Scott Galloway The Four Quotes

Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent.

People who received a great deal of attention for their looks at a young age are more likely to opt for cosmetic procedures when older. It’s the same in business.

Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.

teach 120 kids on Tuesday nights in my Brand Strategy course. That’s $720,000, or $60,000 per class, in tuition payments, a lot of it financed with debt. I’m good at what I do, but walking in each night, I remind myself we (NYU) are charging kids $500/minute for me and a projector. This. Is. Fucking. Ridiculous.

Expect that a certain amount of failure is out of your control, and recognize you may need to endure it or move on.

The ultimate gift, in our digital age, is a CEO who has the storytelling talent to capture the imagination of the markets while surrounding themselves with people who can show incremental progress against that vision each day.

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity,” said Coco Chanel.

it seems impossible until it isn’t.

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.

luxury is irrational, which makes it the best business in the world. In 2016 Estée Lauder was worth more than the world’s largest communications firm, WPP.9 Richemont, owner of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, was worth more than T-Mobile.10 LVMH commands more value than Goldman Sachs.

It is conventional wisdom that Steve Jobs put “a dent in the universe.” No, he didn’t. Steve Jobs, in my view, spat on the universe. People who get up every morning, get their kids dressed, get them to school, and have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being, dent the universe. The world needs more homes with engaged parents, not a better fucking phone.

three platforms: Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Registering, iterating, and monetizing its audience is the heart of each platform’s business. It’s what the most valuable man-made things ever created (their algorithms) are designed to do.

Entrepreneurs are usually enamored with the preciousness of their product vs. something that can scale.

My experience in traditional firms is that anything new is seen as innovative, and the people assigned to it, like any parent, become irrationally passionate about the project and refuse to acknowledge just how stupid and ugly your little project has become.

Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don't have to love it, just don't hate it. If practice takes you from good to great, the recognition and compensation you will command will make you start to love it. And, ultimately, you will be able to shape your career and your specialty to focus on the aspects you enjoy the most. And if not—make good money and then go follow your passion. No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.

What’s clear is that we need business leaders who envision, and enact, a future with more jobs—not billionaires who want the government to fund, with taxes they avoid, social programs for people to sit on their couches and watch Netflix all day. Jeff, show some real fucking vision.

Hrănim, cu bună-știință, mașinăriile corporatiste cu foarte multe informații despre viețile noastre - trasee zilnice, e-mailuri, apeluri telefonice, toate cele - și apoi ne așteptăm ca acele firme să le folosească cu intenții bune și în același timp să le protejeze, chiar să le ignore.

A study found that on Facebook, the top descriptors to complete the phrase “My husband is . . .” are “the best,” “my best friend,” “amazing,” “the greatest,” and “so cute.” On Google, under the cloak of anonymity, one of the top five ways to complete that phrase is also “amazing.” The other four: “a jerk,” “annoying,” “gay,” and “mean.”10

If you want to work for Vogue, produce films, or open a restaurant, you had better get immense psychological reward from your gig, as the comp, and returns on your efforts, will likely suck. Competition will be fierce, and even if you manage to get in, you'll be easily replaceable, as there are always younger, hipper candidates nipping at your heels. Very few high-school graduates dream of working for Exxon, but a big firm in a large sector would give you a career trajectory with regular promotions a sexy industry won't.

The definition of rich is when your passive income exceeds your nut (what you need to live).

Brands are two things: promise and performance.

Facebook—at Google the defining factors were the elegantly simple homepage and the fact that advertisers weren’t allowed to influence search results (organic search).

Booking travel the same day? You must be a business traveler, please - bend over.

Recent research from the Johns Hopkins University Center on Aging and Health found that caregivers had an 18 percent lower mortality rate than noncaregivers.

Invest aggressively into your strength(s) and spend modest effort to get your weaknesses to average so they don't hold you back.

It's never been a better time to be exceptional, or a worst time to be average.

One way to appreciate the brilliance of this acquisition is to look at Instagram’s “Power Index,” the number of people a platform reaches times their level of engagement. This social index reveals Instagram as the world’s most powerful platform, as it has 400 million users, a third of Facebook’s, but garners fifteen times the level of engagement. L2 Analysis of Unmetric Data.

the words of Silicon Valley marketer Tom Hayes, who did just that for Applied Materials, “When the news is negative, you want to be perceived as a good company to which a bad thing has happened.

