In all, Rick Bottorff spent more than 35 years immersed in military life, serving active duty in the Air Force from 1989-2010, to working as a civilian management analyst and recruiter for the past decade and a half.
So, leaving the familiarity of the service was a bit scary, especially going into business ownership, which Bottorff knew little about. Fortunately, he could rely on the business acumen of his wife, Stefanie, to help him learn the ropes.
Recently, the couple became franchisees for Office Pride, a commercial cleaning company, with their business based in New Braunfels, Texas.
Bottorff was able to use money saved from the Air Force, along with help from the Small Business Administration (SBA), for a service-disabled small business designation to help kickstart his aspirations.
While transitioning from the military to running a small business can be intimidating, more veterans are finding that their skills can easily transfer to entrepreneurship. As of 2024, there were about 1.6 million veteran-owned businesses in the U.S., based on the latest statistics from the SBA.
Bottorff joined Military.com writer Kevin Damask recently to discuss the SBA’s role in helping establish his business, his time in the military, and tips for other veterans interested in starting a small business.
Kevin Damask (KD): You were able to qualify for a veteran’s small business designation to help establish your business. How did that help get the ball rolling?
Rick Bottoroff (RB): The SBA really looks out for veterans, and its whole intent is to grow small businesses. Give them the opportunities to compete against the bigger companies.
The SBA also helps connect them to larger businesses. It’s good for a bigger corporation to say, “Yeah, we contracted with a small business.” It helps with the whole coordination. We’re also a disabled veteran-owned business.
When you’re looking at government contracts, it’s a lot easier to get those contracts when you’ve been certified and vetted through the SBA. It puts us on the radar. And becoming a franchisee with Office Pride has been great. They’ve been very supportive.
KD: Why did you and your wife, Stefanie, decide to jump into a small business venture?
RB: Well, she has a background in owning apartments and hotels. She has business experience and the ability to actually see the dollar signs coming in. In the military, we don’t really have that. We do a lot more on the human resources side than the finance side. We don’t see the dollars coming in or the bills being paid.
As a military guy, I’m technically trained, so we have the skill, but we really don’t know how to develop a business. I think that’s what really attracted me to Office Pride. It’s a franchise, and they have a proven method. We can buy into the method and eventually own it. I think that’s attractive to veterans.
They say, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Well, when you own your own business, you get to see both ends. You get to do the hard work, but you also get to see the reward on the other side, with money coming in. It’s neat.
Military people really don’t get to see that side of the process. They just tell us to do more work, and we do more work. Well, owning a small business, you get to see the positive side of it, too.
KD: Why do veterans typically make good business leaders?
RB: I can tell you why from an Air Force perspective. I had three different careers in the Air Force. I came in as a radio operator in 1989. That career kind of died with the advent of satellite radios and cell phones. Everybody now has secure communication at their fingertips.
My second career, which I did as an enlisted guy and as a civilian, was management analyst. We did studies to find out how many people it takes to do whatever mission the Air Force is looking at doing. Then they take that study, roll it up, and crunch the numbers to see how many positions it takes to execute that mission. We got to see more of the human capital costs. We would help roll up that information for the president’s budget, and then they could see how much money they could designate from the Department of Defense.
In my third career, I worked as an Air Force recruiter. What was interesting about that is you take all your Air Force knowledge, roll it up and then you’re sort of running your own business because you’re running a satellite office of the Air Force. Then you go out, talk to school administrators, and businesses. You realize that if nothing’s coming in, you have to get out there and find more work, so stuff keeps coming in.
As you move higher up the ranks of the military, most of the time, they start giving you more professional training. You go from the operator side to more of the strategic thinking side. I think that helps when you’re running a business. You learn how to develop better processes. You have to learn the tactical side to know what to do.
Air Force "Sounds good to me"
KD: Why did you decide to go into the Air Force?
RB: I’m originally from Houston, Texas. We have a really nice mall there called Memorial City. They have all the recruiters lined up in offices next to each other. I’m flat-footed, so I knew the Marines wouldn’t work with all that marching. At the time, 1989, I was graduating from high school, and “Top Gun” was still a popular movie. Even though that’s the Navy, it attracted a lot of people to the Air Force and flying jets.
I didn’t know anything about college, and all my friends were going to college. I wasn’t a very good student. This was before they were diagnosing kids with ADHD. But seriously, the recruiter just talked to me about opportunities, and I said, “Sounds good to me.”
I went from hot Houston all the way up to Montana, where it was 20 degrees below zero when I got there for basic training. I thought I had made the biggest error of my life, but it turned out really great.
