Wealth & Money Quote by Curtis Carlson

Carlson’s line isn’t about greed so much as permission. “All my life I knew” frames wealth not as a lucky break but as a settled fact, a worldview he’s carried like a compass. The first clause does something shrewd: it removes scarcity from the story. If money is “out there” in limitless supply, then the real dividing line isn’t resources or fairness; it’s temperament. That setup quietly flatters the listener: you’re not trapped, you’re merely uncommitted.

“All you have to do is go after it” is where the motivational simplicity turns strategic. The phrase pretends the path is obvious, even easy, but its subtext is a businessman’s ethic: action beats hesitation, ambition beats caution, and the market rewards the hunter. It’s a creed tailor-made for sales culture and entrepreneurial mythmaking, where the primary sin is passivity. The grit is doing rhetorical work here, converting systemic complexity (access to capital, networks, timing, risk tolerance) into a personal choice.

Context matters because Carlson wasn’t selling fantasy as an outsider; he built and led major hospitality and marketing businesses. Coming from that vantage point, the quote reads like corporate folklore that doubles as management advice: behave as if opportunity is abundant, and you’ll build organizations that pursue deals, customers, and acquisitions aggressively. The darker edge is what it omits. If wealth is always available, then failure becomes personal, not structural. That’s the pitch and the trap: optimism as rocket fuel, denial as collateral damage.