A Quote by John Caudwell

My second business would have succeeded but for competitors' jealousy. I was selling motorbike gear cheap, but the people I was undercutting complained to the manufacturer and cut off my supply. It showed me how corrupt business can be. When I sold phones, the same thing happened, but this time I was ready.
Business school professors don't take selling seriously because they don't know how to sell. It's easy to talk about business theory and production time and just-in-time development. Selling is much more difficult.
You can have an Apple in the phone business, or a RIM, and they can do very well, but when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that's gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software that's sold by somebody who doesn't make their own phones.
When you are in a business, you must join associations, (both local and international), so that you can exchange ideas, with people from the same industry, including your competitors. This is how you “benchmark”. Before you dash off to implement something, try and find out what others have done, or not done This is really how you should be using tools like the Internet.
What business strategy is all about-what distinguishes it from all other kinds of business planning-is, in a word, competitive advantage. Without competitors there would be no need for strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable the company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors.
The idea that you can create a template that will work forever doesn't happen in any business. There's some really, really bright people in this business. You can't do the same thing the same way and be successful for a long period of time.
There are just two questions to ask to attain success in business: First, "What business am I in?" Second, "How's business?"
Boxing always was corrupt and always will be corrupt. The three world champion's belts really are absurd. One single association would make this business more reputable. Just as powerful as the promoters, is the media. The cable networks control the cash flow. You can?t ignore the influence the media and the promoters have on the sport. They have a financial objective - high ratings, selling pay-per-views and selling out arenas. Because of the system, the public may not be seeing the best the sport has to offer, but what sells.
When I'm at our house in France I totally cut myself off from the rest of the world. I never have to listen to phones ringing and that's because - and Vanessa would confirm this - phones are banned from the house. We have a beautiful life and I feel that spending time in France has just calmed me down and made me stop worrying about things which aren't really important.
In industries where a lot of competitors are selling the same product - mangoes, gasoline, DVD players - price is the easiest way to distinguish yourself. The hope is that if you cut prices enough you can increase your market share, and even your profits. But this works only if your competitors won't, or can't, follow suit.
One day you're cut off, at the very start you're cut off and can't go back, the language you learn and the whole business of walking and all the rest is for the sake of the single thought, how to get back again.
If you offer people a decent service, if you give them you know Internet access, if their phones are not cut off on the trains, you know if you have plugs where they can plug in their computers, and if you have a smiling, cheerful staff; and if you can travel really quickly, then you can make a success out of the rail business.
I'm not in the news business and won't tell people how to do their job. I'd like to restore trust in the news business, though, and feel that restoring fact-checking will really help. News business realities mean that such fact-checking has to be practical, it has to be fast and cheap.
I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then showed me how Joyce or Hemingway handled the same elements of the short story. The prof would have placed me in competition with the greatest writers of all time, and that would have ended my writing career.
The transformation at the corporate level was achieved by selling off business units in old markets and by creating new business units to pursue the new opportunities. But the individual business units themselves within those transformed corporations were almost inert to change.
The United States of American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent. Now, if you're a business person, and you can locate any place in the world, then, obviously, if you go to the country where it's 11 percent tax versus 35 percent, you're going to be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment, et cetera. I want to cut that business tax. I want to cut it so that businesses will remain in the United States of America and create jobs.
I always try and watch how business people think. I like to read a lot about business people. I'm not going to say I've got a great business mind, but I enjoy learning from the world of business.
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