefer to work by yourself, as opposed to in big groups, [00:01:00] um, you don’t have to. If you own a business, uh, if you own a business, you could work in a team, you can hire people, you can contract out to other people who may have other skills that maybe you don’t have.

Maybe you’re really great at one particular thing, but marketing your business isn’t your thing. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert at that because there are people out there who can do marketing for you. And so you can work with those people as well, as much as little as you need to. Um, so it’s kind of a better way in some cases to get out into the workforce without having to dive into a nine to five job that’s sucking the life out of you because you hate your coworkers.

You can’t stand the job, you can’t stand the. Community or the environment that you’re working in, um, you know, it may not be sustainable to work by yourself long term, uh, depending on what it is that you’re doing, but it’s a [00:02:00] good start and you can always add people to the mix as time goes on. Uh, where you start to see maybe holes in your business and you need some help with different things.

Uh, I know I. As an entrepreneur for, uh, probably close to a decade after, uh, getting out of the military because I just really enjoyed the benefits of working for myself, being my own boss. Um, some of those benefits, I mean, for me, it gave me control over my life, over my career. Um, I got what out of it, what I put.

Um, if I wanted to take time off and I didn’t want to spend a ton of time working late nights and all that kind of stuff, I didn’t have to, and I could take time to relax, to go on a trip with my family to eventually when I [00:03:00] needed it, I, when I realized I needed it, I should say, I was able to get the mental health treatment that I needed without having to take time off of work and have to get approval from a boss.

Um, Gave me more freedom in that sense. Um, and for me, it gave me the opportunity to create something that was meaningful to me. I liked being able to take a concept or an idea or something from absolutely nothing, a blank page in a notebook, and come up with something from my own head, my own ideas. And that just.

Started working and created an income. It put food on the table, kept a roof over my family’s head. Uh, it, it allowed us to do some great things, allowed me to travel to some cool places, meet some cool people, uh, and gave me lots of opportunities that I maybe wouldn’t have otherwise had. Had I not started my own business.

[00:04:00] Um, and the other thing too is the business that I started, so I...