It is true that there is a fine line between entrepreneurship and insanity. Crazy people see and feel things that others don't. But you have to believe that everything is possible. If you believe it, those around you will believe it too.
Interpretation
Entrepreneurship often requires bold thinking that can seem irrational to others, but belief in possibilities can inspire those around you.
Anita Roddick suggests that entrepreneurship might be perceived as a fine line between creativity and madness, as it often involves ideas and visions that the average person may not comprehend. However, she emphasizes the importance of belief in potential, stating that if you hold a conviction that anything is achievable, you can motivate and influence others to share that vision, making the seemingly impossible a collective reality.
In practice
In a motivational speech to aspiring entrepreneurs, you could use this quote to inspire belief in their ideas.
I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses and made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently . . . This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.
I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon's advice to take sales of Β£300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.
If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.
But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.
Quite apart from anything else, my experience is trying to change things for the better makes you feel better, healthier. Humans are communicative animals: when you do good in a community, the benefits eventually get back to you.
First, you have to have fun. Second, you have to put love where your labour is. Third, you have to go in the opposite direction to everyone else.
When I was 14, I would sit up in my room and write till my eyes would bleed.
Eat your words! Eat your words! I am the greatest.
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
Other nights ... I visualize to the point that I know exactly what I want to do: dive, glide, stroke, flip, reach the wall, hit the split time to the hundredth, then swim back again for as many times as I need to finish the race.
Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.
It is called working your ass off. The difference is what you are willing to sacrifice. For every writer who wants balance in their life, there is a guy like me who gives up a lot to make their dreams come true. There is always going to be someone out there that knows they have to compensate for maybe having less talent with harder work and preparation.
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