Josh Kaufman Quotes

Understanding your Locus of Control is being able to separate what you can control (or strongly influence) from what you can't. Trying to control things that aren't under your control is a recipe for eternal frustration

As the saying goes: you can have anything you want, as long as you’re willing to pay the price.

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.

Perceived Value determines how much your customers will be willing to pay for what you’re offering. The higher the perceived value of your offering, the more you’ll be able to charge for it, which significantly improves your chances of succeeding.

It always pays to assume your prospects begin in a state of Preoccupation. Begin your marketing approach in a way that breaks their Preoccupation and earns their Attention.

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

If you are good enough to get in, you obviously have enough talent to do well, regardless

Slack is tricky to manage: too much, and you're wasting time and money. Too little, and your system faces the risk of running out of the resources necessary to continue operating

يقوم كل مشروع تجاري (1) بابتكار أو تقديم شيء له قيمة (2) يريده الآخرون أو يحتاجون إليه (3) بثمن يقبلون دفعه بطريقة (4) ترضي احتياجات المشتري وتوقعاته و(5) وتزود المشروع بالإيرادات الكافية التي تجعل استمرار الملاك في التشغيل أمرًا يستحق العناء.

Absence Blindness is a cognitive bias that prevents us from identifying what we can’t observe. Our perceptual faculties evolved to detect objects that are present in the Environment. It’s far more difficult for people to notice or identify what’s missing. Examples of Absence Blindness are everywhere. Here’s a common example: great Management is boring — and often unrewarding. The hallmark of an effective manager is anticipating likely issues and resolving them in advance, before they become a problem. Some of the best managers in the world exhibit a quiet sort of competence: there’s little drama, and everything gets done on time and under budget. The problem is, no one sees all of the bad things that the great manager prevents. Less skilled managers are more likely to be rewarded, since everyone can see them “making things happen” and “moving heaven and earth” to resolve issues — issues they may have created themselves via poor Management.

A good salesman, as the old (and politically incorrect) saying goes, can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. It's a cliché, but there's some truth to it: Inuit who live above the Arctic Circle use insulated refrigerators to keep their food from freezing in subzero temperatures

People buy because they believe they’re getting more value in the Transaction than they’re spending.

Sunk Costs are investments of time, energy, and money that can’t be recovered once they’ve been made. No matter what you do, you can’t get those resources back. Continuing to invest in a project to recover lost resources doesn’t make sense — all that matters is how much more investment is required versus the reward you expect to obtain.

Market research is the business equivalent of “look before you leap.

Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good.