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How to Raise an Entrepreneur

The key, Michelle Rousseff Kemp found, is to bar your kids from the family business.

A first-generation american, half Polish and half Macedonian, Michelle Rousseff grew up on a 160-acre cattle and grain farm in Fort Wayne, Ind., went to college, and married another Macedonian, John Markoff, who owned a tavern. She had a baby, then two more: Jonathon in 1971, Katrina in 1973, and Natalie in 1976. Shortly after Natalie was born, Michelle’s marriage collapsed. “I have three children. What am I going to do?” she wondered, but she didn’t waste time brooding. She was from tough stock; she coped. To help ends meet, she worked a paper route. At the age of 29, she was getting up at dawn and flinging newspapers at people’s houses from her Ford Country Sedan.

It took Michelle a while to tell her father about the divorce. But he had already guessed that there was trouble. “What took you so long?” he asked. Then he gave her a job at the janitorial supplies company he owned. At night, Michelle changed the paper dispensers in bathrooms; by day, she sold degreasers and chemical solvents. Sales was thought to be a man’s world, but Michelle excelled. She liked winning customers and clients.

By: Jonathan Black

Full Story: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050801/entrepreneur.html

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