A little-known company with a realistic framework that appeals to entrepreneurial employees is going to be more attractive than a famous company that treats its people like disposable assets.

During normal times or boom times, there are some parts of the business that are going to so well, that that can cover for weakness and other parts of the business. What happens during recessions, is you have less windfalls just helping you cover mistakes. You have to be more careful about not making mistakes.

The metaphor that I frequently use for entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane plane on the way down.

There are two reasons [ business people are not publicly anti-Donald Trump ], one is well-intentioned, which is the classic kind of American notion. We want to be inclusive, we want to have our shareholders, our employees, our customers, whether they are Democrat, Republican, Green or Libertarian, to feel comfortable with how we're doing business. And so that tends to be apolitical. People say, "No, no, I just simply shouldn't get involved in politics."

I think the right way to do this is just to step up and do it, so I actually think we'll see more of that over the next coming weeks, because I think they'll say, "We'd like to be good for business and quiet on politics, but this is too urgent, it is too much of a key crisis in who we are going to become as Americans. We can risk too much, and so we have to step forward." And I think you will see more and more people stepping forward, like Howard Schultz, Steve Case and other folks, in order to try to make a difference in this [Donald Trump] election.

One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.

Well, well-run companies always have a focus on growth and the two lines, which includes profit. The key thing during, I think, tough times, is to make sure that you've covered the basis for when something, you know, essentially things taking longer, bad luck, adversity, other kinds of circumstances may occur. Make sure that you can monitor to win, it's potentially, you know, something is going to go wrong, monitor early enough, and then take appropriate action to essentially counteract that or shift your strategy or plan, even if in fact something is not working out as well as it is.