Entrepreneurship Runs Deep In My Family … One Reason I Am a Self Franchised Marketer
“The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Socrates
--
A dictionary definition of an entrepreneur is a “person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money” and it can also carry an additional connotation of vision and innovation.
My grandfather and my brother believed in plotting their future to the best of their ability and faith in hard work to gain rewards. I hope to endorse this vision as my legacy, too.
My grandfather was an immigrant from Russia at the age of 16. He learned to speak English and rather than being part of a communal lifestyle, soon bought some land in the valley, logged it, horse-plowed it into hay fields, built a log house without nails, raised sheep for wool, a garden to sell produce, even had a small mercantile storefront to sell supplies to neighbors. He was the first man to own a model T-Ford in the valley and in his later years, drove a Volkswagen painted lime green (I don’t know why) so he could take his grandchildren on picnics.
He was a master craftsman capable of doing most anything with his hands from making shoes, to sewing a suit of clothes, to baking bread and cooking, to animal husbandry and farming where he lost his foot in a haying accident, but not his zeal for helping out.
To me, he was my grandfather who spend time teaching me to read and write, to play ball, to fish, to play the fiddle and wander the woods looking for hazelnuts.
My brother, Jim, also had many innate talents to master anything he set his mind to do. His education was based on computer technology and when he was downsized from a corporation, his next logical step was to start his own computer business.
At first he worked in the basement of his house, guarded at that time by a large Rottweiler with the loudest bark that didn’t deter his customers who knew of his skill sets and honesty.
