Billion Dollar Smile Quotes

Connor places his jacket on a wooden table. “I apologize for hurting you.” “I accept,” I say, “but Janie’s gonna need more than that.” Connor nods. “I’m aware. She already asked her mom and me to write a three-thousand word essay on why we love her. His lips pull upward, admiration for his daughter clear in his eyes. My dad flashes a dry smile. “That’s what happens when you raise a bunch of geniuses and make your family motto: loyalty to the death.” Connor grins a billion-dollar grin.

He grinned a slow, lazy grin and nipped at my lips. I smiled softly; he looked so young and beautiful and carefree in that moment. Not the CEO who ran a billion dollar company, but a man that looked his age. Playful and sweet…

Have you ever considered, people, how much time has been stolen from the lives of girls and women due to agonizing over their appearance?' A few faces smile, uneasy. Even louder: 'How many minutes, hours, months, even actual years, of their lives do girls and women waste in agonizing? And how many billions of dollars of corporate profit are made as a result?

Smile at someone, and you have given him more than hundreds of dollars. Hug someone, and you have given him more than thousands of dollars. Kiss someone, and you have given him more than millions of dollars. Love someone, and you have given him more than billions of dollars.

Eddie: (into the speaker, in a plummy and completely bogus British accent) Hullo, Blaine! Cheerio, old fellow! This is Robin Leach, host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Brainless, here to tell you that YOU have won six billion dollars and a new Ford Escort in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes! Susannah: Eddie, stop it! STOP IT! Eddie: (smiling, eyes glittering with a mixture of fear, hysteria, and frustrated anger) You and your monorail girlfriend, Patricia, will spend a lux-yoo-rious month in scenic Jimtown, where you'll drink only the finest wine and eat only the finest virgins! You-- Little Blaine: ...shhhh... Eddie: Suze? Did you-- Little Blaine: ...shhh...don't wake him up. Eddie: What...What are you? Who are you? Little Blaine: I'm Little Blaine. The one he doesn't see.

she feels lucky to have a job, but she is pretty blunt about what it is like to work at Walmart: she hates it. She’s worked at the local Walmart for nine years now, spending long hours on her feet waiting on customers and wrestling heavy merchandise around the store. But that’s not the part that galls her. Last year, management told the employees that they would get a significant raise. While driving to work or sorting laundry, Gina thought about how she could spend that extra money. Do some repairs around the house. Or set aside a few dollars in case of an emergency. Or help her sons, because “that’s what moms do.” And just before drifting off to sleep, she’d think about how she hadn’t had any new clothes in years. Maybe, just maybe. For weeks, she smiled at the notion. She thought about how Walmart was finally going to show some sign of respect for the work she and her coworkers did. She rolled the phrase over in her mind: “significant raise.” She imagined what that might mean. Maybe $2.00 more an hour? Or $2.50? That could add up to $80 a week, even $100. The thought was delicious. Then the day arrived when she received the letter informing her of the raise: 21 cents an hour. A whopping 21 cents. For a grand total of $1.68 a day, $8.40 a week. Gina described holding the letter and looking at it and feeling like it was “a spit in the face.” As she talked about the minuscule raise, her voice filled with anger. Anger, tinged with fear. Walmart could dump all over her, but she knew she would take it. She still needed this job. They could treat her like dirt, and she would still have to show up. And that’s exactly what they did. In 2015, Walmart made $14.69 billion in profits, and Walmart’s investors pocketed $10.4 billion from dividends and share repurchases—and Gina got 21 cents an hour more. This isn’t a story of shared sacrifice. It’s not a story about a company that is struggling to keep its doors open in tough times. This isn’t a small business that can’t afford generous raises. Just the opposite: this is a fabulously wealthy company making big bucks off the Ginas of the world. There are seven members of the Walton family, Walmart’s major shareholders, on the Forbes list of the country’s four hundred richest people, and together these seven Waltons have as much wealth as about 130 million other Americans. Seven people—not enough to fill the lineup of a softball team—and they have more money than 40 percent of our nation’s population put together. Walmart routinely squeezes its workers, not because it has to, but because it can. The idea that when the company does well, the employees do well, too, clearly doesn’t apply to giants like this one. Walmart is the largest employer in the country. More than a million and a half Americans are working to make this corporation among the most profitable in the world. Meanwhile, Gina points out that at her store, “almost all the young people are on food stamps.” And it’s not just her store. Across the country, Walmart pays such low wages that many of its employees rely on food stamps, rent assistance, Medicaid, and a mix of other government benefits, just to stay out of poverty. The

