John Ilhan Quotes

120 John Ilhan Quotes

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If you find the right balance between having fun and holidays and working, you just keep working. If you stay at home or you keep playing golf it would get very boring I’d say.
John Ilhan

I just try to find new challenges in my life… That stimulate me each day.
John Ilhan

To keep changing the business with market trends. Whatever it takes. New technologies come out.
John Ilhan

Just keep chipping away at our business. Try to perfect it each year. To be the best one stop shop in telecommunications as a retailer.
John Ilhan

The market is changing all the time. So it’s fun.
John Ilhan

I would like to have 300 stores one day. But if it means that we need to downsize our biggest stores more into an entertainment outlet, we might have 50 stores in each state one day rather than 100 stores in each state. We might have 1000 stores in Australia one day. Who knows…
John Ilhan

Always be the market leader.
John Ilhan

If someone wants to buy a telecommunications product, we want to be the best place to come.
John Ilhan

[On money being able to buy a lot of things but not being able to buy health] No it can’t but it can help.
John Ilhan

I’m a healthy guy…
John Ilhan



I have to succeed no matter what it is…
John Ilhan

If you’re going to work hard, I might as well work for myself.
John Ilhan

I have to have what I want. When somebody says you can’t do that I think ‘pardon’, you watch me. Watch me just to prove a point. It might not be the right decision, but to prove a point I’ll do it.
John Ilhan

[On growing up in Broadmeadows] That’s why I’m so tough in business.
John Ilhan

[On one of his daughter’s peanut allergies] It’s like a time bomb.
John Ilhan

I just thought, ‘I’ll open a shop, I am a good salesman!’ Then I went into it and I realised what a lease was, and I realised how hard it was to get going.
John Ilhan

When I started my own business, I thought I would get credit limits from suppliers and manufacturers, but no-one was willing to help.
John Ilhan

[On starting his first store] It was the hardest time in my business life.
John Ilhan

You just can’t give up… If you’re a loser, how are people ever going to take you seriously again in the future?
John Ilhan

I can’t be the loser out of the group.
John Ilhan



It started picking up a little through selling second-hand goods.
John Ilhan

I think that honesty is the best policy – it always wins.
John Ilhan

I was going to shut the shop a number of times in the first year and a half…
John Ilhan

[On originally being called Mobileworld and then changing it to ‘Crazy Johns’] This guy comes in and says, ‘You guys are crazy, you’re giving away all these accessories on a phone. I haven’t seen that anywhere, you guys are crazy’… I was talking to this Austereo state manager about branding, and we’ve gone, ‘Crazy… Crazy John’.
John Ilhan

I had a big knack for marketing.
John Ilhan

I’ve got to give it a go.
John Ilhan

If you just create a niche in any company, a niche market and you do it better than the rest, it will work – it’s not rocket science.
John Ilhan

I’m a risk taker, I always have been.
John Ilhan

[On his store locations] They’ve all worked. I went for crappy little stores where you would pay $50 a week in rent.
John Ilhan

Business gives you a good opportunity to help people…
John Ilhan



Over the years I just took more and more risks, and in the last four years I’ve taken a lot of risks in property and it’s all worked out.
John Ilhan

Expansion is a risk… but you have to take risks.
John Ilhan

Everything is a risk.
John Ilhan

We’ll be around for a long, long time.
John Ilhan

Money can’t bring my brother back.
John Ilhan

If you put in so much effort, something is going to come your way…
John Ilhan

I don’t believe you are born with talent… You have to want it and really give it a go.
John Ilhan

You have to want something bad enough – you’ll be thinking of every angle to make it successful.
John Ilhan

Anything can happen in this world. You have to cherish these moments
John Ilhan

In the end you don’t work for the money.
John Ilhan



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