Business LesBusiness Lessons from the Best

7/28/2019 Business LesBusiness Lessons from the Best

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Business Lessons from the Best

Words of Wisdom from America's

Top Entrepreneurs


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This year promises to be full of difficult challenges

and unique opportunities for small business

owners nationwide. That makes right now an ideal

time to seek inspiration and advice from the

leaders who have proven their ability to overcome

obstacles and achieve success despite difficult

times.


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This unique slideshow brings together key quotes

that encapsulate the wisdom and advice of 15

remarkable American entrepreneurs. From Marc

Andreessen to Sam Walton, each one of thesetitans found ways to change the world with their

vision, hard work, and perseverance. And their

pithy quotes -- covering everything from branding

to leadership and beyond -- offer invaluable

nuggets of wisdom for all small businesses and

entrepreneurs.


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Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com) on

Branding"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.

You earn your reputation by trying to do hard thingswell."

For creatively leading Amazon.com during the dot-com

boom, Time magazine named Jeff Bezos its Person of

the Year in 1999. In retrospect, his greater

achievement may have been guiding his company

through the dot-com bust and building it intoAmerica's largest online retailer while successfully

diversifying into other lines of business, including the

Kindle e-reader in 2007.

Born to a teenage mother in Albuquerque, New

Mexico, Bezos showed an early aptitude for science. He

attended Princeton University, graduating with adegree in computer science and electrical engineering.

He founded Amazon.com in 1994. Today the company

has a market capitalization of more than $80 billion.
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Howard Schultz (Starbucks)

on Building Your Team"You can't expect your employees to exceed the

expectations of your customers if you don't

exceed your employees' expectations ofmanagement."

Growing up poor in Brooklyn, New York, the

son of a truck driver, Howard Schultz was the

first person in his family to go to college. After

graduating in 1975, he held several jobs,

including a sales position at Xerox Corp. In1979, Schultz joined Hammarplast, a Swedish

drip coffee maker, as its general manager. Two

years later he walked into Starbucks, a small,

popular chain of coffee shops in Seattle, and

his life changed. Schultz eventually bought the

company, became its CEO, and expanded itfrom four stores to more than 16,000 today.

With Schultz's emphasis on company-owned

stores and his insistence on training and

quality, Starbucks has become ubiquitous

throughout the United States and in 50 other

countries.


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Larry Page (Google) on

Collaboration"If you can run the company a bit more

collaboratively, you get a better result because you

have more checking and balancing going on."

Larry Page's parents were both computer science

professors, so it's not surprising that he gravitated

toward computers at an early age. Page attended the

University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's

degree in computer engineering, and Stanford

University, where he gained a master's in computer

science. It was at Stanford that Page met Sergey Brin,

a fellow Ph.D. candidate. After developing the

PageRank algorithm, the men conceived the idea for

a superior search engine.

Google was founded in 1998 and quickly came to

dominate online search and advertising while

playing key roles in cloud computing, video, email,

mobile communications, and many other growing

businesses.


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Bill Gates (Microsoft) on

Customer Service"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest

source of learning."

One of the leading entrepreneurs of the personal

computer industry, Bill Gates discovered his

interest in software at the age of 13. In 1973 he

entered Harvard University, where he developed a

version of the programming language BASIC for the

first microcomputer, the MITS Altair. It's also where

he met Steve Ballmer, who became a lifelong

business partner at

Microsoft Corp. Gates started the company in

1975, believing that the computer would becomean indispensable tool in every home and office.

Now chair of Microsoft and a major

philanthropist, Gates is the world's second-

wealthiest person, with an estimated worth of

$53 billion.


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Herb Kelleher (Southwest

Airlines) on Financial Discipline"We're very conservative from a fiscal standpoint.

We never got dangerously in debt and never let

costs get out of hand."

Herb Kelleher is the cofounder and former CEO of

Dallas-based

Southwest Airlines, which changed the U.S.airline industry with its low-fare, low-cost

business strategy. Since the company's inception

in 1971, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking

Kelleher believed that Southwest employees

should have fun on the job and provide superior

customer service. With 35,000 employees,Southwest is consistently named one of the best

places to work in the U.S. In fact, the airline

received 90,043 resumes in 2009, hiring only 831

people.


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Steve Jobs (Apple) on Finding

Your Bliss"The only way to do great work is to love what

you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep

looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the

heart, you'll know when you find it."

Steve Job's company,

Apple Inc., has revolutionized the computer

industry, the consumer electronics industry,

and the music business -- not bad for a guywho once lost control of his company. Jobs

cofounded Apple in 1976. The company's

Macintosh, introduced in 1984, became the

first successful small computer with a

graphical user interface. But after an internal

power struggle, Jobs left Apple in 1985 andfounded NeXT Computer. Apple acquired

NeXT in 1996, and Jobs returned to Apple in

full force. He expanded Apple's products

beyond its lineup of laptop and desktop

computers, introducing the iPod in 2001, the

iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010.


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Marc Andreessen (Netscape) on

Hard Work"A lot of this is sheer persistence. It's sheer

persistence at one company or it's sheer persistence

at whatever you're doing in the future."

While still a college student, Marc Andreessen

cocreated Mosaic, the first easy-to-use Web browser.

After moving to Silicon Valley, he cofounded

Netscape Communications Corp., which was sold to

AOL for $4.2 billion in 1998. Andreessen went on to

start Loudcloud, which changed its name to

Opsware and was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6

billion in 2007. Today he is a prominent venturecapitalist who has invested in Ning, Digg, Twitter,

and other firms. He is a director of Hewlett-

Packard, Facebook, and eBay.


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Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) on

Leadership

"Outstanding leaders go out of their way toboost the self-esteem of their personnel. If

people believe in themselves, it's amazing

what they can accomplish."

Born on a farm in Oklahoma during the Great

Depression, Sam Walton founded

Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. After working for

J.C. Penney and completing a stint in the

military, Walton took over his first variety

store at the age of 26, making sure the retailer

was stocked with a range of goods at low

prices. That model would become thehallmark of his firm's success. The first Wal-

Mart opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962.

Today, Wal-Mart is the nation's largest

publicly traded company by revenue. Walton

died in 1992.


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Vera Wang (Designer) on

Learning"Don't be afraid to take time to learn. I worked

for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn."

After working as a senior fashion editor at

Vogue and then for Ralph Lauren,

Vera Wang opened her own business on

Madison Avenue in 1990, designing bridal

wear and evening gowns. In 1994, she started

her own label. Her client list is extensive, and

she's particularly known for dressing the stars

for the Academy Awards. She has made

wedding dresses for Mariah Carey, ChelseaClinton, Alicia Keys, Khloe Kardashian, and

Sharon Stone. She has also designed costumes

for several figure skaters, including Michelle

Kwan and Nancy Kerrigan.


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Ted Turner (CNN) on Self-

Confidence"All my life, people have said that I wasn't going tomake it."

It was a novel idea at the time -- a 24-hour, live cable

news channel -- and many experts thought it

wouldn't succeed. But Ted Turner's

CNN, launched in 1980, paved the way for a host ofimitators. After building a reputation covering high-

profile news events such as the Space Shuttle

Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Persian Gulf

War in 1991, today, CNN, a division of Time Warner,

reaches 100 million U.S. households. Now the

largest private landowner in the United States,

Turner got his start in his father's billboard

business.

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