The Entrepreneurial Bloodline That Built Me

Before there was The Revenue Method®. Before there was Amenity Wizard™. Before there was my own leap into entrepreneurship.

There was a serpentarium.

The photo above? That yellow sign is real. From the 1960s. From the Texas Serpentarium my dad owned on Ranch Road 620 in Lakeway.

That sign once stood at the entrance of a roadside attraction built on risk and reinvention.

Today, it hangs in my 3D-printed home in Georgetown, Texas.

A reminder of where I come from.

The Snake Trailer & The Carnival Years

My father’s first business was a traveling snake trailer, a rolling museum of reptiles, parrots, and tortoises that he hauled from shopping center to shopping center across America.

He made simple, brilliant deals with retailers: give their shoppers tickets, create curiosity, drive traffic.

No pitch deck.

No venture capital.

No MBA.

Just hustle and grit.

Then came the carnival years.

My parents were full-fledged road warriors. A house trailer parked behind shopping centers. Employees living in a converted school bus. Pony rides and umbrella rides hauled across state lines. My dad would drive ahead to book the next city while the convoy followed behind him.

For the first three years of their marriage, this was life.

Motion.

Hustle.

Risk.

They lived in a 35-foot Spartan trailer with three small children under the age of three.

1968: Bread, Eggs, and Milk

In 1968, my mother made a decision that altered our family’s destiny.

“I don’t want to go back on the road. I want to build something here.”

They didn’t even have money for groceries.

When my mom tells this part of the story, her eyes still well up. Decades later, the memory sits just beneath the surface. She can still feel the fear, the weight of not knowing how you’re going to buy food with three small children at home.

My dad drove from the Texas Serpentarium on 620 down to a homebuilder’s office on I-35 and walked in cold.

“I want to sell houses.”

“Do you have experience?”

“No.”

“You can’t sell houses unless you’re licensed or working for a builder.”

That same day, he went to the model home park and sold a house anyway.

A young couple. Baby due any day.

He called my mom and said, “You know that extra porta crib in the trailer? I want to give it to this couple I just sold a house to. They have a baby on the way.”

He went back to the homebuilder's office to let them know he got a contract. He asked how commission worked.

“You’ll get paid when the loan closes.”

My dad said: “I need to get paid now. I don’t have any money. I need bread, eggs, and milk.”

The sales manager reached into his pocket and handed him a $20 bill.

That night, my dad came home with bread, eggs, and milk.

Within ninety days, he was the #1 sales rep.

From snake trailer to top producer in three months.

That’s not luck.

That’s wiring.

And my mom always says:

“When you’ve been that broke, you never want to go back there.”

That season didn’t just humble them.

It lit a fire.

The Handshake That Drew the Line

In the early 1970s, my dad entered the homebuilding business on a handshake deal , a 50/50 partnership.

They built 19 houses in North Austin, a little subdivision still known as Lamplight Village.

At year end, his partner sat across from him and said his half of the profit was $7,000.

Seven thousand dollars.

My dad knew the math. He knew the margins. He knew what 19 houses were worth.

He walked out to his truck.

He came back in with a pistol on his hip.

And he said: “If you think I built 19 houses for $7,000, you’re out of your mind. You’re going to write me an IOU for $50,000 or we’re done.”

It wasn’t about violence.

It was about refusing to be underestimated.

His partner wrote the IOU.

My dad took that letter to the bank and secured his first independent construction loan.

That was the end of the partnership.

And the beginning of building on his own terms.

My mother painted that first house inside and out.

My dad framed it himself.

One presold contract at a time. One interim loan at a time.

Over the next 30 years, they built 700 homes in the Austin area.

Seven hundred.

No private equity.

No safety net.

Just reputation, leverage, and relentless belief.

1987: Walburg Furniture

During a housing slowdown in 1987, my mother made another bold move.

“Let’s start a furniture company.”

She asked the custom cabinet maker who had built the cabinets for their homes if she could use his 3,000-square-foot cabinet shop and begin manufacturing furniture to sell at market.

Within days, Walburg Furniture was incorporated.

She leveraged vacant lots she owned in Austin as collateral to secure an SBA loan. What began as a small cabinet shop expanded into a 30,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Walburg, Texas.

At its peak, they employed 90 people, the largest employer in Williamson County at the time.

They showed at High Point.

They sold nationally.

They shipped bookcases and desks across the country.

