Illinois will only get economically healthy if we stop focusing on growing minimum wages and start focusing on growing everyone's wages.

Being a successful CEO, where I've driven a bottom line, assembled teams, driven results, that's a critical benefit to running the state government.

I think we've got to be competitive here in Illinois. It's critical we're competitive. We're hurting our economy by having the minimum wage above the national. We've got to move back to the national.

The critical thing is that we have to reduce the tax burden.

Money can be taken away from you, by the IRS or by pistol. That's why I always measure riches in terms of wisdom. No one can ever take from you what you know.

Money grants you freedom, I guess.

We look for the scrappy entrepreneur: the kind of person who will get things done without looking to spend money right away.

Yeah, we shot ourselves in the foot right out of the gate. The guy who ran it at first misled pretty much everybody about how much capital we had. He said we had enough to go three years without making money, and we had enough to go three weeks.