The digital age is Heraclitus on steroids: change is a daily constant. In almost every professional environment, we are expected to use and master tools that did not exist a decade ago, or even last year. For better or worse (and frankly, it is often for worse), organizations have access, essentially, to infinite amounts of data, and what might as well be an infinite variety of ways to sort through and act on that data. At the same time, ideas can be turned into reality at unprecedented speed. The thing Amazon, Facebook, and no less hot firms, including Zara, have in common is they are agile (the new-economy term for fast).

The wealthiest man in the twentieth century mastered the art of minimum-wage employees selling you stuff. The wealthiest man of the twenty-first century is mastering the science of zero-wage robots selling you stuff.

People who get up every morning, get their kids dressed, get them to school, and have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being, dent the universe. The world needs more homes with engaged parents, not a better fucking phone.

Sixty-four percent of people who join extremist groups on Facebook do so because the algorithm steers them there. Less than three years after QAnon appeared online, half of Americans had heard of its conspiracy theories. In reality, what social media favors is that which divides us.

Consider that the telephone took 75 years to reach 50 million users, whereas television was in 50 million households within 13 years, the internet in 4,  . . . and Angry Birds in 35 days. In the tech era, the pace is accelerating further: it took Microsoft Office 22 years to reach a billion users, but Gmail only 12, and Facebook 9. Trying

the so-called first-mover advantage is usually not an advantage. Industry pioneers often end up with arrows in their backs—while the horsemen, arriving later (Facebook after Myspace, Apple after the first PC builders, Google after the early search engines, Amazon after the first online retailers), get to feed off the carcasses of their predecessors by learning from their mistakes, buying their assets, and taking their customers.

No one has been able to aggregate more intention data on what consumers like than Google. Google not only sees you coming, but sees where you’re going. When homicide investigators arrive at a crime scene and there is a suspect—almost always the spouse—they check the suspect’s search history for suspicious Google queries (like “how to poison your husband”). I suspect we’re going to find that U.S. agencies have been mining Google to understand the intentions of more than some shopper thinking about detergent, but cells looking for fertilizer to build bombs. Google controls a massive amount of behavioral data. However, the individual identities of users have to be anonymized and, to the best of our knowledge, grouped. People are not comfortable with their name and picture next to a list of all the things they have typed into the Google query box. And for good reasons. Take a moment to imagine your picture and your name above everything you have typed into that Google search box. You’ve no doubt typed in some crazy shit that you would rather other people not know. So, Google has to aggregate this data, and can only say that people of this age or people of this cohort, on average, type in these sorts of things into their Google search box. Google still has a massive amount of data it can connect, if not to specific identities, to specific groups.

In early 2016, Amazon was given a license by the Federal Maritime Commission to implement ocean freight services as an Ocean Transportation Intermediary. So, Amazon can now ship others’ goods. This new service, dubbed Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), won’t do much directly for individual consumers. But it will allow Amazon’s Chinese partners to more easily and cost-effectively get their products across the Pacific in containers. Want to bet how long it will take Amazon to dominate the oceanic transport business? 67 The market to ship stuff (mostly) across the Pacific is a $ 350 billion business, but a low-margin one. Shippers charge $ 1,300 to ship a forty-foot container holding up to 10,000 units of product (13 cents per unit, or just under $ 10 to deliver a flatscreen TV). It’s a down-and-dirty business, unless you’re Amazon. The biggest component of that cost comes from labor: unloading and loading the ships and the paperwork. Amazon can deploy hardware (robotics) and software to reduce these costs. Combined with the company’s fledgling aircraft fleet, this could prove another huge business for Amazon. 68 Between drones, 757/ 767s, tractor trailers, trans-Pacific shipping, and retired military generals (no joke) who oversaw the world’s most complex logistics operations (try supplying submarines and aircraft carriers that don’t surface or dock more than once every six months), Amazon is building the most robust logistics infrastructure in history. If you’re like me, this can only leave you in awe: I can’t even make sure I have Gatorade in the fridge when I need it.

