The power of this new era is simple: if you want to (need to, must!) lead, then you can. It’s easier than ever and we need you. But if this isn’t the right moment, if this isn’t the right cause, then hold off. Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
A CEO’s job is to supervise all systems and to indentify weaknesses before the weaknesses turn into system failures. This can happen in many different ways, but it is exceptionally disconcerting when you company is growing rapidly. Your sales are increasing, your product of service is getting attention from the media, and suddenly you can’t deliver. Why? Uusually, it’s because your systems imploded from the increased demand. You didn’t have enough phone lines, or operators answering the phones. You didn’t have enough production capacity or enough hours in the week to meet the demand; or you didn’t have the money to build the product or hire additional help. Whatever the reason, you missed the opportunity to move your business to the next level of success due to failure of one of your systems…At each new level of growth, the CEO must start planning the systems needed to support the next level of growth, from phone lines to lines of credit for production needs. Systems drive both cash flow management and communication. As your systems get better, you or your employees will have to exert less and less effort. Without well-designed and successful operating systems, your business will be labor intensive. Once you have well-designed and successful operating systems, you will have a saleable business asset.
- Robert Kiyosaki
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
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
- Peter Drucker
Every time I find myself stressed out, it’s because I do things primarily driven by growth.
- Timothy Ferriss
The great news is that God knows everything about you, both good and bad, and He still loves you and values you unconditionally. God does not always approve of our behavior. He is not pleased when we go against his will, and when we do, we always suffer the consequences and have to work with Him to correct our thoughts, words, actions, or attitudes. And while you should work to improve in the areas where you fall short, nothing you do will ever cause God to love you less…or more. His love is a constant you can depend on.
- Joel Olsteen
The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.
- P.T. Barnum
Disneyland will never be the completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
- Walt Disney
I had a will to win that come from being raised poor.
- Sam Huff
If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.
- Joel Olsteen
If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.
- Vince Lombardi
After the Apple II was introduced, then came the Commodore and the Tandy TRS-80.
- Steve Wozniak
In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
- Sid Caesar
To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.
- Clayton M. Christensen
The formula for handling Inherent Objections: 1. Isolate the Objection 2. Minimize the Objection 3. Offset the Objection with Benefits
- Jerry Vass
While evaluating his future professional opportunities, Gary has chosen to spend some time with his family.
- John Chambers
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
- Lawrence Bossidy
Failures are life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.
- Sara Blakely
You give before you get.
- Napoleon Hill
The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.
- Peter Drucker
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
- Henry Ford
You’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.
- Peter Thiel
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
- Jim Rohn
We are not 100 percent there, but we are finding consensus.
- Jon Fredrik Baksaas
I know Bo Xilai well. But our relationship was based on our work, we didn’t have a personal relationship.
- Wang Jianlin
This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us the latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
- Jack Welch
The basic problem with the computer in business is not that computer technicians do not understand the managers’ needs. It is that the managers do not take the time and trouble to think through their needs and to communicate them to the computer people.6 How the computer people satisfy the needs of the manager is their business. What the needs are is the manager’s business. To expect the computer people to define the information needs of the managers is abdication.
- Peter Drucker
Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
- Joel Olsteen
The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.
- Elon Musk
Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
- Napoleon Hill
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.
- Ben Horowitz
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
- Winston Churchill
If you look upon chronic diseases as an epidemic, and you see that the chronically ill are the poor, then you see that this issue of the uninsured is not really a moral but a financial obligation to change health care.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
- Ben Horowitz
By the end of the war (the civil war) John D. Rockefeller had established the foundations of his personal and professional life and was set to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunities beckoning him in postwar America. From this point forward, there would be no zigzags, or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business.
- Ron Chernow
Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future.
- Zig Ziglar
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.
- Harvey Mackay
We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.
- John Chambers
The idea would be in my mind – and I know it sounds strange – is that the most important advances in medicine would be made not by new knowledge in molecular biology, because that’s exceeding what we can even use. It’ll be made by mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, figuring out a way to get all that information together.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
A barber lathers a man before he shaves him.
- Dale Carnegie
Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.
