#3A- My Entrepreneurship Story

Entrepreneurship and Me 

I have been exposed to entrepreneurship my entire life. Seeing as my dad is a small business owner himself, I am not surprised I have been drawn to the concept of owning and managing my own business in the future. My dad owns a small, five employee Auto Repair Body shop named Tower Auto Rebuilders in Chicago, Illinois. Although I have constantly been exposed to my dad's small business, the "experience" I remember most vividly is when my dad had officially bought-out his partner and became the sole-proprietor of his business. He asked me to come with him to the shop, and upon getting there all five of his employees were already there and hard at work. My dad then called everyone to the break room and surprised them each with a high-quality cigar and a coffee, and said "I appreciate all of the hard-work you guys put forth and I hope to repay the favor in the upcoming years". I remember the pride on my dad's face at the time telling them he had bought out his partner and how well his employees responded to the information. He had five grown men genuinely happy to be working under him, and this idea has inspired me since. Why would I want to work for someone else when I could inspire others to work for me instead, and benefit financially in the process?

This experience and my dad's success both financially and in life-experience is the primary reason as to why I have enrolled in this class. My father was able to provide me with numerous experiences growing up, ranging from traveling the world with my family to spending time on our boat with friends. My dad was able to provide my family with both experiences as well as materialistic things, primarily thanks to his body shop. Many people say, “Money doesn’t buy happiness”, and I don’t believe this to be true in any way. Money provides you the ability to do the things you desire, experience aspects of the world that may not have been possible without, and to live a successful life. I am not saying this as a narcissist, I am saying this only as someone who has lived a life full of experiences largely because of father’s success, and even he believes his business has provided him a life he didn’t see possible. Personally, I am a fourth-year biochemistry student with a minor in business administration here at UF. However, I felt an additional class in entrepreneurship would provide a more well-rounded education in both business and in my science courses, as I hope to one day open my own Bioengineering firm and I was interested to see if this course would truly provide me better insight to the process of starting and operating one’s business, as learning from my dad’s business can only get me so far.