John Schnatter Quotes

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.

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.

To operate a company of the size of Sears Holdings or Wal-Mart or Target or Home Depot or Lowe's, you need a combination of skills, and each of those skills needs to be sufficiently strong.

My expertise is running businesses.

I have run large organizations, I know what it takes to create a healthy business climate, and I have more experience than Jerry Brown doing that. So it'll be a stark contrast, a career politician vs. someone who has met a payroll, gotten a return on investment, knows how to use technology to do more with less.

Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn't create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we're at our best when faced with enormous challenges.

I love the business of business; I love the risk raking.

My father was a successful entrepreneur.

My dad is an unbelievable entrepreneur who balanced his life as a father and a president of two very successful companies.

You're not going to become a great manager overnight. You're not going to become a great public speaker or figure out how to raise money. These are the things you want to start the clock on as early as possible.

It helps to have founded and run a company if you're going to help somebody run a company who is a founder.

Most regular, two-year MBA programs provide both experience and the capacity to link together the essential elements of management such as finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and operations.

In 1983, I set up Caxton Corp. It's been an interesting and happy ride since.

I spent most of my career operating businesses and fixing businesses, not staring at a Bloomberg screen.

I was one of those guys who never wanted to start their own business. I never saw myself as a leader. I saw myself as a great No. 2.

Man, he could sell. As he liked to say, he lived at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. But there was a more personal side of Steve Jobs, of course, and I was fortunate enough to see a bit of it because I spent hours in conversation with him over the 14 years he ran Apple.

I am a very hands-on person, and I like to be involved in driving my business.

People have said, 'Why don't you make your own company like Chan-wook Park has his own company,' but my head is full of writing and directing and I don't feel like I want to run a company. That's not really within my personality as well.

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.

Good entrepreneurs can manage, but no one but an entrepreneur can entrepreneur, let alone help build and lead the world's community of leading social entrepreneurs and their top business entrepreneur allies.

As a first-time CEO, I wasn't sure if I would scale to run IronPort long-term. But I wanted a legitimate shot at it.

Our managers need to have a strong integration of managerial skills and technical understanding. One cannot substitute for the other.

Shondaland is my company. I run that mother. I am in charge. I am the leader. It's fantastic. It's also really hard. As it should be.

The fact that my father set out on his own to build Hyatt - a business the family was not in and a business he was learning about as he was building it - is instructive.

I built my company a lot while playing for the Patriots.