Like millions of entrepreneurs across the country, U.S. veterans who are small business owners have faced the devastating economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. LISC's Rapid Relief and Resiliency Fund and other small business grant-making efforts took veterans into special account and we are honored to have been able to support hundreds of veteran-owned businesses keep their doors open and weather the nearly nine months since lockdowns began. To mark Veterans Day 2020, we are sharing the stories of three of them, and each credits their military experience with helping them bend with the winds of change, however severe.
Melissa Dunbar, MTDJ Trucking
Pittsburgh, PA
If Melissa Dunbar has learned one thing of value about running a small business in the past decade, it’s the importance of responding to constant change. “Flexibility is good,” says Dunbar, who started a passenger transportation company with her husband, Melvin, in their native Pittsburgh in 2012. The couple operated a fleet of shuttle vans offering a safe and affordable ride to customers between events downtown and the city’s residential districts and airport, and business was good—until a pair of new players, Uber and Lyft, arrived in town. “That hurt us,” Dunbar recalls. “Those guys don’t have to cover the cost of overhead and commercial insurance policies that we did.” As they watched MTDJ Transportation’s revenues dip, the enterprising couple hatched a new business plan. In 2017 they acquired a single dump truck capable of hauling heavy-duty industrial residue from Pittsburgh’s sprawling steel mills to offsite processing facilities and a new business, MTDJ Trucking, was born.
Now, the couple are reinventing themselves once again, this time as a result of the COVID-19 downturn. “For a couple months there the mills were closed and construction was down, and there was nothing, no work for us,” says Melissa. “At that point, we had a bunch of conversations about what could do. We don't want to lose our business that we worked so hard for. So we’re transitioning again,” she says. Since the one sector of the transportation industry that didn’t seem to suffer during the lockdown was package delivery, the Dunbars are planning to use funds from a $20,000 small business emergency relief grant from LISC, with support from Lowe’s Companies, to procure a box truck or Sprinter van to begin a parcel delivery service. “We’re looking into expanding our company in that direction and subcontracting with a Staples or Amazon-type of organization to transport parcels,” she says.
An armed services veteran, Dunbar credits her 10 years in uniform for teaching her many of the key competencies that have allowed the Dunbars to succeed as small business owners in an unpredictable economy. “Those leadership skills have helped me immensely,” she says. Among other assets, she learned the procurement business and contract negotiation, which put her in a good position to act as the company’s business lead, while her husband, who has a commercial driver’s license, takes charge of the transportation and driving end of operation. She is also comfortable with people from diverse backgrounds, another hallmark of military experience. “That has always worked for me, because you never know what type of employees or people you’ll be dealing with as a contractor or subcontractor,” she says. “I can converse with anybody, figure out their strengths and needs and how we can grow our businesses together.”
With Pittsburgh’s steel mills back in production, the MTDJ Trucking’s waste hauling business has rebounded to about 75 percent of pre-COVID levels. And with plans for expansion into the new field of package delivery, Dunbar is hopeful the company is prepared to weather future disruptions. “I’m very optimistic,” she says. “Being able to expand in this additional direction of transportation means I’m keeping my business alive and growing and thriving.”
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Gary Peterson, One Community Auto
Albuquerque, NM
You’ve probably never met a used car salesman like Gary Peterson. The Albuquerque, N.M, car lot he opened seven years ago, One Community Auto, looks like any of the others along the city’s Route 66 automotive strip, but under the hood there’s a key difference. “We’re a used car dealership with a social mission,” says Peterson. That’s because all of the previously-owned cars on offer on site and at the dealership’s regularly scheduled online auctions have been donated to local charities and then refurbished and readied for sale by a team of mechanics, thereby boosting the sales value of the automobile. It’s a win-win situation, Peterson explains: “Every time we sell a car the donor gets a bigger tax break because the car is worth more money; our charity partner gets more money for its mission; and somebody in the community here gets a decent car.”
Launched in 2013, Peterson’s innovative for-profit enterprise currently processes and sells 50 to 100 cars a month in partnership with a wide range of local charities, from veteran’s groups and church-based philanthropies to food banks, the New Mexico Cancer Foundation and, most recently, Wings of Life, an organization that supports returning citizens from New Mexico’s jails and their families as they reintegrate into their homes and communities. Like countless small businesses across the country, however, operations were abruptly shut down when state officials deemed used car dealerships “non-essential” during the COVID-19 crisis, forcing Peterson to furlough his seven co-workers.
Fortunately, emergency funding, including a $20,000 small business emergency relief grant from LISC via Lowe’s Companies, helped to keep the car dealership from permanently closing, and shifting to online sales and marketing kept the business going throughout the temporary lockdown. “This really helped us when we were falling short on rent, utilities and our insurance, which is steep for a car dealership. We have two tow trucks, and I really didn’t want to have to sell one to bridge the gap.”
With the economy in slow recovery from the pandemic, Peterson is back to practicing the professional skills and strong values that he says were instilled during 23 years of service in the U.S. Air Force, including four deployments in Iraq. “I was a logistician, so I really had two passions. One was automobiles, that type of stuff, and the other was charity work. Wherever I went in the world, I tried to make it a better place, I got involved in the community.” Another valuable lesson learned is a focus on resiliency. “In the military, you constantly meet with obstacles that you have to move around to get the job done,” he says. In that sense, he adds, it’s a lot like running a small business.
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Professor Ronald Gibson, Gibson School of Music and Arts
Philadelphia, PA
When U.S. Navy veteran Ronald Gibson bought Zapf’s Music store, one of the country’s largest retailers of guitars and other instruments, and turned it into a school in North Philadelphia’s Olney district in 1995, he was inspired by a vision of a neighborhood reborn. On city blocks once settled by German immigrants, a new generation of less affluent newcomers from Asia and Latin American countries had arrived, bringing a new sound to the streets. “Let’s just say other people looked at the changing of the community differently than I did,” says Gibson, a player in the Navy Band who went on to become a composer, concert pianist and professor of music. “This area is multicultural, and that’s good for music.”
A quarter century later, it’s obvious that music education has also been good for the neighborhood. Gibson’s creation, the Gibson School of Music and Arts, has grown into a thriving center of learning, offering classes in all types of music—jazz, gospel, rock, R and B, and classical—as well as dance, drama, painting, drawing and reading for toddlers. Its instructors have trained hundreds of working artists, including producer James Poyser and keyboardist Jimmy Gray of the Grammy-winning The Roots, the house band of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “There’s a lot of success stories here,” says Gibson.
As the Gibson School prepared to celebrate its 25th anniversary, instructors and some 400 students were forced to stay home when the coronavirus caused a lockdown of all non-essential businesses in Philadelphia. Physically shuttered for five months, the school quickly shifted to online instruction, although in teaching music “there’s no substitute for one-on-one teaching,” notes Gibson, who recently wrote the musical score of a documentary about the environmental revitalization of North Philadelphia’s Tacony Creek. But with the help of a $10,000 small business emergency relief grant from LISC via Verizon, the school was able to continue paying salaries to teachers, a receptionist and administrators, allowing the community resource to stay open in a time of need.
Now reopened for in-person classes, Gibson School of Music and Art is operating as it has since Professor Gibson first pledged “not to run from the blight” he saw in Olney, a neighborhood whose vibrancy has since rebounded. “I chose to try to make my legacy here,” he says. “I saw it as an opportunity.”