Gathering Emails

Two plugins I added to my gmail are https://connect.clearbit.com and https://rapportive.com/.

With Clearbit Connect you can look up people by job function based on a company’s domain extension. It is free up to a certain number of lookups. However, if you pay, you can get a pretty solid list of people within specific job functions.

With Rapportive plugged in to your email, every time you type in an email into a new message, you’ll get some insight into that person in a side-panel. Sometimes you can guess someone’s email and when you type it into a message, the side-panel will show up and you’ll know that you guessed right. You can use https://www.toofr.com/ to figure out the pattern that people use, ie. Fname.Lname@domain.com or Fname@domain.com or FinitialLname@domain.com.

You can also use https://www.skrapp.io/ which is a plugin for LinkedIn. With skrapp there are free versions and paid versions. You essentially do an advanced search on LinkedIn for people in job positions you want to target, then hit the Skrapp “Find Email” button and it searches for an email.

Sending Emails

Once I’ve built a list of emails that I want to target I put it in a spreadsheet and use either http://www.yesware.com/sign-up/, http://www.gmass.co/, or https://mixmax.com/ to send out an email drip campaign. They each have free versions. If your email campaign lasts less than 28 days, you can use Yesware entirely free.

Testing Emails

Here are 3 examples of email chains that I put together. We had 3 microsites with different messaging that were linked to these emails. We were testing to see which messaging was most effective and then we started serving up that microsite more. We used Google Analytics to do that A/B testing. (Hereis a good blog post about how to do that) Again, for each chain I had four emails that would go out, dripping every 6 days until they responded. You have to be aware of the CAN-SPAM Act though. You have to give people the right to opt out of receiving emails from you and you have to tell them your physical address.

Try it out

Doing cold email campaigns won’t be amazing results, but you can make it better when you target your contacts more precisely, keep your emails short, continue to follow-up, and track results. With this process we had around a 40% open rate and we had a 7% response rate which led to several in-person meetings.

I would look at providing a service or product that others would pay me money for.  I’ll break this blog post into those two offerings, services and products, and give some tips on how to brainstorm your next offering.  Keep in mind that your goal should be to turn your side business into ‘passive income’.  That means that although you may have to put some legitimate work into your business up front, it’ll hopefully continue on with minimal interaction with you in the future.  Essentially it’ll turn into a source of income for you that you aren’t dedicating 100% of your effort into. That’s perfect for a military member because you may get pulled away from it for training or deployments.

Services: One approach to providing a service is to think of something that you are passionate about and less than 5% of the people you know have in depth experience with.  This could be car detailing, fantasy basketball, model airplanes, or watch collecting.  Then build a site that allows you to talk about that passion freely.  The point in this site will be to provide awesome content that either people can’t find anywhere else or has such a unique perspective.  Match that site up with social media and draw as many people to you as possible.  You start making money through providing links to companies on your site.  The easiest way is to use Google Adsense but you could also find specific companies that you want to sell for and google for the following “Company X affiliate program”, where Company X is the company you want to sell for.  If they have an affiliate program, they will provide you the code snippets that you need to include on your site that will link your readers with their company.  Then when you viewers buy products, you get a commission.  Another easy affiliate program is Amazon associates.  This is not an easy journey to take, but if you are truly unique, you can elevate your game and reach out to specific companies and work out promotional deals where you get paid fees for having them as featured content.

Products: To invest time in building a product, you have to first find a pain point to solve or find a joy that people want more access to.  A pain point could be finding parking, or spending too much time checking emails, or having to take your shoes off when going in your home.  Obviously, the bigger the pain point, the better. And you know you are on to a big pain point when someone can tell you story after story about how frustrated they are with it.  For example, if I asked someone if they liked taking their shoes off at home, they might say, “no it sucks”.  But they won’t be able to tell me stories about how bad it was the last time they did it.  Not a big pain point, and my product solution will not likely fly off the shelves.  But you can also increase people’s access to joy.  I started a company once called Malosi Rugby. I have since stopped restocking inventory since I run a different business now and it takes my full attention.  I started a rugby supply company when I was looking on Amazon for a rugby ball that would ship to me using Prime shipping.  The supply was limited and the balls that did ship were crappy quality. I decided that there was a gap in the market there and rugby was an incredibly fast growing sport.  I found a manufacturer on Alibaba.com and had them send me sample products.  I tested them out, made a design for my balls, and had them ship me around 300 balls and kicking tees. I spent less than $1000 on inventory.  I then shipped all of my products to an Amazon warehouse and listed it as a Prime offering.  I sold all of my first inventory in about 4 months at a markup of almost 10x the cost. Mind you though, I paid shipping costs, taxes, and Amazon fees in there as well so I don’t want you to think I made 10x on my investment.

