A Quote by Fred DeLuca

You have to realize that the customer really is king. People who go into more established businesses probably have to be careful not to be casual about that. When you have a brand-new business, and nobody knows who you are, you know you have to work really hard for your customers.
Bed and Breakfasts are really, really hard to run. You're the first one up and the last one to go to bed. You know, it really tested our strength. We became stronger from it - the whole experience from, you know, learning about it, sort of investing wise - money-wise, business-wise and then just pushing yourself. You know, it takes a lot of work to run a Bed and Breakfast. And then with a brand new baby, it triples.
If you go into business school and suggest firing a customer, they'll kick you out of the building. But it's so true in my experience. It allows you to identify the customers you really want to work with.
New media is ... an amazing form of direct marketing in that you really get a sense of who your customer is, and you also get to know those people who may not be your customers yet but are aspirational and are hoping to be.
The outside-in discipline requires that you have an explicit customer-based reason for everything you do in the marketplace. Managers need to create what I call "customer pictures," verbal descriptions of customers that highlight the key customer characteristics and make those customers come alive. Although managers never know as much about customers as they want and need to know, the outside-in discipline requires that they construct customer pictures anyway, basing the pictures on whatever hard data they have plus hypotheses and intuition.
When thinking about how to deploy kind of professional and social networking into your business, it's really not a question of if, it's a question of when. And the reason is, just think about the fact that those businesses that adopt new technologies to operate efficiently and use them to get a competitive edge are the businesses that in fact, you know, it becomes one more competitive advantage. Whether it's a fax machine or a mobile phone or a new way of doing financing or any of these things, you know, these are key things to do.
People in New York just go about their business. Maybe living there for a long time, it would get lonely, but there's something really nice about being able to go about your business and not feel like anybody is really paying attention to you or what you're doing.
That's the sad thing about it, is that you don't know. And you certainly don't know when you quickly meet somebody. But even as you know somebody longer, it's really hard to know. Obviously you go on your gut feeling but that can be wrong too. ANd it's terrible to have to be wary about people, because it is not my nature, but I've been burned a few times and you just have to careful.
I've carried a gun for 10 years. I've carried them in the locker room, and nobody really knows about it. I know how to handle myself, and I stow it away where nobody really knows about it.
As you probably know, half of the people who work in this country work for small businesses. And it's more than that, because two out of every three net new jobs come from small business. So we mean it when we talk about small business being the engine for the economy.
Quality that significantly exceeds the customer's expectations doesn't seem to pay off. This 'delight the customer' stuff isn't rewarding. One has to be careful about delighting customers too often, because it sort of reshapes customer expectations.
Who are businesses really responsible to? Their customers? Shareholders? Employees? We would argue that it’s none of the above. Fundamentally, businesses are responsible to their resource base. Without a healthy environment there are no shareholders, no employees, no customers and no business.
What people in business think they know about the customer and market is likely to be more wrong than right...the customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.
A lot of my customers wouldnt go to a McDonalds but we are all after the same thing in this business: pleasing the customer. I dont know why people get so aerated about it. I like McDonalds.
Some people work hard in this business and become really popular, really big stars but they never receive an award from within the business. Somehow, when your colleagues and friends believe in you to the point of handing you an award it means so much more.
I think a lot of people would assume that my job is more about supermodels and naked ladies and all that, and no, it's just really about fashion, merchandise and customers. So the obviously sexy parts - you get to go to the fashion show and all that stuff. It's really just business. That's my story. I'm sticking to it.
I want to work with performers who really are ready to lose their minds, you know? People who are established and have talent, but who are ready to break new ground and really be cracked open in a new way.
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