Josh Kaufman Quotes & Sayings

Business schools make a fortune forcing their students to take in a HUGE amount of information. The majority of it is theoretical. The majority of that is useless. — Josh Kaufman

If you want an audience, start a fight. - IRISH PROVERB — Josh Kaufman

As much as I enjoyed yoga courses, it was hard to make time for them. Generally speaking, my work arrangements were flexible, so it was mostly a psychological problem: it was hard to convince myself it was acceptable to go twist my body into knots for two hours when there was work to be done. — Josh Kaufman

Retired general Colin Powell famously advocates collecting half of the information available, then making a decision, even though your information is clearly incomplete. — Josh Kaufman

Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else ... By focusing on only a few core features in the first version, you are forced to find the true essence and value of the product. - PAUL BUCHHEIT, CREATOR OF GMAIL AND GOOGLE ADSENSE — Josh Kaufman

Objections #4 and #5 ("I can wait" / "it's too difficult") are best addressed via Education-Based Selling. Often, your prospects haven't fully realized they have a problem, particularly in the case of Absence Blindness (discussed later). If the business doesn't realize it's losing $10 million in the first place, it's difficult to convince them that you can help. The best way to get around this is to focus your early sales efforts on making your customers smarter by teaching them what you know about their business, then helping them Visualize what their involvement would look like if they decide to proceed. — Josh Kaufman

The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn't replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough. — Josh Kaufman

Here's a curious fact about human beings: we have a really hard time realizing that something isn't there. — Josh Kaufman

If you rely on finding time to do something, it will never be done. If you want to find time, you must make time. — Josh Kaufman

When you're feeling lost, take heart. It's just your brain gathering the information it needs to make good decisions. — Josh Kaufman

If you want to succeed in business in any capacity - employee, manager, or owner - you must have a solid, comprehensive understanding of what business principles actually are and how they actually work. — Josh Kaufman

By making offers Modular, the business can create and improve each offer in isolation, then mix and match offers as necessary to better serve their customers. It's like playing with LEGOS: once you have a set of pieces to work with, you can put them together in all sorts of interesting ways. — Josh Kaufman

The benefit of making your offers small and Modular is that it allows you to take advantage of a strategy called Bundling. Bundling allows you to repurpose value that you have already created to create even more value. — Josh Kaufman

Every time your customers purchase from you, they're deciding that they value what you have to offer more than they value anything else their money could buy at that moment. — Josh Kaufman

Provide significant value to each subscriber on a regular basis. 2. Build a subscriber base and continually attract new subscribers to compensate for attrition. 3. Bill customers on a recurring basis. 4. Retain each subscriber as long as possible. — Josh Kaufman

At the core, all successful businesses sell some combination of money, status, power, love, knowledge, protection, pleasure, and excitement. The more clearly you articulate how your product satisfies one or more of these drives, the more attractive your offer will become. — Josh Kaufman

By choosing to innovate instead of compete, Apple successfully captured a leadership share of a very competitive market. — Josh Kaufman

Business is essentially applied rationality:
a systematic process of thinking that produces a real-world result. Instead of mortgaging your life to go to business school, it's possible to dramatically increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost - without setting foot inside a classroom. — Josh Kaufman

Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff. — Josh Kaufman

Options are often an overlooked form of value - flexibility is one of the Three Universal Currencies (discussed later). Find a way to give people more flexibility, and you may discover a viable business model. — Josh Kaufman

The quickest and easiest way to screw up your life is to take on too much debt. — Josh Kaufman

The zealous display the strength of their belief, while the judicious show the grounds of it. - WILLIAM SHENSTONE, EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POET AND LANDSCAPE DESIGNER — Josh Kaufman

Every successful business (1) creates or provides something of value that (2) other people want or need (3) at a price they're willing to pay, in a way that (4) satisfies the purchaser's needs and expectations and (5) provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation. — Josh Kaufman

Business schools don't create successful people. They simply accept them, then take credit for their success. — Josh Kaufman

A Checklist is an Externalized, predefined Standard Operating Procedure for completing a specific task. Creating a Checklist is enormously valuable for two reasons. First, Checklisting will help you define a System for a process that hasn't yet been formalized - once the Checklist has been created, it's easier to see how to improve or Automate the system. Second, using Checklists as a normal part of working can help ensure that you don't forget to handle important steps that are easily overlooked when things get busy. — Josh Kaufman

Email is 20-30 times more effective in generating a purchase than any other tool. — Josh Kaufman

You can't make positive discoveries that make your life better if you never try anything new. — Josh Kaufman

Ideas are cheap - what counts is the ability to translate an idea into reality, which is much more difficult than recognizing a good idea. — Josh Kaufman