I first caught the bug of entrepreneurialship when I was still fairly young, one summer in the mid-1970s, when I started mowing lawns for several neighbors around the neighborhood. Mowing lawns was not my favorite thing to do in the world, especially since I had to use a pretty old Amish-style push reel mower that, as I was fond of saying "was probably built prior to the Civil War." But ancient mowers and frequent jammings did not dampen my enthusiasm for making some money, which I used to get a lot of pizza and Cokes while hanging out with friends at the public pool in town.
When I finally made it into my teen years, I discovered that I could also make some money during the winter months by shoveling snow. Between my summer endeavors and winter ones, I also figured out - after considerable prodding from my parents - that if I saved some of my money, I could do things like buy records that I liked, buy a new fire helmet or get cool accessories for my mountain bicycle. Again I did not always enjoy the menial labor, but I did rather enjoy the freedom of spending my earnings when and where I liked; a freedom that I still very much enjoy to this day.
Things would really come together and gel for me when I was exposed to the world of Mobile DJing. I loved music, I loved helping others and I liked making money too - it was a perfect fit for me from the very beginning. I used the DJ-money to buy better equipment and more records so that I could make more money to buy more music. So the cycle of buying music and gear to make more money went for many years until I eventually stumbled upon the concept of turning my hobby of being a Disc Jockey into a legitimate business endeavor. After several name changes, false starts and hard lessons learned, my DJ business is now called River Valley Wedding DJ.
However, this was only just the beginning as I would also branch out into designing websites too. A few years later I added website hosting to my toolbox, which gave birth to my second longest running business, River Valley Hosting & Web Design. Between my two businesses and book sales, I was able to get by as a fulltime, self-employed business owner for several years. I continue to push the boundaries of my comfort zone and what I know through on-going education, seminars, books, etc. in order to improve my businesses by offering progressively better services to my customers which gives them a better value and experience.
