“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

Author Unknown

Story contributed by Brad Handler*

Brad Handler

My younger brother, Brent, and I are fifteen months apart. We grew up with a father obsessed with business and real estate. Any time we passed a lot for sale my dad would take his eyes off the road and wonder aloud if the parcel was a good buy. My mom had to remind him every time he had my brother or me in the car, to pay attention and not let his eyes wander. He was constantly looking for the next “big deal” in Denver’s real estate market.

Other kids would play catch with their dad but not us. The only competitive sport in our house was Monopoly. My dad, brother and I would spend long weekends in marathon games at the kitchen table. Dad would coach each of us on how to best build an empire. He’d then go off to work on Monday morning and build his.

My dad was an entrepreneur. He started in the early 1960s as a salesman of western wear shirts and jeans. By the late 1960s he owned and ran a series of clothing manufacturers. I spent summers working in the factory and weekends selling “seconds” at the flea market. When I was old enough to drive, I’d come down to the factory after school for a few hours most days. By the time I was 18 years old I’d had a master class in entrepreneurial management.

The business lessons I learned from my dad still resonate with me today. Here are a few I’ve found most helpful in my own career as an entrepreneur:

1. Take responsibility.

For my dad, it meant much more than taking responsibility for your own actions, it meant protecting those who work for you as well. He would never tell a customer that an employee mistake was the cause of some mix-up. He would call the customer and take responsibility for the error and the solution.

2. Walk around the floor.

My father walked around his plant a couple times every day to check in with his employees. Not just the managers, but everyone he saw. He was interested in their lives, their families and their careers. The result was unheard of loyalty. He had employees who worked for him across multiple companies for over 30 years.

3. Use technology where you can to get an edge.

My first exposure to a computer was an IBM System/360 installed at my father’s office for inventory and accounting. I was probably no more than 5 years old when I played my first game of tic-tac-toe against IBM. That moment started my lifelong interest in technology.

4. Have enough self-confidence to fail.

My dad’s business was not always prosperous. There were incredible successes, but there was also complete failure. After any setback, he remained positive, focused and committed to learning from the failure so that the next endeavor would succeed. Importantly, true to lesson number one, he never blamed others when failure occurred.

My brother and I are now both in our mid-forties and on our second joint startup (if you don’t count the snow shoveling business we had as kids). Almost two years ago we launched Inspirato, a private, luxury destination club, after leaving our first company, Exclusive Resorts, which we started together eight years earlier. We had the same teacher and the same lessons. But we apply those lessons in different ways—each of us complementing the other. The result is, I hope, something our dad would be proud of.

I don’t believe my dad ever set out to teach my brother and me anything about business. We learned by observation. My dad was so passionate about what he was doing it just rubbed off on the two of us through osmosis.

Norton Handler died three and a half years ago. His sudden passing left a big hole in our family. Every day I miss talking with my dad. As we run our company, I hear him in the decisions we make and the culture we build.