1. Make incremental advances Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward.2. Stay lean and flexible All companies must be “lean,” which is code for “unplanned.” You should not know what your business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out, “iterate,” and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation.3. Improve on the competition Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.4. Focus on product, not sales If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Every obnoxious act is a cry for help.
- Zig Ziglar
Courage is on display every day, and only the courageous wring the most out of life.
- Zig Ziglar
I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.
- John C. Maxwell
Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.
- P.T. Barnum
Refuse to accept partial completeness.
- Timothy Ferriss
Let’s make it easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can.
- Jack Dorsey
I think I may not be able to retire.
- Tadashi Yanai
It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.
- Peter Drucker
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
- Bill Gates
We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren’t that many things people use twice a day.
- Larry Page
Success is not what you have, but who you are.
- Bo Bennett
Stay focused instead of getting offended or off track by others.
- John C. Maxwell
Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ is my go-to song to pump myself up if I’m having a tough time or if I get really nervous right before a speech.
- Sara Blakely
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.
- Zig Ziglar
The factory has programmed that adventurous impulse out of us. The economic imperative of the last century has been to avoid risk, avoid change, and most of all, avoid exploration and the new. An efficient factory fears change because change means retooling and risk and a blip in productivity. Sure, we’ll put up with change if we have to, and welcome the predictable incremental change of productivity improvement, but please leave us alone when it comes to the word “bold.” Avoiding risk worked then but doesn’t work now. Now “what’s next?” is in fact the driving force for individuals and for organizations. Ever onward, ever faster.
- Seth Godin
And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
- Peter Drucker
If you ask me what I worry about every morning when I wake up, it’s that I don’t understand future mainstream Internet users’ habits.
- Ma Huateng
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
There is a winner in you. You were created to be successful, to accomplish your goals, to leave your mark on this generation. You have greatness in you. The key is to get it out.
- Joel Olsteen
Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory?Destruction of false theories will not decrease the sum of human happiness in future, any more than it has in the past… The days of miracles have passed. I do not believe, of course, that there was ever any day of actual miracles. I cannot understand that there were ever any miracles at all. My guide must be my reason, and at thought of miracles my reason is rebellious. Personally, I do not believe that Christ laid claim to doing miracles, or asserted that he had miraculous power…Our intelligence is the aggregate intelligence of the cells which make us up. There is no soul, distinct from mind, and what we speak of as the mind is just the aggregate intelligence of cells. It is fallacious to declare that we have souls apart from animal intelligence, apart from brains. It is the brain that keeps us going. There is nothing beyond that.Life goes on endlessly, but no more in human beings than in other animals, or, for that matter, than in vegetables. Life, collectively, must be immortal, human beings, individually, cannot be, as I see it, for they are not the individuals – they are mere aggregates of cells.There is no supernatural. We are continually learning new things. There are powers within us which have not yet been developed and they will develop. We shall learn things of ourselves, which will be full of wonders, but none of them will be beyond the natural.
- Thomas Edison
Don’t Walter Cronkite me!
- Jack Welch
Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees.
- Putting the Service-Profit Chain To Work - Ja
If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.
- Richard Branson
I just believe that the way that young people’s minds develop is fascinating. If you are doing something for a grade or salary or a reward, it doesn’t have as much meaning as creating something for yourself and your own life.
- Steve Wozniak
PR is gift-wrapping. If you package a bracelet in a Tiffany box, it will have a higher perceived value than if you presented it in a Kmart box.
- Michael Levine
Branding is what people think about you before they even know you.
- Bryan Smith
We had no capital but we grew.
- Phil Knight
Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.
- John C. Maxwell
I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.
- Oprah Winfrey
One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.
- Napoleon Hill
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you’ve got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don’t give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
- Jack Ma
The best ideas in a company are the ones that people come up with themselves because then they really own their ideas and are committed to making them work. – David Novak CEO of YUM Brands
- David Novak
Cherish each hour of this day for it can never return.
- Og Mandino
Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
- Yoda
My husband is such a healthy eater. Except when it comes to sweets. He never consumes anything except fruit until noon. And then from noon on he might have some brown rice and some tofu, and then, come eight or nine at night, he orders three mud-pie double-chocolate pieces of cake and eats all three of them.
