I hate competition. —Marat Safin, tennis champion, Russian politician When entrepreneurs approach me to invest in their companies, I naturally want to know who their competitors are. It’s a basic question that any investor would ask. Some entrepreneurs answer the question thoroughly and confidently. They are not afraid to acknowledge what the competitive landscape looks […]
View Post Blockbuster, Harvard University, Marat Safin, N. Gregory Mankiw, Netflix
Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit. —Frank Borman, retired NASA astronaut. The other day while checking out new books at Barnes and Noble, I came across the story of how a young Howard Schultz, the current CEO of Starbucks, was inspired by a trip he took to Italy that would change his […]
View Post Creativity, Global Growth, Howard Schultz, International Business, Italy, Milan, Starbucks, Strategy, Travel
Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes. —Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady, United States of America Few things are more irritating in business than dealing with a person who pretends to be a decision-maker but in reality is just a subordinate. You know these misleading types. […]
View Post Eleanor Roosevelt, Sales
To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. —Mark Twain, author, humorist. Pete Kight has a success story that is simply amazing. The company he founded, CheckFree, was acquired in 2007 by Fiserve for approximately $4.4 billion in cash. In many ways, his story sounds like other millionaire success stories that include […]
View Post Bill Gates, CheckFree, College, Courage, Fiserve, Forbes, Forbes 400, George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Plank, Ohio, Pete Kight, Sara Blakely, Software, Spanx, Under Armour, Warren Buffet
No business plan survives first contact with a customer. —Steve Blank, Silicon Valley–based retired serial entrepreneur. After conjuring up a brilliant business idea, I would immediately start writing a business plan. Like a skilled magician, I could make a marvelous business plan appear before your eyes in just a few days. It would be complete […]
View Post Arthur M. Blank, Babson College, Business Plan, Competitive Landscape, Customer Service, Entrepreneur Magazine, Feasibility Study, Frankenplans, Prototype, Strategy
I have always been afraid of banks. —Andrew Jackson, seventh president, United States of America. One of the worst things you can do as an entrepreneur is to open a business bank account at a bank where you have a personal bank account. Likewise, it is not a good idea to open a business credit […]
View Post American Express, Andrew Jackson, Banking, Business Credit, CapitalOne, Corporate Law, Credit, Credit Card, Credit Report, Debt Collection, Debt-to-Income Ratio, Discover, Finance, Loans, Overdraft Fees, Personal Finance, Right of Offset, Social Security Number, Tax Identification Number, Veil Piercing
A winning effort begins with preparation. —Joe Gibbs, former NFL coach, race team owner At a recent entrepreneurship conference where there was a panel with angel investors, an audience member asked the following questions, “Do you take cold calls? And if you do, what should I, as a business owner seeking capital, say?” One of […]
View Post Capital Growth, Daymond John, Forge Intellectual Capital, Joe Gibbs, Timothy Reese, Valerie Gaydos
Two heads are better than one. —John Heywood, English playwright. One of my favorite events in the Summer Olympic Games is the 4×100 meter relay. In this event, a team runs 400 meters total, once around a regulation athletics track, with four teammates running 100 meters each. Currently, Jamaica holds the world record time of […]
View Post Bill Gates, Eduardo Saverin, Fear, Google, Greed, Jamaica, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Johnson, Olympic Games, Olympics, OmniPublisher, Paul Allen, Pride, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Track & Field, Usain Bolt, World Record, Yohan Blake
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
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