Every Entrepreneur Needs Heroes to Help Them Along the Way

Every entrepreneur needs heroes to help them along the way.

Inspirational heroes are individuals whose stories and achievements resonate deeply with aspiring entrepreneurs. These heroes serve as sources of motivation, demonstrating that success is attainable even in the face of adversity.

Whether overcoming financial struggles, navigating market turbulence, or pioneering groundbreaking innovations, inspirational heroes provide tangible examples of resilience, determination, and the capacity to turn challenges into opportunities.

My two heroes were my Dad, R. Craig Allison, and Pittsburgh's Ron Morris, both serial entrepreneurs.

R. Craig Allison, Le Grande Fromage

R. Craig Allison, born on March 4, 1941, in Ashtabula, Ohio, became a serial entrepreneur by design and necessity. When he graduated from Cathedral Prep High School in 1959, he married my Mom, Susie. My brother Mike was born a few months later, in September of that year; I was born in March 1961, and my brother Craig in July 1963.

Three kids and a wife were a lot of mouths to feed for a young guy. So, from day one, life was a struggle. And despite all the nuisances, stress, and sleep-deprived days, he guarded his family's wellbeing like a terrier.

Getting there was a heavy lift, taking every ounce of grit and energy he possessed.

He worked full-time at injection molder Quinn Berry Plastics while a full-time student at Gannon College, where he graduated with an accounting degree in 1965. He told me once that he was so exhausted that he fell asleep during a final exam. After a short stint as an auditor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Greenville, Pennsylvania, working for the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad, a division of US Steel, he returned to Erie because my Mom got homesick.

He landed a job as a detail man for USV, a pharmaceutical company division of Revlon. His territory was Northwestern Pennsylvania and Eastern New York. While peddling diabetes drugs, my Dad's entrepreneurism started with a side hustle doing construction. Another name for people who start a side business is "moonlight" entrepreneurs.

A "moonlight entrepreneur" starts and runs a business or side venture while maintaining a full-time job. This type of entrepreneur typically works on their business during evenings, weekends, or other free time outside their primary job. The term "moonlighting" historically means working a second job in addition to one's regular employment, often at night, hence the name.

On the weekends, he started doing small concrete jobs on the side. Next, my Dad took the same advice Dustin Hoffman's character Benjamin Braddock from The Graduate got during the graduation party scene.

Plastics.

My Dad's next side business was Daleson Plastics, a small injection molder he started with his cousin, Dale Cage. The name Daleson was a combination of "Dale" and "Allison".

The company mostly made plastic bottle caps for Meadow Brook Dairy in Erie. Most of the work occurred at night or on the weekends because my Dad still worked for the pharmaceutical company, and Dale worked for National Fuel Gas.

After that, my Dad started a small company renting traffic barricades to divert cars around street repair construction sites. He had one customer ---National Fuel Gas. In addition to delivering, setting up, and retrieving the barricades, many nights, my Dad would need to replace the large six-volt batteries on the blinking barricade lights.

Just as my plumber says he's never replaced a water heater on a weekday, National Fuel Gas never called to have a barricade light battery replaced before 10 p.m. When he got a call to replace a battery, he'd say, "C'mon, Bongs, take a ride with me." So, most nights, I'd jump in the cab of his pick-up truck and venture out in the wee small hours of the morning to replace batteries.

On nights like those and weekends in the plastics plant, my Dad became my hero. He always did what he could to take care of his family. National Fuel Gas liked his work for the company by providing traffic barriers, so they let him bid on small jobs replacing broken sidewalks that resulted from gas-line repairs.

My Dad's next side hustle became one of his most successful businesses, UTEK, Inc., and created the capital that helped fund his home run --- Tollgrade Communications, Inc.

UTEK, Inc. made money by repairing streets and sidewalks damaged by National Fuel Gas crews, which repaired natural gas pipe leaks. It became an excellent business for my Dad, topping $3 million in sales for some years.

My Dad always liked the informality and earthiness of those men because he was that way himself. He was humble and self-deprecating. His Tollgrade business card read: "R. Craig Allison, Le Grande Fromage"

After college, my Dad invited the boys to join the business but didn't recommend it. He wanted all of us to "reach." He also said, "This business will age you fast. And every year, I compete with every guy with two shovels and a pick-up truck." He meant that winning his annual contract with National Fuel Gas was always done through blind bids. He started Tollgrade because every year for UTEK was a crapshoot.

