UCLA drills disabled vets on business

About 1,015 disabled veterans' business enterprises are certified to work with the state, said J.P. Tremblay, a spokesman for the California Department of Veterans Affairs.

"But that's by no means an inclusive number; there may be more," he said.

There are many other business owners who don't know how to compete for such contracts or have trouble navigating tricky business waters, experts say.

"We're not medical doctors, but we are economic ones -- and business is a war that they've lived a different version of," Osborne said. "If we can give them economic freedom and help them bring themselves and their families back to normalcy, we'll be there for them."

To fund the boot camp, the Anderson School's Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, which conducted the program, raised $250,000 from the business community. Other schools nationwide have expressed interest in hosting their own entrepreneurship boot camps, but Osborne said officials at the four schools this year wanted to go slow and work out kinks.

Most veterans were gung-ho about their chances in the business world.

"I don't think anything holds me back," said Steven Yeschin, 25, of Los Angeles, who had surgery for kidney failure and is deaf in his left ear. "I just hold the phone with my right hand."

"It slows me down, but it can't stop me," Thomas said of the 85% range of motion in his left leg, which was fractured along with his jaw and right leg in a September 2003 roadside ambush in Iraq.

For most participants, the UCLA boot camp was a chance to switch focus from trauma and scars to balance sheets and customer needs.

Greg Murray, 24, came to refine a concept he had hatched after years managing Casa de Balboa, his family's luxury vacation rental company in Newport Beach.

Last week, he worked on his management and operating skills so he could develop Honestly Green, his proposal for an eco-friendly company selling alternatives to paper and corrugated packaging.

After four years in the Marines and two tours in Iraq as a scout and reconnaissance sniper, Murray came back to the U.S. with eye problems but also ambition.

"This is like going from the AAA level to the Major Leagues," he said of the UCLA program. "You learn things you'd never thought of or more efficient ways to accomplish stuff you always thought was common sense."

Others, such as Yeschin, were trying to expand existing companies.