Battle To Business - A Success Story - Part I
Editor's Note: This story was originally posted in The Salvation Army's "Caring" magazine which can be found HERE.
Veteran, homeless entrepreneurs start small businesses with the help of The Salvation Army and Pepperdine University.
Story By Dawn Wright, Photos by Dawn Wright and Courtesy of Mike Slaughter
Paul Crowley is not your average Pepperdine University student. He’s 61, part of an exclusive 20-student population attending Pepperdine’s Palmer Center Micro-Enterprise Program and he commutes to school from The Salvation Army Haven homeless shelter. Like all of his peers, he’s homeless, and like many of them, he’s also a veteran.
He’s the embodiment of The Salvation Army’s dedication to veterans, which takes many shapes and forms, including helping them secure gainful employment. From that commitment, a collaboration with Pepperdine was born to teach homeless veterans wanting to restart their lives entrepreneurism from the ground up. The Palmer Center Micro-Enterprise Program—in its first official year after several pilots—teaches “Entrepreneurs-in-Training” how to evolve from dependence to independence to interdependence.
“It’s helped me learn to take baby steps, but it’s challenging. They’re always evaluating you,” said Crowley, proudly adding, “I haven’t missed a single day of class.”
Crowley applies the same dedication and perseverance to his current studies that he demonstrated in his three years of service as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne in the 70s. Just like the Army, he had to go through a rigorous application process and in-person interview to enter the Pepperdine program. After completing 12 weeks of class focusing on personal skills, he had to prove himself once again during the second round of cuts. Only those who can demonstrate their proposed business model is viable move on to the second session, concentrating on building a solid business plan.
Entrepreneurs-in-Training are encouraged to draw from their own experience, knowing it will take personal passion to meet the challenges of small business ownership. Crowley’s distinct point of view allowed him to see the need among veterans for certain supportive services, and led to his idea for a nonprofit organization—“Suit Up Vets”—that provides homeless veterans with suits or other appropriate work clothes to help them gain the confidence to jump back into the job market.
“These guys are running around with holes in their pants, dirty shirts…filthy. If they come in tattered and torn, they’re not going to get the job,” Crowley said. “But once they start getting some new stuff, it makes them feel better about themselves. It’s all about self-esteem. They come in so low and it’s about trying to bring them back up.”
He’s had many mentors along the way.
Each student is paired with three “Champions”—graduate students pooled from Pepperdine’s law and business school. Distinguished professors rotate as guest speakers. Program coordinators such as Vanda Collins begin class by reciting inspiring Scripture: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer. 29:11 NIV).
Even the barber across the street from Crowley’s residence at The Salvation Army’s Haven shelter has inspired Crowley. “Dreamer,” as he is known, gives about 200 free haircuts a month.
“Guys will come in just off the streets. He welcomes them in, gives them some assurance that everything’s going to work out. He makes them look nice,” Crowley said. “And the guy walks out almost feeling like a new man…with a whole different attitude than he had when he walked in.”
Of course fresh haircuts and a new suit are just one piece of the puzzle. Crowley credits The Salvation Army’s comprehensive program and shelter with rebuilding his life. “This is the best put together program I’ve seen,” he said. “It’s not high pressure. There’s accountability and structure, but it’s anchored by a sense of respect and dignity, which is important to me. It’s therapeutic.”
Crowley reminisces about the time he entered the program. He’d lost everything to alcoholism and had destroyed his family relationships, business relationships, everything. “I was a mess,” he said. “And felt that way—completely felt torn down.”
But then he moved into The Salvation Army’s Haven. With food in his stomach, new clothing and a haircut, Crowley started feeling better about himself. When he first transitioned out of homelessness, he said, he wouldn’t have thought he deserved the opportunity to go to college to learn how to start his own company. But with the help of the Haven staff offering encouragement, assisting with the application process, and giving mock interviews, he said he regained self-esteem.
“I had lost all faith in myself,” Crowley said. “But I started to hold my head up higher. I started to think, you know what? I can do this.”
As Crowley now fine-tunes Suit Up Vets—to be virtual and mobile—his future is hopeful. He won’t wait for the economy to improve so he can land his dream job; Paul Crowley understands his future is now.
Click HERE to read Part II of this story.