Monday, December 04, 2017

Scaling for Success

Canadians are running one of the world's most ambitious experiments in learning how to help promising growth companies learn how to scale.

"Scaling" is a fun term. Look it up in Google Image Search and you find picture after picture of dental hygienists poking at your teeth with sharp metal instruments. 

But in business, scaling is the new term for "managing growth." Scaling is about scraping away your bad habits to expose the shiny value proposition beneath - and then developing a dozen new organizational capabilities (strategic communications, delegation, culture development, recruitment, finance, sales management, etc.) to ensure that you know how to compete on a global scale.

Essentially, scaling is the discipline all businesses must master if they hope to survive and grow. That's why I'm so interested in the Lazaridis Scale-Up Program now being workshopped by Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis Institute for the Management of Technology Enterprise. For the second year, they've selected 10 companies from across Canada to participate in a six-month crash course in scaling - as a way of learning how to teach scaling, and then how to scale it so more Canadian entrepreneurs can benefit from that education.

Imagine the competitive advantage Canada could enjoy if its best and brightest companies understood the challenges and logistics of scaling. We could create all the "unicorns" we want, and finally build the 21st-century economy we've dreamed of.

So here's the link to my first article about Cohort II of the Lazaridis Scale-Up Program.

As you'll see, it all starts with better communication. 

Specifically, how can you engage stakeholders' heart, mind and gut - in 20 seconds?

Excerpt:
Be clear (What do you do?).
Be compelling (How much better are you? How are you different?).
Be credible (Can we believe you?).
Those messages go straight to the head, the heart and the gut, in that order.

Click here for more.



Friday, November 03, 2017

How to grow your business NOW!

“All businesses start as an idea, an opportunity, or a hunch.”

“But as a business grows, it has to shed the startup phase of gut instinct and guesswork. Founders need to embrace an ever-evolving framework of processes and systems – such as accounting, human resources and even internal communications – to ensure that work started by just one or two people can be understood and consistently supported by employees and associates of all different levels and backgrounds.”

This was the opening of my four-part Financial Post series last month on “scaling”. That’s the process we used to call “managing growth,” before Silicon Valley found a cooler buzzword.

I wrote four stories for the National Post on different aspects of managing your company’s growth, oops, I mean scaling. VCs use this term to describe how tech startups can master the path to global success, but these stories are meant for any business leader trying to get ahead of the competition.

Hopefully that includes just about everybody.

Here are the yarns you should check out:

Scaling your family business

Scaling fast and slow

Managing the baffling logistics of scaling

The secret of scaling: managing three businesses at the same time.
-        the business as it is (current state);
-        the business it will become over the next year (next-state);
-        and the business you think it could become in five years (long-term).

Plus: The LazaridisInstitute’s Scale-Up Program is exploring the right way to help promising companies learn to scale. Here’s what their test entrepreneurs learned in Year One.


Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Life at the Top: The challenges facing Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies

I spent this morning at the PROFIT 500 CEO Summit, bringing together the leaders of Canada’s Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies. It’s the 29th year of the survey, which has now outlasted not only PROFIT magazine, which debuted the survey in 1988, but Canadian Business, which took over the survey after PROFIT folded a few years ago. (CB stopped publishing in magazine form earlier this year, but it lives on online and in occasional special issues.*)

Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein on stage at PROFIT 500 CEO Summit today
PROFIT/CB/Maclean’s drags me out of mothballs once a year for this event to lead one of the many roundtable discussions for the “Idea Exchange,” where growth company CEOs discuss the issues that keep them up at night. The seven CEOs I met today – from Toronto, Montreal, Calgary  and southwestern Ontario – cited some pretty interesting challenges:

·       - How do my brother and I convince our father that the family business should invest more in technology?
·       - How do we keep doubling sales given that it gets harder and harder as you grow?
·       - What tasks as CEO do I need to give up in order to grow the company faster?
·       - How can we get ahead without hiring more people?
·      -  How can we increase profitability?
·       - How can we motivate world-class talent to move to our city?
·        - How can we systematize hiring so it takes less time, while maintaining the rigour of our current process and preserving our culture?

As you might guess, these are confidential discussions, so I can’t talk about the solutions we discussed. But it’s interesting to see how growth businesses in different industries have problems that sound different, but are all essentially the same:
How do I personally change fast enough to keep up with my company’s success?

