The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
The road doesn’t have to be infinite after all. Take the hidden paths.
- Peter Thiel
If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.
- Jack Welch
Tip #17 – Perceived value is what sells. Real value is what repeats.
- Jack Nadel
Education is the key to unlock the Golden door of freedom.
- George Washington Carver
In 1984, the Sino-British talks on the future of Hong Kong triggered a confidence crisis. Daunted by the uncertainties over the colony’s future, most developers shied away from construction projects that took considerable time to complete. In that year the Group recognized what the community needed and actively responded to the government’s call for a landmark convention and exhibition venue of international standard to be built in Hong Kong. The Group turned out to be the only developer willing to take financial and operating risks on a long-term basis, thereby laying a solid foundation for Hong Kong to host international conventions and exhibitions. Coupled with its excellent services, Hong Kong soon secured world-wide recognition as an ideal spot of conferences and exhibitions.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you can discipline yourself to read, you can free up two years of your life for the good stuff!
- Seth Godin
[In 1998] The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.
- Phil Knight
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow.
- Evan Esar
With our feet to the fire, we needed to produce, in the course of the deal we figured out how to buy, how to sell, and how to finance a transaction.
- Jack Nadel
I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
- Jack Welch
SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.
- Elon Musk
I know something about how to build constituencies in an independent way.
- Michael Bloomberg
Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.
- Napoleon Hill
If you look – look at – I mean, look at what’s going on with your gasoline prices. They’re going to go to $5, $6, $7 and we don’t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, ‘Fellas, it’s time. It’s over. You’re not going to do it anymore.’
- Donald Trump
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
- Peter Drucker
Anyone would fight for things that matter, true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter
- Peter Thiel
If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
- Henry Ford
When Steve Jobs was at NeXT, he was really getting his head together and taking control and becoming the person that, when he came back to Apple, you know, he was ready to really run the company and keep control of things and watch what was being done and develop new products secretly that were really incredibly great.
- Steve Wozniak
Possession of Power That Was Not Acquired Through Self Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.
- Peter Thiel
If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company a long time ago and ended up on a beach.
- Larry Page
Basically, our goal is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful.
- Larry Page
There are a few other things that I built when I was at Harvard that were kind of smaller versions of Facebook. One such program was this program called Match. People could enter the different courses that they were taking, and see what other courses would be correlated with the courses they are taking.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
- Bill Gates
You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.
- Warren Buffett
They don’t understand that Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.
- Seth Godin
Although I receive a small salary from Apple, I do virtually no real work at the company.
- Steve Wozniak
Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used them….
- Thomas Edison
Opening new stores outside of Japan is important, but training our employees is even more important.
- Tadashi Yanai
Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of his imagination
- Napoleon Hill
I like the book. Do you have a problem with that? … I just think it’s a great story of somebody who stood up for what they believe in.
- Travis Kalanick
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.
- Napoleon Hill
When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Marketing knits the whole organization together.
- Phil Knight
There are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. Therefore, training should be the most basic requirement for all managers in your organization. An effective way to enforce this requirement is by withholding new employee requisitions from managers until they’ve developed a training program.
- Andrew Grove
Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.
- Joel Olsteen
I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- Winston Churchill
No man ever achieved worthwhile success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
- Napoleon Hill
Ideas… they have the power.
- Napoleon Hill
Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I’m a positive person, so I don’t get bogged down with it. If you’re expecting that, if you wall in that, if you practice that, then you’ll attract what you fear.
- Denzel Washington
Your business has to work when it’s small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.
- Seth Godin
As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.
- Reid Hoffman
The great football coach John Madden was once asked whether he would tolerate a player like Terrell Owens on his team. Owens was both one of the most talented players in the game and one of the biggest jerks. Madden answered, “If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you’ll be so late you’ll miss the game, so you can’t do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you’ll have a player that’s so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.
- Ben Horowitz
Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.
- Bill Gates
I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple. Jesus didn’t go around condemning people.
- Joel Olsteen
If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.