The approach to thinking of a product to sell could also be used to think of a service.  Sometimes you may have to hire a couple of people or partner with a couple people to service someone’s needs.  That’s ok, but just be aware of how much time it will take for you to manage other people.  With one person running the business, you can go fast, but with 2 or 3 people, you likely go slower but you can also go far.

Find out what your goals are: do you want to have this business take over your life and be your primary source of income at some point, or do you just want to make some quick money and ride the ride as long as it keeps feeding you money.  Honestly, when I was in the military, my goal was the second of those two.  I was fine doing businesses for the sake of experience.  I didn’t want to lose money, but as long as I broke even, I felt like I had gained a bunch of lessons for free.  It wasn’t until I left the army, that I decided to make entrepreneurship my primary source of income.  But by then I felt I was ready for it.

BTU #21: Ian Folau – Tactical advice for starting a company (even while on Active Duty)

Think of debt as your worst enemy, and you must prepare with a battle plan. So get your war face on and follow the plan below:

• This is a mind game. You need to come up with your “WHY” statement. You are more likely to complete a marathon or Spartan race when your purpose is well defined. Why are you wanting to get out of debt?  What is driving you to sacrifice your worldly wants?  Whatever that is, write it down and put it on your bathroom mirror so you see it EVERY single day. It sounds corny, but if you’re not always thinking about it, then you’ll slip up. For me, my “WHY” is to have the freedom to invest money into my retirement—so I can retire at 60 years old and just enjoy life.
• Create a budget. You have to know where your money is going to go every month before you spend it. Taking ownership of your spending is the only way to understand how to pay off your debt. Put a name to every dollar that you are spending. First start with the bare necessities: house, food, electricity, and water. Then it’s simply a math exercise. Take what you earn in your paycheck (take home pay) and subtract the necessities. What you have remaining is what we can put towards your debt and other expenses. For example, let’s say I make $3,000/month and after my bare necessities (house, food, utilities) are paid for I’m left with $1,200.  It would be great to throw the $1,200 at my debt, but people still have a car, phone, and car insurance payments. Now it’s time to sacrifice your lifestyle. If you are paying ¼ of your take home pay to a car—sell your car. If you can’t use a bicycle, figure out how or use public transportation.  If for some reason your life is dependent on car, buy a beater—just something to get you from point A to point B.  Another rule of thumb is, if you’re paying more than 1/3 of your take home pay in rent—move to a cheaper place.  Entertainment, clothes, or trips should not be in your budget—because you’re in a debt war and can’t afford that right now! To create a budget you can do it manually in excel or use some helpful software like mint.com or www.everydollar.com. These tools are free and mint.com allows you to connect your credit card(s), savings, and checking accounts so that you can track every single dollar you spend. I personally use mint.com
• Rank your loans from the smallest dollar amount to the largest. There are two schools of thought on where to start with paying off loans: a) Start with the smallest loan (regardless of interest rate) or b) Start with the highest interest rate loan (regardless of the amount). Dave Ramsey, who is famous for helping people get out of debt, suggests you start paying off the smallest loan first, and I agree with him.  The reason is people get motivated after they pay off one loan, even if that loan is only a few hundred bucks. That first small win creates that intrinsic feeling of success and motivates people to keep paying off the next loan and then the next until they don’t have any more loans.  Dave Ramsey refers to it as the “snowball effect,” meaning once you get going you’ll gain energy and passion to pay off your remaining debts.
• Start paying. Start paying as much as you can against the smallest loan while still paying the minimums on your other loans. And then once you pay off the smallest loan you move onto the next smallest loan paying everything you possibly can while still paying minimums on your other loans. For example, say I had three loans for $5K, $10K, and $15k and after my bare necessities I can pay $1,200 towards my loans.  If the minimums for each loan were $100, I would put $1K towards the $5K and $100 towards both the $10K and $15K loan for five months. After five months, I would have killed one loan and only have two loans left to fight.  So now I would put $1,100 towards the $10K loan and still $100 towards the $15K loan until I pay of the $10K loan. The key here is consistency. Keep the pressure on paying off your debt and do not let up!
• Automatic Payments. The idea was made famous from the book, The Automatic Millionaire, and it truly helps.  Automate all your payments so you never forget to make a payment.  But best of all, the decision to pay down your debt has already been made.  You remove the temptation or at the least make it more cumbersome to not paying down your debt when you set up automatic payments.  Once you get out of debt, a good tidbit is to start automatically depositing money into a savings account or investment account—this way the money that would’ve been used for paying off debt can now be used to build up your wealth!
• If you can’t trust yourself, cut up your credit card. If credit cards are what got you in this debt mess, then you can’t trust yourself.  Cut it up! If you’re carrying a credit card balance—Cut it up! Credit cards do offer points and even cash back, but if you’re not paying it off every month then you are just fooling yourself into more debt.
• Sell Everything. To speed up the process of cleaning up your debt, do garage sells, sell stuff on craigslist, sell anything you don’t need to live. The more money you can throw to your debt the faster you gain financial freedom. Once again, you have to be willing to sacrifice your worldly wants to get back on track. It’s a matter of establishing your needs over your wants.
• More Money. For those whose take home pay is barely enough to pay for the bare essentials, this is an INCOME problem. You simply don’t have any extra money to spend towards debt after your house, food, and utilities. You need more money. After you sell everything you can to earn extra money, you now need to get a side job. Yup, time to sacrifice again.  Even being a delivery boy/girl on nights or weekends making minimum wage can earn you an extra $500 to $1,000 a month. If this is truly a battle for financial freedom—what are you willing to do?!

