“They tend to have a certain freedom of thought and action, and as a result they are willing to take risks. And the risk-taking is related to a strong desire to be successful.”   Harvard professor Abraham Zaleznik

“You have to be an optimist – almost delusionally optimistic – otherwise you’ll never ever think about creating something new, like a business.”   Guy Kawasaki

“You really need to have sales experience with starting a business. A lot of people who want to start their own businesses would rather be delivering the product rather than finding customers. But usually what makes new businesses fail in the first couple of years are periods when the business dries up.” John Challenger, CEO Grey & Christmas

“You should be willing to personally fail for what will seem like and interminably long period of time, and not give up.”  Dean Kamen

“People first tend to gravitate towards things that they know.”  John Challenger, CEO Grey & Christmas

“Entrepreneurs tend to have a singular weakness that allows them to do things without checking their conscious. Juvenile delay puts act and then try to sort things out afterwards. I think entrepreneurs have this tendency.”  Harvard professor Abraham Zaleznik

“You need to be in denial or in ignorance. You have to believe that it will be hard for you to succeed. You have to be ignorant about how difficult it is. That’s why entrepreneurship is often best done by young people – because they don’t yet know what they don’t know.”  Guy Kawasaki

“You should be willing to endure the fact that most of the people around you particularly the well-meaning ones are going to constantly remind you that you are nuts. They will call you a dreamer and say they are better, safer ways to move forward in life without taking unreasonable risks.”  Dean Kamen

I met a young entrepreneur last night named Jason Wilson, who has started a craft beer company. I interviewed him for the book that we are writing, and to hear his incredible story, you are going to have to wait.  But I wanted to share some of his classic lines about entrepreneurship now…..

“The biggest obstacle (to success) is picking up the phone and calling, didn’t take 3-4 calls before I got a yes.”

“I studied failures to learn.  You see successful companies all the time, but what caused the others to fail?  I saw that at 2 year they did not have enough funding and at the 5 year mark, well this fascinated me – well funded, good plans, good models – they understood their model but ran out of passion, got tired – their explosion never happened.”

“I am not yet proud of myself – I have not accomplished much of anything yet – I have  lots of investors to answer to – dreams to fulfill.”