Entrepreneurs are always taking feedback, especially from their customers, bankers, workers, and sales force. Without straightforward feedback, entrepreneurs cannot make sound decisions.
It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.
Profits are not financial-they’re social. Everybody profits from industry. Politicians don’t understand profits because they can pay bills out of taxation.
Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
I have a great, great company. I employ thousands of people. And I’m very proud of the job I did.
The epiphany for me at William Morris was realizing, ‘They bullshit on the phone! I can bullshit on the phone too!’
A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer. In the case of an automobile the sale of the machine is only something in the nature of an introduction. If the machine does not give service, then it is better for the manufacturer if he never had the introduction, for he will have the worst of all advertisements-a dissatisfied customer.
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.
Do not spend too much time planning or trying to anticipate and solve problems before they happen. That is just another kind of excuse for procrastination. Until you start, you won’t know where the problems will occur. You won’t have the experience to solve them. Instead, get into action, and solve the problems as they arise.
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
There should be rivalry between men and between business.
We’ve designed swimming pools that turn into ballrooms, and fitted security devices that fill a garage with gas if someone is stealing your car.
Well, I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
Leverage: don’t make deals without it!
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
When most people ask about a business growing, what they really mean is growing revenue, not just growing the number of people using a service. Traditional businesses would view people using your service that you don’t make money from as a cost.
I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life’s problems.
If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.
Building a brand may be more important than building a business.
Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence.
