Pat Kiggins, Author, Speaker, Veteran Benefit Expert, and Veteran Transition Expert

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It Only Took Me 35 Years
To Successfully Transition
From The Military!

I'm Pat Kiggins, The Veteran's Mentor and I'm happy to say that I finally figured out the secret to creating a successful transition from military life to this mysterious "business world"! I'm proud of my veteran status but clearly, I'm a slow learner.

Here's my story and what I learned along the way:

I entered the Army in 1966 and spent 6 years defending our country. I served in Viet Nam and also served on the DMZ in Korea. While I was in Viet Nam, I received several Purple Hearts and a fist full of other medals. I was an Infantry officer and actually intended to make my career in the Army.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I ended up leaving the Army in 1972 with very short notice. It was then that this huge fear came over me. I had absolutely NO IDEA what I was going to do next. In fact, I had been to the Pentegon before I left for Korea and I already knew that when I returned, I was scheduled to go to Ft. Meade, MD. and was to be assigned to a mechanized unit. I was really looking forward to it. I was a Captain at the time and knew that I would soon be a Major.

While I won't bore you with the details of what happened, I will say that when I learned that I was leaving the Army, I really had no clue what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Sure, I had leadership skills, but all of my military experience was focused on learning tactics and strategies on how to kill our enemy. I could accurately fire just about any weapon that had ever been made. Clearly, there was not a huge demand for those skills on Wall Street.

I decided to use the only Veteran benefit that I was aware of at the time and used the GI Bill to go back to school. I went to the University of Nebraska and ultimately graduated with a degree in Real Estate in December 1973. At the time, there were only 3 universities in the US that offered a degree in Real Estate. I thought that would give me an edge but I was wrong.

You see, since there were so few people graduating with a Real Estate degree at the time, there really wasn't an established transition process from school to the business world. I had a unique degree with some really special knowledge and skill but it was really up to us as new graduates to go out in the world and teach the business world just how valuable that knowledge could be. Once again, I was facing that "transition" problem!

The college recruiting office was useless. They didn't know how to place us in companies where we could perform meaningful work so I had to do my own research. Ultimately, I ended up working for Ford Motor Credit Company financing commercial real estate but I think I got the job because the guy who hired me had gone to the Naval Academy. Later, that man would become the Chairman of the Board of Ford Credit.

Learning the corporate world was hard. I was great at what I did but there was so much to learn. It was like learning a new language. I had to learn how to write for business. I was used to all of that "military speak". I was also used to having a procedure written for everything. Out in the business world, they loved to make things up as they went along.

Oh sure, they had procedures but hardly anyone ever read them. As it turned out, that was actually a good thing because in the mid-seventies, the bottom fell out of the real estate market and we were foreclosing on everything. Heck, I was even on a team who foreclosed on the Astrodome in Houston!

I made great progress at Ford and loved what I did but as it turned out, they had a career path set out for me that I wasn't thrilled with at the time. For seven years, it seemed that I had a new job every nine months or so in order to train me for their vision of where I should go in the company. I loved the jobs that allowed me to use my leadership skills and I loved working with people on the "front lines".

Ford, however, loved my analytical skills and wanted me to be on the "finance" side of the business. I've always been a visionary and I combined my analytical skills with the discipline to always look forward. Ford liked that approach.

That's when we parted ways. I was offered a job managing a profit center for another finance company and I jumped at the chance.

In the years to come, my creative finance skills earned lots of money for my customers but I just kept moving along the "typical" path of success with bigger salaries and benefits. Meanwhile my knowledge was making other people rich.

You see, I got to learn from the best. Since I had been lending money to some of the richest people in the world, I learned from them how they made their millions. Unfortunately, people always learned of my military background and sometimes, I still felt as if I were a new veteran trying to break into business in a big way. I still hadn't figured out how to "break the mold".

You see, most of these really wealthy people appreciated my creativeness and sincerely respected my military background and the fact that I was a decorated veteran, however, it never earned me the same respect from them that a degree from Harvard would have.

My final J.O.B. with a major company was when I spent 12 years with Digital Equipment Corporation. Originally, they hired me to help build a captive finance company for them and the team we put together did a great job for my first 5 years with the company. By the time I moved on to a higher management position in the company, we were doing over $100 Million in leases every year. That wasn't bad for a small group of about 17 or 18 people.

During my last years at Digital, I was on a management team that was responsible for the entire Central United States. Our team managed 21 states with an annual budget of just over $1.3 Billion in sales!

When I left Digital, I finally got the "entrepreneurial" spirit. But even that came slowly. You see, I was hired by a small computer company and the President had just one thing in mind. He wanted to grow his company and ultimately sell it so he could retire. He had been building this company for almost 15 years when I was hired. When we first met, he told me he wanted me to help him diversify his business and wanted to sell his company after two years. We sold that company to a Fortune 50 company nine months later and he was able to retire.

