If you own a small business, you’ve more than likely been asked why you do it. Maybe you’ve been through a business networking class, and have dug into why you do what you do. If you’ve been through a good networking class, then they’ve made you dig deep – really deep – and find that WHY.

You can’t just say that you like to help people, and even though it may be more acceptable to proudly say that you are the 3rd generation in the family business, that’s not your real why. If you are that 3rd generation, that business is in your blood, it’s what makes you tick. If it weren’t you wouldn’t be there – or you wouldn’t be happy about it anyway.

Digging Deep

Dredging down into the inner depths of my soul several years ago in one of these networking classes, I eventually made my way through many of the typical answers:

• “because I like helping people with computers”
• “I’m good at fixing computers”
• “I’m good at teaching people how to use computer”

The instructor kept digging – How did I end up in the computer field?

I told the story about how I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was applying for colleges. Still undecided but leaning toward architecture, I went to the University of Findlay my freshman year. All of the classes I signed up for were ones that would easily transfer to The Ohio State University where I was planning on transferring and going into the architecture program. Second semester, I took an entry level computer programming class and absolutely loved it! Three days before school was out, I changed my mind and decided to stay at Findlay and major in computer science.

I was asked to ponder that until the next week and see if that was still what I felt my why was – did it go back further than that, was there more?

Finding my Spark

The next week, I came back to class with more.

My Dad brought our first computer home in 1982, when I was 8 years old. It was a TI-99 that hooked up to a TV. I sat in front of that computer for hours on end. At first I was playing the games that had come with it, but eventually I was curious about the cassette player my Dad had hooked up to it. When I asked, he showed me that he used that to store programs that he wrote.

He gave me my own cassette tape and showed me how to store programs on it. It didnt’ take long before I was teaching myself to code with the manuals that had come with the computer. I was hooked! Next, I moved on to writing some of my own programs, but I was also copying programs that others had published in Computer World magazine and running them – and fixing bugs I found in them.

In 1984, a teacher at the elementary school was offering an after school program to teach us how to program a turtle named Logo to move around on an Apple computer. Again, I loved it! A couple years later, my dad brought home a personal computer. I learned some DOS and Basic on my own, but I was heading into middle school and there were other interests that came along. In a small town school system and there was no real push to teach us computers. I didn’t even realize it was an option as a career choice when I left for college.

That was it. That was my why. That is the thing that makes me spark. And I had found it at 8 years old. My why is solving problems by programming computers.  Do you own a small business? Have you discovered your why?