Gerry Harvey Quotes
120 Gerry Harvey Quotes
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It doesn’t matter what you think of me, customers will cross the road to shop at Harvey Norman because they know there’s a real person looking after their interests. That’s where small business has it all over the big corporations – customers can relate to the owner.
Gerry Harvey
[On Gai Waterhouse] Gai’s a really nice girl and she’s a horse trainer. But she’s got a son that’s a bookmaker and she’s got a husband that’s a bookmaker. So she goes to bed at night and they say, ‘Ay, Mum, ay Wife.’ You know…
Gerry Harvey
[On Betfair operating in Australia from a Tasmanian base] Of course it is a concern. Tasmania is a little island in Australia that didn’t have much going for it in this area. So, you know, they are just – the Tasmanian Government – they are taking advantage just like the corporate bookies are. They think, ‘Oh, there’s a loophole, we’ll take advantage of it, we’ll rip the rest of the states in Australia off.’ That’s all they’re doing. They know they are doing it, they are getting away with it.
Gerry Harvey
The silly buggers like Tabcorp or me or whoever else is in the racing industry all putting our bit in, and they say, ‘Mate, I’m taking advantage of you, I know that, but that’s how the system is, what do you want me to do?’ Put your bloody share in, mate, put your share in like the rest of us, and stop the bullsh*t.
Gerry Harvey
[On Betfair] If they are successful, there’s no racing, it’s as simple as that, and they know that. It will all go back to picnic races. So it’s just total destruction of the racing industry as we know it. They know it; we know it.
Gerry Harvey
When I was at school I was going to be a farmer. I wasn’t going to be a businessman.
Gerry Harvey
You have these ideas of what you are going to do when you are a kid. A lot of us have not got an idea, but with me it was pretty clear what I was going to do. I got scholarships to agricultural colleges but I couldn’t take them up because we didn’t have any money. What would have happened then I have no idea.
Gerry Harvey
I did like making money and I would work during the holidays. I would be thinking about breeding chooks or growing flowers or vegetables and selling them, or being the local SP bookie. So there must have been something in my make-up that wanted me to be a trader of some description. It was there.
Gerry Harvey
I did the commerce degree and worked during the night. I really didn’t like the study. I hated it. After the first years I failed because I just wasn’t interested.
Gerry Harvey
The job was for a door-to-door salesman and I thought I couldn’t do that. Somehow or other I decided to give it a go. I saw others doing it and so I thought if they can make it so can I. It was very bloody demeaning, going around knocking on doors saying do you want to buy a vacuum cleaner…
Gerry Harvey
[On selling vacuum cleaners door to door] I could see you could make a lot of money doing it, so that motivated me. I then determined that I would just bloody learn how to sell. What was obvious was that it was hard because from every 100 people they employed they got one survivor, and if they employed 200 people they got two survivors because it was just such a tough job. They got no retainer – it was all about how much you sold.
Gerry Harvey
I came from a reasonably well off family and they went broke and pulled me out of boarding school in Bathurst. Then we went to live in a garage, and you would never take people home because you were ashamed of living in a garage. I saw my mother and, in particular, my father as people who had stuffed up. He didn’t work and he just let it all happen around him and I thought he was mad. Why did he do that?
Gerry Harvey
[On his parent going broke] I didn’t want to end up like them. They were both on an invalid pension. They were on four quid a week each and there were three kids and Mum and Dad living in a garage. My dad’s father had left him a lot of money and all his brothers and sisters were really wealthy people. As a twelve, fourteen or sixteen year old I was thinking to myself, my father has just wasted all of this. So I always had the view I didn’t want to be like that. I will never be like that. It was firmly entrenched in my head.
Gerry Harvey
When you look at a lot of successful people, a lot of them have had difficult backgrounds. When you have your own kids and you watch them over the years and they are not that successful in terms of being an entrepreneur or going out and making a lot of money, you think to yourself that maybe they all had it too easy.
Gerry Harvey
I was not a good salesman. I just kept watching guys who could sell. All I was concentrating on was how can I do as good as them? It took me about six months and all of a sudden it started to click, and then I became the best salesman they had and I broke every record they had.
Gerry Harvey
I had the view that if I worked twice as hard as them I would beat them. … It would not worry me to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Every record they had I broke.
Gerry Harvey
When you spend a lot of time with someone you pick up the good things that you want to do and you discard the bad parts.
Gerry Harvey
If you do the right thing by people it tends to come back and repay you in some way.
Gerry Harvey
Most businesses don’t grow much and then go out of business. That said, most big businesses go broke too.
Gerry Harvey
I used to look at retailers right across Australia and every one of them went out of business.
Gerry Harvey
I still have a fear about going broke. Then I tell myself that it is nearly impossible, not totally, but nearly.
Gerry Harvey
If someone retires and they have $2 million. I think how could they retire? They would be in a nursing home with everyone treating them like sh*t.
Gerry Harvey
I can’t imagine someone taking control of my life and when I turn sixty-five years old they give me the pension. I would be scared that one day they wouldn’t give me the pension. I can’t live on the pension.
Gerry Harvey
I never want to retire because working is a lot more interesting.
Gerry Harvey
I’m constantly looking for stars. That is my job. To find people who can run businesses and make a lot of money.
Gerry Harvey
I don’t know whether I believe in global warming. It is a bit like believing in God and some people believe in God, but I am an agnostic. I believe there is some superior being, but I’m not sure what.
Gerry Harvey
The place should be a bloody shrine, not a hole in the ground. The irony – and stupidity – of possibly losing a place like Tarwyn to mining is simply breathtaking.
Gerry Harvey
You’ve got to have the culture there and the change has to come from the top.
Gerry Harvey
You have to knock on 100 doors just to get into one, and then you get one in every three that you see, so you have to knock 300 doors to make one sale. If you can make two sales a day, that’s pretty good. I was selling up to thirty a week.
Gerry Harvey
I wanted to make a lot of money and I was. I was just spending it as fast as I could make it.
Gerry Harvey
My definition of success is that you’re happy, you’re content and you lead a useful life. Money is just a small part of it.
Gerry Harvey
If you do the best you can every day, things will come.
Gerry Harvey
I have a lot of real estate. With all the experience I had through Norman Ross in twenty years, I’ve built this place up to having over $600 million in real estate.
Gerry Harvey
We buy and put other stores in, but it’s better if you can buy it and rent it to yourself because you get two bites of the cherry.
Gerry Harvey
Of the people who have $10 million or more in Australia, I would live more simply than every single one. It’s important to know what you want.
Gerry Harvey
I’m a mean bugger. I’ve been meaning to buy a new pair of shoes for a couple of months now, but I think the old ones will do. I might re-sole them.
Gerry Harvey
Why would you ever want to retire?
Gerry Harvey
Most new ideas come from young people under thirty. Trouble is, the come up with a lot of rubbish too.
Gerry Harvey
I don’t want someone who has $1 million to invest; I want someone who has no money and wants to make some.
Gerry Harvey
My view in life is you wake up every day and you try to be as nice to as many people as you can. It pays dividends.
Gerry Harvey
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