From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
If you're simply trained in accounting or marketing, you'll never have what I call a kind of epiphany. A fantastic business stumbles onto something psychological which just gives it a fantastic edge.
Your competitors are looking for the product, idea or feature that gives such a competitive advantage that they can take all your customers away from you. You need to work like someone's trying to take it all away from you, because they are.
I always tried to run my business in a humane way. I had this idea of business being tough and harsh, and thought I could build a business that was humane and kind. Performance metrics and KPIs are relatively straightforward to follow, but doing the 'right thing' is not nearly so clear cut.
Without truthfulness I would never have been able to grow anything of any significance, I would have been 'found out.' Having truthfulness and ethics within a business creates trust among employees at all levels and is critical.
One of the great ironies of a company like Meta, where I worked, is that well over 90% of its users are outside the US, yet well over 90% of the bandwidth among decision-makers is focused on what's happening in America. In the end, that just doesn't make sense.
The biggest mistake is thinking that some people at the top make strategy, while everybody else executes it. It feels intractable at this point, it's so ingrained in our way of thinking. You don't want people who sit there faithfully executing strategy, you want people who lead their part of the organisation and who engage in good communication.
I'm extremely proud of the fact that we have driven social and cultural change. I have always wanted women to be empowered, and we've given them that opportunity. At the beginning, we said our events were going to be for women only, it enabled women to talk to each other about their sex lives in private, in a safe and unintimidating environment, and that was part of women's sexual empowerment as a movement.
You have to re-earn your customer's business every single day – it's not just about listening to them, but anticipating what they don't realise they need, and staying ahead of them.
We're choosing brands like we choose friends. And that is a huge responsibility because they've got to be a real friend, not a false friend.
To the striver, that addiction is success. It activates the same neurobiology and dopamine pathways as alcohol or drugs. When the business collapses, their life ends not just in terms of work, but their whole sense of self is removed. All addicts are the same.
Too often, businesses today are driven solely by academic numbers. But customers aren't numbers. They're human beings who care about storytelling and integrity. You can tell when a product is made by people who care.
The first thing I'd say is a big mistake is not caring about what the other side wants. Oftentimes people are thinking I have to say no to the other side. My goal is to say yes to them. It's to figure out what it is they want and give it to them.