I get approached all the time by people who want to invest in our company. But I don’t want to have to worry about what some knucklehead thinks I should be doing. I want to run my business in a way that makes me and my employees happy and satisfies our customers.

So far, we’ve managed to do pretty well without investors. My company, Big Ass Fans, brought in $224 million last year selling, well, big-ass fans for industrial spaces. We’ve also recently started selling residential fans and lights for industrial spaces. We’ve grown 30 percent every year since the recession and we expect that to continue — without outside investors.