While interviewing all of the people featured in Restaurant Owners Uncorked, I asked them to recount how they got started.

As I listened to stories about bankers, friends and even family members telling them they were crazy, and expressing doubts, I couldn’t help but think of my favorite quote. My guess is that all of those owners, as well as any entrepreneur who started a business in spite of the doubts and fears expressed by the people around them, share a similar perspective to what president Roosevelt so boldly stated:

“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 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 up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for 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 knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt

I tip my hat to all of you brave souls who have ignored your critics, and have taken those bold steps into the arena. You’re courage is eternally inspiring. Thank you.

Wil