Competition is very good. . . . It’s what makes one strive to be better. —Christine Lahti, actress, film director. Ninety-five percent of the time, arrogance leads entrepreneurs to believe that they have no competition in the marketplace. However, on rare occasions, arrogance isn’t the true cause of this belief. Instead, arrogance is an effect […]
View Post Back to the Future, Contrave, DeLorean, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, New York Times, Orexigen Therapeutics, Road and Track, Segway, Zipcar
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools. —Albert Einstein, German physicist. Entrepreneurship is a humbling exercise in learning how to deal with your negative feelings, so as to do what’s best for your company. One of the most difficult feelings to tame is anger caused by a prospective customer who finds no value in […]
View Post Albert Einstein, The Godfather
Timid salesmen have skinny kids. —Zig Ziglar, author, motivational speaker Reality hit us like a Mack truck and stopped us dead in our tracks. Although we reached our goal of creating OmniPublisher, one of the first content management systems built specifically for newspapers and other periodicals, we realized that we forgot to include the most […]
View Post Apple, Eduardo Saverin, Facebook, George Cloutier, Goldman Sachs, Mack Truck, Mark Zuckerberg, Netflix, OmniPublisher, Pandora, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Twitter, Webvan, Zig Ziglar
Everybody can tell you how to do it, they never did it. —Jay-Z, recording artist, entrepreneur. Since I started my business, I have been fortunate to have excellent mentors who have helped me to grow as an entrepreneur. In fact, not only have they been great advisers, but they have also brought me valuable clients. […]
View Post Advisory Board, Angel Investor, Board, Fear, Initial Public Offering, Mentors, Mentorship, Venture Capitalist
You don’t pay taxes. They take taxes. —Chris Rock, comedian, actor I was anxious out of my wits as I sat in my chair waiting for the calculations to tabulate. I had dreaded this day ever since the previous January, when I knew I had only three months left until the deadline. On that early […]
View Post Chris Rock, EIN, IRS, Taxes
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. —Walt Disney, founder, the Walt Disney Company. As he approached the middle of the basketball court, Michael Jordan had tears in his eyes. It was halftime during his final NBA All-Star Game in 2003, a highly emotional moment for sports fans […]
View Post Ashton Kutcher, Atlanta, Atlanta Hawks, Basketball, Harrisburg, Isaiah Thomas, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Morehouse College, NASA, NBA, NBA All-Star Game, Nelly, Nick Cannon, Pennsylvania, Shaquille O’Neil, spider dribble
Nothing recedes like success. —Walter Winchell, newspaper and radio gossip commentator. In 2009, Canadian recording artist Drake released “Successful,” the second single from his third release, titled So Far Gone. The song has a melodic and a catchy chorus: “I just wanna be, I just wanna be successful.” The same lyric is repeated over and […]
View Post Canada, Facebook, Generation Y, Initial Public Offering, Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, Self-Actualization, Serial Entrepreneurship, Success
The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry. —Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook As I watched my life play out on the big screen in the movie The Social Network, I smiled, reminiscing about my college days when I, too, was an instant campus superstar like Mark Zuckerberg, cofounder of Facebook. It was […]
View Post Kanye West, Mark Zuckerberg, OmniPublisher, P. Diddy, Sheryl Sandberg, The Social Network
Systems are the essential building blocks of every successful business. —Ron Carroll, entrepreneur, business coach As a computer science major in college matriculating with some of the brightest students from around the world, I quickly learned that my computer programming skills were not the most economical. I could get the job done, but not in […]
View Post Henry Ford
The man who has no problems is out of the game. —Elbert Hubbard, writer, philosopher. When checking my e-mail one morning, I noticed an urgent subject: “Web Site Down. Call Immediately.” This wasn’t a good sign. I knew then that it was going to be a long day—and it was. Until that moment, I had […]
View Post Customer Service, OmniPublisher, Software, Strategy, Technology