Centre for Entrepeneurship
Centre for Entrepreneurship
This year we’ve been engaging with veteran owned businesses to offer support as they make the step into expansion and sustainable growth. Our team at Amodigo is fortunate to have recruited veterans as both employees and associates, so we understand the pressures of being a veteran entrepreneur. Amodigo CEO, Mike Crofts, who served in the British Army himself, highlights the benefits of including veterans in your team; they are loyal, hardworking team players, and they are able to adapt to complicated and challenging situations; but business owners also have a moral responsibility to support people who have served our country, once they enter the civilian workforce.
Whilst developing an early stage 3Pillars Project, the charity he founded, Mike contributed to the CFE (Centre for Entrepreneurship) Manifesto on Military Entrepreneurship. It’s an interesting read and for anyone thinking about developing a veteran owned business, it deserves consideration. There is some support and information available to veterans starting businesses, but it remains too limited. To fully harness the undeniable benefits of military leadership in entrepreneurship, we first need to bridge the gap between military public service and awareness around commercial entrepreneurship.
It can seem hard to escape the pigeonholing of military veterans into the brackets “mad, bad or sad”, and the proliferation of military charities enhances this perception. During ‘Veterans into work’ podcast with Kate Silverton Amodigo | Veterans Work The Podcast With Kate Silverton , we highlighted the need to develop tangible commercial opportunities for veterans, not just volunteering opportunities. The Armed Forces Covenant Scheme that acknowledges employers who employ more veterans goes some way. However, it is time that we start to see running a successful commercial enterprise as a valid route for veterans, putting their leadership talents to work. By enabling the leadership talent of veterans and moulding it to suit entrepreneurship, we can unleash a wave of talent within UK business.
You can read the manifesto here: The military entrepreneurship manifesto – Centre for Entrepreneurs
