How a Marine and entrepreneur turned his pain into purpose

Permanently inked on the inside of Joe Smarro’s upper right arm is a Latin phrase: “amor fati.”

“Love your fate.”

For Smarro, the founder of a business aimed at saving lives through crisis intervention, it’s become easier to embrace fate—even the parts he says he wished never happened—because ultimately, it’s led him to a fulfilling, meaningful career. And that career made him the 2024 recipient of DAV’s Arthur H. and Mary E. Wilson Top Venture Impacting Veterans Award.

But the road there was anything but smooth. Growing up in upstate New York, Smarro was subjected to abuse at home. By his senior year of high school, he became a father and was faced with a responsibility he was ill-equipped to navigate. As “a matter of survival,” he decided to join the military.

Smarro enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2000 and became a fiscal chief for a battalion in an infantry unit at Camp Horno in Southern California. The following year, 9/11 happened.

“They took my credit card away, gave me my rifle, and there I go to the front lines,” Smarro said.

Smarro deployed first to Afghanistan and later as part of the initial push into Iraq. It was that convoy from Kuwait into Iraq that sticks with him.

“It was that first couple hours of things I’ll never forget, and also what told me that this is going to be a long deployment,” he said.

Smarro and his unit traveled in soft-back Humvees, slowly making their way toward a village they were told was all enemy. In the dark of night and fog of war, miscommunication resulted in his unit shooting in the direction of Marines trying to clear the village. Smarro still doesn’t know whether any Marines died from friendly fire.

“They never told us anything. And then it was just business as normal, keep going,” he said. “And then I remember the sun came out that first morning and just seeing the amount of carnage, vehicles blown up, bodies burnt to the roadway, to vehicles.”

After a four-year enlistment, Smarro was just happy to have survived. But for the following decade, he said, his life was a mess as he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal ideation.

After the military, Smarro joined the San Antonio Police Department, the “path of least resistance.” Years later, he attended crisis intervention training, which emphasized communication and de-escalation.

“I went through that training and it was like, wow, this is what police work should be like,” Smarro said. “This is just learning how to talk to people effectively, learning how to de-escalate a person in crisis, which is what every call is, essentially. Why are we not doing more of this?”

A few years later, Smarro applied to be on the department’s newly created mental health unit. The unit, and Smarro’s knack for crisis intervention, became so acclaimed that they were featured in the HBO documentary “Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops.”

As Smarro became a go-to expert, colleagues encouraged him to start his own consulting firm. When a fellow Marine veteran told him about an entrepreneurship bootcamp for veterans through the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, Smarro finally took the leap.

“I left there on fire,” Smarro said.

By 2017, he had founded SolutionPoint+, a firm dedicated to providing crisis intervention training for first responders, with mental wellness at the forefront. Once the business took off, Smarro retired from the police department.

Now, SolutionPoint+ provides training and consulting across the country. In addition to working with law enforcement, the company works with school systems and is hoping to expand into health care. As the company grows, Smarro and his business partner, Marine veteran Jesse Trevino, have made it a point to hire other veterans.

In recognition of the positive impact Smarro and SolutionPoint+ have made on communities across the country, Smarro and Trevino were invited to the 2024 DAV and Auxiliary National Convention in Phoenix, where they accepted a $10,000 award.

“Joe represents the incredible potential of those who served to become impactful, change-making entrepreneurs,” said Nick Brophy, director of DAV Patriot Boot Camp for veterans turned entrepreneurs. “It was an honor to recognize the work he and Jesse are doing, and we look forward to watching SolutionPoint+ grow.”

Smarro credits his military service for preparing him to succeed in crisis intervention and to start his own business. Not only has it given him a new purpose that improves and saves lives, but it’s also helped him understand his own mental health struggles and led him to get help.

“Look, if it’s happening to you, it’s happening for you,” Smarro said of life’s trials. “And you can either hold the pain or learn the lesson.

“I’d rather learn the lesson.”

Contact Smarro at joesmarro.com and learn more about his business at solutionpointplus.com.