At one point, I mentioned the importance of taking time to put your key processes into writing. Then I asked how many of the entrepreneurs at the table maintained an employee handbook. All seven said yes. Astounding!

Above all, I was impressed by the respect these leaders had for their employees. They truly treat them as partners. As one participant mentioned, “Our people are the resource that makes our business successful, and will one day let us step away from it.”

At the end, I asked people to offer their best management tip, or a book that changed their life.

The books: Delivering Happiness (by Zappos founder Tony Hsieh); The One-Minute Manager; Managing Up (get your employees to read it); and It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, by Roy Spence (no relation).

Some of the best advice:
  •       “Get a mentor. Or join a peer group (such as YPO, PEO, Innovators’ Alliance, etc).”
  •        Surround yourself with people who are better than you. There’s no better feeling when you're running a company than when people eat, breathe and sleep the organization.”
  •        When you're trying to teach your team something, “Keep at it. Let people know why you want them to do this.” If they're balking, find out what’s holding them back: “It’s my job to show people the whole picture.”
  •        “Do what you say you will.”
  •        “Don't overthink it. Get a product out there and test it.”
  •        “Even as COO, I still have my own customer accounts. I try to stay in touch with all aspects of the business.”
Read more about the PROFIT 100 here: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/profit-500-canadas-fastest-growing-companies/

(* And of course PROFITguide.com also survives online, albeit rarely updated.)

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Why Does Networking Matter?

Networking – or building better business relationships – is one of those essential skills that no one ever learns in school. Some folks are natural networkers – they meet people easily, gain trust quickly, and forge fast friendships. But most of us have to work at it.
Why bother? Because business is always about people. You will only succeed in business if you know how to meet people, how to connect with them, and how to gain their ongoing friendship and support. This applies not just to customers, but to co-workers, suppliers, consultants and associates, and hundreds of potential prospects, mentors, advisors, partners and friends.
We all know people who have sworn off networking, because they say it doesn't work. But that's usually because they don't know how to do it!
Networking isn’t just about schmoozing people so they will buy from you. Business relationships pay off in many ways, many of them unknown and invisible to us now. When you neglect to turn an acquaintance into a trusted contact, who knows what future opportunities you are tossing away?
Yesterday I had a coffee meeting with someone I just met the day before. We hit it off and now plan to do a very cool project together. Other people aren't strangers; they're allies you haven't met yet.
And I would never have met him had I not made friends 10 years ago with yet another new acquaintance, who’s the one who invited me to yesterday’s event. Developing and building new relationships in business may not change your life right away, but will pay off continually over time.
Think back to your recent business successes, large or small. Chances are they were initiated or abetted by people who recently passed the “acquaintance” level and became trusted colleagues. Business is all about adding value – and building your network is the best way to add value for your clients, employer, employees and other partners.
Why do I say that most people aren't very good at “networking”? Because it’s so much more than sizing up strangers based on their potential to become customers.  You need to see the bigger picture – and then you need a plan.
The best way to succeed in any aspect of business is to develop a strategy and follow it. But when it comes to networking, almost no one bothers to plan. Expecting people to come to you with great ideas or open wallets isn’t networking. It’s standing in a corner waiting for someone to talk to you.
Today’s business leaders need a better vision of relationship-building. One rooted in the fact that business is a team sport. Each of us needs the most supportive team we can find. So networking is the process of putting together that team.
And remember – you're just one player on the team. It’s not all about you. It’s about how you and your team-mates can help each other. 
Many people don't understand this. Even Dictionary.com defines networking as “cultivating people who can be helpful to one professionally.” That definition seems to assume that networking is selfish and narrow. It may sound appealing at first. But most adults have already learned that relationships based on grabbing sole advantage never last. No one wants to hang out with a bloodsucking vampire.
And you may have noticed that the selfish quarterback gets sacked by the other team much more often than the quarterbacks who respect their teammates and share the credit. You want your teammates to have your back.
So here’s the definition of networking that we use at Connectinc: Interacting and sharing with other people to develop lasting personal and business relationships of mutual benefit.
True networking means thinking not just about how people can help you, but how you can help them. Everyone needs information, resources, feedback, contacts and encouragement. Each of us can help each other by sharing our own experiences, our solutions, our network. And we can create lasting value for others by maintaining active, long-term relationships.
Make no mistake: networking is a powerful tool for personal advancement and profit. But a network exists for every member’s benefit – not just your own. Create value for others, and you’ll be planting seeds that will bloom and grow throughout your long and successful career.
Want more? Rick Spence and Barbara Katz are holding a free webinar on Tues. Sept. 26, at 1 pm and 7 pm EDT. We’ll share our seven best networking tips and take ALL your questions on relationship building, improving your confidence, mastering small talk, understanding "opening lines", and much more - including the best ways to follow up. For more information, click HERE for 1 pm. Or click HERE for 7 pm.
Connectinc offers tips and strategies for building your social capital through stronger business relationships. Follow us on Twitter at @connectinc_

