6 Charlie Sheen quotes to make you a better entrepreneur

Jason Baptiste


(Editor’s note: Jason L. Baptiste is the CEO and co-founder of PadPressed and co-author of the OnStartups blog. This story originally appeared at that site.)


In between the winning and being ringmaster of the year’s biggest media circus, Charlie Sheen has been spouting off a lot of one-liners that are becoming pop culture catch phrases. But mixed in are a lot of interesting quotes that can be applied to entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur, after all, often straddles a thin border between insane and brilliant.


Here are his best:

“Defeat is not an option. CBS picked a fight with a Warlock.” – Most entrepreneurs don’t end up losing because of market forces or what can be attributed to specific failures. At the end of the day, entrepreneurs fail because they decide to give up and accept defeat as an option. When starting a company, Elon Musk referred to it as the equivalent of eating glass and staring into the abyss on a daily basis.

It may be a hard road, but complete and utter defeat is NOT an option. Take a look at  Airbnb. They failed to attract any attention and failed continuously for not only days, months, but actually years. Instead of accepting defeat, they persevered and kept going. Most startups don’t die due to specific circumstances, but because they commit “suicide”.

“Everyone will say: Don’t be special, be one of us! NEWSFLASH: I am special, and I will never be one of you” – No one will understand what you do. They will hear the entrepreneur word and think you are crazy or broke. To succeed, you have to ignore those that don’t understand us.

We’re a crazy breed and we’re special. If this were for everyone, then it wouldn’t be special. As an entrepreneur you have to have thick skin and trust that it will all work out. Even when it does, you will always feel as if the respect you deserve isn’t where it should be. Steve Jobs said it best with a quote that goes along the lines of “You have to be insane to do this and you have to love it. Any sane person would do what a sane person would: just quit and give up.”

Focus in on being different and drown out the noise. They will be fast to hate on you and they be move even faster to congratulate you.

“[My brain] fires in a way, not particularly from this terrestrial realm” – As an entrepreneur, you need to think at a level that is not from this world. Look back at the legendary Apple ad campaign about “Think Different”. The rest of the world happens to be a fickle bunch. On the one hand, they want to vilify you for being an entrepreneur and take you down a level or two. On the other, they want something that is outside the box and pleases them.

The only people capable of doing that are entrepreneurs. If what you’re doing is criticized as “tame”, then you are doing something very wrong. At the end of the day, you should seem as if your creation is from another planet. Your brain needs to think in a manner that is truly extra terrestrial.

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