The epidemic So many people are frozen in the face of uncertainty and paralyzed at the thought of shipping work that matters that one might think that the fear is hardwired into us. It is. Scientists can identify precisely where your lizard brain lives. This is your prehistoric early brain, the same brain that’s in the lizard or the deer. Filled with fear, intent on reproduction. Steven Pressfield gives the voice of the lizard brain a name: he calls it the resistance. And the resistance is talking to you as you read this, urging you to compromise, to not be an troublemaker, to avoid rash moves. For many of us, the resistance is always chattering away, frequently sabotaging our best opportunities and ruining our best chance to do great work. Naming it helps you befriend it, and befriending it helps you ignore it.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
- Sergey Brin
The person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power.
- Dale Carnegie
we can not prepare for defeat and expect to live a life in Victory.
- Joel Olsteen
Microsoft’s an important partner for Dell, an important company in the industry.
- Michael Dell
Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.
- Yoda
By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
- Steve Jobs
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
I predict at least one of the rookie drivers will win a race this year. With this strong of a group, two or three of them will likely win.
- Ed Clark
I think the word rich is all relative.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.
- Paul Graham
The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
- Dale Carnegie
I always wanted to find oil. It was always an irresistible calling.
- Harold Hamm
Treasure the love you have received above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished.
- Og Mandino
When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don’t read much anymore.
- Steve Martin
Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
- Zig Ziglar
If you believe in quality, you can’t just tell everybody We believe in quality! You’ve got to pay bonuses based on quality. You’ve got to let everyone in the organization know that they are being judged on quality.
- Jack Welch
I took up an offer for me to lose 30 pounds in 30 days. It worked. I lost 30 days!
- Zig Ziglar
The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.People will follow.
- Seth Godin
What you are will show in what you do.
- Thomas Edison
A smart, motivational good manager can work what some outsiders call Wal-Mart magic with folks everywhere. It make take more time. You may have to sift through more people, and you may have to become more skilled with your hiring practices. But I truly believe that people anywhere will eventually respond to the same sorts of motivational techniques we use, if they are treated right and are given the opportunities to be properly trained. If you are good to people, and fair with them, and demanding of them, they will eventually decide you’re on their side.
- Sam Walton
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
- Winston Churchill
Poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure.
- Peter Thiel
We certainly employ a lot of immigrants at Fox… and we do not take any consistent anti-immigrant line.
- Rupert Murdoch
Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.
- Sam Walton
Bury your mistakes.
- Rupert Murdoch
Contrary to popular belief, the price of real estate does go down on occasion.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.
- Elon Musk
Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you’ll create credit… So you reach a certain point that that you can’t do that anymore… There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?
- Ray Dalio
Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.
- Yoda
As God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days.Why should you and I?
- Dr. Spencer Johnson
Two metrics set the limits for effective distribution. The total net profit that you earn on average over the course of your relationship with a customer (Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV) must exceed the amount you spend on average to acquire a new customer (Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC). In general, the higher the price of your product, the more you have to spend to make a sale—and the more it makes sense to spend it.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves.This is precisely why you’re stuck. Starting without seeing the end is difficult, so we often wait until we see the end, scanning relentlessly for the right way, the best way and the perfect way.The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.Step by step, page by page, interaction by interaction. As you start moving, you can’t help but improve, can’t help but incrementally find yourself getting back toward your north star.You might not end up with perfect, but it’s significantly more valuable than being stuck.Don’t just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.
- Seth Godin
The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events – Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima – so it’s more visible.
- Bill Gates
Our job as founders as entrepreneurs is to distribute the future that’s already here.
- Jack Dorsey
I am very optimistic about china’s growth.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
I always saw myself wanting to do something deemed successful and good at the same time.
- Howard Schultz
I didn’t think I would come to this conclusion — but eventually I came to the conclusion that more information is better, even if it is not as full as we would like to see.
- Sergey Brin
I was the night foreman of a galvanizing factory, which is hot and smelly and dirty and miserable.
- Ronald Perelman
I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.
- George Soros
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy, profit from folly rather than participate in it.
- Warren Buffett
As you begin changing your thinking, start immediately to change your behavior. Begin to act the part of the person you would like to become. Take action on your behavior. Too many people want to feel, then take action. This never works.
- John C. Maxwell
You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.
- Joel Olsteen
It is simply service that measures success.
- George Washington Carver
Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
- Steven Wright
When times are bad is when you want to build! Why wait for things to pick up so everything will cost more?
- Ray Kroc
When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.
