Entrepreneurship goes beyond Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Garrett Camp, and it embodies something bigger than Twitter and WhatsApp. Entrepreneurship is a mindset, an attitude, and a lifestyle adopted by people who aren't satisfied with the status quo.

It's an approach to life that favors creativity over conformity and action over inaction. Bestselling author, investor, and entrepreneur James Altucher says that for him, "Being an 'entrepreneur' doesn't mean starting the next Facebook. Or even starting any business at all. It means finding the challenges you have in your life, and determining creative ways to overcome those challenges."

So, even if you’re not tinkering away at the next world-changing invention or looking to set up shop in Silicon Valley, there are aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset that will enrich your work and life. Here are 8 things entrepreneurial people do differently.

They're brave enough to commit to their dreams.

Entrepreneurs choose to forego the security and familiarity of a 'regular job' to live an uncertain and insecure lifestyle. It takes a lot of bravery to make that tradeoff, but for icons like Walt Disney, the potential reward is worth it.

They think of their customers more than themselves.

Entrepreneurs are rarely out to seek fame for themselves. Instead, they're more concerned with the people they want to help or the problem they want to solve. This infuses their task with a layer of meaning that can be the difference between success and failure when things get tough. In his book, APE - Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, former Apple chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki writes, "In your darkest, most frustrated hours, remember the value you are trying to add to peoples’ lives, the satisfaction you’ll feel, or the cause that you’ll further."

They never stop learning.

Since they're in the business of creating new products and inventing new ways of doing things, much of what entrepreneurs do can't be taught in a classroom. They know that the most important lessons are learned through living, so throughout their lives, they remain open, flexible, and curious in order to absorb as much as possible.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, started off with a small student magazine, before eventually growing a string of record stores, a music label, an airline, and now even a commercial spaceflight company. Rather than becoming an expert in one area, he continued to learn and adapt throughout his life.

They never give up.

Rarely does an inventor or entrepreneur succeed on the first try. To create something lasting and worthwhile, it usually takes years of hard work, focus, and dedication; an idea is just a starting point. Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, a spoken word poet and the founder of a production company, believes this level of persistence is a critical element of entrepreneurship. "That's what it means to be an entrepreneur: to really focus on that one thing that does not exist yet and keep working towards it until it becomes real,"she says.

They love failing.

For most of us, the fear of failure is entirely paralyzing, but for entrepreneurs, failure is something to embrace. It's an indication of pushing the limits, and inevitable when one is constantly trying new things.

They find and fill a need of the world.

Entrepreneurs want to do more than indulge their own interests -- they want to solve a problem or create a product that satisfies a need.

Some started businesses because of frustration with an inefficient or defective system. Others were moved by a personal encounter with poverty or misfortune. Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS, started his business after traveling to Argentina and seeing kids who didn't have shoes: "An absence that didn't just complicate every aspect of their lives -- including essentials like attending school and getting water from the local well -- but also exposed them to a wide range of diseases," he writes inStart Something That Matters.

They take old ideas and make them way, way better.

While one might think that entrepreneurs are focused mainly on never-seen-before ideas, they often revamp an existing model or upgrade an outdated product. Sometimes, these reinvented ideas change the way we exercise, read, or eat.

And once in a while, they revolutionize ice cream.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the co-founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, started out in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont, before growing a globally recognized brand that features unusual flavors like 'Cherry Garcia' and 'Hazed & Confused.' They're also pioneers in the socially responsible business movement, speaking often about how business can give back to the community and earning Ben & Jerry's a B-Corporation certification.

Above all, they act.

Entrepreneurs execute when for many others, an idea simply fades into the past. They are masters of turning the abstract into the concrete. This seemingly simple action is one of the great challenges of life and in the end, it's what defines an entrepreneur. 