History favors the bold. Compensation favors the meek. As a Fortune 500 company CEO, you’re better off taking the path often traveled and staying the course. Big companies may have more assets to innovate with, but they rarely take big risks or innovate at the cost of cannibalizing a current business. Neither would they chance alienating suppliers or investors. They play not to lose, and shareholders reward them for it—until those shareholders walk and buy Amazon stock. Most boards ask management: “How can we build the greatest advantage for the least amount of capital/investment?” Amazon reverses the question: “What can we do that gives us an advantage that’s hugely expensive, and that no one else can afford?” Why? Because Amazon has access to capital with lower return expectations than peers. Reducing shipping times from two days to one day? That will require billions. Amazon will have to build smart warehouses near cities, where real estate and labor are expensive. By any conventional measure, it would be a huge investment for a marginal return. But for Amazon, it’s all kinds of perfect. Why? Because Macy’s, Sears, and Walmart can’t afford to spend billions getting the delivery times of their relatively small online businesses down from two days to one. Consumers love it, and competitors stand flaccid on the sidelines. In 2015, Amazon spent $7 billion on shipping fees, a net shipping loss of $5 billion, and overall profits of $2.4 billion. Crazy, no? No. Amazon is going underwater with the world’s largest oxygen tank, forcing other retailers to follow it, match its prices, and deal with changed customer delivery expectations. The difference is other retailers have just the air in their lungs and are drowning. Amazon will surface and have the ocean of retail largely to itself.

The path to rich(es) is a path of living below your means and investing in income-producing assets. Rich is more a function of discipline than how much you make.

Mil millones por una empresa con diecinueve empleados?»), Zuck se mantuvo firme y apretó el gatillo para hacerse con un activo que ahora vale cincuenta veces más que lo que pagó por él.

Amazon appeals to our hunter-gatherer instinct to collect more stuff with minimum effort. We have serious mojo for stuff, as survival went to the caveman who had the most twigs, had the right rocks to crack stuff open with, and got the most colorful mud to draw images on walls so his descendants knew when to plant crops, or what dangerous animals to avoid.

HP.com vs. the Apple Regent Street store in London is like bringing a (butter) knife to a gunfight.

With knowledge of 150 likes, their model could predict someone’s personality better than their spouse. With 300, it understood you better than yourself.32

Facebook has already appropriated (that is, stolen) other Snapchat ideas, including Quick Updates, Stories, selfie filters, and one-hour messages. The trend will only continue—unless the government gets in the way.

Perhaps that’s why, of the Four, Google seems the most retiring, the most likely to remove itself from the limelight. “Gods don’t take curtain calls,” John Updike famously wrote of Ted Williams’s refusal to come out of the dugout to acknowledge the crowd after his last at bat. Lately, Google seems to prefer to keep its cap low over its eyes,

All of the other stuff—autonomous vehicles, drones—is just chaff, designed to keep customers and, even more so, employees pumped up.

Amazon is going underwater with the world’s largest oxygen tank, forcing other retailers to follow it, match its prices, and deal with changed customer delivery expectations. The difference is other retailers have just the air in their lungs and are drowning. Amazon will surface and have the ocean of retail

Nuclear energy suffers from a tragic branding problem. The technology is a carbon-free and reliable source of twenty-four-hour-per-day power. A single generator produces enough electricity to run all the homes in Philadelphia. And nuclear power has been in wide use around the world for generations.

Luxul nu este ceva exterior, e înscris în genele noastre. El combină nevoia instinctivă de a transcende condiția umană și de a ne simți apropiați de perfecțiunea divină, având dorința de a deveni mai atractivi pentru potențialii parteneri. Timp de mii de ani am îngenuncheat în biserici, moschei și temple, am privit în jur și ne-am gândit „e imposibil ca mâinile umane să creeze catedrala din Reims/Hagia Sophia/Panteonul/Templele din Karnak. E imposibil ca oamenii simpli să fi creat această alchimie de sunet, artă și arhitectură fără inspirație divină. Ascultă cât de înălțătoare este muzica. Acea statuie, acele fresce, acei pereți de marmură. Nu mai sunt în lumea obișnuită. Aici e locul unde sălășluiește Dumnezeu.” De-a lungul istoriei masele nu au avut acces la lux, așa că făceau pelerinaje la catedrale pentru a vedea potire încrustate cu nestemate, candelabre sclipitoare, cea mai frumoasă artă din lume. Au început să asocieze copleșitoarea senzație estetică a operelor...cu prezența lui Dumnezeu. Aceasta e piatra de temelie a luxului. Datorită revoluției industriale și a creșterii generale a prosperității, în secolul XX acel lux a ajuns la îndemâna a milioane, poate chiar miliarde de oameni.

