I was recruited by Pepsi and put out in Pittsburgh, and I worked in the bottling lines, and then I was sent on to Phoenix, Arizona, where I also drove trucks and I put up signs, Pepsi signage, and I was then sent on to Las Vegas for a month of training, and then I finally ended up in Milwaukee. So I got a really hands - on introduction to the soft-drink industry. I was so appreciative of the fact that I was able to not only learn a business through what I learned at business school, but I was able to learn it with hands-on learning. I'm a huge believer in hands-on learning.

Apple no longer builds any products. When I was there, people used to call Apple "a vertically integrated advertising agency," which was not a compliment.

The Japanese always started with the market share of components first. So one would dominate, let's say, sensors, and someone else would dominate memory, and someone else hard drives and things of that sort.

Those lessons that I got along the way are the ones that have shaped my life for the last 20 years.

I feel most badly, though, [because] after 10 years, I was at the company, I wanted to go back to New York where I was from. Why I didn’t go to Steve Jobs and say, ‘Steve, let’s figure out how you can come back and lead your company.’ I didn’t do that, it was a terrible mistake on my part. I can’t figure out why I didn’t have the wisdom to do that. But I didn’t. And as life has it, shortly after that, I was fired.

As a brand marketer, I'm a big believer in 'branding the customer experience,' not just selling the service.

In many cases, jobs that used to be done by people are going to be able to be done through automation. I don't have an answer to that. That's one of the more perplexing problems of society.