Nick Candy

In New York and Los Angeles, you can throw your car keys to the valet and he parks it. Same in Hong Kong and Singapore, the service is off the scale. In London it’s sub-standard to abysmal.

London has got better as it’s become more international – you only have to look at the quality of the restaurants to see how improved it’s become.

On Beverly Hills we paid too much. One hundred per cent, we did over-pay. We didn’t do our research properly.

No one should buy on reputation alone. They should come and see it and inspect it, feel it and touch it.

It’s true we’ve got some fantastic clients. We’re very fortunate to be connected with the movers and shakers of all the global cities of the world. You can usually tell when we’ve got a client in here because their bodyguards are all over the place: two outside the front door, two in the lobby, one in the lift…

Our aim is to compete with any luxury brand. Candy & Candy will be a luxury brand, recognised in Rodeo Drive, New York, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and London. Those are the major centres in the world. It will be synonymous with the design of homes, houses, flats, yachts, aircraft and retail.

My advice to budding property developers: do it on the cheap and you’ll get a cheap price. Don’t avoid putting in skirting just because it’s hidden by a sofa.

Getting permanent value out of a job means purpose and fitting means to ends.

A touch of the jitters sharpens the mind, gets the adrenaline flowing and helps you to focus.

My motto is: Always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.

No business can succeed in any great degree without being properly organized.

As a rule, we find what we look for; we achieve what we get ready for.

Entrepreneurs are always taking feedback, especially from their customers, bankers, workers, and sales force. Without straightforward feedback, entrepreneurs cannot make sound decisions.

You should consider an employment change before you consider selling out.

I must have had a dozen jobs and I got fired from all of them.

I really don’t retain information – by the time I arrive wherever I’m going, I already forget what it is that I wanted to say.

I decided to sit quietly and do business and don’t stick your neck out and tell everybody everything belongs to me. That would only cause problems for myself. Therefore I never told these stories or declared all these things to anyone.

I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

Exchange ideas frequently.

In the Ford Motor Company we emphasize service equally with sales.

See what a 25-cent raise will do to us, said Mr. Ford. So they figured the daily and monthly cost of a 25-cent increase. Put on another quarter and see what that will cost, he said. And so they went on, 25 cents a step. Finally the wage of $2.34 stood at $4.75–more than 100 percent increase. One of the associates–a good financial head–remarked rather sarcastically that if they were going to be fools, why not be first-class fools and make it $5. All right, said Mr. Ford, let’s make it $5.

I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.