He Told Himself the Truth in a Bathroom Mirror. Then He Went Looking for Purpose.

After Iraq, Chris Abbott spent nearly three years trying to figure out who he was without the uniform. The answer eventually led him to Sean Gregory and to Alpha Roofing and Construction, the company they are building together.

Forged in Business — A Veteran Entrepreneur Spotlight Series | Issue 03

Chris Abbott came home from thirteen months in Iraq and spent nearly three years disappearing into a bottle. Then one night, drunk, he looked at himself in the mirror and told himself the truth nobody else could. This isn’t who you are. Fix it.

It didn’t fix itself the next day. But that was the moment he stopped chasing the man he’d been in uniform and started searching for who he needed to become next. The military gave him a mission and then took it away. Rebuilding one, on his own terms, is what eventually put him in business for himself.

He didn’t get there alone. Chris built Alpha Roofing and Construction with Sean Gregory, a civilian whose path looked different but whose priorities had landed in the same place: both men were done trading their families for a paycheck on the road. For Sean, that cost became impossible to ignore when he watched through a doorbell camera from a hotel states away as his wife fought with a generator in the rain. Alpha became the place where Chris’s rebuilt purpose and Sean’s own drive could point in the same direction.

Inside Alpha

The partnership works because they do not bring the same thing to the table. Chris carries the technical side: the claims, the insurance navigation, skills he sharpened long before he ever wore a company polo. Sean is the numbers guy. Chris and Sean describe themselves as good cop and bad cop: different instincts, different roles, but able to read each other well enough that year one closed with zero real arguments. Seven months in, Chris says the company had been valued at more than $1.5 million.

How Chris rebuilt his direction, and how he and Sean turned that direction into Alpha, is the episode. Here are the three things from their conversation that we haven’t stopped thinking about since.

From the Episode | 01 — Purpose After Service Isn’t Found. It’s Rebuilt.

The hardest part of getting out was not the job search. It was the identity search. Chris didn’t get his life back by finding a new mission handed to him. He rebuilt one conversation at a time with his wife, and months later she told him she was proud of him. That sentence is what told him he’d found solid ground again, before Alpha was ever an idea. In the episode, he talks about how long that actually took and why it couldn’t be rushed.

From the Episode | 02 — The Grind Isn’t Exclusive to the Uniform. Direction Is What Gives It Weight.

Sean never wore a uniform. He also never needed one to understand the grind. Chris came out of the Army with discipline but spent nearly three years with nowhere to point it; Sean arrived at Alpha with that drive built through a different path. That contrast matters. What makes the partnership work is not a shared military background. It is shared direction. In the episode, they break down how a veteran and a civilian read each other, divide the work and cover for each other without needing to be the same kind of operator.

From the Episode | 03 — The Opposite of Success Is Not Failure

Chris started a roofing company once before Alpha, back when he was still finding his footing outside the military, and it didn’t survive. Alpha is not simply his second attempt. It is a different build, this time with more years of perspective and a partner whose strengths do not duplicate his own. In the episode, Chris walks through what he assumed instead of verified the first time, and what he learned to do differently. His advice to the veteran still figuring out life after service is one sentence long: the opposite of success is not failure. Failure is a teacher. The opposite of success is quitting.

Hear the Full Conversation

Watch Finding Purpose After Service with Chris Abbott, Army veteran and owner, and Sean Gregory, civilian and owner, of Alpha Roofing & Construction — or play the episode here. Reach them at [email protected].

One More Thing

Alpha Roofing & Construction is hiring. They’re looking for sales reps in the Houston area who want to build an income around family instead of away from it, and they’ll train the right person from zero. The company is in Cypress, and you can reach Chris and Sean at [email protected] or on roofsbyalpha.com.

Forged in Business is a veteran entrepreneur spotlight series inside Building With The Browers, published in partnership with Dock Line Magazine. Read Issue 01 with Jesse Mahan and Issue 02 with Naro Mak, and listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Know the next veteran entrepreneur we should feature? We’re looking for the next one.