Every single thing I learned about marketing and building my business, I learned from my mom, and she had never been in the workforce. She just had great practical sense.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My mother taught me to love my work. I learned everything about business from her.
I learned to take the first job that you have in the business that you want to get into. It doesn't matter what that job is, you get your foot in the door.
I guess what I learned the most was to feel lucky with what I have been able to accomplish and what I have and to feel humble about the people I have been able to work with.
From the minute I got to 'Fortune,' I loved my job. I knew myself to be a virtual dunce about business, and I was wide-eyed about how much I was learning.
I learned how to be a learner. When you get in a job, the tendency is to say, 'I've got to know it. I've got to give direction to others. I'm in this job because I'm better and smarter.' I always took a different view, that the key was to identify the people who really knew and learn from them.
I received most of my business education around the dinner table. Whether I listened to my father or brothers, or we had business people as dinner guests, I learned from everyone.
I think running a business, doing what I've done for the last - since 1996, has taught me so many things because I started from just an idea and then had to figure out how to make it, market it, every single thing from soup to nuts on how to get a product done and out there.
My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.
I never had a job. I bought my first house within a year of getting out of school, and I built a custom one four and a half years later. The Art Center didn't teach much about business, but I learned a lot from the Fortune 500 companies that were my clients.
I learned the life of business, commerce - it's an art.