Your Business Matters Quotes

MAKE WAVES WITH ME! My talk's not cheap, but sponsorship is inexpensive and tax-deductible. ~ Lisa Tolliver

Mom sez I like talk radio, teaching, and consulting 'cuz they ensure captive audiences. True or not (let Freudians decide), I'm driven by a "four eyed" mission to inform, instruct, intrigue, and inspire. Moreover, I like interactivity: If you're listening, I'm listening. Talk with me! ~ Lisa Tolliver

If the store were your own business, you'd escort the customer to a product's location in the store and refer to the customer by name. ~ Steven Burd

You look green, immature. A young boy playing at business, dressing up in the manner in which he believes an actual grown-up would. Your viewpoint of business attire is one of wide-eyed wonder from the nursery door. ~ Chris Murray

I try to encourage people to really love what they do, like when it's about being a part of this business [entertaining], love what you do because it's not going to always be defined by who you are. It's going to be a lot of times your good name walks in the door before you do. ~ Cedric The Entertainer

Maybe you are in the Abyss of Emotional Bankruptcy looking for a way out, looking for the next rung in the ladder on your climb to the Peak of Happiness, or you may even be at the Peak of Happiness already, looking for a way to stay there. Wherever you are in life, this book is designed to give you the tools necessary to help you achieve your goals. ~ Ken Poirot

If there's any business that instructs you in the strong hand of fate, it's show business. You can plan and plan, but it's what happens to you that really determines what your career will be like. ~ Sam Waterston

Could the Burmese trade for themselves? Can they make machinery, ships, railways, roads? They are helpless without you. What would happen to the Burmese forests if the English were not here? They would be sold immediately to the Japanese, who would gut them and ruin them. Instead of which, in your hands, actually they are improved. And while your business men develop the resources of our country, your officials are civilising us, elevating us to their level, from pure public spirit. It is a magnificent record of self-sacrifice. ~ George Orwell

Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still - that's how you build a future. ~ Arthur Miller

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough. ~ Abraham Lincoln

If you take care of your workers they'll take care of your business. ~ Richard Branson

Well cult is a word you would never say in Hollywood. In any film business, if you're trying to get your next film made, you would never say, "Oh, my last film was a cult film." I'd say, "Oh great, well I hope this one isn't!" ~ John Waters

Look you," Pandora told him in a businesslike tone, "marriage is not on the table."
Look you? Look you? Gabriel was simultaneously amused and outraged. Was she really speaking to him as if he were an errand boy?
"I've never wanted to marry," Pandora continued. "Anyone who knows me will tell you that. When I was little, I never liked the stories about princesses waiting to be rescued. I never wished on falling stars, or pulled the petals off daisies while reciting 'he loves me, he loves me not.' At my brother's wedding, they handed out slivers of wedding cake to all the unmarried girls and said if we put it under our pillows, we would dream of our future husbands. I ate my cake instead. Every crumb. I've made plans for my life that don't involve becoming anyone's wife."
"What plans?" Gabriel asked. How could a girl of her position, with her looks, make plans that didn't include the possibility of marriage?
"That's none of your business," she told him smartly.
"Understood," Gabriel assured her. "There's just one thing I'd like to ask: What the bloody hell were you doing at the ball in the first place, if you don't want to marry?"
"Because I thought it would be only slightly less boring than staying at home."
"Anyone as opposed to marriage as you claim to be has no business taking part in the Season."
"Not every girl who attends a ball wants to be Cinderella."
"If it's grouse season," Gabriel pointed out acidly, "and you're keeping co ~ Lisa Kleypas

The one thing a lifetime in the newspaper business teaches you is pace - you spend all your time trying to make sure that the reader's going to finish what you're writing. ~ Carl Hiaasen

It is a lonely programme. The very virtues you cultivate become walls that inevitably separate you from your kind ... A new danger comes to your soul, and intolerance and impatience with those who are as you have been all but destroy that which you have taken such pains to build up. Not alone are there spiritual barriers between you and the friends that you have, but your business training has made your mind incisive. In the swift rush of business you have no time for small debates and petty dilemmas. ~ Alice Foote MacDougall

Serving as your own boss, and doing so successfully, consistently, day in and day out, takes an uncommon degree of slight edge integrity, and frankly many business owners just don't have it. ~ Jeff Olson

How do you know you have won? When the energy is coming the other way and when your people are visibly growing individually and as a group. ~ John Harvey-Jones

That is why, I explained to Bojia, as a columnist, "I am either in the heating business or the lighting business." Every column or blog has to either turn on a lightbulb in your reader's head - illuminate an issue in a way that will inspire them to look at it anew - or stoke an emotion in your reader's heart that prompts them to feel or act more intensely or differently about an issue. The ideal column does both. But ~ Thomas L. Friedman

He is Your Customer, the Reason behind Your Customs. ~ Vineet Raj Kapoor

Life isn't a dress rehearsal; you have to go for it. But it takes hard work and dedication and you might not always get what you think you deserve. It doesn't matter. Handle yourself with professionalism and remember that in business, your personal brand is your greatest asset. Mind your reputation and the rest will come. ~ Aliza Licht

