Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans Is a Launch Pad for Startups

When Sergeant Joey Chaires retired from the U.S. Army in 2020, he was a UH 60 Blackhawk mechanic. He had been attached to multiple National Guard units, including those in Alaska, Arizona and Michigan. “I began in heavy maintenance and continued on to the 2nd Battalion, 238th Aviation Regiment Alpha Company,” says Chaires, who served eight years in the Guard, with one tour overseas. “One lesson I learned from being a Crew Chief was to make definitive decisions: Trust your instinct, training and experience to solve problems along the way to your objective.”

Chaires concludes that, later on, “that could make the difference between having a ‘cool business idea someday’ to generating an actual revenue stream. Proper planning and preparation breed the confidence to navigate obstacles in the way.”

When he landed back in Arizona with his family and felt ready to launch his own “cool business idea” as a civilian, his instinctive planning and preparation led him to enroll in the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) at UCLA Anderson. The EBV Consortium of Schools, of which Anderson is a national partner, offers cutting-edge, experiential training in entrepreneurship and small business management to soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines disabled as a result of their service to operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. The intent of EBV is to open the door to small business ownership by developing competencies in building and sustaining an entrepreneurial venture. EBV is administered at Anderson by the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and taught by tenured Anderson research faculty who teach the school’s full-time and part-time MBA curricula. In 2023, Kumar Rajaram, Hal Hershfield and George Geis were among the professors.

Anderson’s 2023 EBV class consisted of 17 men and women who came from California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii. They represented the Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Air Force. Among the participants, four had separated from the military within the prior 12 months. The entrepreneurs are incubating businesses in a wide range of sectors and industries, including consulting, real estate, fitness, IT and cybersecurity. One is developing aerial mapping technology. Another is opening a donut shop.

Chaires is scaling Ofelia’s Seasonings and Spices, a company offering a gourmet spice blend named for Chaires’ grandmother. “We initiated the LLC in 2023,” he says, “and are in the preparation stage of establishing sustainable and ethical sourcing, as well as providing value through cost. Ofelia’s will be primarily appealing to sales with major food distributors like Sysco and Shamrock for direct sales to restaurants, as well as to entities within the federal government.”

If it sounds like Chaires entered the summer program with his business plan locked down, he was well aware that challenges still loomed. “The main issue was to organize each step in preparation to launch. The EBV residency experience provided me the tools to successfully prepare, as well as launch the business up to the very first sale.”

He says that Professor Corinne Bendersky’s lecture on networking and team management was especially influential and unexpected. “The influence that networking brings, especially for a new business, is incredible. Continuing to be genuine in your interactions — whether personal or business-based — not only empowers you to pursue growth, but also places you in a position to help others. That entire networking lecture had a great message. Financial projections, cost analysis, operational efficiency models and sales execution are absolutely imperative to be sustainable and successful, but operating from a stance of integrity and care will set a business aside from its competitors.”

A hallmark of EBV is its immersive character. Peer interactions are as important as the lectures by seasoned professors like Bendersky and Eric Sussman, along with longtime EBV faculty directors George Abe and Al Osborne.

“Peers with experience currently operating their businesses added to a dynamic framework to imagine going from a good idea to a functioning entity,” says Chaires.

EBV program manager Jackie Toenniessen adds, “We had four amazing TAs, all veterans or currently on active duty, guiding the program participants and providing feedback on their business concepts and presentations. Having a shared military background not only helps create the relationship between student and TA, but expedites understanding of where the participants have been and where they want to go with their business.” Jennifer Dymicki and Kristofer Danielson (U.S. Marine Corps), and Tyler Dennison and Rick Miller (U.S. Navy) will all graduate in the Executive MBA Class of 2024.

Guest presenters included Traci Cole, director of the SoCal Veterans Business Outreach Center, and Eric Cazenave, whose Cazenave Consulting Group provides presentation and leadership development training. Anderson alumni Todd Hickman (’05), a finance professional and U.S. Naval Academy graduate who mentored EBV participants in 2015, and Captain Juan Rose (’13) paid a visit to the 2023 EBV participants, too. Rose, an executive officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and a 2012 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow, earned his MBA after a decade of military service, with the aim of coupling his leadership experience with more technical knowledge. He and Hickman helped evaluate the EBV entrepreneurs’ final presentations.

As for Chaires, he finished the program with a concrete idea of how to move the needle on his venture. “Since EBV, our first move has been to break down our costs and identify profit margins. We’re reviewing our previously awarded contracts to ensure our pricing is competitive,” he says. “The next move will be to prepare a marketing and advertising campaign to showcase our brand, and solicit business from our target customer segments.”