RL93: TheMilVet Business Update

How it's going and where we're headed!

The entire purpose of this newsletter is to keep a record of what I’m learning in business and to give you a glimpse into the entrepreneurial journey.

This week, I wanted to take some time to provide an update on our startup, The Military Veteran.

This is an extremely exciting time for the business - things are going well!

• We have fantastic clients who are happy with our work

• We’re serving our community to the best of our abilities

• We’re having fun in the process

In this post, I’ll break down -

• A timeline of events from launch to where we are today

• How we identified a gap in the market and found our Ideal Customer Profile

• The concept of rate-limiting steps in a service-based business

• Where we are today and what the next phase of growth will require

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A Timeline from Start to Today…

It has been about 2 years since Tim and I began scheming on this business.

For new followers/subscribers, here’s a quick timeline of events -

• March 2022: We started ideating on all the problems with the military transition.

• April 2022: We decided to host an in-person event for pre-MBAs - we decided to pursue this demographic because it was one we were very familiar with that journey, and we felt we could provide the most value to this demographic.

• July 2022: We hosted our first career conference for veterans about to matriculate in MBA programs. We were scrappy - we got JP Morgan and KKR to host us for 2 days and invited awesome speakers to share their experiences. We had an incredible NPS >90, so we decided to do more events.

• Late Summer 2022: We contacted dozens of business owners to ask what roles they had difficulty hiring for. We also talked to recruiting agency owners about the pros/cons of various business models.

• September 2022: We hosted another in-person event in NYC for all student veterans + transitioning vets. It was a ton of fun, and we locked in a handful of sponsors, though we barely broke even on this event.

• Fall 2022: We completed a few headhunting placements. It was clear from the start that headhunting would be a better business model than hosting events. To get started, we offered discounts to early adopters to ensure we could get reps in and build a track record. Our placements included -

  • In-house counsel at a Space industry startup

  • A General Manager at a trades business

• Winter/Spring 2023: We landed a few more placements into GM roles. I spent a lot of time ‘selling’ to business owners rather than fulfilling open contracts in front of us.

• Summer 2023: We hosted our first Career Conference in San Francisco. The event went well, though it wasn’t as well attended as our NYC events. Sponsors were generally happy and reported hiring several people through this event. I also spent the summer and fall refining our process - I don’t want to provide an average customer experience, I first needed to become a recruiting technician (more below)

• Fall 2023: We onboarded a few big PE roll-ups as clients and had a LOT more success. We refined our process to lay the foundation for a world-class client experience.

• Winter 2023: I feel VERY confident in our ideal customer profile. We’re now about to enter the scaling phase of the business.

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Decisions About Where to Compete

When we initially went to market, our approach was extremely broad.

We talked to EVERYONE to get a lay of the land - we spoke with large enterprise companies, tech companies, VC-backed startups, alternative investment funds, and PE-backed companies.

Over the last two years, we’ve narrowed in on our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Here’s a definition of an ICP if you’re not familiar with the term -

The ideal customer profile (ICP) defines the firmographic, environmental and behavioral attributes of accounts that are expected to become a company's most valuable customers.

Ideally, we’d avoid competitive niches and find the highest ROI clients.

The most obvious place to start is with placing transitioning veterans into full-time civilian jobs, but there are a few issues with placing this exceptional group of people into jobs -

1. It’s a very competitive market - lots of recruiters focus here because it is a very large market.

2. The jobs are not the highest paying roles - they are lower margin than an executive role.

3. Transitioning veterans tend to leave their first employer within a year - this is bad for business!

Out of all of the potential clients we spoke with, a few stood out to us.

OK - here’s some frustrating news - the rest of this article is paywalled. Sorry to do it, but I’m going to reveal quite a bit about our thought process after studying this space for 2 years, and I’m confident that the information below the paywall is worth the subscription price.

Here’s why you should subscribe -

1. You’ll get access to the rest of this article, including:

   1. How we made the decision about where to focus (our ICP)

   2. The concept of a rate-limiting step in business

   3. What a service business needs to grow

   4. The main challenges facing us as a business

2. You’ll get access to >90 past editions of Retained Learnings! Some popular articles include:

   1. The difference between PE & VC investors

   2. Appearing on CBS Taught Me a Valuable Lesson about Business

   3. 5 Powerful Communication Hacks for Business

3. You’ll support someone whose content you value. Putting skin in the game is also helpful for following through on a goal - hopefully you’re inspired by the content to launch your own business.