Quotes & Sayings About Good Businesses

When you read reviews on Yelp, you get a good sense of what's going to happen when you walk in the door of that business. The challenge is that there are fifteen million businesses in the U.S., and its very hard to communicate with all of them about how Yelp works, and why it works the way it does. — Jeremy Stoppelman

While good business ideas are plentiful, many entrepreneurs struggle to understand payroll taxes, health care and other thorny issues ... In other words, they don't have the financial literacy to scale their businesses and attract investors. — Daymond John

We must reject the idea ... Well-intentioned, but dead wrong ... That the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become "more like a business." Most businesses ... Like most of anything else in life ... Fall somewhere between mediocre and good. — James C. Collins

But there isn't much else most club managers can do to push their teams up the table. After all, players matter much more. As Johan Cruijff said when he was coaching Barcelona, "If your players are better than your opponents, 90 percent of the time you will win." There cannot be many businesses where a manager would make such an extravagant claim. The chairman of General Motors does not say that the art of good management is simply hiring the best designers or the best production managers. — Simon Kuper

Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can't deliver good service from unhappy employees. — Tony Hsieh

Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying. — Jackie Robinson

This had been a bad section of town before the Circus moved in and brought in money, which attracted other businesses. The area had been gentrified not because of some government interference, but by good old-fashioned capitalism, which was one of Jean-Claude's favorite things. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It's like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit. — Cory Doctorow

Good hunting, Lieutenant."

"Thanks. Hey, you've got a lot of businesses to protect."

He turned in his doorway. "One or two."

"Zillion," she finished. "The point being, you've got fail-safes and contingencies and whatever. Various people who'd do various things when in the dim, distant future, you die at two hundred and six after we have hot shower sex."

"I'd hoped for two hundred and twelve, but yes. — J.D. Robb

Twenty five years in business, including business with other nations, competing with companies across the world, has given me an understanding of what it is that makes America a good place to grow and add jobs, and why jobs leave America - why businesses decide to locate here, and why they decide to locate somewhere else. — Mitt Romney

Banks do not create money for the public good. They are businesses owned by private shareholders. Their purpose is to make a profit. — John Rogers

Our culture doesn't seem to value competence as much as it used to. Now we seem to want to do and get everything as quickly as possible, which often leads to mediocre work and products. It seems to be the exception to find people at stores and businesses who are actually able to help us thoroughly with whatever problems we may have. We accept poor service and poor workmanship as if we deserve it
and when we decide to make a stand about something, it usually has to do with price or rudeness, but not about competence. — Tom Walsh

thousand CEOs, business owners, and highly successful entrepreneurs about their businesses and how they lead companies through good times and bad. One of the most important questions I ask them is "What's the biggest worry keeping you awake at night? — Jason Jennings

Good businesses can survive a little bad management. — Charlie Munger

I'm constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don't train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business. — Zig Ziglar

Independent economists say immigration reform will grow our economy and shrink our deficits by almost $1 trillion in the next two decades. And for good reason: when people come here to fulfill their dreams - to study, invent, and contribute to our culture - they make our country a more attractive place for businesses to locate and create jobs for everyone. So let's get immigration reform done this year. — Barack Obama

It is crucial to have a strategy in place before problems hit, precisely because no one can accurately predict the future direction of the stock market or economy. Value investing, the strategy of buying stocks at an appreciable discount from the value of the underlying businesses, is one strategy that provides a road map to successfully navigate not only through good times but also through turmoil. — Seth Klarman

To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. My conclusion is instead a prediction, based on what I have seen happening in the past. Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices. — Jared Diamond

Democracy is only good for a society where individuals are educated and have the ability to differentiate right from wrong without any influences from the outside. India is the biggest democracy in the world, yet, why is it so venal, divided and poor? America is the greatest democracy of the world, yet, it only has two main political parties, which are heavily influenced by lobbyists from religious groups, and powerful institutions like businesses, trade unions and think-tanks. In contrast, China is a nation ruled by one party, yet it has prospered during the last three decades, which is nothing less than a miracle. No other country on earth has ever achieved that feat. No system is good or bad for all. I am not saying democracy is bad, but it is not good for all. It can be good or bad for certain periods of time, circumstances and societies. There is no such thing as one idea fits all."

