Lynda Resnick quotes: the billionaire’s best advice.
“Large or small – you can adapt to achieve success.”
“Learn to expect less from life and more from yourself. Accept the changes that life throws at you. Remember, your destiny is pretty much in your hands. So, as your mom may have told you, keep them clean.”
“Give 100% of yourself. Don’t expect anything from your spouse or your kids. Invest in yourself. Don’t look for an even give and take.”
“Never be afraid to ask when you don’t understand. It sounds like a little thing, but awful things have happened, international incidents have flared, and markets have collapsed just because people couldn’t make sense of what was being said. They didn’t ask why because they thought it would make them look stupid.”
“Every company can find ‘rubies’ in its orchard, elements of intrinsic value that consumers will desire. Every successful marketing campaign begins with uncovering these hidden gems, and communicating their value honestly and transparently to the consumer.”
“If you have a business website; make it stickier; redo the merchandising often and try new things until you hit the right homepage. Then try and beat that. The most important audience drivers on the internet are paid search and keyword optimization. Concentrate on those. They are very inexpensive compared to banner advertising.”
“What is your Unique Selling Proposition? What makes you different than your competitors? Wrap your advertising message around that USP and communicate it in a clear and concise manner.”
“Do your homework. Test your idea with the core consumer.”
“Do your research. Use the internet to find out if your business idea already exists. Even if it does, figure out how you can take advantage of a local market or a unique angle.”
“Make sure you have the financing behind you to back up your business plan.”
“You can learn from mistakes, but if they frighten you too much to try again, don’t make them in the first place.”
“Most Fortune 500 companies began as small startups whose entrepreneurial founders slowly developed the infrastructure, hired the staff, sourced manufacturers or built their own factory, and created distribution, sales and marketing plans.”
“The most common way to grow a business is by overseeing each and every aspect of the company – the ‘ground up’ method.”
“It’s the responsibility of the business owner when you hire people to have a business that gives back and takes care of its employees, and it is frivolous to be in a business that isn’t.”
“Any entrepreneur worth their salt knows that their brand is worthless if it doesn’t somehow contribute to society or the overall good of the planet.”
“You will learn more from your failures than your successes – so embrace those mistakes, as difficult as that sounds, and grow from them. When a project is successful, you’re never really sure why, because so many elements come into play. However, when you fail, you always know why. That is how you learn and grow.”
“Some of the most innocuous inventions have proven earth-shattering, with reverberations felt around the planet. The internet is the poster child for disruptive technology, but even such inventions as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPod have rocked their respective industries by changing how we entertain ourselves.”
“Since the advent of the internet – more recently compounded by blogging – everyone can be a published voice. Any cowardly, anonymous anger-monger can have an audience of thousands. That doesn’t make them a journalist any more than my throwing an onion and a few carrots into a pot of boiling water makes me Julia Child.”
“Art is a critical component in a well-rounded education. Art is the level playing field – no matter how rich or poor, tall or short, pretty or ugly to the bone, if you can draw, you can find personal fulfillment and build self-confidence. Art is the highest achievement of mankind.”
“As places of learning, schools have a responsibility to also educate on nutrition, which we all can agree is far more important than algebra, no matter what your third-period teacher claims.”
“I was trained as a fine artist. I went to a progressive public school in Pennsylvania that developed these talents, but I was never able to apply to a decent college because I had no math, no science – I was allowed to just paint all day and write.”
“The best thing about art is that it is the one luxury in life that can be enjoyed by everyone. And it lasts forever.”
“If art means as much to you as it does to me, or even if you’re just exploring the art world for the first time, I invite you to turn off the boob tube, pry the Wii controllers from your kids’ hands and drag them to a museum.”
“I think collecting is in our blood as humans.”
“As a child, I was tortured because my mother was a brilliant seamstress who made most of my clothes. I was despised by the children at school because I looked like I was going to an opening every day. We weren’t wealthy at all; we lived in a row house in Philadelphia.”
“I have a remarkable life, from opening my own ad agency at age 19 to the time I famously overpaid for Jackie Kennedy’s pearls at auction, then transformed my ‘mistake’ into tens of millions in sales for the Franklin Mint. I learned a systematic approach to breaking through marketplace clutter and consumer cynicism, and creating blockbuster brands with true staying power.”
“If I don’t believe in it, I can’t sell it. If I love something, I’m passionate about it… and… that’s what has helped me in business. Also being a child star in a very limited way, I assure you, taught me to never be afraid of anyone or anything. I was never afraid of public speaking because I had worked in front of a large audience.”
“I have sayings like ‘think inside the box.’ Everyone says ‘think outside the box,’ but the problem is inside the box, and the solution is part of the problem. I don’t know how much I’ve done things my way. I didn’t have a traditional education, but if something works and it’s traditional, I’m the first one to do it. It’s all about execution in life.”
“What’s worked for me is just being true to myself and not allowing people to run me over or scream louder and say that something is true when it isn’t. America will survive during these very challenging times, but the recovery is going to take years. So, if you’re a student, I’d say go into a business that’s global. If you are in a standard business, make sure it has a global footprint. And if you can be entrepreneurial and do something on your own, you may have a chance to do that.”
“This is the time for ethics. This is what’s going to get us back on an even keel, to do the right thing, to care about our fellow man and give back to society. This is really something that I care about the most. If people really cared about humanity, they would take more time to do the right thing and give back because, in the end, we all suffer if our society disintegrates, don’t we? It touches all of us. We need young, wonderful people in business, but just keep it true.”
“People care most about the things that touch their lives every single day.”
“The days of the farm worker as unskilled labor are coming to a close. Sure, we will always need workers to pick the fruit, but our farming operations are employing technologies to a dramatically-escalating scale… and this requires a more sophisticated and better-educated work force. Those workers will be coming from our local communities.”
“I want to bring some of my business acumen and problem-solving expertise to our giving… to get more personally involved.”
“I hope you think about what else you can do to create change right in your own back yard. We can change our world… one community, one workplace, one child at a time.”
“When you wake up each morning, you can choose to be happy or choose to be sad. Unless some terrible catastrophe has occurred the night before, it is pretty much up to you. Tomorrow morning, when the sun shines through your window, choose to make it a happy day.”
“A successful approach is ‘doing well by doing good.'”
“When you face life looking for something amazing to happen, it usually does.”
