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Johnson saw a need in the military field for an easy-to-
use, effective tourniquet, so he created one. It is now used throughout the military and has also entered the civilian world with several of the country’s top police departments and the American Red Cross using it.
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a working tourniquet was a passion project so Johnson’s goal wasn’t to make money. But as the requests grew, he needed to cover his costs and soon he was able to supplement his income and help provide for his family that included two children by then.
While orders for his tourniquet had steadily increased, he was still making them by hand at home, often sew- ing all night after a full day at work. While living in a tent in the desert of the Helmand Province during his second Afghanistan tour, he received an order from the Army for 56,000 tourniquets.
“That was a huge order and it wasn’t going to happen with me making each one of them,” he said. “But I had started the process of setting up a partnership with a manufacturer and was able to put things in motion with just a couple of phone calls to the home office.”
The $1.2 million order came in 2004 and was a turning point for Johnson. He estimates that he personally made the first several thousand of what is now marketed as the SOF Tourniquet (SOF stands for Special Operations Forces). He went from a staff sergeant whose pay quali- fied him for government assistance to a business owner, setting up Tactical Medical Solutions and working with a manufacturing facility in far western North Carolina.
For three years he tried to do both but by 2006 he real- ized he needed to focus on the business, so he became a full-time entrepreneur with the Army’s blessing. He moved his young family from Fort Bragg, North Caro- lina, to Anderson, South Carolina, a small town about halfway between Atlanta, Georgia, and Charlotte, North Carolina. Because the factory he worked with was in the mountains, it would take him about three hours to drive there to work on new product design, which he did about once a week.
“I’d always wanted to learn how to fly and it made sense to do it then,” Johnson said. “So I went and bought a plane because I figured that would force me to finish the process. I bought a Piper Archer, which took that three-hour drive down to a 30-minute flight. I could be at the factory to work in the morning and then be home at lunchtime.”
The business continued to grow in several ways: John- son and his team that includes fellow former Green Beret, business partner and best friend Alan Hester developed additional products for point of injury uses based on their experiences in the field (a trauma bandage and
a surgical airway kit, for example). The small group of investorsthatownswhatisnowcalledTacMedSolutions ›
6 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
NOVEMBER 2021