There can be no doubt that Don Jones (Founder of Carnegie-Mellon’s Don Jones’ Center for Entrepreneurial Studies) is my all-time favorite entrepreneur.

Over the years, I’ve come to know a whole lot of entrepreneurs - both serial and static - but Don just seems to trump them all. You have to watch him in action to appreciate his sheer genius.

On a Saturday morning talk radio show, Don re-told one of those almost-apocryphal stories that I have heard about him over the years. This one had to do with his having once begged, borrowed, and commandeered every last penny he could raise in order to “have the most impressive booth” at a key industry trade show for his then-nascent company.

Behaving just like a puff adder, Don bet his company on this “look big” gambit. And it worked. He came away from that once-a-year show with orders and status that could not have been built up by years of traditional marketing and selling.

So how did he know? What little birdie sat on Mr. Jones’ shoulder telling him to go ahead, draw to that inside straight? Especially when virtually everyone else was telling him that he would likely “lose everything, with almost no chance of winning.”

I’ve had nine start-ups in thirty-plus years, and in some of these companies I’ve also bet the house. Maybe not as dramatically as Don, but I’ve certainly had many days when payroll was due in less than 72 hours and there I was, investing that payroll to add maybe another couple of thousand dollars to our bottom line.

Recently, I asked Don, “What if you had failed? You bet everything. What if your instincts were wrong?”

His response to that question was the same as it has always been, “Then I’d have found another way. Hell, you of all people should know that there’s always a way.”

There’s always a way. How absolutely, positively true! But that way is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for anyone who has learned how to quit (which is, in my opinion, a “learned behavior”). The way is all about hard work, great strategy, hard work, and great personnel. (Oh, and did I mention hard work?)

Entrepreneurs live in the world of the possible. They know and fully understand the consequences of failure, but they simply refuse to grant failure even the smallest of footholds. They know that there is no way but forward. And therefore they will not allow negative thinking from their cohorts and teammates. This is why entrepreneurs are indomitable spirits who invariably change the thinking of those who come into contact with them.