Author: Brandon Jones

Listen as Forrest and Daniel talk about the key differences between being an employee and owning your own business. 

Key differences between employee vs business ownership:

• Employees can expect an organizational framework, like the military.  Business owners have to create their own.
• Employees have a job description.  Business owners have to do everything that someone else isn’t already doing.  
• Employees get paid in a predictable manner.  Business owners get what’s left over (for better or worse).
• Employees can put in their time and go home.  Until they create systems that allow them to ‘let go,’ business owners are always thinking about ‘what’s next?’
• Understand the compliance regulations and what responsibilities you have (hint: they’re a lot more as the business owner)

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Listen as Forrest and Daniel share a little about each of our stories, and what we did while we were on active duty.

You can do a lot.  But training for combat isn’t really like actually being in combat.  But you train anyway, because you’ll be a lot better off.  Same principle applies here.

Here are things you can do:

• Develop your plan (See episode 5)
• Determine credentials or education (See episode 3)
• Learn marketing, SEO, sales
• Find volunteer opportunities
• Shore up your personal finances
• Get your family onboard–this is THE most important thing.

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How do I build a business plan?

You’re not going to know everything out of the gate.  But your ‘plan’ should involve the following steps:

1. Determining your military timeline:
   1. Home town?
   2. Last duty station?
   3. Where does your spouse/family want to go?
2. 1. When is your exit?  
   2. What military milestones are you looking to hit (next promotion, next retention bonus, special assignment, etc.)
   3. For people looking for pensioned retirement–have you done the math on your next promotion.  I.E. if you’re an O-5 on the O-6 select list, it’s not a year that you’re postponing your retirement.  It’s a year (or two) to put it on, then 3 years if you want to retire with High-3 credit for time in grade.  It might be worth it to your personal retirement plan to wait it out…but you need to do the math.
   4. Where do you plan to retire to?
   1. Public speaking (you might be doing a lot of presentations just to get clients in the door).  Great practice is available while you’re in uniform, if you just look for the opportunities to get in front of people as part of your job.
   2. Collateral duties
3. What skill sets do you need to work on (not education)
   1. Every command has a financial counselor.  If you can’t be this person, be the assistant.  Or talk to them and learn what they do with sailors/airmen/soldiers/marines
   2. VITA office
   3. Local financial office 
   1. Right now
   2. Later (after deployment/end of the fiscal year, or whatever your optempo allows)
   3. Next year
   4. Next duty station
4. Determine what you can do:

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Industry rule of thumb for people opening their own shop:  3 years before you ‘feel traction.’

• Year one:  Sucks for everyone – a hard slog
• Year two:  Gets a little better, but not really anything to ‘live on.’  
• Year three:  You finally start feeling like you can make it.  But you’re probably still reinvesting in your business.

Have a plan where you don’t depend on income from your business until at least year 4.

XYPN Benchmarking survey results

• https://blog.xyplanningnetwork.com/podcast-blog/ep-288-xypns-2020-benchmarking-survey-results-review-with-alan-moore-and-michael-kitces

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Credentials vs licensing vs. education:  Each plays a different role

• Credentials–Help apparent credibility.  You can stop at a certain point–no one really cares about your alphabet soup
• Licensing–What allows you to legally do business in a certain capacity.  We stopped with our Series 65 licenses.
• Education–This will help you in your ability to help people.  This is the most important aspect, but also the least quantifiable.  This never stops.

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You might feel overwhelmed by all the choices out there in the profession. The key to finding the right tribe or profession for you is to ask the right questions. Those questions include: Where can I be mentored, so I can grow into the best version of myself? What opportunities exist in this profession if I work there? What will my role be, and will it fit with my long-term career plan?

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Download this episode!