All Quotes

# business — 310 quotes

BUSINESS

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Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.

businesshuman-nature— Poor Charlie's Almanack
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If you want a friend on Wall Street, get a dog.

businessculture— Various interviews
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Find a business you understand, with a dominant market position, where management has high integrity. That's it. That's the whole strategy.

businessvalue-investing— CNBC Interview, 2018
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Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.

brandbusiness— Interview, 2009
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If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness.

businessexperimentation— Interview, 2018
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Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

businesscustomer— Business at the Speed of Thought, 1999
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My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that as if I do not care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to us is building something that actually makes a really big difference in the world.

businessmission— Interview, 2012
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How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

businessoffers— $100M Offers (book subtitle), 2021, 2021
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Your competition is not your enemy. Your competition is your best teacher.

businesscompetition— YouTube, 2018
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Never mistake movement for progress. Busyness is the enemy of building.

businessfocus— Valuetainment, 2021
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I would rather have a business doing $1M a year with no investors than a startup raising $10M that I do not control.

bootstrapbusiness— Interview, 2023
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Cybersecurity is the biggest business opportunity of the next decade. Every breach headline is a sales call.

businesscybersecurity— CNBC, 2020
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Business is a sprint and a marathon. You have to pace yourself but also know when to run.

businesspersistence— Interview, 2018
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I don't care about your feelings. I care about your numbers.

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There's no such thing as a good partner. I want the whole thing or nothing.

businessnegotiation— Shark Tank
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I'm not Mr. Wonderful because I'm nice. I'm Mr. Wonderful because I tell you the truth.

brandingbusiness— Shark Tank
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Know what you're good at and stop doing everything else.

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The easiest way to make money is to create something of such value that everybody wants it and go out and give it to them.

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A successful business is not the one that makes the most money. It's the one that keeps the most money.

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Build personal wealth separate from your business. Your company is an asset, not your retirement plan.

businessretirement— Speaking engagement
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Your pricing is a signal of your confidence and your expertise. Undercharging doesn't make you humble — it makes you broke.

businessconfidence— Become Your Own Boss
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Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash flow is reality.

businesscash-flow— #SmallBizChat
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Don't just invest in businesses. Learn to operate them. The best investors understand what it takes to actually run something.

businessinvesting— Interview
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Culture compounds just like capital. Good culture builds value over decades. Bad culture destroys it faster than any financial mistake.

businessculture— Kanbrick presentation
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Data is the new oil is a terrible analogy. Oil is valuable because it's scarce. Data is valuable because it's abundant.

businessdata— Ali Ghodsi, Databricks CEO, Data + AI Summit 2022
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Open source is not charity. It's the most effective go-to-market strategy ever invented for enterprise software.

businessopen-source— Ali Ghodsi, interview with Forbes 2023
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Every company is becoming a data company whether they like it or not. We just make it less painful.

businessdata— Ali Ghodsi, Data + AI Summit 2024
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Growth is oxygen. Without growth, you are slowly asphyxiating.

businessgrowth— Frank Slootman, Snowflake CEO, "Amp It Up" book 2022
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Separating storage from compute sounds like a technical detail. It's actually a business model revolution.

businessinnovation— Benoit Dageville, Data Cloud Summit 2021
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Data sharing between organizations will be bigger than data warehousing itself. We're building the connective tissue of the data economy.

businessdata— Frank Slootman, earnings call 2023
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Adobe paying a billion-dollar breakup fee and Figma keeping the money is the most expensive compliment anyone has ever received.

businesscompetition— Tech industry commentary on Figma-Adobe collapse, 2023
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Free viewers was the most important product decision we ever made. When everyone can see the work, everyone cares about design.

businessgrowth— Dylan Field, podcast interview 2021
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Our free tier isn't a marketing gimmick. It's a belief that everyone deserves access to good design tools regardless of budget.

accessibilitybusiness— Melanie Perkins, Canva Create 2024
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We sold 20,000 flamethrowers in four days. The merchandise business has a better margin than the tunnel business right now.

businesshumor— Elon Musk on Not-a-Flamethrower sales, 2018
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We fund our own R&D. If the product doesn't work, we lose our money, not the taxpayer's. That alignment changes everything.

accountabilitybusiness— Brian Schimpf, Anduril CEO, 2023
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Everyone was fighting over New York and LA. We went to the suburbs. Turns out, that's where most of America actually lives.

