Following completion of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program and graduation from the University of Tennessee, James A. “Jim” Haslam II was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1952. Not a stranger to serving our country as the son of a World War I and World War II army officer, he was on active duty from 1953 to 1955, and served as a Company Commander of an Engineer Combat Company in Korea in 1954 and 1955.
Three years after his return from Korea, Mr. Haslam opened the first Pilot gas station in 1958. It was a family-owned business with one gas station. Within the next 10 years, Pilot grew to 21 store locations and another 38 locations within the following five years. Today, Pilot Flying J is the largest operator of travel centers in North America with more than 750 locations in 44 states and six Canadian provinces, and employs more than 27,000 people. This is the type of entrepreneurial success Bunker Labs strives to create.
A veteran himself, Todd Connor founded Bunker Labs in 2014, a national non-profit organization that strives to empower military veteran entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses after their departure from service. Todd, current CEO, served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy for four years and served during Operation Iraqi Freedom aboard the USS BUNKER HILL (CG-52). In the three short years since its launch, Bunker Labs has helped launch over 360 companies that have created over 1,700 new jobs.
Approximately 200,000 active-duty military will transition into the ‘real world’ from the U.S. military this year. Twenty five percent of transitioning service members are interested in starting a business[1], yet only about 4%[2] actually accomplish this. Conversely, after World War II, 49% of veterans owned and operated a business after leaving military service, and 40% of Korean War veterans became entrepreneurs[3]. Today, veterans believe that a lack of non-military networks, a lack of access to professional networks, and better access to professional mentors are major obstacles on their venture to becoming innovative and successful entrepreneurs.
Through its four main programs—Bunker in a Box, Bunker Brews, Launch Lab and CEOcircle—Bunker Labs works with and supports military veterans in overcoming these obstacles throughout the journey of starting a business: from the idea stage to the growth stage of successful companies looking to hire, raise capital and expand into new markets.
At Pilot Flying J, philanthropic efforts are part of who we are, something established by our founder Mr. Haslam. This year, we are excited to partner with Bunker Labs in support of their mission to inspire, educate, and connect transitioning service members and veterans as they seek to launch their own ventures. Through a donation of $125,000 and continued partnership, we hope to help the next generation of military veterans fulfil their American Dream as innovative business owners—the next generation of Mr. Haslam’s. Through this partnership, we hope to spread the word of the Bunker Lab’s mission to the many guests we serve on a daily basis and to hopefully be able to help ignite that spark inside a veteran wishing to start a business while visiting one of our locations.
We sat down with Mr. Haslam and Todd Connor separately to get each of their thoughts on supporting veterans, entrepreneurship and this partnership.
Q: What did you learn during your time in the military, and how did your service prepare you to be the successful leader you are today?
Mr. Haslam: “What I learned in my year in Korea helped me more than anything in starting and operating a business. I would not have been able to do it without that. I learned that you had to have a plan, you had to follow the plan and no matter what happened you had to be able to adapt and still follow the plan. When I came back and got in business and started our own business, all of these things I’d done were similar to being a Company Commander. You had to come up with a plan, carry it out and stay within the plan, and if something happened you had to adapt to it but had to remember that your basic job is to take care of the troops. Your basic job running a business is to take care of what we call today our Team Members and Guests.”
Todd: “I joined the Navy because I wanted to serve, and I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. When I got out of the Navy that instinct and that desire to serve was still there, as well as that ambition to do big things, which I think is part of what being in the military is. I ended up starting a couple of small businesses, and I really felt like being an entrepreneur was the thing that re-energized me in a way in that really nothing had since I’d gotten out of the Navy. I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t apply some leadership skill or organizational skill that I learned in the military. Entrepreneurship at its core is about working really hard, staying disciplined, knowing how to lead and manage people, knowing how to reach out to customers and knowing how to take total ownership over something that needs to get done. Those are all things that we learn in the military. The basics of leadership and management values translate very specifically to being successful as an entrepreneur.”
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced while opening your own business post-military, and how has that changed today?
Mr. Haslam: “The biggest challenge you face in starting a business, you always think it’s getting enough capital but it’s really about getting people—and it took me a while to realize this. It’s the same challenge you had in commanding your company in the military, making sure you put the right people in the right place and challenging them to reach their full potential. The biggest challenge today is still people. Anytime you’re in a business, the biggest challenge is people. We have to go out and recruit the best people and put them in the right position.”
