Guest: Todd Thompson; A Pekin based Economic Consultant.
Today’s Episode Summary:
When people see entrepreneurs they see them as a final product and they think their success is “overnight success”. but they don’t realize struggles and a long journey behind the scene. For most of the entrepreneurs their entrepreneurial journey starts from a very young age and they strive continuously to leave a meaningful impact on the world through their vision. My today’s special guest, Todd Thompson, started working in a very young age and all of his work added up into a vision that changed many lives.
Todd has managed a wide variety of downtown revitalization projects. He rebuilt and repaired vacant buildings of Pekin, Havana and many other towns and filled those buildings with local small businesses. He is running economic development projects and also helping and coaching small business to grow. So far he has changed so many lives through his vision of stabilizing small towns.
In our today’s podcast episode I am having conversation with Todd about his early age work, his carpentry business, how he ended up in downtown revitalization work and how he brought his vision to life.
To know detailed information listen to the full podcast.
The Episode Timeline:
[00:00] – Introduction of guest.
[01:06] – Where Todd grew up and what was his first business?
[03:35] – When he made money for the first time?
[07:00] – Which personality type can be an entrepreneur?
[08:45] – Todd juggling with his education and work.
[12:28] – His commercial carpentry company at the age of 17.
[13:54] – What is carpentry work that he was doing?
[15:15] – How he ended up in economic development project of revitalization of Pekin downtown?
[35:06] – How many buildings he revitalized and in how much time?
[36:50] – How he coaches his tenants to thrive their business.
[41:19] – Next project of Todd; revitalization of Havana Illinois.
[45:53] – Remarkable impact of Todd’s work on people’s lives.
[49:41] – Ripple effect of good intentions.
[52:05] – Some best advices from Todd.
Golden Nuggets from Episode
- “Any personality type can be an entrepreneur. There is no 1 formula that fits everybody. Human beings have so many dimensions so you can approach business your way.”
- “Change what you can and accept what you can’t.”
- “If things are not going the way you want, then do something different.”
- “We all are somebody good and if we allow that goodness to shine then ripple effect becomes exponentially good.”
- “Good intentions make all the difference in the world.”
- “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
- “It’s so easy to create stress in your life if you never believe what you did was good enough. But if you accept that this was my best today then this alleviates a lot of stress.”