There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.
- Bill Gates
The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.
- Seth Godin
I swore I would never get involved in another startup ever again in my entire life.
- Larry Ellison
The average occupancy rate of the core investment properties of the group was maintained at a high level of 96%.
- Lee Shau Kee
There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice
- Simon Sinek
The person who dumps garbage into your mind will do you considerably more harm than the person who dumps garbage on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your possibilities and lowers your expectations.
- Zig Ziglar
Les tengo buenas noticias: Usted no se tiene que mantener a la par de nadie. Usted puede correr su propia carrera y ser un individuo. Dios le ha dado la gracia para hacer lo que Él le ha llamado a hacer y no le ha dado la gracia para hacer lo que todos los demás están haciendo. Usted no tiene que ser la mejor mamá del mundo, sólo sea la mejor mamá que usted puede ser. Posiblemente, yo nunca seré el mejor pastor del mundo. Quizá no seré el mejor esposo ni el mejor padre, pero he decidido ser lo mejor que yo puedo ser y no me sentiré mal conmigo. Si otra persona puede hacer lo que hago mejor que yo, que bueno, yo no estoy en una competencia ni me estoy comparando con nadie. A mi manera de pensar, ¡yo soy el mejor! Y sé que estoy haciendo lo mejor que puedo. Eso es lo que nos enseña la Escritura. Dice: Así que, cada uno someta a prueba su propia obra…1.
- Joel Olsteen
If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.
- Elon Musk
A smart manager will establish a culture of gratitude. Expand the appreciative attitude to suppliers, vendors, delivery people, and of course, customers.
- Harvey Mackay
Leaders never outgrow the need to change.
- John C. Maxwell
The most important thing about education is appetite.
- Winston Churchill
Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
- Steve Martin
I believe that God has put gifts and talents and ability on the inside of every one of us. When you develop that and you believe in yourself and you believe that you’re a person of influence and a person of purpose, I believe you can rise up out of any situation.
- Joel Osteen
most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings.
- Timothy Ferriss
You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don’t let that stop you from blooming. Realize that your environment does not prevent you from being happy. Some people spend all their time trying to pull up all the weeds. Meanwhile, they miss much of their lives. Don’t worry about things you can’t change. You can’t change the traffic in the morning. You can’t fix everybody at work. You can’t make all your family members serve God. But you shouldn’t let that keep you from being happy. Bloom anyway and focus on the things that you can change. You can change your own attitude. You can choose to be happy right where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument— and that is to avoid it. Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.
- Dale Carnegie
I aim to be pretty – I gave up dressing to be sexy in the eighties.
- Sara Blakely
Businesses often forget the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can’t deliever good service from unhappy employees.
- Tony Hsieh
I loved couriers. You had this transfer of physical information happening throughout the city and the world. Someone picking up the package, putting it in a bag, going somewhere, taking it out of the bag, giving it to someone else. I thought that was so cool. I wanted to map it, to see that flow on a big screen.
- Jack Dorsey
Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The Green Revolution focused on the big three – maize, rice and wheat – and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have.
- Bill Gates
They said it was only a ground shark, but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.
- Winston Churchill
End-user buyers re-emerged in the market at a time when local commercial banks were keen to offer preferential terms for home mortgage loan business.
- Lee Shau Kee
You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.
- Joel Olsteen
Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best….”
- Thomas Edison
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
- Seth Godin
The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
- Jerry Seinfeld
I have found from costly experience that it is much easier to analyze the facts after writing them down. In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problem clearly goes a long way toward helping us reach a sensible decision. As Charles Kettering puts it: A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
- Dale Carnegie
When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
- Napoleon Hill
If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, let’s assume one week, someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.
- Bill Gates
Uber is “way more” evil than Google, the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley.
- Peter Thiel
If you have the character to hang in there when its tough, you will develop or acquire every other characteristic necessary to WIN in the game of life.
- Zig Ziglar
Try to maximize the number of people that can benefit from an individual contribution.
- Lee Shau Kee
I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.
- Steve Martin
If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
- John D. Rockefeller
It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.
- Ben Horowitz
Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time.
- John C. Maxwell
Comparing Apple to Netflix is like comparing apples to oranges, especially if the oranges made so many mistakes that people stopped eating oranges and just went back to Blockbuster.
- Reed Hastings
Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn’t. It’s just the opposite. What I think is brutal and false kindness is keeping people around who aren’t going to grow and prosper. There’s no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don’t belong – just when the options are limited and they’re putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.
