Quotes on Business
“It’s safe to say headphones is a good business.”
DJ Khaled, Business
“...After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are the moving impulses of our life. But it is only those who do not understand our people, who believe that our national life is entirely absorbed by material motives. We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism.”
Calvin Coolidge, Business, Wealth, Goals, Life
“Economy is idealism in its most practical form.”
Calvin Coolidge, Business
“The business of America is business.”
Calvin Coolidge, Business, Society
“That pipe, just so happens to lead to the room where I make the most delicious flavored chocolate covered fudge."
Then he will be made into strawberry flavoered chocolate covered fudge, they'll be selling him by the pound, all over the world!"
No, I wouldn't allow it. The taste would be terrible. Can you imagine Augustus flavored chocolate covered gloop? Ew. No one would buy it.”
Johnny Depp, Business
“Maybe if you had a f—ing business you were passionate about, you’d know what it takes to run a f—ing business, but you don’t. So don’t even act like you know what I’m talking about.”
Kim Kardashian, Business
"My decision to end my marriage was such a risk to lose ratings and lose my fan base. I had to take that risk for my inner peace and to be happy with myself."
Kim Kardashian, Love, Business, Goals
“One of my most popular songs, ‘Satellites,’ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.”
Kevin Gates, Music, Business
“Every time I do a partnership with the corporation, it’s usually – I mean, it is – reflective of me and they really want who I am. They want what I’ve established for my brand and the respect and quality that I’ve established.”
Will Ferrell, Business
“But no matter what you do in life, selling is a part of it.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Life, Business
“Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming.”
Richard Branson, Business, Opportunities
“I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive then I believe you are better off not doing it. A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Business
“A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”
Richard Branson, Business
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
Richard Branson, Business
“Business isn't about ties, suits and briefcases. It's about adventure.”
― Richard Branson
Richard Branson, Business
“You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it's because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It's the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.”
― Richard Branson, Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur
Richard Branson, Business
“In the same way that I tend to make up my mind about people within thirty seconds of meeting them, I also make up my mind about whether a business proposal excites me within about thirty seconds of looking at it. I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Business
“Good brands reflect the histories of the time and the group of people that made them. They can not be copied. They can not be recycled.”
― Richard Branson, Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur
Richard Branson, Business
“I have always believed that the only way to cope with a cash crisis is not to contract but to try to expand out of it.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Business
“Throughout my business life I have always tried to keep on top of costs and protect the downside risk as much possible. The Virgin Group has survived only because we have always kept tight control of our cash. But, likewise, I also know that sometimes it is essential to break these rules and spend lavishly.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Business
“What we are trying to do at Virgin is not to have one enormous company in one sector under one banner, but to have two hundred or even three hundred separate companies. Each company can stand on its own feet and, in that way, although we've got a brand that links them, if we were to have another tragedy such as that of 11 September - which hurt the airline industry - it would not bring the whole group crashing down.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Business
“I don’t believe it can be taught as if it were a recipe. There aren’t ingredients and techniques that will guarantee success. Parameters exist that, if followed, will ensure a business can continue, but you cannot clearly define our business success and then bottle it as you would a perfume. It’s not that simple: to be successful, you have to be out there, you have to hit the ground running; and, if you have a good team round you and more than your fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can’t guarantee it just by following someone else’s formula. Business is a fluid, changing substance.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Business, Success
“If I had to give one reason why I have been fortunate enough to experience some success, it would be my knack of bringing together wonderful people.”
― Richard Branson, Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography
Richard Branson, Business, Success
“Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Business, Success, Happiness
“The key enterprising skills I used when first starting out are the very same ones I use today: the art of delegation, risk-taking, surrounding yourself with a great team and working on projects you really believe in.”
― Richard Branson, Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography
Richard Branson, Management, Business
“It’s very important to actively seek out and listen very carefully to negative feedback. This is something that people tend to avoid because it’s painful, but I think this is a very common mistake. To not actively seek out and listen to negative feedback. […] When friends get a product, I say, ‘Look, don’t tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like.’ Because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn’t like. You really need to sort of coax negative feedback. If somebody’s your friend or at least not your enemy, and they’re giving you negative feedback, then they may be wrong, but it’s coming from a good place.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Mistakes, Business
“I think it’s very difficult to start companies and quite painful. There’s a friend of mine who’s got a good phrase for doing a startup: ‘It’s like eating glass and staring into the abyss.’ If you’re sort of wired to do it, then you should do it, but not otherwise. If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Business
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
No one wants an unhappy customer, but unhappy customers can teach us a lot about our business, especially with what's wrong with the way we run our business. The feedback of our unhappy customers gives us the opportunity to learn and improve our products and services.
