If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. —Henry Ford, founder, Ford Motor Company. The two kinds of entrepreneurs are those who create markets and those who do not. On the one hand, the entrepreneur who creates markets is considered a revolutionary. On the other hand, the entrepreneur who […]
View Post Amazon.com, Blue Ocean, Blue Ocean Strategy, Cirque du Soleil, College, Forbes, George Lucas, Harvard Business Press, Henry Ford, Jeff Bezos, Lexus, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Dell, Nike, Phil Knight, Profit, Ralph Lauren, Red Ocean, Renée Mauborgne, Revenue, W. Chan Kim, Wall Street
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. —Proverbs 27:17 The average person is intimidated by smart people. I know firsthand: Whenever people find out what I scored on an SAT exam, they are shocked. (I have very proud relatives.) Some try to stump me on the spot with a complex riddle or math […]
View Post E. James Rohn, Hewlett Packard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, SAT
Beauty awakens the soul to act. —Dante Alighieri, Italian poet. Excited to hit the pavement and to sell advertisements for my new magazine, I visited a local mom-and-pop store near my alma mater, Morehouse College. After my sales pitch, I waited to hear if the business owner would place an ad in my next issue. […]
View Post Black in America, Black in America: The New Promised Land, Cadillac, Chelsey Rodgers, CNN, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ford, Investors, Los Angeles Lakers, Miss USA, Morehouse College, Silicon Valley
The customer determines at the end of the day who is successful and for what reason. —Jerry Harvey, inventor, entrepreneur Everyone talks about how entrepreneurship affords you freedom and independence to do what you want. No longer do you have to suffer the rigid and long hours of corporate America. Nor do you have a […]
View Post Apple, Bank of America, BlackBerry, Circuit City, Facebook, IBM, Jerry Harvey, likes, Verizon Wireless, Wells Fargo
A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies. —Oscar Wilde, Irish writer, poet. One of the biggest rivalries in business history is between Apple and Microsoft, two behemoths that have ruled the technology sector for decades. Wherever you go in the world, whether it’s to the United States or to China, […]
View Post Apple, AT&T, Bill Gates, Boston Red Sox, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Enemy, Ford, General Motors, Ivan Drago, McDonald's, Microsoft, New York Yankees, Pepsi-Cola, Rocky, Steve Jobs, Strategy, Teamwork, Technology, Verizon
Begin with the end in mind. —Stephen Covey, best-selling author, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. When I shut down my college magazine (my third business), it had lasted six good years. During its run, the magazine was declared one of the top independent college magazines in the country. The last issue was published […]
View Post Dodgers, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Exit Strategy, Great Recession, Lakers, Los Angeles, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Publishing, Retirement
People with leverage have dominance over people with less leverage. —Robert T. Kiyosaki, author, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. When I started my media company, very few prospects wanted to buy advertisements. They saw the tremendous value in my media outlets, but always tried to leverage what they had instead of paying. For example, I approached […]
View Post College, Fila, Leverage, Mentor, Resources, Robert T. Kiyosaki, Selling
Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will. —Nelson Mandela, former president, South Africa Nothing is more irritating than hearing one of the many generalizations that permeate the business world and corrupt the minds of new entrepreneurs. You’ve heard them. You may even deal in these false aphorisms: “Follow your passion.” “Fake it […]
View Post Capital, Content Management System, Finances, Money, Nelson Mandela, Passion, Publishing, South Africa, Start-Up
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