Kotler Quotes & Sayings

With this in mind, it is not inconceivable to say that there are people alive today who will live long enough to see their selves stored in silicon and thus, by extension, see themselves live forever. — Steven Kotler

Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value. — Philip Kotler

Howard Thurman once said, Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs most is more people who have come alive. — Steven Kotler

He defined the state as being so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost. — Steven Kotler

The sales department isn't the whole company, but the whole company better be the sales department. — Philip Kotler

Risk heightens focus and flow follows focus. This means that the fight-or-flight response primes the body - chemically and psychologically - for the flow state. Athletes report moving through one to get to the other. — Steven Kotler

There's a difference between when this happens in an artist's studio or on the tennis court versus inside the barrel of a fifty-foot wave. When you tap into that much force while pushing the absolute limits of human performance, that's more than just an imaginative breakthrough - that's bending reality to your will. — Steven Kotler

Suddenly normal wasn't good enough. — Steven Kotler

Good customers are an asset which, when wellmanaged and served, will return a handsome lifetime income stream for the company. — Philip Kotler

There will never be peace on Earth until we have peace within ourselves. We have to be able to look deeply into the nature of our suffering - to touch, embrace and hold it - before we can touch peace. — Arnold Kotler

As it turns out, what makes a dog adoptable has very little to do with dogs, a great deal to do with humans. — Steven Kotler

Instead, over the past thirty years, in the world of action and adventure sports, in situations where asses really were on the line, the bounds of the possible have been pushed further and faster than ever before in history. We've seen near-exponential growth in ultimate human performance, which is both hyperbolic paradox and considerable mystery. Somehow, a generation's worth of iconoclastic misfits have rewritten the rules of the feasible, not just raising the bar but often obliterating it altogether. And this brings up one final question: Where-if anywhere-do our actual limits lie? — Steven Kotler

George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon provides one of the simplest definitions of curiosity: the feeling of deprivation that comes from an information gap between what we know and what we want to know. Separately, — Philip Kotler

Scientists who study human motivation have lately learned that after basic survival needs have been met, the combination of autonomy (the desire to direct your own life), mastery (the desire to learn, explore, and be creative), and purpose (the desire to matter, to contribute to the world) are our most powerful intrinsic drivers - the three things that motivate us most. All three are deeply woven through the fabric of flow. Thus toying with flow involves tinkering with primal biology: addictive neurochemistry, potent psychology, and hardwired evolutionary behaviors. — Steven Kotler

The inevitable consequence is that the wealthy become dominant. The wealthy set their own pay or the company boards pay very generously. Each company board, in hiring a new CEO, feels it must pay as much or more than the competitive companies pay their CEO, rather than using the firm's earnings or share price or some other yardstick. In many sectors, especially in the financial sector, there is more collusion than real competition. The wealthy see their pay as describing their worth, and they rely on their wealth and political influence to defeat democratic measures to contain or tax them sufficiently. Democracy is therefore in danger of being destroyed by capitalism. Unless there is higher taxation on wealth and more regulation to promote real competition, democracy is subverted.8 — Philip Kotler

To get around these things, Maus lived at the back of a closet. The door was — Steven Kotler

There is no such thing as a commodity. It is simply a product waiting to be differentiated. — Philip Kotler

Don't buy market share. Figure out how to earn it. — Philip Kotler

The Ownership Quotient, — Philip Kotler

Flow tends to be the psychic signature of world-class performance and paradigm-shifting breakthroughs, — Steven Kotler

Mindset impacts emotion, which alters biology, which increases performance. Thus, it seemed, by tinkering with mindset - using everything from physical to psychological to pharmacological interventions - one could significantly enhance performance. — Steven Kotler

Time slows down. Self vanishes. Action and Awareness merge. Welcome to Flow. — Steven Kotler

Applying this idea in our daily life means breaking tasks into bite-size chunks and setting goals accordingly. A writer, for example, is better off trying to pen three great paragraphs at a time - the equivalent of moving through Mandy-Rae's kick cycles - rather than attempting one great chapter. Think challenging, yet manageable - just enough stimulation to shortcut attention into the now, not enough stress to pull you back out again. — Steven Kotler

Flow is more than an optimal state of consciousness - one where we feel our best and perform our best - it also appears to be the only practical answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? Flow is what makes life worth living. — Steven Kotler

Neurons that fire together wire together. — Steven Kotler

The internet will create the winnerand bury the laggards. — Philip Kotler

Watch the product life cycle; but more important, watch the market life cycle. — Philip Kotler

The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas. — Philip Kotler

Every company should work hard to obsolete its own product line - before its competitors do. — Philip Kotler