Sunday, August 06, 2017

Writing with Power, for Impact

The other day a business acquaintance, Jeff, sent along the beginning of a blogpost, and asked me what I thought. I thought he was off to a good start, so I wrote him back some notes on how to turn it into an article with credibility and reader utility – and, hopefully, some promotional value for the writer.

But it has to happen in that order.
A blogpost that promotes the writer over the needs of its audience is doomed to be ignored and forgotten. An article that brings real value to a reader is much more likely to be remembered, to be shared, and to encourage readers to follow up.

Here, only slightly edited to preserve his confidentiality, is the advice I gave Jeff.

I think your article is off to a great start. I like your passion and your professionalism. And you offer some very vivid examples.
But before you start writing, you should always ask yourself:

·  *   What am I trying to say?
·  *   Who is my audience?
·  *   What do I want them to take away from this article that’s new and impactful?

You have to decide if this is going to be a promo piece for you, a think piece, a tool packed with useful tips, or a manifesto that will open people’s eyes to new thinking in their fields. (There are many other possibilities, of course; these are just a few samples to show the range that’s possible.)

Usually, the right answer is a blend of the above. The best promo pieces don't brag; they offer real value to the target reader. Confident professionals are happy to give knowledge away, because they know that’s the best way to earn respect, goodwill, and potential follow-ups and referrals.

So I suggest you now prepare an outline that includes what you have here, explores why so many people have the wrong idea of [redacted], and then follow up with some really insightful observations that will make your business market sit up and take notice. They might point to the essential changes your market needs, or examples of organizations that failed because they lacked the ability to change. Or you might get more prescriptive, and offer three to give tips on how companies can rethink their processes, make them simpler, more powerful or more effective, and reap the benefits of consistent improvement.

There’s so much free information available today. To make an impact, you have to share powerful ideas, stated simply, clearly and accessibly.

Good luck!

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

When you spoil your kids you're stealing their future

Yesterday I did a radio interview with Aaron Rand of Montreal news/talk station CJAD 800. We discussed my most recent column, which ran in the Montreal Gazette and other major Postmedia papers as well as the Financial Post.

My column was an analysis of EntitleMania, a new book by California attorney Richard Watts, who's a financial advisor to many affluent business leaders and their families. The book is a warning to successful partners not to give to much to their kids - lest you steal away their ambition and self-reliance, or "cage" them in a lifestyle that they don't want and can't afford.

It's a fascinating book, and Aaron picked up on all of the cool points in my story: how Mr. Watts learned from nearly spoiling his third son;  how entrepreneurs are some of the worst offenders  in terms of spoiling their children; and how your kids' whole futures may be at risk.

Click here to watch the six-minute video on YouTube. (Ignore Mr. Rand's identity confusion at the start. It was embarrassing enough for the both of us.).



Or you can read my column here. It's more fun than spoiling your children!

Friday, June 16, 2017

The paradoxes of entrepreneurship - a classic from the archives

Here's a story I wrote three years ago. Some of the details may be outdated, but the message is more timely than ever now.


They tell you to focus on the big picture. Then they tell you “retail is detail.”

They call entrepreneurs risk-takers. Then they tell you to be risk-averse.

In many respects, your success in business will hinge on your ability to resolve the essential paradoxes of entrepreneurship. 

Life presents us with many paradoxical situations: “Hurry up and wait.” “I saved a lot of money shopping.” Paradoxes galore were on display last week in a panel discussion I moderated with four entrepreneurs in Ottawa. 

The first speaker was Rivers Corbett, founder of two Fredericton-based businesses, caterer Chef Group and restaurateur Relish Gourmet Burgers. He told the audience his No. 1 secret of success: “I zag when everybody else zigs.” So often, Corbett says, life requires you to fit in. Paradoxically, business requires you not to fit in. “In the marketplace, you have to be different,” he says. “It’s not like high school. You have to be stand out, you need to be unique.”

