You can’t just keep doing what works one time, everything around you is changing. To succeed, stay out in front of change.

The truth is when those Butler Brothers folks turned down my discounting idea, I got a little angry, and maybe that helped me decide to swim upstream on my own.

Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

I guess real merchants are like real fishermen: we have a special place in our memories for a few of the big ones.

You can make a positive out of the most negative if you work at it hard enough.

I learned a long time ago that exercising your ego in public is definitely not the way to build an effective organization.

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.