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At Starbucks 0 as in any business, in any life - there are so many hectic moments during the day when we are simply trying to do the job, trying to put out the fires, trying to solve any number of small problems, that we often lose sight of what it is we're really here to do.
There's a wonderful saying that's dead wrong. 'Why did you climb the mountain?' 'I climbed the mountain because it was there.' That's utter nonsense...You climbed the mountain because you were there, and you were curious if you could do it. You wondered what it would be like.
If you're lucky enough to have been rewarded in life to the degree that I have, there comes a point at which you have to decide whether to become a slave to your net worth by devoting the rest of your life to increasing it or to let what you've accumulated begin to serve you.
We're responsible for the fortunes of the company but this is a bone-dry situation in terms of access to credit. Nobody can operate on that basis unless you have large cash balances, which we don't. My concern is that the government doesn't appear to care about manufacturing.
When we buy somebody, we cut the head off. We keep the operators who are looking - I hate to use this term - they're looking for a leader. We lead very well. And we immediately spend money on them and make them better. Everybody wants to be led. Except for me. I want to lead.
Our philosophy has been to be fiscally conservative, so we can be operationally aggressive. We're not using borrowed money to grow. So we'll put up a store just to get there before the competition. If it doesn't work, we'll close it and lose a little equity. It won't kill us.
I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit.
Kimbo Slice the man, you watch the YouTube videos of this guy in backyards, and they start fighting and you think this guy's a thug. You think he's a bad guy, you have this perception of him and then you meet him, it isn't true. It's the exact opposite. He's a really good guy.
A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning.
Being rich isn't about money. Being rich is a state of mind. Some of us, no matter how much money we have, will never be free enough to take time to stop and eat the heart of the watermelon. And some of us will be rich without ever being more than a paycheck ahead of the game.
What's interesting about Twitter and the influencers that someone follows - like, say, Shaquille O'Neal - is that they see someone who is using the exact same tools that they have access to, and I think that inspires this hope to be able to really engage with someone like him.
Wrong location? Move it. Wrong people? Replace 'em. Wrong industry? I don't believe it. I've got a company in the machine tools industry, and we're doing great. I'd happily go into the coal business. It's how you look at something and how it's managed that make the difference.
I think about the business all the time. Well I shouldn't say all the time. I don't think about it when I am wakeboarding. But even when I am on vacation, or on my boat; I am on email everyday. I am always prowling around the internet looking at what our competitors are doing.
When you're the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you're basically saying, "I'm right, and everyone else is wrong." That's a very unpleasant position to be in. It's at once exhilarating and at the same time an invitation to be attacked.
The weirdest place someone has asked me for advice was at a party where there were a lot of A-list celebrities and super-wealthy people. There were people in the middle of mingling asking for investment advice, and I'm like, 'Hey, I'm just here to dance. I'm here to have fun!'
I retired at twenty-nine, bought a life-time pass on American Airlines and my only goal in life was to party like a mad man and get drunk with as many people as possible. And I was happy right there. But when we started the streaming business, I knew it could be something big.
When you post something, when you text something, you lose ownership of it when you hit enter or send. Who you send it to, where you post it, they take ownership of that information whether you like it or not. Unfortunately, you don't lose responsibility for that text or post.
When you see in places like Africa and parts of Asia abject poverty, hungry children and malnutrition around you, and you look at yourself as being people who have well being and comforts, I think it takes a very insensitive, tough person not to feel they need to do something.
It is a law of nature that you must do difficult things to gain strength and power. As with working out, after a while you make the connection between doing difficult things and the benefits you get from doing them, and you come to look forward to doing these difficult things.
If you can stare hard at your problems, they almost always shrink or disappear, because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don't face them head on. The more difficult the problem, the more important it is that you stare at it and deal with it.
Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
I come back to the same thing: We've got the greatest pipeline in the company's history in the next 12 months, and we've had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we're predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year '06.
I pray Cardiff get back to the Premier League. If I sell Cardiff, I will buy another club in the U.K. I have a club in Sarajevo. The fans are fantastic. The people who run the club are incredible. They really motivate me. I'm looking at another club in Europe and then the MLS.
The poorest Americans use three time the energy as the percentage of their income as the average American does. This is going to disproportionately hurt the poor. It may make the whole electric grid unstable, depending on how it is enforced. And it does nothing for the climate.
Some of the very best private equity people, in my experience, are people who start out as stock pickers - people who really understood value, how to take a company's financials apart and couple that with good judgment about businesses, macro trends, and where things are going.
