Tar Heel of the Week: T.J. Breeden helps turn vets' ideas into careers

T.J. Breeden was watching President Barack Obama talk about the country’s debt to veterans on television five years ago.

Soon after, some military family members asked his advice about how to transition into new jobs.

Something clicked in Breeden’s mind.

Less than a year later, Breeden was invited to Washington, D.C., to be honored as one of Obama’s Champions of Change for his efforts to help veterans start new businesses.

Breeden, 32, says the unusually fast growth of his nonprofit eMerging Entrepreneurs was part luck. His low budget forced him to do much of his work online, which turned out to be a great draw for younger veterans.

Since then, Breeden’s impact has spread and recognition for his work has continued. He has sponsored several conferences and workshops on veterans issues, and last year he started a program to expose at-risk youth to entrepreneurship.

Breeden recently won two major awards: for his humanitarian efforts and for business community service.

For Hakeem Moore, one of Breeden’s first clients, Breeden’s patience and enthusiasm were crucial as he sought to start a business.

“He took the time to understand my personality and understand my passion, and he put thought into how to connect that to opportunities,” says Hakeem, a disabled Army veteran. “He’s a very selfless person, and he’s one of these guys who can take an idea and actually create something tangible from it.”

Pushed to dream

Breeden grew up in Laurel Hill, a town near Laurinburg that he says was small enough to lack a McDonald’s. But Breeden says his family pushed him and his two sisters to “think big.”

“My parents didn’t push to be perfect,” Breeden says. “They pushed us to dream.”

They also instilled in their children a sense of community. His father, a pastor, was also a county commissioner and active in community affairs.

“I was working in soup lines as a kid, and passing out fliers and sitting in the front pew,” Breeden says. “I was actively engaged in stuff as a young kid.”

The lessons of his youth would guide him to his current position. In college, Breeden’s version of “thinking big” was financial success. He majored in communications, but went into investment banking.

He worked for five years in private wealth management, but he found the work a bad fit.

“The prospect of what you could create for yourself was promising,” he says. “It looked good, but it didn’t really feel like what I should be doing.”

He thought of his father, who was a minor league athlete before finding his calling as a pastor. Breeden recalls marveling at how his father could look up the Bible passage on which he would base his sermons and then close the book and talk for 20 minutes.

He thought that when he was doing the right thing it should feel that natural.

His next stab at “thinking big” came shortly after Obama visited Fort Bragg in 2011.

“He was saying that while we want to thank our veterans for all they do for us, it’s time to do something for them,” says Breeden, recalling the speech.

Within minutes of the speech, Breeden got a call from his best friend, who was in the Air Force. The man had been deployed several times and now wanted to talk about finding a new career so he could spend more time with his children. Not long after that, Breeden’s cousin, who was serving overseas, called with a similar issue.

Both men were having a hard time visualizing life outside the military.

“Both of them had great experiences in the military, but they were wanting to figure out what the next step would be,” Breeden says.

Breeden was still trying to figure out his own next step, and the idea of helping veterans had instant appeal.

He created a website with some planning tools for veterans who were interested in starting their own businesses, and he started using email and social media to reach out to potential clients.

Within three months, he had seven clients. A month later, he had 40. A few months after getting started, Breeden and his sister planned a small-business summit for veterans at Fort Bragg, the first of its kind, with 30 employers and 30 universities.

It was that event, he says, that got the attention of the White House. He was invited to Washington to discuss advancing economic prospects for veterans. In May 2012, the White House honored him as part of its Champions of Change program, which seeks to highlight the work of individuals in specific areas of need, such as veterans affairs.

At first, he was working for free. Now his work is funded largely by foundation grants. He says his faith boosted his confidence in his new path.

“I believe all of us have a special assignment we’re supposed to do,” he says. “This was my gift, and it was astounding to see how powerful this information could be.”

Engaging students

His nonprofit is now a one-stop, first step for clients who might want to start anything from a construction business to a salon to a consulting firm. Breeden helps them tackle the basics: a business plan, securing funding, establishing partners – and often refers them to other resources from health care to training.

He says he has ongoing contact with about 75 veterans and has helped launch about a dozen businesses, some that are starting to hire.

“How do you translate your skills in a combat zone into society?” he asks. “That’s always been a complicated space. Our strategy has always been to engage clients and encourage them to write it down.”

He’s continued to organize events focused on veterans, including two conferences last year focused on overcoming post-traumatic stress disorder: one in Durham and one in Washington, D.C., where U.S. Rep. David Price was a speaker.

Also last year, he added a youth program called the Urban Leadership Lab, focused on teaching at-risk teenagers about entrepreneurship. He created a merit badge training program for the Boy Scouts and did a series of classes at local public libraries.

Part of his approach is to ask teenagers to consider problems in their lives they’d like to address, and he sees great potential in their ideas.

They’ve told him about their fellow students whose only source of food is free meals at school and proposed having an after-school snack. Others, worried about violence in their neighborhoods, talked about starting a community watch.

“They’re coming up with solutions,” he says. “These kids have real ideas. They just need someone to push them to create something.”

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This story was originally published January 30, 2015 at 11:05 PM with the headline "Tar Heel of the Week: T.J. Breeden helps turn vets' ideas into careers."