My view is that everything begins with the customer. If you know the customer, then you can match the merchandise and then you can market it. The marketing is kind of the icing. The foundation is the cake. That's the merchandise. Then the question is, "Do the customers want cake, or do they want cupcakes or donuts. What is it?"
Les WexnerSociety can't wait. It's sad there are so many entrepreneurs, business successes and venture capitalists who give no thought to society.
Les WexnerI think leaders lead themselves, but leaders have ideas and maybe they're visionary ideas. Probably today, people would say Steve Jobs was a visionary because he invented this little gadget, the cell phone. But he didn't invent cell phones, and he didn't design the cell phone. He just took a couple of ideas and put them together, and no one else put those same ideas together as successfully as he did. But he had something that he was trying to do that intrigued him, and he could do it very well.
Les WexnerWhen you coach and teach leadership, most people think about them. It's like you're the leader and how do you influence them. Clearly, leaders do take their followers, their flock, their enterprise, their business - whatever - hopefully to a better place. But I think the foundation of what makes really great leaders is they lead themselves, and they're conscious about knowing themselves and coaching and leading themselves in a very profound way. The simplest of us talk to ourselves. The question is, "Do we really lead ourselves?"
Les WexnerSometimes I wish I lived more in the day, but I'm happier thinking about tomorrow or the day after. The way I see it, there's always a new or next thing.
Les WexnerI don't think I've invented anything. Henry Ford didn't invent the car, and Steve Jobs didn't invent the cell phone, and he didn't invent the digital revolution, but he could adapt, put things together in creative ways. So I think in what we do there's a lot of "let's try it and sees," whether it's a new color or a new style. But we didn't invent cosmetics or lingerie. How we market them - style, color - those are the things that we do, but it isn't pure creation. It's putting together ideas. I truly believe there's nothing really new in the world.
Les WexnerMy Picassos and Ferraris - those are kind of just toys. Those aren't the things that matter. What matters in the car collecting or the art collecting is to learn about it, and then actually not the acquisition but to put them into a collection that I think is curated. You know, so something of me in the collection that the artist actually created the work. If I was going to collect art, it had to be something of me, my eye, things that appeal to me so when I looked at it, it would really look like a collection, not just an accumulation of stuff.
Les Wexner