businessgrowth— Tony Xu on DoorDash's suburban strategy, podcast 2021
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Advertising at the moment of purchase intent is the most valuable real estate in marketing. We own that moment for groceries.

advertisingbusiness— Fidji Simo on Instacart Ads, earnings call 2023
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Uber was the villain. We were the hero. Turns out the hero still needs a business model.

businesscompetition— Industry commentary on Lyft's positioning, 2022
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Being the nice guys in ride-sharing got us a lot of goodwill and about 28% market share. The market rewards ruthlessness more than kindness.

businesscompetition— Industry analysis of Lyft vs Uber, 2023
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We stayed in the US and Canada while Uber went to 70 countries. Focus isn't glamorous, but it's how you survive.

businessfocus— Logan Green on Lyft's market strategy, podcast 2021
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When Uber handed us their Southeast Asian business, it wasn't generosity. They were bleeding $700 million a year in the region and we weren't stopping.

businesscompetition— Industry analysis of Grab-Uber deal, 2018
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The last mile is the most expensive mile in logistics. Robots don't need tips, don't call in sick, and don't double-park.

automationbusiness— Nuro company presentation, 2022
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We're not competing with DoorDash or Instacart. We're their future delivery infrastructure. We replace the driver, not the app.

businesspartnerships— Nuro partnership strategy, 2022
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Pinterest is the only place on the internet where the ads are actually the content people came for. Nobody goes to Pinterest to avoid seeing products.

advertisingbusiness— Bill Ready, Pinterest CEO, earnings call 2023
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A thousand true fans is all you need. You don't need millions of followers. You need a thousand people willing to pay $10 a month.

businesscreator-economy— Jack Conte, referencing Kevin Kelly's essay, 2020
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We were profitable at the unit level from almost the beginning. The reason it took so long to show on the P&L is we were reinvesting everything into growth.

businessgrowth— Alex Karp on Palantir's path to profitability, 2023
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We turned down $23 billion from Google. Then we accepted $32 billion. The $9 billion difference was basically a really expensive negotiation tactic.

businessexits— Industry commentary on Wiz-Google negotiations, 2025
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In a recession, every company needs to cut software costs. In a boom, every company is buying more software and overpaying. We win in both markets.

businessmarket— Tropic investor pitch, 2023
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SaaS vendors have pricing data from thousands of deals. Buyers have pricing data from one — their own. We fix that imbalance.

businessnegotiation— David Campbell, Tropic CEO, interview 2023
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Every great business is built around a secret that others don't know or have underestimated.

business— What It Takes, 2019
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Think big, think fast, think ahead. Ideas are no one's monopoly.

business— Reliance Industries Annual Report, 2015
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The secret of luxury is quality and exclusivity. The moment you lose those two things, you no longer have luxury.

business— Harvard Business School interview, 2001
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The goal of a business is to make something people want. Not to raise money, not to grow headcount, not to get press.

business— The Minimalist Entrepreneur, 2022
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We changed our license from BSD to BSL and the open-source purists lost their minds. But the alternative was watching AWS offer Sentry as a service and collect the revenue. Pragmatism beats ideology.

businesslicensing— Blog Post, 2019
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The best investment you can make is in a business so simple that even an idiot could run it — because eventually, one will.

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Own the land under your business. Rent is a tax on ambition that never stops growing.

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Customers first, employees second, shareholders third. If your customers are happy, your employees are happy, the shareholders will be happy. Do it the other way and nobody is happy.

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The worst quality of a businessperson is to be a nice, good person. You need to be tough and make difficult decisions. Nice people finish last in business — decisive people finish first.

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One win, nine losses. That is the history of my career. The key is to make that one win so big that it pays for all nine losses and then some.

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The idea is 1%. Execution is 99%. Everyone has ideas. Almost nobody can execute at speed and scale. That's what Rocket Internet does — we execute faster than anyone on Earth.

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Email is the most underrated business model on the internet. You own the relationship. No algorithm can take that away.

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The best businesses are the ones that sound boring when you explain them but print money when you run them.

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Stop looking for the next billion-dollar app. Buy a laundromat. The returns are better and nobody is trying to disrupt you.

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The best business in the world is one where your customers pay you every month and never call to complain. That is self-storage.

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I would rather own a boring business that makes $10 million a year than a sexy startup that burns $10 million a year.

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The fastest way to get rich is to solve a problem for people who have money and are willing to spend it.

