This post is more on the sentimental side, so excuse my soppy story. The most incredible entrepreneur that I know is my father. My father was in the military for nine and a half years  during the gulf war and worked overseas for Boeing in Saudi Arabia for five and a half years. At the time he married my mother, my father had a high school degree and no outside business experience. My father promised my mother that she would never have to work when they had children so that my mother could be a stay at home mom. My father returned to the states when I was one and a half and my brother was two months from being born. He started working as a financial planning business while also pursing a bachelor’s degree at Philadelphia biblical university, now Cairn. He worked about 90 hours a week from the time I was 2 till the time I was 8 on growing his business and pursuing his degree.

It was a rough time for our family, as many entrepreneurial businesses are not extremely profitable in the beginning stages. I remember times where my father would skip meals and the bills were paid over the phone at the last moment possible. This is the less beautiful sides of entrepreneurship. Many people do not entirely understand the downsides to being an entrepreneur. It becomes even tougher to be an entrepreneur when you have a family to support and people relying on you.

My father worked so hard and somehow still managed to be home with our family on Sundays. My father continued to grow his business and got his Bachelor of Science in biblical studies in 2005, when he was 39 years old. He continued to pursue various accreditation and grow his clientele and increase his business. Currently, my father has his own firm with three employees and is a certified financial planner for many interesting clients. He is proof to me that starting your own business takes a lot of time and hard work, nothing comes easy. My goal in this is to somehow make him proud with my business endeavors and one day work alongside him in the business.