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Quotes
Achievement
Instead of wondering when your next
vacation is, you ought to set up a
life you don’t
need to escape from.
If there was ever a moment to follow
your passion
and do work that matters, this is
it.
You have everything you need to
build something far bigger than
yourself.
Developing expertise or assets that
are not easily copied is essential;
otherwise you’re just a middleman.
’Good enough’ stopped being good
enough a long time ago. so why not
be great?
The good news is that more than
ever, value accrues to those that
show up, those that
make a
difference,
those that do work that matters.
If you
make a difference,
people will gravitate to you. They
want to engage, to interact and to
get you more involved.
Successful people are the ones
who are
breaking the rules.
You can’t shrink your way to
your way to
greatness!
If you have no wish, how can it
possibly come true?
Knowing what to do is very, very
different than actually doing it.
Playing safe is very risky.
Go ahead, do
something
impossible.
Do you
believe in what you do? Every day?
It turns out that
belief happens to be a brilliant
strategy.
Change
is not a threat, it’s an
opportunity. Survival is not the
goal ,
transformative success is.
If you’re not proud of where you
work, go work somewhere else.
Positive thinking is hard. Worth
it, though.
Put aside your need for a
step-by-step manual and instead
realize that analogies are your best
friend.
…Acknowledge to yourself that the
factory job is dead. Having a
factory job is not a natural state.
It wasn’t at the heart of being
human until very recently. We’ve
been culturally brainwashed.
When exactly were you brainwashed
into believing that the best way to
earn a living is to have a job?
Just saying yes because you can’t
bear the short-term pain of saying
no is not going to help you do the
work.
Saying no to loud people gives you
the resources to
say yes to important opportunities.
Once you free yourself from the need
for perfect acceptance, it’s a lot
easier to launch work that matters.
You can’t – or you don’t want to? I’ll
accept the second. It’s quite possible that you don’t want to. It’s
possible that making this
commitment
is too scary or too much work… Perhaps you don’t want to because it
feels financially irresponsible. I think that’s an error in judgment on
your part, since becoming a linchpin is in fact the most financially
responsible choice you can make.
Fear for a linchpin is a clue that
you’re getting close to doing
something important.
The reason they want you to fit in…
is that once you do, then they can
ignore you.
Well, if you don’t have time to do
it right, what makes you think
you’ll have time to do it over?
If you could do tomorrow over again,
would you?
If there’s time for an emergency,
why isn’t there time for brilliance,
generosity or
learning?
Writing a book is a tremendous
experience. It pays off
intellectually. It clarifies your
thinking. It builds credibility. It
is a living engine of marketing and
idea spreading, working every day to
deliver your message with authority.
You should write one.
Why waste a sentence saying nothing?
If your organization requires
success
before
commitment,
it will never
have either.
It’s better to
make a decision, even the wrong
one, than to be in limbo.
You don’t have to settle. It’s a
choice you get to make every day.
Leadership
If you’re not uncomfortable in your
work as a leader, it’s almost
certain you’re not reaching your
potential as a
leader.
Leadership
is scarce because few people are
willing to go through the discomfort
required to lead.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the
status quo.
You can raise the bar or you can
wait for others to raise it, but
it’s getting raised regardless.
Leadership on the other hand, is
about
creating change you believe in.
Give up control and give it away …
The more you give your idea away,
the more your company is going to be
worth.
As our society gets more complex and
our people get more complacent, the
role of the jester is more vital
than ever before. Please stop
sitting around. We need you to make
a ruckus.
Heretics are engaged,
passionate,
and more powerful and
happier
than everyone else. And they have a
tribe that they support (and that
supports them in return.)
Great leaders create movements by
empowering the tribe to communicate.
They establish the foundation for
people to make connections, as
opposed to commanding people to
follow them.
Hope without a
strategy
doesn’t generate leadership.
Leadership comes when your hope
and your optimism are matched with a
concrete
vision
of the future and a way to get
there. People won’t follow you if
they don’t believe you can get to
where you say you’re going.
Our job is to
make change.
Our job is to
connect to people, to interact
with them in a way that leaves them
better than we found them, more able
to get where they’d like to go.
Every time we waste that
opportunity, every page or sentence
that doesn’t do enough to advance
the cause is waste.
Human beings can't help it: we need
to belong. One of the most powerful
of our survival mechanisms is to be
part of a tribe, to contribute to
(and take from) a group of
like-minded people. We are drawn to
leaders
and to their ideas, and we can't
resist the rush of belonging and the
thrill of the new. ... We want to
belong not to just one tribe, it
turns out, but to many. And if you
give us tools and make it easy,
we'll keep joining.
Tribes make our lives better.
And
leading
a tribe is the best life of all.
You can be right or you can have
empathy. You can’t do both.
Make a decision. It doesn’t have
to be a wise decision or a perfect
one. Just make one.
