National Veterans Small Business Week (NVSBW) is an annual opportunity to celebrate veterans’ service beyond their military career. For thousands of veterans and military spouses, the commitment to serve continues through entrepreneurship. NVSBW celebrates those who carry the values of discipline, resilience, and teamwork from the battlefield to the small business world.
When Army veteran Dennis Guy returned to the Mt. Oliver neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he felt a renewed call to serve—this time through storytelling. When his local fire department faced permanent closure due to a lack of volunteers, Dennis stepped in. Leveraging his background in video production and marketing, he created a compelling recruitment campaign that brought in new volunteers and kept the department’s doors open.
That successful campaign didn’t just help his community—it sparked a business idea. Dennis and his wife, Samantha, launched First Sip Studios, a multimedia marketing agency dedicated to helping startups, nonprofits, and local communities share their stories with impact.
Nina Pinidi, the owner of Solime Royal Hair, juggles her business, school and breast cancer treatments.
More than half of small businesses are born from someone’s desire to find freedom. Nina Pinidi’s business was born out of necessity.
Her comrades needed products they couldn’t find on base or on deployment, but her morale needed it too after serving 17 years.
She rose in rank to chief petty officer with deployments to Japan, Guantánamo Bay, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Chile and Djibouti before getting sick and having to medically retire.
“I was really in a dark time when I was out because it’s like all of a sudden you’re not needed anymore,” she said. “You don’t have to wear a uniform. No one calls you for advice. No one needs your mentorship, and that literally stops overnight.”
When James Earl Carter Jr. signed the legislation establishing the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) program in 1980, he drew upon his own experiences as both a military officer and small business owner to understand the vital importance of supporting American entrepreneurs.
Born in Plains, Georgia, in 1924, James Earl Carter Jr. graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. His subsequent seven-year naval career included service aboard submarines and significant contributions to the nuclear submarine program under Admiral Hyman Rickover. This engineering background and attention to detail would later serve him well in both business and public service.
When Staff Sergeant Eric Grandon, a 20-year U.S. Army veteran, returned home from multiple combat deployments, he was struggling with the debilitating effects of PTSD. Rather than let the stressors of war consume him, Grandon found solace and purpose in an unexpected place – the gentle hum of honeybees.
In 2014, Grandon founded Sugar Bottom Farm in the small town of Ovapa, West Virginia, starting with just two beehives. Along with his wife Mary and daughter Abigail, Grandon dove headfirst into the world of beekeeping, determined to use this newfound passion as a way to manage his PTSD.