John Sculley Quotes

I have almost no interest in quarterly reports. Running a business or investing in a business based on quarterly earnings doesn't make any sense at all to me.

I think the greatest CEOs in the United States, business, anyway, are the ones you don't hear too much about.

It's a very difficult business, and I'm very interested in the future of it after I'm gone, and I thought that if I can't produce a strong management team here myself, and I can find better management elsewhere, then I should sell it.

If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

Once you start a business, you have to grow it and grow with it - starting a business is not just for Christmas.

There's smarter people than me. But you cannot have any one guy running 18 billion-dollar businesses. It just doesn't make sense to me. I've met some extraordinary leaders in my time. They struggle with running one billion-dollar business.

People must be realistic when evaluating their business.

A lot of what I do is running businesses rather than buying stocks. My worst decision is probably when I know I have the wrong chief executive running the business, and I keep on waiting to make the difficult decision of replacing him.

You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

There's one thing I've learned about entrepreneurs' business plans. Every one is wrong.

I consider a merchant someone who has a certain intuition and instinct, and - very important - knows how to run a business, knows the numbers.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

Your first job, as an owner and an entrepreneur, has to be to understand how the business is going to actually work.

No business can succeed in any great degree without being properly organized.

My business acumen is definitely growing.

Board meetings should not be for the benefit of the board. They should be for the benefit of the CEO and the senior team.

There is a difference between hiring a CEO and turning over control of the business.

It's much more difficult running a business than buying one.

Being on a board is not just about showing up for the meetings. A board member needs to materially contribute to the success of the business.

The thorniest business problems will surface at the board meetings, and the different, sharp opinions help to better explore the poles of the arguments to make better decisions.

[Describing her role:] It's like running a big corporation and a little country at the same time.

Most corporate disasters are driven not by market forces, but by CEOs messing things up.

… good luck and good timing are huge components of outsized success in entrepreneurial endeavors. Lots of things have to go right, and the planets have to align; that certainly happened in Amazon’s case. Our timing turned out to be very good. And so you can’t sit down to write a business plan and say you’re going to build a multibillion-dollar corporation; that’s unrealistic.

Every entrepreneur, whether man or woman, should start with a robust business structure.