Green Home Solutions - How Does a Military Background Prepare You For Owning a Franchise?
Experience with military structure plays an important role in running your own business. Several of the franchisees in our system come to Green Home Solutions with many years of military training.
Ben White is a multi-unit Green Home Solutions franchisee in Greater Indianapolis, IN. He was in the active military for 22 years, finishing as Command Sgt. Major.
Following his retirement from service, Ben became a small business owner intending to get away from the structure of the military and to be able to set his own hours. But he soon realized that the structure of franchising was a key element in being a successful business owner.
“I relied on that structure— and it’s really been helpful in our processes and the outcomes.” he adds. “The more I set up my business the way the military has their structure–not with everything all lock-step and absolutely perfect all the time, but that structure really, really helped out.”
Multi-unit franchisee Brian Preuss (Mount Airy, MD) agrees. Brian also served over 20 years in the Army in Special Operations and Intel Background.
“I was used to structure. It became very scary for me when I knew I wanted to run my own business. I wanted to be my own boss. Problem was, what was I going to do?”
He ruminated on what was important to him, as well as his personal and family values on environmental stability which ultimately met up with Green Home Solutions.
“As I came into Green Home Solutions, I had all kinds of fears but one of the benefits of going into a franchise system and in particular the Green Home Solutions system was where–even during covid– I had a structured training program that helped me get off my feet.”
He adds that his Area Representative (AR) was instrumental in understanding how to run his business. “That was one of the best attributes of the system to get me up and running quickly. The structure in training that you’re looking for or that you’re used to from a military background, is going to be very similar.”
Brian reiterates that it’s not going to be done for you entirely.
“You’re going to have to put your time in. It’s not going to be given to you hand-and-foot but if you put effort in, you will get what you got out of the military in an organization like this.”
