Quote unquote: Valerie Daniels-Carter

Valerie Daniels-Carter, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Milwaukee-based franchise restaurant organization V&J Holding Companies, was recognized as the Lifetime Achievement Award winner during the annual BizTimes Bravo! Entrepreneur & I.Q. Awards program in August. Daniels-Carter shared her thoughts on being an entrepreneur and mentor during a Q&A with BizTimes editor Andrew Weiland as part of the awards program. See her full remarks at biztimes.com/bravo.

• “You’re an entrepreneur no matter what platform, whether you’re an employer or an employee. You can have the great entrepreneurial spirit as an employee within an organization and that makes your organization great.”
• “It’s not just capital, but it is the proper utilization of capital, deploying it at the right time and understanding the proper way to manage it once you have it.”
• “Do you have challenges? Yeah. Do you have setbacks? Absolutely. But you don’t allow them to control you. The key is you control them, so when something happens that’s a negative, you look at it and say, ‘You shouldn’t have done that because now you’re going to make me do something even greater than what I just did.’”
• “Start with your strengths first, because weaknesses will always be there and you’ll always have to deal with them.”
• “I wake up every morning asking for the wisdom to do the things that I need to do. I have set no retirement age for myself and I think when that day comes, I’ll know it.”
• “My failures have been some of my greatest opportunities for me because it allowed me to understand what I shouldn’t be doing, why I shouldn’t do it and it allowed me to regroup and refocus. It allowed me to look at things differently and really it opened up my understanding as to why I failed.”