- Rupert Murdoch
Learning is truly a value, growth for every employee is a real objective, mistakes aren’t always fatal, and there are lots of people around whom you can reach out to for coaching and mentoring.
- Jack Welch
Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.
- Seth Godin
Remember that failure is an event, not a person.
- Zig Ziglar
Our schools teach the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learns not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. 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
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
- Dale Carnegie
Well, excuuuuuse me!
- Steve Martin
But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.
- Winston Churchill
The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the Struggle. The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The Struggle is unhappiness. The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse. The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy. The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. The Struggle is where your guts boil so much that you feel like you are going to spit blood. The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak. Most people are not strong enough. Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through the Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is the Struggle. The Struggle is where greatness comes from.
- Ben Horowitz
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
- Viktor E. Frankl
You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.
- Zig Ziglar
Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new.
- Peter Thiel
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’re always going to get what you’ve always gotten.
- Zig Ziglar
To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
- P.T. Barnum
Jim Cathcart is one of the brightest, dearest and most comprehensive speakers I know. In this powerful book he will help you discover and express your true self, accelerate your success and improve your quality of life.
- Jack Canfield
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
- Jim Rohn
It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.
- Reed Hastings
Working to fulfill someone else’s needs or dreams almost always catches up with you.
- Jack Welch
I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.
- Bill Gates
If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
- Reid Hoffman
I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.
- Reid Hoffman
I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
- Elon Musk
We, too, need to be patient, especially when it comes to reaching new goals.
- George Foreman
Don’t use your words to describe the situation. Use your words to change the situation.
- Joel Olsteen
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
- John D. Rockefeller
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
- Warren Buffett
The Pitch is your mechanism for persuasion. Persuasion is the goal. You’re trying to convince them of someone or something, and they might initially be resistant. This isn’t a nice casual conversation; it’s the Guerrilla P.R. version of a first strike.
- Michael Levine
I love creating partnerships; I love not having to bear the entire burden of the creative storytelling, and when I have unions like with George Lucas and Peter Jackson, it’s really great; not only do I benefit, but the project is better for it.
- Steven Spielberg
It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.
- James C. Collins
We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.
- Seth Godin
By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: ‘John, I’d love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I’ve got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said ‘no’ yesterday. Gotta run!
- Timothy Ferriss
The best way to predict the Future is with a Great, Unique Abilities Team
- Terry Powell
I try to speak in everyday language. I feel like God has gifted me to take Bible principles and make them practical.
- Joel Olsteen
Properly run startups place a great deal of emphasis on recruiting and the interview process in order to build their talent base. Too often the investment in people stops there.
- Ben Horowitz
Some questions that I’ve found to be very effective in one-on-ones: If we could improve in any way, how would we do it? What’s the number-one problem with our organization? Why? What’s not fun about working here? Who is really kicking ass in the company? Whom do you admire? If you were me, what changes would you make? What don’t you like about the product? What’s the biggest opportunity that we’re missing out on? What are we not doing that we should be doing? Are you happy working here?
- Ben Horowitz
Sound character provides the power with which a person may ride the emergencies of life instead of being overwhelmed by them. Failure is… the highway to success.
- Og Mandino
One of the cornerstones of what I believe will be the future is wave after wave of applications.
- John Chambers
All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.
- Winston Churchill
Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous.
- Peter Thiel
I’m often asked how I define success. It’s an overused term, but I fundamentally view this elusive beast as a combination of two things – achievement and appreciation. One isn’t enough: Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
To be willing to do new things you don’t think you’ll like requires you to prefer the unknown. Not just to tolerate it, but to prefer it. One way to achieve that is to set out to experience things you’re sure you won’t like. To have conversations that are frightening. Becoming generous beyond measure, just to see what happens. And most of all, setting out to fail. Failing helps you see how far is too far, failing helps remind you that failing isn’t fatal, and most of all, failing opens you up to succeeding.
- Seth Godin
Southwest consistently turns a profit because they have an employee ownership program that gives their employees a sense of ownership that is very real. When the company does well financially, the employees do well financially. When the company struggles, the employees struggle.
- Clay Clark
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
- John C. Maxwell
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.
- Jerry Seinfeld
To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict.
- Patrick M. Lencioni
There are abundant business opportunities to bring about the recovery of the local economy.
- Lee Shau Kee
I do think there is an important artistic component in what we do. As a technology company I’ve tried to really stress that.
- Larry Page
The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.
- Seth Godin
All a bliss state like California does is spoil you.
- Phil Knight
Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.
- Bill Gates
