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Business Casual
By Ingrid Skjong
 To say Adam Baumgartner, 20, is ambitious would be an understatement. He graduated from Peotone High School a year early, then promptly turned around and won a seat on the school board in April 2005. Now the owner of two start-up businesses (Baumgartner’s Unlimited, a landscaping firm, and V.I.C., Inc., an office-furniture installation business), two Subway restaurants and the co-owner of Escape Builders, a commercial and residential concrete and excavation company, Baumgartner is the epitome of the word “entrepreneur.”
How did he get to where he is today? “I can’t say that any one thing has made me goal-oriented,” says Baumgartner, who is also a board member, treasurer and coach of the Peotone Biddy Basketball program and president of the town’s first Youth Football League. “I think that I was just born that way. I was always a self-motivator and started earning money at a very young age. My parents are money savvy, so it was something that I also grew up around.”
Although focused on his finances, Baumgartner never loses sight of his community. While still in high school, he helped a family who had lost their husband and father renovate their home through his involvement with the East Will County Thrivent Chapter (he is now the congregational service team director) and the Care Abounds in Communities® program. He enlisted the aid of 100 businesses and 150 volunteers to complete the project. Shortly after that, when a local man became a quadriplegic after an accident and was unable to work, Baumgartner helped rally hundreds of businesses and volunteers to raise $24,000 for the family, plus an additional $3,000 from the East Will County Chapter itself.
It’s this refreshing combination of entrepreneurialism, generosity and determination that has carried Baumgartner this far. And, with the security he’s found, he is more than capable of even greater things down the road.
“My advice to younger people is to start now,” he says. “You are never too young to start making money and turn it into something bigger.”
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