Another paradox: Corbett says it’s important to be Think Big. But you also have to think small. Look after the little things. “At Relish, when we think gourmet burgers, we think total domination,” he says. But he knows domination comes from the little things, such as making sure all customers entering his restaurants in Atlantic Canada are greeted warmly by the entire team. If Corbett sees a passerby in the street carrying a Relish takeout bag, he’ll make a huge fuss about thanking them for their business. “We instill a culture of thinking small,” he says. “Little experiences that add up to big, big impact.”

Another paradox plunged Marissa McTasney into her own business. After taking a construction course geared to attracting more women into the skilled trades, she found that the required safety gear – such as steel-toed work boots – came only in men’s styles and sizes. She formed Whitby, Ont.-based Moxie Trades to sell women’s work boots and safety equipment. (You may remember her from her 2008 appearance on Dragons’ Den, where she scored a $600,000 investment from W. Brett Wilson – then the biggest-ever deal in the Den.)

Then McTasney ran into the “We have to protect our customers from themselves” paradox. Determined to get pink workboots into Home Depot Canada, she found it almost impossible to meet with then-president Annette Verschuren. McTasney says Verschuren’s team physically blocked her when they saw her approaching. Finally, McTasney took a gift bucket containing workboots, flowers and cupcakes to Home Depot HQ. When the executive who used to roll his eyes at her finally spied the boots, he said “This could be exactly what we need.” She got her meeting with Verschuren, and now sells boots, safety glasses and hard hats through more than 400 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

The third speaker, Vinod Rajasekaran, is an aerospace engineer turned lead strategist at HUB Ottawa, a company-working space dedicated to innovation and collaboration. We all know that entrepreneurs need to think positive and focus on their strengths. But Rajasekaran urged them to pay more attention to mistakes: “It’s really important to capture your failures.” It’s the best way to improve, he says: “We celebrate our failures, and we share them.”

The final speaker, Michael Daignault, is CEO of Ottawa-based Magnus Training & Protection Inc. The paradox he explored concerns the surprisingly empathetic nature of business today. 

Daignault is a Canadian Forces veteran who spent nine years with the elite Special Forces before being injured in a non-combat-related accident. “Suddenly that door – everything I’d strived for – slammed shut,” he says. He found new purpose by teaming up with colleagues to offer security services to businesses and individuals. “I had two options: develop and build my own dream, or build somebody else’s. I chose the ceiling-less route of entrepreneurship.”

He admits he knew nothing about business when he started – but he didn’t know it at the time. Studying at a one-week “business bootcamp” at the University of Regina taught him that entrepreneurship is a not a solo activity, but a community. “I guarantee it,” he told the audience. “If you ask any question of anybody in this room, they will bend over backward it get you an answer. And that’s a community that I didn’t believe existed.”

“My original approach for Magnus was to kick open the door, get into the market, and absolutely face-push everybody in my way,” Daignault admits. “Thankfully I didn’t do that. I developed advisors, I built a team, I got support from anyone who would support me. I have strategic relationships and partnerships with very heavy hitters within the security space, and now we're in two provinces and three countries.”

Think small. The market doesn’t know what it wants. Capture failure. Collaboration, not conflict. What would the combative icons of capitalism – the Rockefellers, Henry Fords and Jack Welches – make of contemporary entrepreneurship?

Perhaps they would say “This is exactly what we need.”

Monday, April 24, 2017

The Best Advice I Ever Got

I was interviewed recently by You Inc., Arlene Dickinson's young-entrepreneur site. It's part of the publicity push for an event Wednesday in Toronto that I am co-hosting for ScotiaBank.

One question asked me to recall the best advice I was given when I started out as an entrepreneur. However, as regular readers will know, I didn’t start out as an entrepreneur; I started as a writer.

First I wrote for a general newsweekly in Edmonton; later I became a business writer with the Financial Times of Canada. That job in particular introduced me to cool young entrepreneurs in technology and retail (whom my editors NEVER wanted me to write about). So that in turn led me to PROFIT, The Magazine for Canadian Entrepreneurs – the publication that turned me into a modest intra/entrepreneur and a national champion of entrepreneurs.

I don't often get the chance to reflect on how my career developed – or to credit the people who guided me along the way. So I welcomed the question from You Inc., and enjoyed answering it in a way that weaves my journalistic and entrepreneurial threads together.

