Josh Kaufman Quotes

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

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.

Find the inputs that produce the outputs you want, then make them the focus of most of your time and energy. Eliminate the rest.

It’s this simple: if I never try anything, I never learn anything.

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

Always focus the majority of your efforts on serving your ideal customers. Your ideal customers buy early, buy often, spend the most, spread the word, and are willing to pay a premium for the value you provide. The more ideal customers you can attract, the better your business.

Desire BUT I REALLY WANT IT!!! — TWO-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN EVERYWHERE

Choose a lovable project. 2. Focus your energy on one skill at a time. 3. Define your target performance level. 4. Deconstruct the skill into subskills. 5. Obtain critical tools. 6. Eliminate barriers to practice. 7. Make dedicated time for practice. 8. Create fast feedback loops. 9. Practice by the clock in short bursts. 10. Emphasize quantity and speed.

Intervention bias makes us likely to introduce changes that aren't necessary in order to feel in control of a situation.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Fitbit is a company that knows the value of Shadow Testing. Founded by Eric Friedman and James Park in September 2008, Fitbit makes a small clip-on exercise and sleep data-gathering device. The Fitbit device tracks your activity levels throughout the day and night, then automatically uploads your data to the Web, where it analyzes your health, fitness, and sleep patterns. It’s a neat concept, but creating new hardware is time-consuming, expensive, and fraught with risk, so here’s what Friedman and Park did. The same day they announced the Fitbit idea to the world, they started allowing customers to preorder a Fitbit on their Web site, based on little more than a description of what the device would do and a few renderings of what the product would look like. The billing system collected names, addresses, and verified credit card numbers, but no charges were actually processed until the product was ready to ship, which gave the company an out in case their plans fell through. Orders started rolling in, and one month later, investors had the confidence to pony up $2 million dollars to make the Fitbit a reality. A year later, the first real Fitbit was shipped to customers. That’s the power of Shadow Testing.

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.

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.

By choosing to innovate instead of compete, Apple successfully captured a leadership share of a very competitive market.

Everyone can be great because everyone can serve. — MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST