Starting a Business Quotes

There's an entrepreneur right now, scared to death, making excuses, saying, 'It's not the right time just yet.' There's no such thing as a good time. I started an apparel-manufacturing business in the tech-boom years. I mean, come on. Get out of your garage and go take a chance, and start your business.

When I started Net-a-Porter, I knew nothing. And I was pregnant. Starting a new venture and being pregnant for the first time are pretty similar in many ways. If you knew what was going to happen to you, you wouldn't venture down that road.

When you leave a good job to go off on your own and don't expect to make money for a while, you name the firm whatever your wife says you should.

I have so many runner-up cups that I am thinking of starting my own tea shop.

I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon's advice to take sales of £300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

I try not to dwell on big mistakes but to move on when I make a mistake. I make mistakes most of the times and that's part of the risk profile being an entrepreneur. I guess one big mistake I did was not to start my own company earlier. I spent nine years working for others before starting Kazaa in 2000.

I started this whole endeavor really. And at the beginning we had the selection in Italy. And that was pretty much among people that had held previous experience in that particular satellite. So, I was in that, in a good position then.

I had my first child at 21, my first restaurant at 24.

[ Oval House] director, Peter Oliver, gave you the right to fail. He had a philosophy that came from Winston Churchill that you go from failure to failure with enthusiasm. So Peter gave us a go and that's how Ray [Hassett] and I ended up starting Sal's Meat Market at the Oval House.

The next day after I got fired, literally the next day, I started a new company.

Escape plan number seventeen," I told her. "Run away and open a juice stand in Fresno." "Why Fresno?" "Sounds like the kind of place people drink a lot of juice.

Those back-to-back experiences confirmed what I already knew: That I was a shitty-ass employee and I'd better start my own business.

I just started to do my own thing for about a year and a half, and I worked in the evening selling phonograph records. Then I said to myself, "I'm afraid I have to go to New York after all."

My mom. She was quite a character. Open-minded. It was a very small town, and she started her own business, manufacturing children's wear. She was very dynamic. Her death was like the umbilical cord being cut. That's when I moved to America.

Start small and with your own money.

I was terrified and confused every day of my life until I started Nasty Gal, and for a good while after as well.

So much of starting a business or affecting change is the confidence and courage to simply try.

The only person who would employ me without a degree was myself.