So that’s the battle plan! I personally followed this plan and sacrificed a lot of fun, sold a lot, drove a beater, worked a lot, and basically put my “wants” on hold for two years to finally become Financially Free!  It feels amazing and it truly is awesome to say I have NO DEBT.  I now put my money to work for me.  I’m now contributing to my 401K, investing in stocks and mutual funds, bought a nicer car, and bought a home. It feels great to be free to do what I want with my money!

1. The admin stuff is crazy. I have a box filling up with envelopes from the federal government, the state, bills, credit cards, lawyers, etc. I just hope I’m staying out of trouble and preventing us from getting fined down the road. I have a lawyer, WilmerHale, who keeps me on track with some stuff and filed all of my incorporation stuff. However, the more questions I have for them, the more I have to pay, so I still spend lots of time researching on the internet. They do fortunately defer my lawyer fees until I raise a good amount of money.  I use Gusto to do my payroll and they have a delightful user interface which makes payroll almost fun to do, and they handle all the stuff that I should be paying to stay out of trouble. For health insurance, we decided to just do it individually for now and used the health plan marketplace at https://nystateofhealth.ny.gov/. I recommend it for sure.
2. Raising money is brutally long. I was always told this but I didn’t really believe it. We came out of school on fire with everybody wanting to talk to us about our business. We felt as if we were getting meetings with venture capitalists that we weren’t supposed to be getting at our size/stage. I met with a new VC almost everyday for the first three weeks of business. Ask me how many we’ve closed…Zero. Even though these VCs claim that they are early stage pre-seed investors, it’s not really true. In the market we are in presently, nobody wants to invest unless you can show traction from multiple customers. But I’ve heard that that may be more of a NYC thing. The east coast seems to put more weight on achieving revenue than the west coast. So we are putting VCs on the backburner and are moving to seeking funding from Angels and Grants. We will focus on getting traction now and keep VCs in touch with our progress for future funding rounds.
3. The VC pitch was not what I thought it would be. I was prepped with a slide deck and presentation skills through Cornell Tech. While this was good for getting concise with my brand messaging, I have never opened up a pitch deck with a VC. We have always just sat in a room (or over the phone) and had a conversation. The first question is typically “tell me about how you discovered this problem”. I would start there and then things flowed into explaining who is on my team. Additionally, I always take the meeting as one guy, the CEO. I have done other meetings along with my co-founders, but we were doing so many meetings that my co-founders didn’t want to attend anymore. They preferred to work on the product. This is totally fine and at this point I get the same questions each time, so I don’t usually have a problem answering any of the technical questions.  If you’ve wondered what it looks like to sit in the waiting room, waiting for your pitch meeting with a VC, that’s what the top picture on this post is.
