Entrepreneurs: Mary Hunter
by Miki Saxon
Earlier this year I cited a study that demonstrates the value of experience for entrepreneurs, something in short supply if you are a twentysomething starting a company in your dorm room.
Best of all, there’s no upper end to creativity or sources of inspiration.
Mary Hunter says her ideas com from God, as do her recipes, but it was diabetes that drove her to find a better way to add flavor to the large roasts she cooks for her church.
And it was moxie that kept her moving forward for twenty years, because, whether your idea is the result of heavenly inspiration or drowning frustration in a few beers, execution is never smooth.
Now it’s finally happening.
Later this month, Mary’s Marinating Sticks are scheduled to go on sale in Target stores.
It took enormous risk, Hunter mortgaged her home at age 63; great support from family and friends; a sales force recruited from her church (a la Sarah Breedlove, AKA Madame C. J. Walker), the kind of hard work that generates good luck and a belief strong enough to overcome everything that went wrong—and plenty did.
There are dozens of entrepreneurs who are held up as examples of perseverance in the face of adversity, but few fought it through for 20 years.
Those that fight and win all have one thing in common; an edge of some kind.
Hunter would tell you her edge was God, others would say it was a spouse or friend or just plain stubbornness.
But I think they are more like the Energizer bunny and just keep going and going and going.
Flickr image credit: The Accent
