On February 25, 2016, the SuccessVets podcast released “Michael Penney: Sharing Sea Stories, Business Plans, And Transition Tips With A USMC Vet.” The interview runs just under an hour. It was published about three weeks before his TEDxRaleigh talk.
What the episode covered
The show notes open with the question that drove the conversation:
How can you use mission planning tools from the military to plan your business or transition?
SuccessVets show notes, February 2016
The notes summarize where Michael stood at the time:
- Eight years as a Marine Corps infantryman, with three deployments: two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.
- Out of the Corps in 2012 and working as an entrepreneur since.
- Co-host of the Cigars & Sea Stories podcast and chief contributor at BloodStripes.com.
- Building resources for veteran entrepreneurs, including what the notes call “the 5 paragraph business,” based on O-SMEAC.
O-SMEAC is the Marine Corps format for the five-paragraph order: Orientation, Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Logistics, and Command and Signal. Every Marine who has received a patrol order has heard it briefed in that sequence. The idea Michael was developing was to use the same structure to lay out a business. You state the situation and the mission, then work through how it gets done, what it needs, and who is in charge.
The show notes send listeners to SuccessVets.com for more from the interview and link to Cigars and Sea Stories. The full episode, about 59 minutes, is in the player above.
Why it mattered then
Most transition advice in 2016 focused on résumés and job searches. SuccessVets pointed listeners to the tools they already carried. A veteran who could write or follow an operations order already knew how to organize a plan. The episode covered the business side and the personal transition side, which are often the same problem for someone leaving the military.
The episode came at a busy stretch for Michael. In the same few weeks he was preparing for TEDxRaleigh, doing Doug Stewart’s video conversations, and appearing on the Military Entrepreneur Show.
Looking back
This episode is one of the earliest public references in this archive to the 5 Paragraph Business by name. The idea he was working on in early 2016 became the 5 Paragraph Business Plan, his O-SMEAC-based framework for planning a business.
This post is part of the From the Archive series, which collects Michael’s past media appearances in one place. See the full media archive.
Work with Michael
Marine veteran, TEDx speaker and author of the 5 Paragraph Business Plan. Bring him to your stage, wear the gear, or catch him live.