4. Networking is amazing. I’m not a great networker in social events. I’m kind of the guy that walks around the fringes of the crowd and picks off lonely outliers. I also don’t like to just pitch all the time. I like to be interested in other people and try to find ways to help. But I have found the true value in networking lately, and I do it all by email. I’ll email well connected people for intros to other people and when I meet with those people I’ll ask for connections to other people. Not everyone I meet with will be an investor or a client but most connections to influential people have come through random conversations with interesting people that weren’t my target. I’m starting to build a decent network here in NYC and its seeming to snowball. I was using the trial version of Cloze.com to track all my contacts and it is pretty nice because they automate a lot of stuff, but I have to wait to get more money to invest in the Pro version.
5. Team is everything. My team has stuck through some tough things already. We formed together as a team because we believed we were different enough that we wouldn’t step on each other’s toes and we were focused enough to be able to work independently of each other. That seems to have been a good strategy. We have taken on interns and developers and we always know exactly who those people should report to because our roles have been so well defined. I personally prefer three co-founders because there is always a tie-breaker. Two of the co-founders will present their case for a strategic decision and the third will break the tie. It has worked up till this point.
6. Culture and doing things regularly are hard to implement. There are a few things that we have tried to keep going from the beginning. We wanted to do a weekly report to each other due on Monday stating what you did, what you’re going to do, and how you feel (illustrated through a GIF). Our CTO, Nicolas, is the only one diligently still following through with that. (But then again, it was his idea). I proposed that we just stick with sending out a GIF, but even that has proven hard for me. We also have plans to do something together as a team every other Thursday. It switches between game night and sprint night. For games, we usually play arcades, PS4, or board games. For sprints, we meet together around 5pm and declare what we will individually be working on for the next 5-6 hours. It can be something that you’ve been meaning to tackle but haven’t had the time to get to. We throw some music on and try to knock it out. Game night and sprint night are barely hanging on, but I hope it stays.
7. There is a lot of free space in NYC.  Lots of companies are giving away free space to startups.  If you are smart, you don’t have to pay for space and you don’t need to give away equity.  We are working for 6 months at eBay.  Friends of mine are working on their startup at Infor.  AWS has free shared space for use that you don’t even have to ask for.  And I believe AOL has free space for companies that are interesting to them.  They may even give you money to work there.  This seems to be a growing trend and I would definitely recommend it.  Ebay is awesome and we get free food.

If you have questions about life at the beginning of a startup, send me an email(ian@themilitaryentrepreneur.com) or write it in the comments. I’ll try to write a new blog post about it.  I just recently had our fourth baby boy, so that is just some added fun, piled on top of starting a company in NYC.

-Ian

I am exposing my vulnerabilities by posting this video here.  I hate watching it because I see how nervous I was and how that translated into how I talked, walked and gestured.  But I believe that life is about putting yourself out there.  “Some people fail to grow and some people fail in order to grow.”

I’ve discovered that if you dedicate most of your time to this one attribute, you’ll become a leader that is remembered far longer than your time as their leader. You just need to sincerely do one thing: To Care. That’s it! You just need to truly care about others.