- Sara Blakely
You hit what you aim at, and if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.
- Zig Ziglar
My own center, my Kingdom Center, which is the highest priced tower in Saudi Arabia, was vacated twice because of terrorist attacks, terrorist threats.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value
- Warren Buffett
The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.
- Jack Welch
You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.
- Dale Carnegie
The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline–a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.
- James C. Collins
My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.
- Richard Branson
Think and Thank. Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
- Dale Carnegie
People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.
- Joel Olsteen
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
America’s leaders need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.
- Howard Schultz
When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened
- Winston Churchill
Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.
- Steve Jobs
Networking is one of the most powerful tools you can use to grow your company and reputation.
- Business Insider.com
Every company needs people with different skill sets and passions. But early on, everybody should be willing to wear ten different hats. They can’t have the attitude that something isn’t their job or their responsibility. They have to have the MacGyver mentality and do whatever it takes to get the job done. – Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos)
- Tony Hsieh
When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside.
- Joel Olsteen
Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.
- Henry Ford
Most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that makes it to the top.
- Seth Godin
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
- Henry Ford
A broad trend I’m completely obsessed with is mobile commerce. Like completely. I’m completely convinced that everybody’s going to be buying from their mobile devices. Whoever can claim that space or be in that space, I’m very interested in.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The Chinese people have always been determined to forge ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.
- Seth Godin
Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.
- John C. Maxwell
You can be happy where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
- John Wooden
I want people to know their palate is a snowflake. We all like different things. Why should we all have the same taste in wines?
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
- Bill Gates
We’re better than the rest of the country but we shouldn’t believe it too much.
- Peter Thiel
Save your first bucket of gold… then use it for investments.
- Lee Shau Kee
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/raydalio477440.html#y1TGJiE5HFdDtpgG.99
- Ray Dalio
God accepts you. God approves you. And He has something better in store.
- Joel Olsteen
Be a coach, not a cheerleader
- Stacy Thorn
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
- Mark Twain
How about we agree upon what our common American values are, which is let’s make this a true land of opportunity.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes—the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions. People are quite flexible, in that they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. An employee of IBM, for example, can quite readily change the way he or she works, in order to work successfully in a small start-up company. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Similarly, values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high-margin products, cannot simultaneously accord priority to low-margin products. The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along with it.
- Walt Disney
It is exactly because we are a city that embraces freedom, that welcomes everyone and encourages their dreams, that New York remains on the front lines in the war on terror.
- Michael Bloomberg
Always remember that nothing kills great ideas more than people with small ideas and limited imaginations.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.
- James C. Collins
I’d get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It’s a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.
- Sara Blakely
Every choice you make has an end result.
- Zig Ziglar
As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.
- Peter Thiel
I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
- Elon Musk
The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown.
- Dale Carnegie
Every pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, but every optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she’s at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn’t think it would be fair; plus, they didn’t have any interest anyway.
- Howard Schultz
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- Warren Buffett
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
- Peter Drucker
innovation without discipline leads to disaster.
- James C. Collins
Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules – not just for governments but for private companies.
- Bill Gates
America, for me, is the country where, if you have something great to offer, you’ll be valued highly.
- Tadashi Yanai
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
- Jack Welch
Pick a movement. Pick a revolution. And join it.
- Jack Dorsey
Government shouldn’t tell you whom to marry.
- Michael Bloomberg
Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God’s final word on where your lips end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
In the end, the customer doesn’t know, or care, if you are small or large as an organization. She or he only focuses on the garmenthanging on the rail in the store.
- Giorgio Armani
I really like reading books
- Dale Carnegie
I started NetSuite. NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, ‘We’re going to do ERP on the Internet, software-as-a-service.’ Six months later Marc Benioff, finding out what NetSuite was doing, and kind of copied it.
- Larry Ellison
Lost time is never found again.
- Benjamin Franklin
We do lots of Stuff. The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.
- Sergey Brin
I will everyday as just a blow from my blade against a mighty oak…strike until it falls quote.
- Og Mandino
Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.
- Jerry Seinfeld
