ENT 3003: 3A – My Entrepreneurship Story

I grew up in South Florida in a typical family.  My father is an immigrant from Italy, who made his living in America doing blue-collar work.  My mother, a registered nurse, worker her way up to a hospital administrator.  My sister and I never went without, but my parents were very financially conservative, and I worked to make money for all the “extras” that every child wants from an early age.  My parents saved and did not spend on anything other than necessities.  When they bought a house, they did not have all the furniture they needed, but instead of borrowing money, they simply purchased things for the house as they could afford them.  My parents’ ways have served them well because, to this day, they are financially independent and live comfortably and within their means.

As a child and a young man, I wanted cool toys, nice clothes, popular shoes, a new car and top of the line stereo equipment.  My earliest experience with entrepreneurship was when I was 9 years old.  I started to cut the neighbors lawns and wash their cars.  Later, I formalized a landscaping business with an older friend and drafted contracts to avoid competitors from taking my business.

In my last year of college, I was recruited by Office Depot’s global headquarters while working in one of their stores and made the switch to financial security and significant career growth opportunities of corporate environment.  I have worked for Office Depot for over 20 years and worked my way up to an executive position after working in over six different business units.

My most significant (and most challenging) experience with entrepreneurship is being a small business owner.  My wife became a licensed attorney in 2014 and we opened a law firm that same year.  Our initial challenges were typical of any startup business: how to stick to a small budget, how to market effectively, how to attract the right types of clients, when and if to hire support staff (virtual or in-person), which networking opportunities to focus on and which to forego.  Today, we are focused on growing the firm and building on the success we have enjoyed.  We have narrowed down the practice to a few interrelated areas of law and have invested into training and client attraction.

I enrolled in this class hoping to see things in a different lens while fostering new entrepreneurial ideas.  What I hope to get out of this class is fresh ideas and a non-corporate perspective that will help me be a better small business owner.  I have never owned a small business before and my wife has never worked for a large corporation.  We come from very different professional backgrounds and have different management and decision-making styles.  I hope this class gives me more insight into my wife’s daily struggles and concerns of being a solo practitioner, which I may be unable to relate to easily, working at a 2,000+ person office of a Fortune 200 company.  My wife and I have set a challenging goal for the law firm’s revenue for 2018 and I am excited to learn anything that will move us closer to achieving that goal.