FROM MY NO.7 BOOK COMING SOON.... — Tim I. Gurung

We must never forget that it is the private sector - not government - that is the engine of economic opportunity. Businesses, particularly small businesses, flourish and can provide good jobs when government acts as a productive partner. — Bill Richardson

When our markets work, people throughout our economy benefit - Americans seeking to buy a car or buy a home, families borrowing to pay for college, innovators borrowing on the strength of a good idea for a new product or technology, and businesses financing investments that create new jobs. — Henry Paulson

There is a lack of female venture capitalists, and so there are fewer female-oriented businesses getting funded. Intel has done a good job of creating a message across Intel, and they are putting their money where their mouth is. — Brit Morin

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight ...
[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells ... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of
meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

When a country doesn't have a good economic infrastructure, that harms the country. With Stripe, the idea is that by providing better infrastructure, by linking the Internet economically, by making it easier for these online businesses to exist, it'll make the web better. — John Collison

It's not a good idea to always look for new frontiers, especially when you have opportunities in your existing businesses, in your own backyard. — Kumar Mangalam Birla

Almost nothing worthwhile is easy, and it's hard to just jump in and be good at something difficult right off the bat ... The only reliable way to succeed at anything is to actually do it, repeatedly, with concentrated effort. True for individuals, and true for organizations. Athletes, artists, businesses. — John Gruber

Facebook will figure out ways to allow people to have good businesses. — Jonah Peretti

Most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies' performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time. — Benjamin Graham

Business often does a good job supporting communities: the arts, universities, and scientific enterprises ... But that philosophy has rarely reached poor countries. Even businesses that are enlightened in their home bases see Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia as places to exploit natural resources or use cheap labor. — Jeffrey Sachs

For corporations to be bedfellows with the arts is good business for both. The architecture that houses a company is a more visible statement than the president's in the annual report. Ditto interiors, particularly of offices and sometimes, dramatically, in plants. For solvent businesses, support of community cultural undertakings in music, drama, dance creates great goodwill. Also, the existence of such activities is often important to the executives and their families that companies want to keep or attract to keep. — Malcolm Forbes

Treat your career as a business. Invest your earnings into good tools that can enhance your business. Film businesses are the same as non-film businesses. Ploughing part of your earnings back into your filmmaking business would grow career exponentially. — Elliot Grove

Businesses are made by people. We've proven time and time again that you can have wonderful shop, and put a bloke in there who's no good, and he'll stuff it up. Put a good bloke in, and it just turns around like that . — Gerry Harvey

Inside every alienated hacker who thinks he stands for the "good things that ultimately don't matter to most businesses" there is a tycoon struggling to get out. — Michael Lewis

I kind of decided that doing music is enough because I'm already running a couple small businesses. I'm a part of Bikini Kill Records, Le Tigre Records, and Digitally Ruined Records. In dealing with my health and everything, my ability to do that? I wouldn't be good at it. — Kathleen Hanna

People who succeed in life do not go around settling scores. They do not even keep score. They "run up the score" by doing good to others, even when the others do not deserve it. They give them better than they are given. And as a result, they often bring the other person up to their level instead of being brought down to the level of the other. They are a redemptive force carrying a good infection wherever they go, infusing relationships with health; infusing businesses with health; and infusing communities with health. They change things for the better. — Henry Cloud

Commercial banks are very good for certain businesses, like loans and guarding other people's money. They're not great investors or entrepreneurs. — John Gutfreund

When I was minister of sport in Brazil, I tried to bring in a law that would make the chairmen of clubs reveal their accounts like other businesses. It was turned down, but I think it is an important story that will make a good film. — Pele

Trade can really be good for American workers and American businesses. — Richard Neal

I tend to go with things people need. Obviously with the barbershop, people will need haircuts regardless of the economy. In a down economy, I choose businesses that don't require a lot of start-up cash or a cash injection on a regular basis. They might need some initially, but not often after. Rental of properties is a good business in a down economy as people struggle with mortgages. — Kamerion Wimbley

