When Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra sang, most people thought his songs were all about love.  Not me.

Nope! Frankie was clearly crooning about entrepreneurship—with its ever-changing roller coaster ride between the ecstasy that comes with financial independence and the pure terror that is imminent from fast approaching bankruptcy.

Let me show you what I mean by sharing with you some of the titles of his songs, then you judge for yourself.  I think you will agree and see what I mean.  He was clearly singing about launching and growing your own business venture.

When one begins that terrific ride toward complete self-reliance, one starts with “High Hopes.”  They often “Dream” about “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Maybe this Time.”

Failure?  “It Never Entered my Mind.”  No entrepreneurship is “Almost Like Being In Love.”  It knows no bounds and it is truly blind.

Sure, friends and neighbors might “Call Me Irresponsible,” but “Yes Sir, its My Baby” and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” even though they try “Time After Time.”  No, this time it is going to be different.  This business venture is going to be “An Affair To Remember.”

Often the start of the journey, when “Fools Rush In,” is only a few weeks old, yet in “The Wee

Hours of the Morning,” you begin to pray for “Pennies from Heaven” or someone to bail you out of this mess you got yourself into.

A new business takes “All of Me.”  Sometimes you feel like “I’ll Never Smile Again,” and you are “On That Lonesome Road.”  and that you should join “The French Foreign Legion.” These feelings soon pass and you have some business success, cash begins to roll in and you ask yourself, “Why Should I Cry Over You.” After all, “It’s Only Money.”

Soon you decide you need to hire someone to help you so you try and convince others to “Come Fly With Me.” You try and portray yourself as an “An Old Cowhand,” and the “Best is Yet to Come,” even though you are frightened because sometimes you really think maybe this is “The Impossible Dream.” As you really don’t know what you’re doing about half the time. 

But you are tired of being “All Alone.”  Because the exact right person to hire doesn’t come along, you try and practice, “Some Old Black Magic,” and you hire someone with less skills, “Until the Real Thing Comes Along.”  You feel that anyone is better than just doing it yourself.  You feel you need “Someone To Watch Over Me” because you feel like you are slowly “Going Out of My Head.” 

Things are starting to really go great now so you make one of your friends a partner.  The business begins to build momentum.  Sales are coming in and you both begin to feel like “Winners.”

But that old roller coaster ride takes a radical downward turn.  You are out of money again except for the “Three Coins in the Fountain.”  Soon your partner and friend tells you he is leaving.  He has accepted a real job.

You plead, “You Forgot All The Words,” that we promised one another.  “How Could You do a Thing Like That to Me?” Yet, you tell him bravely, “After You’re Gone,” we will always remember “The Night We Called It a Day.”

After your partner leaves, sometimes “In the Still of the Night,” you think “I’ll Never Smile Again.”  You almost envy him because he has a real job with a regular paycheck. 

Then you become more determined.  You say to yourself, “Let Me Try Again,” so you “Sit Right Down and Write Yourself a Letter” and put in writing all the things you are going to do differently “The Second Time Around.”  So, what if you are forced to “Change Partners.”

You set goals. You determine you are only going to hire just the right people—no friends, family or relatives.  You make out check lists.   You get focused and organized.  You decide you are going to take this business “All the Way,” even if it means “Going South of the Border.”  It might be rough “For A While,” but you know that soon you will be “Dancing On the Ceiling.”

“As Time Goes By,” sales, revenues and profits get better and better. Finally, when you get your end of the year statements, you decide “It Was A Very Good Year.”  Year after year, it gets better and better.  Your business and your personal fortune grows and flourishes.

You soon agree with Napoleon Hill when he wrote, “Once the money starts rolling in, you will ask, where has it been hiding all these years?”

“They all Laughed,” when you started, but you showed them.  You can repeat again with confidence, “Yes Sir, It’s My Baby,” and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.  “Thanks For The Memories.”

You can say with pride, “I Did It My Way,” as you make those daily deposits in the bank, buy the latest Tesla and make donations to great non-profits like the Academy for Creating Enterprise.

So ends the saga of the real Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra.  He did it his way, and you can do it your way, as an Entrepreneur.

Stephen W. Gibson is the Founder of the Academy for Creating Enterprise: A nonprofit that teaches tens of thousands of returned missionaries and others in less-developed countries (LDC) how to increase family income and bring self-reliance to their families.

You can visit the Academy website at https://www.the-academy.org