Creative Entrepreneurship Quotes

American Made is not just an event. It's a movement to spotlight and support the next generation of creative entrepreneurs who are turning their passion for making into thriving small businesses.

Unfettered, creative, and enthusiastic entrepreneurship is one of the hallmarks of American life, and it has allowed us to attract the best and brightest to this country.

Music is one of those businesses in which, if you're talented and hustle hard enough, you can make it - specifically as an entrepreneur. If you look as far back as Berry Gordy, Russell Simmons, Andre Harrell, L.A. Reid, and Sean 'Diddy' Combs, there's a whole lineage of successful black entrepreneurs who have built their own companies from scratch.

I first felt successful when I was 13 and in a show called "Seesaw." I came offstage and heard the applause of the theater audience and felt a sense of accomplishment. Around that time, my role model for success was Burt Lancaster. He was one of the first actors in Hollywood to start his own production company, and I respected him because he created something he believed in.

I was on the outside of the industry. So I started a podcast early in the podcast boom and that caught on a little. I made an album that went to No. 1 on the iTunes charts. I made my own special. I started my own storytelling show.

I believe that economics is based on scarcity of markets. And it's possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.

All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.

I was an artist, I was executive producer on my first album, so I've always had to manage both. I couldn't get a record deal. It wasn't by choice - I couldn't get a record deal, so I had to figure it out.

Well, I've been happily supporting myself for ten years now on the hustle and trade of live entertainment. I guess my breakthrough moment was when I decided to go for it once and for all.

I'm very supportive of creative people being paid for the work that they do.

If you've got the money, you need people to make money with your money. And if you have the talent, you can always merchandise your talent to someone who's got the money and make money. There's two pieces to it: talent and money.

We started Airbnb because, like many across the U.S. and in New York, we were struggling to pay our rent and decided to open up our living room to fellow artists coming to town for a design conference. Sharing our apartment allowed us to stay in our home and start our company.

I'd love to build a company that will continue to make movies well beyond me someday. And I'd like to help start something great, even investing in it myself.

After university, I was working as a stylist in the Paris theatres when I had a flash of inspiration. I made necklaces from the bikinis designed for the cabaret performers of Folies Bergeres. I was so happy with them that it was only then that I sought out formal training in jewelry.

When I was a young actor, I just didn’t understand how to function in this business as an artist. It is a business, it’s called the film business for a reason, there’s money involved ... But on the flip side, now I do not let the business side of it rule either. It’s a balance.

There's obviously nothing wrong with selling your art - only an idiot with a trust fund would tell you otherwise. But it's confusing to know how far you should take it.

I am a commercial artist because I paint to earn a living. We who earn money from what we produce are all commercial artists.

I started off as a recording engineer and a beatmaker. I was this skater kid that would skateboard to auditions, and then I would use the money I'd make and buy a bunch of equipment and make a bunch of beats. I still am that kid, just with a little more money.

I made my own major called art and business as religion.

EVERY MOMENT IN business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.

When I was 7, I came up with the idea of 'charm socks.' My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.

It's very simple... this banging around with a camera and typewriter as a business is just one helluva lot of fun.

Do I want to start my own production company? No, I doubt it. I'm too old for that. I don't want to start anything.

I was so moved by music that I wanted to create it as well, but once you decide that's what you want to do with your life, to be successful, you have to be business-minded, too.

Competition is. In every business, no matter how small or how large, someone is just around the corner forever trying to steal your ideas and build his success out of your imagination, struggling after that which you have toiled endless years to secure, striving to outdo you in each and every way. If such a competitor would work as hard to originate as he does to copy, he would much more quickly gain success.