9 out of ten new businesses fail in the first five years.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Notable Quotables
We had no capital but we grew.
- Phil Knight
People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things – to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m not as interested in what you make as I am in what you’re passionate about. What business are you really in?
- Howard Schultz
Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are commmon and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy – though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies. It is a checklist.
- Atul Gawande
As bad as your situation may be, someone else always has it worse than you.
- George Foreman
God wants us to live consistently, He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives.
- Joel Olsteen
In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.
- Elon Musk
The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty.
- Francois Pinault
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
Property prices depend mainly on the supply and demand of a particular point in time, in much the same way as the price for a commodity is fixed.
- Lee Shau Kee
Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.
- Jack Welch
[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.
- Jack Dorsey
Why do you ask so much?
- Lee Shau Kee
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
- Timothy Ferriss
A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
I wanted to be a tailor to craft products.
- Jack Dorsey
The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.
- Zig Ziglar
Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.
- Joel Olsteen
Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you.
- Seth Godin
In setting goals and executing a strategy, Wanda is sophisticated. We have good systems and departments. If targets are not reached, a yellow light goes off.
- Wang Jianlin
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
Much like us, our customers are rigorously working to improve their profitability and capacity for innovation. For us, this means doing everything possible when it comes to efficiency, effectiveness, and innovations – and all that on the basis of the highest quality. After all, quality creates trust – and trust creates orders. In short, we need to constantly become better and better at the high level we are already operating at.
- Elmar Degenhart
My politics are: I’m a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I’m pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It’s good for everybody; it’s not red or blue.
- Travis Kalanick
Entrepreneurs must protect themselves and the venture at all times by documenting your agreements.
- Jack Nadel
Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.
- John C. Maxwell
$1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.
- Timothy Ferriss
The average occupancy rate of the core investment properties of the group was maintained at a high level of 96%.
- Lee Shau Kee
If 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
I love doing a lot of things I’m told I can’t do. I think that’s what drives me and keeps me awake every day.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
A pay increase of 5 percent is more than justified. It would compensate for losses we’ve had in the past and I’d like to be able to buy the everyday things I’ve put off for years, like a new TV.
- Michael Gerber
Have the humility to learn from those around you.
- John C. Maxwell
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
Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.
- Howard Schultz
Today, getting people to hear your story on social media, and then act on it, requires using a platform’s native language, paying attention to context, understanding the nuances and subtle differences that make each platform unique, and adapting your content to match.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
[On the Nike logo] I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.
- Phil Knight
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
It’s been a long career, and I’ve made some mistakes along the way.
- Rupert Murdoch
Rule No.1: Never lose money.Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
- Warren Buffett
If you don’t know how it works, find out. If you’re not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn’t make sense, play with it until it does. If it’s not broken, break it. If it might not be true, find out.
- Seth Godin
Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
- Dale Carnegie
[On the first twitter tweet] The first tweet that was actually written by a human was by me and it was inviting co-workers.
- Jack Dorsey
You have a real chance to make an impact, but you have to do it in the first 90 days. Otherwise they’ll think it’s going to be business as usual.
- David Novak
You may think you’ve got a long way to go, but you need to look back at how far you’ve already come. You may not be everything you want to be but atleast you can thank God that you’re not what you used to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Saudi Arabia has stability. The social contract and the political contract between the king and the rulers and the royal family and the ruled people in Saudi Arabia is very strong and the bondage is so solid.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I’m not ashamed of any of my papers at all and I’m rather sick of snobs that tell us that they’re bad papers, snobs who only read papers that no one else wants. I doubt if they read many papers at all.
- Rupert Murdoch
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill
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
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
For any Silicon Valley company, the most important thing is the company. And any great founders need to get out of the way of the company. We presented a spark with an idea.
- Jack Dorsey
If we’re going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.
- Elon Musk
Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees.
- Putting the Service-Profit Chain To Work - Ja
If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.
- Sam Walton
Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.
- Jack Taylor
you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.
- Dale Carnegie
Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.
- Bill Gates
The Waffle Trainer later became the best-selling training shoe in the United States.
- 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
People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people – and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
- Walt Disney
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
- Jack Nadel
It’s about stories. If I can tell the story to America, whether it’s Riesling or a boxer from Harlem, it will sell. I know on my gravestone it’s going to be, ‘Storyteller.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
- Steve Jobs
If you want to increase your success rate, double your rate of failure.
- Thomas J Watson
I never worry about action, but only inaction.
- Winston Churchill
I kicked but I also hugged.
- Jack Welch
Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was… just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But…it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since [1945]…. And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.
- James C. Collins
Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
The great thing is we’re going to have a lot of new facilities, where the others were 10 years old or older. That’s a plus for the fans. The new State Road 20 is going to open. That’s a huge addition for us, probably one of the biggest things that’s happened since we bought the track in 1990.
- Ed Clark
That’s one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.
- Donald Trump
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.
- Napoleon Hill
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
The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.
- Ben Horowitz
We all sort of do want incentives for creative people to still exist at a certain level. You know, maybe rock stars shouldn’t make as much; who knows? But you want as much creativity to take place in the future as took place in the past.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft
- Bill Gates
I’m a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they’re simpler for customers.
- Jeff Bezos
One incident preserved by General Ismay in an apocryphal and somewhat lively form may be allowed to lighten the narrative. His orderly, a Royal Marine, was shown the sights of Moscow by one of the Intourist guides. “This,” said the Russian, “is the Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel. Here is Churchill Street, formerly Hitler Street. Here is the Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station. Will you have a cigarette, comrade?” The Marine replied, “Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!” This tale, though jocular, illustrates none the less the strange atmosphere of these meetings.
- Winston Churchill
our skills and talent, but above all, be tenacious. See yourself as victorious–which means never giving up
- Donald Trump
Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.
- Jack Welch
Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.
- Bill Gates
Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask ‘Why?’ ceaselessly.
- John C. Maxwell
HE RICH DON’T WORK FOR MONEY The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.
- Robert Kiyosaki
It all comes down to interest rates. As an investor, all you’re doing is putting up a lump-sump payment for a future cash flow.
- Ray Dalio
To me, failure means not trying; failure isnt the outcome. If i have to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘I didnt try that because I was scared,’ that is failure.
- Sara Blakely
The greatest business people I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.
- Michael Gerber
There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
- Simon Sinek
I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.
- Elon Musk
If you believe, as I do, that your employees truly are your most valuable asset, you will do whatever you can to help them do their jobs as well as possible.
- Harvey Mackay
Your job should make you want to get out of bed
- Tony Hsieh
There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.
- Jeff Bezos
The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.
- Bill Gates
BLAMING IDIOTS FOR interruptions is like blaming clowns for scaring children—they can’t help it. It’s their nature. Then again, I had (who am I kidding—and have), on occasion, been known to create interruptions out of thin air. If you’re anything like me, that makes us both occasional idiots. Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse. This is infinitely easier when you have a set of rules, responses, and routines to follow.
- Timothy Ferriss
Good talkers often choose to become sales professionals. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that selling well means listening well.
- Jerry Vass
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world
- George Washington Carver
For people who are readers, reading is important to them.
- Jeff Bezos
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
- Winston Churchill
Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that’s where charisma comes from, from the leading.
- Seth Godin
Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.
- James C. Collins
To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone
- Sergey Brin
I don’t know why you should be proud of something. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. You are what you are.
- Michael Bloomberg