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Here is the transcript to the talk:

“Nine years ago, I walked nervously down the stairs of an old German fire station through a cold steel door to meet a small team of eight US soldiers for the first time. I was a fresh college graduate and a new officer in the United States Army. I had a lot of training but not so much practical application. And I was supposed to be in charge. As they turned to face me I could see their eyes first look at my rank and then analyze me from top to bottom. I looked skinny, young and not intimidating. So what do I do? How do you get people that are much more experienced than you to listen and respect you? I can tell you, looking back, I’m embarrassed by the approach I took.

I graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point. This is an academy that breeds leaders like Eisenhower and MacArthur. My two brothers attended there and my father had a long, respected career in the Army. I was primed to lead in the military. But deep down inside, I was scared of leadership. My charisma level was questionable, my competency level was just a little above average. And with the war in Afghanistan on my horizon, I had to ask myself if I was ready to be responsible for people’s lives. What I left West Point with, was an understanding of the science of leadership. In my mind, there was a long checklist of do’s and don’t’s that would ensure my success as a leader and these are things passed down from one great leader to the next. So I graduated, and I took off with my memorized lines and procedures, which were bound to make me an awesome leader.

So there I was in front of my team spouting memorized lines and trying to follow the leadership equation to a “T”.  I could actually see them feeling my awkwardness. I wasn’t being myself. I felt like a robot. So here’s my first point, leadership is not something that takes memorization. A checklist alone won’t guarantee your leadership success. People see right through this. Maybe they’ll appreciate your effort but it is definitely not natural and it becomes hard for you to keep up that facade.

Throughout my years in the military and after listening to stories from dozens of other successful military leaders and their subordinates, I’ve found one common attribute to always be present. And that’s what I’m sharing with you today.  I’ve discovered that if you dedicate most of your time to this one attribute, you’ll become a leader that is remembered far longer than your time as their leader. You just need to sincerely do one thing: To Care. That’s it! You just need to truly care about others. Now that may seem very soft and non concrete, especially coming from a military guy.  I could slam my fist while saying it if it makes it sound tougher, but seriously, it’s this touchy/feely concept of caring that always wins in leadership. It is the number one attribute that you wished your leaders had when you were coming through the ranks. Yet, somehow, when we become leaders, we forget how much we used to want someone to care about us. The reason we all want a leader that cares about us is because we have basic needs to learn, grow, achieve recognition, and be accepted; and caring leaders validate those needs.

I’ll share with you three of my favorite examples today of Caring Leadership in Action:

1) I Need You

In my interviews with leaders, I found a magic phrase: “I need you”. How many times have you said that? I have a 2 year old and he says that to me sometimes and I stop in my tracks and I pick him up and give him the biggest hug and don’t let him go for awhile. I believe that inherently, when someone tells us that they need us, it changes our mindset, we open up to them. If they are genuine about it, we want to help them. What if you said that as a leader? We tend to think that these words expose a vulnerability, and we shy away from using them in the workplace. Why? The strongest team bonds come together from this type of mindset of one person needing another.

I interviewed an Army pilot that used the phrase “I need you” with powerful results. He used these three words to forfeit some of his own pride in exchange for someone’s dedication to the mission.  He told me how he was put in charge of twenty plus soldiers who were about to head to Iraq. Most of the soldiers including himself had never been to Iraq or any war zone for that matter. He had two well seasoned sergeants on his team that had been to Iraq a couple times. In the Army we call these type of guys salty. As this pilot worked to prepare his soldiers for war, he watched as the 2 sergeants mockingly observed without providing support. He grew more and more frustrated as the 2 people with the most experience chose not to help and acted as if all the training was beneath them.  After weeks of frustration, he walked over to the 2 salty soldiers and asked them to step outside with him.  It was then that he put his hands on their shoulders and looked in their eyes and said  “I need you.”

There was an immediate change in their eyes. A look of shock at first.  He empathized with them about how repetitious and invaluable this may seem to them because they were much more experienced and then explained the value he saw in them to the team.  You could see a look of determination and professionalism come over them. There was a mental shift and the time for selfishness was gone. It was time to get ready for war!  They changed their attitude from that point forward and upon bringing everyone home safe from war, they each wrote that pilot a long letter explaining how touched they were by someone that saw their value and personally cared for them. He was the best leader they ever had.

