Business Priorities Quotes

I have a business to run and stockholders to think about.

But today the quickest way to save your bottom line is to cut off research.

I like to work with people of different cultures, different points of view. But yeah, I feel much more comfortable. That's the problem I sometimes have with going to Hollywood. I feel like they don't share the same values as I do. They aren't interested in the same things. It's not always true, but sometimes, I feel it deeply, because as an industry, they celebrate things that I'm less interested in, and it's all about the business.

Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner.

The players in the promotion business today are, by and large, not in it for the art anymore. It's all about how many bucks can you make on a concert.

I've got my life. I'm very serious about my business. I've got my family. And I've got my game.

The customer is number one, the employee is number two and the shareholder is number three. If the customer is happy, the business is happy, and the shareholders are happy.

I'm not a young kid struggling to get to the top. I've been to the top. I gotta look out for my best interests as a businessman in this fight game. At the end of the day, it is a business. I've got children to take care of; I've got bills to pay.

As a rule, from what I've observed, the American Captain of Industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a Captain of Industry again.

I have always focused on the bottom line.

Do business managers have a commitment to anything more than the success of their company and to making money? It would be hard to say that they do. Indeed, many business leaders deny that there is any conflict between self-interest and the interests of all.

Customers should be number 1, Employees number 2, and then only your Shareholders come at number 3.

Don't worry about the financials. Just focus on delivering great products.

Businessmen in society are not going to be the ones that promote anything outside of money.

There has been no great surprise, no sudden revelation. I knew pretty much what I was getting into. What I've learned is that a restaurant can be as much of an art as you want it to be, but it has to be a successful business first.

People who run a ready-to-wear company are businessmen rather than production or design people.

Dealing with those personalities and the people who run this music thing has been most challenging. It's hard to really communicate things to people who run a business yet forget the nature of the business. They only look at the bottom line and the financial return, you know, they forget what it is they're packaging. It's art.

Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what's best for your customers.

We have access to more resources in general, and they are not going to force a situation on us, whether its the producer, or the cover, or what songs we have to play. And it's a small enough company that it seems like the people there care about music and not just about business.

The trouble, in my opinion, with corporate America today, is that everything is thought of in quarters.

The oil industry is a stunning example of how science, technology, and mass production can divert an entire group of companies from their main task. ... No oil company gets as excited about the customers in its own backyard as about the oil in the Sahara Desert. ... But the truth is, it seems to me, that the industry begins with the needs of the customer for its products. From that primal position its definition moves steadily back stream to areas of progressively lesser importance until it finally comes to rest at the search for oil.

The ethics of journalism are one thing. Another thing is the ethics of business.

When the sales guys run the company, the product guys do not matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.

In my opinion, right now there's way too much hype on the technologies and not enough attention to the real businesses behind them.

I don't need every customer. I'm primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?