Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My role in the business is to use my judgment. All these years of experience have given me a clear head, and I can give a nonpartisan view with a sense of distance.
My own experience, though, as a business executive and as a governor, tells me that businesses are interested in a lot more than a low tax rate when they decide where to locate.
I wanted a CFO with public company experience; I needed an HR department, new office space, and a board which could help me grow the business. Insight, the private equity firm I chose, helped me with all that.
And at that point, I think my experience in covering the subject helped me. I think editors felt comfortable with the idea of me telling this story because I had demonstrated that I know this business pretty well.
I went to college because my father thought that I should learn engineering, because he wanted to go into the heating business with me. There, I realized I wanted to be a physicist. I had to tell him, which was a somewhat traumatic experience.
Documenting trips makes them that much richer. I stick in train tickets and business cards from restaurants. It makes the whole experience poetic, describing the sights, smells and sounds around me. It means I can relive the holiday years later.
The thing that helped me most when I started my own business was my experience as the president and PR director of student associations in college. Because of that I knew how to create and run an organization and how to really make things - even hard things - happen.
If I had done 'Go, New York, Go' for the Spurs, it might not have worked. It really taught me a lot about demographics and tastes and styles. I never went to business school, so that whole experience was my crash course in marketing, contracts, negotiations, and product launches.