Where I Got My Entrepreneurial Spirit

Five children under the age of 10 and $100 in their name. One-bedroom rental in a poorer part of Houston.

Note: This is a new version of a post I wrote yesterday that wasn’t quite right in a few ways. Please excuse the spam of a new, improved, version if you read the previous one!

Five children under the age of 10 and $100 in their name. One-bedroom rental in a poorer part of Houston.

That is how my parents started their lives together. My sister slept in a closet.

If you know me, my family and where I grew up in Houston, you would not associate the above with my life. In honesty, I don’t have the right to associate the above in many ways, I didn’t suffer in the ways my siblings & parents did - but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t massively formed a part of who I am today.

And I want to give that more airtime. That no matter what we have all been through in our lives (and there have been extreme lows) that we made it, they made it, through hard work and never giving up.

My father started college then left for Vietnam, two of my brothers joined the military - one Navy, one Army - so in many ways, we were a military family. One of my sisters is still serving and has helped to drive forward many elements regarding women in the military. Will she make the history books, maybe not, but often it’s the people putting in a lot of the hard work that don’t get the credit they deserve.

While my parents didn’t immediately finish college, they busted their asses setting up their own business, creating a place for people to work that was fair, equal & diverse by the nature of the work and being Houston. Often working multiple jobs to pay the bills, my mother also went to night school to learn about computers and technology and keeping her brain going. My father often worked a 15/hr day, 7 day week - heading back into work at 9:15 on a Sunday morning after church. This was our normal.

I was the only one of my siblings to go straight to university from high school, thanks to my parents being able to pay and the privilege of growing up during the life stage that I did in their journeys.

My sister began college and studied for years while simultaneously working in the Air Force and then going on to one of the top universities and graduating with her degree (and then even later went on to get her Master’s).

My mother graduated from university with a degree in British Literature at the age of 65, which was not without its stresses (including being bullied by younger students and not supported by professors) and following that completed a Shakespeare course at Oxford. To say we were proud is an understatement.

What is the point of all of this? Why am I sharing it? Well to be honest I got a talking-to from a friend recently that I needed to stop apologising for finding things hard because I’m privileged (my words) and it really made me stop and think again about the topic and my place in it.

Should I? Or should I delete all my social because I’m privileged and take up space? Or, just maybe, my parents worked their skin to the bones to get themselves to where they are today (up and down several times as things shifted in their market), they almost went bankrupt, they had multiple loans, they had people relying on them - employees, us kids, bills (and other family members as well…)

ALL of the above could not have happened without the fundamental drive to work hard, desire to continue to learn, and the want to help others succeed - be it employees or family.

Should I not give that the space and credit it deserves? Should I not say that my parents have the strongest work ethic, integrity in their business and relationships and the constant desire to keep learning has, consciously or not, seeped into my veins and has been a driving force for who I am. It’s why I’m successful. It’s why I am an entrepreneur at heart. It’s why I have a strong work ethic (and it’s not bc I’m American…) It’s why I respect integrity over everything else in my professional and personal relationships.

The drive and grit my parents survived and ultimately thrived professionally is the background to what makes me the successful and ambitious woman I am today.

We often focus on the negatives of our lives and the trauma, which yes, is super important to acknowledge and address (that’s a different post - or book!), but it’s healthy to remember the positive driver too.

Yes, I grew up with food, a big house, a nice neighborhood, a swimming pool and I’m white. In many/most ways, I was and am privileged. But apart from being white (and my dad being male), my parents were not, and they have had a massive part to play in who I am, and how I have taken those attributes to progress and succeed - it’s more than just being privileged that got me to where I am and I always want to hold on to that - and pass those same attributes down to my children.