“To find the beginning, reduce your business idea to its apparent essence. Then reduce it again.”
“The beginning anticipates, in an almost genetic fashion, the business it will become. Each step in the growth of a business is a consequence of the preceding step.”
“Don’t cut a single corner along the way.”
“If a business is to grow you have to own it–the acts, habits, functions, jobs, and grunt labor … You have to know all the fundamental details in order to give them away later.”
“The entrepreneur must expect at some time to experience an awful emptiness in the pit of the stomach.”
“Even if nothing goes wrong at first … you will feel a strange loneliness. A time will come when the primal fears emerge: What have I done? Isn’t someone else doing it, too, and better?”
“Play with it.”
“Work and practice and learn.”
“Problems signify that the business is in a rapid learning phase.”
“Understand in the beginning that you will always have problems. It is there that the opportunities lie.”
“A new business simply will not conform to any set of expectations, predictions, or patterns. It will have frayed edges, surprises and unintended consequences. This is a reflection of the world.”
“When your business encounters problems and messes, stay with them. Find something valuable down in the dreck. Work with it until you know that mess so well it will never develop again, until it has become your friend.”
“A good business has interesting problems, a bad business has boring ones.”
“Your job as owner and manager is not to solve every problem. Your job is to create a company with compelling problems that attract bright, unusual people to join in solving them.”
“Your best idea for a business will be something that is deep within you, something that can’t be stolen because it is uniquely yours, and anyone else trying to execute it without the … thought you have given the subject will fail.”
“Your business must be an extension of who you are and what you are trying to learn and achieve.”
“Don’t worry about anyone stealing your idea, because they can’t steal your life.”
“Good ideas often do not look very good at first or even second glance, but don’t worry if your business idea sounds weird, crazy, or obscure. Like a puppy, many good ideas are awkward, helpless, and unimpressive.”
“The idea for a business is usually the result of a fascination, preoccupation, or even obsession with some mundane field or pursuit.”
“Remember that in business you are never trying to “beat” the competition. You are trying to give your customers something other than what hey are receiving from the competition.”
“Don’t start two businesses.”
“If you conceive a business where twenty serious mistakes could occur, and then you create safeguards to deal with some or most of these possibilities, you are creating a survivor.”
“The proper way to grow is by releasing growth. The worst way is to push growth.”
“One of the most important functions of the founder/manager of any business is sensing what that “inherent” growth rate should be, and adhering to it.”
“The time to be expansive is at the bottom of a recession. The time to be conservative and highly cost conscious is when profits and sales are soaring.”
“Plan to be around for a hundred years.”
“…the product itself is not the business you are in. Your business is creating satisfaction for the customer…”
“…if you plan to succeed, do so from the beginning. There may not be time later.”
“Let your relationship with money determine the amount of money you use to start your business.”
“Embarking on your own business venture, you should start slowly and steadily, preferably using your own money.”
“The sense that someone is on track, on schedule, and on purpose is immensely attractive to people and capital.”
“Do not compare yourself with others. Ignore the journalistic sirens of quick success. The question is what growth rate is comfortable for you.”
“Luck is working so hard at your craft, service, or enterprise that sooner or later you get a break.”
“In order to be a growing business and attract capital, you must project a sense that the world is expansive. Generosity, ampleness, and abundance draw money to ideas, people, and businesses.”
“Being in business will be one long, continuing effort. Persistence is applying yourself doggedly and relentlessly to the daily tasks at hand, knowing there are no shortcuts.”
“You cannot delegate what you do not understand.”
“The less experience, the less initial money should be spent.”
“Profit is a cost of doing business. You need it in order to grow.”
“In every business there is a “model” relationship between sales and expenses.”
“To grow, your business must earn the permission of the marketplace.”
“If you start with quality and the truth you’ll never have to stop.”
“…you must be the market. You should want to shop at the store you run or receive the services you offer. Every expression of the business … should be 100 percent credible, respectable, and acceptable to you.”
“…watch the customer’s hands, eyes, feet, and body. See what people do and don’t do, the attractions and repulsions, and observe the minutiae of daily life so that you can say before the buyer even knows it, “this is what you want.””
“Take your time. There’s plenty of it. If you try to rush your message and do and say too much, you’ll create cynicism, in your customers and yourself … proceed as though you are having a long dialogue with your customer.”
“You’re not big. Your market doesn’t want big.”
“As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.”
“The market is a stream of information constantly flowing into your business. Once you sense the stream and are able to read its signals, your business is born–and you know it.”
“When you are dealing with customer problems you have to discard the idea of profit.”
“A mistake is usually where the predicted didn’t happen. The unpredicted is the gap between perception and reality. The unpredicted is your best toehold on reality because it is from these events that don’t “go right” that you can discover what is really happening with your business.”
“The only model you should keep in mind is one of integrity, your own and your company’s, in all relations with suppliers, customers, and community.”