My Entrepreneurship Story

When I was in my early twenties, I had a friend, who I will refer to as Mark for the sake of this story, whose father was a contractor up in New Jersey.  Mark's father was fairly successful in the the community where they grew up.  The unfortunate part of the whole thing, was that none of the father's children wanted to follow in his foot-steps and take over the family company.  They all moved to Florida and took their own paths in life.  Zack, the youngest son, followed suit with his older brothers and moved to Florida to attend college.  During college he enjoyed himself, partaking in all the normal college activities, and not really applying himself to the academic side of things.  After a few years of dropping out of classes and not really completing anything, Zack's parents had enough and cut him off.  Zack was bothered by this, and was angry with everyone for not giving him the time he needed to find his way.  Midway through Zack's last semester of college that he attended, he drove down to stay with Mark for the weekend.  When he arrived, Zack said that he wasn't going back to school.  He now knew what he wanted to do with his life. Growing up, he had always seen his father having to pay others to perform grading and site prep for his construction sites, and had seen firsthand how expensive that could get.  Zack had decided that he was going to drop out of college, get his hands on a front loader and a digger and start his own company performing this kind of work.  Needless to say, Mark did everything he could to convince Zack not to do this.  He called the other brother, Robbie, and the father, who all told Zack the same thing.  They told him that the equipment was too expensive, he would never be able to afford to purchase it.  They told him the business was too streaky, that he would never know if he was going to work or not.  They continually laid out the negatives trying to persuade Zack not to try and start this business.  The father wanted him to go back to school to complete his degree and then take over the family business when he retired.  Against all their wishes Zack moved back to New Jersey. It took him a while, but he eventually raised enough capital to purchase the equipment on loan.  In the beginning the work was exactly as all the family had told him.  It was a rough road, he would take on work for clients, and after the work was done people wouldn't pay, or because of the harsh winters he wasn't able to work at all.  There were quite a few times he thought he was going to lose it all. Eventually though, it started getting better, he started making money, started getting out of debt, and started to grow.  Today, fourteen years later, he has quite a few employees and more backhoes and front loaders than one person should own.  I look at the determination Zack had to have to keep going, to believe that he could make this work, and I realize now that he is the epitome of an Entrepreneur.  Zack knew he might fail, but he was still ready to face his future and give everything to make it work.

To be honest, I enrolled in ENT 3003 due to it being a required course for my degree.  I am very curious to see where this semester will take me, and if I will see a change in my perceptions and actions due to the subject matter.  I have never been one to want to stake it out on my own and try to blaze my own trail so to speak.  However, we never know what the future has in store for us.  This course may be the beginning of a new mindset that could possibly lead to me taking a swing at one of those crazy ideas that you think might be just the ticket. Only time will tell and I for one am definitely interested to see what the future holds.

                          photo courtesy of Jim Williams.