Nimic nu este mai important decât maturitatea emoțională - mai ales pentru cei de douăzeci și ceva de ani, unde această calitate poate varia puternic. Sunt din ce în ce mai puține domenii în care o persoană poate declara că lucrează pentru un singur șef, are o serie clară de sarcini și nu se așteaptă ca acești parametri să se schimbe frecvent sau semnificativ. Prin comparație, lucrătorul din era digitală trebuie să răspundă în fața mai multor părți interesate și să facă trecerea între mai multe roluri pe parcursul zilei - un mediu care îi favorizează pe cei maturi. Pe măsură ce ciclurile competitive și de produs se scurtează, viața noastră va înregistra treceri rapide între succes și eșec. Este important cât de bine își gestionează fiecare propriul entuziasm pe parcursul acestor cicluri. Felul în care interacționează oamenii unul cu celălalt determină proiectele la care vor lucra, cine va lucra cu ei și cine va vrea să îi angajeze. Tinerii care au un sentiment puternic al propriei identități rămân netulburați de stres, învață și aplică cele învățate, se vor descurca mai bine decât colegii lor care amețesc ușor, cantonându-se în probleme mărunte și lăsând emoțiile să le dirijeze răspunsul la stimuli. Cei care sunt capabili să dea ordine și să le primească și care își înțeleg rolul într-un grup se descurcă mai bine decât colegii lor când ierarhiile de autoritate devin neclare și structurile organizaționale sunt fluide.

Ai nevoie de un mediu în care îți poți răspândi excelența, deoarece calea către subcompensație este să faci muncă bună fără ca ea si fie explicit promovată sau asociată cu tine. Da, nu pare prea evident, iar munca și realizările tale ar trebui să vorbească de la sine. Ei bine, nu o fac. (...) Unii oameni sunt mai buni la cuvinte, alții, la imagini. Investește agresiv în punctele forte și investește efort modest pentru a-ți aduce punctele slabe la nivelul mediei, pentru ca acestea să nu te tragă înapoi. Toată lumea, de la angajați la colegi și până la parteneri potențiali, te caută. Asigură-te că văd ce e mai bun în tine. Caută-te pe Google, iar dacă informările pot fi mai clare, mai puternice și mai amuzante, e timpul să faci îmbunătățiri.

Nu îți urma pasiunea, urmează-ți talentul. Găsește lucrul la care ești bun (de timpuriu) și propune-ți să devii excepțional. Nu trebuie să îl iubești, doar să nu îl urăști. Dacă exersarea te va duce de la bun la foarte bun, recunoașterea și recompensarea pe care le vei primi te vor face să îl iubești. Și, în final, vei putea să îți modelezi cariera și specialitatea ta pentru a te concentra pe aspectele care te bucură cel mai mult. Iar dacă nu - fă bani buni și apoi urmează-ți pasiunea. Niciun puști nu visează să fie contabil. Și totuși cei mai buni contabili de pe planetă zboară la Clasa I și se căsătoresc cu oameni care arată mult mai nine decât ei - două lucruri pentru care au probabil o pasiune.

Dacă vrei să cauți dreptate, nu o vei găsi în lumea corporațiilor. Vei fi tratat injust și te vei afla în situații imposibile, care nu sunt din vina ta. Așteaptă-te să nu poți controla o mare parte din eșecuri și recunoaște că va trebui să le înduri ori să mergi mai departe. Dacă pleci, nu uita că oamenii țin minte mai degrabă cum ai plecat, decât ce ai făcut cât timp ai fost acolo. Indiferent de situație, fii politicos. Cea mai mare răzbunare este să trăiești mai bine decât persoana care ți-a făcut viața un chin, sau măcar să nu te mai gândești niciodată la ea. Și după zece ani acea persoană s-ar putea afla în poziția de a te putea ajuta, sau măcar de a nu-ți pune obstacole. Oamenii care se plâng de alții și cum au fost trași pe sfoară sunt, ei bine... sunt niște ratați.

Condu un Porsche, chiar și la 80km/h, și te vei simți mai atrăgător - și mai dispus la o experiență sexuală întâmplătoare. Deoarece bărbații sunt programați să se reproducă agresiv, omului cavernelor din noi i se face foame de acel Rolex sau de Lamborghini - sau de Apple. Și pentru că gândește cu organele genitale, omul cavernelor va sacrifica foarte mult (va plăti un preț irațional) pentru șansa de a impresiona. Produsele de lux nu au un sens din punct de vedere rațional. Dar nu ne putem desprinde de dorința de a fi în apropierea perfecțiunii divine sau de a procrea. Când luxul are efect, actul de a cheltui devine el însuși parte a experienței. Cumpărarea unui colier cu diamante din portbagajul unei mașini, chiar dacă pietrele sunt veritabile, nu este la fel de satisfăcătoare ca o achiziție de la Tiffany, de la o consultantă de vânzări bine îmbrăcată și care prezintă colierul vorbind în șoaptă sub lumini strălucitoare. Luxul este echivalentul pe piață al penelor de pe o pasăre. Este irațional și sexual și domină cu ușurință semnalele raționale și enervante ale creierului - cum ar fi „Nu îți permiți asta” sau „Asta nu are niciun sens”.

