Master Quotes

Simon Cowell

It's been a while since I've done a "Master Quotes" post. In fact, I've only done one on this blog, so I thought it was long overdue and here we are. The quotes in this post are also from Oprah Presents Master Class. This time we have quotes from the Simon Cowell. I have a feeling you all know Simon Cowell :) But in case you do not, Simon Cowell was one of the original creators of American Idol, a show that has launched the careers of some of the biggest names in music like Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson and helped make Ryan Seacrest a household name in the United States. Here are some of his quotes:

Trust your instincts

"I'm not a master of anything. I think what I am good at is making shows or records which a lot of people would like for the same reasons I like them. Mainly I trust my instincts. Because I have a really broad taste, I generally believe that if I like something, other people are gonna like it as well. I didn't sit there thinking I work for a record label or run a T.V. company, I just go 'I like this person' or in many, many cases, 'I don't like this person.' I am normally right though."

Early years 

"All my life I had to teach myself. I never has a proper education, I was not born with any skill, I didn't learn anything from school, I hated stuff like physics, chemistry, wood work, metal work...I was bored, constantly naughty and doing things I shouldn't be doing and I never had a clue as to what I was going to do other than I promised myself that whatever I did do, I was going to have fun, and that was the most important thing throughout my life growing up is that I just didn't want to be bored and I didn't want to be scared, and I wanted to be in charge of my own life."

Learning Patience

"When I was younger, the guy who owned the house next to us was Gerry Blatner and he ran the British arm of MGM studios and used to make a lot of movies then in the U.K. so a lot of the big American stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Betty Davis, Robert Mitchum, they'd all come in for these big, big parties and we would be standing on boxes overlooking the party and I remember seeing this party one night and the interesting thing was I didn't want to be the celebrity at the party, I wanted to be the person having the party. I never had any major desire to be well known but I wanted to be the person who worked with the well known people and could host the party and I made a pact with myself that however long it'd take to get myself in that position, I was gonna be patient."

Lessons from his Father

"My dad was a brilliant mentor to me because he didn't over complicate it. He just made everything so simple, which was 'I know you hate school, but your mother wants to to do well so do your best.'" But he taught me the basics which are: you gotta work hard, you gotta be patient, and he also taught me that you gotta look after yourself."

Starting from the mail room

"When I started, you were building a career for yourself and the only way you were ever going to build a career was meeting people along the way and they teach you something and working it out for yourself. You gotta be patient and enjoy, as I said before, the process of getting there because I promise you, it's a whole lot more fun than getting there. And then when I was 32, I ran out of patience."




Referring to his gut

"I can't force myself to laugh, I can't force myself to cry, and I can't force myself to like something. On my shows I base everything on 'I like it, I don't like it, I'm bored, I'm not.' But I am not going to say 'I think other people would like it, I think this would like it,' I just go 'I like it' and that's good enough for me. I don't guess. I'm confident about what I do. If you ask me if I'm going to care the world debt, I wouldn't have a clue but I wouldn't pretend to have an opinion, I would just tell you I don't know...you gotta be absolutely in the moment. It's your senses in a way that tell you and you gotta think with your heart and not your head in situations like that. That's why most people in the music business screw it up because they do not think with any emotion. An emotion is absolutely key to this and I always say 'if I like it, the chances are other people will like it' and that's why I can't bear research. Research just kills creativity because people lie in research or they say things that they think the person wants to hear or they over think it. If they researched Idol before it went on air here, it would not have gone on air because people would have felt guilty about saying they like it."

On his confidence 

"I never used to have that confidence, you know I was very shy when I was younger, and I still am to a certain point, so I always struggled with that or I just didn't put myself in those certain types of situations. I only put myself now into a meeting or situation where I am confident that I know what I am talking about."

Turning a negative situation into a positive one

"I was arrogant enough to believe it [the show, American Idol] would be easy sell in America as it did in England so the three Simons, me, Simon Phillips and Simon Jones all hopped on a plane to L.A. and I thought the same thing would happen - I'd explain the concept, and they'd buy it - and it didn't happen. We had some of the worst meetings I have ever had in my life. One was so bad that about a minute into the pitch, the man said no... and we were basically thrown out of the network and we had basically forgotten to order a car for ourselves, so apart from being thrown out, we're sitting on the steps of the studios and I turned to the other Simon and said 'the good news is, it would never get worse than this.' It was just horrific. I did go to England with my tail between my legs  but every single negative can lead to a positive. Any negative situation. Don't get too down by it. Rupert Murdoch's daughter had seen the show, which had been a hit in the U.K., she called her dad, her dad then phoned FOX and said "Any you guys heard from Idol?' and he said 'buy it. Just don't change it, buy it.' If one of these idiots had bought the show the first time around, um, we would have probably been in big trouble because we would have accepted pretty much any deal we had at the time, and if we would have had to work with some of the people I met, I think we would have been in a pretty sticky place right now."

Learn from Others

"I started working in the mail room but even when I was in the mail room, I'd open lessons, I'd read things, I would sneak into people's meetings, I would harass people on a daily basis to tell me what was going on, explain things to me, teach me things...I always put myself in front of other people, to say 'I'm here, and I'm interested, and I wanna learn, and I want you to promote me.' I had no problem doing that. I spent most of my time watching, but most importantly listening to what was going on, where my mind feels like it's being a sponge, where I can really absorb things that are happening around me. I met some incredibly smart people, and I just watched them. One particular person, a music producer...I instinctively knew that he was going to do well, so I followed him around like a dog for two years. I had a feeling that he was going to change my life and he did."

A little bit of Simon Cowell history. Prior to American Idol, Simon Cowell was a successful A&R executive for a music company and did well . However, after a successful career in the music industry as an A&R executive, Simon Cowell became bankrupt at age 30.

Beware of your Ego

This can happen to you when you are successful - you start to believe your own hype, you start living in this bubble, which is your world, and you start to believe that that's the only world that exists.That's where a lot of successful people screw it up for themselves within the first five, ten years because they stop listening. I would say the biggest failures I've had were at a time when I believed my own hype."

"A lot of people, what they do in the music business is say it's the radio's people's fault, it's the marketing people's fault, it's the video...yeah, right. It wasn't good enough. End of story, you made the decisions, take it on the chin and learn from it. It's the only thing you can do and there's a certain positive you can take from that because you're not kidding yourself because if you start kidding yourself, you're dead."

Greatness take time

With the internet, everything is about speed...quicker, quicker, quicker. I think the generation of people now in their teens have a slightly different outlook. They see fame now as a very, very quick way of getting what they want and they don't wanna wait around for 30 years. They just want that lifestyle now. They want the house, the chicks, the cars...it is an epidemic, there's no question about that. Obviously, we've helped fuel it.

"It should take a while. It takes a while to be good."


Knowing when to leave

"The minute I think we can't do better, I'm out. Somebody once said to me, 'Simon, always know when to leave the fair,' and I think that's good advice. Something inside you tell you it's time to go.


Simon left Idol. He's now on X-factor doing his thing. I have to say, I really enjoyed watching him on Oprah's Master Class and the episode with him is one of my favorites as well. Hope you enjoyed reading this and thank you for reading cause I know this is super long!

Hope you are having a great week.