Die besten Zitate meiner Lieblings-Unternehmer

Derek Sivers

• “Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself.”
• “Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it.”
• “To me, ‘busy’ implies that the person is out of control of their life.”
• “If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they’ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff”
• “Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it.”
• “You’re free to do anything you want with your company. It’s more like art. You don’t have to follow any norms. It’s an expression of how you feel the world should be. When you make a company, that’s your little place to make your own little utopia.”

David Heinemeier Hansson

• “You’re better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole.”
• “It’s not about being eight hours in an office. It’s about increasing the quality of the hours that you spend.”
• “The whole point of innovation and disruption is doing things differently from those who came before you. If you hide in the herd, you’re not likely to get ahead of the pack.”
• “If you’re not working on your best idea right now, you’re doing it wrong.”
• “Fear is ugly because it makes you irrational. Fear makes you jump to conclusions. Fear makes you reactionary.”

Günter Faltin

• “Erfolgreiche Unternehmen entstehen im Kopf.”
• “Als Entrepreneur müssen Sie an Ihrem Unternehmen arbeiten, nicht notwendigerweise in Ihrem Unternehmen.”
• “Beim Gründen mit Komponenten können wir uns den Gründer als einen Komponisten vorstellen, der ein Ziel vor Augen hat und sein Instrumentarium einzusetzen versteht. Auch der Komponist hat nicht alle Instrumente zu spielen gelernt, so wie der moderne Kapitän nicht Maschinist, Softwarespezialist und Navigationsexperte ist.”
• “Wenn man Entrepreneurship von Business Administration unterscheidet, wird die Gefahr, den Gründer mit einer Vielzahl von Anforderungen – etwa betriebswirtschaftlicher, rechtlicher, organisatorischer Art – zu überfordern, entscheidend geringer.”
• “Der Gründer als Lead Entrepreneur muss sich voll auf das Ideenkonzept und seine Weiterentwicklung konzentrieren können. Dem Management obliegt das operative Tagesgeschäft.”
• “Wer sich als Gründer solche professionellen Kräfte nicht leisten kann, dessen Gründungskonzept ist nicht tragfähig.”

Jason Fried

• “Simple” is a tricky word, it can mean a lot of things. To us, it just means clear. That doesn’t always mean total reduction, or minimalism – sometimes, to make things clearer, you have to add a step.
• “What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.”
• “When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.”
• “if you’re a copycat, you can never keep up. You’re always in a passive position. You never lead; you always follow. You give birth to something that’s already behind the times—just a knockoff, an inferior version of the original. That’s no way to live.”
• “It’s a beautiful way to put it: Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic.”
• “No is easier to do. Yes is easier to say.”
• “The design is done when the problem goes away.”

Seth Godin

• “Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.”
• “I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.”
• “If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.”
• “The best way to be missed when you’re gone is to stand for something when you’re here.”

Tim Ferriss

• “But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.”
• “What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”
• “People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”
• “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
• “The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met are all good communicators. It’s perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.”
• “Age doesn’t matter: an open mind does.”
• “Slow down and remember this: most things make no difference.”
• “It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.”
• “Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market – define your customers – then find or develop a product for them.”
• “Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.”
• “Think big but ensure payday comes every day.”
• “Simplicity requires ruthlessness.”

Warren Buffett

• “Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.”
• “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”
• “Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it’s the lack of change that appeals to me.”
• “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”
• “Keep all your eggs in one basket, but watch that basket closely.”
• “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
• “It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”
• “Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be.”
• “Intensity is the price of excellence.”
• “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”