Many people are not satisfied with their job, their boss, or their future and are asking the question, “Are Entrepreneurs Made Or Born?”  By Tim Walterbach #000349

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Are Entrepreneurs Made Or Born?

By Tim Walterbach

  Hello my name is Tim Walterbach with IBBTalks today we’re going to be talking about our entrepreneurs made or born. I’m going to use my own story as a way to explore this idea whether anybody can be an entrepreneur or are there certain qualities that you’re just innately born with that will enable you to be an entrepreneur. So my story is I analyzed   idea of whether you’re born where certain attributes you know, I look at my life as somebody who was kind of and put in a mold that I never fit in because I didn’t understand what being an entrepreneur was,I went through all the education system that was available but it really wasn’t helpful to what I was ultimately going to become .Sure all the basics were absolutely necessary but I  was just a round peg in a square hole and maybe you feel like that sometimes. I look back at my school times and what I was taught and the process is very frustrating but I had this other track going. Since I was really little I got to thinking about when I was even in the third grade. We lived in this little town and I would walk behind grocery stores and look for pop bottles, pop balls used to have deposits on them, and you can turn them in for money and when I was in fourth grade I started a paper route now, this is something that was available to young people but still I was very young now at the time. I didn’t know as an entrepreneur, always doing anything out of the ordinary is something that came very natural to me. If it was snowing I was grabbing a shovel, I was in the 5th grade at Nebraska so the snow was piled up high and all we had was a coal shovel a steel. I didn’t have the nice light aluminum ones but Cara was with my 30 pound coal shovel and the 5th grade out knocking on doors asking people if I could shovel their walks for 50 cents or a dollar .It was just something that always came natural to me .Something that I wanted but in school just opposite very unnatural to me. I was the kid always looking out the window and so I wish I had understood it, while I was earlier on and maybe that’s the value of sharing my story. May be you’re frustrated near you don’t fit in the boxes that other people create for you. I was in school all the way through .I was a junior in college, I even went to a jewelry in gemology school thinking that maybe  I’d sit behind the bench and create jewelry all day and you know I spent a couple years there and didn’t use that for anything .I worked one place for a while just hated it and then I went off to school again and up to my junior year, and one summer I started a a long business I picked up a mower and needs some money and I thought well I can go work for somebody , You know good rate at that time probably six seven dollars an hour and I thought well I can do that I can mower lawn for twenty and so I got a mower I borrowed money for a weed eater from my future wife didn’t know, she’s gonna be my future wife at the time but she loaned me money for a weed eater . I went up and down the streets knocking on doors like when I was a kid asking people. I came over long   time I built that business up, though I love just working for myself I didn’t go back to school i finished online. I just loved building something that I could call my own that that I could set my hours. As a friend always says as an entrepreneur you can work more than 80 hours you want to work. You can work and so I didn’t mind working long hard hours. It was something I was building. I built that up and got some commercial accounts created some value and ended up selling that business and bought a janitorial company.

Then I built that up bought a little fledgling general company .I organized that and built that up, then sold that. I began to see that, I wasn’t  get to where I wanted to go though  I was doing things that anybody could do .It’s always basically the law of supply and demand . My lawn mower business I was competing with other high school kids or college kids.  When I got started I was always keep the price down .So I sold everything. This is another way I knew as an entrepreneur .I wasn’t afraid to take risk I had a wife and kids. I was responsible and I had an idea of starting a magazine called Tulsa’s best businesses, it was just built on a need and an idea that I had .If you’re moving to town this would be pre-internet days . If you’re a moving the town how would you find the best doctor or dentist or mechanic. Know you had to start all over. I thought you know if I could come up with some criteria that you know for my magazine, to be featured in my magazine you know like in the three. I came up with you had to be in business at least five years. You had to have no outstanding complaints with the association’s you belong to and you’re willing to give references .So it was kind of  unique approach when I wouldn’t talk to people .You know is more like hey! Are you worthy to be in my magazine without saying that?, But it worked and I started this magazine and traded some.  You know we ate out a lot because I traded a lot that we featured a lot of the best restaurants in town .It was a kind of fun and I built that up and that provided another opportunity. You know is something an entrepreneur always looking for .  He’s not afraid to risk for better opportunity.

I was in Milan my final publishing days of magazine and I sold a two page four color that says the biggest. I had  the back cover to a local developer who developed really nice high-end developments for resident for residential .You know he’d go buy a piece of property. But the streets sell a lots. I saw an opportunity there and I developed and refresh with them. I thought if I could figure out how to build a homes. I could may be   know someone who takes his Lots and improves them then sells them. So I   talked to my father and he went to the bank I couldn’t do it at the time, not that level and we put up a spec home. I built this my first spec home on one of his property not in one of his high-end developments but he had some old lots. So I took what I could .I owed his development of the entrances in the evening just to make a little extra money. I put everything I had in this home and I built this modest two thousand square foot home. So this homes experimented with some colors. I liked one that I saw in a house and I didn’t have the right formula and so it turned out to be really awful peach color .I remember sitting on the stairs and looking at that thinking .I have totally blown it .There is no way and I can’t afford to repaint the whole house so the next Sunday or Saturday we had an open house and comes to us lady with this bright yellow peach windbreaker on and yellow shirt and she just loved it .

She bought that and during that time I showed it to a guy said well I don’t want this house, But I want to build another house and I ended up building for him around the corner and got my custom business going and I had been doing that since since 94’s, So for me it was something that I was born to do .Now to answer the question are you born or made? You know there’s a lot of different levels of entrepreneurship. There’s a guy who buys a franchise that’s an entrepreneur.  May be you’re not the type of that, You want to just go out and start something from scratch but you’re somebody that wants to buy something but you want to  experience of building a business. So the answer is they made or born. I think the answer is yes, there’s some intuitive things that you have to have, but they can be bought if you pull out of franchising and learn from somebody else in their abilities. So don’t be frustrated though don’t let other people put you in boxes. Do what you’re .The most gifted to do and what brings you the greatest joy and if you’re willing to take the challenge .Throw everything on the line and work a few extra hours you can be an entrepreneur .Thank you for your time I appreciate it.