I thought that if I had done it once, I could do it again so I found another company to help build. This one was even smaller, yet they had been in business longer. Two years later, we were able to sell that company to a large company and those owners were able to retire.

That's when I opened my own technology company in Dallas. I was tired of doing this for other people and thought it was time to do it for me. My kids were grown now and were out of the house so now was my time.

That business was a resounding success. In fact, Microsoft was my very first "large" customer. In my first nine months in business, the company generated over $4.5 Million. That's when I sold this successful company and thought I was going to retire myself. I thought that I had finally "transitioned" from the military into a complete business person.

Well, "retirement" didn't last very long. One day, my sister-in-law asked me to help her find some money for her Master's degree and wondered if she was eligible for any veteran benefits because of her dad's veteran status. I began to do some research and that's when my eyes were really opened.

I found so many benefits available to veterans that I couldn't help myself. I used what I had learned to start another business. (Of course, I was able to find my sister some grant money that was available in Texas for dependents of veterans).

What I found just blew me away. In 2005, I started a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Business. I used every free veteran benefit that I could find to help me on my journey (and believe me, there were plenty of benefits to use).

Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business Logo

I learned just how many preferences that I had as a veteran by starting a business that was registered to sell products and services to the government. I still didn't know what I was going to sell but while doing research, I found a bid opportunity for industrial tires and since my neighbor owned an industrial tire company, I asked him if I could use his business as my supplier.

Although my neighbor was also a veteran and his business had grown over the years to where he had seven locations in Texas and Louisiana, he had never sold anything to the government. He didn't know how! We worked on the bid together since I knew absolutely nothing about the industrial tire business. I registered my company with the government and handled all of the bid process. Ultimately, that bid was awarded for $423,000!

You see, at the time, the government was "setting aside" $84 Billion every year just to be spent with veterans who owned a business. This is actually a federal law where the government has to set aside 3% of its annual contracting budget to be spent with Veterans who own a business.... who knew?

Here's a link to a video that just addresses "How To Do Business With The Army". The reason I place the link here is that it validates the fact that all government agencies must spend 3% of their prime and subcontracting budgets with Veteran businesses. Check out:

Doing Business With The Army

It was then that I realized that I had to teach other veterans what kind of opportunity was sitting right under their noses. Since I always wanted to become an author, I decided to write a book to teach others what I had learned. I wrote The Veteran Advantage and have been selling that as an information product online since 2005 to other veterans.

There is no better feeling than to be able to write a book and sell your knowledge. Shortly after I began selling that book online, I started learning about selling other information products online. Again, what I learned blew me away. Do you realize that there are "guru's" out there who routinely expect to launch an information product that they create just once and generate "at least" $1 Million during the first week. In fact, some are generating that much money in the first few hours of launching a product!

In the process of learning Internet Marketing, I came across an opportunity to write another book. Take a look below:

I was fortunate enough to be a co-author in the Best Selling Series, Wake Up, Live The Life You Love, Finding Life's Passion.

It was an honor to be included in this book along with such distinguished authors as Anthony Robbins, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Brian Tracy and other great authors. I had the opportunity to write about my passion for helping Veterans and now, I'm a best-selling author! Who says doing what you love doesn't pay?

These folks have created a real "machine" when publishing these books. This was the 13th book in this best selling series. The experience was great! I got to get on weekly conference calls with all these multi-millionaires and learn all about their publishing strategies. I now have many of their cell phone numbers programmed into my own phone!

Finally, at age 61, I think I've figured out how to successfully transition from the military to the wonderful world of business. With the help of the government, I've become a successful veteran business owner, an author, a speaker and finally, a Mentor to other veterans.

My latest project began this year. I've agreed to Mentor a group of 16 Veterans for an entire year and teach them everything I've learned during the past few years. I have agreed to teach them for free. Our goal is to create 16 new Veteran-owned businesses this year that will each generate at least $1 Million in revenue during their first year in business. That's a total of $16 Million during 2008. I'm confident that we're going to be able to make it.

As I teach this great team of veterans, I've been learning from them. Everyday, each one of them teaches me something as they work hard to build their own business empire. I've even recruited a network of volunteers who have agreed to help these veterans become successful. In exchange, each of the veterans have agreed to set aside 20% of their first year's profits in a scholarship fund managed by my local VFW.

This money will be available to all of the volunteers who participate in the program. If we're successful in reaching our goals, there should be about $640,000 in scholarship money available for all of the volunteers at the end of the year.

If you would like to learn more about this project, here's a video that I have on YouTube:

If you would like to volunteer to help these veterans be wildly successful this year, please click the following link to join us:

Click Here To Volunteer!

Thanks for visiting my little window to the world. I hope that you have learned something valuable about transitioning from the military. Here's to a very prosperous future!

P.S. If you would like to purchase a copy of my book The Veteran Advantage, you can find it here:

The Veteran Advantage

Who Says That Veteran Benefits Don't ROCK!

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