That one phrase can be so powerful. Why? Because this pilot cared about his entire team. He was willing to open up to the salty soldiers and invite them into the mission of the team. He did not want his team to be a conglomeration of single individuals, each doing their own thing. He wanted his team to be more like a single individual doing a lot of things at once, and he needed everyone on board to do that.

Remember that magic phrase “I need you”

2) Challenge your team members so that they thrive

A second story will help you see why you should care to understand your team members and challenge them individually. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, once said “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”  I know a veteran who was once the only female officer in her army unit. As a petite 5 foot tall woman, such a masculine alpha-male environment could be quite intimidating.  This vet told me story after story about the boss she had there that challenged her to the point of exhaustion.  And she loved it.  Her boss was 6 foot 4 with a booming voice and people listened when he spoke. Instead of coddling her and sheltering her from the hard-charging men around her, her boss challenged her to excel at her job.    

He took the time to understand her and her strengths and made sure that whenever opportunities arose, he would challenge her to use her skills. She remembered some of her first company meetings when the boss was presented with difficult decisions to make. Instead of spouting off an answer which the boss was likely capable of doing, he directed everyone’s attention to the lady in the back of the conference room and asked her for her advice because the decision involved her area of expertise. These public displays of trust in her capabilities made her feel totally comfortable and involved. She felt proud of her contributions and this led her to thrive in her environment.

A caring leader looks for potential in the people he leads and when you discover this potential, call it out! Truth is your team wants to be challenged and motivated. They love to have tasks that make their minds come alive and stimulate new ideas. As a leader, you can promote intrinsic motivation by giving your team opportunities to self-express and show off their strengths.

3) Give more than you take

As a last point i want to encourage you to change your paradigm from a taking mentality to a giving mentality. Most people start a new job by thinking “I’m going to learn so much from this new job” or “When I leave this job I’ll be able to add to my resume that I was a manager”. And when they leave, they pack everything up and take off leaving very little behind.  But what if you started your job with “I’m going to give” statements? Like “I’m going to give my best to help my team perform better”. “I’m going to give helpful career advice to people that work for me”. You see, that paradigm change of giving versus taking suddenly changes the type of leader you are trying to be.

A friend of mine served as a Lieutenant in the Israeli Army and he told me about a time he chose a giving mindset. When he was a young leader he had a boss that he wished he could be mentored by, but that boss was not at all approachable. My friend took this as a lesson in what he didn’t want to be. He wanted to be a giving leader and decided one day that he was going to start holding what he called “dream sessions” with his team. He had a diverse team, both young and old, military and civilian members. He started with the youngest soldier first and went outside in the fresh open air. Under the warm sun with some french fries sitting on the table, he asked this young man what he wanted to get out of his time as part of this team. The soldier told him he wanted a college degree and he felt concerned about taking care of his family. My friend gave him the advice that he could and told him he’d link him up with people that had already taken that journey. My friend was amazed at how much this young man had been thinking about his future and how excited he was to share it. He then continued meeting with a new soldier each week. Soon the older civilian team members who were twice his age were asking for a dream session with him. Word spread like wildfire and his peers who were leading other teams started asking him how he was conducting these dream sessions. My friend said that his team became incredibly high performing after he started the dream sessions due to two main reasons: First. His team members felt appreciated and felt as if they were being personally welcomed to the team. And second. He was now able to distribute tasks and instruct without awkwardness. Have you ever asked someone to do something that you barely knew?  It’s tough because it feels very one way and shallow. For my friend, he told me that he felt much more in tune with what makes his people tick and was able to frame his leadership in a much more personal way. This is what happens when you choose a giving mentality instead of a taking mentality. Keep in mind of how you can give to your team as a leader. Not just take.

Closing

In closing, as I have made this transition out of the military world, and into the civilian workforce, I have found that people are the same, whether soldiers or software developers. They want to know you care. And when you truly care, you “give” much more than you take. You give time to understand people and challenge them to reach their potential.  You should make frequent efforts to remind people of their importance and how much they are needed.

