Brains are far more important than money or connections. Everyone and anyone can create a business out of their bedroom.
I love to compete. To me, business is the ultimate sport. It’s always on. There is always someone trying to beat me.
Everyone tells you how they are going to be “special”, but few do the work to get there. Do the work.
Focus on building the best possible business. If you are great, people will notice and opportunities will appear.
Everyone has ideas. The first step is to learn more about your industry than anyone in the world. Otherwise there is a good chance that the lady that knows it better than you is going to kick your ass. Then you just have to go for it. No excuses. Just work your ass off.
There is only one thing in life you can control: Your own effort.
The Higher Education Industry is very analogous to the Newspaper industry. By the time they realize they need to change the costs to support their legacy infrastructure and costs will keep them from getting there.
There are no shortcuts. You have to work hard, and try to put yourself in a position where if luck strikes, you can see the opportunity and take advantage of it.
Money is a scoreboard where you can rank how you’re doing against other people.
In my opinion, right now there’s way too much hype on the technologies and not enough attention to the real businesses behind them.
I never look at the glass as half empty or half full. I look to see who is pouring the water and deal with them.
All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.
When you post something, when you text something, you lose ownership of it when you hit enter or send. Who you send it to, where you post it, they take ownership of that information whether you like it or not.
I hate politics. It’s slimy. Any job where people pander for votes, I don’t like. The country has gotten so partisan that if you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy. The only thing I ever try to support is a third party, like Unity08. We need more parties and more choice.
Sales is the most important aspect of a company, which in turn is about how well you treat your customer and stay ahead of your customer’s requirements.
I create offbeat advice; I don’t follow it. I rarely take third-party advice on my investments.
If I didn’t like you, I could take any or all of what I found and invent a context that lost you your job, your relationships, your degree. People are so vulnerable online and they don’t realize it. That is scary to me.
If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.
The one thing in life you can control is your effort. Are there any shortcuts in the beauty business? No. That was the first lesson I learned. You can’t just rocket to the top.
If you think back to the first sporting event you went to, you don’t remember the score, you don’t remember a home run, you don’t remember a dunk. You remember who you were with. Were you with your mom, your dad, your brother, on a date?