- Jack Welch
How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?
- Seth Godin
The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader.
- Yoda
Applause is a receipt, not a bill.
- Dale Carnegie
We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don’t decide for you.
- Larry Ellison
You hope that one or both of them win a race right before our race. I know that in the past, when Bill Elliott won it always boosted sales here.
- Ed Clark
I ask every participant to think about who their personal business mentors have been and why. I tell them my own business hero was Andy Pearson and I give them a few Andy stories to illustrate why. Then we break into groups of about twenty to go around in a circle and have each person talk about the person who has mean the most to him…We reconvene in the larger group and discuss some of the traits that were exhibited by the mentors; integrity, passion, inspiration, a positive outlook, and so on. A lot of people said it was someone who, helped me realize what I could achieve or really cared about me as a person. Then I try to get them to go a little deeper. I say, Now suppose that you were a fly on the wall, looking down on this room ten years from now. What would you like people to be saying about you? How would you feel if someone were saying that you were the person who had the greatest impact on his or her professional life?
- David Novak
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
- Henry Ford
We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.
- Joel Olsteen
Remain close to government and away from politics. It means deal more with the authorities. And less with individuals.
- Wang Jianlin
Learning to be a CEO through classroom training would be like learning to be an NFL quarterback through classroom training.
- Ben Horowitz
Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn’t mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It’s about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.
- Steve Martin
“Pick me, pick me” acknowledges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone else to initiate. Even better, “pick me, pick me” moves the blame from you to them. If you don’t get picked, it’s their fault, not yours. If you do get picked, well, they said you were good, right? Not your fault anymore. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
If a man’s heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.
- Dale Carnegie
Anyone working for a big company might be skeptical that a large business, or even a strictly online business, can form the same kind of friendly, loyal relationship with customers as a local retailer. I’m saying it’s already been done because I lived it.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
- Steve Jobs
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Cherish each hour of this day for it can never return.
- Og Mandino
I think it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible for anyone to try and break up Microsoft.
- Steve Ballmer
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- John C. Maxwell
China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.
- Bill Gates
In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone.
- Peter Thiel
People have come to me over the years and said to me: ‘I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?’ I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
- Howard Schultz
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
- Peter Drucker
I don’t think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you’re willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn’t work. If you’re going to invent, it means you’re going to experiment, and if you’re going to experiment, you’re going to fail, and if you’re going to fail, you have to think long term.
- Jeff Bezos
The Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own.
- Peter Thiel
When you are unbalanced you can launch things
- Rachel Faucett
If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth
- Ray Kroc
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
That was so much fun. It’s been such a neat experience racing with these guys.
- Ed Clark
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
- Winston Churchill
The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate.
- Winston Churchill
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
- Henry Ford
I’m short on New York, long on Silicon Valley.
- Peter Thiel
An attributable HK$9,892 million worth of properties in Hong Kong was sold, an increase of 25% as compared with HK$7,895 million for the year before.
- Lee Shau Kee
The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it’s very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk.
- Bill Gates
Monotony is the awful reward of the careful.
- A. G. Buckham
Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
- Benjamin Franklin
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
- Peter Drucker
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
- Wayne Gretzky
I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.
- Sara Blakely
The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses.
- Dale Carnegie
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.
- Winston Churchill
We’re living in what I like to call the ‘Thank You Economy,’ because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way – and do it authentically – are going to have a prayer of competing.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.
- Seth Godin
If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55 percent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?
- Dale Carnegie
Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
- Oprah Winfrey
I look at Facebook as being more conscientious about operator concerns, we are not 100 percent there, but we are finding consensus.
- Jon Fredrik Baksaas
I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family that would have killed for each other – and we still are. x
- Richard Branson
It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.
- Bill Gates
If you want to be inventive — you have to be willing to fail.
- Jeff Bezos
You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.
- Sergey Brin
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
- Winston Churchill
Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.
- Reed Hastings
Time is your most precious asset.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.
- Winston Churchill
Like technical debt, management debt comes in too many different forms to elaborate entirely, but a few salient examples will help explain the concept. Here are three of the more popular types among startups: 1. Putting two in the box 2. Overcompensating a key employee, because she gets another job offer 3. No performance management or employee feedback process
- Ben Horowitz
Going the extra mile is the action of rendering more and better service than that for which you are presently paid. When you go the extra mile, the Law of Compensation comes into play.
- Napoleon Hill
