If your offering itself isn’t remarkable, then it’s invisible — no matter how much you spend on well-crafted advertising.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
I watch mostly independent films.
- Reed Hastings
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
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
you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.
- Dale Carnegie
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
- Winston Churchill
We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time
- Sara Blakely
A number of people in the United States, almost everyone, is using plastic cards to pay for things, but it’s extremely difficult to accept these cards. So let’s make it’s easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can.
- Jack Dorsey
With residential property prices having dropped by around two-thirds from their peak in 1997 and local interest rates dropping to their historic lows, mortgage payments currently falls below rental payment. This positive carry has led to property purchases by both home purchasers as well as investors. Further, with the local stock market becoming active again and reaching its highest level in the past 17 months, this has resulted in an increase in the number of transactions and a price for the luxury properties.
- Lee Shau Kee
One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you’ve got somebody who’s raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give ’em that shot.
- Jack Welch
At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.
- Mark Zuckerberg
If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.
- Harvey Mackay
In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.
- Peter Thiel
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
- Jerry Seinfeld
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
Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.
- Mary Kay Ash
Building companies involves creating great wealth. If that means I am an oligarch, OK, it’s fine. But if being an oligarch is about buying football clubs, it is not for me.
- Alexei Mordashov
Giving feels good, but it’s also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot ofcompanies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we’re doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won’t mention an advertisement; they’ll say a friend told them our story.
- Blake Mycoskie
You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.
- Peter Thiel
From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Peter Thiel
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
It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.
- Bill Gates
By my count, more business leaders have failed and derailed because of arrogance than any other character flaw.
- Harvey Mackay
I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.
- Bill Gates
My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.
- Steve Jobs
Japan has only 100m people. Asia has 4bn. At least one-third, maybe nearly half, will become middle class, and this is a big opportunity for Japanese businessmen.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’m much more concerned about America than the Democratic Party.
- Howard Schultz
Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.
- Tadashi Yanai
The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader.
- Yoda
Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
- Albert Einstein
You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I’d have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.
- Sara Blakely
The one thing coaches cannot tolerate… is the individual who grows arrogant because he excelled at a lower level and believes he has nothing else to learn.
- Zig Ziglar
Wal-Mart’s leaders had obviously made a point of educating and informing everyone at all levels about all aspects of the company, and that shows a real respect for their people.
- David Novak
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.
- Ben Horowitz
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
- Og Mandino
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
- Warren Buffett
When you try to do something big its hard to fail completely.
- Timothy Ferriss
Even if you don’t have the perfect idea to begin with, you can likely adapt.
- Victoria Ransom
What I love about New York is just the electricity I feel right away.
- Jack Dorsey
True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.
- P.T. Barnum
Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Management will endeavour to actively encourage staff to broaden their experiences and job knowledge for extensive application in the process of improving the Group’s operational and competitive performance. Combined with our strengths in both entrepreneurial spirit and managerial professionalism, this would result in the creation of a leading edge honed in a relentless drive for operational excellence in the Group’s future pursuits.
- Cheng Yu-tung
We all need a check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitude.
- Zig Ziglar
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.
- Napoleon Hill
Good policies without the right people will achieve nothing.
- Aliko Dangote
A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.
- Jack Ma
I know a lot of people are upset by our decision but it is something we have deliberated for a number of years.
- Sergey Brin
Said another way, the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is. When The Entrepreneur creates the model.
- Michael Gerber
This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
- Peter Thiel
To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
- Peter Drucker
Our favorite holding period is forever.
- Warren Buffett
the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.
- Zig Ziglar
People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.
- Mark Zuckerberg
You create your own universe as you go along.
- Winston Churchill
A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.
- Henry Ford
I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.
- Bill Gates
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
Big companies have always needed and cooperated in areas where it made sense.
- Larry Page
I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.
- Steve Martin
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
- Walt Disney
Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.
- Peter Thiel
Your legacy is being written by yourself. Make the right decisions.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.
- John C. Maxwell
Getting over the war was biggest adversity I have ever faced.
- Jack Nadel
You must go through the process before you get the product.
- Paul Pressey
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
- Thomas Edison
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
There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction that goes with knowing your time, talent and abilities are not being properly used.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family – father, mother, children – is fundamental to our civilisation.
- Rupert Murdoch
I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.
- Donald Bren
Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress—stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.
- Timothy Ferriss
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
- Bill Gates
To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’
- Lao Tzu
See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.
- Joel Olsteen
I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver.
- Sara Blakely
We’re not in the hamburger business. We’re in show business.
- Ray Kroc
I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.
- Oprah Winfrey
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
- Timothy Ferriss
That’s not a Puma, that’s a Nike. [‘What’s a Nike?’] A new brand.
- Phil Knight
It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.
- Herb Kelleher
If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.
- Benjamin Hooks
You can start from where you are with what you’ve got and go to where it is you want to go.
- Zig Ziglar
Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
- Dale Carnegie
You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth. People who feel like they’re being listened to feel accepted and appreciated. They feel like they’re being taken seriously and what they say really matters.
- Harvey Mackay
When I feel particularly tired at the end of the day, or when irritability proves that my nerves are tired, I know beyond question that it has been an inefficient day both as to quantity and quality.
- Dale Carnegie
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
- Dale Carnegie
No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.
- Napoleon Hill
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein
I am amazed that CNN can’t get its act together.
- Rupert Murdoch
A company will be most successful if the senior managers optimize for the company’s success (think of this as a global optimization) as opposed to their own personal success (local optimization).
- Ben Horowitz
You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts. The good-to-great companies operated.
- James C. Collins
The reason I was able to grow my business was that every day, after producing 30 minutes of wine television, I spent 15 hours a day replying to every single person’s e-mail and every single person’s Twitter @ reply.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace – a connection to what matters.
- Oprah Winfrey
A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.
- Peter Thiel
