Motivational Quotes

Business

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.

- Seth Godin

Best Quotes about Business

Compromise is usually bad. It should be a last resort. If two departments or divisions have a problem they can't solve and it comes up to you, listen to both sides and then pick one or the other. This places solid accountability on the winner to make it work. Condition your people to avoid compromise.

Townsend, Robert

What helps people, helps business.

Burnett, Leo

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.

Beene, Geoffrey

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.

Ceo, Harold Geneen

The question is, then, do we try to make things easy on ourselves or do we try to make things easy on our customers, whoever they may be?

Frand, Erwin

Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.

Little, Royal

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

Smith, Adam

Get the best people and train them well.

Merrill, Charles

I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.

Woolworth, F. W.

10.

If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don't wait for time.

Franklin, Benjamin

11.

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P's -- pay, perks, power and prestige -- rather than making profits for shareholders.

Pickens, T. Boone

12.

You can hype a questionable product for a little while, but you'll never build an enduring business.

Kiam, Victor

13.

A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often has no opportunity to exercise judgment.

Firestone, Harvey S.

14.

It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.

Geneen, Harold S.

15.

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business: Business is war!

Bovee, Christian Nevell

16.

A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something.

Coffin, Harold

17.

Anybody can cut prices, but it takes brains to produce a better article.

Armour, P. D.

18.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Warren Buffett

19.

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.

Olsen, Kenneth

20.

Every business is built on friendship.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

21.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out -- either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

Ogilvy, David

22.

Cut your losses and let your profits run.

Proverb, American

23.

The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.

Hook, Harold

24.

More business is lost every year through neglect than through any other cause.

Cathcart, Jim

25.

Leisure for people of business, and business for people of leisure would cure many problems.

26.

If you don't drive your business you will be driven out of business.

Forbes, B. C.

27.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Blanchard, Ken

28.

It is almost as difficult to keep a first class person in a fourth class job, as it is to keep a fourth class person in a first class job.

Dunn, Paul H.

29.

It doesn't matter to me if a man is from Harvard or Sing Sing. We hire the man, not his history.

Ford, Henry

30.

Business is like a wheelbarrow--it stands still until someone pushes it.

31.

Business, that's easily defined; it's other people's money.

Dumas, Alexandre

32.

People will go right on preferring to do business with friends.

33.

You never really hear the truth from your subordinates until after 10 in the evening.

Jurgen Schrempp

34.

Frankly, I don't want to see a rapid upturn.I want it to hold until some of these idiotic competitors go bust.

Bamford, Joe

35.

A vacation should be just long enough that you're boss misses you, and not long enough for him to discover how well he can get along without you.

36.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

Carnegie, Dale

37.

Corporations cannot commit treason, or be outlawed or excommunicated, for they have no souls.

Coke, Sir Edward

38.

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

Welch, John

39.

Charge less, but charge. Otherwise, you will not be taken seriously, and you do your fellow artists no favours if you undercut the market.

Elizabeth Aston

40.

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.

John Cleese

41.

Executives are like joggers. If you stop a jogger, he goes on running on the spot. If you drag an executive away from his business, he goes on running on the spot, pawing the ground, talking business. He never stops hurtling onwards, making decisions and executing them.

Baudrillard, Jean

42.

Talk of nothing but business, and dispatch that business quickly.

Aldus Manutius

43.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

Geneen, Harold S.

44.

I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.

Sydney Biddle Barrows

45.

To succeed in business it is necessary to make others see things as you see them.