No sigas tu pasión, sigue tu talento. Averigua (pronto) qué se te da bien y empéñate en hacerlo genial. No tiene que encantarte, simplemente no tienes que aborrecerlo. Si la práctica te lleva de bueno a genial, el reconocimiento y la compensación que recibirás por ello harán que empiece a encantarte.

It’s difficult to remember now, but when Apple made that move back then, most people figured the company was wrong; that Apple was a company lurching toward irrelevance; and that by opening fancy stores it was positioning itself for luxury with the equivalent of a walker. How dumb was that, they thought. Couldn’t Apple see that the tech market now revolved around commodity boxes powered by Microsoft and Intel? That the boom was in e-commerce? Gap Inc., Form 10-K for the Period Ending January 31, 1998 (filed March 13, 1998), from Gap, Inc. website.

Facebook gestates intent better than any promotion or advertising channel. Once in pursuit, we go to Google or Amazon to see where to get it. Thus Facebook is higher up the funnel than Google. It suggests the “what,” while Google supplies the “how” and Amazon the “when” you will have it. Historically,

At L2, we track migration patterns between the largest firms, including traditional agencies and the Four. WPP is the world’s largest advertising group. Some 2,000 of its former employees have migrated to Facebook or Google. By comparison, only 124 former Facebook or Google peeps left to go work at WPP. Consider the reverse migrants—124 that went back to WPP. Many of them, it turns out, had only interned at Facebook or Google, and went to WPP when they weren’t extended offers in Palo Alto or Mountainside.21 The ad world today is increasingly run by the leftovers. L2 Analysis of LinkedIn Data.

and it gets its content, similar to Google, from its users. In other words, more than a billion customers labor for Facebook without compensation. By comparison, the big entertainment companies must spend billions to create original content. Netflix is shelling out more than $100 million for each season of The Crown and will spend $6 billion on content in 2017 (50 percent more than either NBC or CBS).26 Yet Facebook competes for our attention, and wins it, with pictures of fourteen-month-old Max curled up with his new Vizsla puppy. This is fascinating to a small audience, maybe two hundred or three hundred friends, but that’s enough. It’s easy for the machine to aggregate, segment, and target.

The fifth factor in the T Algorithm is the ability to control the consumer experience, at purchase, through vertical integration.

The process is the message: if you survive, you are among the elite, the most brilliant members of your generation. There is no evidence that this process actually works, but that doesn’t matter.

told Nike that to have a shot at a trillion, they would need to do three things: Increase percentage of direct-to-consumer retail to 40 percent within ten years (closer to 10 percent in 2016). Gain greater facility with data and how to incorporate into product features. Move their headquarters from Portland. As I learned, the algorithm is the easy part. Getting them to listen to you (“You need to relocate HQ from Portland”) is the hard part. Chapter 9 The Fifth Horseman?

The education market is ripe, and I mean falling-off-the-tree ripe, to be disrupted.

The internet is the fastest-growing channel in the largest economy in the world, and Amazon is capturing the majority of that growth.

The difference between good and great can be 10 percent or less, but the delta in rewards is closer to 10 times.

si sabes de antemano que algo va a funcionar, es que no es un experimento».

La mayor parte de la gente que ha tenido éxito tiene tiempo para reflexionar sobre cuestiones importantes, como «¿Por qué estoy aquí y qué huella quiero dejar?». La respuesta, generalmente, tiene que ver con ayudar a los demás. Si piensas tener éxito tienes que saber pedir ayuda. También deberías acostumbrarte a ayudar a gente con menos experiencia que tú. Ayudar a quienes están por encima de ti no es ayudar, sino ser un pelota.

Los inicios, el crecimiento, la madurez y el declive requieren (por decirlo burdamente) de un emprendedor, un visionario, un operador y un pragmático, respectivamente. Sorprendentemente, los más difíciles de encontrar son los pragmáticos.

