“The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day,
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.”
The opening lines of Ernest L. Thayer’s poem Casey At The Bat brought a broad smile to my father’s face just last week as our family gathered for Mother’s Day weekend. After a 40 year career as a pastor my Dad now struggles to put full sentences together, suffering from a form of dementia that makes it difficult for him to communicate. But his visage shone as I recited the famous poem first published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1888.
My Dad was the inspiration for me to start up a business at age 24. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I knew I wanted to be on my own. Dad encouraged me to think independently and I watched him act as an “independent consultant” throughout his career as a pastor. I built a recruiting practice and ran it for 19 years before joining the StartupNation team last year so that I could encourage and inspire others to start it up.
I was fortunate to have such an encourager in my Dad to go for it and strike out on my own. If you’re about ready to start your own business, find someone who can be that encourager for you. They will be an invaluable source of continuous inspiration – for the rest of your life.
