Even while he was serving in the Army, Marquis Neal knew he would someday own his own business. Such aspirations are not uncommon in the military – who wouldn’t love to be their own boss after serving in such a regimented world? For Neal, who enlisted at 25, the rigid structure of the military only strengthened the desire he’d been nurturing most of his life.
“It intensified the urge to become an entrepreneur,” said Neal, an OIF veteran who spent part of 2006 and 2007 coordinating and traveling in truck convoys in Iraq. “I’ve always had that in me. I’ve always wanted to work and do my own thing. But the military intensified that drive to actually do that.”