The Commander's Brief

Earlier this week, I launched sbalenders.co. What does it do? It helps connect SBA borrowers with the right kind of lender for their loan.

<24 hours after launch we already connected someone looking to buy a hotel with a lender who has a niche in hotel lending.

It was really fun to see that happen so quickly.

Veteran Business of the Week: Old Glory Studios

Video game culture is big in the military. I had a solider who met his wife on a CoD server and I myself spent many hours playing games when stuck somewhere waiting for a flight overseas (once had to fly back to Erbil for a 30 min appointment to get a new CAC and was stuck there for 3 days).

Many of us have likely played a first-person shooter and odds are many of you have played CoD or Ghost Recon or something similar. These games try to simulate the soldier’s experience but have one giant gap: the games aren’t designed by veterans.

Enter Old Glory Studios: Combat games by Combat Veterans.

For background, Lewis Manalo, co-founder, is both a US Army combat veteran AND a veteran of the video game industry, having worked as lead writer on Ghost Recon: Wildland and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. Lewis also worked to create a “Clancyverse” where all of Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy brands — Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, and The Division — all existed in the same story universe.

Old Glory Studios recently announced its upcoming game Victory's Grave: Outflank, an intense team-based PvP shooter set in a post-apocalyptic version of 1980s Eastern Europe. This first game in Old Glory's portfolio is in line with the studio's brand of Combat Games Made By Combat Veterans.

Lewis and his co-founder, another veteran, will be on the podcast soon to talk about Old Glory Studios and their current fundraise.

Resource of The Week: VA Home Loan

My guess is most of you know about the VA Home Loan and are probably underutilizing it.

I’m guilty of that as well.

I am just putting this on your radar: I will have a guest on the podcast soon who is a WHIZ on the VA Home Loan. He has used it extensively himself to build personal wealth and is also a loan broker.

I’m looking forward to sharing that one with you.

Business Idea: Concrete X-Rays

I got this one off Reddit:

A 2-second google search told me that a deluxe concrete scanner package will run you about $25,000.

Throw that bad boy in the back of a truck, go make friends with construction guys, and you are off to the races. Your niche is just looking through concrete- be THE guy someone calls when they need to do that.

My guess is you could charge $750/visit (quick google search) for anything under 1 hour and then $350/hour after that.

Initial investment: $25,000

Price per visit: $750

Net Margin Per visit: 20% or $150

That’s 167 jobs to break even. 3 jobs/day seems reasonable, so that’s 55 days or ~2 months to recoup your initial costs.

Not bad.

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Go crush it,

Mark

P.S. I now have a JOB BOARD