Helmut Jahn Quotes

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

There's one thing very important to me in business and for the long-term: always be honest with people. For the past 60 years, I always pay my debts.

All you have in business is your reputation - so it's very important that you keep your word.

A good reputation for yourself and your company is an invaluable asset not reflected in the balance sheets.

I have great admiration for the way the Americans do business. They drive a hard bargain, but once they do it, they stick to their contracts.

The Osram brand and the Osram company is well-established in the world. Customers like them.

You only have one thing in business, and that is your reputation

We can afford to lose money - even a lot of money. But we can't afford to lose reputation - even a shred of reputation.

We all know that the Disney brand is our most valuable asset. It is the sum total of our seventy-five years in business, of our reputation, of everything that we stand for.

The public may admire a corporation for its impressive size. Who in the United States doesn't? But when a business, however gigantic, gets smug enough to believe that it is sufficient only to match competition on trivial points instead of leading competition in valid matters, that business is becoming vulnerable to public disfavor.

I made the decision when I came to Seagram that it had to be OK that my public persona would be bad. It's the downside of a family business: anything good is because I'm somebody's son; otherwise, I'm a schmuck.

Engel & Volkers is unlike any other real estate company I have known and I am proud to be part of an organization that raises the bar to such high levels.

So long as TARP money is wrapped up in GM, the company will never shake its 'Government Motors' image. That label, as competitors and GM employees are keenly aware, is code for one thing: 'GM is a failure.'

As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.

All the merchants may break, but the Bank of the United States will not break.

The public mind can, therefore, repose in reasonable security, while business will proceed without apprehension of serious and sudden changes, so disturbing to the commercial world and so distracting to the business man.

The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression... For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game... Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before.

This crash is not going to have much effect on business.

That in affairs of very considerable importance men should deal with one another with satisfaction of mind, and mutual confidence, they must receive competent assurances concerning the integrity, fidelity, and constancy each of other

A company is only as solvent as the perception of its solvency.

The initials BP used to stand for British Petroleum, but like Kentucky Fried Chicken, they changed their name to improve their image. Apparently, 'Petroleum,' like the word 'Fried,' connoted a company too oily for American tastes.

The Ford Motor Co. should stand for something more than cars and trucks. There is a Ford way of doing things that we cannot lose... We need to be continuously polishing that Ford oval.

I've got an accountant who's been with me forty years. If he makes a mistake, he dies.

Image means a lot. It is everything in the business that we are in.

Corporate identity deals with how a company is perceived. When you're working for a company, you try to determine what the optimum perception of them should be and develop a set of objectives that often take the form of reinforcing what's there that's perceived to be desirable and finding a way of dealing with misperceptions.