Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm the kind of person that when I saw a lack of African Americans in the apparel business, that was something I set out to do, and I lead by example.
I think it's only failure if you put the word failure on it. I think it's part of the process of learning where you're going to go and what doesn't work.
I always tried to align myself with strategic partners, friends, and information to help me with the things that I did not know, and ultimately, I made it.
If you can't come clean and tell investors how and why you failed, that raises a red flag. They need to see that you learned from it and came back stronger.
I'm not a golf player. I think golf and fishing are the same, but at the end of the day, you can't fry up and golf ball and dip it in tartar sauce. So I'm a fisherman.
Make sure you're doing something that you love, that you're willing to do for the rest of your life. If you're doing it for money, that's the only thing you won't make.
No matter what business you're in, business is business, and financing and money are critical. I would have made a lot fewer mistakes if I had more schooling in that area.
I don't care if you're my brother - if we go play football, I'm gonna try to crack your head open. It doesn't mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I don't respect you.
I think African Americans are resilient and hustlers by nature. I think they need to understand that you can take that hustle to the boardroom, but it has to be an education process.
When I first came into money, I bought six or seven homes. One weekend I went to Miami and bought an apartment and a mansion several blocks from each other, which was not that bright!
I've learned, like with anything else, business is only as good as your connections and your resources. And some of the resources that I have are the fact that I work with huge artists.
Five days a week, I read my goals before I go to sleep and when I wake up. There are 10 goals around health, family and business with expiration dates, and I update them every six months.
When you sell a product or service, you're making a promise to your audience. If you don't understand your audience, you'll never be able to keep that promise and you'll ultimately let them down.
When looking at trends I always ask myself basic and timeless questions about business, and the one I seem to always come back to is, 'How is this different than anything else in the marketplace?'
One of my business partners would remind me that no fashion line lasts forever, that we would hit the down curve eventually, and that we needed to look for new brands that complement the first one.
I never knew anything other than wanting to be an entrepreneur. I tried my first business when I was 6 years old, and I started another business when I was 8. I don't think I knew anything besides that.
I've come to learn that my initial investment is more about the person versus the product that I am buying into. I've also learned that I really do enjoy giving worthy people an opportunity of a lifetime.
An entrepreneur needs to know what they need, period. Then they need to find an investor who can build off whatever their weaknesses are - whether that's through money, strategic partnerships or knowledge.
In the founders, I look for a person I feel is trustworthy, driven and smart. I invest in the person first, because in the event the business fails, the person and I can move forward and create another business.
Learn as many mistakes and what not to do while your business or product is small. Don't be in such a hurry to grow your brand. Make sure that you and the market can sustain any bumps that may occur down the road.
Learn as many mistakes and what not to do while your business or product is small. Don’t be in such a hurry to grow your brand. Make sure that you and the market can sustain any bumps that may occur down the road.
The things that I've learned is, try to make all the mistakes with your own money and on a small level so that when you are responsible for a partner's money or assets, you've learned, and you don't make bigger mistakes.
The only thing that scares me in the tech area is that it moves so fast that you have to be ready to invest in 20 things. Because if you just invest in one, next week, somebody has a better mousetrap, and you get taken to the cleaners.
Mentors don't have to be the Daymond Johns or the Mark Cubans. A person running a successful bodega or a tax firm in your community for the last 20 years, that person is working just as much as the individual who's running General Mills.
While good business ideas are plentiful, many entrepreneurs struggle to understand payroll taxes, health care and other thorny issues… In other words, they don't have the financial literacy to scale their businesses and attract investors.
I think Wall Street is very important, especially to tech companies. Wall Street will get in their rhythm and go fund tech companies, and tech companies will go create jobs and employ a lot of people, so there's that aspect of Wall Street.
Try to make all the mistakes with your own money and on a small level so that when you are responsible for a partner's money or assets you've learned and you don't make bigger mistakes. Try to go as far as you can without anybody else's help first.
I think the single biggest turn off is people who think that they need money and they need all these people around them so if they get the money they can just buy all the things they need to help the company... [without] hav[ing] to put in the work themselves.
The thing about branding is it isn't etched in stone. A brand is a mark or an image or a perception we stamp on a product, a concept or an ideal, but it doesn't last forever. Like anything else, it needs to be nurtured and reinforced, or it will start to fade.
In entrepreneurship, you decide to give up your day job at the point where either (A) the hobby/new business is at least making some form of ends meet, or (B) you feel that you need to dedicate yourself for a certain amount of time to it and give yourself the last hoorah.
If you go out there and start making noise and making sales - people will find you. Sales cure all. You can talk about how great your business plan is and how well you are going to do. You can make up your own opinions, but you cannot make up your own facts. Sales cure all.
I like to look at things that have been developed and re-developed over the course of time so I know the bugs are worked out of it. And in the business itself, I like to look at sales, by far. I want to see that there is a vetted track record of sales to show the price point has worked.
There really is no shortcut just because you have a name, or you have some kind of access or some way you can solve all the problems. And I think one of the things I learned with FUBU, you have to understand that there's really only two ways of operating a business: more sales, or lower overhead.
Fortunately, right now 'entrepreneurship' is one of the business world's biggest buzz words and so many young people in our country are looking up to this new generation of CEO's as their modern day rock stars. Whenever you have that effect, it makes the job of promoting entrepreneurship much easier.
A lot of times, I can put a product together with a distributor when I go into my Rolodex for distributors. I can then put it together with a face, such as an artist. And then I can go into my databank of retailers and people that I've been working with through the years of retail, and then also manufacturing.
I think a great entrepreneur is learning every day. An entrepreneur is somebody that doesn't take no for an answer - they're going to figure something out. They also take responsibility. They don't blame anybody else. And they're dreamers in one sense but they're also realistic and they take affordable steps when they can.