Los emprendedores en serie tienen tres cualidades en común: • mayor tolerancia al riesgo • capacidad de vender • demasiado tontos como para saber que van a fracasar

Un ejercicio productivo para su propia carrera que uno puede hacer es preguntarse: ¿En qué parte del alfabeto me va mejor? Imagina que las empresas y los productos tienen un ciclo de vida, de la A a la Z. ¿Estás más contento en una empresa emergente, donde vas a tener que ponerte toda una serie de gorras distintas (A-D)? ¿En la fase de inicio/visionario (E-H)? ¿Se te da bien administrar, escalar y reinventar (I-P)?... ¿O eres capaz de gestionar una empresa/producto en decadencia, y sacarle rentabilidad (Q-Z)? Hay pocas personas que sean buenas en más de varias letras.

Pocos directores ejecutivos tienen competencias para más de dos de estas etapas. La mayoría de los CEO llegaron a su puesto siendo fundadores, visionarios u operadores, no pragmáticos. Muy probablemente se pueden contar con los dedos de una mano los CEOs de la historia empresarial de Estados Unidos que han dirigido eficazmente sus empresas (o han deseado hacerlo) a lo largo de todo el alfabeto. Después de todo, ¿quién quiere acompañar hacia la muerte a la gran empresa que fundó décadas atrás?

Insisto, nunca ha sido más fácil ser multimillonario y tan difícil ser millonario. Puede resultar vano, o simplemente incorrecto, combatirlas o etiquetar a estas increíbles empresas como «malas». No lo sé. Sin embargo, estoy seguro de que entender cómo funcionan los Cuatro nos da un buen conocimiento de nuestra era digital y una mayor capacidad para crear seguridad económica para ti y para tu familia. Espero que este libro te ayude a hacer ambas cosas.

Las personas que logran su objetivo en un ámbito los logran en todos los ámbitos (...) el logro es un hábito que puede cultivarse y repetirse. Steve Jobs recibió un montón de críticas cuando volvió a Apple a principios de este siglo y anunció que solo iba a contratar gente A, porque la gente A solo contrata a otros A, mientras que la gente B contratan a gente C, pero tenía razón: los ganadores saben reconocer a otros ganadores, mientras que los segundones pueden ser amenazados por sus competidores.

Las personas que logran su objetivo en un ámbito los logran en todos los ámbitos (...) el logro es un hábito que puede cultivarse y repetirse. (...) Steve Jobs recibió un montón de críticas cuando volvió a Apple a principios de este siglo y anunció que solo iba a contratar gente A, porque la gente A solo contrata a otros A, mientras que la gente B contratan a gente C, pero tenía razón: los ganadores saben reconocer a otros ganadores, mientras que los segundones pueden ser amenazados por sus competidores.

Vale, entonces tienes madurez emocional, eres curioso y tienes agallas, pero no eres el único. ¿Cómo te distingues de todo el resto de jóvenes brillantes? En primer lugar, tienes que forzar los límites de tu zona de confort dando constantemente visibilidad a tus atributos. Primera pregunta: ¿cuál es tu medio?

Mira los currículums de los altos ejecutivos: si en su mayoría provienen del sector de ventas, entonces lo que la compañía valora son las ventas. Si son gente de operaciones, ese es el corazón de la empresa, diga lo que diga en los anuncios.

Si quieres trabajar para Vogue, producir películas o abrir un restaurante, es mejor que obtengas de ello una inmensa recompensa psicológica, pues tu compensación económica, y el retorno por tus esfuerzos, probablemente vaya a dar bastante pena.

La característica más común de los CEO es que tienen un régimen de ejercicio regular (...) Si te mantienes en forma, serás menos propenso a la depresión, pensarás con más claridad, dormirás mejor y ampliarás tu grupo de posibles parejas (...) Trabaja ochenta horas una semana, sé el tipo que se mantiene tranquilo ante el estrés, aborda un problema grande a base de pura fuerza bruta y energía (...) Esta forma de trabajar, sin embargo, a medida que te haces mayor puede matarte de verdad. Así que hazlo pronto, mientras eres joven.

Imran Khan, director de estrategia de la empresa, aseguró: «Snapchat es una empresa de cámaras, no es una empresa social». No sé si es por resentimiento, después de que Evan Spiegel rechazara las ofertas de adquisición de Zuckerberg, o si se trata de una respuesta justificada ante una amenaza, pero creo que lo primero que piensa Mark Zuckerberg en cuanto abre los ojos por la mañana, y lo último antes de cerrarlos por la noche, es: «Vamos a barrer a Snap Inc. de la faz de la Tierra». Y lo va a hacer. Zuckerberg sabe que las imágenes son la funcionalidad más potente de Facebook, y gran parte de ella reside en esa ala de su imperio social llamada Instagram. Tardamos sesenta mil veces menos en procesar imágenes que textos. Las imágenes tienen línea directa con el corazón. Y si Snapchat amenaza con llevarse un considerable pedazo del negocio, o incluso con encaramarse al liderato, esa amenaza hay que machacarla.