He learned that we should keep our eyes on the goal and not on the ground. He learned so much about the Burger King’s operations that later when he was running the Investment Bank and was looking for high-profile American billionaires to sit on his Board of Directors, he met Joe Antonius, Chairman of the 32-billion-dollar conglomerate. The first thing they had in common was that Antonius ran that corporation where Mir once cleaned bathrooms. He went up to him, introduced himself, “Hi Joe! I am Mir Mohammad Ali Khan, founder and Chairman of KMS Investment Bank and my first job in America was washing bathrooms at one of your restaurants.” Joe burst out laughing and all top notch people – Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Peter Lynch – could not believe what the young man was saying. Joe took him aside and said, “Tell me honestly what did you like about cleaning bathrooms.” “Ammonia,” replied Mir. “Why?” Mir said, “I hated my job and it hurt my ego. I hated it so much that I cried throughout the first week and every time somebody saw me crying, I would tell them that it was because of ammonia. Ammonia helped me shelter my ego.” Later Antonius joined the Board of Mir’s bank for NO COMPENSATION and also brought 6 top people from Forbes, Yoblon, Mario, Andretti, and others. In the first meeting of the Board Antonius said, “I joined this board because if this immigrant kid can come from a family background that he has, compromise with his ego, wash bathrooms and smile and tell us in a corporate meeting of leaders that he is proud of it, then it means that he will go far in life. At 29 he owns a bank, imagine what he will do at 49.

He didn’t sit. He rarely sat. Big hands massaging the back of his chair, he looked as if he was keeping the furniture from jumping off the floor. The smile enjoyed itself for another moment while smart eyes read every face. Then he decided that things weren’t stirred up enough, so with a big voice accustomed to commanding billions of dollars, he told all of us, “I’ll be dead before New Year’s.

Bob is a perfectly fine name. So is Baboo." "And Layla is a lovely name," Bob said. "Did you know it means 'dark beauty' in Arabic? It suits you." "Thank you." Her smile faded when Sam scowled. "It's a tragic name," Sam said. "Very unlucky. I'm sure you know the Arabian legend of Qays and Layla, a young couple who fell so deeply in love they were unable to contain their passionate devotion." "What exactly does that mean?" Layla asked, hoping to distract him in case Bob was superstitious like Lakshmi Auntie. India had a billion-dollar superstition-centric industry focused on astrology, black magic, and fake babas. An unlucky name had derailed more than one prospective marriage. "Is it anything like being unable to contain your opinion about things no one asked you about?" "I'm sure we can all guess what it means." Sam didn't address her sarcastic quip. "Layla used poor Qays for his magnificent body and then went prowling around for a new man only hours after leaving his bed. It caused quite the scandal in their conservative community. Qays was denied her hand in marriage and prevented from seeing her ever again, although why he would want her after that, I don't know. Distraught, he fled into the wilderness while chanting love poems about his darling Layla until he descended into madness and death.