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The most underrated skill in business is the willingness to do things that feel beneath you.

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We built Morning Brew on one insight: business news does not have to be boring. That is it. That was the whole strategy.

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Distribution is more important than product. The best product nobody sees is worth less than a mediocre product everyone sees.

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Insurance is not a boring business. It is the most elegant asset-liability matching machine ever invented.

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We signed a power purchase agreement with Microsoft because we wanted external accountability. A deadline with a customer is worth more than a deadline on a whiteboard.

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We are building a power plant, not a science experiment. That distinction changes everything about how you make decisions.

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The physical operations economy is bigger than the digital economy. But it has a fraction of the software spend. That gap is our entire opportunity.

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Price wins the first order. Speed wins the second order. Reliability wins every order after that.

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On-demand delivery used to be a luxury. Now it is infrastructure. Every restaurant, every retailer, every warehouse needs it daily.

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Software is the best business model ever invented. High margins, recurring revenue, low capital intensity. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

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Natural gas is the transition fuel. You cannot go from coal to solar overnight. Something has to bridge the gap. That is what New Fortress Energy does.

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We became a unicorn while charging the lowest prices in Indian edtech. Everyone said you cannot build a billion-dollar company on $5 courses. We did.

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Udemy for Business is where the real growth is. Companies spend billions on employee training. We can deliver it better and cheaper than anyone.

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We built the world's largest homework help database. Then AI learned to do the same thing in real time for free. That is a problem.

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I sold crack. I sold records. I sold brands. The skill is the same — understand what people want and give it to them before anyone else.

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I am not a businessman. I am a business, man.

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Own what you create. That is the only rule in business that matters. Everything else is a lesson you learn the hard way.

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The 7-Eleven of the internet is still a $100 billion idea. We just need to get the unit economics right before the money runs out.

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Data is the most powerful force in business. The person with the best data makes the best decisions. That is not an opinion — it is math.

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If you start a business just to make money, you will probably fail. Start it because you are angry that something is bad and you know you can make it better.

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$8 billion in pre-orders from American, United, and Japan Airlines. Real airlines, real money. This is not a science project.

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Voodoo acquired us for $500 million. Some say it was a bailout. I say it was a bet on the authenticity format having a future.

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A brand is not a logo. A brand is the gut feeling people have about you.

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The best deal is one where the buyer, the seller, and the community all win. If anyone loses, the deal isn't as good as you think.

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If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together. If you want to do both build a conglomerate.

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We do not just sell tractors. We sell economic empowerment to rural India.

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Every single desk is worth more than a bitcoin.

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India is not just an emerging market. It is a surging market.

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In media you either own the distribution or you are owned by it.

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If you do not have an unfair advantage you should not be in the deal.

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The 30 percent store tax is the defining issue of this decade for the entire tech industry.

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Developers are our customers. The moment we forget that we lose everything.

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Open source is not a business model. It is a distribution strategy. The business model is being the best place to run the open source.

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The role of business is to create products and services that make people's lives better while using fewer resources.

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We do not lobby for special favors. We lobby for economic freedom. There is a difference.

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We measure success not by the size of our revenue but by the long-term value we create for customers and society.

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India is a market of extremes. You can deliver biryani to a tech worker in Bangalore in 20 minutes and you cannot get an address in a village 100 km away.

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Mark offered me three billion dollars. I was 23. Saying no was the easiest decision I ever made.

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Happiness is the most underrated business strategy. Happy customers tell friends. Happy employees build better products.

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We build three businesses not one. Gaming funds e-commerce. E-commerce creates payments. Payments enable lending. That is the flywheel.

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Curation is our moat. Anyone can list 100,000 products. Knowing which 100,000 products to list — that is the skill.

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Real estate is a relationship business that happens to need technology. Not a technology business that happens to involve relationships.

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Mortgage lending is a rate-sensitive business. When rates double your business does not halve. It falls off a cliff.

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We bootstrapped our fundraising from our own users. They invest in real estate through us and they invest in us. That alignment is everything.

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Every dark store is a small bet. Five hundred dark stores is a big bet. We are all in on quick commerce.

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Our riders are not costs. They are the backbone of the company. When they succeed we succeed.

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I closed SpaceX's first major contract — a 1.6 billion dollar deal with NASA. That was the moment we became a real company.

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Elon builds the rockets. I build the business that pays for them.

