Ana Fruend
Development Director, Hall of Giants
I married a serial entrepreneur.
Not someone who simply owns a business or likes the idea of working for himself. I married a man with a relentless determination to build something, solve problems, improve efficiency, and above all, to create something of his own.
When we were 21 and still in college, he was manufacturing and selling a device called the BoilingBeeper. This was the very first product on the market that alerted you when your pot of water had reached boiling temperature. It was oddly useful – and just unusual enough to teach him hard lessons about markets, manufacturing, patents, and the difference between having a clever idea and building a real business.
And even as those lessons were being digested, it was on to the next idea. And then the next after that.
My husband consulted for a confections manufacturer. He has helped build and market an Airbnb business that allowed landowners to rent out their property for hunting and fishing. He partnered with one of the largest and most well-known Pilates brands, which designed, manufactured, and sold Pilates reformer chairs — with Susan Lucci as the main celebrity endorser. He has followed opportunities into industries neither of us ever expected, and about which we knew nothing before jumping in headfirst.
I have learned not to get too attached to any one chapter in life, because with my husband, there is always another idea, another market gap he finds, another special opportunity he cannot ignore.
His current “day job” is manufacturing and selling a patented walking cane and innovative walker trays that hover around the number one spot on Amazon. He also sells to QVC and HSN on live TV all around the world, and just recently you can likely find his brand at your local CVS. That alone would be enough for most people.
But for an entrepreneur, the day job is rarely the whole story.
At 26, my husband became an owner of a 103-year-old golf course and one year later was asked to join the board of directors. It is both a joy and an honor to help a legacy establishment enter the 21st century and re-earn golfers’ respect as a quality semi-private course.
Since then, he has learned far more than he ever expected to know about the microenvironments of grass and sand, irrigation and drainage, clubhouse repairs, municipal water issues, and the fragile economics of a small, seasonal, family-style business. And because I am married to him, I now know far more than I ever expected to know about those things too. If you live with an entrepreneur, you know very well that their latest obsession becomes your secondhand expertise.
Unfortunately, my husband has also learned more than he ever wanted to know about financial fraud and the havoc it can cause to a small organization. More than once, we’ve been unsure whether we could open the doors at the start of the season.
The constant responsibility of entrepreneurship is what most people do not see. Some days there is a shipping delay. Some days it is a broken pipe. Some days it is a legal issue, a payroll issue, a product defect, a tariff, a customer complaint, an employee problem – or a squirrel getting into the pro shop office through broken tiles caused by a water leak that has already been repaired numerous times. When there is no one else to call or delegate to, it comes down to you to solve the problem, big or small.
A day in his life right now might begin with nine holes of golf at six in the morning, followed immediately by news that a shipping container has been hit by new tariffs and cannot be unloaded because there is no room or staff available at the port. While he figures out how to get that product off the ship, his business partner will call to tell him that he needs a pitch deck to present to a potential investor. During lunch, while running out to pick up groceries for me, he may take a call from an 85-year-old man who needs advice on selling his bubble gum empire to a private equity firm.
And that is all before 1 p.m.
The life of an entrepreneur is not a career. It’s a lifestyle. Work does not fit neatly into work hours because the problems rarely arrive neatly inside the typical 9-5. The ideas come during dinner. The calls come during errands, first thing Sunday morning, or just as you’re about to jump in the swimming pool.
Entrepreneurs see problems as opportunities— and instead of assuming someone else will solve them, they feel compelled to try. They build, test, fail, adjust, risk, repair, and begin again. They see what exists and wonder (constantly, trust me!) about how to build something better. It’s a unique way of seeing the world.
We only hear these stories after a company scales or goes public, or after the founder gets a glossy media profile. Before any of that, there is someone staying up late trying to solve one problem after another with no guarantee that any of it will work. Employees and their families depend on the outcome. The pressure does not often feel inspiring. Failures are always lessons, but they are rarely funny. And yet, the entrepreneur perseveres.
That is what I love about the mission of Hall of Giants.
We are not just building a place to celebrate famous entrepreneurs after history has already polished their stories. We are building a place that helps people understand what entrepreneurship really looks like – the human story of what it took to get there, and all the failures that had to take place first.