Business Quotes

I think the hardest thing about my job is the way Whole Foods Market views itself philosophically is that we are a business dedicated to meeting all the various stakeholders of the company’s best interests. And by stakeholders we mean customers, team members, stockholders, community, and the environment. Sometimes what is in the best interest of one stakeholder may not be in the best interest of another stakeholder, and as the CEO, I have to balance the various interests of the different constituencies and stakeholders to create win, win, win scenarios, and that can sometimes be very difficult to do. Everybody wants something from the CEO.

I think you have to learn that there’s a company behind every stock, and that there’s only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.

In the model that we grew up with, governments rule physical territory in which national economies function, and strong economies support hegemonic military power. In the new model, already emerging under our noses, economic decisions don’t pay much attention to national sovereignty in a world where more than half of the one hundred or two hundred largest economic entities are not countries but companies.

I always took my role as a leader, and certainly chairman and CEO of a major company very seriously as to our employees and trying to create opportunities for them and create opportunities where they could even, as I said many times, could realize their God-given potential and maybe realize more potential than even they realize they had.

The trouble, in my opinion, with corporate America today, is that everything is thought of in quarters.

If you build that foundation, both the moral and the ethical foundation, as well as the business foundation, and the experience foundation, then the building won’t crumble.

We’ve got a portfolio of companies that range all the way from hotels to television stations and cable TV companies, oil and gas, consumer products, and industrial products. If there’s anything that I want to know more about, I have the opportunity. It’s right in our portfolio. I can spend time at the factory or with the manangement and learn as much as I want. You can’t get bored doing that.

Our industry expertise (at KKR) enables the firm not only to make better investment choices but also to win the confidence of senior management and sellers, which has enabled us to purchase many companies on an exclusive basis.

In the large buy out space, which is where we (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) focus our efforts, there are relatively few firms with the capital, experience, infrastructure and networks to compete effectively with the large complex companies that we seek to acquire.

To understand KKR, I always like to say, don’t congratulate us when we buy a company. Any fool can buy a company. Congratulate us when we sell it and when we’ve done something with it and created real value.