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Rich Kleiman is my business partner. He handles the deals I handle the vision. Together we built a real portfolio not a celebrity vanity project.

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Steel is a commodity. In commodities the lowest-cost producer always wins. That is why scale matters more than anything.

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I am not just an athlete. I am a brand. I am a businessman. And I am going to be a billionaire before I retire.

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Always deliver more than expected.

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Maverick Carter and I have been partners since Akron. He handles the business. I bring the platform. Together we are dangerous.

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The real money is not on the court. It is in ownership. I learned that lesson and I have been teaching it ever since.

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Salesforce has generated 35 billion dollars in revenue and given away 600 million dollars to charity. You do not have to choose.

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There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced.

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The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.

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I think the main quality you need in running a newspaper is a stomach for risk.

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Monopoly is a terrible thing, till you have it.

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Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

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Business, as I have seen it, places one great demand on you: it asks for your honesty.

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If someone's picture ends up in the newspaper with a Cerberus connection, we will kill them — figuratively.

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The best acquisition is one where the customer base stays and the costs go.

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Kindness is not weakness. It's actually the ultimate strength in business.

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Entertainment is the last thing people give up in a recession. They'll cut everything else first.

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The best businesses own the infrastructure that other businesses depend on.

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Technology reduces costs. Lower costs attract customers. More customers generate more data. Better data builds better technology. That's the flywheel.

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If you don't innovate, you die. It's that simple in the entertainment business.

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There is only one boss — the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

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Every restaurant is a small business. You can own 600 of them, but each one has to work on its own.

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Shut up and listen to your customers. They'll tell you everything you need to know.

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We can do well and do good at the same time. Those two things are not in conflict.

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Growth is easy. Profitable growth is hard. And that's what separates real businesses from subsidized experiments.

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I didn't come to Uber to maintain the status quo. I came to build a real business.

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The hardest part of building a developer tool company is converting free users into paying teams.

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Companies manage money with the rigor of an audit. They manage people with a spreadsheet. That's backwards.

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The license change was hard. The community was angry. But we can't let AWS sell our free tool as a managed service forever.

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Insurance is about pricing risk correctly. Better data means better pricing. Better pricing means better business.

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$500 million in revenue proves that serving the underbanked is a real business, not charity.

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Open source built our community. The commercial product built our business. Both matter.

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Early cancer detection saves lives and saves money. The ROI for employers and health systems is clear.

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Mark Cuban invested because he understood: cash advances without predatory interest is a real business.

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Attention is the most valuable currency in the world. If you can hold it, you can build anything.

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Corporations are people, my friend.

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RED proved that you don't need charity to fight AIDS. You need good products with a purpose.

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If millions of people can't find a product that works for them, that's not a diversity problem — that's a business opportunity.

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I'm not a businesswoman. I'm a business, woman.

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Ford lost $4.7 billion on EVs last year. Toyota made record profits on hybrids. The market is the judge.

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Comedy is my first love. Business is my second. Both pay well. But only one makes people cry laughing.

businesscomedy— Netflix special, 2022
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I treat my career like a business. Every joke is content. Every movie is marketing. Every Instagram post is distribution.

businessmedia— Interview, 2020
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I signed some terrible deals early in my career because I didn't know what my name was worth. Now I know.

brand-valuebusiness— Interview, 2018
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My mom taught me that attention is the most valuable currency. I have 300 million followers. That's a lot of currency.

attentionbusiness— Podcast appearance, 2022
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The Pacquiao fight paid me $300 million for one night. That's not boxing. That's business.

boxingbusiness— Post-fight interview, 2015
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I promote my own fights. I negotiate my own deals. Nobody takes a percentage of Floyd Mayweather but Floyd Mayweather.

businesscontrol— Press conference, 2015
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If Nike won't give me royalties, I'll find someone who will. And I did.

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The music gets you famous. The business gets you rich. Don't confuse the two.

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I took equity in Vitamin Water instead of a check. That one decision changed my life more than any album ever did.

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I want to be remembered as a businessman, not just a cricketer. The bat has an expiry date. Brands don't.

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Making expensive drugs affordable is not charity. It is the biggest business opportunity in the world.

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At Facebook, I learned how to build products for billions. At Instacart, I learned how to build a business that actually makes money. Both skills matter.

