Lori Greiner Quotes

The first year, I didn't have much capital so I did everything myself. I had to keep my overhead low by learning everything about running a business, from accounting to fixing the gears of my equipment. I really started from scratch.

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.

It's opportunity. It's opportunity, not a check from government - it's opportunity that has always driven America and defined us as Americans.

I really started from grassroots, without a handout or anything.

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

I wasn't sheltered or spoiled. All the money I made, I made myself.

We have lost that which has made us great over the generations, and that is the sense of individual and personal responsibility that we can come up, we can pursue our dreams and our aspirations and we won't be blocked by government regulation, by the inability to get a loan as a small business to make our dreams come true.

When my father came over here penniless with $100 sewn into his underwear, thank God some well-meaning liberal didn't come put his arm around him and say, 'Let me take care of you.'

I've always been a workhorse, and I've been supporting myself since I was 15.

Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It's a nice idea but not true.

I didn't want to take anybody else's money. I wanted to do something small that could be profitable from the beginning, and grow that way - and never need someone to write me a check to keep the business going.

The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candle of industry and economy.

I was born to sell it as a kid. I think it's partially innate, and partly it's because my parents were always very clear: if I needed anything that wasn't a necessity, I was going to have to save my money and buy it myself. That meant not only did I have to buy basketball shoes, but I had to figure out how to pay for college as well.

I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation - I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, 'cause you'd turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.

Being self-made means doing things your own way - and doing it without any handouts.

My siblings and I had to earn our own pocket money so from the age of about 10 I had a job. I did a paper round, helped with the farmer's delivery at the weekend, cut hedges for neighbours and worked on a market stall. Then I'd go and buy a record with my hard-won money.

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it!

I always kept busy. If the music business got bad I'd get me a job doin' somethin' else. Bellhop. Porter. Anything to make an honest living.

In the beginning, I was doing whatever came my way. But that's how life is. I am not sitting around calling a 'daddy' to make a movie for me.

I do it all, man. I produce, I do my own wardrobe and my own ironing, too!

Anytime you own a small business, it's all you. There is nobody to fall back on.

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.

The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor-the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all-gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all.

Your mom's working 9 to 5 every day and might get a second job. So you're really raising yourself, and you've got nobody else, so you go outside, and the streets raised most of us.

Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works, no outside help can avail him.