“I not only want to do this,” Joe said after completing the program, “but now I genuinely believe that I can do this.”
He came home to San Antonio and called his best friend Jesse.
He didn’t have a polished pitch. He had a conviction of 26 years of trust. Jesse didn’t ask for a business plan or a revenue model.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Jesse said, “but if you want to do this, I want to support it.” That was all it took to decide to start a company. Not months of deliberation or bartering. Two people who had spent their entire adult lives building inside a structure someone else designed, deciding for the first time to build something of their own.
By 2017, SolutionPoint+ was incorporated. It started as a side operation while both remained on the force, but by 2020, Joe left SAPD to run the company full time. Jesse followed shortly after. Two years after Joe went through EBV, Jesse completed the EBV program himself at Syracuse University. The capstone pitch of SolutionPoint+ won the Captain Melvin T. Smith Pioneer Award.
What The Decision Built
The company Joe and Jesse built is the direct translation of two military careers and two policing careers into a scalable business. SolutionPoint+ trains first responders, corrections officers, healthcare workers, educators, and transit employees in crisis intervention, de-escalation, and mental wellness. Their stated vision is to eradicate suicide among first responders. Their largest client is the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Every federal correctional facility in the United States falls under their training contract. They operate internationally, with contracts in Canada, and the company appears on both the Inc 5000 and the Vet 100 lists.
None of that happened in spite of their military background. It happened because of it.
Joe describes one of the core lessons of the Marine Corps as “Semper Gumby.” Always flexible. “Whatever plan you ever come up with is never going to fully execute because of unforeseen things,” he said. “The Marine Corps did a really good job of preparing us for that.”
He pointed to a recent example. SolutionPoint+ had a training team deployed to Iowa during a blizzard. The client spent five days assuring Joe that attendees would be there. His team showed up ready, but only two people arrived out of twenty. The client canceled. Joe had predicted it a week earlier. He rescheduled and moved on.
That response to unexpected events isn’t incidental. IVMF research shows that 71% of veteran entrepreneurs report their military experience helped them adapt and persevere through business challenges, and 93% say their military skills directly contributed to their success. For Joe and Jesse, those are not abstract statistics. They are operational reality.
According to IVMF’s National Survey of Military-Affiliated Entrepreneurs, 47% of veteran entrepreneurs identify as social entrepreneurs, and most of them are not running nonprofits. They are building for-profit businesses oriented around a mission that extends beyond revenue. Joe and Jesse didn’t abandon that instinct when they separated. They built a company around it.
Finding The Right Ecosystem
The decision to build is one thing. The ability to sustain it is another.
SolutionPoint+ did not reach this point alone. Joe has completed EBV , EBV Accelerate, and is currently in CEOcircle. Jesse completed EBV at Syracuse and has attended Veteran EDGE multiple times with Joe. In fact, a connection made at Veteran EDGE led directly to their first federal contracting opportunity, which put SolutionPoint+ on their path to their Federal Bureau of Prisons work. Connections like that are why Joe and Jesse return to Veteran EDGE year after year.
For Jesse, the value went deeper than business development, it was permission. “When you realize there’s a lot of people, even when they’re at the next level, and they’re figuring it out as they go,” he said, “that network provided confidence.”
Joe doesn’t qualify it. “I do not believe we would be where we are if not for IVMF.”
For veterans who spent years building competence within the military or a civilian career, the hardest part of entrepreneurship is often believing the skills translate. Joe and Jesse took that step and made the decision to build. Through IVMF, they found the education, the community, and the opportunities to build a company whose mission is as serious as the one they served in uniform.
