Find your niche p1 - Military Success Stories - Military Times EDGE

Robert Fitzgerald never set out to be an entrepreneur. As a captain at Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va., he saw a problem that needed fixing, and when he retired in 2001, he set out to fix it.

That effort grew pretty quickly from a simmering notion into a full-boil, high-tech enterprise. Today, his business is raking in awards and revenues, and Fitzgerald says none of it could have happened without the relationships he built while in the military.

“I already had all the contacts. I knew who all the players were,” said Fitzgerald, 52, whose Newport News, Va.-based UAV Communications landed its first federal contract in February 2004.

The business exists to solve a basic problem in the world of unmanned aerial vehicles. While supervising contractors in the UAV program, Fitzgerald saw that there was no smooth way to transmit video from aircraft cameras to decision-makers beyond the immediate field of ops. When he left the service, he went to work for one of those contractors, and when he saw a way to solve the transmission problem, he broke off and became a subcontractor, landing his former boss as his first client.

Here’s what Fitzgerald learned along the way:

Know your environment

To make his business succeed, Fitzgerald had to learn how to operate in the civilian world. “After 22 years, you come out like a deer in the headlights. You don’t know what civilian life is like,” he said. “Fortunately, I had a parent company to hold my hand a little bit,” he said. “Then there were a couple of entrepreneurs I knew who could point me [in the right direction]. I did a lot of reading. I spent a lot of time on the Web. I attended seminars at the local community college.”

Consult professionals

For those eyeing the entrepreneurial path, Fitzgerald is happy to sum up the basics. “The two most important things I knew were to get a good attorney and get a good accountant,” he said. “Let me go broke, but don’t let me go to jail.”

Neither bankrupt nor incarcerated, the Texas-born son of an Air Force dad recently hired his 102nd employee, and top-tier tech contractor Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) named UAV Communications its 2008 Small Business of the Year.

Get loved ones on board

Fitzgerald has needed more than just smarts and a willingness to learn to get to this point. He also has flexed his leadership skills, starting on the home front. “Most military families have been pretty secure, and they can be risk averse,” he said. “So you’ve got to have buy-in from your family. If they are against it, you have a tough row to hoe.”

Don’t just give orders

Back in the office, a habit of giving orders gives way to a softer touch. “You’ve got to learn what motivates people. We have a lot of former military people here, and sometimes sense-of-duty is enough. But if people are motivated by job satisfaction or by compensation or by job title and authority, you’ve got to figure those things out.”

Apply what you’ve already learned

In the big picture, Fitzgerald said the rigors of the private sector are not so different from the demands of life in uniform. Rally the troops. Keep them moving toward the mission objective. “The only difference is we get to pick what we wear every day, and we don’t have to cut our hair.”