One way to think about running a
successful business is to figure out
what the least you can do is, and do
that.
The easiest thing is to react. The
second easiest thing is to respond.
But the hardest thing is to
initiate. – When people ask you to
tell them what to do, resist.
Innovation
No organization ever created an
innovation.
People
innovate, not
companies.
Don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead,
try to be
the other, the changer, the new.
The scalable, profitable
strategy is to
change the game, not to become
the most average.
Ideas in secret die. They need
light and air or they starve to
death.
You can’t have good ideas unless
you’re willing to generate a lot of
bad ones.
There’s no correlation between how
good your idea is and how likely
your organization will be to embrace
it.
Big ideas are little ideas that
no-one killed too soon.
Are you a serial
idea-starting
person? The goal
is to be an
idea-shipping
person.
Fire the committee. No great website
in history has been conceived of by
more than three people. Not one.
This is a deal breaker.
Don’t have any meetings about your
web strategy. Just do stuff. First
you have to
fail,
then you can
improve.
Ideas aren’t a sideshow that
make our factory a little more
valuable. Our factory is a sideshow
that makes our ideas a little more
valuable!
Market-driven design builds the
success of the product’s marketing
into the product itself.
As an organization grows and
succeeds, it sows the seeds of its
own demise by getting boring.
Customer
Success
People rarely buy what they need.
They buy what they want.
Relying too much on proof distracts
you from the real mission – which is
emotional connection.
Everyone is not your customer.
Choose your customers, choose your
future.
Your best customers are worth far
more than your average customers.
Choose your customers. Fire the ones
that hurt your ability to deliver
the right story to the others.
If you’re a marketer who doesn’t
know how to
invent,
design,
influence,
adapt, and ultimately discard
products, then you’re no longer a
marketer. You’re deadwood.
The best marketing strategy is to
destroy your industry before your
competition does.
Advertising is just a symptom, a
tactic.
Marketing is about far more than
that.
Low price is a great way to sell a
commodity. That’s not marketing
though, that’s efficiency.
The reason it seems that
price is all your customers care
about is that you haven’t given them
anything else to care about.
Perhaps marketing is about to
transition to a new kind of
profession, one that requires
insight, dedication and
smarts.
Marketing management is now
tribal leadership.
If you're remarkable, then it's
likely that some people won't like
you. That's part of the definition
of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous
praise – ever. The best the timid
can hope for is to be unnoticed.
Criticism comes to those who stand
out. Playing it safe. Following the
rules. They seem like the best ways
to avoid
failure.
Alas, that pattern is awfully
dangerous. The current marketing
"rules" will ultimately lead to
failure. In a crowded marketplace,
fitting in is failing. In a busy
marketplace, not standing out is the
same as being invisible.
But this is a remarkable egg, an egg
worth talking about, an egg worth
crossing the street for, an egg
worth writing about.
If you can’t make money from
attention, you should do something
else for a living.
Selling
to people who actually want to hear
from you is more effective than
interrupting strangers who don’t.
Marketing by interrupting people
isn’t cost-effective anymore. You
can’t afford to seek out people and
send them unwanted marketing
messages, in large groups, and hope
that some will send you money.
Instead, the future belongs to
marketers who establish a foundation
and process where interested people
can market to each other. Ignite
consumer networks and then get out
of the way and let them talk.
You can win with consistent
benefits, delivered over time. You
win by incrementally earning share,
attention and trust.
Marketing is the way your people
answer the phone, the typesetting on
your bills and your return policy.
Don’t try to please everyone. There
are countless people who don’t want
one, haven’t heard of one or
actively hate it. So what?
Once you have permission to talk to
someone, finding new products or
services for them is a smart way to
grow.
The best time to do great
customer service is when a
customer is upset.
Excellence isn’t about meeting the
spec, it’s about setting the spec.
It defines what the consumer sees as
quality right this minute, and
tomorrow, if you’re good, you’ll
reset that expectation again...
Knowing Yourself and Others
People don’t believe what you tell
them. They rarely believe what you
show them. They often believe what
their friends tell them. They always
believe what they tell themselves.
If religion comprises rules you
follow, faith is demonstrated by the
actions you
take.
You are not your resume, you are
your work.
A long walk and calm conversation
are an incredible combination if you
want to build a bridge.
Expectations are the engines of our
perceptions.
We notice what we choose to notice.
’Teamwork’
is the word that bosses use when
they actually mean ‘Do what I say’
Most of the time,
creative entrepreneurs
lose interest long before their
marketing message loses its power.
In our desire to please everyone,
it’s very easy to end up being
invisible or mediocre.
Busy does not equal important.
Measured doesn’t mean mattered.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the
urge to settle.
Be with the ones you love (and the
ones that love you.) Ignore everyone
else.
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