Taking Action on Behalf of Service-Disabled
Veteran-Owned Businesses
During a routine Army training exercise in 1978, a bone spur penetrated and partially severed Randy Slager’s spinal cord. That injury, while debilitating, shaped his career from that point on.
Over the ensuing 20 years, Slager did his best to hide his disability, finding ways to work around it so that it didn’t impede his credibility. “As time progressed, my limp worsened,” Slager says. After multiple procedures to correct it, or at least mitigate the pain and discomfort, he was forced to walk with a cane. “When the cane came out, I couldn’t hide it any longer.”
When he started Catapult Technology in 1996, Slager found that discrimination due to his disability was a barrier to getting funding. “It always seemed to be the main topic of conversation,” he says. “Banks assumed that because I used a cane, Catapult was a risk.”
He had to convince banks, as well as federal agencies, that his disability had nothing to do with the company’s ability to perform.
Motivated to action.
In 1996, the Department of Veterans Affairs began a program through which qualified companies could self-certify as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). But even with SDVOSB designation, Slager saw that it was a challenge for disabled veterans to get work in the federal marketplace. His own injury—and experiences surmounting it—motivated him to take action.
He began lobbying Capitol Hill to open more business opportunities to disabled veterans, advocating for the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-50), a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to provide technical, financial, and procurement assistance to veteran-owned small businesses.
The goal of the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act was to ensure that at least three percent of all federal prime contract/subcontract awards went to small business concerns owned and controlled by service-disabled veterans. No one represented the veteran community, so the Department of Veterans Affairs looked to Slager as a spokesman of sorts, someone who represented a successful SDVOSB.
Even after the passage of the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act, many federal agencies, including the agencies responsible for its implementation, weren’t meeting the three percent goal. When Slager attended an outreach session for small-business owners, he was the only disabled-veteran business owner present.
“The Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs was also in attendance,” says Slager. “I explained to him that the SDVOSBs are out there, but we just needed some help,” says Slager. The Deputy Secretary provided him with a congressional committee report that outlined the dearth of disabled-veteran businesses working in the federal marketplace.
Armed with this information, Slager lobbied members of Congress and addressed the general counsel of the House Small Business Committee. “I told my story repeatedly, anything to aid in the process of improving veterans’ opportunities,” he says. Congress unanimously approved opening federal small business programs to disabled veterans.
Around 2001, Slager pushed the Small Business Administration (SBA) to recognize physical disability as a category of social disadvantage, thus helping disabled business owners compete for federal set-aside contracts and qualify for the SBA’s 8(a) Business Development Program. It was around this time that Catapult itself received SDB (Small Disadvantaged Business) certification and achieved 8(a) status after being rejected in the past.
Holding the government accountable.
Meanwhile, the House Small Business Committee named Slager as their point person to ensure that the SBA was implementing the executive orders and laws that had been passed. “I was the thorn in the SBA’s side,” says Slager. If the SBA was delaying the implementation of regulations, Slager contacted the general counsel of the House Small Business Committee to report the inaction.
Slager became an influential supporter of the Veterans Benefits Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-183), which created the procurement program for small business concerns owned and controlled by service-disabled veterans. The Veterans Benefits Act was passed to provide federal contracting assistance to service-disabled veteran-owned small business concerns. Federal agencies now had a vehicle for achieving the three percent procurement goal.
“It took several acts of Congress and a lot of effort to get the disabled veteran program going,” Slager says. But it was clear that a law doesn’t have any effect until regulations are in place and are followed by the contracting officers who award contracts. “You have to hold the government accountable to make good on their legislative promises and enforce the laws they pass,” he says.
The Clinton administration pushed several acts that accommodated government employees with special needs. As federal employers became more aware of these needs, contractors with similar needs became more visible, making it more common to consider an SDVO business for a federal contract.
Even so, many contracting officers claimed that they couldn’t locate SDVOSBs, so part of the new law was to educate contracting shops and government offices to give the SDVOSBs more visibility. “Contracting officers are busy and if it’s too difficult to locate an SDVOSB, they’ll move on. In some ways, they’re resistant to change. They say, ‘I won’t even look because they aren’t out there.’ But they’re out there.”
Part of the hurdle has been educating contracting officers at federal agencies and getting them to take the programs seriously. President Bush’s 2004 Executive Order 13360, which directed the General Services Administration (GSA) to create a GWAC for SDVOSBs, helped by passing the Veterans Technology Services government-wide acquisition contract (VETS GWAC), the first GWAC set-aside for SDVOSBs.
Even with contracting mechanisms intended to help contracting officers connect to pre-qualified companies, Slager contends that agencies aren’t being as diligent as they should be to hit the three percent quota. “The Bush administration hasn’t pushed hard enough, so it hasn’t risen above half of one percent,” he explains.
Slager takes a personal tack to combat inertia. He meets with small business offices and attends sessions and conferences that are focused on SDVOSBs. But there is still work to do.
Not only contracting officers must be educated; disabled veterans themselves often don’t know that there are mechanisms in place that could help them realize an entrepreneurial dream. “Veterans aren’t taking advantage of the opportunities that are out there because they don’t know about them,” says Slager. He strives to promote these programs within the disabled veteran community.
Everybody wins.
Today, the federal marketplace is more acutely aware of the need for recognizing disabled veterans, Slager says. “The war in Iraq has returned many young men and women who may be missing limbs, but are otherwise ready and able to hit the market,” he adds. “They have unique skills and they’ve been through a lot. They are willing to take the risk of becoming an entrepreneur.”
Most of Slager’s efforts on behalf of veterans have been to help open the doors to starting a business, including mentoring.
“I have often taken a phone call from a disabled veteran seeking information, sharing an experience, or running an idea past me. I enjoy giving them tips on their first steps.
“I wish someone would have been there for me when I was starting it out,” he adds.
Slager acknowledges that these young people often call him because he and Catapult have been so visible in the fight to recognize disabled veterans as a minority small business category. Being a pioneer put Catapult ahead of many other smaller firms that are in the nascent stages of their business he says. “Catapult started in the days when it was extremely difficult to get off the ground,” he says. “We’ve simply been at it a lot longer.”
He’s proud to have broken barriers and helped to make it easier on disabled veterans to exercise their entrepreneurial spirit. He encourages any disabled veteran considering starting his or her own business not to give up.
“The opportunities are there,” he says. “Take advantage of them. Remain determined. Prove yourself. Then build on the proof. If you stick with it, you will get the work.”
He believes that the more veteran-owned businesses competing, the more visibility they all get. And that leads to more opportunities for other firms.
“Everybody wins,” he says.
