Are you looking to transition but don’t want to work for someone else? Many veterans agree, which is why small business opportunities are so popular within the community, especially in the world of franchising. According to the International Franchise Association, about 14% of all franchises are owned by military veterans—serving as a fantastic career opportunity that puts your skill sets to work. U.S. Veterans Magazine sat down with Navy SEAL and founder of TRX Training and OutFit Training, Randy Hetrick, to talk about franchising, business ownership and its impact on the veteran community.
What made you decide to join the Navy SEALs Teams?
During my junior year in college, the Reagan Revolution was in full swing, and the concept of service to the country became cool again. I got the itch to prove myself and to see what I was really made of. The Navy SEAL Teams—with its notorious 85% attrition rate during the selection process known as BUD/S—represented the ideal intersection of each of these notions.
How did you first create the TRX Training System?
Around 1997, while I was serving as a Troop Commander at the SEAL Special Missions unit, I was on a deployment to Southeast Asia. We were preparing for a counter-piracy operation, deployed to a warehouse where there was no real way to train the muscles necessary to climb up the side of a freighter. I got the idea to stitch together some nylon webbing with my jiu-jitsu belt to create a simple harness that leveraged my body weight, working against gravity to create a functional strength training tool. That harness, originally dubbed “The Gizmo” by my squadron mates, ultimately transformed into today’s TRX Suspension Trainer.
How has your military service influenced your civilian career?
My time in the SEAL Teams colors virtually every portion of my life. All of the best leadership principles that I know came straight from the Teams, learned in the field. I had some of the best leadership mentors on Earth, both enlisted and commissioned, and I learned a ton about how to organize ordinary people into phenomenal teams who, together, can achieve the impossible. It also gave me thick skin, a hard head and a high pain threshold, which—it turns out—are incredibly valuable assets in entrepreneurship.
Tell us more about OutFit Training—what inspired you to mobilize TRX?
After 16 years of building TRX, I became excited about the “blue ocean” idea of bottling up everything we do indoors for gyms and taking it into the great outdoors. I also became passionate about the notion of creating a business with a low buy-in and low monthly expense structure that could give trainers and military veterans (two groups of people who are near and dear to my heart) a realistic opportunity to build their own businesses and create real net worth for themselves and their families. Mix that together with a great team, a heap of new-fangled technology and two decades of fitness business experience, and voilà! OutFit Training was born.
What makes an OutFit Training franchise ideal for veterans?
Veterans grow up doing outdoor PT with their buddies. It’s generally a part of military culture that we all enjoy. After service, many vets want to move in an entrepreneurial direction rather than joining another giant bureaucracy. They want to be their own boss. However, certain challenges make that transition difficult: 1) Most vets lack formal business experience; 2) Vets often lack the start-up capital needed to buy an existing business or to fund a start-up because most options require a big pile of investment capital; 3) They’re generally uncertain and unfamiliar with the businesses opportunities that may be placed in front of them.
OutFit solves all three of these problems. First, as a franchise structure, it comes with complete operating instructions and full support from OutFit HQ—essentially business in a box. Second, it has the lowest start-up costs of any fitness business I know. And third, most vets love to workout outdoors with their buddies. OutFit gives you the opportunity to do that for a living!
Anything else you would like to add or share with us?
Having made the transition from a military career to entrepreneur, I’d encourage vets who are thinking of starting businesses to do at least two things. First, investigate franchise opportunities because choosing the right one can reduce your risk significantly versus going it alone and “free-styling” a start-up business from scratch. Second, and most importantly, be sure to choose a second career in an area that you are passionate about. Business is a different form of battlefield and can be pretty grueling if you don’t love what you’re doing. Conversely, as the old saying goes, “If you really love what you do for a living, you’ll never work a day in your life!”
Read more articles for the veteran community here.
