Go Big or Go Home: Life Lessons from an Entrepreneur
By Jennifer Carroll, special to Overdrive
This is a story about my late husband, Phil Carroll, a long-time entrepreneur, EO Arizona member and one of the first people to join EO. Like many hard-charging entrepreneurs out there, Phil fearlessly embraced the “Go big or go home!” motto. He always lived life in the fast lane, and the result was a beautiful journey filled with love, laughter and lessons learned.
Born to Build Businesses
If I had to describe Phil with a noun, it would be “entrepreneur.” As an adjective, it would be “positive.” In abbreviation form? That’s simple: “!” Phil was an entrepreneur from the day he was born. At age 10, he started a grass-cutting business using his father’s lawnmower. In high school, he launched a hospital flower delivery business by turning the family station wagon—he unbolted and removed the back seat—into a state-of-the-art flower delivery mini-van. In college, Phil and his best friend, Dave Steele (EO Vancouver), bought a broken houseboat and flipped it into a cruising boat. They went on to create Three Buoys Houseboat Vacations, the largest fleet of houseboats in the world.