The phenomenon of entrepreneurship has gained significant terrain over the last few years in Brazilian academia. However, we should understand that, in general, it has been given generic treatment. It seems to us that a good starting point on the road to understanding it is a grasp of the "ingredients" of the phenomenon. Hence, it is in entrepreneurial action that we focus our study. We therefore revisit and critique the framework outlined by Collins and Porras (1995) to suggest our own framework in which we present the subject as the center of entrepreneurial action. For empirical verification, a linguistic corpus was constructed of one of the most successful Brazilian entrepreneurs. To analyze the data, we utilized a hierarchical logic inspired by means-end chains theory. As a result, the relationships among the hierarchical levels of our conceptual framework were indeed verified in the accounts of practices histories of our entrepreneurial subject. We thus present our conceptual framework as well as an analytical framework in order to understand entrepreneurial action with a focus on the subject. In regards to the subject studied, it is worth reflecting over the results obtained in our research as a way to understand the very practice of a set of successful entrepreneurial acts.