So this is what you can do on Monday when you show up to work. You don’t have to be the designated leader to do this. Find someone on your team that you don’t know much about and start a dream session. What does he or she really want in their future and how can you “give” to help make it happen?

I would like to end with this: “Leadership in the end is an affair of the heart. When we care and invest our time in people, we receive dividends for a lifetime”. This is what I NOW believe is leadership.

Thank you.”

2016 Best MBAs: Ian Folau, Cornell

At first, when I was made aware that I was being nominated for this list, I couldn’t understand why.  I was definitely not the smartest in the class, with barely making it by in accounting and finance.  I was also not the most involved in extra-curricular activities put on by the school.  But as I talked to people involved with the selection and reading comments made by my professor, I realized that it stemmed from my ability to be a good person that cared about others.  I recently gave a talk at TEDx Cornell Tech and I talked about leadership as being someone who cares about others.  It took a lot of self-reflection and a massive collection of leadership stories from friends and colleagues to get to that simple realization.

Now reflecting on what I’ve learned over the past year doing an MBA at Cornell Tech, I have pulled out key attributes that I want to stay with me the rest of my life.  I want to be able to give more than I take.  I want to be able to really care about the success of others and do my best to help them accomplish whatever they want to do.  I don’t want to be seen as someone that gives only half of his effort or someone that doesn’t do what he says he’s going to do.  And above all, the thing that I am striving for after a year of introspection, is the ability to empathize with people.  Although we hear about taking caring of your soldiers in the Army,  I don’t think I understood how important the concept of EQ (emotional intelligence) played a legitimate role in leadership.  People love leaders that can empathize with them, their needs, their abilities, and their desires.  When you tap into that, you open a world of super-charged abilities.  In the end, I believe that I was selected to this list, because I cared less about my grades and more about the people around me.

Three months ago, two classmates and I were assigned two Israeli companies to consult for as part of the Global Trek course taught by Professor Roni Michaely. The first, a relatively new Startup called Voiceitt, built an app to help individuals with speech disabilities. For individuals whose speech isn’t discernable to most, the app translates their sounds into more intelligible speech using a synthesized voice.

The second startup we consulted for was a little more established and had a decent amount of funding. Comigo sells set-top boxes (that thing you point your TV remote at) to TV providers that allow their customers to do more than simply select channels. It gives viewers a richer experience through social media integrations, shopping options, and details about sports games like starting lineups and play-by-play reports.

In the two months preceding our trip to Israel to present our recommendations, my team video conferenced each company every week. We determined what strategic decisions the companies were trying to make and got to work researching and setting up interviews with customers and other companies in the industry. Now that I spent two months trying to dissect the traditional TV/media industry, I realize that I don’t want to ever be a player in it.

Once in Israel, venture capitalists, banks and startup incubators graciously donated space for our final presentations. In addition to the leadership teams of our startups, each group of MBAs presented in front of a panel of 5-6 investors and experts as well as our MBA and Computer Science classmates.

When working for Voiceitt, we analyzed multiple business models they could implement. Voiceitt wanted to reach as many afflicted people as fast as possible, which was taken into account in our recommendation.

Our presentation focused on dissecting the pros and cons of two main business models: selling the product as an app in the Apple AppStore vs. selling it as a medical device reimbursable by insurance. The process of qualifying for medical device reimbursement is arduous and limiting, so we recommended selling Voiceitt in the AppStore to the public.

We also explored building a proprietary hardware device to accompany the app for better quality and gave the company a breakdown of costs and technology.

When making our recommendations for Comigo, we laid out the current progress of dynamically inserting TV commercials in Europe, as this functionality is something Comigo wants to help provide. Although dynamic ad insertion isn’t on live television in Europe yet, we wanted to find television operators for them to target in the future.

To do this, we found channels that are streaming online and utilizing “dynamic ad insertion” and researched operators that stream these channels on television. Our recommendation included three progressive operators for Comigo to target in three different European countries.