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I am not trying to win a popularity contest. I am trying to run a business. Those are different objectives.

businesscontrarian— Parliamentary Select Committee testimony, 2016, 2016
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Retail is arithmetic. You buy it for X and sell it for more than X. The companies that fail have forgotten the arithmetic.

businessretail— Sports Direct earnings call, 2018, 2018
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Football is an emotional business. You can't run it like retail. I learned that at Newcastle — painfully, slowly, and expensively.

businessfootball— Interview following Newcastle United sale, 2021, 2021
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CSK is not just a cricket team. It is a brand that stands for loyalty, consistency, and winning. Those three things translate to every business I invest in.

brandbusiness— CSK franchise media day, 2022, 2022
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Building Somnium Wine is the same as racing. It takes years of preparation, the results are not immediate, and the details matter enormously.

businesspatience— Wine Enthusiast feature, 2021, 2021
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The jersey number changes. The club changes. But the brand — Neymar — that stays. That is what I am really building.

brandbusiness— Interview with Bloomberg, 2019, 2019
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Football gave me everything. Business is how I protect it for the next generation.

businessfootball— Interview with Forbes Brasil, 2021, 2021
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The difference between a good player and a great player is what you do when the pressure is highest. Same in business.

businessexcellence— Interview with Cricinfo, 2018, 2018
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In cricket and in business, the result matters. But the process that gets you to the result matters more. Get the process right and the result takes care of itself.

businessdiscipline— Interview with India Today, 2019, 2019
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Take equity, not just fees. The difference between a brand deal and an equity deal can be worth more than your entire career earnings.

businessequity— Forbes Women's Summit, 2022, 2022
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I am not just an athlete. I am a business. And you have to protect your business — which means protecting your body and your mind first.

businesshealth— Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, 2022, 2022
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Losing Canelo hurt. It was the right business decision for him and the wrong outcome for us. I respect it. I had to learn from it and rebuild.

businesslosing— Interview with ESPN Boxing, 2019, 2019
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People say the WNBA is a passion project. No. The NBA is a passion project too — it just gets paid like a business. Women's sport generates value. Pay for the value.

businessequality— ESPN Women's Sports Summit, 2021, 2021
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Basketball taught me that the only shortcut to success is doing the long work consistently. Business is the same. There is no fast version.

businessconsistency— Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, 2022, 2022
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The promoter's job is to make the fighter look like the biggest star in the world. When you do that job well, everyone makes money. When you forget whose name is on the marquee, you lose the fighter.

businesspartnership— Boxing Business Summit, 2017, 2017
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If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

businesschange— Various speeches, 1998
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We've always known that profits are important, but we've never thought that profits were the purpose.

businessculture— Leadership conference, 1997
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Change before you have to.

businesschange— Various speeches, 1995
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An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

businesscompetition— Winning, 2005
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We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.

actionbusiness— Various speeches, 1995
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My name is my greatest asset. I protect it like I protected the plate.

brandbusiness— Big Papi Foods launch interview, 2019
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The music business will eat your lunch if you don't understand the business side as well as the creative side.

businesseducation— Business of Music textbook, 2012
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The rarest thing in this business is someone who sees where culture is going before it gets there.

businessculture— Complex interview, 2019
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Every artist I have ever worked with — I saw something in them before the world did. That is the skill.

businessmusic— Texas Southern University lecture, 2016
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The hardest phone call I ever made was when I had to have a business conversation with my own daughter.

businessfamily— Houston Press interview, 2013
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Revenue solves all known problems. If you don't have it, everything else is a distraction.

businessrevenue— Google leadership meetings (widely attributed), 2008
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Security is not a feature. It is the foundation. Companies that treat it as optional are building on sand.

businesssecurity— Schmidt Futures summit, 2021
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Selling a business you built is harder than building it. But knowing when to sell is the most important skill a founder can have.

businessdiscipline— Post-acquisition reflection
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The best partnerships are ones where you disagree often enough to avoid mistakes but agree enough to actually get things done.

businessmanagement— Highbridge investor meeting
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$21 billion for a company I built with my hands over 35 years. Johnson & Johnson got a bargain.

acquisitionsbusiness— Post-sale reflection, 2013
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We made mistakes expanding too fast into too many categories. A toothpaste company doesn’t need to sell jeans.

businessfocus— Industry conference, 2020
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A monk owning a company confuses people. But someone has to commercialize India’s ancient knowledge. Why not us?

businessentrepreneurship— Interview, 2018
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Synthes succeeded because we listened to surgeons, not to consultants. The people using the product know what it needs.

businesscustomers— Harvard Business School case study, 2010
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The companies that win in the next decade will be the ones that figure out how to unlock the potential of every single employee, not just the top performers.

