INTRODUCTION
Eleven letters.
What if I told you that’s really all it takes to change the world? What if, instead of tripping over ourselves to learn from the mouths of the executive suite, real estate moguls, and venture capitalists, we just opened an Oxford Dictionary? It’s right there in front of our noses. Persistence. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.
Every single day there is an entrepreneur who comes to life for the first time. There is a moment, like lightning in the bones, when they realize with their whole being theirs is an idea that is going to impact millions. It’s a compulsion, a calling, an unquestionable fact that this thing must be brought into existence. And on every single one of those days, there is someone else who is giving up on their very same idea—the thing that once filled them with pride, with the energy of life. There are graveyards full of unfilled dreams. Unfortunately, there is no sagacious wisdom or hypnotic charm for success. You cannot buy it, beg for it, or borrow it—it must be earned, Old Testament style.
More often than not, it is our expectations that defeat us, not our circumstances. We believe that the hard work was in taming the muses, in the concentrated focus of generating the idea. After we’ve got that done, well, shouldn’t the world step-to and blaze a trail for us? No, you’ve got to earn your supper. If an idea is a body, then persistence is the road that no one else can walk for us. Not our family. Not our friends. Not our mentors.
Mahatma Ghandi asked of us to “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Fundamentally, I think he understood that before we can change anything outside of ourselves, we must be mentally and physically prepared for the trials and tribulations ahead. Make no mistake about it, failure is coming. You will trip and stumble, scrape your knee, and second-guess just how bad you want this crazy, ludicrous, wonderful idea. But you already have in your arsenal, everything you need to continue forward.
QUITLESS is an anthology dedicated to exactly this idea.
The game changers, the creative disruptors, the people that loudly proclaim “We refuse to color inside the lines!”—they come from all walks of life. They are not just entrepreneurs; they are artists, and engineers, and teachers, and parents. Yet, each and every one of them shares a piece of common ground: they persisted when it would have been easier not to. They pushed forward in the face of adversity, not stubbornly ramming their head against a wall, but strategically slipping life’s many jabs. The breadth of human stories encompassed in QUITLESS will take you to every tiny corner of the world, and my hope is that you begin to see that there is no archetype. There is no rigid system or set rules of the game. Every single one of you has the capacity to do something extraordinary.
So go out there, persist, and make it happen.
You might just change the world.
