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30 Great Entrepreneurs in Their Own Words

30 years of entrepreneurs speaking their minds

1. "No business, no problems. No problems, no business. Problems are opportunities for solutions."

-- George A. Naddaff,Boston Chicken, UFood Grill (2008)

2. "We're so focused on our company's mission that we could pee through a straw."

-- Richard Tait, Cranium (2002)

3. "My house is full of microcomputer magazines, and I still come home every night to my IBM-PC. I don't play the violin, you know."

-- Bill Gates, Microsoft (1984)

4. "I have yet to meet a genius in my business. Actually, I've yet to meet a genius in anything. Once you realize there are no geniuses out there, you can think, I can do that. One reason I've succeeded is I have that naive sense of entitlement."

-- Donny Deutsch, Deutsch Inc. (2005)

5. "Do you think the earth was created by an accountant? No! The earth was created by the combustion of a creative explosion. Fire and chaos are what started everything. Then order came on top of that."

-- Robert Redford, Sundance Institute (2003)

6. "One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you."

-- Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com (2004)

7. "People who suggest the end of the workplace totally misunderstand the social nature of work. There is a social fabric to work. Techno-geeks will talk about people wanting to get out of the office and wanting to work by e-mail only, but techno-geeks don't have the social side of life. They don't miss what regular people do."

-- Scott Cook, Intuit (1994)

8. "The biggest impact of technology has been to allow us to do more unproductive things at a far more impressive rate."

-- Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert (1994)

9. "We're getting to a point where we can't fart without calling a meeting. And if I'm bored by them, Christ knows what other people must be thinking."

-- Anita Roddick, The Body Shop (1990)

10. "Things are going great now, and that's the time to leave. If you want to walk out rather than being carried out, you have to go when everybody says, 'How could you possibly leave? Things are so good.' Every time I hear that, I think, Damn it, I have to go. I don't have any choice."

-- Michael Bloomberg, on his choice to leave Bloomberg LP to run for mayor of New York City (2001)

11. "We are the 10th largest brewer in the United States. Do you know what that means? We have one two-hundredth of the beer market. That's minuscule. Twelve years of busting my ass, and we've gone from nothing to infinitesimal. If I'm lucky, I'll go another 12 years and get to be small. That's my life's work."

-- Jim Koch, Boston Beer Co. (1996)

12. "Stay constantly irritated. When you walk through your business, focus on what's wrong. What's right is what you pay your staff for."

-- Evan Cole, ABC Carpet & Home (2002)

13. "Even after 40 years, my adrenaline starts pumping every time my plane touches down in a new country. Every trip is a story waiting to happen."

-- Pat McGovern, International Data Group (2007)

14. "I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything."

-- Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, SolarCity (2006)

15. "We learned that a product doesn't sell just because you're trying to do good in the world. You still have to have a healthy distribution, a good marketing strategy, and price the product properly."

Read more:

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