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Speed is the only thing that matters in hourly hiring. If you take three days to respond to a candidate, they already have another job.

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The average restaurant loses 100 percent of its hourly staff every year. That is not a hiring problem. That is an onboarding and retention problem.

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Democratizing access to opportunity is not charity. It is good business. Companies that only recruit from 20 schools are leaving 95 percent of the talent pool on the table.

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The future of work is not full-time or freelance. It is both. The best companies will build hybrid teams that pull in top talent exactly when they need it.

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The insurance industry spends 30 cents of every premium dollar on acquisition and overhead. That is money that should be protecting customers, not funding middlemen.

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The key to wholesale is volume and efficiency. Every penny we save on logistics is a penny we can pass to the customer. That compounds over decades.

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We keep our headquarters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania because our costs are lower, our people are loyal, and we do not need a fancy office to ship restaurant equipment.

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The restaurant supply business is not glamorous. Nobody writes articles about us. But every restaurant in America needs plates, pans, and fryers, and we deliver them cheaper than anyone.

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We started by selling a few restaurant supplies out of a small warehouse in Lancaster. Fifty years later we ship to every state in the country. The secret is simple. Keep prices low and ship fast.

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Insurance in India was sold on fear. We decided to sell it on simplicity. Make the product easy to understand and people will actually buy it.

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We became profitable faster than any Indian insurtech because we focused on unit economics from day one. Growth without profitability is just expensive marketing.

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We pivoted from selling directly to homeowners to selling building kits to developers. The B2B model scales faster and burns less cash.

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Vertical integration is the only way to make prefab construction work. The moment you depend on subcontractors, you lose control of quality and schedule.

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The ADU market in California alone is worth billions. Every homeowner with a backyard is a potential customer. We just have to make it easy enough.

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We have been bought and sold by three different owners across four decades. The brand survives because the tractors outlast the corporate drama.

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We priced our four-wheel-drive tractors at half what John Deere charged. Same horsepower, simpler design, fewer parts to break. Farmers figured it out fast.

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Distribution is everything. The company that gets its product to the customer fastest and cheapest wins in the long run.

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Build an ecosystem, not a company. Every Grupo Salinas business feeds the others. The TV drives customers to Elektra. Elektra drives customers to Banco Azteca.

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Vertical integration is the only way to protect your margins in mining. If someone else ships your copper, they control your profit.

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Structure matters more than strategy. If the structure is wrong, the best strategy in the world won't save you.

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Business is about trust, and trust takes a long time to build.

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Legal teams shouldn't be a bottleneck. They should be an accelerator.

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Contracts are the most important documents in any business, and they're managed worse than almost anything else.

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Build relationships first. Business follows naturally.

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Fashion should come to the people, not the other way around.

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Speed is more important than perfection. A good product in the store today beats a perfect product in the store next month.

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The customer is the only boss. If you listen to them, they will tell you everything you need to know.

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In business and football, it's all about relationships.

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The hole in my pocket is just as important as the hole in my arm.

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The packaging business taught me more than Harvard Business School ever did.

businesseducation— Interview
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Build where the traffic is.

businessreal-estate— Business profile
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The worst thing in fashion is to be ubiquitous. The hardest thing is knowing when to say no.

businessdiscipline— Interview
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A brand built around a community is more powerful than any amount of advertising.

brandingbusiness— Little Black Stretchy Pants
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Pricing is a feature, not a barrier. If the product is good enough, charge what it's worth.

businessluxury— Interview
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If you build a product that works, people will find you.

businessentrepreneurship— Little Black Stretchy Pants
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Our number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just happen naturally.

businessculture— Various interviews
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Safe AI and powerful AI are the same thing. The companies that figure this out first will win.

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Customer service shouldn't just be a department. It should be the entire company.

businesscustomer-service— Delivering Happiness
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We do not need to be famous. We need to be affordable.

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The only sustainable competitive advantage in retail is being the cheapest.

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Complexity is the enemy of low prices.

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Speed kills the competition. If you can get from sketch to store in two weeks, nobody can copy you fast enough.

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Glasses are the only product people wear on their face every day. That is a very powerful position.

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A brand without distribution is just a logo. Distribution without brands is just a shelf.

