Bobbi Brown Quotes

After working for 14 years on Wall Street and growing up in a family with strong roots in small business, I know how important the entrepreneurial spirit is to attaining the American dream.

My grandmother was divorced, and she had 10 children herself. She never finished high school. She started selling lace on the side of the road and then grew that into a multimillion-dollar business - a retail store selling mostly furniture and appliances.

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.

My uncle was the first brown person to have a market stall on Petticoat Lane in the 1960s. He worked his way up from the street. He was homeless, but eventually he got a car so he could sell from the boot. And by the 1980s, he was a millionaire wholesaling to companies like Topshop. So in a way, fashion put me in England.

I've lived the American dream. I was born and raised on the farm, first in my family to graduate from college. I spent 13 years working in our family business.

I come from a really big family, my father was a businessman and what he always instilled in us was to be your own boss. My father built up his business, and he was by no means a rich man, but he figured out how to work four-and-a-half days a week.

It's a fire, it's a passion to get out and to create and to innovate. And that I've always enjoyed and I've always been very proud of is that the people I've done business with, the people around me have always made money.

I never knew anything other than wanting to be an entrepreneur. I tried my first business when I was 6 years old, and I started another business when I was 8. I don't think I knew anything besides that.

My father was a chef but hadn't owned his own business. I didn't like that. In my heart of hearts, I knew I wanted to be in business.

I don't think anybody ever started a great business because they wanted to make a little more cash. They had a dream. They wanted to better their life.

If achieving the Hong Kong dream becomes a vanishing hope, then our society will suffer. What would the Hong Kong dream be? It's no different from the American dream, whereby an everyday man on the street who works hard would be able to make good savings and use those savings as equity for their future small business.

The restaurant business had a profound effect on my future and that of my two brothers. When we were able to stand on a stool to reach the sink, we washed dishes, and later, when we could see over the counter, we waited tables and managed the cash register.

You can say that Mitt Romney started with nothing! He didn't get an inheritance from his dad.

I have spent some time talking to Rex Tillerson. He's an amazing human being. He's an American success story, not just in his business life. He's a rags-to-riches success story. He stated working at 8, lived in a one-bedroom house until the time he went to college, and grew to become the CEO of one of the world's largest companies.

If anything, I'd say my family was entrepreneurial - my grandfather and father. It was in our blood. But I didn't have this one mentor that was super successful.

I knew how to sell. I felt confident I could run a business. I was willing to outwork anyone. I wasn't afraid to live like a student on next to nothing. So that meant I had absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.

My father bought three ramshackle houses, rebuilt them, rented them out, kept clawing his way up the ladder. A man with a third grade education from the south.

My family were all entrepreneurs, including my parents and grandparents.

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

Donald Trump is living proof of the American Dream. A kid from Queens, New York, who made it big. And, yeah - he'll be the first to tell you he isn't perfect. But who is?

I always wanted to do creative things, but I was really interested in entrepreneurship. My family comes from a very entrepreneurial culture, so business was always something I was interested in.

I grew up the son of a businessman. And I didn't get into music to be a businessman.

My grandmother started as a ticket-taker and basically became the CFO of my dad's company. It was a very important first impression for me - I've always looked on the business with more eyes than just as a wrestler.

My father always said working for somebody else never amounted to anything. You have to be an entrepreneur

I was told I had to go to business school to succeed. I gave it a shot, but eventually dropped out to bootstrap a restaurant with just a Visa card and a $20,000 line of credit. Everyone told me restaurants were hard work (and they were right! I have so much respect for anyone in the restaurant business). I ran the restaurant for two years, sold a franchise, decided to change paths, and sold the whole operation at a modest profit.