- Elon Musk
Selling your company to the media is a necessary part of selling it to everyone else.
- Peter Thiel
I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.
- Celine Dion
I wanted to be a tailor to craft products.
- Jack Dorsey
My friends and I had fun together, but I was more reserved, not at all the life of the party. I would just be the quiet one in the room.
- Joel Olsteen
Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
- Michael Bloomberg
Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you’re not called to do it, you’re dividing the audience you’re trying to reach.
- Joel Olsteen
Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle and a victory.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?
- Peter Thiel
Real estate deals a lot with the government. It isn’t like manufacturing, logistics, home appliances or the auto sector, which deal with consumers.
- Wang Jianlin
India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.
- Bill Gates
Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it’s taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, ‘Let’s get out the camera and get that shot.’ You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.
- Bill Gates
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
We decided that instead of avoiding our competitors, or waiting for them to come to us, we would meet them head-on. It was one of the smartest strategic decisions we ever made. In fact, if our story doesn’t prove anything else about the free market system, it erases any doubt that spirited competition is good for business – not just for customers, but the companies which have to compete with one another too. Our competitors have honed and sharpened us to an edge we wouldn’t have with out them. We wouldn’t be nearly as good as we are today without Kmart, and I think they would admit we’ve made them a better retailer. One reason Sears fell so far off the pace is that they wouldn’t admit for the longest time that Wal-Mart and Kmart were their real competition. They ignored both of us, and we both blew right by them.
- Sam Walton
God, You said You would restore health unto me and heal me of my wounds. You said I would live and not die. You said what is impossible with men is possible with God. When you pray.
- Joel Olsteen
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
The Group’s performance will continue to improve in future upon return of the local economy on an upward recovery track.
- Lee Shau Kee
the average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together.
- Dale Carnegie
They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.
- Dale Carnegie
My first large-scale community development opportunity was the formation of the Mission Viejo Co. – a partnership with the O’Neill Family, who owned Rancho Mission Viejo. As the young president of the company, I had the responsibility for master planning, master building and implementing the new community’s development plans.
- Donald Bren
The young athlete who aspires to greatness, generally speaking, learns a number of things from several different coaches. The first one taught him the fundamentals; the second one instilled discipline in him and taught him more of the techniques that must be mastered to excel.
- Zig Ziglar
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’
- Henry Ford
The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.
- George Soros
Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.
- Napoleon Hill
Sound managerial decisions are at the very root of their impending fall from industry leadership.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Simplicity scales. Complexity does not.
- David Nilssen
When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I like all kinds of music. I listen to Abigail Washburn, the Punch Brothers, and Marc Johnson, the great clawhammer player. I also listen a lot to Sirius Radio, there’s a lot of bluegrass there.
- Steve Martin
When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.
- Josh James
Diversity meets adversity.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The big value of the founder running the company is really two things: the knowledge and the commitment.
- Ben Horowitz
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
I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.
- Warren Buffett
One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.
- Seth Godin
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
- Warren Buffett
Don’t let what you don’t know scare you, because it can become your greatest asset. And if you do things without knowing how they have always been done, you’re guaranteed to do them differently.
- Sara Blakely
You will give birth to more in the future than you’ve lost in the past.
- Joel Olsteen
You will never change what you tolerate.
- Joel Olsteen
Desire Is Born With Vision.
- Zig Ziglar
You don’t make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you’re-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don’t know what’s going to happen.
- Michael Bloomberg
I like definitive things.
- Jerry Seinfeld
At an end your rule is, and not short enought it was!
- Yoda
I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it’s just such a dramatic success.
- Bill Gates
Make today worth remembering.
- Zig Ziglar
And in urology, it could be drugs or devices for bladder and prostate problems.
- David Pyott
I think growth covers up mistakes.
- Howard Schultz
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
- Timothy Ferriss
PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.
- Dale Carnegie
Where you start is not as important as where you finish.
- Zig Ziglar
Every obnoxious act is a cry for help.
- Zig Ziglar