En una de sus famosas cartas a los inversores, Jeff Bezos destacó que lo que acaba con las compañías maduras es su apego poco saludable a los procesos acostumbrados. Solo hay que preguntarle a Óscar Muñoz, CEO de United Airlines, quien defendió a los empleados de la aerolínea que sacaron a un pasajero a rastras de un avión, porque «habían seguido los protocolos preestablecidos para hacer frente a ese tipo de situaciones».

Ca specie, suntem mai slabi și mai lenți decât mulți dintre concurenții noștri. Diferențierea față de ceilalți o facem prin creierul nostru dezvoltat. Empatia ne face mai umani. Explozia de imagini distribuite pe rețelele sociale a dus la mai multă empatie, care ar trebui să ne dispună mai puțin la gazarea copiilor sau măcar să ne inspire să îi vânăm pe cei care fac asemenea lucruri. E bine cunoscut faptul că țările care fac comerț între ele sunt mai puțin predispuse să își declare război. Pe măsură ce pierderile de vieți omenești cauzate de violență continuă să scadă (și scad în continuare), cred că vom descoperi că una dintre cauzele acestei scăderi este faptul că oamenii sunt mai apropiați de...tot mai mulți oameni. Lipsa egoismului și grija pentru ceilalți sunt cruciale pentru supraviețuirea speciei - iar cei care o îngrijesc sunt răsplătiți cu viață. Nuanța, emoțiile și latura fizică a îngrijirii ne țin tineri, deoarece vedem că adăugăm valoare umanității. Aceasta este legătura vitală a Facebook cu inima, fericirea și sănătatea noastră.

Stay Loyal to People, Not Organizations Mitt Romney was wrong—corporations aren’t people. As British Lord Chancellor Edward Thurow observed more than two centuries ago, business enterprises “have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned.” As such, they do not deserve your affection or your loyalty, nor can they repay it in kind. Churches, countries, and even the occasional private firm have been touting loyalty to abstract organizations for centuries, usually as a ploy to convince young people to do brave and foolish things like go to war so old people can keep their land and treasure. It. Is. Bullshit. The most impressive students in my class are the young men and women who have served their country. We benefit (hugely) from their loyalty to our country, but I don’t think we (the United States) pay them their due. I believe it’s a bad trade for them. Be loyal to people. People transcend corporations, and people, unlike corporations, value loyalty. Good leaders know they are only as good as the team standing behind them—and once they have forged a bond of trust with someone, will do whatever it takes to keep that person happy and on their team. If your boss isn’t fighting for you, you either have a bad boss or you are a bad employee.

Manage Your Career Take responsibility for your own career, and manage it. People will tell you to “follow your passion.” This, again, is bullshit. I would like to be quarterback for the New York Jets. I’m tall, have a good arm, decent leadership skills, and would enjoy owning car dealerships after my knees go. However, I have marginal athletic ability—learned this fast at UCLA. People who tell you to follow your passion are already rich. Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don’t have to love it, just don’t hate it. If practice takes you from good to great, the recognition and compensation you will command will make you start to love it. And, ultimately, you will be able to shape your career and your specialty to focus on the aspects you enjoy the most. And if not—make good money and then go follow your passion. No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.

How people interact with one another determines the projects they work on, who will work with them, and who wants to hire them. Young people who have a strong sense of their own identity, remain poised under stress, and learn and apply what they’ve learned, do better than peers who are more easily flustered, get hung up on petty issues, and let their emotions drive their responses to stimuli. People who are comfortable taking direction and giving it, and who understand their role in a group, do better than their peers when lines of authority get murky and organizational structures are fluid.

One interesting result of the increasing importance of emotional maturity is that among younger people, this skill favors women. I’m not trying to be politically correct here, though admittedly I’m not sure I would have had the balls to highlight this point if the finding favored men. Anyway, when asked in surveys, men and women agree that women in their twenties tend to “act their age” more than men. There is neurological evidence that women’s brains develop sooner and more quickly into adult brains.

