The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that’s all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.The only correct answer to ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ is ‘Because it’s lizard brain told it to.’ Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It’s real, and it’s living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—“Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally”—she’s not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she’s reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.
- Seth Godin
Don’t solicit feedback on your product, your idea, or your business just for validation purposes. Be really careful about that. You want to tell the people that can help move your idea forward. But if you’re just looking to your friend, coworker, husband, wife, for validation, be careful. Because out of love… a lot of people will express some concerns, and it can stop a lot of multi-million dollar ideas right in their tracks.
- Sara Blakely
When I hear something going wrong, I insist on it being put right.
- Rupert Murdoch
Being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.
- Peter Thiel
Here’s how I work: It’s 2013, and most marketers are operating like it’s 2009. I’m always trying to market like it’s 2015, but not like it’s 2020. A lot of my contemporaries who understand where the world is going, go too far out, and aren’t practical. I have always prided myself on being visionary, with a heavy practicality.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
How you get up in the morning will play a big part in how high you go up in life.
- Zig Ziglar
I know if I stopped hosting ‘Wine Library TV,’ we’d probably lose 75 percent of our audience, but the remaining 25 percent is still a big number.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I DECLARE I will live victoriously. I was created in the image of God. I have the DNA of a winner. I am wearing a crown of favor. Royal blood flows through my veins. I am the head, never the tail, above never beneath. I will live with purpose, passion, and praise, knowing that I was destined to live in victory. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
I seldom read anything that is not of a factual nature because I want to invest my time wisely in the things that will improve my life. Don’t misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with reading purely for the joy of it. Novels have their place, but biographies of famous men and women contain information that can change lives.
- Zig Ziglar
Patience is a key element of success.
- Bill Gates
My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we’ve had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.
- Bill Gates
And I keep saying, whether you like the president or not, everybody has to pull together and help the president because, as the president goes, so goes the country, as the country goes, so goes your job, your ability to feed your family, your government.
- Michael Bloomberg
When there is no job related stress, you are more aware of your mate and children, if you are a parent.
- Zig Ziglar
Through the wisdom of its government leaders and the entrepreneurship of its private sector, India has rapidly risen to become a major force in the global economy, … Cisco believes that the Internet, and related technologies, will be a key enabler for India to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation.
- John Chambers
I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.
- Joel Olsteen
A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed.
- Seth Godin
I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned so it evens up for me.
- Jay-Z
Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.
- Seth Godin
We are making these changes at a time when we are beginning to see signs that our business is stabilizing.
- John Chambers
Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.
- Zig Ziglar
To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership—not only on the movie set where I learned it, but everywhere.
- Ronald Reagan
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
All of us, in a sense, struggle continuously all the time, because we never get what we want. The important thing which I’ve really learned is how do you not give up, because you never succeed in the first attempt.
- Mukesh Ambani
The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.
- Sam Walton
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
- Steve Jobs
In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.
- Peter Drucker
Growth inside fuels growth outside.
- John C. Maxwell
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
- Viktor E. Frankl
A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
- Winston Churchill
It’s amazing how people will give when you don’t ask. Many of them send money because they believe in the message.
- Joel Olsteen
An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.
- Seth Godin
You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.
- Andrew Carnegie
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
- Winston Churchill
In a start-up company where there are no processes in place to get things done, then everything that is done must be done by individual people–resources. In this circumstance, it would be risky to draft someone with no experience to do the job–because in the absence of processes that can guide people, experienced people need to lead. But in established companies where much of the guidance to employees is provided by processes, and is less dependent upon managers with detailed, hands-on experience, then it makes sense to hire or promote someone who needs to learn from experience.
- Clayton M. Christensen
In my weekly staff meeting, I inserted an agenda item titled “What Are We Not Doing?
- Ben Horowitz
College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.
- Peter Thiel
I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.
- Larry Ellison
Who am I winning for? Am I winning for Oracle shareholders or is it simply a matter of personal vanity? I’ll admit to it. Mea culpa. An awful lot of it is personal vanity.
- Larry Ellison
None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone’s help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.
- Harvey Mackay
Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.
- Wang Jianlin
If Wanda can control more than 20 per cent of the world’s three most important film markets – the United States, Europe and China – then it will have an empire with great voice in the industry.
- Wang Jianlin
The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.
- Elon Musk
If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.
- Bill Gates
I once asked General Eisenhower’s son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. No,” he replied, Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.
- Phil Knight
Refrain from throwing the executive under the bus.
