We hear every day about the flashy twenty-five-year-old wunderkinds who have hit it big in the tech world and celebrated CEOs who have flourished in public companies. But we rarely hear about the majority of successful men and women who, at the average age of forty-one, start their own company. He was forty when he founded Homax Corporation in 1981.

He is an award-winning entrepreneur who would like to share what he has learned in business and life with others. With $25,000 of his own money and a $250,000 loan from the bank secured by everything they owned, he was "all-in" with a wife and two young children. He sold his company in 1996 that was thoughtfully structured to be sustainable for those who helped him be successful. Talented management continued growing the company (Homax is now owned by PPG). The sale met his goal to retire comfortably at the age of fifty-five, with money and time left to acquire new skills and pursue other adventures.

How Hard Can It Be? How I Found Success through Intention, Integrity, and $75 in My Pocket is a 67,000-word book that echoes the words of St. Francis of Assisi, "Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." His story shows young entrepreneurs how to plot their course to succeed in business and life by building cultures with good character while simultaneously growing themselves. It also speaks to the middle-aged start-up entrepreneur about how to assess risk and how to focus their courage to begin.

His personal story is eclectic. He left home at the age of nineteen with $75 and a used car. Much of his book includes anecdotes-some funny, some quite serious-that help frame my message. They are intertwined with his personal stories about racing cars, windsurfing, heli-skiing, and piloting high-performance aircraft, and he uses these kinds of experiences to punctuate a point.

In spite of facing a new normal, the basic principles he describes in his book remain constant. "A changing world, even the coronavirus, has always been the clarion call for entrepreneurs and people of creative spirit to rise to the surface and lead the way."

A Roadmap for Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs - inbunden, Engelska, 2021