Curiosity is crucial to success. What worked yesterday is out-of-date today and forgotten tomorrow—replaced by a new tool or technique we haven’t yet heard of. Consider that the telephone took 75 years to reach 50 million users, whereas television was in 50 million households within 13 years, the internet in 4, . . . and Angry Birds in 35 days. In the tech era, the pace is accelerating further: it took Microsoft Office 22 years to reach a billion users, but Gmail only 12, and Facebook 9. Trying to resist this tide of change will drown you. Successful people in the digital age are those who go to work every day, not dreading the next change, but asking, “What if we did it this way?” Adherence to process, or how we’ve always done it, is the Achilles’ heel of big firms and sepsis for careers. Be the gal who comes up with practical and bat-shit crazy ideas worth discussing and trying. Play offense: for every four things you’re asked to do, offer one deliverable or idea that was not asked for.

Strength A decent proxy for your success will be your ratio of sweating to watching others sweat (watching sports on TV). It’s not about being skinny or ripped, but committing to being strong physically and mentally. The trait most common in CEOs is a regular exercise regime. Walking into any conference room and feeling that, if shit got real, you could kill and eat the others gives you an edge and confidence (note: don’t do this). If you keep physically fit, you’ll be less prone to depression, think more clearly, sleep better, and broaden your pool of potential mates. On a regular basis, at work, demonstrate both your physical and mental strength—your grit. Work an eighty-hour week, be the calm one in face of stress, attack a big problem with sheer brute force and energy. People will notice. At Morgan Stanley, the analysts pulled all-nighters weekly, and it didn’t kill us, but made us stronger. This approach to work, however, as you get older, can in fact kill you. So, do it early.

Facebook, por su parte, apela a nuestro corazón. No de la forma en que la marca Tide apela a tu instinto amoroso y maternal, sino conectándonos con nuestros amigos y familiares.

Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and expert in how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities, compares social media notifications to slot machines.51 They both deliver variable rewards: you’re curious, will I have two Likes or two hundred? You click the app icon and wait for the wheels to turn—a second, two, three, piquing your anticipation only makes the reward sweeter: you have nineteen Likes. Will it be more in an hour? You’ll have to check to find out. And while you’re there, here are these fake news stories that bots have been littering the information space with. Feel free to share them with your friends, even if you haven’t read them—you know you’ll get your tribe’s approval by sharing more of what they already believe.

Facebook attempts to skirt criticism of its content by claiming it’s not a media outlet, but a platform. This sounds reasonable until you consider that the term platform was never meant to absolve companies from taking responsibility for the damage they do. What if McDonald’s, after discovering that 80 percent of their beef was fake and making us sick, proclaimed they couldn’t be held responsible, as they aren’t a fast-food restaurant but a fast-food platform? Would we tolerate that? A Facebook spokesperson, in the face of the controversy, said, “We cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves.”47 Well, you sure as hell can try. If Facebook is by far the largest social networking site, reaching 67 percent of U.S. adults,48 and if more us, each day, are getting our news from it, then Facebook has become, de facto, the largest news media firm in the world. The question is, does news media have a greater responsibility to pursue, and police, the truth? Isn’t that the point of news media?

Facebook built its foundation on a second lie, repeated thousands of times in early meetings between Facebook’s army of sales reps and the world’s largest consumer brands: “Build big communities and you will own them.” Hundreds of brands invested hundreds of millions on Facebook to aggregate enormous branded communities hosted by Facebook. And by urging consumers to “like” their brands, they gave Facebook an inordinate amount of free advertising. After brands built this expensive house, and were ready to move in, Facebook barked, “Just kidding, those fans aren’t really yours; you need to rent them.” The organic reach of a brand’s content—percentage of posts from a brand received in a fan’s feed—fell from 100 percent to single digits. Now, if a brand wants to reach its community, it must advertise on—that is, pay—Facebook. This is similar to building a house and having the county inspector show up as you’re putting on the finishing touches. As she changes the locks she informs you, “You have to rent this from us.

what's good for amazon is bad for retail, and vice versa

given a 10 percent chance of a hundred times payout, you should take that bet every time

they live for today and acknowledge that great success only comes with significant, even existential risk

biggest mistakes in business history.. are risks that firms failed to take

Amazon's unwavering focus on making consumer purchases increasingly frictionless

most boards ask management: "how can we build the greatest advantage for the least amount of capital/investment?" amazon reverses the question: "what can we do that gives us an advantage that's hugely expensive, and that no one else can afford?

macy's, sears and walmart can't afford to spend billions getting the delivery times of their relatively small online businesses down from two days to one.

it's not stores that are dying, but the middle class, and the stores serving them

luxury is irrational, which makes it the best business in the world

amazon is google's biggest customer