Pauline Brown

People, in general, hunger for new angles in business.

In order to bring out the full flavor of food, it’s best to serve it at room temperature.

Even the way food is sliced affects how it tastes; a thick slab of roast beef is gamey and chewy, while a paper-thin slice, cut against the grain of the meat, is more tender.

In my experience, the most stylish people are never those with the most money. If anything, extreme wealth dilutes the ability to edit down choices, make thoughtful trade-offs, and remain disciplined—three fundamental elements of good style.

Walmart is a success for many reasons, but an important one is that its founder, Sam Walton, understood his customers because he was one himself.

The best personal style does not follow trends and is not concerned with being “fashionable.”

The infamous (and now rehabilitated) scammer Frank Abagnale, Jr. (who was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can), says, “A nice set of clothes is one of three things that allowed me to convince people I was a doctor and a lawyer when I was still just a teenager.

“For Madeleine Albright, it was a pin. Michelle Obama made sleeveless acceptable. That and belts were nice signatures of hers.” A signature is an accessible pathway to your personal style—even if you have to wear a suit every day to work because your profession demands it, you can have a signature.

It can also be detrimental to a business’s bottom line, as customers can and often do give up trying to choose; if they do manage to decide, they are often unhappy with their choice (and the brand).

Iyengar notes that when Procter & Gamble reduced its Head & Shoulders brand offerings from twenty-six to fifteen, sales rose by 10 percent. When the Golden Cat Corporation eliminated ten of its worst-performing cat litters, profits increased by 97 percent, due to both a lowering of production cost and an increase in profits