Army vet endures rough path to entrepreneurship

The year Derek Rodenbeck served in Iraq exposed the Army sergeant to rocket and mortar attacks, perilous discoveries of improvised explosive devices and gruesome sights of injured soldiers, all of which left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Life was no easier back home outside Philadelphia, where Rodenbeck was forced to live out of his car for about a month. His homelessness late last year into early this year was the result of a landlord missing tax payments on the property where Rodenbeck was living.

Single, 32 and working as a bouncer at the time while occasionally competing in strongman contests, Rodenbeck did not have savings to put down on another place.

He spent days at a library reading and drawing. At night, he'd go to a gym for weight training and a shower, then he would bed down in his 1998 Subaru Legacy with his service dog, Kuma, a 140-pound Akita.

It was not the path that organizers at St. Joseph's University had envisioned for a graduate from its Veterans Entrepreneurial Jumpstart Program.

Rodenbeck was one of 19 participants in VEJ's all-expenses-paid, weeklong business-development training program for disabled veterans in April 2015, the inaugural class.

At its conclusion, he impressed a panel of judges in a Shark Tank-style pitch event. Conquering a fear of public speaking, Rodenbeck confidently discussed his plans for a line of clothing featuring artists' designs.

'You are the canvas,” he said of the idea behind his Lvnup brand. He planned to start with T-shirts, then expand to dresses, swimsuits, and jackets, and to have his own cut-and-sew facility.

Small-business reality interfered with that plan, however. He sold his first batch of 40 T-shirts for $20 each, but 'was definitely in the red” and did not have the capital to keep going.

'I decided to break away from it,” Rodenbeck recalled during a recent morning interview at an apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Tamara Freilich, a lawyer.

Meeting her while on a walk in a park six months ago was a key turnaround moment for him after the failure of the clothing business.

Another was an introduction by friends to developers of a card game, who have hired Rodenbeck as creative director and to handle some marketing, strategy and personnel management.

Simultaneously, he was hired to work on a comic book based on a movie screenplay by two writers in Georgia.

'I'm not buying a new car, but I have income that's not bar work,” he said. 'It's art income.”

Rodenbeck was unequivocal in crediting VEJ for his transformation, saying it 'nudged me on my way for bigger things.”