Quotes About Business

I think a businessman can be an artist just as much as a writer or a sculptor, so I'm real proud of what the company has become.

The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.

It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes.

But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.

Science fiction writers aren't in the prediction business; they're in the speculation business, using 'hasn't happened' or 'hasn't happened yet' to create entertaining scenarios that may or may not anticipate future realities.

Led by a new generation of edgy sportswriters like Lipsyte, we found new purpose in the great issues of the day - race, equal opportunity, drugs, and labor disputes. We became personality journalists, medical writers, and business reporters.

A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.

I am into the candle business, have a home store, The White Window, and interior designing is my primary occupation, though writing now seems to have become better known.

All parties accept that companies must act in the 'interest of their stockholders' whatever the cost in alienation or exploitation.

If you can't describe your business model in ten words or fewer, you don't have a business model.

Can we get a bank loan to start our business? Answer you're looking for: "No," assuming it's a tech business. Tech businesses don't have liquid assets to use as collateral.

Also, like the Holy Grail, the business plan remains largely unattainable and mythological. Most experts wouldn't agree, but a business plan is of limited usefulness for a startup because entrepreneurs base so much of their plans on assumptions, "visions," and unknowns.

According to Celtic myths, there were once magical vessels that "satisfied the tastes and needs of all who ate and drank from them."* These myths led to the legend of the Holy Grail. The modern-day equivalent of the Holy Grail is the business plan.

Smart writers understand that writing is also a business. Really smart writers see themselves also as entrepreneurs. Barry Eisler

Generally speaking, you should go pro with a page if you're using social media for business, because of added capabilities such as multiple administrators and extensive analytics. For Google+ in particular, sharing posts with external services such as Buffer, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite is much, much, much better with a page.

There is no such thing as a vanilla term sheet. If term sheets are ice cream, the most common flavor is Rocky Road.

My hypothesis is that the more an entrepreneur insists on a nondisclosure agreement, the less viable the idea.

A real business is one with something to sell—not one where people have business cards and letterhead.

Should two founders split the company right down the middle? Answer you're looking for: "No, you should allocate 25 percent to future employees and 35 percent to the first two rounds of investments. That leaves 40 percent for the founders to split among themselves.

How long should our business plan be? Answer you're looking for: "You shouldn't write a business plan. You should get customers.

BRANDS ARE LESS IMPORTANT. When information was incomplete and slow, people depended on a brand's imprimatur for quality assurance. In the book business, the average number of stars on Amazon and the first few comments that strangers have posted are more important and visible on Amazon than the publisher's name.

Music is a part of life. It is not merely an accomplishment or a hobby, nor yet a means of relaxation from the strenuous business of earning a living. It is not an addendum or an excrescence: it is an actual part of the fabric of life itself.

The best client is a scared millionaire.

Thus she is almost always a failure as a lawyer, for the law requires only an armament of hollow phrases and stereotyped formulae, and a mental habit which puts these phantasms above sense, truth and justice; and she is almost always a failure in business, for business, in the main, is so foul a compound of trivialities and rogueries that her sense of intellectual integrity revolts against it.