Josh Kaufman Quotes

Risks are known unknowns. Uncertainties are unknown unknowns.

لن يحصل المجتمع الذي يحتقر التميز في السباكة كنشاط متواضع، ويحتمل الرداءة في الفلسفة لأنها نشاط محترم، على من يجيد السباكة أو الفلسفة، ولن تكون أنابيبه سليمة، أو فلسفته منطقية. - جون دبليو. جاردنر، رئيس سابق لشركة كارنيجي

It is better to have an approximate answer to the right question than an exact answer to the wrong question. — JOHN TUKEY,

At the core, every business is a collection of five Interdependent processes, each of which flows into the next: 1. Value Creation — discovering what people need or want, then creating it. 2. Marketing — attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created. 3. Sales — turning prospective customers into paying customers. 4. Value Delivery — giving your customers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied. 5. Finance — bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.

ERG theory”: people seek existence, relatedness, and growth, in that order.

Roughly defined, a business is a repeatable process that: 1. Creates and delivers something of value… 2. That other people want or need… 3. At a price they’re willing to pay… 4. In a way that satisfies the customer’s needs and expectations… 5. So that the business brings in enough profit to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.

Every successful business (1) creates or provides something of value that (2) other people want or need (3) at a price they're willing to pay, in a way that (4) satisfies the purchaser's needs and expectations and (5) provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.

Every time your customers purchase from you, they’re deciding that they value what you have to offer more than they value anything else their money could buy at that moment.

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

A counterintuitive way to gain insight into a new skill is to contemplate disaster, not perfection. What if you did everything wrong? What if you got the worst possible outcome? This is a problem-solving technique called inversion, and it’s helpful in learning the essentials of almost anything. By studying the opposite of what you want, you can identify important elements that aren’t immediately obvious. Take white-water kayaking. What would I need to know if I wanted to be able to kayak in a large, fast-moving, rock-strewn river? Here’s the inversion: What would it look like if everything went wrong?

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action. — JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, NINETEENTH-CENTURY POET

Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it. —

If you only have an hour or two each day to devote to practice and learning, and you spread that time and energy across twenty different skills, no individual skill is going to receive enough time and energy to generate noticeable improvement.

Goods in any storehouse are useless until somebody takes them out and puts them to the use they were meant for. That applies to what man stores away in his brain, too. — THOMAS J. WATSON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF IBM

Value can’t be created without understanding what people want (market research). Attracting customers first requires getting their attention, then making them interested (marketing). In order to close a sale, people must trust your ability to deliver on what’s promised (value delivery and operations). Customer satisfaction depends on exceeding the customer’s expectations (customer service). Profit sufficiency requires bringing in more money than is spent (finance).