Nick Candy

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

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…

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

Sometimes our idea of luxuries are our client’s ideas of necessities. You might think having a helicopter pad in the back garden, 20 housekeepers and two tennis coaches is over the top. But for them it’s like you buying a sandwich.

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

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

The five separate fingers are five independent units. Close them and the fist multiplies strength. This is organization.

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

There are good examples of companies – Coca-Cola is one – that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.

Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it.

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man’s back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

Everything I do in life is framed through the view of a businessman. That’s my instinct. If I go into a pharmacy to buy shaving cream, then I’m going to look for the best deal on shaving cream.

I have a theory that the best advertisements come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

The main job of the entrepreneur is to define the mission, find and inspire the team, and lead.

The more predictable the business, the more valuable it is.

I will build a motor car for the great multitude – constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. So low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.

Efficient industry is the sole key to prosperity.

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.

The best of merchandise will go back to the shelf unless handled by a conscientious, tactful salesman.

They encouraged me to always look for the good in people instead of assuming the worst and trying to find fault.