Winner's circle: lottery winners bet on entrepreneurship

Entrepreneur, April, 1996 by Janean Chun

Nancy brown checked her numbers, checked them again, and again. Then she screamed. "It scared my husband," Brown says. But she had as good a reason as any to scream: She realized she had just won almost $7 million in the California Lottery.

The hospital worker was able to quit her job and purchase two new houses. However, the fairy tale was not quite complete until Brown opened her dream business, an antique mall called Wrightwood Gifts & Antiques, in Wrightwood, California. "I opened the shop just to see whether [owning a business] was something I really wanted to do," Brown says. The verdict? "It is. I'm thoroughly enjoying it."

Brown isn't the only one. Norma Minas, public information officer with the California Lottery, says several lottery winners, given endless doors of possibility, have chosen to enter into entrepreneurship. Among these lucky stars:

A woman whose house was on the verge of foreclosure won $17 million and started a nonprofit organization to help HIV/AIDS and hunger organizations;

A retired CPA who purchased a 120-acre vineyard;

A woman who won $19.5 million and opened a doll and teddy bear shop, sending the proceeds to an organization that supports children's hospitals across the country.

Brown herself has used some of her proceeds to encourage budding entrepreneurs. Her antique mall allows local small-business owners to rent retail space for a minimal amount. "It affords them the opportunity to see how their product performs," she says. "I hope once they're successful, they'll have the courage to start larger stores, or open their own malls."

Brown acknowledges that if she hadn't won the lottery, she probably wouldn't have been playing entrepreneurial mentor today. Were it not for the simple twist of fate, she believes she would still be working at the hospital, her knack for entrepreneurship left undiscovered. "I think about that quite often," she says. "This money has afforded me a chance to go out and fulfill my dream of having my own little business, doing something I love to do."

Unfortunately, that enviable state can't be attained by any amount of education, hard work, marketing or networking--only by randomly hitting six out of six numbers. Could it happen to you?