In the Fall of 1987, I found myself dead broke, in-debt and unemployed.
At that point in my life I had been through a series of menial jobs and had never been to college.
Not knowing what else to do, I began going door-to-door, a borrowed ladder strapped to the roof of my car, offering to clean the leaves from people's gutters.
Little did I know, I had stumbled into an experience that would change my life forever.
I had always dreamt of owning my own business, yet like most people, I thought I'd need lots of money, a patented new technology or an Ivy League MBA, things I certainly didn't have.
To me, it seemed, owning a successful business was a distant dream, a privilege set aside for a fortunate few.
Again, not knowing what else to do, I began to forge ahead.
Soon customers began to ask me to take on other small repairs and, by doing what I said I would do, my business began to grow.
I went to seminars and read books to learn all I could about construction, remodeling and repair.
I began to take on larger projects.
Soon I was building homes and buying real estate.
Before I knew it, I had transformed gutter cleaning into a multi-million dollar business, and a better life.
Somewhere along the way, I became intrigued by the stories of other successful self-made entrepreneurs, to hear their stories, to understand their mindset, and how they were able to accomplish so much with so little.
I soon realized that these entrepreneurs had valuable insights, skills and practical knowledge gained through their experience that I hadn't found in a classroom or a textbook.
Some were highly educated, others had barely finished high school.
Most were self-made entrepreneurs, bootstrappers who started with little or nothing.
Their stories are all remarkable.
The lessons they provided were life changing.
Through my own experience, and the insight gathered from other successful self-made entrepreneurs, I learned that starting and growing a successful business doesn't require money, privilege, patented technology or an Ivy League education.
I learned that entrepreneurship is a mindset, it's a way of looking at the world that exposes opportunity, ignites ambition and fosters the innate creativity, drive and determination that we all possess.
Entrepreneurship is about innovation and initiative, about using our innate creativity and imagination to solve problems.
It's about taking risks, challenging the status quo as well as our own self-limiting beliefs.
It's about combining our own unique experience, talents, ideas and abilities to solve problems and create value for others.
It's about getting up early, working late and making things happen in the margins.
It's about connecting and collaborating, bartering and bootstrapping to make it work with what we've got.
Through my experience, I learned that entrepreneurship is a mindset that can empower ordinary people to create extraordinary results: · It can enable you to start and grow a successful business, regardless ofwhere you are right now.
· It can enable you to breath new life into an existing business.
· It's a mindset essential to educating and preparing the next generation to survive and succeed in the rapidly changing new global economy.
Throughout all of human history, great advances have come about not as the result of greater effort, but as the result of a shift in our awareness, a new paradigm that enables us to see the world in a different way.
Entrepreneurship is a mindset that offers life-changing awareness.
It's a mindset that exposes a world of unlimited opportunity, a mindset that enables us to overcome self-imposed limitations and to achieve things we might otherwise have never been able to achieve.
And, it's a mindset we can all cultivate within ourselves, wherever we are, in whatever we do.
Gutter cleaning taught me that.