Nothing works better than just improving your product.
Since your company is the product that makes all of your other products, it should be the best product of all. When you begin to think of your company this way, you evaluate it differently. You ask different questions about it. You look at improving it constantly, rather than just accepting what it's become.
What I've learned over the years is it's so much better to surround yourself with real talent and hire real chefs. I learned more from the chefs I have working for me than you could ever imagine. There's nothing wrong with being able to create opportunities for people, and you don't have to do everything, take credit for everything, and have all the weight be on your shoulders.
I've learned over the years that 'rational discussion' accomplishes almost nothing in politics, particularly with people better educated than average.
Sometimes, the advertising is better than the product. Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. Everyone tries the thing and never buys it again.
As the owner, you have to look into the mind of the customer and see and feel how their relationship to your product works - not just that the product works.
I can recommend nothing better... than that you endeavor to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of the works of others.
I learned the value of focus. I learned it is better to do one product well than two products in a mediocre way.
The only damn thing I ever learned in all my years in art school was a piece is never done, it is just finished. You have to trust your inner voice, your instincts, when they tell you pencils down. And you roll up your sleeves and you start over again.
Over the years, I've learned that if you can just hang in there and, regardless of what's presented to you, take it as a challenge and try to bring in something fresh, then it works.
Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.
You're nothing but a product. And what's this product called? Emptiness, dude, that's what it's called. And for the rest of your life, they sell you over and over, right to the end when they package you one last time and plant you in the ground.
I think my philosophy has evolved over the years. I started teaching almost 15 years ago and I've learned that how one student learns is obviously much different than how another student learns and so I've had to figure out how to get through to people honestly without hurting their feelings - which is no easy task just in the scope of being a human being, much less in the classroom, but which is something that is more important to me now than it was when I was 30 - and to show them a path to improving.
If you keep hearing the same thing over and over again from your fan base, you should pay attention to that. But that's just another bunch of loud voices in your ear. I would imagine it makes it very hard to stay in touch with your own gut. You try to think of it as just another episode, but that never works. It just isn't.
There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul.
I've learned that whether it's with your skin or your hair, less is more. People go and do so much to it, I don't think that's good. Too much product is not good, so I think that's probably the best thing. And not the most expensive thing is the best thing. That's for sure. I've learned that the hard way.