Morning Briefings

For if a man will betray God, he will surely betray man.

– Gereon Goldmann
The Shadow of His Wings

The founder of a successful corporation steps down. Then What?

– The Wall Street Journal
Disney, Walton, Ford, Gates: Tales of When Legends Leave

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won’t suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when they look back–and at some point everyone looks back–she will hear her heart saying, ‘What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you?’

– Paulo Coelho
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Ignore schmexperts.

– Guy Kawasaki, Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur

Never ask anyone to do something that you wouldn’t do: This goes for customers (‘fill out these twenty-five fields of personal information to get an account’) to employees (‘fly coach to Mumbai, meet all day the day you arrive, and fly back that night.’)

– Guy Kawasaki, Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur

Try stuff. Luck is a big part of many successes, so (a) don’t get too bummed out when you see a bozo succeed; and (b) luck favors the people who try stuff, not simply think and analyze. As the Chinese say, ‘One must wait for a long time before a Peking duck flies into your mouth.’

– Guy Kawasaki, Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur

Make a little progress every day: I used to believe in the big-bang theory of marketing–a fantastic launch that created such inertia that you flew to ‘infinity and beyond.’ Now my theory is you make a little progress every day–whether that’s making your product slightly better, increasing your skill in one small way, or closing one more customer.

– Guy Kawasaki, Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur

Cash is what keeps the doors open and pays the bills. As my mother used to say, ‘Sales fixes everything.’

– Guy Kawasaki, Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur

Years later, he would say that when he decided to become a professional baseball player, it was the only time he’d done something just for the money, and that he’d never do something just for the money again. He would never let the market dictate the direction of his life. The funny thing about that, now he was running a poor major league baseball team, was that his job was almost entirely about the money; where to find it, how to spend it, whom to spend it on.

– Michael Lewis on Billy Beane
Moneyball

Being made in the image of God invests us with a portable spirituality center. No matter where we go, so long as we carry this core identity with us, we remain spiritually impervious to the ups and downs of external circumstances.

– Naomi H. Rosenblatt and Joshua Horwitz
Wrestling with Angels