Noah Kagan went to UC Berkeley and graduated with degrees in Business and Economics. He worked at Intel for a short stint, and then found himself at Facebook, as employee #30. You’d think this is where the story would get really good: Noah went on to become the head of product and is now worth 10 billion dollars! That’s not what happened. Instead, he was fired after eight months. Noah has been very public about this, and it’s well documented. He even wrote about why it happened, which mostly comes down to the fact that he was young and inexperienced. Here’s where the real story gets interesting. After being fired, Noah spent ten months at Mint, another successful startup. For Noah, that was a side-hustle. After Mint, he founded KickFlip, a payment provider for social games. He also started an ad company called Gambit. Both of those companies fluttered around for a while and then fizzled out. Next came AppSumo, a daily deals website for tech software. AppSumo has done very well, and it’s still in business as of this writing, but Noah eventually turned his attention to another opportunity. While building up his other businesses, he had become an expert at email marketing, and realized there was a huge need for effective marketing tools. So he created SumoMe, a software company that helps people and companies build their email lists. SumoMe has exploded since its launch. Over 200,000 sites now use it in some capacity, and that number is growing every day. It’s easy to imagine SumoMe becoming a $100 million dollar company in a matter of years, and it’s completely bootstrapped. The company has taken zero funding from venture capitalists. That means Noah can run the business exactly how he wants. I’ve known Noah for almost ten years. I met him when my first company was getting off the ground. Several months ago, we were emailing back and forth about promoting my first book. He ended one of the emails with, “Keep the hustle strong.” I smiled when I read that. Noah is, and always will be, a hustler. He’s been hustling for his entire career―for over a decade. And he deserves everything that’s coming his way. Hustle never comes without defeat. It never comes without detours and side-projects. But the best hustlers all know this simple truth: All that matters is that you keep on hustling.

No matter your age, a smile makes you look and feel better. People spend billions of dollars every year to get pumped, pulled, tucked, and tweaked in hopes of being more beautiful. But there is nothing like a genuine smile to transform your appearance and provide an instant facelift.

But she could make one decision- to change her environment. And if she could change her environment, she would be subject to a whole different set of cues and unconscious cultural influences. It's easier to change your environment than to change your insides. Change your environment and then let the new cues do the work. She spent the first part of eighth grade learning about the Academy, talking to students, asking her mother, and quizzing her teachers. One day in February, she heard that the board of the school had arrived for a meeting, and she decided in her own junior-warrior manner that she'd demand that they let her in. She snuck into the school when a group of kids came out the back door for gym class, and she made her way to the conference room. She knocked, and entered the room. There was a group of tables pushed toward the middle of the room, with about twenty-five adults sitting around the outside of them. The two Academy founders were sitting in the middle on the far side of the tables. "I would like to come to your school," she said loud enough for the whole room to hear. "How did you get in here?" somebody at the table barked. "May I please come to your school next year?" One of the founders smiled. "You see, we have a lottery system. If you enter your name, there is a drawing in April-" "I would like to come to your school," Erica interrupted, launching into the speech she had rehearsed in her head for months. "I tried to get into New Hope when I was ten, and they wouldn't let me. I went down to the agency and I told the lady, but she wouldn't let me. It took them three cops to get me out of there, but I'm thirteen now, and I've worked hard. I get good grades. I know appropriate behavior. I feel I deserve to go to your school. You can ask anyone. I have references." She held out a piece of binder paper with teachers' names on it. "What's your name?" the founder asked. "Erica." "You see, we have rules about this. Many people would like to come to the Academy, so we decided the fairest thing to do is to have a lottery each spring." "That's just a way of saying no." "You'll have as fair a chance as anyone." "That's just a way of saying no. I need to go to the Academy. I need to go to college." Erica had nothing more to say. She just stood there silently. She decided it would take some more cops to take her away. Sitting across from the founders was a great fat man. He was a hedge-fund manager who had made billions of dollars and largely funded the school. He was brilliant, but had the social graces of a gnat. He took a pen from his pocket and wrote something on a piece of paper. He looked at Erica one more time, folded the paper, and slid it across the table to the founders. They opened it up and read the note. It said, "Rig the fucking lottery." The founders were silent for a moment and looked at each other. Finally, one of them looked up and said in a low voice. "What did you say your name was?" "Erica." "Listen, Erica, at the Academy we have rules. We have one set of rules for everybody. Those rules we follow to the letter. We demand discipline. Total discipline. So I'm only going to say this to you once. If you ever tell anybody about bursting in here and talking to us like that, I will personally kick you out of our school. Are we clear about that?" "Yes, sir." "The write your name and address on a piece of paper. Put it on the table and I will see you in September".

