We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn’t want to just sell shoes. I wasn’t even into shoes – but I was pasionate about customer service.
- Tony Hsieh
Notable Quotables
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.
- Jack Welch
Waiting isn’t easy, which is precisely why it is so effective when engaging with other people.
- Seth Godin
In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
Network effects businesses must start with especially small markets.
- Peter Thiel
Resposibility is the price of greatness.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books.
- Joel Olsteen
Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.
- Timothy Ferriss
Without passion, you don’t have energy; without energy, you have nothing. Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
- Donald Trump
An optimist understands that life can be a bumpy road, but at least it is leading somewhere. They learn from mistakes and failures, and are not afraid to fail again.
- Harvey Mackay
The man who is bound in the slavery of debt is just as helpless as the slave who is bound by ignorance, or by actual chains.
- Napoleon Hill
I’d never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn’t exist.
- Sara Blakely
There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.
- Elon Musk
If I do you a favor you will reciprocate even in greater measure if possible. Through the proper use of this law / can get you to do whatever I wish you to do. If I wish you to dislike me and to lend your influence toward damaging me, I can accomplish this result by inflicting upon you the sort of treatment that I want you to inflict upon me through retaliation.
- Napoleon Hill
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.
- Dale Carnegie
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
Pessimism doesn’t grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
- Harvey Mackay
My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.
- Mukesh Ambani
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there’s something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.
- Ben Horowitz
My dad is like a cactus – introverted and tough. I’m a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He’s my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Though the external environment is still fraught with uncertainties, mainland China, which has been less affected by the global financial tsunami, is expected to keep growing from strength to strength despite fine tuning of its moderately loose monetary policy on concerns of overheating in the property sector and inflation risk.
- Lee Shau Kee
If it didn’t happen in your life before, then you’re not paying attention you don’t think it’s possible. But almost all important events never happen in your life before.
- Ray Dalio
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.
- Ben Horowitz
One of [Bill] Bowerman’s more legendary innovations is the Waffle outsole, which he discovered by pouring rubber into a waffle iron.
- Phil Knight
No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.
- Winston Churchill
The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.
- Jack Welch
Success is about being where we are supposed to be and doing what we need to be doing.
- David Robinson
The future of gambling is as an entertainment business.
- Lui Che Woo
I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.
- Joel Olsteen
Like it or not, life is a series of competitions. You may be competing for a grade, a spot on a team, a job, or the largest account in town. The higher your self-esteem is, the better you get along with yourself, with others, and the more you’ll accomplish.
- Harvey Mackay
I DECLARE I will experience God’s faithfulness. I will not worry. I will not doubt. I will keep my trust in Him, knowing that He will not fail me. I will give birth to every promise God put in my heart and I will become everything God created me to be. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
There is no accountability today… no willingness to focus on big ideas.
- Michael Bloomberg
Andy Andrews is the best speaker I have ever seen.
- Zig Ziglar
Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.
- Jeff Bezos
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete – the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
- Peter Drucker
I really believe that you cannot use the stock market as a proxy for the economy.
- Howard Schultz
Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that… you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.
- Elon Musk
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The price of success is much lower than the price of failure.
- Zig Ziglar
The market’s going to move with tremendous speed. If there is such a thing as a killer app, video is it.
- John Chambers
That’s your opportunity–to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.
- Seth Godin
It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.
- Elon Musk
A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast. Good news travels slow.
- Ben Horowitz
We are not 100 percent there, but we are finding consensus.
- Jon Fredrik Baksaas
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
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
- Winston Churchill
Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.
- Seth Godin
The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event.
- Elon Musk
If you are starting a business I believe it has to be your passion.
- David Robinson
The era of cornucopian hope was relabeled as an era of crazed greed and declared to be definitely over.
- Peter Thiel
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
- Warren Buffett
No matter what any of us has—and how grateful we are for what we have—no one has it all.
- Sheryl Sandberg
Visionary companies make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and—quite literally—accident. What looks in retrospect like brilliant foresight and preplanning was often the result of Let’s just try a lot of stuff and keep what works.
- James C. Collins
The arrival of the 21st century precedes the onslaught of turmoil and tsunami. The business environment has become unpredictable and the global economy even harsher…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Keep Calm and Carry On.
- Winston Churchill
That which becomes acceptable becomes inevitable.
- Michael Levine
Desire Is Born With Vision.
- Zig Ziglar
The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
- Dale Carnegie
Be courageous! Whatever setbacks America has encountered, it has always emerged as a stronger and more prosperous nation…. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward!
- Thomas Edison
It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.
- Timothy Ferriss
I really chess-play culture shifts. I’m really good at understanding what worldwide cell-phone use means. That’s what I do. I try to picture it three to four to five steps ahead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money
- Warren Buffett
“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it eventually, just do it and correct course along the way.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
- Reed Hastings
Believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.
- Seth Godin
Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship.
- Ben Horowitz
Believe that you will succeed — and you will.
- Dale Carnegie
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
- Warren Buffett
Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.
- Michael Dell
You will have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
If you want to reap financial blessings, you have to sow financially.
- Joel Olsteen
Establish late-payment penalties as part of your terms and conditions and enforce them.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.
- Larry Ellison
It is becoming increasingly clear that the global economy is improving, … As customers feel more confident to invest, we believe that we are well positioned to provide compelling value as a strategic business adviser and technology partner.
- John Chambers
Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.
- Bill Gates
TV is a great big megaphone,” and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find.
- Peter Thiel
I’m just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.
- Ray Dalio
E – Energize Others
- Jack Welch
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
- Dale Carnegie
Pretty much everything will come to him who hustles while he waits. I believe that restlessness is discontent, and discontent is merely the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
- Thomas Edison
Remember: There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.
- Timothy Ferriss
Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each of these three stages, there are two key concepts, shown in the framework and described below. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept we came to call the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great.
- James C. Collins
My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
- Winston Churchill
Desire is the catalyst that enables a person with average ability to compete and win against others with more natural talent.
- Zig Ziglar
Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
- Howard Schultz
Sales is what you do in person, one on one. Marketing is sales done via a system. Most (Self-Employed) S quadrant businesspeople are very good at one-on-one sales. For them to make the transition to the B quadrant, they need to learn how to sell through a system which is called marketing.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.
- Jack Welch
Make youself necessary to someone.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.
- Winston Churchill
The lesson is that, No. 1, this management has to be at the highest class possible. No. 2, they have to have a succession plan.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I’d get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It’s a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.
- Sara Blakely
We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
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 don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t won that AOL deal
- Sergey Brin
Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.
- Bill Gates
Whatever your income, always live below your means.
- Thomas J Stanley
Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.
- Seth Godin
