My Entrepreneurship Story

I joined the Air Force in August 2003 and my first assignment was Lajes Field, Portugal in the Azores islands.  I met one of my very good friends, even til this day, Ed "Luc City" Lucas.  He was always creative and tried to involve me in all of his ideas but I was never focused and patient enough to follow through with the idea.  I'll keep it brief and only focus on two of his ideas.  One of his first ideas was to start doing music production with no intention of selling the beats but because he really wanted to learn and had a real passion for music.  This may be considered user generated entrepreneurship.  Although he didn't come up with some really innovative idea he was interested in creating beats for his own enjoyment and several people around the base started to come by his room to record  as the word spread that he was "the man".  He invested in decent equipment on a budget and became addicted to making beats.  Over the years I really seen the growth in his production from sounding like an amateur to making professional beats that he now sells online and locally wherever he may be stationed.  He tried to get me involved early on to try to learn music production with him but it didn't last long because of my frustration with not seeing any instant gratification.
The next entrepreneurial idea that Luc City decided to get involved with was buying a pool route to offer cleaning services to residential customers.  He still is trying to get me to take the risk and invest in this type of business.  We talk all the time and his motivation behind buying a pool route is 100% driven by the the stress that comes along with the rules and strict adherence to the military lifestyle.  Neither one of us like anyone telling us what to do but he decided to do something about it and use his salary from the military to pay for this business.  His plan is to buy more pool routes and never have to work for anyone ever again after he retires from the Air Force in 7 years.  This is definitely a form of entrepreneurship as emancipation.  He's just started the business about 6 months ago and he's doing pretty good for himself.  I might take him up on his offer this time around and if I fail then it will not be a devastating loss but more of a learning experience to reach my ultimate goal of being my own boss and not having to take orders from anyone except my wife.
Now, this brings me to the question of "why did I enroll in ENT 3003"?  Well, honestly because I am a Business major and it's a required course.  Without this class I don't graduate and that's not an option for me.  After listening to the class lectures then it eased my mind to know that this class is not about learning several definitions and unrealistic concepts but about exploring and changing some of our ways of thinking as it relates to entrepreneurship.  The one thing that I hope to get from this class is changing my perception of failure and learn how to view risks from a more optimistic approach.