Self Made Entrepreneur Quotes & Sayings

My first Grammy wasn't even in a jazz category, but of course I was really excited. 'Rockit' was the beginning of kind of a new era for the whole hip-hop movement. — Herbie Hancock

Catch a customer with emotion and you will have a customer for a day; but, capture a customer with value and you will keep a customer for a lifetime. I truly believe in good, old-fashioned values when it comes to business. That is what timelessness is made of! At the end of the day, the question is, "Do you want to build a good hut for a day or do you want to build a good fortress for a lifetime?" Quality, value, understanding the needs of your clientele - that's how you build a legacy. Connect with people, because you can never underestimate just how many people out there are yearning for any form of good interpersonal connection that they can find and when you can provide that as a brand name, you can allow the person behind your business to shine through. That's how timelessness is created. It's not created by luring people into a myth; it's created by making connections, by remembering people's names, by being genuinely interested in everybody. — C. JoyBell C.

In times of recession there are massive opportunities and fortunes to be made, so for new up and coming entrepreneurs, this is the time to go and start a business. — Richard Branson

The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into "big business" was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses. — Ludwig Von Mises

To the wind with what the world thinks about us. We are not to seek the approval of earth, but the honor of heaven. — Paul Washer

My transition from scientist to entrepreneur? Some would say that I still haven't made that transition. — Robert Moog

The thread of will-they-or-won't-they was the real driver of every word and glance and shift of body.
So ... this was a date, Blay thought. A subtextual negotiation slipcovered in talk of books read and music enjoyed. — J.R. Ward

The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? — Malcolm Gladwell

There's an old chestnut that asks whether an entrepreneur is born or made and I think it's a combination of both. You need the talent; without the talent you can't do it. — Theo Paphitis

An entrepreneur must pitch a potential investor for what the company is worth as well as sell the dream on how much of a profit can be made. — Daymond John

If he hasn't lined up the who he is, the what he does, and the how much he makes in the way that he sees fit, he can't possibly be to you what he wants to be. — Steve Harvey

The modern joint stock firm is the outcome of innumerable decisions made by individual entrepreneurs, owners and managers. For these decision makers the choices among alternatives were limited and the outcomes uncertain, but almost always there were choices. Despite the variability of these individual decisions, taken cumulatively they produced clear patterns of institutional change — Alfred D. Chandler Jr.

What happened in my personal life affected my career too. I am not perfect and I have made a lot of mistakes. Being an entrepreneur is incredibly lonely. There were many hurdles along the way. From starting out, to making it, and almost losing it, to fighting back, to nearly losing it all again. There have been extreme highs and extreme lows. — Michelle Mone

The modern family is one in which the divergent values of our separate souls are supported, valued, encouraged. Diversity is not just tolerated, it is affirmed as the radical gift of relationship. Conflict is mediated with accepting love despite disagreement, and no one carries the assigned burden of becoming something other than what they are. — James Hollis

My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left the meeting or the office. In a startup, it doesn't matter if you're 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. What matters is having forward momentum and a tight fact-based data/metrics feedback loop to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That's why startups are agile. By the time a big company gets the committee to organize the subcommittee to pick a meeting date, your startup could have made 20 decisions, reversed five of them and implemented the fifteen that worked. — Steven Gary Blank

Mary Lasker was an entrepreneur; she was a socialite. She was kind of a legendary networker. She became interested in saying, 'Well, you know, if these diseases don't have political support we'll never conquer them.' And she made, really, cancer her special cause. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The editing process, for me, is both the most fun and the most frustrating. It's the most fun because you get to see it actually piece together. But if one thing is off, it can be frustrating trying to figure out exactly what it is that's bumping you, so you try a hundred different things. — Scott Foley

We are sometime truly to see our life as positive, not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of constraints and prohibition. — Mary Parker Follett

He who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it. — Lao-Tzu

How happy you are, Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? Deuteronomy 33:29 — Beth Moore