1. "I want to put a ding in the universe." - Steve Jobs

2. "Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them." - Alfred North Whitehead

3. "Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." - Jonas Salk

4. "If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles Kettering

5. "If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney

6. "Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller

7. "You can't solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level." - Albert Einstein

8. "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." - Miles Davis

9. "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves." - Carl Jung

10. "There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

11. "If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think." - Clarence Darrow

12. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." - John Steinbeck

13. "To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act." - Anatole France

14. "It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas." - Charles Peguy

15. "There's no good idea that cannot be improved on." - Michael Eisner

16. "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." - Anais Nin

17. "We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." - Thomas Edison

18. "The best vision is insight." - Malcolm Forbes

19. "Genius is infinite painstaking." - Michelangelo

20. "Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude." - Goethe

21. "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together, go to the making of genius. Love, Love, Love. That is the soul of genius." - Mozart

22. "Swipe from the best, then adapt." - Tom Peters

23. "Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself." - Robert Louis Stevenson

24. "You can expect no influence if you are not susceptible to influence." - Carl Jung

25. "Whether or not you can observe a thing depends upon the theory you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed." - Albert Einstein

26. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Goethe

27. "Sit, walk, or run, but don't wobble." - Zen proverb

28. "The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites." - Carl Jung

29. "We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish." - John Culkin

30. "I will act as if what I do will make a difference." - William James

31. "There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start." - Charles Baudelaire

32. "What is now proved was once only imagined." - William Blake

33. "Remember, a dead fish can float down a stream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream." - W.C. Fields

34. "99 percent of success is built on failure." - Charles Kettering

35. "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." - Abraham Maslow

36. "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." - Albert Einstein

37. "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

38. "The ultimate creative thinking technique is to think like God. If you're an atheist, pretend how God would do it." - Frank Lloyd Wright

39. "I start where the last man left off." - Thomas Edison

40. "Never confuse motion with action." - Ernest Hemingway

41. "The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child." - Thomas Edison

42. "No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy." - Sir Laurence Olivier

43. "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

44. "I'll play it first and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis

45. "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." - Linus Pauling

46. "Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought." - Albert Szent-Gyorgi

47. "A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind."- Antoine Saint-Exupery

48. "Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing." - Duke Ellington

49. "You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky

50. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki

51. "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - General George Patton

52. "The man with a new idea is a crank - until the idea succeeds." - Mark Twain

53. "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." - Charles Kettering

54. "The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil." - Thomas Edison

55. "Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." - David Lloyd George

56. "The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development." - Alfred North Whitehead

57. "A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor." - Victor Hugo

58. "Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money." - William J. Cameron

59. "Systems die; instincts remain." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

60. "You will never find the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." - Charles Burton

61. "Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission." - Peter Drucker

62. "One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

63. "The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind." - Thomas Carlyle

64. "I failed my way to success." - Thomas Edison

65. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

66. "The way to succeed is to double your failure rate." - Thomas Watson, (Founder of IBM)

67. "Innovation opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze." - Peter Drucker

68. "The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present…the decline will be fast." - Peter Drucker

69. "You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." - John Barrymore

70. "No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered." - Winston Churchill

71. "Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives." - Carlos Casteneda

72. "After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

73. "If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out." - Arthur Koestler

74. "If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself." - Rollo May

75. "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." - Emile Chartier

76. "There's always an element of chance and you must be willing to live with that element. If you insist on certainty, you will paralyze yourself." - J.P. Getty

77. "Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced." - A.N. Whitehead

78. "Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys." - Sam Walton

79. "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein

80. "Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction." - Pablo Picasso

81. "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." - Groucho Marx

82. "Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

83. "Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." - William James

84. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift

85. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." - Alan Kay

86. "If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it." - Gordon MacKenzie

87. "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

88. "There is a vitality, a life force, that is translated to you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost." - Martha Graham

89. "We have approximately 60,000 thoughts in a day. Unfortunately, 95% of them are thoughts we had the day before." - Deepak Chopra

90. "Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not yet understood." - Henry Miller

91. "I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. What is reality? Nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin

92. "Now that we have met with paradox we have some hope of making progress." - Niels Bohr

93. "Microsoft is always two years away from failure." - Bill Gates

94. "We've reached the end of incrementalism. Only those companies that are capable of creating industry revolutions will prosper in the new economy. - Gary Hamel

95. "If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied." - Alfred Noble

96. "I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it." - Steven Wright

97. "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." - Steve Jobs

98. "I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." - Henry Ford

99. "You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere." - Lee Iaccocca

100. "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage