Business Knowledge Quotes

I can tell you, because I serve on so many nonprofit boards - where half of us are academics and half of us are from Wall Street - that there's no CEO who understands at all a derivative. All they know is that somebody tells them in their organization, 'We've got a wonderful profit center.'

I like knowing about everything, and I think that really helps me in my business.

No man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.

I'm my own biggest marketing tool. I know the history of the business and I might as well capitalize on it.

Know the business, learn the business, own something.

Even though I'm a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I'm looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it.

The primary goal of management education was, as originally conceived, to impart knowledge that could be applied to a variety of real-world business situations.

My undergraduate degree is in business, so I'm trying to get a bit of a background before I go in.

If I'm setting up a new business I'll spend three or four months learning everything there is about that business, everything there is about that subject and then I will find good people to run it on a day-to-day basis, but whilst they're running it at least I know what they're talking about when they come back to me.

Business books are generally read and written by people who aren't good at business.

[In picking stocks] You really have to know a lot about business. You have to know a lot about competitive advantage. You have to know a lot about the maintainability of competitive advantage. You have to have a mind that quantifies things in terms of value. And you have to be able to compare those values with other values available in the stock market.

Never invest in a business you don't understand.

If you look at where the tried and true of Silicon Valley VC's are investing, it's in people who understand what it takes, who've been through it and have a network of people they can tap and resources to pull together.

You've got to know business before you go to show business.

The closer you get to your ultimate customer, the more you learn about your business.

What I learned about America is that anything is possible, but sometimes people get into businesses they shouldn't be in. They go in without capital or know how, but their mothers had told them that they could cook, and they're good with people.

I never took classic business classes in college, so I don't have the background that any of the people running large companies have.

I spent 26 years watching my dad, and I didn't know anything about the business until I started myself.

I don't really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson. I'm a creative artist. All I know from business I've picked up along the way.

Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world. Love what you do or don't do it.

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

What outsourcing causes - what it's caused by, rather. I understand, for instance, how to read a balance sheet. I happen to believe that having been in the private sector for twenty-five years gives me a perspective on how jobs are created - that someone who's never spent a day in the private sector, like President Obama, simply doesn't understand.

If you're an artist, it's great to have a knowledge of the business and be educated about that, but you've got to keep the balance right between business and artistry; otherwise, you get cynical.

I know one business, and that's how to make software.

People who have been successful in business have a huge amount to offer young people who are just starting out.