![\"Risking](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.everywritersresource.com\/selfpublished\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/RI_full-size_WEB-236x300.jpg?resize=236%2C300\" "\\"Risking")
Author<\/h2>\nTim Hoerr<\/p>\n
Tim Hoerr is the CEO of Serra Ventures, a professional services firm offering assistance with business strategy, capital formation, and organization development. He serves as the Managing Partner of Serra Capital, the division of the company providing funding to seed and emerging stage high tech companies. He is also the Managing Member of a Jimmy John\u2019s franchise operating in central Texas.<\/p>\n
A partner and consultant for 15 years with RSM McGladrey, an international accounting and consulting firm (both in Illinois and San Diego), Tim subsequently served as president of SourceGear (a software firm), and then as Co-Founder and CEO of iCyt, a bioscience instrument firm which garnered numerous technology and business awards for their innovations. The company was acquired by Sony Corporation in 2009, the same year Tim won the Entrepreneurial Excellence in Management Award at the Innovation Celebration — an honor recognizing exceptional entrepreneurial talent bestowed by the University of Illinois.<\/p>\n
Having previously authored “Thank God It\u2019s Monday! A Toolkit for Aligning Your Lifevision and Your Work” (Everywhere Press, 1998), Tim is keenly dedicated to sharing his career-related insights with the goal of encouraging and equipping fellow Christians who are similarly seeking to integrate their faith into their own work life.<\/p>\n
Over his three decades in the business arena, Tim has actively sought to boldly implement this key principle into every aspect of his business endeavors, and candidly shares his failures as well as his successes with businesspeople and entrepreneurs who are building today\u2019s high performance organizations.<\/p>\n
One Christian business man\u2019s warts n\u2019 all tale\u2026from lessons learned early on in his family\u2019s business, to a laudable stint in the senior ranks of corporate America, to entrepreneurial adventures as well as misadventures — all humorously and engagingly shared amidst the backdrop of Tim Hoerr\u2019s unshakable Christian faith, a key to his growth into the seasoned and now-successful serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist he\u2019s become.<\/p>\n
Tim\u2019s primary goal in opening up his own life story from the business trenches is to inspire and provide practical encouragement to fellow Believers who are struggling with how to fully integrate their walk with Jesus into their secular work lives. Told with candor and often self-effacing, his hard-won wisdom and insights are both practical as well as profound. As a result, Risking It offers actionable guidance to those just getting underway in their career in addition to those who have decades of work life behind or in front of them.<\/p>\n
With one foot in Illinois and one in southern California, Tim Hoerr\u2019s orientation refreshingly embraces both Midwestern as well as more progressive west coast values. While decisively successful in worldly terms these days, his personal as well as career foundation is steadfastly based upon God\u2019s Word from which he derives his perfect example and inspiration — Jesus Christ. Tim\u2019s ultimate goal is that his life \u2013 professionally as well as personally \u2013 might always glorify Him.<\/p>\n
His collaborator on the book is his daughter, Alyssa Kolb, who serves as Serra Ventures\u2019 Marketing and Communications Director. She\u2019s a graduate from the University of Illinois (undergrad) and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology (masters). Alyssa has performed a variety of functions since joining the firm in 2009, and has extensive training and background in the field of Industrial Organizational Psychology, essentially how human factors influence people\u2019s behavior and interactions within organizations.<\/p>\n
She is the oldest of Tim\u2019s three daughters (and he could not be more proud!). A committed family man, Tim has enjoyed a long and happy marriage to his wife, Toni, and they\u2019ve been blessed with three now-grown children.<\/p>\n
IT WAS ABOUT 5:45 P.M. ON A TUESDAY, AND I WAS<\/p>\n
EXHAUSTED. It had been a long day, and I was ending it by having
\na staring contest with my computer. I was hanging in there, though my
\neyes were glazing over.
\n\u201cHey, Tim, you okay?\u201d Bob Harrington said as he strolled into my
\noffice. Bob was one of my brightest team members\u2014a manager over the
\nhuman resources consulting group and an expert in compensation consulting.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look sort of\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cComatose?\u201d I said, finally managing to avert my eyes from my computer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I am. Too many projects. Hard to keep them all straight
\nin my head.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFunny thing, being in the management consulting business. It\u2019s
\nkind of like running a restaurant,\u201d Bob said as he plopped down in a
\nchair.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, really?\u201d I said. \u201cEnlighten me.\u201d I could think of a lot of things
\nthat this business was like, but a restaurant wasn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink of it this way,\u201d Bob said. \u201cOur clients are like customers at
\nthe restaurant. They\u2019ve come to us with very specific expectations and
\nneeds. Of course, everyone wants something slightly different. They\u2019ve
\nplaced their orders, and as far as they are concerned, they should be our
\ntop priority. Never mind that we\u2019re serving fifteen different parties at the
\nsame time. Everybody likes to think they\u2019re number one in the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shrugged and nodded. \u201cThat\u2019s probably why I\u2019m comatose right
\nnow. Lots of demands. Tough problems to solve. And everyone wants
\ntheir solution now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bob headed off down the hall and I shut off my computer and
\nthought about the only problem I really wanted to solve: what\u2019s for dinner.<\/p>\n
But before I went home, I thought about the intensity of our consulting
\nwork. It demanded that we find ways to renew \u201con the fly,\u201d
\ncatching little respites here and there. I stood and looked out my window
\nand across Fox Drive. I was struck by the soothing scene in front on
\nme\u2014a winding walking trail surrounded by trees and shrubbery, covered
\nwith a half inch of freshly fallen snow. The street and parking lot
\nglistened with whiteness.<\/p>\n
It was late November, 1994, and winter seemed to have arrived
\nthough the calendar indicated it was not official for another four weeks
\nor so. Yes, I thought. Our work is really challenging and exhausting\u2014
\nbut it\u2019s also very rewarding. We get to make a real difference for our
\nclients, solving very challenging problems. Not only that, I get to do it
\nwith people like Bob, Tony, Kevin, Scott, Sherry, Thane and Kim\u2014just
\na terrific team of talented pros. 1994 had been perhaps the most productive
\nand fruitful year for our consulting team. We seemed to really
\nbe hitting stride.<\/p>\n
My moment of quiet reflection was interrupted by the phone ringing.<\/p>\n
The caller ID showed an unfamiliar number, a 619 area code.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.TimHoerr.com<\/a><\/p>\nBest place to buy your book<\/h2>\n