About 10 minutes [into the dinner] my sister texted me and said, "Maria, I just wanted to let you know that you're on TV live. You're front and center." I thought, 'Oh God, I'm right behind Donald Trump and in the camera shot. After that I stopped moving. I just sat there. It was funny. I was delighted that people noticed my white gloves. It was a white tie dinner, for the dais you had to be in white tie. If I can't channel my best Sophia Loren glamour for a white tie affair, when can I? I thought it was an excellent opportunity to wear the white gloves.

Selling cookies helped me to realize that you needed to have a certain way to communicate with people. You also needed business skills. You knew you needed to sell a certain amount of boxes, so that gave me some business sense.

I'm not expecting a big sell-off but I do think that if we don't have a move toward economic growth and policies that will promote economic growth and get us out of this 2 percent world - we really need to see 4 percent, 5 percent - to see jobs created, and if we don't see that longer-term, yeah the market will sell-off...[but] I do think things are getting better. It's just been very slow.

Successful people are always thinking about what they can do to move to the next level. Initiative is the drive to do it - to take the first step, and then the next step. The great thing about initiative - is that it's free and available to everyone.

A lot of people love Oreos. So their manufacturer is making money. That means more dividends for shareholders.

Individual investors have become far more powerful than anyone gives them credit for. Today, 85 million Americans invest in stocks. Collectively, that kind of buying and selling power can move markets.

I think the value of venues like CNBC is that they give investors an opportunity to reevaluate the situation minute by minute, but maybe we don't need to follow the market so closely.