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Start small and build as you go. If you feel like you can do a better job than someone else, then go do it.

I couldn't afford to go to college full-time, so I took night classes at NYU and worked in the campus bookstore to help pay for it.

Founder & Chairman

I would remember going to restaurants. And you'd go to something like a great Italian restaurant in New York, and I had friends that owned restaurants. And I remember them telling my friend, Anthony, gee, the food is so great, you have the greatest veal pecan, or whatever it was. You have to open up a place like this in Greenwich, Connecticut. And Anthony is saying Greenwich, Connecticut, I'm here in New York. So he's saying no no, you don't understand, you'd make a fortune up there. People don't get this kind of food. &gt;&gt; [LAUGH] &gt;&gt; And Anthony said you're crazy, I'm not going up to Connecticut. &gt;&gt; Yeah. &gt;&gt; With me, the difference was that someone came in to me and said to me they need a bookstore like yours at Queensborough Community College. And I said where's Queensborough? [MUSIC] My aunt had a neighbor who was the floor manager of the NYU bookstore, and I needed a job, and if I got a job at the NYU bookstore they'd pay for my tuition at night. Up until the age of 18, I don't think I'd been to New Jersey more than twice, I'd been to Connecticut once, and that was as far as I'd ever traveled. And crossing the bridge into Manhattan was going to the city. When I went to the NYU bookstore, my provincial days as a resident in a little ghetto, Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, were over. I met people that I had never encountered before, and they were full of ideas, and full of knowledge and wisdom, and we had a really interesting Hungarian who was a supreme intellectual. And he took one look at me and thought I was the dumbest thing he'd ever met. And he would, in that thick accent, kind of say here, read this, you dummy, and give me books that I had never been exposed to. And here I am, taking them home, and gobbling them up, and I mean, everything from economics, geography, to political science, to good God, I read all the way up to the graduate level in psychology. All that was very stimulating to me, and I was growing leaps and bounds without, I mean, it's not like you were attempting to grow, you just grew. [MUSIC] I mean, I was always what you would call a hustler. My dad had always taught me to work longer, and harder, and smarter. And I found that my career at the NYU bookstore was too confining. I couldn't transform the store into what I thought was a really great service organization. You couldn't get things done because people didn't do them that way. So I opened up my own store. We were a sort of a counter to the university book store. [COUGH] And my mission always was that the things that I was selling were not mere products. They were books, they were the tools of education. If a student came in and needed a book for their studies, we weren't about to say I'm sorry, we're out of stock, come back next week. We were really all up into send a plane to go get the book. We were just going to make sure we put the book in the students' hands. I think that if you have a job, or an occupation, or a business and you feel like you're doing good work, and you feel like you have a mission, it's a great privilege. We run the bookstores at Harvard, Yale, UPenn, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, U of Chicago, Texas A&amp;M. That's the business that actually started Barnes and Noble college bookstores. And the business that you know about actually spun from that. &gt;&gt; Interesting. &gt;&gt; Most young people today are frustrated because they suppose you're a failure if you don't get on the big lists, if you don't become a celebrity CEO, if the whole world doesn't envy you. But if you're trying to leap too far ahead too fast perhaps, a sense of alienation can set in. I'm not getting enough, I'm not doing enough, they're not allowing me to become. And what happens is that you get disoriented and then you're not happy, [MUSIC] Doing what you're doing, and you can't make anything of it. You could start small, I mean, look at what I made out of one book store. &gt;&gt; So how many people do you sleep in here? &gt;&gt; Four. &gt;&gt; Just four? &gt;&gt; Just the four of us. &gt;&gt; This folds down, this folds down, we got [SOUND] that's it. &gt;&gt; One, two, three, and this folds down to make four. &gt;&gt; [LAUGH] I mean, you could live your life in here. &gt;&gt; You can. &gt;&gt; We do [LAUGH]. &gt;&gt; The art now is my latest foray, I suppose. I'm the chairman of a fairly great museum here in New York and I have to tell you, I know nothing. I mean, when you talk about beginning with zero knowledge, it's so exhilarating to reach this point in my life and realize that I have so much to learn. So it's every place I turn, there's a new gem of wisdom. 

Interview

My aunt had a neighbor who was the floor manager of the NYU bookstore, and I needed a job. And if I got a job at the NYU bookstore, they'd pay for my tuition at night. I found that my career at the NYU bookstore was too confining, so I opened up my own store. And my mission always was that the things that I was selling were not mere products, they were books. They were the tools of education. If a student came in and needed a book for their studies, we weren't about to say, I'm sorry, we're out of stock, come back next week. &gt;&gt; Right. &gt;&gt; We were really all up into, send a plane to go get the book. &gt;&gt; [LAUGH] Wow. &gt;&gt; We were just going to make sure we put the book in the student's hands. That's the business that I actually started, Barnes and Noble College Bookstores. And the business that you know about actually spun from that. &gt;&gt; Interesting. &gt;&gt; Most young people today are frustrated because, and I suppose you were a failure if you don't get on the big lists. What happens is that you get disoriented, and then you're not happy doing what you're doing, and you can't make anything of it. You could start small. I mean, look at what I made out of one bookstore. 

Leonard Riggio

Founder & Chairman

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Leonard Riggio

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My work combines:

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Upholding a Cause and Belief

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