Most entrepreneurs will admit luck plays a part in success.

Our model is to develop each business separately with its own shareholder and management - this way we can concentrate on the job in hand, rather than be part of some enormous and faceless conglomerate.

My very first venture was a national student magazine to try to campaign against the [Vietnam] War. And so I wanted to be an editor. I wanted to bring the magazine out. And in order for the magazine to survive I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution. And, you know, I had to try to, at the end of the year, have more money coming in than going out.

We need a new way of doing business to get out of the present crisis ... Absolute greed has come close to bankrupting the world. Thanks to the crisis that certain businesses have dumped on everyone a lot of people are going to suffer on a global scale. All of us must learn. It is all the more important that those business leaders that are left standing try to be a force for good.

Luck is when determination meets opportunity

Respect is how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.

Although my spelling is still sometimes poor, I have managed to overcome the worst of my difficulties through training myself to concentrate.