I received an e-mail the other day from a friend who thanked me for my advice. Having long ago lost touch with him, I barely remembered the incident to which he referred.

Years ago, he and I spent an afternoon on a boat on Lake Erie, next to Cleveland. He began complaining about his job, and after quietly listening for several minutes, I said, "And what do you intend to do about it?" He stared back, somewhat blankly. I repeated, "What do you intend to do about it?"

He told me that it never occurred to him that he had the option of simply reassessing his situation, perhaps quitting his job altogether and starting something different. He told me he'd once thought about leaving and starting a business, but, after all, that entailed risk and he feared disaster.

I told him, "The worst disaster is to look back and say, 'What if?'" He asked me why I felt so strongly about taking chances, and I told him a story.

When I practiced law in the late '70s, my law firm offered the chance to spend the summer working for the United Way as a "loan executive." As an L.E., I learned to give a speech about the organization -- the percentage of the donated dollar that gets down to the beneficiaries, the efficiency of the organization, etc.

I agreed to participate in the program upon one condition -- that my United Way supervisor assign me to the business division. As an L.E. for the business section, my job required me to meet first with CEOs of medium and large corporations. The CEO and I would then get into a car and drive to a non-United Way supporting colleague of the CEO's, at which time I would make my pitch to the nonparticipating CEO's workforce. I chose the business sector so that I could have some one-on-one face time -- usually an hour each way in the car -- with these successful CEOs. I asked them how they got started. Why they went into business. What mistakes they made along the way. And, most important, I asked, if you were starting out today, knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself?

Mind you, each of these CEOs ran successful companies with gross revenues from 25 million to over 100 million in 1970s dollars. Nearly all started out in humble circumstances, without inherited wealth. They started a business, with some, at first, failing a couple of times. One business distributed shoes. Another shipped goods. Another manufactured car antennae. These 50-something CEOs were, in my mind, huge risk-takers. Continued...