He ran his business like it was a plot

He ran his business like it was a plot, people used to say. Khalifa thought of him as the pirate, nothing was too small for him: smuggling, moneylending , hoarding whatever was scarce as well as the usual stuff, importing this and that.

A. Gurneh, Afterlives (2020), 9

Disturbing imponderables like 'character', 'pure luck', 'ability to mix', and 'boldness' have a way of tipping the scales

[the scholarship boy] is unhappy in a society which presets largely a picture of disorder which is huge and sprawling, not limited, ordered, and centrally heated; in which the toffee-apples are not accurately given to those who work hardest nor even to the most intelligent; but in which disturbing imponderables like 'character', 'pure luck', 'ability to mix', and 'boldness'  have a way of tipping the scales. 

R. Hoggart, The uses of literacy (1957), 270

Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac

The individualistic, artisanal quality of the French baffled the men Paul called the “Marshall Plan hustlers” from the U.S.A. When American experts began making “helpful” suggestions about how the French could “increase productivity and profits,” the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: “These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we have a nice little business here just as it is. Everybody makes a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think, as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make these changes that you suggest.”

J. Child, My life in France (2006), loc. 1,441

Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket

As for the proverb 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket', that, in Carnegie's opinion, was nonsense. His advice was to 'put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket.'

Carnegie, of course, was preaching what he had practiced, for those were the methods he had used to get to the top (although, to give a rounded picture, he should also have mentioned the benefits of insider trading, crony capitalism and screwing down wages).

D. Reynolds, America: Empire of Liberty (2009), 245