Why I'm an Entrepreneur

There are a lot of people who say I followed in my parents food steps. My dad was a lawyer, so am I. My mother was a nurse, so am I. There are so many examples of this you could fill up pages and pages.

For the longest time I didn’t think I followed in my dad’s footsteps. He was a pharmacist, I was a financial advisor. Call me irrational but those two things are no where remotely related.

However, he was an entrepreneur. He owned his own business for 25 years. He never had any big goals or aspirations for the business, just pay the bills, put food on the table, shelter for the family, educate the kids and do the job. He never did a business plan, marketing plan, 1st or 4th quarter goals, business succession planning or anything remotely resembling a plan past the next day.

Yet, for 25 years he paid bills, paid employees, kept the doors open and managed to put both kids and his wife through college. He didn’t have a business coach, networking groups, business partners or other professionals in his industry to talk with. It was just him, getting up every day, going to work, sacrificing, and having faith that it would all work out.

Apparently it did. Upon his death, he had a healthy retirement, pension and social security that would have supported him for 10 years, no debt and family and friends that cared a great deal for him. Wouldn’t we all like to be so lucky.

While I didn’t follow in his ‘industry’ footsteps, I did follow in his entrepreneural footsteps; getting up every day, going to work, paying the bills, paying employees and doing the job. Some days are harder than others, some days require more faith than others, more networking than others, longer hours than others, but at the end of the day, he was an entrepreneur and so am I.

Thanks dad, for being such an excellent role model.