We need a new way of doing business to get out of the present crisis ... Absolute greed has come close to bankrupting the world. Thanks to the crisis that certain businesses have dumped on everyone a lot of people are going to suffer on a global scale. All of us must learn. It is all the more important that those business leaders that are left standing try to be a force for good. — Richard Branson

The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don't want to earn a good return on their investment, but it's not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They're also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They've learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they've created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants. — Bo Burlingham

Life's more important than a living. So many people who make a living are making death, not life. Don't ever join them. They're the gravediggers of our civilization - The safe men. The compromisers. The moneymakers. The muddlers-through.
Politics is full of them ... so is businesses ... so is the church. They're popular. Successful. Some of them work hard, other are slack, but all of them could tell a good story.
Never where there such charming gravediggers in the world's history. — James Hilton

There are differences in the businesses themselves, but the fundamentals are the same: give customers a good experience, charge them a reasonable price, listen to them, and treat them with respect. — Ronnie Apteker

Transparency, honesty, kindness, good stewardship, even humor, work in businesses at all times. — John Gerzema

A nation is safer and progressive when the citizens own or are involved in healthy businesses that can aid them enjoy good livelihood without any fear for tomorrow. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

I've always believed that competition is good for consumers and good for businesses. — Jim Pattison

Well, optimism's a good thing. It - makes people go out and - you know, start businesses and spend and do whatever is necessary to get the economy going. — Ben Bernanke

We can only create good jobs if we make smarter investments in infrastructure and do more to support small businesses, not stiff them. — Michael Bloomberg

Don't make excuses; rather, find support and resources to make good things happen for yourself, your family, your businesses, your community, and the world you live in. — Anna Stevens

Entrepreneurs start businesses because ... they have no choice. Passion and energy drive them on good days and sustain them on bad days — Barry Moltz

She said if good-hearted families travel to Night Vale only to find their subconsciouses besieged with unforgettable revelations, horrors buried so deep as to be completely indescribable, revealing wholly unbearable new truths, then we certainly can't expect these people to return, let alone leave good Yelp ratings for local businesses. — Joseph Fink

University is sheltered from the business world and they think they should not have any connection with the businesses because maybe the business is dirty or not very good. — Maurice Levy

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference. — Abraham Lincoln

Someone in my office suggested I get my haircut at New Millennium on Wilshire Blvd. It was so different from any place I had ever been; it was like a party. Everyone was laughing and having a good time and I heard the barbers talking about all of the celebs that get their hair cut there. When I went back, they were talking about other celebs that frequent businesses on Pico, Crenshaw and in Inglewood. We had been thinking about doing a game show then we said why not have it centered around all of the places that you don't think celebrities go. — Harvey Levin

I was more of kind (who was better at) building businesses and selling them. That was a big thing for me. I was very good at that. I wasn't good as a boss. I was either your best friend or your worst enemy. I didn't balance the two very well. (So) I sold them. — Drew Waters

Colorful posters with appealing statements like "Get into a good book this summer" and "We are going to force you into a good book this summer" and "You are going to get inside this book and we are going to close it on you and there is nothing you can do about it" have appeared overnight around the library entrance and in local shops and businesses... — Joseph Fink

I believe that today's businesses - regardless of their size - must be prepared to do good in societies around the globe. I am cautiously optimistic that we can make the world a far better, safer and more equitable place - but business and enterprise must sit at the heart of this process. — Richard Branson

Local television is a slightly different story. It is under much more pressure in the same way that all local businesses are, whether that's a local newspaper, local radio or local television. But I think television in the aggregate is actually in very good shape. — Jeff Zucker

Good design allows things to operate more efficiently, smoothly, and comfortably for the user. That's the real source of advantage. Businesses have started to understand this, so good design will become the price of entry ... Customers appreciate good design. While they can't necessarily point out what specifically makes it good, they know it feels better. There's a visceral connection. They are willing to pay for it, if you give them a great experience. — James P Hackett

In our personal lives, we have a lot of businesses going on. I have a profession, I'm a father, a spouse, a good member of my community. How much of my time and energy can I allocate to each of those things? What I allocate becomes the strategy I have for my family, and everything else. — Clayton M Christensen

