Caroline Ghosn Quotes

The world of the small business owner is all about moving multiple items forward at once, and it's a fool's errand to believe one person can do it all when the shift comes from linear to parallel.

I don't have a lot of skills, but one thing I can do is, I can compartmentalize. I can make that a little world that I can go back to, so I can be a waitress, or I can be a teacher, and then go and work on my book.

I had a little delivery van, and I did work around Queens. I was also a waiter at Red Lobster, so I was working on the business in between jobs.

Because I didn't have much money, I bought a small shop that fit my budget. The previous six owners had closed their business in three years. The store had no people traffic and, because of that, I was able to focus on figuring out how to provide a better service to each and every one of the customers that did come through.

I did parallel entrepreneurship, which was very hard to do. It was hard to keep your head straight and know which ideas were with which company.

I found it very helpful not to do the venture round. Instead, I started with very little money, a few thousand dollars, and I did every job myself. I was the first photographer. I was the first customer service rep. I was the first online marketing person.

Learning how to interact with customers is something that anyone starting any business must master. It's an amazing opportunity to be able to learn the ropes at an established company and then employ your expertise at your own company.

My last two years of high school, I did work-study half the day, and I ran the restaurant. It was just this little restaurant, but it was just so cool. I had 35, 40 employees.

Even if the chef has a good business head, his focus should be behind kitchen doors. A business partner should take care of everything in front of the kitchen doors.

There is a saying in entrepreneurship that your early employees are all commandos. Commandos are people who can do almost everything well: emails, strategy, code, design.

My mom and I had a kids' clothing store called Smooch for six years, and I did all the buying before I even had kids.

My father was an entrepreneur - a sign maker, and he had about 20 employees - and often he'd take me to business meetings, and I would listen to him talk with his workers and customers. We would also talk a lot about business over dinner.

My best experience was my business training.

Yesterday the President had one of his busiest days. …. The corridor outside his study has been filled with gentlemen all day long. I often wonder how it is possible to adjust to so many different people and their interests in the course of a day, but after all that is one of the things every President must learn to do.

My father was a small business owner. When I was growing up, he ran a one-hour photo store - back when there were one-hour photo stores.

I've always strived to keep mixing it up, keep doing different things, and work in all different parts of our business.

I don't know why the word 'solopreneur' is in our lexicon. Nobody can physically do it all by themselves, and more importantly, why would they want to? Being the sales team, the HR department, management, and production all by yourself is terrible. Period.

I've considered myself a writer since I was 7 years old, but I've done a lot of jobs along the way. I enjoyed waiting tables and tending bar during college, especially when it got busy, so I might like managing a big restaurant. In fact, I might like managing many kinds of businesses or organizations.

When you open any kind of food service establishment, you do all this planning, but it's not until you've opened the door and people are inside that you learn what people want you to be to them.

When I was in the restaurant and bar business, I followed a rule, which was that the places that I opened were places that I wanted to go to.

I always loved retail. I love the ideas behind it. I think small-business retail is one of the areas where capitalism works so wonderfully well.

A lot of the work in, say, construction or restaurants involves visual and motor flexibility. It also requires adaptability, in terms of answering questions, giving people directions, or taking orders.

I believe in always having a lot of irons in the fire.

I'm a business owner.

My father and I talked every day. He coached me on how to cold-call companies I wanted in our portfolio, how to network at public events, to cultivate senior journalists at important outlets, and how to run a profitable P&L. But, more or less, he allowed me to make my own mistakes.