This isn't just your mind paying more attention - suddenly your entire body is paying attention. When this happens, it's outside our conscious capabilities. There are no words. Our language becomes that of the river. All the features of the river speak to you and you to them through motion. There is tension, threat, there is joy and release, and overall, a deep, deep sense of flow. You are literally part of the flow of the world. — Steven Kotler

There wasn't anything wrong with these dogs. I wanted to take them all home with me. The whole damn warehouse of misery. Just strap it to my back and get the fuck out of the way. — Steven Kotler

Today's economic landscape is being shaped by two powerful forces - technology and globalization. — Philip Kotler

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness. — Steven Kotler

Companies pay too much attention to the cost of doing something. They should worry more about the cost of not doing it. — Philip Kotler

How many people have stopped playing guitar, writing poetry, or painting watercolors - activities packed with flow triggers - because these are also activities that do not squarely fit into culturally acceptable responsibility categories like "career" or "children"? — Steven Kotler

Creatives fail and the really good ones fail often. — Steven Kotler

creativity triggers flow; then flow enhances creativity. — Steven Kotler

There are three kinds of companies: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who wonder what's happened. - Anonymous — Philip Kotler

Our limits are governed by flow's ability to amplify performance as much as by imagination's ability to dream up that performance. — Steven Kotler

Good companies will meet needs; great companies will create markets. — Philip Kotler

Creating Customer Evangelists, The Power of Cult Branding, and Creating Raving Fans. — Philip Kotler

Competitive advantage is a companys ability to perform in one or more ways that competitors cannot or will not match. — Philip Kotler

A good company offers excellent products and services. A great company also offers excellent products and services but also strives to make the world a better place. — Philip Kotler

Sooner or later, there's always a Jaws: a mental hurdle we can't clear, a decision too dangerous to attack head on. In those situations, sideways is forward. — Steven Kotler

Training in high-stress situations increases what psychologists call "situational awareness." Defined as the ability to absorb information accurately, assess it calmly, and respond appropriately, situational awareness is essentially the ability to keep cool when all hell breaks loose. Because attention and pattern recognition are so heightened by flow, training in the state radically increases situational awareness. — Steven Kotler

When doing what we most love transforms us into the best possible version of ourselves and that version hints at even greater future possibilities, the urge to explore those possibilities becomes feverish compulsion. Intrinsic motivation goes through the roof. Thus flow becomes an alternative path to mastery, sans the misery. — Steven Kotler

Creativity has a brain wave signature as well: alpha waves pulsing out of the brain's right hemisphere. — Steven Kotler

The theory of marketing is solid but the practice of marketing leaves much to be desired. — Philip Kotler

The art of marketing is largely the art of brand building. When something is not a brand, it will be probably be viewed as a commodity. — Philip Kotler

It is not often that Death is told so clearly to fuck off. — Steven Kotler

This means flow packs a double punch: it doesn't just increase our decision-making abilities - it increases our creative decision-making abilities. Dramatically. — Steven Kotler

Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders. — Philip Kotler

Fully alive and deeply committed is a risky business. — Steven Kotler

This automatic feedback is another reason extreme athletes have found flow so frequently, but what if we're interested in pulling this trigger without help from the laws of physics? No mystery here. Tighten feedback loops. Put mechanisms in place so attention doesn't have to wander. Ask for more input. How much input? Well, forget quarterly reviews. Think daily reviews. Studies have found that in professions with less direct feedback loops - stock analysis, psychiatry, and medicine - even the best get worse over time. — Steven Kotler

The United States is in a tough spot. — Steven Kotler

Where is personal selling? Isn't the sales force of key importance in business marketing? — Philip Kotler

Your company does not belong inmarkets where it cannot be the best. — Philip Kotler

When people say that animal rescuers are crazy, what they really mean is that animal rescuers share a number of fundamental beliefs that makes them easy to marginalize. Among those is the belief that Rene Descartes was a jackass. — Steven Kotler

It was even odds that the thing I was the most afraid of didn't actually exist at all. — Steven Kotler

If we are hunting the highest version of ourselves, then we need to turn work into play and not the other way round. Unless we invert this equation, much of our capacity for intrinsic motivation starts to shut down. We lose touch with our passion and become less than what we could be and that feeling never really goes away. — Steven Kotler

The successful salesperson cares first for the customer, second for the products. — Philip Kotler

Correct predictions result in understanding. Incorrect predictions result in confusion and prompt you to pay attention. — Steven Kotler

I felt strongly that marketing managers, in order to make better marketing decisions, needed to analyze markets and competition in systems terms, explicating the forces at work and their various interdependencies. — Philip Kotler

That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn't able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, "the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast." Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her
own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was
supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn't come back either.
And that's the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you'll always wonder if you could have gone
deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back. — Steven Kotler

Most people live in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. — Steven Kotler

