Owning as a small business as a Traditional Reservist

[bb17]

Hey folks. So I'm headed to UPT pretty soon and in the meantime I'm trying to plan ahead for the future. I'm an engineer by trade and for the last 10 years have been working in an office. I have no desire to have a full time office/desk gig ever in the future again, and I'm working on getting into some independent consulting (out of my house) on the side after training when I'm not doing Air Force stuff all the time. Just curious what other small businesses traditional reservists/guardsmen have to work on in their free time. I have seen a number of realtors and flight instructors, but I'm curious to see what else people have done or are doing and how successful its been. I'd greatly appreciate whatever input you could provide for somebody in that situation, such as dealing with clients when needing to go on a TDY or deployment, or whatever other situations a TR can find themselves in. Thanks for your input!

Edited January 11, 2017 by bb17

[HU&W]

6 hours ago, bb17 said:

Hey folks. So I'm headed to UPT pretty soon and in the meantime I'm trying to plan ahead for the future. I'm an engineer by trade and for the last 10 years have been working in an office. I have no desire to have a full time office/desk gig ever in the future again, and I'm working on getting into some independent consulting (out of my house) on the side after training when I'm not doing Air Force stuff all the time. Just curious what other small businesses traditional reservists/guardsmen have to work on in their free time. I have seen a number of realtors and flight instructors, but I'm curious to see what else people have done or are doing and how successful its been. I'd greatly appreciate whatever input you could provide for somebody in that situation, such as dealing with clients when needing to go on a TDY or deployment, or whatever other situations a TR can find themselves in. Thanks for your input!

As a TR, you have tons of freedom.  I've personally known one that owned a few restaurants, one who was the VP of an R&D firm, and one who owned a large self-storage business.  All three were married to their work and had to make arrangements for balancing it with military life.

[bb17]

16 hours ago, HU&W said:

As a TR, you have tons of freedom.  I've personally known one that owned a few restaurants, one who was the VP of an R&D firm, and one who owned a large self-storage business.  All three were married to their work and had to make arrangements for balancing it with military life.

That's cool to know. Do you know specifically how they would make such arrangements? Did they have employees or business partners they would delegate work to? 

Edited January 11, 2017 by bb17

[HU&W]

7 hours ago, bb17 said:

That's cool to know. Do you know specifically how they would make such arrangements? Did they have employees or business partners they would delegate work to? 

The restaurant and storage guys had employees and would keep up with things in the evenings.  The R&D guy eventually became an IMA and treated his reserve time like a vacation from work.

[JarheadBoom]

Two booms in my former AFRC SQ are .civ business owners.  One (still a TR) has a very successful corporate catering business, the other (retired TR) is a majority partner in a sewage sludge remediation business, and is a patent holder for his processes.

Catering boom has his wife & BIL as business partners; they take care of things while he's flying or TDY.

Sewage boom did a lot via email and phone legwork for the networking/contracting side of his business; his partner was the hardware guy.

Both are/were able to do quite a bit of flying/TDY above & beyond the minimum for currency, but only because they worked hard at the beginning to ensure their businesses wouldn't go dead in the water in their temporary absence.

We also had a pilot who ran a successful medical equipment development and sales business, but he was a minimum participant for several years due to the demands of his business, and eventually elected to retire before his number came up in the deployment lottery.

 

BL: it can be done, but it takes work up-front to ensure you can take the .mil time off and not have it come crashing down around you.