I know one thing with certainty: He possessed the finest entrepreneurial mind I had ever seen and enjoyed the traits required of all great entrepreneurs: a high capacity for risk and intense curiosity. In the realm of executive leadership, it's called vision. He could see the possible.

In the early 1970s, he knew cable television would dominate the media. He tried to obtain a cable franchise in Erie but ultimately failed. At that time, he saw the potential of cell phones. Once, he told me, "Chris, people will be carrying phones in their purses and briefcases."

The emerging Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology would be a viable transitional service for data, and it also pushed our company into developing test offerings for cable service to complement our phone business. He was an early advocate of satellite transmission, wanting us to find a way to invest in the Iridium Satellite Company.

My dad was motivated by his hero, Chris Cooney, who distinguished himself while serving as a highly decorated captain in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. After Vietnam, Chris sold pharmaceuticals for Pfizer, as did my dad, who worked for USV Pharmaceuticals. He then moved to Downers Grove, Illinois, to begin a sales career at telecom equipment company Wescom.

At a dinner party in 1974, Chris and a group of Wescom engineers, production managers, and marketing executives hatched an idea to start a new company. Shortly thereafter, as they sat around the kitchen table at eventual CEO Mike Birck's home, legendary telecom equipment company Tellabs was born. They derived the name by combining the words "telephone" and "Bell Labs."

During Tellabs' first year, they didn't accept any money from outside investors and took no salary. Family members, including children, helped assemble the electronic devices. Tellabs' success and Chris himself inspired my Dad to ask, "Why can't I start a company like that, too?"

After that, our company, Tollgrade, was founded. Our main business was selling centralized test systems for voice lines to the seven regional operating companies known as The Baby Bells.

Raising only $6 million from angel investors, my Dad founded our company in 1989. From 1989 to 2005, the company generated more than $670 million in revenue and $135 million in EBITDA.

In 1995, we completed our Initial Public Offering on NASDAQ with a $62 million valuation. By 2000, our market capitalization soared to $2 billion in 2000. We met or exceeded analysts’ estimates 40 of 41 fiscal quarters.

Ron Morris, The Entrepreneurs' Entrepreneur

When I hear the word entrepreneur, I always think of my friend Ron Morris, one of my other heroes. In addition to starting more than seven successful businesses, mainly in the technology space, without external capital and creating a significant amount of wealth for himself, there was no more prominent advocate for entrepreneurship in the Pittsburgh region.

By age 10, Ron had started a door-to-door egg sales route, which laid the groundwork for dozens of startup companies he developed as a young adult, including a software company that made him a multimillionaire before age 30.

He later started a NYSE-listed company called JD Warren that helped insurance companies recover third-party deductibles. He sold the company in 1999 for approximately $13 million.

For a decade, he founded and led the Entrepreneurial Studies Program at Duquesne University, which has educated hundreds of students on the Faustian art of starting businesses. Mr. Morris emphasized that being one's boss does not come without a reasonable level of strife and personal sacrifice. I was fortunate enough to work for Ron at Duquesne after I left Tollgade. I often told Ron I wished Dad had met him because they were twin sons of different mothers.

I never met with Ron when we didn't laugh. Ron also hosted the nationally syndicated radio broadcast "The American Entrepreneur," which has inspired thousands to start their businesses. He also wrote prolifically about how to create new ventures as a regular columnist for the Pittsburgh Technology Council's TEQ magazine.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, he had provided startup capital and board advice to dozens of local businesses as an active angel investor. Ron earned the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award for his lifelong commitment to helping people fulfill their destinies and achieve personal freedom.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy."

We lost my Dad in 1998 due to a massive heart attack and Ron to cancer in 2012. Chris Cooney died of complications from dementia in 2019. They were all too young to leave us. Candles that burn the brightest never burn for long.

I will remember all of them forever. They were my heroes.

Chris Allison, who served as the CEO of Tollgrade Communications, Inc. for 10 years and the author of the new book, Hit It!: A Tech Startup Story and Seven Rules for Entrepreneurs, teaches bus

Chris Allison, Co-Founder and CEO of Tollgrade Communications, Inc., teaches business at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA and is the author of the new book, Hit It!: A Tech Startup Story and Seven Rules For Entrepreneurs.