Failing and taking chances go hand in hand to be a successful entrepreneur.

The fifth recipient of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the University of Mary studied to be a radiologist, then was told by a superior to go into the business end of health care.

"These people all make you take certain turns in your life,"Michael Hofer said.

He is the owner of Imaging Solutions Inc. in Fargo, a company with $50 million in annual sales.

He spoke to a standing-room- only audience of more than 150 people Thursday at the university. He talked about his life experiences that made him an entrepreneur and what he thinks are attributes of an entrepreneur.

When radiology fell through, he took a chance on a job with a new company, Dakota Medical Systems, and invested in it. They hired him to be a service technician. He made a lousy service technician, so the boss made him a salesman, he said.

He started there in 1974 and by 1981, when the boss retired, his shares of stock helped propel him to be president and CEOof the company. His boss, who started the company when he was 55, had planned how to retire and have his company carry on without selling it.

It is the forethought in planning - seeing into the future of what he wanted to do - that made him successful, he said. It's a common characteristic among successful people.

To get to that point, people have to take a chance. When Hofer started his job at the company, he bought $8,000 worth of stock.

Hofer has taken other capital risks in his life. He and another investor bought an electric car company for $240,000 instead of investing in it. Three years later, Daimler-Chrysler bought it.

While he has invested in areas outside of health care, it is an area he comes back to, he said.

For the students at the University of Mary who are in health care, he told them it's a good field to enter.

"Health care is very recession-proof. People get sick if the economy is good and people get sick if the economy is bad," he said.

The other recipients of the award are Harry Pearce, Dewey Tietz, Edward Shorma and Gary Tharaldson. Each spoke at the university earlier this year.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@;bismarcktribune.com.)