Kevin O'Leary
Kevin O'Leary
Terence Thomas Kevin O'Learyis a Canadian businessman, investor, journalist, writer, financial commentator and television personality. He is co-founder and Chairman of O'Leary Funds and the co-founder of SoftKey. He previously served as a commentator on Canada's CBC Television and CBC News Network, on the programme The Lang and O'Leary Exchange and hosted Redemption Inc. He is an investor on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank and was a venture capitalist "Dragon" on CBC Television's Dragons' Den...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth9 July 1954
CityMontreal, Canada
CountryCanada
Nobody forces you to work at Wal-Mart. Start your own business! Sell something to Wal-Mart!
When I turned 50, something clicked in my head and I said, 'I'm not going to live to 100. I'm half-cooked already.' I set the family down and I said, 'Listen everybody, we're now entering the decade of Daddy. We're going to start doing things that I want to do.
Vision is nothing without a plan to execute it.
Life is hard, money doesn't care, your tears don’t add value
I actually think being an entrepreneur is a state of mind. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, my thesis is that you have to sacrifice everything for some period in your life to be successful. You have to be myopic and completely focused and unbalanced in every way. Once you've achieved success, you're free to do whatever you like.
Money is my military, each dollar a soldier. I never send my money into battle unprepared and undefended. I send it to conquer and take currency prisoner and bring it back to me.
The only reason to do business is to make money; that's the only reason for doing business.
Downturns are the best time to start businesses, because you develop discipline that's very lean and mean in terms of how to spend money. And those habits serve you very well in good times.
Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team thinking we're going to win.