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When you're invested in your own business, you're going to run it better. When people are financially responsible for whether their store succeeds, they're going to have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that's harder to get if headquarters is running things.

I tell everybody there are only three things that we do. We build sales at the store level, we build profits at the store level, and we build more stores. The first two things go in tandem, of course. It's pretty tough to build profits without sales.

We have multiple businesses, and obviously we want every one to stand on its own, and what you don't want to do is manage one business from the profit of the other one.

You can't compete with Walmart. But you can have smaller businesses that are successful.

Entrepreneurial profit is the expression of the value of what the entrepreneur contributes to production.

A lot of people who own a business aren't entrepreneurial at all.

The reality is, I've started multiple companies, so actually I'm probably more of a product/creative person than I am sales. Although I can do both.

Eighty to 90 percent of success in a company has nothing to do with business at all - it's all personal.

I have started many companies now worth more than $100 million. So I know a little about business.

Wal-Mart uses technology to increase sales volume, but the more it does so, the more it drives down profit margins - its own and everybody else's. The same logic does not appear to hold for Goldman Sachs.