I believe in that Old Chinese Proverb, When the student is willing, the teacher appears. But I would add, It also doesn’t hurt to be a little proactive about it.
- David Novak
Notable Quotables
Satisfied, loyal and repeat customers are at the heart of Walmart’s spectacular profit margins, and those customers are loyal to us because our associates treat them better than salespeople in other stores do. So, in the whole Wal-Mart scheme of things, the most important contact ever made is between the associated in the store and the customer. I didn’t catch on to that idea for quite a while. In fact, the biggest single regret in my whole business career is that we didn’t include our associates in the initial, managers-only profit-sharing plan when we took the company public in 1970. But there was nobody around preaching that philosophy in those days, and I guess I was just too worried about my own debt, and in too big a hurry to get somewhere fast. Today, some of our company’s critics would like everybody to believe we started our profit-sharing program and other benefits merely as away to stave off union organizing.
- Sam Walton
People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
- Winston Churchill
This may sound a bit naive, but I got here by believing in big dreams.
- Howard Schultz
Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God’s final word on where your lips end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The minute there’s a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.
- Seth Godin
At first, we couldn’t be establishment, because we didn’t have any money. We were guerrilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit. But, as we became No. 1 in our industry, we’ve had to modify our culture and become a bit more planned.
- Phil Knight
After the Apple II was introduced, then came the Commodore and the Tandy TRS-80.
- Steve Wozniak
Storytelling is the game. It’s what we all do. It’s why Nike is Nike, it’s why Apple is Apple, it’s why Walt Disney built Disney World and it’s why Vince McMahon makes a billion dollars.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Customers today are strongly value oriented. But just what does that mean? Customers tell us that value means the results they receive in relation to the total costs (both the price and other costs to customers incurred in acquiring the service).
- Gary W. Lo
Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each of these three stages, there are two key concepts, shown in the framework and described below. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept we came to call the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great.
- James C. Collins
Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‘I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.’ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources.
- Seth Godin
We need to understand the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment is what you do to someone, discipline is what you do for someone.
- Zig Ziglar
Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to ‘gamble’ on an unknown.
- Zig Ziglar
All of the great empires of the future will be empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill
Wouldn’t it be great to be gifted? In fact… It turns out that choices lead to habits. Habits become talents. Talents are labeled gifts. You’re not born this way, you get this way.”
- Seth Godin
The residential leasing market remained robust with expatriates from the banking and financial sectors continuing to be the major source of tenant demand for luxury properties on Hong Kong Island.
- Lee Shau Kee
Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.
- Leo Burnett
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
Successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.
- Peter Thiel
What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.
- Michael Bloomberg
I can’t stress enough the essential nature of really hearing what someone has to say even if it is totally contradictory to your own beliefs, and I wish this was a lesson I only had to learn once.
- David Novak
Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you’ve got, you’re more likely to do it.And this is precisely why it’s difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.
- Seth Godin
Never Cease to Proclaim in Fearless Tones the Great Principles of Freedom
- Winston Churchill
Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ‘naturals’, the ones who somehow know how to teach.
- Peter Drucker
All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.
- John C. Maxwell
India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.
- Bill Gates
You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.
- Oprah Winfrey
Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.
- Peter Thiel
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
- Andrew Carnegie
The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion – others pray in church. It’s a banality, but you don’t possess art, it possesses you. It’s like falling in love.
- Francois Pinault
I have asked thousands of business people to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to class and talk about the results.
- Dale Carnegie
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
I think part of the reason we’re successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.
- Larry Page
We have a number of difficulties facing our nation, but I believe fatherlessness is right at the top of the list.
- Tony Dungy
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
I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, You deserve to be in the pit.” The Catholic said, You need to suffer while you’re in the pit.” The Baptist said, If you’d been saved, you wouldn’t have fallen into the pit.” The charismatic said, Just confess I’m not in the pit.” The mathematician said, Let me calculate how you fell into the pit.” The IRS agent said, Have you paid taxes on that pit?” The optimist said, Things could be worse.” The pessimist said, Things will get worse.
- Joel Olsteen
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
- Jeff Bezos
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.
- Elon Musk
The son has not caught me in bed for 50 years.
- Thomas Jefferson
We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.