Allow yourself a space of quiet, wherein you can add to your knowledge of the Good and learn to curb your restlessness. Guard also against another kind of error: the folly of those who weary their days in much business, but lack any aim on which their whole effort, nay, their whole thought, is focused. ~ Marcus Aurelius

I find too often in the wrestling business, you just wrestle, get to the hotel, make your money. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself to enjoy my life and not just rush through. ~ Owen Hart

The unwinding brings freedom, more than the world has ever granted, and to more kinds of people than ever before - freedom to go away, freedom to return, freedom to change your story, get your facts, get hired, get fired, get high, marry, divorce, go broke, begin again, start a business, have it both ways, take it to the limit, walk away from the ruins, succeed beyond your dreams and boast about it, fail abjectly and try again. ~ George Packer

If your team members can run a home, raise a family, and organize their lives, they are fully equipped to run a multimillion-dollar business. ~ Mary Christensen

Tissue gas was an embalmer's worst nightmare - a highly infectious form of bacteria that thrived on dead tissue and released a noxious gas inside the body. Smell was usually the easiest way to detect it, but sometimes, as with this body, the smell was buried under other chemicals, and the only way to identify it was the 'skin-slip' Mom had found on the back, where interior gas bubbles separated the skin from the muscle. The gas itself was bad enough, because the stink would soon become so foul it would be all but impossible to cover up; that didn't reflect well on us when people showed up for the viewing. Even worse than the gas though, were the bacteria that made it. Once they got into your workspace, you might never get them out again. If we didn't put a stop to this right now, every body we embalmed would catch the same bacteria from our tools and table. It could destroy the entire business. ~ Dan Wells

If 'Party of Five' hadn't done well, it would have been a bunch of names involved in the demise. But if 'Time of Your Life' doesn't do well, it will be my name. You have to prepare for the worst. This is a very fickle business. ~ Jennifer Love Hewitt

Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. ~ Andrew Carnegie

You should think of your customers as partners, or better still, family. ~ Victor Kiam

Oh, God", he thought, "what a strenuous career it is that I've chosen! Travelling day in and day out. Doing business like this takes much more effort than doing your own business at home, and on top of that there's the curse of travelling, worries about making train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different people all the time so that you can never get to know anyone or become friendly with them. It can all go to Hell! ~ Franz Kafka

When people hurt your feelings, keep remembering these words: "In years to come, will it matter?" Time heals almost everything. Give yourself time ... And what other people think of you is none of your business ... it's in their head to give them brain damage and not yours ... my secret of Longevity. ~ Peekey

Don't be worried about the next man - make sure your business tight. ~ Dr. Dre

So don't look over your shoulder or let fear and anxiety rule you. Go for broke. Let passion blaze your trail. Look ahead and pursue the dream that fits who you are as a person and a manager. Learn what you can, but don't get bogged down
in today's world, there's so much to know that learning can actually take the place of action and hold you back. Learn enough, then trust your gut and act. Be bold
or crazy
enough not to hold back. Take advantage of the freedom to be your own person. When the game is over, regardless of the score, you'll revel in what you've done. ~ Edward M. Hallowell

The thing I preach constantly is do your research; build your knowledge base. Don't just go into business on a whim or a prayer - and don't think 'I'm an entrepreneur so I have to take risks'. Entrepreneurs don't take risks. They take calculated risks; only the good ones. ~ Theo Paphitis

Your inner voice is the voice of your past. ~ Meir Ezra

As a chef I'm not your dietitian or your ethicist, I'm in the pleasure business. ~ Anthony Bourdain

I can't think of anything that anyone has ever accomplished without having some sort of self-discipline. Without knowing how to work for it. Without learning how to earn it. I talk to my friends who are writers. I say, "Well, how do you do it?" Most all of them will say, "I sit down. I force myself every day to sit down and write for at least two hours. Whether something comes out of it or doesn't come out of it, whether I finish my fifty pages or two, I sit down and I do that because I have to make myself do it."

That's what a work ethic is. Any person I know who is successful in my business or any other business is so because they work their asses off for it, because nothing is for free. If you want something, if you want to achieve success in any area of life, you must apply your discipline and your work ethic. Because discipline is what helps you consciously do things in order to reach a desired goal. Discipline is a rejection of entitlement and expectation. Discipline is having a strong awareness that your choices have impact and that your actions make a difference. ~ Cameron Diaz

But I won't keep a count of people I have killed as though it were a trophy record or a disgusting business like notches in a gun, he told himself. I have a right to not keep count and I have a right to forget them.

No, himself said. You have no right to forget anything. You have no right to shut your eyes to any of it nor any right to forget any of it nor to soften it nor to change it. ~ Ernest Hemingway

A tree 'fires' its leaves every autumn, and a mother bird 'fires' its babies from the nest in spring, right? Be alert to the need to call an end to a relationship within your business, and if it's your turn to fire, do it swiftly. ~ Andrea J. Lee

It is no longer a matter of IF you have a personal brand--it is a question of "How is it working for you?" Does it best express your intentions, your uniqueness, and your service offering? Is it helping or hindering your progress and success in business? ~ Susan C. Young