Emeril Lagasse Quotes

Starting a business isn't for everyone, and it's not what you should do if you aren't sure what else to do. It requires thick skin and the willingness to carry a great deal of stress, sometimes alone. It's more often a life of failure than a life of success, and the majority of successes came after a long road of disappointment, and often shame.

I quickly learned that if I kept at it and plowed right through the rejections I would eventually get somebody to buy my wares.

The biggest hurdle is rejection. Any business you start, be ready for it. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is the successful people do all the things the unsuccessful people don't want to do. When 10 doors are slammed in your face, go to door number 11 enthusiastically, with a smile on your face.

If you look around at the people in show business today they are basically the people who didn't give up.

I'd get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It's a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.

We can find a great sector or business, but we're investing so early that unless there's this tenacious grit, determination, resourcefulness, ability to evolve, it won't work.

Entrepreneurship is usually about people executing in the face of other folks telling them that it's not going to work.

You definitely get the answer 'no' more times in this business than you do 'yes.' It's what you do with those 'nos' that makes your success either great or not.

As important as hustle is, grit and resilience are equally as important because there's a lot of rejection in our business.

I used to create meals for my friends. Eventually one of them suggested opening a restaurant. So I did.

Being an entrepreneur is simply going from one mistake to the next. You must have the fortitude to continue on.

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.

Men do not fail; they give up trying.

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.

The entire time I was modeling, I was trying and failing at businesses. In fact, we would have started our business much sooner had I been more successful.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

When I was coming up as an entrepreneur, I had to fight for everything I got, and there was no clear roadmap of how to be successful.

My training of cold-calling and everyone under the sun telling me no, and my keeping going, was a huge part of the first two years of Spanx.

I know I'm not going to book everything I go in on, and that's just the nature of the business. You have to keep hustling and not get down on it. You have to keep at it and find your way in. Everybody's story is different.

You know, being an entrepreneur is super hard work, and if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're probably not going to succeed.

I watch 'Shark Tank,' of course. It's very entertaining. I think it's actually good to help people think about the business they might start, and sometimes you get encouraged by looking at someone going into business and saying, 'Hey, I could do that.'

I wonder how many times people give up just before a breakthrough - when they are on the very brink of success.

A lot of people give up just before they're about to make it. You know you never know when that next obstacle is going to be the last one.

For most of the people who have a lot of success, it's because they were the ones who didn't quit. It's not necessarily because it was just laid out for them. It won't apply to all cases, but I think it's pretty good advice.

I've had some wins. And been knocked down with defeats. Glimpsed views from the top of the mountain. And walked through the darkest of valleys. But through this entire ride called 'a life' - I've refused to give up.