Entrepreneurship is not a personality trait. It is a condition. It behaves like something living inside you. It keeps you awake at night. It whispers ideas you did not ask for. It refuses to let you settle.
I did not set out to write an inspiring book. This one is written to prepare you. Success is a reward. Failure is a curriculum. You are not ready for real success until you have taken a few beatings and kept going anyway.
I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, the son of two exhausted parents who ran a small printing shop after heart trouble ended my father’s career at NCR at twenty-five. They worked all day, came home at nine, and repeated the cycle. I was not inspired by entrepreneurship. I was shaped by survival.
The route from there runs through a nuclear submarine, a company that failed quietly, an airplane that cost me a partnership, a suitcase in the loft of an RV, a catalog I had no idea how to make, a morning in Times Square, six years in an eighteen-wheeler, and a Ford Transit I waited three years to receive. Part One is that route. Part Two is still being written.
This chapter is part of Failure Is Always an Option. The full book is still a free PDF, and the voice-over still plays on the book page: the book page