From Montana, I went to Germany, Italy … California. The Air Force gave me a lot of great opportunities. And that was one of the more important things when I was a recruiter. You have to give kids information and present it on a level where they understand it.
The Air Force uses the term MATTERESS, an acronym for developing a conversation with someone based on money, advancement, training, travel, education, recreation, satisfaction, and security. That kind of leads me back to running your own business. If you’re only coming at it through one angle with a person and that angle dries up, you don’t have anywhere else to go. You could be talking to one kid who comes from money and a wealthy family, so maybe they don’t need money. But maybe the next kid you talk to has an entirely different situation.
You learn to develop a relationship with somebody as opposed to, “Hey, sign up right here and join!” It’s not like “Stripes,” even though that’s a great movie. If anything, I talked too much to my applicants. But I never got any calls saying, “Hey, you lied to them.”
In the military, we learn to develop relationships. Sometimes it’s to make your job easier because you’re working with other people and you’re sharing the responsibility. Other times, it’s part of the fun when you get deployed to another country. You don’t know anybody there, so you just start talking to people and you build a relationship.
KD: Did you have to deploy to other countries?
RB: I was pretty lucky in that I didn’t have many deployments because of the career fields that I chose. My first deployment was in 1995 when the peace accord was signed to end the Bosnian conflict. I was with a combat communications unit, and we had our own satellite communications. They put us there to set up communications. Honestly, I was only there for a week. That was the nice thing about being with the Air Force: you knew where the planes were to go home. (laughs)
In 2004, I deployed as a management analyst to Camp Slayer in Baghdad, Iraq. I was doing manpower work, which was non-combat related. We would process people in. I was never really in harm’s way, and sometimes you get ragged on for being in the Air Force, but that’s OK.
It made you really respect what some of these other folks go through being deployed to war zones.
KD: What was the most challenging aspect of your time in the Air Force?
RB: I really didn’t have that many challenges. I think the biggest thing was being away from the family at different times. Again, it doesn’t even compare to what most of the Army guys go through. I mean, we were deployed for like three months at a time.
What’s interesting with the Air Force is that we do the exact same job whether we’re deployed or back at home station. But when you take an Army installation that’s a few thousand troops, when they’re stateside, they’re mostly training and getting ready. But our job is the same wherever we go.
Recruiting could sometimes be difficult. It was a sales-type business, and I’m more of a process guy. We build it, and the output is where we see all the good stuff. With sales, you never really get to figure out a good process; you’re always just going after numbers. Recruiting was difficult because you’re trying to develop relationships with people, and it was more like, “Nope, just give me another person.”
KD: What did you enjoy most about being in the Air Force?
RB: The Air Force does a good job of developing good leaders and people that you can rely on if you have a problem. It’s not nearly the size of the Army. You have a smaller group of people.
Family time and quality of life were good. My kids were part of the youth center on base, which was great. They adapted well to frequent moves across the country. Meeting friends, losing friends, it really helped them balance out to enjoy life.
Best Advice for Veterans
KD: Where would you like to see your business five, 10 years down the road?
RB: My wife and I are a team. I think we’re going to grow. I rely a lot on Stefanie because she’s really good at marketing, going out, and talking to people.
That’s the main thing for the next five years, just seeing that growth. After that, having a storefront would be nice. We want to be well-established in our community. Obviously, being successful and making money is important too. The proof is in the pudding – you've got to do the work.
Also, by then, we would like to have a few staff members go out and do cleanings.
KD: Any advice for other veterans interested in starting their own business?
RB: Be comfortable with the process. We have “process” drilled into our heads a lot in the military. But this is a process they actually own. A lot of them have technical skills, but they don’t know how to run a business. Be comfortable with that. Learn. Research, research, research.
That’s what led me to Office Pride. It’s a franchise, and it’s nice that it’s a Christian organization because my wife and I have been on the sales side, where it’s just about money-grubbing numbers. We didn’t want to be a part of that. We wanted to leave the corporate world, own our own business, and make an impact.
My passion is cleaning. The ability for constant improvement. You’re touching stuff and cleaning it. You don’t touch it one time, and it just goes away; you have to clean it again and again. It’s one of the OCD-type things that I kind of enjoy.
KD: Anything else you want to add?
RB: Our business is really just starting, but I would love to connect with other veteran business owners to talk about it. We have a lot more tools in our bag than we think we do.
Sometimes we feel beaten down from our service time, and we think we’re done, but we just have to get a new life. That’s the biggest thing, finding out what you want your new life to be.
Editor's note: Readers who would like to reach out to Rick can email him at rickbottorff@officepride.com.
