It’s not hard to find talented people in Grove City.
Take Craig Chavis, for example, who is a serial entrepreneur, a returned Peace Corps volunteer, a Division I collegiate athlete and an accomplished author – the list goes on.
“It’s been a hell of a journey these past few years and I wouldn’t change it for the world,” Chavis says.
Craig Chavis hiking in Cordillera Blanca mountains in Ancash, Peru.
Chavis’ journey has been anything but dull. He grew up in Ohio, moving from one city to another as his dad’s work took them all over the state. After graduating from New Albany High School, he made his way down to Alabama to play football for Samford University.
“Athletics is really how I defined myself, because moving around so much, all this constant uprooting, I had to adjust to new people, new cultures, new environment,” he says. “Little did I know how that would prepare me for my future life calling.”
After suffering a career-ending injury his sophomore year, Chavis thought his future was over. Luckily, his Spanish teacher threw him a life preserver of an idea: studying abroad.
“She said, ‘Go, clear your mind. Put yourself in a completely different environment and go from there,’” says Chavis. “This is where I started developing my methodology that I don’t believe in self-made. We all have help getting to different points in our life.”
So Chavis went to Costa Rica, lived with a host family and became fluent in Spanish.
“I realized a higher version of myself that already existed, and I just got hooked on (traveling)," he says, “and since that experience in Costa Rica, I’ve been to 20 different countries and I’ve spent close to five years of my life living abroad.”
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Craig Chavis and his Peace Corps group that went to Lima, Peru.
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Chavis teaches financial literacy to his host family in Peru.
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Chavis and his Peace Corps group.
After returning from Costa Rica, Chavis switched his major to international business and studied in Salamanca, Spain, before getting his MBA. He began feeling like corporate America wasn’t where he belonged, and after meeting a Peace Corps recruiter his life yet again changed course.
He signed up to volunteer with the Peace Corps and before long was stationed in Peru in an economic development program where he worked in imports and exports, fair trade certifications, business coaching and consulting, and youth entrepreneurship.
“I had this dream of starting a business in another country, but I didn’t know how I was going to do it,” he says.
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After his 27 months in the Peace Corps and a brief visit home to Ohio, Chavis decided to immigrate to Peru and start up a craft distillery. Chavis had learned the distillery process during his Peace Corps days. Business was booming, but landlord issues forced him to close the distillery.
“That experience was my second big quote-unquote failure, but as I define in my book, FAIL is just an acronym for First Attempt in Learning,” Chavis says. “I only spent three years in Peru, but it was like 30 years of life experience because the highs were really high and the lows were really low. I found myself because I followed my dream to become this international businessman.”
The next few years were difficult as Chavis strove to find his place in the world. He worked in Washington D.C. for a few companies and ended up moving back to Ohio to be with family after the loss of his grandmother.
“I needed to come back home to heal myself, but I also needed to help out with family, and being back in Ohio has really put me on firm ground,” he says.
Chavis chose Grove City as his home because it’s close to downtown Columbus and Interstate 71 and his parents now live in the community after they relocated from New Albany.
“I’ve been running a million miles an hour for the past decade, and I enjoy living in a place like Grove City because it is comfortable, affordable and has access to so many amenities including restaurants, a quaint downtown, scenic natural parks, a library and much more,” he says.
Chavis adds: “The most surprising thing about Grove City has been the astonishing growth over the past year and change. There are new businesses popping up monthly, the massive highway expansion is almost complete, and it seems like new people are moving here every day.”
Since settling in Grove City, Chavis reached out to Matt Yerkes from Cultivate Grove City, who helped him plug into the local entrepreneurship scene.
“Networking with the right people was crucial to me getting my business off of the ground and I really appreciated all of the free advice and classes that Matt provided me,” Chavis says.
He’s now part of the larger Columbus community and found a home in a number of organizations, from Wild Goose Creative to Conscious Capitalism Columbus, Women in Technology International and Central Ohio Returned Volunteer Association, it’s clear he’s made his mark.
“It was just nice coming back to Columbus where people ask me, ‘Who are you?’ instead of, ‘What do you do?’ And that’s the great thing about being back in the Midwest. People are a lot more humble and a lot more relaxed,” he says. “Life is good here.”
This is also where Chavis discovered his calling: writing a book, Burdens of a Dream, part memoir and part guide that helps people to realize their dreams and become the entrepreneurs of their own lives through the lens of his journey and experiences.
“I define a creative entrepreneur as anyone who takes a calculated risk to create something out of nothing and share it with the world,” he says. “With that definition, you can create a thing, you can create a business, or better yet, you can create a life that you don’t have to run away from. That’s what I love most about entrepreneurship – I really get to live on my terms.”
Chavis’ journey had its share of failures, but that’s the fuel in his fire to keep going.
“Failure is not final,” he says.
Burdens of a Dream sends that same message of hope to readers.
At the end of the day, Chavis wants to communicate the power of overcoming adversity and the hope he has for the future.
“My 10-year-old self couldn’t have even articulated this,” he says. “I would never imagine that I would go from stutterer to serial entrepreneur to business coach to paid speaker who speaks in three different languages.”
Chavis’ story proves that with a little bit of help and a passion for your dreams, anything is possible.
The gift of a good book Burdens of a Dream can be found locally at Gramercy Books in Bexley, the Book Loft of German Village and Prologue Bookshop in the Short North.
Sarah Robinson is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
