Born or Made?
Michelle Oliver
Founder Partner EVOLVE Lodging and Design | CEO Expitality |Experiential Outdoor Hospitality Consulting | Creative Leadership & Performance Coach | TALKABOUT TV Host | Investor | Experiential Experts Alliance | Author
Were you just born that way or do you practice being the boss of everything?? Those words were slung at me across the school playground as I skipped up the concrete steps towards home. Like an over shot arrow, the prediction they carried flew right over my head and I glanced, puzzled at the fuming 5th grade girl standing by the swing set. Not completely sure she was even addressing me, I flounced across the large field, my thoughts already leaping into the dance class I had every Tuesday after school.
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The next morning, I was greeted by a note on top of my desk. The girl from the playground was challenging me to fight on the playground after school. A fight? What? I’d never heard of girls fighting and I wasn’t even sure who this person was. Even in my ignorance, this ominous communication scared me.?
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In my characteristic Pollyanna style, believing all problems could be solved with kindness and courtesy, I decorated a piece of notebook paper with hearts, smiley faces and flowery swirls, scribbled a friendly reply and set out to discover who this girl was. It turned out that she was new to the school, had come from a neighborhood with different rules than mine and was very angry at me.
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Here’s the back story:
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Our elementary school was taking part in collecting donations for UNICEF. This was back in the days when they would give everyone a little cardboard box that we would unfold, pop out the serrated slot on the top so it could accept coins and we would go door to door asking for donations.?
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I thought it would be more fun to do this with a group of friends, so I gathered them to meet on Saturday and we went 2 by 2 to the doors on opposite sides of the neighborhood streets. Half way through the day, 3 of them went home, which left 4 of us to finish out the afternoon.
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We ended our efforts at my friend Katherine’s house, because her family owned a bakery and we could always count on an amazing array of day-old treats. We peeled the scotch tape off our little boxes and dumped the coins onto the kitchen table. We counted the money carefully, amazed at the piles of quarters and dimes. When all was said and done, there was a total of nearly $30.00.
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Initially, I was elated. All we had to do was ask and people willingly gave us money. As I thought about it, I had to ask our little group the question: How many $30. donations would it take to feed the starving children around the world? The images of starving children we’d been shown at school drifted through my mind.
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“This is not enough money”, I blurted out, “we need to get more money faster.” Of course, I had an idea. That Monday, my friends and I put the word out that we were starting a do gooder club and after school, 9 of us met near the big tree at the back of the field. I’d hoped for more people, but I had a plan and wasn’t going to let the numbers stop me.
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The Big Idea was this: we pooled our donations, which was pretty close to $40. This was during a time when trolls were not an evil social media presence, but a coveted, cute little doll that all the kids collected. We decided to start making custom clothes for troll dolls and sell them. We gathered fabric scraps from our homes and then invested a portion of our donations to pay my friend’s older sister to sew some really special clothes for us on her sewing machine.
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We were given day-old bakery goods from Katherine’s mom and added these goodies to our products along with gallons of lemonade that Teresa’s brother delivered by wagon the 1st 3 days. We set up our little store on the playground and each day after school we sold our goods.
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By the end of the week, we had a total of almost $100. This inspired us to finish out the effort with a Saturday going door to door in another neighborhood, offering free baked goods with every donation. By the time?we turned in our boxes, we had more than tripled our initial donations.
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These ideas and actions fall into the fundamental process of every entrepreneurial undertaking.
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We saw a need, had a vision and acted on it immediately. We gathered people, inspired them to drink our kool-aid and they happily supported our good idea. Our enthusiasm and determination were contagious and we were rewarded with a level of success. This was just one of 100s of my childhood entrepreneurial efforts.
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If you’re not aware, there’s an ongoing worldwide debate?as to whether entrepreneurs are born or made. So the initial accusation ( or question)?of?“Were you just born that way or do you practice being the boss of everything??”?was a relevant one.
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And the new girl? It turned out her name was Pamela, my note to her looked something like this and she was given the title of treasurer when we sold boxes of chocolates to collect donations for the next charitable campaign, which also turned into a neighborhood performance we sold tickets for, but that’s another story…
Franchise consultant/ Business Strategy and Patient Advocate Medical Anti-Aging/Commerical Real Estate and Business Loans /
1 年wow. what a great inspiration, great story. Really lets us know what qualities really count at the end of the day.
President/COO at Breeze Thru Car Wash
2 年I think the intuitive response for an entrepreneur for this question is: BORN! However, I don't believe that to be true. You're born with the instinct to take a breath, nurse from your mother, produce excrement, etc. The environment(s) one encounters; those are what craft the entrepreneur. Scenarios that invoke a sense/craving of freedom, creativity, purposeful contribution. Where risk takes a backseat because whatever lit your fire to chase your dream draws and drives you to fulfill it. We saw this, nationally, with the biggest spike in 70 years of people starting their own business during the pandemic. An environment that inspired people to pivot. To top it off, entrepreneurship is a practice (akin to a doctor or an attorney). Practice is not innate, but rather discipline and effort. #Made
Founder Partner EVOLVE Lodging and Design | CEO Expitality |Experiential Outdoor Hospitality Consulting | Creative Leadership & Performance Coach | TALKABOUT TV Host | Investor | Experiential Experts Alliance | Author
2 年Kuel Life ,Carol McKown, Ashley Bush,Diane Forster ~ TV HOST ?? SPEAKER ?? LIFE COACH OF THE YEAR??, Rachelle Hagerty, Jess Sato ??, Larry Lall, Justin Salisbury, Kristy Schlepp, Kristina Corcoran, Kristin Golliher