To operate based on conviction and belief requires an acceptance that your actions could get you fired. This is different from pig-headed bravado, and it is different from putting the company at risk.
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
The sea was our main entertainment. When company came, we set them before it on rugs, with thermoses and sandwiches and colored umbrellas, as if the water – blue, green, gray, navy or silver as it might be – were enough to watch.
If I’m going through life broke, I might as well live in the company of cheerful idiots like actors.
At my company, we have 300 employees spread across offices all over the world, and I send them all a voicemail each morning with a message from me about why our work is important and a reminder about one of our values. I call myself our company’s ‘chief spiritual officer.’
It’s a bit embarrassing for a company to be exposed for wrongdoing, but it’s really embarrassing if it’s done by making them the butt of a joke.
Curiosity at work isn’t a matter of style. It’s much more powerful than that. If you’re the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you’re laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group. You’re letting people know that the boss is willing to listen.
‘She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.
We always talk about how you have to build a brand from the inside out, not the outside in. Brands are not wrappers. Brands are based on the values of the founders, and then they spread to the people who work for the company, and then that psychological contract is spread to the customer.
Thinking about Amazon’s restraints – the company has never tried to introduce a social network or an email service, for example – you can understand something about the future Amazon seems to envision: A time when no screen is needed at all, just your voice.
I’m just interested in building a company that doesn’t necessarily change lives but adapts people’s behaviour.
I think you have to learn that there’s a company behind every stock, and that there’s only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.
Well, you know, News Corp is the only real media global – that has a global presence that’s involved in TV production, in movies, in publishing, in newspapers, digital media, et cetera. So for a company like that to function, clearly it does not depend only on Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch.
Google is a very responsible company. It’s a generous company, but it’s very frugal in many ways.
A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man – the one he used to be.
I used to be pretty reckless. When I was a runner for a production company, I drove a massive 16 seater van. I was only 18. I mean I look young now, but then I looked about 12.
Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.
The East India Company’s domination of the Indian economy was based on its private army.
I know Toby Jones very well, we’ve done yoga together in the past and get on very well. He’s a fantastic actor, but also extremely good company, very witty, and smart.
If a company knows it may have to pay a large amount of money if it poses an unreasonable threat to others, it will have a strong incentive to act better.
In 1995, I had been chosen to make a short presentation about the state of the TV business at a company retreat in Santa Barbara. At the time, I felt we were not real competitors in network television. The studio wasn’t prolific; we didn’t have much of a brand.
I do think there is an important artistic component in what we do. As a technology company I’ve tried to really stress that.
I played with different words like ‘home run,’ ‘megahit,’ and they just all sounded kind of ‘blah.’ So I put in ‘unicorn’ because they are – these are very rare companies in the sense that there are thousands of startups in tech every year, and only a handful will wind up becoming a unicorn company. They’re really rare.
Believe me, you don’t want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or policy are being hashed out.
The Internet has been a blessing and a curse. The curse we know: A lot of people appropriating your intellectual property without paying for it. But I think it’s important to realize the blessing of the Internet, which is that everybody has a voice and you can break through, even without a record company.
I’m still focused on the flagship businesses: Quicken Loans and RockBridge, the title company, and some of the board stuff in the gaming.
I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community. I want something not just to invest in. I want something to believe in.
Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.
And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it’s catchy, and you’ve got a little bit of help, I think that’s all you need. But there hasn’t been that in music.
Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being paternalistic as a company. We are very paternalistic. We have a very good health plan – we take care of people.
The Hudson’s Bay Company has always been the guardian angel of the north.
The only way you survive is you continuously transform into something else. It’s this idea of continuous transformation that makes you an innovation company.
Where minds differ and opinions swerve there is scant a friend in that company.
When Warren Buffett invests in a company, he is conferring upon that company something very unique: his credibility.
But once you buy a company, you are married. You are married to that company.
Back in the 1970s, Kodak tried to give $25m to a black civil rights organisation in Rochester, New York. The company’s shareholders rose up in arms: making this politically charged offering wasn’t the reason they had entrusted Kodak with their money. The donation was withdrawn.
If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we’d all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.
I’m excited about developing as a Diva and finding where my place is in this company.
Now, if most Americans want to go out and buy a car, they don’t say, you know, ‘I think I’ll call the chairman of the board of Ford Motor Company and see what kind of deal we can make here.’
Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Build on what you know so that you don’t repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company’s life.
Automobiles have always been part of my life, and I’m sure they always will be. What is it about them that moves me? The sound of a great engine, the unity and uniqueness of an automobile’s engineering and coachwork, the history of the company and the car, and, of course, the sheer beauty of the thing.
Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
Does it bother me that I’m attached to ‘Three’s Company’ 30 years after? Not at all. All we were trying to do was be funny. How can I complain? That’s all I wanted to do.
I see easyHotel as one of the best, most natural extensions of the ‘easy’ brand from the airline. EasyHotel is raising money to accelerate growth at a much faster rate than I could have grown it as a private company, whilst enabling me to spend more time on my diversified portfolio of other investments.
At 19, while studying at St Xavier’s College and majoring in literature and sociology, I got my first job as a copywriter. It was at a company called the Script Shop.
A holding company is a thing where you hand an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you.
Red Bull is an energy drinks company operating a team in F1, of course it doesn’t sit particularly well when you are competing against iconic brands like Ferrari and Mercedes. We are happy to be perceived as a bit of a maverick.
I graduated from Columbia University in 1996 and founded my investment company in 1997, thus starting my professional investment career.
Uber is hardly the first company to exploit the financial vulnerability of teachers – and the desperation of public schools more broadly – to score PR points. Amazon, Boeing, Bank of America, and other corporations have played the part of school benefactor, offering everything from reward programs to school supplies.
