Sunday, January 07, 2007

Blog-tagged on Personal Things

Becky McCray has the wonderful Small Biz Survival blog, which she does from Alva, OK (population 5,288). I was in Alva in May, 2005 doing one of four regional events in the four corners of Oklahoma.

Becky blog-tagged me to tell you five things about me that you probably didn’t know about me and I’ve found that you don’t ever tell Becky ‘NO’. Here they are:

1. My first entrepreneurial endeavor was when I was 18 and started a tree trimming and spraying business, which grew into an exterminating and house painting business. I hired about 15 high school and college students during each summer during college.

2. I wrote my thesis on the future of soybeans in Brazil and when I graduated raised funds from family and friends and started a farm and seed business there. I lived in Brazil for seven years.

3. I’ve started 13 different businesses in my career. Seven of those were unmitigated disasters, but I learned more from those failures than I did from the successes. Henry Ford, who failed twice before starting Ford Motor, said it best, “Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”

4. I met my wife in Brazil where her father ran the King Ranches from Kingsville, TX. We adopted our twin sons in Brazil. One is freshman at the University of Oklahoma and the other is at Monmouth College.

5. Since launching BoomtownUSA on Super Bowl Sunday in 2004, I’ve toured and talked in over 250 towns in 42 states. I’m still having a ball seeing wonderful things all over this great country of ours.

I’ll be back in Oklahoma on Thursday and Friday, doing talks in Duncan and Stillwater.

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