What is thus improperly regarded as profit, instead of as part of capital, is consumed by the entrepreneur or passed on either to the consumer in the form of price-reductions that would not otherwise have been made or to the labourer in the form of higher wages, and the government proceeds to tax it as income or profits. In any case, consumption of capital results from the fact that monetary depreciation falsifies capital accounting. — Ludwig Von Mises

I have no doubt that my M.B.A. from New York University's Stern School of Business was one of the best investments I ever made. It helped me climb the corporate ladder and become an entrepreneur. — Vivek Wadhwa

No," said his cousin. "I've had enough of this. Let's write to the newspapers! That's the way to get things done. Everyone's complaining about the fruit and vegetables and the seafood. Vetinari should be made to understand the plight of the small-time entrepreneur. After all, what do we occasionally pay our taxes for? — Terry Pratchett

At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining. — Carlos Slim

Age did not have to prohibit or inhibit a woman's ability to make money or a living. Age did not diminish a woman's usefulness as a self-employed person or entrepreneur. Age did not limit the ways in which a woman made money through self-employment or entrepreneurship. — Robin Caldwell

I made the decision (that), if I was gonna do this, I was gonna do it 100% because before in my life I had been an entrepreneur. It was weird. I would wake up in the morning (saying) "You know what? I'm gonna do this." (I'd) set out (and) in three months (I'd) have a new business on its way. I didn't stop and think about the repercussions of anything. I just did it. I moved forward in doing it to succeed. — Drew Waters

When entitlement's poison begins to infect our hearts, gratitude is the antidote. — Kristen Welch

I was the kind of entrepreneur that never really felt I made it. When Mike Olefield's "Tubular Bells" [Virgin Records' first release] sold 8 or 10 million copies, I suppose, at age 19, I could've possibly retired on the money. Instead, I immediately pushed the boat and took that risk again. — Richard Branson

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs can make is trying to do everything themselves. They usually blow up when they try. I did an inventory of every deal I've ever done and it turned out that every single deal I made money on was a partnership, and every colossal failure, where I lost millions, was something I tried to do by myself. — Kevin O'Leary

Is it weird that when I see a cool t shirt or pick up a toothbrush or see a new car I don't think about the product itself? I think about the thousands of people and dollars to make it.

I think about how the retailer that took the risk to buy and resell it. Then I work backwards to the store costs, the distributer who got it there, the shipping company that brought it over from China, the factory workers that made it, the people that sourced the materials and the people that harvested the raw materials, and on and on..
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The global economy is amazing. Your $20 t-shirt is a freaking miracle. — Richie Norton

I want to feel that again. I want to remember what it feels like to love someone like that. And not just anyone. I want to know what it feels like to love Charlie. — Colleen Hoover

Nellie Cashman, from Midleton, County Cork, made a mint providing "bed, board, and booze" to the gold and silver miners all over the western US and Canada. She was a prodigious entrepreneur, running and owning numerous stores, restaurants, and hotels in various mining settlements. While working the bar of her hotel, canny Nellie was able to buy a number of very lucrative mines by discretely listening to the gossip of drunken prospectors. — Rashers Tierney

I want to see a world in which every entrepreneur has access to the resources he or she needs to succeed, and where through the power of supportive communities - that means you and me - every resource can be made available. — Jessica Jackley

When Ole Kirk Kristiansen established the company name LEGO in 1934, it was a fortunate play on words. The entrepreneur had been inspired by the Danish phrase "leg godt" - "play well." He took the beginning of each respective word and made what he considered to be a pleasant-sounding, imaginary word out of them. The company owner was unaware that as the first person present singular of the verb legere, "lego" is also the Latin word for "I assemble" - and therefore completely appropriate for the modularity of the company's later invention, the LEGO brick. — Christian Humberg

Jumping in before you know what you're getting into is a good way to get hurt, — Joelle Charbonneau

Be a learning machine. What made you money last year, won't necessarily make you money this and next year. — Richie Norton

Never, ever ask a former clergyman to say the blessing over a holiday dinner. Not if you like your dinner warm, anyway. — Mary Kay Andrews

But human borders mean nothing to air, water, windblown soil or seeds or migrating fish, birds or mammals. — David Suzuki