Quotes About Entrepreneurship

Suddenly I could control every aspect of publishing, and it was incredibly empowering! I didn't have to sit by the phone any longer waiting for things to happen because I was the one making them happen. That's why I decided to start Amber House Books.

I traveled the state of Florida for two years campaigning. I have never met a job creator who told me that they were waiting for the next tax increase before they started growing their business. I've never met a single job creator who's ever said to me I can't wait until government raises taxes again so I can go out and create a job.

You have to create your own stuff. It's really exciting to create something, sell it, and feel like I'm not just a pawn waiting to be cast.

My dad and my uncles owned a bar outside of Cincinnati. I worked there growing up, mopping floors, waiting tables.

I know that you're better off making your own products, not just waiting for someone to hand you something.

People ask me all the time, 'How can I become a successful entrepreneur?' And I have to be honest: It's one of my least favorite questions, because if you're waiting for someone else's advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you're not one.

You don't have the chance in a small business - when every dollar counts, every day - to make too many mistakes and recover from them, and you don't have the luxury of waiting to make the decision. You have to move quickly.

For seven years after college, I was a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, and from there I got a job at Merrill Lynch as an account executive, from where I went to vice president of investments for Prudential-Bache Securities. I started my own firm in 1987.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, it's not a job, it's a lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going home at 6 pm - last thing at night you'll send emails, first thing in the morning you'll read emails, and you'll wake up in the middle of the night. But it's hugely rewarding as you're fulfilling something for yourself.

Some people have blithely dismissed growth in markets like China and India, saying Silicon Valley will always be the hub for tech: that everyone will come to us. Wake up: Because the numbers are showing money and talent is increasingly going elsewhere.

The only time in my career I've lost sleep - wake up 3:30 in the morning, and you know you're not going back to sleep - is when I've been an entrepreneur. Even in the financial crisis.

I didn't wake up one day and want to become an entrepreneur. I had the idea for Rent the Runway and thought it would be fun to work on and also thought if it was successful, it would make women feel great about themselves.

I wake up every morning and I feel like I'm juggling glass balls. I live in Los Angeles, my business is run out of London, and most evenings I'm cuddled up in front of Skype, in my dressing gown, speaking with my studio in London. I travel a lot, my team travel a lot, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Every day I would wake up and think, 'Today is another missed opportunity to do something important.' After enough days like this, you start feeling like you are getting old, even when you are relatively young. We are all natural entrepreneurs, and being manacled to a desk job is not for us.

We really wake up every day trying to build businesses. That is the goal of private equity. It's a misnomer out there that private equity profits by shrinking companies. In fact, it's just the opposite. Private equity creates value by growing great companies.

Retail is my game. I spend every waking hour thinking about it. I started in the industry at the age of 18 after trying various other things that were mind-numbingly boring to me.

I sometimes compare starting a business to having a child. You have a moment of profound inspiration, followed by months of thankless hard work and waking up in the middle of the night.

I tell people: walk around for one month and write down three problems in your life every day. At first it's easy - you got stuck in traffic, you missed your alarm - but by the end of the month you're looking really hard to get your 90 problems. The most common things on your list are now billion-dollar businesses.

I made two rings for myself, and when I was in Los Angeles, I walked into a store called Maxfields, and they essentially bought them off my hands.

I walked out with 14 advertising projects.

One day when I was 14 I put together a makeshift CV and walked into this weird boutique in Pinner, near where I lived, to ask if they needed a Saturday assistant. They didn't, but the owner took me on anyway.

Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world.

Madam Walker was a woman who transformed herself in a very American, rags-to-riches way.

As one of the pioneers of modern hair care and cosmetics, Madam Walker is still an inspiration to a lot of people going into the business.