Bill Gates, Business
“Furthermore, you are embarking on the loneliest profession in the world. Even the despised tax collectors return to their homes at sundown and the legions of Rome have a barracks to call home. But you will witness many setting suns far from all friends and loved ones. Nothing can bring the hurt of loneliness upon a man so swiftly as to pass a strange house in the dark and witness, in the lamplight from within, a family breaking evening bread together. “It is in these periods of loneliness that temptations will confront thee,” Pathros continued. “How you meet these temptations will greatly affect your career. When you are on the road with only your animal it is a strange and often frightening sensation. Often our perspectives and our values are temporarily forgotten and we become like children, longing for the safety and love of our own. What we find as a substitute has ended the career of many including thousands who were considered to have great potential in the art of selling. Furthermore, there will be no one to humor you or console you when you have sold no goods; no one except those who seek to separate you from your money pouch.”
The Greatest Salesman in the World, Business
“Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats. Yet each struggle, each defeat, sharpens your skills and strengths, your courage and your endurance, your ability and your confidence and thus each obstacle is a comrade-in-arms forcing you to become better … or quit. Each rebuff is an opportunity to move forward; turn away from them, avoid them, and you throw away your future.”
The Greatest Salesman in the World, Business, Success, Problems
“Truly, many times have you heard me say that the rewards are great if one succeeds but the rewards are great only because so few succeed. Many succumb to despair and fail without realizing that they already possess all the tools needed to acquire great wealth. Many others face each obstacle in their path with fear and doubt and consider them as enemies when, in truth, these obstructions are friends and helpers.”
The Greatest Salesman in the World, Business, Success, Problems, Wealth
“The promoters of the global economy...see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.”
Wendell Berry, Business
“A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.”
Wendell Berry, Business
“Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare.”
Wendell Berry, Business, Anger and Fighting
“Every student of political science, every student of political economy, every student of economics knows that the race can only be saved through a solid industrial foundation; that the race can only be saved through political independence. Take away industry from a race, take away political freedom from a race and you have a slave race.”
Marcus Garvey, Government, Business, Society
“There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe.”
Margaret Thatcher, Government, Business
“When I'm out of politics I'm going to run a business, it'll be called rent-a-spine.”
Margaret Thatcher, Government, Business
"Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success."
Thomas Edison, Ideas, Business, Success
“Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do.”
Dave Ramsey, Mistakes, Business
“People will not buy from you if they don’t trust you, your product, and your company.”
Dave Ramsey, Business
“If you wouldn’t want your mother to buy the item or the service then don’t sell it.”
Dave Ramsey, Business
“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.”
Milton Friedman, Government, Business
“If you haven’t pissed someone off by noon, then you probably aren’t making any money.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Entrepreneurial success and wealth creation, as well as wealth attraction, requires a willingness to risk and experience failure, and the emotional resiliency to recover from it quickly, decisively, passionately, and persistently.”
Dan Kennedy, Business, Wealth, Success
“I want it all. And I want it delivered.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Ultimately, as always, the way the majority thinks about money is wrong. Thinking that virtue or talent or superior product quality or service entitles you to success is fantastical and foolish.”
Dan Kennedy, Intelligence/Wisdom, Wealth, Business, Success
“Your business isn’t different. Nor is anybody else's.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“The only asset that can be kept safe from every threat and made to appreciate in value year after year is the relationship you have with your customers.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“There is a classic sales legend about the hotshot salesman pitching a new home-heating system to a little old lady. He told her everything there was to tell about BTUs, construction, warranties, service, and so on.
When he finally shut up, she said: I have just one question — will this thing keep a little old lady warm?”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Write for the buyer, not the nonbuyer. Real prospects are hungry for information.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“The only sure way to keep your own accumulated but untested opinions and beliefs about your customers from sabotaging your sales letters is to start anew, from scratch, and to engage in getting to know the customers just as if you were arriving to write for them for the first time, with no foreknowledge.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Get a fix on the prospect/customer/client and on his or her desires; failing to do so will undermine all your other efforts.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“People do not buy things for what they are; they buy things for what they do.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Proof by demonstration is extremely important.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Remember that photographs outperform drawings and illustrations.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“The goal is understanding. To persuade someone, to motivate someone, to sell someone, you really need to understand that person.”
Dan Kennedy, Business, Goals
“All successful selling is by nature and necessity manipulative, and must apply pressure to get decision and action.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Always enter the conversation already occurring in the customer's mind.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Do not arrive as an interruption or disruption, attempting to divert your reader's attention from the object it is focused on, fighting to interest him in something different from what he is already, at this moment, interested in.
Instead, align yourself with the subjects already possessing his attention, the matters already garnering his interest, the self-talk conversation already occurring in his mind, and the conversations he is already having around the water-cooler at work or at the kitchen table at home with peers, friends, and family.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Envelopes actually addressed by hand often outperform all others in controlled split-tests.”
Dan Kennedy, Business
“Of course, a great deal of our onslaught on Mother Nature is not really lack of intelligence but a lack of compassion for future generations and the health of the planet: sheer selfish greed for short-term benefits to increase the wealth and power of individuals, corporations and governments. The rest is due to thoughtlessness, lack of education, and poverty. In other words, there seems to be a disconnect between our clever brain and our compassionate heart. True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with our heart.”
