Anne M. Mulcahy Quotes

All entrepreneurs make decisions. Some will go right, and some will not go that right.

Good household decision-making often relies on thinking about your household like a firm.

In markets, there are times when you are looking for what makes sense. At other times, you are looking for what you can do that is sensible versus constraints and uncertainties.

An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.

Thirty to 40 years ago, most financial decisions were fairly simple.

I'm smart with my money, I invest conservatively. I don't mind paying top-dollar, but I don't want to get ripped off.

Business wise, I have always learned valuable lessons so I don't regret any decisions I have made.

The ability to select stocks, manage them over time and know when to sell them is incredibly difficult, even for professional fund managers.

One way to mitigate our risk is to invest in companies with understandable business models.

All of us would be better investors if we just made fewer decisions.

Businesses fail when they over-invest in what is at the expense of what could be.

I don't invest in the stock market. I did it a long, long time ago when I was really young, and I got involved in all the investigations and all the prosecutions, and I felt it was better if I didn't make individual investments. So I'm invested in funds, but not in individual - not in individual stocks.

Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make.

When I was very young, maybe 12 years, I began to make investments.

It's one of the most important things at the end of the day, being able to say no to an investment.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

I tell my micro students everything I teach them is important, but the truth is that some things are more useful than others, and opportunity cost is near the top.

People must be realistic when evaluating their business.

I learned that you shouldn't take your most esoteric concept and fit it into the largest space with the highest fixed costs. It puts too much pressure on the restaurant to hit grand slams every day when there just aren't enough people who want to watch that sport.

To spend more money, you have to have more money, but time is fixed and we all have the same amount to spare. How we choose to spend it can make a significant difference on the impact we have in our careers or in the world.

The second thing we did was said, OK, we've now identified the risk, but what do you want to do with the money? Because it's not enough to have risk; you've got to have a meaningful use for the money we give you.

When you're talking about capital and financial things, which I certainly pay a lot of attention to, I base those decisions on one question that I typically ask myself, which is 'Does it help us to build a better company?'

The law of diminishing returns is something I really believe in.

One of the great responsibilities that I have is to manage my assets wisely, so that they create value.

The challenge of any business owner is not only to keep the saw sharp, but also to know if you even have a need for such a tool.