You need to look no further than Apple's iPhone to see how fast brilliantly written software presented on a beautifully designed device with a spectacular user interface will throw all the accepted notions about pricing, billing platforms and brand loyalty right out the window.
Sometimes you're pushing and what you want to do is not coming with ease; doors are not opening. A lot of times we're pushing against resistance. If one looks closely, there is often a message in that resistance: "Wait a minute, maybe it's not what you're supposed to be doing."
The innovations are changing now, drastically. I remember coming to Toronto from Vancouver, and on any given night in the '70s, '80s and early '90s, everything was closed at ten o'clock. There was no drinking on Sundays. Unless you stayed at a hotel, then you could get a drink.
Nothing so enchants attorneys general, their eyes generally fixed on higher public office, as slinging accusations against successful financial executives. Preening press conferences and fawning media coverage are virtually guaranteed, whether or not the charges have substance.
It's things like Wikipedia that help us to advance as a society and help us to accelerate our evolution. If you're a researcher and you need some answer to something, and in today's world you can find it this quickly, it allows you to develop whatever you are doing much faster.
I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don't know what I'll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around ... anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.
If a blending of individualism and of cooperative participation is a prerequisite to a democratic solution of the problems of a society of free men, it must also be noted that an atmosphere of freedom is required if these problems are to be met constructively and as they arise.
What I'm trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there's inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.
The people of the United States don't recognize it, but the oil industry has given the greatest gift to the people of the nation, and that gift is the low cost of energy. Bottom line is this enables the country to be very competitive manufacturing-wise and in the world economy.
The entire Nintendo group will carry on the spirit of Mr. Yamauchi by honoring, in our approach to entertainment, the sense of value he has taught us - that there is merit in doing what is different - and at the same time, by changing Nintendo in accordance with changing times.
And I'm convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you can work with the unions because the unions want to survive. If they are confronted simply with the question: "Do you want this company to survive or do you want it to be broken up?" they will listen. It's their livelihood.
If I sat back and decided to sell the product of my father and my grandfather's work, like a leech, you know I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror... I want to be able to look at my father in 10 years' time and say, 'I'm proud of you, and you should be proud of me.'
My mom was terrific. I described my mom once. If fear was a color, she was color blind. Nothing frightened her. If I told her that I was going to take over General Motors, she'd say, "You can do it." Just the most preposterous things, ambitious things, she said, "You can do it."
Putin regards me as the most dangerous person, and when they were releasing me from jail, the only condition was that I leave the country. And when they did push me out of the country, to make sure that I wouldn't come back, they opened up a criminal case against me - a new one.
When there is pain, the animal instinct is 'fight or flight' (i.e., to either strike back or run away) - reflect instead. When you can calm yourself down, thinking about the dilemma that is causing you pain will bring you to a higher level and enlighten you, leading to progress.
When computers (people) are networked, their power multiplies geometrically. Not only can people share all that information inside their machines, but they can reach out and instantly tap the power of other machines (people), essentially making the entire network their computer.
John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there's something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.
I won't speak for the entertainment industry. I speak for Disney. I've seen people in the industry come to work every morning paranoid about what the other person or other company is doing. That means you're spending time and focus on somebody else's business instead of your own.
Steve McClellan has drawn on an insider's lifetime view of how Wall Street really works to produce a practical and entertaining book of advice for investors. Whether you are a new or experienced investor you'll get something valuable out of it, including more than a few chuckles.
Between myself, my brother, my father, and my wife, we have four of the 1,500 concealed carry permits for New York City, which is one of the most difficult carry licenses to get anywhere in the world and certainly in the United States. It is something we believe in fundamentally.
If you want to find what God put you here to do, ask yourself three questions. First question: What comes easy to you but harder to other people? The second question is: What would you do for years and never have to get paid for it? Third, ask yourself: How can you be of service?
The name Derek Jeter is made for stardom. He's got an infectious smile, and he's so handsome and well-behaved. He's just a fine young man who does everything right. He's like Jack Armstrong and Frank Merriwell, guys I grew up rooting for. Some guys come along who just measure up.
As a kid, I saw that Dad lost a lot of money in casinos, and I didn't understand that. I thought this must be a great business. At the same time, I saw when I was with him - and I was with him a lot of the time - that this was a really cool business, and it was fun and glamorous.
The truths of the gospel do not change. If you will follow the Christ, follow his prophet, and follow his Spirit, you will always choose the right. As a result of your wise choices, your testimony will grow stronger, and great blessings of joy, happiness, and peace will be yours.