A Quote by Charlie Munger

What's fascinating . . .is that you could now have a business that might have been selling for $10 billion where the business itself could probably not have borrowed even $100 million. But the owners of that business, because its public, could borrow many billions of dollars on their little pieces of paper- because they had these market valuations. But as a private business, the company itself couldn't borrow even 1/20th of what the individuals could borrow.
I assumed a business like a film studio would behave like a business and still want to protect its own interests, still do the best it could to get as many people paying for as many of their movies as possible. I realized this is not actually a business about business: it's a business of egos and dominance.
In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.
I have heard firsthand from several small business owners about their struggle to borrow and their fear of taking on additional debt.
I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by M.B.A.’s. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.
Bill Gates has 90 billion dollars ... If I had 90 billion dollars, I wouldn't have it for long because I would just dream of all the crazy stuff I could do with it. This guy, 90 billion dollars. He could buy every baseball team and make them all wear dresses and still have 88 billion dollars.
80% of all products and services that will be on the market in five years do not exist today. So therefore, always be innovative, always be creative, always think, 'What new products or services could I create, could I represent, could I joint venture?" Sometimes you can find someone else that has a fabulous product or service that you can use your existing business or resources to sell and you can double your income or sales in your business by selling somebody else's product to the same customers that are buying yours.
In the 1920s you could buy stocks on margin. You could put 10 percent down and borrow the rest against your stocks.
The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point.
Twenty-eight years in business and you understand the importance of problem solving and the importance of efficiency, because if you don't become efficient, you don't run a business well, and you are out of business. And I think some of those principles could be applied to leadership in Washington.
Public school was never in business to produce Thoreau. It is in business to produce a man like Richard Nixon and, even more, a population like the one which could elect him.
Anyone working for a big company might be skeptical that a large business, or even a strictly online business, can form the same kind of friendly, loyal relationship with customers as a local retailer. I'm saying it's already been done because I lived it.
I was working with an extraordinarily successful company that was doing a CEO succession, and the board was discussing the threats to the business. They were enormous, despite the company's strong market position. I then realized that there were no longer just turn-around periods for companies in trouble, that now variables that could drastically effect any business's profitability were not going to go away.
Every time somebody has thought of relief for the farmer it has been to make it so he could borrow more money. What he needs is some way to pay back. Not some way to borrow more.
I'm 85 years old. I've been in business since I was a teenager, practically; I was in grade school, and I even had a paper route. I always had a job so I could have money to spend on girls.
At 16, I started a web development business and had clients from the Netherlands, Caribbean, and across the country - none of whom knew my age because I could conduct all my business with a phone, scanner, and the Internet.
I've always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop, and so I've always had people buying them. I could always sell a few, even if I couldn't sell a lot, and somehow my business grew because people happened to like it. I'm in a fortunate position.
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