Farley turned and took a selfie using Snapchat as Evan and Bobby smiled and looked out at the crowd. Evan’s fiancée, supermodel Miranda Kerr, stood on the floor of the stock exchange, as did early Snapchat employees Dena Gallucci and Nick Bell and Snap chief strategy officer Imran Khan. Bobby and Evan pressed a button together and a bell rang out loudly, signaling the opening of the day’s trading. The assembled throng of Snap employees, friends, and reporters cheered. Farley encouraged the crowd to cheer louder. Evan, in a white shirt and gold tie, and Bobby, with a blue shirt and darker blue tie, smiled at the crowd, then turned and shared a moment. Bobby patted Evan on the back in celebration as Farley turned and shook hands with them each in turn. This was actually happening. $ SNAP was priced at $ 17 a share, but it opened at a much loftier $ 24. Snapchat CFO Drew Vollero watched the stock jump and exclaimed, “That’s crazy!” After Snap began trading, Evan, Bobby, Kerr, and Khan headed over to the fourth-floor equities trading desk at Goldman Sachs on 200 West Street. When Snap’s stock jumped up to $ 24 right out of the gate, the Goldman trading floor broke out in jubilant cheers. The stock closed at $ 24.48, up 44 percent, with a closing market cap of $ 34 billion, on par with Marriott and Target. By the end of the day, Evan and Bobby were worth more than $ 6 and $ 5 billion, respectively. Never before had so much economic value been created by a consumer product, used by millions of people daily, that was still so misunderstood.

They would need a logo for the app, something that instantly enticed users to download and use Picaboo. Reggie and Evan sat together and created the logo over the course of a few hours, going back and forth on ways to symbolize the disappearing nature of the app. They settled on a friendly ghost who was smiling and sticking out its tongue. Evan drew the ghost in Adobe InDesign while Reggie tossed in ideas. Reggie named the ghost Ghostface Chillah, after the Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah. Evan studied the hundred most popular apps in the app store and noticed that none had yellow logos. To make Picaboo stand out, he put the Ghostface Chillah logo on a bright yellow background. Reggie slapped the logo on Facebook and Twitter pages he made for the app. While Evan worked hard on the design and vision for the product and Bobby coded, Reggie contributed less. Plenty of successful Silicon Valley founders do not write code; but they play other roles, relentless hustling in the early days of their companies, dominating nontechnical jobs like marketing and user growth. Reggie simply wasn’t doing that. Having recently turned twenty-one, he wanted to enjoy the Los Angeles nightlife, and he stayed out into the wee hours of the morning. While Evan and Bobby lived the plot of Silicon Valley, Reggie was more Entourage. Evan had always remembered and valued what Clarence Carter had told him when he worked at Red Bull, “When everyone is tired and the night is over, who stays and helps out? Because those are your true friends. Those are the hard workers, the people that believe that working hard is the right thing to do.” His co-founders felt Reggie was not pulling his weight, and it was beginning to cause resentment.