Over the past 60 years, marketing has moved from being product-centric (Marketing 1.0) to being consumer-centric (Marketing 2.0). Today we see marketing as transforming once again in response to the new dynamics in the environment. We see companies expanding their focus from products to consumers to humankind issues. Marketing 3.0 is the stage when companies shift from consumer-centricity to human-centricity and where profitability is balanced with corporate responsibility. — Philip Kotler

In Lovelock's view the earth was a 'super-organism,' a cybernetic feedback system that 'seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.' At the suggestion of his neighbor, author and screenwriter William Goldman, he called the system Gaia after the ancient Greek Earth goddess. — Steven Kotler

Most people are so afraid of dying they never live. — Steven Kotler

It was a silly time to try to make a living out of words, but it was a silly time in general. — Steven Kotler

Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master. — Philip Kotler

Poor firms ignore their competitors; average firms copy their competitors; winning firms lead their competitors. — Philip Kotler

Abundance: The Future is Better than you Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. — Joanna Penn

With our sense of self out of the the way we are liberated from doubt and insecurity. — Steven Kotler

Flow is an alternative path toward mastery, but, like any path, not without its pitfalls. There's a serious dark side to flow, — Steven Kotler

There is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market. — Philip Kotler

From a quality-of-life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth. — Steven Kotler

The past three decades have witnessed unprecedented growth in what researchers now term ultimate human performance. This is not the same as optimal human performance, and the difference is in the consequences. Optimal performance is about being your best; ultimate performance is about being your best when any mistake could kill. Both common sense and evolutionary biology tell us that progress under these "ultimate" conditions should be a laggard's game, but that's not exactly what the data suggests. — Steven Kotler

The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you arenot a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner. — Philip Kotler

The best advertising is done by satisfied customers. — Philip Kotler

The most important thing is to forecast where customers are moving, and be in front of them. — Philip Kotler

Marketing is the set of human activities directed at facilitating and consummating exchanges. — Philip Kotler

Today you have to run faster to stay in place. — Philip Kotler

No company in its right mind tries to sell to everyone. — Philip Kotler

And the dark night of flow is an issue that society has not made particularly easy to handle. How many people have stopped playing guitar, writing poetry, or painting watercolors - activities packed with flow triggers - because these are also activities that do not squarely fit into culturally acceptable responsibility categories like "career" or "children"? How many, now grown up and done with childish things, have put away the surfboard, the skateboard, the whatever? How many have made the mistake of conflating the value of the vehicle that leads us to an experience (the surfboard, etc.) with the value of the experience itself (the flow state)? — Steven Kotler

Today's smart marketers don't sell products; they sell benefit packages. They don't sell purchase value only; they sell use value. — Philip Kotler

It is more important to do what is strategically right than what is immediately profitable. — Philip Kotler

The quality most desirable in a CEO? According to a global survey conducted by IBM of 1,500 top executives in sixty countries: creativity. — Steven Kotler

Hallucinogens then do the same job as religion - they provide proof of unity, which is still the only known cure for fear of death. — Steven Kotler

The best way to hold customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less. — Philip Kotler

Every good athlete can find the flow," continues Pastrana, "but it's what you do with it that makes you great. If you consistently use that state to do the impossible, you get confident in your ability to do the impossible. You begin to expect it. That's why we're seeing so much progression in action sports today. It's the natural result of a whole lot of people starting to expect the impossible. — Steven Kotler

Every business is a service business. Does your service put a smile on the customer's face? — Philip Kotler

The future isn't ahead of us. It has already happened. — Philip Kotler

Business, investor, and consumer confidence is shaken and the contraction phase begins. — Philip Kotler

That's why people who seek out group flow often join startups or work for themselves. Serial entrepreneurs keep starting new business as much for the flow experience, as for the additional success. — Steven Kotler

After three decades of research, Zimbardo found that the healthiest, happiest, highest performers blend the best of both worlds. The optimal time perspective combines the energy, joy, and openness of Presents, with the strength, fortitude, and long-term vision of the Futures. — Steven Kotler

Integrated marketing communications is a way of looking at the whole marketing process from the view point of the customer. — Philip Kotler

It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them. — Philip Kotler

During a peak experience," Maslow explained, "the individual experiences an expansion of self, a sense of unity, and meaningfulness in life. The experience lingers in one's consciousness and gives a sense of purpose, integration, self-determination and empathy. — Steven Kotler

Answer me!'Shouted Lieutenant Kotler. 'Did you steal something from that fridge?' 'No, sir. He gave it to me,'said Shmuel, tears welling up in his eyes as he throw a sideways glance at Bruno. 'He's my friend,'he added. — John Boyne

The upper echelon of adventure sport athletes are grappling with the fundamental properties of the universe: gravity, velocity and sanity. They're toying with them, cheating death, refusing to accept there might be limits to what they can accomplish. — Steven Kotler