Terry Pratchett Quotes

Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.

One thing I always say is being a great chef today is not enough - you have to be a great businessman.

What is excellence? It is about going a little beyond what we expect from ourselves. Part of the need for excellence is imposed on us externally by our customers. Our competition keeps us on our toes, especially when it is global in nature.

You have to have what your customers need because if you don't have what your customers need, you're not going to have customers.

I've always maintained the basic business principles of keeping it simple, doing your homework, hard work, and common sense.

When you open any kind of food service establishment, you do all this planning, but it's not until you've opened the door and people are inside that you learn what people want you to be to them.

It feels good being a restaurant owner because it's part of my dreams of being the biggest mogul.

Any time a bar or chef cares more about their own ego than the tastes and comforts of their customers, they should just open a monument to themselves and not a business.

The business cannot ignore what customers are saying when the message is clear: We're not on our game.

People are grateful when you make a difference in their lives. That is the essence of any successful business

I married a man once and we had been married over a year before I found he preferred potatoes. I said, "I didn't know you loved potatoes." And he said that until he was about 13, he thought rice was potato seeds.

I became successful and within five years conquered the world and had the most amazing run. I had so much momentum and adrenaline going, but then it ends and you have to find what level you're going to be on, how enthusiastic you're going to be.

A successful business must have a sound knowledge of its market and work on how its product or service will be different, stand out and improve people's lives. If you can ensure it responds to a real need in the market place, your business can punch well above its weight.

I have said countless times that unless you are delivering a product and service that is really needed and unless you are doing it really well, you don't stick around for 80 years.

I've heard it for years, if you're very successful you can't run for high office, especially for President.

I think maybe 50 years ago people and businesses felt like they had to choose between maximizing profits and making customers happy or making employees happy, and I think we're actually living in a special time where everyone's hyperconnected, whether through Twitter or blogs and so on. Information travels so quickly that it's actually possible to have it all, to make customers happy through customer service, to make employees happy through strong company cultures, and have that actually drive growth and profits.

Look, I think that when we started Virgin Atlantic 30 years ago, we had one 747 competing with the airlines that had an average of 300 planes each. Every single one of those have gone bankrupt because they didn't have customer service. They had might, but they didn't have customer service, so customer service is everything in the end.

John Wanamaker, founder of the stores that bear his name, once confessed: "I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that results exist only on the outside.The result of a business is a satisfied customer. The result of a hospital is a satisfied patient. The result of a school is a student who has learned something and puts it to work ten years later. Inside an enterprise there are only costs.

If there’s one reason we have done better than of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience.

So my resolution this year is: I'm not a money guy, but I want to make our next product a commercial success, so that people will say, 'Hey, there's a huge market out there. If you make a high-quality games that can touch people, it's going to do great business.

I would like to see more successful business people run for office.

The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want

I am a great believer that you need passion and energy to create a truly successful business. Remember many new businesses do not make it and running a business will be a tough experience, involving long hours and many hard decisions - it helps to have that passion to keep you going.

In the long run, no matter how good or successful you are or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire.