Adam DeVine Quotes

I was always a kid trying to make a buck. I borrowed a dollar from my dad, went to the penny candy store, bought a dollar's worth of candy, set up my booth, and sold candy for five cents apiece. Ate half my inventory, made $2.50, gave my dad back his dollar.

I was pretty entrepreneurial as a kid. I had a lemonade stand. When I was 12, I arbitraged the price of 7-Eleven hot dogs; I'd buy the ones that are pre-wrapped with the bun and then sell them on the beach.

I had my first flower stall when I was seven, at the end of the drive in Minehead, Somerset. Nobody was stopping so I moved it to my neighbour's drive, because I thought: 'Location, location, location.' It worked.

I consider myself an inventor first and an entrepreneur second. In real life, my hero is Thomas Edison. He was a great inventor, but also an outstanding entrepreneur who was able to sell his inventions to the masses. He didn't just develop the light bulb; he invented the entire electric grid and power distribution system.

I love building companies; I love making products.

You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we've come up with doing that is through companies.

Every single thing I learned about marketing and building my business, I learned from my mom, and she had never been in the workforce. She just had great practical sense.

I've had business sense since I was very young. I sold chicken eggs when I was six.

One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.

Producing suits me because I have a business mind and a business sensibility. I was a street hustler. I did whatever it took. I sold whatever I could sell. I'm a good organiser.

At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn't collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

I almost never invest in ideas or plans, so you'll need to have a company and at least a product, if not customers.

At some point, you decide to take something you really like and turn it into a business you love.

My sister and I had a lemonade stand - with a two-drink minimum.

I don't invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

I think my sister and I just focus on working hard. We started off working with Wal-Mart on our first clothing line as an extension of our personal brand when we were 12, and we got to learn about being aware of what was in the market and what wasn't.

Being an entrepreneur can be learned, and that is exactly what I have done. You don't have to be born with it or have had the 'lemonade stand.' But, you do need to have the passion, devotion, conviction, and sheer will and drive to make it happen.

I wasn't the kid with the lemonade stand.

I knew that if I could create a quality product and find the proper retail outlets, it would be a great company.

I think every athlete is an entrepreneur. Our job is to better our product to present to a new team every year.

I had sold products in flea markets before and I thought a cleaning product would be a good idea. So, in 2006, I came up with the ShamWow! I had seen this type of product at fairs, but it wasn't well marketed. And from there, I went to this factory in Germany that made them for me.

I told myself the next time I had a good idea, I would bring it to market.

The most dangerous thing for an entrepreneur to do is to actually go into a business that he does not understand fully.

My entrepreneurial spirit happened all day long because I got to think of things that kids would interact with. I was in front of my customers for 6-8 hours a day. I got to see what they like, what they don't like, what they connected with, and most importantly, did they learn something from this?

Having my own label, I have to look at things in a realistic, bottom-line manner.