Categories:
- Rallying the Team
- Personal Success
- Ins and Outs of Entrepreneurship
- Conquering Fear
- Dealing with Failure
- Overcoming Challenges
- Thoughts on Innovation
Rallying the Team
If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth.
Nothing is easy. If you want to do nothing, that’s easy.
Terrible is the temptation to do good!
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
Make sure that the best thing to happen to your customer today is you.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.
Always make new mistakes.
Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.
You want to learn from experience, but you want to learn from other people’s experience when you can.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Add the quote.
Looking forward, people need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
I would rather fail at something I love than succeed at something I hate.
Retail is detail.
What is not possible is not to choose.
People will remember stories long after they have forgotten your bullet points.
Purpose is not a mere tagline or marketing campaign, it is a company’s fundamental reason for being.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
The first 98% of the engineering design takes 98% of the time. The remaining 2% of the design work takes the other 98% of the time.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
If everything is important, then nothing is.
If you try to do some big thing, you don’t just need it to be big: you need it to be good. And it’s really hard to do big and good simultaneously.
The old definition of leadership is ‘look at me, I’m a leader.’ But the new definition should be ‘No, actually, look at you – I’m listening.’
A setback is a setup for a comeback.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Facts tell. Stories sell.
People have a historical memory that goes back to breakfast.
It’s not success you want to be remembered for, but significance.
I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.
If you watch entrepreneurs long enough, you observe that innovation is typically a ground game, not a Hail Mary pass.
Accommodate changing times but cling to unchanging principles.
Religion either leads to a deeper reflection or a greater certainty.
Profit gives us resources.
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
An entrepreneur is someone who shoots an arrow and then runs to move the target, so the arrow hits it.
Try your best to make goodness attractive.
I believe that smart people working hard will eventually get lucky.
I think strategic planning is the antithesis of building a corporation.
Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.
Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
A leader is a dealer in hope.
We was doin’ good till we blowed up!
We’re imperfect people pursuing perfect ideas and there’s tremendous frustration in the gap.
After 35 years, there is not a shred of evidence that stock-based compensation by company officers is correlated with company performance.
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
I don’t want the revenue; I just want the profit.
You cannot control cattle at a high rate of speed. They have the capacity to tire out and just stand there, and they will not move. Slow is fast – cattle don’t wear a wristwatch.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
Good enough never is.
Proving it will be a homerun ahead of the swing is impossible! You have to try for a hit first and sometimes it turns into a homerun.
There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.
People have anxiety about ambiguity.
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.
Trust your mistakes.
Sleep on your big decisions and then be decisive.
Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.
You can’t really run the company by pissing off the scientists who do the work.
We were given some great advice early on: Strategy is what you don’t do. Whenever we do anything, we ask ourselves, ‘Is this true to Warby Parker?’
Not knowing what you’re doing has nothing to do with where you’re going.
Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.
For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
I see the light when I feel the heat.
Too many kings can ruin an army.
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
Great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother.
They tried to be too clever, and that was their undoing.
Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.
There’s no decision you should ever make that would embarrass you if it became public.
The best sales professionals are experts in and advocates for their buyers. They won’t represent companies they don’t believe in. They won’t get on a call without being prepared to make the most of their and their prospect’s time. They know how to leverage every technology, colleague and contact to augment their skills in order to produce optimal outcomes. They welcome coaching, exercise discipline with their time, do their homework and win for the team. They are true athletes.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Done is better than perfect.
Failing to plan, is planning to fail.
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
The meek shall inherit the earth – but not its mineral rights.
A business exists to create a customer.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It may be a different age, but I’m on the same page. ‘Cause one thing I’ve found. I still be digging on James Brown.
Strategy – is figuring out what is the most important thing for your company and deciding to focus on it and say no to everything else.
For some entrepreneurs it’s better to be never than late.
Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness.
Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency.
Your results may be worthless or misleading … but at least the data was easy to collect and you got published.
By and large the citizens are proud of their great orchestra; and by and large, the citizens have never heard it.
There are only two problems in business: 1. Not enough orders. 2. Not enough capacity to ship the orders.
It’s not a good strategy until it costs you something to pursue.
In my next life, I will try to commit more errors.
The seven smartest words in the English language are: ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out.’
Listening to advice often accomplishes far more than heeding it.
All you need is faith, trust and pixie dust!
