Why Veterans Make Good Institutional Capital Raisers
Since much of the population is not routinely exposed to the military, we are often disconnected from the transferrable skills that veterans bring to the workforce. There are many reasons why hiring veterans makes good business sense, and why they make good institutional capital raisers.
Placement Agents / Institutional Capital Raisers are great at touting their ability to raise millions through referral networks and a few calls. However, things are never as easy as they’re made out to be; it’s more of grind requiring a lot of telephone and email work, and a lot more “no” responses than is laid out to be.
If you haven’t had the best of luck with third-party groups, make a bet on a veteran.
From the moment service members start on Day 1, they’re in training and it never ends. It’s gritty at times, but there’s learning and development to be extracted from every moment endured. No one can expect to be decent at anything unless they’ve put in the time and training for it, and the capital raising business is no different. A good salesperson has to keep grinding out gritty phone and emails, and that’s the only way to stay on top of their game.
After-action reviews (AARs) are crucial following every military exercise: these are concise meetings to debrief the successes and failings of every detail for future improvements. These reviews are direct, concise, and can be callous at times. That’s because it can be a matter of life or death. Being able to pick oneself up quickly can be the difference when hearing 5 LPs say “no in quick succession: someone who questions their own commitment vs. someone else who continues selling. In most work environments, you just can’t teach someone to have this spirit (and audacity, to an extent) to call dozens of people in a day. Most who can do this are born with that ability, but others develop this spirit in the the toughest of environments.
Reporting in the third-party business has a lot left to be desired, and many won't like that we’re saying this. Beyond the chain-of-command in every military unit, each service member is responsible for documenting their own progress; simply put – everything has to be accounted for when an officer-in-command calls for it. No ifs, ands, or buts. There’s something to be said about this ability to work efficiently in an organizational structure under pressure when there’s added temptation to take shortcuts. Veterans understand the importance of effective reporting.
Jason Varner had recently shared with us his own story behind a successful transition from the military to the alternative investments industry. Jason is a Marketing Analyst at Blueprint Investment Partners and had spent 4 years in the United States Marine Corps:
One of the most valuable assets carried with me out of the military was the ability to put aside taking anything personal. It's understood in training that you need clear, sometimes painfully honest feedback on what you're doing and the effectiveness of your strategies if there is any hope of improvement. Training to a military standard requires one to be able to remain stoic in learning and honing a new skill set, and a flexibility that not only allows for less effective strategies to be replaced with more effective alternatives, but enables those more effective alternatives to be implemented on the fly. These are transferrable skills to any business, and I’ve found them extremely useful in my line of work.
It's easy to develop a personal bias favoring a strategy that has cost a considerable amount of time and effort to learn and implement, and if not kept in check, that bias can result in a less effective strategy being maintained for much longer than necessary. The stoic, objective view of oneself required to do well in military training is extremely effective at keeping that bias in check. That is why many veterans are able to flourish as salespeople and marketers in our industry: we have that self-awareness and learning-the-hard-way that many that have not served find uncomfortable. We have learned to "embrace the suck".
Veterans Day will be observed on November 11th, an important reminder of service members’ contributions. The Commonwealth nations commemorate Remembrance Day on this same day. Capital+ expresses its gratitude for all those who have served and put country before self.