lasting transformations from good to great follow a general pattern of buildup followed by breakthrough.
- James C. Collins
Notable Quotables
I’m concerned a little bit with the culture of celebrating the fundraise. My dad taught me that when you borrow money it’s the worst day of your life.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
What we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Brian Tracy
God wants to use you in spite of your weaknesses. Of God chose to use perfect people only, He’d have no one to use.
- Joel Olsteen
Our job as founders as entrepreneurs is to distribute the future that’s already here.
- Jack Dorsey
To change somebody’s behavior, change the level of respect she receives by giving her a fine reputation to live up to. Act as though the trait you are trying to influence is already one of the person’s outstanding characteristics.
- Dale Carnegie
Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?
- Winston Churchill
There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.
- P.T. Barnum
Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time.
- John C. Maxwell
Hard times may have held you down, but they will not last forever. When all is said and done, you will be better off than before.
- Joel Olsteen
What’s important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn’t satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn’t right, or if the offerings aren’t right, it’s the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don’t get hung up on zeros.
- Jack Welch
Why do you ask so much?
- Lee Shau Kee
For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.
- Timothy Ferriss
Who’s your Jedi master? WHO’S your Jedi Master?
- Yoda
Control your own destiny or someone else will.
- Jack Welch
With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.
- Steve Martin
The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.
- Bill Gates
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.
- Thomas Edison
This is not a book for the wild-haired crazies your company keeps in a corner. It is a book for you, your boss, and your employees, because the best future available to us is a future where you contriubute your true self and your best work. Are you up for that?
- Seth Godin
The overall dynamic was net positive, unlike Napster’s negative-sum struggle with the U.S. recording industry. As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.
- Peter Thiel
I feel a lot of people listen to what I have to say.
- Donald Trump
Even today few businessmen understand that research, to be productive, has to be the “disorganizer,” the creator of a different future and the enemy of today. In most industrial laboratories, “defensive research” aimed at perpetuating today, predominates.
- Peter Drucker
As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.
- Peter Thiel
Not only was the casual shoe effort a failure, but it was diluting our trademark and hurting us in running.
- Phil Knight
In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.
- Seth Godin
Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon. Sorry I’m all out of cards. Boy, does your country ever eat up business cards.
- Phil Knight
It was much easier to reach a few thousand people who really needed our product than to try to compete for the attention of millions of scattered individuals.
- Peter Thiel
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
- Albert Einstein
The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?
- Dale Carnegie
Simply stated, the value of a business today is the sum of all the money it will make in the future.
- Peter Thiel
P – Passion, you care about the team, passion and players
- Jack Welch
The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission.
- Peter Drucker
Our approach as a Group is based on strong economic, social and environmental principles. We strive to create high quality, visually stimulating innovative new homes and commercial developments that enhance, as well as integrate with, their surrounding natural and built environments.
- Lee Shau Kee
It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.
- Donald Trump
Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible.
- Bill Gates
But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian – or just being in show business, is really more accurate.
- Steve Martin
People shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to get high-quality clothing.
- Tadashi Yanai
Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.
- Dale Carnegie
In those days he was wiser than he is now, he used to frequently take my advice.
- Winston Churchill
What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
- Steve Martin
You’re only as good as the people you hire.
- Ray Kroc
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Business Coach Quotes: A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs
- Seth Godin
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear.
- Timothy Ferriss
I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.
- Joel Olsteen
True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing that a title can buy is a little time.
- Napoleon Hill
Everyone has the potential, but it isn’t accomplished overnight. It requires perseverance.
- John Maxwell
Love is a promise delivered already broken.
- Steve Martin
I am a fifty-seven-year-old male, married with three children. About 70 percent of us earn 80 percent or more of our household’s income.
- Thomas J Stanley
Catering to a mass audience usually backfires. Instead the key thing is to stay in your lane, and if you are good enough and interesting enough, people move to you…If you never compromise, your core audience will come with you as you grow. Then you build on their loyalty and bring in other people.
- Russell Simmons
[On American running shoes] They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters after five miles. Adidas was taking advantage. And at $30 a pair, Adidas was making a killing.
- Phil Knight
You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
- Dale Carnegie
When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.
- Zig Ziglar
Bush’s war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.
- George Soros
Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what’s coming.
- Steve Martin
Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
- Michael Gerber
It has been almost a decade since the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Hong Kong has gone through both good times and bad times. During the past decade, Hong Kong has undoubtedly played an increasingly important role in the economic development of China.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.
- Bill Gates
The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.
- Thomas Edison
Use money to make money.
- Lee Shau Kee
In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare.
- Winston Churchill
I’ve always had that gratitude that I had the opportunity to pursue my potential. So I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver. We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time.
- Sara Blakely
The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”
- Ben Horowitz
How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.
- Seth Godin
The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?
- John D. Rockefeller
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them…let them be your friends.
- Winston Churchill
Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
- Steve Martin
Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.
- Jack Welch
Ranking among the greatest Christmas movie classics, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ tells a beautiful story about the priceless value of relationships.
- John C. Maxwell
…People have lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first and then build you actions on the backs of their lessons.
- Gary Keller
I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.
- Mark Zuckerberg
You have to be responsible when you’re running an organization, and firing people who are your friends is part of that responsibility.
- Ben Horowitz
The best—perhaps even the only—way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter Drucker
Who decides what’s in Windows? The customers who buy it.
- Bill Gates
America, for me, is the country where, if you have something great to offer, you’ll be valued highly.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’m not a fan of the cursing method of management.
- David Robinson
When those in power use shame to bully the weak into compliance, they are stealing from us. They tell us that they will expose our secrets (not good enough, not hardworking enough, not from the right family, made a huge mistake once) and will use the truth to exile us from our tribe. This shame, the shame that lives deep within each of us, is used as a threat. And when those in power use it, they take away part of our humanity.
- Seth Godin
If you give a good thing to the world, then over time your karma will be good, and you’ll receive good.
- Russell Simmons
Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
If we can get you a car in five minutes, we can get you anything in five minutes.
- Travis Kalanick
My parents were ordinary people, we lived in a small apartment.
- Viktor Vekselberg
The proposed abolishment of estate duty by the Hong Kong Government will contribute to establish Hong Kong as a regional financial centre as well as an asset management hub.
- Lee Shau Kee
The Group also continues to be bullish for the long-term prospects for the property market in mainland China…
- Lee Shau Kee
It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
- Winston Churchill
Thinking about what might happen if we ran completely out of money—laying off all the employees that I’d so carefully selected and hired, losing all my investors’ money, jeopardizing all the customers who trusted us with their business—made it difficult to concentrate on the possibilities. Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke: Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.
- Ben Horowitz
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.
- Ben Horowitz
No company has a culture, every company is a culture.
- Peter Thiel
The first rule of organizational design is that all organizational designs are bad.
- Ben Horowitz
Many a false step was made by standing still.
- Timothy Ferriss
Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life’s blessings.
- Oprah Winfrey
The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.
- Bill Gates
Great music and art are earthly wonders, but I think ‘cubist’ songs and paintings are hideous.
- Thomas Edison
The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.
- Jeff Bezos
How will your new job differ from your current job?
- Ben Horowitz
I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, ‘It’s all your fault.’ Your reaction is, ‘It’s not my fault.’ But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it.
- Ben Horowitz
With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.
- Elon Musk
Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalues people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented.
- Jack Welch
Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.
- James C. Collins
