The expensive act of planning on late When you’re late, there’s not a lot of room for choice or decision or initiative. When you’re late, the path is well lit, and the choices are clear. Run! Run down the path you’ve run down before. Late is a tool for people unable to find the guts to stand for their acts. Late gives us cover; it permits us to trample forward, without creativity or panache. “Can’t you see I’m late!” we shout, as we do what we have to do, without even pausing to think about what we could do instead. Late might be useful, except that late is incredibly expensive. This strategy, the one we choose so we can avoid the fear of choice, costs us in so many ways. It degrades quality, misses airplanes, charges overtime, and shuts down those around us. It’s also exhausting. The alternative to planning on late is to initiate before it’s required, to ship before deadline, to put the idea out there before the crisis hits. This act of bravery actually gives you influence, leverage, and control in a way that planning on late never can.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
- Winston Churchill
Every person has a longing to be significant, to make a contribution, to be a part of something noble and purposeful.
- John C. Maxwell
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.
- Bill Gates
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
- Bill Gates
As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.
- Donald Trump
If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.
- Bill Gates
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
- Yoda
I have mentioned before that financial intelligence is a synergy of accounting, investing, marketing and law. Combine those four technical skills and making money with money is easier.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it’s safe.
- Sara Blakely
Success doesn’t make you and failure doesn’t break you.
- Zig Ziglar
I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.
- Wang Jianlin
Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting.
- Peter Thiel
Nothing tells in the long run like a good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the stock exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.
- Andrew Carnegie
I think it’d be crazy not to have the plan encompass the entire reservoir. If we have (the smaller map), we’ve got a bunch of other folks telling us what they want to see happen in our community.
- Jack Taylor
One who buys things to write them off for their business whether they need them or not and who borrows massive sums of money to buy frozen yogurt and cupcake franchises that cannot possibly generate enough money to produce a livable wage, much less anything approaching prosperity.
- Clay Clark
When I was a comic in the 1980s, I was on the road somewhere every day, and I’d get back to the hotel, and it was Carson and Letterman, and I looked forward to that all day.
- Jerry Seinfeld
[On someone with a new idea.] The first thing is to draw it out, program it, play with it and get other people playing with it so you can get feedback right away… Once you get that feedback you know if it’s something you should pursue and give more of your attention to, or if it’s something you should put on the shelf for another da
- Jack Dorsey
Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person’s life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader’s style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.
- John C. Maxwell
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
Intemperance.
- Napoleon Hill
No matter how many times you get knocked down, keep getting back up. God sees your resolve. He sees your determination. And when you do everything you can do, that’s when God will step in and do what you can’t do.
- Joel Olsteen
The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window.
- Herb Kelleher
“Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.”
- Sam Walton
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want that on my business card.
- Bill Gates
There are some people that can get things done, and it seems there are others who just can’t. That’s why we move heaven and earth to retain our stars and the main reason we manage out our lowest performers – the bottom 10% at least – each year.
- David Novak
In order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the consumer. It must build trust and rapport. It must understand the customer’s needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.
- Gary Keller
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
- Elon Musk
I am a huge bull on this country. We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.
- Warren Buffett
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
- Aristotle
I can’t really comment on rumors.
- Larry Page
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
- Steve Jobs
In reality it is the focus on the first three D’s that ultimately gains you the data, and the dollars you need to become very, very rich…in other words the dollars are derived from having a dream, being dedicated, and having the drive to win.
- Robert Kiyosaki
We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn’t want to just sell shoes. I wasn’t even into shoes – but I was pasionate about customer service.
- Tony Hsieh
Even leaders with the best of intentions can have dumb ideas sometimes, and if you have good people around you, then hopefully they’ll stop you before you’ve done too much damage.
- David Novak
In the old generation, if one kid bought a PlayStation 2 and the other kid bought an Xbox, at his house you played PlayStation, at your house you played Xbox. Now that it’s online, all those early buyers who… you want to play with, they’ve got their reputation online of who they are and how good they are at these games.
- Bill Gates
There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.
- Mark Zuckerberg
When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.
- John C. Maxwell
Organizations that achieve both market and operating focus are nearly unbeatable Customers don’t buy products or services. They buy results. They were designed to break what Schlesinger and his colleagues called the cycle of failure practiced by many of Au Bon Pain’s competitors who paid their employees and managers low wages, offered them little training and other support, and suffered high turnover of employees and limited customer loyalty as a result.
- James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser and Leonard
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffett
The Group is rapidly increasing its activities in Mainland China, where it now has projects ranging from landmark commercial developments in the major cities of Beijing and Shanghai to massive residential schemes in the second-tier cities.
- Lee Shau Kee
Over the long run, the price of gold approximates the total amount of money in circulation divided by the size of the gold stock. If the market price of gold moves a long way from this level, it may indicate a buying or selling opportunity.
