The way management treats their associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the customers.

There’s a lot more business out there in small town America than I ever dreamed of.

Curiosity doesn't kill the cat; it kills the competition.

To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.

Swim upstream. Go the other way. 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. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.

It was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I had to get up everyday with my mind set on improving something.