His dismissal shouldn’t hurt. I’m only pretend-dating his son. I don’t even want to like Blake, and I will never meet this man again. Still, to be judged unworthy in so short a space of time really pisses me off. I at least deserve a shot. Blake vanishes into the bathroom. As I’m marshaling the nerve to try and start a polite conversation, Mr. Reynolds looks off into the distance, hoists his water glass, and lets out a sigh. “Fifty thousand dollars.” My first thought is that Blake must have told him about our deal after all. I sit in place, waiting for him to give some explanation, to make some sort of demand. But he takes a long swallow of water and doesn’t say anything more. I fold my hands in my lap. “Well?” he asks after a few interminable seconds. “I can’t wait forever.” He’s not even going to pretend to be polite, and I suspect that everything he says from here on out will only get worse. Fine. If he wants to play that way, I can come along for the ride. “No,” I say with my most charming smile. “You probably can’t. Five minutes of your time is worth a fortune. But my time is worth basically nothing. So if we want to keep staring at each other, I’ll win. Eventually.” He leans against the booth, letting his arm trail along the back. He has Blake’s wiry build, but there’s an edginess to him that Blake lacks, as if he has a low-voltage current running through him at all times. He drums his fingers against the table as if to dispel a constant case of jitters. His glare intensifies. “Cut the innocent act. If you’re smart enough to hold Blake’s interest, you’re smart enough to know what I’m talking about. My son is obviously emotionally invested in you, and I’d rather he not be hurt any more than necessary. If all you want is money, I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars to walk away right now.” I pause, considering this. On the one hand, fifty thousand dollars to walk away from a nonexistent relationship is a lot of money. On the other hand, technically, at this point, Blake has offered me more. Besides, I doubt Mr. Reynolds would ever actually pay me. He’d just spill everything to Blake, assuming that revealing my money-grubbing status would end this relationship. In other words, true to form, he’s being a dick. Surprise, surprise. “I see you’re thinking about it,” he says. “Chances are this thing, whatever it is, won’t last. We’ve established that you don’t really care about Blake. The only thing left to do is haggle over the price.” “That’s not what I’m thinking.” I pick up my own water glass and take a sip. “I think we need to make the stakes even. I’ll accept sixty-six billion dollars. I take cash, check, and nonliquid assets.” His knowing smirk fades. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.” I set my glass down. “No. I’m simply establishing that you don’t love your son, either.” He almost growls. “What the fuck kind of logic is that? Sixty-six billion dollars is materially different than fifty thousand.” The bathroom door opens behind us, and Blake starts toward us. Mr. Reynolds looks away from me in annoyance. Blake approaches the table and slides in next to me. He sits so close I can feel the warm pressure of his thigh against mine. He looks from me to his father and back. “What’s going on?” The fact that I’m not actually dating Blake, and don’t care about the state of his relationship with his terrible father, makes this extremely easy. “Your father and I,” I tell him sweetly, “are arguing over how much he’ll pay me to dump you. Stay out of this; we’re not finished yet.” “Oh.” A curiously amused look crosses Blake’s face. “He offered fifty thousand bucks,” I say. “I countered with sixty-six billion.” Blake’s smile widens. “She’s not negotiating in good faith,” Mr. Reynolds growls. “What the fuck kind of girlfriend did you bring?” “Don’t mind me.” Blake crosses his arms and leans back. “Pretend I’m not here. Carry on.

left shoots me another leering glance. He’s nursing what must be his umpteenth scotch, his glazed eyes telling. Isn’t it funny how creepy men exist everywhere, in each and every layer of our society? A suit and a six-figure income makes no difference. I don’t delete that. It’s too true. The man moves a few chairs over, a sly smile on his lips. “Good evening, gorgeous.

You expect me to give you two hundred grand and let you jet off alone to Southeast Asia?" Kate asked him, more accusation than question. "You aren't thinking about going after Griffin and the half a billion dollars yourself, are you?" "Never crossed my mind." They were so close that their lips were practically touching, and she could feel his heart beating under her hand. She'd sort of hoped his heart would be racing, but his heart was steady. Her heart was the only one racing. Dammit. She saw his eyes darken just as they had in the dressing room. He leaned in to her ever so slightly, and a hot rush of panic flashed through her. The panic was followed by something she feared was desire. Holy Toledo, she thought, he's going to kiss me. "See you in Denpasar," Nick said, his lips lightly brushing hers when he spoke. "Mmm," Kate murmured, ready for the kiss. "Denpasar." Nick stepped away, smiled at her, and messed up her hair.

I knew another good man whose wealth was estimated at more than nine billion dollars. He’s in heaven now, but he’d made it big in the oil business after starting with nothing. He loved God and always helped others. Among many other things, he owned a big retreat center where people could come and get away for a weekend and be refreshed. One time a couple showed up at the retreat’s front desk when the receptionist had stepped away. My friend the multibillionaire just happened to be there. He was an older man, very friendly and humble. He checked in the couple, gave them their keys, then grabbed their suitcases and carried them to the room. He set them up, laid out their bags, and even brought ice for them. He was about to leave them when the lady pulled a five-dollar bill from her purse and gave him a tip. She thought he was the bellman. He just smiled and said, “Thank you, Lord, now I’ve got nine billion and five dollars!” I love the fact that he wasn’t too important to serve. He didn’t say, “Excuse me, I don’t need a tip. I own it all. Do you know who I am?” It takes a big person to do something small. It takes humility to say, “I don’t have to do this. It’s not required of me. I could have somebody else do it. Nobody would fault me if I didn’t, but I know in order to serve God, I need to serve other people.