One thing my and mother and dad shared completely was their approach to money - they just didn't spend it.

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

I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

Don't get so stuck in your ways that you can't change.

If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.

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.

Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.