Business leader quotes as refresher learning for entrepreneurs and small businessmen

1. Influential Business
Quotes for
Entrepreneurs
From Acclaimed Business
Leaders

2. On Employees

3. …effective executives do not start out
by looking at weaknesses. You
cannot build performance on
weaknesses. You can build only on
strengths. Make weaknesses
irrelevant.

4. Giving people self confidence
is by far the most important
thing that I can do because
then they will act.

5. The essence of competitiveness is
liberated when we make people
believe that what they think and
do is important – and then get
out of their way while they do it.

6. On Customers

7. The most important single
thing is to focus obsessively
on the customer. Our goal is
to be earth’s most customer
centric company.

8. For something this
complicated, it’s really hard
to design products by focus
groups. A lot of times,
people don’t know what
they want until you show it
to them.

9. Choose your customers. Fire
the ones that hurt your
ability to deliver the right
story to the others.

10. Our point of view is we will
sell more if we help people
make purchasing decisions.

11. A lot of people in our industry haven’t
had very diverse experiences. So they
don’t have enough dots to connect, and
they end up with very linear solutions
without a broad perspective on the
problem. The broader one’s
understanding of the human
experience, the better design we will
have.

12. On Business Priorities

13. Time is the scarcest resource
and unless it is managed,
nothing else can be
managed.

14. Business has only two
functions – marketing and
innovation. All the rest are
costs.

15. On Marketing

16. Conversations among the
members of your marketplace
happen whether you like it or
not. Good marketing encourages
the right sort of conversations.

17. The aim of marketing is to
know and understand the
customer so well the product
or service fits him and sells
itself.

18. Products that are remarkable
get talked about.

19. In a crowded marketplace,
fitting in is failing. In a busy
marketplace, not standing
out is the same as being
invisible.

20. A brand for a company is like
a reputation for a person.
You can earn reputation by
trying to do hard things well.

21. Most organizations spend
their time marketing to the
crowd. Smart organizations
assemble the tribe.

22. On Dealing With Change

23. Within five years, if you’re in
the same business you are in
now, you’re going to be out
of business.

24. Face reality as it is, not as it
was or as you wish it to be.

25. The best way to predict the
future is to create it.

26. Change, BEFORE you have to.

27. Willingness to change is a
strength, even if it means
plunging part of the
company into total confusion
for a while.

28. On Experimentation

29. We were willing to go down a
bunch of dark passageways
and occasionally we find
something that really works.

30. What’s dangerous is not to
evolve.

31. On Learning

32. We now accept the fact that
learning is a lifelong process
of keeping abreast of
change. And the most
pressing task is to teach
people how to learn.

33. That’s been one of my mantras —
focus and simplicity. Simple can be
harder than complex: You have to
work hard to get your thinking clean
to make it simple. But it’s worth it in
the end because once you get there,
you can move mountains.

34. An organization’s ability to
learn and translate that
learning into action rapidly is
the ultimate competitive
advantage.

35. You can’t connect the dots looking
forward; you can only connect them
looking backwards. So you have to trust
that the dots will somehow connect in
your future. You have to trust in
something — your gut, destiny, life,
karma, whatever. This approach has
never let me down, and it has made all
the difference in my life.

36. On Initiative

37. The easiest thing is to react.
The second easiest is to
respond.
But the hardest thing is to
initiate.

38. I’m convinced that about half of
what separates the successful
entrepreneurs from the non-
successful ones is pure
perseverance.

39. The entrepreneur always
searches for change,
responds to it, and exploits it
as an opportunity.

40. Every interaction, every
assignment, is a chance to
make a change, a chance to
delight or surprise or to
touch someone.

41. Your time is limited, so don't
waste it living someone
else's life.

42. On Competition

43. If you don’t have a
competitive advantage,
don’t compete.

44. Key Takeaways
• Employees, customers are #1
• People focus
• Make a difference attitude
• Necessity to adapting to change
• Continuous learning
• Be persistent

45. Final Thoughts

46. Actively manage your
company’s culture based on
these mindsets, skills and
core values

47. Never stop the learning
process

48. About Dr. Schoultz
Dr. Schoultz has thirty five years of business
development, marketing, technology, and
business operations experience.
He served as VP / President of Distribution
Technologies, a company he helped to found and
grow to a 700 M + / year market leader.
Dr. Schoultz Ph. D. is from the University of
Virginia.

49. Thank You !
• mschoultz@yahoo.com
• Twitter: mikeschoultz

50. Coming Soon !
Digital Spark Marketing
Consulting, LLC