Inside the unique challenges of military spouse entrepreneurs: 'Not everybody is going to understand this life'

When Cece Meadows started her cosmetics brand Prados Beauty from her daughter's nursery in 2019, she just wanted a job.

Meadows and her four kids had been living for two years in West Point, New York, where her husband, an Army Major, taught at the U.S. Military Academy. After taking time off for the birth of her daughter, Meadows — a former Bank of America vice president, makeup artist and model — says she was struck by what she felt was a lack of available jobs for military spouses.

Spouses of military members say they often turn to entrepreneurship to overcome the unique hurdles they face landing traditional employment. They become their family's primary caregiver when their spouses deploy, they have limited job opportunities on and around military bases, and military families frequently relocate — every 2.5 years, on average.

Yet entrepreneurship is no guarantee. New businesses frequently fail, and military spouses say they face steeper obstacles than most entrepreneurs — including increased expenses of repeatedly moving their businesses on short notice, creating new local relationships with each relocation and skepticism of their business' stability from investors and lenders.

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The 920,000-plus spouses of active duty military members in the U.S. have a staggering unemployment rate of 20%, according to the most recent data, a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Defense. "The Department of War recognizes military spouse employment as a critical quality-of-life and readiness issue affecting military families," an agency official tells CNBC Make It. "To better address this issue, the Department has accelerated its military spouse support initiatives in 2026," the official says, including government-provided career coaching, entrepreneurship training and employment resources under the DOD's SpouseWorks program and Office of Spouse Employment.

Simultaneously, a growing movement of business owners and advocates is working to remove obstacles faced specifically by military spouse entrepreneurs. In some cases, that means lobbying U.S. congresspeople. In others, it means creating educational materials specifically for this subset of entrepreneurs, because generic business training doesn't cut it for them, says Moni Jefferson, a 46-year-old Air Force spouse, mother of three and founder of the Association for Military Spouse Entrepreneurs, or AMSE.

Most of her organization's 2,800-plus members bring in less than $10,000 per year in revenue, she adds. "What they need to learn is not how to write a SWOT [strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats] analysis. They need to learn how to make money when they move, to pay for a gas bill or a vacation," says Jefferson.

The unique challenges of a military spouse entrepreneur

Some military spouse entrepreneurs do succeed, but often not without great difficulty. Meadows, 41, self-funded Prados Beauty after getting rejected for funding from banks and investors more than 50 times, she says. The company now sells beauty products in more than 600 JCPenney stores across the U.S., and Meadows says it's been profitable since Day 1.

Others struggle, to a degree that's raised concerns in Washington D.C. In June 2023, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) introduced legislation that would direct the Small Business Administration to develop a training program specifically for military spouse entrepreneurs. More recently, on May 7, a group of entrepreneurs and advocates met with congressional lawmakers to encourage legislation that would open up more federal funding for military spouse-owned businesses and designate them as "disadvantaged," helping those eligible qualify for one of the SBA's development programs.

Cece Meadows, founder and CEO of Prados Beauty

Source: Cece Meadows

The proposed legislation would also waive SBA loan fees up to $1 million for military spouse entrepreneurs, while reducing required loan down payments by at least 5% and requiring the SBA to track the participation of military spouses in the agency's loan programs to study their impact, according to Stephanie Brown, co-founder of the Military Spouse Chamber of Commerce, or MSCC. The MSCC, a nonprofit, is a designated partner in the DOD's Military Spouse Employment Partnership program, and Brown helped present the proposal to lawmakers.

The SBA didn't immediately respond to CNBC Make It's request for comment on the proposed legislation. The DOD doesn't comment on proposed legislation "as a matter of policy," according to the agency official.

Karen Hetz, 38, knows firsthand how tough it can be to raise financing, particularly as a new entrepreneur. Shortly after the Great Falls, Virginia-based military spouse with three kids launched her baking kit company, Kids' Cake Boxes, in 2020, she organized documents showing her strong credit score and low debt, then called a local bank to inquire about a small-business loan. But due to her family's frequent relocations, Hetz' family lived in a rental, and without a mortgage to put up as collateral, she was denied on the spot by three banks, she says.

For some military spouse entrepreneurs, the sheer lack of certainty can be more daunting than landing funding. Rebecca Bender — the 33-year-old founder of Little Bug, which sells kids' toys, and her own marketing agency — was eight months pregnant when she found out her husband was being relocated to an Air Force branch in Melbourne, Florida, from Gloucester Point, Virginia. She let all three of her contracted employees from both businesses go, and became solely responsible for packing and shipping products, social media and connecting with clients and vendors, she says.

Rebecca Bender, pictured with her son at a Little Bug booth

Courtesy of Rebecca Bender

Meadows dealt with her own logistical hurdles, she says: She and her husband drove Prados' inventory to Las Cruces, New Mexico, from New York during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, losing nearly half of it to damage from jostling on the road.

Christina Hunt, who runs a one-woman marketing consultancy, has had to move five times with very little notice since 2018 due to her husband's position within the Air Force, she says. Moving their household of two young children and two dogs can require her to take up to two weeks off work, which can mean pushing deadlines or turning down high-paying projects, she adds.

"There's a level of professionalism that's hard to keep because not everybody is going to understand this life," says Hunt, 38, who's currently based in California's Bay Area. "All you can do is be really upfront [with your situation and bandwidth], and then some clients will be flexible and some won't. It does add a layer of stress."

A growing coalition's advocacy

The DOD intends for U.S. service members' military compensation to financially support an entire family, through a combination of base pay and supplemental allowances. Average annual compensation for service members, including allowances for housing and other expenses, began at $57,604 in 2025 and topped $228,000 for colonels and captains, according to the agency.

But families are often reluctant to give up on a dual income, especially with rising costs and expenses nationwide, including child care, says Jefferson, the AMSE founder. And many military spouses have career aspirations beyond the needs of their families.

"As a mom of three, it's helped me have an outlet that's made me feel I was doing something that was my own," Bender says. "We'll go across the world to support them, but [it's important] to have a little bit of something that is you, to feel like you're contributing financially ... I feel like it's helped me keep my identity."

Military spouse entrepreneurs do share a common benefit, many of them say: access to a large and supportive network of other military spouses and entrepreneurs within the broader U.S. military community. Often, their first customers are also connected to the military. Hetz learned how to self-fund and gradually grow Kids' Cake Boxes using educational resources from the MSCC, she says.

Karen Hetz, pictured with her family

Courtesy of Karen Hetz

The U.S. government provides resources, too. In 2023, Congress authorized each branch of the U.S. military to reimburse spouses of active service members up to $2,000 in total for business re-licensing and certification fees, along with costs that result from a member's relocation. The DOD's SpouseWorks program is a modernized rebrand of its Military Spouse Education and Career Opportunities initiative, which originally launched in 2007.

The military also partners with the SBA on informational resources and entrepreneurial training programs for military spouses, active service members and veterans through the Veterans Business Outreach Center program, which provides entrepreneurial training, workshops and counseling. The SBA didn't respond directly to CNBC Make It's questions regarding resources for military spouse entrepreneurs by the time of publication.

However, federal assistance doesn't go as far as it used to, says the MSCC's Brown. The Trump administration has cut back on federally-backed funding programs for minority entrepreneurs. Military spouses are 90% female, according to the Labor Department.

Now, with military conflict in Iran, "spouses are not just experiencing fear, anxiety and stress, but we're also having to hold it together to support our service member," says Hunt. "There's this added layer of emotion that impacts work. I'm putting a mask on a lot of the time."

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