My father was a serial entrepreneur. He’d gone to law school in Jerusalem and was just shy of graduating and becoming an attorney when he pivoted and left for Geneva to pursue a degree in business instead. To me, the word entrepreneur — which I learned alongside my multiplication table — meant adventure, because every opportunity my dad pursued came with a wild story to match.
For starters, there was the motorcycle he bought during his business school days. My father recounted stories of zipping along Alpine roads, hugging sharp curves with nothing but an open future beyond the next bend. But Europe wasn’t far enough for this thrill-seeker, and he soon headed to the heart of the hustle: New York City.
There, he dabbled in multiple ventures, culminating in a charter airline he single-handedly launched in his 20s, flying passengers from New York to Israel. Along the way, he met a whip-smart Vassar College graduate who’d later become my mom.
Then came a new business opportunity — one that took him to Venezuela, a country he’d never been to, where he didn’t speak the language. He set up his own business, as a door-to-door salesman selling facial saunas to wealthy housewives in the upscale neighborhoods of Caracas.
My father’s storytelling was worthy of an Oscar — not just for the way his thick, bushy eyebrows danced with every twist in the tale or how his hazel eyes lit up like stage lights, but for the stories themselves, which were always filled with mishaps, obstacles and, ultimately, triumphs.
They captivated my sisters and me. We couldn’t get enough, even if the story centered around Waterpik or whatever gadget he happened to be selling that year.
He eventually opened an office, building a mini empire selling equipment like those wild-looking walk-in saunas that were all the rage in the 1970s — then opened a second office in Ecuador, where his business shifted into more discreet territory involving the Ecuadorian and Israeli governments. In Venezuela, he purchased a vast swath of sun-scorched land and started a mango farm, despite never having farmed a day in his life, recruiting Israeli experts to transform the barren soil into a fertile and thriving success.
While his work kept evolving, one thing never changed: He was always chasing the next big idea and collecting stories along the way. From him, I came to understand that carving your own path isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t always lead where you expect. It’s the stories you gather, the risks you take, the possibilities you chase that shape who you are — not just as a leader, but as a human being.
And those stories, whatever the outcome, are always worth telling.
Happy Reading!
Alona Abbady Martinez
alona@bocaratonobserver.com