A head for business p1 - Military Success Stories - Military Times EDGE

Josh Collins has entrepreneurship in his blood.

Whatever combination of chutzpah, hard work and patience drives someone to build a business where there was none before, it flows strong through the Collins family tree.

His grandfather started it, opening a restaurant after coming back from fighting in the Pacific during World War II. His father continued it, founding a successful home health care company.

And then young Josh seemingly broke the pattern by enlisting in the Army at 19.

He might have thought he was bucking family tradition at the time, but the retired special operations soldier doesn’t see it that way now. A military career is one of the smartest investments around, he said, even apart from the intangible benefits of serving your country.

You’d have to put away at least $1 million by the time you’re 40, Collins estimates, to pull in the monthly paycheck and benefits of a retiree.

“How many people can put a million dollars in the bank and have it in an investment that returns 6 percent?” he asked. “Guys on the bubble — I tell them, there’s no question, stay in.”

But for him, that 20-year investment was just a start.

Private property

In 2000, after more than a decade in the Army and a successful kickboxing career, Collins’ latent entrepreneurial drive kicked into gear. He gave up knocking out opponents and began to knock out life goals, one by one.

He pursued a bachelor’s degree in management and administration from Excelsior University. He graduated from Officer Candidate School. And he and his wife, Bridgette, started buying houses, fixing them up, and selling or renting them.

They eventually built up property management companies that handled homes in North Carolina and Georgia and another that rented vacation cabins in Tennessee.

Josh had the grand strategy and Bridgette was responsible for the nuts and bolts of making it work while he served on active duty, deploying to Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003. They worked well together: His drive moved them forward, but her caution made sure their feet were on the ground, he said.

“I’d find 10 and want to buy 10, and I’d convince her to buy one,” he said.

Gradually, the business grew. At one point, the companies owned $3 million in real estate with rents totaling $25,000 a month.

But then life threw up a roadblock.

Bridgette was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in December 2004. In September 2005, at age 39, she died.

The military family rallied around Josh and his two kids, but “at some point in time, they expect you to get back on your feet,” he said. “The tribe starts to go back to their lives.”

Except for one friend, Tonia, who kept coming around to help.

“She was our guardian angel,” he said. They married in 2006.

Tonia turned out to be an excellent partner in business as well as life, he said. A paralegal and property manager by trade, she jumped into the family business right away.

Café life

Josh and Tonia made the leap from residential to commercial property in 2006, when Josh went to look at a building for sale in downtown Fayetteville and was told the café downstairs was part of the package.

That was a Friday. Over the weekend, he bought five books on restaurants. On Monday, he signed on the dotted line.

Was he nervous about entering a notoriously difficult business? Heck yes, he said, but the purchase fit into his big-picture plans. “You have to be careful how small you dream because you just might achieve it.”

Over the 2½ years they owned the café, Josh and Tonia raised the gross revenue by more than 35 percent a year and maintained a 12 percent profit margin, earning almost $250,000.

Meanwhile, Josh retired from the Army in 2008, after 20 years. It was a hard decision: He needed two more years as an officer to rate an officer’s retired pay, and he had expected to serve many more years after that.

“But I would make the same decision again today in order to support my family through their hardship and loss,” he said.

Collins is hardly taking it easy these days. He now directs linguists and security personnel for TigerSwan Inc., a defense contractor founded by two veterans, and he used his kickboxing and mixed martial arts background to help the company develop a combatives program. And his zeal for business is as strong as ever.

“I’ve achieved all my goals in the military — Ranger, OCS, degree — [so] I kind of raised the bar. We can go much bigger than this; we can do more than this.”

He found out how much bigger when a restaurant and brewery across the street from their café went up for sale. Huske Hardware House had been open since 1996 in a historic hardware store built in 1903. Its location — and its parking lot — were unbeatable, and the property included space for other businesses. Besides, they figured, they’d done well with a 70-seat establishment. How hard would 365 seats be?

“We had a lot to learn,” Josh said. “Quickly.”

Corporate culture

This was a huge step up from their previous ventures — “another zero,” as he described it. They couldn’t do it alone, so he wrote a business plan, found investors — all former service members — and formed a corporation to make an offer. Team Collins hammered out a five-year lease agreement with an option to buy by January 2008.

A month later, they were approached to sponsor the Dogwood Fest, a signature Fayetteville event. The only catch: The festival was in April. They had about three months to pull off a $500,000 renovation.

“Literally, we just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling,” Josh said. When they made it to bed, that is. “I started going to bed at 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning.”

Three crazy months later, Huske Hardware House opened in time with a refurbished kitchen, refinished floors and timbers, new bathrooms and a new bar. The restaurant hosts live and DJ music three nights a week, and lines snake out the door on weekends. The bar sells 16 beers on tap, including six created by its own brewmaster. Revenue is up 30 percent under the new ownership.

In October, Huske Hardware launched three beers for distribution to other bars and restaurants in North Carolina: Level-Headed Blonde (named after Tonia), Kill-A-Man Irish Red and Sledgehammer Stout. Once the brand is more established and demand develops, the brewery will look into bottling them, Collins said.

Tonia is at the restaurant five days a week, and Josh puts in 30 to 40 hours a week on top of 50 to 60 hours at TigerSwan. He likes to move around, touching tables, talking beer and food with customers, telling a patron when he’s done for the night. “I’m the MWR office of downtown Fayetteville.”

Entrepreneurship is not for those afraid to work, and Josh has never been that type. “This is my hobby. Some people fish, some people golf, I do business.”

But not business just for the sake of business.

“The driving factor behind this was really to make a difference ... in our community ... providing income, providing jobs, providing a great place downtown,” he said.

Even more, he sees his businesses as a way of making memories with his family, who are all involved with the restaurant. The years ahead will show whether his two children and two stepchildren inherited their parents’ entrepreneurial genes, but he thinks it likely.

Josh, on the other hand, knows exactly where he wants to be years from now: “I want to work another 20 good hard years, and then work 20 years giving it back.”

_________________

“Everyone has big dreams and big goals, Collins said. “You just got to do it.” Here’s his advice for getting it done.

Get a mentor

Collins’ most important mentor was his father, who gave him lots of business advice as he built up his management companies. His bosses at TigerSwan, Jim Reese and Brian Cearcy, schooled him in marketing and the corporate world as his business plans became more ambitious. But Collins doesn’t scorn mentors by way of Barnes & Noble, either. “I read a lot of books,” he said, and quickly learned to recognize the good ones from the bogus get-rich-quick ones.

Surround yourself with good people

“Going big is about owning a smaller piece of a bigger thing: going corporate or partnering,” Collins said. “Just understand one thing. The only sinking ship is a partnership. So choose your investors or partners wisely.”

Treat your business plan like a mission

“Develop a course of action, have an exit strategy and have the end state in mind,” Collins said.

You have to be practical — you can’t base a business on your fondness for birdhouses if a lot of other people don’t share that affection. “Businesses succeed based on a demand ... for a service or product that is three to five times greater than the cost of the service, goods and overhead,” Collins said. “In other words, you have to sell a quarter for a dollar in order to succeed.”

Replicate yourself

“Entrepreneurship is more about leadership than any other business — motivating, influencing and directing others,” Collins said.

He learned those skills both as an NCO and as an officer, like when to step away and let others do the job you’ve groomed them for.

“Some people are business owners, but they’re really just self-employed,” he said. “You’re really a business owner when you can step away and it runs on its own.”