Quotes from Sahar Hashemi

Ideas are easy. It's the execution that's hard. —Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon

Remember, the only way to avoid a "no" is not to try

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission

In the creative world, ideas are worthless unless they are acted on.

lack of execution is: "The single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most disappointments.

A business plan is a worthless piece of paper without someone rolling their sleeves up, getting their hands dirty and turning it into a living, breathing, operating business.

It's easier to get forgiveness than permission. If you wait for permissions and authorizations, your ideas will stall and never see the light of day.

The problem with large corporations and their competitors is that they subscribe to the same industry magazines, get the same body of research and even hire the same people. The

Think of it this way: it can take 15 years to become an overnight success!

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. —Henry Ford

Our moods and performance can often depend on whether this self-talk is positive or negative.

An extra 1% self-belief every day gets you almost 100% in three months

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn: It can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the wrong person's brow. —Charles Browder

Prototyping is about doing small experiments at low cost, using what you have to hand.

Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner of New York University cites studies that show that people only remember 10% of what they hear, 30% of what they read, but about 80% of what they see and do.

The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is very true for creative thinking.

The ivory tower analogy is no joke – is it any coincidence that top management is often on the top floor? That's physically about as far away from customers as you can get.

For me as the founder, it was shocking to see how having a more formal structure with lines of reporting and processes can so easily start to disconnect you from the customer.

If you wait too long for the perfect idea, your creativity will stay between your ears in inertia.

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly

Pretend you are a customer of your own company

prototyping lets you make your mistakes and discoveries as soon as possible in the development process, so you can change things and move on.

Becoming switched on is about forgetting the "this is how we've always done it" mentality and wiping the slate clean

Howard Schulz approached 242 people to raise money for Starbucks and was rejected by 217 of them.