- Joel Olsteen
Ironically, the biggest obstacle to putting a training program in place is the perception that it will take too much time. Keep in mind that there is no investment that you can make that will do more to improve productivity in your company. Therefore, being too busy to train is the moral equivalent of being too hungry to eat. Furthermore, it’s not that hard to create basic training courses.
- Ben Horowitz
Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character.
- Winston Churchill
I’m a big supporter of President Obama.
- Russell Simmons
Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with anyone in the outside world. Every bit of contact. That means a lot of marketing opportunities. It does not mean investing a lot of money.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
[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
I’m surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms.
- Steve Wozniak
The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of poverty.
- Napoleon Hill
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
- Winston Churchill
I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.
- Joel Olsteen
You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.
- Seth Godin
You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.
- Seth Godin
Make sure your ego lies in the performance of the company, not in the performance of the stock.
- Warren Buffett
This is not the end its only the beginning
- Winston Churchill
Those people behind the mosque have to respect, have to appreciate and have to defer to the people of New York. The wound is still there. Just because the wound is healing you can’t say, ‘Let’s just go back to where we were pre-9/11.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
A startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.
- Peter Thiel
If you can’t communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you’re giving up your potential.
- Warren Buffett
If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.
- Simon Sinek
People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.
- Tadashi Yanai
Options – the ability to choose – is real power. This book is all about how to see and create those options with the least effort and cost. It just so happens, paradoxically, that you can make more money – a lot more money – by doing half of what you are doing now.
- Timothy Ferriss
Our business practices are no different than those of our competitors, but we are bigger, and thus more visible, so we get more flack.
- Phil Knight
Know what your brand stands for an exaggerate it in everything you do.
- David Novak
My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven, he got injured on a job. That was a very important point – because of the injury, he couldn’t walk, and the company he was working for did not pay him. There was no compensation. So there was no money and no food.
- Howard Schultz
I would argue heavily that the time that has been allocated to social used to come from television, and people are benefitting from it. People who are saying, ‘Aw, you’re spending all your time on Facebook, or all your time on Twitter,’ I’d like to understand what the person used to do with that time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We, too, need to be patient, especially when it comes to reaching new goals.
- George Foreman
One of my biggest flaws is I don’t take advice.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I didn’t invent the hamburger. I just took it more seriously than anyone else…We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.
- Ray Kroc
when praise is specific, it comes across as sincere—not something the other person may be saying just to make one feel good.
- Dale Carnegie
Ego stops you from getting things done and getting people to work with you. That’s why I firmly believe that ego and success are not compatible.
- Harvey Mackay
Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that’s what I think keeps me hungry.
- Warren Buffett
I’m very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There’s so much opportunity. Let’s just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.
- Steve Ballmer
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
I think that God gives you your own will and choices. I don’t believe that we’re supposed to drag ourselves through life defeated and not see God’s blessings. But you have to make the right choices and follow that still, small voice within you. Because I think that’s how God leads us.
- Joel Olsteen
Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success.
- Zig Ziglar
I couldn’t figure out what to wear under my clothes. The body shapers were too thick at the time.
- Sara Blakely
If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.
- Peter Drucker
Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.
- Dale Carnegie
In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.
- Seth Godin
Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.
- Bill Gates
You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.
- Seth Godin
No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.
- Winston Churchill
If you can’t be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.
- Seth Godin
The thing that I’m most passionate about, I’m writing a book called ‘Jab Jab Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,’ and it really focuses on how to story-tell in a noisy, ADD world.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
God, I’m not going to look at what I don’t have. I’m looking unto you. I know in my weakness, you show up the strongest.
- Joel Olsteen
It is going to be a little, if you will, laboratory for sustainability in businesses of small scale
- Larry Ellison
The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.
- Robert Kiyosaki
If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison
We will make our products work out of the box.
- Steve Ballmer
A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.
- Winston Churchill
Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11.
- Michael Bloomberg
India has the potential to be our biggest market in Asia, bigger than China, in as much as two to five years.
- John Chambers
God will never ask you for something without first depositing it within you. If you will dare to take a step of faith, you will discover gifts inside that you never before realized were there.
- Joel Olsteen
If something is expensive to develop, and somebody’s not going to get paid, it won’t get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?
- Bill Gates
Advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away, it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later.
- Peter Thiel
How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.
- Seth Godin
India has rapidly risen to become a major force in the global economy.
- John Chambers
Every time you walk down the street people are screaming, ‘You’re fired!’
- Donald Trump