Purpose motivates employees better than profit. They are proud if they can say, ‘Our company is making the world cleaner, the food healthier.’
Someone needs to do something about this.
Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
Nothing new ever happened before.
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
You can never complete the work, nor must you abandon it.
Working a little harder to keep a customer now is a lot smarter than working a lot harder later to get a new customer.
If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.
Design is an agent of change, which can help us to make sense of what is happening and to turn it to our advantage.
Organizations resist innovation because people are more comfortable with what they know than what they don’t.
The darkest nights produce the brightest stars.
The most dangerous phrase in the language is ‘We’ve always done it this way.’
Be careful – a little success can create a whole lot of overhead.
If you have perfect customer analytics, you will know how to find people who look like your current customer. But if you focus only on them, you will never get any new business.
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
He that can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good.
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
The first person you lead is you.
First, they ignore you. Then, they laugh at you. Then, they fight you. Then, you win.
Whatever people … do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike.
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason.
My advice on firing is simple. Treat that person the same way you’d want to be treated if you were in that situation. They’re still a good person, just not the right fit.
Anytime anybody says, ‘It’s good enough,’ it’s shitty.
Even if you are on the right track, the train will run you over if you just sit there.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
We shall make no progress today.
To understand a company, spend time with its customers.
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I don’t have a lot of regrets.
Entrepreneurship exists in the tiny space between madness and genius; and, its journey requires a few cross border violations across both madness and genius to get to the final destination.
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
The four most important words in business are ‘What do you think?’
Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.
You can’t let your past hold your future hostage.
Take my factories and my money but leave me my salesmen and I’ll be back where I was in two years.
What got you here won’t get you there.
Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.
We’re not trying to entertain the critics… I’ll take my chances with the public.
The job of tech transfer manager is to make something happen – without getting fired.
Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.
Integrity is a binary state. You either have it or you don’t
People fire themselves.
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.
I am not a fan of lost causes. But a … of causes not yet won.
There is nothing so depressing as boundless optimism.
If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will.
Elon cares a lot about humanity, but he doesn’t really care about individual people all that much.
Focus on doing things that can’t hurt and might help. You’ll always be ahead.
Change before you have to.
The biggest thing about negotiating: You’ve got to make sure you’re trying to construct a good deal for them.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
If you presume, you are putting ‘P’ on your resume.
Choice is the enemy of decision.
The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.
Problems don’t age well.
Long as the night will be, the sun will rise without you.
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.
History has shown that incumbents tend to fight trends that challenge established ways and, in the process, lose focus on what matters most: customers. Customers always win.
I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time, I am right.
I made it because I believed I’d make it.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
We’re not funding Mother Teresa. We’re funding imperial, will-to-power people who want to crush their competition.
Decide what your [company] purpose is and write it down. That way, you won’t lie to yourself.
Expedite the inevitable.
With good people, you can do anything. With bad people, nothing helps.
The best audience is intelligent, well-educated and a little drunk.
Politicians are the same everywhere. They promise to build a bridge even when there’s no river.
The impossible missions are the only ones that succeed.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty. An optimist sees the glass as half full. The engineer sees the glass as twice the size it needs to be.
Raising your first VC round can be like bobbing for piranhas.
If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits.
When assessing ‘first mover advantage’ remember that mousetraps demonstrate the wisdom of being the second mouse.
Leaders define reality and provide hope.
Our company is guided by three deeply held beliefs: That brands with purpose grow, companies with purpose last and people with purpose thrive.
Too little confidence, and you’re unable to act; too much confidence, and you’re unable to hear.
Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits, but the animating force for achieving them.
Innovation often originates outside existing organizations, in part because successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go long, go together.
Angels who won’t conduct postmortems climb the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
I don’t know what the price is, but the price knows what the price is.
Make no little plans.
Feed the strong, starve the weak. Lead with your strength and avoid protecting the weak – weak brands, weak products and weak people. Know your strengths and lead with them.
Storms make trees take deeper roots.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss in enthusiasm.
The harder I work, the luckier I get!
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
A leader’s job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room.
Nobody cares about your product, service or solution. All they care about is the difference you can make for their organization.
In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning in indispensable.
A smooth sea never made for a skillful sailor.
Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, and abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.
Panic is not a strategy.
Whether individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves.
