Being an entrepreneur takes a lot of patience, discipline and curiosity.
For veterans, those traits sound familiar.
"If you have the patience and skills we all had as veterans, you're going to make it," Scott Neil, founder of American Freedom Distillery, said. "We’re not an anomaly. We stick to the plan and make it happen."
Neil spoke in front of a packed room at the Bad Monkey in Ybor City Tuesday night, in part to raise awareness of a partnership between national non profit Bunker Labs and Tampa-based non profit Action Zone.
"The same business plan we wrote five years ago is the same one we have today — we’re executing to precision," Neil said. "All the fundamentals I learned in the military are fundamental today...and to get like an entrepreneur, you have to be like a soldier. You have to be brave enough to say 'That's what I'm going for.'"
Chicago-based Bunker Labs was created in 2014 to help give veterans resources to become entrepreneurs. Bunker Labs teams up with non profits across the nation, such as Action Zone, to provide a more localized resource hub and give offerings such as business education classes.
"If you're trying to start a business there might be some things you don’t know, but more importantly there's some people you don’t know," Bunker Labs CEO Todd Connor said. "And we’re trying to solve the people equation of it."
Bunker Labs plans to open a formal space for the partnership to reside in later this year at an unknown location, which Connor added will hopefully spur new businesses in the area.
"My hope is to come back in September for a ribbon cutting to formalize our presence in Tampa, but I also want to hear about the dozens of people who made a dollar because they're involved in this community," he said. "Let's make Tampa a wonderful place for military veterans to start a business."
