I joined the Air Force in 2010. I worked in intelligence. People sometimes ask what that has to do with helping a plumber or a salon owner grow their business. The answer is: almost everything.
Mission first, people always
In the military, everything starts with the mission. Everyone knows what it is, and everyone knows their part in it. But the mission only gets done because people take care of each other.
Most small businesses have the second part down. Owners care deeply about their people. What's often missing is the first part: a mission so clear that everyone on the team could say it back to you. When people know exactly what winning looks like, they stop waiting for you to make every decision.
Decide with good information
Intelligence work taught me to separate what we know from what we assume. In business, owners make decisions every day on gut feel because they don't have time to dig into the numbers. Sometimes the gut is right. Often, it's off by just enough to hurt.
Good information doesn't mean drowning in reports. It means knowing the handful of numbers that actually tell you how the business is doing, and looking at them every week.
Plan, then adjust
President Eisenhower, who led the Allied forces in World War II, put it this way in 1957: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."
Your plan for the year will be wrong somewhere. That's fine. The value is in the planning itself: thinking through what could happen, what matters most, and what you'll do when things change. Owners who plan adjust faster than owners who don't.
Get in the arena
There's a speech by Theodore Roosevelt from 1910 that I come back to often. He said: "It is not the critic who counts... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."
Every business owner is in the arena. You took a risk most people never will. You will make mistakes, and people on the sidelines will have opinions. Let them. The courage it took to start is the same courage that will get you through.
Serving those who serve
I'm proud that Blackex is a veteran-owned business. I bring the same discipline, honesty and loyalty I learned in uniform to every owner I work with. If you're building something that matters, I'd be glad to stand in the arena with you.