- From The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times
Jane Goodall, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness, Nature, Society, Business, Government
"I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business."
Warren Buffet, Business, Intelligence/Wisdom
"In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love."
Warren Buffet, Business, Goals, Success
"Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless."
Warren Buffet, Business
"American business -- and consequently a basket of stocks -- is virtually certain to be worth far more in the years ahead."
Warren Buffet, Business, Finance
"If a business does well, the stock eventually follows."
Warren Buffet, Business, Finance
"Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre."
Warren Buffet, Business, Time
"In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield."
Warren Buffet, Business
"Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks."
Warren Buffet, Business
"The white worker who has been displaced at General Motors has more in common with the displaced black worker than those larger white CEO's, and those Wall Street people who are determining their fate...whose thievery and greed is determining their fate."
bell hooks, Business
"An office is not for dying. An office is a place for living life to the fullest, to the max, to… an office is a place where dreams come true."
Michael Scott, Business
"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."
Henry David Thoreau, Business
"It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing 'compassion' for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about."
Thomas Sowell, Government, Business, Society
"Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers."
Thomas Sowell, Government, Business
"Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed."
Thomas Sowell, Government, Business
"The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better."
Thomas Sowell, Government, Business
"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
Thomas Sowell, Government, Business
"People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint."
Steve Jobs, Business
"We are very careful about what features we add because we can’t take them away."
Steve Jobs, Business
"The most powerful person in business is the storyteller."
Steve Jobs, Business
"The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!"
Steve Jobs, Business, Sex
"I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."
Steve Jobs, Business, Success
"If you’re gonna make connections that are innovative, you have to not have the same bag of experience as everyone else does."
Steve Jobs, Business, Goals
"You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last."
Steve Jobs, Business, Goals
"The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person."
Steve Jobs, Business
"There is a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product."
Steve Jobs, Business
"You can build your own things that other people can use. And once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again."
Steve Jobs, Business, Goals
"Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves."
Steve Jobs, Business, Goals
"No government, no multinational corporation, no agency at all could counter the mandates of a unified world community. And that is why so much energy and resources are invested in division and separation."
John Lewis, Government, Business, Society
"Governments and corporations do not live. They have no power, no capacity in and of themselves. They are given life and derive all their authority from their ability to assist, benefit, and transform the lives of the people they touch. All authority emanates from the consent of the governed and the satisfaction of the customer."
John Lewis, Government, Business, Society
"Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!"FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Business
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Business, Government
"For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Business, Government
"...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry."
Thomas Jefferson, Government, Business
"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
Thomas Jefferson, Business
"The life and ventures of Mickey Mouse have been closely bound up with my own personal and professional life. . . He still speaks for me and I still speak for him."
Walt Disney, Business
"To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past—and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America—with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world."
Walt Disney, Business
"I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the Park. I want them to feel they’re in another world."
Walt Disney, Business
"I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty."
Walt Disney, Business
"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it."
Walt Disney, Business
"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."
Walt Disney, Business
"I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true."
Walt Disney, Business
"I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a mouse."
Walt Disney, Business
"By nature I’m an experimenter. To this day, I don’t believe in sequels. I can’t follow popular cycles. I have to move on to new things. So with the success of Mickey, I was determined to diversify."
Walt Disney, Business
"Disney and I were a bad mix. For a year I was probably more depressed than I have ever been in my life. I worked for a great animator, Glenn Kean. He was nice, he was good to me, he's a really strong animator and he helped me. But he also kind of tortured me because I got all the cute fox scenes to draw, and I couldn't draw all those four-legged Disney foxes. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't even fake the Disney style. Mine looked like road kills."
Tim Burton, Business
"There is a market for knowledge and another market for experience."
russelison.com quotes, Business
"Never underestimate the great customer demand for convenience."
russelison.com quotes, Business
"“1. What is our mission? 2. Who is our customer? 3. What does the customer value? 4. What are our results? 5. What is our plan?"
Peter Drucker, Business
"The "non-profit" institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its "product" is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their "product" is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether."
Peter Drucker, Business
"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."
Peter Drucker, Business
"Entrepreneurship is "risky" mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing."
Peter Drucker, Business
"Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform."
Peter Drucker, Business
"It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday."
Peter Drucker, Business
"Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art."
Peter Drucker, Business
"Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."
Peter Drucker, Business
"This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity."
Peter Drucker, Business
"Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems."
Peter Drucker, Business
"Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation."
Peter Drucker, Business
"The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer."
Peter Drucker, Business
"Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision."
Peter Drucker, Business
"The surest way to remain poor is to be honest."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Business
"Ability is of little account without opportunity."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Business
"The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope."
Karl Marx, Business
"A person who risks everything for a business idea is not a businessperson but a gambler."
russelison.com quotes, Business
"If your idea turns out to be a moneymaker, you'll have copycats and there would be little that you can do about it."