Todd: “There were two challenges. One in just understanding the business context—there’s a language and a culture that goes with every industry. The military, different business sectors all have their own language. I had to understand the language and culture of the industry in which I was trying to start a business. The second is networks. Networks are people who you can call and reach out to for help to get things you can’t otherwise get yourself. You need to know people in your industry to successfully start your business. The challenge for military veterans is they have very strong networks from the military, the language and cultural understanding of the military. But where they’re weak is understanding the language and cultural understanding of business and having the right networks to help them as entrepreneurs.
Q: Tell us about the importance of networks when working to open a business.
Mr. Haslam: “There’s a book for everything in the army—how to do it, and it’s right. There’s not a book for starting a business, but there’s a lot of people that can help you and tell you how to start a business. In the army, your sergeants are all almost twice as old as you are, 15-to-20 year veterans of the army. I had to learn everything from them, but I had to earn their respect. It’s the same when starting a business, there might be people a little older than you, and in some ways more experienced, that you need to lean on and learn everything you can from them.”
Todd: “Networks are everything. Networks allow you to save time and effort to get to the right answer most quickly. I tell every entrepreneur that the first thing they need to do is find somebody who’s done something comparable to what you’re trying to do but did it five years ago and get them to mentor you. Knowing people that have done what you are trying to do accelerates your learning in a very profound way. Networks allow for us to minimize the mistakes we make, accelerate our time to market and ultimately to become quickly more successful based on having had those relationships.
Q: What is the advantage to having a veteran-started business?
Mr. Haslam: “A veteran, by his/her training in the service, is going to understand discipline, follow orders, follow the plan and do it the right way. That’s what the service teaches you. They have to use, but not rely completely on, what they learned in the military.”
Todd: “Veterans bring with them a commitment to working hard. They also have engrained values such as work ethic, commitment to solving things, staying mission-focused, and willingness to do impossible things to get something done. I think military veterans are incredibly resourceful and creative and very tenacious to get done the things they need to be successful. The other thing we can’t underestimate is the maturity. These are all people who definitionally, this is not their first job; these are people who have life experience, almost all of them have traveled abroad and have foreign global context. There’s a humility and appreciation for what’s happening that allows them to stay mentally calibrated in the right way for the task at hand.”
Q: Why is it so important to support veterans, particularly as they endeavor to start and grow businesses?
Mr. Haslam: “I think we need to encourage all veterans who want to start their own business and try to help them. They’re going to need help in three ways: 1) finding the right business and putting a business plan together, 2) getting financial resources and 3) getting the right people. And if we can help them in those three ways that will give them a head start in getting in business.”
Todd: “It’s the right thing to do by them. These are people who make a commitment to protect our freedom, and we owe them a great debt for that commitment to ensure our freedom and security here and abroad. It’s incumbent on us to show our appreciation to honor their dream for what they want to do next with their lives. A second reason is for us. We need the talent and the aspiration and the businesses that these military veterans are going to bring into marketplace to ensure that our economy is strong and innovative and that we are building the future to ensure American prosperity both now and in the future. Nobody is better equipped to do that work than military veterans.
When military veterans are successful they create industries, they create businesses—like Pilot Flying J. They hire other military veterans, they have an impact in the community. It’s a force multiplier when we support a military veteran and when they go on to be successful because it not only creates news businesses but it changes communities.”
Q: What do you hope to see accomplished through this partnership?
Mr. Haslam: “I hope the partnership will result in opportunities for our veterans, in helping them settle into and prosper in their post-military life. Everybody in our country owes veterans a ‘thank you’ and a helping hand for what they have done.”
Todd: “We see it happen every single day, lives transformed by the inspiration that there is life after service and that dreams don’t end and commitment to service doesn’t end after military service, that in fact there is more. There is an exciting bright future ahead for those who want to take advantage of it. Even knowing that’s possible changes lives. I hope to see more veterans aware of our mission and seek to think about how they might start their own business. I love the notion that somebody could come into a Pilot or Flying J travel center and learn about the partnership and think to themselves, ‘You know I’ve always had this crazy idea and I haven’t known where to take it or whether to honor it,’ I hope this partnership creates a spark for military veterans, as well as their spouses, who have dreams.”
[1] Waldman Associates, “Entrepreneurship and Business Ownership in the Veteran Population,” 2004, http://archive.sba.gov/advo/research/rs242tot.pdf, in SBA, p. 5; Bunker Labs, “Survey of Chicago Area Veterans Leadership Council Members,” 2014.
[2] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Self-employment In The United States,” March 2016, http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2016/self-employment-in-the-united-states/pdf/self-employment-in-the-unitedstates.pdf, p. 10.
[3] Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF), “Introduction to Business Ownership for Veterans and Military Service Members,” 2013, http://vets.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/IVMF-Intro-to-BusinessTextbook-Electronic-Version.pdf, p. 18.
