“You have to realize that the customer really is king. People who go in...” — Fred DeLuca Quote

You have to realize that the customer really is king. People who go into more established businesses probably have to be careful not to be casual about that. When you have a brand-new business, and nobody knows who you are, you know you have to work really hard for your customers.

The people who come to work deserve to be paid properly, and there's no excuse. I could understand someone making a small error, but sometimes people make systematic errors, and that's not right.

I tell everybody there are only three things that we do. We build sales at the store level, we build profits at the store level, and we build more stores. The first two things go in tandem, of course. It's pretty tough to build profits without sales.

We're very much in the people business in that there are two important groups you have to work with: customers and employees.

I honestly was supposed to always be a wrestler. I was never hired into any business as an announcer. That was just something I ended up falling into.

My grandmother was divorced, and she had 10 children herself. She never finished high school. She started selling lace on the side of the road and then grew that into a multimillion-dollar business - a retail store selling mostly furniture and appliances.

I think global warming is the gravest threat. With global warming, it's the product of a war between old energy - between the carbon cronies, who, by the way, could not stay in business in a true free market capitalism.

The thing we should all be looking for are people who want to make a difference. I'm a big believer in the Silicon Valley religion of the power of markets. But I also believe in our obligation to give back, and to give back in the way we do business, to create more value than we capture for ourselves.