I mean, these good folks are revolutionizing how businesses conduct their business. And, like them, I am very optimistic about our position in the world and about its influence on the United States. We're concerned about the short-term economic news, but long-term I'm optimistic. And so, I hope investors, you know - secondly, I hope investors hold investments for periods of time - that I've always found the best investments are those that you salt away based on economics. — George W. Bush

Use law and physic only for necessity; they that use them otherwise abuse themselves unto weak bodies, and light purses; they are good remedies, bad businesses, and worse recreations. — Francis Quarles

We created a whole lot of millionaires to boot. Businesses did just fine. And you know there are plenty of patriotic, successful Americans all across the country
I meet them every day
who'd be willing to make this contribution again because they understand there is such a thing as the common good. They understand that we're in this thing together. — Barack Obama

When the corporation's investment capital becomes impatient for growth, good money becomes bad money because it triggers a subsequent cascade of inevitable incorrect decisions. Innovators who seek funding for the disruptive innovations that could ultimately fuel the company's growth with a high probability of success now find that their trial balloons get shot down because they can't get big enough fast enough. Managers of most disruptive businesses can't credibly project that the business will become very big very fast, because new-market disruptions need to compete against nonconsumption and must follow an emergent strategy process. Compelling them to project big numbers forces them to declare a strategy that confidently crams the innovation into a large, existing, and obvious market whose size can be statistically substantiated. This means competing against consumption. — Clayton M Christensen

Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions. — Tony Hsieh

I hate the concept of luck, especially when people try to apply it to me. Yes, it's true: Hundreds of thousands of businesses fail. Mine succeded. Was that all just because I "got lucky"? I don't really think so.
What I hate about luck is that it implies being devois of responsibility. It implies that you can do nothing and the step into success as easily as stepping into a pile of dog poop on the sidewalk. It implies that success is something given to a knighted and often undeserving few. Luck tells us that we don't control our own fate, and that our path to succes of failure is written by someone, or something, entirely outside overselves. Luck let us believe that whatever happens, whether good or bad, it's not to our credit or our fault. That is why I don't buy luck. But I do buy magic. — Sophia Amoruso

[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both.
These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight ...
She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind. — Nora Roberts

We prefer: large purchases (at least $5 million of after-tax earnings), demonstrated consistent earning power (future projections are of little interest to us, nor are "turn-around" situations), businesses earning good returns on equity while employing little or no debt, management in place (we can't supply it), simple businesses (if there's lots of technology, we won't understand it), an offering price (we don't want to waste our time or that of the seller by talking, even preliminarily, about a transaction when price is unknown). — Warren Buffett

Businesses are not just local or even national anymore - good ideas are immediately global. So the market opportunities are much larger than we've ever imagined or seen. — Alfred Lin

People who weren't fans of the actress didn't understand that through much of the sixties, Doris Day played independent women, characters who owned their own businesses, ran households, and often didn't need a man. The irony was, she usually ended up with a pretty good one: Rock Hudson, James Garner, and Cary Grant, to name a few. — Diane Vallere

Somehow, when ownership interests are divided into shares that bounce around with Mr. Market's moods, individuals and professionals start to think about and measure risk in strange ways. When short-term thinking and overly complicated statistics get involved, owning many companies that you know very little about starts to sound safer than owning stakes in five to eight companies that have good businesses, predictable futures, and bargain prices. — Joel Greenblatt

All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal. — Mark Cuban

If you own a wonderful business ... the best thing to do is keep it. All you're going to do is trade your wonderful business for a whole bunch of cash, which isn't as good as the business, and you got the problem of investing in other businesses, and you probably paid a tax in between. So my advice to anybody who owns a wonderful business is keep it. — Warren Buffett

Downturns are the best time to start businesses, because you develop discipline that's very lean and mean in terms of how to spend money. And those habits serve you very well in good times. — Kevin O'Leary

I have set up several businesses as social businesses, and I am a great believer that the power of business should be used for good. — Lily Cole

Jon Miller would be amazing for Yahoo because he is extremely good at building display advertising businesses and buying young startups. — Jason Calacanis

