Nick Candy

When you are in real estate, you are going to make some mistakes.

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.

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…

We decided not to show One Hyde Park til we were 100% ready. A lot of people open the doors too early.

One client didn’t want to go out so had us build him a nightclub in his house.

We started learning ourselves, understanding ourselves, reading, researching, going around the world and looking at what was defined as the very best.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

It was impossible to operate in the aluminium business without krysha – very real physical protection.

Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.

Work mixed with management becomes not only easier but more profitable. The time is past when anyone can boast about ‘hard work’ without having a corresponding result to show for it.

I actually do think you’re seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that’s a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what’s going on with 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 think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.

We started learning ourselves, understanding ourselves, reading, researching, going around the world and looking at what was defined as the very best.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard working and pragmatic.

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

What’s the quickest way to become a millionaire? Borrow fivers off everyone you meet.

My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.

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