They were building something big.

The Smell of Oak

Some of my clearest childhood memories are in Walburg.

I can still smell it.

Fresh-cut oak.

Sawdust hanging thick in the air.

Lacquer curing on assembly lines of bookcases lined up like soldiers.

The hum of saws.

The thud of lumber.

Forklifts beeping across the floor.

I was a teenager sitting in the office with my mom’s secretary, answering phones, flipping through order forms, listening to my mom talk to sales reps from across the country.

Entrepreneurship wasn’t theory.

It smelled like oak and hard work.

It sounded like machinery and momentum.

It felt like risk.

1989: The Fire

In November 1989, the plant burned to the ground.

A welding spark.

A failed fire extinguisher.

Wood dust and lacquer.

By the time my parents drove from Austin to Walburg, it was ash.

Gone.

They didn’t wait on insurance.

They rebuilt using their own money.

Then 1991 came.

SBA refused to defer payments.

They foreclosed.

The company was sold on the courthouse steps for $300,000.

My parents went from owners to employees overnight, splitting a $75,000 salary between the two of them.

Most people would have stopped there.

They didn’t.

My dad stayed on until disagreements over materials and quality led to his termination. The new owner offered to keep my mom on for her half of the $75,000 salary.

She said, "I love Walburg Furniture. I started it and I’m proud of it. But I am not going to work for $35,000 a year.”

The Afghan Years

By then, I was 15. Three older sisters. A younger brother. A younger sister. A 6-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot house in Northwest Austin, with an 18% interest rate.

My mom bought a van and a trailer and went on the road selling afghans at arts and crafts shows across the country.

Three months at a time.

Mailing checks home nightly so the house payment never missed.

Until one day she came home and told my dad:

“I can’t keep staying out on the road. Put on a nice pair of jeans and boots. Let’s go visit some banks.”

That’s how they started building houses again in 1992.

Two spec loans.

Sell one.

Get another.

Keep building.

2001: 9/11

In 2001, they had ten spec homes on the ground:

• 2 in Lakeway

• 2 in Bastrop

• 2 in Elgin

• 2 in Crystal Falls

• 2 in Liberty Hill

They intentionally built in different areas to see where the market would respond.

Then 9/11 happened.

Interest alone was about $30,000 per month.

Spec homes sat.

My mom called the five banks she had loans with.

“I’ll give the houses back. When you get a contract on them, we’ll finish them for you.”

Most builders were walking away unfinished.

She negotiated to finish them once sold.

Four banks said yes.

One said no.

She filed Chapter 7.

Not because she failed.

Because she refused to let one bank take everything.

Then she started again.

New company name.

Different structure.

Same courage.

They began finishing homes other builders had walked away from.

Entrepreneurship Is Our Native Language

As I celebrate three years in business, and finally figuring out what I want to do when I grow up, I reflect on where this began.

I’m one of six kids.

Every single one of us has started a business at some point.

Different paths.

Different timing.

Some failed.

Some pivoted.

Some went back to corporate America before going out on their own again.

Yes - some of us have more than one LLC.

Today, five of the six of us run our own business.

That doesn’t happen by accident.

Our parents didn’t have college degrees.

They had courage.

They were entrepreneurs by necessity long before it was trendy.

Long before “founder” became a personality type.

Of the six of us:

• Three have some college

• One has a degree

• All six learned how to build something from nothing

Our mom is 81 years old and still running her LLCs from her lakeside home in McQueeney, Texas.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t come from a diploma.

It comes from environment, example, and courage.

This Is Why I’m Built This Way

People ask how I walked away from corporate stability.

How I built an advisory firm from scratch.

Why I value independence so fiercely.

This is why.

I come from carnies.

From handshake deals and IOUs taken to the bank.

From 18% interest rates, factories that burned, and businesses that rose again.

From bankruptcy court and back to the builder’s table.

Entrepreneurship isn’t glamorous in the glossy magazine sense.

It’s glamorous in the grit sense.

Motion.

Resilience.

Reinvention.

Pride.

It’s my mom saying, “Put your boots on. Let’s go talk to the bank.”

It’s my dad saying, “I’ll frame it myself.”

So when I say I believe in independence, I mean it.

When I say I’m system-agnostic, it’s not marketing.

It’s bloodline.

And if I ever have to start over?

I already know how.

Bread.

Eggs.

Milk.

Let’s build.

— J Schu