Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
This notion that it is up to each person to innovation in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
By being remarkable, being genuine, you can be worth connecting with. And you don't have to have it figured out perfectly the first time - you can adjust.
The only reason to build a website is to change someone. If you can't tell me the change and you can't tell me the someone, then you're wasting your time.
Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.
Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.
It turns out that the people who like their jobs the most are also the ones who are doing the best work, making the greatest impact, and changing the most.
Before you tell yourself you have no right to invent this or improve that, remind yourself that the person before you had no right either, but did it anyway.
The only people who get paid what they're worth are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map.
Understanding the mythology of your partner, your customer and your audience is far more important than watching the instant replay of what actually happened.
If you're working with a spreadsheet or a thread of correspondence or a set of data, I'm not sure you're doing your best work if you're doing it on an iPhone.
If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure.
The answer to the question "where do good ideas come from" is always the same, the come from bad ideas. If you come up with 20 bad ideas you get one good one.
Blaming the system is soothing because it lets you off the hook. But when the system is broken, we wonder why you were relying in the system in the first place.
In a race, sooner or later there's a moment that separates the winner from those who don't win. That instant is your chance, the moment you've been waiting for.
Everyone has a comfort zone. Worth considering: How hard (and how often) are you willing to work to get out of it? You can turn that into a habit if you choose.
I was lucky enough to co-found a business in college that ended up with 400 employees, and I launched 20 different projects while I was there - a project a week.
Human beings, thanks to culture and genetics, are inclined to be pessimistic, fearful, skeptical and believers in conspiracy theories. We also don't like change.
If you're a marketer who doesn't know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you're no longer a marketer. You're deadwood.
Pain s the truth of art. Art is not a hobby or a pastime. It is the result of an internal battle royal, one between the quest for safety and the desire to matter.
I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.
Solving problems—actually solving them, not just claiming you do—solving perceived, urgent problems, is a surefire way to get the world to beat a path to your door.
Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone.
All good ideas are terrible... Until people realize they are obvious. If you're not willing to live through the terrible stage, you'll never get to the obvious part.
If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power.
Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.
Go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing results you seek.
Faced with the opportunity to become the category of one, we almost always hesitate, almost always compromise, almost always dumb it down to play it a little bit safer
A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs. You're welcome to play this game if it makes you happy, but for most people, it will make you miserable.
The opportunity is not in being momentarily popular with the anonymous masses. It's in being missed when you're gone, in doing work that matters to the tribe you choose.
Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.
Our job is obvious: we need to get out of the way, shine a light, and empower a new generation to teach itself and to go further and faster than any generation ever has.
The purpose of an elevator pitch is to describe a situation or solution so compelling that the person you're with wants to hear more even after the elevator ride is over.
The art, the new, the ability to connect the dots and to make an impact - sooner or later, that can only come from one who creates, not from a teacher and not from a book.
Now for the first time, you can choose yourself. You can be responsible for what you do and how you do it. You have to do the hard work of finding and pleasing an audience.
Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave.
Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.
All motivation is self-motivation. Your family, your boss, or your co-workers can try to get your engine going, but until you decide what to accomplish, nothing will happen.
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stores and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another.
At least at first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin.
Go ahead and act as if your decisions are temporary. Because they are. Be bold, make mistakes, learn a lesson, and fix what doesn't work. No sweat, no need to hyperventilate.
People are buying only one thing from you: the way the engagement (hiring you, working with you, dating you, using your product or service, learning from you) makes them feel.
Learn. Ceaselessly. Learn to code, to write persuasively, to understand new technologies, to bring out the best in your team, to find underused resources and to spot patterns.
Most people don't see that they have options beyond what society tells them to do. That's the biggest problem. They honestly believe that compliance is the shortcut to success.
People don't believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.
If you treat your employees like mushrooms (keep them in the dark and regularly throw crap on them), it's entirely likely you will get precisely the work you deserve in return.
We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate.
Great boss is challenging people in the right way. Leading, not managing. Supporting them by giving them both a platform they can count on and expectations they can stretch for.
If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you're worthy.
An organization filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical and driven people will always defeat the one that merely has talent. Every time.
There's a huge difference between being a replaceable cog on the assembly line and being the one who is missed, the one with a unique contribution, the one who made a difference.