- Dale Carnegie
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.
- Bill Gates
My favorite museums are things like the Frick Museum in New York and the Huntington Hartford in Pasadena where it’s someone’s home that you walk through.
- Larry Ellison
When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world. Now I am.
- Elon Musk
It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.
- Steve Jobs
At the end of the day, I guess my feeling is that it was sort of a failure to communicate.
- Phil Knight
The door to a balanced success opens wide on the hinges of hope and encouragement.
- Zig Ziglar
Takings were down by 25 per cent as a result of the security scares following the London bombings.
- Michael Ward
It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. The first month cost perhaps $200 more than if I had been micromanaging.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.
- Elon Musk
The reason we love our parents is because they loved us first. Every single company should take this advice.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.
- Bill Gates
At the start of each new day, remind yourself: I am talented. I am creative. I am greatly favored by God. I am equipped. I am well able. I will see my dreams come to pass.” Declare those statements by faith and before long, you will begin to see them in reality.
- Joel Olsteen
I never took classic business classes in college, so I don’t have the background that any of the people running large companies have.
- Howard Schultz
I’m not a politician. I only want to help relieve the suffering in communities, and I want to help people see their community in each other.
- Russell Simmons
However, for equity to create commitment rather than conflict, you must allocate it very carefully. Giving everyone equal shares is usually a mistake: every individual has different talents and responsibilities as well as different opportunity costs, so equal amounts will seem arbitrary and unfair from the start. On the other hand, granting different amounts up front is just as sure to seem unfair. Resentment at this stage can kill a company, but there’s no ownership formula to perfectly avoid it.
- Peter Thiel
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
Other people and things can stop you temporarily. You’re the only one who can do it permanently.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s [the internet] like the flu – it just spreads like crazy.
- Jack Welch
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
- Henry Ford
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they’re hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that my not always make sense, so that’s why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them.
- George Foreman
The commercial segment produced the best results.
- John Chambers
Play by the rules, but be ferocious.
- Phil Knight
Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.
- Ben Horowitz
It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.
- Harvey Mackay
Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.
- Elon Musk
It’s Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.
- Seth Godin
Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.
- Seth Godin
No one lives long enough to learn it all..
- Brian Tracy
The only career worth pursuing is the one that turns your crank.
- Jack Welch
You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
- Sam Walton
Cisco’s collaboration with AT&T and GI will result in a New World network that will fundamentally change the way communications services are delivered to the consumer market.
- John Chambers
As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.
- Winston Churchill
I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was… an arctic wilderness.
- Steve Martin
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
God, Family, Country.
- Zig Ziglar
A false transaction using my own people to buy the flat? I’ll make a bet with you. For every $10,000 you put down, I’ll wager $1 million.
- Lee Shau Kee
The screwball. Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.
- Michael Levine
We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.
- Phil Knight
The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.
- Michael Bloomberg
We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.
- Michael Bloomberg
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
- Seth Godin
You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.
- Winston Churchill
I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.
- Larry Page
One of the cornerstones of what I believe will be the future is wave after wave of applications.
- John Chambers
Newport Center has become a Mediterranean town. The climate here is the same as the Mediterranean’s, and so is the architecture. This center exudes a radiance, an energy. It will become a special way of life for everyone.
- Donald Bren
Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.
- Bill Gates
If you’re not seeing God move in your life right now, one of two possibilities must be considered. Either your requests are not God’s best and will probably not be answered the way you’d like or it must not be the right time. If God were to answer that prayer the way you are hoping, it could interfere with his ideal plan for you.
- Joel Olsteen
Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.
- Caterina Fake
If that doesn’t seem dominant enough, consider the fact that the word “google” is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary—as a verb.
- Peter Thiel
I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Within the Nasdaq as an example, I do believe that out of the top 100 companies … half of them will not be around five years from now.
- John Chambers
People ask me all the time, ‘How can I become a successful entrepreneur?’ And I have to be honest: It’s one of my least favorite questions, because if you’re waiting for someone else’s advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you’re not one.
- Michael Dell
Do all you can to make your dreams come true.
- Joel Olsteen
By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
- Timothy Ferriss
