A Quote by Steve Ballmer
I have a hard time with businesses that don't make money at some point.
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To succeed in the tech industry, you start businesses, make money, and make smart investments. But to succeed in the tech community, you do and build awesome things, are generous with your time and efforts, and make a point of making space for strangers - without any expectation of payback.
At some point, you're growing up and might think, 'If I can make a lot of money, I'll be successful.' You make some money and realize success isn't about that.
I’d say that Berkshire Hathaway’s system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is. We’ve really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money’s been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who’ve made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses.
When the government takes more money out of the pockets of middle class Americans, entrepreneurs, and businesses, it lessens the available cash flow for people to spend on goods and services, less money to start businesses, and less money for businesses to expand - i.e. creating new jobs and hiring people.
The biggest challenge is that when people look at low price point products, they essentially invest less money in development, innovation, and new technology. And in order to innovate at a lower price point, and make sustainability attainable to the masses, you have to invest more. But that's counterintuitive for a lot of businesses.
Money is a great isolator. In fact, we don't even need to have money or make money, we only need to be perceived as having money to be isolated in the strangest ways from most of the community around us. It reaches the point where a person with money spends a great deal of time reacting to people who are reacting to the money.
If you really want to make a relationship work, at some point in time, you're going to have to make some sacrifices and do some things that are a little bit uncomfortable.
People see me as a person who can make them some money, which makes it hard to make real friends. I'm asked to do a lot of stuff for free - to wear certain clothes, turn up to events - people use you to make money. I think that's why I tend to jump into relationships.
If the point of an activity is to be relaxing, changing that point to money isn't a great idea. Then you have to show up for it differently, and that can take the fun out of it, absolutely. I'm a big fan of turning your hobbies into businesses, but not if it's the hobby you do to relax and unplug.
I think now it's the money who tells the artist what to do - it's not the artist who tells the money what to do. And things move very fast, which is hard, because sometimes you need more time to be creative. I guess no one has a loud mouth like I did. They don't dare to scream loudly what they think. But you can't take fashion too seriously. The whole thing is about giving the woman who wears your clothes some power, some fun, some service. It's great to make it as art. But first, it's a service for someone.
So I became a publisher by mistake - well, not quite by mistake, because I wanted to be an editor but I had to make sure the magazine would survive. The point is this: Most businesses fail, so if you're going to succeed, it has to be about more than making money.
We regard using [a stock's] volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return. Some great businesses have very volatile returns - for example, See's [a candy company owned by Berkshire] usually loses money in two quarters of each year - and some terrible businesses can have steady results.
Everyone wants clean air and clean water, but my hope is that we will not regulate it to the point where we drive businesses and industries out of this country, to the point where entrepreneurs cannot start or expand their businesses because they simply can't afford to do so.
I wish I could just relax sometimes and make some money, but I always feel like I have to prove some kind of big, profound point.
My illness has changed me - I've always thought "life is short and I wanna make as much of it as I can," but I really don't have time to mess around. This has really been a wake-up call in terms of what's important, and I'm working hard to figure that out. I need to get better at not doing favors for people all the time. It's hard because there's so many people who have helped me get to the point where I'm in a band that people wanna come see, or where people pay money to see me lecture.
People who decry the fact that businesses are in business "just to make money" seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.
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