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Logistics is the backbone of the world economy. Everything you touch was moved by someone like us.

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A brand on a building is worth twenty percent more per square foot. That is just math.

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You can be profitable with low-grade ore if you control your costs. That is the entire secret.

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Restructuring is not about destroying. It is about saving what can be saved.

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Relationships are the most valuable asset in business. Everything else depreciates.

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A conglomerate is only as strong as its weakest business. If one division is bleeding, it drains everything.

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If you make something essential affordable, the entire developing world becomes your market.

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Make what people need. Make it better. Make it cheaper. There is no other formula.

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Brand is the most valuable asset a company can own. It outlasts everything else.

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Let the product sell itself. If users love it, growth follows. If they don't, no amount of salespeople will save you.

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Success in any market requires you to understand its people before you understand its economics. The economics will follow the people.

businessemerging-markets— Al-Kharafi Group Annual Conference, 2005
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Political work and business are not separate in this region. They are the same conversation, conducted in different rooms.

businessmiddle-east— Arab Business Council Forum, 2007
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Our business is built on trust — trust between us and the global brands we represent, and trust with our customers in the Gulf.

brand-partnershipsbusiness— Al Mana Group corporate communications, 2015
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We grew because we were honest. In money-changing, your reputation is your only product. Lose it, and you have nothing.

bankingbusiness— Forbes Arabia, 2009
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In this region, business and politics have never been separate. The question is whether you use that connection to build or to exploit.

businessmiddle-east— Interview, Financial Times, 2013
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I studied pharmacy, not finance. Business is about understanding what people need. That is the same skill whether you are in a laboratory or a boardroom.

backgroundbusiness— Profile interview, Financial Afrik, 2018
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A business is only as strong as its capacity to serve the people around it. If you lose sight of that, you lose the business.

businessleadership— HEC Paris Alumni Event, 2017
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Politics and business in our part of the world are two sides of the same coin. You cannot separate them.

businessmiddle-east— World Economic Forum, Davos, 2010
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Zhang Xin sees what a building can become. I figure out how to make the deal work. We have never confused our jobs.

businesscomplementary-skills— CNBC Interview, 2015
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I have never done a dishonest thing in my business life. Every building we promised, we built. Every worker we employed, we paid.

accountabilitybusiness— Hong Kong press conference, 2021
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The bigger you are, the more people depend on you, and the more responsibility you carry. Size is not vanity — it is obligation.

businessresponsibility— Evergrande shareholder letter, 2018
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A company that forgets its customers will eventually be forgotten by them. We listen to our homeowners, not just our investors.

businesscustomer-focus— Country Garden Annual Report Chairman's Message, 2020
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Building a business requires three things: hard work, correct timing, and the discipline not to be greedy when prices are high.

businessdiscipline— Forbes Asia interview, 2007
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You cannot divorce business success from civic responsibility. Those of us who have benefited most from Hong Kong have the greatest obligation to give back.

businesshong-kong— Hong Kong Trade Development Council speech, 2005
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Hong Kong is a city built on trust and enterprise. That combination is irreplaceable.

businessenterprise— Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce address, 2007
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Anyone who tells you roofing materials are boring has never tried to sell them in 105 countries.

businessentrepreneurship— Business Insider Russia Interview, 2019
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Syria gave me my values. Britain gave me the platform. The Middle East gave me the market. I needed all three.

businessidentity— Asfari Foundation Annual Report, 2017
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I was 14 years old on The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson looked at me and said I was going to be a star. I never forgot that. But I also knew the business behind the curtain was where the real power lived.

businesscomedy— Rolling Stone, 2020
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We are not in the business of creating content for content's sake. We are in the business of creating content that people love and that sustains a business.

businesscontent— Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2022 Earnings Call, 2022
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My father was the greatest businessman I ever knew. And the most demanding person I ever knew.

businessfamily— Various Australian media, 2007
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Cardboard is the circulatory system of the economy. Without packaging, nothing moves.

businesseconomy— Industry conference address, 2018
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We need to reduce taxes, reduce regulation, and let business do what it does best — create jobs and prosperity.

businesspolicy— Australian Mining Conference, 2016
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The Australian people deserve to know the truth about how their country is run — by corporations, not by Parliament.

australiabusiness— Palmer United Party campaign statement, 2013
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Litigation is not a last resort for me. It is a business strategy. If someone owes you money, you fight for it.

