Jake Jabs: at 82, he shows no signs of slowing down.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: EXECUTIVE edge

ON THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSITY of Colorado at Denver School of Business are Jake Jabs' "39 Keys to Business Success."

"To succeed you have to be willing to fail," reads one. "Entrepreneurs don't do it for the money," reads another. And, "Have a passion for what you do. Love your job."

Last summer Jabs--the founder and CEO of American Furniture Warehouse--donated $10 million to establish the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship, the largest single donation in CU-Denver's history.

"It just seemed that there was a need for an interest in entrepreneurship," Jabs said. "When you lose your job at 50 years old, where do you .go? What do you do? So I figured there is more interest in entrepreneurship today because of all the high unemployment, people going broke and filing for bankruptcy."

He says his business philosophy is a result of growing up in Lodgegrass, Mont., one of nine children born to immigrant beet farmers.

"My mother was from Russia and my dad From Poland. They came over with the shirts on their backs and were sharecroppers," jabs said. "We lived off the land and had two sets of clothes--one in the wash and the one that we were wearing."

His father was drafted into the Russian Army in 1916 and witnessed first-hand Lenin's communist takeover in 1917.

"He saw rich people killed off, educators killed off and would always say, 'Don't love money," jabs recalled. "So I never did it for the money. Money was the byproduct oldoing a lot of volume. If you do a lot of volume, you can make money, so I started to do volume and could do it cheaper than anyone."

He oversees operations of 12 stores in Colorado and this fall opened his first out-of-state shop--a 600,000-square-foot store in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Ariz. "Entrepreneurs must be willing to take risks. At my age, I'm taking a risk going outside of Colorado, but it's been very successful with no advertising," said the 82-year-old Jabs. "My goal was...