Even though the daily workload of presenting around 30 presentations in 10 days was intense, it was offset by some amazing food, drinks, cultural sightseeing, entertainment and good old MBA fun.

Here’s a video recap courtesy of Google Photos.

After serving nine years as an officer in the U.S. Army, I’ve seen hundreds of service members leave the military and try to find a new path in the civilian world. As a veteran, you might be considering an MBA as the next step for your career.

At Johnson, I viewed my MBA as a training school or preparing myself to take on a new job; as if I was changing my MOS. In reality, the experience has been much more personal and enriching than I could have anticipated.

Here are 7 takeaways for veterans considering an MBA at Johnson:

1. You will be respected

When leaving the service, there is often a fear as to how you will be received by civilian population.

Will I be perceived as lacking business skills or corporate understanding?

Will I be seen as a trained robot without the ability to think independently?

My experience with classmates and staff at Cornell has been overwhelmingly positive. I am also often approached by international classmates who mention my service and have positive observations of American military service and dedication.

2. You might be the only one with a family

I have three children. This is not the norm in business school, and is likely due to a difference in culture between the military and civilian world. It is common for military folk to get married relatively young in their careers and have children soon after.

Although I am one of very few to have kids in the Johnson Cornell Tech program, my classmates love seeing my kids and have plenty of polite and enthusiastic questions for me about family life.

3. You’ll be grateful you can stay calm under pressure

At West Point I learned to wake at 0530, work out, polish shoes, prepare a uniform, tidy a room/bed, meet with and train my subordinates, take 20+ credits in classes, go to three hours of sports practice, and complete more than four hours of homework each day.

When I entered the Army and was deployed to Afghanistan, I was prepared to take stress in stride. I learned to think straight under pressure and prioritize.

As a student, I am grateful for these skills and to the military for instilling these tools. Graduate school is full of demands; from a heavy course load to extracurricular activities. Expect to have a quiz, final, or project on a weekly basis.

Thankfully, military nature has taught me to tackle problems as they come and not to overcomplicate things.

4. You already have business finesse

I have been asked by classmates to give a seminar on discipline, and it’s clear that discipline is a respected trait for your MBA and future endeavors.

You’ll hear staff advising students to be on time as an outward depiction of your dedication and responsibility. This habit is a military vet’s habit to lose. You’ve had it beat into you as a service member, why not keep it up? The business world respects you for it.

5. You know more about leadership than you realize

In the Army, it became cliché to say that I was becoming a leader. Everything was about leadership – we read books, attended classes, and received mentorship on how to lead correctly. We learned how to turn groups of strangers into cohesive teams willing to put their lives on the line for one other.

Now, in my MBA, I lead without realizing it’s even happening. I lead a group from school in business idea brainstorming. I lead teams in weekend business creation competitions. I have been asked on multiple occasions by classmates for advice on my leadership style.

I was initially concerned that my military-learned leadership style may not work in a civilian environment. I have found that to be untrue. The one thing we don’t talk about, but do, is lead with emotional intelligence. Great veterans understand our peers and lead with understanding and empathy.

6. You’ll be cared for

The admissions process at Cornell was amazing. When I arrived on campus, the first thing I received was a contact list with every veteran at the school. The veteran network at Cornell is collaborative and helpful.

I spoke with five different veterans during my application process and received guidance on what to write, how to interview, and which program to choose. I find myself trying to find ways to pay this forward.

As a student, I am constantly being introduced to fellow vets. The veteran network at Cornell is amazing and the history of military relations runs deep at the University.

7. You’ll receive more financial aid than you thought

When researching business schools, I sought out those that accept the GI Bill and are participants in the Yellow Ribbon Program.

When reviewing aid options, I was surprised to see how generous Cornell University’s contribution to the Yellow Ribbon Program is. In fact, it was the highest of all of the schools that I been considered.

In speaking to Johnson veterans that were ineligible for the Yellow Ribbon Program, I found that a large majority were offered scholarships or fellowships that covered a majority of their tuition. Admissions staff firmly believes that veterans bring a very unique skillset to our community and want to encourage more to consider Johnson.

Learn more about the veteran community at Johnson.