If any proof is needed of the importance of having a good understanding of business, all you have to do is look at what often happens when the owner of a business decides to retire and turn it over to one of his or her children. More often than not, when this happens, the son or daughter who takes over has spent a few years working in the business and a few more helping the owner run it. But a lot of family businesses don't do as well when they are passed on, and one of the primary reasons for this is that, even though the new owner has some experience in the business, he or she often doesn't understand the various facets of business and how they are all interrelated. And the result, unfortunately, is that a perfectly viable company, one that its original owner spent years building up, now has a questionable future. — Bill McBean

She had to do that
she had to become a widow, for life, before she was even married. That's why I never got married. I'm thirty-eight years old. I can read and write very well
my mother made sure I was educated
and I do the bookwork for all the shops and businesses in the slum. I do the taxes for every man who pays them. I make a good living here, and I have respect. I shouldn't been married fifteen or even twenty years ago. But she was a widow, all her life, for me. And I couldn't do it. I just couldn't allow myself to get married. I kept hoping I would see him, the sailor with the best moustache. My mother had one very old, faded photograph of the two of them, looking very serious and stern. That's why I lived in this area. I always hoped I would see him. And I never married. And she died last week, Lin. My mother died last week. — Gregory David Roberts

There's a lot of good that's done for society in building businesses, but it's also great to be involved in those things where you can be connected to the community, to the world, and think about how you can use what you're creating, both in terms of your personal skills as well as your products or services to do good things for others. — Jeff Raikes

Well you'd see a very dramatic change in the perspective of small businesses, entrepreneurs, middle-size businesses, and perhaps even some large multinationals. They'd say, you know what, America looks like a good place to invest again, a good place to take risk, a good place to hire again. — Mitt Romney

As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me. — Richard Branson

Despite their good intentions, today's businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives - to do good and make money simultaneously. — Cindy Gallop

Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better. — Richard Stallman

The community of Partageuse had drifted together like so much dust in a breeze, settling in this spot where two oceans met, because there was fresh water and a natural harbor and good soil. Its port was no rival to Albany, but convenient for locals shipping timber or sandalwood or beef. Little businesses had sprung up and clung on like lichen on a rock face, and the town had accumulated a school, a variety of churches with different hymns and architectures, a good few brick and stone houses and a lot more built of weatherboard and tin. It gradually produced various shops, a town hall, even a Dalgety's stock and station agency. And pubs. Many pubs. — M.L. Stedman

Almost all good businesses engage in 'pain today, gain tomorrow' activities. — Charlie Munger

However, we must try to see, and the best place to begin may be with the fact that the family farm is not the only good thing that is failing among us. The family farm is failing because it belongs to an order of values and a kind of life that are failing. We can only find it wonderful, when we put our minds to it, that many people now seem willing to mount an emergency effort to "save the family farm" who have not yet thought to save the family or the community, the neighborhood schools or the small local businesses, the domestic arts of household and homestead, or cultural and moral tradition - all of which are also failing, and on all of which the survival of the family farm depends. — Wendell Berry

We try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That's all I'm trying to do. — Warren Buffett

It's good to buy a large company with fine businesses when the price is beaten down over worry about one problem. — Henry Earl Singleton

There is a tendency among some businesses to criticize and belittle their competitors. This is a bad procedure. Praise them. Learn from them. There are times when you can co-operate with them to their advantage and to yours! Speak well of them and they will speak well of you. You can't destroy good ideas. Take advantage of them. — George Matthew Adams

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. society didn't ban child labor because it's impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it's corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Businesses large and small shouldn't have to check the expiration date of a tax provision to see if it's still good. — Michael Enzi

Most of the cricketers are doing side businesses apart from playing the sport, so why should I be left behind. I feel there is a lot of money in making films, and since Punjabi cinema is doing good, this is a lucrative option for me. — Harbhajan Singh

Good debt growth is when you borrow money, and it goes into the real economy. You do capital spending. You build businesses. — Stanley Druckenmiller

Buying a share of a good business is better than buying a share of a bad business. One way to do this is to purchase a business that can invest its own money at high rates of return rather than purchasing a business that can only invest at lower ones. In other words, businesses that earn a high return on capital are better than businesses that earn a low return on capital. — Joel Osteen