- Ray Dalio
In my opinion, education is the finest gift an individual can give a young person.
- Donald Bren
I’ve worked very hard, but my life’s always been fun.
- Reed Hastings
We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.
- Winston Churchill
There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.
- Steve Wozniak
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world
- George Washington Carver
Lack of Capital.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s vital that you accept yourself and learn to be happy with who God made you to be. If you want to truly enjoy your life, you must be at peace with yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
I should be only paying for things that matter. I shouldn’t be paying for things that don’t matter. And, if Walgreen wants a premium, and they’re not doing anything different, why should I pay them more?
- George Paz
The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.
- John C. Maxwell
Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.
- Michael Dell
Q1 was a solid quarter for Cisco, with balanced execution across most of our geographies, market segments and product categories, … We are especially pleased with the improving business momentum in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, the strength of our product families and the accelerated growth of the commercial marketplace, which has become our fastest growing customer segment.
- John Chambers
Have the humility to learn from those around you.
- John C. Maxwell
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
We build dwellings and thereafter they build us.
- Winston Churchill
I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen.
- Steve Wozniak
You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.
- Dale Carnegie
People will always blame the poets for society’s ills. But these are the true artists.
- Russell Simmons
A change is as good as a rest.
- Winston Churchill
Fear is one of the worst things in business.
- Jack Nadel
Look back in forgiveness, forward in hope, down in compassion, and up with gratitude.
- Zig Ziglar
The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.
- John D. Rockefeller
And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thoughts and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged in. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line; to lead in it. Adopt every improvement, have the best machinery and know the most about it.
- Andrew Carnegie
Movies always are open to being remade because times change so much, and the tempo of movies changes. I think of it like a James Bond. They can have different actors play the same role… I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘We want to remake ‘The Jerk’ with so and so.’ And I say, ‘Fine.’ It just doesn’t bother me. It’s an honor actually.
- Steve Martin
Like it or not, life is a series of competitions. You may be competing for a grade, a spot on a team, a job, or the largest account in town. The higher your self-esteem is, the better you get along with yourself, with others, and the more you’ll accomplish.
- Harvey Mackay
It will change the way we work, live, play and learn.
- John Chambers
Your margin is my opportunity.
- Jeff Bezos
Appreciation – Learn to give flowers while people are still living.
- Joel Olsteen
I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.
- Larry Ellison
Only men of character are trusted.
- Zig Ziglar
Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.
- Henry Ford
I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.
- Bill Gates
There is always plenty of capital for those who can create practical plans for using it.
- Napoleon Hill
You may not realize initially how many other opportunities are wrapped up inside the first one. After you go through the first door, you’ll then discover more doors automatically opening behind that one. One door leads you to another door, which leads to another door, and so one. It’s like ten other boxes packed inside one box. The initial door that God opens is your access to more opportunities. But you must be willing to walk through the first one to get to the other good things God has for you.
- George Foreman
Superstition of Prejudice.
- Napoleon Hill
Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we’re just trying to accomplish something.
- Thomas Edison
God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you’ve experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God’s word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen.
- Joel Olsteen
There is a time to provide advice and offer an opinion, and there is a time not to. Don’t be too quick to offer unsolicited advice. It certainly will not endear you to people.
- Harvey Mackay
It’s so easy to tweet from wherever you are.
- Jack Dorsey
Globalization replaced technology as the hope for the future. Since the ’90s migration “from bricks to clicks” didn’t work as hoped, investors went back to bricks (housing) and BRICs (globalization). The result was another bubble, this time in real estate.
- Peter Thiel
We’re seeing an explosion in new approaches, new models and new forms of interaction. This growth comes from change, insight and exploration, not obedience.
- Seth Godin
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …
- Dale Carnegie
Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it’s a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline.
- Harvey Mackay
The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits.
- Winston Churchill
A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate
- Seth Godin
You need to be around people who know more than you and have more talent than you. Don’t be intimidated by them, be inspired.
- Joel Olsteen
If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth
- Ray Kroc
Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.
- Ben Horowitz
Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.
- Winston Churchill
I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.
- Dale Carnegie
It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.
- John C. Maxwell
Customers are the reason we open our doors every day, and keep the machines humming all night long. Customers determine what we eat, where we live, whether we stay in business.
- Harvey Mackay
In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
- Warren Buffett
Let us accept the natural order in which we move. Let us reconcile ourselves to the mysterious rhythm of our destinies, such as they must be in this world of space and time. Let us treasure our joys but not bewail our sorrows. The glory of light cannot exist without its shadows. Life is a whole, and good and ill must be accepted together. The journey has been enjoyable and well worth making – once.
- Winston Churchill
