When you introduce something new to a country, you want to do it right. Generally, that means you have to do it yourself.
Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.
If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned.
Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged... 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' is all wrong. I tell you 'put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.'
If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.
Great companies are built on great products.
If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will.
The One Ford plan drives the business to get PGA, Profitable Growth for All, meaning that every year we increase the profits and cash flow. So how do we do that? We serve all the markets around the world with a complete family of vehicles and use the One Ford Plan.
Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.
The reality is, I've started multiple companies, so actually I'm probably more of a product/creative person than I am sales. Although I can do both.
Great execution is at least 10 times more important and a 100 times harder than a good idea.
Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea.
The three most important things in retail are location, location, location. The three most important things for our consumer business are technology, technology, technology.
I have to let the general manager do what makes the most sense, or I can't hold him accountable.
Most of the things I do brand wise are both missionary and mercenary in their position, and that's really important to me; that's one of the first things I look at when I say, 'does it make sense to do a deal?'
Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
After a lifetime of swimming upstream, I am convinced that one of the real secrets to Wal-mart's phenomenal success has been that very tendency.
WWE is basically scooping up all the talent and making it really difficult. They say they want competition and like competition, but I don't believe that. They are trying to make this a monopoly.
You have to build businesses for longer term.
I keep my overhead as low as I can.
You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don't know what's goin' on, I then got the money, and gone.
In Canada, there's a surprising worship of managerialism versus ownership and wealth creation. There's a real problem in this country with believing that management is the answer to our problems.
I spend most of my career as a management consultant, a businessman working with family-owned small and medium-sized businesses. The businesses that make up the core of our economy.