Here’s my response to: What was the best piece of advice you were given when starting out as an entrepreneur?

Classic Ted Byfield
Rick Spence: "I started out as a business journalist, and gravitated slowly to entrepreneurship, as I began to learn that just writing was not enough – you have to market the heck out of your work and build networks and alliances to keep your platform strong. 

My first editor, Ted Byfield at Alberta Report, told me to verify everything I thought I knew – which is excellent advice for entrepreneurs. 
And my next editor, David Tafler at the Financial Times of Canada, taught us all to answer the question: “Why is this here?” Which is to say, when you write a story (or do anything new and creative), you must very clearly indicate what the work is about, what purpose it serves, and why it really matters to its intended audience. New products and services have to over-communicate."

Friday, March 24, 2017

The following stories are all about you

I continue to find incredible value in exploring new startups. I hope you do, too.

The startup stories I write in the Financial Post aren't really about the entrepreneurs whose stories I am profiling. What I try to do is draw key moments out of those entrepreneurs’ stories that relate to game-changing decisions that every entrepreneur faces. And how building a global business, while always hard, is getting easier over time.

So while one of my stories may seem to be about a 29-year-old entrepreneur with a breakthrough product idea, they're really about how you or I or anyone can build a better business: from identifying opportunities to building a product, hiring staff or communicating with customers. Or simply developing resilience in the face of setback after setback.

If I did my job right, in these stories below you will find lots of great ideas for building your business, refining your product, and re-connecting with prospects and customers.

You’ll find inspiration, too. I hope these stories will fill you with pride in our new generation of entrepreneurs, and the spirit to pursue your own goals with greater passion and confidence.


How a teacher- musician and tinkerer is trying to change how – and where - electric guitars are played. A story of vision, partnerships and reaching out.
And also: the benefits of raising capital. “The more clout you have, the more you can put your foot down (with a manufacturer) and say, ‘No, that’s not the component I want.’”

Is phytoplankton the healthy juice of the future? This entrepreneur hopes so
A story of incredible persistence – and how entrepreneurs and big businesses can work better together.

“My job is to strategically find a way to let Canadians know this amazing plant has the potential to change everyone’s lives,” says David Hunter. “If we do it right, this could be a global brand.”



Not just a story of a woman entrepreneur succeeding in a traditional male industry (defence). Also a story of partnering with customers and learning to listen to mentors.

Early collaboration with key stakeholders ensured OMX’s success, says Verkindt: “They felt that it was their platform, not ours.”




How a pro hockey player became a penny-pinching tech entrepreneur.
“I knew the odds of getting to the NHL were slim. To succeed, I had to look past the bumps and stay focused on my goal.”


A Toronto tech company has pivoted to curating channels full of Internet video that may save US cable companies from extinction. A classic example of finding a big problem to solve for deep-pocketed prospects.

Meet the Toronto startup that’s fuelling Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of eliminating all human diseases. An unusual story of angel investors who didn't cut and run when times got tough.
  

Friday, February 24, 2017

From Steve Jobs, on his 62nd birthday

Apple's onetime boy wonder,  Steve Jobs, would have been 62 today. 

To celebrate the life and spirit of one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, here’s a selection of his most inspiring business quotes. Adopt one and make it your own.

On Innovation
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.”

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.”

“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.”

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

“I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I've done that sort of thing in my life, but I've always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don't know why. Because they're harder. They're much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you've completely failed.”

“Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem.”


On Strategy
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.”  (2004)

“[Success] comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much.”  (2004)

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”

“The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts.”

“Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes' or Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?” 


On Apple:
“Each year has been so robust with problems and successes and learning experiences and human experiences that a year is a lifetime at Apple. So this has been 10 lifetimes.” 

“It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans.” (On lawsuit from Apple following his resignation to form NeXT, 1985)

“The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!” (On Gil Amelio's tenure, 1997)

“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

“It wasn't that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated.”

“iMac is next year's computer for $1,299, not last year's computer for $999.

“What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.”


On Design
“In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

“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.”

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.”
(on Mac OS X's Aqua user interface, 2000)


Inspiration
“I want to put a ding in the universe.” (“Ding” was often replaced by “dent.”)

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” (The pitch he used to lure John Sculley as Apple's CEO)

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me.”

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”


Life Lessons:

“I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year... It's very character-building.”

“I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

“My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”

“Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And 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.”

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
 
“It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.”


On Leadership
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.”

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.” 

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