Disabled Vet Finds Purpose In Helping Aspiring Veterans

What Dillon Consulting does?

Dillon Consulting Services LLC was founded in 2006 to help veterans who want to start their own businesses.

The Current Landscape

As noted in a recent article, the nation has finally realized that veterans make great entrepreneurs. Daily press reports of veterans starting new businesses are common throughout the media landscape, with profiles of hometown vets starting coffee shops, tech support companies, landscaping services, security firms, and a whole host of businesses too numerous to mention.

This should not be a great surprise. According to the SBA report entitled, Veteran-Owned Businesses and Their Owners, there are nearly 2.4 million veteran-owned businesses in the U.S., representing 6.1% of all businesses nationwide. These small business enterprises owned by veterans employed 5.8 million people, had an annual payroll of $195 billion, and receipts of $1.14 trillion.

And, a 2011 study from the SBA Office of Advocacy reported that veterans are 45 percent more likely to start their own businesses than people who have never served in the military.

Company Birth Story

The company didn’t start out with the idea of helping veterans. It started out providing project management and business development services to companies in the service industry. But, that really didn’t work out. There were several “pivots” before a niche was discovered that worked.

The big pivot point was when one of the firm’s clients, Crain’s Chicago Business, the regional business publication in Chicago, requested some research in 2011 on companies in Chicago that were hiring veterans. A considerable amount of time was spent on this assignment, much more than was necessary —but, it resulted in considerable knowledge about businesses in Chicago, and around the nation, that were hiring veterans, and the support programs for veterans wanting to enter the workforce upon leaving their military service. All of this research led to a very successful section in the publication around Veterans Day in 2011, called “Veterans in the Workplace”.

And, things just took off from there...

The Solution

All of this knowledge in working with veterans who want to start their own businesses resulted in the creation of a graduate-level course on veterans’ issues at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

A Customer Story

The article, 6 Leadership Lessons for Business from a Bronze Star Recipient, shows how the company is changing lives.

The Team Culture

This article, Why Doing the Right Thing Can Bring You Success in the Global Marketplace, adequately addresses the culture of Dillon Consulting Services LLC.

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