Inspired by the words in the famous speech delivered in 1910 by President Theodore Roosevelt, who exhorted others to risk failure rather than shrink from life’s challenges, author David Michael Semas has spent a lifetime in building businesses from the ground up. David writes to edify his readers, who, he hopes, can glean a few useful lessons from his long list of successes as well as his notable failures, which has fueled his quest to live in the arena, where life plays out on a grand scale.

 

Nearly 5.5 million business applications were filed in the United States in 2021, a record breaking year up 54% over 2019. But how long do most businesses survive? Roughly a third will implode within two years. Half won’t make it past five and seventy percent will fail by the tenth year. But all the statistics in the world can’t tell the full story. Man in the Arena: Never Say Quit provides budding entrepreneurs and the inquisitive with a case history of success and failure, risk and reward. David’s half-century in business runs the gamut from general contracting, real estate development, construction lending and finance to owning and operating hotel resorts, a metal-finishing technology business and a green chemical company partnered with the US Navy and Pratt & Whitney. His story, one of triumph and despair, has the potential to inspire tomorrow’s success stories. Indeed, if he can impart his message of gumption, hard work, and resilience to at least one reader, he will consider this book a success.

 

The story is part memoir, part inspirational self-help, which is why you won’t find anything like it at bookstores these days. Readers can pursue pure business memoirs like Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, which offers an honest take on the hard road to success. But the average reader might find such a memoir unrelatable, given the all-but-unattainable level of success reached by its author. Anytime we pick up a memoir or tell-all story by a billionaire like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and others, we already know how the story ends. This story, on the other hand, details the author’s share of ups and downs and more closely resembles the rollercoaster ride that most people experience when trying to pursue their dreams. Indeed, ‘Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…It’s about learning to dance in the rain’ - Vivian Greene.