At an early age, my mother gave me this feeling that anything is possible, and I believe that.

On balance, I am a supporter of the minimum wage going up. We've got to be very careful what we wish for because some employers - and there could be a lot of them - will be scared away from hiring new people or creating incremental hours for part-time people as a result of that wage going up.

My parents really wanted me to get out of New York, be exposed to other people, other ways of life.

People in Washington need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.

I really believe that you cannot use the stock market as a proxy for the economy.

Overnight the digital age had changed the course of history for our company. Everything that we thought was in our control no longer was. But within a year we had invested in social media and digital experts. Now Starbucks is the number one brand on Facebook.

Entrepreneurs must love what they do to such a degree that doing it is worth sacrifice and, at times, pain. But doing anything else, we think, would be unimaginable.