Chapter 6

Selected Quotes

· “The only thing worse than not being able to see, is having no vision.”

-Helen Keller

· “Merely owning a business does not make you an entrepreneur, it makes you a small-business owner . . . Entrepreneurs don’t only own their own businesses, they run them. Entrepreneurship is not a theoretical mind game but a hands-on, up-to-the-elbows, down-in-the-dirt experience. You cannot be an absentee entrepreneur . . .”

-Rieva Lesonsky

· “The most exhilarating, exciting, and empowering business experience you can have is being an entrepreneur, even though it is as tough and risky a task as you can undertake.”

-Earl G. Graves

Founder and publisher of

Black Enterprise magazine

· “Being in your own business is working 80 hours a week so that you can avoid working 40 hours a week for someone else.”

-Ramona E.F. Arnett

· “Entrepreneurship has become one of the most sought-after areas of study among collegiate business students. Graduates of these programs are not only increasing in number, they are reshaping our understanding of market, technology and management leadership. Bent on realizing their own perceived opportunities, they continue to define the standard for business innovation—and, by doing so, will forever alter the competitive landscape for future enterprise.”

-Michael Camp

Director of Research,

Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership

· “During the last 30 years, America has unleashed the most revolutionary generation the nation has experienced since its founding in 1776. This new generation of entrepreneurs has altered permanently the economic and social structure of this nation—and the world—and has set the ‘entre-preneurial genetic cods’ for future generations. It will determine more than any other single impetus how the nation and the world will live, work, learn, and lead . . .”

-Jeffry A. Timmons,

America’s Entrepreneurial Revolution: The Demise of Brontosaurus Capitalism, 1998

· “Most of what you hear about entrepreneurship says America’s leading management thinker, is all wrong. It’s not mysterious; and it has nothing to do with genes. It’s a discipline and, like any discipline, it can be learned.”

-Peter F. Drucker

· Playing Not To Lose:

“Avoiding situations where we might lose, fail, be emotionally hurt, or be rejected.”

· Playing To Win:

“Consciously choosing to go as far as I can with all that I have.”

· “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

-Helen Keller

· “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

-Mark Twain

· “There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.”

-J. Paul Getty

· “I wouldn’t care if I lost it all; I’d just start all over again, because I know I can do it. I’m not fearful of that. Even if I did have an economic collapse, I know that I can build something; I’ve done it before . . . If I lost everything, it really wouldn’t matter. I have personal happiness, I have personal security. The security is internal. It’s not in my bank account.”

-Helen Mills

Aon Consulting

· “Instead of avoiding risk, I recommend learning how to manage financial risk. People who take risks change the world. Few people ever get rich without taking risks.”

-Robert Kiyosaki

(Self-made millionaire)

· “Take large risks because without risks you receive no rewards.”

-John Huntsman