My dad was definitely entrepreneurial, but he wasn't a technology guy at all. The businesses he ran when I was a kid included: running a pulpwood truck, cutting down trees and hauling logs to the mills; building docks and bulkheads for people with houses on the water; building a selling crab traps; running a dump truck, hauling fill dirt and doing ground grading / leveling / etc; running a small-time shrimping operation, and uh, probably a couple more I'm forgetting. He never made it "big time" doing any of the above, although he would sometimes go years at a time making it OK doing one of those things, but he always wound up going back to a "day job." Then, after hurting his back on the job and being forced to more or less retire, he started a business doing cement pouring / finishing, and that's the one where he kinda "made it." He is very well established now doing that and makes pretty good living at it.

So yeah, watching my dad as a kid definitely taught me something about persistence and the value of hard-work; and certainly contributed to my desire to do my own thing.