My buddy Thanh and I got up and went to the gym this morning. What a perfect way to start the day.

John Hunstman gave a devotional address to BYU’s student body today. I love his life story, and read parts of it once in a book called “Winners Never Cheat”. He grew up as a farm boy in Idaho and eventually became and international business icon. I love how he got financing for the first business he started.

He says at first the banker just blew him off and wouldn’t give any money. He had many failed attempts at getting a bank loan, but finally Jon just wore him down and was given a meager pittance. He mentioned that the principle to learn from this is that you have to live your own dream and not let other people decide what life you’ll live. I love it. That’s probably what most people don’t get about entrepreneurship.

A lot of people still think that if you’re an entrepreneur you’re made of magic and play all day while getting paid large sums of money. They don’t know the countless sleepless nights, doubts, vision, polite head nodding when people ask you if you’ve ever thought of this or that or give you innumerable pieces of worthless advice that come along with blazing your own trail in the world.

If having self confidence and strong sense of identity and work ethic is magic, and if doing something you love is play, then maybe we are made of magic and get to play all day.

Too many people look to others to decide their fate for them. They take a test to tell them their passions, ask an advisor what they should major in, and take a fearful failure’s word for it when it comes to doing something creative or hard. “Oh, you can’t start a business unless you’re a super genius who is already a millionaire” or “no, that idea won’t work, besides, someone has probably already done it”. Put a cork in it, fearful failures. Don’t try to put a shade over someone’s sunlight. Just because you have long, sinking regrets in life doesn’t mean you have to belittle those that try harder than you did.

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

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-Theodore Roosavelt