Andrew Mason Quotes

My parents worked harder than anyone I have ever met. They had so many businesses. There was the motel, but throughout my childhood, they also had a drive-through dairy, a gas station, a clothing store, a computer reselling business.

I think the best advice I ever got about acting was from my dad, which was, 'If they don't buy the fish on the first toss, throw it back in the wagon and go to the second house.' Which is like an old Jewish fishmongers' story about how you become a successful fish monger.

Creativity and business acumen don't always go hand in hand.

I just think a hustler's ambition is that I never stop. I start off hustling and said I'll never stop hustling. An ambitious hustler is the one to hustle the hustlers. When I grew up, my heroes were hustlers. Now I'm their hero.

I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.

From the time that I was a child, I loved interacting with people. I would go around door-to-door and sell candies and gift-wrapping paper, and it was a great way to interact with people and communicate with people.

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.

Some people revel in getting their hands dirty. These are the people that make startups grow wildly. People with hustle also tend to be much more agile - they're the water that goes around the rock. These are the people you want around when everything goes wrong. They're also the people you want beside you when everything goes right.

All human beings are born entrepreneurs. Some get a chance to unleash that capacity. Some never got the chance, never knew that he or she has that capacity.

I just have this sort of entrepreneurial spirit and I work really hard at promoting myself.

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.

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 think entrepreneurs are born and not created, and so I think you see a lot of similarities among entrepreneurs in different parts of the world. Their backdrop may be very different, but their drive to create a business and to create jobs remains very much the same, whether it's in Silicon Valley or Kandahar or Kabul.

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it.

I have a mother who never took no for an answer when it came to her creative pursuits. She started a hair salon in her spare bedroom and four years later had 30 employees.

I stood up for what I believed in starting businesses.

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.

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.

There are lots of people who say you are born an entrepreneur - you either have that gene or not. I really disagree with that.

If you're shameless enough, you can sell anything.

I often see people who I think could be really successful in business but they just don't realise they have the skills and they don't believe in themselves.

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

I didn't have capital and influence in this industry. So I bought yellow pages and knocked each door of the company located at industrial parks.

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.