Success Quote by James Sinegal

Sinegal is pitching a kind of corporate heresy: the idea that discipline sometimes means refusing to play the game everyone is watching. “Next quarter” isn’t just a calendar unit here; it’s shorthand for Wall Street’s dopamine loop, the cycle of forecasts, analyst calls, and cosmetic fixes that can make a company look smarter than it is. By framing the problem as “too focused on worrying,” he implies that short-term obsession is less strategy than anxiety - a nervous tic masquerading as rigor.

The line also works because it’s not anti-metrics, it’s anti-myopia. “You have to worry” about the long term is still a demand for accountability, just on a longer fuse. It signals a worldview where the real scorecard is customer trust, pricing power, operational muscle, and culture - things that compound slowly and punish shortcuts. Coming from the Costco co-founder, the subtext is clearer: if you’re serious about longevity, you protect the model even when it dents near-term optics. Costco’s famous willingness to cap margins, pay workers better than peers, and keep prices low reads like the practical application of this philosophy: invest in loyalty and efficiency, and let the quarters take care of themselves.

There’s a quiet provocation, too. Sinegal isn’t just advising patience; he’s critiquing a system that rewards executives for being impressive on paper. The quote is a permission slip to disappoint the spreadsheet in order to earn the future.