How the Army Values run Fire Team Whiskey
My name is Stephanie Lincoln and I am the founder of Fire Team Whiskey. I enlisted in the Army in 1997. I spent 10 years in the Army and achieved the rank of Captain (O3). When I resigned from the Military, I was an Army Instructor at the Regional Training Institute Officer Candidate School.
I created Fire Team Whiskey because as I was working as a civilian contractor with Military Medical, I noticed a troubling steady trend, that our troops were getting more overweight, more unfit and sicker than I had ever seen in my 10 years of military service. My medical, behavioral health and fitness background and experience culminated into an idea to create a military and first responder specific program to address the health and fitness crisis within the ranks of our military and first responders. We provide a military-style holistic approach to fitness and health addressing all the things a person needs to focus on to achieve long term good health. We provide all of our services virtually through our Fire Team Whiskey app so that any military service member anywhere in the world can participate in our program. We have been in business for 2 years now.
While, I could write a book about the things that have gone wrong along the way (ha ha), I would say that my military training helped me with this inevitable trend of things "going wrong" in a new business because in the military we are trained to adapt, overcome and always have more than one contingency plan. My business model is different now than when I conceptualized it 3 years ago. I had to learn that just because we had to make adjustments or compromises, it didn't mean that my vision for the business was destroyed, it just meant I had to "adjust fire" according to all the factors involved and the bottom line is that no matter the way it looks, we are still saving lives and helping veterans and first responders overcome chronic health conditions every single day. As long as I keep my focus on that bottom line and realize that the ultimate goal is to help people, we are doing our job and doing it well.
The military instills in us many attributes that are essential to being a good business owner. I still to this day use the Army Values every single day in my business, and I believe that I am successful in business because of this.
Loyalty- Our Fire Team Members (our customers) are our family. When they join, we treat them like family and not just a paycheck.
Duty- We focus all of our efforts on our key audience and provide value to them with our products.
Respect- Our customers have served their communities and country proudly, so we treat them with the respect they deserve.
Selfless service- Our sole existence is to help service members, first responders and their family members. With that, we give back. Our business not only provides discounts for veterans and first responders, but we partner with non-profit organizations that provide support services to military and first responders and we donate back 25% of our profits and services to these organizations. To date, we have donated over $16,000 of money and services to these organizations.
Honor- We do our jobs 100% and with honor. We even wear uniforms when we are working! We carry ourselves like we still are in the service!
Integrity- This is a HUGE problem in the business world and we have gotten so many compliments on our business operations having integrity. If we mess up, we admit it and make it right. We don't make it hard for our customers to make complaints or get refunds. Nothing is more frustrating than to purchase something then have to jump through a million hoops just to get an issue resolved. We make it right, and we never ever waiver on our integrity. We also don't adhere to the typical fitness business world of making promises you can't keep and blaming the customer if the product doesn't work for them.
Personal Courage- What we do means that our customers are being vulnerable. They are admitting they have a problem and need help. We too have to be vulnerable and open about our own struggles. We have weekly coaching calls where our Trainers talk about their own journies and struggles, we interview our customers and they tell their stories. We put up front that we are all human and have fallacies, successes and hardships. Going back to treating our customers like family, we are supportive, encouraging and forgiving. We leave no one behind.