I'm a big believer that if you're happy and your employees are happy, your customers are going to be happy. If you're unhappy and your employees are unhappy, there's no way your customers are going to be happy.
When selecting businesses, I first have to be enticed by the product or the industry they are in. Then I look for passion. If a company has these two qualifiers, I go for it.
Usually, you can figure out where a person's mistakes came from if you ask them the genesis of their thought process: 'Why did you do it this way?' As opposed to telling them they did it the wrong way. Understanding their thought process will ultimately help you be able to communicate with them and navigate around them.
The weirdest place someone has asked me for advice was at a party where there were a lot of A-list celebrities and super-wealthy people. There were people in the middle of mingling asking for investment advice, and I'm like, 'Hey, I'm just here to dance. I'm here to have fun!'
The most disappointing businesses, for me, are the ones where the people flat-out lie. I had one in Queens where I gave them a couple hundred thousand dollars and they started spending it on themselves.
The likelihood of success drops dramatically when you expand, especially in the services business. And there's a lot of capital that goes into opening another office.
Put no more than three messages on a lemonade stand. You have to describe what your product is, why it's the best, and how much it is. Don't be drawing turtles and flowers and footballs all over it, distracting people. Keep it clean.
People are the core of every business. Businesses are based on relationships, and relationships are based on people. I would go to an average restaurant run by amazing people over an outstanding restaurant run by awful people.
It's okay to work for someone else; not everyone is cut out to own a business, and even so, working for someone else is a chance to learn how to both be an employee and an employer.
If I ever took a business public, I wouldn't want to take the shares off the table. I don't want people thinking I'm doing it just to make money and then going to run for the hills. I think that's a very important distinction.
I'm really not a great businessperson. I understand business, and I understand numbers, but I think what I understand more than that is people... Ultimately, I think businesses fail and people fail because they don't have their act together.
I regret the Pro Fit investment because I didn't know that I was dealing with people who were more concerned about the exposure than fixing their business.
I don't know if people consciously get in the way of their own success. In fairness, people have a lot of pride, and they fall back on what they know to be safe and correct. Anybody, including me, struggles with change.
I became an entrepreneur as a child. I liked the art of the deal whether I was mowing lawns or selling candy or promoting clubs at the age of 16. I understood early on the importance of knowing my numbers and surrounding myself with the best people.