- Ben Horowitz
God, Family, Country.
- Zig Ziglar
At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization—taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere.
- Peter Thiel
Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.
- Seth Godin
I try to keep a positive intention and use whatever resources I have to benefit others. I try to create businesses that I think are not hurtful. I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet.
- Russell Simmons
Keep it simple. Tell the truth. People can smell the truth.
- Stephen Wynn
Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.
- Joel Olsteen
Great leaders, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, also focused on the long term.
- Reed Hastings
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
- Winston Churchill
Ethical decisions ensure that everyone’s best interests are protected. When in doubt, don’t.
- Harvey Mackay
Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets
- Steve Jobs
The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.
- Andrew Carnegie
We hate bureaucracy and all the nonsense that comes with it.
- Jack Welch
I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.
- Bill Gates
A story is at its best when it’s not intrusive, when it brings value to a platform’s consumers, and when it fits in as a natural step along the customer’s path to making a purchase.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.
- Joel Olsteen
One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- Bruce Lee
One piece of advice that always stuck in my mind is that people should be respected and trusted as people, not because of their position or title.
- Herb Kelleher
Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.
- Timothy Ferriss
At the end, the acquisition of wealth is ignoble in the extreme. I assume that you save and long for wealth only as a means of enabling you the better to do some good in your day and generation.
- Andrew Carnegie
It will change the way we work, live, play and learn.
- John Chambers
should go out each day expecting good things, anticipating God’s blessings and favor. God has planned all of your days for good, not evil.
- Joel Olsteen
Every great business is built on friendship.
- JC Penney
On an opponent:”He loves the working man. He loves to see him work.
- Winston Churchill
The most expensive piece of real estate is the six inches between your right and left ear. It’s what you create in that area that determines your wealth. We are only really limited by our mind.
- Dr. Dolf de Roos
Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s my view that solar energy may be the ultimate solution for energy for most of the world. I believe, based on what little I know about it, that there is a possibility of a breakthrough.
- Donald Bren
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London
You hit what you aim at, and if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.
- Zig Ziglar
People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.
- John C. Maxwell
What’s interesting about Twitter and the influencers that someone follows – like, say, Shaquille O’Neal – is that they see someone who is using the exact same tools that they have access to, and I think that inspires this hope to be able to really engage with someone like him.
- Jack Dorsey
FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.
- Ben Horowitz
Timid salesmen have skinny kids.
- Zig Ziglar
Music plays a very important role in my life. I’m a frustrated musician. I play the drums.
- Ronald Perelman
I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s where the fun is.
- Donald Trump
I’d say my mother made more of a difference to me than anyone else did. I know that’s a conventional and perhaps mundane answer, but my family was blown apart at the start of World War II.
- Herb Kelleher
Other people’s successes are good news – for them and for you. Good for you because they show you a way to go.
- Stephen Wynn
The wealthy class often looks down on the poor as those people. And deprived people view the rich as cold and heartless. The way to break down the barrier between the rich and poor is to asociate with each other and to help one another. Make a connection. If you can break down the barrier, it may pave the way to recovery for some person, a family, maybe an entire community.
- George Foreman
“Everyone will think it’s stupid!””Everyone says it’s impossible.”Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong.
- Seth Godin
It’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money and that you’ve employed a lot of people.
- Donald Trump
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.
- Thomas Edison
Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.
- John D. Rockefeller
After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.
- Jim Rohn
To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.
- Seth Godin
Play like you’re ten points behind in the final quarter. I’ve always heard this defined as operational cadence – creating a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of doing business that drives the relentless pursuit of results. Whatever I’ve learned about creating a sense of urgency started when I worked for Howard Davis at Tracy Locke. He really knew how to push people. Everything had to be done yesterday. And I was one of the people who go pushed. Howard was a master of intimidation. Everyone knew if you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to find another way to get it, and if your weren’t part of the solution then you were part of the problem. The clients loved Howard because they knew he’d kill for them (and none of us wanted to be killed). It wasn’t always comfortable, but it taught me the value of constantly putting pressure on myself and the people who work for me. In corporate America, pressure is a way of life, so rather that resist it or merely accept it, you have to learn to use it as a personal motivator.
- David Novak
Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it? The first and the last of these are too often overlooked—with dire results.
- Peter Drucker
No matter what you do, your job is to tell your story.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.
- Ray Kroc
Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.
- Jeff Bezos
Since belief determines behavior, doesn’t it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?
- Zig Ziglar
As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everybody has a product to sell.
- Peter Thiel