businesslegal— Interview on legal disputes with CITIC, 2016
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Money is just a tool. What you build with it — that's what matters.

businessphilosophy— Business interview, Australian Financial Review, 2018
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I don't give up on anything. I just change tactics.

businessresilience— ABC Australia interview, 2019
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Football needs a new model. The current system cannot sustain itself financially for the clubs that bear the highest costs and generate the most value.

businessfootball— European Super League Announcement, 2021
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The biggest risk of all is not taking one.

businessentrepreneurship— The Art of Being Unreasonable, 2012
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Conventional wisdom is usually wrong. If you do what everyone else is doing, you get what everyone else gets.

businesscontrarian-thinking— The Art of Being Unreasonable, 2012
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The day you separate business from humanity, you lose both.

businesscompassionate-capitalism— Forbes India interview, 2018
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I started Jaipur Rugs to prove that you can build a business with love. Every knot in every rug is an act of love by the person who tied it.

artisansbusiness— TED Talk, 2016
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Winning is the best marketing. Everything else follows.

businesssports— ESPN Interview, 2021
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When you are in business, you have to hold yourself accountable. That goes for the Cleveland Browns, and it went for Pilot Flying J. We learned hard lessons.

accountabilitybusiness— Interview with ESPN, 2017
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I take full responsibility for the actions of the company. What was done at Pilot Flying J was wrong and we are deeply sorry.

accountabilitybusiness— Public statement on Pilot Flying J fraud investigation, 2013
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The broker channel is the best option for the consumer. We will not apologize for defending it aggressively. If that makes enemies, so be it.

broker-channelbusiness— Housing Wire conference, 2021
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Quality is the only business plan that does not expire.

brandbusiness— Various interviews, 2018
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If you pay the farmer well, you get better coffee. If you get better coffee, you build a better brand. The ethics and the economics point in the same direction.

businessethics— World Economic Forum remarks, 2020
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Sustainability is not charity. It is the only viable business model for the long term.

businesslong-term— Various speeches and interviews, 2019
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The most dangerous thing in business is to be right for the wrong reasons — or to win the battle and lose the war.

businessleadership— Stanford Graduate School of Business interview, 2008
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A company without revenue can't pursue a mission for very long. Commercial success and safety research are not enemies.

businessmission— Tech interview, 2023
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I want to work for profit, but not live only for profit.

businesshumanistic-capitalism— Wall Street Journal interview, 2018
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Competition is healthy. It sharpens your instincts and forces you to become better at what you do.

businesscompetition— Business conclave keynote, 2015
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Challenges make us stronger. My husband faced many. My sons face many. We do not step back — we step forward.

businessfamily— Media interview, 2008
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The mathematics of gambling are simple. The mathematics of building a sustainable business around gambling are considerably harder.

businessgambling— Bet365 Company Document, 2012
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The Thomson family's greatest inheritance is not the companies or the capital. It is the understanding that information, delivered with accuracy and speed, always creates value.

businessinformation-services— Thomson Reuters Annual General Meeting, 2009
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You cannot run a pharmacy from a spreadsheet. You run it with people. The numbers follow the people.

businessmanagement— Les Affaires interview, 2007
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The circus was supposed to be dead. Everybody said so. But nobody stopped to ask whether the circus had just been done wrong for fifty years.

businesscontrarian— Harvard Business Review case study interview, 2007
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The key to being successful in business is trust, you have to trust the people you work with.

businessleadership— Thought Economics interview
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One of the best ways to support Ukraine is through increased trade, business and investment in the country.

businessinvestment— Danir statement, 2025
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With a business, your whole life is hanging on this thing. People have to love it.

brandingbusiness— Entrepreneur, 2018
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I would rather be completely authentic and have the company go to zero than bullshit people.

authenticitybusiness— Interview, 2020
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When you have a media or ecommerce business, almost no press is bad press. As long as we're being honest and ethical and not doing anything wrong, it all just kind of comes and goes.

businessmarketing— Interview, 2018
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I would rather own a boring business that prints money than a famous one that loses it.

businessownership— Interview, 2017
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It is a must to believe in one's product.

businessconviction— Attributed remarks
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Business is the greatest charity. Doing a good job in the company, paying employees on time, and not defaulting on your suppliers is the greatest good.

businessethics— Interview
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Morality and economy are one.

businessethics— SBI Holdings management philosophy, 2005